MAD, BAD & DANGEROUS TO MARRY (The Highland Brides Book 4)

by Elizabeth Essex

  “Aye, my love,” she agreed. “Mercy before vengeance. I’ve had my fill of coffins, without filling any more.”

  Ewan pulled her close and kissed her brow. “Then you shall have it. Send him away.”

  “I’ll see you in hell, cousin.”

  “You may go to hell, Malcolm, but I am going to get married.”

  As soon as might be arranged. “Come.” He took Greer by the hand and led her out, into the clean open air, where he could breathe and think. Where he could hear the wind whisper through the trees to calm the racing of his heart. Where he could propose the way he had always meant to. “It’s not Glas Maol,” he told her as they went through the gate to the walled garden. “But it will have to do.”

  “Do for what?”

  “To show you. It was you.” He opened his hand to revel her battered and shattered miniature, very much the worse for wear. “It was you all along—the penny in my palm.” He held out the miniature in the flat of his palm. “It is you.”

  “Aye.” She could not keep the tears from her eyes. “I gave that to you. Sent it from—”

  “Italy,’ he confirmed. “You did. And this lass I know, I remember, this lass from the letters—the lass I wrote to.”

  “Oh, aye?” Her voice cracked with some bittersweet combination of disbelief and hope.

  “Oh, aye. It all makes perfect sense now—the reason I couldn’t remember you, this beautiful, gorgeously ginger creature, this fierce, kind woman, was that I had never met you. I know only my sprite, my lucky penny in my pocket who went with me everywhere. Though she was only a painting, not been flesh and blood, she had been real to me.”

  “Am I real enough now?” Greer asked through the tears that rolled down her cheeks even as she smiled at him.

  “You are more than real. You are mine, just as you always were. You were the last thing he tried to take from me—that day on the bridge, when he took grandfather’s ring from my fingers, and rifled through my pockets, he pulled you from my hand.”

  She shivered in his arms. “I heard most, but not all of what happened.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.” But perhaps it did, because he went on. “It had been afternoon—the bright September sun had slanted thought the dark green trees. I was traveling along the tree-lined road, and the sun had been warm on my left shoulder—because I was going north. On my way home. To Crieff. To be married. To be with you.”

  He kissed the tears from her eyes. “I was so happy because I was going to be with you. And now I am.”

  “You’ve remembered it all.”

  “Not all, but most. But I know it doesn’t matter anymore. I know that I will love you with every fiber of my being, and fiercely as you have loved and fought for me. I am at peace.”

  “And at Crieff.”

  “With you.” He kissed her. “Will you have me, damaged as I am?”

  “I like this man. I respect this man. And I pledge myself to this man forever more.”

  He kissed her again, slower this time, with all the joy and love and relief he no longer had to hide. “What say you to ending our betrothal, and at last getting married, my Lady Greer?”

  “Oh, aye.” His lass’s smile was bright with her own brand of impish joy. “I beg that you would do so at your earliest convenience.”

  His Grace the Duke of Crieff

  Cameron House,

  Edinburgh

  Scotland

  1 September, 1792

  Dearest Ewan,

  I am arrived ashore in Britain, and as anxious as I can be to fly to you! But Mama says a certain decorum must be observed, therefore I write to ask your permission and blessing to meet you at Crieff three days hence. Please say yes! Oh, please. For I can wait no longer to be ~

  Yours, G

  Lady Greer Douglas

  Dalshee House

  Perthshire

  Sept—

  Dearest G,

  Yes. Let us be wed in two days’ time. With all my heart, yes.

  —E

  Epilogue

  It ought to have been a joyful thing to marry a man one had always loved, but despite her joy—or perhaps because of it—Greer cried. They were happy tears, but tears nonetheless.

  But perhaps a couple who had suffered less, could smile more.

  They were married just as they ought to have been, in the ancient kirk of St. Bride at Crieff, beneath the bright rainbow of the stained-glass window, and everything was exactly as it ought to be—her friends surrounded them, her Papa beamed, her Mama sighed, and her bridegroom was so handsome in a suit of embroidered silk velvet so fine that he outshone the sun.

