The Lady and the Laird. Nicola Cornick

Lachlan. It would be wrong.”

      “Please, Lucy,” Lachlan repeated, with more pleading in his tone this time. “I really do love Dulcibella.” He threw out a hand. “How can she be happy married to Methven? The man’s a savage! He’s not like me.”

      “No,” Lucy said. “He most certainly is not like you.” Robert Methven had none of Lachlan’s refinement. He had rough edges, a roughness that had been rubbing against Lucy’s senses for the past three months like steel against silk. Once again she felt that shiver of awareness tingle along her nerves.

      “I can’t help you, Lachlan,” she said. “You should leave well enough alone.”

      Lachlan’s face took on the mulish expression Lucy remembered from when he was a small boy who was not getting his own way.

      “I don’t know why you would refuse,” he said. “No one would know.”

      “Because it’s wrong,” Lucy said sharply. A little shiver rippled over her skin. She knew she had to refuse even if Lachlan’s feelings were genuinely engaged. It was not fair in any way to sabotage Robert Methven’s betrothal. Besides, more practically, Methven was not a man to cross. He was hard and dangerous, and she would be foolish to do anything to antagonize him. If he found out, she would be in a very great deal of trouble.

      “You need the money,” Lachlan said suddenly. “I know you do. I heard you telling your maid the other day that your quarterly allowance was already spent.”

      Lucy hesitated. It was true that her allowance was already gone, given away to the Greyfriars Orphanage and the Foundling Hospital as soon as it was paid to her. Lachlan did not know, of course. He thought she was as extravagant as he was and saw no shame in that. He had no notion that her remorse over Alice’s death prompted her to give every penny she had to try to make up for a guilt that could never be assuaged.

      “I’ll buy you the bonnet with the green ribbons you were admiring in Princes Street yesterday,” Lachlan said, leaning forward.

      “I’d rather have the cash, thank you,” Lucy said. For a moment she allowed herself to think of all that she might buy: new clothes and shoes for the children, books and toys, as well.

      There was a sliding sensation of guilt in her stomach as she realized that she was going to do as Lachlan asked. She tried to ignore the feeling. She told herself that there could be no danger of Lord Methven discovering what she had done because Lachlan’s name would be on the letters and as long as he held his tongue, no one would suspect her. She told herself that she would be able to buy more medicines for the children at the hospital, as well. The bronchitis was particularly bad this winter.

      “How much?” Lachlan asked. He uncoiled his long length from the chair and stood up.

      “Ten shillings per letter,” Lucy said briskly.

      Lachlan glared. “I’ll write them myself,” he said.

      “Good luck with that,” Lucy said, smiling at him.

      Lachlan stared at her. She looked directly back and did not waver. She knew Lachlan would cave in. Her will was much stronger than his.

      “You could do it out of love,” he grumbled.

      Lucy turned her face away. Love was not a currency she dealt in. “Hard cash works best for me,” she said.

      “Five shillings, then,” Lachlan said. “And for that they had better be good.”

      “Seven,” Lucy said. “And they will be.”

      While Lachlan went to fetch the money, Lucy opened the desk drawer to extract a new quill, sharpened it expertly and refilled her ink pot. She would tell Lachlan to copy out the letters in green ink, she thought. The writing had to look as romantic as it sounded.

      A shower of sleet pelted the window. The frame rattled. The wind howled down the chimney. Lucy shivered. She could not quite banish the sense of trepidation that had settled like a weight inside her. She could see Lord Methven in her mind’s eye, his face as hard as rock, the dark blue eyes as chill as a mountain stream.

      It was wrong of her to help Lachlan take Dulcibella away from him. She knew that. Not only was it morally wrong, but it would also ratchet up the tension between the two clans, a tension that had never really died. She knew that there was some sort of ongoing lawsuit between the Marquis of Methven and her cousin Wilfred, Earl of Cardross. If Lachlan stole Methven’s bride, that would only throw fuel on the fire.

      She knew she should throw the quill down and walk away now, but she desperately wanted more money to help the Foundling Hospital. Picking up the quill, she started to write. Everything would be fine, she told herself. She would not get into trouble. She was quite safe. Robert Methven would never find out what she had done.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Two months later, April 1812

      THE BRIDE WAS LATE.

      Robert, Marquis of Methven, surreptitiously eased his neck cloth. It felt very tight. So did the pristine white shirt that strained across his broad shoulders. The little Highland church was full and hot, and the heavy fragrance of lilies permeated the air. Robert had thought lilies were a flower of funerals.

      Appropriate.

      The wedding guests were growing restive. The time had long passed for Dulcibella to be fashionably tardy. The only excuse for such a delay could be a malfunction in her wardrobe or perhaps the sudden and inconvenient death of a family member. Robert doubted that either of those had occurred.

      Dulcibella. It was a hell of a name. During the two months of his engagement, Robert had not been sure he could live with it. It looked as though he would not get the chance to try.

      He turned. The church was packed with guests, for this was the wedding of the social season. Two hundred members of the Scottish nobility had made the journey northward to this tiny church on the Brodrie Estate to see the daughter of the laird married to the man who had rejoined their ranks as scandalously as he had left them eight years earlier.

      “I think you’ve been jilted, my friend.” His groomsman and cousin Jack Rutherford spoke out of the side of his mouth. Jack was actually grinning, damn him. Robert scowled. He was indifferent to the public humiliation, but he had not wanted to lose Dulcibella. She had been the key to his inheritance.

      A lady sitting near the back of the church caught his eye.

      Lady Lucy MacMorlan.

      He felt his blood heat and quicken as it always did when he looked at Lucy. Just the looking made Robert feel as though he had selected his wedding breeches two sizes too small, a most inappropriate physical reaction in a church, when he was marrying another lady.

      He was not quite sure how this damnably inconvenient attraction to Lady Lucy had happened. He suspected that, lowering as it was to admit it, he had developed some sort of tendre for her when they were both in their teens, and he had never quite grown out of it. When he had kissed her years before at Forres Castle, it had been no more than an impulse. His reaction to the kiss, to her, had been so strong and unexpected that he had immediately backed off, knowing that if he did not, they would both be in deep trouble. Time and tragedy had then intervened to take him a long way from Scotland both in mind and spirit, but when he had returned and seen Lucy at one of the Edinburgh assemblies, it was as though a dormant spark was kindled in him, catching alight, burning into a flame.

      He had changed, but she had changed too, he thought. The artless, open girl he had known had become a great deal more guarded. She was still charming, but with the town bronze of the sophisticate now. Robert had been surprised to feel an urgent curiosity to know what was under that facade.

      He had other equally urgent impulses toward Lady Lucy, as well. They were destined to be unfulfilled.

      Today Lucy was sitting near the back of the church between her elder sisters and her father, the Duke of Forres, and her cousin, the ghastly Wilfred, Earl of