Chapter Twenty-Three

A full day and several bracing rounds in the boxing ring at Gentleman Jackson’s later, and Ronan still hadn’t calmed. He was full of rage and fury, picturing Calder’s face with every jab, every drill, and every punch, and he’d already gone through two of the salon’s best fighters. Ronan had guessed that Imogen hadn’t been telling him everything, and even though he’d suspected the man of something devious, hearing the unvarnished, painful truth had been like nails driven into his flesh.

That filthy bastard had drugged her. Touched her without her consent.

God, he wanted to kill the man. Tear him apart with his bare hands.

After Imogen had left the room, he’d almost raced to Calder’s residence, but somewhere deep down, a tiny rational part of him knew that he would not have left the bastard alive. And so he’d gone to the only place he could find a measure of release, and then he’d returned again the following day at the crack of dawn.

A strike to his opponent’s temple had the third man he’d fought falling flat on his back, knocked out cold. Ronan was still shaking with anger, but after the past evening’s rounds and this morning’s bouts, most of his murderous savagery had receded. At least enough for him to keep a civil tongue in his head and for him to take his coach back to his residence, bathe, have Vickers tend to the minor cuts on his face, and then make his way to Calder’s home. Thanks to Gentleman Jackson’s, Ronan was lucky he’d lasted a day.

Once outside the man’s Piccadilly residence, Ronan held himself tightly in check. He would put Calder in the bloody ground for what he’d done to Imogen, but he would do so in the most irreproachable way possible. One that was beyond question.

Ronan flexed his fingers as the man came to the door as before and greeted him wearing a smug countenance.

“Lord Dunrannoch. Back again to accuse me of something else wicked? Where is your Bow Street dog this time?”

“I dunnae need a Runner or a policeman today. This is between the two of us.”

Calder looked amused, inviting him inside the Spartan front room as he poured a drink, then offered one to Ronan.

“Is there laudanum in it?” Ronan asked, his throat constricting as the fury leaked back into him. “I hear that’s how ye subdue the women ye…wish to violate.” He couldn’t bring himself to say rape, though that was what the man had done.

Calder retracted the glass of whisky and, after a moment’s pause, laughed. “I see you are here to accuse me of something.”

“I ken everything. Imogen told me. She told her parents, too.”

He had to block the images that entered his mind of a young Imogen’s distress as a man she’d trusted betrayed her. The helplessness and fear she had to have felt.

“She is merely desperate to make excuses for her actions the other evening in St Giles. I feel quite sorry for her, actually.” Calder sipped from the glass. “You know, they say people hurt those they love the most. I do believe Imogen’s attempt to discredit me is a display of her unswerving affection.”

Ronan had known the man was a liar, but now he could see the true sickness that filled him. Calder had used Imogen, harmed her, taken away her innocence by trickery and force, and he reveled in it.

“Ye’re a spineless degenerate who deserves to be put out of his misery.”

“And you have plans to do me in right here? Right now?” Calder laughed again, though there was a small glint of bloodlust in his eyes, as if he wanted Ronan to attempt it. “I didn’t touch her, you know.”

“You fed her laudanum, and she was unclothed.”

“She was crazed,” he said. “It was a mere drop to relax her. And a man’s entitled to see what he’s shackled the rest of his life to, isn’t he?”

Ronan felt his body tighten with fury. “Choose yer second, Calder. I’m calling ye out.”

Dueling might have been illegal, but it was still an unquestionable method of reparation. The challenge could not go unmet, not without inflicting a decisive blow to a man’s honor. And though Ronan knew Calder had none, the man was so desperate to be someone of consequence, wealth, and power that he couldn’t not agree.

Calder smiled thinly. “Agreed. Pistols. Tomorrow at Regent’s Park at dawn.”

Ronan knew the challenged party was allowed the choice of weapon and place, but Calder’s ready acceptance didn’t quite sit right. “Ye seem eager to die.”

The man’s smug grin vaporized. “I am simply impatient to be rid of you, Dunrannoch. With you gone, Imogen will soon realize the only man willing to have her now is me.”

The man was delusional.

“Ye’re going to be severely disappointed tomorrow, Calder. I’d see to yer affairs if I were ye.”

