Harlequin Historical July 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2

by Virginia Heath

  But defeat was not in his blood.

  For good or ill.

  Neither was mercy.

  As the Earl of Avondale was discovering.

  It was time for Lachlan to go home, but he would bring with him a souvenir. The greatest prize of the man who had nearly destroyed him.

  He could think of nothing sweeter.

  Lachlan’s mother had sent him to England, using a connection forged by his father, to gain him a position with the Earl. She’d sent him without his father’s knowledge or permission. A great dishonour, his father would think. To send his son to make money to replace the money he was squandering.

  But the Earl had cheated Lachlan. Left his labour unpaid. And he could not return home a failure. So he had stayed. Waiting for the man to make good and in that time his mother…

  She had given in to despair.

  She had taken her own life.

  His father bore the brunt of that guilt. But the Earl of Avondale had played a part in it and he would pay for that part.

  Lachlan went to the door and knocked. He could have barged in. He had no patience for waiting around. But he would be let in here. Admitted by servants. A station he no longer held.

  He could buy this manor, he could buy the Earl of Avondale, twice over. He bowed to no man.

  Their fortunes had reversed and he intended to make the other man feel the weight of it.

  The butler who answered the door was the same man who had been here when Lachlan was a boy of fifteen. He remembered him as being rather imposing. A hawkish face and broad shoulders, which Lachlan recognised now were padded.

  The man’s black eyes no longer looked intimidating, rather Lachlan could see a depth of exhaustion there he would not have appreciated as a boy.

  He felt no pity. It was the price to pay for working for the devil.

  He didn’t judge the man, either, as Lachlan had once found himself in the Earl’s employ.

  ‘Mr Bain,’ he said. ‘The Earl is expecting you.’

  ‘Captain,’ he said. ‘Captain Bain.’

  His ranking in the British Army, which he used only because it gave him some satisfaction to exceed the position this Englishman insisted on placing him in.

  The man’s lip curled ever so slightly. If the man recognised him as the boy he had been, Lachlan couldn’t be sure. But he recognised a Scotsman and it was clear he found him beneath contempt. Yet the man had no choice but to admit him entry and so he did. Lachlan looked around the entry that he knew at one time had been grand. Now the wallpaper was stained and peeling, the flowers warped and swollen from moisture that seeped into the walls here. Apparently even aristocrats could not find insulation from the damp.

  Before he could take another step, a door flung open and a woman all but tumbled into the space in which he was standing. She straightened, pressing her hands down over her skirts. Hands that were clearly shaking.

  ‘Steady, lass,’ he said.

  His voice clearly provided her with no comfort. Wide, blue eyes met his and he could see fear there. He was used to men looking up at him with fear. He was quite accustomed to being the last thing a man saw. He had a reputation for being brutal in battle and it was well earned.

  But he derived no joy from frightening small women.

  It took him a moment to realise that this woman was his newly betrothed. He had not seen her since she was a girl. But he could see traces of the child she had been then. She still had a small frame, delicate. Her cheeks were no longer round, but her eyes were the same blue and the stubborn set of her chin remained.

  Her dress was a simple, pale shift, the same milk white as her skin, the neck low and wide in that way that was so fashionable. He had wondered more than once if men were responsible for the current sensibility since it offered a tantalising view of female flesh.

  He had not expected her to be beautiful. Beautiful seemed too insipid a word.

  She was like a faery. It seemed that gold glowed beneath the surface of her skin.

  She was infinitely lovelier than he had imagined she might be. He had not thought the collection of limbs she’d once been could be reassembled into something quite so pleasing.

  She was still slim, her pale blonde hair like gold, her eyes the sort of blue found in the deep part of the sea. Mysterious like the ocean, too. He could see her fear, but there was more. A strength and stubbornness and something he could not define.

  A depth he had not expected.

  That, he supposed, had always been there. The magic behind her stubborn bearing. Most vulnerable beings would find themselves crushed living with a man such as the Earl. Yet she had seemed to retain her stubbornness and he found it admirable.

  But while he could see her defiance, he could also see her fear. A pulse racing at the base of that delicate throat. It angered him for a moment, that her body betrayed her in such a way. The source of her life there to be seen. So easily crushed if a man was of a mind.

  Had he been a different man he might have felt pity for her. But he was not a different man and pity had no place in his life.

  ‘You,’ she said, her expression changing from one of fear to shock.

  That one word contained many.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘You’ve spoken to your father, then.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ she said. ‘It’s you. You’re the boy.’

  She did remember him. He had wondered if she might when he had wondered about her at all and it had been only for the briefest of moments. He had thought of her only in terms of a tool he might use to exact revenge.

  A might bit more difficult now that she stood before him, clearly a woman and not a chess piece.

  Most women, he found, displayed what they wanted from him, or didn’t, with immediate clarity. Fear, lust or greed an immediate flash in their eyes and smile, with nothing else beyond.

  But not this woman.

