Highland Pleasures [6] The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie

by Jennifer Ashley

  “If? If I took you to the inn?” Daniel slammed his hand to the table, making the coffee cups dance. “Did ye think I had no intention of doing that? Even though I’d said so? Did ye think I was playing with you?” His anger rose. “So you said, aye, ye’d like to go back to that cozy inn with me, looking happy about it, but all the time ye thought I was lying?”

  “I didn’t think you lied,” Violet said, her words heating. “I thought you meant it at the time. But you might have forgotten or changed your mind. How was I to know?”

  “Why the devil would I change my mind?”

  Violet’s own temper sparked in her eyes. “Because you’re an aristocrat! You can afford to ride across France in a private train car and hang up a costly balloon in a tree and shrug about it. You can do anything you want, Daniel Mackenzie. Why should you bother telling the truth to me?”

  “Well, you haven’t bothered much telling it to me!” He put his fists on the table. “But I’ve never lied to you, Vi. I’ve been nothing but honest. That’s my trouble, ye see. I’m painfully honest. I don’t like secrets, so I don’t keep them.” He straightened. “But let’s come back around to you being married. Where is the lucky fellow? Does he know you gad about the world and seduce hapless young men? Am I just another mark? You knew all about me and my family the minute I walked into your dining room in London. Did you look at me and decide I was ripe for the plucking?”

  Violet flinched at his words, but Daniel didn’t feel like being kind. She’d played him, the same way she’d played Mortimer and all the other young men around the table that night. And Daniel, dazed by her beauty, had tumbled right on his ass.

  Violet’s lips were bloodless. “You mean the moment I met you, was I supposed to hold out my hand and tell you my life story? How could I know my life story would even matter to you?”

  “Would matter to me? Everything about you matters to me, Vi. What if I were fool enough to get on my knees and propose to you? Would you have mentioned the marriage then?”

  “I told you—I planned to tell you tonight at the inn.” Violet’s eyes were filled with fury, but also tears. “I am telling you tonight. It took me a long time to gather the courage to say the words—I know you’ll probably toss me to the wind once you know everything, but I want to tell you. I’m trying to.”

  “Don’t throw this back at me, love. I’ve been square with you from the moment I met you. And you’ve returned half-truths, lies, and evasion. Hell, you even dumped me in a cart when you couldn’t wake me up.”

  Violet jumped to her feet, the cups clattering again as she jarred the table. “And I didn’t ask you to follow me across Europe, or to spring upon me in the theatre in the middle of my performance. I thought you’d want to stay far, far away from me.”

  “A simple You know, Daniel, I’m married might have convinced me to.”

  “I doubt it.” Violet’s eyes sparkled blue. “You take whatever you want, damn all who get in your way. You want to test your theory about flying, so you take my wind machine, you take your friend’s balloon, you fly it into a tree—but it’s all right, you’ll buy him a new one. We’re stuck in a storm, but it’s all right, you’ll charm the innkeepers into giving us the best room in their house. And a woman you want to bed is caught by the police, but no matter—you’ll get your father to call in favors and take her out. Why?” Violet balled her fists. “Why not leave me alone? If I’ve lied to you and evaded you, why the devil don’t you just leave me alone?”

  Her words rang against the clackity-clack of the train as they sped into the heart of France. Violet looked so empty, so starved, that Daniel almost relented. But his temper wouldn’t let him.

  “Why the devil should I leave you alone?” he shouted back. “You seem to like my company. You’ve had the power to send me away anytime—why didn’t you use it?”

  “Power? I don’t have any power over you at all! You do as you bloody well please, no matter who doesn’t like it. Me, your friends, country innkeepers, your glittering courtesans . . .”

  Violet broke off, snapping her mouth shut, as though she hadn’t meant to say the last.

  “What glittering courtesans?” Daniel made a show of looking around the empty room. “I don’t see any glittering courtesans. Maybe they’re hiding under one of the sofas?”

