Mia Marlowe Read online

  My good lady. We’ll see how good she is after I tell her we’re quitting Dalkeith immediately. On Christmas Eve, no less.

  Feeling a bit like Daniel re-entering the lion’s den, he trudged back to his chamber. To his great relief, there was an abigail with Lucinda. A dressing screen had been found and moved into his room.

  His bride stood behind it, her shoulders bare except for the long auburn locks teasing around them.

  Lucinda in nothing but her skin. His imagination went into full gallop at the thought of heavy breasts, a supple waist, and heaven between her silky thighs. If he hadn’t ever heard of Lord Liverpool and his web of intelligence gatherers or been convinced he was doing her a favor by not being a true husband, Alex would have pulled down the screen and enjoyed the sight of his beautiful wife in the altogether.

  Instead, he couldn’t even tell her why he was really in Scotland. A marriage based on lies and half-truths had no chance at all. His head argued that he was right to keep his distance.

  Another part of him begged to differ. Most insistently.

  “Yer pardon, milord,” the maid said, dropping a hasty curtsey. “I’ll be on me way.”

  “No need.” Alexander waved her back. It was safer to have the girl there as a buffer. Formality was preferable to honesty at this point. “My wife is clearly in need of your services. Carry on.”

  Lucinda shot him a questioning look, then raised her arms to allow the girl to slip a fresh chemise over her head.

  “’Tis the day before Christmas,” Lucinda said cautiously, as if she too were treading lightly around their frail marriage. She disappeared completely behind the screen and Alex’s imagination rose up to taunt him with images of her rolling her stockings up her shapely legs and tying neat bows behind her knees. “I expect me sisters and I will take to the woods to gather boughs and mistletoe and such for the beautifying of the hall. Will ye be taking part in finding the Yule log before the Hanging o’ the Greens?”

  “No. I intend to leave before those festivities get underway.”

  Lucinda’s head shot up at that. She peered over the screen at him, a burning question in her eyes. “Leave us, if ye please, Brigid.”

  As if the lady’s maid sensed an approaching storm, she skittered out without a word, taking Lucinda’s clothing from the previous night with her.

  “So, ye dinna intend to honor yer vows,” Lucinda said, her voice deadly calm.

  “I misspoke. I should have said we will be leaving. I intend to take you with me.” He might be a cad, but he’d never embarrass Lucinda by abandoning her after one night. Since Alex figured he’d be stuck in Scotland at least until the king came and went next August, there’d be time enough for her to realize that they weren’t suited—would never be suited—and she’d give him the annulment he needed without a qualm.

  Her chin lifted and her eyes glinted coldly. “Then ye intend to stick to all the points outlined in the contract, my bride-price, the support of my father’s invention, the herds and grazing rights, all of it, and not a farthing less?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll honor it all.” She was turning into quite the mercenary little wench.

  Then her chin quivered a bit. “Ye just dinna intend to honor me.”

  Alexander was doing her more honor than she knew. This was about more than securing his freedom. He was giving her a chance to get away from him as well. He might not run to madness, but he still wasn’t meant to be a husband. Not with his father’s blood coursing through his veins.

  “Be ready to leave within the hour.”

  Lucinda barely had time to pack a fourth of her belongings. Her sisters dragged themselves from bed and tried to help, but only succeeded in slowing her progress with unwanted questions and advice.

  “Go wake Aunt Hester for me, so I can say good-bye,” she’d finally pleaded in hopes that she’d have a moment alone to explain matters to Brodie. She’d heard once that ghosts didn’t take kindly to crossing water. When Alexander told her that a goodly portion of their journey would be by ferry barge, she knew she’d have to persuade Brodie to remain with her sisters till he could return to the MacOwen farm with them. Sometime—it didn’t matter when since Brodie had all the time in the world—she and Alexander would have to visit her family and she could be reunited with Brodie then.

  She still expected him to pitch a fit over their separation.

  As soon as Aileen and Mary left, bickering loudly over who would have the dubious honor of pulling back the bed curtains and rousting their aunt from sleep, Lucinda called Brodie’s name softly.

