If You Desire by Mara (1)

 

 

 

“Hugh?” she murmured in a daze.

“What do you plan to do with me?”

 

 “I’ve something on my mind,” he said, setting her on his bed, following her down. As he leaned above her, his dark hungry gaze flickered over her, and his voice broke low. “Something I need tae see.”

 

 He rubbed an unsteady hand over his mouth, looking like a man in agony. His body seemed to thrum with tension. Frowning, she brought her palms up to cup his face, but he groaned and shuddered, even at that slight touch. What was happening here?

 

 For all the books she’d read, for all that she’d heard from her cousins and learned in London, she’d never imagined a man behaving like this—as though he were about to die from desire, pained with a need so great he could scarcely speak and could barely stand to be touched.

 

 Hugh slowly reached forward to brush her nightdress straps down her shoulders, then dipped a kiss to her collarbone. Just as she felt cool air on her breasts and belly, he hissed something in Gaelic, and sank back on his haunches to stare. She felt his gaze on her bared skin like a touch and arched her back for him.

 

 Leaning forward once more, lowering his head, he rasped,“Mercy….”

 

 Acclaim for Kresley Cole!

 

 “One of romance’s fastest rising stars!”

 

 —Romantic TimesMagazine

 

 “With a captivating brand of passion all her own, Kresley Cole is destined to be a star of this genre!”

 

 —The Romance Readers Connection

 

 And praise for her novels…

 

 IF YOU DARE

 

 “Filled with heated passion and wonderful repartee.”

 

 —Romantic TimesMagazine

(Reviewers’ Choice Award Winner)

 

 “Cole’s voice is powerful and gripping, andIf You Dare is her steamiest yet!”

 

 —New York Timesbestselling author Linda Lael Miller

 

 “A deliciously entertaining read that kept the sexual tension high!”

 

 —Romance Designs

 

 THE PRICE OF PLEASURE

 

 “A splendid read! The sexual tension grips you from beginning to end.”

 

 —New York Timesbestselling author Virginia Henley

 

 “Sexy and original! Sensual island heat that is not to be missed.”

 

 —New York Timesbestselling author Heather Graham

 

 “Savor this marvelous, unforgettable, highly romantic novel by a fresh voice.”

 

 —Romantic TimesMagazine (Top Pick)

 

 THE CAPTAIN OF ALL PLEASURES

 

 “An exciting, sensuous story that will thrill you at every turn of the page.”

 

 —readertoreader.com

 

 “Electrifying…. Kresley Cole captures the danger and passion of the high seas.”

 

 —New York Timesbestselling author Joan Johnston

 

 “Fast-paced action, heady sexual tension, steamy passion…. Exhilarating energy emanates from the pages…very smart and sassy.”

 

 —Romantic TimesMagazine

(Reviewers’ Choice Award Winner)

 

 A HUNGER LIKE NO OTHER

 

 “A unique romance—it truly stands on its own!”

 

 —New York Timesbestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon

 

 “Not just a romantic read…it’s a powerful experience!”

 

 —The Best Reviews

 

 “With intense action, devilishly passionate sex and fascinating characters,A Hunger Like No Other leads readers into an amazing and inventive alternate reality. Hot stuff!”

 

 —Romantic TimesMagazine (Top Pick)

 

 Books by Kresley Cole

 

 The Captain of All Pleasures

 

 The Price of Pleasure

 

 If You Dare

 

 A Hunger Like No Other

 

 No Rest for the Wicked

 

 

 Available from Pocket Books

 

 

 

 An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

 

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

 

 

 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

 

 Copyright © 2007 by Kresley Cole

 

 All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

 

 ISBN: 1-4165-2500-9

 

 POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

 

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 Cheers to the very real “sensation seekers,”

a virtually unrecognized breed of Victorian,

wild enough to imbibe, partake, and

cavort with reckless abandon

—and wily enough never to get caught by history.

 

 Discipline is nothing more than avoiding consequences.

Ultimately, disciplined men will always prevail.

 

 —Hugh Logan MacCarrick

 

 Bringing a strong man to his knees is simple.

It’s keeping him there that’s the tricky business….

 

 —Jane Farraday Weyland

 

 Prologue

 

 The Kingdom of Morocco, North Africa

1846

 

 “Take the shot, MacCarrick!” Davis Grey ordered yet again. His tone was harsh, but low enough not to give away their vantage, concealed high in the desolate headlands of the Atlas Mountains.

 

 Hugh ignored him. This was to be his first kill, and he knew that once he committed this deed, there was no going back—a weighty decision for a man of only twenty-two years.

 

 He would do it when he was bloody ready.

 

 Taking his eye from the telescopic sight, Hugh released his rifle with one hand and ran his forearm over his face, wiping away the sweat and sand that stung his eyes like needles. Summer was upon them, and the surreal blue of the sky stretched relentlessly, unmarred by clouds. Hugh squinted against the light of a white, indistinct sun.

 

 “Why in the hell are you hesitating?” Grey bit out. “It’s noon.” The sun was directly above, casting the fewest shadows of the day. Shadows mocked a gunman’s truest aim.

 

 Hugh didn’t want to disappoint the older Grey, his mentor of sorts. Grey was Hugh’s only real friend outside of the MacCarrick clan, and the only person Hugh would spend time with, apart from his brothers. And apart from an auburn-haired lass Hugh would kill for. He gave a bitter laugh, adjusting his rifle against his shoulder.

 

 In a way, he was killing for her.

 

 To take out a stranger in cold blood was to cross a line. Which was what he wanted.

 

 “Goddamn it, MacCarrick!” Grey yanked his own rifle and its detached refractor scope from his leather holster, assembling them. “It’ll take us four more weeks to get a shot like this again.”

 

 That was true. The traitor knew he was marked for assassination for his treason and had been running for a month, before holing up in the abandoned Berber farm far below them. In this part of the world, even a battered, flat-roofed hut like the one below had a courtyard for a private oasis, and the man sat within it. He faced the courtyard’s only entrance with a pistol in his lap and a shotgun by his side, yet he was unguarded from above.

 

 The shot was clear, but both of them knew Grey could never hit a target so far away. Where Grey’s preferred weapon was a blade, Hugh had been hunting and target-shooting since he’d been old enough to lift a rifle. Besides, Hugh wanted to act soon while the man was still alone. “I’ll do it,” Hugh grated, sliding a glance toward Grey. He refused to believe he saw excitement there in the man’s expression. This was a job, a foul task. Grey couldn’t enjoy this.

 

 Hugh turned back and took a bead once more. The wind was light, but the target was more than a quarter of a mile away. The glare of the sun was an environmental factor, and the nearly four feet of his gun barrel were heated, as was the single bullet inside the chamber. He took all of this into account.

 

 He stroked his forefinger over the trigger guard before placing his sensitive fingertip at the trigger, beginning a ritual he performed with every shot, almost unconsciously. With his other hand gripping the forestock, he rubbed his thumb twice over the wood, then froze halfway through an exhalation of breath.

 

 The press of the trigger was smooth; the report was like a cannon boom in his ears, louder, for some reason, than all the times he’d shot while hunting.

 

 Nearly two seconds later, the bullet pierced the man’s forehead and cast him to the ground. Blood seeped out from the back of his head, soaking the gravel, and his legs twitched in death, stirring a cloud of dust at his feet.

 

 It’s done, then.

 

 Hugh was done.

 

 There again, he saw something like pleasure in Grey’s eyes. “I’ve never seen anyone shoot like you, Scot.” Grey slapped him on the back, then took a swig from the flask he always kept near, grinning against the opening.

 

 All Hugh felt was disgust and a strange sense of relief.

 

 They mounted up quickly, then rode hard down winding mountain trails. An hour after they reached the valley, they neared a village and slowed.

 

 “When we get back to London,” Grey began, still jovial, still excited, “I’m going to tell Weyland that you’re ready to go out on your own.”

 

 Hugh’s expression must have revealed his uneasiness with Grey’s buoyant mood.

 

 “Don’t look at me like that, MacCarrick. You do this for as long as I have, and we’ll see if some part of you doesn’t come to love it.”

 

 Love it?Hugh shook his head and quietly said, “It’s a job. Nothing more.”

 

 “Trust me.” Grey’s smile was knowing. “It’ll be something more—when it’s all you have….”

 

 One

 

 London, England

1856

 

 Ahardened killer, denied his obsession for a decade.

 

 That was what Edward Weyland was bringing back into his daughter’s life with one cryptic message: Jane is in grave danger.

 

 Since receiving Weyland’s missive in France two days ago, Hugh had read and reread it with fingers gone white from clutching it in fury.

 

 If anyone had dared to hurt her…

 

 Now, after days, and nights, riding like hell was at his heels, Hugh had finally reached the Weyland town house. He slid down from his saddle and nearly toppled over, his legs gone boneless from so many hours on horseback. His mount was as winded as Hugh, its coat lathered and its barrel chest twitching.

 

 As Hugh approached the side door, where he always entered, he encountered Weyland’s nephew, Quinton Weyland—who also did work for Weyland—sprawled along the stairs.

 

 “Where’s Jane?” Hugh demanded without preamble.

 

 “Upstairs,” Quin said, seeming preoccupied and even somewhat dazed. “Getting ready for…for her night out.”

 

 “She’s safe?” When Quin nodded absently, relief sailed through Hugh. Over the hours alone on the road, his mind had conjured too many ways she could be in grave danger . He’d prayed she hadn’t been hurt, that he wasn’t too late. Now that Hugh had been assured of her safety, the hunger and thirst he’d ignored for two days began to gnaw at him. “Who’s watching her now?”

 

 Quin answered, “Rolley’s inside, and I’m trailing her tonight.”

 

 Rolley was Edward Weyland’s butler. Most butlers in the exclusive enclave of Piccadilly were older with a hint of grandeur about them, denoting experience and the longevity of a family’s fortunes. Rolley was in his mid-thirties, wiry, his nose shapeless from being broken so many times. His fingers were scarred from his incessant use of steel knuckles. Hugh knew the man would die for Jane.

 

 “Is Weyland here?” Hugh asked.

 

 Quin shook his head. “Not getting in till late. He said if you somehow managed to get here tonight, to tell you he wants to see you in the morning to give you all the details.”

 

 “I’m going in—”

 

 “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

 

 “Why the hell no’?”

 

 “For one thing, your clothes are covered with dirt, and your face looks like hell.”

 

 Hugh ran a sleeve over his cheek, remembering too late the jagged cuts marking his skin.

 

 “For another, I’m not sure Jane would want to see you.”

 

 Hugh had ridden nonstop for days, and his body was a mass of knotted muscles and aching old injuries. His head was splitting. The idea of being near her again had been all that kept him going. “That does no’ make sense. We used to be friends.”

 

 Quin flashed him an odd expression. “Well, she’s…different now. Completely different and completely out of control.” He caught Hugh’s eyes. “I don’t know that I can take another night of it.” He shook his head forcefully. “No longer. Not after what they did last night….”

 

 “Who? Did what?”

 

 “The Eight. Or at least, three of them. Two of whom are my sisters!”

 

 Society’s notorious Weyland Eight consisted of Jane and her seven female first cousins. Remembering the brazen antics they’d encouraged Jane to take part in, Hugh felt his irritation building.

 

 “But this is no’ what I’ve been brought here for?” Hugh had abandoned his injured younger brother Courtland in France and nearly killed his new horse, a fine gelding that had been a gift for a service he’d rendered. “Because Weyland needs someone to rein her in?”

 

 Surely Weyland wouldn’t be so foolish as to call Hugh back for this. Weyland knew what Hugh was, of course. He was Hugh’s superior and dispatched him to deliver deaths in the name of the Crown. But then, Weyland had no idea how badly Hugh coveted Jane. Nor for how long.

 

 An obsession. For ten bloody years…

 

 Hugh shook his head. Weyland would never have exaggerated the danger in his missive.

 

 “Weyland didn’t tell you what’s happened?” Quin’s brows drew together. “I thought he sent you a message.”

 

 “With little information. Now, what in the hell—”

 

 “Bloody hell!” Rolley came barreling through the doorway. “Bloody, bloody hell! Quin! Have you seen her?”

 

 “Rolley?” Quin shot to his feet. “You’re supposed to be watching her until she leaves.”

 

 The butler cast Quin a scowl. “I told you she knew we’d been following her. She must’ve gone out the window. And got that saucy maid of hers to walk about, tryin’ on dresses in her room.”

 

 “She’s gone?” Hugh lunged for Rolley and fisted his hands in the man’s shirt. “Where’s she going and who’s she with?”

 

 “To a ball,” Rolley said, but immediately glanced at Quin.

 

 Hugh gave Rolley a shake, knowing he was risking Rolley’s swift uppercut, usually accompanied by those steel knuckles.

 

 “Go ahead,” Quin said. “Weyland tells him everything anyway.”

 

 “She’s goin’ to a masquerade with Quin’s sisters and one of their friends.”

 

 “What kind of masquerade?” Hugh asked, though he had a good idea.

 

 “Libertines and courtesans,” Rolley said. “In a warehouse on Haymarket Street.”

 

 With a grated curse, Hugh released Rolley, then forced his legs to cooperate while he crossed to his horse—which seemed to eye him with disbelief that their journey wasn’t over yet. Gritting his teeth at his tightened muscles, Hugh mounted.

 

 “You’re goin’ after her?” Rolley asked. “We’re just supposed to follow her. Weyland doesn’t want her to know yet.”

 

 “MacCarrick, rest,” Quin said. “I’m sure they took a hansom, and the traffic will be mad. I’ve got time to saddle up and beat them there—”

 

 “Then follow, but I’m going now.” Hugh reined around. “Best tell me what I’m up against.”

 

 Quin’s grave expression made Hugh’s fists clench around his reins.

 

 “Not what, but who . Weyland thinks Davis Grey’s on his way to kill her.”

