Shout-outs
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very entertaining, uplifting read.lcdolphin
Despite happening at the time of the brutal Scottish Clearances, the English Lady, Juliana, and the Scottish man, Logan, manage to fall in love, surpass their misunderstandings, and have their HEA. Very enjoyable read. Highly recommend. (Reviewed in Canada on September 21, 2019)
- Book info
- Sample
- Media
- Author updates
- Lists
Synopsis
A single lady of birth, beauty, and large fortune should not have this much trouble making a match. Yet after two failed betrothals, Lady Juliana Bernard is in a bind. She must find a husband at once or lose guardianship of her beloved niece. The Duke of Blackmore is her last, best hope, but once she tracks him down to Scotland, she receives two pieces of starting news. First, the duke is already engaged. Second, his brother, Logan, wishes to marry her instead.
Wooing does not go well at first. But just as Juliana begins to welcome the boisterous but tenderhearted Scot into her life (and her bed), secrets come between them once more. And it will take a determined husband indeed to ensure that a marriage begun in haste leads not to heartache...but to love.
Release date: September 17, 2019
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Print pages: 320
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Reader buzz
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
Author updates
Close
To Wed a Wild Scot
Anna Bradley
Prologue
Strathnaver, Scotland, 1814
The sun has not yet illuminated the morning sky, but the fires are already burning. The timbered roofs groan and hiss under the assault, but hours pass before the heavy beams succumb to the flames and collapse, still smoking, into the small farmhouse kitchens. It’s not a place for women or children, but they’re there, weeping quietly as they watch their homes reduced to cinders on the ground.
The men aren’t quiet. This is the Scottish Highlands, where men wear the dirt of the land under their fingernails, just as their fathers did, and before them their grandfathers, digging a living from the soil. They’ve earned their fury, their hatred.
Greed, one farmer mutters as charred black fragments of his roof float upward in the hazy predawn sky. Patrick Sellar lit Will Chisholm’s house up with his mother-in-law still inside. Murderers.
Murderers, another farmer echoes, his voice hoarse from the smoke. Robert MacKay’s roof set afire, with his two sick little girls still lying in their beds.
There are no landlords here to witness the destruction. The Countess of Sutherland has sent her factor, Patrick Sellar, to clear the land for the sheepherders who will take possession as soon as the farmers have been driven away. Aside from a barn here and there, Sellar burns every building in his path, so the Cheviot sheep will be free to roam and graze at will.
The men who come to burn the houses, like Sellar, are Scots themselves—sheriff’s officers, constables, and Sellar’s own sheepherders. Their faces are hard, uncompromising as they set their fires in service to Sellar, to the Countess of Sutherland. They came from the south—from England, or the Scottish Borders—on horseback. These men here today with their blazing torches weren’t the first to come, nor will they be the last.
Sometimes they wait until the families leave the farmhouses before they set them alight.
Sometimes they don’t.
Every house in Rosal Township is set ablaze, one after the other. They all burn at once. A gray cloud envelops all of northern Scotland. People as far away as Thurso can taste smoke and ash on their tongues.
Margaret MacKay, Chisholm’s mother-in-law, dies of her burns five days later. A day after her death, the last of the Rosal fires burn themselves out.
In 1814, Logan Blair is twenty-four years old. His father has been dead for a year now. Logan’s clansmen now consider him Laird of Clan Kinross, and so he would be, if a lairdship were determined only by a man’s love for his clan.
Logan has traveled north from County Ross to Kildare, and then further north to Strathnaver, to see for himself if the tales of the devastation of Clan MacKay are true. Before he arrives, he tells himself it can’t be as terrible as he’s been told.
Now, he watches as the haze of smoke from the fires billows against the horizon, turning the sun blood red. Rage coils inside him, hot and ugly, a serpent writhing in his chest. The confusion, the terror, the grief of the people defies description.
The smoke lingers much longer than the people do. The homes, their valued possessions—in some cases even their kin—are left behind in the ashes. Families, entire clans are disbanded. Some board ships to try their luck in North America. Others are relocated to coastal Scotland to scrabble out a hard living as kelp farmers, fishermen, or coal miners.
All of them are devastated.
Greed. Landlords, squeezing Scotland until English pounds fall out.
Highland chiefs, turning on their own people, their own kin.
Logan was raised on Kinross soil, like his father before him, and before his father his grandfather, reaching back for generations. But these lairds are nothing like his grandfather, who fought and died at Culloden. The chiefs today are more English than Scottish, and the laird of Clan Kinross is no different.
All of Logan’s clan claim him as their laird. Not because they don’t know better, but because in every way that matters to them, he is laird. But the Duke of Blackmore owns the castle, and all the land surrounding it. As far as the law is concerned the duke is the true laird, leader of a clan he’s never seen, and doesn’t understand.
A clan he has no love for, and feels no loyalty to.
The Duke of Blackmore is Logan’s maternal uncle. Logan’s twin brother is the duke’s heir. Logan has never spoken to his brother, and he’s never seen him. Years ago, the clan midwife told Logan he and his brother were indistinguishable from each other as newborns—that from the day they emerged from the womb until the day the Duke of Blackmore took his brother away to England, they slept with their tiny hands clasped together.
His brother is half English, half Scot, just as Logan is, but his brother has never set foot on Scottish soil. He’s never worn the Kinross tartan, or chased a Scottish lass through the heather. He was raised as an Englishman, by an Englishman, with an Englishman’s sensibilities. He and Logan share their parents’ blood, but there is no history between them. There are no memories.
His brother has an Englishman’s name.
He was christened Gavin Blair, but now he goes by the name Fitzwilliam Vaughan. When their uncle dies, Fitzwilliam Vaughn will become the sixth Duke of Blackmore.
That’s when he’ll come to Scotland.
It won’t be today, or even tomorrow, but someday he’ll inherit the land, and he’ll come to assess his new properties. Measuring, calculating profits and losses with his every step over Kinross land.
No good ever came of an English aristocrat on Scottish soil. Logan isn’t fool enough to believe Fitzwilliam Vaughan will prove an exception to this rule. Soon enough he’ll discover Cheviot sheep are more profitable than people, and then the evictions will begin. If the future Duke of Blackmore chooses to be merciful, the people might lose only their homes. If he chooses not to be, the more vulnerable among them could lose their lives.
