Julia London - [Scandalous 02]
Page 1
“You deserve to know what it is like to be wholly seduced,” Jack said roughly.
“You deserve to know what it feels like to be aroused to the point of weeping, to be released from that arousal in a manner that leaves you weak and short of breath. You deserve to know the raw intimacy that only a man and a woman can share,” he said, and let his hand drift down her shoulder to the swell of her breast.
Lizzie could hardly seem to catch her breath. “I think you are mad,” she whispered breathlessly.
“Aye, if I’m mad, then half the world is mad with me,” he said softly.
Critical acclaim for the captivating novels of Julia London
“A triumph of wit and passion.”
—BookPage
“Singular, outstanding.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
More acclaim for the dazzlingly romantic novels of Julia London
“In historical romance, Ms. London is one of the very best.”
—Publishers Weekly
“London’s characters come alive on every page and will steal your heart.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A depth of emotion that takes the breath away.”
—Romantic Times
“London’s characters become so real they become part of your life while you are reading her books.”
—The Oakland Press
“Exquisitely romantic, lusciously sensual.”
—Booklist
“Witty, spicy, and funny.””
—Library Journal
ALSO BY JULIA LONDON
The Scandalous Novels
The Book of Scandal
The Desperate Debutantes Novels
The Dangers of Deceiving a Viscount
The Perils of Pursuing a Prince
The Hazards of Hunting a Duke
The Lockhart Family Novels
Highlander in Love
Highlander in Disguise
Highlander Unbound
“Snowy Night with a Highlander”
in Snowy Night with a Stranger anthology
“The Merchant’s Gift”
in The School for Heiresses anthology
Guiding Light: Jonathan’s Story
with Alina Adams
Pocket Books
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New York, NY 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Dinah Dinwiddie
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Hand lettering by John Stevens.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-5940-8
ISBN-10: 1-4391-5940-8
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
For Jameson
HIGHLAND SCANDAL
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Epilogue
Chapter One
SCOTLAND, 1807
From his vantage point in the middle of a brambly thicket—which, Jack noted gloomily, had torn his best buckskins—he could see the road through the branches. He’d ridden hard the last hour, pushing his horse to stay a mile ahead of the two men. He gulped down air as he watched them trot by, their hats pulled low over their eyes, their greatcoats draped over the rumps of their Highland ponies and wearing scarves about their necks that were definitely plaid.
Diah, they were Scots! The old man in Crieff had been right—the prince’s men had hired Scots bounty hunters to help find him.
Bloody, bloody hell. He’d put himself in quite a quagmire this time, hadn’t he?
Jack waited until he was certain they’d passed and moved down the road a piece before picking his way out of the thicket, cursing beneath his breath when another thorn caught his buckskins. He untethered his horse and tossed the reins over the mare’s neck and swung up onto the saddle.
And sat.
Jack really didn’t know where to go from here. He’d been running from the prince’s men for more than a month, fleeing England the moment he’d learned he’d been accused of adultery with the Princess of Wales, running deep into the Highlands.
Adultery. Jack snorted as he rubbed the mare’s neck. Imagine, taking the Princess of Wales to his bed! It was preposterous to believe he’d do such a thing! Yet Jack couldn’t help the wry smile that curved his lips as he spurred the mare up onto the road.
He’d never taken the princess to his bed, to be sure—but he was guilty of participating in more than one vulgar activity at her residence.
In spite of his innocence, when Jack had been warned that men accused of bedding the princess were being rounded up for questioning and would likely face charges of high treason—a hanging offense—he’d decided to decamp to his native Scotland. That sort of accusation flung about in the midst of a royal scandal rarely played out well for a Scot in England, and Jack Haines, the Earl of Lambourne, who was no stranger to moral transgressions and shocking behavior, knew a bad scandal when he saw one.
On the road again, he paused to look up at the tops of the Scots pines that seemed to scrape a stretch of sky the color of blue China silk, and inhaled deeply. It was clean, crisp air that swept down the glens and hills that made up the Highland landscape…glens and hills that seemed endless and exasperatingly uninhabited.
Jack reined his horse north, in the opposite direction of the bounty hunters. He had four, maybe five hours of daylight left and would need to find a place to bed down for the night. Diah, he dreaded the thought of another night in a bloody cold barn. But a barn was a good sight better than the frigid forest floor.
The air was so still—he could hear the breathing of his mount above the clopping of her hooves.
