Claimed by the Laird

He sat quietly, thinking, whilst the noise of the taproom washed over him. The taste of the whisky was mellowing on his tongue and he felt a pleasant lethargy start to slide through him. Contrary to his previous experience, the whisky tasted delicious, warm and deep, once he had got used to the fact that it was strong enough to take the top of his head off. The Kilmory distiller was clearly very talented.

He leaned an elbow on the table, staring into the deep golden liquid. It swirled like magic, like a witch’s spell. This was the whisky’s skill, he thought; it could make you forget, ease you away from all kinds of raw memories and soothe the pain of the past. But tonight, here in Kilmory, he felt the shadow of the past standing right at his shoulder. It was here that Peter had died. He had stayed with his friends in this very inn, had dined at the castle and had walked on the same cliffs.

Lucas thought about the whisky-smuggling gang. He had heard the men deny any involvement in Peter’s death, but he did not believe the word of a bunch of criminal thugs. They would have dispatched him swiftly enough had the lady not saved his life, and it was the obvious explanation.

Still, he knew the key to discovering the truth was finding the woman he had met tonight. He would never be able to identify the individual members of the gang, but she was a different matter. He could find her and she would lead him to the others. He could then betray them to Sidmouth.

He thought about what he had learned of her. He thought of her touch, of the rich, sensual rub of her velvet cloak and the scent of her perfume. He thought of her kiss, of the heat and the sweetness of it and the blinding sense of recognition he had felt. The memory of it still disturbed him. If he were a fanciful man, he would have called it love at first sight.

He was not a fanciful man.

It had been lust.

The other stuff, the sense of intimacy, of understanding, was no more than a trick of the senses. He had been fighting for his life and she had helped him. It had been relief and gratitude that had touched him, nothing more.

It seemed that “the lady” was precisely that, an aristocrat. She had spoken with an aristocrat’s confidence and authority. Lucas had heard one of the men address her as “my lady” before he had quickly corrected himself. There were not many ladies to the square mile around here. Inescapable logic suggested that she must be related to the Duke of Forres and be a resident at Kilmory Castle.

The landlord brought him his supper at last, a plate of fragrant mutton pie with steaming vegetables, which Lucas fell upon with all the enthusiasm of a man who had just cheated death. As he ate, Lucas thought about what Jack had told him about the duke’s female relatives. There was Lady Semple, the wife of the duke’s heir. It seemed unlikely that she would be involved with a gang of outlaws but perhaps her daughter might be. He needed to find out more about Lady Allegra. Then there was Lady Christina MacMorlan, the self-effacing spinster who kept house for her father and was eclipsed by her two beautiful younger siblings. The thought of her as the pistol-wielding leader of a band of outlaws was mind-boggling.

On the other hand, there was no better cover for the pistol-wielding leader of a band of outlaws than being the self-effacing daughter of a duke.

But he was getting ahead of himself. There might be other possibilities. The first thing he needed to do was obtain the job at the castle. His lady smuggler had told him to go back to Edinburgh, but he had absolutely no intention of doing so. Tomorrow he would present himself at Kilmory Castle as a candidate for the post of footman as though nothing had happened. It would be a test of his acting abilities. He was not good at taking orders, so it would also be a test of his tolerance. He loathed the aristocracy with their opulent lifestyle and their sense of entitlement. A position of servitude in a ducal house was the worst possible match for him.

He smiled faintly. It was a small price to pay to find out the truth about his brother. If it also meant that he found his lady smuggler as well, then so much the better. He knew that he would recognize her again. One touch, a hint of her fragrance, would be sufficient.

If she really was the duke’s daughter, then he had no sympathy for her. Either she was a spoiled little rich girl playing at being a smuggler for some excitement, or she was a cunning, deceitful criminal. Or perhaps she was both. Lucas did not really care about her motives. He could remember what it felt like to steal food in order to survive, to beg and thieve and fight simply to stay alive. He had no time for those who had every privilege and still behaved like delinquents.

