Chapter Seven

Damn the bloody gall of the man. Damn his lips, his strong hands, his big body…all of it.

Damn all men, for that matter, not just virile, high-handed Highlander dukes.

Imogen sat stewing in the morning room in her parents’ home, where she and Lady Kincaid were presently hosting two ladies for tea. There was nothing to be done to hide Imogen’s irascible mood, so she didn’t try.

“Tell me again, who is this Stormie person?” Lady Glenross asked, frowning into her teacup. Sorcha had taken up Imogen on her invitation to tea and had brought with her Lady Tarbendale, one of the Maclaren brothers’ wives. There seemed to be a half dozen or more Maclaren brothers and sisters and in-laws, cropping up like weeds everywhere she turned.

That isn’t fair, Imogen scolded herself. Aisla was perfectly charming and kind, and to Imogen’s mother’s delight, she had brought her baby with her to tea. The little boy’s chubby chin and cheeks, his hearty squall, and his constantly fisted hands made him appear like a miniature caber-tosser in training. He was asleep at the moment. Maxwell was precious, and when even he could not stir Imogen to a good mood, she realized nothing would.

With another, worthier male target in mind, she let her seething frustrations settle on the flash man who was currently sinking his hooks into Rory.

“He’s an awful brute,” Imogen answered Sorcha. “He trains these children, many of them from the time they can walk, to depend upon him for everything. To pickpocket and steal. And once they are older, especially the girls, even to—”

“Imogen,” her mother said with a cautionary look to their guests.

“Well, it’s the truth, Mama, whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not.” She let out a sigh and lowered her cup, the oolong inside gone cold. Across from her, both Sorcha and Aisla waited for her to continue. They were not daunted, she realized with a lift of her spirit. “Rory, one of Stormie’s lads, has befriended me, only…well, Rory isn’t a lad.”

Aisla nodded knowingly. “A lass in disguise.”

“And do you think this Stormie knows?” Sorcha asked.

It was what Rory had come to her office about the afternoon before. She’d asked Imogen whether she knew of a tonic. Something, anything, to halt her courses. The monthly flux was becoming difficult to hide.

“She wouldn’t say. Rory masks her concern with a show of bravado; she’d never admit to being afraid.” But she was, Imogen was certain of it. And she’d refused to accept help, yet again, when Imogen had offered her a place at Haven.

“Your efforts are commendable, Imogen,” Aisla said, her tea in one hand, her other rocking the sleeping infant in his small bassinet beside her on the sofa.

“They’re not enough.” Another burst of bitterness made her restless, her legs aching to stand and pace the room. “And now, going to London, being away from Haven and the women, and Rory and Emma…not to mention an engagement ball…”

She shot up—to hell with it—and went toward the windows overlooking the gardens, her temper renewing.

To force her hand and drag her to London for no less than five weeks… It was despicable of the duke! And then, practically within the same breath, to stand so close and use those lips and tongue and hands the way he had… Imogen shivered at the memory of her body being heaved up against his unyielding one. And how swiftly she’d submitted to the heady explosion of sensation it had elicited, how hungrily she’d kissed him back.

She wouldn’t think of it. Couldn’t. Not without feeling like a brainless hussy.

“Perhaps a London engagement ball is a better idea, Imogen,” her mother said after a few moments of quiet. “You two haven’t exactly made the best impressions in Society here.”

“Yes, it seems my brother has worked up quite a reputation these last weeks in Edinburgh.” Sorcha subdued a wry grin. “They’re calling him the Dreadful Duke.”

“Dreadfully unfashionable.” Aisla snickered.

“Those same papers dubbed me Lady Rosebud,” Imogen remarked. “Though my more recent favorites are Lord Troglodyte and Lady Pompadour.”

Aisla giggled. “Troglodyte, that’s marvelous. I shall need to keep a list, if only to torture my stick-in-the-mud brother with it later.”

Lady Kincaid looked as if she’d like to change the subject. Imogen and her mother had been silent with each other after that morning’s breakfast, when Lord Kincaid had declared he would not hear another word about how unsuitable the duke was.

