Sinful Scottish Laird. Julia London

he will have a chronic ague?” Daisy had asked, for certainly that particular winter, it had seemed her son was perpetually ill. And then she’d led the physician from Ellis’s bedside and whispered, “Or something worse?”

      The physician had shrugged and said absently, “One never knows how these things will manifest themselves.”

      “I beg your pardon, sir, but that is why I sent for you,” she’d said impatiently. “So that you might explain to me what his illness is and how it may manifest itself.”

      “Lady Chatwick.” The physician had sighed, as if she was testing his patience, then had said quite loudly, “You will not understand the nuances of the boy’s medical constitution. You must trust me when I tell you that he will never be a robust lad.”

      Ellis had burst into tears as one might expect having just heard such a callous delivery about the state of one’s health. Daisy had known then that the physician meant only to collect his fee and didn’t care a whit for her son. “Then we have a problem, sir, for I don’t trust you at all,” she’d said, then called for the butler to dispatch the good doctor.

      When she’d complained of his demeanor later that evening, her husband had chastised her for being disrespectful to the doctor.

      Nevertheless, Daisy refused to believe the man’s prediction of Ellis’s future. Frankly, her son’s health was the second reason Daisy had undertaken what had become an increasingly dangerous journey north.

      Robert was the first reason. If Robert had only reached her in time, this travel might well have been avoided.

      She mindlessly touched his letter, kept safe in the pocket of her gown. I will come with great haste as soon as my commission has ended, he’d written her.

      But not soon enough, as it turned out.

      “If they don’t find us now, they’ll surely find us at this lodge,” Belinda warned, settling back against the squabs, still intent on worrying them all.

      “We are perfectly safe,” Daisy said, and tried to convey a warning to her cousin with her expression, which, naturally, Belinda did not notice. Daisy smiled and squeezed Ellis’s knee. “Pay Cousin Belinda no mind, darling. It’s been a trying day for us all.”

      “I am not unreasonable in my concern,” Belinda said. “We were all of us frightened by those dangerous men.”

      “Need I remind you that those dangerous men offered to repair our wheel?” Daisy asked, then impulsively covered Ellis’s ears with her hands and leaned forward, whispering, “Forget that now, darling. Did you not see the gentleman? He was so...alluring.”

      Belinda blinked. “The Scotsman? Alluring? Daisy!” She gasped, clearly appalled. “What is the matter with you? Scotsmen are not alluring. They are traitors to the Crown!”

      Were she not so exhausted, Daisy would have argued that Belinda was not acquainted with any Scotsmen, and, therefore, couldn’t know if they were all or any of them Jacobites. Instead she was disappointed that Belinda had not noticed the man’s allure. She could not share in the observation of how a man with his extraordinary presence could be found on an abandoned road in what seemed the most remote region of the earth. With a sigh, she let go of Ellis’s ears and turned her gaze to the grimy window as Belinda began to speculate if they would be forced to camp on the road tonight.

      He’d been so utterly unexpected. Daisy flushed again, thinking about the Scotsman. Oh, but she was a hopeless cause. Quite possibly even mad! She shuddered to think how foolishly beguiled she’d been, particularly in the face of what could have been terrible danger. She’d long been an admirer of healthy men, but this...this bordered on lunacy.

      And yet...she hoped she might see him again one day. She would very much like to make him smile, to see the light she was certain could be coaxed from those blue eyes under the right circumstances. She quivered a little, imagining just how she might.

      Oh yes, she was mad—completely and utterly mad.

      This tendency to fantasy was something that had been slowly building in Daisy since her husband’s death more than two years ago. She’d since dabbled liberally in the art of flirtation in salons across Mayfair, had imagined any number of handsome gentlemen in varying degrees of compromise, so much so that now that tendency often felt impossible to control. The truth was that Daisy very much missed a man’s touch.

      Her husband, Clive, had been robust when her marriage was arranged, but he’d contracted a wasting illness soon after Ellis’s birth. In the last years of his life, he’d suffered gravely, too sick to be a father, too sick to care for her as a husband ought. Now, at nine and twenty, Daisy felt desire flowing in the vast physical wasteland of her life like a river that had overrun its banks.

      Her steady stream of suitors since Clive’s death were the raging storm waters that fed that river.

      But the Scotsman was not a suitor, and she thought of him in an entirely different light. She closed her eyes and imagined being kidnapped by him, carried off on the back of his horse, tossed onto a bed high in some rustic castle. She imagined his large hands on her body. She imagined resisting him at first, then succumbing to his expert touch. She imagined feeling his body, hot and thick inside her, and those blue eyes boring into her as she found her release.

      Daisy shifted uncomfortably.

      “Are you all right?” Belinda asked.

      Poof. In an instant, the image of him disappeared. “Pardon?” Daisy’s cheeks warmed as she shifted again. “Yes, I’m fine.”

      “Is it your stays?” Belinda asked sympathetically. “Stays can be quite dangerous, you know,” she said, launching into conjecture about the dangers of corsets.

      Daisy sank into the squabs and resolved not to think of the stranger again. She would think of London, of all the reasons she’d been so determined to leave.

      Ah yes, that stream of suitors.

      Her husband’s will had made London unbearable for her. It was no secret to the gentlemen bachelors about town that Lord Chatwick’s widow must remarry within three years of his death or risk forfeiting her son’s inheritance.

      Clive had explained this to Daisy from his deathbed. “You must understand, darling. I should not like to see you refuse to marry again and deplete Ellis’s inheritance to live as you like. You will rely on Bishop Craig to help you find a suitable match. He will see to it that the man you agree to marry will ensure Ellis’s education in the finest institutions and will possess the proper connections for Ellis when he reaches his majority.”

      Daisy had been horrified by his unexpected edict. She could scarcely embrace her husband’s looming death, much less the plans he’d made for her for after he’d gone. “I can look after him, Clive,” she’d said. “I am his mother—of course I will.”

      Her husband had lost a moment in a fit of coughing, then patted her hand. “You will do as I decide, Daisy. I trust you to understand.”

      But she didn’t understand. She would never understand.

      Daisy and Clive’s match had been made on the basis of compatible fortunes and family interests. He was fifteen years her senior, and Daisy had been his second wife, his first having been lost in childbirth along with the child. It was the sort of match she’d been brought up to expect, and she’d been somewhat prepared for it. Duty first, wasn’t that what had been drummed into her?

      But something miraculous had happened in that first year—she’d discovered affection for Clive. She’d been a steadfast and true companion, and she’d given him a son. She’d remained at his bedside when other women might have sought diversion elsewhere, and she’d held his hand when he felt searing pain rack his body. She’d been the wife she had promised him she would be.

      And for her devotion, in the last weeks of his life, he’d made his final wishes known to her. Plans he’d already made. None of them included any regard for her.

      Daisy