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

  Dewar seemed to suddenly awaken to the identity of his new acquaintances—he belatedly tugged his cap. “Yer pardon, Milord Shee. On yer way tae Crieff, are ye? Then ye’ll have gotten the news?”

  “That His Grace is to marry today? Most assuredly.” Her papa was all burnished pride. “I bring him his bride, my dear daughter, this very morning.”

  A sort of stunned stillness came over Dewar’s craggy face, as if he had not yet understood that the young woman before him was to be his new mistress at Crieff. Which was strange—she would have thought the entire village would have been making ready to drink a punch in toast to the health of their new duchess. But perhaps in Ewan’s travels back and forth to Edinburgh to make things all right and tight with the lawyers, he had not yet given the word that the long-standing betrothal was at last to conclude with their marriage.

  But whatever it was she saw in Dewar’s expression was quickly masked when the moorkeeper turned to the business of hoisting the injured fellow’s heavy body into the back of his sturdy cart.

  Greer found herself strangely loath to let the injured fellow go—she kept hold of his cold hand as they lifted him, as if she might somehow give him some small bit of warmth. “Mind there’s a nasty gash on the back of his head,” she cautioned. “I fear his skull might be broken.”

  “Aye, mistress,” answered Dewar, just as the lad in his care let out a terrible groan.

  “Gently there,” Greer cried, abandoning any attempt at detachment to bundle her voluminous lace-trimmed linen fichu under his head to cushion it.

  “Not the Brussels lace,” Mama muttered from her viewpoint in the window of the carriage, but she was too used to her daughter’s brash chivalry—for Greer was forever giving the shawls off her shoulder and the shoes from her feet to unshod beggars—to put any real heat into her objection.

  And Dewar was already straddling the fellow to position his fractured head on the square yard of delicately embroidered fabric, while perhaps also purposefully shielding Greer from getting too close a look at the fellow’s grimy, be-whiskered, swollen face, as if the moorkeeper feared the sight would be too much for her.

  But Greer had never taken to being shielded, because it was her experience that men had a dreadful, and frankly infuriating tendency to withhold both experience and information from women. Even her papa, who knew better than most men, had upon occasion forgotten his pledge to treat her as an enlightened, thinking, feeling woman who could make her own choices and decisions.

  So she stepped around the side of the cart to get a better look at the fellow. It seemed important to see him. To fix him in her mind, perhaps so she might help Ewan and Dewar identify him.

  Grime and blood spattered the man’s bruised and swollen face. Merciful heavens, but he’d been beaten so badly, his own mother would be hard put to recognize him—at least one of his eyes was purpled and completely swollen shut, and his pallor beneath the blood and bruising was a fearfully pasty white. “He’s had an awful time of it, hasn’t he?”

  “Aye, mistress. Had a terrible millin,’ ’ee has. I don’t ’ave too much hope.” He took off his own tweed coat and laid it over the fellow’s shoulders. “I’ll see tae him either way.”

  “Thank you.” How terrible, the moment she should be starting a new life, this young man—though it was hard to tell his age under the welter of blood—might be losing his. It was a sobering, somber thought. “You’ll keep His Grace apprised of his condition?”

  Dewar spared her another sharp glance, no doubt wondering why a woman of her standing should be so concerned for an injured villager. “If ye insist, mistress.”

  “Thank you, Dewar.” Greer could not keep the wee smile that spread across her lips despite the terrible circumstance. “I’m very happy to become your new mistress—I’ve looked forward to marrying His Grace of Crieff for a very long time.”

  Dewar shook his head and nodded, and then, of all things, patted her hand as if he were her father and not an odd, wizened old moorkeeper. “Ye trust ’im tae me, mistress,” Dewar swore. “I ken what’s needed.”

  Greer tried to feel relief, and a satisfaction that the incident was well-concluded. There was nothing more she could do. “I thank you for your kindness to him.”

  “It be the least I can do, mistress. I’ll see tae him as if ’ee were me own.” Dewar climbed atop his cart, ready to be off.

