The Highlander (16 page)

“Yes.”

Oh, no.
Mena turned, so he could not see the fear tightening her features. Though she doubted he could over the mountain of boxes he hauled toward the turret.

My, but Millie LeCour did get carried away at the cobblers.

Biting her lip, Mena remembered back to her encounter in the library earlier that morning. An encounter with a demon? Or with her own madness?

She struggled to keep her voice casual as she asked, “Would it be terrible of me to inquire about how she … how she died? I've heard the children discuss it, but I'm not certain of the particulars, and I thought it cruel to ask.”

“They are ignorant of the particulars, as well,” he called from around the dividing wall. “For they are too brutal.”

“Oh?” Her heart bumped against her chest. She burned to know, but didn't dare ask him to elaborate, so she remained quiet, hoping he'd fill the silence.

Luckily, he did just that. “She had terrible fits. So bad that the marquess had to keep her from the children. One night, she climbed up to the widow's walk, and threw herself from it.”

Oh, dear Lord.

“Why?” Mena whispered, horrified. “Were the children in residence?” Had the marquess been?

Jani appeared around the wall shaking his head. “The children were with their maternal grandmother in London, and the laird and I were not even in the country. The marquess was called back from Rajanpour for the funeral. That was maybe more than nine years ago. Though the children think that an illness took her, and the marquess would be very angry if he found out they knew different.”

“They won't hear it from me,” she promised.

So what had been the meaning of the ghostly encounter in the darkness of the library this morning? She'd been so tired, hadn't she? So utterly exhausted, perhaps she'd imagined it. Perhaps she was remembering it wrong and this was all the fault of an overwrought imagination.

Needing a change of subject, she asked, “What about you, Jani? How old were you ten years ago?”

“I was a very small boy, maybe seven.”

Working alongside him to pull out all her skirts, she pressed, “That's awfully young. Your parents allowed you to work for the marquess at that age?”

“My parents were part of a rebel force that fought the British
and
the East India Company. They were killed when the laird's regiment … moved on our village.
Everyone
was killed, but me.” His voice remained genial, pleasant even, but his features darkened with something bleak and indefinable.

“Dear God, Jani!” she gasped. The petticoat Mena had been folding slid from her fingers and fell in a heap at her feet.

He shook his head, the deft movements of his fingers never ceasing. “It was so long ago. Time has a way of softening all tragedies, and after a while, it is easier to forget the pain of it.”

Horrified, Mena tried to focus on their task, but she simply couldn't bear it. “But Jani, how can you bring yourself to work for him? To live under his roof and serve him?”

His dark, gentle eyes lit on her as he smiled sadly. “Because he offered me revenge.”

“What?” Mena could hardly believe what she was hearing.

“The marquess was a captain then. He and his lieutenant found me picking through the rubble searching for food. I was so angry that when I saw them I threw things, even glass. I screamed at them and spat at them. His superior took out his pistol and was about to put me down when Ravencroft stopped him. I remember being very frightened when he approached me. I never had seen a person so big before. So tall and wide. He subdued me and picked me up. Then he took me to his tent and fed me. I was so angry, but also starving.” Even in the dim light of the fading evening, the youth's hair gleamed a brilliant black, and it matched the darkness in his eyes. “Do you know what he said to me while I ate?”

Mena shook her head, astounded. “I can't even
imagine
.”

“He said that if I wished, he'd feed me, train me, and protect me. He promised that if my anger grew to hatred as I grew into a man, he would be always close, and I could have my revenge whenever I wanted to take it. He said he would not fight me.”

Plunking onto the bed behind her, Mena just shook her head in disbelief. “You had to have been tempted.”

Jani's eyes lost some of their luster as they gazed into the past. “I would sit on my cot eating the supper he brought me. He always provided a sharp knife, even when there was no meat to cut, and we'd eat in silence. For years I went to bed, fully intending to slit his throat while he slept.”

“What stopped you?” Mena breathed.