  “I saw you,” Violet said, her voice hard. “The night we got back from the country. You were with gentlemen friends outside a restaurant, and lady friends too. They were quite beautiful. They were covered with diamonds, which is why I call them glittering. Please, do not pretend you are anything but a wealthy aristo who has any sort of woman he wants—respectable and not-so-respectable—happily going from one to the other.”

  Daniel’s confusion cleared. “Do you mean you saw me outside the bistro? My obnoxious friend Richard provided the female company that night. The glittering ladies went home with Richard and his cronies, and I went to my hotel to be interrogated by my precious little sister. I’d just been with you, Vi. I wasn’t interested in them.”

  Violet stared at him as though he’d lost his mind. Daniel supposed the fashionable world would think it odd that, plied with the most expensive and willing ladies in Marseille, Daniel would ignore them for a struggling confidence trickster with beautiful blue eyes. But that was because they hadn’t met Violet.

  “We’ll be discussing this lack of trust in me,” Daniel said. “Thoroughly. But I noticed ye’ve neatly turned the tables back to me being a complete bastard instead of talking about what we started out to. Tell me about this marriage. Every detail. Who is he?”

  Violet’s bosom rose in the beaded gown, the costume she’d not yet had a chance to remove. “I married Jacobi. To save my reputation, he said.”

  “Jacobi.” Daniel’s hatred for the man spun higher.

  Violet wet her lips. “It is one reason I forgave him. I thought, at the time, he’d been as much of a victim as me. He made me a married woman, in name only, to protect me.” She stopped, and fresh pain filled her eyes. “And because I was pregnant.”

  Dear God. Daniel’s rage drained swiftly away. Violet watched him with trepidation, waiting for him to turn her away as she feared. Daniel knew, realistically, that with any other man her fears might not be unfounded. He’d just have to convince her he wasn’t any other man.

  “Was the father the man who took you as . . . payment?” The word tasted sour in Daniel’s mouth.

  “Yes.”

  She said it so calmly, but Violet wasn’t calm. Her hands trembled, and she couldn’t look directly at Daniel.

  “Where is the child?” Daniel asked in a quiet voice.

  Violet was silent for a long time, and when she raised her head, Daniel knew. Pain bored into his heart as though someone had stabbed him. “I never had the child. I miscarried.”

  “Violet . . .”

  Violet held up her hand, fingers stiffly spread. “No. Wait. I want to finish. I was onstage with my mother when it happened. She had no idea about any of this.” Violet smiled a little, that heartbreaking smile that made Daniel want to kill every person who’d ever hurt her. “I was too young and ignorant to understand what was wrong with me. A lady in the audience, a courtesan called Lady Amber, saw what was happening. She came backstage, took me away to her house, and got a doctor—a real doctor, a good one—to help me. The doctor saved me, but couldn’t save the child.”

  Violet trailed off. The train’s wheels clacked into the silence, the train rushing along at a great speed toward Paris.

  “I’m sorry, Violet,” Daniel said, not moving. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Perhaps it was for the best.” Violet got the words out, but her voice broke.

  “No, not for the best. It’s never for the best. You tell yourself that so you can bear the hurting. My stepmum, she lost a babe that came from an unscrupulous man, but it grieved her all the same.”


  Violet’s tears dropped to her cheeks. Daniel came to her, gently seated her on the sofa where she’d sat with Ainsley, and sat down with her.

  “Tell me the rest, love.”

  Violet looked up at him, her eyes wet. “There is no rest. Jacobi was kind to me, trying to make amends. But when he was in debt again, when he offered me again, as I told you, I packed our things and took my mother and Mary out of Paris. I never wanted to live through that again. I haven’t seen Jacobi from that day to this.”

  Daniel let silence fall between them for a time. Her hurting was real, no more lies. “Was it a legal marriage?” he asked after a time. “You were very young. Are you certain?”

  She nodded. “There was a priest, our names in the register, a license, witnesses. I’m fairly certain it was all legal. Whether Jacobi is alive or dead now, as I said, I have no idea. I might be a widow. I don’t know.”

