Claimed by the Laird

by Nicola Cornick

  “What will you do?” Lucas asked.

  “Go to Eyre, I suppose,” Christina said. She was slurring her words slightly now. “Beg him to release Callum MacFarlane. I suspect he will enjoy seeing me beg.”

  They had reached the top of the stairs. Christina stood up on tiptoe to take a key from the lintel above the door. For a second she swayed against Lucas, her hair brushing his shoulder, her breast pressing against his arm. She smelled of bluebells and the earthiness of peat and the faintest hint of whisky. His body tightened and he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from touching her.

  She fumbled with the key in the lock for so long that Lucas stepped forward and took it from her, sliding it into the lock and turning it. The door swung open, silently again, to reveal a small dressing room furnished with two deep, comfortable armchairs and a thick carpet on the floor. Beyond that an open door showed the corner of a big tester bed and a grate where a fire burned low. The room had the same shabby coziness that characterized the rest of the castle. Lucas felt again that unfamiliar sense of warmth and welcome drawing him in. He, who had never had a proper family home and had never wanted to create one, felt its appeal.

  “Thank you for your help, Mr. Ross,” Christina said. She was sliding the cloak from her shoulders, draping it over the back of one of the chairs. Her gown was a little lopsided, dipping down to reveal the curve of her left shoulder. Lucas stared, fascinated. Her skin was creamy, pale and scattered with freckles, the faintest shadow cast by the delicate line of her collarbone. He wanted to press his lips to the elegant curve where her neck met her shoulder. He wanted to see if the rest of her body had that tempting dusting of freckles, too. He badly wanted to know.

  “You may go, Mr. Ross,” Christina said, interrupting his thoughts. “Please lock the door on your way out and hide the key.” She looked him straight in the eyes, or at least she tried to. Her gaze seemed slightly out of focus. “I hope that I can trust you not to tell anyone about this.”

  “You can trust me,” Lucas said.

  Another lie.

  He was disturbed to feel a jolt of guilt. There was something about this woman that seemed to demand honesty, and he could not give her that. He did not even understand why he felt the need to. All he knew was that she was intoxicated and vulnerable and that for some reason that made him feel protective of her.

  He forced himself to think about Peter. Like Callum MacFarlane, Peter had been someone’s child, someone’s brother, scarcely more than a boy himself. He wondered if Christina had cared about that.

  “Answer me one thing before I leave,” he said. “You owe me that.”

  Her eyes opened wide. She blinked. “I don’t owe you anything, Mr. Ross.” She was making an attempt to sound crisp, reminding him of his place, comically dignified given her tousled state.

  “I think you owe me plenty for my help tonight,” Lucas said.

  “And I think you presume a lot,” Christina said.

  Lucas smiled. “That’s true, I do.” He paused. “What if I ask nicely?”

  She sighed. “What do you want to know?”

  “I do not understand how a woman like you comes to be involved in something like this,” Lucas said. He looked around the room. “You don’t need the money,” he said slowly, “and after what you have said tonight I would swear you do not do it for the excitement. So why do you do it?”

  She was silent. After a moment she sat down in one of the armchairs, half turned away from him. He watched the play of firelight and shadow across her face. She was just drunk enough to be indiscreet, he thought, whilst sober enough to be coherent. It could be interesting.

  “I’m good at it,” she said after a moment. Her chin came up. She looked defiant. “I am the taster, the only one with the ability to judge when the whisky is ready to be distilled. It’s important...a skilled job.”

  “I’m skilled at picking pockets,” Lucas said. “It doesn’t mean I should do it.”

  “Are you?” For a moment she sounded intrigued. “What an extraordinary talent to possess! How did you develop it?”

