Imogen gave a mock shudder and slipped through the front door, where her carriage was waiting. “God, I hope not. Good night, Emma dear.”
“Love will find ye,” Emma singsonged behind her.
“Not if I can help it!”
Imogen was still grinning and shaking her head when she entered the coach and rapped for the driver to depart. Hinley waited without fail at the same time every evening, whereupon he drove her back to her residence—her parents’ residence—where she had dinner with them before retiring.
Early on, she’d made the decision not to live at Haven herself. It was a large home with many bedrooms, but she wanted every last one of them open for whoever needed them. And as much as she loved her work, she did need space to breathe. The Kinley home was spacious enough for her to live comfortably with them. She had her own wing and enough privacy. Why change a good thing?
Smoothing her dress, she descended from the carriage and climbed the steps.
“Papa? Mama?” she called, divesting her cloak, bonnet, and gloves and handing them to their butler. “Thank you, Burns. Are my parents at home?”
“In the study, dearest,” her mother’s tense voice floated back before Burns could make his reply.
She entered the room, her smile fading at her parents’ unusually somber faces. Was something amiss? Had something happened?
“My goodness, what is it?” she asked, lowering herself into the leather chair and peering at her mother, whose face remained pinched. “What has happened? You look upset.”
Her mother, standing by the hearth, her hands clasped nervously together in front of her skirt, was first to speak. “No, dear, not upset. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Maclarens are in town. Lady Dunrannoch is an old friend, and well, it’s about the duke’s engagement, you see. The Maclaren family’s solicitor has reached out to let us know that it has been put into effect. We wondered if it ever would be, but honestly, I’d assumed…well, he’s also a Highlander laird, and I’ve never heard of any laird choosing not to wed…”
Imogen attempted to follow her mother’s breathy, rambling sentences. Maclaren? The name was well-known. They were a wealthy, influential family, and the duke was rumored to be a strict, ruthless sort of man. But she could hardly see what their arrival in Edinburgh or his engagement had to do with her, so she relaxed somewhat.
“What your mother is trying to say,” Imogen’s father cut in, though Imogen herself had already closed one ear to her mother’s chirping and slipped into her own thoughts about Haven and its dangerously slim funds, “is that a decision must be made. We want only for your happiness, but we must take into account your security as well. You will forever be taken care of so long as I am alive, my dear, but my title and holdings are all entailed. Once I am gone, you will be dependent upon whichever one of my cousins is still alive to inherit.”
Imogen closed her eyes. She didn’t want to imagine what would happen after her parents were gone. She couldn’t imagine a world without them. Her inheritance, properly managed, would be more than enough for her and Haven.
Suddenly, the rest of what her father had said sank in.
“Wait. What decision needs to be made?”
“Your engagement, dear.” Her mother’s brows drew together. “Haven’t you been listening to a word we’ve been saying?”
She blinked, her lungs shriveling and her ears beginning to pound like a distant tide. “Pardon, Mama…did you say my engagement?”
“Yes, your betrothal agreement, Imogen. To the Duke of Dunrannoch, Laird of Maclaren.”
No, no, no. That couldn’t possibly be right. Her brain refused to cooperate to form a coherent response. A protest. Anything at all. Nothing would come. Her body went cold with fear and dread. The first, and last, time she’d been engaged had been a disaster.
Silas Calder had been one thing on the surface and something quite different beneath it. Even now, her parents didn’t know the depth of his deception, and she hoped they would never find out. Silas was out of their lives for good. The last she’d heard from her friend Shane McClintock was that he’d been run off to Italy. She hoped she and her family would never lay eyes on the man again.
But now, even the thought of marrying another made her feel ill.
Her mother finally moved from the hearth, toward her. “I know you’ve been against marriage ever since Silas—”
“Do not say that name!” Imogen was on her feet before she knew what she was doing. The blood rushed from her head to her ankles, and she felt dizzy. But the brewing anger stayed firmly in place.
