What a Scot Wants (Tartans and Titans)

by Amalie Howard; Angie Morgan

  The air in the room disappeared. All sound did as well. Imogen could only hear her own rapid breaths…and, after a while, her mother’s quiet weeping.

  “In the end, the man we all trusted didn’t give me a choice. He took it from me. In a men’s club, in an upper room, where he altered my drink with laudanum. I don’t recall anything from that evening, and I couldn’t fight him. I was utterly powerless until the owner of that club barged in and saved me. Silas vanished that very night…and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you what had really happened. How”—her voice broke on a ragged sob—“unforgivably stupid I’d been.”

  She closed her brimming eyes, the first brick in her resolve crumbling. Her hands started to tremble. She could not look at Ronan, though she felt his burning, incisive, and utterly furious stare.

  “Oh, my darling, oh, my darling,” her mother whimpered, and in the next moment, she felt her arms come around her in an embrace. She didn’t ask why Imogen had never told them. She didn’t fault her for keeping it secret. She only held her. And when Lady Kincaid finally stepped back, Imogen saw pain and regret etched in her teary eyes. Her mother believed her.

  “I am appalled,” her father said, lowering himself to the edge of a sofa as if his legs had lost the strength to hold him.

  “I know you cared for him, Papa,” Imogen said, certain he was about to tell her she had to be mistaken. But he snapped his head up.

  “For him? He dared to harm you, and I will never forgive him. Or myself, Imogen. To have let this happen, not even suspecting anything was amiss or what kind of man we’d welcomed into our home with our precious daughter…what kind of father am I?”

  “It isn’t your fault.” She’d grown accustomed to saying the same thing to others at Haven, and the words came instinctively to her now. “He deceived us all.”

  He nodded, a hand coming up to pass over his forehead, blocking her view of his face. His shoulders shook, and Imogen went to sit beside him. He embraced her as her mother had, murmuring apologies. The cushion beside her dipped, and Imogen’s mother joined their embrace. Telling them the truth hadn’t been half so difficult as she’d always thought it would be, and now that it was done she felt like a fool for believing that they would blame her, that they would turn their backs on her.

  There was a gap of silence, and Imogen knew she could no longer avoid Ronan. She stood, the tremors threading back into her arms and legs, and met his eyes. They nearly knocked her back with their ferocity.

  “Ye did no’ tell me any of that. Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to know the truth. I didn’t want to face it.”

  He came toward her, but she shook her head. He held back. “What truth?”

  “That I’m ruined. That he took something from me that I can’t ever get back.”

  Not her virginity, but something more. Something integral to her very soul.

  “A piece of me is missing, Ronan, and that gaping wound… It will be with me forever. It will stand between me and any man I ever come to care for. And now, with these rumors, everyone else will see it, too.”

  “Imogen, I dunnae care what other people think.”

  “But you care what I think?”

  “Of course I do,” he said, coming forward again. Imogen slipped to the side, out of his reach. One touch and she would crumble entirely. She’d been such a fool to think any of this was possible. That any happy-ever-after could be hers…that the stain of her sins would fade with time.

  Even if she did let Ronan go through with it, the gossip would follow him, too. Follow his family, his sisters, and their children. He deserved better than she could give him. She had to be the strong one here. Release him from whatever misplaced sense of honor was driving him where she was concerned. He wasn’t her knight, not when protecting her would only tarnish him.

  Imogen drew a breath and motioned him near the door, out of immediate hearing of her parents, though she felt their keen stares. “Then listen to what I think. To what I know. I can’t be your wife. I can’t be any man’s wife, not with Silas’s touch hanging there between us. I don’t want that, and neither do you.”

  “Dunnae tell me what I want,” Ronan replied, his voice grinding out each word. They ricocheted through her body, setting off a vibration that made her dizzy. “I told ye, ye’re mine.”

  He didn’t understand, and yet how could he? Ronan likely thought this would all blow over in time. That she’d be fixed, so long as he kept her safe. But Imogen knew better. What Silas had done would haunt her forever, soil her forever, and poison everything around her. He had ruined her…for anyone else.

