The Pretender (14 page)

“So you met when your carriage broke a wheel, were set upon by brigands, and Mr. MacKinnon here came to your rescue?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth assured him, with a smile to Douglas.

“Incredible, my dear.”

“Yes, it does sound so, doesn’t it? And you know I’ve never been one of those ladies who dreamed of getting swept off my feet, but that is precisely what happened. We were married at an inn near the Scottish border and
went home immediately to Drayton Hall where Douglas met the family.”

“That must have been quite an interesting reunion. Tell me, how exactly did your father take the news?”

“Oh, Father was of course quite flustered at first, but once he met Douglas and spent time getting to know him, he was very pleased and welcomed him into the family.”

And
that
was when Elizabeth took the tale too far. In trying to paint a picture of contentment and bliss, she had forgotten to consider that she was talking to the one person who knew her father better than anyone else, even her mother.

“I see,” said the colonel, seeing all too well, but he decided to wait before passing any real judgment on the matter. He turned to Douglas. “My aide tells me the patrol stopped you on the way to Glenelg? You had hoped to ferry across to Skye in the morning?”

“Yes,” Douglas answered, “but your men seemed to think there might be some problem with that.”

The colonel nodded. “We’ve been instructed to keep a throttlehold on all ports until they find and apprehend the Stuart. You no doubt have heard by now that the Jacobites were routed at Culloden?”

“Yes, we did,” Elizabeth cut in, “although I cannot think what any of it should have to do with us. Douglas is not a Jacobite. He’s had nothing to do with the rebellion.”

A page came forward to the colonel then bearing a packet of papers. The colonel excused himself, taking a moment to look them over.

“MacKinnon,” he said, looking up from whatever it
was he’d read. “Would your father be Lachlan MacKinnon of Dunakin?”

Douglas inclined his head. “Aye.”

“And your brother, Iain MacKinnon, is presently being sought for crimes against the Crown in this rebellion?”

“Aye.”

The colonel narrowed his gaze, searching. “But you yourself are not a Jacobite?”

“No, my lord. I did not come out for the prin—” he corrected, “the
Pretender
. As for my brother, I cannot speak for him.”

The colonel looked at him closely. “Would you consent to a search of your belongings and your person?”

Elizabeth spoke up. “My lord, really, is that necessary? I have been with my husband every moment of the past fortnight. I give you my word as the daughter of the Duke of Sudeleigh that he is no more a Jacobite than . . . than I am. Or my father for that matter.”

Douglas stared at his wife, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

“All we wish to do,” Elizabeth went on, “is end a very long and exhausting journey. Can you not assist us by granting us passage to the isle so that I may settle in at my new home?”

The colonel looked at Elizabeth for a long moment. Finally he said, “Very well. If I cannot trust my own goddaughter, then who can I trust?” He looked at Douglas. “You will be given papers by my man Duff here assuring your safe passage and also protecting your property against the invasions which His Grace the Duke of Cumberland has ordered against the homes of the known
rebels. I’ll arrange for the ferry. You may leave in the morning, but I insist that you stay here tonight as my guests and have supper with us. The inn at Glenelg is not the best choice for a young lady like yourself, Elizabeth, and Lady Lyon would never forgive me if she didn’t get the chance to see you and congratulate you on your marriage. So you’ll stay?”

Elizabeth glanced at Douglas before giving the only response she could. “Of course.”

Douglas could only appease himself with the knowledge that oftentimes the best hiding place was the one that was right out in the open.

Lady Lucinda Lyon was warm, welcoming, and possessed of a discretion her husband had not shown. She did not reveal the slightest hint of distress at the news of Elizabeth’s marriage to Douglas when they were introduced later that evening, this despite the fact that her husband was, after all, in command of a regiment that had been sent to the Highlands on a mission to subdue and quell.

Instead, Lady Lyon, who was as petite as her husband was large, whose rounded cheeks dimpled deeply when she smiled, and who despite her noble title had traveled with her husband from the comforts of the London drawing rooms to the “wilds” of the Scottish Highlands, greeted Douglas with a genuine and easy manner.

“Mr. MacKinnon, it is a pleasure to meet you.” She offered her hand.

Douglas took it and inclined his head as he bowed to her. “The pleasure is mine, Lady Lyon.”