“Ever since you broke off the engagement because you didn’t suit,” her mother forged ahead. “But Imogen, your father and I have discussed it at length, and we have a duty to see you protected and secure.”
“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I don’t need to wed to be secure.”
“We know you are capable, dear,” her father said, “but when the late duke approached me with his proposal a few years ago, I couldn’t see the error in it. The alliance would benefit both of our families, considering his son’s own reluctance to wed, and your mother and I would not have to worry about your future if you remained on the solitary path you seemed to favor. After the debacle with Silas, we’d hoped you’d accept one of the other suitors who called on you, but…”
He didn’t finish, though his chiding tone was enough. Imogen’s staunch refusal to court any of the men who’d called on her had been tolerated, but as she’d slipped into her late twenties, she was well aware her parents had become anxious. How could she explain that the thought of marriage to anyone made her physically sick. Then she would have to tell them about Silas, and that she could not do. The devil had hurt enough people. It would kill her father to know what the man he’d trusted like a son had done.
Imogen had thought this was all water under the bridge—an independent and happy future in her grasp—only to be faced with this calamity.
An arranged marriage! She couldn’t fathom the current Duke of Dunrannoch, given his reputation, would want this any more than she.
Imogen grasped at that. “Why on earth would the duke accept such an agreement?”
“Because if he doesn’t, he stands to lose his family business. A whisky distillery,” her father said, standing up from the sofa.
For the second time that day, Imogen felt the burn of tears behind her eyes. She felt deceived. Misled. By the two people whom she trusted the most. She suddenly felt like a stranger in the room, as if she didn’t know the man and woman standing before her at all.
“His Grace has agreed,” her mother offered, her voice purposefully light and optimistic.
“Of course he has,” Imogen said, her throat tight with a notion of what sort of man this Maclaren laird was. “That Highland boor would probably marry a tree stump if it meant he wouldn’t lose his precious whisky stills.”
Her mother reached for her, and Imogen flinched away, ignoring the hurt on her face. “We just want you to be happy, darling.”
“I am happy,” she said. “I don’t need a man for that to be the case.”
“He’s a duke. You’ll want for nothing,” her father said.
“And if I refuse?” she asked, her jaw firming.
“You cannot refuse, Imogen.” The look on his face stopped her cold.
Oh, good Lord, what has he done?
“Why?” Imogen asked with some trepidation, and a minute later, after her father had explained the terms of forfeiture, she stared in utter disbelief at her parents.
“You would give him my inheritance?” she whispered.
Her father nodded. Imogen’s heartbeat slowed, and she felt lightheaded. How could they do this to her? If she lost the remainder of her dowry, she would be destitute and completely at the mercy of whichever male was in line for the earldom. And worse, Haven would suffer. Perhaps even close its doors for good.
Her parents were leaving her with absolutely no choice. They were backing her into
a corner and setting fire to the rest of the room. She could barely breathe from the injustice of it. A whisky distillery! That was all the man would forfeit—
Imogen blinked, and the fury ringing in her ears suddenly quieted. She peered at her parents, remembering that the duke had something to lose as well, according to what her father had said. Dunrannoch’s forfeiture had to be of comparable worth. “Is it a very large distillery?”
“One of the largest in Scotland,” her father replied.
If so, the distillery had to turn a staggering profit. She could do many things with that income. The purchase of a second building. Expansion for a school. Imogen grew dizzy thinking how many more women she could help. This could be a windfall, not the calamity she’d initially assumed—so long as the laird broke the marriage contract, and not her.
“Very well,” she said. “You leave me little choice. I’ll honor the agreement.”
Imogen had spent a decade successfully deterring the affections of men. And when this thickheaded and entirely too desperate Highlander duke finally cried off, she’d take his reparation payment and put it to excellent use.
Haven and her independence would be secure forever.
Chapter Two
Once his carriage crossed the city limits into Edinburgh, Ronan felt a change take place inside of him. He knew the city well, having traveled there numerous times every year, and had done so all his life. Though his heart belonged in the Highlands, he still enjoyed the break Edinburgh offered, especially these last two years.