  “No, Ronan, don’t you see? I’m not yours. I never was.” She loosed a shattered exhale. “The best thing you can do is get as far away from me as possible before the scandal touches you, too. It’s already overtaken most of Town. You deserve more, so much more than…me.”

  With a raw, gut-wrenching cry, Imogen bolted from the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A full day and several bracing rounds in the boxing ring at Gentleman Jackson’s later, and Ronan still hadn’t calmed. He was full of rage and fury, picturing Calder’s face with every jab, every drill, and every punch, and he’d already gone through two of the salon’s best fighters. Ronan had guessed that Imogen hadn’t been telling him everything, and even though he’d suspected the man of something devious, hearing the unvarnished, painful truth had been like nails driven into his flesh.

  That filthy bastard had drugged her. Touched her without her consent.

  God, he wanted to kill the man. Tear him apart with his bare hands.

  After Imogen had left the room, he’d almost raced to Calder’s residence, but somewhere deep down, a tiny rational part of him knew that he would not have left the bastard alive. And so he’d gone to the only place he could find a measure of release, and then he’d returned again the following day at the crack of dawn.

  A strike to his opponent’s temple had the third man he’d fought falling flat on his back, knocked out cold. Ronan was still shaking with anger, but after the past evening’s rounds and this morning’s bouts, most of his murderous savagery had receded. At least enough for him to keep a civil tongue in his head and for him to take his coach back to his residence, bathe, have Vickers tend to the minor cuts on his face, and then make his way to Calder’s home. Thanks to Gentleman Jackson’s, Ronan was lucky he’d lasted a day.

  Once outside the man’s Piccadilly residence, Ronan held himself tightly in check. He would put Calder in the bloody ground for what he’d done to Imogen, but he would do so in the most irreproachable way possible. One that was beyond question.

  Ronan flexed his fingers as the man came to the door as before and greeted him wearing a smug countenance.

  “Lord Dunrannoch. Back again to accuse me of something else wicked? Where is your Bow Street dog this time?”

  “I dunnae need a Runner or a policeman today. This is between the two of us.”

  Calder looked amused, inviting him inside the Spartan front room as he poured a drink, then offered one to Ronan.

  “Is there laudanum in it?” Ronan asked, his throat constricting as the fury leaked back into him. “I hear that’s how ye subdue the women ye…wish to violate.” He couldn’t bring himself to say rape, though that was what the man had done.

  Calder retracted the glass of whisky and, after a moment’s pause, laughed. “I see you are here to accuse me of something.”

  “I ken everything. Imogen told me. She told her parents, too.”

  He had to block the images that entered his mind of a young Imogen’s distress as a man she’d trusted betrayed her. The helplessness and fear she had to have felt.

  “She is merely desperate to make excuses for her actions the other evening in St Giles. I feel quite sorry for her, actually.” Calder sipped from the glass. “You know, they say people hurt those they love the most. I do believe Imogen’s attempt to discredit me is a display of her unswerving affect
ion.”

  Ronan had known the man was a liar, but now he could see the true sickness that filled him. Calder had used Imogen, harmed her, taken away her innocence by trickery and force, and he reveled in it.

  “Ye’re a spineless degenerate who deserves to be put out of his misery.”

  “And you have plans to do me in right here? Right now?” Calder laughed again, though there was a small glint of bloodlust in his eyes, as if he wanted Ronan to attempt it. “I didn’t touch her, you know.”

  “You fed her laudanum, and she was unclothed.”

  “She was crazed,” he said. “It was a mere drop to relax her. And a man’s entitled to see what he’s shackled the rest of his life to, isn’t he?”

  Ronan felt his body tighten with fury. “Choose yer second, Calder. I’m calling ye out.”

  Dueling might have been illegal, but it was still an unquestionable method of reparation. The challenge could not go unmet, not without inflicting a decisive blow to a man’s honor. And though Ronan knew Calder had none, the man was so desperate to be someone of consequence, wealth, and power that he couldn’t not agree.

