The Untamed Mackenzie (highland pleasures)

by Jennifer Ashley

  “And you do everything Mrs. Leigh-Waters says? You let yourself be alone with unmarried gentlemen to please Mrs. Leigh-Waters?”

  “You are making this sound sordid. It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.”

  Fellows was over her, the scent of violets that clung to her floating to him. “Then tell me why.”

  “Mrs. Leigh-Waters didn’t want him left by himself,” Louisa said stiffly. “And apparently he wanted to speak to me.”

  “What about?”

  Fellows stood too close to her, could feel the warmth of her body, see the smoothness of her skin as her pink flush deepened. “None of your business what about,” she said. “It was a private conversation.”

  “Between friends?”

  “Yes. Why are you talking to me like this? I’d thought we were friends. Why are you accusing me?”

  Fellows curled his big hands. “Right now, I am the best friend you can have. But you have to tell me everything. What you were speaking about, why you decided to be alone with him. Why I should believe you didn’t deliberately poison him.”

  Louisa’s breath tangled his for an instant before she stepped back. She put her hands to her temples, red curls snaking around her fingers. “This has to be madness. I didn’t kill him.”

  “You expect me to take you at your word?”

  “Yes, I do.” She glared up at him. “An Englishwoman’s word is as good as an Englishman’s.”

  “Not in my world.” Fellows made his voice hard. “In my world, everybody lies. They might think it for a good reason, but they lie. And those lies hurt. They can even kill.”

  “You come from a terrible world, then.”

  “Oh, it’s bad, all right.” Fellows gave her a wolfish smile. “And I don’t want you to be part of it. So tell me, Louisa, why did you go off alone with the bishop?”

  The tears that flooded Louisa’s eyes made his heart pound. But they weren’t tears of sorrow, they were tears of rage and embarrassment. “I don’t want to tell you,” she said. “It had nothing to do with his death.”

  “You can’t know that. It might have everything to do with it.”

  Louisa had opened her mouth to argue, but she stopped. She turned away again, still massaging her temples, moving to the window. The light silhouetted her, her gown gently swaying as she walked.

  The vulnerability in her stance nearly undid him. Fellows wanted to go to her, slide his arms around her from behind, kiss her hair when she leaned back to him. He wanted to caress her, as though she belonged to him, and say, It’s all right, love. I’ll take care of everything. You don’t worry about any of it. I’m here.

  If Fellows touched her, he wouldn’t let go. He’d draw her into his arms again, crush her up to him, let their mouths meet. He’d taste her, drink her, and let the rest of the world go to hell. He’d take her away with him, anywhere, to be safe, alone with him. Never letting go.

  When Louisa turned back to him, her face was blotchy red, the tears wiped away, but one still damp on her cheek.

  “You’re a policeman,” Louisa said. “From what Mac and the others have told me, you’re very good at it. A detective first, they’ve said. Like a bloodhound on the scent.”

  Fellows dragged in a breath, pulling his thoughts back from burying himself in Louisa and never coming out. “Flattering.”

  Ian Mackenzie had once lumped Fellows’ dedication in with the Mackenzie family’s madness, saying Fellows’ focus on catching criminals was as intense as Cameron’s brilliance with horses, Mac’s with painting, or Ian’s with numbers and total recall.

  “If I tell you, the good policeman, everything, it will end up in a report on a desk, will it not? The foolishness of Lady Louisa Scranton in black and white, for all to see. Shall I then find it splashed across every newspaper and scandal sheet in London?” Louisa gave a half-hysterical laugh. “Why not? They played out my sister’s marriage and near-divorce there. They’ll quite enjoy themselves over me.”

  Fellows held up his empty hands. “My notebook is over there. Whatever you say to me, in this room, will go no further. I’ll write it into no report. What you tell me will be between you and me, I promise you. You’ll have to take me at my word.”

  “And why would you, the good policeman, not write down every syllable I say?”

  Because I’d do anything for you, Louisa.

