The Seduction of Elliot McBride

by Jennifer Ashley

  He donned his boots at the bottom of the stairs then walked quietly along the flagstones to the kitchen. He found the shotgun Mahindar had hidden in the butler’s pantry, and shells in a drawer high in a kitchen cupboard.

  Mahindar was nowhere in sight, the family taking a well-deserved sleep. The likeliest person Elliot would encounter was McGregor, who sometimes wandered the house at night, but even he remained upstairs and quiet.

  A cool breeze met Elliot when he stepped out the back door, but he didn’t bother fetching a coat. He could wrap up in his kilt if need be.

  A fox called in the distance, followed by the noise of small animals scurrying for cover. At the end of the garden, just outside the gate, Elliot stopped and loaded the gun, tucking spare shells into his sporran, along with the tin of biscuits he’d found in the cupboard next to the shells. He kept the gun open, slung over his arm.

  He started along the path that would take him to the footbridge that led over the river to Rossmoran land. He and Juliana had used this route to return to the house that evening.

  As Elliot walked, he relived the tactile sensations of being with Juliana—he inside her, she squeezing down without knowing she did it, the cushion of her breasts against his chest. He also remembered the delicious feeling of her tongue on his cock. Her hesitant little licks and kisses, growing bolder by the second, had him nearly crazed with need.

  She was too innocent yet for the things he wanted to do with her. Her well-meaning stepmother had taught her that a man bedded his wife using one position, did his business quickly, and disappeared back to his club and his mistresses. Elliot would have to teach her that this was not necessarily so. Besides, he had no intention of spending days at a stifling club with hidebound men, nor did he intend taking a mistress. What idiot would, when he had Juliana?

  Elliot reached the footbridge and the path that led to the steep hill where he and Juliana had climbed from the tunnels. He picked his way along, the moonlight giving him no need for a lantern.

  The hill curved around into the fold of the valley, another hill rising beyond it. Elliot knew there must be more entrances to the tunnels—the McGregors of old would not have allowed themselves to be bottled inside if their enemies found and blocked one. He walked to the next hill, where trees began to rise around him again.

  The woods went quiet, the watcher back.

  Elliot snapped the shotgun closed and cocked it. “Come on out and face me,” he said, voice loud in the still air. “If I like what you say, I might not shoot you.”

  Chapter 15

  Silence. An owl hooted far, far away.

  Only one man in Elliot’s experience could track him in this way. But he was dead, gone, buried, forgotten by the world. Unfair that he was forgotten, because he’d been amazingly good at what he did, but the world was like that.

  Stacy had to be dead. When Mahindar had told Elliot about the man’s death, Elliot had accepted the story as plausible, because Stacy had been volatile and tended to provoke people.

  Equally plausible was that Stacy had provoked Elliot, and Elliot had throttled him. Mahindar could have invented the story of Stacy dying in Lahore to spare Elliot—Mahindar was forever trying to spare Elliot.

  The fact that Elliot had no memory of murdering Stacy meant nothing. He had no memory of many things, and Elliot had learned so well to be an expert at killing.

  The watcher displayed skills very familiar to Elliot—he’d taught Stacy most of them.

  Elliot was being stalked by a dead man. Or a man who was supposed to be dead and was not. Elliot still lived some of his days sunk in confusion, but his instincts, honed by months of animal-like existence, told him truths that his reason could not grasp.

  “If I’m right,” Elliot said to the night, “then tell your friends I didn’t kill you. Keep them the hell away from me and my wife.”

  Wind sighed in the trees, last year’s leaves scuttling in the dirt. It was dry now, no rain for days.

  Elliot spoke again, keeping his voice level, no shouting. “If you’re trying to take the child, I’m not letting her go to you. Priti is mine, and she’s staying with me.”

  Silence. The watcher apparently did not intend to speak.

  Elliot walked closer to the spot where he thought the next opening to the tunnels lay and set the tin of biscuits on a rock. “If you try to live off the land, someone will report you to the constable as a poacher. I’ll have my lad bring you some food.”

