The Ravishing One Read online

  More lost words, but by that time Fia could not tell if ’twas the rushing in her ears or that of the wind that shred them.

  “His brother raped a nun! He is as bad as his sire. They all are. Fia is nothing more than Carr’s whore, groomed to fetch the largest marriage settlement possible!”

  She’d staggered to her feet and fled to the castle, her mind whirling, intent on one thing. Finding proof. Though she did not need it. All of her suspicions had finally found a voice. His voice.

  In Carr’s library, hidden in the mantel cache she’d seen her father opening, she found a thick packet of material. She did not find proof Carr had murdered her mother but she found other things, horrible things, more than enough to substantiate Thomas Donne’s claim that the Merricks were a cursed family.

  She forced herself to face the truth. She was the daughter of an evil man. Evil blood ran in her veins. Carr had cosseted, pampered, and groomed her to be sold to the highest bidder. And he’d made her complicit in his plan.

  Overnight Fia changed. A weaker girl might have continued on in the role fate and blood had chosen for her. But Fia was not weak. The hard core of her hardened further. When Donne left a few days later after betraying her brother Ash and nearly costing him Rhiannon Russell’s love, Fia noted it with newly born cynicism but no surprise.

  She set about making her own plans, keeping her own counsel. She did not create an open breach with Carr but subtly challenged and derided him when she could. Perhaps deep within she’d hoped to see some evidence that her perfidy hurt Carr. It didn’t. It only amused him. He’d used her from the beginning.

  She vowed she would be used no more. Not by Carr. Not by anyone.

  She’d intended to wait longer to realize her plans but when her brother Raine secretly returned to Wanton’s Blush set upon an ill-fated course, she found she could not stand by and watch his destruction. Unbeknownst to Carr, she accepted a couple’s precipitous invitation to journey with them and be their guest in London.

  It was a desperate move. Carr would pursue her, if not himself then through any of a hundred agents, and drag her back. Once more, providence interceded. While Fia fled, Wanton’s Blush burned and Carr, trapped inside retrieving his blackmail material, was seriously injured.

  By the time he’d recovered, Fia had already accomplished her goal. Having taken society by storm, she’d culled from her herd of suitors a wealthy Scot, a lowland widower decades her elder, Gregory MacFarlane, and eloped with him to Scotland. MacFarlane was a bluff, unimaginative man who in wedding an English earl’s daughter had achieved his lifelong ambition to gain entry to the upper echelons of English society.

  Fia’s intention in wedding him was just as cold and clear and simple. She needed only to wait until her husband died, at which time she, as his widow—as his Scottish widow—would inherit his estate. Finally she would be independent. And in the meantime, she was out from under Carr’s thumb.

  Things might have gone according to Fia’s plan from there out except for one simple matter. Upon arriving at MacFarlane’s home in the lowlands Fia discovered that Gregory had neglected to tell her that he had two children.

  And thus, two heirs.

  Once more life had handed Fia a two-edged sword.

  If Gunna’s arrival in her life had been a revelation, MacFarlane’s children were an epiphany. Each day something new, something astounding, confronted Fia. A few days after their arrival she discovered something that so confounded her that she could not help but question Gregory about it at breakfast.

  “The tutor is teaching the girl Latin,” Fia told him.

  “Oh? Oh, yes,” Gregory responded absently, chipping away at his hard-boiled egg. “He said the chit had a knack for languages.”

  “You mean you knew about it?” The notion that anyone would pay someone to instruct a girl dumbfounded her.

  “Oh, yes. Rather resourceful of me, getting the education of both me brats for the price of one, eh?” Gregory continued eating as though he’d said nothing untoward, which only gave credence to Fia’s growing suspicion that she had no real concept of what the world, the world outside Wanton’s Blush, considered … normal.

  “You mean Cora is being educated in the same disciplines as her brother?”

  “Yes. Let’s see … history, geography, and mathematics. I believe the fellow wants to throw in a smattering of philosophy, too.” Gregory popped a bit of biscuit in his mouth.

  “I see,” she murmured. But she didn’t. “Why?”

