The Ravishing One Read online

  “IS THIS SOME NEW FORM OF

  WITCHERY?” THOMAS DEMANDED.

  “A torment dreamed up in that complicated little mind of yours? Because it is unnecessary. There is nothing you can do to make me want you more and to make that wanting more unbearable.”

  “But you are bigger, far stronger than I,” Fia pointed out.

  “I am weaker than a day-old kitten where you are concerned, madam. I am undone by you. I could no more force myself on you than I could fly.”

  “Even if I tempted you, teased you, brought you within an inch of what you want?”

  He shook his head. “Would you have blood, Fia? Blood I would gladly give, if you would but cease these games and leave me in peace.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Then we are transfixed here, for I cannot leave you.” His smile was infinitely sad.

  “What do you want?” she asked softly.

  “I want you to bid me to stay,” he commanded. “But bid me to stay knowing that I will have you beneath me on your back.”

  He said not a word about affection, but she was a woman, not a maiden. Her marriage bed had had no affection in it. She knew now its presence because she’d known well its absence. He needn’t say the words for them to be true.

  “Please,” she managed to say, “stay.”

  PRAISE FOR

  MCCLAIREN’S ISLE: THE PASSIONATE ONE

  “EXQUISITE ROMANCE … Brockway’s lush, lyrical writing style is a perfect match for her vivid characters, beautifully atmospheric settings, and sensuous love scenes. Readers will be delighted to learn that McClairen’s Isle: The Passionate One is the first in a trilogy featuring the Merrick siblings.”

  —Library Journal

  “THIS IS A GLORIOUS BOOK, WONDERFUL READING—so rich and full. Brockway doesn’t write anything but this type of book, and you can count on her every time to deliver.”

  —Romance Reviews

  “RICH, ROMANTIC AND INTENSE, A BEAUTIFULLY PASSIONATE LOVE STORY.”

  —Jill Barnett, bestselling author

  “THE CHARACTERS ARE DYNAMIC AND COMPELLING, the descriptions vivid, and the sexual tension sizzles.… Connie Brockway writes with passion and power. McClairen’s Isle: The Passionate One is terrific!”

  —Barbara Dawson Smith, author of Too Wicked to Love

  PRAISE FOR

  MCCLAIREN’S ISLE: THE RECKLESS ONE

  “Any one who read the first volume in this masterful trilogy, The Passionate One, will devour The Reckless One. Complex, fascinating and gripping, this is memorable storytelling. Connie Brockway simply gets better and better as she creates characters and a plot that draw you in like a fly to a spider web. Reading The Reckless One is a surefire way to start off the next century as Ms. Brockway raises her standards and our expectations for her next book.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Those looking for a little more substance in their plots will relish this one; there’s intrigue, adventure and betrayal all woven into a story with characters you won’t soon forget.”

  —The Oakland Press

  “Readers will enjoy the excitement and passion.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A fine story peopled with interesting characters, a good old rambling, falling-down castle and some really bad, bad guys.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “Connie Brockway is a phenomenal writer, and the McClairen’s Isle books are beautifully constructed, vividly detailed, and filled with heart-stopping romantic thrills between dynamic heroes and heroines in engaging plots to make these books winners in every way you can imagine. The all-star cast of characters, from ones you love to ones you hate, is magnificent to behold. Ms. Brockway only gets better with each book.”

  —The Belles & Beaux of Romance

  Dell Books by Connie Brockway

  A DANGEROUS MAN

  AS YOU DESIRE

  ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT

  MY DEAREST ENEMY

  MCCLAIREN’S ISLE: THE PASSIONATE ONE

  MCCLAIREN’S ISLE: THE RECKLESS ONE

  MCCLAIREN’S ISLE: THE RAVISHING ONE

  THE BRIDAL SEASON

  BRIDAL FAVORS

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

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

  Insert photo © IT STOCK INT’L / Index Stock Imagery / PNI

  Copyright © 2000 by Connie Brockway

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Dell® is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76835-3

  v3.1

  For my wise, witty, savvy father.

  You were my very first hero, Dad,

  and you still could give

  lessons in “hero.”

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  After writing a certain number of books, I find I keep thanking the same people. I am not about to stop now. I’d like to think this is because we’ve formed friendships and relationships that simply improve with age. In fact, as Carr would say, I insist on it. Because I know for a fact that the following people, whose talent, generosity, and encouragement have aided, nurtured, and sometimes, quite frankly, wrenched me from the fire, get better with each passing year.

  So thank you Damaris Rowland, my wonderful agent, and Maggie Crawford, my insightful and talented editor. Thank you Susan Kay Law, Geralyn Dawson, and Christina Dodd, a triumvirate of wonderfully gifted writers who are always willing to put their talents at my disposal. Thank you Michelle Miller, for years of primo friendship, and Grace Pedalino, for whatever it is you do. And finally, all my love to you David and Rachel, lights of my life, joy of my existence. You are, all of you, truly the very best.