Before he could give in to the crushing urge to beat the bounder to a bloody pulp right there in the parlor, Ronan left. He told his driver to return to Dunrannoch House; he needed air, and the three-mile walk to his next destination would give him the opportunity to expunge some of the savage energy that had turned his muscles into what felt like stone.

By the time he’d reached Niall and Aisla’s home, he felt a little looser, though no less murderous. His youngest brother received him in the study.

“Who are ye planning to kill?” Niall asked the moment Ronan was shown in.

“How did ye ken?”

“The last time ye looked like that, our sister had been taken by Duncan Campbell,” Niall answered, pouring two whiskies. Ronan accepted this glass and tossed it back.

“Aye, I remember.”

Makenna had been abducted by an enemy to Maclaren. She’d been found unharmed, but Ronan had not known rage or fear like that could exist inside of him before then. Now, with Imogen, the same rage was nearly choking him, but the element of fear had been replaced with something else. The need for vengeance. Calder had to pay for what he’d done.

“I’m killing Silas Calder tomorrow in a duel. Ye’re to be my second, if ye agree.”

Niall sat behind his desk and gestured to the seat across from him. “I think ye should tell me what’s happened.”

Ronan sat and confided in his brother the reason behind his challenge to a duel. Aisla was not to know. No one was. If Imogen chose to tell her, that would be her decision. By the time he finished, powerless rage had replaced Niall’s composed expression. As Maclarens, they’d all been raised to respect and protect women, and the thought that any man could take such brutal advantage of a defenseless innocent was unconscionable. As a family, they’d dealt with their share of misfortune and horrors, but this…this kind of act was truly vile.

“I’ll no’ breathe a word,” Niall promised with a tight nod. Ronan could see the vehemence in his brother’s stare. He clearly wanted Calder maimed or dead as well.

They sat in silence for a good minute before Niall huffed a mirthless laugh. “A duel with pistols. We’ve certainly become citified, havenae we? Shite, what I wouldnae give to see ye take a claymore to that bastard.”

It would have been Ronan’s preferred method as well. To gut the bastard with a sword would be satisfying; however, it would not have been deemed honorable, not when Ronan’s superior strength would have given him an unfair advantage. Ronan would kill him fairly, with the weapons the man had chosen.

“I willnae lose,” Ronan said. He didn’t care if Calder was a crack shot with a pistol. “But ye should ken that I’m no’ going to marry Imogen.”

The words ripped at him unexpectedly.

Niall set his whisky down and peered at Ronan. “Because of this business with Calder?”

“No’ in the way ye’re thinking,” Ronan replied. “Imogen doesnae want to marry. No’ just me, but any man. She’s made it clear that what happened to her, what Calder did all those years ago, she’ll never be free from the pain of it. She thinks it will stand between us.” He paused, grimacing. “And I fear she’s right.”

It would slowly drive them apart. Ronan had, at first, been furious. Imogen was wrong. It wouldn’t be like that. He could prove to her that her past didn’t matter. She could heal, and he would help. He’d protect her at any cost.

But then at Gentleman Jack’s, with every blow he’d planted on his numerous opponents and the endless well of anger and violence that continued to overflow, Ronan started to comprehend. Imogen had never admitted the truth to anyone before. She’d never allowed herself the opportunity to heal from the damage Calder had caused.

To her, right now, she believed she never would. He understood only too well that she needed time to heal herself, and that he could not do it for her, no matter how much he wanted to. That power was hers alone. And he would not take it from her, not when she’d been stripped of almost everything. Coercing her into a marriage she did not want or wasn’t ready for would make him as bad as Calder.

“I cannae force her to choose me, Niall.”

“So she’s cried off?”

She had not properly ended the betrothal at Kincaid Manor before fleeing the room. And the more Ronan thought about it, the more he knew he couldn’t let her be the one to cry off. He had to do it.

“She’d lose everything. The rest of her dowry, her shelter in Edinburgh. Hell, she’s already lost her reputation. If she cries off she’ll only be incurring more damage. Calder will be rotting in a grave somewhere, and so she’ll be safe from him, but there are others, Niall, ye and I ken it. Men who prey on women in dire straits. They’ll crawl out of the woodwork.”