  Calder smiled thinly. “Agreed. Pistols. Tomorrow at Regent’s Park at dawn.”

  Ronan knew the challenged party was allowed the choice of weapon and place, but Calder’s ready acceptance didn’t quite sit right. “Ye seem eager to die.”

  The man’s smug grin vaporized. “I am simply impatient to be rid of you, Dunrannoch. With you gone, Imogen will soon realize the only man willing to have her now is me.”

  The man was delusional.

  “Ye’re going to be severely disappointed tomorrow, Calder. I’d see to yer affairs if I were ye.”

  Before he could give in to the crushing urge to beat the bounder to a bloody pulp right there in the parlor, Ronan left. He told his driver to return to Dunrannoch House; he needed air, and the three-mile walk to his next destination would give him the opportunity to expunge some of the savage energy that had turned his muscles into what felt like stone.

  By the time he’d reached Niall and Aisla’s home, he felt a little looser, though no less murderous. His youngest brother received him in the study.

  “Who are ye planning to kill?” Niall asked the moment Ronan was shown in.

  “How did ye ken?”

  “The last time ye looked like that, our sister had been taken by Duncan Campbell,” Niall answered, pouring two whiskies. Ronan accepted this glass and tossed it back.

  “Aye, I remember.”

  Makenna had been abducted by an enemy to Maclaren. She’d been found unharmed, but Ronan had not known rage or fear like that could exist inside of him before then. Now, with Imogen, the same rage was nearly choking him, but the element of fear had been replaced with something else. The need for vengeance. Calder had to pay for what he’d done.

  “I’m killing Silas Calder tomorrow in a duel. Ye’re to be my second, if ye agree.”

  Niall sat behind his desk and gestured to the seat across from him. “I think ye should tell me what’s happened.”

  Ronan sat and confided in his brother the reason behind his challenge to a duel. Aisla was not to know. No one was. If Imogen chose to tell her, that would be her decision. By the time he finished, powerless rage had replaced Niall’s composed expression. As Maclarens, they’d all been raised to respect and protect women, and the thought that any man could take such brutal advantage of a defenseless innocent was unconscionable. As a family, they’d dealt with their share of misfortune and horrors, but this…this kind of act was truly vile.

  “I’ll no’ breathe a word,” Niall promised with a tight nod. Ronan could see the vehemence in his brother’s stare. He clearly wanted Calder maimed or dead as well.

  They sat in silence for a good minute before Niall huffed a mirthless laugh. “A duel with pistols. We’ve certainly become citified, havenae we? Shite, what I wouldnae give to see ye take a claymore to that bastard.”

  It would have been Ronan’s preferred method as well. To gut the bastard with a sword would be satisfying; however, it would not have been deemed honorable, not when Ronan’s superior strength would have given him an unfair advantage. Ronan would kill him fairly, with the weapons the man had chosen.

  “I willnae lose,” Ronan said. He didn’t care if Calder was a crack shot with a pistol. “But ye should ken that I’m no’ going to marry Imogen.”

  The words ripped at him unexpectedly.

  Niall set his whisky down and peered at Ronan. “Because of this business with Calder?”

  “No’ in the way ye’re thinking,” Ronan replied. “Imogen doesnae want to marry. No’ just me, but any man. She’s made it clear that what happened to her, what Calder did all those years ago, she’ll never be free from the pain of it. She thinks it will stand between us.” He paused, grimacing. “And I fear she’s right.”

  It would slowly drive them apart. Ronan had, at first, been furious. Imogen was wrong. It wouldn’t be like that. He could prove to her that her past didn’t matter. She could heal, and he would help. He’d protect her at any cost.

  But then at Gentleman Jack’s, with every blow he’d planted on his numerous opponents and the endless well of anger and violence that continued to overflow, Ronan started to comprehend. Imogen had never admitted the truth to anyone before. She’d never allowed herself the opportunity to heal from the damage Calder had caused.