Logan sucks in a breath of air, coughing as smoke fills his lungs. Sellar’s burning party moves on to the next farmhouse, then the next, until the air becomes so heavy with thick black smoke that Logan can’t draw a clean breath.
By the end of it, all of Rosal Township will fall victim to the flames. The fire will devour more than two hundred fifty farmhouses, and scatter their inhabitants to every corner of Scotland and beyond. Later, long after the smoke has cleared, 1814 will be known as an bhliain ar an dó.
The Year of the Burning.
Logan doesn’t stay to watch it happen. He turns his horse’s head and leaves the scene of destruction behind him, but it’s not the last time he’ll see Patrick Sellar.
In 1816, he’ll make the short journey to Inverness, to watch Sellar go on trial for the murder of ninety-year-old Margaret MacKay, burned to death in Rosal Township two years earlier. Despite the evidence against him, Sellar will be found not guilty of the charge.
There are other factors, after Sellar. Other greedy landlords eager to trade their history, their heritage, their kinsman’s lives for a profit. The people will try to fight them, and they’ll lose. The clansmen have no rights. Neither their landlords nor the law will protect them.
When Fitzwilliam Vaughan arrives in Scotland, there will be nothing to stop him from setting fire to every farm on Kinross land.
Nothing, that is, but Logan.
He won’t let it happen. The duke owns the land, but he doesn’t own the people. Whatever Logan has to do—lie, steal, fight—he’ll do it. Laird or not, he’s been raised to protect his clan at all costs.
He won’t let an Englishman destroy Clan Kinross.
Not even if that Englishman is his brother.
Chapter One
Gretna Green, Scotland
Late June, 1818
By the time Lady Juliana Bernard realized something was amiss, her boots and the hem of her riding habit were already splattered with vomit.
Miss Findlay, who’d been looking a trifle green over the past few miles, slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my lady! I’m so dreadfully—”
Sorry.
The word was lost in a faint gurgle, and poor Findlay once again cast up her accounts all over the floor of the carriage. Juliana jerked her feet back to save her boots from another dousing, but it was already too late.
“Oh, dear. I’m excessively mortified.” Miss Findlay sagged back against the squabs, her forehead sheened with sweat. “Oh, and I’ve ruined your boots, and your favorite blue habit!” she wailed, looking as if she were about to burst into tears.
“Now, Findlay, you mustn’t think on it. I have other riding habits. There’s no real harm done.” Juliana reached for her companion’s hand and patted it soothingly. “Indeed, I blame myself. I thought you looked a bit off color. I should have realized you were ill.”
“No, no. I’ll be perfectly well in a moment,” Miss Findlay protested weakly, but her face had gone from green to white, and she was obliged to swallow several times before she dared open her mouth again. “A brief rest, and I’ll be as fit as ever.”
Juliana didn’t argue, but as soon as Miss Findlay’s eyes drifted closed, she leaned out the window and told her manservant, Stokes to stop at the next inn. Miss Findlay had borne up well over the six days of travel between London and Gretna Green, but it was clear the poor thing was exhausted. As anxious as Juliana was to settle her business, she wasn’t quite so wicked as to drag her poor companion another twenty-five miles to Dumfries.
Wicked enough, though.
Miss Crampton, her old governess—a woman of stern propriety and rigid ethical principles—had warned Juliana time and again that every lie was like another bar in a sinner’s prison. Once a lie was told, one never escaped it. It might take years, even decades, but your lies would haunt you in the end.
Juliana shuddered. Miss Crampton had been a terrifying woman to be sure, but she hadn’t been wrong. Juliana had told dozens of lies over the past few weeks—to her father, to her friends, and even to her six-year-old niece, Grace—and now she was being punished for it.
None of this was Findlay’s fault. It was hers. Her toes were now resting in a puddle of vomit because she deserved it.
She dredged up a handkerchief, pressed it to her nose, and fell back against the squabs with a sigh. She must be mad to be chasing Fitzwilliam all the way to Scotland. When he’d left five months earlier he’d promised to write, and so he had—for the first month or so.
Since then he hadn’t replied to any of the dozens of letters she’d sent him.
Not even the most urgent ones.
But Fitzwilliam was her dearest friend, and they’d been promised to each since birth. If a lady in desperate straits couldn’t rely on her betrothed, whom could she rely on?
If she could only find him, all would be well.
But if I can’t…if I can’t…
The trouble was, she wasn’t quite sure where he was. That is, she knew he was somewhere in the vicinity of the Sassy Lassie Inn in Inverness, because he’d told her to send his letters there. He’d answered the first few, so she knew he’d received them. Surely Castle Kinross wasn’t so very far away from the inn? Surely, someone in Inverness would be able to direct her to the castle?
But if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t…
An image of Grace’s face the day Juliana had left her in Buckinghamshire rose in her mind. Grace’s dark eyes—so like Juliana’s brother Jonathan’s—had filled with tears. Since her niece was born, they’d never spent a single day apart. Juliana had done her best to explain to Grace why she had to go, but at six years old Grace understood only that her beloved Aunt Juliana was leaving her behind. She’d clung to Juliana’s skirts, wailing, until her nurse had been obliged to drag her away.
Juliana squeezed her eyes closed and tried to hold off the familiar wave of grief and panic, but it was no use. Her chest tightened, her stomach heaved, and she might well have cast up her own accounts right then and there if Stokes hadn’t signaled the post boys to stop the coach.
She stuck her head out the window to survey the inn, and her stomach gave another threatening lurch. The King’s Head Inn was an indifferent looking place. Not dirty, precisely, but not clean, either, and cramped looking, with only a tiny inn yard and small stables. Juliana opened her mouth to instruct Stokes to go on, but Miss Findlay roused herself, and opened her eyes.
“Are we stopping, my lady?”
Juliana took one look at Findlay’s pallid, clammy face and decided the King’s Head Inn would have to do. “Yes, for a night. It’s another half day to Dumfries. We’re better off staying here and continuing our journey tomorrow.”