 

 Two

 

 At his first sight of Jane in nearly ten years, Hugh forgot to breathe. The pain in his body, the hunger and fatigue went unnoticed.

 

 He strode headlong after her, shadowing her group from a parallel alley as they strolled down Haymarket after alighting from their hansom.

 

 At the mere mention of Grey, Hugh was determined to take Jane from this place—

 

 A massive hand clamped on his shoulder and yanked back. “Could’ve planted a knife in your back a dozen times these last ten minutes,” a deep voice intoned from behind him. “Losing your touch?”

 

 “Ethan?” Hugh wrenched his arm back, throwing off his older brother’s grip, then swung a lowering glance at him. “What are you doing here—”

 

 “Christ, what happened to your face?” Ethan interrupted.

 

 “Explosion. Falling rock.” Hugh had been caught in a shower of slate in a battle down in Andorra just days ago—the same battle Courtland had nearly lost his leg in.

 

 “Now answer the question.”

 

 “Went by Weyland’s. Caught Quin just as he was readying to leave,” he replied. “And lucky thing I did. It’s no’ like you to be so careless in a place like this. What are you thinking?”

 

 “I’m thinking I’m taking Jane home.”

 

 “Weyland only wants her followed. Stop shaking your head—Grey has no’ made England yet.” When Hugh remained unconvinced, Ethan said, “And he might no’ make it here alive. So just calm yourself and take your nursemaid duty like a man.”

 

 “Is that what I’ve been called back here for? Why would Weyland want me?”

 

 “He seemed to think I would unnerve Jane while protecting her,” Ethan said casually. His scarred face had been known to scare women. “And that Quinton is only qualified to divest certain foreign ladies of certain critical secrets. No, Weyland needed a gunman. And you know Grey best.”

 

 Hugh returned his attention to Jane, who was at that moment passing the cross-street where he stood concealed, so close he could hear her throaty, sensual voice, but couldn’t make out the words. She was clad in a rich green dress with a plunging neckline that bared her alabaster shoulders and revealed how much fuller her body had become. Her face was partially covered by a mask of dark green feathers that fanned out to the sides, like the wings they’d been plucked from.

 

 In that dress and that mask, she looked…wanton.

 

 He wasn’t even surprised when cold sweat dotted his forehead. He’d always reacted physically to her. He remembered well the symptoms he’d endured that last summer he’d spent with her—the thundering heart, the need to swallow half a dozen times a minute, the stifled shudders of pleasure at her lightest touch.

 

 One of her soft whispers in his ear could make him bite back a groan….

 

 “Is Courtland back in London with you?” Ethan asked.

 

 Without looking away from her, Hugh said, “I had to leave him behind when I got the missive from Weyland. Court injured his leg and could no’ ride fast enough.”

 

 “Where did you leave him?” Ethan snapped. “Far enough away fromher , I hope.”

 

 Hugh had been charged with more than just seeing Court back to England—he was supposed to make sure that Court didn’t have second thoughts and return for his woman, Annalía Llorente. “I left him in France. Court will no’ go back for her. He understands what he’ll do to her if he returns,” Hugh said confidently enough, though he had to wonder. Court yearned for his lass so badly it was palpable. But Hugh hadn’t had a choice except to abandon him, not after learning Jane was in danger. “What the hell is this I’m hearing about Grey?” Hugh asked. He had counted the man a friend until the last couple of years.

 

 “Weyland sent him on a suicide mission. That failed.”

 

 That got Hugh to face Ethan. “Were you a part of that?” Sometimes, most times, he wished Ethan had never been recruited with himself by Weyland.

 

 Ethan gave him a chilling half smile—distorting the whitened scar winding down his face—the sneer that now seemed to say,Brother, had I been, there would be no failure . Then he replied, “I was no’, but I did volunteer to take him out. Weyland seemed to think I was personally too involved, and declined.”

 

 “You volunteered?” Hugh asked in disgust.

 

 Ethan shrugged, unconcerned. “Well, go on. Doona let me stop you from overtaking their little coterie once more so you can see her from the front.”

 

 Hugh scowled, but Ethan was well aware of his desire for Jane—there was no use denying it. “Have no’ seen her in years,” he bit out defensively as he strode down the side lane with Ethan following. “Curious about her.”

 

 “It’s like a carriage wreck I can see coming from a mile away,” Ethan muttered. “First Court with his lass and now you with Jane—again. Thankfully, I remain immune.”

 

 Hugh ignored his comment, settling into another dark spot farther up the street. “Why is Weyland so certain he’ll target Jane?”

 

 “Grey wants revenge,” Ethan said simply. “He’ll destroy what’s most precious to the old man.”

 

 Just then, Jane laughed at something one of her cousins said, and Hugh returned his gaze to her. She had always been quick to laugh—a quality that was foreign to him, but one that had beguiled him. She’d told him once, while cupping his face with her delicate hand and gazing up at him solemnly, that she promised to laugh enough for both of them, if need be.

 

 “So now Grey plans to kill Jane,” Ethan murmured over his shoulder, “seeks to slit her throat like he’s done with other women. Only now it seems he’s got a real taste for it. Likes to make it last.”

 

 “Enough,” Hugh grated, still staring at Jane’s soft smile. The idea that Grey needed to be taken out permanently had never sat well with Hugh, even as he understood it might be the only course. No longer would he be reluctant.

 

 “I wager that right about now, you wish my offer to kill Grey had been accepted,” Ethan said, easily reading him. “But no’ to worry, little brother, it certainly has now. Weyland will do anything to protect her.”

 

 Ethan jerked his chin at Jane, faced Hugh, then did a double take back to the girls, only to stare. A disquieting interest flickered in his eyes, then flared—all the more unsettling to Hugh because it was completely unfamiliar.Interest? In Ethan’s deadened eyes?

 

 At once, Hugh’s fists clenched. Was Ethan casting that hungry look at Jane?

 

 Hugh had him shoved against a building wall, his forearm lodged against Ethan’s neck, before he’d even realized his own intention. They used to fight constantly when younger, and had mutually called a truce when the two determined they were getting better at it and could easily kill each other.

 

 Hugh was ready to resume hostilities.

 

 Unaffected by Hugh’s ready violence, Ethan gave him a weary look. “Rest easy. I’m no’ ogling your precious Jane.”

 

 After a long moment, Hugh released him, believing him, although it was hard to understand how any man would not be battling lust for her. “Then what held your attention?” Still he was looking over Hugh’s shoulder, and Hugh followed his gaze. “Claudia? The one in the red mask?” That would fit Ethan. Hugh remembered Jane telling him Claudia possessed a wild and wicked nature.

 

 When no answer came, Hugh turned back. “Belinda? The tall brunette?”

 

 Ethan shook his head slowly, never taking his eyes from the object of his attention—the third girl, a short blonde wearing a blue mask, whom Hugh didn’t recognize.

 

 Since the injury to his face, Ethan had seemed to lose interest in so many things—including chasing skirts, as he’d once been wont to do. Now, it was as if years ofsomething , some kind of need, rushed to the fore.

 

 Ethan, it seemed, was not immune.

 

 The unusual notice shocked Hugh. “I doona know her, but she must be one of Jane’s friends. And she looks young, no’ more than twenty. Too young for you.” Ethan was an old,old thirty-three.

 

 “If I’m as bad as you and Court and all of the clan believe, then I’ll find her that much more enticing for it, will I no’?” In the blink of an eye, Ethan’s hand shot out to snare a passing masquerade-goer’s domino. The man opened his mouth to object, took one look at Ethan’s ominous expression, and darted away.

 

 “Doona toy with her, Ethan.”

 

 “Afraid I’ll ruin your chances with Jane?” Ethan asked as he donned the mask. “Hate to remind you, brother, but they were ruined before you even met her. And you’ve got a book to prove it.”

 

 Shadowed to walk with death…

 

 “Your fate is just as grim as mine,” Hugh reminded him, “yet you’re going after a woman.”

 

 “Ah, but I’m in no danger of falling in love with her”—he turned to stride into the masquerade, tossing over his shoulder—“so it’s no’ likely my dallying will get her killed.”

 

 With a grated sound of frustration, Hugh followed him in.

 

 Three

 

 Abrick dropped into a reticule was a necessary evil when touring Haymarket Street, Jane Weyland knew, but the drawstring strap was murder on her wrist.

 

 As Jane and her companions—two intrepid cousins and their visiting friend—waited impatiently in queue for admission to the Haymarket warehouse, Jane shifted the bag to her other hand yet again.

 

 Though tonight was by no means their first foray to tickle a bit at London’s dark underbelly—their decadent haunts included the east-end gaming dens, the racy stereoscopic pictorial shows, the annual Russian Circus Erotisk—the lascivious scene that greeted them gave even Jane pause.

 

 A horde of courtesans fronted the warehouse like a painted, and aggressive, army. Masked, well-dressed patrons, in clothing that screamed stock-exchange funds or old-money tweed and university, perused the wares, physically sampling before deciding which one, or ones, they would sponsor and escort inside.

 

 “Janey, you’ve never told us what brought about this change of heart about attending,” her cousin Claudia said in a light tone, no doubt trying to relax the others. “But I’ve a theory.” She must dread that the others would back out. Raven-haired “Naughty Claudie,” tonight sporting a scarlet mask, lived for thrills like this.

 

 “Do tell,” said her sister Belinda, a heads-and-tails opposite of Claudia. Belinda was brilliant and serious-minded, here tonight for “research,” and not euphemistically. She planned to expose “egregious social inequities,” but wanted to write with authority on the subject of, well, the other side of inequity. Already, Jane could tell, Belinda was eyeing the scene in terms of reform from behind her cream-colored mask.

 

 “Did we need a reason to come,” asked the mysterious Madeleine Van Rowen, “other than the fact that this is a courtesans’ ball?” Maddy was a childhood friend of Claudia’s who was visiting for a few weeks. She was English by birth, but now lived in Paris—a seedy Parisian garret, if rumors were to be believed.

 

 Jane suspected that Maddy had journeyed to London to call on an old friendship and see if she could snare Claudia’s older brother, Quin. Jane was not at all perturbed by this. If Madeleine could get Quin to settle down and marry, then she deserved him and all his money.

 

 In fact, Jane genuinely liked the girl, who fit in with their set perfectly. Jane, Belinda, and Claudia were three of the Weyland Eight—eight female first cousins notorious for adventures, pranks, and general hijinks—and were the only ones born and bred in London. Like all young Londoners who had coin in their pockets, they spent their days and nights recklessly pursuing all the modern pleasures to be had in this mad city, and all the old sins still on offer, within reason.

 

 Jane and her cousins were moneyed, but not aristocratic. They were gently bred but savvy, ladylike but jaded. Like Jane and her cousins, Maddy knew how to take care of herself and seemed perfectly at ease in the face of this risqué masquerade.

 

 As if revealing a great secret, Claudia said, “Jane’s finally going to accept that gorgeous Freddie Bidworth’s proposal.”

 

 Guilt flared, and Jane adjusted her emerald green mask to disguise it. “You’ve got me all figured out, Claudie.” She and Freddie Bidworth were an item of sorts, and everyone assumed Jane would eventually marry Freddie—including him. But Jane had yet to accept the rich, handsome aristocrat.

 

 And she feared she never could.

 

 That conclusion was what had brought about her change of heart tonight concerning the masquerade—she needed something to get her mind off the conundrum she found herself in. At twenty-seven, Jane knew prospects like him would only become more and more scarce. And if she didn’t marry Freddie, then whom? Jane knew the train was leaving the station, yet she couldn’t board.

 

 She’d told her cousins she wavered because of Freddie’s horrid mother and sister. In truth, she’d hesitated because, her upstanding father excepted, she didn’t trust men.

 

 Over the last couple of years, Jane had begun to realize she’d been ruined. Not socially ruined. No matter how badly the Weyland Eight behaved, they never could seem to manage that coup, since her unassuming father, a mere businessman, had an inexplicable influence with the aristocracy and powerful government figures. Invitations continued to arrive, even as the cousins shook their baffled heads.

 

 No, a black-haired Scot with a deep, husky voice and intense eyes had ruined Jane—though he had never touched her, never even kissed her, no matter how much she’d teased and tempted him.

 

 Belinda frowned at Jane. “You’ve come to terms with Bidworth’s family?”

 

 “Yes, I believe so,” Jane replied carefully. “I’ve just been moving slowly with something so important.” Slowly? Freddie had asked her the first time nearly a year ago.

 

 “Are these wild oats we’re sowing, Jane?” Maddy asked, making Jane wonder how wild any oats would seem to a woman from the not-nice part of Paris. Sometimes on their nightly thrill-seeking adventures, Maddy had appeared…bored. “A last hurrah?”

 

 “Did we need a reason to come,” Jane said wryly, repeating Maddy, “other than the fact that this is a courtesans’ ball?”

 

 Luckily, they’d reached the bottleneck of the entrance, where a burly attendant with a pig mask and a shining pate accepted the steep admission price, so the subject was dropped. As the four labored to keep their skirts from being dirtied in the crush, Jane tendered a guinea apiece for everyone—mainly to pay for Maddy and not hurt her pride.

 

 Though Maddy was attired in a lavish sapphire gown, Jane had seen the girl’s trunks in Claudia’s room and knew her stockings and underthings had been mended and remended. Her jewels were paste. Maddy spoke of French mansions and elegant parties, but Jane suspected she was nearly destitute. Sometimes the girl had a back against-the-wall air about her.

 

 Once the attendant waved them through, Jane blithely crossed the threshold with the others close behind. Inside the warehouse, masses of perfumed bodies swarmed around the edges of the central dance floor, or waltzed to the jaunty music of a seven-man band. Legally, this place was termed an “unlicensed dance hall.”

 

 Those in the know called it “the Hive.”

