The Pretender (5 page)

Douglas awoke on the singular thought that somehow during the night, whilst he’d been asleep, and without him even being aware of it, someone had clubbed him over the head with a cudgel.

Repeatedly.

Any movement, just the effort of opening his eyes to face the light of dawn through the small curtained window set above the bed caused him to suffer a teeth-clenching jolt. It seemed suddenly every noise—the lads working in the stables outside, muffled voices coming from the downstairs taproom, the simple closing of a door down the hall—all of it took on a thunderous magnitude.

Why the devil had he drunk so damned much whisky?

He’d not woken to a morning like this since he’d been a lad of fourteen, the day after he and his younger brother, Iain, had stolen their way into their uncle’s underground distillery. They’d been two green boys who’d
wanted to play at being men, and Douglas had learned then that while the drink of his ancestors went down quite smoothly, it came up with a violence that could make a grown man—or a fourteen-year-old lad—weep out loud.

He’d spent two days afterward hanging over a chamber pot, and Douglas had sworn never to do such a thing again. From then on, the only whisky he took would be in toasting—at weddings, clan celebrations, the birth of a new bairn. And he had stood by that promise for seventeen years—until a hazel-eyed hoyden had issued him a challenge, a challenge that now left him wondering if his head had somehow gotten itself wedged between two boulders during the course of the night.

Douglas shifted on the mattress, seeking the soft solace of a pillow to place over his thrumming head. He would have groaned if that small effort wouldn’t alone have caused him more agony than it was worth. So he burrowed under the bedcovers instead, like a mollusk in the sand. It was then, and only then, that Douglas realized he wasn’t in fact alone on the bed.

A curtain of silken hair fell softly against his shoulder, hair that when his vision finally cleared, revealed its color of burnished gold. He knew that hair, knew the lass it belonged to, too. She was the same lass whose slender arm was apparently hooked around his waist—his very naked waist—with her hand splayed very closely to his groin.

Like an early morning mist burning off with the coming of dawn, the memory of the night before slowly came clear. He remembered how he had brought the fallen shoe to her room, how she had begged him not to
leave because of the dark. From where he now found himself, he had apparently done just that. He hadn’t left, even though he’d intended to the moment she fell asleep. All he could think was that he must have somehow dozed off himself.

It had been the whisky, yes, that was it, and the fatigue of having traversed the north of England on foot throughout most of the previous day. He had been so intent on getting home to Skye, he hadn’t realized how very tired he’d obviously been. When she’d called him into the room, he’d been lulled by the darkness, the sound of her voice, the whisper of her soft breath. Any ordinary man would have been unable to resist. But that still left one question remaining:

What the devil had happened to his clothes?

Just the awareness of where he was, how he was dressed (or rather undressed), and with whom, made Douglas’s groin grow hard. No hope for it. His belly tightened as he thought of how close her fingers were to him, how soft her skin felt against his, how sweet her hair smelled as it draped against his shoulder. He looked down at her in the pink light of dawn, watching her as she slept. Her brow was furrowed and her mouth frowned as if in dreams she struggled against some foe. Instinctively Douglas reached to gently smooth the troubled crease away.

A part of him wanted nothing more than to just stay there in the warmth of that bed, listening to the soft cadence of her breathing as the dawn sun crept higher in the morning sky. The saner part of him, however, realized the utter danger of his situation. He had to find his clothes and get out of that room as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, that part of him didn’t react quite as promptly as it should have.

“Elizabeth, I’m sure you’d love nothing better than to sleep the day away, but we cannot—”

A scream loud enough to shatter glass ripped across the room. It deafened him just as surely as the stark light pouring in through the open door was blinding his eyes. Douglas grabbed the nearest pillow and buried his head beneath it.

“Elizabeth Regina Gloriana Drayton, what in the name of God have you
done?
”

The sound of her sister’s shrill voice wrenched Elizabeth immediately awake.

“Good God, Bella, why must you harass me at this unholy hour?”

She groaned against the pain in her head and burrowed into the warmth of her pillow. Until her pillow moved and she realized it wasn’t a pillow at all.

Elizabeth shot up.

“What are you . . . ? Who are you . . . ? I beg your . . . What do you think you are doing in my bed? You must get out—immediately!”

