McClairen's Isle: The Ravishing One

Book 2: McClairen's Isle

by Connie Brockway

Genres: Romance; Historical Romance; Scottish & Highlander

Synopsis

His desire for her turned abduction   into seduction....

She is the toast of London society. But Fia Merrick gives her heart to no one, for love is a weakness she cannot afford. Once she would have given her soul to Thomas McClairen, until he shattered her innocent dreams. Now he is back, a convict returned to England in disguise to abduct Fia to Scotland, to McClairen's Isle. There, as Fia seeks her revenge in seduction, a passion is ignited that defies the past and cannot be denied....

Release date: December 1, 2010

Publisher: Loveswept

Print pages: 384

Sample

Prologue
 
Some said Lady Fia Merrick was born bad, others that she’d only been raised to it. Whatever the case, it was generally agreed that she could not end up being anything but bad.
 
After all, her notorious father, Ronald Merrick, Earl of Carr, had killed her mother, his wife. Not that the little girl had any notion of this. She only knew that one day she had a doting mother and two brothers and then she did not.
 
No one came to explain. For the next several days her nurse arrived in a distracted, frightened, and silent state and then, one morning, after a tearful and furtive kiss she, too, disappeared.
 
Oh, people came. Meals appeared, someone aided Fia with dressing and undressing, and a long series of interchangeable faces arrived daily to mind her. This task usually fell to a maid-of-all-work no more than a decade older than Fia. The exhausted, frightened girls would set her down in whatever corner of the castle they were working and hiss at her not to move or speak while they went about their chores.
 
So Fia, by nature reticent, became more so. She cautiously followed, and silently watched, becoming a black-haired little shadow following in the footsteps of her servants. When she was noticed at all, it was with surprise and alarm and suspicion. As she was daughter of the Demon Earl, the servants considered Fia’s silence unnatural, never realizing that they themselves had inspired it with their unspoken threats to abandon her should she ever make herself a bother. Because it was Fia’s greatest fear that someday she would wake and find herself utterly alone. The wretched staff was too frightened of her father—and later of her—to adopt her into their circle, the other guests at the castle had no interest in the small doll-like creature, and her brothers were not allowed to see her.
 
Where other children learned their letters and numbers and were indoctrinated into the ways of their class by instructors, siblings, parents, and friends, Fia was uniquely alone. She knew nothing except that which she gleaned through observation. By six years of age Fia had learned to take her education where she found it. Instead of a classroom with books and paper and ink, her school was the castle-cum-gaming-hell known as Wanton’s Blush.
 
There had been a time when Wanton’s Blush was a proud and unassailable island fortress belonging to an equally proud and unassailable line of Scots, the McClairens. For three hundred years the castle had stood as Maiden’s Blush.
 
Then, one year in the early reign of George II, Ronald Merrick was chased out of England by a pack of creditors and found himself at Maiden’s Blush, the guest of Ian McClairen, a man as honest and open-hearted as Merrick was devious and selfish.
 
Now, Ronald Merrick may not have had money, but he did have charm aplenty and he used it to hide his true nature from his hosts. Gloriously handsome and urbane, he easily won over the score of Scottish ladies then living at the castle, the most important being Janet McClairen, Ian’s favored young cousin.
 
Seeing a plum ripe for his plucking, Ronald married the girl. For years after, he lived off the genial munificence of his Scottish hosts, feeding on their hospitality, gaining their confidence, and learning, to their everlasting regret, of their secret Jacobite loyalty.
 
After the Jacobites were routed at Culloden, Ronald testified against his wife’s family, achieving two goals in doing so: the first being the executions of the McClairen men; the second being Maiden’s Blush and the island on which it stood, a gift of a grateful monarch.
 
For years Janet refused to believe what she knew in her heart, that her husband had betrayed her people and that their blood had paid the price of turning Maiden’s Blush into a sumptuous, decadent palace, rechristened Wanton’s Blush.
 
When Janet could no longer hide the truth from herself she confronted Carr. And he, with no more guilt than he’d felt upon betraying the McClairens, pitched her from the island’s cliffs, claiming her death a terrible “accident.”
 
In truth, murder came so easily to Carr, and the rewards from it were so substantial, that twice more he wed and killed wealthy heiresses. At which point his once-grateful sovereign heard of Carr’s new habit and forthwith unofficially banished Carr to Scotland on penalty of death should he ever return to London and flaunt his ill-gotten gains.
 
For the first time Carr knew desolation. London had been the motive for his murders, his triumphant return to London the single goal to which he’d aspired.
 
But desolation shriveled and became the black seed of a tenacious resolve. He would return to London in splendor and power. He turned Wanton’s Blush into a gaming hell and made a career of collecting debts both monetary and otherwise, blackmailing, pressuring, and slowly accumulating enough wealth and power so that no one dared gainsay him his objective. The people he collected at Wanton’s Blush were the powerful, the wealthy, and the decadent.
 
And thus these were Fia’s tutors.
 
Indeed, she would have reached adulthood without even the most rudimentary academic skills had not, in the beginning of her seventh year, a disfigured, hunched Scotswoman with a black veil draped over half her face presented herself at the kitchen door. She came seeking employment, asking only for room and board in return for caring for Carr’s three children. Thus for the first time in two years Carr was reminded of his children’s existence.
 
Carr’s aversion to ugliness warred briefly with his greed, and greed—as was ever the case with Carr—won. The woman, Gunna, was hired. To Ash and Raine, well on their way to becoming the hell-spawned reprobates the locals deemed them, the old woman was a curiosity to be tolerated, ignored, and finally reluctantly respected. But to Fia, the ugly old woman was a revelation.
 
Gunna not only taught Fia the rudiments of reading and writing, but all her vast knowledge of Scottish lore and folk wisdom. But most important, Gunna, unfailingly honest in her acceptance of her own deformity and her own weaknesses as well as strengths, taught Fia to be honest with herself, to never turn from a truth, no matter how painful.
 
Gunna’s broken appearance had separated her from her fellow man just as Fia’s exalted status and otherworldly calm had set her apart. Perhaps ’twas the natural affinity of opposites, perhaps some sense of unspoken kinship, but the girl and the twisted old woman forged a deep, abiding bond.
 
Unfortunately the same providence that had supplied Fia with a caring counselor also drew her father’s attention to her.
 
For in being reminded of his daughter, Carr noted how pretty she was. If she kept the promise of her childish beauty, one day she would be a prize. It would be a waste not to spend the necessary time cultivating her, ensuring she was a willing accomplice in the future Carr envisioned for her—that future being in London, wed to power. He could not browbeat, belittle, or deride her as he did her brothers, for they were simply cubs to be driven from the pride, his pride, but she … Instead, Carr set about wooing his child.
 
Fia never stood a chance.