“I think it was the way he looked at me every night before he blew out the lantern…” Jani paused, glancing up at Mena as though remembering that they were not so well acquainted.

“How was that?” she inquired, unable to stop herself from asking.

“Like he wanted me to do it.” Jani gathered an armful of her new skirts and carried them to the wardrobe, leaving her to stare after him in dumbfounded amazement until he glided back for more.

“But he has children.”

“Yes, he does.” Jani's expression turned contemplative. “But he's never really allowed them to know him.”

With movements that felt stilted and stiff, Mena rose to help, but her mind wouldn't stop racing. “Even after all these years, you can't have just … forgiven him.”

“The marquess, he has kept his promise. He took me with him all over the wide world, and even provided for me in his will should he die. I do not know, Miss Mena, if he's responsible for the deaths of my parents, but I do know that we were both part of an empirical war machine that was built long before that day.” Jani paused in his work to look out her window and over the forest that rolled down to the sea. “The first time he brought me to this place, I understood that Ravencroft was bred to be a warrior, it was his destiny.” He turned back to her with that white smile, though this time it was not so bright. “Can you imagine him as anything else?”

“No,” Mena admitted, her heart bleeding for the pure tragedy of it all. “No, I don't suppose I can.”

“I did not mean to distress you, Miss Mena,” the young man said earnestly. “I am content with my life here, and there are … other reasons for me to stay.”

It was strange, Mena thought, that for the first time in their entire conversation, Jani truly seemed sad.

She had a good idea as to why. “Rhianna?” she prompted softly.

He looked at her, and his heart was revealed.

“Does she return your feelings?”

“She does not know.” Fear crept over his features and Mena hurried to comfort him.

“It's all right,” she murmured to him, placing a hand on his silk sleeve. “I've mentioned it to no one. I have secrets of my own to keep, and would never betray a confidence of a friend.”

He searched her gaze, then nodded. “It is not to be, Miss Mena. The daughter of a marquess doesn't marry a valet, especially a foreigner. I mean, is that not why you are here, to teach her how to be the wife of a gentleman and a nobleman?”

Mena lifted her hand to his smooth cheek and rested it there, a lump of emotion in her throat. “I think, sweet Jani, that there may be no man alive more gentle and noble than you.”

A curious sheen glimmered in his dark eyes before he quickly turned away. “Then you will allow me to arrange your writing desk to further maximize your efficiency,” he said with forced brightness. “When you reply to your letter, you will be thanking me.”

“If you must.” She offered him a tremulous smile, allowing him to alter the course of the conversation. She stepped back to her trunks to finish sorting and unpacking them. She and Jani worked in relative but comfortable silence, though, she suspected, their thoughts were anything but.

The dinner bell interrupted them not long after, and Mena decided she and the sweet valet had made sufficient progress.

“Miss Mena,” Jani exclaimed upon opening the door.

She looked up from her dressing table, where she hastened to tidy her coiffure.

“This was left in the hallway outside your room.”

What lay in his hands instantly softened the sharp edges of her heavy thoughts, and brought back the memory of her encounter with the marquess.

And the heat.

Standing, Mena reached for the tidy, if indelicately arranged, bouquet of the very same flowers she'd abandoned that afternoon. There was no note, no card, and nothing but a small knot made from the Mackenzie plaid to hold them together.

But there was no question as to just who had left them at her door. And as she wrapped careful fingers around the fat stems of the few roses, Mena noticed something that melted the very cockles of her careful heart.

Ravencroft had stripped them of every thorn.

 

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Liam ran his hands through the soft green of the fresh peat moss and tried not to compare it to the vibrant shade of Miss Lockhart's eyes. Was this the newest torment to his endless search for peace? Was there no escaping the lass? He couldn't even examine something as innocuous as fucking moss without conjuring some part of her to his mind. She'd been at Ravencroft two weeks, and he could barely get through dinner every night without hiding arousal beneath the table.