Ronan couldn’t let that happen. Imogen deserved better than that. She’d fought tooth and nail her whole adult life to protect herself from the past. He would never forgive himself if he took that protection away from her.

“Are ye saying that ye plan to cry off?” Niall stood up and braced himself against the desk. “Ye’ll lose everything ye’ve built for Maclaren. The distillery. The clan’s livelihood. All of it.”

The conversation with Aisla when she’d drawn him aside at the garden party came back to him. She’d shrugged off the potential losses, claiming that it was not who Maclaren was. Not who he was. At the time, he’d balked at the notion. But now, weighing his reparation payment against Imogen’s, he saw the disproportion of it.

Imogen’s safety, her happiness, was worth more than anything Ronan could hang a price on.

Ronan glanced at his youngest brother. For such a young man, Niall’s strength and fortitude had always awed him. He’d built a business, a way for his clan to survive, using the mines on his lands, and had made himself into a better man. Niall had fought for his estranged wife, and, when it seemed he’d have nothing at all, choosing to let her go, she’d come back to him.

Perhaps Imogen might do the same. He doubted it. Niall and Aisla had years of history. He’d known Imogen for weeks. She’d walled herself off from any man; her defenses were too high. Even for him.

Either way, Ronan knew his clan would not fall into ruin, not if he had anything to say about it. A distillery could be rebuilt. Lands could be re-tilled. He would find a way, and his clan would be stronger for it.

He was Ronan Maclaren. Protector. Defender. Duke.

“I willnae lose everything,” Ronan said hoarsely. “I’ll still be me. I will be the one who has to live with my choices in the end. Yer wife tried to tell me as much recently, and it seems she was right. Aisla is a wise woman, ye ken.”

“Aye, she is.” Niall’s blue eyes speared him.

“Can I ask ye a question?” he asked Niall.

His brother nodded. “Anything.”

“Would ye have given it up? Yer estate, Tarbendale, and yer cairngorm business, if the only thing ye could have in return was Aisla?”

“In a heartbeat.”

He’d do the same. Imogen’s happiness was everything. With the realization, it felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He wouldn’t lose the core of who he was. Those were external trappings. His family would always be there for him.

Maclaren was a place, a lovely place with many wonderful memories, but it wasn’t what made him a Maclaren. Every member of his family had their own marriages and families. Niall had Tarbendale. Sorcha had Montgomery. Finlay and Evan would stay on at Maclaren, if Imogen decided to keep the distillery running. Annis had made her life in the Americas, and Makenna had Duncraigh with Riverley.

Christ, it was liberating. He would build a new life, find a new way for his clan to thrive, allowing Imogen to live hers the way she deserved. Ronan ignored the hollow stab in the pit of his stomach at the thought of walking away from her. Giving her up…when he only wanted to hold on to her forever. See her laugh and smile and swell with his children. Grow old and tell stories of their silly antics when they’d first met.

Ronan scrubbed a hand through his hair and then strode around the desk to pull his brother into a hug. “Thank ye, bràthair. I’ll send ye the details of the duel.”

“Where are ye going?”

“To set things right.”

Niall squeezed his shoulders as if in understanding. “Good luck.”

Ronan almost chuckled. He’d need more than luck to see Imogen and let her go. He’d need a miracle not to throw her over his arm and spirit her away into the wilds of the Highlands where no one would ever find them. They could live in a cottage off the land. Instead of a duke, he could be a husband, a lover, a father. All worthy things.

Ronan shoved the dreams away and took his leave. Since he’d walked to Niall’s residence, he flagged down a hackney and gave directions for Kincaid Manor. He didn’t even know if Imogen would want to see him, but he had to take the chance that she would.

Upon arrival, he announced himself to the butler, though the man knew him by now, and was ushered to a light-filled salon adjacent to the one he’d been in earlier when his fiancée had laid herself bare. He was glad for it. He didn’t think he could bear to be in that room without recalling the aching vulnerability and pain that had been etched on her face.

Ronan sat on the edge of a delicate sixteenth-century chair that his frame dwarfed, then stood up, walking to the window. Then he checked his watch and strode to the other end of the room, mindlessly noting the painted figurines in the cabinet. He was restless. Anxious. Would she refuse to see him? Was she even at home? Ronan frowned. He would not have been offered admittance if she weren’t.

