The Highlander’s English Bride: The Lairds Most Likely Book 6 Read online

  Diarmid and Emily were yet to meet, although Hamish had an odd feeling they’d like each other when they did. Emily’s cleverness and lack of artifice would appeal to his cousin.

  Last night, he and Diarmid had sat up late with a bottle of Bruce Mackenzie’s finest whisky as Hamish struggled to lend a favorable tone to the story of his engagement. He didn’t manage as well as he’d like. It didn’t take Diarmid long to winkle out most of the facts behind the scandal.

  By God, it had been a treat to drink good whisky after months of French brandy, the tipple of choice in London. The conversation, however, hadn’t been nearly so agreeable.

  Diarmid had been scathing in placing the blame for this shambles firmly upon Hamish’s shoulders. Hamish supposed that was what family was for – to tell a person the unpalatable truth when nobody else would. Although Emily was never slow to point out his failings. Dear God, he faced a lifetime of criticism, and he had nobody to blame but himself.

  That was if the bride deigned to turn up at all.

  "She doesn’t see me as any great prize."

  "Given the trouble your temper has caused her, I cannae blame her," Diarmid said grimly.

  "You haven’t told Fergus and Marina or Brody and Elspeth, have you?"

  "Damn it, man, I sat up with ye until the wee small hours. After ye went home, all I did was tumble into bed at your mother’s house, grab a couple of hours’ sleep, and scramble into my clothes to be fit to stand up for an eleven o’clock wedding. I havenae had a chance to share your tale of woe with anyone."

  "Well, don’t. I don’t want my idiocy broadcast all across the Highlands."

  Actually Diarmid had scrubbed up well, given how little sleep he’d had. Not to mention that he and his family – Diarmid had a son called Richard now, along with his stepdaughter Christina – had just made the long journey down from the north of Scotland.

  Nobody looking at the cousins would see any family resemblance, apart from a certain arrogance of bearing. Diarmid was as dark as a gypsy and built on long, lean, dangerous lines. While he was a tall man, Hamish topped him by several inches.

  Diarmid’s dark blue coat fitted perfectly, outlining shoulders as straight as a ruler, and his linen was so white it dazzled. Hamish was similarly attired in Savile Row’s best. Now Hamish wondered if all this dressing up had been a waste of time.

  By God, he hoped some of Bruce Mackenzie’s whisky was left. He might need it.

  Another glance behind him. Another disappointed dip of his heart because Emily wasn’t here yet. Surely she wouldn’t let him down. She mightn’t like him, but she wasn’t spiteful, and this marriage was as much for her benefit as his.

  He just hoped to hell she saw it that way.

  "She’s no’ that late." Diarmid’s reasonable tone made Hamish want to clout him.

  "Not yet," Hamish said gloomily, wondering how much of the murmuring behind him related to the scandal in Greenwich a month ago.

  During the engagement, he’d done his best to give the impression that Emily and he were April and May, head over heels in love. He wasn’t convinced he’d succeeded. At least the delay between betrothal and wedding told the world that no baby would arrive less than nine months after the ceremony.

  Given this devil’s bargain he’d made with Emily, there wouldn’t be a baby in nine months or nine years or ninety. More was the sodding pity.

  The awful truth was that ever since she’d declared that she’d never sleep with him, Hamish had thought of little else but getting Emily Baylor into bed. He knew it was the lure of the forbidden, but somehow over the last four weeks, his mentor’s uppity daughter had become the most desirable woman in London. It was a character flaw with him that the minute someone told him no, he set out to make the answer yes.

  His dilemma was made even more painful because as Emily’s chosen escort, he inevitably had to touch her. Often. None of the contact overstepped propriety – which only worsened his torment – but by God, he must have held her arm a thousand times, taken her hand in a hundred dances, brushed her skin when like a devoted fiancé, he placed a pelisse or a shawl over those slender shoulders.

  He remained woefully aware that to her, he was nothing more than an annoyance. It was a joke that she’d told him he was too virile for her tastes. As far as he could see, she didn’t think of him as a man at all. Yet every time he touched her, his heart crashed to a standstill and the rush of blood to his ears muffled her polite thanks.

