by Lauren Smith
“Aye, that does.” Lachlan glanced once more at the stained-glass windows and the kaleidoscope of pale colors cast over the wooden pews.
“And this is to be a private affair?” John asked.
Lachlan finally faced the minister again, expecting more questions. “Yes. Cameron and Eliza will witness.”
“Very well. Is that all you need, my lord?”
“Yes, that is all.” He and Cameron bid the minister farewell and then they exited the church.
“Cameron, why don’t you bring Eliza up to Huntley Castle for a few days? Mother thinks it would cheer Daphne.” He wasn’t too keen on doing anything that would cheer his future wife, but it would cheer him, which was something he desperately needed. The anger he’d clung to for so long was waning and he was filled with an empty loneliness that he couldn’t seem to escape. Having Cameron around for a few days would remind him of the happy man he’d once been, before Willian’s death. He wanted Daphne to see him as he used to be, the man who might have fallen in love with her under different circumstances.
“I’m sure Eliza would be thrilled, and it will give me a chance to meet this woman and see if I can figure out why she has you twisted up in knots.”
“I’m not twisted up in knots.”
“So you say. But never in my life have I seen you so boorish. Growling like a wounded bear one minute and snapping your jaws like a wolf the next.”
“McLeod…” he warned, and inwardly cursed at how the name escaped his lips in a clear growl.
“Ack, now I’ve done it. You’re calling me McLeod.” Cameron feigned distress as they reached their mounts, tied up outside the church yard.
“Be there tonight for dinner,” Lachlan said as he and Cameron climbed into their saddles. His horse shifted and snorted. With a light smack on the gelding’s neck, Lachlan gripped his reins and readied to leave.
“Tonight, it is.” Cameron nodded to him and rode off, his home being only a few miles away.
Lachlan began the quick journey back home, wishing the distance was greater. He wasn’t yet ready to face Daphne. Not after last night. He had groped her like a randy lad and she had purred like a cat in response, something he hadn’t expected. The startled look of pleasure in her eyes told him she had never climaxed before. She wasn’t simply a virgin, she was completely uneducated in the ways of pleasure. He tried to bury the heavy guilt he felt, knowing he would enjoy giving those lessons.
I shouldn’t enjoy her, not anything about her, yet I do. It felt like a betrayal of William’s memory.
For the next half hour, he was lost in thoughts of Daphne as he rode home.
As he approached the castle’s entrance, he spotted a feminine figure kneeling among the rose bushes. There were no buds to admire, though, only frost on the remaining greenery. Intrigued, he rode closer, wondering if one of the maids was out…but then he recognized Daphne.
He took a moment to admire her. She worked a small pair of clippers in her gloved hands to cut a bit of a rosebush, then lifted the stem close to examine it.
“What are you doing?”
“My lord!” She gasped in shock and leapt to her feet before she spun around, her cheeks flushing. “I was retrieving a stem of this rose. I thought I might grow it inside the hothouse I discovered behind the castle.”
“The hothouse? That place hasn’t been tended to in years.” He slid off his horse and patted its flank as he waited for Daphne to join him. She wasn’t wearing a cloak, only a thin shawl, yet she seemed unbothered by the chill.
“Where’s your cloak?” he asked sharply.
Daphne’s face was still red. “I don’t have one.”
“But the modiste came today to bring you clothes.” He had seen to that personally before he’d ridden off to seek out Cameron.
“She gave me plenty of ready-made dresses and other necessary things, but she did not have a completed cloak.”
“Oh…” He felt like a horse’s arse for snapping at her. Lachlan stripped off his great cloak and hung it over her shoulders, noting that it pooled on the ground like a black train. He wanted her unhappy. He didn’t want her catching cold and becoming ill.
“Really, my lord…”
“Lachlan. Please call me Lachlan. As your future husband, I must see to your care. That includes giving you a cloak when you are cold.” He took his time, making sure it fastened securely beneath her chin. She trembled at his touch and clutched the frozen branch to her chest like a talisman.