  “Because I’m not always the good policeman,” Fellows said. “Never mind what the Mackenzies tell you about me—sometimes I’m just a man.”

  Just a man who remembered every brush of her lips, every touch, their impulsive kisses, the stolen moments. I shouldn’t have done that, she’d whispered after the first time. But I’ve been wanting to kiss you. Fellows’ world had changed that day and hadn’t righted itself yet.

  “I want to trust you,” Louisa said.

  “I want to trust you.”

  Louisa looked away, head turned, but not bowed. She was courageous, elegant, beautiful. Fellows wanted her with the intensity of a small sun. Somewhere not this overly large sitting room where she could walk so far away from him, somewhere he could close her in his arms, lay her head on his shoulder, and simply be with her.

  “Very well, I’ll tell you,” Louisa said. She looked back at Fellows, her green eyes luminous with unshed tears. “Mrs. Leigh-Waters encouraged me to go alone to the tea tent with the Bishop of Hargate, because she knew he would propose to me there.”

  Chapter Five

  Isabella’s maid had laced Louisa’s stays too tightly. She could not draw a proper breath, couldn’t keep her voice from sounding scratched.

  She hated the way Inspector Fellows was looking at her—Chief Inspector now; he’d won his long sought-after promotion. His hazel eyes were steady but behind them were questions, skepticism.

  This man, this half-Mackenzie, always unnerved her. He was as tall and strong as his brothers, and possessed their air of confidence so acute it was almost arrogance. His hair, a dark shade of auburn, had been cut short, now rumpled as though the wind had caught it. Unshaved whiskers were dark on his bruised and battered face, and his eyes were red-rimmed.

  But the hazel eyes that looked out at her showed anything but exhaustion. Fellows watched her with the keenness of a hawk, one waiting for the right moment to strike its prey.

  The abrasions on his face had stunned Louisa almost as much as seeing him again. She wanted to touch him, ask in concern what had happened to him, try to make his hurts better, as though she had a right to.

  The wild streak in the rest of the Mackenzies had been honed in Fellows into a ruthless need to pursue whatever criminals he believed needed to be pursued. He was just as single-minded as the rest of the family, but not as scandalous, because he kept a very tight rein on his emotions.

  Fellows waited, not saying a word. The hawk would let his prey come to him.

  Louisa drew another breath, or tried to, silently cursing her tight corset. “And yes, he did propose.”

  “And you said . . . ?”

  “I never had the chance to answer. As I tried to think of a way to let him down politely, he took ill.”

  Fellows’ expression didn’t change. “You were going to refuse him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I thought of you, and I couldn’t. “Why?” She wanted to laugh again. “Because I did not want to marry him. I knew we wouldn’t suit.”

  Fellows’ expression didn’t change. “Because your father defrauded him?”

  Louisa flinched but had to nod. “I was surprised Hargate wanted to propose to me, in light of that.”

  “Curious.”

  “Yes, it was.” Humiliating too. Something she did not want to discuss with Mr. Fellows.

  Fellows looked her up and down, and when he spoke again, his voice was mild and even. “I’ve spent years listening to people lie to me, Louisa. I’ve learned what exactly it sounds like. Up until this moment, you’ve been telling me the truth. Now you are lying. Why?” />
  With any other man, Louisa might hold her head up and demand him to cease badgering her, but with Fellows, she couldn’t. He knew too much about her. He knew she liked kissing him, liked the smoothness of his lips, the taste of his tongue.

  Her face burned. “You are presumptuous.”

  “It isn’t presumption,” Fellows said, keeping the mildness. “Or assumption. Why did you refuse the Bishop of Hargate? He’s rich, has plenty of titles in his family, and a lofty position. He should have been a good match for you.”

  His indifferent tone made Louisa’s heart sting. “I should have married him for his wealth and position?” She gave him a mirthless smile. “Is that what you’re asking?”

  “It is why people of your class marry, isn’t it? A business arrangement. Marriage is for connections and money; love is sought with mistresses.”