  “Why?” Gregory paused in spreading soft cheese on his bread. “Because. Because that’s what one does. One educates one’s children. Just as your father had you educated and my father had me educated. I can’t see that it did either of us any lasting harm and it keeps them occupied, but if you rather they didn’t—”

  “No! No, of course you are right,” she said.

  An idea occurred to her. She pondered it a moment. Then, in a voice that shook with fear that her plot might be discovered and she herself exposed as the half-bred monster posing at humanity that she was, she said, “I suppose that it is my duty as their … their stepmother to sit in on their lessons and make sure they are … they are properly attending them?”

  “If you wish,” Gregory responded calmly. “Do try the creamed haddock, m’dear. It’s delicious.”

  He studied her as he chewed, a frown slowly forming on his face. “Tell me, Lady Fia, do you have a particular modiste you utilize? Because upon our return to London I insist you contact her about creating a new wardrobe for you.” He dabbed at the bits of creamed haddock sticking to his lower lip, beaming munificently.

  She blinked at him uneasily. She considered the gowns she now owned far and away sufficient for what her life would be from here on in. “Thank you, sir, but I have no need of more gowns. I’ve a surfeit of gowns, as you will see, for Gunna should soon be arriving with them.”

  “Who’s Gunna?” Cora asked.

  Fia turned to stare at MacFarlane’s youngest child.

  “Your nurse is coming to live here?” Kay’s voice chimed in, drawing Fia’s bemused glance. Kay was Gregory’s nine-year-old son—and heir.

  Children. At the dining table. Speaking without first being addressed. None of the few books she’d read made much mention of children, and certainly none of them described a child taking its meal with its parent. Why, even as Carr’s doted-upon daughter, she’d never actually sat down at table with him and his guests.

  “Why would you need a nurse?” Kay continued.

  “I don’t.”

  “Well,” Kay said, “I hope, then, that she’s coming for Cora, because I am too old to have a nurse.”

  Fia frowned. “No. She won’t be nurse to either of you.”

  “Then why is she coming?” Kay demanded.

  “To help me,” Fia said, befuddled at finding herself answering the demanding inquiries of a nine-year-old boy. “Gunna arranges things and sees to things—”

  “Ah!” Gregory exhaled. “She’s here to replace Mrs. Osborne as housekeeper! Good. There now, Kay. You have your answer. Please don’t speak anymore. At all.”

  “Would you play a game with me after breakfast, Mama?” Cora suddenly asked with suspicious ingenuousness.

  Fia set down her fork and looked desperately at Gregory. “The girl called me ‘mama’ again!” she whispered urgently. “Why does she do that? I have asked her at least half a dozen times not to call me that, yet she continues to do so!”

  Gregory shrugged. “She’s teasing you.”

  Fia went utterly still. Her mouth parted, closed, and parted again. “Teasing me?”

  No one had ever teased Fia. No one had come closer than offering a rude double entendre. This was different. The feelings flooding her were indescribable. She sat back in her seat.

  No, things had not gone according to plan, but perhaps she could adapt.

  Chapter 1

  BRAMBLE HOUSE

  THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS

  A
UTUMN, 1765

  Your father is here,” Gunna whispered. She stood in the doorway, looking over her shoulder as if she expected Satan to be behind her. Nothing scared Gunna. At least, Kay MacFarlane thought interestedly, nothing until now.

  And Fia, who usually seemed as composed as one of his tutor’s mathematical theorems, flinched. “My father?”

  “Aye.” Gunna bit on the tattered scrap of her lower lip. “I could say yer gone.”

  Fia’s black skirts rustled as she stood up. “No. I’m only surprised he’s waited this long. The lawyers were here four months ago. Kay and Cora, please stay here with Gunna.”

  She disappeared into the interior of the house. Gunna hesitated, fixing both children with a stern glare. Cora hastily closed her open mouth and went back to her needlework.

  “You two’d best wait here if ye want to go to bed with blameless bums tonight,” Gunna warned, and hastened after Fia.

  “The kitchen,” Cora said, popping to her feet.

