Bernadine looked at Donnan, expecting him to react to the insult, but he stayed seated, his face a mask of earnestness as he said, “She is nae bein’ forced to live here, Nicholas. She is here willingly, as me love and me future wife, God willin’. Is that nae right, Bernadine?” Donnan asked, turning toward her.
Bernadine thought she had already seen him at his most vulnerable, that morning when he had first confessed his love to her. But she realized that this particular moment was the most exposed Donnan had ever been. He looked worried, scared, almost, as he gazed at her, the fear of losing her clear in his eyes. He needed her to speak, to restore his good name.
I cannot let him be afraid. I must be strong for him.
“Yes, it is true, Lord Hammilton. I am not his captive. I am his love. I love him, and I want to be his wife.”
Lord Hammilton looked, if possible, almost more distressed at this news than when he had thought that Bernadine was marrying Donnan against her will.
“Dear God…” he muttered, resting his elbows on his knees and hanging his head in his heads.
“Hammilton? What is the matter?” Donnan asked, looking concerned. Bernadine felt the same. All the fight seemed to have gone out of the lord, and now, as he sat slouched in his chair, he looked exhausted and dejected.
“This is almost worse,” he muttered, his voice muffled by his large palms covering his cheeks.
“Worse? Worse than ye thinkin’ I’m holdin’ Bernadine against her will? I’d think ye would be happy the lass is here freely, that she wants to marry me. Aren’t ye the one always tellin’ me I need to find a lass to settle down with? Well, I’ve found her. And I love her, Nicholas. She makes me the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Bernadine could hear the smile in Donnan’s voice as he spoke, and it warmed her to hear those words. She would never tired of Donnan telling her of his affections, not for the rest of her life.
The warmth in her heart was short-lived, however, for Lord Hammilton raised his head and turned his body to face her fully, steel resolve in his eyes. “No matter why you are here, what you feel for Donnan, you must come back with me, Bernadine. You need to see your father. I promised him I would bring you back to England safely, and I do not plan to abandon that promise. Your time in Scotland is done.” Lord Hammilton said and went outside to get some fresh air and rest from his journey.
Chapter 22
The orgasm came quickly, rushing from her center out to her limbs, her heart beating riotously as Donnan’s fingers continued their assault on her core.
“Donnan,” she croaked, her voice sounding needy and desperate to her own ears. “Please.”
Lifting his head from where it had been buried between her breasts, placing quick, biting kisses there, Donnan quirked a smile at her, the first she had seen grace his handsome face all day. “What is it ye ‘re needin’, lass?”
“You know what,” she said impatiently, pulling him up by the shoulders until he was above her, his manhood brushing against her belly.
“I’m afeared I need to hear ye say it, lass,” he said devilishly.
She groaned in frustration, her nails digging into the backs of his arms as she bit out, “Take me! Please! I need you inside me.”
She did not need to repeat herself. Before another breath had left her lungs, Donnan was placing himself at her entrance and thrusting in, filling her up exactly as she wished, as she needed.
His movements were fast, lacking the grace they usually bore, but she did not care. She had no need for grace tonight. She wanted Donnan raw, coarse, natural. She needed this version of him in her mind, a Donnan stripped to his bare essentials. It was this Donnan she would spend the rest of her life loving.
She could feel him nearing his climax, the muscles of his back tightening, his face contorting in that delicious grimace, when she said it.
“I’m yours. Forever. Only yours.”
Her eyes were locked on his as the words left her mouth. They were the truest words she had ever spoken, and she saw how they affected him. His pleasure hit him a moment later, his eyes glazing over as he thrust into her one last time before collapsing onto her, his slick chest pressing against her as he fastened his lips to her neck.
“And I the same lass. Always and forever,” he whispered just before he flipped them over, curling her into his chest with a grip that told her he never wanted to her go.
I wish he didn’t have to let me go, were Bernadine’s last thoughts before she fell asleep, her last sleep in Venruit Castle. Forever, or so she thought.
* * *
“She’s here! I can see the carriage rounding the corner now!” Guinevere shouted, toddling down the stairs, her hand on her chest, breathing hard as she made her way to the entrance of Harrow House.
It had been five long days since Lord Hammilton had sent word that he had succeeded in convincing Donnan Young to send Bernadine home, and since then Lord Nibley had been consumed with thoughts of his daughter and just how wounded she would be when she finally returned home.
Though Lord Hammilton had assured him that Bernadine was well, looking “as healthy as ever, and completely unharmed,” Lord Nibley’s knew the man was speaking only of his daughter’s outward appearance. But this was not what Lord Nibley had worried himself sick over. No, he was not worried about Bernadine’s looks. He was worried about her head, and the no-doubt dastardly things that Donnan Young had done to it.
