The Reckless One

by Connie Brockway

  The sight that met his gaze sent him reeling backward, gasping and clutching at his chest.

  Janet stood beneath her portrait.

  She was silhouetted by the fire he insisted always be kept burning in the hearth of his private chambers, posed in profile, her hands folded at her waist. Her chin was tilted up at an angle as though she were studying the picture; a small smile curved her soft lips.

  “No!” he whispered.

  “Leave here, Ronald.” Her voice seemed to come from within his own head, echoing and dim, soft and implacable. She did not turn to face him. Her figure wavered slightly. “Leave here now.”

  She’d come to save him.

  Ronald Merrick, Earl of Carr, obeyed the haunt’s advice.

  “It’s barred from outside!” Favor shouted, clawing at Raine’s arm as he banged his shoulders again and again into the small door at the foot of the tower stairway. It was pitch black; only a sullen sliver of light beneath the door gave any illumination. “We have to go back up—”

  “No! We’ll die up there!”

  He’d been working to open the door for ten minutes, though it felt like hours. The stone tower had as yet stood proof against the blaze’s fury but soon the fire would find entry and they would be burned alive at the tower’s base.

  “Favor,” he said urgently, “I need something with which to pry the hinges off. See what you can do, I’ll keep battering at this.”

  Nodding, Favor scrambled back up the stairs, her hands feeling about for anything to use as a pry bar, her feet sliding over the width of the steps for anything that might be lying there. Halfway to the second story she almost impaled herself on a sharp edge protruding from the wall. She groped until she caught hold of a curved piece of metal. It was an old iron banister some worthy McClairen had fitted along the steep staircase and promptly left to erode. Double blessings on his head.

  Favor wrapped her fingers around the cold metal and twisted. The railing moved and she heard plaster pieces falling. She leaned back against the central core of the spiral staircase, braced her foot against the wall and heaved back with all her might. With a distinct snap, a heavy section of metal came loose in her hands.

  Panting and triumphant, she clambered down to Raine. Patting her way down his arm, she found his hand and slapped the three-foot section of metal in his palm.

  “Now, please, get us out of here,” she said.

  “Yes, Milady.” His tone told her he was smiling. She heard him feeling for the hinge, the scrape of metal against metal as he fit the end beneath the hinge, and then a grunt as he shoved.

  The metal snapped.

  For a second neither spoke.

  “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” she asked quietly.

  In answer she heard his shoulder strike the door with a loud boom, the sound reverberating through the small enclosure.

  “Please, Raine,” she said. “If we have to die here, I don’t want to die without feeling your arms around me once more.”

  Boom!

  “I love you, Raine. I want you to know that.”

  “God!” His roar was part fury, part supplication.

  “Please—”

  Strong arms caught her up in a fervent embrace. Lips salty with blood and sweat touched hers in a kiss so tender that tears sprang to her eyes.

  “I love you, Favor McClairen Merrick. I would have done everything in my power to make you happy. I swear I would.”

  “Where would we have gone?” she asked, an unnatural calm overtaking her. How could she feel so content in such a hell? A benefit of loving, she imagined.

  “America?” he said, sounding as if he, too, struggled to reconcile himself to this fate but fared far worse than she. “Perhaps … India. Yes. I think India.”

  “It’s warm there, is it not?” she asked wistfully. “I never realized how much I like to be warm until I’d returned here.”

  “I promise, you would have never been cold again,” he swore in a rough voice.

  “I should have dressed in silk saris and lain beneath white canopies and fed you pomegranates.”

  “No, sweet one,” he replied in a hushed voice. “I would have fed you pomegranates and kissed the juice from your lips.”

  “Then I should have been the first woman on earth to have grown fat on pomegranates,” she said, smiling softly.

  He did not reply and she felt a shiver pass through him, heard the hiss of a breath drawn in pain. She hurried on, determined to take him away from this black place and, for a brief moment, to the brilliant future they would never know.

  She touched his mouth, trying to soothe him. “And how many children would we have had?”

  “Dozens.” His voice was hushed. “All with shining hair and fierce dark brows and … Oh, God, I cannot do this. I will not do this!” He pounded his fist against the door.

