The Highlander (8 page)

It was lucky, Liam realized, that everyone's focus remained on her, and no one noticed how affected he was.

Except for, perhaps, the lass.

“I—I confess, I don't know what to say.” Her breasts heaved with breath as she obviously prepared for a lengthy apology regarding the afternoon.

The thought pleased Liam a great deal less than he'd anticipated, and so he didn't allow her to finish.

“Permit me to present my children, Miss Lockhart, Rhianna and Andrew Mackenzie.” His children, both inherited the Ravencroft ebony hair, had very opposite yet equally inappropriate reactions to the introduction.

“What happened to yer lip?” Rhianna demanded, her chocolate eyes wide as saucers in her angular face. “And are ye wearing cosmetics? Did ye get them from Paris? I heard they're only worn by actresses and prostitutes.”

“Haud yer Wheesht, Rhianna,”
Liam commanded, earning him a glower from his daughter, though she complied. She had no manners and even less respect, Liam was ashamed to admit. In the army, one caned or shot someone for insubordination. With a slip of a daughter, Liam was at a loss for what to do. He dare not raise a hand in anger to his children. There had been enough of that in this house, and Liam refused to be like his father.

“Ye see, Miss Lockhart, how in need we are of your expertise. Rhianna will apologize for her discourtesy.”

Everyone held their breath, wondering if Rhianna was about to throw one of her famous tantrums, but she merely slid out her lower lip in a dramatic pout and muttered, “Apologies,” without looking up.

Miss Lockhart's glove had gone to her own lip and self-consciously lingered there. After a few surprised blinks, she lowered her hand and gifted his daughter with a kind smile. “I've always had a fondness for an inquisitive mind. I suppose now is the right moment to explain to you all that I was … in a carriage accident not a week ago and sustained a few abrasions. The cosmetics were a capitulation to my vanity and maybe a little to my hopes of making a good impression here.”

Her voice was the auditory equivalent of warm honey, sweet and languid, and Liam let it coat his senses for a beat longer than he should have.

“A carriage accident?” he repeated, grasping at the vestiges of stoicism. “Ye seem to be rather prone to those of late.”

The comment took her more aback than he'd thought it would. “Yes, well…” She blinked at him, at an apparent loss for words.

“We're just glad ye're not hurt,” Russell said, gifting the lass with his most charming smile.

“Thank you, Mr. Mackenzie.” The appearance of dimples on the edges of her smile was enough to distract Liam from what he was about to say next.

Luckily, Miss Lockhart didn't await a prompting. “It's lovely to make the acquaintance of you both, Rhianna and Andrew. I'm very much looking forward to our time together.”

True to form, Andrew muttered a “likewise” and said not another word, but stood when he should stand, and bowed when he should bow, doing just enough to not draw Liam's ire. Which, of course, was beyond irritating.

“Ye dress better than any governess I've ever had,” Rhianna remarked artlessly. “Is that the latest in London couture?”

“It is.” Miss Lockhart's bosom turned an intriguing pink. “But you'll have a much prettier trousseau once you're of age.”

“I
am
of age in most circles,” Rhianna huffed. “Father is making me wait another year, and I'm certain to be an old maid by then.”

Miss Lockhart only smiled again, but Liam thought he observed a rueful tightening in her eyes. “Don't be in too much of a rush to marry, dear,” she said, and then seemed to remember herself. “Give me enough of your time, and you'll be the jewel of next season, I swear it.”

Rhianna assessed her new governess with skepticism, but finally nodded.

“Kindly take yer seat, Miss Lockhart, the soup is getting cold.” Liam gestured to the seat next to Rhianna, and tried not to notice the sway of the governess's generous hips when she walked. She didn't glide like so many ladies were wont to do. She swayed, each lift of her foot telegraphed by a corresponding movement of her body. A swivel of the hip, a swing of her arm, and a slight, jiggling ripple in the soft skin of her décolletage.

Gritting his teeth, Liam sat. “We're a regimented household, Miss Lockhart, and in the future will start dinner at the stroke of eight.”

“Yes, my lord.” Soft russet lashes swept down beneath his disapproving look, properly chastised.

Liam winced beneath a ripple of regret that slithered through him.

Jani held her chair out for her, and the governess took it with perfect grace. Liam became absorbed with his soup the moment it was served as it gave him a reason not to look at her.