“And you, Elizabeth, how dare you come to us after all this time suddenly married and without the slightest hint
of it beforehand? Just look at you. I swear you’ve grown a foot in height since we saw you last, which isn’t possible I know, but still. You look so grown up of a sudden. Whatever happened to my six-year-old goddaughter who stood with her hands on her hips and her chin in the air, proclaiming to none other than King George himself—much to your mother’s horror I might add—that she would never ever marry?”

Elizabeth managed a flush, a most appealing flush, too. “Do cease your teasing, my lady. If you’ll recall I also intended when I was six to be the next queen of England, ruling alone, of course. And we all know that isn’t going to happen either.”

Lady Lyon laughed at the memory. “Oh, it was quite a sight, considering King George had just celebrated his coronation, and there you were, all of six, laying claim to his throne! You should have seen her, Mr. MacKinnon.”

Douglas was seized by an image of Elizabeth, tall, skinny, with her red-gold hair, standing before the periwigged Hanoverian, proclaiming herself the next virgin queen while her mother suffered a fit of the vapors behind her.

“Shall we go in to supper?” Lady Lyon asked.

And the two couples repaired to a sizeable dining room set off by a long mahogany table that seated eight and gleamed like polished glass. Elegant carved armchairs lined each side. Chinaware and silver sparkled in the candlelight. Paintings hung in gilt frames from the walls, and a fire blazed in a massive stone hearth. The room could have easily been part of a country house instead of attached to an austere military fortification in the Scottish Highlands.

After they were seated, two liveried and bewigged footmen served generous helpings of cockle soup, roast pullet and greens, topped off by a gooseberry pudding that was a perfect mix of sweet and sour.

After a week of nothing but porridge, bannocks, and stew, it was a veritable banquet. Still Douglas couldn’t help but think that while they sat there enjoying the delicious food and elegant surroundings, elsewhere, just a few hundred yards away, the men under the colonel’s command—the same men who had risked their lives on the field of battle to assure a throne for George II—were sitting on hard benches, eating out of wooden trenchers. Instead of warm bread and creamy butter and gooseberry pudding, they were being served hard biscuits and gruel—and if they were fortunate, salted beef that had been dried to the toughness of leather. No charming conversation or liveried footmen to serve them, but grumbles of dissent and the occasional squabble. In the clan system, when circumstances called for their gathering together in one place, the chieftain ate, slept and marched beside his men. He fought with them, risking his life just as they.

And they called the Scots the barbarians.

“Do you have family on Skye, Mr. MacKinnon?”

Lady Lyon’s inquiry broke Douglas from his thoughts.

“I’ve a brother, Iain, though it is my understanding that he was one of the many who fell at Culloden.”

It did not escape Douglas’s notice that, though the odds were slight, at that same moment he could be sitting across the table from the man who had fired the shot that killed his brother. Iain had been on that desolate, doomed moor, as had the colonel, facing each other on opposite sides. The irony had apparently not escaped the colonel’s
notice either. At just the mention of that terrible battle, the man’s eyes had grown dim and his expression seemed a degree more strained than it had been moments before.

Lady Lyon endeavored to break the sudden silence. “We are sorry to hear of your loss, Mr. MacKinnon. I lost a brother, too, not so very long ago. Though his passing was the result of a duel, it still came with the honor of defending what he believed was right. It is a loss one never truly gets over.”

Douglas read the sincerity in her eyes. “Thank you, my lady.”

The remainder of the evening passed pleasantly enough, with the gentlemen enjoying a bottle of port by hearthlight while Lady Lyon sang and Elizabeth played at the pianoforte. She was an accomplished pianist, Douglas could see, her fingers moving deftly over the keys in a complicated
capriccio.
With her hair burnished by the candlelight and her face focused on the keys before her, she presented a picture of elegant determination.

When the candles began to gutter and the clock suddenly struck one, Colonel Lyon rose from his armchair, signaling his wife.

She rose and said, “Come, Elizabeth, Mr. MacKinnon, and I’ll show you to your room.”

She led them down one hall, then another, before opening the door onto a tiny chamber that fit a bed barely wide enough for two—and nothing else, not even a hearth.

“I’m afraid it’s not much, but the barracks weren’t built with a mind for entertaining. One must make do when circumstances call. You’re newly wedded, so I’m sure you won’t mind the cramped quarters. It’s not much bigger than you’d have found at the inn, but I can assure
you ’tis clean and the sheets are free from vermin. We’ll see you at breakfast, dear. Mr. MacKinnon. Good night.”