In the privacy of his chamber, a tiny little box of a room tucked under the inn’s eaves where he was too tall to stand upright beneath the sloping ceiling, he finally took out the pistol and examined it. It was a fine piece of workmanship, expensive, made entirely of brass and beautifully engraved. Lucas suspected it had been made in the late eighteenth century and that it would not look out of place in an aristocrat’s collection. He tucked it away at the bottom of his bag, then lay down to sleep. The inn was noisy, but he could sleep anywhere, another legacy of the years he had spent on the streets, seizing rest when and where he could, always half-awake to trouble. Tonight, though, he found it more difficult than usual. He thought he might be haunted by memories of Peter, but instead he slept in snatches of dreams, and always through them there was a woman running away, a woman he yearned for, a woman whose face he could not see.

CHAPTER TWO

CHRISTINA PUSHED OPEN the wooden picket gate that separated the grounds of Kilmory Castle from the road beyond. A path in the shadow of the high estate wall led past the neat row of gardeners’ cottages, shadowed by a tall stand of pines whose fallen needles were soft beneath her shoes. On the other side of the pines, a vast expanse of lawn, dotted with cedars, bordered the rose garden and led to a flight of steps up to the terrace. Christina walked slowly, unhurriedly. She had told her family that she was taking a stroll after dinner, and though she had been gone some time, they would not suspect anything. They never did.

Light glowed softly behind the castle windows. She did not particularly want to go back inside. She loved being out at night when the moon was high and the wind blew in the sea fret. She loved it more, perhaps, because ladies were not supposed to wander around alone after dark. She loved doing the unexpected because her days were governed by the expected.

Lucas Ross had been unexpected. She could still taste his kiss. She could still feel the touch of his hands on her body. His scent clung to her, not the cloying pomade and cologne some men wore, but a mixture of fresh air and forest and ocean. It seemed familiar, striking a chord in the region of her heart, making her shiver. Had it been that dangerous sense of recognition that had prompted her to behave with such reckless abandon? She did not know. All she knew was that she had almost made love with Lucas Ross and she could not quite believe what she had done.

Lucas was a servant. A footman, if his story was to be believed, but he had been far more than just a handsome face. He had been forceful, quick-witted and courageous. He had hidden his character well enough before the men and played the ignorant city boy, but she had known. Right from the moment she had first seen him, she had felt that he was different.

She had known that he was dangerous.

She shivered.

“Ma’am?” The door had opened and Galloway, the butler, was peering out, his face lined with worry. He had known where she had gone that night. All the servants knew. So did the entire village. Her involvement in whisky smuggling was the worst-kept secret in Kilmory. The only people who did not know were her own family, and that was because they knew nothing about who she really was and cared less.

“All’s well.”

The door yawned wider, yellow light spilling out into the night. It was time to become Lady Christina MacMorlan again.

Galloway locked and bolted the door behind her.

“Thank goodness you are back, ma’am.”

Christina paused to examine her reflection in the hall mirror. She did not look too bad; her hair looked a little windblown perhaps, and she had sand clinging to the hem of her velvet gown, but that was no surprise in this wild place. Her face was flushed and rosy. So was her throat. She remembered the delicious rub of Lucas’s stubble against her skin. Fortunately she could pretend that the high color was the result of a cold breeze. It would be more difficult to explain away the stinging pink of her lips and the way they were swollen from Lucas’s kisses. She prayed that the shadows in the hall would disguise much of the damage, since she would have a hard time explaining her exploits to her family. They saw her as passionless, almost sexless; efficient Christina who smoothed away all the little details of life that they did not want to trouble themselves with, a glorified housekeeper who kept home, family and clan together with never a word of complaint.

If only they knew.

For a moment she felt the echo of Lucas’s kiss through her blood again, his hand at her breast. It was a very long time since she had been kissed, touched. She had not wanted passion in her life. It belonged to the past, to a part of time that she had closed off and sworn never to think about again. Now, though, with the memory of Lucas’s touch, she felt restless, sleeping desire awakened again.

She repressed a shiver, turning away from the mirror, stripping off her gloves, removing her cloak.

“Is there a problem, Galloway?” she asked.