The only thing he could recall this far north was Castle Beal, and that was several miles away across some questionable terrain, two days’ hard ride from Lambourne Castle, just south of here. He was trying to recall the best route—it had been eleven years since he’d spent any time in Scotland other than the obligatory annual fortnight at Lambourne—when he heard the
faint but unmistakable clop clop of another horse’s hooves on the road…or worse, a pair of horses.
Jack reined up and listened. Damn their eyes—the bounty hunters had turned back. There wasn’t a moment to spare. Jack dug his spurs into his mare, but she was fatigued and he spurred her too hard; he winced when she whinnied as loudly as if he’d stuck her with a hot poker and broke into a run. The bounty hunters had surely heard it and would realize they were on Jack’s heels.
Indeed, they had gained ground on him throughout the day in spite of wretched terrain and the prime horseflesh he rode. Christ Almighty, where had the prince found these men?
Jack sent the mare crashing into the woods and its thick undergrowth, leaping recklessly over the trunk of a downed tree. A deer path led off to the right; Jack reined her in that direction. The mare careered up the path, splashed through a running stream, but balked at a steep embankment. Jack quickly wheeled her around, pointed her toward the embankment again. “Move on, then—move!” he urged her, bending low over her neck and digging his spurs into her flanks.
The horse gave it all she had; she crested the top of the embankment—and reared at the sight of two men on horseback. Jack hung on and managed to yank her around with the intention of going back down the embankment, but saw the bounty hunters crashing through the stream and heaving up behind him.
He reined his horse tightly as four men encircled him. He quickly looked around for an escape, any escape, but saw only a pair of shotguns leveled at him. The mare’s spittle was foaming and her breathing labored—she’d not sprint, and even if she did, she’d not get far.
Jack looked again at the shotguns leveled at him as his heart began to pound in his chest. There was no out—he’d been caught. “Mary, Queen of Scots,” he uttered irritably as he eyed the one with the largest gun. “I donna suppose we might have a chat, then? I am a wealthy man.”
His answer was the cock of the gun’s trigger.
“All right, all right,” he said, slowly lifting his hands. “You have me, lads.” And he braced himself as they closed in, entirely uncertain if today would be his last.
Chapter Two
If it was possible, Castle Beal was even drearier than Lambourne Castle.
When Jack realized where the men were taking him, and caught sight of the imposing, drab, gray structure, he mentioned, in a rather flimsy bid for better accommodations than might be given to a fugitive, that his great-grandmother had been born a Beal.
That clearly gave the four men pause.
He hastily added that she was of the Strathmore Beals, and hoped that was true—he was hard pressed to remember the tedious details of the family tree; his sister, Fiona, was the one who could recite it precisely—but it seemed to have the desired effect. Instead of a room in the dungeon, into which Jack knew very well he would have been tossed like a sack of tubers, he was put into a suite like a proper guest.
And there he’d been left to rot, apparently, divested of his gun and hunting knife. But Jack cheerfully reasoned that though he’d been in London quite a long time, he’d been born and bred a Highlander, and he knew how to fight his way out of a scrap.
The door was left unlocked. They considered him a gentleman, above escape. He debated whether or not he was, indeed, that sort of gentleman as he walked the length of the room, counting his steps for the breadth and depth, again and again. The room was approximately sixteen by fourteen feet, give or take an inch. There was a faint odor, too, a rather acrid smell that led him to believe something was rotting beneath the wood flooring.
Jack had no idea how long he’d have to wait, as they were a wee bit reluctant to discuss their plans with him. But they’d brought him something that passed as gruel, and had thrown a block of peat on the hearth when the sun slipped below the horizon.
By then, Jack was tired of pacing and lay on the bed fully clothed, including his greatcoat, on the chance an opportunity for escape should arise. He fell into a shallow sleep in which he envisioned himself floating on a cool green river near Lambourne Castle. The sunlight was dappled on the stern of his little boat, and a woman in a very large-brimmed hat was rowing. She had slender arms and elegant hands. She possessed a fine figure, but Jack could not see her face….
Something awakened him abruptly. He came up with a start and looked right into the eyes of a boy whose dark golden hair stuck out from beneath his cap.
Jack relaxed and idly scratched his chest as he observed the lad. “Who are you?”
The boy did not respond.
“You’re a page, I’d wager, sent to attend me, aye?”
Again, the boy did not respond.
