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To R.L. Merrill and Ellay Branton
What would this book be without yous twos?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, my editor knows just what to say to encourage me and in what direction to point when I get lost. Thank you, Monique and Alex, for all your work, support, and communication. Justine, Marissa, their marketing team, the SMP design team, Jon Paul, and my copy editor—I don’t know your name, but I’m in love with your red pencil—and everyone who touches these books who I never get to thank in person, are a tribe I’m grateful for every single day.
My agent, Christine, is the woman I don’t know how to be, and admire constantly from a safe distance. She fights my battles for me, even the ones I don’t know I’m fighting, and her warrior spirit is second to none.
Cynthia St. Aubin, there’s not enough room on this page to sing your accolades, but congratulations a million times. Cynthia and Tiffinie Helmer, this book would not have happened without you. I have the best critique partners in the world.
Also for my love. You’re the strongest person I know. Thank you for all the memories.
And all the coffee.
PROLOGUE
Ravencroft Keep, Wester Ross, Scotland
The boy they called Thorne lost his virginity at almost sixteen years of age. He’d lost his innocence long before that. So young, in fact, it never occurred to him to miss it.
It was the night his father had bought the bawd Tessa McGrath and brought her to Ravencroft Keep. He’d not have been the first man to purchase a prostitute for the purpose of turning his boys into men. But Thorne had been too young to guess, at the time, that Hamish Mackenzie never intended for his sons to learn to be lovers.
Only monsters, like himself.
The lass had been famous in the Highlands for specializing in the darker side of eroticism, but when she’d accepted the proposition of the Laird Mackenzie, she’d not realized the fathomless depths of his cruelty.
She’d thoughtfully brought her own satchel of playthings. Soft whips, buttery-leather straps for binding or lashing, and other creative and clever devices that even a randy boy of Thorne’s age couldn’t imagine the applications thereof.
He’d tried, as he’d stood next to his elder brothers and looked on in petrified fascination as his father had tied the purring, naked whore to the bed. He’d glanced up at Liam and Hamish, looking for cues as to how he should feel or what to expect.
Hamish the younger, his father’s bastard namesake, had a predatory gleam in his onyx eyes. A malevolent anticipation that puzzled and confused Thorne. He knew that Hamish was no virgin. At twenty, the man had already boasted of a great deal of conquests, willing and otherwise.
Liam, the Ravencroft heir, barely spared the naked woman a glance. He, instead, regarded their father with a grim sort of misgiving. Liam had been born in the middle of Hamish and Thorne, but his mother was Laird Mackenzie’s first wife. The one who died.
The one everyone said their father had killed.
Thorne’s gaze bounced between Liam and the Laird. Their features almost identical. Long hair as black as a raven’s wing. Midnight eyes. Hard, brutal features. He was surprised to note that Liam was almost as tall as Father now. To Thorne’s reckoning, they stood as big as one of the oaks lording over Inverthorne Forest. He didn’t know if Liam had a woman … or women. They didn’t speak much anymore. But Thorne loved his brother with all the gentle ferocity his young body could contain.
Liam was brave. He was strong and stern and protective. Sometimes, when Thorne had been very young, Liam had shown him where to hide when the Laird had been on one of his violent rampages. He’d taken a few lashes or blows that had rightly belonged to Thorne.
And for that, he’d forever love his brother. No matter what.
Thorne wasn’t small enough to fit in the nooks and crannies of Ravencroft anymore, which was why he now sought refuge in the outdoors whenever possible.
Tessa McGrath had been lovely that night. Lithe, with smooth, pale skin and intriguing beauty marks in places he’d never really glimpsed before, but had always fantasized about seeing. The underside of her generous breast. The inside of her thigh. Right above the soft tuft of hair between her legs.
The whore had aroused him. Excited him. She’d writhed and begged, she’d said the things ladies only did in his fantasies, but out loud.
He’d have to tell his closest mate, Callum, about this tomorrow, he thought. The stable master’s boy was a year or two younger than he, but they had spent years romping about Wester Ross and galloping their horses over Gresham Peak to the freedom of the Erradale Moors. Lately, they’d taken to pinching a bit of fragrant tobacco from Callum’s father’s tin, and smoking it behind the Rosses’ cattle pastures. They’d watch the waves bash against the black cliffs, and laugh at the antics of fluffy red Highland calves while speculating at length on just this very thing.
What a naked woman looked like. What she’d feel like. What they someday wanted to do to her. Or what they hoped she’d do to them. They’d spy on Mrs. Ross. A pretty, young, dark-haired lass with sparkling blue eyes and a way to her walk that endlessly enticed them both. She was a strong and shapely woman, with a laugh that carried over the moors and drew answering smiles from the boys. Though she was a cattle rancher’s wife, she always dressed like a fine lady.