 

 If the outside of the Hive had been rough and unassuming, the interior was lush. The walls were silk papered, and expensive-smelling incense burned, oozing a flat layer of smoke that floated just over the heads of the crowd. Along the walls were massive murals, hanging from shiny brass chains and painted with nymphs and priapic satyrs in lurid poses. Beneath the murals were Persian rugs with pillows cast about. There, women kissed lechers and fondled them artfully through their breeches—or were fondled in return.

 

 Anything more, Jane surmised, was taken to the rooms lining the back wall.

 

 Happily married Belinda murmured, “Just look at what these women are forced to do to earn their coin.”

 

 “Earncoin ?” Claudia breathed, feigning ignorance. “You mean you can…? Ah! And to think I was doing it for free!”

 

 Belinda glared, because twenty-eight-year-old Claudia was, in fact, carrying on a torrid affair with the family’s groom. “Claudia, you might try doing itwhile married .”

 

 An exhibit, of sorts, silenced all of them—halting yet another sisterly row.

 

 Men and women with shaven bodies covered in a layer of clay posed as statues, motionless even when admiring patrons cupped and weighed body parts.

 

 “This was so worth attending,” Claudia said with a quirked eyebrow, gaze riveted to the well-endowed and muscle-bound men.

 

 Jane had to agree. Nothing like naked, real live statues to distract the mind from thoughts of marriage, ticking clocks, and rumbling-voiced Scotsmen who disappeared without a word.

 

 Their group had little time to admire the scene as the crowd, circling the warehouse like a current, pushed them along. When they passed a table where a half-naked debauchee in a fox mask served punch, they each eagerly swooped up a glass, then made for the wall to get out of the traffic.

 

 Jane drank deeply. “Well. No one told us coverage from the waist up was optional—for both sexes,” she observed as another half-clad woman sauntered by, breasts bouncing as she smiled flirtatiously up at her. Jane gave her a saucy wink back, as was polite. “Otherwise,” Jane continued dryly, “I might have opted for a lower-cut bodice and a bigger brick.”

 

 Maddy sniffed her glass with a discerning expression, then took a hearty drink just as Claudia raised her own and said, “I’m just glad to be at a ball with punchI don’t have to spike.” Having seen her older brother Quin doing that once and noted the raucous results, Claudia never failed to bring flasks to staid gatherings.

 

 When a middle-aged roué exposed himself to the Persian-rug women and they laughed, Belinda harrumphed. She shoved her glass at Jane so she could surreptitiously take notes, like a first-year plebeian might write up boys’ school demerits. Jane shrugged, placing her own finished glass on a tray, and started on Belinda’s.

 

 She nearly choked on the last sips as she spied a towering man in a long black domino pushing through the crowd, clearly searching for someone. His build, his stride, the aggressive set of his lips just beneath the fluttering veil drop of his mask—everything about him reminded her of Hugh, though she knew it couldn’t be him. Hugh wasn’t in London.

 

 But what if it had been him? Sooner or later, he would have to return to the city, and they would run into each other. It was possible she might seehim on the carpets, with his knees falling open and eyelids growing heavy as a woman’s skilled hand rubbed him. The thought made Jane drain Belinda’s cup. “Going for more punch,” she mumbled, suddenly longing to be away from the warm throng of bodies.

 

 “Bring us back some more,” Claudia called.

 

 “A double,” Maddy added absently. She was watching the tall man wending through the crowd as well.

 

 As Jane made her way toward the punch table, she recognized that the restless feeling in her belly that she continually battled had grown sharply worse. Ever since she could remember, she’d been plagued by an anxiety, as if she were missing something, as if she were in the wrong place with greener grass calling to her. She felt an urgency about everything.

 

 Now, after regarding the man who was so like Hugh, and imagining Hugh being serviced by another woman, she felt anurgency for fresh air. Else she’d lose her punch.

 

 Once she had glasses in hand, she returned to the group to see if they wouldn’t mind going outside—

 

 But Maddy wasn’t there.

 

 “I turned around and she was gone,” Claudia said, sounding not too concerned. Maddy had a habit of slinking off whenever she felt like it. The more she did it, the more Jane realized Maddy didn’t find environments like the Hive threatening.

 

 “Shall we start looking on the dance floor?” Jane asked with a sigh.

 

 The three began maneuvering through the crowd. Unfortunately, Maddy was short and had an uncanny way of blending in. A half an hour passed, and they still hadn’t spotted her—

 

 A shrill whistle rent the din; Jane’s head jerked up. The band whimpered to a lull.

 

 “Police!” someone yelled just as more whistles sounded all around them. “It’s the bloody peelers!”

 

 “No, no, that isn’t possible,” Jane said. These dance halls always paid off the police! Who in the devil had forgotten the “payment for protection”?

 

 All at once, waves of screaming people clambered toward the back entrance, jostling them. The Hive was suddenly like a bottle turned upside down with the cork pulled out. The entire building seemed to rock as people fled, colliding with Jane and her cousins until a current of bodies separated them.

 

 Jane battled to reach them, but was only forced back. When Belinda pointed to the back door, Jane shook her head emphatically—that way out was choked with people. They would be crushed to death. She’d rather get nicked and have her name printed on the page of shame in the Times .

 

 When Jane lost sight of her cousins completely, she backed to the wall—stunned to find herself separated and completely alone. The wave of people continued to swell until Jane was engulfed again. Unable to find a clear spot or an empty corner, she felt the world spinning out of control.

 

 Two hands shoved against her back, sending her careening. She whirled around, swinging her reticule. She garnered a split second’s worth of room but connected with nothing, and the momentum tore her reticule down and off her wrist. Gone. Her money, her makeshift weapon…

 

 The next push didn’t take her by surprise, but someone else was standing on her dress hem. Jane flailed her arms, helpless to stop herself from being pitched to the ground.

 

 At once, she attempted to scramble up, but her skirts had spread out over the floor like the wings of a framed butterfly, pinned there by the stampede. Over and over, she fought to rise, but always new boots trapped her skirts.

 

 Jane darted her hands out between ankles, yanking at the material with desperate strength, struggling to gather her dress about her legs.

 

 She couldn’t catch her breath under the press of people. How had this night gone so wrong—

 

 A boot came straight for her head. To dodge it, she rolled toward the wall as far as she could, but then, even over the commotion, she distinctly heard the eerie ping of metal.

 

 Looking up with dread, she saw one of the hanging murals directly above her, swaying wildly. The brass chain holding it had an opened link that was straightening under the massive weight.

 

 Like a shot, the link popped, and the chain lashed out like a whip. The mural came crashing down.

 

 Four

 

 When Davis Grey chased the dragon, he had no dreams.

 

 In that hazy twilight of opium, the pain in his body ebbed; no longer could he see the faces of the men, women, and children he’d killed.

 

 Chasing the dragon, Grey thought with a weary exhalation, staring at the paint chipping across the ceiling of his hidden east London loft. What an appropriate saying to describe the habit—and his life.

 

 In the past, the smoke had quelled the rage in his heart, yet finally his need for revenge had overpowered even opium’s sweet pull.

 

 He rose in stages from his sweat-dampened bed, then crossed to the basin to splash water over his face. In the basin mirror, he studied his naked body.

 

 Four crusting bullet wounds riddled his pale chest and torso, a constant reminder of the attempt on his life. Though it had been six months ago since Edward Weyland, for whom Grey had killed faithfully, had sent him to his own destruction, the wounds still hadn’t healed completely. Though half a year had passed, Grey could remember perfectly the order in which he’d taken each bullet from a trio of Weyland’s hungry, younger killers.

 

 Yet somehow Grey had survived. He’d lost much muscle, but he still possessed a wiry strength—enough to enact his plans.

 

 He ran a finger down his chest, skating around the wounds in fascination. Perhaps Weyland should have sent his best man for the kill. But then Weyland always spared Hugh MacCarrick the altering jobs, the ones that changed a man forever.

 

 Those tasks should have been split between Grey and Hugh, but Weyland carefully meted out each one. Hugh was dispatched to kill people who were out-and-out evil, dangerous people who often fought for the lives Hugh sought to take. Grey executed the variables, the peripherals. Toward the end, Grey hadn’t been very particular if children got in the way.

 

 In dreams, he saw their glassy, sightless eyes.

 

 Weyland, that bloody bastard, didn’t even send Hugh to kill me.

 

 That galled Grey more than anything, scalding him inside.

 

 Soon Grey would deliver his retribution. Weyland treasured only one thing in this world—his daughter, Jane. MacCarrick had loved her from afar for years. Take away Jane, and two men would be destroyed, forever.

 

 A little work had ensured that Weyland and his informants knew Grey was stirring. Cunning and two deaths had ensured that they thought Grey was still on the Continent. Weyland would already have sent for his best gunman to protect his precious daughter.

 

 Good. Hugh should be there to see Grey end her life. Both MacCarrick and Weyland should know the searing purity of grief.

 

 There was power innate in having nothing left to lose.

 

 Years ago, Weyland had said that Grey was suited for his occupation because he possessed no mercy, but he’d been wrong then. Years ago, Grey wouldn’t have been able to happily slit Jane’s pretty throat. Weyland wasn’t wrong now.

 

  

 

 With a shriek, Jane rolled out of the way just as a corner of the mural hammered into the floor directly beside her. She didn’t have time to gape at how close it had been because more charging people overwhelmed her. She couldn’t breathe. With a cry, she ducked her head down, raising an arm over her face.

 

 Seconds later, Jane lowered her arm, brows drawn in confusion.

 

 The crowd was parting around her instead of treading over her.

 

 At last, she had room to maneuver, a fighting chance….

 

 She’d be damned if she’d be killed by the very spectacle she’d come to leer at! Finally able to gather her skirts, she made another wobbling attempt to rise, and lurched to her feet. Whirling around, she lunged forward.Free!

 

 No! Brought up short, she dropped to her front with a thud. She crawled on her forearms, but realized she was crawling in place. Something still anchored her. More people coming in a rush—

 

 The middle-aged roué she’d seen earlier dropped bodily to the ground beside her, holding his bleeding nose, staring up horrified at something behind them. Before she could even react, another man went flying over her, landing flat on his back.

 

 Suddenly, her skirts were tossed up to the backs of her legs, and a hot, calloused hand clamped onto her thigh. Her eyes went wide in shock. Another hand pawed at her petticoats, ripping them.

 

 “Wh-what are you doing?” she screeched, her head whipping around. With her mask askew and her hair tumbling into her face, she could barely see the man through the shadows of a jungle of legs all around them. “Unhand me this instant!” She jostled the leg he held firmly.

 

 With the back of her hand, she shoved her hair away, and spied another flash of her attacker. Grim lips pulled back from white teeth as if in a snarl. Three gashes ran down his cheek, and his face was dirty.

 

 His eyes held a murderous rage.

 

 The visage disappeared as her attacker bolted to his feet and felled another oncoming patron, before dropping down beside her once more. His fist shot up at intervals as he ripped again at her petticoats.

 

 She realized he’d finally stopped—when he swooped her up onto his shoulder.

 

 “H-how dare you!” she cried, pummeling his broad back. She vaguely noted that this was a bear of a man who’d lifted her with the ease of plucking lint from a lapel. The body she was looped over was massive, the arm over her heavy and unyielding. His fingers were splayed, it seemed, over the entire width of her bottom.

 

 “Don’t go this way! Put me down!” she demanded. “How dare you paw at me, ripping at my undergarments!” As soon as she’d said the last, she spotted the remains of her petticoats pinned beneath a mural with a jaunty satyr covering a nymph. Her face flamed.

 

 With his free arm, the man sent patrons careening. “Lass, it’s nothing you have no’ shown me before.”

 

 “What?” Her jaw dropped.Hugh MacCarrick? This murderous-looking fiend was her gentle giant of a Scot?

 

 Returned after ten years.

 

 “You doona remember me?”

 

 Oh, yes, she did. And remembering how she’d fared the last time the Highlander had drifted into her life, she wondered if she mightn’t have been better off trampled by a drunken horde.

 

 Five

 

 Outside, instead of following the general flight down Haymarket, Hugh immediately ducked down a back alley behind a gin palace, then set her on her feet.

 

 Before she could say a word, he began pawing her again. “Were you injured?” he barked. While she could only sputter, he pulled up her skirts again to check her legs, then rose to fist his hands around her arms, dragging his palms down them from her elbows to wrists to fingers, checking for breaks, sprains. Amazingly, she felt herself to be unharmed.

 

 “Jane, say something.”

 

 “I…Hugh?” Somehow he was here for her, though she scarcely recognized him. It was Hugh, but it wasn’t . “I-I’m all right.” Soon, yes, soon , she would catch her breath and stop gazing up at him.

 

 How many times had she imagined their first time meeting after so long? She’d envisioned herself coldly sighing and spurning him as he begged her to marry him. He would plead for forgiveness for abandoning her without a word.

 

 How different reality was proving.Of course , Jane would be quite foxed and capable of little more than dumbly staring. Oh, yes, and fresh from a police raid and near death by stampeding.

 

 As he lightly tweaked her crooked mask, he exhaled a long breath. “Ah, lass, what in the hell were you thinking, coming here?” Though his looks were altered, his voice was the same—that deep, rumbling brogue that used to make her melt.

 

 Buying time to collect herself, she drew back and brushed off her torn skirts. “This would have been perfectly safe if the proper bribes had been paid.”

 

 “Is that so?”

 

 “Quite.” She nodded earnestly. “I’m writing a letter to management.” She could tell he couldn’t decide if she was serious or not. Jane did have a tendency to joke at inappropriate times.

 

 When she began untying her mask, he said, “Keep that on for now. Till I get you in a cab—”

 

 More whistles sounded, and a harsh horn trumpeted the arrival of a police wagon. Hugh took her hand and strode forward, quickly putting distance between them and the warehouse—and her group.

 

 “Hugh, you must stop. I have to go back!”

 

 He ignored her.

