Читать книгу Claimed by the Laird - Nicola Cornick - Страница 8

PROLOGUE

Edinburgh, April 1817

“I DON’T KNOW why I am helping you,” Jack Rutherford said.

Lucas Black laughed. “Because my club serves the best brandy in Edinburgh?” He topped up his friend’s glass.

“It does,” Jack allowed. “But that isn’t the reason.”

“Because you owe me money?”

The cards lay abandoned on the cherrywood table between them. This was one of the club’s private rooms and empty but for the two of them. Beyond the door lay the gambling hell’s main salon, packed tonight with a clientele representing the richest men in Edinburgh society. Lucas cared nothing for a man’s antecedents, but he did care that his guests could pay their debts. He was in a position to be selective. An invitation to The Chequers was one of the most sought-after privileges in Scottish society.

Jack took out his pocketbook. “Twenty-five guineas, wasn’t it?” he said.

Lucas waved the debt away. “I’d rather have your help.”

His friend was frowning, watching the brandy swirl in his glass. He did not reply.

“A conflict of loyalties?” Lucas asked. He and Jack were business partners; they had helped each other out of more difficult situations than Lucas could remember. Which made it interesting that this time Jack was refusing to commit himself.

“Hardly that.” Jack glanced up. “I have little time for my father-in-law,” he said. “He tried to push both my wife and my sister-in-law into the sort of marriages that could have damaged them irreparably. People think him charmingly eccentric, but that is too kind a judgment.” He shifted in his chair. “No, it’s the element of deception that concerns me. I thought you were the sort of man who would walk in and state his terms rather than masquerading as a servant to spy on people.”

“I am the sort of man who prefers a direct approach,” Lucas agreed, adding drily, “but can you imagine what would happen if I walked into Kilmory Castle and said that I suspected someone there of killing my brother and I had come to find the culprit and bring him to justice? They would throw me out—or have me clapped in bedlam.”

He stopped. His dry tone had masked all kinds of emotions, but Jack had not been fooled. Lucas saw the sympathy in his eyes.

“I’m sorry about Peter,” Jack said, a depth of sincerity in his voice that Lucas could not doubt. “I understand that you want to know what happened—”

Lucas cut him off with a sharp gesture. “I want justice,” he said through his teeth. “It was no accident.”

He could see that Jack was struggling for a response.

Don’t, Lucas thought viciously. Don’t say that you understand how I feel. Don’t tell me that Peter’s death was investigated, that if others could not find a culprit, neither will I.

Rage and frustration welled up within him and he clenched his fists. He had met his half brother only once as an adult after years of estrangement. They had laid a foundation that they had both hoped would develop into a strong bond. And then Peter had died, robbing them of that chance and that future. He had been nineteen years old, no more than a boy.

When his half brother had first written to say that he was coming to Scotland and wanted to meet, Lucas had ignored the letter. He had had no contact with his family since his mother’s death and had wanted none. His childhood memories of life in Russia were not happy ones.

You’re a bastard and your mother is a whore, the other children had whispered to him, the ugliness of the words so incongruous amidst the opulent beauty of his stepfather’s palace.

Bastard, bastard...

The taunt echoed in his head and he pushed it away, shutting it out, closing down the emotion, the response, as he had done since the time the words first had a meaning for him. His parentage did not matter. In fact, he was grateful for those taunts because in the end they had given him the incentive he needed to prove himself. He had worked tirelessly to build a business empire that would give him wealth and influence to outstrip anything his family possessed. His hatred of his relatives had inspired him.

Then Peter had come and all that had changed. He could still see his half brother standing on the doorstep of his house in Charlotte Square, a tall, lanky youth who had not yet fully grown into his own skin but whose bearing showed the man he would one day become. Peter was hunched against the wind that whistled down from where Edinburgh Castle stood stark against a cold blue autumn sky.