“Yes, my lady.” The butler was shaking, and Christina was suddenly and forcibly reminded of his increasing age and infirmity. That was why it was essential that they should recruit a quick, intelligent younger man as footman to be Galloway’s understudy. But not the man she had met tonight. Lucas Ross would have been ideal—strong, practical, clever—but she could not employ a man who had kissed her to within an inch of her life. Or one that would recognize her as the leader of the whisky gang—it could be disastrous.

“His Grace has lost his latest consignment of books from the Royal Society of Edinburgh,” Galloway said. “He has turned the library upside down looking for them and is quite beside himself.” A muffled crash from behind the library door gave emphasis to his words.

“I’ll find the books,” Christina said.

“Lady Semple went down to the kitchens to complain that dinner was burned,” Galloway continued, “and now Cook is threatening to leave and you know we cannot get good staff out here in the middle of nowhere—”

“I’ll smooth things over with Cook,” Christina said. “And I will speak to Lady Semple.” Her brother, the Marquess of Semple, and his wife, Gertrude, were the most demanding guests imaginable, always finding fault. They seemed to take pleasure in upsetting as many people as possible. It was the only sport they enjoyed.

“Lady Semple also mentioned that the water was cold again this morning, and Lord Semple complains of an icy draft in his bedroom,” Galloway said.

“I draw the line at any involvement in my brother’s marital affairs,” Christina said. Then, when Galloway looked at her, uncomprehending, “Never mind, Galloway. I suppose the stove went out again?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Galloway said. “It always blows out when there is a northwesterly.”

Christina gave a sharp sigh. Kilmory was a fourteenth-century castle with a heating system almost as old. It was utterly inadequate to meet the needs of guests like the Semples, who insisted on the best of everything. For the past three years her father, with typical eccentric stubbornness, had insisted on making his home at Kilmory rather than at his main seat at Forres. When she had asked him why, he had muttered something about the wild, west-coast scenery inspiring his academic studies.

“Lord Lachlan—” Here Galloway paused, his mouth creasing into disapproving lines.

“Foxed again?” Christina said sympathetically. “I shall go up and throw a pitcher of water over him, or if that fails I will shoot him.”

Galloway gave a thin smile. She was joking, but truth was it was a tempting option. Lachlan’s wife, Dulcibella, had left him six months earlier, and he had spent almost the entire time since in an alcoholic stupor. Christina was out of patience with him. There had been faults on both sides, but Lachlan had done nothing to try to heal the breach with his wife, who sat in her castle at Cardross telling anyone who would listen what a brute her husband had been to her.

Except...except that she couldn’t shoot Lachlan, because she had dropped her pistol. She had dropped it when Lucas had kissed her, and until now the memory of that kiss had sent it completely from her mind. She felt a sickening, sinking feeling. Lucas would not have forgotten. She was willing to bet that even now her beautiful engraved brass pistol was in his possession.

It was one more reason to be rid of him. If he dared show his face at Kilmory tomorrow—and somehow she suspected that Lucas Ross would dare a great deal—she would pack him off back to Edinburgh even if she had to put him in a coach herself.

Galloway was waiting, watching her. His eyes looked tired. She wanted to send him to his rooms to rest, but she knew he would refuse. There was always more work to do.

“Any other problems, Galloway?” Christina asked.

“No, ma’am,” the butler said gratefully.

Christina nodded. “You are interviewing for the new footman tomorrow,” she said. “I have had word that one of the candidates, Mr. Lucas Ross, is...unsuitable. I would ask that you do not offer him the job.”

A shade of hauteur came into Galloway’s manner. He stood up a little straighter. “Ma’am?”

Christina knew she was trespassing. The running of the servant’s hall was entirely the business of Galloway and the housekeeper, Mrs. Parmenter. By interfering she was implying that she thought them incompetent. At this rate Galloway would be the next to resign.

“I want to make sure that any new staff will fit in here at Kilmory,” she said carefully. “My father grows ever more eccentric, as you know, and I would not want anyone to upset the balance of his health.”