  He didn’t answer.

  She knew he enjoyed exploring out-of-the-way places within the safety of Dalkeith’s stout walls, but his hearing was so preternaturally keen, he’d hear her whether he were floating near the rafters in the garret or skimming the dank stone of the deepest crypt. In all the years she’d known him, he’d never refused to show himself when she called, no matter how peeved he might have been with her.

  Now he was simply . . . gone.

  Lucinda sank onto the foot of her bed and let the gathering tears fall. She wasn’t usually such a watering pot, but she had good reason now. Her husband didn’t want to take her to wife. Alexander was pulling her from the bosom of her family on the day before Christmas and she’d lost her best friend in the world.

  She’d have given anything to hear Brodie’s scratchy brogue telling her “Ye dinna have to cry so, lassie,” just as he had when she was a little girl and he first found her shut up in the cellar. But when she held her breath, listening intently for him, there was only the soft sibilance of air currents flowing from one room to the next and the crackle of the fire in the grate.

  Then there came a scuffle from the skittering kid soles of her sisters’ slippers and the heavy clunk of her aunt’s ponderous steps in the adjoining room. Lucinda wiped her eyes and forced an over-bright smile. No need to trouble her family with her woes.

  There wasn’t time to find Dougal in order to bid him good-bye. Alexander was in such a hurry to be gone, Lucinda wondered that he waited for her.

  The carriage ride with her new husband back to Edinburgh was a study in awkward silence, so she feigned intense interest in the landscape scrolling past the isinglass windows. Thick hoarfrost coated every blade of grass, turning meadows into fields of short white daggers jutting upward. Trees scraped the sky with their icy fingers. The scenery matched the cold bleakness of Lucinda’s new marriage.

  Finally, she could bear the quiet no longer.

  “I see ye’ve given up on riding Badgemagus,” she said since Alexander had left him at Dalkeith.

  “No, I haven’t.” He still didn’t look at her, staring instead out the window with as much interest in the countryside as Lucinda had pretended to. “I arranged for your brother to bring him to Bonniebroch after Christmas. The horse will do better on the ferry with blinders and a knowledgeable groom to tend him along the way.”

  Lucinda sniffed. It was all well and good to care for one’s animals, but she’d do better if her groom gave as much thought to tending to her needs as he did to his horse.

  “I wonder if you might like to have some of your family close by.” Alexander’s gaze darted to her and then away to the window again. “Once your brother comes to Bonniebroch, perhaps he might want to stay on in some capacity. If you would like his company, of course.”

  Something fluttered in her chest. It was kindly meant of him. Getting Dougal away from Dalkeith where King George would be lodging next summer was an answer to prayer. Lucinda hoped never to see that dirk dance again.

  “I would like that.” It wasn’t the loving conversation every girl hopes to have with her bridegroom the day after their wedding, but at least they were talking. “When Dougal comes, I’ll see can I talk him into staying. He’s a dab hand with horses and though he’s no’ the inventor me father is, he’s Erskine MacOwen’s son when it comes to building or repairing things. I’m sure ye’ll find a use for him on yer estate.”
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  “Our estate, as per the marriage contract,” he corrected. “You’re Lady Bonniebroch now.”

  Much good may a title do me when my bed’s still cold.

  “We couldn’t hire your brother as a servant. That wouldn’t be seemly,” Alex said. “But perhaps he could help me with getting to know the tenants. Would he fancy being overseer?”

  “Lording it over the crofters attached to the estate and collecting rents, aye, that’s just the sort of thing Dougal would fancy.” Her brother always liked being in charge. The cellar incident rose in her mind and she added, “Ye’ll have to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesna get too heavy-handed though.”

  “Don’t worry. I intend to,” Alex said quickly.

  Her gaze snapped to him at that. She had her suspicions about Dougal. Did Alex have them too? And if he learned Dougal had been mixed up with the Radicals was Alex English enough to act upon his suspicions?