  “I had a misspent youth on the streets,” Lucas said. He had not meant to talk about himself, but with Christina it was all too easy to let down his guard and forget. He could see her looking at him curiously; it was not pity he could see in her eyes but compassion. “I was an orphan,” he said. His voice was harsh. He had never told anyone but Jack about his childhood. He was astonished to hear himself telling her now. “I had to learn any number of tricks to survive.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was soft. “Your parents—”

  “I don’t speak of them.” He slammed the door shut before he could betray himself entirely.

  “What you do is different,” he said, as much to remind himself as to provoke her.

  “Of course.” A defensive note had crept into her voice. “I do not have to fight for survival. But, equally, I don’t act for personal gain. The rest of the gang divides up the profits. They need the money. I don’t.” She rushed on, her words tumbling out far quicker than normal in her hurry to justify herself. “You’ve seen the poverty in the village, Mr. Ross. Many of the young men have left to join the Highland regiments, or taken their families overseas. There is no work, nothing to keep people here ever since my grandfather put up the rents sixty years ago and offered his tenancies to the highest bidder. He drove people from the land.”

  Lucas had recognized the poverty in Kilmory Village within the first day of being there. What Christina said was true; there was little work on the land now, few ways to give any man a job and a living wage. And with that loss of work went a loss of self-respect. He understood that; he knew how fiercely a man’s pride and his independence were tied up in his ability to provide for his family. Christina’s grandfather had destroyed the traditional bonds between the laird and his people, and it seemed that her father had done nothing to try to improve their welfare, even though he was reputedly a rich man.

  “Is it too late to reverse that process of decline now?” he asked.

  Christina shrugged. “I do not know. But Papa...” For a second she faltered as though considering the disloyalty of speaking out against the duke. “Well, he has no interest in the land, no interest in anything other than his studies. By the time he inherited his estates, the damage was done, and he handed his lands over to be administered by those who could make him the greatest profit.”

  “It sounds as though your father is not really concerned with the future of his people,” Lucas said, “whilst you work to limit the harm he can do by feeding them and keeping a roof over their heads.”

  “Oh...” She sounded embarrassed. “I would not have you think that Papa cares nothing for people. Truth is, he does not really notice. He is a scholar, caught up in matters of more academic importance...” Her voice faded away unhappily.

  Fiddling whilst Rome burned, Lucas thought. It seemed to him that the Duke of Forres was like a great big overgrown child who indulged his whims without thought for the consequences or the toll it took on others. It was not sufficient to ascribe his neglect to eccentricity or scholarly absorption. He was draining his lands of their money and his people of their livelihoods for personal gain.

  “So it is left to you to give the people of Kilmory back their self-respect,” Lucas said. “I imagine you do the same at Forres, and all the duke’s other estates.”

  “I don’t run smuggling gangs there,” Christina said, “but I do try to help the people make a living.”

  “A dishonest one, in Kilmory’s case,” Lucas said.

  Her lips twitched into an enchanting smile. “Do I infer that you disapprove of me, Mr. Ross? I had no idea that you were so incorruptible.”

  “Smuggling is illegal,” Lucas said.

  She raised a brow at his blunt tone. “Well, theoretically, yes—”

  “There’s no such thing as a theoretical criminal,” Lucas said. “You either are or you aren’t.”

  She shrugged. “Bad
laws make for bad men.” She gave him the glimmer of a smile. “And women.” She tipped the flask to her lips again. “My dream would be to run a distillery of my own,” she said after a moment. “I think I would be very good at it.”

  “A splendid idea,” Lucas said. He removed the bottle from her grasp and placed it on a high shelf next to a dusty pile of books. “In the meantime, though, you have had quite sufficient whisky to drink.”

  She pouted. “I give the orders around here,” she said. “Give it back.”

  Lucas laughed. “No,” he said. “You are going to have a dreadful headache in the morning. It may taste nice now, but whisky is the worst drink for making you feel bad later. Drink lots of water,” he added, “and try to eat something in the morning even if you don’t feel like it.”

  She raised her eyebrows in faint mockery. “Food advice now,” she said. “How do you know these things, Mr. Ross?”