Miss Findlay looked so relieved, Juliana’s stomach knotted with guilt. She never should have involved poor Findlay in her mad scheme. “Stokes,” she called. “Secure rooms for tonight, if you would, and order a light supper and bath for Miss Findlay. There.” She gave Findlay a reassuring smile. “You’ll feel much better after you’ve rested a night.”
Stokes grumbled as he dismounted. He was a surly one, but he’d known Juliana since her birth, and was more like one of the family than a servant. Stokes wasn’t at all pleased about their highland adventure, but of all the servants at Graystone Court, he was the least likely to reveal the truth about it to her father. Lord Graystone hadn’t the faintest idea she was in Scotland. He thought she was in Buckinghamshire with Grace, and Juliana was determined to keep it that way. Stokes might grumble and scold a bit, but he’d keep her secret.
The proprietor of the inn was pleased to accommodate her ladyship’s party. Within half an hour Miss Findlay was safely ensconced in an upper bedchamber, awaiting her bath and supper. Juliana saw her settled and bid her to go to sleep, then hurried back down the stairs in search of the inn’s proprietor.
Surly servants, dusty roads, vomit, and ruined boots were unpleasant enough, but finding Fitzwilliam was a much stickier problem, and it became stickier the closer they got to Inverness. They were still several hundred miles away, but surely someone at the King’s Head had heard of Castle Kinross? The innkeeper was the most likely person to help her, but when she stepped into the dining room she found only a handful of dusty travelers taking refreshment there. She hesitated for a few moments, hoping a servant might appear to direct her to her host, but she waited in vain.
“Where in the world is everybody?” she muttered crossly as she made her way down the hallway toward the entryway. Several carriages had arrived while she was upstairs with Findlay, and the ostlers were dodging about, trying to accommodate them all. She ventured out, hoping to find Stokes, but he wasn’t in the yard.
Juliana stepped away from the bustle of guests and servants coming in and out the door, and leaned back against the side of the inn with a sigh. It was a warm day. She closed her eyes, let the sun caress her face, and tried to calm her mind. She’d spent so much of the past few months scurrying from one place to the next it felt strange to be still and let her thoughts go quiet.
She took a few deep breaths until her frayed nerves calmed a little, then began once again to ponder a way out of her dilemma. That is, the dilemma of having come hundreds of miles in search of a man who might not wish to be found.
Not even by her, his dearest friend.
Why hadn’t he answered her letters? Oh, what a fool she’d been to go haring off to Scotland after Fitzwilliam! Even if she did find him, he might refuse to return to England with her. If he’d wanted to come home, he would have done so by now.
Tears gathered under her eyelids, but she fisted her hands and held them back, furious with herself. What good would tears do her now? She was at a shabby inn in Gretna Green, ankle-deep in vomit. It was too late to change her mind now, and even if she could, she wouldn’t. In the end, her decision to come to Scotland had been a simple one. She needed Fitzwilliam’s help, and as surely as she was his dearest friend, he was also hers.
She knew Fitzwilliam, from the exact shade of his blue eyes right down to the size of his boots. She knew every corner of his heart. She couldn’t explain why he hadn’t answered all her letters, but she knew he’d never turn his back on her.
She only had to find him.
Juliana opened her eyes and blinked against the sun. The commotion in the yard had died down, but Stokes still hadn’t turned up. Perhaps she’d just go on to the stables then, and fetch him herself. That way she could be sure he’d secured a post chaise and horses for early tomorrow morning.
She straightened from the wall and had taken two steps toward the stables when a man walking across the inn yard caught her attention. She had no reason to think he was coming toward her, yet she stilled, her breath held, unable to look away.
He was some distance still—far enough so she couldn’t properly see his face, but he was tall and broad, with a headful of long, rather unruly dark hair. Perhaps he was handsome, but Juliana had spent too much time among the ton for a handsome face to unsettle her. London was rife with Corinthians, bucks and dandies, gentlemen of fashion and taste, of intelligence, grace, and uncommon beauty. She’d long since considered herself immune to even the most striking of male specimens.
But there was something about this man—
He looked up then, and Juliana froze, her heart stuttering in her chest. The angular jaw, the strong cheekbones, the square chin—there was only one man in the world with such an arresting face.
Fitzwilliam.
Had she said his name aloud? Had she shouted it, or whispered it?
He was coming toward her, and every part of her tensed to run to him. Every muscle, every nerve screamed at her to throw herself into his arms, but something held her back. Some instinct she couldn’t explain kept her feet rooted to the ground.
He didn’t call her name, or run to her. Why did he hold back? He’d be shocked to find her here, and perhaps angry with her for coming so far. She’d written and told him to expect her, but perhaps he hadn’t received her letter yet, or…
Alarm darted down Juliana’s spine. He didn’t hold himself like a man who was angry, or one who was in shock. He wasn’t stiff, but loose-limbed and graceful—the sort of man accustomed to physical activity, and comfortable in his body.
He didn’t walk like Fitzwilliam.
He drew closer, and closer still. By the time he stopped in front of her, Juliana was so agitated she was sure he could hear her heart thundering in her chest.
He said something to her—something about assisting her—but she could only stare wordlessly up at him, a gasp frozen in her throat.
He wasn’t Fitzwilliam.
He had Fitzwilliam’s brow, his nose, his sculpted cheekbones, but this man was too rough, his features too aggressive, his manner too stern to be mistaken for Fitzwilliam, who was all smooth, polished charm.
He was speaking to her still, but Juliana didn’t try to make sense of his words. She was staring at his hard lips.
His mouth is all wrong.
It was too wide, with a hint of ferocity in the lower lip. His voice was deeper, too, and though not unkind it was raw somehow, as if he were accustomed to barking commands, and had done so a few times too often.
Dear God, who was this man? She might have been looking at Fitzwilliam’s mirror image, but through a cracked glass that distorted the reflection.
He was still talking, saying something about running away, and a missing bridegroom, and Gretna Green…
Gretna Green. The vowels lengthened in his mouth, and his tongue wrapped around the r’s in a distinct Scottish burr. That lilt in his deep, smoky voice made her shiver, as if musical notes were darting down her spine.