  She wore the silk dress Mrs. Malloch and Morna Beale had hand embroidered so patiently so long ago—and which they had carefully revived without chiding Greer about the dirt and stains from that first, awful wedding day, the day her beloved had fallen, quite literally, at her feet.

  But she would think of that awful day no more. Today was the first day of the future she had always wanted, always planned and hoped for. Today was a memory she would keep forever. And so would her bridegroom, who at last, knew just what to say when her Papa bestowed her hand upon him. “Gie it laldy, now lass,” he murmured as they faced the rector.

  And she did, because at last the bright autumn sun shone high overhead, and everything was exactly as it should be.

  Thank You from the Author

  Thank you for reading Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Marry. I hope you’ll take a few minutes out of your day to review this book – your honest opinion is much appreciated. Reviews help introduce readers to new authors they wouldn’t otherwise meet.

  The Highland Brides

  Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Marry is the fourth book in The Highland Brides. While each book reads as a stand-alone, the series is best enjoyed in chronological order.

  Mad for Love

  Mad About the Marquess

  A Fine Madness

  Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Marry

  Mad Dogs and Englishwomen (coming soon)

  To keep up to date on The Highland Brides, learn about other series (including The Dartmouth Brides and The Reckless Brides), sign up for Elizabeth’s newsletter and get exclusive excerpts, contests, and more

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  Excerpt from Mad About the Marquess

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  June 1792

  Lady Quince Winthrop had always known she was the unfortunate sort of lass who could resist everything but temptation. And the man across the ballroom was temptation in a red velvet coat. There was something about him—some aura of English arrogance, some presumption of privilege—that tempted her beyond reason, beyond caution, and beyond sense. Something that tempted her to steal from him. Right there in the Countess of Inverness’s ballroom. In the middle of the ball.

  Which was entirely out of character. Not the stealing—she stole as naturally as she breathed. But because the other thing that Lady Quince Winthrop had always known, was that the most important thing about stealing was not where one relieved a person of his valuable chattels. Nor when. Nor how. Nor even what particular wee trinket one slipped into one’s hidden pockets. Nay.

  The tricky bit was always from whom one stole.

  When one robbed from the rich, one had to be careful. Pick the wrong man, or woman for that matter—too canny, too important, too powerful—and even the perfect plan could collapse as completely as a plum custard in a cupboard. Which made it all the more curious when she ignored her own advice, and picked the wrong man anyway.Whoever he was, he stood with his back to her, his white-powdered hair in perfect contrast to that red velvet coat so vivid and plush and enticing that Quince was drawn to it like a Spanish bull to a bright swirling cape. Unlike the gaudily embroidered suits worn by the other men, the crimson coat was entirely unadorned but for two gleaming silver buttons that winked at her in the candlelight, practically begging her to nip one of the expensive little embellishments right off his back.

 
A button like that could feed a family of six for a fortnight.

  And while her itchy-fingered tendency toward theft was perhaps not the most sterling of characteristics in an otherwise well brought up young Scotswoman, no one was perfect. And it was so very hard to be good all the time.

  She had much rather be bad, and be right.

  So Quince took advantage of the terrific crush in Lady Inverness’s ballroom, slipped her finger into the tiny ring knife she kept secreted in the muslin folds of her bodice for just such an occasion, and sidled up behind Crimson Velvet.

  She did not pause, nor give herself a moment to think on what she was about to do. She ignored the chitter of warning racing across her skin, and set straight to it, diverting his attention by brushing her bodice quite purposefully against his back, while she nipped the button off as easily as if it were a snap pea in a garden.

  The elation was like a rush of blood to the head—intoxicating and addictive.

  And because that was what she did—regularly stole fine things from finer people in the finest of ballrooms—she wasn’t satisfied with only the one button. Nay. Another six mouths could be fed, and Quince could live all week on the illicit thrill of having taken the second button as well, and gotten away clean.

