Bride

by Stella Cameron

  But not in near darkness.

  Still fully dressed in rustling black gros de Naples, she moved as swiftly and silently as she dared, holding the bannister with both hands as she descended the stairs to a dim corridor leading to the vestibule.

  He wouldn’t come. What would she say if he did? What would he say if he saw her?

  She would simply say, “Hello, Struan.” Yes, that would be perfectly appropriate.

  The corridor opened into the vestibule where standing suits of armor gleamed dully on all sides. A massive battle relief, in white plaster and placed aloft above a great, bare fireplace, gave off an eerie glow. The wall sconces had been allowed to burn out and the candles never replenished—another evidence of servants slacking about their duties while their employers were not in residence.

  Struan should … But Struan obviously had larger concerns than burned-out candles and slothful servants.

  Justine reached the cold flagstone floor and crossed an expanse of carpet she remembered from her arrival as red Persian.

  She stopped, pressed her fists into her stomach, aware of being cold but not caring.

  He wouldn’t come.

  If she was seen here by a servant she’d be the one causing mean whispers belowstairs.

  To the left of the huge double front doors, a black archway suggested a porter’s nook. Justine approached cautiously and peered inside. As her eyes adjusted, she made out a wooden bench where some appropriate servant should have been ensconced and ready to perform his duties at all times.

  She would rest on the bench—for a few moments—then return to her apartments and sleep. The journey from Cornwall had been long and tedious.

  But she would rest here first. For a few moments.

  She settled herself.

  A clock ticked. Not loudly—but definitely. She could discern the instrument only as a corner shadow.

  When she moved, the bench creaked.

  The darkness seemed to have a substance, a thickness that settled around her, cool and oppressive—and alive.

  Darkness was not alive; she was not a fanciful woman.

  “Modest, circumspect, pious, and above reproach.” How often had she been complimented on her virtues by Grandmama’s friends?

  Virtues! The devil take virtues. The time had come to make one last grab for happiness, and Justine was willing—no, glad to toss her virtues to anyone in need of them in exchange for freedom.

  She could stay at Castle Kirkcaldy if she wanted to. No one would be rude enough to tell her she wasn’t welcome.

  Ooh, what a moonstruck widgeon she was. She stood up. Why had she thought Struan might be glad to see her? Why had she thought he’d welcome the proposition she’d decided to make him?

  Footsteps sounded on stone outside the castle doors.

  Justine plopped back down and held her breath.

  An echoing grind meant the iron ring handles were being turned. A scrape, followed by a rush of icy air, told Justine someone had opened the doors.

  Why had she dared to come?

  She would hold very still, make not a sound, and return to her rooms the instant she could do so without being seen—by anyone.

  Heavy steps clanged on flagstones. Scrabbling sounded and light flared from a candle atop an ancient chest opposite Justine’s hiding place. Before the chest, his back to her, stood a tall, cloaked figure.

  She heard a drawer opening and the rustle of something being removed. Then she heard a low, angry oath and tried to grow at once smaller.

  The man paced out of her sight, then back again, his boots cracking on stone, his cloak swinging away from his powerful shoulders. His voice came to her in a low, rumbling, unintelligible stream. It was Struan’s voice.

  Then he stopped pacing and stood, in profile, his sharply defined jaw outlined against the candle’s light.

  And this time Justine’s heart did stop beating entirely.

  Struan bore with him the very wind that streamed through the still-open doors. The cold air, snapping with scents of moor and mountain and crystal night, flowed about the folds of his cloak and settled in his ruffled black hair.

  Struan, Viscount Hunsingore, appeared a man at one with the night. The flickering flame caught the glitter of eyes as black as his hair and his slanting brows. Shadows found the lean planes of his face, the slash of high cheekbone and straight, narrow-bridged nose. The same flame glimmered on white teeth between flaring, drawn-back lips.

  Night became the man, even when rage made of his features a stark mask. Perhaps especially then.