  “Don’t be such a child, Cora,” Kay chided her. “You can’t mean to eavesdrop. It’s so juvenile. Besides, ’tis nearly dinner. There’ll be so many pots and pans banging around we won’t be able to hear anything anyway.”

  Cora gave him a sour look and disappeared. Kay waited a few minutes and then rose. It wouldn’t be right to set Cora a bad example, but he would be a poor excuse for a stepson if he didn’t bother to find out what had upset Fia enough to make her flinch.

  He headed down the hall for the servants’ staircase, on his way nabbing a glass goblet from the sideboard in the dining room. The chance reminder of their father caused him a moment of melancholy.

  Father had died five months ago. Dead of one too many treacle puddings, or so they said, and was it a wonder? Last time Father had been to Bramble House he’d looked like a prize bull but without any of the bullish parts and naught left but fat and bluster.

  The thought saddened Kay, for he remembered Father as stout and solid a man as Bramble House was a manor. He pushed his sadness away. Something important was happening. Though in all the years she’d lived here Fia had never spoken about Lord Carr, Father had more than made up for that oversight.

  On his rare visits home he’d been full of tales of his bosom companion, Ronald Merrick, Lord Carr. Fia hadn’t liked that much. Her skin would tauten up and her eyes would grow flat with every mention of Lord Carr’s name. Not that Father had noticed—but then, he hadn’t been a very “noticing” sort.

  Upstairs, Kay dropped to his knees and upended the goblet on the bare floorboards. It took him a few tries, but finally he found the best vantage for listening. Fia’s voice, low and throaty as a spring warbler’s, vibrated through the glass.

  “—surprised you didn’t have him done away with at once.”

  “And play right into your hand, m’dear? I should hope I have more restraint than that. Why, if I had, you’d have inherited a rich estate. You’d have been completely independent. Oh yes, Fia. I knew your plan from the moment I heard you’d ‘eloped.’ ”

  “You’re forgetting his children.” Fia’s voice was a bit breathless. “His heirs.”

  The man laughed. “You know as well as I that had MacFarlane died when you’d first wed you would have had the management of his estate until the boy came of age. Still, from what I hear you didn’t know about them, did you?

  “How that must have pricked! I truly do wish I’d been a fly on the wall at that particular meeting.”

  There was a pause and Kay heard footsteps, measured and heavy. Lord Carr. When next he spoke it was directly beneath him but in a voice so low Kay only caught phrases.

  “—enough faith in your imagination—”

  “—sure you’d married with a plan already—”

  “—dispose of the little—”

  Then Fia’s voice, cold and flavorless as ice. “Why did you come? You’d already sent your lawyers.”

  “I know the lawyers already told you,” Carr purred, “but I could not deny myself the pleasure of repeating it to your face.”

  Fia’s response was mostly lost but ended in the words “—how much?”

  “Why, everything, my dear. Everything.”

  There was a long pause, then Fia murmured something indistinguishable.

  “I should think you would be happy I did,” Carr responded. “MacFarlane was certainly delighted to have me vouch for him. And carry him. And accept his notes. And his collateral. I believe,” a pause, “I believe he saw it as evidence of our friendship.”

  “You befriended him for one reason.” Fia’s voice was clear this time. “To avenge yourself on me.”

  “You are wrong. Well, mostly wrong. Oh, Fia, we are so alike, you and I. I wouldn’t expend my energy on simple vengeance for anyone but you, dear daughter. Is that not proof of my paternal regard?”

  Fia did not reply. The silence beneath Kay swelled, bloated on the black stew of emotions he sensed in the room below. He did not fully understand what was being said, but instinctively recognized it as vile. He’d begun to rise to his feet when he heard Fia again.

  “What exactly do you want?”

  “Nothing much. Simply for you to fulfill that role I assigned you on your birth, that role that you should have fulfilled five years ago but which you circumvented by running off with your Scottish groom. The role you were bred to perform.”

  Something fell on the floor below.

  “What’s this? Emotions, Fia? Oh, my dear, you have grown soft here in your little country estate. It’s quite quaint, isn’t it? All greeny and flattish. Not to my taste, but I see you’ve grown fond of it. And you can keep it, too. If you follow my wishes.”