  Still, nothing. The wind sighed again, and in the next instant, Elliot knew the watcher was gone.

  He’d heard no branch moving, no twig breaking. Stacy was almost as good a tracker as Elliot. That had been the basis of the men’s friendship at first.

  Elliot waited for a long time after that. The noises of the woods returned to normal again, but not until the moon had moved well behind the hills in the west did Elliot snap open the gun and tramp back the way he’d come.

  The next morning, Juliana emerged from bathing and dressing in the bedchamber to find the lower hall filled with men wanting work.

  Hamish had spread the word with a vengeance. Men of all ages, shapes, and sizes had come from Highforth village and the outlying farms, from sturdy lads who should have been in school all the way to a stooped elderly man who’d come to give his decided opinions on everything. They’d arrived to put McGregor’s house right.

  Mahindar was a bit nonplussed about how he would feed them all, but Juliana had Hamish run to the village and see what he could find. Not only that, the farmers and crofters brought things with them—chickens, eggs, a nanny goat, cheese, bread, ale—gifts for the new laird and his lady.

  Priti liked the goat, even though it immediately found and ate one of Channan’s pretty silk scarves. The animal looked quite innocent when the discovery was made, despite the bit of indigo silk sticking out the side of its mouth.

  McGregor sat down outside with the elderly man to chat and smoke a pipe with him, while Mahindar and Channan ran about the kitchen, Nandita tried to hide from all the strange men, and Priti played with her new friend the goat.

  The day before, Juliana had begun lists of what needed to be done, but her round of calls, followed by climbing through the tunnels with Elliot and making love all evening, had kept her from finishing them. Mahindar’s voice sounded down the passage as he tried to keep order, and Komal busied herself following people about and giving commands no one understood.

  As Juliana tried to decide what they should do first, Elliot calmly walked in and took over.

  He set men to repairing the roof, some to repairing windows, some to finding the wires and pulleys of the bell system, and some simply to cleaning. He gave orders clearly and without fuss, asking which would be the best men to do each job.

  By midmorning, Castle McGregor buzzed like a hive, workers crawling all over it—raising dust, hammering, breaking away old things and putting up new. The kitchen overflowed with food, Mahindar, Channan, Nandita, Hamish, and Mrs. Rossmoran’s granddaughter Fiona cooking up a storm and watching Priti at the same time. The nanny goat eyed Mahindar nervously as he approached her, but Mahindar only wanted a bit of milk.

  Juliana commandeered a section of the dining room table, where she wrote letters, made her lists, and summoned Hamish from time to time with a handbell, which she’d found rolling in a drawer in the sideboard.

  One of the smaller rooms on the ground floor, whose windows overlooked the land sloping down to the sea, would be sunny in the mornings, perfect as her writing room. The room next to it, large and airy, would be the breakfast room. She looked forward to mornings there with Elliot—he reading his newspapers, she reading and answering her correspondence.

  Cozy, domestic, warm.

  When the house was whole, she told herself, Elliot would no longer have his bad dreams and waking visions of the past. He was a natural leader—the way he handled the men working on the house told her that. He’d be himself again. They’d have summer fêtes and the shooting in Au
gust, Christmas and New Year’s, and then return to Edinburgh or London—wherever her family and his decided to go—for the social rounds of the Season.

  Mahindar fed them all lunch, mostly bread, meat, and cheese—probably Fiona Rossmoran’s suggestion, though Mahindar brought Juliana a lentil and chicken stew with goat’s milk that was seasoned to perfection.

  The men worked throughout the afternoon, their banging and shouting somehow comforting. The old house had been quiet too long. Now it teemed with life.

  Even McGregor was excited. He’d longed to repair the place, he’d said, for years, but he’d had no money, and he wasn’t the sort of laird who’d force his tenants to work for no pay.

  As the workday waned and the men went home with their families, Mahindar came to Juliana’s dining room corner and cleared his throat. Juliana looked up from her list of supplies to find him curling and uncurling his large hands in nervousness.

  “What is it, Mahindar?” she asked in alarm. “Is Mr. McBrideunwell again?”