“I thought you said you did not fear me,” he whispered, stepping forward until their bodies pressed. He couldn’t resist her, not when he thought of last night--the way she felt so perfect in his arms, and the way she reacted to him. The tension between them built as she raised her eyes to his.
“I don’t fear you…” Her admission only deepened the blush staining her cheeks.
He brushed his gloved hands down the pale column of her throat. “Then what do you fear?”
“I fear how you make me feel.” Her brown eyes, the color of a doe’s and just as frightened, glanced away from him.
“You should never be afraid of passion. Sometimes, when all else has been stripped away, it’s the only thing you have left in life,” he murmured, and the truth of the words hit him deep. Passion was all he had left. Love and trust, faith, hope...all of these had perished when William died.
“You have more than that, I’ve seen it in your eyes. Passion is a spark, and a spark dies quickly unless it has fuel to sustain it.” Daphne’s eyes softened and her lips curved in a smile so full of hope that it made his heart bleed for the past.
She reached with her free hand and stroked his cheek, then cupped his face and stood up on tiptoes. She pressed her mouth to his in a way that sent his senses spinning like no chaste kiss should. He took in the fall of her thick dark lashes before he closed his eyes and returned her kiss. He realized with a stunned sense of clarity that this moment was not about passion. It was about them, together, their souls reaching out to one another.
He should’ve stopped it, but he couldn’t. Kissing Daphne was like breathing. He couldn’t do without her.
Lachlan tried not to think about the danger he was putting himself in by caring for the woman he planned to marry out of spite. When she finally broke away from him, she raised a hand to her mouth, touching her slightly swollen lips, which had become a lovely shade of dark pink.
“Lass…” Lachlan choked on the words he didn’t want to say. “We do not have to go through with this.”
She blinked, her gaze still hazy with desire. “What?”
“You don’t have to marry me. I have been thinking about this and it’s not fair for you to marry a stranger. I’ll waive any rights to the money I set up in your trust, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She swallowed and spoke quietly but firmly, “I swear I didn’t agree because of the money.” She blushed and looked at the ground for a second. “I did need security, but after I met you and we arrived here, well, I want this… I want to be a part of your life. Do you wish to cry off? Is it because of something I’ve done?”
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “What? No!”
“Then why?”
“I’m not a good man, Daphne. I’m broken.” The honesty shocked him.
“Everyone has something a little broken inside them. Perhaps our pieces fit. Don’t you think we should at least try?” She bit her lip. The hard set of her face told him she wanted to marry him. The poor fool.
I tried to do the right thing. I tried.
“Perhaps we should,” he agreed, fighting the temptation to kiss her again. “Let me escort you back to the house.” He held out his arm and after a moment’s hesitation, she slipped her arm in his. They walked side by side to the house, her with her rose branch, him leading his horse. He was struck by the strange domestic contentment of her companionship without a word needed between them.
“I met with the vicar today,” he said at last.
“Oh?”
“It seems the church was in need of a bit of repair. I offered to donate timber to the parish, and Mr. McKenzie is overlooking the residency issue since you’re not a resident of the Parish. He shall call out the banns three times today to satisfy the legal requirements, and then we can marry tomorrow.”
“Are you sure that will be legally binding?”
“Yes. Sometimes Scottish law can be looser than English law, but do not worry, you will be the Countess of Huntley.”
“I don’t care about that. Titles never really mattered to me.” She was smiling a little as they walked.
He shot her a sideways glance of disbelief. “Titles don’t matter?”
“Not to me. My mother was the daughter of a duke, but she married down for love. I think I’m more like her than my father, at times. I care little about the ton and it’s love of rank. It always seemed a silly thing to me.”
“Oh?” He stiffened at the mention of the man who had unknowingly brought them together.