  He knew what manner of man her father was. Living beneath this roof would have been enough to break even the strongest of men, yet here she stood, her back straight, her shoulders square.

  She was unexpected in every way, though she should not have been.

  A neglected child with a broken wing of her own, she had occupied herself saving animals on the estate. Curious, he’d thought at the time. For she so clearly needed rescuing, yet she concerned herself with the plight of other small, vulnerable creatures, not seeming to recognise she was kin to them.

  Recognising that did not change his intention.

  Though the flare of lust he felt when he looked upon his future bride was a welcome and unexpected addition to his revenge.

  ‘The boy who used to talk to me. The boy who helped me save the bird,’ she added.

  ‘Yes. I suppose I should be flattered that you remembered. But you will find that I’m not a servant any more. Neither am I a boy. I’m Captain Lachlan Bain, Chief of Clan MacKenzie. And you are to be my bride.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Penelope had run straight from fireplace and…well, right into the enemy.

  Except, the enemy was a man she had once considered…nearly a friend. Her only friend in the whole world, once upon a time. Oh, if her father had known it would have meant disaster for them both. But he hadn’t. She had been careful, sneaking out of the manor during the day when her father was otherwise occupied. When he had left her to her own devices, left her without a governess, she had nothing else to do.

  So, she had made the hours pass picking across the fields that surrounded the property. And she had often rescued wounded animals she’d found there.

  Lachlan had helped her.

  She’d thought him an angel. She’d loved his funny accent and the way the sunlight caught the curls in his hair. She’d loved the way he’d smiled at her.

  She’d been quietly destroyed when he’d gone. Another b
rush with grief.

  It was tempting for a moment to think he’d come back for her. He had. But she knew it wasn’t like that. She could look at him and know.

  There was almost nothing of the boy she’d once known left in him.

  She didn’t remember him being quite so tall. But then, she’d been a child when he was here and to her, everyone seemed tall. That he still towered over her now seemed notable.

  She knew for a fact he had not been quite so broad.

  His hands were battered and scarred, a great, raised slash extending from his neck down beneath the collar of his white shirt. A shirt which was open at the neck and revealed quite a bit more of his chest than was at all decent.

  He wore a kilt with a green tartan, a sword at his hip, and a sporran clasped with a badger’s head.

  She knew that the kilt was common dress for Scottish soldiers, but it was very rare to see a man wearing one for a social call.

  She looked to his face, hoping to see someone she recognised. Hoping to see Lachlan as she’d known him somewhere in those eyes.

  But they were hard as flint, his mouth set into a grim line. As mysterious and frightening to her as the Highlands themselves.

  If she had hoped to find an ally in him, she suspected she would be disappointed. Because this man was not soft. She couldn’t imagine him bending down to help a small, distraught child save a doomed bird. No. Instead, she could imagine that large hand wrapping itself around the vulnerable creature and crushing it.

  She thought to use the same tactic with him that she used with her father. Rational, reasonable negotiation.

  ‘I am engaged already,’ she said, trying her very best to look beset by regret. ‘A sad truth. But that will make a betrothal between you and me quite difficult.’

  ‘Nothing difficult about it, lass,’ he said, his voice rich and low. She remembered the accent, but the voice had definitely changed. She could feel it echoing inside her chest and she did not like it.

  He had come into her home and filled the space here. Now he was invading her as well.

  ‘Your father owes me a debt. And money will not suffice.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s not for you to understand. It’s for you to do as you’re told.’

  Well, rational did not seem to be working. He certainly wasn’t giving her any answers that she could hold on to. Nothing about this made sense to her. He had been a boy, a servant when he had left, and now he had returned, saying that he had some sort of hold on her father.

  ‘I’m not certain I understand,’ she said, keeping her tone exceedingly patient. ‘You see, when you were here last you were a servant. You can see how I might be having some difficulty connecting how you went from there…’ She circled her hand and then pointed at the floor. ‘Here.’

  ‘I saved the neck of the right rich man while fighting in the war. His parents were exceedingly grateful. They gave to me what your father promised and did not deliver.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I worked for your father for years. Sweat and blood, lass. There were no wages paid. I was nothing but a penniless boy in a foreign land unfriendly to me based on my origins. I had few options when I arrived, less after I’d spent a year here, with all the money sent by my mother long since gone. And when I approached your father about the lack of payment, he promised me a merchant ship, if only I were to work three more years.’

  ‘That’s… I can’t imagine that my father would pay a boy something with that sort of value.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Lachlan said. He smiled, but there was nothing at all nice in that smile. ‘He lied. And he sent me off with nothing. After years of promises. Years of working for nothing. I had no means of getting home and, by the time I was through here, by the time I realised that nothing would come of this, that I had wasted those years, my mother was dead.’ His lip curled, the expression savage. Thunderous. ‘And there was nothing I could do to save her.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ she said. ‘Really. I know what that’s like. My mother’s dead, too.’

  ‘Are you trying to appeal to my softer side? Because you’re wasting your time, lass. I haven’t got one.’