She was wearing a chemise, nothing else. One sleeve had slipped down, baring her shoulder. Aghast, she grabbed for the pillow that covered his head, only to freeze when her hand glanced his leg. His very
naked
leg.

“Y-You’re not wearing anything underneath these blankets.”

“No, I’m not.”

When next she looked down, it was the face of the Scotsman from the day before staring at her through
those damnable blue eyes. He didn’t, however, move to get out.

“How the devil did you get in here?”

“You invited me in, lass.”

“I did no such thing. You’re lying.”

“When I was returning your shoe last night . . .”

Elizabeth quieted, suddenly remembering what had happened the night before. In truth, she’d thought it had been a dream.

I’m not going anywhere, lass.

Just as she’d asked, he hadn’t left her alone. He’d stayed with her all night, to keep watch against the shadows and that nameless, faceless demon that had plagued her almost all her life.

For as long as she could recall, Elizabeth had always hated the dark. She’d been probably all of six years of age when she and Bella had been playing in one of the many empty bedchambers in Drayton Hall’s long unused east wing. A game of hide and seek, and an empty coffer trunk was all it had taken. Elizabeth had slipped inside, never realizing the latch on the outside could—and did—fix in place quite on its own. She’d been effectively trapped, but by the time she’d realized it, Bella had gotten distracted by some new game, as four-year-olds are wont to do, and had wandered away. It took her parents and the Drayton staff until the next morning to find her. By then, Elizabeth’s voice had been hoarse for having screamed for help through the most terrifying night of her life. She’d felt quite certain that she was going to die.

The nightmares had begun soon after, waking her in a panic in the middle of the night. To combat them,
Elizabeth would steal away to the library to read and avoid the darkness of her bedchamber. Finally, from sheer exhaustion, she would doze off, only to be discovered by her father the next morning curled up in his favorite armchair. He’d thought it an extraordinary interest in books, and it did indeed become that. He just never knew the true reason why it had begun. Elizabeth had told no one, not even Bella, partly for the weakness it implied, but mostly out of the fear that Bella would spend the rest of her life blaming herself for having left her sister behind that day.

Elizabeth said to Isabella, “Yes, he’s right. I did invite him in.”

Isabella stood in the open doorway, her face a mask of absolute horror. “Oh, Bess, how could you?”

Before Elizabeth could come up with any sensible response, Manfred and Titus arrived, with Turnbull, no doubt alerted by the sound of Bella’s screams.

“What happened?” grunted Manfred, clearly out of breath from having come running.

“I think it’s fairly evident what has happened here,” Isabella said with a murderous glare to the Scotsman. “Mr. MacKinnon has ravished my sister.”

Manfred sucked in his stomach.

Titus actually growled.

Behind them, the innkeeper was shaking his head in disbelief. “Och, but I warned you, MacKinnon.”

“This is a mistake. Nothing happened. I would remember if I had ravished someone last night.”

Isabella remained unmoved. “Your declaration doesn’t carry much conviction, Mr. MacKinnon, in the
face of the fact that you are lying in my sister’s bed completely unclothed.”

“Bella,” Elizabeth said, “what he says is true. We were talking and we simply fell asleep. That is the whole of it. Nothing untoward happened—truly. I’m almost certain.”

“
Almost
certain? Oh, that reassures me, Elizabeth. That is a feeble explanation, even for you. As for you, sir, I believed you a gentleman. How dare you take advantage of an innocent girl?”

“Innocent?”

“Yes, innocent!” She advanced into the room, hands fisted. “Do you mean to suggest that my sister was—had been—” She came to stand at the side of the bed, drew back her fist, and clouted him hard on the head.

“Isabella!”

“Don’t you ‘Isabella’ me! Do you have any idea of the enormity of the blunder you have just made?”

“Bella . . .”

“Do you know who our father is, Mr. MacKinnon?”

“Bella, no. Don’t . . .”

“I’ll tell you who he is, sir. Our father is Alaric Henry Sinclair Fortunatus Drayton, the fifth Duke of Sudeleigh in Northumberland, and Elizabeth is the eldest of his children—and, I might add, his favorite.”

“Bella, that isn’t true.”