He was Scottish. A Scotsman who looked just like Fitzwilliam.
What was happening? She’d never laid eyes on this man before. Fitzwilliam hadn’t ever breathed a word about having family in Scotland, but it was beyond comprehension two men could be mirror images of each other without being related.
Indeed, they looked so much alike, it was impossible not to think they were…
Brothers.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. “I don’t…it doesn’t make sense,” she muttered, dazed.
“He told you he loved you to get you to come with him to Gretna Green, didn’t he, lass? But now he’s gone and left you, hasn’t he?”
Questions were tumbling through Juliana’s mind, knocking everything about and leaving wreckage in their wake, but for some reason, this caught her attention. It penetrated the haze of shock, and a suspicion began to take hold.
Missing bridegroom…left her…Gretna Green…
Oh, no. This Scottish version of Fitzwilliam thought she was a runaway bride!
Well, how absurd. That is, she was aware she wasn’t looking her best at the moment. Her hair was a nest of tangles, her riding habit was creased and dusty, and even the fresh air couldn’t disguise the unpleasant aroma hanging over her like a noxious cloud. Even so, it was ungentlemanly in him to make such an assumption, no matter if she was at Gretna Green.
Juliana drew herself up and fixed him with the most dignified look a lady with vomit on her boots could manage. “Left me? No! I’m not a—” she began, but then clapped her mouth shut before she could do something stupendously foolish.
Like tell him the truth.
Perhaps I am a runaway bride, after all.
Fitzwilliam had a brother. By the looks of it, a twin brother. A twin brother who must know where he was, and who even now was likely on his way to Inverness, and from there, to Castle Kinross.
She could ask him to take her along with him. That would be the simplest approach, but instinct held her back. Fitzwilliam’s brother or not, Juliana didn’t know or trust this man, and she hadn’t the least intention of putting herself under his protection. She’d come too far to risk making a mistake now.
Still, this giant Scot was a precious gift, and he’d just fallen right into her lap. She intended to seize it—him—before he could slip through her fingers. She cast a frantic gaze around the inn yard, praying like she’d never prayed before that she’d find…yes! Thank goodness. There was Stokes, just coming out of the stables. “There’s my husband now.”
She bit her lip as Stokes inched his way across the inn yard. Oh, dear. He didn’t look much like an eager bridegroom. He was hobbling along as if his gout were bothering him again, and even from this distance it was plain to see he was old enough to be her father.
“Him?” The man’s tone was incredulous, but at this point Juliana didn’t care if he found her pretend marriage scandalous. She only cared he leave so she and Stokes could follow him straight to Castle Kinross.
“Yes, indeed. He’s, ah…that is, we’re husband and wife.”
A pair of dark brows too elegant for that rugged face drew together over his eyes. He gave her a long, measuring look. “Beg your pardon then, madam.”
He bowed, and turned away with the sort of shrug generally reserved for stubborn children and barking dogs. Ah, good. He’d clearly washed his hands of her, just as she’d hoped he would.
Juliana kept an eye on him as he mounted a towering gray stallion. As soon as he rode out of the inn yard, she ran to meet Stokes. “Quickly, Stokes! Go back to the stables and secure two horses for us.”
Stokes gaped at her as if she’d lost her wits. “I thought we were staying the night!”
“No, there’s no time. I’ll explain it all once we’re on our way. Go on, hurry, while I run upstairs and have a word with Miss Findlay.”
Stokes hurried off toward the stables while Juliana ran upstairs. She returned a few moments later to find him in the inn yard, waiting for the ostler to bring them fresh horses.
When he saw her, he shook his head. “You don’t expect Miss Findlay to mount and ride today, I hope.”
“No, she can’t. I’m afraid she’ll have to stay behind.” Juliana didn’t like to leave her companion alone at the King’s Head Inn. Findlay was upset, and it wasn’t proper for Juliana to travel without her. Then again, worrying about propriety at this point was rather like buffing a pair of riding boots stained with vomit—a wasted effort.
Poor Findlay was in no shape to chase a vigorous Scotsman from Gretna Green to Inverness. Juliana had no choice but to leave her behind with funds to hire a private coach to take her back to London.
As for her and Stokes…
For most people it was a four-day ride from Gretna Green to Inverness, but Fitzwilliam’s brother looked as if he could do it in three. There was no way they’d be able to keep up with him in the coach. No, they had no choice but to do it on horseback, and take care he didn’t notice they were following him.
It was going to be a long three days.
Still, for the first time since this ill-conceived journey began, hope unfolded in Juliana’s breast. At last, everything was falling right into its proper place.
* * * *
If she hadn’t smelled of vomit, Logan might not have noticed her at all.
If the wind had been blowing to the south rather than the north, or if she’d been standing a few feet further from the doorway, he would have passed by her without a second glance. It wasn’t as if she was the first runaway bride he’d seen at the King’s Head Inn. They all stopped here, the guilty bridegrooms and their ill-gotten spouses.
He’d been dismayed the first few times he’d noticed the brides, especially when they were weeping. It was a six-day journey from London to Gretna Green—more than enough time for a young lady to come to regret her clandestine marriage. Red eyes and tear-stained cheeks weren’t an uncommon sight at the King’s Head.
Like most men, Logan found a lady’s tears deeply alarming, but he’d been back and forth between Scotland and England so many times these past few years, he hardly noticed the brides anymore.
But he noticed her.
She wasn’t crying.
The unmistakable smell of vomit was surprising enough to make Logan pause to glance at her, but it was the absence of tears on that pale cheek that made him stop. What sort of lady was distressed enough to cast up her accounts, but not so distressed she couldn’t squeeze out a single tear?
He didn’t have time to spare for some foolish chit who’d wasted herself on a scoundrel, yet he found himself wandering closer to get a better look at her.
English, of course—they always were. Fair hair, a delicate, heart-shaped face, stubborn chin. Her blue riding habit was creased and dirty, and yes, just as he’d suspected, she was the source of the sour smell. The hems of her skirts were stained with what looked suspiciously like someone’s breakfast.
