Sabrina York

Chapter One

“Lord Tiverton, you are too amusing,” Catherine said. It pained her to feign a titter. She did so abhor titterers. And Tiverton wasn’t amusing—not in the least—but it was the polite thing to say.

She shot a glance at Elizabeth, standing nearby and next to the lemonade table, who batted her lashes in something like sympathy.

Or perhaps in amusement at Catherine’s predicament, the wretch.

Though she was a wonderful best friend, Elizabeth St. Claire was notorious for taking far too much pleasure in her friend’s discomforts. At least when it came to lofty, drooling lords. And there were, indeed, too many of those.

It should not be an awful thing when a lord of the realm sets his eyes on one. Especially a lord as rich as Tiverton.

But he did think his dusty jests were amusing.

And he did have a tendency to spatter when he spoke.

And he did rather smell like old cheese.

Though Catherine was of an age to choose a husband, and of a standing to choose nearly anyone of her liking, Tiverton was not that man. None of the men she met seemed to be that man.

They were all prancing popinjays, landed lords who seemed interested only in horses and gambling.

None of them were tall and braw.

None of them had an entrancing cleft right there on their chin, or dancing blue eyes or a smile that always tipped a little to the left. None of them—

Blast. She was thinking about him again. That beastly man she swore never to think about.

Stiffening her spine and swallowing the slightly bitter taste in her mouth, she re-fixed her focus on Tiverton’s bird-like features and thinning wispy blond hair. Her intensity was hardly forced at all. But before she could make her mind settle on an inane question to ask—one that would stroke his avaricious ego—he caught sight of a friend waving from across the ballroom.

“Oh, I say. There’s Preeble. You will excuse me, ladies?” he asked, though it was hardly a question as the words drained out of his mouth even as he bolted away.

Elizabeth sighed, rather melodramatically if one was to ask. “Well, that was lowering.”

Catherine whirled on her. “Was it?”

“Deserted for a Preeble?” Long black lashes fluttered in that thoroughly annoying way.

“It so happens that I was praying for a Preeble. Or at least something like him.”

Elizabeth’s green eyes widened. “I find that hard to fathom.”

Catherine glowered at her friend, but was unable to hold back the smile behind it. “All right. Not a Preeble, per se.” She glanced over her shoulder at Tiverton’s dearest friend who wore a brocade jacket of the most peculiar shade of puce. At least, she thought it was puce. Hard to tell, puce being puce as it was. “But I was hoping for an excuse to escape that particular conversation.”

“Really?” Elizabeth took her arm and started weaving through the crowd to the ladies’ retiring room. Catherine was more than happy to follow. “I would not have gathered that. Considering what an amusing conversationalist Tiverton is.”

Catherine had to allow that Elizabeth’s faux titter was far superior to her own.

“Perhaps you would like him to court you.” Though Tiverton was too self-absorbed for a woman of Elizabeth’s sharp wits. She would eat him alive. It would not be a fair match. “He does have ten thousand a year.”

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose; somehow it still appeared perfect. An adorable button of a thing. Everything about her was an adorable button of a thing, from her corkscrew ebony curls to her annoyingly delicate toes.

Catherine didn’t mind being tall, especially when she had call to stand up for herself—which she often did with a brother like Peter—but next to Elizabeth, she sometimes felt like a giraffe, all legs and neck.

Only one man had ever made her feel petite and delicate and—

Blast.

Him again.

“Some things are more important than ten thousand a year,” Elizabeth said.

“Tell that to Peter,” Catherine muttered. Elizabeth heard her. She always did.

“You don’t have to marry Tiverton. You don’t have to marry any of them.” All the men her brother had paraded before her with a near desperate frenzy.

“Peter has been insistent.”

“Oh, pish. Your brother probably wants the house to himself, so he can indulge in decadent pursuits without his older sister looking on.”