  “Have you never tried to find him? Obtain a divorce, or annulment?”

  Violet shook her head. “I never wanted to see him again. I did keep an ear out for mention of him, but I never heard anything. And he never tried to find me.” Her shoulders slumped. “It didn’t matter to me. I had no intention of marrying anyone else, so the fact that I’d married wasn’t important.”

  Not important. Daniel had to stand up again. If he strangled Jacobi, not only would it feel good to his restless hands, he would set Violet free.

  Daniel turned back to her. “It’s important to me, love. I’ll hunt down Jacobi, and if he’s still alive, I’ll shake an annulment out of him. If you haven’t seen him in years, the marriage might be null anyway. Abandonment or disappearance can dissolve it. Or Jacobi might have ended it so he could marry someone else.”

  “He could have. I never had the opportunity or the money to bother with it. As I say, I wanted nothing to do with him. Ever.”

  Daniel nodded. “Yes, you ran away. You’re good at that—running. How was it the police caught you this morning? I’d have thought you light on your feet.”

  “I told you, I wanted them to catch me. My mother needed to get away.”

  Daniel’s anger surged again. He went swiftly back to the sofa, leaned down, and planted his fists on either side of her. “You mean you sacrificed yourself for her, just as you sacrificed yourself for Jacobi, just as you sacrificed any chance at a normal marriage because he convinced you to. You sacrifice, and you run, and Violet, you have got to stop.”

  “How can I?” Violet’s eyes held defeat. “What else is there?”

  The defeat pierced Daniel to the heart. “I’m going to show you what else. I said so before—not that you believed me. Ye think me the frivolous Mr. Mackenzie, the flirt, the ne’er-do-well. Hell, I can barely say ne’er-do-well. But unfortunately for you, I’ve seen the true Violet. I’ve watched you leave your sacrificing, drudging flimflammery behind you and open yourself to the world. I’ve seen you spread your arms and scream out loud as the wind carried you. And I’m going to see that again. I plan to drag you out of yourself, sweetheart, whether you like it or not.”

  “And then what? Crash me to the ground again? It’s what gentlemen do to ladies when they’re finished with them.”

  “And I so love the way you try to turn me into a villain every time. Makes me angry, that does. But if I say I’m going to show you everything in life you missed, I mean it. I’m not Jacobi, or a man who thinks it just to use a girl’s innocence as payment. And I’m not the marks you play upon to fleece. I don’t care about your parlor tricks, or your phosphor-luminescent paint, or your fake talking boards. I’m going to show you real life. Real joy. Whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not. No, don’t agree or disagree right now. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think?” Violet’s pride was back.

  “No, it doesn’t.” Daniel straightened up, feeling his smile return. “It only matters what I think right now. You’ve put yourself into my hands, love, and I’m going to show you the world. The way you’re supposed to see it.” He reached down and pulled her to her feet. “But right now, you’re going to sleep. Because when we reach our destination, no more rest for you. And no more looking after everyone. I’m going to look after you now, and that’s all there is to that.”

  Violet came against him, the onyx on the bodice sharp under his hands. She looked up at him, a storm in her eyes, her body rigid.

  Daniel kissed her. Violet’s lips shook, but she kissed him back, her mouth softening a little under his. Daniel cupped the back of her neck and let the kiss become thorough.

  When he drew back, Violet looked up at him with eyes filled with despair but also desire. She’d hurt so much, lost so much. Daniel wanted her with an intensity that nearly crushed him. When they finally came together, the world would shake apart.

  But for now, they were in his father’s private train car, with his stepmother and baby sister in the bedrooms in the back, not to mention Violet’s mother. His father would soon stroll back from the smoking car or wherever he’d been to join Ainsley. He didn’t like to be without her for long.

  And Violet truly needed to rest. She was drooping, exhausted, too pale. Daniel kissed her lips again, then made her walk with him into the back to an empty bedroom. He kissed her good night at the doorway, Violet’s eyes still full of fear and longing.