Dinner was generally a purposeful meal, and they ate in silence save for a few terse items of business discussed with Russell, if any words were spoken at all. So when Miss Lockhart broke the silence, everyone passed uneasiness around the table like a breadbasket.

“Since comportment and conduct are part of my duties, Rhianna, would you permit me to show you the way the ladies eat soup in London?”

Rhianna paused mid-slurp and slid a mutinous look to her new governess. Liam could tell that his daughter absolutely wanted to know, but didn't want to be taught. She was a difficult girl that way. Eschewing authority, but frustrated at not knowing her boundaries and constantly overstepping.

“I suppose,” she replied carefully.

They all observed Miss Lockhart as she held her soup spoon delicately, and dipped it into the potato and leek soup. “You scoop it away, rather than toward, and bring it slowly to your mouth, instead of bending over the bowl. The important part is that you sip instead of slurp.”

Liam's eyes remained affixed to her lips as she took a delicate sip from her spoon, and returned it to the bowl. She ate like she did everything else. With elegance and poise. Could it be that she was as unaware of her innate sensuality as she pretended?

“Now you try,” she encouraged.

Rhianna echoed her movements perfectly until the grating sound of a slurp filled the expectant silence.

“Tip the spoon to your lips rather than breathing in,” Miss Lockhart corrected. “Just thus.” She lifted another perfect spoonful, though before it reached her mouth, a tremor in her hand sent half of it spilling onto the bared skin of her chest.

Everyone froze, and that pink color appeared from beneath her gown once more.

An undignified snort of laughter escaped Rhianna and she clapped her hands over her mouth, unable to control the shaking of her shoulders. Even Andrew bit his lips to stop their quivering.

But it was the governess, herself, who broke into a brilliant smile before a merry laugh bubbled up from her throat. Now that her amusement was allowed, Rhianna joined in, as did Andrew, and finally Russell. The tension of the evening dissipated like an unpleasant odor.

It occurred to Liam that laughter was something long missing not just from his table, but from his life. From his keep. But he couldn't possibly join in. Not because he didn't want to, or because he wasn't amused.

It was the perfectly creamy texture of the soup that arrested him. White and slick. It dripped over the curve of her breast, threatening to slide into the valley between as she fished the linen from her lap.

She caught it in time, still enjoying the joviality of the moment.

Salacious, wicked images seized Liam and held him in thrall. He could barely believe he was having such thoughts in the company of his own children, but Liam could only think of that warm, smooth liquid running between her magnificent breasts, and fight the violent lust sizzling through his body.

This had nothing to do with her, personally. It was the Mackenzie appetite to blame for his crass and demeaning fantasies. It was the demon who whispered dark and unbidden things in his ear.

*   *   *

Mena didn't know if it was the warm meal, the French wine, or the soft glow of the candelabra, but the band of suffocating iron clamped about her chest suddenly released. She filled her lungs for what seemed like the first time in months, and savored the scent of crisp summer apples in the sweet Vouvray Jean-Pierre had sent up to accompany the dessert soufflé.

Taking another sip of the wine, she regarded the marquess over the glass as he discussed the suspicious fire in the barley fields with Russell Mackenzie.

He hadn't so much as acknowledged her presence since the soup course.

Mena still couldn't believe it. The savage Highlander from the road had transformed into a militant marquess. He'd been telling her the truth, after all. Though he'd donned his white-tie finery, bathed, shaved, and slicked his hair back into a neat queue, Mena still expected the barbarian to somehow rip free of the refined nobleman any moment and threaten to hack her to pieces with a claymore.

Troubled, she set down her wine. Lord, he must think her a fool for how she'd acted this afternoon. But he hadn't mentioned it, and she hoped he wouldn't. Or maybe she needed him to say something, to allow her to explain, to perhaps absolve her, somehow.

Mena watched the muscles of his jaw work ponderously on a bite as he listened to his steward's reports intently. Only a fool would expect absolution from such a man. He was the sort that granted favor sparingly and forgiveness never.

She'd do well to remember that.