“That would be so like him.” But in truth, Catherine didn’t understand Peter’s hurry to marry her off. And frankly, it hurt her feelings to think he might want to be rid of her. The only thing that had ever been constant in her life was her family. And now that Papa was gone, that left Peter. The two of them. Together against the world.

And he wanted her . . . gone.

The girls slipped into the elegant retiring room and sat on the plump sofa and Catherine kicked off her shoes. “Ah.”

Elizabeth grinned and did the same. “I do hate these events.”

“As do I. Do you remember when we were younger and we used to dream of dancing all night and being courted by dashing dukes?”

“Life does not turn out the way you want it to, does it?”

“No.” Her tone must have been a tad too maudlin, because Elizabeth laughed. Catherine frowned at her. “What?”

“That face. So telling . . . Lady Tiverton.”

Catherine’s stomach gave a queasy lurch. “Honestly. You should consider him.” It felt so good massaging one foot that she started on the other.

Elizabeth laughed. “It wouldn’t matter. Tiverton would never consider me.”

“Nonsense. Your cousin is a duke.”

“A Scottish duke. To the members of the high ton they hardly count.”

“What idiocy.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “It is the way it is. So, my dearest friend,”—she leaned in and grinned—“Tiverton is all yours. And Preeble too, if you’ve a hankering for one of those.” Her snigger made clear Elizabeth did not.

But then, neither did Catherine. She gusted a sigh. “None of them are very interesting,” she said. Not one of the current crop of eligible partis. It was disheartening, to say the least, especially given Peter’s determination to see her wed.

“You know what the problem is, don’t you?” Elizabeth said.

“Please don’t say inbreeding.”

“Well, there is that. But the fact of the matter is, your father ruined you.”

Catherine blinked. Not what she’d expected to hear. “I beg your pardon?”

“You know what I mean. Dragging you off to Scotland in your formative years—”

“I was twelve.”

“Exactly. Your formative years. The point when a girl decides what is attractive to her. Once that expectation is set . . . you’re lost.”

“I do believe you are babbling.”

“No. I am being perfectly logical. Your concept of the perfect man is skewed. Rather than fall in love with the idea of a handsome lord in a topcoat and superfines, you long for a bare-chested savage in a kilt—”

“I most certainly do not.” Though it was probably her father’s fault, bless his soul, who, after their mother had died, had taken her and her brother to live at his estate, Halkirk Wilds, in the north of Scotland. The kind of man she’d grown up watching would never wear blooming cravats and flutters of lace.

“What was his name again?”

Catherine stilled. Her blood went cold. “Um . . . who?”

“You know who. The man who saved your life. That bare-chested Scotsman.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you are—”

“Oh, please, Catherine. You’re talking to me. Elizabeth. Do you think I’ve forgotten?” She waggled her brows. “Because I assure you, I have not. I remember every story you told me about that glorious Scotsman—”

“He was not glorious. He was a beast.” He had been. A horrible, awful, hideous beast of a man and she never wanted to see him again. And she never would.

She pressed away a flare of unaccountable grief at the thought. After five years, there was no call to lament.

“Oh, yes.” Elizabeth clasped her chest and collapsed back on the sofa pillows. “To be saved by such a glorious man. To be held in his arms. To be kissed—”

“It wasn’t a kiss.” Not really. He’d been blowing air into her lungs. That hardly counted as a kiss.

“I’m sure I would swoon from delight if such a man would hold me.”

“I believe I mentioned I was unconscious. I had drowned after all.”

“But you had to wake up at some point.”

She had. With his lips on hers.

And she’d fallen in love.

A stupid little girl. Thinking a man like him would want her.

He hadn’t.

He’d made it abundantly clear.

* * *

As a matter of fact, he’d gone out of his way to treat her like a little sister after that. Teasing her. Making jokes about how young she was. How innocent she was. How silly she was.

Making sure she saw him kissing pretty Saundra.

How painful. How humiliating that had been.