  “The new laird will be among us shortly. We know not what may come if he succeeds. Only what will happen if he fails. Perhaps the Powers have ordained it so. Too much knowledge of what’s ahead might quell a stouter heart than our new Lord Bonniebroch possesses.”

  From the secret journal of Callum Farquhar,

  Steward of Bonniebroch Castle since the

  Year of Our Lord 1521

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Beans” MacFee lived up to his pungent nickname. The garrulous ferryman reeked of the thick pottage he kept bubbling in the little boathouse on the bank of the River Tay near where his barge was tied up. A miasmatic cloud of onion, garlic, leeks, and legumes and their accompanying gasses oozed from the layers of his plaid with every swinging stride. However, as long as Alexander stayed upwind, Beans seemed a jolly enough soul and an entertaining companion.

  “Don’t get many wishin’ to go to Bonniebroch, ye ken,” he told them when Alexander bespoke their passage up river.

  “Yes, we know,” Alex said as he counted out the coin into MacFee’s grimy palm. “I’ve heard the people there keep to themselves.”

  Beans laughed. “Aye, the castle’s shut up tight as an oyster most times. Nane go in. Nane come out.”

  That was an exaggeration surely. The people from Bonniebroch couldn’t stay behind its walls all the time. After all, Callum Farquhar had called on Alex at Dalkeith, however briefly.

  “Why is it that the folk there dinna go abroad in the wide world, d’ye think?” Lucinda asked.

  “Because o’ the curse, I reckon,” Beans said as he finished loading the last of their trunks and cast off his lines.

  “Curse?” Lucinda’s eyes widened. “What curse?”

  “Och, there’s always two or three versions of it floatin’ about at any given time. The details are lost in the past, ye ken, so it does nae harm for folk to make up what they dinna know for certain.” Beans scratched his head, giving the lice that called his gray, matted locks home an excuse to scurry around. “Mostly, the gist of the tale is that because of some sort of treachery, and I dinna quite know what it was exactly, mind ye, but this particular foul deed was committed back in . . . och, I forget how many hundred years ago . . . and as I said, nane can say for sure what it was as happened, but in any case, it were a most grievous thing as was done. Most grievous.”

  MacFee shook his head to accentuate his point and, like any raconteur worth his salt, waited for his audience to ask for more. When Lucinda obliged, he favored her with an alarming black-toothed smile.

  “Since the guilty party wouldna step forward to admit to the offense, the whole of the castle was set to pay dearly for it. Then just when it appeared all was hopeless, a fellow who hadn’t anything to do with the original misdeed took the punishment. And that great-hearted deed saved all the souls in the castle at the time.”

  “That sounds as if all’s well that ends well,” Lucinda said, her smile tentatively hopeful.

  “It do, don’t it?” Beans said agreeably.

  Alex crossed his arms over his chest. “It ended well for everyone except for the poor blighter who paid for someone else’s treachery.”

  “Aye, there’s the rub.” A cunning smile spread over Beans MacFee’s weathered face. He tapped the end of his nose, and then pointed to Alex in agreement. “Even good deeds can bring down a sort o’ punishment of their own. After all, they didna kill saints for evil-doing, did they?”

  “No, I suppose not,” Lucinda said as she settled on one of their traveling trunks. “What happened then?”

  “The powerful sorcerer what set about to punish the original culprit was unhappy that the folk of Bonniebroch had escaped the end he’d intended for them, so he cursed ’em, each and every man, woman, and child what called Bonniebroch home.”

  “That’s enough nonsense,” Alex said crossly. “My lady doesn’t wish to hear about curses.”

  “Aye, she does,” Lucinda contradicted with a tart grin, then turned back to Beans. “What sort of curse?”

  “Och, it’d be a wise man as knows that,” Beans said. “Nane save the folk who bide there are privy to the particulars and they’re no’ sayin’. But so long as ye dinna intend to stay long, I imagine the curse will no’ apply to the pair o’ you.”

  “We’ll stay there as long as we like,” Alexander snapped, hoping to shut the man up. The next thing he’d probably tell them was that the castle was haunted or infested with boggles or some other Scottish demon. “We are Lord and Lady Bonniebroch.”

