MAD, BAD & DANGEROUS TO MARRY (The Highland Brides Book 4) Read online

  Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Marry

  Elizabeth Essex

  to Tracy Brogan,

  brilliant author, steadfast friend and

  superlative road trip companion

  for teaching me that all the small moments

  could add up to something bigger, many thanks.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Letter of April 1782

  Response of May 1782

  Chapter 1

  Letter of April 1784

  Response of May 1784

  Chapter 2

  Letter of July 1784

  Response of August 1784

  Chapter 3

  Letter of October 1784

  Response of November 1784

  Chapter 4

  Letter of December 1784

  Response of January 1785

  Chapter 5

  Letter of April 1785

  Response of July 1785

  Chapter 6

  Letter of October 1785

  Response of January 1786

  Chapter 7

  Letter of March 1786

  Response of June 1786

  Chapter 8

  Letter of August 1786

  Chapter 9

  Letter of October 1786

  Chapter 10

  Letter of December 1786

  Chapter 11

  Letter of February 1787

  Chapter 12

  Letter of May 1787

  Response of July 1787

  Chapter 13

  Letter of March 1788

  Response of April 1788

  Chapter 14

  Letter of September 1788

  Response of October 1788

  Response of November 1788

  Chapter 15

  Letter of March 1789

  Response of April 1789

  Chapter 16

  Letter of November 1789

  Letter of February 1790

  Chapter 17

  Response of March 1790

  Chapter 18

  Response of April 1790

  Chapter 19

  Letter of May 1790

  Response of May 1790

  Chapter 20

  Letter of May 1790

  Chapter 21

  Response of June 1790

  Letter of July 1790

  Chapter 22

  Letter of December 1790

  Letter of January 1791

  Chapter 23

  Letter of March 1791

  Response of April 1791

  Chapter 24

  Letter of May 1791

  Chapter 25

  Letter of June 1971

  Chapter 26

  Letter of July 1791

  Response of August 1791

  Chapter 27

  Letter of November 1791

  Response of December 1791

  Chapter 28

  Letter of June 1792

  Response of July 1792

  Chapter 29

  Letter of August 1792

  Response of August 1792

  Chapter 30

  Letter of September 1792

  Response of September 1792

  Epilogue

  Thank You from the Author

  Excerpt from Mad About the Marquess

  Also by Elizabeth Essex

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  September, 1792

  Ewan Cameron, Duke of Crieff’s joy was a rare and pleasingly exhilarating thing, like the tot of strong Scots whisky he tossed back to celebrate his good news. The letter in his hand settled it—he was going to be the happiest man on earth. He was going to be married.

  In two days’ time, the woman who had been chosen to be his bride would arrive at Castle Crieff, and they would at last become man and wife.

  He was ready. In fact, he had never wanted anything more.

  Let other men gnash their teeth and complain of the parson’s mousetrap—he would step gladly into the Eden of having the woman he had admired, adored, and grown to love over the course of ten seemingly short years of correspondence, at last by his side.

  All was in readiness. The final settlements were signed and sealed. The hall and drawing rooms of Castle Crieff sparkled. The suite of rooms he had refurbished for his intended bride was everything refined and serene.

  It only remained for him to finally meet her.

  Lady Greer Douglas

  Dalshee House

  Perthshire

  1 April, 1782

  Dear Lady Greer,

  I thank you for the honor you do me in consenting to be betrothed to me. I look forward to the day in the future when we shall eventually be married. It is a great relief to know my future, and the future of Crieff, is secure. I hope you will like me.

  Your servant, Lord Ewan Cameron

  Lord Ewan Cameron

  Castle Crieff

  Perthshire

  14 May, 1782

  Dear Lord Cameron,

  I thank you most kindly for your letter of congratulations. Mama tells me it is I who am honored by your kind condescension, and that I should pledge that I will use the years between now and our marriage to make myself into a helpmeet worthy of both you and Crieff, though I had rather just ride my pony up the moor. But I do hope I shall like you, too. That would be nice. As nice as if you liked me, too, though Mama says that it is my place to make myself pleasing to you. I suppose I might do so, if I knew what you thought pleasing. But all that seems terribly complicated ~ let’s just like each other, shall we?