  It was enough to drive a hot-blooded Scot to madness.

  Even a hot-blooded Scot who sounded like a blasted Sassenach.

  He’d never kiss that prim pink mouth. He’d never run his hand through that wealth of shiny hair. He’d never cup that lovely round bosom in his large hands. He’d never possess that slim, graceful body.

  With a sigh, he glanced toward the vicar and caught the old man’s eyes. And had the grace to feel a qualm for his lascivious thoughts in this holy place.

  He was in the process of yet again shifting from one large foot to the other when he heard a rustle from the congregation. The organ started to play Handel’s Largo.

  Relief flooded him – he wasn’t a coward, but the prospect of fresh gossip made him quail – and he turned. His bride poised at the church door, her father beside her.

  The breath jammed in his lungs, and his usually doughty knees wobbled. His heart began to race with an excitement that this wedding didn’t justify, not when a solitary night awaited.

  But he couldn’t help it. She was just so damned beautiful.

  "You didnae tell me," Diarmid said in a voice quiet as a breath.

  Hamish had to swallow twice before he could speak. "Tell you what?"

  "That she’s exquisite."

  To Hamish’s despair, she was.

  With dazzled eyes, he drank in every detail of Emily’s appearance. She wore a rose pink silk gown that might appear modest on a woman with a less spectacular figure. On Emily, the soft fabric clung to every sinuous line and whispered seduction. Her lovely hair was caught up in a mass of loose waves and threaded through with pearls. More pearls encircled her graceful neck and one wrist. She wore white lace gloves and carried a bouquet of white roses. A lace veil was pinned to her crown and draped down her back.

  She stood straight and proud. After her attendant straightened her short train, she took her father’s arm. With a confidence Hamish couldn’t help but admire, she started down the aisle.

  Especially as he knew her well enough to see the nerves raging beneath the regal air.

  By heaven, she was a cracker of a girl. Her bravery made his heart swell. Any fellow would be privileged to wed her. The anger at himself, at fate, at society, that had been his constant companion for a month faded to nothing.

  "She was worth waiting for," he said to Diarmid, and he meant every word.

  Hamish turned to the front as his bride took her place beside him and the vicar began the service.

  Chapter 9

  When Emily returned to the Bloomsbury house with her new husband, it was evening and the staff had lined up on the front steps to greet them. An augmented staff, thanks to Hamish’s generosity over the last weeks.

  The new butler Roberts stepped forward with a bow. "On behalf of everyone downstairs, my lord and lady, I’d like to offer our warmest congratulations and best wishes for many happy years together."

  Emily made herself smile, even as she was startled to hear herself called "my lady." She kept forgetting that Hamish was a lord in his remote northern fastness of Glen Lyon. A few people at the wedding breakfast had addressed her as Lady Glen Lyon, but it was only now on the threshold to her own home that she registered the radical change this marriage made to her life in worldly terms.

  Hamish must be used to it, although his title cut little mustard in the scientific circles they inhabited. He went as plain Mr. Douglas in London, even if nobody who met him could doubt that he came from society’s upper levels.

  Now it seemed she did, to
o.

  "Thank you, Roberts." With a proprietary air that she had no right to resent, Hamish took her arm. In the eyes of the law, he owned her and all her chattels. Not that her meager assets bore any comparison to his. "Thank you, Miss McCorquodale, Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. Brown, Polly and Mary and Florrie and Elsa. And Edward, too."

  Edward was the new footman. The Baylors had never been grand enough to need a footman before. Emily wasn’t convinced she needed one now. Edward was a handsome devil who sent the maids silly. Perhaps she might talk to Hamish about dispensing with his services.

  Emily wasn’t surprised that her husband knew the name of everyone who worked in the house. While he might be aristocratic, he’d never been high in the instep. When he’d lodged here as a young man, he’d been a general favorite with the household. Now she noted genuine pleasure on every face as the staff welcomed her new husband.