 

 When she tried to dig in her heels, he easily pulled her along. “Hugh! My cousins and my friend are still back there.”

 

 “They’re fine. But if you go back in your condition, you’ll get arrested.”

 

 “In my condition?”

 

 “Drunk.”

 

 “Well, since you’ve addressed it, I will tell you that, in my condition , the idea of going back to save my friends feels imperative and quite achievable.”

 

 “Will no’ happen.”

 

 The alley finally ended, and they reached a cabstand. So Hugh was sending her home for the night? Perfect. She’d let the cabbie go a block, and then she’d get out and return.

 

 As ever, a score of drivers geared up to jockey and wrangle for the fare. But Hugh held up one finger with a look that subdued even this lively bunch, then pointed to the nicest-looking cab. The chosen cabbie eased his vehicle over, all obliging.

 

 Hugh tossed Jane inside, then turned to direct the driver to his mount on the next street over. When she realized Hugh was accompanying her, Jane opened the opposite door and heedlessly climbed out.

 

 “Damn it, Jane.” He loped around the carriage after her, swooping her to his side with his arm around her waist.

 

 She was being carried again and could do little more than drunkenly blink behind her mask.

 

  

 

 “Your friends are safe,” he repeated as he tossed her back in, keeping a fist in her skirts as he joined her. He slammed one door, then reached over her to slam the other. Once they’d begun to roll along, he finally relaxed a fraction.

 

 He’d never forget catching sight of her inside, then seeing her disappear in that swarm of people. Never, not as long as he lived.

 

 “How do you know they’re safe?” she demanded.

 

 “I saw Quin go in, no’ five minutes before me. And trust me, Quin will no’ let his sisters stay to look for you.”

 

 Jane’s eyes narrowed. “What was he doing there?”

 

 “He suspected his sisters would attend.”

 

 She quirked an eyebrow, glancing out the window in the direction of the warehouse. “Really?” When she said the word slowly like that with her proper English accent, it always sounded like “raaaally.”

 

 Oh, yes, she was very suspicious. She hadn’t climbed out her window tonight for no good reason.

 

 She suddenly gasped, facing him. “B-but we were separated from Maddy!”

 

 “Is she the blonde in the blue dress?”

 

 “You noticed her?” Jane stilled. “I didn’t think blondes were your type.”

 

 He frowned at her tone. “Apparently, they’re my brother’s. Ethan is intent on the lass and went in to…talk to her.” Even after Hugh had followed him inside and warned him yet again not to seek out the girl, Ethan was undeterred. “Your friend Maddy—”

 

 “Madeleine. Madeleine Van Rowen.”

 

 Van Rowen. The name hit him. His brother could not be lusting after that one. What in the hell would Ethan do when he discovered whose daughter she was?

 

 “Your friend will be fine.”At least from the crowd and the police. “Ethan will no’ let her be hurt.”By anyone else . “But when you see her again, you might want to warn her about Ethan. He’s no’ the most honorable of men.”

 

 Another understatement. Hugh would like to say Ethan had changed after he’d received the injury to his face. Or when his fiancée had died the night before their wedding. But Ethan had always been a rough, roguish sort, showing a marked indifference to feelings and forming few attachments even as a young man.

 

 “Oh.” Then she frowned. “Actually, Hugh, you might want to warn your brother about that one. Little Maddy’s not as sweet and helpless as she looks. I’d worry more about Ethan.” He cast her a doubting expression, but she ignored it and said, “So, both Quin and your brother were there. I wonder, what were you doing in a place like that?” When Hugh simply shrugged, her lips thinned. “No need to answer, I can imagine. Curious, though, that you’re not scandalized that I was there.”

 

 Did she want him to be? Of course, he hated it, hated that she was in a place so rife with danger. “Nothing you do could shock me, Jane.”

 

 “No comments on my behavior?”

 

 “You’re a woman grown, are you no’?”

 

 “Hugh, you don’t have to interrupt your night’s revelry just to take me home.” Her tone was almost cutting. “And there’s another establishment very like the Hive, not too far away. I could give you directions. Much amusement for a man to have inside.”

 

 “I dinna go for that,” he answered quietly.

 

 “Then why on earth were you there?”

 

 He studied the window beside her as he muttered, “Heard you might be.” He glanced back at her. Her sudden smile was as baffling as it was devastating to him. Never taking her eyes from his, she untied her mask. Somehow she made that small movement sensual—as if she were undressing her body for him alone.

 

 Want tightened his every muscle, and he leaned closer to her, even as instinct screamed for him to ease away.

 

 She dropped the mask; he stifled a curse. Goddamn it, how could she have grown more beautiful? He’d hoped he might have imagined how lovely she’d been. He’d thought she would have lost the first blush of youth, the fire in her personality diminishing. Seeing her again now, he knew these qualities would never fade.

 

 An old question arose for the thousandth time: Would he have been better off never having met her?

 

 Right now, he believed so, yet he was still greedy for the sight of her, studying her face at leisure, savoring.

 

 Her eyes were that changeable, intoxicating green. Her cheekbones were high, her nose slim and pert. In the cab’s flickering lamplight, her loosened hair appeared dark, nearly black, as it curled all around her face and shoulders, but it was actually a deep auburn. Her lips were plump, and on the one occasion he’d dared stroke his thumb over them, he’d been amazed at how soft and giving they’d been—

 

 “Do I pass muster?” she murmured breathlessly with a slow, easy grin that made his heart punch the insides of his chest.

 

 “As ever.” He fought not to touch a curl that teased her cheek, taunting him.

 

 “You, however, are quite dirty,” she said with a disapproving glance at his clothes. “And your face is cut up.” Were her words slurring worse? “Hugh, whatever have you gotten into?”

 

 “I’ve ridden for days on end.” He hadn’t taken time to heal and sure as hell hadn’t stopped for ablutions when he’d believed she was in danger. But how badly he wished he looked successful, as wealthy as he’d finally become. Any man would want to appear rich and powerful to the woman he desired. Instead, Hugh was injured, his clothing covered in road grime.

 

 Appear successful ? Right now, he’d accept clean.

 

 “And what brings you to London?” she asked.

 

 You. Finally, I’ve permission to see you. Hugh had never lied to her before. Yet the last time he saw her, he’d been a decade younger and still concerned with honor. No longer.

 

 He opened his mouth to speak, but the facile lie he’d prepared refused to escape his lips. So, he told her the truth. “Your father sent for me.”

 

 “Important business?” she asked, gazing over at him with an understanding expression.

 

 Staring at her, he searched for his voice, finally grating, “You canna imagine.”

 

  

 

 Jane had been quaking with jealousy at the thought of Hugh sampling the pleasures of the Hive—and at the possibility of his interest in Maddy. Jane had no objection to Maddy snagging her cousin Quin, the only male in Jane’s entire Weyland generation, solely for his money.

 

 But the idea of Hugh together with Maddy had made Jane want to claw her eyes out.

 

 Then came Hugh’s quiet admission. His words had softened her, undermining her guard.

 

 “How do you feel, Sìne?” he asked.

 

 Sìne was the Gaelic form of Jane—he pronounced it Shee-ah-na and had never seemed to realize that he always said it as if it were an endearment. Her eyes nearly fluttered closed with pleasure at the name rolling from his tongue. That brogue would be the death of her.

 

 “Lass, are you shivering?”

 

 “Too much excitement,” she said, though she knew that wasn’t why she shook. Even if the crush hadn’t scared her witless, even if seeing him once more hadn’t stunned her, she’d still be reduced to shivers by the way he said her name in his language.

 

 “Hugh, someone really ought to see about these.” Before thinking better of it, she lightly touched the backs of her fingers to the three marks on his face, but he flinched as if burned.

 

 “Did I hurt you?” She laid her hand on his arm, but he slowly shrugged away. “I’m sorry.”

 

 “No bother.”

 

 Then why had he shifted as far away from her as possible on the bench and turned away without a word? As he stared out the window, eyes subtly darting over the street as though searching for something, she took the opportunity to study him.

 

 She couldn’t decide whether the years had been kind or unkind to Hugh. He’d grown larger than he’d been at twenty-two, which was saying something, considering his strapping build even then. He was perhaps six and a half feet tall, still towering over her own five and a half feet, but now his body seemed packed with even more muscle. He was a man in his prime, and the years had honed the strength of his body.

 

 Virile, masculine, rough. All the qualities she’d loved about him before had now become magnified—his heroic actions tonight were proof of that.

 

 Yet if his body had benefited by the years, his face had not. Those three long gashes carved his cheek, and a furrow was etched between his brows. A raised scar marred the side of his neck. And his brown eyes seemed darker, as if the flecks of warm amber that she’d loved to stare at had been extinguished.

 

 As she’d discovered tonight in the melee, Hugh looked…dangerous. The steady, grave Hugh she’d known had become an intense man—an alarming man.

 

 But he also looked markedly unhappy. Wherever he’d been without her for all this time, he hadn’t been content. She could have made the brooding Highlander happy these past years. That was all she’d ever wanted. Just a chance to—

 

 “DoI pass muster?” he asked quietly, facing her.

 

 Striving for politeness, she replied, “The years have been kind.”

 

 “No, they have no’. And we both know it.” His gaze flickered over her. “At least they have for one of us.”

 

 Her hot blush of pleasure flustered her. Luckily, she was saved from having to reply when the cab stopped for Hugh’s horse. The poor animal looked as road-weary and fatigued as Hugh, but Jane could tell that under the layer of dust the animal was exceptionally fine with an unusual build and markings.

 

 After Hugh had tethered the horse to the back of the hansom, and he’d rejoined her, she said, “You’re lucky someone didn’t steal a horse like that. Why didn’t you take it to the city stables a block away?”

 

 “I dinna have t—” He broke off, seeming irritated. “I just dinna.”

 

 “Oh. I see,” she said with a frown. After several moments of silence, she ventured to make conversation with him. Her home was only fifteen minutes away, but as the ride was filled with clipped, awkward exchanges—between two who used to be so at ease with each other—it seemed the longest of her life.

 

 Mercifully, they arrived at last. When Hugh put his hands to her waist to help her down, he seemed to linger, then kept his palm across her back as he escorted her to the front door.

 

 “I don’t have a key.” Jane patted her skirts as if she had pockets. “I lost my reticule tonight.”

 

 “Rolley will be awake,” Hugh said, but he didn’t make a move to knock. He looked like he was about to say something, but whatever he saw in her eyes made him fall silent.

 

 There they stood at the door facing each other, each seeming to await something. Could he see how much she yearned for an apology, or, at the very least, an explanation? The moment stretched out interminably.

 

 Hugh, if you were ever going to make things right between us, now would be the time. But he didn’t. Instead, his eyes grew intent, and his brows drew together.

 

 He’s going to kiss me! she vaguely comprehended, her breaths growing shallow. For the first time? Now?

 

 Anger simmered inside her. He didn’t deserve her kisses. He could have had them freely for the last ten years.

 

 He leaned in….

 

 Without even an apology? Her palm itched to slap him—

 

 At the last instant, the door swung open. “Thought I ’eard something,” Rolley said, standing tense in the doorway.

 

 Hugh drew back and had to cough into his fist to rasp to her, “Go inside now. I’ll see you in the morning when I return.”

 

 “Seeme ?” She blinked up at him. “Whatever for?”

 

 Six

 

 Jane’s cousins called him Hugh “Tears and Years” MacCarrick.

 

 Because she’d wasted an inordinate amount of each on him.

 

 Now that the giddy rush of seeing him again—and the effects of the deceptively potent punch—had worn off, she stared into her dressing table mirror, combing out her hair after her bath. When her eyes glinted in the glass, Jane realized she was about to go wasting even more. She laid down her brush beside the message from Claudia saying they’d all gotten home safely, then put her head in her hands. She shoved the heels of her palms against her eyes, as if that would stem the tears.

 

 Countless nights crying and years of her life she’d squandered. Jane—who knew how precious time was!

 

 When Jane was only six, her mother had died from a lung inflammation, and since then Jane had never been content . Perhaps she knew too well that she could never take for granted a single second, and that was what made her restless. Perhaps she was simply never meant to experience a feeling of complete satisfaction.

 

 She burned to travel, to experience exciting new places—but was it wanderlust, or the yearning to be wherever she wasn’t at the time? Ten years ago, with Hugh at her side, that anxious feeling had dimmed to a point where she could ignore it. She couldn’t explain why.

 

 Then he’d left her behind without a word.

 

 She’d grieved for him, longed for him, and had wasted nearly half of her life on him.

 

 Damn him, no more, she swore to herself, and yet still she replayed their history in her mind, seeking, as usual, some answer as to what she’d done to drive him away….

 

 “The Scotsman is mine.”

 

 Jane had made that declaration to her cousins with her very first look at him. Her heart had stuttered, and she’d decided then that she would be the one to make him happy so his eyes wouldn’t be so grave. She’d been thirteen and he’d been eighteen.

 

 He and his brothers had come down from Scotland to summer at their family’s lake house, Ros Creag, which shared a broad cove with Vinelands, her family’s. When she’d charged up to him to introduce herself, he’d chucked her under the chin and called her “poppet,” and it sounded wonderful the way he said it with his brogue. He was kind to her, and she followed him everywhere.

 

 At her urging, her father had also visited and befriended the reclusive brothers, though they seemed to want to have nothing to do with the rest of the merry Weyland brood. Somehow he persuaded them to come back down the following summer, delighting her. Since he had no sons, Papa was set on recruiting them to work in his import business.

 

 By the end of the next season at the lake, whenever she got a bee sting or splinter she ran to Hugh alone.

 

 Her fifteenth summer they returned again, but Hugh spent most of the time frowning at her, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her. When she’d turned sixteen, just when she’d started to fill out, he’d avoided her entirely. He’d decided to work for her father, and spent all his time with him at Ros Creag, discussing the business.