  She was not herself.

  Without thinking, she walked into the archway to see the man she loved more clearly.

  His head snapped toward her.

  Justine took a backward step and stumbled. The cold had stiffened her leg.

  His eyes narrowed, but then he moved. Swiftly. He strode toward her as she moved farther into the tiny porter’s room.

  “My God,” he exclaimed, reaching for her.

  She felt her lips part, but she couldn’t form a word.

  His strong hands clasped her waist, lifted her, swung her. Justine was a tall woman, but Struan was so very much taller.

  She was sure he was angry with her. He’d found her spying on him in whatever this trouble was that turned his eyes the shade of devils’ designs.

  He swung her around and up into his arms. “Justine,” was all he said, his voice breaking a little in its depths.

  She still could not speak.

  “I cannot believe this,” he said, holding her against his wide chest.

  Justine dared look no higher than his beautiful mouth. The scents of the untamed Scottish country prickled in her eyes and wrinkled her nose. His hair—longer than when she’d last seen him—curled at the high collar of his cloak.

  At last she managed to say, “I did not mean to startle you.”

  “You almost fell,” he said. “It’s too cold for your leg here. You should be in your bed.”

  He didn’t ask why she was here, why she’d come when she ought to know Arran and Grace weren’t here.

  “Oh, Justine,” Struan said, and when she raised her eyes to his, she almost gasped at the intensity she saw there. He didn’t smile. “Praise the Lord for letting me find you in this place on this hellish night, my lady.”

  Words deserted her once more.

  He was about to speak again, but blinked and seemed to realize he held her in his arms and that such a thing was extraordinary—and inappropriate.

  “Forgive me,” he said, shaking his head. “I forgot myself.” Very carefully, he carried her to the bench, set her gently down, and sat beside her.

  Struan took her cold hands into his own and chafed them with long, supple fingers. “I cannot believe my good fortune. You cannot know how I needed to set my eyes upon you.”

  Her mouth turned dry and she struggled to think why be should seem so delighted to find her here.

  “Please tell me you’ll spare just a little time for a man in need.”

  A little time? She’d spare him her entire life. “Of course,” she told him. “Tell me, Struan. Tell me what you need.” She had undoubtedly been wrong to employ falsehood to bring about this meeting, yet it appeared a nobler cause than her own might be served.

  Struan simply looked at her. Holding both of her hands in one of his, he touched her cheek, rested a thumb on her lips.

  Justine could not draw a breath. Surely he gazed at her with affection?

  “I need very little, my dear one,” he said at last. “All my soul requires is this chance to look upon a woman beyond reproach and above deceit.”

  Chapter Two

  Struan bent forward, surrounding the woman who sat sideways before him on his horse, shielding her from the gale with his cloak and the heat of his body.

  She had refused to allow him to leave the castle without her. “A mature female may choose to come and go as she pleases,” she’d informed him tartly when he’d reminded her that he
r absence would be questioned. “I shall take a warm outer garment and write a message for the maid. Since none seemed particularly pleased at my arrival, none should be less pleased by my departure.”

  He smiled into the unkind night. From the moment he’d first met Lady Justine Girvin, he’d felt her quiet, patient strength, but he would never have wagered her stubborn.

  They’d traveled some miles. The big black he’d appropriated from the castle stables several weeks since, followed the narrow trail north with unerring ease. Their destination lay beyond Castle Kirkcaldy’s outermost fortifications, in the hilly area of the estate where Struan’s grandfather had built his hunting lodge.

  “Your leg?” Struan shouted against Justine’s ear. “Are you too uncomfortable?”

  She shook her head but made no attempt at a reply. There had been no question of alerting attention by going to the stables for a second mount.

  Apart from her final pronouncement that she would go with him whether he approved or not, Justine hadn’t spoken at all since he’d confessed how glad he was to see her. In fact, if he didn’t know her to be a woman of few words by nature, he’d wonder if she’d had some recent and deeply disturbing experience. Perhaps his inappropriate exuberance at the castle had embarrassed her.