  She said something. Her words were muffled.

  “Well,” Carr replied, “first off, you must come with me to London.”

  Chapter 2

  The aria came to an end. The stout Italian bowed in acknowledgment of the applause and the impresario joined him to announce an intermission. Immediately a din of conversation filled the air as gentlemen and ladies jostled their way toward the lobby.

  Captain Thomas Donne remained where he sat. Beside him his companions, Edward “Robbie” Robinson and Francis Johnston, lounged indolently while young Pip Leighton stood up and looked around eagerly.

  Thomas had met Pip and his sister, Sarah, at an assembly to which his friend and shipping partner, James Barton, had brought him. Normally Thomas would have eschewed such affairs, but as his ship would take weeks to repair, he owned free time to spare. For a few days thereafter he had enjoyed Miss Leighton’s company, until it became apparent that she sought more than a casual friendship.

  He could never offer his name to any English lady. Not because he did not want to—indeed, he wanted very much to have the sort of relationship James had enjoyed with his sweet Amelia before the influenza had taken her last year. No, he could not give his name because he no longer had one to give.

  He was a convicted felon, deported as a Jacobite traitor and returned here under a false name. No one knew his true identity was Thomas Fitzgerald McClairen. Not even James Barton.

  It had grieved Thomas to hurt Sarah, but at least he still held the good opinion of her brother, Pip. He was glad. He liked the young man.

  “Her Christian name means ‘dark promise,’ ” Pip suddenly crooned.

  He smiled at the boy’s impassioned tone. Apparently Pip had a new infatuation, some woman named Mac Farlane. The smile softened the hard lines of Thomas’s dark, lean countenance and burnished the adamantine gray of his eyes to a warmer hue. If his stillborn brother had lived, he might have been much like Pip, not only in age but in coloring, having a shade of hair similar to Thomas’s own mahogany.

  If things had been different. If war and strife and Ronald Merrick, Earl of Carr, had not happened.

  The thought of Carr frosted Thomas’s smile.

  “I’ll be damned. There’s the Black Diamond now,” Francis Johnston breathed. “And as severe a beauty I never hope to see again.
”

  “Is she here? Where?” Pip’s head swung around.

  “Up there, lad,” Robbie remarked. “Watching from Compton’s box. Or rather, being watched.”

  “Oh!” Johnston chuckled. “Imagine the consternation amongst the other fair ladies. They don’t stand a chance by way of comparison.”

  “The Black Diamond?” Thomas asked, without looking about. Society was filled with high-class courtesans with interesting sobriquets. Unfortunately that was usually the most interesting thing about them.

  “ ’Tis a name one of the club lads conferred upon her. ’Tis said she’s as rare and hard and black-hearted a beauty as that fabled gem,” Johnston said.

  “She’s absolutely riveting. But why is she so riveting?” Robinson mused. “She doesn’t utilize any of the usual tricks. No fans, no sidelong glances or teasing pouts … I’ll be damned if I can see how she does it.”

  “And never will, Robinson,” a wit behind them drawled. “See how she does it, that is. Not even if your older brothers were all to up and die. No mere viscount for that lady. You’d need a coronet at least to discover just how she does it.”

  The double entendre gave rise to rough, if embarrassed, laughter and cool disdain. Except from Pip. The lad’s downy cheeks burned brilliant red.

  “Lord Tunbridge!” he exclaimed, glaring behind them. “I demand an apology on behalf of the lady.”

  Dear God, Thomas closed his eyes in exasperation, spare me indignant youth. Of all the men the boy could have chosen to take issue with over some light-skirt, Pip had to pick a renowned swordsman. True, Tunbridge’s skill might have been hampered as a result of having his hand—and the card he’d been trying to palm—impaled against a tavern table some years back. Had not Tunbridge fenced with either hand.

  Tunbridge laughed. “Tell me, gentlemen, am I mistaken or has this pup just challenged me?”

  Calmly, Thomas turned around. The years had not been good to Tunbridge. Once thin, he was now near skeletal, the cheekbones jutting painfully in his face, his eyes sunken into sulfur-colored flesh.