 

 She’d cried from missing her big, solemn Scot. Her cousins told her she could have anyone and that they didn’t want her pining over “that rough MacCarrick,” but upon seeing she would not be dissuaded, they’d suggested she play dirty—and her cousins had known what they were talking about. Their saying was, “Man bows before the Weyland Eight. And if he won’t bow, we’ll make him kneel.”

 

 Claudia had said, “Now we scheme, Janey. By next summer, we’ll make sure you have low-cut dresses, soft as-silk hands”—she grinned a devilish grin—“and a shameless demeanor. Your Highlander won’t know what hit him.”

 

 But he didn’t come the next summer, leaving Jane devastated. Until that one night when luck was with her, and he’d arrived with an urgent message for her father. Whatever could be pressing about relics and antiques, Jane couldn’t fathom.

 

 Before he could ride off again, she made sure he saw her, and he gaped as if he didn’t recognize her. A single night’s stay had turned into two, then three, and he couldn’t seem to spend enough time with her.

 

 Her older cousins had taught her much in the previous year, and every day he was there, she teased and tormented him for the days he hadn’t been.

 

 She’d learned that whispering in his ear could make his eyes slide shut and his lips part, and that running her fingers through his hair as she hugged him could make him hiss in a breath. As often as she could, she’d coaxed him to swim with her—especially after that first time, when he’d frozen in the middle of shrugging out of his shirt to silently watch her removing her skirt and blouse, until she was in naught but stocking, garters, and a chemise. After they swam, Jane—never one for modesty—had slipped from the water in the transparent garment. She’d followed his rapt gaze on her body before he finally jerked his face away. “Hugh, can you see through?”

 

 When he’d turned back to her and given her a slow nod, his eyes dark, she’d said, “Well, darling, if it’s only you.” She’d noted that it had taken him a very long time before he’d been able to get out of the water that day.

 

 During what would prove to be their last afternoon, they’d been lying side by side in the meadow, and she rolled on top of him to tickle him. He despised it when she tickled him, and for hours afterward was surly and tense, his voice husky.

 

 But that time, instead of shaking her off, he reached up and tugged her ribbon loose to free her hair. “So fair,” he rasped as he ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “But you know that well, do you no’?”

 

 She leaned down to kiss him, intending not the torturing little kisses on his ear before she whispered to him, or the brushing of her lips on the back of his neck that she’d been giving him all summer. She wanted her first real kiss.

 

 But he took her shoulders and pushed her up, grating, “You’re too young, lass.”

 

 “I’m almost eighteen, and I’ve already had marriage offers from men older than you.”

 

 He scowled at that, then shook his head. “Sìne, I’m leaving here soon.”

 

 She smiled sadly. “I know. That’s what you do when summer’s over. You go back north to Scotland. And every winter I miss you very much until you return to me here.”

 

 He just stared at her face as if memorizing it.

 

 Jane had never seen him or heard from him again. Not until this night.

 

 She’d been so convinced Hugh would marry her—it had been a foregone conclusion for her—that she’d only been counting the days until Hugh deemed her not too young. She’d believed in him so much, certain they would be together. Yet he’d known he was going to work abroad for years, had known he was leaving her behind. It had been a conscious decision on his part, and he hadn’t even told her why.

 

 He hadn’t asked her to wait for him, or given Jane her chance to make him happy.

 

 And now, ten years later, she stared into the mirror, watching the tears roll down her face….

 

 Tonight, the women Jane had seen at the masquerade had hard eyes for all their swagger and flirting. They were bitter, but it wasn’t simply due to economics or circumstances, as Belinda lamented.

 

 Those hard-eyed women had been hurt by men .

 

 Jane recognized it in them with perfect clarity, because this very mirror reflected the same quality growing in her own eyes every day. She could finally acknowledge that.

 

 She would do whatever it took to avoid that fate. Bitterness was a life sentence, and it was one that was entirely avoidable.

 

 She dried her tears—for the last time.

 

 Early tomorrow morn, she’d accept Freddie’s proposal.

 

 Seven

 

 The side door to the Weyland home was unlocked the next morning.

 

 Hugh’s body went tense as he let himself inside the quiet house, striding directly to the second floor to find Jane, unholstering his pistol as he hurried up the carpeted stairs. Had Weyland even arrived home from the night before?

 

 He finally heard movement in a room down the hallway and hastened to follow the sounds. Through a cracked-open bedroom door, he spied Jane on her knees, sweeping her hand back and forth under the bed.

 

 He inhaled deeply, gathering control, then stowed his weapon behind him under his jacket.

 

 Unable to help himself, he entered her room and approached silently, staring at her body clad in naught but a silk gown. She slowly gazed up to meet his eyes. She had the damnedest green eyes.

 

 “Just what are you doing in my bedroom?” she demanded, rising to her feet. Though scarcely dressed, with her curves more highlighted than concealed, she sashayed around him, continuing to search through piles of lace for whatever she was missing, unconcerned by her state of undress.

 

 He could see her nipples under the silk and swallowed hard. Why couldn’t she have grown reserved over the years? Never had he encountered a woman so immodest. But then, that last summer with her, he hadn’t complained whenever she swam with him.

 

 “What do you want, Hugh?”

 

 “Where’s your father gone so early?”

 

 When she shrugged, the threadlike strap of her gown skimmed down her shoulder. Typical Jane, she did not pull it back. “I don’t know. Did you check in his study? That’s where he is these days, twenty hours out of twenty-four.”

 

 Something was different about her this morning. From the time he’d left her last night, fighting not to kiss her, to now, she’d become colder. He felt it strongly.

 

 “I dinna see him. The door was open, and Rolley’s nowhere to be seen.”

 

 “Then your guess is as good as mine. Why don’t you run down there and check again?” She turned, dismissing him.

 

 “You’re coming with me. Put on a robe.”

 

 When she ignored him, he scanned the room for a wrap. No wonder she’d been searching for something. Shoes, stockings, laces, and satiny corsets littered the room. Dresses were puddled where she’d dropped them. So much disorder. Hugh hated disorder, craved the opposite in every aspect of his life.

 

 He finally spotted something that might cover her. “Put this on.”

 

 “I’m not going downstairs until I’m fully attired. I’m late as it is for an engagement.” She chuckled as if at some private joke.

 

 “We have a problem, then.” For all he knew, Weyland and Rolley had been taken down. “Because I’m no’ letting you out of my sight.”

 

 “And why is that?”

 

 “Your house is empty with the door unlocked.”

 

 “Call down.”

 

 He strode to the doorway. “Weyland,” he bellowed. No answer. “The robe, Jane.”

 

 “To hell, Hugh.”

 

 Why was she the one woman on earth he didn’t intimidate?

 

 “I’ve told you I’ll go when I’m ready.”

 

 “Then dress yourself,” he grated.

 

 “Leave the room.”

 

 “No’ going to happen.”

 

 “Turn around, then.” When he didn’t, she tapped her cheek and said, “But there’s nothing you haven’t sneaked a peek at before, is there?”

 

 Stunned by the difference in her, he grated, “As I said last night, lass, there’s little you have no’ shown me.”

 

 Her eyes glittered with anger. “But just as you’ve changed, so have I.” She put her shoulders back and pulled her hair behind her, clearly aware that her figure had become even more tempting.

 

 He scrubbed a hand over his mouth, about to say something he shouldn’t. “Just dress,” he ordered. As he turned from her, he caught his reflection in the basin mirror and scowled. He was well aware that the years had not been kind.

 

 One night’s restless sleep had done nothing to alleviate his exhaustion, and for the last three days, his injuries had prevented him from shaving.

 

 Was it only three days ago that he’d been in a war? That he’d killed?

 

 Now her reflection caught his attention. He watched her in the mirror as she poised a dainty foot on a stool to roll her stocking up one long leg—

 

 He found his jaw slackening in wonderment when she slid her gown higher to wrap the wickedest garter he’d ever seen around her thigh. As she tied it into a perfect bow, his hands clenched the edges of the washstand so hard he thought he’d break the marble.

 

 That last summer, she’d always worn her garters high. Because her shifts were so short….

 

 He forced himself to look away. When he heard stiff material rustling, he asked, “Are you no’ done yet?” He didn’t recognize his voice.

 

 “Be patient with me, Hugh.” How many times had he heard that phrase?

 

 He exhaled and answered as he always had, “I try, lass. Think of other things.” He spied her bow propped up near the doorway and noticed fresh blades of grass affixed to the bottom of her full quiver. He was pleased she’d kept up with her archery.

 

 He’d bought Jane her first bow, and helped her with her aim, and by the end of the summer, she could split a wand at a hundred paces. She’d taken to shooting as if she’d been born for it.

 

 Perhaps she had. In the past, when she wasn’t torturing him with coy smiles and soft words and touches, Jane had been a bit…fierce.

 

 He glanced at her dressing table and saw a book entitled A Gentlewoman’s Apprentice . Probably a scathing satire, knowing her. He picked it up, finding that the cover was a false one stretched over the real cover. Brows drawn, he opened it and scanned some pages, quickly comprehending the nature of the content. A swift perusal of one scene told him this was more lewd than anything he’d ever read.

 

 The idea of her reading these writings didn’t outrage him—it aroused him, and blood rushed to his groin with each word he skimmed. After swallowing, twice, he grated, “Where do you find books like this?” Without turning, he held it up over his shoulder.

 

 In a bored tone, she said, “All the printers on Holywell Street sell them.”

 

 “Is this what young ladies are reading these days?”

 

 “Very much so. Women patrons ensure that our favorite bookseller returns from his grubby little Holywell shop to his grand estate outside of the city each night. He can’t print them fast enough. You can turn around now.”

 

 No…no, he couldn’t.

 

 At length, after getting his erection under control, he turned and found her holding out a necklace to him. “Hugh?”

 

 He crossed to her and took it, and she gave him her back. Tendrils of dark red hair lay starkly against the alabaster skin of her neck. He wanted to press his lips there more than he’d wanted anything in his life, and was a heartbeat from doing so. Instead, he inhaled her perfume—so light as to be a mere tease of fragrance, but spicy.

 

 Then his big hands, which had never been clumsy except around her, fumbled for several moments. Once he’d finished, he lost the struggle to keep from stroking the backs of his fingers over the soft, smooth skin of her neck.

 

 When she shivered, he briefly closed his eyes.

 

 “Hugh, did you just touch me?” she asked, her voice sultry. When he said nothing, she turned, gazing up at him. Her breaths were shallow—he doubted he breathed at all.

 

 His eyes darted to her lips, and she saw it.

 

 “Did you?”

 

 “It happens, when you fasten a necklace, does it no’?”

 

 Her brows drew together in puzzlement, but without waiting for an answer, he grabbed her hand, pulling her along the corridor and down the stairs.

 

 They found Weyland in his study, gazing at his late wife’s portrait, absently rolling a letter as one might roll a map. The man schooled his features immediately, but Hugh had always known how much he missed his lovely wife, whom Jane favored so strongly. Weyland faced them and forced a smile, but he appeared exhausted. He looked twenty years older than when Hugh had seen him just months ago.

 

 “MacCarrick, it’s good to see you, son.”

 

 Hugh didn’t shake hands since he still clutched Jane’s. “You as well, Weyland.”

 

 “Papa,” Jane said, yanking her hand away, “please tell me why Hugh was allowed to walk in on me dressing.”

 

 When Weyland raised his graying eyebrows, Hugh gave her a baleful look. “No one was here and the door was unlocked. I thought that was…unusual.”

 

 “Oh, yes, well, Rolley was with me in the mews. The damned coal vendor was shorting us again,” Weyland explained, as if he would ever worry himself over something so trivial. “Jane, I want you to wait outside my study for a few minutes.”

 

 “Can’t, Papa. I’m supposed to meet Freddie at Hyde Park this morning,” she said airily.

 

 Hugh’s stomach clenched.Freddie?

 

 “Do give Frederick my regards.”

 

 Who the hell is Frederick?

 

 She nodded and swirled out of the room without a backward glance at Hugh.

 

 Hugh said, “I go with her, if you have no one else.”

 

 “Quin’s got it. She’s just going down the street,” Weyland assured him, but Hugh continued to stare after her. “You know, all of Jane’s beaus call her Plain Jane.” Weyland gave a chuckle. “I suppose sarcasm passes for wit among these young bucks today. But who can keep up with them? I only remember Frederick Bidworth because he’s lasted so much longer than most.”

 

 Now Hugh glowered at the door. Beau? Just how long had “Freddie” lasted?

 

 “So I trust your moonlighting went well?” Weyland asked.

 

 Hugh turned, frowning until Weyland pointed to the cuts down the side of his face.

 

 “Aye, successful,” he said, inwardly shaking himself. Just a casual suitor. An innocent meeting in the park. So why this sudden roiling in his gut?

 

 “I expect you’re wanting to know what the situation with Grey is.” When Hugh nodded, Weyland said, “You knew he was becoming more unstable, but it finally got to the point that he was uncontrollable. We made an attempt to take him out. But a more cunning killer, I’ve never seen. He survived, and in retaliation, he’s gone rogue, threatening to make public a list of all our people in the organization. He might already have done it.”

 

 Hugh’s fists tightened. “Everyone?”

 

 “I was just receiving word from a messenger out back when you arrived. From what we’ve been able to gather, it’s the entire Network. If the list goes public, you’ll be officially retired.”

 

 Hugh had never expected to end his career that way. “Does Jane have any idea?” he asked, trying not to reveal how much the idea disturbed him. “Any idea what I am?”

 

 “No, she still thinks you’re in business with me. And I plan to keep it that way until we know with absolute certainty that the list has gone public. After that, it won’t matter—everyone will know.”

 

 Hugh exhaled a weary breath. “Weyland, you ken the danger you’re in. No’ just from Grey.”