Crushing the soft little buds in his hand, he growled at Russell. “Just
how
many barrels of peat did Grindall order?”

“Enough to roast the entire harvest,” his steward said carefully. “He said he discussed it with ye.”

“I've no memory of that.”

Russell swiped his hat off, revealing tufts of wild orange hair, and scratched his scalp nervously. “Well, if ye doona mind me saying so, my laird, ye've been a bit … distracted lately.”

Distracted by a ripe mouth and a round arse.

“I
do
mind ye saying so.” Because it was true. He'd always been a focused, driven, and determined man, and no tempting wee English lass was going to change that.

The Ravencroft distillery had almost collapsed under the drunken tyranny of his father, and Liam would be goddamned if he added the failure of the livelihood of so many to his already tainted legacy.

Employing a breathing technique he'd learned from an Indian guru, he took a breath in through his nose, and counted slowly as he controlled the exhale with his throat.

Russell likewise employed another tactic. “This shipment was expensive, and we could barely afford it due to the new copper mash tuns for the barley we acquired last year without dipping into the tenant rents. Grindall said that the peat would hasten the kiln fire of the barley and add smoke to the taste. So many of the Highland distilleries are implementing the practice.”

Goddammit
. He'd wanted the distillery to be self-sustaining. He'd do anything to avoid dipping into his other sources of income.

Liam looked to his right, counting a few bricks of the warehouse which held rows upon rows of aging Scotch in their blond oak casks, then back to the kiln fires over which he was aiding Thomas Campbell, the cooper, in assembling and charring the insides of the imported casks for this year's offering of spirits. The work was backbreaking for most men, but Liam found that he appreciated the mental monotony of it. Once Andrew fit the wet slats of oak into the bottom ring, he passed them to Thomas Campbell to char the inside over the flame.

Liam would then take one of the already charred barrels and bend the slats of wood to fit into the iron rings, and employ the blacksmith's hammer to pound them into place. He enjoyed the need to sweat and strain, found a sort of physical release in the force it required of him.

A physical release that he was sorely in need of.

This peat business was an unwelcome interruption.

Taking another breath, he tossed the peat back into the crate. “There are three—and
no more
than
three
—ingredients in Ravencroft Single Malt Scotch. What are they, Andrew?”

He turned to his son, who stood behind him. The boy's mood was as black as the soot smudged across his fine shirt and stubborn, miserable features. He'd brought Andrew down to experience the jolly frenzy of work that came after the barley harvest. The milling and mashing of the barley into grist, the import and assembly of the casks, the careful fermentation in the mash tuns, the distillation processes, and finally the stacking of the finished barrels where they would sit for no less than three years and one day, and sometimes more than two decades.

“I doona ken what they are,” Andrew mumbled.

“Aye, ye do, lad. They've been the same for centuries.” Liam tried to keep his rising temper from his voice.

Glowering at the crates of moss, his son lifted a shoulder. “I canna remember.”

Setting his teeth against his frustration with his son, his steward, and his fucking buyer, he ticked the answer off on his own fingers. “Malted barley, water from the river Glan, and yeast. That's it,” he informed them both. “I'm not adding the taste of the slag ye collect from the bogs to my whisky.”

“This peat is special grown for Scotch,” Russell said. “It's hardly from the bogs.”

Unused to repeating himself, Liam enunciated his words very slowly.
“Barley. Water. Yeast.”

Russell took one look at Liam and hopped to cover the crates. “What do ye like we should do with all this?”

“Burn it. Throw it in the sea. Wipe yer arse with it! I care not,” Liam snarled. “But I'll flay the skin from any man's hide that puts it near my whisky.”

“You know, Mr. Mackenzie.” A soft, husky feminine voice from behind him vibrated through every hair on Liam's body until lust dripped like warm oil straight to his loins. “I've heard that peat makes an excellent addition to compost. Perhaps you can add it to the fertilizer you're mixing in with the top layer of soil before the frost.”