  In spite of the uncaring words, the look in Fellows’ eyes was bitter. Louisa knew his history—the now-deceased Duke of Kilmorgan had dallied with a tavern maid, got her with child, then deserted her. When Fellows’ mother sought the duke to tell him about the baby and ask him for help, he’d denied Fellows was his.

  Fellows’ Mackenzie blood was obvious, however. At one time he’d worn a thick moustache to hide some of his features, but now that he went about clean-shaven, the resemblance to the old duke and to Hart Mackenzie was clear. Fellows had never spoken of his parentage to Louisa, but she knew the duke’s denial of him had hurt him deeply and driven him most of his life.

  “My reasons for refusing the bishop have nothing to do with this,” Louisa said. “I promise you. I didn’t poison him, and I’d like to go home now.”

  Fellows took a step toward her, his carelessness gone, menace returning. “I will determine what has to do with Hargate’s death and what doesn’t. You need to tell me everything, or else you’ll be stammering it in front of a magistrate. He will also know when you are lying, and unlike me, he’ll turn everything against you. Because you’re an earl’s daughter, instead of being hanged or sent to prison, you might be put into a home for genteel ladies who have gone insane, but then again, you might find yourself up before a judge who wants to make an example of you.” Another step, the light in his hazel eyes sharp. “Or, you can tell me everything, and you won’t have to face a magistrate at all.”

  He was unnervingly close. Louisa smelled the outdoors on him, the fresh April wind mixed with the scent of coal smoke that clung to the wool of his coat. His words terrified her, because she knew he was right. She knew how it looked—she alone with the bishop, she serving him tea, he dropping dead at her feet. Louisa was a young woman from a scandalous family, and who knew what she might do?

  His deep voice rumbled around her, stern and harsh, but Louisa wanted to cling to it, to let the sound comfort her. While he meant to frighten her, he was asking her to trust him with the truth, and with her life. He was right that she had no one else to help her.

  She clenched her hands and said the words in a rush. “The Bishop of Hargate told me he would release my family from any obligation to repay him if I married him. Repay him what he’d lost because of my father, I mean. He’d relieve us of that debt and the shame of it, but only if I consented to be his wife.”

  Fellows’ eyes became even more focused, frighteningly so. “He told you this in no uncertain terms?”

  Louisa nodded. “Oh, he made it very clear.”

  Fellows went silent for a few moments. Clouds slid across the sun, thick enough to erase the happy spring sunshine and plunge the sitting room into gloom.

  When Fellows spoke again, his voice was quiet. “You know you have just outlined a perfect motive for killing him.”

  “Yes, I do realize that.” Louisa swallowed on dryness. “It is one reason I was trying very hard not to tell you.”

  “One reason? What is another?”

  “The other reason is because it is so very embarrassing.”

  Fellows studied her, his eyes still. His left cheekbone bore a deep cut, the blood dried. Black bruises surrounded the cut, the bruises moving up to his temple. The right side of his mouth had taken another cut, and scrapes decorated his cheek. Again, Louisa wanted to reach up and touch his face, to ask if he was all right. She curled her fingers into her palms.

  “Did anyone else know the terms of this proposal?” Fellows asked abruptly.

  “I have no idea. Mrs. Leigh-Waters knew, or guessed, the bishop would propose to me, but whether she had any hint he would try to blackmail me into accepting, I do not know.”

  “Even if she didn’t know, the story will come out sooner or later,” Fellows went on in his matter-of-fact voice. No false comfort for Louisa, just unvarnished truth. “Hargate might have confided in his valet that he planned to coerce you into marrying him, or his solicitor. Or he might have boasted of it loudly at his club or a meeting of his vestry, who knows?”

  “Well, I didn’t know until he sprang it on me in the tea tent,” Louisa said. “That’s a point in my favor, is it not? If I’d decided to poison him, I would have had to prepare beforehand. But I had no reason to prepare, because I had no idea what he meant to ask me. Surely that proves my innocence. I would have had to bring the poison with me to the garden party, and I assure you, Inspector, I have no vials of poison about my person.”