That she was a runaway bride was beyond question, but she was the most composed runaway bride he’d ever seen. Expensively dressed, too. Her riding habit looked as if it were worth a small fortune.
Or it had been, before she’d vomited on it.
An heiress then, lured into a Gretna Green marriage by some fortune hunter, though for a lady who’d been seduced and ruined, she was remarkably calm.
Logan glanced around the inn yard, but the lucky bridegroom was nowhere to be seen. No servant, either. He waited, but no one approached her.
It was damned odd, but it wasn’t his concern, and he didn’t have time to stand about and wait for the mystery to unravel itself. She didn’t seem at all worried about her situation, so he didn’t see any reason why he should be. . .
Strathnaver, Scotland, 1814
The sun has not yet illuminated the morning sky, but the fires are already burning. The timbered roofs groan and hiss under the assault, but hours pass before the heavy beams succumb to the flames and collapse, still smoking, into the small farmhouse kitchens. It’s not a place for women or children, but they’re there, weeping quietly as they watch their homes reduced to cinders on the ground.
The men aren’t quiet. This is the Scottish Highlands, where men wear the dirt of the land under their fingernails, just as their fathers did, and before them their grandfathers, digging a living from the soil. They’ve earned their fury, their hatred.
Greed, one farmer mutters as charred black fragments of his roof float upward in the hazy predawn sky. Patrick Sellar lit Will Chisholm’s house up with his mother-in-law still inside. Murderers.
Murderers, another farmer echoes, his voice hoarse from the smoke. Robert MacKay’s roof set afire, with his two sick little girls still lying in their beds.
There are no landlords here to witness the destruction. The Countess of Sutherland has sent her factor, Patrick Sellar, to clear the land for the sheepherders who will take possession as soon as the farmers have been driven away. Aside from a barn here and there, Sellar burns every building in his path, so the Cheviot sheep will be free to roam and graze at will.
The men who come to burn the houses, like Sellar, are Scots themselves—sheriff’s officers, constables, and Sellar’s own sheepherders. Their faces are hard, uncompromising as they set their fires in service to Sellar, to the Countess of Sutherland. They came from the south—from England, or the Scottish Borders—on horseback. These men here today with their blazing torches weren’t the first to come, nor will they be the last.
Sometimes they wait until the families leave the farmhouses before they set them alight.
Sometimes they don’t.
Every house in Rosal Township is set ablaze, one after the other. They all burn at once. A gray cloud envelops all of northern Scotland. People as far away as Thurso can taste smoke and ash on their tongues.
Margaret MacKay, Chisholm’s mother-in-law, dies of her burns five days later. A day after her death, the last of the Rosal fires burn themselves out.
In 1814, Logan Blair is twenty-four years old. His father has been dead for a year now. Logan’s clansmen now consider him Laird of Clan Kinross, and so he would be, if a lairdship were determined only by a man’s love for his clan.
Logan has traveled north from County Ross to Kildare, and then further north to Strathnaver, to see for himself if the tales of the devastation of Clan MacKay are true. Before he arrives, he tells himself it can’t be as terrible as he’s been told.
Now, he watches as the haze of smoke from the fires billows against the horizon, turning the sun blood red. Rage coils inside him, hot and ugly, a serpent writhing in his chest. The confusion, the terror, the grief of the people defies description.
The smoke lingers much longer than the people do. The homes, their valued possessions—in some cases even their kin—are left behind in the ashes. Families, entire clans are disbanded. Some board ships to try their luck in North America. Others are relocated to coastal Scotland to scrabble out a hard living as kelp farmers, fishermen, or coal miners.
All of them are devastated.
Greed. Landlords, squeezing Scotland until English pounds fall out.
Highland chiefs, turning on their own people, their own kin.
Logan was raised on Kinross soil, like his father before him, and before his father his grandfather, reaching back for generations. But these lairds are nothing like his grandfather, who fought and died at Culloden. The chiefs today are more English than Scottish, and the laird of Clan Kinross is no different.
All of Logan’s clan claim him as their laird. Not because they don’t know better, but because in every way that matters to them, he is laird. But the Duke of Blackmore owns the castle, and all the land surrounding it. As far as the law is concerned the duke is the true laird, leader of a clan he’s never seen, and doesn’t understand.
A clan he has no love for, and feels no loyalty to.
The Duke of Blackmore is Logan’s maternal uncle. Logan’s twin brother is the duke’s heir. Logan has never spoken to his brother, and he’s never seen him. Years ago, the clan midwife told Logan he and his brother were indistinguishable from each other as newborns—that from the day they emerged from the womb until the day the Duke of Blackmore took his brother away to England, they slept with their tiny hands clasped together.
His brother is half English, half Scot, just as Logan is, but his brother has never set foot on Scottish soil. He’s never worn the Kinross tartan, or chased a Scottish lass through the heather. He was raised as an Englishman, by an Englishman, with an Englishman’s sensibilities. He and Logan share their parents’ blood, but there is no history between them. There are no memories.
His brother has an Englishman’s name.
He was christened Gavin Blair, but now he goes by the name Fitzwilliam Vaughan. When their uncle dies, Fitzwilliam Vaughn will become the sixth Duke of Blackmore.
That’s when he’ll come to Scotland.
It won’t be today, or even tomorrow, but someday he’ll inherit the land, and he’ll come to assess his new properties. Measuring, calculating profits and losses with his every step over Kinross land.
No good ever came of an English aristocrat on Scottish soil. Logan isn’t fool enough to believe Fitzwilliam Vaughan will prove an exception to this rule. Soon enough he’ll discover Cheviot sheep are more profitable than people, and then the evictions will begin. If the future Duke of Blackmore chooses to be merciful, the people might lose only their homes. If he chooses not to be, the more vulnerable among them could lose their lives.
Logan sucks in a breath of air, coughing as smoke fills his lungs. Sellar’s burning party moves on to the next farmhouse, then the next, until the air becomes so heavy with thick black smoke that Logan can’t draw a clean breath.
By the end of it, all of Rosal Township will fall victim to the flames. The fire will devour more than two hundred fifty farmhouses, and scatter their inhabitants to every corner of Scotland and beyond. Later, long after the smoke has cleared, 1814 will be known as an bhliain ar an dó.