He was the Demon Highlander,
elder
brother to the Blackheart of Ben More. These monikers, they were not granted by the happenstance of birth or marriage, like marquess or earl, they were earned by means of ruthless violence and bloodshed. It was easy to forget that fact beneath the grand chandelier of this lofty keep. That was, until the fire in the hearth ignited the amber in his eyes, lending him a ferocity that even his expensive attire couldn't tame.

Suddenly feeling as though she'd taken refuge in a sleeping bear's den, Mena drained the last of her wine much faster than was strictly proper.

When dinner adjourned, she bade the children a fond good night and curtsied to Russell and the marquess.

Rhianna attempted a curtsy, as well, and Mena put that on the list of things to practice with the girl. Andrew merely nodded at her and mumbled an excuse before hurrying away, not once lifting his eyes from the carpet. He was on the tall side of thirteen, and very slim, but his hands and feet were large and ungainly on his frame, hinting that he had the propensity for his father's build.

His aloofness distressed her, and Mena decided, as she made to slip away, that she'd use the next few restless hours in her bed thinking of ways to ingratiate herself to the boy.

“Remain a moment, Miss Lockhart, I would have words with ye.”

The vise winched around her lungs once again at Ravencroft's command, squeezing them until her limbs weakened for want of breath. Turning toward him, Mena kept the length of the grand table between them. “Yes, my lord?” she answered, as she watched Russell Mackenzie's retreating back until it disappeared around the entry, abandoning her to the terrifying presence of the so-called Demon Highlander.

“Forgive me, as I'm not the expert, but is it considered good manners to call a conversation across a room?” His expression revealed nothing. Not an eyebrow lift, a half-smile, or even a scowl. Just an unsettling stoic watchfulness that set every hair of her body on its end with absolute awareness.

He'd not-so-subtly requested for her to approach him, but it sounded like a dare.

Like a temptation.

“No, my lord, it is not.” Remembering Millie LeCour's advice, Mena lifted her chin and forced her eyes to remain on his, summoning every iota of British superiority that had been beaten into her since she'd come to London as the Viscountess Benchley.

The flames that reflected in his unblinking eyes licked his gaze with heat and, for a moment, Mena could truly believe that a demon stared out at her from those abysmal depths. He regarded her approach with the same sulfurous glare she imagined the devil used to survey his unholy realm.

To compensate for her apprehension, Mena rolled her shoulders back, as though stowing angel wings, and traversed the length of the table with the deportment of a benevolent royal. Though she kept the corner of the table and one of the high-backed chairs in between them.

She was being brave, not idiotic.

Mena regretted eating quite so much at dinner, as the meal now rolled and tossed inside her stomach, and threatened acid that she had to desperately swallow. Despite that, she didn't allow her gaze to waver, though it cost her more strength than she'd ever credited herself with.

His eyes touched her everywhere, and Mena had to fight the impulse to cover herself, lest he know how exposed she felt in his presence.

“We've not had the opportunity to formally meet,” the marquess remarked. “I must say, Miss Lockhart, ye're not what I expected.”

Mena attempted a polite smile and fished in her blank mind for something witty and charming to say. “It seems, my lord, that the circumstance is mutual.” Indeed, she hadn't expected him to be so young. So devastatingly virile. So wickedly dark and—dare she think it?—attractive.

She'd meant to be witty, to diffuse some of the intensity between them, but she could tell that her answer hadn't pleased him.

“Aye.” He didn't return her smile, and Mena fought the urge to fidget like a child set in the corner.

She'd met precious few people in her lifetime who'd made her feel small. She looked most men straight in the eye, if she didn't tower over them. But Ravencroft dwarfed her so entirely, she had to tilt her head back to meet his stern regard. He stood before her every inch the regimented soldier, posture erect and unyielding with his arms clasped behind him, neither a hair nor stitch out of place. At this close vantage, Mena could identify the familial resemblance between Liam Mackenzie and Dorian Blackwell. The same thick ebony hair, similar dark, haunted eyes, and a raw, almost barbaric bone structure. All hard angles and broad planes and no quarter given to weakness. But where a cruel, sardonic twist adorned Blackwell's lips, Ravencroft's were instead drawn into a perpetual hard line. Unreadable and forbidding. Dorian had the look of a prowling lone beast, hungry and predatory. Ravencroft, however, had never seen a cage that would dare hold him. Nations fell before him. Kings had bowed and tyrants had groveled at his feet.