  Except that she didn’t get away clean.

  She didn’t get away at all.

  A very large hand clamped onto Quince’s wrist like a shackle. A red velvet-clad hand.

  Alarm jumped onto her chest like a sharp-clawed cat, but Quince kept her head, automatically tucking the buttons and knife down the front of her bodice, and winding her now-empty free hand around that crimson velvet waist. She pressed herself to his backside more firmly, and familiarly, and said the first unexpected thing that came to her mind. “Darling!”

  Crimson Velvet went as stiff as a bottle of Scotch whisky. “Good Lord. What’s this?”

  Alarm faded as recognition, and something that really oughtn’t be delight curled into her veins. She knew that deceptively easy tone. Strathcairn. Earl thereof.

  Oh, holy clotted cream.

  The Laughing Highlander, she had once called him. But the Highlander was not laughing now. He was looking down at her with a sort of astonished wonder. “Wee Quince Winthrop, is that you? Good Lord.” He stepped away—though he did not let go of her wrist—to case her as thoroughly as she ought to have done him. “I would not have recognized you.”

  She had clearly not recognized him. But the man gripping her wrist was neither the powdered dandy she had imagined from across the ballroom, nor the amusing, carefree Earl of Strathcairn she remembered. This man was different, and as dazzling in his own way as the shining silver buttons she had secreted down her soft-pleated bodice.

  Firstly, he was as irresistibly attractive as that red velvet suit—all precise, well-cut shoulders, and long lean torso that seemed a far cry from the rangy, not-yet-fully-formed man in his youth. But secondly—and more importantly—he was much more controlled, more…curated, as if he had carefully chosen this particularly splendid view of himself to show the world. As if he not only wanted, but demanded to be seen.

  Quite the opposite of Quince, who minded her appearance only to make sure she blended into the crowd—if her sister told her this season everyone was wearing white chemise dresses, then a white chemise dress she wore, disappearing into a sea of similarly dressed swans.

  By contrast, Strathcairn looked every bit an individual, and quite, quite splendid. His waistcoat was of the same saturated color as his coat, and his snow-bright linen with only the barest hint of lace was the perfect foil for his immaculately powdered hair.

  On any other man such a look might have appeared plain and underdone, but on Strathcairn the blaze of unadorned velvet served to highlight the force of his personality.

  And there was nothing she liked as much as personality, unless it was a challenge.

  The earl appeared to be both.

  “Why, Strathcairn.” She made her voice everything breezy and cordial. As if her heart were not beating in her ears, and dangerous delight were not dancing down her veins. “It’s been an age.”

  “Too long, from the looks of it.” He stepped close—too close, not that she particularly minded—and looked down at her in a perilously attentive way, like a great, green-eyed tomcat eyeing up a wee mouse. The effect was most unsettling. It put her right off her stride. “Do you often embrace men you haven’t seen in years?”

  It had been exactly five years. He had briefly been one of her eldest sister Linnea’s suitors then—newly elected a Member of Parliament, and headed to London, brilliant and ambitious. Quince remembered thinking the lanky Highlander was too tall, too clever, too canny, and far too insightful for tiny, fluttery Linnea, who adored nothing more than to be made a pet of.

  Strathcairn hadn’t seemed the type to keep pets.

  Quince had been little more than a fourteen-year-old lass, but she had quite liked the young man’s intelligence, nearly as much as his vibrant charm. Though what she liked best of all was his lovely, buttery smile that had made her feel like she was melting in the sun.

  Strathcairn was certainly not pouring the butter boat over her now—his eyes might have been smiling, but from this angle, his chiseled jaw seemed to have been carved out of Grampian granite.

  No matter. Quince was not Linnea—she was no one’s pet. “I thought you were someone else,” she lied without effort or qualm. “You’ve changed.”