  She drew away from Hamish to climb the steps and express her gratitude to everyone there. Behind her Hamish was busy shaking hands.

  "Cor, miss, you do look lovely and all," Polly said, dipping into a curtsy.

  "Polly," Mrs. Roberts, the new housekeeper, said in a stern voice, "remember your place."

  "It’s all right, Mrs. Roberts. I think today of all days, we don’t need to be too strict." Emily smiled at the maid who had come to the house as a twelve-year-old girl.

  Polly was the only servant here who remembered her mother. Again, Emily felt a painful pang of longing. How she’d missed the late Mrs. Baylor’s quiet strength and unfailing love today, when she felt so appallingly alone.

  She preceded Hamish into the house, aware that now he had a right to be here beyond the welcome of an honored guest, and tonight they’d sleep under the same roof. She tried to tell herself that he’d done that before, but he’d left the house for his lodgings at the Albany when he was twenty-four. She’d been a mere eighteen. A boarder studying with her father wasn’t at all the same thing as a husband.

  "Miss McCorquodale, how is Papa?" she asked the nurse who had followed them inside.

  The wedding breakfast had been a crowded affair, held in Hamish’s mother’s elegant house in Fitzroy Square. Emily’s father had lasted only half an hour, before Hamish arranged for his return home in the care of Miss McCorquodale and one of the innumerable Scots.

  "He’s sleeping, my lady. He was very tired when he came back. Tired and unsettled. I needed to give him a sleeping draft." The woman curtsied. Emily had never been the recipient of so many curtsies in her life. "If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to him."

  "I’ll look in, once I’ve changed." She still wore her wedding finery.

  Most couples left on a honeymoon after their nuptials, but she and Hamish had used her father’s health to explain their continued presence in London. Hamish had asked if she wanted to go anywhere, but it would be difficult enough to get used to his presence in familiar surroundings. The thought of going somewhere romantic where they were alone and endlessly awkward with each other made her queasy. He’d cooperated, as he had so often during their betrothal.

  He was handling her with kid gloves. That shouldn’t irk, but it did. His behavior smacked a little too much of humoring her.

  She waited in the hall for Roberts to remove the paisley silk shawl from her shoulders, then she prowled through to the library. She and Hamish hadn’t been together in this room since the day he proposed. She stood in the center of the floor, while her husband – she still couldn’t quite believe that was now true – strode across to stare into the blazing fire with a brooding expression.

  Within minutes, Roberts carried in a tray of tea and sandwiches and cakes. "I took the liberty of arranging refreshments. I remember when I married Mrs. Roberts, neither of us took a morsel of food at the wedding breakfast. I thought you might have been in a similar case, my lady."

  He was right. Emily had nibbled on a lobster patty, but her throat had closed against swallowing. Hamish hadn’t managed to eat much more. She knew. Ever since the wedding service, they’d stood side by side, presenting a united façade.

  "Thank you, Roberts," she said, although she didn’t feel much more like eating now than she had in Fitzroy Square.

  "Please set up the brandy on the sideboard," Hamish said, looking up from the fire.

  "I have a bottle of champagne on ice, sir, if you’d prefer that."

  "Emily?" Hamish asked.

  She shook her head. Right now, she’d choose hemlock over champagne. The grim line of Hamish’s lips told her he guessed her wish to end this ruse of celebration.

  "Just the brandy," he said to Roberts. "We’ll have dinner at eight."

  Emily bit back a protest. She was ready to scream for a little privacy, although she supposed if she ate alone on her wedding night, it would cause comment below stairs.

  Again Hamish seemed to read her thoughts. "Or perhaps, after this long day, Emily, you might prefer a tray in your room. After all, we have a lifetime of dinners ahead."

  Oh, dear, didn’t that make her want to run away to Timbuctoo and stay there?

  "Yes, I am a little tired," she murmured. "Perhaps that would be best."

  That was a vast understatement. Since agreeing to marry Hamish, she’d hardly slept a wink, and her face ached from a day of forcing a smile. She felt about ready to drop.