“Dear God, but this country is cold!” His brother had walked straight in without invitation. He had spoken in Russian, and had embraced Lucas, who had stood there in astonished silence. Very few things had the power to surprise him; Peter had achieved that within five seconds.

“I wrote!” Peter had said enthusiastically.

“I know,” Lucas had said. “I did not reply.”

But there had been no resisting Peter, who cloaked a steely determination behind an irrepressible spirit that reminded Lucas of a puppy. Lucas recognized the determination because he had it, too, and he could not withstand his brother’s affection. They spent a riotous fortnight together in Edinburgh; Peter got gloriously drunk and Lucas had to rescue him from the tollbooth where he had been locked up in order to sober up; Peter threw himself into the social round of parties and balls and dinners—as a Russian prince he was much celebrated. Peter’s tutor, a long-suffering fellow who was trying to escort the boy and three companions around Europe, also insisted that they attend the talks and exhibitions for which Edinburgh’s academia was famous. Peter slipped out of one lecture halfway through to visit a brothel. Lucas had to rescue him from there, as well.

After two weeks, Peter and his companions had set off for the Highlands.

“I must see Fingal’s Cave!” Peter had exclaimed. “So wild, so romantic.” He had written after the boat trip to the island of Staffa, waxing lyrical about its beauty and telling Lucas that they were visiting Ardnamurchan on their way south. He wanted to see the most westerly point on the British mainland.

Then the news had come of his death. His body had been found by the side of a coastal track at Kilmory, a village at the end of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. He and his companions had dined the previous night at Kilmory Castle with the Duke of Forres and his family. After that Peter had apparently returned to the Kilmory Inn, only to go out later, alone. No one knew why or whom he was meeting, but his body was found the following morning, half-clothed. He had been beaten and robbed. Robbery and murder were unusual in the Highlands despite the wild reputation of the land and its people, but that was no consolation to Lucas, who had lost the half brother he had barely had chance to know.

The fall of logs in the grate recalled him to the room and he realized that Jack was speaking. He forced down his grief and anger and tried to listen.

“I truly believe that Lord Sidmouth is using you for his own ends, Lucas,” Jack was saying carefully. There was something in his eyes that was almost but not quite pity. “He’s using your grief to manipulate you.”

Lucas shook his head stubbornly. “I offered to help Sidmouth of my own free will,” he said, “in return for information and resources.”

After Peter’s death, the home secretary had sent men from London to try to find his murderer, but they had drawn a blank. Lord Sidmouth was certain that the case was connected to the illegal trade in whisky distilling with which the Highlands were rife. It was his contention that Peter had inadvertently stumbled over the notorious Kilmory smuggling gang and had been killed to ensure his silence. Lucas had no reason to doubt the home secretary’s assessment and he had a burning desire to avenge himself on the gang of thugs who had taken Peter’s life.

“I know it’s a long shot,” he said, “but maybe I can discover something that those fools from London could not. If the whisky smugglers were responsible for Peter’s death, then I have a better chance of learning of it than Sidmouth’s men had, and to do that I cannot approach Kilmory openly.” He fixed his gaze on the fire. It burned low in the grate, filling the room with heat and light. Yet Lucas felt cold inside. He could not remember the last time he had felt warm, could not remember if he had ever felt warm, not inside, where it mattered.

He was the illegitimate son of a Scottish laird and a Russian princess, the product of a night of youthful passion when his father had been traveling through Russia. His birth had scandalized Russian society and disgraced his mother. She had made an unhappy dynastic marriage five years later to a man who had been prepared to overlook her sullied reputation because he was dazzled by her dowry.

Lucas had gone with his mother when she had married, but he had been a changeling, unwelcome in his stepfather’s house, keenly aware of the difference between him and other children. His grandfather had asked Czarina Catherine to legitimize him, but that had made matters worse rather than better. His cousins and his stepfather still called him a bastard; his mother still had such grief and shame in her eyes when she looked at him. Peter had been the only one unaware of the dark shadow cast by Lucas’s existence. He was little more than a baby, open, trusting and loving.