The Year of the Burning.
Logan doesn’t stay to watch it happen. He turns his horse’s head and leaves the scene of destruction behind him, but it’s not the last time he’ll see Patrick Sellar.
In 1816, he’ll make the short journey to Inverness, to watch Sellar go on trial for the murder of ninety-year-old Margaret MacKay, burned to death in Rosal Township two years earlier. Despite the evidence against him, Sellar will be found not guilty of the charge.
There are other factors, after Sellar. Other greedy landlords eager to trade their history, their heritage, their kinsman’s lives for a profit. The people will try to fight them, and they’ll lose. The clansmen have no rights. Neither their landlords nor the law will protect them.
When Fitzwilliam Vaughan arrives in Scotland, there will be nothing to stop him from setting fire to every farm on Kinross land.
Nothing, that is, but Logan.
He won’t let it happen. The duke owns the land, but he doesn’t own the people. Whatever Logan has to do—lie, steal, fight—he’ll do it. Laird or not, he’s been raised to protect his clan at all costs.
He won’t let an Englishman destroy Clan Kinross.
Not even if that Englishman is his brother.
Chapter One
Gretna Green, Scotland
Late June, 1818
By the time Lady Juliana Bernard realized something was amiss, her boots and the hem of her riding habit were already splattered with vomit.
Miss Findlay, who’d been looking a trifle green over the past few miles, slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my lady! I’m so dreadfully—”
Sorry.
The word was lost in a faint gurgle, and poor Findlay once again cast up her accounts all over the floor of the carriage. Juliana jerked her feet back to save her boots from another dousing, but it was already too late.
“Oh, dear. I’m excessively mortified.” Miss Findlay sagged back against the squabs, her forehead sheened with sweat. “Oh, and I’ve ruined your boots, and your favorite blue habit!” she wailed, looking as if she were about to burst into tears.
“Now, Findlay, you mustn’t think on it. I have other riding habits. There’s no real harm done.” Juliana reached for her companion’s hand and patted it soothingly. “Indeed, I blame myself. I thought you looked a bit off color. I should have realized you were ill.”
“No, no. I’ll be perfectly well in a moment,” Miss Findlay protested weakly, but her face had gone from green to white, and she was obliged to swallow several times before she dared open her mouth again. “A brief rest, and I’ll be as fit as ever.”
Juliana didn’t argue, but as soon as Miss Findlay’s eyes drifted closed, she leaned out the window and told her manservant, Stokes to stop at the next inn. Miss Findlay had borne up well over the six days of travel between London and Gretna Green, but it was clear the poor thing was exhausted. As anxious as Juliana was to settle her business, she wasn’t quite so wicked as to drag her poor companion another twenty-five miles to Dumfries.
Wicked enough, though.
Miss Crampton, her old governess—a woman of stern propriety and rigid ethical principles—had warned Juliana time and again that every lie was like another bar in a sinner’s prison. Once a lie was told, one never escaped it. It might take years, even decades, but your lies would haunt you in the end.
Juliana shuddered. Miss Crampton had been a terrifying woman to be sure, but she hadn’t been wrong. Juliana had told dozens of lies over the past few weeks—to her father, to her friends, and even to her six-year-old niece, Grace—and now she was being punished for it.
None of this was Findlay’s fault. It was hers. Her toes were now resting in a puddle of vomit because she deserved it.
She dredged up a handkerchief, pressed it to her nose, and fell back against the squabs with a sigh. She must be mad to be chasing Fitzwilliam all the way to Scotland. When he’d left five months earlier he’d promised to write, and so he had—for the first month or so.
Since then he hadn’t replied to any of the dozens of letters she’d sent him.
Not even the most urgent ones.
But Fitzwilliam was her dearest friend, and they’d been promised to each since birth. If a lady in desperate straits couldn’t rely on her betrothed, whom could she rely on?
If she could only find him, all would be well.
But if I can’t…if I can’t…
The trouble was, she wasn’t quite sure where he was. That is, she knew he was somewhere in the vicinity of the Sassy Lassie Inn in Inverness, because he’d told her to send his letters there. He’d answered the first few, so she knew he’d received them. Surely Castle Kinross wasn’t so very far away from the inn? Surely, someone in Inverness would be able to direct her to the castle?
But if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t…
An image of Grace’s face the day Juliana had left her in Buckinghamshire rose in her mind. Grace’s dark eyes—so like Juliana’s brother Jonathan’s—had filled with tears. Since her niece was born, they’d never spent a single day apart. Juliana had done her best to explain to Grace why she had to go, but at six years old Grace understood only that her beloved Aunt Juliana was leaving her behind. She’d clung to Juliana’s skirts, wailing, until her nurse had been obliged to drag her away.
Juliana squeezed her eyes closed and tried to hold off the familiar wave of grief and panic, but it was no use. Her chest tightened, her stomach heaved, and she might well have cast up her own accounts right then and there if Stokes hadn’t signaled the post boys to stop the coach.
She stuck her head out the window to survey the inn, and her stomach gave another threatening lurch. The King’s Head Inn was an indifferent looking place. Not dirty, precisely, but not clean, either, and cramped looking, with only a tiny inn yard and small stables. Juliana opened her mouth to instruct Stokes to go on, but Miss Findlay roused herself, and opened her eyes.
“Are we stopping, my lady?”
Juliana took one look at Findlay’s pallid, clammy face and decided the King’s Head Inn would have to do. “Yes, for a night. It’s another half day to Dumfries. We’re better off staying here and continuing our journey tomorrow.”
Miss Findlay looked so relieved, Juliana’s stomach knotted with guilt. She never should have involved poor Findlay in her mad scheme. “Stokes,” she called. “Secure rooms for tonight, if you would, and order a light supper and bath for Miss Findlay. There.” She gave Findlay a reassuring smile. “You’ll feel much better after you’ve rested a night.”
Stokes grumbled as he dismounted. He was a surly one, but he’d known Juliana since her birth, and was more like one of the family than a servant. Stokes wasn’t at all pleased about their highland adventure, but of all the servants at Graystone Court, he was the least likely to reveal the truth about it to her father. Lord Graystone hadn’t the faintest idea she was in Scotland. He thought she was in Buckinghamshire with Grace, and Juliana was determined to keep it that way. Stokes might grumble and scold a bit, but he’d keep her secret.