And with that, she turned, closing the door behind her.

“But where are you going to sleep?” Elizabeth asked the moment they were alone.

Douglas looked at her blandly. “In the bed, lass.”

“With me?”

“Unless you’re planning to sleep on that narrow strip of cold stone floor, aye, I am. I’ve been over a week in the saddle and sleeping on dirt floors. A stone floor like that will do me in. Now, are you going to stand there gaping at me while I get undressed?”

“Undressed?”

“Aye.” He pulled off his shirt. “I sleep in my skin. If the sight of a man’s body offends you, then I’d suggest you put out that light and climb into the bed within the next ten seconds.” He reached for the fastening of his trews.

She was in the bed, the candle snuffed, before he could count to three.

The room fell dark. There was but a small window on the wall, far from sufficient to allow in the moonlight. Douglas shrugged off his trews and found the bed, lowering onto the mattress. Elizabeth was as stiff as a board beside him, pressed as far to the side as she possibly could be without wedging herself between the wall and the bed.

She said nothing, but he could hear her rapid breathing as she lay there, too shocked by the fact that she was but inches away from a naked man, to even remember to be frightened of the dark.

Douglas closed his eyes and slept.

Early the next morning Elizabeth awoke with her cheek at rest on Douglas’s shoulder. It was a warm shoulder, actually, nice and firm, and as her vision cleared, the small amount of light the tiny window afforded gave her a remarkably clear view of his mouth.

He slept quietly, barely making a sound. Elizabeth didn’t immediately move, but lay still, studying his chin, the slant of his nose, the thick lashes that lay at rest against his cheeks. Much as she’d never admit it aloud, his was a handsome face, in fact, more handsome than she’d at first acknowledged. His hair was not really as black as it appeared, more a rich walnut, one small lock of which seemed intent upon falling over his eyes. She lifted a hand, pushing that stray lock back. She noticed a small white scar, long healed, that cut a crooked C on the underside of his chin. Elizabeth touched a fingertip to it, tracing its shape while wondering at what mischief he
must have worked in childhood to have left behind the mark.

When he didn’t stir at her touch, Elizabeth shifted closer, studying his mouth, the shape and fullness of his lips, the dip of his chin. She remembered the way her sister Matilda had sighed the first time she’d seen the Scotsman, remarking that she thought his mouth
sensuous.
Mattie quite obviously was spending too much time reading cloying romantic poetry.

Elizabeth’s gaze slipped to the thick cords of Douglas’s neck, his shoulders, the muscles of his broad chest that tapered down across the rippling lines of his middle to delve beneath the bedsheet. She watched the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed and wondered if he dreamed. Then she wondered what his dreams could be.

She traced her finger lightly over his arm to his chest, pleased that he was so sound a sleeper. She studied the textures of him, the angles of him, sharp and solid, the straight grainy line of his jaw, the rugged slant of his nose.

She scarce realized she had replaced her fingers with her lips, touching them to his jaw, tasting the salt of his skin, breathing in the very scent of him. Knowing she could do something so daring as to touch him, kiss him, without him even realizing, was a heady, wonderful thing.

This would likely be the only time in her life that she would ever be this close to a living, breathing man without him being aware of her. Once the two months had passed and she returned to live out the rest of her life in England, she would never marry, and thus would never wake with a man beside her in her bed.

She had studied anatomy, yes, poring over books that described the male body in detail. But this—lying so closely to a man, surrounded by the potent warmth of him—this was far more intriguing than any book.

A book was only parchment and ink.

This was real.

He
was real.

Douglas had seen every inch of her in that tub. Wasn’t it only right that she should, in turn, be given the chance to see him?

All of him?

Elizabeth slipped her fingers beneath the edge of the sheet and slowly started to lift it away . . .

She was on her back a moment later, pinned beneath the man who was her husband.

The very
naked
man who was her husband.

“I was—”

His mouth covered hers, cutting her off. He possessed her, he consumed her, overwhelming her, trapping her with his mouth and his body and his tongue as he teased her every sense, until she was clinging to his shoulders and doubted she could even blink.

Every inch of her felt alive. The taste of him, the scent of him, filled her head, and when she felt that first touch of his tongue on hers, she drew back, startled, but then she gave herself over to the unfamiliar sensation of it, the exciting newness of it, and kissed him back.