  Silently, it swung open.

  She stared as Raine grabbed her hand and pulled her out after him. They were in the front hall, leading to the main staircase. Part of the ceiling had fallen in midway. Flames shot from the hole above and curtained one wall in a sheet of rippling fire.

  A footman carrying an empty sack ran far ahead of them and disappeared into the dining room. A scullery maid emerged shrieking from a doorway, beating at the fire climbing up her skirts but refusing to drop the silver tray she carried. She wheeled back into the room from whence she came and was lost to sight.

  They stopped. They needed only to make it past the blazing mound of plaster and wood that the ceiling had dumped in the corridor. The heat was intense, scorching their cheeks and singeing their hair. They were so close; they’d need only to turn the corner to be at the front door. But the pile was deep and the flames engulfing it were high.

  Abruptly, Raine spun her around. He clutched handfuls of her satin gown and with a mighty jerk, tore the heavy skirts off her. He scooped her up, tossing her over his shoulder and with a muttered oath, ran straight over the pile of burning debris. On the far side he dropped her, slapping his smoldering boots before motioning her ahead. She took hold of his hand. A few more yards. They turned the corner leading to the front entrance.

  There, impossibly, set on the floor directly in front of the door to the outside, stood a life-sized portrait of Janet McClairen. Some hand must have set it there, barring that portal. Yet who? It was afire, the painted canvas curling at the corners, little yellow flames lapping from the edges in toward the painted visage, burning away the beautiful one-sided smile, the haughty nose, and the gorgeous too-knowing eyes. As they watched, thunderstruck, Janet’s face disappeared exposing the backing and secured to it a large leather satchel. Then the backing, too, caught fire and the pocket dropped from where it had once been lodged.

  “Raine …?”

  He knelt and quickly retrieved the heavy leather bundle, untying the thong and lifting the flap. A fierce Celtic lion the size of a man’s hand glared up at him with marble-sized ruby cabochon eyes.

  “McClairen’s Trust,” Raine murmured.

  “Do you think that … that someone put it here just for you to find?” she asked. The flames behind them were growing nearer.

  Someone had. Raine gazed at the empty picture frame, a scowl hardening his features and then, just as the fire had burned away Janet’s lovely visage, the frown disappeared from his face replaced by tenderness and warmth and fierce certainty. He retied the bundle and thrust it inside his shirt.

  “Raine?” Favor asked again.

  “Aye,” he said. “I do. My mother, Favor. She gave it to us as a wedding present and that belief I will carry to my grave.”

  He held out his hand. She took it.

  Together they walked out of the burning castle and down the granite steps and past the huddled, whimpering queues of guests and servants.

  And they did not look back.

  You met Ashley Merrick in

  The

  Passionate One.

  You got to know his brother, Raine Merrick, in


  The

  Reckless One.

  Now turn the page for an introduction to their younger sister, Fia Merrick. She is …

  The

  Ravishing One.

  The third novel in Connie Brockway’s breathtakingly romantic McClairen’s Isle trilogy is available from Dell.

  The Ravishing One

  Thomas pushed the door open without knocking.

  Though only midafternoon, a half-dozen men crowded Fia’s boudoir to offer their opinions on her toilette for the coming evening. They flanked her ornate rosewood dressing table, their primped and carefully painted faces reflected in the huge velvet-draped mirror sitting atop its lacquered surface. One sat on a tufted stool by her feet; another knelt beside her and peered into a silver dish containing several beauty marks. The others stood close. Jonathan was among their number.

  His presence alarmed Thomas and disappointed him. He turned his head from his friend, concentrating on the object of Jonathan’s attention and that of every other man in the room: Fia, Lady MacFarlane.

  In the midst of this coterie of gentlemen, like a rose in a field of bracken, she reclined on a small gilt chair, glorious and feminine and deadly in her fashionable dishabille. Her black tresses spilled in glossy, artful disarray over her spare, smooth white shoulders, naked above the filigreed lace that edged the deep bodice of her dressing gown. Sheer shell-pink silk flowed along the curves of her body and pooled about her feet. When she was a child, her beauty had been disconcerting; now that she was a woman, it was devastating. An untried boy would never be able to resist such as she—especially if she’d targeted him.