“Oh,
shush,
Bess! We all know he worships you.” Isabella railed at Douglas. “My father is a very powerful man. He’ll have your head for this, you know.” She glanced down at the bedcovers which had slipped to his waist. “As well as any other pertinent parts of you.”

Sitting on the bed, Elizabeth could but stare, still
hoping she was dreaming this whole horrible debacle. Who was this . . . this
virago
posing as her sister? Quiet, undemanding,
sweet
Isabella had never struck anyone or anything in her life. She’d never given her mare, Sugar, more than a soft nudge with her heel to urge her to go, and when Caro’s mongrel puppy had once chewed through her favorite pair of dancing slippers, Bella had simply ruffled the dog’s fur and scolded him as she would an infant.

But now . . . ? Elizabeth was utterly struck dumb at the sight of her sister as she paced the room, her skirts whisking against the floorboards as she alternately wrung her hands and waved her fist at the Scotsman.

“How are we going to explain this to Father?” Isabella said now, more to herself than anyone else in the room. The others simply stood watching her. And waiting. Finally she stopped, her face registering an idea. “I know what we will do.”

Elizabeth blinked. “You do?”

“Yes. It’s a bit on the absurd side, but I begin to think it is the only solution. Yes, it is. I’m certain of it.” She turned. “You and Mr. MacKinnon will marry.”

“Marry? Me to him? Bella, have you completely lost your senses?”

“Yes, Elizabeth, marry, and no, I haven’t lost my senses. It shan’t be difficult at all. We’re in Scotland. We need no crying of the banns, no special license. Heavens, from what I understand, you can have it done by the local blacksmith before breakfast. And that is precisely what we will do, but we’ll have it done after breakfast. You really must eat something. Then we’ll return to Drayton Hall having done the necessary”—she looked
hard at the Scotsman—“the
honorable
thing. I daresay Mr. Turnbull here can direct us to a local parson who will see to the job.”

The innkeeper took his cue and hollered to the hall, “Effie, have the stable lad run and fetch Hamish Beaton here quick! And call for Mrs. Turnbull, too. We’ll be needin’ witnesses!”

“Thank you, sir.”

Isabella started plucking Elizabeth’s clothing from various resting places about the room. She had some trouble locating one of the white silk stockings, until she found it flung across the back of the wardrobe. She shook her head, hissing a curse at the stocking under her breath.

“Bess, it is time you get up and get dressed. You certainly cannot get yourself married in your underwear.” She stopped at the edge of the bed, clutching Elizabeth’s clothing, and frowned at Douglas. “Nor should you, sir, I suspect, wearing nothing at all.”

“Pardon me, Miss Drayton,” MacKinnon said calmly, as if discussing nothing more important than the weather, “but you seem to have overlooked one significant detail.”

“I have?”

“Yes. You see, generally when two people wed, the bridegroom must agree to the thing.”

Isabella’s eyes burned. “
That,
Mr. MacKinnon, is no longer relevant.” She scooped up Douglas’s plaid from where it lay on the floor and tossed it at him, hitting him in the nose. “Let me just say you gave up the right to disagree when you compromised my sister. Serving maids and strumpets are one thing, sir. Ladies of noble
breeding are another. And before you try to tiptoe your way out of this, let me just add that if you should refuse, sir, besides being an entirely deplorable response to this entirely deplorable situation, one of your own making I remind you, I would be forced to ask our associates here, Titus and Manfred, to use whatever means necessary to gain your agreement, even if it means taking you before the local magistrate and charging you with rape.”

“Bella!”

On cue, the two behemoths stepped forward from the doorway as one.

“Now, sir,” Isabella finished, lifting her chin, “I suggest you get out of that bed immediately, get yourself dressed, and prepare yourself to become a member of our family.”

Douglas’s face set into stone, dark, unreadable stone. His eyes were icy with rage.

There was no possible way for him to get out of this, and he knew it. But he took his time in conceding. He remained on the bed, staring at Isabella.

She, in turn, stared straight back at him.

After a moment, he slid his legs over the side of the bed. His feet hit the floor. He gripped the edge of the bedcovers, ready to flip them back. He stared at Isabella for one long moment, challenging her, and she lost her nerve at the last second and turned to face the window. Her bravado, so new to her, didn’t stretch quite that far.