“He is a duke and the son of a very good friend,” her father had said. “And by God, he’s weathered your charades like a saint these last two weeks, hasn’t he? His patience speaks volumes.”

Imogen’s eyes had goggled. “His patience? Papa, have you seen the man parading in his kilts and swinging his claymore like he’s Wallace reborn?”

“He’s a Highlander,” her father had huffed, waving a dismissive arm that made Imogen want to throw her teacup across the room.

He’s a Highlander?

That was her father’s excuse for the man’s uncivilized, vulgar behavior? She bit her lip hard. Her so-called charades were tame by comparison. She’d opened her mouth and shut it at the dour look on Lord Kincaid’s face.

“Not another word, Imogen. We will go to London, and you will see that this is the best course of action. You need someone to keep you in line, my girl.”

Her stomach had lurched, threatening to unseat the kippers she’d eaten. “Is that what you do with mother? Keep her in line?”

Lady Kincaid had burst into laughter. “Only when I’m utterly unruly.”

“Which is all the time,” he’d added with an arch glance her way.

Imogen had wanted to scream bloody murder, cast up her accounts, and roll her eyes all at once. Blast their love match! She didn’t mean it, of course. She’d dreamed of a love match herself, once upon a time. But that had been long ago. That dream had withered and was now buried, impossible to exhume.

She was unable to love completely, wholly, without doubt. It simply wasn’t possible. Because she herself wasn’t whole and complete and never would be. Not after what had happened to her dear Belinda. What had happened to her.

And the monster she’d given her heart to.

There were pieces of her missing, stolen away by a man she’d once trusted completely… No man deserved the rest of those pieces, ruined the way they were. Not even a rotted, overbearing Highlander who she’d like to throttle in his sleep—or kiss.

The tormenting thing was, she couldn’t make up her mind as to which one she wanted more.

“I think I should take some air,” she said to Sorcha and Aisla, apologizing with a glance toward them and her mother.

The weather was warm enough to go about without a cloak, and so she ambled along one of the garden paths until she came to a sundial. The light was weak, hidden behind banks of clouds, and no shadow was cast on the dial to mark the hour. If only time was as simple to pause.

“If you’re thinking to catch a cold and stay behind instead of going to London, I should warn you I’m rather good with healing tonics and rubs and the like.”

Aisla had followed her. Sorcha, too.

Imogen wasn’t annoyed, however. She liked the pair of them immensely. Too much, perhaps.

“I’m sure the duke would insist upon my presence even if I had dysentery,” Imogen muttered.

She had already considered and dismissed a number of excuses, from a curious case of amnesia all the way to a broken leg. But from his previous conduct, Imogen suspected Ronan would toss the crutches aside and haul her right over his shoulder, giving her bottom a smack for good measure. The ripple of thrill the thought sent through her was enough to make her feel truly nauseated.

“He can be a devil,” Aisla said, coming toward the sundial. She held little Maxwell, the babe now squirming against her shoulder. “When Niall and I were sixteen, we eloped. Ronan was furious, and good Lord, when that man is angry he can be intimidating. But then, when the marriage didn’t work out and I went to Paris, Ronan would check in on my welfare. I had no idea at the time. Niall told me later, after we fell back in love.” Aisla smiled as she spoke, looking a bit wistful as she swayed her baby back to sleep. “I was still a Maclaren, and he felt he had a duty to care for me, even when he’d rather have taken me by the ear and dragged me back to his brother.”

“I know I sang his praises earlier,” Sorcha said before Imogen could speak. “What we’re trying to say is…well, perhaps you’ve only seen one side of Ronan these last weeks. The angry, dispassionate one. The one who feels as if he’s been forced into a corner.”

“Much like you have been,” Aisla added.

Imogen took a seat on a bench, suddenly ashamed to have been in such a belligerent mood before. Sorcha and Aisla were only trying to help what they knew was a difficult situation for their brother—and for her as well.