  “Right, then.” Greer ought to have been happy—happy they had done the right thing, a good deed for a stranger in grave need. But she couldn’t seem to cast off the ridiculous feeling that she ought to do more. That this man needed her help, not Dewar’s.

  But she had other responsibilities this morning. So she stepped back. “Godspeed to you both, Mr. Dewar.”

  The moorkeeper raised his hand in silent farewell, before slapping his reins and trundling away.

  Greer swallowed her misgivings, shook out her clarty, bloodied skirts and climbed aboard her own carriage. She tried to settle back her seat, but as the Douglas carriage wheeled forward to take her to her wedding, she could just make out Dewar’s last words. “Jesus God, lad. What in hell have they done tae ye?”

  Lord Ewan Cameron

  Castle Crieff

  Perthshire

  1 April, 1784

  Dear Lord Cameron,

  I have turned ten and four this year, and as an acknowledgment to my advanced age, my mama has at last given me permission to correspond with you—hoping that you shall not mind being corresponded with. But I think as our futures are to be entwined, I should rather tell you my news than anyone else.

  Pray, if you are amenable, please write, so I may tell you all.

  For instance, I have now a new pony of my own to ride, bought special for my use. He is the prettiest chestnut of 13 hands ~ quite the tallest I have ever ridden. I feel like I can see the whole of the world from his back. Papa has promised me that once I am well used to riding him, I will be allowed to take him up the long path to Glas Maol, which Papa says is where Crieff and Dalshee lands meet, which makes it my favorite place in the world.

  Should you like to meet me there some day so we might know each other? Wouldn’t that be nice? I await your reply.

  Your friend, Lady Greer Douglas

  Lady Greer Douglas

  Dalshee House

  Perthshire

  6 May, 1784

  Dear Lady Greer,

  My grandfather has given me permission to answer that I think it a fine thing for you to write me. And I congratulate you on your pony. What have you named him? I myself have a fine riding horse of 17 hands, bred here at Crieff. Cat Sìth is his name, on account of his black coat and white star on his chest like a mountain panther. I should think it a fine thing to take him up the long mountain pass to Glas Maol to meet you, but as Grandfather is taking me with him to Edinburgh on estate business, I fear we shall have to postpone the expedition until later in the summer. So we shall have to make haste slowly—as my grandfather is always cautioning me—in our friendship. I hope this day finds you well.

  Your servant, Lord Ewan Cameron

  Chapter 2

  The pain reached down into the darkness and dragged him up into the punishing light.

  Everything was an agony. Every thought. Every breath.

  But he was breathing. He was alive somehow, though he felt none too sure that the condition would last—the Devil and all his minions were pounding at his brain with pick axes, piercing his skull with such fierce deliberation that death seemed a viable alternative.

  But still, he breathed. And felt the hellish pain.

  He screwed his eyes tighter against the bright agony of the light, but the movement brought a roiling in his gut and a hot bitterness to his throat. It was pain to move, and pain to lie still, panting like an injured animal. That’s what he was—nothing but animal instinct to escape.

  An overloud voice made the ache in his head intensify as if it were being crushed in a grinding vise. “Are ye still wi’ us, lad?” A c
ramped hand gripped his shoulder, bringing a host of lessor pains shouting in his ears like a sergeant major. “Yer no good tae me dead.”

  He gritted his teeth, tasting the metallic tang of blood on his tongue. “Not dead yet,” he attempted, but the words were nothing but a moaning gibberish.

  “That’s it, lad,” the voice encouraged, nonetheless. “Stay wi’ me now.”

  It was everything he could do to obey. He did his best, but if this was what being alive felt like, he wasn’t sure he didn’t want to be dead.

  “Devil take it,” the voice ground on, “but someone wanted ye kilt. Yer hair and skull is so blacked with blood, I dunno what—” The gruff voice was choked with fear.

  That made two of them.

  He slitted one eye open to see an auld fellow wearing a weather-beaten face leaning over him, inspecting him like a gralloched deer on a game larder hook.