“Yes. I love my father, but he was focused on advancing our position in society. I believe he felt he had to earn his place to make up for my mother marrying down, but he became addicted to his social climb. It was very lonely growing up with him after my mother died.”
Her quiet words cut through the anger that usually filled him when that man was mentioned. But to hear about him through her eyes, the rage vanished. She, too, had lost someone she’d loved.
“How old were you when she passed?”
“I was eleven. She was fine one minute and the next, she had a bad headache. She went to sleep after tea and never woke up. It was her heart that failed, according to the doctor.” She looked down at her feet. “I cried for weeks. I still miss her.”
Lachlan pulled her close as he pictured her waiting for her mother to wake up, and how frightened and grief stricken she must have been when she didn’t.
“I...” She hesitated as they reached the steps. She tucked her rose branch under one arm then lifted something from the pocket of her gown and held it out. When she uncurled her fingers, he saw a string of pearls coiled on her palm.
“These were my mother’s. It’s all I could save when the Court took my house to pay the victims of my father’s crimes.” Her voice wavered on the last word, but when she raised her head to look at him, fierce pride gleamed in her eyes.
“You don’t wear them?” he asked, surprised at her humility.
“No. They’re too precious for that. I couldn’t even part with them for food and water when…” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
“When you were living on the streets?” There was a time he would have taken a dark pleasure at the idea of her on the streets, cold, hungry, alone and endangered. But now the thought filled him with a hard rage, almost as suffocating as the hatred he bore for her father.
“Wear them tomorrow for the wedding,” he ordered. “I want to see them on you.”
“But—” she started to protest, but he placed a finger to her lips.
“Please. I insist. For your mother’s sake. No doubt she would have wanted you to wear them.”
“They won’t look fetching with my plain white gown.”
Regret prickled his insides, because he’d insisted that he didn’t want her to have a fancy wedding trousseau.
“We could have the modiste return…”
“No,” she replied. “You wanted simple, and simple I shall be.” She tucked the pearls back into her gown pocket. She let go of his arm as he met a groom at the steps of the house. She did not wait for him, nor did she look his way as she entered the house alone, her head held high.
If he ever doubted she was the granddaughter of a Duke, that moment alone would’ve proven him wrong. And damned if the picture didn’t make him smile.
Chapter 7
Daphne trembled as she gazed at herself in the full-length mirror. Her new maid had helped her dress in her lovely but simple purple evening gown. Would it be good enough to please Lachlan? He’d claimed he didn’t want a fancily dressed wife, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to look pleasing. His friend Cameron McLeod and his new wife Eliza had arrived for dinner and Daphne couldn’t shake the feeling that they would be studying her closely, measuring her to see if she made a suitable match for their friend.
“You look lovely, my lady. Truly.” Mary sighed dreamily. “Purple complements your fair skin.”
Daphne pressed a hand to her cheek, trying to see the beauty Mary spoke of. She had to admit, she did look...better. Two months of scraps had left her gaunt and feeling worn in ways she hadn’t been prepared for. Having a warm bed and regular meals had been more than a relief, it had been restorative.
I am finally safe, I finally have a home.
Her eyes suddenly burned and she closed them, fighting her emotions.
Mary touched her shoulder, giving her a gentle squeeze. “My lady? Are you all right?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes. I am. ’Tis nerves, is all. I’m anxious about meeting Mr. McLeod and his wife.”
Mary grinned. “There’s no need to be nervous. Mr. McLeod is a perfect gentleman, especially toward the ladies. I suspect his Lordship will be the one in trouble.”
“Oh?” Daphne reached for the white elbow-length gloves that had been laid out across the bed’s coverlet.
“Yes, Mr. McLeod—Cameron, that is--loves to tease his Lordship. Ever since they were lads, or so I’ve heard. Mr. McLeod will no doubt tease him about you, as well.” Mary put the brushes and extra pins into the drawers of the vanity table.
“What could he tease Lord Huntley about in regards to me?” Daphne asked.
The maid shrugged, reluctant to speak.