And then, with no warning, no warning at all, he’d gone. Just disappeared, without even saying goodbye.

That part hurt the most.

Oh, how she hated him.

She hated him even now.

Thoughts of him made a hot tide of mortification wash through her.

Thank God she was in London, and he was far away in Mey or Dounreay or Caithness—wherever he’d gone—eating haggis and kissing Saundras and lobbing cabers at unsuspecting hairy coos.

She would never see him again.

Thank God.

Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.

“Catherine?” Elizabeth touched her hand. For some reason, her friend’s face was blurry. “Catherine, are you all right?”

“All right? Of course. I am lovely. Perfect. Overjoyed.”

Judging from Elizabeth’s expression, those might not have been the right answers. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Yes, yes. Couldn’t be better.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“I’m not.”

“Your cheeks are damp.”

“Nonsense.”

“Perhaps we should go. Shall I find find Aunt Esmeralda and the girls?”

“Oh, no.” The St. Claire family had escorted Catherine to the event tonight because Peter had had plans. She couldn’t bear the thought of ruining everyone’s evening just because she’d gone all wobbly. “I’m fine. Really. It was just . . . a moment.”

“A moment?” It was annoying at times, having a friend who knew one so well, but Elizabeth was gracious and backed down. “Shall I get you a cloth soaked in rose water?”

“That would be lovely.” And it was. The cool cloth relaxed her and helped her push those unwelcome memories back where they belonged. They rarely surfaced any more, but when they did, they burst through in the most undignified way.

One day, Duncan Mackay would be a memory so dim she would have trouble calling his face to mind. This she vowed.

One day.

Who knew how long she would have to wait for that to happen? And how many sleepless nights would she suffer, wishing him dead, before that miraculous day arrived?

* * *

As it so happened, Aunt Esmeralda and the girls—Elizabeth’s sisters, Victoria, Anne and Mary—came to the retiring room to find them. Apparently Esmeralda’s lumbago was acting up and she wished to return home.

Though Catherine had no idea what lumbago was, and though she was truly sorry for Aunt Esmeralda’s discomfort—whatever it was—she was delighted with the reprieve. She wanted nothing more than to go home, crawl into bed and plead megrim for the next few days.

Not that she ever had megrims, but they were very useful in that way.

Men—specifically Peter—were at a loss when a woman had a megrim and would undoubtedly bow to the power of the inscrutable female ailment. Which, of course, meant a day alone, reading in bed, being brought tea and cakes and catered to like the Queen of Sheba.

In Catherine’s mind, she deserved at least that for suffering Tiverton’s presence this evening. And Nordhoff’s the evening before. And the gropings of the intolerable Lord Winterston at Ellie Grantham’s house party last week.

The conversation in the carriage home revolved mostly around Aunt Esmeralda’s lumbaginous aberrations, with a touch here and there on what might be causing her uncontrollable and occasionally unfortunate flatulent winds. Then it circled around, as it often did, to the Duke of Caithness, Lachlan Sinclair.

“I sent him another letter, I did,” Aunt Esmeralda said with a nod.

“Lovely.” Anne, the eldest and always serene, patted her aunt’s hand.

“I’m certain he will bestir himself to come to London and oversee your debut.” Aunt Esmeralda, while delighted to lead her nieces through the season, was getting on in years and had been after the duke to attend his cousins, or at the least, arrange a more energetic chaperone. Keeping up with Elizabeth, she averred, made one bilious.

“Of course he will,” Anne said.

“Perhaps he will bring some Scotsmen with him.” Elizabeth earned a frown from her sisters and aunt for this suggestion, probably on account of the fact that she drooled through it. It was no secret that Elizabeth was fascinated with Scotsmen, which, all things considered, was probably Catherine’s fault. She should never have told her friend those stories about Duncan.

“He most certainly will not bring Scotsmen to escort us,” Anne said with a sniff. “That would hardly be proper.” It was also no secret that Anne had no love for Scotsmen. In fact, her antipathy bordered on aversion.