“His Grace need have nothing to do with a new footman.” Galloway was stiff with outrage at the thought of the duke lowering himself so far. “I am sure that you may trust my judgment in choosing the appropriate candidate, Lady Christina.”

“Of course,” Christina said, sighing. “I beg your pardon, Galloway.” She knew better than to press the matter now, with Galloway already standing on his dignity. Tomorrow she would make the point again and he would listen.

“Mr. Bevan requests a meeting tomorrow morning, ma’am,” Galloway said, referring to the duke’s land agent. “He says that there are a number of issues he needs to discuss with you.”

“I’ll see him at eleven o’clock,” Christina said. “In the study.”

Galloway nodded. The tension had eased from his face. “Thank you, my lady.” He took her cloak and gloves. “I will fetch the supper tray.”

The clock on the landing chimed ten-thirty with a delicate sweetness. They kept country hours at Kilmory Castle, with dinner at six. The duke preferred it. The ritual of the supper tray had been enshrined in family tradition since Christina’s childhood, after which everyone retired early. It gave Christina the perfect opportunity for smuggling business when everyone else was abed.

Christina smoothed the skirts of her velvet gown. She could not go into the drawing room with damp sand on her hem. Gertrude, gimlet eyed and sharp of tongue, would be sure to notice. She should have changed before she went out to meet the gang, but the message had been so urgent that she had not wanted to delay and give the men a chance to do something violent, something they might later regret.

She shuddered. She hated violence, hated the sudden, vicious cruelty of it and the pleasure men seemed to take in it sometimes. All her life she had been caring for people, nurturing them and protecting them, whether it was her younger siblings or the wider family or what was left of the Forres clan. It was the reason she had become involved with the Kilmory smugglers in the first place. She had seen the ruthless exploitation of the revenue officers, imposing exorbitant taxes on families who were already barely scraping a pittance from their lands. Such exploitation infuriated her, and she had been fired with the need to protect them. No one had listened to her conventional protests; she was a woman and women should not meddle in politics and economics, or so she had been told in the politest possible terms when she had written to the government to complain. She had seen that the case was hopeless and only direct action would succeed and so with her usual practicality she had set about organizing the smugglers into a ruthlessly efficient band who could run rings around the excisemen. It was her fault that occasionally these days they could be a little too ruthless.

The drawing room door opened and Gertrude swept out. Small and vigorous, Christina’s sister-in-law gave the impression of attacking anything and anyone who had the misfortune to get in her way. Behind her trailed Christina’s niece, Lady Allegra MacMorlan. Allegra, at eighteen, had all the MacMorlan good looks but drooped with boredom and lack of purpose. Gertrude spoke of marrying her daughter off during the Edinburgh winter season. Allegra showed as little interest in that ambition as she did in anything else. Christina wondered what it was Allegra did feel a passion for. She was sure there must be something.

“There you are!” Gertrude said disagreeably. “You look as though you have been pulled backward through a hedge.” Her sharp gaze traveled over her sister-in-law, itemizing the damage done by the sand, the wind and Lucas’s kisses. “In fact, you look quite absurdly wild, considering that you have only been strolling in the gardens. This is why I never allow Allegra to walk anywhere at all. It is very damaging to the complexion.”

“Very true,” Christina said. “However, I am far too old to pay any consideration to such matters.”

“At your age, the damage is already done,” Gertrude agreed. “Now, I have a task for you. You need to sack the second housemaid. She has been making eyes at Lachlan and, given the parlous state of his marriage to Dulcibella, I do not doubt that with the least encouragement he will run off with her.”

“I’d rather sack Lachlan,” Christina said. “He is a great deal less use than Annie is. Where would I find another housemaid? It is difficult enough to get servants out here in the back of beyond.”

“You have a most inappropriate sense of humor, Christina,” Gertrude said frostily. “I quite despair of you.”

“I will speak to Annie,” Christina said with a sigh. “But I am sure that you are mistaken, Gertrude.”

Gertrude looked contemptuous. “You are as naive as Allegra,” she snapped. “You never see what is going on under your nose.”