She felt his hips, the hardness of him, pressing against her and it wasn’t enough. She wanted to feel his hands on her, the way she had touched him. She wanted to feel more, take more. She wanted to
know
more.

Not until he pulled away, breaking the kiss, did the
colors and the feelings that had swirled in a tumult around her begin to ebb. Daylight returned in harsh, undeniable measure. When finally she found the will to open her eyes, Elizabeth met his stare. She saw desire there, a man for a woman. And she knew he wanted her, knew it to her soul.

But she saw something else there, too. She saw refusal.

“You should not begin what you do not intend to finish.”

His voice was low, unnerving. She should say something, but the words, any words, somehow escaped her.

Elizabeth, who was known for her quick tongue and frank opinion, couldn’t think of a single thing to say. She simply closed her eyes and willed herself to vanish. It was the only thing she could do.

Elizabeth felt the bed shift beneath her as he got up. She lay still, willing him away, wishing she could take back the last minutes as she listened to the sounds of him dressing, moving about the room.

“The ferry should soon be ready to leave.”

She did not answer.

“I will await you outside.”

Elizabeth waited until she heard the door close behind him before she opened her eyes again. She stared up at the ceiling, awash with humiliation.

What had possessed her to look at him like that? To touch him like that? She was the daughter of the Duke of Sudeleigh, not a common strumpet. All her life she had been determined never to allow a man dominance over her heart and body. With dominance came vulnerability, and with vulnerability came weakness. It was the one
thing she’d learned from studying women throughout history.

Elizabeth had grown up surrounded by the cream of English genteel society, earls, dukes, even royal princes. She had spent her formative years observing the manner of the world into which she’d been born. At an early age, she knew not precisely when, she had begun to question the way in which the women of her world seemed to lose their every freedom, their individuality, not to mention their every possession the moment they were wed.

Elizabeth had been witness to acquaintances of her mother, nobly born women who had been reduced to little better than beggars, utterly dependent upon the agreeableness of their husbands. If the man they wed revealed himself to be a boor, the lady could not so much as buy herself a book to read, or quills for letter writing. Instead she was made to ask permission for these small conveniences, and though a lady likely brought a healthy dowry to the marriage, if her husband had hidden a propensity for drink or gambling, she might find herself penniless, threatened with debtor’s prison even before her first child was born.

Lady Wolfton, one of the duchess’s closest contemporaries, had once quipped at afternoon tea that she’d been on more familiar terms with her modiste than she’d been with her husband the earl when they’d wed. The Marchioness of Thurston, who came from a long line of distinguished nobility, had had to flee to France with her children in the dead of night after discovering that Lord Thurston had lost their home, their fortune, and even their fine town carriage all on a single roll of the dice.

Elizabeth had resolved early on that she would never
allow herself to be placed in such a position. She alone would determine her own destiny. And the simplest way she had seen to do that was to avoid that one peril so many others had fallen victim to before her.

Elizabeth had vowed never to fall in love.

But that was before Douglas Dubh MacKinnon had walked into her life.

Two hours later, Douglas and Elizabeth boarded the small ferry that would take them across Kyle Rhea to Skye.

From where they stood on the pier in Glenelg, the verdant shoreside hills of Skye loomed softly on the morning mist, looking close enough to skip to across the water. In fact, the boatman, a wizened sort named Niall MacRae, told Elizabeth of how when the tide was slack, the drovers would tie their beasts together in fives, nose-to-tail, using heather rope. With a single skiff, they could swim upwards of one hundred head of cattle across to the mainland in a day. Ponies, he added, would make the crossing as well, but because of their high-spiritedness, they would have to be lashed to the boats by halters and withies.

As they crossed, Douglas passed the time chatting with the boatman in Gaelic. Though she couldn’t understand them, Elizabeth knew it was no casual conversation. They spoke in hushed tones and Niall MacRae cast her a wary glance on more than one occasion.

When they arrived on the Skye shore, they were stopped briefly by a waiting detachment of militia. As soon as Douglas presented the safe-conduct the colonel had given them, the soldiers nodded and allowed them to
continue onto shore. Douglas left Elizabeth at the stone jetty that served as pier, returning a short while later with three sturdy ponies.

“Is it much farther to your croft from here?” she asked. She was anxious now to reach the end of their journey. It would be such a treat to sleep more than one night in the same bed after so many days of traveling.