The proprietor of the inn was pleased to accommodate her ladyship’s party. Within half an hour Miss Findlay was safely ensconced in an upper bedchamber, awaiting her bath and supper. Juliana saw her settled and bid her to go to sleep, then hurried back down the stairs in search of the inn’s proprietor.
Surly servants, dusty roads, vomit, and ruined boots were unpleasant enough, but finding Fitzwilliam was a much stickier problem, and it became stickier the closer they got to Inverness. They were still several hundred miles away, but surely someone at the King’s Head had heard of Castle Kinross? The innkeeper was the most likely person to help her, but when she stepped into the dining room she found only a handful of dusty travelers taking refreshment there. She hesitated for a few moments, hoping a servant might appear to direct her to her host, but she waited in vain.
“Where in the world is everybody?” she muttered crossly as she made her way down the hallway toward the entryway. Several carriages had arrived while she was upstairs with Findlay, and the ostlers were dodging about, trying to accommodate them all. She ventured out, hoping to find Stokes, but he wasn’t in the yard.
Juliana stepped away from the bustle of guests and servants coming in and out the door, and leaned back against the side of the inn with a sigh. It was a warm day. She closed her eyes, let the sun caress her face, and tried to calm her mind. She’d spent so much of the past few months scurrying from one place to the next it felt strange to be still and let her thoughts go quiet.
She took a few deep breaths until her frayed nerves calmed a little, then began once again to ponder a way out of her dilemma. That is, the dilemma of having come hundreds of miles in search of a man who might not wish to be found.
Not even by her, his dearest friend.
Why hadn’t he answered her letters? Oh, what a fool she’d been to go haring off to Scotland after Fitzwilliam! Even if she did find him, he might refuse to return to England with her. If he’d wanted to come home, he would have done so by now.
Tears gathered under her eyelids, but she fisted her hands and held them back, furious with herself. What good would tears do her now? She was at a shabby inn in Gretna Green, ankle-deep in vomit. It was too late to change her mind now, and even if she could, she wouldn’t. In the end, her decision to come to Scotland had been a simple one. She needed Fitzwilliam’s help, and as surely as she was his dearest friend, he was also hers.
She knew Fitzwilliam, from the exact shade of his blue eyes right down to the size of his boots. She knew every corner of his heart. She couldn’t explain why he hadn’t answered all her letters, but she knew he’d never turn his back on her.
She only had to find him.
Juliana opened her eyes and blinked against the sun. The commotion in the yard had died down, but Stokes still hadn’t turned up. Perhaps she’d just go on to the stables then, and fetch him herself. That way she could be sure he’d secured a post chaise and horses for early tomorrow morning.
She straightened from the wall and had taken two steps toward the stables when a man walking across the inn yard caught her attention. She had no reason to think he was coming toward her, yet she stilled, her breath held, unable to look away.
He was some distance still—far enough so she couldn’t properly see his face, but he was tall and broad, with a headful of long, rather unruly dark hair. Perhaps he was handsome, but Juliana had spent too much time among the ton for a handsome face to unsettle her. London was rife with Corinthians, bucks and dandies, gentlemen of fashion and taste, of intelligence, grace, and uncommon beauty. She’d long since considered herself immune to even the most striking of male specimens.
But there was something about this man—
He looked up then, and Juliana froze, her heart stuttering in her chest. The angular jaw, the strong cheekbones, the square chin—there was only one man in the world with such an arresting face.
Fitzwilliam.
Had she said his name aloud? Had she shouted it, or whispered it?
He was coming toward her, and every part of her tensed to run to him. Every muscle, every nerve screamed at her to throw herself into his arms, but something held her back. Some instinct she couldn’t explain kept her feet rooted to the ground.
He didn’t call her name, or run to her. Why did he hold back? He’d be shocked to find her here, and perhaps angry with her for coming so far. She’d written and told him to expect her, but perhaps he hadn’t received her letter yet, or…
Alarm darted down Juliana’s spine. He didn’t hold himself like a man who was angry, or one who was in shock. He wasn’t stiff, but loose-limbed and graceful—the sort of man accustomed to physical activity, and comfortable in his body.
He didn’t walk like Fitzwilliam.
He drew closer, and closer still. By the time he stopped in front of her, Juliana was so agitated she was sure he could hear her heart thundering in her chest.
He said something to her—something about assisting her—but she could only stare wordlessly up at him, a gasp frozen in her throat.
He wasn’t Fitzwilliam.
He had Fitzwilliam’s brow, his nose, his sculpted cheekbones, but this man was too rough, his features too aggressive, his manner too stern to be mistaken for Fitzwilliam, who was all smooth, polished charm.
He was speaking to her still, but Juliana didn’t try to make sense of his words. She was staring at his hard lips.
His mouth is all wrong.
It was too wide, with a hint of ferocity in the lower lip. His voice was deeper, too, and though not unkind it was raw somehow, as if he were accustomed to barking commands, and had done so a few times too often.
Dear God, who was this man? She might have been looking at Fitzwilliam’s mirror image, but through a cracked glass that distorted the reflection.
He was still talking, saying something about running away, and a missing bridegroom, and Gretna Green…
Gretna Green. The vowels lengthened in his mouth, and his tongue wrapped around the r’s in a distinct Scottish burr. That lilt in his deep, smoky voice made her shiver, as if musical notes were darting down her spine.
He was Scottish. A Scotsman who looked just like Fitzwilliam.
What was happening? She’d never laid eyes on this man before. Fitzwilliam hadn’t ever breathed a word about having family in Scotland, but it was beyond comprehension two men could be mirror images of each other without being related.
Indeed, they looked so much alike, it was impossible not to think they were…
Brothers.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. “I don’t…it doesn’t make sense,” she muttered, dazed.
“He told you he loved you to get you to come with him to Gretna Green, didn’t he, lass? But now he’s gone and left you, hasn’t he?”
