A Highland Duchess

by Karen Ranney

  Her return home had been without fanfare. Not one of her servants had been curious. Nor had she explained to Juliana where she’d been or why. Instead, knowing that the girl sometimes went to her uncle with information she would much rather not share, Emma remained silent.

  She was conscious of every passing hour, and with it, the knowledge that there was nothing she could do. Without her agreement, with her whole repugnance, she was going to be married again. The alternative was frighteningly real. She didn’t doubt that her uncle would do whatever was necessary, in his mind, to accomplish his goal.

  For some reason, that goal was her second marriage.

  The view outside her window held a great deal of fascination for her. The scenes of life being lived by people unrestrained by their titles or the expectations of others were more interesting than her own existence.

  The young girl across the square, today attired in pale yellow, always accompanied by her governess, reminded her of herself. She couldn’t help but smile one day when the girl raced away from the older woman and hid behind a pillar. How many times had she wished to do the same but never quite possessed the courage?

  Oh, Ian.

  Her life felt as if it should be in two parts—before her abduction, and after.

  How foolish she was to recall a man she’d known for only three days. Yet in those three days, she’d learned wonder, delight, and the true meaning of yearning. For the first time in her life she’d felt true passion. She’d lusted and hungered and given in to all the sensations she’d only witnessed before. She’d lain in his arms and felt only a sense of feminine victory, not humiliation or shame.

  Three days, that was all. Three days could not change the course of her lifetime. Three days did not have the power or the ability to mold her, or to alter her to a substantial degree.

  Somehow, they had.

  “Your Grace?”

  She turned her head to see Juliana entering her sitting room.

  “Someone is at the door to see you.”

  For an impossible moment her heart raced.

  “Show him upstairs,” Emma said, carefully schooling her features so as to not betray her excitement.

  It had to be Ian.

  Juliana looked conflicted but turned, finally, to do her bidding.

  A few minutes later a footman attired in Herridge livery stood at her bedroom door. Emma bit down her disappointment as she stared at the man.

  “Your Grace,” he said, bowing low. “I was tasked with bringing this to you.”

  “This” turned out to be a carved mahogany box that he handed to her. She recognized it immediately.

  She opened the box to find the Tulloch mirror cradled on a small pillow. Resting on top of it was a note from the housekeeper. The mirror had evidently been retrieved from the Duke’s Suite when renovations were begun and tucked away for safekeeping.

  “Thank you,” she said, dismissing both the footman and Juliana. They left her sitting room, closing the door softly behind them.

  She should call for one of her own footmen and have him deliver the box to Ian. He’d be in Scotland, but his staff could forward it to him. At least she’d help him succeed in his task of delivering the mirror to Lady Sarah.

  Emma set aside the note from the housekeeper, gripped the handle of the mirror and extracted it from the case to admire the back. There had been writing on it; she’d remembered that correctly. The language was Latin: Animadverto vestri, visum posterus. To see the truth of the future?

  The handle was adorned with a pattern of trailing vines. Inset around the back of the mirror were at least a hundred small diamonds. They winked in the afternoon light, as if summoning the sun itself.

  Her fingers trailed over them. How odd a juxtaposition—ugly and beautiful at once. Not unlike how she viewed Chavensworth.

  Slowly, she turned the mirror over, and the sun abruptly vanished. Now she remembered why the mirror had been so disconcerting when Anthony gave it to her. What should have been her reflection was, instead, dark brown glass. All those years ago, she’d put it away, disturbed by something she couldn’t recall.

  Now, however, she stared into the glass. The mirror began to lighten, the brown fading first to beige, then to blue. She felt, suddenly, as if she were not in her chamber in London at all but standing in the midst of a blue sky. Behind her was an ocean glittering in the sunlight.

  The woman in the mirror was laughing, her eyes alight with humor. Her cheeks bloomed with color, and Emma could almost feel the surge of true joy that swept through her at that moment.

  In her dream—because that’s all it could be—her reflection reached out a hand to someone just beyond the mirror’s curved frame.

  Abruptly, the brown surface of the mirror reappeared, and in its shadowed darkness Emma saw herself as she was now, her face pale, her brows drawn together in puzzlement or refutation. The stranger in the mirror was gone, vanished. No, she’d never been there at all—only wishful thinking had created a woman suffused with joy.

  With trembling fingers she placed the mirror back in its wooden case and closed the top. Standing, she walked to the other side of the room and rang the bellpull. While she waited for a footman to appear, she went to her secretary, and wrote a note to Ian.

  Please convey this to Lady Sarah.

  Six small words, when she wanted to say so much more.

  Had the mirror demonic properties? Or was it possible that it had the power to display one’s greatest hope and desire? In her case, a wish for happiness, for love, for the utter joy she felt pulsating through the image in the mirror.

  Perhaps it simply lured the viewer to sit and watch what might have been, to become so immersed in a world of fantasy that the real world simply faded away.

  She walked to the window and stood looking out at the square.