 

 “I know.” Weyland nodded gravely. “At last count, no man in England has more people who want him dead than I do. And they’ll want more than that—the information, the secrets, the political prisoners…. It’s about to be a maelstrom. That’s why I need you to take Jane away for a time.”

 

 “And you?” Weyland had become like a father to Hugh, and he wouldn’t allow him to be hurt. “I will no’ leave you here to the wolves.”

 

 “This is the worst crisis in the history of our organization. I can’t go to ground. But I’ll call in help, and with luck, we’ll bait Grey to come here. Stop shaking your head, son. Ethan has been spoiling for a chance at Grey. Quin and Rolley are itching for the fight. But my daughter must go.”

 

 The reminder that Ethan would be fully involved reassured Hugh, and he finally relaxed somewhat—

 

 “And you will marry Jane first. That’s why I brought you here.”

 

 Eight

 

 Jane’s soon-to-be fiancé was so much Hugh’s opposite, he was like a foil to him.

 

 As she gazed into Freddie Bidworth’s cerulean blue eyes, Jane considered how perfect a man he was. He was the golden boy, the gentleman Adonis, and his looks made young women sigh whenever he strode by. If his blond locks caught the sun, swoons would be imminent.

 

 When he laughed, and he laughed often, he threw back that blond head, giving himself up to it. Whereas Hugh was brooding and a loner, Freddie was merry and got along with everyone. Society loved him. And he loved it back.

 

 Even after her unsettling encounters with Hugh, Jane couldn’t help but smile at her good fortune that Freddie had waited so long for her. He’d joked that he would be the knight who tamed Plain Jane. He treated her as if they would be “partners in life,” as he’d put it, and he’d promised that they would have a bloody good time of it. He let her be herself and even seemed to like her wild ways, since his personality tended toward…safe.

 

 Not to mention that he was theEarl of Whiting.

 

 “Freddie, let’s go away together,” Jane murmured. Since it appeared that Hugh was remaining in the city, she thought it best for her to vacate it. “Let’s leave London for a holiday and get away from everyone.”

 

 “You’re irrepressible, d’you know that?” Freddie sighed. “I can’t be running off with you.”

 

 “No one would have to know. Besides, you like that I’m irrepressible.”

 

 “Now, that I do.” He tapped her nose. “But I did want to talk to you about your wicked ways. Mother has asked me to coax you to be a bit more circumspect. Since everyone assumes we’ll be wed, she says your behavior reflects on our family.”

 

 “Tocoax me, Freddie?” she asked, her tone gone leaden.

 

 “Just until Lavinia finds a husband, you see.”

 

 His sister, pursed-lipped Lavinia, wed? As soon as waspish, sanctimonious prudes came into matrimonial demand.

 

 Jane had no sympathy for the young woman, not after she’d found out that Lavinia and the dowager countess routinely did the unthinkable, the unforgivable.

 

 They donated funds to the Society for the Suppression of Vice—the bane of most Weylands. The soddingS.S.V.

 

 The society that received anonymous hate mail whenever Jane sat down at her escritoire.

 

 Jane wondered what they would say if the new Lady Whiting formed the Society for the Expression of Vice. Just a thought.

 

 “Well, if you’ll ever agree to be my wife,” Freddie continued, “countesses sometimes must make sacrifices. And it’s just for a while.”

 

 For a while? No, it’d be a protracted sacrifice. So long as men shuddered at the sight of bitter females. Her face fell. Who was she to talk? She was becoming bitter. “Lavinia might not wed for a spell,” she said carefully.

 

 “Surely she will!” He gave her a boyish grin. “Could you do it for me, vixen?”

 

 She smiled tightly, hating it when he called her that. Just last night, Jane had had a Scot with a body like a god’s rasp “Sìne” to her. Compared to MacCarrick’s husky brogue that set her blood afire, Freddie’s clipped “vixen” was downright insipid.

 

 Still comparing every man to Hugh, Janey?

 

 “Kiss me,” she said suddenly, placing her palms on his chest. “Give me a nice kiss, won’t you, Freddie?” she asked almost desperately. They’d kissed hundreds of times before, but this would be the most important one of her life.

 

 Be the man to make me forget him.

 

  

 

 “What?” Hugh hadn’t heard correctly. Surely he hadn’t. “Something you should know—I’m no’ marrying anyone. Ever.”

 

 “You must wed her,” Weyland said. “If news of the list breaks, then I want her gone for at least a couple of months, out of the city. Away from the scandal and the danger. As her husband, you can take her away.”

 

 “I can do that without wedding her.”

 

 “No, Hugh, it must be—”

 

 “You ken what I am. And what I’ve done .” Weyland couldn’t truly want his daughter married to a gunman with a broken-down body and blood on his hands? “How can you choose me for this…task?”

 

 “It’s because of what you are and what you’ve done that it must be you. Do you know what the marriage would say to anyone who would think to do her harm? She’d become a MacCarrick. If the threat of your reputation failed to deter them, then what about Ethan’s? She’d be his sister-in-law. And Courtland’s as well. The only bride in the family. Who would risk your family’s wrath to hurt her?”

 

 Hugh’s head was pounding as if a vise were tightening at his temples. “Goddamn it, did you ever think that I might no’ wish to wed? When I made my first hit, I knew I would never take a bride—”

 

 “There are several members in the organization who have spouses.”

 

 “And they put their families’ lives in jeopardy because of it.”

 

 “Jane’s life is already in jeopardy.”

 

 Hugh made a sound of frustration. “Then did you ever think I might no’ want to marry her specifically?”

 

 “No, I did not.” Weyland gave him a sympathetic smile. “That thought never entered my mind.”

 

 Hugh hid his astonishment. Or maybe he didn’t. Apparently he hadn’t been able to hide his feelings for Jane before.

 

 Weyland continued, “If there’s a choice, you always opt for the jobs farthest afield, and you never come to my home unless Jane’s out of town. It’s telling how determined you are to stay away from her.”

 

 Hugh could deny nothing.

 

 “I’d believed you would be more receptive, but if you’re truly averse to the idea, then you can get an annulment after these difficulties have been resolved.”

 

 “No,” he snapped. “It will no’ happen.”

 

 “It must. I won’t trust her with anyone but you.” When Hugh still refused, Weyland clasped his forehead. “Son, I’m tired, bloody tired, and I’m about to have the fight of my life. I can’t win against the deadliest, most skilled adversaries on earth when I have one blatant vulnerability that would be like a red flag to them.”

 

 An unmarried, heartbreakingly beautiful, trouble-seeking daughter. No wonder Weyland looked like hell. “Weyland, you doona understand.” Was Weyland forgetting that Hugh was uncomfortable around groups of people, unsociable and forbidding? Jane would slowly die around him. “I canna make her happy.”

 

 “Hugh, you can bugger happy !” He slammed his fist on the desk. “I want her alive .”

 

 Hugh was undaunted by his tone. “Let’s talk scenarios. The most likely is that you apprehend Grey, and Ethan goes on the offensive and strikes out against a few of the worst threats so severely that he warns the rest away. Everything returns to nearly normal, except that we overreacted with this marriage when I should simply have taken her to lie low for a couple of months. And then Jane and I are stuck with each other for the rest of our lives.”

 

 “In that case, you can get an annulment after things die down. If the two of you are so dead-set against it, then don’t have a marriage in truth.” Hugh shook his head, but Weyland spoke over him. “Here’s a scenario, Hugh. You know I might not make it through this alive.” He put his hand up when Hugh opened his mouth to interrupt. “Before I die, I know that my daughter is married and could not have a more fearsome protector. I don’t die wondering what will become of her. Can you comprehend what a boon it would be to me to know she’s safe with you? Finally to have her settled? Would you not do this for me?”

 

 “You doona know what you ask. She’d be safer without me.”

 

 “I hadn’t wanted to bring this up, but Grey isn’t targeting Jane only because of me. I know you beat him bloody years ago. And I know it was over her.” When Hugh could only grind his teeth, Weyland said, “He wants revenge against you as well. I am letting her go—you too need to do what you must to keep her safe. We both owe it to her. She’ll be the one to pay for our actions if we don’t make sacrifices.”

 

 Hugh shoved his fingers through his hair. “This idea of yours has a serious flaw. Jane will never agree to it.” Hugh had been only a summer diversion for a young lass of just seventeen years. Upstairs just now, she hadn’t even wanted to give him five minutes of her time.

 

 “Then I’ll make you a deal. If she agrees, you wed her and take her into hiding until this dies down. If she refuses, you take her away temporarily with no bond between you, risking scandal at best and increased danger at worst.”

 

 Hugh scowled at that, but stubbornly insisted, “She will no’ agree.” Right now she was with her long-term beau, the one who’d lasted longer than the others.

 

 Was Jane in love with this Bidworth? The possibility clawed at him.

 

 “Then do we have a deal? Hugh?” Weyland added, when Hugh remained lost in thought.

 

 Confident of Jane’s refusal, Hugh faced Weyland and gave him one tight nod.

 

 “Good. Now, I believe this must be done as soon as possible. This morning, even.”

 

 “You canna get a license that…” He trailed off at Weyland’s mildly offended expression.

 

 “If only everything was that easy,” Weyland said. “So, if you’ll just go fetch her from the park—she usually goes to the folly by the fountain. Tell her I need to speak with her at once.”

 

 Hell, Hugh wanted to go just to get her away from this Bidworth.

 

 “And, son, if I may make a suggestion before she returns? A wedding ring for Jane might help smooth any ruffled feathers over the suddenness of all this.”

 

 Hugh glowered. “I would no’ know the first thing about how or where to buy a ring.”

 

 “You’ve never bought jewelry for a woman?”

 

 “Christ, no.”

 

 “You pass Ridergate’s on Piccadilly on your way to your family’s town house. They have her ring size on file.”

 

 Hugh raised his brows—even he had heard the name of that exclusive jeweler. “You must know more about my finances than I do.”

 

 “Don’t poormouth me, Hugh. I do know you’re truly wealthy now.”

 

 Hugh shrugged.

 

 “And I think a part of you has always been saving up for a wife and family.”

 

 “If so, I dinna know about it,” he muttered, turning to stride from the room.

 

 Once outside, he realized his heart was thundering. Because within hours, he could be wed to Jane .

 

 No. If Hugh wed her, if he said the vows and signed his name, he would be exposing Jane to his own doomed fate.

 

 He could take her away without marriage. As soon as Jane had, as expected, scoffed at the idea of wedding him, Hugh would prevail upon Weyland to allow them to go into hiding without that bond. The man couldn’t know that there was a risk to Jane in marrying Hugh—one that might even outweigh the danger inherent in Grey. Not to marry…

 

 What was he thinking? Jane would never agree.

 

 But what if she does?

 

 In the park, Hugh spied Quin lounging on a bench on one side of a whitewashed folly, admiring young women strolling in the sun. “MacCarrick, good morning,” Quin said when he caught sight of him. Strangely, he stood to block the path around the folly.

 

 “Anything happen last night at the warehouse?” Hugh asked.

 

 “We lost Claudia’s friend, Maddy.”

 

 Damn it, Ethan.

 

 “I forced my sisters to return home while I searched for her. When I finally decided to check back at home to see if she’d come in, she had just arrived, pale and shaken but unharmed. I think the chit was so frightened, she might have learned a lesson,” he said, then gave a long-suffering sigh. “My sisters, of course, remain undaunted.”

 

 Hugh was glad to hear that at least nothing permanent had resulted from Ethan’s pursuit. His brother must have taken the girl home.

 

 “The lot of my cousins should be married off to unsuspecting Yanks,” Quin added in a grumble. “So, what are you doing here this early?”

 

 “Come to fetch Jane for Weyland.”

 

 “I’ll bring her back in a trice,” Quin said quickly.

 

 “No, I’ll do it.”

 

 A flash of something like pity flickered in Quin’s eyes. “She’s meeting with someone.”

 

 Hugh immediately determined two things: Quin knew he’d wanted Jane. And she was even now being kissed—or worse—in her meeting with Freddie.

 

 He shoved Quin out of the way, but the man followed.

 

 “And how did you know, Quin?” Hugh asked in a seething tone.

 

 Quin didn’t bother pretending he didn’t understand what Hugh spoke of. “Grey told me. Said you were…in love with her.”

 

 Who else had Grey told? Who else pitied the big, lumbering Scot his obsession with the exquisite Jane?

 

 He stormed around the folly.

 

 Nine

 

 “Here, Jane?” Freddie asked, his voice breaking as he glanced around. “You want me to kiss you here?”

 

 Nodding, Jane leaned forward. “There’s no one to see us.” She cupped his neck and tugged, and finally, he met her, brushing his lips against hers.

 

 No, kissing was not new for them. What was new was Jane’s recognition that his kiss felt as good as someone reassuringly patting her cheek. Last night, the feel of MacCarrick’s big, hot hand surrounding her own hand had aroused her more than this.

 

 Dismayed, she kissed Freddie more deeply, clutching his shoulders to provoke more from him, desperate to convince herself she could live with only this for the rest of her life. Even as she went through the motions, she remembered the books she’d read—the lascivious ones that were suppressed —and she knew there was more than what he was giving her. There was passion and aching and longing. Just not with him —

 

 Freddie’s body flew away from her.

 

 Jane stared up in shock. “Hugh?” His wild eyes raked over her, his black hair whipping across his cheek. His jaw and fists were clenched. He shot her a disgusted look, then turned toward Freddie, looking for all the world like he would kill him.

 

 Jane could do nothing but gape as she rose unsteadily. Freddie was stunned as well, struggling to get to his feet.

 

 “No, MacCarrick!” Quin snapped, barring his way. In a lower voice, he said, “You could easily kill him.”

 

 “That’s the goddamned idea,” Hugh grated.

 

 The next moments seemed to go so slowly. She watched, as if from a distance, Hugh shoving Quin far to the side. Freddie made it to his feet—just in time to catch Hugh’s fist. Blood spurted from his nose as he went hurtling back.

