Prologue

June 1818

"Lach, my darling viscount, come to bed.  It's late and I want to play some more.  In fact, I have something rather special in mind for you."  When he did not immediately respond, the woman lying naked upon his bed pouted prettily but with a nasty edge to her voice.  "Now, my darling, Lachlan.  When I am viscountess, I will not tolerate you disobeying me like this.  I shall be mistress of Tinsburg Castle, after all, and will command respect."  Then she giggled like the little girl she often seemed to be, a change so abrupt that had he not just witnessed it himself, he would have found it difficult to believe.  "Imagine!  Me!  A viscountess!  That whore Una McLeod will be positively green with envy when I inform her that we are to wed, Lach! She can only dream of aspiring to so high a lover."

Lachlan glanced behind him to where his mistress, Fiona Campbell, still lay with her legs spread wide open across his bed, despite his repeated requests that she find some clothing.  The daughter of a local shipping merchant, one look at Fiona and it was clear that she was not equal to someone of his higher social standing, but she had more than enough assets, as he gently termed them, to make up for it.  Or she had up until this moment.  Now she was merely annoying, the sexual pleasure they had just shared leaving him more unsettled than satisfied.

However, she was still extremely creative in bed, and she didn't mind sharing him, at least on occasion.  Which was why Brae, the lusty bar maid he had selected earlier in the evening had only just departed his bedroom moments ago, her large, succulent breasts still naked and swaying freely and temping Lachlan to invite her to stay the night.  That was the only reason that he had not asked Fiona to leave his life permanently.  And now even that excuse was wearing thin.

For as adventurous as she was, Lachlan had learned less than a fortnight ago that Fiona was not inclined to allow that sort of fun on a more permanent basis.  The scene she had caused when he had invited another bar wench to stay in their love nest was still being gossiped about.  He had placated Fiona for a time by having the other woman leave, but he had hoped that in time, she might be inclined to accept another woman in their bed, if only for a night or three.  She wasn't, it seemed.  More was the pity, really.  His romp with the two women this evening, especially Brae, had truly excited him, something that was rare as of late.

Not to mention that if he continued to allow Fiona to get away with such behavior, she might think that she was in charge - of everything.  That it was acceptable for her to order him about.  It wasn't.  No one told the future Viscount Gladston what to do or how to behave.  It was time the lovely wench remembered that.  Beginning now.

Instead of doing as Fiona demanded, Lachlan instead poured himself another drink, hoping to ease the pounding in his head as, in the dim light he had insisted upon earlier, he watched shadows play across the red velvet drapes that served as bed curtains.  He had overindulged earlier in the evening and he was beginning to pay for it now, with Fiona's incessant demands only adding to the din that was making it impossible to think.  Not that this was unusual for him.  As the son of Duncan McKenna, the most powerful laird in the area and the man who also held the title of Viscount Gladston, Lachlan was next in line to be viscount some day.  To be fair, he lived his life as if he was already the viscount.  Not that his father particularly gave a damn.  About anything involving Lachlan, truth be known.  It was, as Duncan had often told his only son, precisely what he expected from a weak, half-English whelp of a boy.

Except that Lachlan was anything but weak.  In fact, he was one of the strongest men in all of Scotland with a sexual appetite to match.  Not to mention a strong affinity for drinking and gambling.  Oh, and whoring.  Couldn't forget that one.  That was how he had come to acquire Fiona as his mistress, though at the moment, he really was beginning to doubt the wisdom of that idea.  Lachlan was many things, but stupid was not one of them.  Stubborn and foolish, not to mention selfish?  Well, he was those on occasion, too.  However, he was far too intelligent to let a bad decision go without correction when necessary.  His lover's words moments ago indicated that some correction was now necessary.  Even if it was messy.

"Where did you come up with the idea that we would marry, Fiona?"  Lachlan deliberately kept his tone as light as possible, but he also made certain to keep his back to her so that she could not see his face. Very often, his handsome visage betrayed his every emotion, including his less than pleasant ones, and he wanted her to answer him honestly rather than telling him what she thought he wanted to hear.  Especially if she knew he was angry.  And he was angry.  Very angry, in fact.

"Well that is what I want.  Therefore, it is what we shall do."  He could tell from her tone that she was working up to another pout, if not a full-blown tantrum.  Fiona might spread her legs like a doxy, but at heart, she was nothing but a spoiled, willful child.  It was simply too bad it had taken him so long to discover her true nature.  Then again, when he had taken her to bed, he had not been interested in her nature.  Perhaps he should have been.  "Besides, you love me.  It's so plain that anyone can see."

He took another drink from the tumbler in his hand, sipping the fine scotch and letting the fiery liquid burn its way down inside of him before he cleared his throat.  Finally, Fiona had crossed a line that she knew good and well to avoid at all costs.