  “Proves nothing. You might have known about Hargate’s proposal in advance. Servants gossip. Solicitors and vestrymen gossip too. You might have seen yourself pushed into accepting him and decided the only way out of marrying a man who demanded your body in exchange for forgiving your father’s debt was killing him. You could have brought the vial in your pocket or a reticule. Afterward you could have dropped the bottle in the tea tent, or surreptitiously tossed it into the garden as you walked through it, or even hidden it in this room while you waited for me. Or you might have it in your pocket now.”

  Louisa’s lips parted as she listened, something cold seeping through her body. His words . . . demanded your body in exchange for forgiving your father’s debt . . . were inelegant, even harsh, but again, he was not sparing her. Truth was often ugly.

  “Yes, I might have done any of those things. But I did not. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Just show me,” Fellows said.

  She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Show me what you have in your pockets, Louisa. Believe me, if you are arrested and searched, you’ll be treated far less gently at a police station than you will here by me. So show me.”

  Louisa’s frock had one pocket, in the skirt, its opening hidden by the peplum of her bodice. She jammed her hand inside and pulled out a handkerchief, a pencil on a ribbon, and a tiny notebook.

  “There. That is all.”

  Fellows came to her swiftly. He gave her a measuring gaze and then pushed aside her hand and slid his own into her pocket.

  Louisa’s breath hitched. The corset cut into her again, and spots danced before her eyes.

  Fellows didn’t touch her. She felt the warmth of his hand between skirt and petticoat, the strength of his fingers as they moved in the pocket. She looked up at him and found his hazel eyes focused directly on her.

  The look in their depths made her dizzy. This man should be nothing to her—a member of the family her sister had married into, that was all. He was not of her world. He’d been born on the wrong side of the blanket, raised in working-class London, and had taken up the common profession of policeman.

  But he’d compelled her from the first time she’d laid eyes on him, at a family gathering at Kilmorgan Castle. Louisa had seen how uncomfortable Fellows had been in a home that might have been his, how silent he’d been, how haunted he’d looked. She’d wanted to cheer him up, to show him that the past didn’t have to mean a thing to the present.

  She’d learned Fellows had a biting, deprecating sense of humor, often directed at himself, but he was also happy to direct it at those around him. He had the powerful personality of the Mackenzie men, but one turned in a different directi
on from theirs. While the brothers had been raised with money and power, Fellows had faced the world in all its ugliness. He’d had no protection but himself.

  Now Fellows stood very close to her, and Louisa wanted to kiss him again. The first time she’d done so, she’d told herself she felt sorry for him. But she knew it had been more than that.

  It was more than that now. The need to kiss him rose like an uncontrolled fire. It sent Louisa up on her tiptoes in her high-heeled boots, making her lean into him, wanting to feel his strength and his warmth.

  Fellows’ eyes started to close, his body coming down to meet hers. The hunger she saw, before his lids hid his eyes, sparked an answering hunger deep inside her.

  Louisa drifted into him, welcoming his heat. She felt the touch of his breath, which would be followed by his lips . . .

  Then wasn’t. Fellows jerked back, eyes opening, a hard light entering them.

  He lifted his hand out of her pocket. Between his broad fingers was a small bottle of cut glass with a little stopper, a tiny amount of liquid inside it.

  Chapter Six

  Louisa, still ensnared by the kiss that hadn’t happened, stared at the bottle uncomprehendingly. “What is that?”

  “That is what I am asking you.” Fellows’ voice was harsh.

  “I don’t know.” Louisa held up her hands. “It isn’t mine.”

  “It was in your pocket.” His gaze grew even colder.

  “You must have put it there then. I certainly didn’t.”

  “Louisa.” Fellows lifted the small bottle in front of her face. “I need you to explain this to me.”

  “I didn’t put it there,” Louisa repeated in desperation. “I cannot help it if you don’t believe me. I don’t even know what it is.”

  “It’s a perfume bottle,” Fellows said. “But this is not perfume.”

  “I can see that it’s a perfume bottle. How do you know it’s not perfume inside it?”