 

 Quin caught Hugh’s arm behind him; Jane screamed and ran to Freddie. She grabbed him under his arms and tried to lug him to his feet, darting nervous glances over her shoulder. Freddie was big, yet Hugh’s one blow had sent him flying.

 

 “You’d best get out of here, before the constable shows up,” Quin warned. “Don’t know if you’re aware, but you just broke the nose of a well-respected earl.”

 

 Hugh’s look of hatred only seemed to deepen.

 

 “You have to get Jane out of here,” Quin insisted. “You hurt her more than you know with this insanity.”

 

 Hugh flung Quin off so readily that Jane realized he could have done so at any time, then he lunged forward, seizing her elbow to drag her away from Freddie.

 

 This morning, Hugh’s touch against her neck had been so gentle that she had scarcely felt it. Now his massive hand clutched hard, squeezing.

 

 “Obviously, Quin’s been spying on me,” she said, her tone strident. “But what in the hell are you doing here?”

 

 When he didn’t answer at once, she pried at his fingers, trying to get back to Freddie. She gave Hugh’s hand a withering glare when her efforts failed to loosen his grip. “I want to make sure you didn’t kill him!”

 

 Quin said, “He’s fine, Jane. I’ll stay with him, but you need to go.”

 

 “I won’t do it—” She broke off with a gasp as Hugh dragged her along the walk toward her home, uncaring of the morning pedestrians staring or scrambling out of the way.

 

  

 

 “Hugh, unhand me this instant!” she hissed. “What in the devil has gotten into you?”

 

 “I ask you the same.” Out of sight of the folly, Hugh stopped to grasp her shoulders, his hands shaking. In the minutes before, he had seen nothing but a red haze over his vision, felt nothing but the need to rip the man limb from limb. He knew what he must look like, but Jane stood her ground, chin up.

 

 “Who is he?” Hugh bit out, trying not to notice that her lips were swollen. “Why’re you kissing some man there for all to see?”

 

 Formeto see.

 

 “His name is Frederick Bidworth, Lord Whiting.”

 

 Naturally, she’d be kissing a peer. One who’d never seen Hugh coming because he’d been too drugged by her kiss.

 

 “And he’s not just some man to me,” Jane continued. “How can you react like this, when I was just at a courtesans’ ball? This is mild! You told me I was a grown woman just last night!”

 

 That was before he was expected to marry her. Before there was the possibility that he was to take her under his protection. Now everything felt different.

 

 “Why are you behaving this way, Hugh? I demand an answer. Now!”

 

 Because I wanted to kill him for touching you. The first man he’d ever wanted to kill. “Because the daughter of a close family friend was being compromised.” Not a lie, an understatement. When she began to deny it, he said, “You ken he should no’ have been risking your reputation by kissing you in the park.”

 

 “It’s not as though any of this concerns you!” Her face tightened into a glare. “I do not have to explain my actions to you! This is none of your business.”

 

 “No? Perhaps no’ yet ,” he said, making her frown at his words.

 

 He knew that he was wrong to behave this way, but the idea of marriage to her, no matter how far-fetched, was like an opening wedge freeing every possessive instinct inside him. When he’d seen that bastard kissing her, a thought was seared into his mind: Mine. He’s taking what’s mine.

 

 On the walk to the park, Hugh had been trying to determine what his move should be, wanting to make a cold, shrewd decision and ignore the fact that everything within him burned to possess her. Is the sacrifice to marry her or not to marry her? he’d asked himself with damned near each step.

 

 Now he was so furious that there was no reasoning. All he knew was that he never wanted Bidworth to touch or kiss Jane again.

 

 Hugh knew a fine way to ensure he couldn’t.

 

 Back inside the town house, Hugh yanked her into Weyland’s office, ignoring her gasp and furious glare. “See it done, Weyland,” he bellowed to the unperturbed man. Had Weyland known Hugh would find Jane in a compromising position? Of course. Weyland knew everything. And Hugh was responding just as predicted, being manipulated. “Just see it done.”

 

 “Consider it so.” Weyland nodded solemnly. “Why don’t you go round and pack a case, son, make any purchases you’ll need? I’d like to speak with Jane privately.”

 

 Hugh strode out and shut the door, but listened for a brief moment.

 

 “Papa,” she began, “how can you stand by and let him treat me like this, manhandling me and ordering me? If you knew what he just did to—”

 

 “I can and I must,” Weyland interrupted, “because Hugh’s about to be your husband.”

 

 “Have you gone mad? Married to Hugh MacCarrick?” Her sharp laughter grated. “Never! Never, on your life.”

 

 Ten

 

 “What is wrong with you?” Jane cried as soon as she heard Hugh slamming out of the house. “Have you sustained a blow to your head in the half-hour since I’ve been gone? Perhaps Hugh did it in his present state of violence?” She snapped her fingers. “Of course! Rapid senility!”

 

 “If you will calm yourself.” Her father’s lined visage looked so serious. His kind blue eyes were now grim.

 

 “How am I to be calm? Hugh just attacked Freddie.” Hugh’s face had been set so cruelly, she’d thought he would kill him. “Like some crazed man—”

 

 “I trust there was no permanent damage?”

 

 “—and you just told me I’m to marry him! You should know—I was accepting Freddie’s proposal this morning!”

 

 “Indeed?”

 

 She gawked at his tone, at his utter lack of reaction. This man before her was somehow harder than the easygoing father she’d seen earlier this morning.

 

 “I know this is difficult to accept,” he said. “But I finally must put my foot down.”

 

 “Put your foot down? I’m twenty-seven! You can’t force me to marry him.”

 

 He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I have turned a blind eye to all your doings with your cousins.”

 

 When she peered at the ceiling, all but whistling to it with guilt, he went on, “I know that Samantha has accounts with the printers’ shops on Holywell. I know Claudia is having an affair with her groom. I know of Nancy’s penchant for dressing in men’s clothing. And your cousin Charlotte is most likely even now waiting in line to get into the divorce court to hear every scandal firsthand.”

 

 “I get the point,” she hastily said, wondering how he could possibly know all this…. Quin! Quin had told on them. It must be. But he should know better than to call down the wrath of the eight cousins.

 

 “I’ve allowed these things because it seems your entire generation has gone mad.”

 

 She rolled her eyes. “This isn’t the Regency, Papa.”

 

 “But I’ve also allowed them because on her deathbed your mother made me promise that I would give you the freedom she was afforded and never stifle your spirit.”

 

 “She did?” Jane gazed up at her mother’s portrait. Lara Farraday had been the only child of a famous artist, and a gifted one herself. Lara’s unique upbringing had been acceptable for a celebrated artist’s daughter. “I never knew that.”

 

 “Already at six, you were so much like her. And I have kept my promise, even when I was stricken with worry for you.”

 

 Jane narrowed her eyes. “Is that why Quin was spying on me?”

 

 “No. That’s not why. He was doing that for the same reason I’m going to break my word to your mother.”

 

 “I don’t understand.”

 

 “I’ve had ill dealings with one of my business associates. I made a decision that affected him and his fortunes critically. He wants revenge, seeks to hurt me in some way. Everyone knows you are what I hold most precious in the world.”

 

 She said slowly, “Hurt you?”

 

 “He’s afflicted with a hunger for opium. He hallucinates. There could be violence.”

 

 She nodded, adding sarcastically, “And who is this dastardly businessman who has struck fear in your heart? Who moves you to force your daughter into marriage—a marriage, I might add, that is much less advantageous than the one she arranged for herself ?”

 

 He ignored her rising tone. “Do you remember Davis Grey?”

 

 “You’re jesting?” she said, as a shiver of alarm ran through her.

 

 “Not in the least.”

 

 “I-I had tea with him a couple of times while he waited here for you.” Of all the men he could’ve mentioned…

 

 Upon first meeting Grey, she’d been struck by his soulful brown eyes, boyishly handsome face, and open mien. He’d been extremely well dressed and had an urbane polish to complement his congenial air.

 

 Yet he’d given her chills when she’d been forced to be near him.

 

 She’d once caught him examining her with an eerie concentration. His expression had never been lustful. That she could have dismissed. She hadn’t understood it, but for the first time in her life, and at the age of twenty-five, she’d wished for a chaperone. Now she said softly, “He gave me chills.”

 

 “Then you sensed that he could be capable of violence?”

 

 “Yes,” she finally admitted. “But why such drastic steps?”

 

 “Hugh knows Grey from the past, knows him better than anyone does. He can protect you.”

 

 “Freddie could protect me.”

 

 “Jane, we are both pragmatists, realists above everything. And we both know that Frederick couldn’t protect you from anything worse than committing a fashion mistake.”

 

 She gasped at the insult, and her father shrugged. “You know it’s true.”

 

 “Why not just call the police?” she demanded. “With all your influence, you could get Grey on a prison hulk by teatime.”

 

 “I have called in favors and requested help with this matter. But we can’t find him. We have no idea when or where he could strike.”

 

 She stood, then slowly crossed to the window. “So he could be out there watching me right now?”

 

 Incredibly, her father didn’t scoff and reassure her. “He could be. But we don’t believe he is. He was last seen in Portugal, and there’s been no indication that he’s made England yet, only that this is his destination.”

 

 She stared out at two mothers pushing perambulators and tapping each other’s forearms as they leaned in with gossip. A boy played at the edge of the park with a hoop and stick. So peaceful. She bit her bottom lip. Though this all seemed so far-fetched, she’d heard of madder scenarios.

 

 After all, she lived in London.

 

 As much as she loved this city, she could acknowledge its dangers and the violence that played out here daily. Just a year ago, Samantha had had a vial of vitriol splashed on her by a perfect stranger. Luckily, it only ate through her dress and scarred her leg—instead of her face, as other women had suffered in similar random attacks over that summer. There were grave robbers, or resurrectionists, who got impatient waiting for corpses to sell. And Jane had been mugged so many times that a lull in the offenses gave her cause to wonder if she was dressing shabbily.

 

 She’d read of opium eaters like Grey who, in the grips of hallucinations, assaulted others.

 

 As with a dazzling yet dangerous animal, one could admire London, but had to respect the risks inherent here. If her father said Grey was unhinged and she needed to flee the city, then very well. She’d certainly read stranger accounts in the Times —accounts she’d always cringed to see included not only the criminals’ names and addresses, but thevictims’ as well….

 

 She shivered. “I’ll agree to leave London for a time. But not with Hugh. There’s no reason for him to do this. Why would he ever agree to a marriage?”

 

 “As of ten minutes ago, I don’t believe he was agreeing, I believe he was demanding your hand.”

 

 “That’s correct. He was behaving like the crazed, ravening madman you want to protect me from.”

 

 What she said struck her father completely the wrong way. His face grew tight and his lips thinned. “They are nothing alike, Jane. Don’t you ever say that again!”

 

 She drew back at her normally placid father’s furious tone. “Papa?”

 

 “Hugh is a good man. An honorable man. He and Grey worked together and shared similar experiences. Hugh could have taken the same path, but he didn’t.”

 

 She swallowed. “F-fine. Then I shall go with Hugh. But there’s no need for marriage—”

 

 “What have I ever done to indicate to you that I’d let my only child, my unmarried daughter, run off to travel with one of my business associates?” When she opened her mouth to answer, he cut her off. “Yes, well, that ends today . Besides, if you are so miserable, you can get an annulment as soon as this is over.”

 

 “You can’t make me marry him. I’ll simply go to Freddie and get him to take me away.”

 

 “Yes. I’m sure the dowager countess and her pinch-faced daughter will welcome you with open arms. Surely they won’t mind that I won’t be providing you with a dowry.”

 

 Her eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t!”

 

 He nodded gravely.

 

 “Who are you?” she asked, blinking at him in bewilderment. Her father’s personality had shifted utterly, just as Hugh’s had. “I-I’ll stay with my cousins. Samantha and Belinda and their families are going to Vinelands this week—”

 

 “And how long will you flit from cousin to cousin? From estate to estate as a hanger-on?”

 

 She crossed to him, determined to reason with him. “Father, you know I can’t go back if I do this,” she said with a light touch on his arm. “Once this is over, I will not be able to make another match.”

 

 “Certainly you will. John Ruskin got his marriage annulled just last year, and his former wife is already remarried. And think of all the girls who elope to Scotland. When their families find them and drag them back, the chits have their marriages annulled, and a couple of years later they marry again. If I had a pound for every time that happened during the last season—”

 

 “Those girls are eighteen, nineteen. They have time to wait for another match.” She lifted her hand from his arm and gripped her forehead. “I’m too old to wait! And you know my chances with Freddie would be ruined by this.”

 

 “If you still want him after all of this is over, then I would use all my influence to see it done.”

 

 She sank into a chair. “And why on earth would Freddie still want me?”

 

 “He’s waited this long.”

 

 She bit her lip at that, then said, “I still don’t understand why Hugh has agreed to this. How can you make him take a wife he doesn’t want?”

 

 “Are you so sure he doesn’t?”

 

 “Of course he doesn’t!”

 

 “I believe he cared deeply for you when you were both younger. Don’t you think he acted as if he did?”

 

 “If he cared for me so much, then why would he leave without a word?” Looking back now, it was difficult to see him as anything other than a typical male, enjoying the attention she lavished on him.

 

 “You know he told me to tell you good-bye. If you asked about him.”

 

 “If?” She gave her father the same expression she’d given him when he’d last voiced this nonsense. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s had a life of his own, and we hardly know each other anymore.”

 

 “Yes, he has had a life of his own, and in that time he’s earned enough money to take care of you. I know that you two used to get along. Can’t you charm him? Cajole him and win him over? It should be easy enough for you. Maybe you might try staying married?”

 

 “Why would I ever choose Hugh over Freddie?”

 

 “Because you never loved Freddie.”

 

 No, she didn’t, but she cared for him, and they had fun together. And since she hadn’t loved him, she’d known Freddie had no power to wound her. “Perhaps that’s so—but Freddie’s never hurt me.”