“I hear they wear nothing beneath their kilts,” Elizabeth said.

Even as Anne gasped in horror, and Victoria in delight, Aunt Esmeralda chuckled. “That is true, my dear,” she said with a reminiscent tone, one that was perhaps a bit too salacious for present company. “Always a lovely surprise for a lass.”

“Aunt Esmeralda,” Anne cried.

“I wasn’t always old,” Esmeralda said, shaking her fan.

“Not in front of Elizabeth. Please. She is too easily influenced.”

“I am not. Victoria is far more suggestible.”

“And Catherine. Lord. What will Peter say when you tell him about this conversation?”

“I don’t intend to tell him,” Catherine assured her, but Anne, being Anne, just went redder in the face. “It’s all right Anne. There is no need to panic.”

“Sometimes I feel like I am the only adult in this family,” Anne sputtered.

Aunt Esmeralda nodded and patted her hand. “Sometimes I feel that way too, dear.”

Elizabeth, Victoria, Mary, and Catherine laughed, but Anne huffed a sigh and pulled her cloak tighter about her—as if that could shield her from the indignity of her kin.

It was a shame the carriage slowed and turned into Ross House just then. Catherine recognized the change of the clatter as the wheels went from rough cobbles to the smooth paving stones her father had brought in from Italy before his death. In moments, they would round the drive and stop before the great doors and Winston would be there to welcome her and this evening would be done.

“Thank you so much for the pleasure of your company,” she said to the St. Claire sisters and then, to Esmeralda, “I do hope you feel better soon.”

“Thank you my dear. Thank you.”

“And, Elizabeth, we must have that ride we talked about.”

“Absolutely. Kipper is chomping for a run.”

“I’ll send you a note tomorrow.”

“Excellent.”

The carriage stopped and the door opened. After a series of quick hugs, Catherine allowed Winston to help her down the steps. Then she turned and waved until the St. Claire carriage rolled out of sight.

She sighed. “Such a lovely evening.”

“Very good, miss.”

“Did you have a nice evening, Winston?” she asked, linking her arm in his. She knew she wasn’t supposed to. It was hardly proper to be familiar with one’s butler, but he’d been their man all her life—coming with them to Scotland and then back to London once more when Papa decided Catherine was old enough for a season. And she did adore Winston. And it was dark. Surely the neighbors weren’t watching.

“It was, ahem, an interesting evening, miss.”

Something in his tone caught her attention. “Interesting?”

“Yes, miss. Your brother is home.”

Catherine’s brows lifted. “So early?” These days, he usually stayed out all night.

“He’s brought a . . . guest.”

Oh dear. Such common words did not usually require such an ominous tone.

“Who?”

“They are awaiting you in the library.”

Egads. More ominous still.

Catherine lifted her skirts and made her way up the stairs and into the house and then, with a brief glance at Winston’s impassive face, headed up to the library.

The library was Peter’s domain for the most part, though he rarely read. It smelled of whisky and cigars and she had long ago rescued the really noteworthy books and made a place for them in her sitting room.

She pushed open the heavy double doors and stepped inside. The room was swathed in shadows caused by the flickering fire in the hearth; the lamps had been extinguished.

And the room appeared to be empty.

“Peter?” she called, her voice wafting like a wraith through the gloom.

Her heart slowed as a premonition caressed her. The tiny hairs on her arms prickled. Silence beat with every thrum of her heart.

From the darkness before the fire, a figure rose.

Catherine shivered at the sight of it. Though she could not make out his features, something in her gut told her who it was. And her blood went cold.

“Ah, Catherine,” he said in that languorous, lilting brogue she knew so well and hated so much. “Home at last.”

And then, as he lifted his glass to her, he stepped into the light and her heart stalled.

It was him. Duncan Mackay.

The last man on earth she expected to see.

She had no idea why her knees failed her.