  “So, my indiscreet young friend, have you.” The barest hint of amusement in his glorious baritone was all that was necessary to bring back all the delicious torment of her youthful infatuation. “What in heaven’s name did you think you were doing, calling me ‘darling’?”

  “Thought you were my Davie.” Quince made up a convenient beau on the spot. “I must find where the darling lad’s got to.”

  Strathcairn let out a low, disbelieving bark of laughter, but didn’t let go of her wrist. “You can’t be old enough to be making assignations with men, wee Quince.”

  He trespassed easily on the old acquaintance by calling her by her Christian name—if Papa’s botanically inspired names for his daughters could even be called Christian. Strathcairn also crossed the lines of familiar behavior by turning her toward the door, and somehow settling her against his side in such a subtle, but insistent, way, that not a person in the place would have suspected she was being all but frog-marched from the ballroom.

  Even though she was grown up now, and towered over tiny Linnea, Quince still had to leg it to keep up with Strathcairn’s long strides, all the while craning her neck to get a proper close look at him.

  He looked so different, with his hair powdered white, and this controlled look upon his face, as if his smile had been put away in a cupboard, like a cravat that no longer fit. This new Strathcairn was far more imposing, and much, much more intimidating looming beside her like one of the great statues at Holyrood Palace than he had ever seemed all those years ago when she had keeked out at him from behind the drawing room curtains.

  But she was not four and ten now. Quince let him tow her only as far as a conveniently empty alcove at the end of the entrance hall, before she rounded her elbow out of his grip, and served him a sharp, instructive jab in the ribs—anger brought out the Scots in her. “I’d be much obliged if you’d take your great paws off of me, Strathcairn. You’re creasing my gown.”

  He subdued his grunt of discomfort, but put a hand absently to his side. “My paws”—he gave the word a wry intonation—“are not great in the least. They’re rather average. For a Scot.” At last he let the gorgeously rough Scots burr rumble beneath the town polish of his Member-of-Parliament accent. “Your gown is barely creased, and not by me, but by that interminable crush. Or more likely by this Davie fellow. And who the devil is he?” Strathcairn’s green gaze poured over her like chilly water. “He can’t possibly be a worthy mon if he lets a lass like you caress him in public. You’re too young for suitors.”

 
By jimble, but he had grown into an even more attractive man himself over the years, despite this polished, urbane facade. Or perhaps because of it—his worldliness gave him an attractive look of experienced wisdom. Quite irresistible.

  “I’m not young anymore, either. I’m nineteen.”

  This he acknowledged with a wry sideways slant of his head, as if she were so out of kilter that the acute angle somehow made it easier to see her. “A very bad age to be an accomplished liar. And flirt.” Strathcairn finally released her arm.

  Much to her chagrin—which was all the emotion she would allow to account for the strange warmth suffusing her face—she found she missed the contact. How disconcerting.

  So she changed the subject. Without flirting. “What are you doing in Edinburgh?”

  “I’ve come north to see to Castle Cairn now that my grandfather’s passed on.”

  Something that must have been sincerity stabbed her hard in the chest. “I am sorry, Strathcairn. He was a grand auld gent.”

  It was the right thing to say—Strathcairn’s whole demeanor softened enough to show her more of the young man she had admired beneath his curated veneer. Even those glittering eyes went soft at the edges. “Thank you. He was, wasn’t he?”

  “Aye.” The Marquess of Cairn had been a cavalier of the old school, gentlemanly, generous and bold. He had raised Strathcairn when his son, Strathcairn’s father and the prior earl, had passed away suddenly during Straithcairn’s youth. “He’ll be missed. Oh—that means you’re Cairn now.”

  Strathcairn—for she could think of him no other way even if he were now Marquess of Cairn—lowered that chiseled chin, and nodded in rueful agreement. “Aye. And he’s left large boots to fill. So I’m seeing to Cairn.” He took a deep breath as if he were collecting himself before he raised his head, and added, “But before I head north to home, I’ve also been asked to see to a rather persistent problem plaguing Edinburgh.”