  They climbed upward and entered a forest of sycamore and oak. By daylight budding leaves were visible. In the vague glimmering of the cloud-veiled moon, gnarled tree limbs laced overhead to fashion an arching canopy that swayed, snapped, and whined.

  On the far side of the forest lay a slope where the trail wound downward in wide switchbacks to a slim valley, then uphill again to a pine-crowned knoll. The huge hunting lodge, his grandfather’s only known act of fanciful extravagance, sprawled amid the shielding barrier of those pines.

  Tossing his head and blowing clouds of vaporous breath, the black toiled a little on the final uphill pull. Justine sat rigidly before Struan, and he reached past her to lay a gentling hand on the animal’s neck.

  “Not much farther,” he shouted.

  She only nodded.

  Cloud slipped across the moon, turning out the light over Kirkcaldy. The faintest touch of silver struggled to keep its hold beneath a lowering sky—then faded completely. Soon there would be rain in the wind. Struan could feel it.

  He was glad Justine was here—puzzled, yet very, very glad. But he should not have allowed her to travel through such a night to the lodge. The act was selfish and unsuitable. Mature she might be, but some might find fault with a beautiful and unmarried woman riding alone with a man to whom she was unrelated.

  There was no one in the area to know; none in a position to express disapproval.

  And he needed Justine. He needed an honest friend, if only to be reunited for a short while with the sane world that he fled with the arrival of the first, damnable letter.

  Struan tightened his arms around Justine and closed his eyes. The horse knew the way and this rider was unutterably tired. Justine smelled faintly of roses and her slight body felt strangely comforting pressed to his own.

  The letters.

  His wretched past contained a lapse in good judgment that had cost him what he had so dearly prized—his integrity and his belief in his own strength of character.

  The letters.

  Another rested in his waistcoat pocket. Even through the wind he would swear he could catch the scent of incense from its pages. Once that mysterious aroma had led him deep into himself, to a place where he was at one with God and with his own soul. Or had that merely been an illusion, the dramatic imagining of a fervent young man bent on finding the way to his own essential goodness?

  Essential goodness? He almost laughed but made certain he held back the evil, hollow, hopeless sound such laughter would be in his gentle friend’s ears.

  Again the envelope bore the seal of the fingertip dipped in blood. Blood from where; from whom? And how did the unknown demon manage to deliver his foul messages without being seen? Struan shuddered. He must stop recalling the images of his past. How else could he heal himself and make a life again?

  Justine slid a little sideways and instantly clutched at his hands on the reins. Struan surrounded her waist with one arm and held her tightly.

  “You’re all right,” he called. “I won’t let you fall.” Fool that he was, for all he knew, she’d never mounted a horse since a childhood accident had left her leg so badly damaged.

  After a moment, Justine settled one of her hands atop his at her waist.

  She was a slender creature. Elegantly slender and tall and very, very feminine in her quiet, self-contained manner. When he’d first met her, barely a year earlier in Cornwall, he’d been instantly enchanted. Despite knowing that Justine was a year his senior he’d nevertheless entertained thoughts of courting her. Thank God he’d waited. The letters had proved how right he’d been in his reticence.

  They quickly covered the needle-strewn path through the trees on the knoll. Before them rose the concoction of towers with castellated crowns, of spires, columns and statuary and, fantastically, a single pagoda joined to the main structure by an ornate covered bridge. The whole had been the result of Grandfather’s travels to faraway places.

  Now the place was Struan’s haven, and his prison.

  Urging the horse on, they clattered beneath the bridge into the stable yard. For the first time since he’d come here with Ella and Max, Struan regretted the absence of staff. He was forced to take Justine with him while he stabled his animal. She stood patiently by and he noticed how she seemed to want to wait close to the horse, and how she smiled and murmured and stroked its head until Struan had accomplished the essentials.