  “No, no, the sahib is fine,” Mahindar said quickly. “No, the thing I do not want to have to tell you is that we have a thief.”

  “A thief?” Juliana glanced at the jumble of furniture piled into the dining room, put there so the men could tear apart the other rooms. “How can you tell anything is missing? Or even what there was to be missing in the first place?”

  “From the kitchen, I mean,” Mahindar said. “Food.”

  Juliana’s alarm dissolved. “You cooked many meals today. Food was going in and out. So many brought food—I doubt they were stealing it.”

  “Memsahib, please let me explain.”

  He had a point. Juliana closed her mouth and motioned for him to proceed.

  Except that he didn’t proceed. Mahindar stood still, his fingers curling again, his distress plain.

  Juliana said, “I assure you that whatever you tell me will not leave this room. If you don’t wish me to tell even Mr. McBride, I will not.”

  Mahindar sighed. “I wish to be mistaken about this. I very much wish it. I like him—he is so very eager even if he is clumsy sometimes. But he took a large plate of ham and six naan Channan had just pulled from the oven, and ran out the back door. He thought himself stealthy, and he was, because only my mother saw him. My mother, she told me.”

  Juliana had to smile. “If you are speaking of Hamish, perhaps he was simply hungry. He has been working hard.”

  Mahindar shook his head. “No, memsahib. He’d already eaten well. He wrapped these up and vanished with them, then came back soon after, trying to look innocent.”

  Hamish? Juliana wouldn’t have thought it of him. Hamish had told her he lived with his mother, sister, and uncle on a small farm, his father having died a few years ago. Juliana hadn’t heard that the McIver family was especially poor, but times could be difficult in the Highlands. Farming didn’t pay what it used to, sheep were usually owned by the large landholders, and many crofters continued to stream to the factories in Glasgow and the north of England to find steady wages.

  “Thank you, Mahindar,” Juliana said. “I will speak to Hamish and sort this out.” She put the lid on her inkpot and set aside her pen and her lists. “You need say nothing of this to him or Mr. McBride.”

  Mahindar looked both relieved and unhappy at the same time. “I do like the boy. He puts me in mind of myself as a youth. So eager to please, and I know that I was not always pleasing.”

  “I will take it up with him. You go and rest now. You’ve done so much today.”

  He looked surprised. “No, indeed, there is much more to be done. Much more. Thank you, memsahib.”

  Juliana waited until Mahindar had gone then went in search of Hamish.

  “Juliana.”

  Elliot’s voice rumbled through the narrow passage between main hall and kitchen as she walked there to look for Hamish. A moment later, Elliot was next to Juliana, pushing her up against the wall.

  He curved his body over hers, warmth surrounding her. Instead of speaking to her, perhaps asking where she was going, Elliot put his fist beneath her chin, tilted her head back, and kissed her.

  He crushed Juliana back against the wall, trapping her with his strength, and scraped his tongue between her lips. His mouth stole, commanded, left her breathless.

  As abruptly as the kiss had begun, Elliot eased it to its end. He looked down at her a moment, then he released her, dropped a kiss to the corner of her mouth, and faded away down the hall without saying a word. His kilt moved against his backside, the hem swinging with his stride.

  Juliana remained against the wall, knees weak, her hands pressing the cold stone to keep herself upright as she watched him go.

  She was still struggling for breath when Hamish himself came down the passage at his usual half run.

  “Hamish.” She made herself stand up straight. “Hamish, stop.”

  Hamish halted obediently, panting from his exuberant pace. “Yes, m’lady? Something I can do for you?” He sounded happy, not guilt stricken at all.

  Juliana groped for a way to broach the subject tactfully but decided that asking straight out was best. “What do you know about some ham and bread that’s gone missing?”

  Hamish regarded her in surprise. There wasn’t much light here, but Juliana could see by it that his blue eyes were guileless. “Nothing’s gone missing, m’lady.”

  “I’m afraid you were seen walking out with a large plate of ham and fresh-baked naan.” She gave him a little smile. “Or was Komal mistaken, and the goat ate them?”