  She’d not remarked his entrance, Thomas noted bitterly. Why would she? What could one man more in her chambers mean to her? What had the absence of one boy meant? Nothing.

  He approached her directly, boldly cutting through the ranks of admirers until he stood within a few feet of her. The men turned their heads, looking irritated at finding a new contender for Fia’s attention. But when they saw what he carried, their irritation gave way to alarm.

  Thomas lifted the blood-smeared épée like a talisman and pitched it into the air, seizing the middle of the bare blade in his equally bare fist, feeling the bloodied edge cut into his palm. The men’s mutters faded, the room grew still with hushed expectancy, and Fia, who’d been speaking to the poor sot kneeling beside her, froze too.

  Slowly she turned her head, her eyes still downcast, as if to first assess his presence with other senses besides sight. Her lashes swept across the creamy curve of her high cheekbones. She was unearthly beautiful.

  He waited for her to look up. She would acknowledge him, damn her, before he spoke. Her brow knotted, then smoothed and slowly, with what seemed to him trepidation, her gaze rose to his. By God! Her eyes were just as startling a blue as he’d remembered. Mayhap more so.

  “Lord Donne.” Her voice was slight, breathless. She looked frightened, cornered, but she hadn’t yet dropped her gaze to the épée he clenched.

  “Lady MacFarlane.”

  “I say, Lady MacFarlane, who is this fellow?” a swarthy youngster asked.

  “Lord Donne is a … very old … friend of the family’s.” Her lips curled with sarcasm. Her eyes remained locked with his.

  “Thomas?” Jonathan spoke from his side. His voice held one note of confusion, another of concern.

  For an instant Thomas was locked in her gaze’s sapphire embrace, until the pain of the blade cutting his palm recalled him to his purpose. He didn’t want to be here. He’d thought himself done with the Merricks years before and he resented her having drawn him back into their poisonous web. He also resented the regret that rose within him as he registered the fine lines at the corners of her magnificent eyes, the shadow of a downward pull at the corners of her still, full mouth. He steeled himself against any compassion these subtle signs of weariness awoke.

  She played havoc with men’s hearts and lives. Now she must pay the price of her sport.

  “I’ve brought you a memento,” Thomas said.

  Twin lines of consternation appeared between the dark wings of her brows. “A memento?”

  “Of a particularly successful seduction.”

  “Thomas …” Jonathan laid a cautioning hand on his forearm. Thomas ignored the friend who’d fallen under her thrall—a fitting term, for Fia was certainly a siren, or a witch, or some other black-hearted sorceress. He could think of her as nothing less, for couldn’t he himself feel the draw of her, the potent attraction she wielded with such blithe disregard?

  “Here.” He dropped the bloodied blade on her lap. “You can add this to your collection.”

  Instinctively, she recoiled from the sword. A dark red stain instantly marked the pale fabric of her gown. He waited, the pulse beating thick and urgent in his veins. He could not see her expression. Her face remained bowed over the blade, her hands arrested in the air above it, her tumbled locks masking her face.

  “What is this?” she asked in a low, hoarse voice.

  “By God, Thomas, you go too far!”

  “Do I?” His gaze slew to Jonathan, white-faced and trembling by his side. “And here I’d thought she’d gone too far, for ’twas for her sake the boy offered himself up to be used as a demonstration of Tunbridge’s art. For her—”

  “What boy?” she interrupted, her head snapping up.

  “Are there so many, then?” His smile felt like a rictus.

  “What boy?”

  “I’d best describe him lest you never knew his name,” he said, failing to achieve the cavalier tone he attempted. “A boy of eighteen years but who looked younger. Fair-haired and fur-skinned—”

  “Oh, no. Not Pip,” she murmured. Her eyes were tragic, and for a moment his resolve wavered. But then, he remembered, she had an audience to woo.

