The Untamed Mackenzie (highland pleasures)

by Jennifer Ashley

  “Bloody hell. I didn’t think you had it.” Mortimer’s own cards fell face up—a ten, jack, queen, seven, and three.

  Daniel raked in his money and winked at the dealer. She really was lovely. “You can write me a vowel for the rest,” he said to Mortimer.

  Mortimer wet his lips. “Now, Mackenzie . . .”

  He couldn’t cover. What idiot wagered the last of his cash when he didn’t have a winning hand? Mortimer should have taken his loss several rounds ago and walked away.

  But no, Mortimer had convinced himself he was expert at the bluffing part of the game, and would fleece the naive young Scotsman who’d walked in here tonight in a kilt.

  A hard-faced man standing near the door sent Mortimer a grim look. Daniel guessed that said ruffian had given Mortimer cash for this night’s play, or was working for someone who had. The man wasn’t pleased Mortimer had just lost it all.

  Daniel rose from the table. “Never mind,” he said. “Keep what you owe me as a token of appreciation for a night of good play.”

  Mortimer scowled. “I pay my debts, Mackenzie.”

  Daniel glanced at the bone-breaker across the room and lowered his voice. “You’ll pay more than that if ye don’t beat a hasty retreat, I’m thinking. How much do ye owe him?”

  Mortimer’s eyes went cold. “None of your business.”

  “I don’t wish to see a man have his face removed because I was lucky at cards. What do ye owe him? I’ll give ye that back. Ye can owe me.”

  “Be beholden to a Mackenzie?” Mortimer’s outrage rang from him.

  Well, Daniel had tried. He stuffed his winnings into his pockets and took his greatcoat from the lady dealer. She helped him into it, running her hand suggestively across Daniel’s shoulders as she straightened his collar.

  Daniel winked at her again. He folded one of the banknotes he’d just won into a thin sliver, and slipped it down the top of her bodice.

  “Aye, well.” Daniel took his hat from the slender-fingered lady, who gave him an even warmer smile. “Hope you can find tuppence for the ferryman at your funeral, Mortimer. Good night.”

  He turned to leave and found Mortimer’s friends surrounding him.

  “Changed my mind,” Mortimer said, smiling thinly. “The chaps reminded me I had something worth bargaining with. Say, for the last two thousand.”

  “Oh aye? What is it? A motorcar?” The only thing worth the trouble these days, in Daniel’s opinion.

  “Better,” Mortimer said. “A lady.”

  Daniel hid a sigh. “I don’t need a courtesan. I can find women on me own.”

  Easily. Daniel looked at ladies, and they came to him. Part of his charm, he knew, was his wealth; part was the fact that he belonged to the great Mackenzie family and was nephew to a duke. But Daniel never argued about the ladies’ motives; he simply enjoyed.

  “She’s not a courtesan,” Mortimer said. “She’s special. You’ll see.”

  An actress, perhaps. She’d give an indifferent performance of a Shakespearean soliloquy, and Daniel would be expected to smile and pronounce her worth every penny.

  “Keep your money,” Daniel said. “Give me a horse or your best servant in lieu—I’m not particular.”

  Mortimer’s friends didn’t move. “But I insist,” Mortimer said.

  Eleven against one. If Daniel argued, he’d only end up with bruised knuckles. He didn’t particularly want to hurt his hands, because he had the fine-tuning of his engine to do, and he needed to be able to hold a spanner.

  “Fair enough,” Daniel said. “But I assess the goods before I accept it as payment of debt.”

  Mortimer agreed. He clapped Daniel on the shoulder as he led him out, and Daniel stopped himself shaking off his touch.

  Mortimer’s friends filed around them in a defensive flank as they made their way to Mortimer’s waiting landau. Daniel noted as they pulled away from the Nines that the bone-breaker had slipped out the door behind them and followed.

  Mortimer took Daniel through the misty city to a respectable neighborhood north of Oxford Street, stopping on a quiet lane near Portman Square.

  The hour was two in the morning, and this street was silent, the houses dark. Behind the windows lay respectable gentlemen who would rise in the early hours and trundle to the City for work.

  Daniel descended from the landau and looked up at the dark windows. “She’ll be asleep, surely. Leave it for tomorrow.”