  Could she summon him with a wish? Could she open the window and he would suddenly be there, a rooftop brigand come to carry her away? What had begun in fear ended in delight, days she would never forget. Days that were out of time, and out of place, and never to be replicated.

  She’d made him moan.

  His eyes had darkened with lust because of her. Her hands had gripped him and caused him to swell, as if she were some sort of sorceress. That dangerous, masculine instrument had been tamed by the warmth of her palms and the softness of her lips.

  He’d ripped the dreariness of her widow’s veil aside, and allowed her to see a different world, tinged not by black but colored lemon and gold and azure and green.

  He was more magic than any mirror.

  In his bed, she’d no longer felt alone, had no longer been aloof and isolated. She’d belonged to him because she’d had no choice in the giving of herself. He’d demanded it, and she succumbed and surrendered, and in doing so had felt a greater freedom than she’d ever known.

  She would never forget him, even though she needed to try.

  When a footman appeared, she gave him instructions.

  “Just the name Ian, Your Grace?”

  She only nodded. But the moment the footman reached the door, she called him back.

  “Never mind,” she said, uncaring what the footman thought. Ian wasn’t there, and the mirror would only sit and wait for him. She reached out and took the box from him, forcing a smile to her face.

  The Ice Queen she had been would never have offered an explanation, but she did now. “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll make alternate arrangements.”

  He left the room, no doubt to tell his fellow servants that the Duchess of Herridge had gone odd.

  She ran her hand over the wooden box. She’d never pitied herself, but she did now. Poor Emma, trapped by a vision that she probably imagined, of a life she’d never have.

  A foolish thing, pity, almost as foolish as longing.
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  Chapter 15

  Less than a week after returning home, Emma was married, only meeting her bridegroom twenty minutes before the ceremony in the drawing room.

  Bryce McNair didn’t smile, only nodded at her, as if he were pleased to be wed to a woman garbed as a blackbird, the only concession to this day a small jet brooch at her throat.

  Despite his youth, he already bore the signs of dissipation. His brown eyes were bloodshot and the swelling beneath them would sag with age, creating pouches. One day he would bear a striking resemblance to the hounds at Chavensworth.

  For now, however, he was society’s version of handsome, with his blond hair cut short, and attired in an immaculate gray suit with silver links on the cuffs of his snowy white shirt. He appeared a prosperous bridegroom on the occasion of his wedding, and if he smelled too much of whiskey, she could only surmise it was because of his Scot’s heritage and the fact he was celebrating his marriage to an heiress.

  Emma wished she was as thrilled to be marrying him as he was to be marrying her.

  She couldn’t help but recall her father’s words, spoken on the occasion of her wedding to Anthony. “Your mother and I did not know each other well when we married, my dearest Emma, but we went on to fall in love with each other. There is not one day I do not deeply miss her.”

  Her wedding to the Duke of Herridge had been a spectacular ceremony, costing thousands of pounds, effectively announcing to the world that Emma Harding had become a duchess. This wedding, held in the drawing room and attended by the servants, her uncle, and the minister, was a penurious contrast.

  She was no longer a pattern biscuit. Now she was more like a trickle of water, one that easily changed its path. Yesterday she’d been Emma, Duchess of Herridge. Today she was Emma McNair, wife of Bryce McNair, stranger.

  All her earthly possessions now belonged to Bryce. Her uncle would no longer have control over her fortune, her allowance, or her properties.

  For that alone, she was grateful.

  At the wedding dinner, Bryce did not pass up the glasses of wine offered with each course. At the end of the meal she doubted he had the ability to stand up, and certainly did not do so when she stood.

  Instead, he raised a glass to eye level, looking at her through the crimson wine, and proposed a toast. “To you, my lady wife. Emma.”

  Her uncle followed suit but he, at least, stood at her departure. She couldn’t have cared less what he did. From the moment he’d threatened her with rape, she’d become the Ice Queen once more. Even tonight, disgusted by both of them, she was careful not to reveal any emotion.

  “If you do not mind,” she said, “I will retire.”

  “I shall join you shortly, wife,” Bryce said, the effect of the wine slurring his voice more than a little.

  She only nodded, leaving the room, and wishing she could leave the house as well. But there was no respite to be found, no security, no sanctuary, unless it lay within the confines of her own mind. And even there she felt tortured. Too many memories resided there, all too willing to be recalled on this night, of all nights.

  Juliana was waiting for her in her chamber.

  They barely spoke, but then they rarely had. Their relationship was nothing more than that of servant and mistress. Even though it was Emma’s fortune that paid the other’s salary, Juliana was London born and bred, cultivating a “civility to all, servility to none” attitude that made Emma feel, sometimes, as if Juliana were doing her a favor by acting as her maid. Her loyalty was held in reserve, for herself. Perhaps that was wiser, especially in the Duke of Herridge’s household.

  Sometimes Anthony had dismissed someone from their employ simply because the young man had blond hair and he wanted to see brunette or black. One year, he’d taken to employing only footmen with blue eyes. The next year, it had been brown. During one eventful year, he’d fired the majority of the servants, simply because he wanted to see new faces.