Lachlan did not, would not, and could not love a woman.  Ever.  "And I do not have a say in the matter?  Is that it?"  He drew in a deep breath and placed the tumbler on a table before he crushed the delicate glass with his bare hands.  "Fiona, you know bloody good and well that I do not love.  I lust.  I desire.  I fuck.  But I do not love."  He turned now, displaying his gloriously naked body to her, knowing that she would be more interested in coaxing his cock up to play again than the emotions on his face.  Again, a pity he did not realize how shallow she was before this night.  At one time, he supposed that he found her agreeable.  No longer.  He did not know what had changed within him, but something had.  And the change was within him.  Lachlan knew this.  For Fiona was now as she had always been.  Only now, he cared more about her desire to control him than about how well she could suck his cock.  Again, a pity.

Fiona, however, was undaunted.  She batted her lashes at him in what he knew she believed to be a coquettish and charming fashion.  He often though she resembled someone with a mental disorder when she did that, not that he had ever mentioned it.  Again, odd that he had not truly noticed that this habit of hers annoyed him greatly until this night.  "But lover, we are perfect for each other.  You have a title, or will, and I desire one.  More than that, I deserve one.  We both know this is true.  I am a wealthy merchant's daughter.  If I do not marry you, whom should I wed?  For no other is deserving of me, certainly!"  Then she plucked her own glass filled with claret from a night table and took a long drink.  "Besides, in time, you will come to love me if you don't already.  You're just too afraid to admit it."

Crossing the room in two quick strides, Lachlan snatched the glass from her hand and slammed it on the table, shattering the fine crystal and raining shards of glass over his hand.  If he was cut, he did not notice, nor did he care.  She moved to strike him from where she still reclined on the bed, but in his anger, he was quicker, grasping her wrist firmly in his hand, though he was careful not to hurt her.  She might try his patience, but he did not hurt women.  He was many things, but not that.  Never that.

"I.  Do.  Not.  Love."  His eyes flashed fire and his lips curled in a sneer, not bothering to mask his disgust with her.  "I have been clear from the beginning, Fiona, that there is no such emotion as love.  Not for me.  You fool yourself and you make a fool of me if you believe otherwise."

Rising on the bed on shaky knees, she stood her ground, twisting in his grasp so that she could look directly into his eyes.  "I will make you love me, Lachlan McKenna.  I will force it upon you if you resist.  Just you wait and see.  I refuse to let you go!  You are mine!  Now and forever!"

Lachlan clamped down hard on the rage that threatened to swallow him whole, the same rage that lived inside of his father and often burst forth to disastrous results.  But Lachlan was not that sort of man.  He was half-English.  He had better manners.  Better control.  Still, he could not help but toss Fiona's dressing gown at her with a snort of disgust as he shoved her lightly away from him, sending her sprawling across the bed.

"We are done here, Fiona.  Get dressed and get your things.  You are no longer welcome in my home.  Or at Tinsburg Castle."  There was a dark edge to his voice that he knew she would do well to heed.  However, given the look of rage on her pretty face, the idea of having a title so close in her grasp and then missing it because of her own foolishness clearly did not sit well with her.

"I will do no such thing!" she shrieked, attempting to claw at him while he held her away from his body.  She tried to kick him as well, but he caught her ankle and essentially pinned her to the bed.  He did not want her to harm herself either as she attempted to strike at him.  "Why else would I have let you into my bed?  Given you my virginity if I was not to be your wife?  Your lover?"  She managed to work up some tears but Lachlan knew they were more for her and what she was about to lose than for him.

"You were hardly an innocent when I took you to my bed.  I do not dally with virgins, as you well know."  He snorted, disgusted more with himself this time than with her.  "And if you think that pig's blood on my counterpane was enough to fool either me or my valet, then you are mistaken."  Roughly, he pushed away from her as she grasped at him again.  How had he ever thought this was a good idea?  "Now go.  And do not attempt to finagle money or gifts out of me, Fiona.  I have been more than generous with you."  Then he sneered.  "And I do know where all of your skeletons are buried, my dear.  Literally."

He hated to be so crass, but he did not know of another way to be rid of her permanently.  

It was common knowledge among Scottish society that well before Lachlan had met her, Fiona had borne and lost a child, the babe coming too early to survive.  It was not his, obviously, but rather the bastard son of a local minor viscount.  One whose wealthy wife, the daughter of an earl, would not be pleased to discover that her husband had been one of Fiona's many lovers.  Or that he had gotten a child on her while his own wife remained childless.  Without a husband in her bed most nights of the week.

And Lachlan knew where the child was buried, or had been, wrapped in the plaid of her lover's family's clan.  No woman would bury a child thus unless the babe was of that clan's blood.  And the child, a much longed for son, had been.  Of that there was little doubt in anyone's mind.