“Please, tell me.”
Mary glanced around, as if afraid someone would hear, then said in a low voice, “It’s quite well known that his Lordship has certain beliefs on marriage,” she began. “He’d always proclaimed he would marry only for love. Now that he’s marrying you… well, Mr. McLeod will be sure to prod him about his reasons.”
“Oh dear,” Daphne sighed, and a headache began to form behind her eyes.
Lachlan didn’t love her and would likely be upset if his friend teased him about it.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, my lady,” Mary replied with a little giggle before a distant gong sounded somewhere. “Ach, dinner’s ready.”
Lachlan had a gong? That was unexpected. Only the finest houses boasted such a thing. Not that Huntley Castle wasn’t fine, but despite the exquisite furnishings, the estate had a rustic feel to it that made her forget she was in one of the finer houses in Scotland.
Daphne left Mary to tidy up the bedchamber. Lachlan waited for her at the bottom of the stairs, one arm resting on the newel post. The sight brought back wild, forbidden memories of last night’s kiss. A kiss that had led to one of the most exquisite pleasures in her life. Her face heated and she tried to focus on anything but Lachlan and the memory of his thigh rubbing against her in that unexpected way.
“Dinner and new acquaintances,” she repeated over and over until her nerves replaced the flush of arousal. She bit her lip as she reached Lachlan. He smiled, and for the first time it was warm and genuine. He held out his arm to her and she accepted his escort.
“Don’t let Cameron fool you,” Lachlan said as they neared the dining room. “He’s quite a trickster.”
“And Eliza?”
“By far, she is Cameron’s better half. You will take to her, lass, do not fret.”
She held her breath as they entered the dining room. Candelabras had been lit, lending a seductive glow to the long, polished dining table and the gray walls around them, which bore stately portraits of Lachlan’s ancestors.
Moira stood waiting for them at the far end of the table, beaming. Firelight from the white marble hearth illuminated a couple close to Moira. The man, Cameron McLeod, was almost as tall as Lachlan, with blond hair. They dressed in similar style, but where Daphne felt they stood a
part most was in their expressions. Already, she could see the trickster she had been warned about in his face. Lachlan, on the other hand, had a certain wildness about him, something that seemed untamable, and she longed to let go and be wild with him.
The woman at Cameron’s side, Eliza, was a pretty woman with reddish-brown hair. She wore a fashionable gown but, like Daphne’s, it was simple in cut. That came as something of a relief. The gowns from the modiste were quite good, but she feared they would not appear worthy of a countess. Of course, she was content to wear simple clothes, but at the same time, didn’t want to make a poor impression and embarrass Lachlan.
“Ahh, Lachlan, you finally prove the mystery woman exists!” Cameron laughed heartily. It was an open, kind laugh, and despite the mischief that lurked there, Daphne knew she would like and trust Cameron.
Eliza poked her husband in the ribs with an elbow. “Oh, hush.” She beamed at Daphne, approached, and grasped Daphne’s hands.
“So lovely to meet you,” Eliza said. “I’m Eliza McLeod, and this is my very silly husband, Cameron.”
“It is so nice to meet you as well.” Daphne couldn’t stop smiling as she looked at the couple. She chanced a glance at Lachlan. He seemed more relaxed than he had ever been since they’d met.
“You look well.” Moira gave Daphne a motherly hug that threatened to return burning tears to her eyes. She was suddenly ridiculously happy. She was making new friends, ones who probably didn’t know about her father or her shame. She was being treated like a daughter, a fiancée and a friend.
“Shall we begin?” Lachlan asked.
Eliza and Daphne took adjacent seats at the table. Lachlan moved to its head while Cameron and Moira sat opposite Daphne and Eliza. As the courses flowed in and out of the room, Cameron regaled the diners with tales of his and Lachlan’s childhood.
“…And there was the time we snuck into the bakery in the village, you remember that?” Cameron asked between sips of wine.