  Your devoted friend, Lady Greer Douglas

  Chapter 1

  Castle Crieff, Scottish Highlands

  September, 1792

  It was always going to be a delicate, tricky thing, to marry a man one had never met before one’s wedding day. But until the moment Lady Greer Douglas was seated in the carriage, on her way to her bridegroom, she had not suffered a single twinge of worry—for all that she had never met her bridegroom in person, she and the Duke of Crieff knew each other well.

  Well enough to marry, sight unseen.

  True, she did have a miniature of the duke, tucked safe in her pockets, like a map to show the way in a foreign city. But the painting was from some eight years ago—he would have changed since then. He would have grown into a man.

  Yet despite not knowing his face, she knew his character. She knew him by the hundreds of letters they had exchanged since the day they had become betrothed, some ten years ago. Letters he had faithfully—and hopefully, joyfully—written to the last, setting the date for their wedding.

  The best letter—the one telling her he was ready to marry, if she were also ready—along with the first he had ever written her, were folded deep in the pockets beneath the petticoats under her silk wedding-day gown, tucked away for safekeeping with the miniature—sacred talismans she could touch for strength and reassurance.

  And she needed that reassurance now, as the carriage at last began the descent from the moor down toward the village of Crieff. This would be her home now and forevermore, this side of the mountains, this village, these people. She would be responsible for them and to them.

  The coachman let his horses have their heads, gathering speed and momentum for the sharp rise when they would cross the last bridge and head north into the village at the mouth of the glen. The bright morning sun slanted through the trees and dappled the carriage windows, making the sunlight dance across the seat cushions, as if nature herself were as simultaneously excited and delighted as she.

  Greer let down the window sash so the l
ate summer wind could blow the uncharacteristic nervous excitement from her mind. It was natural to be both excited and nervous—after all, it was her wedding day.

  That nonsensical thought put a smile curving across her lips just as the coach began to jerk to a stop.

  “Whoa there.” The coachman, Fergus Fenner, sawed at the reins to bring the team of four horses to a jangling standstill.

  “Fenner?” Greer exchanged a puzzled look with her parents, the Earl and Countess of Shee, before she called out the window. “What is the delay?”

  “There be a mon in th’ road, mileddy.”

  “A man? What do you mean?” Greer craned her neck out the window to see ahead. “What does he want?”

  “Jesus God,” the coachman swore. “I think ’ee mebbe dead.”

  Dead? Greer was already out the door and onto the dust of the road.

  “Greer! Wait for your father—” Mama called after Greer. “Oh, for goodness— Mind your skirts!”

  Greer dutifully grabbed up an armful of the embroidered cream silk taffeta, but it was too late—the light-colored hems were already coated in the fine dust of the roadway. But what were clarty skirts to the life of a man, whoever he was?

  He was sprawled face-down in the mud and dust of the road, his fingers dug into the dirt, the back of his head a blackened, bloody welter of dried blood and mud.

  The sight knocked her to her knees. “Oh, sweet Lord.”

  “Be he dead?” The coachman was still fighting to bring his nervous team under full control.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Stand back, my dear,” Papa instructed.

  It was too late for that—by the time her father had reached her side, Greer was already kneeling in the dirt of the road, involving herself by leaning in close. “I think his chest is moving. Gracious, but he’s covered in blood.” She carefully put her hand to the fellow’s grimy, outstretched wrist, feeling tentatively for some pulse of life.

  His skin was cool and damp to the touch, and his clothes were torn and ragged and soaking drookit, as if he’d been caught out in the rain. But the weather had been unseasonably sunny for days—Greer had thought the fine, early autumn weather a good omen for her future.

  And yet, here the man was, white with cold—or perhaps from blood loss. She moved her hand to touch him on his neck, and he groaned and recoiled to even that slight pressure.

  Alive, then, God help him. “He lives.”

  “Get a rug!” Papa ordered the groom.

  “Get two!” Greer added. “One to cover and warm him, and the other to get beneath him to carry him—where?”

  “The coach, of course.” Papa, bless his steady heart, didn’t hesitate. “We must take charge of him and take him on to the village. Come help me,” he called to the groom.

  Greer put her hand to his chest. “Can you hear me?” she asked the insensate fellow. “We’re going to help you.”

  A low sound crawled from his mouth to answer her.

  “He’s trying to say something!” Greer put her palm inside his tattered shirt to find his heartbeat and bent her head low to the man’s battered lips. His skin was so cold to the touch.

  The word was the barest breath of sound. “Crieff.”