  He considered lifting and carrying her again, but their eyes met and he knew she’d read his thoughts. Very firmly, she slipped a hand under his elbow and held on, limping badly enough to make him wince, but leaving him in no doubt that this was all the assistance she wanted.

  “I can hardly wait to see Ella and Max,” Justine said, raising her voice above the storm’s gathering babble. “I expect they rise early enough.”

  He set his teeth. “Indeed. When did you arrive?”

  “This afternoon. I find I am not at all tired, Struan. I think I shall sit by the fire and wait for the children.”

  He swallowed with difficulty. “The quickest way into the house from here is through the kitchens. Will you forgive the informality?” Informality? Good Lord, he was becoming accomplished in the art of understatement.

  “Of course. What a delightful building, Struan. Calum mentioned a hunting lodge, but he never described it.”

  How could one describe the almost indescribable? “Is my old friend well?” Struan asked, desperate to find safe territory for discussion. “And his lady?”

  “Remarkably well. Both of them. Philipa only grows more energetic. Everyone loves her.” Justine stopped walking and arched her neck to gaze up a belfry banded with fanciful terracotta friezes. The blue and red tiled structure flanked the door to the kitchens.

  “My grandmother was reluctant to add—er—unusual elements to the castle, so my grandfather simply put them all here—all the things he’d seen and wanted to be reminded of from his travels, that is. The Lords of Stonehaven had not formerly been known for fanciful excesses. I think this was his small—or should I say, rather extravagant—rebellion.”

  “I see.”

  “The belfry isn’t entirely useless. The dairy’s in its basement.” Not that the dairy was used—or much else about the lodge.

  “How delightfully resourceful.”

  And how delightfully kind and circumspect she was.

  Struan led Justine into the totally dark and cold building. He lit the candle he’d left ready near the door, and felt for Justine’s hand. Her cool fingers wound around his—too tightly. She was frightened. He had scared her by bringing her here.

  “I’ve felt a need for a simple existence,” he said conversationally, praying he could reassure her. That’s why I decided to di
spense with servants. There is one girl who comes from the castle on occasion to perform a few necessary tasks. I need no more.” Already he was adding to his lies, doing so to the one woman he’d met whose goodness and truth shone from her every glance.

  “How very sensible of you,” she said in her unforgettable voice with its little break that suggested she might laugh at any moment. “I become so tired of the conventions, don’t you?”

  Surprise silenced Struan. Justine had always appeared entirely conventional, entirely above any form of eccentricity.

  “In fact,” she continued as they skirted the kitchen table and passed the shapes of idle utensils. “That is exactly what I hope we can talk about. Certain somewhat unconventional ideas close to my heart … When you are rested and feel like talking, that is. If you feel like talking at all, of course.”

  Unconventional ideas close to her heart? He hesitated in the act of leading her up stone steps toward the first floor of the wing he’d made into some sort of a home. “Naturally I feel like talking to you, Justine,” he said. Perhaps he could manage to make her so engrossed in chatter that she failed to notice all was not exactly as she might have expected in these makeshift quarters.

  They left the stairwell behind for a curving passageway where vivid and gruesome paintings of dead animal trophies lined the walls.

  “Mairi—the nice little maid who appeared the only one available to assist me—” Justine said, her grip on Struan’s fingers bone-grinding “—she said Ella … Ella is enjoying the freedom to improve her riding skills here in Scotland, I understand.”

  My God. Just what else had Justine been told? “Ella has a wanderer’s soul, I’m afraid.” He would do his damndest to keep lies to a minimum. “She’s become very fond of an old chestnut I rode for years. She—”

  “I applaud you for encouraging her,” Justine broke in. Her voice was a little too high, a little too rushed. “A girl who is an accomplished rider is always looked upon favorably by gentlemen.”

  Struan frowned to himself, uncertain he followed this line of reasoning. “How so?” Drawing a deep breath, he threw open the door to the room where he’d assembled some of his favorite pieces from the entire lodge.