Lord Hammilton had written in his letters that the connection between Donnan and Bernadine seemed “genuine,” but Lord Nibley knew that to be a fallacy. The Bernadine he had raised would never have fallen in love with a captor, a man so brutish and unrefined as to think he could kidnap Miss Bernadine Nibley, heiress to one of the oldest and grandest estates in England and face no consequences.
Lord Nibley knew his daughter. She was headstrong and whip smart. He had, after all, taught her to be that way. She was not one to be cowed by someone else, and the fact that she had done so suggested she had been truly altered. Lord only knew how long it would take to return her to her former state of being, before that horrible beast had entered their lives and so drastically changed them.
He imagined she was traumatized beyond belief from all the atrocities she had born while under the roof of that Scottish brute. That Donnan had convinced himself he was in love with Bernadine, and convinced her that she returned the affections, showed the man was truly unhinged and deserving of a lifelong stay in Bedlam. But that he had, according to Lord Hammilton, managed to convince Bernadine that she felt the same was all the more alarming.
Therefore, Lord Nibley had prepared himself for a long road to recovery, helping his daughter to once again learn to feel safe and cared for. He was not entirely certain how he would rid her of the mindset that had allowed her to stay at Castle Venruit willingly for so many weeks, but he had the time and money necessary to hire the very best doctors and carers to look after her. In time, surely, he would be able to return his daughter to the girl, or rather, the woman he knew and loved.
He had to. He had already lost one woman; he could not stand to lose another.
I could not bear it.
Lord Nibley strode to the door, which was at that very moment being opened by James, who still would not look him in the eye after his outburst the previous week.
“We are home!” Lord Hammilton called, a smile clear in his voice as he stepped into the foyer with Bernadine on his arm.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Guinevere cried, having been crouched near the door anxiously awaiting their entrance. She rushed to Bernadine and covering her with kisses as she pulled the girl into a choking embrace. Bernadine laughed as she returned the hug, burying her face in Guinevere’s fichu.
Lord Nibley hung back, waiting for Guinevere to finish her tirade of affection before he stepped forward and greeted his daughter. Though he would have loved to be the first to greet the girl, he knew how much Guinevere had been agonizing over her absence. As hard as it was to be withou
t his daughter, it was almost worse for Guinevere, who spent most of her hours with the girl. At least Lord Nibley had his work to keep his mind busy; Guinevere was past the years when work occupied her waking hours. Without Bernadine, she had wandered around the house like a ghost, unsure what to do without her gardening partner, the girl she loved like her own daughter.
Finally, after what seemed an hour, Guinevere released Bernadine, stepping back and wiping an errant tear from her eye. “Oh, child, you have no idea how good it is to see you. But I am keeping you from your papa,” she said, sliding an apologetic glance to Lord Nibley. He nodded, accepting her penitence, and stepped forward, holding his arms open for his daughter to embrace.
“Bernadine,” he whispered, his heart lifting at how good it felt to address her after so much time apart.
But as he watched his daughter step toward him, looking for signs of harm or alteration, he found that the woman who walked toward him was more confident than before.
She held her head higher, her shoulders thrust back as she stepped into his arms. She hugged him as tightly as ever, and yet Lord Nibley could detect a change in her as she wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder.
She was no longer his daughter, or rather, she was no longer just his daughter. She was a woman now, not the girl of twenty he had last laid eyes on.
And her eyes, those were different as well. As she stepped back and let him survey her, Lord Nibley saw not the trauma he was expecting in her cool blue gaze. No, instead he saw an emotion he was all too familiar with; love, or rather the sadness that losing it caused.
It was an emotion he had carried with him since the day she was born, since her mother had passed giving birth to her.
His relief at her return was gone the moment he recognized the emotion, replaced with hatred unlike any he had ever known before. Hatred for Donnan Young, who had stolen his daughter’s heart. He had hated the man for kidnapping her, of course, but this, this was a far more egregious wrong.
Donnan Young had taken his daughter from him forever, keeping her innocence, her sweetness for his own. The person he sent back to England was not someone Lord Nibley recognized or understood. What was he to do with her?
Chapter 23
“I won’t go, Papa,” Bernadine said to her father, crossing her arms over her chest. She was standing in front of her father’s desk, contemplating smashing the glass paperweight that was currently holding down some of his most recent business contracts.
“My dear, I think it will be good for you. Lord Chesworth’s son is a perfect match for you. Thirty-one, does not gamble, breeds some of the best horses in the country. And their estate is but an hour’s ride from ours in Cornwall. You could visit whenever you liked. Please, just meet with him,” her father begged. She could hear the impatience and exhaustion in his voice, but it did not deter her from speaking her mind, from refusing.
Her time in Scotland had taught her that she was far stronger than she knew. Donnan, and his love, had given her that strength, and she would not cower to her father. She might love him, but she no longer hesitated to defy him.