  “Nonsense,” Mortimer said. “She sees me anytime I call.”

  He walked to a black-painted front door and rapped on it with his stick. Above them a light appeared, and a curtain drew back. Mortimer looked up at the window, made an impatient gesture, and rapped on the door again.

  The curtain dropped, and the light faded. Tap, tap, tap, went Mortimer’s stick. Daniel folded his arms, stopping himself from ripping the stick from Mortimer’s hands and breaking it over his knee. “Who lives here?”

  “I do,” Mortimer said. “I mean, I own the house. At least, my family does. We let it to Madame Bastien and her daughter. For a slight savings in rent, they agreed to entertain me and my friends anytime I asked it.”

  “Including the middle of the bloody night?”

  “Especially the middle of the night.”

  Mortimer smiled—self-satisfied English prig. The ladies inside had to be courtesans. Mortimer had reduced the rent and obligated them to pay in kind.

  Daniel turned back to the landau. “This isn’t worth two thousand, Mortimer.”

  “Patience. You’ll see.”

  The rest of Mortimer’s friends had arrived and hemmed them in, blocking the way back to the landau. The bone-breaker was still in attendance, hovering in the shadows a little way down the street.

  The door opened. A maid who’d obviously dressed hastily stepped aside and let the stream of gentlemen inside. The drunker lads of the party wanted to pause to see what entertainment she might provide, but Daniel planted himself solidly beside the door, blocking their way to her. They moved past, forgetting about her.

  Mortimer led the way to double pocket doors at the end of the hall and pushed them open. Daniel caught a flurry of movement from the room beyond, but by the time Mortimer beckoned Daniel, stillness had taken over.

  They entered a dining room. The walls were covered with a blue, gold, and burnt orange striped wallpaper, its many colors bright in the light of a hearth fire. A gas chandelier hung dark above, and a solitary candelabra with three candles rested on the long, empty table. A young woman was just touching a match to the candlewicks.

  When the third candle was lit, she blew out the match and straightened up. “So sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen,” she said in a voice very faintly accented. “I’m afraid my mother is unable to rise. You will have to make do with me.”

  Whatever Mortimer and the other gentlemen said in response, Daniel didn’t hear. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything either, except the woman who stood poised behind the candelabra, the long match still in her hand, the smile of an angel on her face.

  She wasn’t beautiful. Daniel had seen faces more beautiful in the Casino in Monte Carlo, at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. He’d known slimmer bodies in dancers, or in the butterflies that glided about the gaming hells in St. James’s and Monaco, enticing gentlemen to play.

  This young woman had an angular face softened by a mass of dark hair dressed in a pompadour, ringlets trickling down the sides of her face. Her nose was a little too long, her mouth too wide, her shoulders and arms too plump. Her eyes were her best feature, set in exact proportion in her face, dark blue in the glint of candlelight.

  They were eyes a man could gaze into all night and wake up to in the morning. He could contemplate her eyes across the breakfast table and then at dinner while he made plans to look into them again all through the night.

  She wasn’t a courtesan. Courtesans began charming the moment a gentleman walked into a room. They gestured with graceful fingers, implying that
those fingers would be equally graceful traveling a man’s body. Courtesans drew in, they suggested without words, they used every movement and every expression to beguile.

  This woman stood fixed in place, her body language not inviting the gentlemen into the room at all, despite her words and her smile. If her movements were graceful as she turned to toss the match into the fire, it was from nature, not practice.

  She wore a plain gown of blue satin that bared her shoulders, but the gown was no less respectable than what a lady in this neighborhood might wear for dinner or a night at the theatre. Her hair in the simple pompadour had no ribbons or jewels to adorn it. The unaffected style hinted that the dark masses might come down at any time over the hands of the lucky gentleman who pulled out the hairpins.

  The young woman spread her hands at the now silent men. “If you’ll sit, gentlemen, we can begin.”

  Daniel couldn’t move. His feet had grown into the floor, disobedient to his will. They wanted him to stand in that place all night long and gaze upon this woman.