  “I see you do recall him. He’ll be so gratified. Phillip Constable. Pip. Not rich Pip, not powerful Pip, but as capable of love as any grown man. Indeed”—his gaze swept through the group of posers like the blade he’d so recently discarded—“more so. But then, the young love so ardently, so wholeheartedly, don’t they? So very, very foolishly.”

  “Yes,” she said, lifting her head to a defiant angle, “or so I’ve been told. Where is he now? What happened?”

  He tallied the brightness of her eyes, the adamantine quality of her expression. She waited, seemingly remorseless, demanding, regal, and haughty.

  “Your name was being besmirched,” he said. “Pip would have none of it. The young fool challenged Tunbridge to a duel. Tunbridge accepted. They fought. Young Pip, as you can see”—he jerked his chin in the direction of the bloodstained épée—“lost.”

  She shuddered slightly. “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “Not yet. The blade pierced the meat of his breast but no vital organs.” The tension in her eased. She wasn’t going to get off so comfortably. “If he’s very lucky, no infection will set in and he’ll live to learn a lesson from his ill-advised gallantry. If he’s lucky.”

  “Perhaps we all will,” she said softly before raising accusing eyes. “And what of you? Apparently you have some feelings for … this boy. Could you not have stopped it?”

  “I knew nothing of the duel.” How dare she place the onus of Pip’s fate on him! And why should he feel the need to defend himself to her? Guilt made his voice harsh. “Only happenstance led me in their direction. I heard the clash of steel and followed the sound. It did not go on very long. Pip is not much of a swordsman.”

  And having been stung by her inference that he had let the boy challenge so superior an opponent, he repaid her in kind—by attacking. “When did you first come upon him? Pip, that is. You could have circumvented this, then, by simply letting the lad be. He couldn’t have presented much of a challenge. Not for you.”

  “No,” she said tautly. “No challenge at all.”

  “’Sblood, man,” Jonathan burst out. “Continue and I’ll be forced to call you out myself!”

  Fia pu
t her hand down on the chair’s arm and pushed herself upright. The sword clattered to the floor.

  The sharp sound shattered the paralysis that held the other men in its grip. The swarthy young man Thomas had noted earlier pushed the others aside and moved to confront Thomas. With one fluid movement he struck Thomas across the cheek.

  “Name the place, sir!” the dark youngster ground out.

  “No.”

  “Coward!” another man spat out in disgust.

  The dark youth’s jaw bulged in frustration. He raised his hand to deliver a backhanded blow to Thomas’s other cheek, but before he could do so Thomas caught his wrist in midair.

  “Don’t do it, son,” he said coldly. “She’s not worth a broken jaw, let alone your life.” To emphasize his point, he tightened his grip until he felt bones grind together. The youngster’s brows snapped together in startled pain. Helplessly he tried to yank free, but Thomas’s grip had been honed holding his own weight one-handed from a yardarm fifty feet above deck while he secured a sail with the other.

  “I will not tolerate your insult to this lady!” the young man panted, his fear causing his voice to break.

  “Thomas, desist!” Jonathan commanded as harsh exclamations erupted around them. Faces grew livid. Hands clenched.

  “Stop it!” Fia’s voice rose above the ensuing clamor. “Let him go!”

  Thomas turned on her with a snarl. “Don’t fret, Madame. Your snowy conscience will not be marred on my account.” He looked back at the youngster twisting angrily in his grip. “You can call me out as many times as you like. Sir.” His gaze swept over the shocked, angry faces of the others. “Any one of you can, but you won’t find any satisfaction. Not now, not ever. Enough blood has been spilled because of her and her own. And from the look of you pitiful fools”—he included Jonathan in his scathing scrutiny—“more will be. But not mine. Never mine.”

  With a muttered oath, Thomas released the youngster’s wrist. He snatched it to his chest, backing away.

  Thomas waited, so focused on what he was sure would be the pup’s fool bid at recompense that he didn’t hear or see Fia move. He just suddenly felt her close by. His head swung around. She stood less than an arm’s span away, small and delicate and vibrant, Queen Mab by daylight, shimmering in silk and sunlight, her blue eyes brilliant and fierce.