  “My misspent youth again,” Lucas said. “There were plenty of mornings when I woke up feeling much the worse for drink.”

  She smiled faintly. “How fascinating. You must tell me more about that misspent youth sometime.” She picked up her cloak and folded it over her arm. In the candlelight something sparkled silver—a jeweled clasp on the collar of the cloak. Lucas had not noticed it before because the light had been too dim, but he recognized it now. The last time he had seen it had been on the velvet collar of Peter’s coat as his brother had stood on his doorstep in Edinburgh.

  All the breath seemed to leave his body. The light spun as though he was the one who was drunk. He put out a hand automatically to steady himself on the back of the chair.

  “That’s a very unusual clasp.” His voice did not sound quite right in his ears. He realized that he was shaking.

  He saw Christina glance down and smile as she ran her fingers over the silver surface. “Isn’t it beautiful?” There was uncomplicated pleasure in her voice. “Papa gave it to me for my birthday a couple of months back. He said the stones came from India. They have fine amethysts there.”

  They might well have, Lucas thought, but these amethysts had come from the mines of Siberia and had been mounted in a silver clasp that had belonged to his grandfather. It was engraved with his family’s crest and motto.

  He felt tightness in his chest. One of the items that had been stolen from Peter’s body was right here in Kilmory Castle, a gift, Christina had said, from the duke.

  Could the Duke of Forres be involved in Peter’s murder? It seemed impossible. Yet was it any more likely that Christina, who seemed so honest and had spoken so passionately about the need to protect her clan, was a liar and a murderer? His instinct told him she was not, that she would never be mixed up in so vile a crime. Yet instinct could be an unreliable guide.

  “Good night, Mr. Ross.” Christina had come up to him. “Thank you for your help tonight.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. She really was tipsy, Lucas thought. She would be mortified in the morning to remember how familiar she had been with him when normally she was so careful to be starchy and proper. He took her hands to steady her and she looked up, her blue eyes meeting his. Something shifted inside him, an emotion he did not recognize; an unaccustomed sense of vulnerability swept through him and he tightened his grip on her hands.

  He saw the expression in her eyes change. He could see confusion in their depths and the compassion she had shown him earlier when he had made the mistake of talking about his childhood. Suddenly he needed her desperately. He bent his head and kissed her and she responded sweetly, openly, without reservation. Heat sliced through him. Lust slammed into him, so hot and hard and fast that it stunned him. Beneath the lust was the same blinding sense of recognition that he had experienced on the first night they had met, fierce and devastatingly right. Something about Christina MacMorlan could reach inside him and awaken emotions he thought long dead. He could not understand it, could not explain it, but in that moment he did not want to. He only wanted her.

  When he let her go they were both breathing hard and he was shaking, shocked by his reaction to her and emotions it had unleashed. He saw his astonishment mirrored in her eyes. She touched her lips lightly with her fingertips, and the gesture sent another spike of desire straight through him.

  “That was a mistake,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Lucas said grimly. The lit room beyond the doorway seemed to beckon him with its wide, deep bed and intimate firelight. He swallowed. His mouth was as dry as dust.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “Yes.” For a moment she looked desolate and he wanted to reach out to her and draw her back into his arms. He clenched his fists at his sides. It felt right but it was wrong, impossible. The light glittered on the silver clasp, taunting him, reminding him who she was and of her possible guilt.

  “Goodnight, ma’am,” he said, and turned the key in the lock behind him before he changed his mind and begged her to let him stay.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK, my dear?” The Duke of Forres, his face bright with childish pleasure, turned to Christina. “This fellow has done a damned fine job, hasn’t he?” He slapped Lucas on the back. “Damned fine,” he repeated. “Eh, Christina?”

  “It looks beautiful, Papa,” Christina said obediently. They were standing in the duke’s garden grotto. The light was dim and the air cool. Outside the rain beat down with an unrelenting heaviness. It seemed to echo through Christina’s head. Lucas had not been wrong; she had the devil of a headache this morning.