  Prologue

  Some said Lady Fia Merrick was born bad, others that she’d only been raised to it. Whatever the case, it was generally agreed that she could not end up being anything but bad.

  After all, her notorious father, Ronald Merrick, Earl of Carr, had killed her mother, his wife. Not that the little girl had any notion of this. She only knew that one day she had a doting mother and two brothers and then she did not.

  No one came to explain. For the next several days her nurse arrived in a distracted, frightened, and silent state and then, one morning,
after a tearful and furtive kiss she, too, disappeared.

  Oh, people came. Meals appeared, someone aided Fia with dressing and undressing, and a long series of interchangeable faces arrived daily to mind her. This task usually fell to a maid-of-all-work no more than a decade older than Fia. The exhausted, frightened girls would set her down in whatever corner of the castle they were working and hiss at her not to move or speak while they went about their chores.

  So Fia, by nature reticent, became more so. She cautiously followed, and silently watched, becoming a black-haired little shadow following in the footsteps of her servants. When she was noticed at all, it was with surprise and alarm and suspicion. As she was daughter of the Demon Earl, the servants considered Fia’s silence unnatural, never realizing that they themselves had inspired it with their unspoken threats to abandon her should she ever make herself a bother. Because it was Fia’s greatest fear that someday she would wake and find herself utterly alone. The wretched staff was too frightened of her father—and later of her—to adopt her into their circle, the other guests at the castle had no interest in the small doll-like creature, and her brothers were not allowed to see her.

  Where other children learned their letters and numbers and were indoctrinated into the ways of their class by instructors, siblings, parents, and friends, Fia was uniquely alone. She knew nothing except that which she gleaned through observation. By six years of age Fia had learned to take her education where she found it. Instead of a classroom with books and paper and ink, her school was the castle-cum-gaming-hell known as Wanton’s Blush.

  There had been a time when Wanton’s Blush was a proud and unassailable island fortress belonging to an equally proud and unassailable line of Scots, the McClairens. For three hundred years the castle had stood as Maiden’s Blush.

  Then, one year in the early reign of George II, Ronald Merrick was chased out of England by a pack of creditors and found himself at Maiden’s Blush, the guest of Ian McClairen, a man as honest and open-hearted as Merrick was devious and selfish.

  Now, Ronald Merrick may not have had money, but he did have charm aplenty and he used it to hide his true nature from his hosts. Gloriously handsome and urbane, he easily won over the score of Scottish ladies then living at the castle, the most important being Janet McClairen, Ian’s favored young cousin.

  Seeing a plum ripe for his plucking, Ronald married the girl. For years after, he lived off the genial munificence of his Scottish hosts, feeding on their hospitality, gaining their confidence, and learning, to their everlasting regret, of their secret Jacobite loyalty.

  After the Jacobites were routed at Culloden, Ronald testified against his wife’s family, achieving two goals in doing so: the first being the executions of the McClairen men; the second being Maiden’s Blush and the island on which it stood, a gift of a grateful monarch.

  For years Janet refused to believe what she knew in her heart, that her husband had betrayed her people and that their blood had paid the price of turning Maiden’s Blush into a sumptuous, decadent palace, rechristened Wanton’s Blush.

  When Janet could no longer hide the truth from herself she confronted Carr. And he, with no more guilt than he’d felt upon betraying the McClairens, pitched her from the island’s cliffs, claiming her death a terrible “accident.”

  In truth, murder came so easily to Carr, and the rewards from it were so substantial, that twice more he wed and killed wealthy heiresses. At which point his once-grateful sovereign heard of Carr’s new habit and forthwith unofficially banished Carr to Scotland on penalty of death should he ever return to London and flaunt his ill-gotten gains.

  For the first time Carr knew desolation. London had been the motive for his murders, his triumphant return to London the single goal to which he’d aspired.

  But desolation shriveled and became the black seed of a tenacious resolve. He would return to London in splendor and power. He turned Wanton’s Blush into a gaming hell and made a career of collecting debts both monetary and otherwise, blackmailing, pressuring, and slowly accumulating enough wealth and power so that no one dared gainsay him his objective. The people he collected at Wanton’s Blush were the powerful, the wealthy, and the decadent.

  And thus these were Fia’s tutors.

  Indeed, she would have reached adulthood without even the most rudimentary academic skills had not, in the beginning of her seventh year, a disfigured, hunched Scotswoman with a black veil draped over half her face presented herself at the kitchen door. She came seeking employment, asking only for room and board in return for caring for Carr’s three children. Thus for the first time in two years Carr was reminded of his children’s existence.