Life as duke and laird had not been difficult to adjust to; he’d been primed for the role and the duties it required for a long time. However, he still felt constricted. His every move watched, every word obeyed. He was the center of Maclaren, all else revolving and working intricately around him, and Edinburgh…well, it had allowed him to breathe.
He took especially unrestricted breaths at the two gentlemen’s clubs that he and his brothers belonged to—the New Club, when he wanted to conduct business, and the Golden Antler, when he wanted to loosen his starched cravat a bit. On the whole, Ronan enjoyed his trips to Edinburgh.
Never did he imagine he’d dread one.
Namely, this dinner with the Earl of Kincaid, where he would meet his intended bride. The idea of marriage made him break into a cold sweat. It had ever since his first love, Grace Donaldson, the only girl he’d ever wanted, had crushed his hopes when she’d eloped with another. And now he found himself in this predicament.
Forced wedlock to a spinster.
Ronan recalled what Stevenson had been able to uncover about Lady Imogen Kinley. At twenty-nine, she was a spinster by choice, even though she was dowered with an obscene fortune. She had been engaged once, to a man called Silas Calder, steward to the expansive holdings of the Kincaid earldom; however, the engagement had been broken, and the man had cried off for unknown reasons.
Following that, she’d apparently refused nearly two dozen proposals. As far as the solicitor had discovered, she spent her days entertaining callers in her city manse, gifted to her by her indulgent father, and working with various charities whenever the fancy struck her. Clearly, she was a spoiled, vain heiress with nothing but time and money on her hands.
He swallowed his disgust. Getting her to cry off should be an easy feat.
When the carriage pulled up to a beautifully appointed residence in Charlotte Square of New Town, a few streets over from his own residence, Ronan hopped out and straightened his formal dinner clothing. The snowy white cravat choked him, almost like a premonition of what was to come. He was glad he’d chosen to come separately from his mother, who had also been invited by the Kincaids. It gave him the means to leave separately later, should the need arise. And he fully expected it to.
He climbed the steps and was announced by the butler. “His Grace, the Duke of Dunrannoch.”
Instantly, the voices in the nearby salon dropped as a handsome, smartly dressed older man accompanied by a slender, blond woman walked forward.
“Welcome, Your Grace,” the earl said.
“Thank you,” Ronan said.
Kincaid’s wife smiled up at him. “What a pleasure it is that you are here at last.”
Lady Kincaid had been childhood neighbors with his own mother in England, and her clipped accent reminded him of Lady Dunrannoch’s. Kincaid, however, had a soft Scottish drawl, though it was nothing like Ronan’s own thicker burr. His eyes scanned behind them for the woman he was here to meet.
Kincaid turned, as if sensing his curiosity, and looked over his shoulder. “Ah, yes, Imogen, there you are. Come, my dear.”
A petite woman emerged from the salon, wearing a pastel pink gown that was better suited to a debutante making her come-out. What seasoned woman wore bloody pink?
Ronan felt his breath catch when a pair of leaf green, almost-feral eyes met his. The fierce challenge in them wasn’t hidden, and the boldness of her perusal hit him like a punch to the gut. Other details like the sable color of her hair and the sharp angle of a dimpled chin registered, but he could not look past the glittering, appraising stare.
God but she was tiny, barely coming up to his chest. Those eyes of hers, however, could slay dragons. Or him, if he wasn’t careful. He had a ridiculous urge to draw his claymore and prepare for battle.
Her eyes narrowed, and he could almost sense the wheels of her mind turning, when an exuberant smile broke over her face.
“Your Grace!” she squealed in a voice that could break glass. “I am so pleased you could come.”
Ronan almost backed away, right through the door, down the stairs, and into his carriage, if it was still there. Good God, that voice made his teeth ache and his ballocks shrivel up in painful tandem. Shocked into immobility for a handful of seconds, he blinked as a twitch crossed the full pink bow of her lips.
Focus, ye dunderheid!