  “Aye, of course. We’ll take you to Crieff straightaway,” she assured the injured fellow, although she had no idea if the man meant the village or the castle. But really, it did not matter—time was of the essence. She made up her mind with characteristic speed. “Robbie,” she called to the groom, “fetch my medical case from the boot of the coach, if you please. Quickly now.” She had perfected the case, adding and subtracting medicines and supplies through the past year of travel on the continent. She had intended to bring such preparedness to Crieff, so that in the future, she might convince her bridegroom that he might travel in comfort and health. “We’ll staunch the bleeding and bind his head up before we put him in the coach, and take him on to the village.”

  The village was closer than Castle Crieff, and a doctor was more like to be found there, than at the castle.

  “Yes, let us get him to the village immediately,” Mama agreed from the carriage. “I applaud your charity, Greer, darling, but do consider that good men are seldom set upon for no reason, while bad men are invariably set upon for very good ones. And Crieff may not approve of your bringing a nearly dead vagrant with you to your wedding.”

  Surely the Duke of Crieff would approve—but Mama did not know Ewan as intimately as Greer did. She was sure her bridegroom would not mind if she finessed the niceties. “I am confident His Grace would be gratified by my swift application of both charity and bandages to bring one of his injured retainers to him, instead of letting the fellow die by the side of the road.”

  “Quite,” Papa agreed. “Let us proceed.”

  Greer gingerly wrapped the man’s head in linen bandage strips before she took the blankets from Robbie. But the injured fellow was far too large for her to shift on her own. “Robbie, I need you there.” She directed the young groom opposite. “Can you lift him so?”

  “May I be of assistance, mistress?”

  Greer turned to see a wizened, tweed-clad man setting his brake and alighting from a sturdy working cart. The old fellow approached in the no-nonsense way of a working man who knows his profession and his own worth—with a simple tug on his tam. “Billy Dewar, mistress. Moorkeeper tae His Grace o’ Crieff.”

  “Oh, yes!” Relief was like a heartening cup of tea. She knew the old fellow’s name from Ewan’s letters—the same way everything she knew about Crieff. Ewan had described the moorkeeper with much admiration. “Thank you, please, Dewar. If you could just help me shift this rather big man onto the rug? He’s badly injured.”

  “Aye, mistress.” The elfin moorkeeper immediately came to her assistance, but when he came close enough to get a good look at the injured man, Dewar let out a low Scots Gaelic curse and dropped to his knees on the road. “Jesus God, lad.”

  “Do you know him?” Curiosity warred with relief—it would be a great help if Dewar knew where the injured man ought best to be taken for help.

  Dewar shot her a surprisingly sharp glance. “Do ye no’ recognize ’im, then?”

  “No,” she admitted, puzzled by his question. “I can’t think he’s from Dalshee”—she cited her father’s estate, located on the eastern divide of the moor—“or one of us”—she indicated her father, the coachman, and the other servants—“would likely recognize him, blood and all. But we’re so much closer to Crieff here. And he said something that sounded distinctly like ‘Crieff.””

  “Oh, aye?” Dewar was all skeptical reluctance. “I reckon he mon be a local lad—he does ha’a look that’s perhaps familiar. Though it be hard tae tell for sure, mistress.”

  “Aye,” Greer agreed. “He is rather badly cut up. Even his hands. But do you have an idea of where we should take him? Perhaps to the doctor in the village, or the apothecary?”

  “Ah, weel, tha’ might do.” The odd fellow shifted his cap, but then nodded, as if he had arrived at his final decision. “Best if you leave ’im tae me, mistress, and be on yer way.”

  “Oh, I had not thought of that.” Greer knew it was the emotion of the moment that made her loath to put the injured man into the hands of an ancient stranger, however much it would ease their way to Castle Crieff. But Ewan had often written of his reliance upon Dewar, and his absolute confidence in the moorkeeper—surely she would be well advised to do the same? “You will make sure the man is seen by a skilled, experienced, medical man?”

  “Indeed.” Her father agreed, drawing out his purse and handing a golden guinea coin to Dewar. “For his care,” Papa instructed. “Or for arrangements, should they need to be made. A Christian burial, in the village churchyard, certainly, not a pauper’s grave. You may apply to my man at Dalshee, if such funds prove insufficient.” The earl stood. “Robbie, fetch Dewar’s cart up here, would you? We’ll load the lad into that instead of the coach, and inform His
Grace of Crieff’s household of the arrangement when we arrive at the Castle.”