His little brother, his life snuffed out by a stranger in a strange land. The coldness swept through him again and with it an ice-cold determination to discover the truth.

“Peter deserves justice,” he repeated. “I can’t just let it go, Jack. He was the only family I had left.”

“No, he was not,” Jack corrected. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. What about your aunt?”

Lucas smiled reluctantly. “All right, I’ll give you that.” His father’s sister was a force of nature. She had come into his life when he was living rough on the streets of Edinburgh. Even though he had told her to leave him alone, she had refused to abandon him. He had been a sullen, ungrateful youth, eaten up with bitterness of his father’s family, but she had driven a coach and horses through his resentment. She had forced him to pull himself up out of the gutter and he loved her fiercely for it. She was the only woman he did love, the only one he could imagine loving.

There was silence in the room. “You never speak of your father,” Jack said after a moment.

Lucas shrugged. There was discomfort in it. He could feel the tension knotting his shoulders again. “There’s nothing to say about him.”

“He left you his estate at the Black Strath,” Jack said. “That must count for something.”

To Lucas, it counted for absolutely nothing. He could feel the anger and hatred stir within him. These days he seemed to be angry all the time: angry that Peter had died, angry that no one had been brought to justice for it, angry that no one really cared. Jack was right; he knew that Lord Sidmouth was using him. Sidmouth wanted to bring an end to the whisky-smuggling gangs who ran rings around his excise officers. He wanted the members identified and jailed. Peter’s death was a convenient means by which to engage Lucas’s help. But that did not matter if they both got what they wanted.

“I’ve always wondered why your mother waited so long to tell you about your inheritance,” Jack said. “Your father died when you were only a baby.”

“I think she was afraid,” Lucas said slowly. He could still remember the clutch of his mother’s fingers, clammy and cold, and see the desperation in her eyes.

Don’t blame your father, his mother had said. He was a good man. I loved him.

But Lucas had blamed Niall Sutherland. He had never forgiven his father for abandoning his mother, for his cowardice and weakness. Their romance had been secret, her pregnancy only discovered months after Sutherland had left. Although Princess Irina had written to tell him, he had never returned to Russia. Lucas felt nothing but contempt for him for condemning Irina to the shame and stigma of bearing an illegitimate child, and Lucas to the endless taunts and mockery that went with bastardy. If he had anything to be grateful to his father for, it was that his example had taught Lucas to be the opposite of him: hard, ruthless and strong.

Jack was watching him. Lucas took a mouthful of brandy. It tasted bitter and he put the glass down abruptly.

“She was unhappy,” he said. “I think she was afraid I would leave her and go to Scotland to claim my inheritance. Even as a child I was headstrong.” He smiled ruefully. “She was wrong, of course. I would never have left her.”

“But you went when she died,” Jack said.

“There was nothing to keep me in Russia then.” Lucas crossed to the fireplace, tossing a couple of logs onto the glowing embers. There was a hiss and a flare of flame. “My stepfather had me horsewhipped from the house on the day she died.” He kept his voice level, even though in his memory he could still feel the bite of the whip through the thin material of his shirt, hear the sound as it ripped, feel the sting across his back. His chest felt tight as he remembered the black panic as the thongs snaked about his neck, choking him. He had fled to Scotland only to find that the trustees of his father’s estate were unimpressed by a fifteen-year-old boy who had no means of proving his claim.

He shook his head sharply to dispel the memories of the past. His aunt had ensured that he received his estate, but he was no laird; he had rented out the Black Strath ever since he had come into his inheritance. His interest was in business, not the land.

“Peter hero-worshipped you,” Jack said. “Evidently his father was unable to poison his mind against you.”

Lucas smiled reluctantly. “Peter had a loving spirit,” he said. “He was like our mother.”