  ‘That’s not true. You did.’ He had and it had meant everything to her at the time. Everything to a girl trapped inside herself.

  ‘That boy you knew is dead.’ Those words were haunting, but had they been spoken in anger, had there been some discernible emotion on that face of his, they might have been less terrifying. But it was the emptiness there, the way his face seemed carved directly from rock, as immovable and unreadable as a sheer cliff, that made her soul turn to ice. ‘He died somewhere on a battlefield in Belgium. The man who stands before you wants nothing but revenge before he returns home for absolution. I got my ship, but I paid for it with blood. And I’ve made my fortune. Which means I have the power now. And your father has none. He has nothing. And I’ve purchased his debts. Sadly for him I’ve made you the price.’

  ‘But why?’ she asked. ‘If you have the money, then what difference does it make?’

  ‘My mother is dead. And I would have your life for hers.’

  Fear rioted through her. ‘You don’t mean to… You don’t mean…’

  ‘You’re no good to me dead.’

  ‘Honestly,’ she said, losing track of strategy altogether, ‘I probably wouldn’t be any use to you alive. My father often tells me that I’m useless. Save my beauty, of course, which I find to be quite a hollow comfort.’

  He stared at her, his eyes cold, and she realised it was perhaps not good of her to speak of her own beauty. But truly, now, it meant nothing to her at all.

  She cleared her throat and continued. ‘It must be said, I accomplished some sort of usefulness when I secured an engagement to the Duke of Kendal.’

  ‘If Kendal found you useful, I imagine I can find something to do with you.’ The words were rough and hinted at a mystery she didn’t fully understand.

  One that made her stomach shiver and the hair on her arms go up on end.

  She pushed the unwanted sensations down deep. ‘I’m not entirely sure he found me useful. But his sister likes me quite a lot and so does his mother, and…’

  ‘I’m not interested in the particulars of an engagement that no longer exists.’

  ‘Then perhaps you would like to tell me about the particulars of this one.’

  He took a step towards her. ‘You are right. Your father was very proud of your engagement to the Duke. His highest achievement. And a pathway out of debt. It brings me great joy to deprive him of both of those things.’

  ‘So I’m…simply revenge to you? A pawn? No regard whatsoever for the fact that I had plans. For the fact that I’m supposed to be getting married to somebody that I’m actually quite fond of. It doesn’t make any sense. You…’ She sputtered, trying to think of some way she might appeal to a humanity she wasn’t certain he possessed. ‘You saved a bird.’

  ‘That is the second time you’ve mentioned the bird. I confess I don’t remember much about you as a child, but I do remember your chatter and I had hoped you’d grown out of that.’

  ‘It’s not chatter!’ she protested. ‘The bird matters.’

  She was no longer able to keep her feelings, her frustrations, wholly locked away. The bird, the truth about Lachlan as she’d known him, had been her only hope.

  She was so very tired of glimmers of hope, faintly shining in the distance, only to be snuffed out.

  ‘You helped me save the bird,’ she said again. ‘I came and I found you and you were working in the stables. I had found a small bird that had fallen out of its nest and you helped me save it.’

  ‘You are applying far too much meaning to it. I was simply a servant doing his best to keep the mistress of the house from reporting to her father that I’d disappointed her. I st
ill thought I was saving my family then, my clan. I still had a heart in my chest. I think what you’ll find is that what war can do to harden a man, to change him, is beyond understanding. There is battle, yes. But what happens in that battle turns men into beasts and what those men will do to the innocent is beyond comprehension.’

  There was something utterly cold and desolate in that tone, something that chilled her from the inside. But she refused to back down. She met his gaze, hard as it was, and would not look away. ‘I don’t understand how the same boy who could help me save that bird would do something so utterly barbaric as to force me into a marriage that I don’t even want.’

  ‘You haven’t even seen the beginning of how barbaric I can be. And if you think I care about your feelings any more than I care about the plight of a bird, you are gravely mistaken.’ His tone was laced with iron and there was a promise in those words that she could not quite untangle. It made strange waves of tension begin to radiate low in her stomach, spreading out through her limbs. ‘I care about two things, lass, and your feelings are not among them.’

  His eyes were green. Deep and dark and unfeeling. When she had seen him standing there she had been struck by a sense of the familiar. But the longer she looked, the more that feeling drained away.

  Until all she could see was a stranger.

  He was right, he wasn’t the boy who had helped her. The boy she’d thought she’d befriended all those years ago. The boy whose absence she’d once mourned. She had thought it impossible to find herself in a colder situation than the one she had grown up in. But it seemed that she had.

  Perhaps that wasn’t fair to her father.

  He had kept her fed and clothed. He had not sent her away. He had not struck her. She was lonely. But loneliness was not fatal.

  ‘Are you spiriting me off to Scotland to be married right away?’ She lifted her chin, trying not to appear frightened.

  But she was frightened.

  Still, she knew a bit about dealing with feral dogs and showing fear was a certain way to get bitten.

  She had no desire to be bitten.