He bowed and reached for her gloved hand, assessing the challenge. It wouldn’t take much to have someone like her fleeing. Playing the part of a vulgar, oversexed Lothario should do the trick nicely, and something about her grating voice and pink dress allowed him not to feel an ounce of shame or guilt over what he was about to do.
Squashing his grin, he pressed his lips—open-mouthed—to her knuckles, letting his teeth close over a small pleat of fabric and skin. As she gasped and tore her hand away, his eyes lifted to hers.
“Oh,” she breathed. Twin flags of hot color lit her cheeks.
“A pleasure to meet ye, my future duchess,” Ronan said, thickening his brogue and watching those green eyes widen. With shock? Horror? He glued his lips together to keep from grinning.
Let the games begin.
As her parents stepped away to greet other arriving guests, he let his gaze sweep appraisingly over her body. All the way down to the tips of her beaded slippers and back up, pausing at her hips and making a low sound of approval in his throat at her nipped-in waist. He stopped at the pink-clad mounds of her breasts and licked his lips as though presented with a great feast.
Christ, it was foul what he was doing. His mother would be disgusted, and his sisters…well, Sorcha would not hesitate to pummel him to a bloody pulp. Such vile behavior went against every grain in his body, but it was the only way to get his future bride to back out. It was the only way to win.
Lady Imogen’s gasp was audible, as was the blush saturating her throat and into her décolletage. “You’re a pig,” she blurted in a furious, scandalized whisper.
He forced himself to wink. “Oink, oink. And to think, I’m to be all yers, leannan.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” She pinned her lips shut, and Ronan couldn’t help remarking that her voice wasn’t quite as shrill as it had been earlier. Curious…and intriguing. “And don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I’m not your darling in Gaelic or any other language.”
He rolled his shoulders and arched a lazy eyebrow. “What makes ye think ye have a say in anything at all? I like my women silent and
biddable.” The flash of temper in her eyes goaded him to push further. “In fact,” he added, leaning closer to her ear, “the only sounds I want to hear are moans. And my wee wife telling me what’s for dinner—after she’s taken all I can give her.” Lady Imogen’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, and Ronan smirked, nodding. “Aye, lass, like that, but a tad breathier.”
He swore he could hear her teeth grinding as she turned on her heel, about to stalk away, but she had not taken one step before he gave her a light swat on her rump. She whirled around, eyes snapping with outrage, and for a moment Ronan thought she might slap him then and there—it was nothing he wouldn’t deserve.
Hell, he could hardly believe he’d touched her so familiarly. But, to his shock, she collected herself and smiled a controlled, polite, dainty smile. And curtsied. Bloody curtsied as though he was the King of England.
“Of course you would, Your Grace.” Her voice had spiraled back up to its former octaves. Ronan winced and then narrowed his eyes.
“Of course I would what?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“You’d want to have dinner,” she said with a vacant look, those plump lips forming into a bow. “Most men do. Sadly, I’m a kitchen’s worst enemy. I cannot cook, not even an egg. The last time I attempted it, I burned the yolk, something Cook told me should be completely impossible to do. But I do know some delicious recipes I can get Cook to make…if it pleases you, that is.” Sighing, she batted her eyes. “I once saw Cook make a blancmange, and it was just so jiggly—I couldn’t countenance even putting a spoonful of it in my mouth!” She suppressed a shudder and giggled, her eyelashes fluttering like trees in a strong gale. “And then, to make things even worse, I couldn’t eat jelly for a whole week. Do you like blancmange, Your Grace?”
He blinked, surprised that she’d stopped to draw breath, and answered before he could think twice about it. “Er, no. I dunnae eat sweets.”
Her smile widened to frightening proportions. “Oh, how sad! I love sweets. I love pudding. I could eat tea cakes and shortbread and pudding all day long. You know, Cook has the best recipe for lemon shortbread. Do you like shortbread? Don’t worry, it isn’t very sweet at all.”
What a Scot Wants (Tartans and Titans) Page 2