  "Very well, my lady," Roberts said, as Hamish returned to contemplating the fire.

  After he left, a heavy silence descended. When Roberts returned to set up the decanters on the sideboard, Emily and Hamish were standing exactly where they’d been when he left. The tray of food remained untouched. Repeating his good wishes for their happiness, the butler left them alone.

  "Can I help with your veil?" Hamish raised his gaze from the flames. "You look like you have a headache."

  She knew enough from talking to her married friends that having a headache was often code to tell a husband that sexual congress wouldn’t take place. In Emily’s cold marriage, no such code was necessary.

  The powerful, handsome man she’d married stood before her in the home where she’d lived all her life. As she surveyed him, she wondered what most women felt at this moment. Not this dreadful grim numbness, she was sure.

  "My head is jangling like untuned bells," she admitted, raising one unsteady hand to a throbbing temple.

  When he walked toward her, his smile was gentle as it rarely was. She turned her back to give him access to her veil.

  His touch was gentle, too, as he began to dismantle the arrangement of pins that had kept her elaborate hairstyle in place through the long day. Stupidly she trembled, as if the unveiling was the prelude to further incursions. When she knew better. He was a man of honor, and she trusted his word that he’d forgo his conjugal rights.

  Hamish was only touching her hair, but that big, heavily muscled body felt too close. She picked up the drift of his scent. Citrus soap and clean skin, and something warm and spicy that belonged to him. With an unpleasant shock, she realized somewhere during the last four weeks, that scent had become part of the fabric of her life.

  "We’ll need to get you a lady’s maid," he murmured, his deep voice making the hairs stand up on her skin. Or perhaps that was the sensation of his fingers moving in her hair. This was the most intimate they’d ever been physically. When he’d kissed her in the church, he’d given her a brief peck on the cheek, the sort of kiss he’d give an aunt. It didn’t compare with the sensuality humming between them now.

  "I don’t need one. I never have before." Even if her father had been able to afford it.

  "You will now." With a care she could feel, Hamish lifted her veil away. "We’ll have social obligations, and you’ll want to look your best."

  "You mean you want me to look my best," she responded with an edge.

  "That, too," he said easily as he draped the veil over a chair, then returned and began to untwine the strings of pearls twisted through her hair. "Did I tell you how lovely you look? When you arrived at the church, I was qu
ite overcome."

  "Hamish…" She started to retreat then winced as the movement tugged on her hair.

  "No, stay there. I haven’t finished." His hand brushed her shoulder and damn her if she didn’t stop shuffling around. He touched her the way he’d settle a restless horse. The odious truth was that she suspected Hamish was fonder of his horses than he was of his wife. "You’re a beautiful bride, Emily."

  "Thank you," she said grudgingly and hated that she sounded like a sulky child. Hamish turned his attention to the pearl pins that held up her coiffure. She struggled to sound more gracious. "Thank you for my wedding gift. They’re very pretty."

  Yesterday a velvet case had arrived from Rundle and Bridge. Inside she’d discovered the pins and ropes of pearls, with a note from Hamish asking her to wear them for the wedding. Another example of Hamish’s largesse, another occasion for her to feel like her new life overpowered the woman she used to be.

  "The second I saw them, I imagined them in your hair, like moons in a dark sky."

  "You picked them out?" she asked, surprised and dismayed at the way his poetic description sent warmth pulsing through her veins.

  "Of course I did, you silly widgeon." The unexpected note of affection in his voice stifled her protest about the way he touched her hair. "How else did you imagine they came to you? The fairies?"

  She shifted from one foot to the other as one long curl of dark hair slipped down to dangle over her shoulder. "I thought you might just tell them to find something nice and send it over with your compliments. To date, my life hasn’t been full of dealings with the royal jewelers."

  "That’s going to change."

  Why did that sound like a threat? "Oh," she said in a small voice, as another lock of hair unraveled.

  "I thought you’d like the pins better than a parure."

  "A parure…" she echoed.

  "Yes, a tiara and a necklace and bracelet and—"

  "I know what a parure is. I just never imagined I’d be wearing one."