  “Och, ye have me condolences then,” was the last thing Beans MacFee said for the rest of the trip.

  As they rounded a bend in the River Tay, a thick bare-limbed forest of black alder, ash, and silver birch crowded the declivity between two bleak hills. A stand of blackthorn hovered near the river’s edge, gnarled and twisted. Like a coven of witches dipping their toes in the water, their threatening prickles were ready to snatch at anyone unwise enough to pass close by.

  A gray stone castle rose behind these woodsy sentinels. Its crenellated top and lofty tower were the only visible evidence of human settlement, save for the listing dock toward which Mr. MacFee steered his craft.

  “Here ye be,” Beans said as he looped a line around a moss-furred piling. “Fetched ye up at Bonnie--broch, as promised.”

  Lucinda drew her cloak tighter around herself. The estate looked daunting enough from the ferry barge without the dubious bonus of a curse attached to it. After her experience with Brodie MacIver, she knew there were spirits abroad in the world, most of them trapped near the places where they’d met their end. And Brodie had warned her once that not all of them were so blithe a spirit as he. If she were to catalogue places that looked as if they were home to malevolent ghosts, Bonniebroch would make the top of the list. The raucous cry of a raven split the silence and made her jump.

  Alexander’s hand on the small of her back settled her somewhat as he helped her out of the craft. She waited on the dock while Mr. MacFee unloaded their trunks. No one seemed to be stirring inland, though she’d made out a trail broad enough to accommodate a small gig cutting through the trees.

  “No one guards the dock?” Alexander asked.

  “No need,” MacFee said. “Your things will be safe enough here till the servants come to retrieve them. No one’s daft enough to steal from Bonniebroch.”

  Since the sun was setting, Lucinda decided they wouldn’t have long to wait.

  MacFee liberated a small leather pouch that was tied to the dock. He fingered the contents, setting the coins clinking, and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

  “An order for provisions,” he explained though neither Lucinda nor Alexander had asked. Then Beans turned away, clambered back into his barge, and lost no time in slipping the cable. As he pushed off with his long pole, he tugged the brim of his hat. “I’ll be back this way before sundown on Twelfth Night. Put up a flag if ye wish to leave. But watch ye for me. I’ll no’ wait long.”

  “Well, milady.” Alexander offered Lucinda his arm. “Shall we see what sort of cas
tle you’ll be chatelaine of?”

  “Ye dinna think we should wait with the baggage?” she asked doubtfully, eyeing the darkening forest.

  “No.” Judging from Lucinda’s chattering teeth, it was high time they found shelter. And besides, he’d rather walk through this wood with a bit of daylight to spare. Wolves hadn’t been seen in Britain since the reign of Henry VII, but this was Scotland and a wild bit of it to boot. Alexander wouldn’t discount finding a pack of the slavering creatures in that shadowy forest.

  Leaving their trunks on the dock, they started down the path through the wood. A thin skiff of snow crunched underfoot and the promise of more swirled in the frosty air. The last rays of daylight faded and the forest sank into twilight.

  They hadn’t gone far when Alex became aware of a low rhythmic thudding, like the tramping sound of an army on the march. The woods were too thick to see anything headed their way. Whatever it was, it was approaching rapidly.

  There was no place to run. Not even a defensible outcropping of rock near the path. He didn’t think Lucinda seemed the type to climb a tree. The forest floor was thick with brambles so they couldn’t flee to the deeper woods to hide without being cut to ribbons by thorns.

  “Get behind me,” he ordered bluntly and positioned himself in front of Lucinda. His gut clenched. It was a novel sensation. Usually the hint of danger merely put all his senses on high alert and made him feel more vibrantly alive than at any other time.

  Now he knew what fear tasted like. Hot and acrid, it burned down his gullet.

  It wasn’t fear for himself, but for her.

  He swallowed back several choice swear words. This sort of thing just reinforced why he wasn’t meant to be a married man. He was expected to venture into unknown places and face equally unknown danger during the commission of his work.