  The grotto was far from finished, but Lucas had certainly made good progress. The pool had been hollowed out and lined with the stone that her father had had imported specially from Italy. A cascade of water now splashed down into it from the spring that rose in the bank above them.

  Christina turned to admire the way the light played across the rippling cascade. Her father was still talking, but she let his words flow over her. Instead she watched Lucas in the reflection on the dancing water. It felt strange, intimate. She was so self-conscious that she could not look directly at him. In the enclosed space of the grotto, she was almost unbearably aware of him standing next to her, of his arm brushing hers, of his gaze on her face. She had woken late with snatches of memory from the previous night drifting through her mind. She wished she had not been able to recall any of it, but unfortunately her memory was not that obliging. She remembered all too clearly that Lucas had had to pick her up off the gravel when she had fallen over, that he had helped her up the stairs, that she had drunkenly confided in him her reasons for smuggling the whisky, that he had kissed her with a fierce passion and that she would have been quite happy if he had carried her off to her bed there and then. Despite the chill of the day, she felt hot color mantle her cheeks.

  As a debutante, she’d had a reckless, dangerous affair with the man to whom she had been betrothed, Lord McGill. At the time, she had been hopelessly infatuated. The snatched meetings and illicit passion had pandered to her romantic nature, and she had not seen the danger because she had assumed that nothing could spoil her happiness. She had learned that lesson fast enough; learned that nothing in life was certain or safe. Her mother had died and the bottom had dropped out of her world. She had lost almost everything; mother, lover, the promise of the future.

  The attraction she felt for Lucas was at least as strong as her girlish passion for McGill had been, though she was not stupid enough to tumble thoughtlessly into love with any man these days. It did not matter how powerful that dangerous illusory sense of connection was that she shared with Lucas. She knew that the only relationship she could have with him would be as mistress and lover, and there were too many reasons why that could never happen, so there was nothing for them; she knew it.

  “My statues will look splendid in the wall niches.” The duke was twirling around with excitement like a small child at the circus. “And with the shells on the ceiling reflecting the light...” He waved his arms about enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, I can
see it now!”

  “I have drawn up some detail for the decoration, Your Grace,” Lucas was saying, laying out a sheet on the stone ledge that ran around the edge of the pool. “I thought to have a fresco with dolphins and putti, and perhaps a motto etched in the stone....”

  Christina was intrigued that Lucas knew about Renaissance design. She wondered if he had gotten the ideas from talking to Bevan. She leaned over to look at the neat pencil sketches. The duke was shortsighted without his glasses. He was nodding and smiling, but Christina was not sure he could see the drawing in detail, least of all the lettering around the fresco. He was bound to ask her to describe it later.

  “‘Vincere vel mori,’” she read. “To conquer or die.” It was the motto from her silver clasp. She looked up at Lucas in surprise. “Did you choose that yourself?” she asked. “Why those words?”

  Lucas did not look at her. He was watching the duke. “I thought they were your family motto,” he said. He glanced at her, and for a moment she saw some emotion in his dark eyes that chilled her, it was so remote and cold. She wondered if she had misread his expression in the pale light of the grotto, but then her father claimed her attention. The duke seemed agitated, running a hand through his hair, shaking his head violently.

  “No, my dear fellow, that simply won’t do!” he exclaimed. “No cherubs, no dolphins and certainly no motto!”

  “I’m afraid you have made a mistake,” Christina said to Lucas. “The Forres motto is Constant and Faithful.”

  Lucas smiled at her. “That seems more appropriate,” he said, “to you.”

  Christina blushed at the compliment but her father did not appear to notice. He was rolling up Lucas’s plans and his hands were shaking slightly.

  “I don’t want a motto on it,” he said querulously. “Statues of nymphs and river gods! That’s what I want!”

  Lucas took the sketches from him. “Very well, Your Grace,” he said. “I shall go back to the drawing board.”