And there was no possibility of her going for a walk in the park with Lord Chesworth’s son, Harold Chesworth. He might be a desirable suitor for most women of the ton, but not for Bernadine. She was not looking for a suitor, now or ever. She would not marry. Donnan had her heart, her mind, her body, and soul, and she would not disrespect him by stepping out with another man.
“No, Papa. I have told you already, I will not go with him. I do not want to,” she said, holding firm. She did not miss the raised eyebrow her father gave her, a sign that her father was losing his temper.
Sure enough, a moment later he rose from his chair, the wood squeaking against the floor as he rounded the desk and came to stand in front of her.
“Listen to me and listen well, daughter,” he said, towering over her. He only called her daughter when he was truly cross with her; the last time he had addressed Bernadine thusly had been when she was still in petticoats. It was not a good sign that he was bringing the moniker out again, but rather than relenting, she rose to her fullest height and levelled with him a fearsome gaze.
“I will say this once more and only once more. You will go to the park this afternoon with Harold Chesworth. You will laugh at his jokes and smile at his affections, and you will not only do this, but you will accept him when he requests more than one dance on your card at the Montague’s ball next week.
“You will not spend another moment in this house looking lost in thought, thinking of that vile castle and its Laird. I am tired of it, Bernadine. You need to return to your routines, to the season, to society. Your life in England. Your reality. Stop letting his machinations fool your brain into thinking you were happier there than you could ever be here.”
Bernadine scoffed. “Machinations? To what exactly are you referring, Papa? To the way he cared for me, loved me, made me feel cherished? Are those the conspiracies of which you speak? For they are not conspiracies to me. They are very real indeed. And I was far happier there than I am here, back in my ‘normal life’ as you so call it,” she spat back, not caring when she saw the fire burn in his eyes at her retort.
She continued. “This is not usual, Papa. Not for either of us. You order me about like a servant, look at me like a stranger. What happened to letting me take my time with suitors, letting me carefully pick the man I am to spend the rest of my life with? Why are you so intent on marrying me off and getting rid of me? Have you grown so coarse in my absence, Papa? Do you no longer care for me at all, love me at all?”
She knew she was being disrespectful and hurtful, but she could not help it. Since the moment she stepped foot back in Harrow House, her father had seemed a totally different man than the one she had always known. His temper had always been poor, but he had never before directed his anger at her.
Yet now, it seemed that every day was punctuated by some sort of argument between them over things as trivial as the meat at supper and as essential as whom she ought to spend the rest of her life with.
Bernadine had made it clear she did not want to marry, ever. She had told her father and Guinevere her first night back that things had happened in Scotland that made her averse to the institution, not adding that those sentiments were a result of her not wanting to marry anyone but Donnan.
Guinevere had accepted this, seemingly so glad to have Bernadine back that she would have agreed to anything Bernadine said, no matter how outlandish or illogical.
Her father, however, seemed to take the statement as a challenge. Ten suitors had come out of the woodwork and were apparently vying for her hand, and every day her father pressed her to meet another one, to give a different man “a chance” at her affections.
It was exhausting, and Bernadine was sick of it. All she wanted was to be left alone, to drown herself in literary love stories and reminisce on her own version of an amorous tale.
But that could not happen, not until she had finally, once and for all, made it clear to her father exactly how averse she was to any suitor’s attention.
It is time to tell him, she realized as she glared back at him. It’s the only way. Perhaps he will understand. After all, he too was in love once.
“Papa,” she said, the anger and frustration gone from her voice. “There is a reason for my reticence with these men, you know.”
“And what, pray tell, is that, daughter?” he said, his words still hard and harsh.
“I am not looking for a man, because I already have one. Donnan Young. I love him, Papa. We fell in love, against all odds, while I was his captive. I love him freely, with my whole heart, and that has not changed since I left Scotland. It will never change, I know it. I will love him the rest of my life, like you loved Mama.”
Bernadine had hoped that the mention of her mother might soften her papa, but it served only to do the exact opposite. His teak brown eyes darkened, the pupils growing so large they nearly took o
ver his irises as he gnashed his teeth.
“How dare you,” he bit out, his words a bitter whisper. “What you and that villain share is nothing like what your mother and I had. What you share woth him is not love. It is control. He told you he loved you to keep you there as his prisoner, so he could feel powerful. That, my dear, is not love. It is evil, pure and simple. The fact that you cannot tell the difference makes me think you are far worse off than I feared.”
Bernadine was so shocked she did not speak, allowing her father to continue his fallacies. “You are out of your mind, Bernadine. I should have realized it before. You are a danger to yourself, and it is my job as your father to protect you.”
Grabbing her arm, he muttered, “Come, my child. I will keep you safe.”
Bernadine had never feared her father, had never truly had any reason to. Until a few moments later, when he shut the door behind him and took the key, leaving her locked in her room, for how long, she did not know.
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