“Your Grace?” Her soft voice made his heart hitch. “What are you doing here?”

He drank her in, taking in her pale, beautiful face and the fact that she was dressed in a lovely muslin gown, though she’d stripped off her gloves. He had the sudden urge to press his lips to those elegant hands. “Are yer parents at home?”

“No, they’re still at luncheon. I…” She trailed off, her voice a rasp. Ronan frowned. He had hoped to announce his intentions to her parents as well, but their absence would not preclude him from saying what he’d come to say. “I felt ill and decided to return home,” she explained. “It was…too soon. The gossip… Well, I’m certain you can imagine what that was like.”

“Tell me,” he said, longing to take her into his arms but knowing she would not welcome it. Even now, she was so guarded with him. He saw it so clearly. That cool reserve—it wasn’t just part of her personality. It was the sum of her armor.

She walked to the sideboard and poured herself a brandy. “I’m officially a fallen woman.” A spare chuckle rose into the air when she downed the glass and refilled it. “And apparently also the subject of an illegal duel, no less.”

Ronan’s eyebrows rose. News in the ton did travel fast.

“That’s all anyone could talk about, and my ill-timed arrival only made it worse. I’m a fucking pariah.” She turned toward him, regarding him over the rim of her glass, looking vulnerable yet equally fierce. Or perhaps it was her brash choice of words that made her seem so feral. He wanted to kiss that saucy mouth. Hear her whisper that word in other ways. “Is it true about the duel?”

Ronan gave a noncommittal shrug.

“I’m sorry ye had to deal with that,” he said instead. “The gossip will blow over eventually, when the ton has something else to salivate upon.”

Inscrutable green eyes met his. “If it’s true, you can’t duel him. He’s not honorable, and he won’t delope. You have to call it off.”

“Why?”

“Silas is an excellent marksman,” she said in a dispassionate tone. “My father taught him to hunt. He never misses.”

The slight waver in her voice made him pause, despite her stoic expression. Was she worried for him? “Dunnae fash, lass. By the time the sun rises tomorrow, ye’ll be free of that man for good.”

“And if he shoots you in the heart?” The waver had become a distinct wobble.

He exhaled. “Then we both die, and ye’ll be free of us both.”

Imogen slammed the glass down and approached him, fire in her eyes. “This is madness, Ronan. Call it off.”

“Nae.”

She jabbed at his chest, and it was all he could do not to snatch her into his arms and seal his lips to hers. Kiss her and devour her until he couldn’t breathe. Until she was gasping for air. But he forced himself to stand still. To inhale her fresh wildflower scent, feel the heat coming off her body, and not move a muscle.

Green eyes clashed with his. “You bloody, daft fool.”

And then she kissed him.

Ronan’s arms banded around her, and his mouth moved on hers with swift, violent hunger. Teeth grazed and tongues slashed. He slanted his head and tugged down her jaw. She opened for him, kissing him wildly until he could taste the salt of her tears between them. They fought and dueled, gorged and consumed, each giving no quarter, until it was no longer a kiss but a battle with no victors.

Imogen pulled away gasping, her fingers knotted into his coat. “Don’t do this. Please. I’m begging you, Ronan. I couldn’t…couldn’t bear it if…” She clamped her mouth shut as if her thoughts were unutterable.

“It’s the only way.” He cleared his throat and stepped out of her reach, her hands falling away and his heart pounding a ferocious tempo in his chest. “There’s one more thing. To stave off the rumors, I forfeit on the agreement, but ye will be the one to call off the engagement in public. If I do it, people will believe it’s because of recent events, and I dunnae want ye affected further.”

Imogen blinked, her eyes going wide with shock. “You don’t want to marry me?”

Quite the opposite.

“This is for the best,” he said. “It’s what ye want, so I’ve called off the betrothal. My solicitor has already been informed, and everything as agreed will be transferred.”

The silence stretched between them, interminable and heavy.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

“Ye ken why, Imogen. I want ye to be happy. I want ye to have everything ye ever wanted.”

His eyes stung, the unfamiliar feeling stunning him into silence for a moment. Or maybe it was because of the intimate words pushing to his lips with a life of their own, words he’d never spoken to a woman. He didn’t care. They had to be said.

“And because I love ye.”