  Mortimer leaned to Daniel. “You see? Did I not tell you she’d be worth it?” He cleared his throat. “Daniel Mackenzie, may I introduce Mademoiselle Bastien. Violette is her Christian name, in the French way. Mademoiselle, this is Daniel Mackenzie, son of Lord Cameron Mackenzie and nephew to the Duke of Kilmorgan. You’ll give him a fine show, won’t you? There’s a good girl.”

  * * *

  As the man called Daniel Mackenzie came around the table and boldly stepped next to Violet, her breath stopped. Mr. Mackenzie did nothing but look at her and hold out his hand in greeting. And yet, every inch of Violet’s flesh tingled at his nearness, every breath threatened to choke her.

  Scottish, Violet thought rapidly, taking in his blue and green plaid kilt under the fashionable black suit coat and ivory waistcoat. Rich, noting the costly materials and the way in which the coat hugged his broad shoulders. Tailor-made, and not by a cheap or apprentice tailor. A master had designed and sewn those clothes. Mr. Mackenzie was used to the very best.

  He topped most of the other gentlemen here by at least a foot, had a hard face, a nose that would be large on any other man, and eyes that made her stop. Violet couldn’t decide the color of them in this light—hazel? brown?—but they were arresting. So arresting that she stood staring at him, not taking the hand he held out to her.

  “Daniel Mackenzie, at your service, Mademoiselle.”

  He gave her a light, charming smile, his eyes pulling her in, keeping her where he wanted her.

  Definitely danger here.

  Old terror stirred, but Violet pushed it down. She couldn’t afford to go to pieces right now. She’d come down here to placate Mortimer, letting her mother, who’d nearly had hysterics when Mortimer had started pounding on the door, stay safely upstairs. Violet, who could handle a crowd of several hundred angry men and women shouting for blood, could certainly cope with less than a dozen half-drunk Mayfair gentlemen in the middle of the night.

  Mr. Mackenzie was only another of Mortimer’s vapid friends. Violet saw the barrier behind Mr. Mackenzie’s eyes, though, when she risked a look into them. This man gave up his secrets to very few. He would be difficult to read, which could be a problem.

  Mr. Mackenzie waited, his hand out. Violet finally slid hers into his gloved one, making the movement slow and deliberate.

  “How do you do,” she said formally, her English perfect. She’d discovered long ago that speaking flawless English reinforced the fiction that she was entirely French.

  Daniel closed his large hand around hers and raised it to his lips. “Enchanted.”

  The quick, hot brush of his mouth to the backs of her fingers ignited a spark to rival that on the match she’d tossed away. Violet’s nerves tightened like wires, forcing the deep breath she’d been trying not to take.

  The little gasp sounded loud to her, but Mortimer’s cronies were making plenty of noise as they shed coats and debated where each would sit.

  Daniel’s gaze fixed on Violet over her hand, challenging, daring. Show me who you are, that gaze said.

  Violet was supposed to be thinking that about him. Whatever the world believed about the talents of Violette Bastien, medium and spiritualist, she knew her true gift was reading people.

  Within a few moments of studying a man, Violet could understand what he loved and what he hated, what he wanted with all his heart and what he’d do to get it. She’d learned these lessons painstakingly from Jacobi in the backstreets of Paris, had been his best pupil.

  But she couldn’t read Mr. Mackenzie. He didn’t let anyone behind his barriers, not easily. But when he did . . .

  When he did, worlds would unfold.

  Violet snatched her hand from him and turned to the others. “Please, gentlemen,” she said, striving to maintain the calm note in her voice.

  She moved to sit down and found Daniel Mackenzie’s hand on the back of her chair. Violet forced her gaze from him and seated herself, trying to ignore the warmth of his body at her side, the fold of open coat that brushed her shoulder. The breath went out of her again as Daniel eased her chair forward, his strength unnerving.

  Shaking, Violet laid her hands flat on the table, trying to use its cool surface to calm herself. She needed to appear utterly composed, sugar-sweet, and ready to help.

  Inside, she was in turmoil. I hate this, I hate this. Why the devil can’t they leave us alone?

  She gave the others an appealing look. “Will you gentlemen give me a moment to prepare myself?”

  The gentlemen agreed without argument. Many had been to the house before, most often as Mortimer’s guests, but some had returned alone for private consultations with Violet and her mother.