“Apparently not,” Christina agreed smoothly. “Would you excuse me, Gertrude? I need to change out of these clothes before supper.”

The rattle of the approaching supper tray sent Gertrude back into the drawing room. Allegra slipped away upstairs ahead of Christina, fading into the shadows at the top of the stairs like a wraith. Christina followed her niece more slowly. At the top she paused beside the statue of Hermes that her father had brought back from his Grand Tour. She barely ever noticed it. All the MacMorlan castles were littered with statuary. Her father was a collector in many ways—works of art, academic papers and classical sculpture. Hermes had been a part of the furniture for as long as Christina could remember, and not a part that she particularly admired. She found herself looking at the statue now, though, comparing the cold marble perfection of the high, slanting cheekbones and the sculpted power of the musculature with Lucas Ross’s living, breathing masculinity.

She felt heat uncurl low in her belly and turned away hastily, aware that Allegra had paused outside her room and was watching her. She was not sure what was showing on her face; hopefully not an expression that her niece would recognize or understand. As the door closed softly behind Allegra, Christina walked slowly past and into her own bedchamber. It looked as old and familiar as ever, yet she felt different, dissatisfied in a way she could not quite pinpoint, as though she was hankering after something she had forgotten she wanted. Once, a long time ago when she was a young girl, she had been wild. Wanton, Gertrude would have called it. No one had known; no one would even believe it to see the staid creature she had become.

Yet meeting Lucas had stirred those desires to life again, wicked, outrageous, delicious desires, desires she had denied herself because they belonged to a time in her life that had concluded now. For a moment she remembered that time and the way it had ended, and she felt the chill sweep through her and she shuddered. She would not open herself up to pain ever again, because next time that pain could destroy her.

CHAPTER THREE

THE INTERVIEW WAS progressing very much to Lucas’s satisfaction. Galloway, the butler, seemed quietly impressed by his excellent references, his willingness to work hard and his respectful manners. Mrs. Parmenter, the housekeeper, seemed to admire his powerful physique. Lucas had caught her staring at his calves and hoped it was only to assess how good he would look in formal livery. He was not sure her interest was impersonal, though. Mrs. Parmenter had a gleam in her eyes that was quite at odds with the respectable image of the traditional housekeeper.

There had been a couple of other candidates for the job, but he was convinced that he had the edge over them. Whether he could do all the work was another matter. He had had no idea that the role of footman was so complex. He had thought that all they did was adorn the back of a carriage, looking pretty, and run off with the lady of the house if they got the opportunity. It seemed he was very much mistaken. Fetching the coal, polishing the silver, cleaning boots and shoes, drawing the curtains, helping to serve the dinner—all those tasks would be a part of his job. It sounded fairly tedious but nothing he could not manage if he rose at five in the morning and retired at midnight.

“Are you experienced in folding a napkin into the shape of a water lily?” Mrs. Parmenter inquired.

“I am afraid not, ma’am,” Lucas replied. The sorts of talents he possessed were of absolutely no use to him here. He had a flair for winning at cards, for example, and had made his first fortune at the gaming tables. He had made a second fortune through investment in a shipbuilding company that Jack Rutherford had established. He had other businesses, other investments. He had no skill in folding napkins.

Mrs. Parmenter’s face fell. “But you are accustomed to serving dinner?” she pressed. “You are trained in the correct etiquette?”

“Of course, ma’am,” Lucas said smoothly, in answer to the second question, at least. His etiquette had been learned in his stepfather’s palace, although he had never been the one serving the dinner. In some ways his had been a gilded existence. But the trouble with gilt was that it tended to rub away leaving something ugly beneath.

Galloway shifted in his chair. It seemed that he had heard enough to be satisfied with Lucas’s credentials and was moving on to give him some background on the establishment at Kilmory. Lucas listened attentively.

“We are a small establishment here despite being a ducal household,” Galloway was saying. “Over the past few years His Grace has preferred to make his home here rather than at his main seat in Forres. It is smaller and also—”

“Cozier,” Mrs. Parmenter intervened, shooting the butler a quick glance. “Kilmory is more...comfortable.”