Questions were tumbling through Juliana’s mind, knocking everything about and leaving wreckage in their wake, but for some reason, this caught her attention. It penetrated the haze of shock, and a suspicion began to take hold.
Missing bridegroom…left her…Gretna Green…
Oh, no. This Scottish version of Fitzwilliam thought she was a runaway bride!
Well, how absurd. That is, she was aware she wasn’t looking her best at the moment. Her hair was a nest of tangles, her riding habit was creased and dusty, and even the fresh air couldn’t disguise the unpleasant aroma hanging over her like a noxious cloud. Even so, it was ungentlemanly in him to make such an assumption, no matter if she was at Gretna Green.
Juliana drew herself up and fixed him with the most dignified look a lady with vomit on her boots could manage. “Left me? No! I’m not a—” she began, but then clapped her mouth shut before she could do something stupendously foolish.
Like tell him the truth.
Perhaps I am a runaway bride, after all.
Fitzwilliam had a brother. By the looks of it, a twin brother. A twin brother who must know where he was, and who even now was likely on his way to Inverness, and from there, to Castle Kinross.
She could ask him to take her along with him. That would be the simplest approach, but instinct held her back. Fitzwilliam’s brother or not, Juliana didn’t know or trust this man, and she hadn’t the least intention of putting herself under his protection. She’d come too far to risk making a mistake now.
Still, this giant Scot was a precious gift, and he’d just fallen right into her lap. She intended to seize it—him—before he could slip through her fingers. She cast a frantic gaze around the inn yard, praying like she’d never prayed before that she’d find…yes! Thank goodness. There was Stokes, just coming out of the stables. “There’s my husband now.”
She bit her lip as Stokes inched his way across the inn yard. Oh, dear. He didn’t look much like an eager bridegroom. He was hobbling along as if his gout were bothering him again, and even from this distance it was plain to see he was old enough to be her father.
“Him?” The man’s tone was incredulous, but at this point Juliana didn’t care if he found her pretend marriage scandalous. She only cared he leave so she and Stokes could follow him straight to Castle Kinross.
“Yes, indeed. He’s, ah…that is, we’re husband and wife.”
A pair of dark brows too elegant for that rugged face drew together over his eyes. He gave her a long, measuring look. “Beg your pardon then, madam.”
He bowed, and turned away with the sort of shrug generally reserved for stubborn children and barking dogs. Ah, good. He’d clearly washed his hands of her, just as she’d hoped he would.
Juliana kept an eye on him as he mounted a towering gray stallion. As soon as he rode out of the inn yard, she ran to meet Stokes. “Quickly, Stokes! Go back to the stables and secure two horses for us.”
Stokes gaped at her as if she’d lost her wits. “I thought we were staying the night!”
“No, there’s no time. I’ll explain it all once we’re on our way. Go on, hurry, while I run upstairs and have a word with Miss Findlay.”
Stokes hurried off toward the stables while Juliana ran upstairs. She returned a few moments later to find him in the inn yard, waiting for the ostler to bring them fresh horses.
When he saw her, he shook his head. “You don’t expect Miss Findlay to mount and ride today, I hope.”
“No, she can’t. I’m afraid she’ll have to stay behind.” Juliana didn’t like to leave her companion alone at the King’s Head Inn. Findlay was upset, and it wasn’t proper for Juliana to travel without her. Then again, worrying about propriety at this point was rather like buffing a pair of riding boots stained with vomit—a wasted effort.
Poor Findlay was in no shape to chase a vigorous Scotsman from Gretna Green to Inverness. Juliana had no choice but to leave her behind with funds to hire a private coach to take her back to London.
As for her and Stokes…
For most people it was a four-day ride from Gretna Green to Inverness, but Fitzwilliam’s brother looked as if he could do it in three. There was no way they’d be able to keep up with him in the coach. No, they had no choice but to do it on horseback, and take care he didn’t notice they were following him.
It was going to be a long three days.
Still, for the first time since this ill-conceived journey began, hope unfolded in Juliana’s breast. At last, everything was falling right into its proper place.
* * * *
If she hadn’t smelled of vomit, Logan might not have noticed her at all.
If the wind had been blowing to the south rather than the north, or if she’d been standing a few feet further from the doorway, he would have passed by her without a second glance. It wasn’t as if she was the first runaway bride he’d seen at the King’s Head Inn. They all stopped here, the guilty bridegrooms and their ill-gotten spouses.
He’d been dismayed the first few times he’d noticed the brides, especially when they were weeping. It was a six-day journey from London to Gretna Green—more than enough time for a young lady to come to regret her clandestine marriage. Red eyes and tear-stained cheeks weren’t an uncommon sight at the King’s Head.
Like most men, Logan found a lady’s tears deeply alarming, but he’d been back and forth between Scotland and England so many times these past few years, he hardly noticed the brides anymore.
But he noticed her.
She wasn’t crying.
The unmistakable smell of vomit was surprising enough to make Logan pause to glance at her, but it was the absence of tears on that pale cheek that made him stop. What sort of lady was distressed enough to cast up her accounts, but not so distressed she couldn’t squeeze out a single tear?
He didn’t have time to spare for some foolish chit who’d wasted herself on a scoundrel, yet he found himself wandering closer to get a better look at her.
English, of course—they always were. Fair hair, a delicate, heart-shaped face, stubborn chin. Her blue riding habit was creased and dirty, and yes, just as he’d suspected, she was the source of the sour smell. The hems of her skirts were stained with what looked suspiciously like someone’s breakfast.
That she was a runaway bride was beyond question, but she was the most composed runaway bride he’d ever seen. Expensively dressed, too. Her riding habit looked as if it were worth a small fortune.
Or it had been, before she’d vomited on it.
An heiress then, lured into a Gretna Green marriage by some fortune hunter, though for a lady who’d been seduced and ruined, she was remarkably calm.
Logan glanced around the inn yard, but the lucky bridegroom was nowhere to be seen. No servant, either. He waited, but no one approached her.
It was damned odd, but it wasn’t his concern, and he didn’t have time to stand about and wait for the mystery to unravel itself. She didn’t seem at all worried about her situation, so he didn’t see any reason why he should be. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