  Mr. Mackenzie sat down beside Violet and looked her in the eye. “Prepare yourself for what?”

  One of Mortimer’s friends, Mr. Ellingham, answered, “To contact the other side, of course.”

  Daniel kept his gaze on Violet. “The other side o’ what? The room?”

  “The ether,” Ellingham said impatiently. “She’s a spiritualist, man. Didn’t you know? Madame and Mademoiselle Bastien are the most famous spiritualists in London.”

  Chapter Two

  The flash of disappointment in Daniel’s eyes stung Violet. Stung her hard. Why she should care what this man she’d never seen before tonight thought of her, she didn’t know, but she did.

  Plenty of people didn’t believe in spiritualism and scoffed at what Violet and her mother did. They didn’t believe a trained medium could contact those beyond the veil, to let the dear departed send comforting messages to the survivors.

  Just as well, Violet’s inner voice drawled. You don’t believe it either.

  Violet knew she’d never felt the cold touch of the otherworld or the trembling ecstasy her mother found in her trances. She’d never seen a ghost or a spirit, and had never had one talk to her, or knock at her, or do any of those other useful things spirits could do.

  But she’d become very, very good at pretending she did.

  That Mr. Mackenzie didn’t believe shouldn’t bother her. Jacobi had told her never to argue with an unbeliever, but to ignore him and move on to the next mark.

  Violet should close to Mr. Mackenzie and concentrate on the other gentlemen, to make him feel that he was left out somehow, to make him doubt his own disbelief.

  So why didn’t Violet turn away with her superior little smile, her amused disdain? Why did she keep wanting to look at him, to explain that she did this for survival, and beg him not to dislike her for it?

  Daniel leaned his elbow on the table, stretching the fine cloth of his coat. “The other side, eh? I’d like to see that.”

  Mortimer said, “You’re in for a show then. That’s why I said she’s worth more than a motorcar or a horse.”

  A motorcar or a horse? Violet’s anger surged. She wished she did have the powers she claimed to, so she could curse Mortimer into living out his life as a rabbit, or at least being a disappointm
ent to any ladies he took to bed. A horse. God help us.

  The gentlemen finally ceased speaking, quieting to watch her prepare. Violet’s preparation was part of the show—when she closed her eyes and drew long breaths to calm herself, her breasts pressed hard into her tight décolletage. Distracted the clients wonderfully.

  When she opened her eyes again, however, she found Mr. Mackenzie not distracted in the slightest. Instead of letting his gaze drop to her rising bosom, as the other gentlemen had, Mr. Mackenzie smiled straight into her face.

  Never let skeptics make you nervous, Jacobi had said. Give them a show in spite of their disbelief. Make them doubt their own doubts.

  Violet glanced around the table, trying to ignore Daniel. “All is calm tonight, the veil so thin. Mr. Ellingham, I believe we were very near reaching your father the last time. Shall we try again?”

  Before the eager Mr. Ellingham—who was attempting to find out where his now-deceased father had hidden away about ten thousand pounds—could answer, Mortimer broke in.

  “Contact someone for Mackenzie. He’s my guest tonight. His dear old mum, perhaps.” Mortimer’s eyes glinted with dislike.

  Violet didn’t miss Daniel’s flash of anger. The flicker was brief and instantly gone, but Violet had seen it. Whatever had happened to Mr. Mackenzie’s mother, his anger about it ran deep; the hurt that accompanied it, massive.

  “Perhaps that would not be for the best,” Violet said quickly.

  Mr. Mackenzie’s mask dropped into place. “Aye, let me mum rest in peace. Tell you what, why don’t you contact me dad, instead?” He sent her a guileless look.

  Too transparent. Violet gave him a sweet smile. “If you wish me to contact your father, Mr. Mackenzie, I suggest a telegram, because that gentleman is very much still living.”

  Mr. Mackenzie stared at her for a heartbeat then burst out laughing. His laugh was deep and true, a man who knew how to laugh for the joy of it. “You were right, Mortimer. She truly has the second sight.”

  “I don’t need second sight to read the newspapers,” Violet said. “First sight will do. Your father appears in many pages of the sporting news. Now, if he’d like me to tell him which of his racehorses will do best this year, his lordship is welcome to join us.”