On a particularly sunny day, they’d peeked over one of the craggy stones at the base of Gresham Peak in openmouthed stupefaction as James Ross had tupped his pretty wife against the barn in front of God and all the cattle. With her dress on and everything, much to the disappointment of the boys, as the particulars of the act had been hidden in endless petticoats. The entire affair had been fast and loud and the couple had sighed and laughed afterward.
“I could marry a woman like that,” Callum announced in his brash Irish brogue.
“Aye,” Thorne had readily agreed. Though he wasn’t so sure … maybe he wanted a woman more like his own mother. Soft-spoken, elegant, and unfailingly kind. Mrs. Ross sometimes yelled at her husband, and once, they’d seen her throw a shoe at him.
Hit him right in the arse.
What kind of woman did something like that?
His mother would ne-ver.
His father would certainly kill her if she so much as raised her voice to him, let alone her shoe.
God, but he despised his father. Almost as much as he feared him.
Why couldn’t he have been born to people like the Rosses? Simple, happy people. Wealthy in land and holdings, or so he heard tell, but not noble in the least. They lived in their own verdant kingdom, one Thorne visited as often as he could escape his own.
Well, the next time he and Callum slipped away, he’d get to boast that he’d become a man this night. That he’d done all the things they’d held in the scope of their boyish conjecture. And other things, besides.
Sometimes he hated Callum. Envi
ed him his gruff but fair and kind father and endless days of freedom to hunt and haver like a bloody savage. Thorne had been an earl since his seventh year, as his mother’s uncle had died, and he’d been the next male heir in the St. James line. Inverthorne Keep to the north belonged to him now, though his father claimed it in trust and held it as his troth.
Thorne’s title meant nothing to him. He was only glad to be clever, that he’d a wit for words, as he’d lock away every detail of his experience with Tessa McGrath to describe in graphic, envy-inducing detail on the morn.
That was the last thought he’d spare for Callum until much, much later.
Who could focus on aught but the encompassing sight of the willing lass splayed before him?
Then, the Laird produced the whip, and Thorne’s anticipation and arousal withered like a salted snail.
Hamish’s favorite instrument of pain and terror had been a Mackenzie acquisition from the Roman era. Legend had it one of their Pictish ancestors had ripped it out of the hands of a Legionnaire and beaten him to death with it.
Thorne didn’t know if the story was true. But he knew the pain of its kiss, and missed the flesh it had torn from his back upon occasion.
A desperate “no” tripped from his lips as the Laird ran the whip over the purring whore’s back. She’d arched and gasped in anticipation …
Until the first two lashes had bit into her own perfect flesh.
Thorne shrank away as his father stalked to their side of the bed and held the detested whip’s pommel out to his sons.
“Two lashes from each of ye,” he’d ordered.
“She’ll not survive that,” Thorne had protested against his better judgment. He hated the crack in his high voice, and the slight pitch of hysteria at the sight of the blood welling on the woman’s soft back.
He’d not seen the blow coming from his father, though he should have, he reflected wryly, as he blinked away stars from the flat of his back and swallowed a mouth full of blood.
“Two. Lashes. Each,” the Laird repeated. “I doona care which of ye gives how many, but she’ll not be released until she’s been whipped six more times.”
None of the Mackenzie lads spoke. They barely breathed. Though Thorne looked to Liam who glared at their father with a hatred that seemed to match his own.
“Ye do it,” the Laird ordered with an evil smile. “Or I’ll do it myself.”
Hamish the younger had reached out for the whip, a frightening anticipation building beneath the apprehension on his less-compelling features.
“Nay.” Liam had stepped forward, wrenching the whip out of his father’s hand before Hamish could take the chance to. “I’ll do it.”
Six lashes. Six long, hellish, screaming eternities.
Thorne’s cheeks were gritty from the salt of his tears by the time it was over. He wept not only for the poor lass, but also because of the darkness gathered on his brother’s features. Liam. His hero. His savior. The brawniest of them all wielding the one instrument of wrath they’d all come to fear. He looked like a demon there in the candlelight, conducting violence upon a defenseless woman.
He looked exactly like their father.
It was a sight Thorne knew he would never forget.
Deep down, he understood Liam had no choice. That his brother didn’t hurt the lass like their father would have. That maybe he didn’t want Hamish and Thorne to have to do such a dreadful thing.
But that night, the pain writhing on that woman’s face would paint his nightmares for the entirety of his life. Because that night had changed everything.
It hadn’t ended with the whipping.
It hadn’t ended with the hour of unspeakable things the Laird had forced them to do to Tessa McGrath.
Nor had it ended when she’d been released.
Nay, for Thorne, the terror had just begun.
A dark pride and a sick relish glinted in the Mackenzie Laird’s eyes as Liam bore the woman out. She couldn’t walk correctly, but, to her credit, she spit and fought and vowed retribution.
“A rare lass, that,” Hamish considered. “Never submitted her will…”
The Laird turned his cold notice to Thorne, who’d lost his ability to cry somewhere in the middle of it all.
Shame washed him in layer of filth and self-hatred.