 

 “You don’t believe Hugh purposely hurt you? I think you’re forgetting all the times he took you riding, or the hours he spent helping you with your archery. He was patient with you, when I could scarcely be.”

 

 When she said nothing, recalling scenes from her childhood, her father said, “In the weeks to come, I want you to remember one thing. Remember that Hugh tries . He’s going to try to make you happy.”

 

 “You’re assuming I’m going to agree to this.”

 

 “Just think, Jane, he’ll likely take you out of England.”

 

 “Where? Far?” she quickly asked, then flushed at her father’s knowing expression. Transparent Jane, eager to travel. “To Carrickliffe?”

 

 “Yes, possibly among his clan. It’s up to him. But I do know that he’ll go north. And that he won’t travel more than a day’s ride from a telegraph. I’ll be able to contact you the minute you can return home. If at that time you still want an annulment, it will be done.”

 

 Self-preservation, Janey. What if you get attached to him again?

 

 When she was still shaking her head, he said, “Jane, this is not up for debate. You will leave London, and you’ll do it this morning.”

 

 She’d concluded that she didn’t recognize her father, but just when she determined that she didn’t care for this new stranger, his face and tone softened. “Ah, daughter, you’re so brave about everything, and yet you’re terrified of this, aren’t you?”

 

 “Well, if I am, it’s because Grey looked at me in such a disquieting—”

 

 “Not about Grey. You’re afraid of getting hurt again.”

 

 Her lips parted, but she couldn’t deny her apprehension. “Hugh left me once and never came back. And I know you invited him again and again.”

 

 “But, Jane, he came back when it counted.”

 

 Eleven

 

 Never! Never on your life….

 

 With Jane’s words running through his mind, Hugh rode for Grosvenor Square in a daze. There’d been too many developments this morning for him to digest. Simply seeing her kissing another man had nearly been his undoing.

 

 And then, after so many years of fighting to stay away from Jane, to be forced to be with her—no, to marry her. He was shocked at how badly part of him wanted Weyland to succeed in persuading her.

 

 Even as Hugh knew he couldn’t keep her.

 

 Did I truly just see Jane kissing another man?

 

 When he arrived at the square, Hugh strode inside the MacCarrick family’s mansion. They all called this place “the family’s,” though in truth it now belonged to Ethan. As the oldest son, Ethan had inherited all of the MacCarrick properties, as well as the Scottish earldom of Kavanagh—though he would likely pummel anyone who dared remind him he was a peer.

 

 In the entry hall, Hugh ignored, as usual, his mother’s messages to him, lying in the silver tray. He couldn’t say he hated the woman, but she’d blamed her sons for their father’s death, and that made it damned difficult to want anything to do with her. His brothers felt the same. All her messages to them were unopened as well.

 

 Ethan hadn’t banned her from the property, yet. By tacit agreement, she never stayed here when any of her sons were in London, though Hugh would bet she was still bribing the servants for information about them—everyone but Erskine, their butler. The dour-faced man was committed to his job of discouraging any and all visitors, and loyal down to his bones.

 

 Hugh strode directly to the study, his boots drumming across the marble floor. He knew precisely where the Leabhar nan Sùil-radharc, the Book of Fates, would be—still laid out on the long mahogany desk, where Hugh had found Courtland, staring at it almost pleadingly just weeks ago.

 

 As always, Hugh was amazed that such an ancient book could be preserved so well after countless years had passed. Of course, the only marking it had ever accepted was blood.

 

 Long ago, a clan seer had predicted the fates of ten generations of MacCarricks and inscribed them in the Leabhar . The lines within foretold tragedies and triumphs that had all come to pass.

 

 Although Hugh had long since memorized it, he turned to the last page, written to his father…

 

  

 

 To the tenth Carrick:

 

 Your lady fair shall bear you three dark sons.

 

 Joy they bring you until they read this tome.

 

 Words before their eyes cut your life’s line young.

 

 You die dread knowing cursed men they become, shadowed to walk with death or walk alone.

 

 Not to marry, know love, or bind, their fate;

 

 Your line to die for never seed shall take.

 

 Death and torment to those caught in their wake…

 

  

 

 The last two lines were obscured by dried blood that could not be lifted from the page.

 

 Tragedies and triumphs revealed? Hugh exhaled wearily. No triumphs were revealed to the brothers. No, they had sired no bairns among them, had killed their father by reading this very book, and continued to hurt everything they cared for.

 

 Running his forefinger down the prediction on the crisp parchment, he felt his skin grow cold and clammy. There was something innate there, some palpable power in the Leabhar . The last person from outside the family who’d touched it had stared at it in horror and crossed himself.

 

 Hugh turned away in disgust, then made his way to his bedroom. He forced himself to pack, though he wasn’t convinced that Weyland could in fact move Jane to this measure, short of blackmail—

 

 “What the bloody hell are you doing?” Ethan barked from the doorway. He glared at Hugh, who was dragging clothing from his wardrobe to a leather travel bag.

 

 “Leaving London.”

 

 “Withher ?”

 

 “Aye. Weyland’s asked me to…wed her and take her away.” His tone was defensive.

 

 “No’ again!” Ethan’s scar was whitening. “We just got Courtland’s woman away from him. Now you’re running off with yours?”

 

 “And what of you?” Hugh countered, snatching up shirts. “I think you showed more interest in that girl last night than I’ve ever seen you show another woman.”

 

 “Ah, but I merely played with my wee blonde.” He rubbed his scar unconsciously. Did he hate it anew after last night? Or had the chit slapped his face? Hugh hoped the latter. “But you and Court are always wanting more.”

 

 “I’ve agreed to wed Jane—temporarily. And only to take her away until you capture Grey and the havoc caused by the list dies down. I’ve made it clear to Weyland that this marriage will be annulled at that time, and he understood.”

 

 Ethan was shaking his head. “You’re no’ thinking clearly. You took one look at her after all that time away and bloody lost your mind. And the clan calls you the reasonable one?”

 

 “I am reasonable,” he grated, punching shirts into his bag so hard that the stitches in the leather strained.

 

 “Running off with the woman you’ve been lost for, to marry her? Temporarily? Aye, the example of reason you are,” Ethan sneered. “My God, you lectured Court about this verra thing. Rightly so.”

 

 Hugh glanced away. He’d been smug when he’d lectured Court, smug that he’d had the discipline to stay away from Jane all these years.

 

 “Hugh, how can you ignore what’s happened? Court made up his mind to marry Annalía, and within days, a bullet almost splattered her brain across our front doorstep. And then me. Have you forgotten my fiancée? It was you who found Sarah’s broken body. Would you expose Jane to a fate like that?”

 

 Christ, no. Never. “I will no’ consummate the marriage. I will no’ keep her,” he said in a low tone. “It will no’ be a marriage in truth. Besides, I’ve already jeopardized her. Grey will seize on her because of me. I know this. Grey will definitely kill her without me to protect her. I might hurt her.”

 

 “Even ill in the head, Grey will be deadly. As much as I hate to say it, he has unmatchable instincts.” Ethan caught his gaze. “Why do you no’ let me take Jane away?”

 

 The thought made Hugh’s blood boil. “Grey will never harm her while I live. Mark me, Ethan. Never.”

 

 Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Then you’d better hope I get to him before he gets to her. You think to protect her when you’re no’ cold about this? Certainly no’ cold like Grey is. You’re going to get both yourself and the girl killed.”

 

 “Damn it, I can take care of her—”

 

 “And keep your hands off her at the same time?” Ethan gave him an incredulous expression.

 

 “I have discipline. You ken that I do.” Hugh strode to his wardrobe for a few essentials—a pistol as backup to the one he always wore holstered, and another rifle, second to the one he kept in his saddle holster. He also packed a good deal of ammunition for all of the weapons. “And I’ve stayed away this long, have I no’?”

 

 “I also know you’ve got years of want stored up. You might seem calm on the outside, but I’ll bet inside you’re seething with it.”

 

 Seething. The perfect word for how he felt. “Does no’ matter. She hates me.” Especially after this morning. “Hell, she’ll probably balk.” Though he wondered. Weyland always got what he wanted. But then, so did Jane. Surely Weyland couldn’t want him as a son-in-law as much as Jane wanted to have nothing to do with him. “I will no’ keep her,” he insisted again. “And she will no’ want me.”

 

 Ethan studied him for long moments. Then he exhaled a resigned breath. “Aye, then. That, I can accept. Even if the old man forces her to wed, the chit will want out at the first opportunity.”

 

 Hugh scowled at Ethan’s tone. As if he were reciting a fact.

 

 “Is it so bloody inconceivable that she might want me as I want her?”

 

 Ethan simply said, “Aye.”

 

 Hugh snatched up his bag, then exited the room to stomp down the stairs.

 

 “Where’re you taking her?” Ethan asked, following. “No’ to the clan?”

 

 Hugh shook his head. He’d considered taking her to Carrickliffe, but the people there all knew about the curse. At best, they would be wary around Jane, superstitious and treating her as though she were doomed. At worst, they would try to spirit her away from Hugh, seeking to save them both. He would only go there if there was no other alternative. “I’m taking her north to Ros Creag.”

 

 “Does Grey know about the lake house?”

 

 “I never told him about it, but I canna be certain whether he does,” Hugh answered. “If he hasn’t reached England and I only keep us there for a few days—”

 

 “I’m fast, but I’m no’ that fast.”

 

 As Hugh reached the front door, he said, “Any suggestions among your various hideaways?”

 

 “Grey knows of several, and I canna swear by the rest. You should take her to Court’s.”

 

 Hugh slowed. He hadn’t thought of Court’s property, probably because his brother had owned it for so short a time.

 

 “Court said the keep was old, but it’s solid and only needs a bit of work,” Ethan said.

 

 He’d told Hugh the same, and that it was in the middle of thousands of acres. “I’ll go to Ros Creag, and if I haven’t heard anything from you in five days, we’ll journey north to Court’s.”

 

 “Good. I’ll alert the staff to your arrival,” Ethan said, referring to the skeleton staff that lived just off the property.

 

 “If Grey follows us, I hope to God you’ll be following him.” Hugh skewered his brother with a look. “Much is in your hands, and you canna afford to get distracted. The sooner you kill Grey, the sooner this marriage is annulled.”

 

 “Then doona get settled in,” Ethan said with a chilling smile. “And best take care with the marks on your face. You doona want them to scar.”

 

 “Go to hell,” Hugh bit out, opening the door.

 

 Ethan cursed under his breath, then said, “Wait a minute.” He strode off, returning with the Leabhar , and offered it to Hugh. “Take it. It will remind you as nothing else can.”

 

 Hugh accepted the weighty book. “And what about you? What if you need it?”

 

 Ethan’s face was perfectly cold. “I’ve no heart to be tempted, remember?”

 

 Hugh narrowed his eyes. “What did you do to the girl last night?”

 

 He smirked, reaching up to rest his hand on top of the door. “Nothing she dinna want me to.”

 

 “Quin said she’d been afraid.”

 

 Ethan’s brows drew together. “No. I dinna scare her.” He touched his scar for the second time—something he never did. Either he’d never wanted to remember the injury, or had never wanted to draw attention to the mark. But this morning, he’d been mindful of it for the first time in years. “Goddamn it, I bloody had a mask on.”

 

 Hugh didn’t think this was a good time to point out that his bearing and demeanor were as disturbing as his face. “Do you know who she is?”

 

 “Was going by Quin’s today to find out,” Ethan drawled, “but now I find my calendar filled. Did you find out her name from Jane?”

 

 Hugh saw an eagerness in his brother’s eyes that gave him pause. Though Hugh didn’t have the full details, he knew that Geoffrey Van Rowen was somehow responsible for Ethan’s scar. Hugh also knew that the injury to Ethan’s face had been deliberately delivered in a manner that ensured it would never heal seamlessly.

 

 In turn, Ethan’s revenge had been protracted and ruthless—and not particularly discerning between those in the Van Rowen family who deserved it, and those who didn’t.

 

 Hadn’t he done enough to them?

 

 Perhaps Ethan would lose interest in her over the coming days. “I know she’s a friend of Jane’s, so doona hurt that lass, Ethan, or you’ll answer to me.” He stuffed the Leabhar into his bag.

 

 Ethan’s cold expression turned menacing. “You think you can stop me if I feel like amusing myself? Go to hell, Hugh. You’re smug about this subject, too,” Ethan said. “But if you get Jane killed, you’ll find you have a lot in common with me. Brother, you’ll end up just like me .”

 

 Hugh cast him a disgusted look before turning away. As Ethan shut the door behind him, Hugh thought he heard him mutter, “Just doona end up like me….”

 

 Twelve

 

 Though well over an hour had passed by the time Hugh returned to the Weylands’, their muffled argument was still going strong in the study, so he sank down into a chair outside the room. He let his aching head fall back against the wall while he anxiously brushed his fingers over the small case in his jacket pocket.

 

 Everything in Ridergate’s whisper-quiet shop had appeared breakable to a man of Hugh’s size, and he’d wanted to pull at his collar the entire time he was there. But when Hugh had found just the ring for her, he hadn’t hesitated to spend a small fortune on it. What else was he going to spend his money on, if not her?

 

 He’d known what to buy her because, that last summer, she’d told him exactly what she dreamed of receiving from her future bridegroom: “A gold ring with emeralds and an enormous diamond in the middle. It should be so heavy, I’ll be forever knocking it into things, breaking shopkeepers’ counters and accidentally unmanning pedestrians.”

 

 They’d been floating in a rowboat, her head in his lap as he played with her silky hair, fascinated as he lifted it to the sunlight, but he’d frozen at her words, tensing with anxiety. As a second son, he’d had no money to speak of and could never afford anything remotely like what she’d described.

 

 Then he’d remembered that he could never have her anyway….