  To her, right now, she believed she never would. He understood only too well that she needed time to heal herself, and that he could not do it for her, no matter how much he wanted to. That power was hers alone. And he would not take it from her, not when she’d been stripped of almost everything. Coercing her into a marriage she did not want or wasn’t ready for would make him as bad as Calder.

  “I cannae force her to choose me, Niall.”

  “So she’s cried off?”

  She had not properly ended the betrothal at Kincaid Manor before fleeing the room. And the more Ronan thought about it, the more he knew he couldn’t let her be the one to cry off. He had to do it.

  “She’d lose everything. The rest of her dowry, her shelter in Edinburgh. Hell, she’s already lost her reputation. If she cries off she’ll only be incurring more damage. Calder will be rotting in a grave somewhere, and so she’ll be safe from him, but there are others, Niall, ye and I ken it. Men who prey on women in dire straits. They’ll crawl out of the woodwork.”

  Ronan couldn’t let that happen. Imogen deserved better than that. She’d fought tooth and nail her whole adult life to protect herself from the past. He would never forgive himself if he took that protection away from her.

  “Are ye saying that ye plan to cry off?” Niall stood up and braced himself against the desk. “Ye’ll lose everything ye’ve built for Maclaren. The distillery. The clan’s livelihood. All of it.”

  The conversation with Aisla when she’d drawn him aside at the garden party came back to him. She’d shrugged off the potential losses, claiming that it was not who Maclaren was. Not who he was. At the time, he’d balked at the notion. But now, weighing his reparation payment against Imogen’s, he saw the disproportion of it.

  Imogen’s safety, her happiness, was worth more than anything Ronan could hang a price on.

  Ronan glanced at his youngest brother. For such a young man, Niall’s strength and fortitude had always awed him. He’d built a business, a way for his clan to survive, using the mines on his lands, and had made himself into a better man. Niall had fought for his estranged wife, and, when it seemed he’d have nothing at all, choosing to let her go, she’d come back to him.

  Perhaps Imogen might do the same. He doubted it. Niall and Aisla had years of history. He’d known Imogen for weeks. She’d walled herself off from any man; her defenses were too high. Even for him.

  Either way, Ronan knew his clan would not fall into ruin, not if he had anything to say about it. A distillery could be rebuilt. Lands could be re-tilled. He would find a way, and his clan would be stronger for
it.

  He was Ronan Maclaren. Protector. Defender. Duke.

  “I willnae lose everything,” Ronan said hoarsely. “I’ll still be me. I will be the one who has to live with my choices in the end. Yer wife tried to tell me as much recently, and it seems she was right. Aisla is a wise woman, ye ken.”

  “Aye, she is.” Niall’s blue eyes speared him.

  “Can I ask ye a question?” he asked Niall.

  His brother nodded. “Anything.”

  “Would ye have given it up? Yer estate, Tarbendale, and yer cairngorm business, if the only thing ye could have in return was Aisla?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  He’d do the same. Imogen’s happiness was everything. With the realization, it felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He wouldn’t lose the core of who he was. Those were external trappings. His family would always be there for him.

  Maclaren was a place, a lovely place with many wonderful memories, but it wasn’t what made him a Maclaren. Every member of his family had their own marriages and families. Niall had Tarbendale. Sorcha had Montgomery. Finlay and Evan would stay on at Maclaren, if Imogen decided to keep the distillery running. Annis had made her life in the Americas, and Makenna had Duncraigh with Riverley.

  Christ, it was liberating. He would build a new life, find a new way for his clan to thrive, allowing Imogen to live hers the way she deserved. Ronan ignored the hollow stab in the pit of his stomach at the thought of walking away from her. Giving her up…when he only wanted to hold on to her forever. See her laugh and smile and swell with his children. Grow old and tell stories of their silly antics when they’d first met.

  Ronan scrubbed a hand through his hair and then strode around the desk to pull his brother into a hug. “Thank ye, bràthair. I’ll send ye the details of the duel.”