“No’ a page? A spy, then?” Jack swung his legs off the side of the bed and stood, hands on hips, eyeing the boy. “The blackguards sent you to ascertain my mood and whether or not I have any nefarious plans, is that it?”
“Who are you?” the boy asked.
“Ah! I asked you first. Who are you?”
“Lachlan,” he said shyly.
“Sir Lachlan,” Jack said, with a bow of his head. “I am Lord Lambourne.”
Lachlan blinked.
Jack’s brows rose. “What? You’ve no’ heard of me? I am the Earl of Lambourne! I own a big, gloomy castle—no’ as gloomy as this one, aye, but gloomy nonetheless—a wee bit south of here. Does that spark any recognition whatsoever?” he asked as he walked around to the basin.
The child shook his head.
“Then I would say,” Jack said, pausing to dip his hands into the ice-cold basin to splash water on his face, “that your education has been sorely lacking.” He glanced over his shoulder at the boy, who was studying him closely. He was wearing trousers that were too short by an inch or more, and his face was stained with the remnants of his last meal.
Jack calmly continued his toilette, aware of his audience. When he was done, he turned to the child once more. “Here we are, then,” he said with a formal bow. “You may take me to your king.”
“We donna have a king,” Lachlan gravely informed him.
Jack shrugged. “Then take me to your squire. Everyone has a squire.”
Lachlan pondered that for a moment. “I think it is me uncle Carson.”
“He’ll do,” Jack said, and gestured toward the door. “Off we go, then.”
They got as far as the threshold, where a pair of rather large Highlanders who’d most inconveniently just arrived, pushed Jack firmly back into the room. Behind them a dignified, silver-haired gentleman strolled into the room and eyed Jack appraisingly.
“Might I have the pleasure of knowing who is ogling me?” Jack asked.
“Carson Beal,” the man answered. “I am laird here.”
“Ah. So young Lachlan guessed correctly.”
“Pardon?”
Jack smiled. “A private jest.”
Carson Beal’s brows knitted; he clasped his hands behind his back and walked deeper into the room as he continued to study Jack. “Who are you?”
“Jankin MacLeary Haines of Lambourne Castle,” Jack said with a curt nod of his head. “Close acquaintances call me Jack. You may call me my Lord Lambourne.” He gave Beal a bit of a smirk.
Carson Beal frowned. “Rather flippant for a man wanted by the Prince of Wales for high treason, are you no’?”
Jack’s smile broadened—he was not one to let his true feelings be known, and he would never let this Beal fellow know how that pained him. “My good friend the prince has been woefully misinformed.”
“Oh?” Carson asked, arching one dubious brow. “Is that why you ran like a coward from my men?”
That certainly got Jack’s back up, but he said pleasantly, “Your men did no’ identify themselves. As far as I knew they were bloodthirsty thieves, and I but one man.”
“Mmm…be that as it may, milord Lambourne,” Beal said with contempt, “I think you find yourself in a spot of trouble, aye?”
Jack laughed and said honestly, “I am in the devil’s own scrape, that I am. But I rathe
r think my loss is your gain.”
“What might I possibly gain?” Beal scoffed.
“I’d no’ even hazard a guess,” Jack said congenially. “But you have no’ yet turned me over for what is, I assume, knowing His Highness as I do, a generous bounty. Therefore, you must stand to gain.”
Beal’s eyes narrowed. “As it happens, I have a proposition for you.”
Aha…they were thieves. They would give Jack the option of paying his way out of their clutches. Bloody good of them, and he, fortunately, was a man of means. “I’m listening,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“You have one of two choices,” Beal said. “We can hand you over to the prince’s men—who, incidentally, have arrived to escort you to London.”
That was a mildly alarming bit of news.
“Or, we can tell the prince’s men you’ve escaped and point them away. To Lambourne Castle, perhaps. Insinuate that you had help, aye?”
An appealing alternative but one fraught with questions. “And why would you do that, Laird?” Jack asked casually.
Beal paused, tilted his head back to look up at Jack. “Because you would agree to a handfasting with one of our women.”
Jack almost choked. “A handfasting?”
“Aye,” Beal said calmly, as if it were perfectly normal to suggest that Jack engage in an ancient pagan ceremony with a complete stranger. “You will agree to a trial marriage of a year and a day. If, at the end of that year and a day, you and the woman do no’ suit…” He shrugged. “You are free to go.”