  Violet shut the door herself, cutting off temptation from either of them. Daniel exited the car and made his way to the platform on the back. There he smoked cigarettes until the frigid winter wind calmed him enough to let him go back inside.

  They changed trains in Paris early the next morning, without pausing to sample the pleasures of the city. The new Tour Eiffel dominated the skyline with its steel girders crisscrossed like lace against the morning sky.

  Violet hadn’t been to Paris except to change trains since the tower had been built. She gazed at the tower with longing, wanting to go to its very top. Maybe someday. She felt a momentary frisson of delight when she realized that in the balloon she’d ascended even higher.

  For now, Violet was happy to move on from Paris, though England was not necessarily where she wanted to go. But they would be staying in Berkshire, Daniel said, a long way from London and her problems there.

  Daniel had told her she had to stop running away, but he couldn’t imagine the sorts of things Violet had run from. Daniel had always had a secure life, a caring family.

  Daniel’s early life might have been lonely, but watching Lord Cameron with him, Violet could see the man loved Daniel with everything he had in him. Even if Cameron hadn’t known what to do with the energetic Daniel as a boy, he’d never entirely deserted him. That Daniel had been energetic, Violet had no doubt.

  Daniel was still energetic. He helped his father direct everything as they changed trains to move on to Calais, and made certain Mary and his parents’ servants were comfortable in their compartments. He helped look after Gavina, taking his little sister around the train when the journey grew dull, keeping her busy. And the whole while, he talked; with his father about sport; with his sister, interesting things they saw out the windows; with his stepmother, music, plays, fashion, and interestingly, cake.

  Ainsley had lent Violet some clothes so she could remove her stolen costume and pack it away. What Mary had managed to carry off was mostly their stage accoutrements and a change of clothing for Celine, but nothing for Violet.

  Ainsley seemed to think nothing of lending Violet a walking dress and two or three day dresses—for the time being, she said. They would of course go shopping for Violet when they reached England.

  Ainsley’s kindness was without artifice, tinged with friendly understanding, and easy to take. Another new sensation for Violet.

  Daniel never said a word to Violet about their argument. He didn’t keep his distance from her, but he didn’t try to be private with her either. Daniel included her and Celine in all
the conversations, talking easily but neutrally as the train ran on into Calais, where they’d spend the night. He was cheerful at the restaurant where they took a meal, bade Violet a polite good night at their hotel, and retreated to a lounge with his father.

  Not until they were on the boat crossing the tossing Channel the next day did Daniel seek out Violet alone.

  Violet hung on to the rail in the bow of the ferry, looking forward, the rumbling of the boat’s huge engine somehow soothing. Celine, who hated boats, had stayed in their cabin with Mary. On her way above, Violet had glimpsed Lord Cameron, his wife, his daughter, and Daniel in the parlor for first-class passengers. Instead of stopping to join them, she’d come out here to be alone with her thoughts. The cold wind kept most passengers below, so Violet had the deck to herself.

  She watched, mesmerized, as the gray water tossed white foam under the bow. The sea was ever changing, yet always there, tons of water somehow adhering fast to the planet. The bow wave surged and broke, surged and broke, but never stopped the boat, which kept plunging onward.

  Warmth came behind her. Daniel brought his arms around either side of her to rest his gloved hands on the rail. “I couldn’t stay away from you,” he said, his breath in her ear. “Seeing you out here with your face to the wind, the courage of you, looking straight ahead into whatever comes.”

  “It isn’t courage,” Violet said. “The smoke from the engines is too thick in the stern.”

  “Don’t ruin the image, love. And I’m not wrong. You aren’t staring backward—smoke and all—at the retreating shore of France. You’re watching England rush at you, your home, come what may.”

  Daniel brushed his lips to her cheek, sweet heat. Violet didn’t dare turn her head, didn’t dare kiss him back. Because once she took hold of Daniel, she’d never want to let him go.

  “What is Berkshire like?” she asked.