“We’ll be there afore long,” Douglas answered, as he secured their belongings onto one of the ponies.

They started out on a drovers’ road that wound its way inland through heather-dusted hills from the shore. It was no more than an obscure pathway, really, but Douglas knew every turn, every pitch, even though at times the trail seemed to vanish into the very landscape that surrounded them.

Douglas’s wariness, which had been keen throughout their journey across the Highlands, seemed to have relaxed now that they had arrived on his home isle. He no longer sat stiffly in the saddle, and his hold on the pony’s reins was slack as they shuffled over the hills heading toward the great rocky crags in the distance.

Elizabeth noticed that everyone they encountered, fishermen at the shore and farmers on the glen, all knew Douglas on sight. They offered him greetings in Gaelic while looking on her with curious suspicion. She searched the hills around them for sign of the place that would be her home, and as they came into a glen that stretched downward toward a rippling burn, it began to rain, not heavily, but enough to have Elizabeth pulling up the hood of her cloak. Soft thunder rumbled through the low patch of clouds, startling a pair of curlews from the tall grass. The wind seemed to shift and surge since
there were no trees to buffer it, racing down the hillsides to meet them.

After a while, Elizabeth noticed a stone tower, lone and tall with small overhanging turrets on each corner. “That castle there? What is it?”

“That is Dunakin,” he answered. “Seat of a MacKinnon chieftain.”

“MacKinnon? Does that mean we are drawing near to the croft?”

“Aye, lass. We should be there before much longer.”

As he watched her face, Douglas couldn’t help but think that had they wed under any other circumstances, he would be taking her to that same distant tower, continuing a tradition of MacKinnon brides from centuries past. Deep inside, he couldn’t help but admit to a certain regret that circumstances were so different. At the time, back when the duke had first told Douglas his plan for Elizabeth, Douglas had been angry at having been trapped into a marriage he’d never wanted, and angrier still that he couldn’t immediately get out of it. He’d never expected her to make the entire journey to Skye, but that she would wilt within the first few miles and beg him to take her back.

But she hadn’t.

Instead she had withstood the rigors of over a week’s worth of riding across harsh terrain. She hadn’t once complained. She had endured it all—the rain, the midges, an attack by two vagrants—without giving in. It was a thing a good many men couldn’t have done. Appreciating that she could have made the past days a living hell for him only made the task Douglas now faced a far less agreeable one.

“We are arrived, madam.”

The rain had stopped and the clouds had drifted over the hills, sparking the glen with dewy tears that glistened in the sunlight. The wind carried mingling scents of heather and rain, sea and turf. Beyond the hills, the sounds of the sea echoed softly.

Douglas watched as Elizabeth pushed back the hood from her face to look around, searching the landscape.

At first, her gaze skipped completely past the crude croft house. Built as it was of the same rugged sandstone as the barren hill it lay nestled against, it was an easy thing to miss. The roof was turfed over so that but for the small windows and door, the place vanished against the landscape. There was no other dwelling in sight, so she looked again, more carefully this time.

Douglas knew the moment she saw it. Though she tried hard to mask it, her eyes gave her away.

As a child, Douglas had lived in that same cottage, scurrying across the glen in play, acting out tales with Roderick and Iain of the great warriors who had once walked these same hills. But now, for the first time in his life, Douglas suddenly saw his childhood home through the eyes of someone who had never known a day of want, who had been surrounded by every luxury of life, and who had never been required to do anything more than look lovely, speak pleasantly, and behave in a dignified manner.

Elizabeth would never last here. Not even for two months. Whether the duke liked it or not, Douglas knew he needed to tell her the truth.

“Elizabeth, I . . .”

She turned to look at him, her face set and determined. “Where do we stable the ponies?”

Douglas looked at her, puzzled. “There is a byre behind the house, but lass, really . . .”

“Shall I see to the pony myself? I assume we are on our own here for the next two months.”

And then Douglas realized that this woman would go through just about anything to meet her end of the bargain she’d made with the duke. Her freedom meant that much to her.

“I will see to the ponies. Just drop the reins. He’ll not roam.”

She nodded. “Well, then, I guess I’m ready to see my new home.”

Elizabeth waited while Douglas dismounted and then came to help her from the back of her pony. He took her gently about the waist and eased her to the ground in front of him. It was the closest they’d been since that morning, when he’d awoken to find her touching him. He frowned when he felt her stiffen against his hands.