  Juliana had served her more than adequately. She was always there when needed, always prompt. She kept Emma’s wardrobe in perfect order, ironed impeccably, attended to her jewelry, straightened her room, arranged and cared for cut flowers, and was available to offer any assistance that Emma required.

  The fact that she could barely tolerate Juliana had, at its roots, the fact that Anthony had selected the maid for her.

  She stood immobile as Juliana closed the drapes before returning to help her off with her skirt and hoops. Night had come suddenly, with no warning of dusk, or setting of the sun on the horizon. One moment it was afternoon, and the next it was dark, as if the earth had simply shut its eyes to sleep.

  She knew only too well what would come now. The only difference between Bryce and Anthony would be youth and cruelty. How much did Bryce wish to become a bridegroom? What was he willing to do to accomplish the consummation of this marriage?

  The last man to touch her had brought her joy.

  She deliberately blocked off those other thoughts, memories only days old. Instead, she thanked Juliana and dismissed her, wishing to finish dressing in private.

  Please, God, let him at least be gentle. God would not see that prayer as too onerous, would He? Would that be considered too selfish of her? Was she simply supposed to endure what her husband chose to do to her?

  But at least this husband would not take her on a stage in full view of a hundred people.

  She was no longer the Duchess of Herridge, and for that she ought to thank Bryce. No longer would she be known as Anthony’s widow, but the shocking Emma Harding who, months after the duke’s death, married a no one. Not a peer but a Scot.

  Society would deem her reckless and foolish, and probably willful as well.

  If no one called upon her, that was fine. If no one sought her company, that was acceptable. If no invitations were extended to her and her new husband, she would be able to tolerate the exclusion.

  As long as she could tolerate the wedding night.

  Tonight she would wear a deep lavender peignoir and wrapper, and forgo the nightgowns that had been dyed black. The color didn’t matter. Nor did the bridegroom, and wasn’t that a sad thought?

  Peter, Earl of Falmouth, watched as his niece’s bridegroom became increasingly drunk. The young man might be decidedly clever but he was vastly unsophisticated in other areas—such as holding his liquor. From what he’d seen of the man, it was a chronic problem.

  The damn fool was a dangerous liability.

  This marriage was a payment, one of the few he could afford. A marriage to an heiress in return for Bryce’s silence. Now all he had to worry about was keeping the idiot quiet.

  “You and I have friends in common, Your Lordship,” McNair had said on that fateful day a month ago.

  He’d known the man by appearance only but had agreed to see him because of McNair’s insistence.

  “Is this a social call, McNair?” he’d asked, taking a seat behind the desk he purchased not long after coming to live with Emma. His niece had needed someone to care for her—and her fortune—after the tragedy of her husband’s death.

  “One of business,” McNair said.

  The expression on Bryce McNair’s face had been genial, but the Earl of Falmouth didn’t give a flying farthing about McNair’s mood.

  “Then state it.”

  “I find myself low on funds,” McNair said. “Here I was, rousting around in my mind for the perfect opportunity to raise some capital when it struck me. I had been overlooking the very means by which to do so.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I know things, Your Lordship. Things I shouldn’t know, perhaps. But I’m a cautious man, one who watches my step. I’m also a curious one.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “I have, you might say, a penchant for overhearing things. Interest
ing things. You might say that I have an ability for being in the right place at the wrong time.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I was at Chavensworth that night,” McNair said.

  “What night would that be?”

  “The night the Duke of Herridge died. Unexpectedly. Before his time. Tragically.”

  They’d exchanged a look, and for a few moments Peter couldn’t breathe.

  “I was often at Chavensworth, Your Lordship. As were you. The gambling was almost as good as the wenching.”

  “I never indulged in the wenching, as you so colorfully put it.”

  “But you did indulge in the gambling, as I recall,” McNair said.

  He hadn’t any choice. He’d no money of his own, and he’d been dependent upon Anthony for assistance. If he wagered and lost at one of Anthony’s parties, the duke covered his losses. Anywhere else, and he had to find a way to fund his markers.

  “How very convenient of the duke to die when he did, Your Lordship. You owed quite a bit of money at the time, didn’t you?”

  The damn fool didn’t know anything.

  But what if he did?

  McNair looked directly at him, and Peter restrained his shudder only barely. He motioned to the chair beside the desk. For a moment he thought that Bryce would refuse, but then he rounded the desk and sat.

  “Are you married, McNair?” he asked.

  The other man smiled, but it didn’t ease the cool look in his eyes.

  “I have it within my power to grant you more money than you’ve ever seen in your entire lifetime,” Peter said, smiling. “What would you say if you could control a vast fortune?”

  He named the cumulative amount of Emma’s inheritance. The other man’s eyes widened, and the cool look vanished.

  “In return for what, exactly, Your Lordship?”

  “Eternal silence?” Peter smiled. “Is that too much to request? What you think you know might prove to be embarrassing should it be repeated. People might give it some credence.”

  McNair watched him with hooded eyes. “Not to mention that the authorities would be interested.”