  “No one beats a mon so badly unless they want him dead,” the man grumbled as he poked painfully at his split and cracked lips. “Weel, even with that thrashin,’ ye’ve still got yer teeth, ye lucky bastert.”

  He felt anything but lucky with the pain cleaving him in two.

  “Let’s gee a drop o’ water in tae ye. Though I reckon it’ll go a treat easier if there’s a wee dram o’ whisky in it.”

  Tepid peat and spirit-infused water dribbled into his mouth, and he had to concentrate to swallow it down. The effort left him gasping with pain, but holding his thick, split lips open like a nestling bird. “More.”

  “Easy, lad. One swallow at a time.” The auld man held the cup to his lips, as patient as Job. “Hell mend ye, but yer that lucky tae be alive.”

  Lucky.At this moment, luck seemed a lot to ask for. But ask, he did. “Crieff.”

  “Aye, lad. I’ve got ye home—I’ve got ye tae Crieff.”

  Inchoate relief made drawing his next breath easier than the last, though the pain was still like a granite boulder on his chest. “Don’t want…die,” he panted. “Want—” He could not remember what he wanted, or exactly what he had been doing before—before the pain.

  One fragment of thought, a memory as thin and insubstantial as a cobweb brushed across his bashed-up, splitting brain—an image, as bright as a penny in his palm. “Penny.”

  “Wheest, lad. No need for money.” The craggy voice rasped in solace. “Yer home.”

  Home. The thought conjured the same word to the front of his brain—Crieff. But what it meant was an empty void—the darkness of his mind yielded no answer.

  There was only loss. And fury.

  And pain.

  Lady Greer Douglas

  Dalshee House

  Perthshire

  1 July, 1784

  Dear Lady Greer,

  I thank you for your last. I have returned with Grandfather from Edinburgh, but it has been decided that I am like a great hunk of Highland granite, and need polishing—I needs must be sent to France for schooling. I own, I do not like the idea of going so far away from home—my idea of what is perfect would be to stay always at Crieff, for here is all my happiness. There will not be hills and moors and guns and dogs and horses of my own in France. Nor I greatly regret, any trips to Glas Maol. I hope that you will forgive me not keeping our appointment there, but I will pledge to do so upon my next return.

  Your servant, Ewan Cameron

  Lord Ewan Cameron

  Castle Crieff

  Perthshire

  12 August, 1784

  Dear Lord Cameron,

  How disappointed I am that we cannot meet. But you must go to the Continent! How I should so dearly love to travel, but I have never been farther from home than Inverness, which is certainly not Paris! But now that you must go ~ even if it is only to school ~ you must write me of your travels, and cure me of my itch to be gone away. All the wonders that you see ~ the buildings and forests, the people and their costumes, the food and the drink and music and dance ~ all must be reported!

  As to polishing, if you who are so learned ~ Papa says you have had a tutor these many years ~ need polishing, I despair that I will be hopelessly gauche! In an effort to prevent that, Mama ~ who says that I am everything rash and brash and hoydenish ~ has made me pledge to apply myself to my studies ~ which are in reality only accomplishments and not learned study ~ with renewed attention, especially my application of the French language, so we may converse easily upon your return. Therefore I will bid you not goodbye, but au revoir,

  From your chère amie, Lady Greer

  P.S. Mama bids me ask you to excuse my evidently scatterbrained sentences. Your pardon.

  Chapter 3

  Greer’s strange sense of loss—the unquiet feeling that she had somehow mismanaged things and made the wrong decision to let the moorkeeper take the injured man away—lasted only until the coach passed through the tall wrought-iron gates to the estate and up the tree-lined drive to Castle Crieff. Her giddy excitement returned in earnest as the carriage rolled to a jangling stop, and the grey gravel crunched under the groom’s running feet.