Jack nodded. “I understand.” He corrected himself. “That is, I understand that you feel the need to bring his murderer to justice.” He let out his breath on a long sigh. “You will make a spectacularly poor footman, by the way.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Lucas said. “I can work hard.”

“You can’t take orders,” Jack said, draining his glass. “You are accustomed to giving them.”

“You don’t think that I fit the advertisement?” Lucas sat, and tapped the newspaper that was folded on the table in front of them. He read aloud, “‘Footman required at Kilmory Castle. Must be diligent, reliable, well trained and deferential.’”

“You are an impressive fail on almost all counts,” Jack said.

Lucas laughed. “I won’t get you to write my references, then.” He picked up one of the playing cards, toying with it, turning it idly between his fingers.

“Tell me more about the household,” he said. “So that I am prepared.”

“I’ve never been to Kilmory,” Jack said, “but I understand it to be a fourteenth-century castle that has no proper plumbing or heating, so it is probably as uncomfortable as hell. The duke prefers it, though.” He shrugged. “He always gets his own way.”

“Do any of the family live with the duke at Kilmory?” Lucas asked. He knew that some of the MacMorlan clan had been there when Peter had died. Sidmouth had told him.

“There’s a houseful at the moment,” Jack said. He ticked them off on his fingers. “You’ll be tripping over them at every turn. Angus and Gertrude are staying there at present—that’s Mairi’s ghastly elder brother, the Marquess of Semple, and his even more horrible wife. He is heir to the title and full of self-importance. I believe they have their daughter, Allegra, with them.”

Lucas grimaced. “And I’m supposed to wait on these people?”

“Your choice,” Jack said unsympathetically.

“Hmm. Who else?”

“Lachlan.” Jack grinned. “The younger brother. He is an utter waste of space. His wife left him some months ago and he has taken to drink for comfort.”

Lucas gave a soundless whistle. “Never a good solution.” He raised his glass in ironic toast. “Is there anyone else?”

“No,” Jack said. “Yes.” He corrected himself quickly. “There’s Christina, the eldest daughter.” He frowned slightly. “We always forget Christina.”

“Why?” Lucas said.

“Because...” Jack paused. “She’s easy to overlook,” he said after a moment. He sounded slightly shamefaced. “Christina’s self-effacing, the old spinsterish sister. No one notices her.”

Lucas found that hard to believe when both Lucy and her sister Mairi MacMorlan, Jack’s wife, were stunningly pretty, diamonds of the first order. He felt an odd, protective pang of pity for the colorless Lady Christina, living in their shadow, the duke’s unmarried daughter.

He let the playing card slip from between his fingers and it glided down to rest on the carpet.

There was a discreet knock at the door, and Lucas’s manager, Duncan Liddell, stuck his head around.

“Table four,” Duncan said. “Lord Ainsley. Can’t pay his debts. Or won’t pay. Not sure which.” He was a man of few words.

Lucas nodded and got to his feet. It happened occasionally when sprigs of the nobility had a little too much to drink and felt they were entitled to play for free. A few discreet words in the gentleman’s ear usually sorted the matter out.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Jack said. He stood up, too, and shook Lucas’s hand. “Best of luck. I hope you find out the truth.” He hesitated. “I don’t care what happens to the rest of them,” he said, “but don’t hurt Christina, or Mairi will have my balls for helping you.”

Lucas grinned. “I know your wife is a crack shot. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.” He sobered. “You have my word, Jack. I’ve no quarrel with any of Forres clan. I doubt I will have much to do with them. All I want is to infiltrate the whisky gang and find out what really happened to Peter.”

As he followed Duncan into the salon, Lucas caught sight of the playing card resting under the table. He bent to pick it up. It was the jack of diamonds. He laid it on top of the pack. It seemed appropriate for the bastard son of a laird and a princess who had made his own fortune and was as hard as the diamonds themselves.