Thorne looked down at his hands and wanted to cut them off. To keep himself from doing something unutterably foolish, he crossed his arms in front of him and gripped each of his skinny biceps, wishing with everything he possessed that he had a fraction of Liam’s corded brawn. Or even Hamish’s doughy bulk.
He was still a boy. He knew that. Nothing he’d done tonight made him feel like a man. No actions recounted to Callum would induce anything but disgust. Or worse, pity.
“Weakness is tedious and disappointing.” The Laird sneered at Thorne. “Like yer mother. Like ye. At least I have two strong sons.” He clapped Hamish on the shoulder.
“The whore is going to talk, Father,” Hamish the younger had warned. “She might make trouble for us.”
“Nay. There are ways to ensure her silence.”
A soul-deep tremble racked Thorne’s entire frame at the way his father spoke. He wanted to rip his flesh from his own sullied body. He wanted to flee this room and never return. He burned to take the dirk from his father’s boot and shove it through his cruel, dark eye, ending both Thorne’s misery, and his mother’s.
But he couldn’t reach that high. Not without his father cutting him down first.
Not yet. The thought snarled through him.
“There’s a social in Gairloch tonight, and my blood is still up.” The Laird yawned. “I think I’ll wander there for some further sport.”
“Can I come with ye, Father?” Hamish queried.
“Aye, there’s a woman I’ve been after a long time, and tonight she willna tell me nay.”
Then Thorne was alone. Naked but for his kilt and one wool stocking.
He didn’t know how long he stood there in the dark and watched the candles flicker, the shadows performing a nightmarish reenactment of the horrors this room had been privy to. His gorge rose at the sight of the bed. There was blood on the sheets. Oh God, he couldn’t look any more.
Eventually, his legs moved, and he wound his way through the corridors of Ravencroft Keep until he found himself in his mother’s chamber. The slide of the lock roused her from her slumber, and the next thing Thorne knew, he’d collapsed against her, dry-eyed, and confessed everything. He wondered, rather numbly, if she could smell the sex and disgrace on him. If she’d stop loving him now. If she’d fear him like she did his father.
When he finished his tale, she just held him in the darkness for a long while, her hot tears dripping into his hair. “I’m sorry,” she whispered piteously. “I’m sorry that he’s your father. I wish I’d known. I’d have run to the ends of the earth rather than married him. You have to understand, I was only sixteen. He and my father had business and … well, I was very innocent. I didn’t know what he was like. I would have chosen for you a different father if I could reach through time and change it all.”
Thorne’s guilt doubled for distressing her. For laying his sins at her feet. He just didn’t know where else to go.
“He wants to turn us into him,” he whispered, despair threatening to drown him in the absolute darkness of her chamber. “What do I do?”
His mother’s small hands, so prone to trembling, gripped the sides of his face with surprising strength and held him aloft in front of her. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. It was almost as though she could somehow make out more than his outline in the heavily draped room.
“Do not be his son. Do not be a Mackenzie,” she pleaded with a whispered fervency he’d never before heard from her. “Hamish is his son. Liam is his son and heir. But you, dear heart, are mine. I am sorry I cannot protect you from him, but remember this in the years to come. You are the Earl of Thorne. Lord of Inverthorne Keep. You are bea
utiful and you are clever and you are good. Promise me to remain good. To never touch a woman but sweetly. To never delight in cruelty. To make your own way in this world, apart from this accursed keep and clan and your father’s tainted legacy most of all.”
“I swear it.” Thorne felt the vow solidify in his chest, hardening his heart, nurturing the seed of cold darkness that had been planted this night. “I am not his son. I am no Mackenzie.”
Thorne allowed his mother to cling to him, to wash away his sins with her tears. It felt unmanly to do so, but he didn’t care. Tonight made up for all the nights he’d tried to save her from his father’s attentions, and was thwarted by size and age. For all the tears she’d valiantly tried and failed to hide from him. They were equals now. Burdened by the same pain.
And the same name.
He did not have to be Hamish Mackenzie’s son.
The Celts were matrilineal before. He didn’t need the Mackenzie name to make his way. He’d establish his own name. His own land. His own legacy.
For he’d sire children with a woman he loved. And he’d hold them. And protect them.
They’d be safe. They’d never know fear, or hate, or this soul-crushing ignominy.
They’d be proud of their name.
His name.
Thorne must have nodded off, because he woke to a desperate shake and a sound like thunder.
“You have to hide.” His mother was sobbing. “He’s going to break the door.”
“Eleanor!” One of the hinges gave beneath the Laird’s mighty boot. “Ye would dare lock me out of a room in my own home? Do I have to remind ye what happened last time?”
Ye gods, he was drunk. They could hear it in the slur of his words.
“Hide,” his mother begged again, creating a protective shield with her body.
“Nay.” Thorne, nearly as tall as his petite mother now, vowed that he was never hiding again. He could protect her now that he was a man, or die trying.
The first thing he saw when the Laird finally splintered the hinges was the whip.
The Scot Beds His Wife Page 1