  This was the moment she had been waiting for—the start of the life she had been wanting, preparing and planning for ten years to lead. But now that the moment was here, her stays felt suddenly too tight. Her stomach rolled and dipped as if she were still at sea, crossing the Channel to hasten home, and her palms went hot and clammy inside her kid gloves.

  She had never expected to feel hesitant—she who had always known what she wanted, and always thought she had the courage of her own convictions.

  Her sudden nerves must have shown—from the backward facing seat, Papa beamed at her, all pride and support. “You look beautiful.”

  “You are beautiful.” Beside Greer, Mama gave her words an entirely different, but no less heartfelt, meaning.

  “Thank you. Thank you, both.” Greer knew she was no conventional beauty—she was too ordinary, too sharp-jawed and flame-haired to be considered bonnie anywhere but Scotland—but she knew she was loved. Which gave one a different sort of beauty—a beauty that came from confidence in one’s merits instead of solely one’s looks.

  So if her knees were knocking together, it must be from excitement, not apprehension. Because any moment now, her friend Ewan Cameron, His Grace, the Duke of Crieff was going to throw open the doors to Castle Crieff and greet her with the smile she had been waiting ten years to receive. She herself was already smiling in near giddiness, so happy to meet the man she loved that her cheeks began to hurt.

  And yet, he and his smile did not come—the door remained closed.

  “Curious.” Papa stepped down from the coach and took a fraction of a moment to show his disapproval for the lapse in protocol by straightening his sleeve. “Robbie,” he instructed the groom, “pray ply the bell and inform the household that His Grace’s betrothed has arrived.”

  Greer certainly felt as if she had arrived—in more ways than merely standing on the doorstep of her soon-to-be-new home. After years and years of preparation—of travel and study and accomplishment—she had arrived at this day, at this extraordinary place.

  Greer took another moment or two to admire the beautiful grey and white crenellations of the immense stone keep, its harmonious imbalance and pleasuring asymmetry—Ewan had described it so perfectly, with his characteristic easy understatement, she felt as if she were coming home, instead of coming to a place she had never been.

  And to a man she had never really seen.

  The miniature in her pocket was of a fair-haired youth, still largely unformed by the world. Not that looks mattered so very much—her own were nothing special. She had heard herself described as a handsome young woman—handsome being what people said when they couldn’t say beautiful—but hoped Ewan would love her for her enthusiastic disposition and sharp mind, rather than the rather ordinary arrangement of her face. She hoped their marriage would be as equals, much like her own parent’s happy, affectionate union.

  From inside the carriage, Mama reached for Greer’s hand, and gave it
a reassuring squeeze.

  “It’s quite all right, Mama.” Greer smoothed her skirts, made herself everything calm and unruffled, like a swan gliding along the top of the water, while beneath all was determined, paddling work. Today she would be on her best, most lady-like manners. She would do her Mama proud. “I am sure it will all be right as rain.”

  “Good lass.” Mama patted her silk and lace clad arm. “No need to fret or fash.”

  And yet there was a need for…something.

  Because still, no one came.

  Greer had expected that her betrothed would have set up a signal from the gatehouse and been out on the forecourt waiting to greet her—she would have been, if their situations had been reversed. For goodness sake, they had been betrothed for ten long years—surely some sense of occasion was warranted?

  “Come, my dear.” Papa took her arm, because the massive double door finally opened to reveal a man in black wearing the badge of the house steward.

  “You must be MacIntosh.” Greer smiled and stepped forward enthusiastically but politely. She couldn’t have them thinking she was a heedless heathen with no sense of occasion.

  The steward was just as Ewan had described him—thin, angular and proud, with a stoic demeanor. “Aye, mileddy.” He bowed deeply at the waist. “We were no’ expectin’ ye. But I welcome ye to Castle Crieff.”

  “Thank you.” Greer very composedly smoothed down her now-soiled silk skirts, and moved toward the door on her own, as Papa was handing out Mama. “But I wrote to His Grace from Dalshee, that he might expect us this day. Did he not receive my missive?” Gracious, what a cock-up that would be, if there were not to be a wedding.