Lachlan would hate to use that knowledge against Fiona, but if she pressed the issue of marriage to him, he would have no choice.  He would not be trapped into a marriage with this scheming shrew who would cuckold him the moment a younger, more handsome and wealthier man came along.  Fiona had insisted to Lachlan that she had changed, that her affair with the viscount was a youthful indiscretion.  Given tonight's performance, one where she had overplayed her hand rather spectacularly, he knew she had not.  She was still the same scheming, social-climbing wench she had been when he had met her.

After more shouting and thinly veiled threats, along with a healthy dose of false tears, Fiona had finally gone, still spouting threats against him and his family.  However, he also knew she would not come back.  She could not risk news of her stillborn child's whereabouts becoming public knowledge.  Speculation was one thing, but a body, wrapped in her lover's family's plaid was quite another.  And a body he could lead the authorities to, if necessary.  The child had been buried long before he had met Fiona but in a fit of madness, she had shown him the location where she had buried the child.  Why?  He still was not certain but it had been a grave miscalculation on her part.

One he would now use to his advantage.

At the time, Lachlan had not cared that Fiona was a woman of such low morals.  He was too involved in gambling and drink to think he deserved better.  However, over the last few years, something inside of him was changing.  Had already changed, actually.  He had not asked for it, nor did he particularly want it, but the change was there and he could not seem to stop it.

At first, it was the gambling.  The cards no longer held the allure they once had and he grew bored attempting to amuse himself in that manner.  There was simply no challenge in it.  Then it was the drink, the sparkling liquid no longer able to numb him as it once had.  He still drank, and, on days like today, perhaps a bit too much, but no longer was he drowning in endless days of a liquor-induced haze, unable to collect his wits or form a coherent thought.  Tonight, unfortunately, he had come to realize that women like Fiona, and yes, even Brae, no longer appealed to him, either.  He liked to fuck.  He was a man after all.  However, each encounter left him emptier than the last, his body yearning for something his mind could not name.

Lachlan hated to admit it, but he was afraid that he was growing up.

His mother had said that one day he would grow into a fine and upstanding man; he had not believed her.  He reminded his mother that she was a lady and knew nothing of men and their behaviors.  Lachlan had been a typical, spoiled young man who thought he knew everything.  Now?  Now he was something else entirely, a man in between two worlds.  He was not yet the laird or viscount.  However, a part of him deep inside knew that he could not be a lay-about spendthrift any longer either.  So where did that leave him?  He did not know.  Other than in a place without a mistress at present, though in truth, he didn't mind all that much.  He wasn't even certain he would take another one.  At least not for a good, long while.

Lachlan had no idea how long he sat there on his bed, his body still unclothed, but eventually, he heard his butler, Roberts, clear his throat.  Lachlan looked up to see the old man shifting nervously from foot to foot.  "An urgent letter for you, my lord."  He offered Lachlan a silver tray.  On it sat a letter bearing his father's seal.

With a sigh, Lachlan took the note and opened it, not caring a whit about his nudity.  After all, Roberts had seen it all before, and Lachlan did so enjoy the feeling of whimsy it inspired in him to shock his valet slash butler.  When Lachlan had finished reading, however, his heart was in his feet, no whimsy to be found.  In fact, his heart was dead.  Like another member of his family.

"My father's wife, Annis, has passed," he announced as crisply as he could, cursing the fates that had taken another good woman from his life.  Lachlan had genuinely liked his father's second wife, technically his stepmother.  She had been kind to him when she did not have to be, making Lachlan feel like a true part of the family instead of the outcast his father often viewed him as.  "Pack my things.  I must return to Tinsburg Castle immediately."  Then he looked around his room, a room that had known nothing but depravity and lustful acts.  In that instant, he was ashamed of the life he had led, the things he had done within the confines of the room.  "In fact, pack everything.  We won't be returning."

"My lord?"  Lachlan could see the confusion on his butler's face but in that moment, Lachlan was finally seeing clearly for the first time in his life.  Unfortunately it had taken the loss of Annis to show him the way.

"I'm going home, Roberts.  My family, or my sisters at least, need me.  I will not be back here.  Ever."

In the span of less than an hour, Lachlan had gone from ravishing two women in his bed to giving up his life as a libertine completely.  Had it been another man, he would have scoffed at the mere notion of such a change.  But this was his life and, given his father's past behavior, Lachlan knew his sisters would need him.  They would need him to shelter them from their father and his unchecked wrath.  To be the adult.  Especially now that Annis was gone.

For the first time in his life, Lachlan had a purpose.  A real one.  He had a reason to be a better man and put this life of debauchery behind him.  Strangely, it felt rather good.  In fact, he would dare say that he liked it.