  Carr’s aversion to ugliness warred briefly with his greed, and greed—as was ever the case with Carr—won. The woman, Gunna, was hired. To Ash and Raine, well on their way to becoming the hell-spawned reprobates the locals deemed them, the old woman was a curiosity to be tolerated, ignored, and finally reluctantly respected. But to Fia, the ugly old woman was a revelation.

  Gunna not only taught Fia the rudiments of reading and writing, but all her vast knowledge of Scottish lore and folk wisdom. But most important, Gunna, unfailingly honest in her acceptance of her own deformity and her own weaknesses as well as strengths, taught Fia to be honest with herself, to never turn from a truth, no matter how painful.

  Gunna’s broken appearance had separated her from her fellow man just as Fia’s exalted status and otherworldly calm had set her apart. Perhaps ’twas the natural affinity of opposites, perhaps some sense of unspoken kinship, but the girl and the twisted old woman forged a deep, abiding bond.

  Unfortunately the same providence that had supplied Fia with a caring counselor also drew her father’s attention to her.

  For in being reminded of his daughter, Carr noted how pretty she was. If she kept the promise of her childish beauty, one day she would be a prize. It would be a waste not to spend the necessary time cultivating her, ensuring she was a willing accomplice in the future Carr envisioned for her—that future being in London, wed to power. He could not browbeat, belittle, or deride her as he did her brothers, for they were simply cubs to be driven from the pride, his pride, but she … Instead, Carr set about wooing his child.

  Fia never stood a chance.

  Wise though she was, she’d never learned to withstand loneliness. Gunna was a teacher and counselor and custodian. Carr offered something Fia had never known, a flattering companion.

  He began to ask for Fia, to command her presence after dinner, to display her on his arm at milder entertainments—always careful to remind her that her manner and her purity must remain unimpeachable. And Fia, for so long ignored and overlooked, drank up his attention like parched earth drinks the rain.

  Carr became Fia’s confidant, her adviser, and her witty guide in the ways of the ton. And she became his familiar, eagerly accepting whatever he said as truth, his opinions as gospel. And all the while, he molded and shaped her to become his creation.

  His whispers taught her whom to emulate and whom to despise. She learned her famous smile from an ancient French courtesan, her graceful, liquid walk from a Russian ballerina, the art of banter from a Hungarian princess. But when she was not following her father’s amused suggestions, practicing the wiles he insisted she would someday need, mastering the arts of seduction, she retreated behind a smooth, watchful mask, and that, her stillness and unassailable self-containment, was uniquely and specifically her own.

  On one hand, her sense of self was bloated by her father’s constant flattery. On the other hand, the hard core of watchfulness and honesty central to her character whispered skeptically. In the end she saw far more than Carr wanted her to see.

  One day a young man named Thomas Donne came to Wanton’s Blush. He was purportedly a Scotsman cast off by his clan for his cowardly refusal to fight for Bonny Prince Charlie. He did not look cowardly to Fia. He looked magnificent.

  It was not only that he was tall and dark-haired with g
ray eyes and a suave manner—handsome, urbane young men were endemic to Wanton’s Blush. No, it was his character that set him apart. He was as different from the other guests as Carr insisted that he and Fia were.

  Oh, he gamed and drank and lounged and trifled with various women, but Fia had the distinct impression that none of it meant anything to Thomas Donne, that it was simply a way to pass time until … Until what?

  His eyes were as watchful as Fia’s own and his hands as still. His manner was courtly; his bearing was impeccable. But most important, he treated the fifteen-year-old Fia with consideration. When he gazed at her, he was not gauging the depth of her décolletage or counting the gems adorning her person, he was looking at her. And he spoke to her. Simple conversations without innuendo. He asked her questions about what she liked, what she did not, whom she’d read, what she thought.

  Fia fell in love. From a font of self-containment she became a nervous, adolescent girl. Not that anyone at the castle—most especially Thomas Donne—noticed. To them she appeared as cool and serene as ever.

  Love made Fia vulnerable and miserable. When Donne next came to Wanton’s Blush she noted his attentions to a young woman named Rhiannon Russell whom her brother Ash had brought to the castle. She was consumed by jealousy. So much so, that when Donne escorted Rhiannon into the garden on a cold, blustery day, she followed.

  She crouched, trembling with self-loathing, on the far side of the stone wall, preparing to hear him make love to the woman. Instead she heard words that would change her life.

  “This isn’t simply a nasty family,” Thomas said. “It’s evil. Carr killed his first wife and then killed the next two. No one says it, especially those dependent on him for their gambling. Who would dare? But in London everyone knows, accepts it as fact—including the king.”

  The wind took the next words.

  “—what your guardian is, Miss Russell! He left his sons to rot in God knows what form of hell rather than spend any of his precious money to ransom them.”