  Hamish looked even more baffled. “Not the goat. She’s tethered in the kitchen garden, and I carried that food well away from her. No, I don’t think the goat got any of it.”

  Juliana blinked at him. “So you admit that you took it?”

  “Aye.” Hamish seemed unworried.

  “And what did you do with it?”

  “Took it around to the footbridge path, to the hill above my great-aunt’s cottage. Ye go around from the castle and cut left before the road reaches the river…” He pointed with his muscular arm down the passage in the general direction of Mrs. Rossmoran’s cottage.

  He was describing the path Elliot and Juliana had taken to walk back home yesterday afternoon. “You were taking the food to Mrs. Rossmoran? You ought to have asked me—I would have had a basket made up.”

  Hamish looked baffled again. “It wasn’t for me great-auntie. I left it on the path, like he told me to.”

  “Like who told you to?”

  “Himself.”

  Juliana stared. “Let me make sure I understand you, Hamish. Mr. McBride told you to take this food out to the path and leave it there? What for?”

  Hamish gave her a shrug that said the ways of lairds were unfathomable to him. “Don’t know. Me grandmum used to leave bowls of milk out for the wee folk. So they wouldn’t steal nothing else if ye did, ye understand. The bowls were always empty in the morning.”

  “No doubt,” Juliana said. “But a platter of ham and a pile of buttered Indian bread are a bit different from bowls of milk.”

  “Aye.” Hamish’s brows drew down again. “But I didn’t ask. The laird’s business is none of mine.”

  “Never mind, Hamish,” Juliana said. “I will take care of it. But if Mr. McBride asks you to leave food out for the wee folk again, do come and tell me.”

  “He asked me not to, m’lady. Wouldn’t have now, except ye pried it out of me.”

  “Nevertheless, you will.”

  Hamish met her gaze, weighing obedience to the laird against obedience to the lady. He heaved a sigh. “Yes, m’lady.”

  “Good. Thank you, Hamish.”

  Hamish’s grin widened. He touched his forehead in a rough salute, turned, and galloped on toward the kitchen.

  Juliana tamped down her misgivings and went in search of Elliot.

  Uncle McGregor had all but dragged Elliot into the old billiards room at the end of the wing of the ground floor. Several billiards tables rep
osed here, only one of which was uncovered. The others were cloaked in huge dust sheets with accompanying layers of dust.

  “While your wife is busy worrying about the ballroom and the reception rooms, let’s not forget the refuge for the husbands, eh?” McGregor said. “When she has her grand fête, the put-upon clansmen will need a place to retreat.”

  Elliot opened cupboards in search of the cue sticks. He knew from the tedious balls he’d attended with his regiment that most husbands had no interest in gatherings that the ladies so loved, let alone any interest in dancing with their own wives. The gentlemen sought escape in cards and billiards, as McGregor said.

  Poor bastards. The last thing Elliot wanted was escape from Juliana. He’d dance with her as much as she wanted. He felt whole and strong in her arms—why would he bypass any chance to have that? When he’d seen her in the passage earlier, he hadn’t been able to resist stopping to steal a kiss. Why say an inane Good afternoon. How are you? when a heady kiss was so much more satisfying? The fact that Elliot could kiss Juliana any time he wished was a thing worth celebrating.

  “Many’s the night I whiled away the time in here, with my university mates,” McGregor was saying, a wistful note in his voice. “I hated McPherson then, wouldn’t let him in the door. Funny, he’s the only one left now. Only one who stood by me when my lady passed on and the money ran out…”

  Elliot found a wooden box of billiard balls along with the cues and carried them to the table. “My old mates are either dead or have buried themselves in the regiment, never to emerge.”

  “Aye.” McGregor shook his head while he took balls from the box and rolled them onto the table. “When we’re young, we think it will last forever.”

  Elliot wasn’t ready to become moody and nostalgic yet. He wanted many more years with Juliana before it was time to reminisce in the billiards room with the next generation.

  Juliana walking in, her eyes bright, her cheek smudged with dust, was one of those things he planned to reminisce about.