“So you’re saying there is another Ronan I’ve not yet met,” she said. If he was so perfect, how had he arrived at the age of seven and thirty without a wife? “Is there some great mystery surrounding him? Some ghastly thing he’s done in the past that makes all the women in the Highlands terrified to accept his hand? Goodness, did he accidentally kill a lady and bury the body in the yard?”

Too far. She saw it in the speaking look Aisla sent toward Sorcha.

“I’m sorry,” Imogen quickly said. “That was appalling.”

Sorcha shook her head and, astonishingly, smiled. “I think it better you know the real story than the ones your alarming mind is churning away.”

Aisla continued walking Maxwell around the sundial as Sorcha sat beside Imogen.

“He had just turned eighteen when he fell madly in love with a lass from a neighboring clan. Grace Donaldson was her name. But the pair of them were far too young to wed, according to her father and ours.”

A dull pain slashed into Imogen’s stomach, and she frowned. Jealousy? Over some girl he’d fawned over twenty years before? Absurd. She shoved it away.

“Ronan was devoted, so certain that in a few years’ time they would marry and finally be together. Grace, however, didn’t see things the same way—not that she ever bothered to tell him. She became enamored with an English viscount. He and Grace eloped, and off they went to America. She never even bothered to give Ronan so much as a goodbye.”

Imogen winced as she pictured a younger Ronan, swallowing such a betrayal, trying desperately to mask his pain.

“He was jilted and humiliated,” Sorcha went on. “He’d made it clear to everyone that they were going to wed, and when she brushed him aside, it devastated him.”

“So he hasn’t married because he’s never gotten over her?” Imogen asked.

Could hurt feelings truly linger so long? The next instant, she felt a fool. Of course they did. She knew from experience. Hers had scarred her beyond belief. Ruined her for any other man.

“Perhaps, though I do not think that’s the whole reason. After Grace, he closed himself off. Protected his heart, or what was left of it, and swore off women,” Sorcha said.

Imogen squashed the rise of compassion in her chest. She should not feel sorry for him. He didn’t deserve it, not after what he’d done in her office.

“There’s something else.” The worried edge of Sorcha’s words reeled Imogen back from the heated memories. “You know who she is, Imogen. Grace was in the retiring room at my ball, if you recall.”

Imogen sat forward, the cold stone of the bench seeping into her. “The redhead?”

Sorcha nodded. “She came on the arm of an earl I invited, and the rumors are she’s widowed and residing in Edinburgh for the time being.”

The woman who’d sat beside Imogen…the gorgeous, venomous woman who’d so overtly mocked her gown?

“Lady Reid,” she recalled. “Yes, she said she’d just returned from overseas.” She’d also made an odd comment that Imogen had promptly forgotten, until now. How a lady should know her competition. “I think she might be here for your brother.”

Aisla and Sorcha exchanged a look while Imogen’s mind raced. She bit her lip as another twist of jealousy turned her stomach. What did she care? This was what she needed.

“Grace is an opportunist,” Aisla said.

“Hopefully one that stays here, in Edinburgh,” Sorcha added.

They would see soon enough. And if Lady Reid shifted cities in the coming weeks, Imogen would decide then what moves to play. As much as her body insisted she hated it, the revelations about Lady Reid could be the very thing that won her freedom.

“You’ll need someone in London, I think,” Sorcha said. “Lady Bradburne is a dear friend of mine, and I know the two of you will get along. She supports a number of hospices and charities with her husband, the duke.”

Imogen brightened a little. “She sounds wonderful. I only wish I didn’t have to leave, especially right now with what’s happening with Rory.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her, if you like. And I can have Brandt look into this Stormie fellow you spoke of.”

Imogen wasn’t certain what the duke could do, at least not single-handedly, but she nodded her thanks. The duchess was so generous, and Aisla, too. Like Emma, they didn’t look at her sideways, attempting to puzzle out just what was wrong with her for having the interests she did.

She almost wished she were marrying into the Maclaren brood, if only to benefit by having Sorcha and Aisla as sisters. Of course, becoming their sister-in-law would require more sacrifices than Imogen was willing to make.

Including giving in to one very frustrating and infuriatingly kissable duke.