Hard-Hearted Highlander. Julia London

have benefited greatly from my employment of you when no one else would have you, and for that, you owe me your allegiance and your obedience. Do I need to say more?”

      Bernadette couldn’t even speak. She thought herself beyond being shocked by anything that happened in the Kent household, but he had shocked her.

      “Good. Now go and make sure her mother hasn’t frightened her half to death. And send Renard to me—surely we’ve brought some decent wine.”

      Bernadette nodded again, fearing that if she spoke, she would say something to put her position in serious jeopardy. She was shaking with indignation as she walked out of the library.

      It had been eight years since she and Albert Whitman had eloped, but sometimes it felt as if it was yesterday. So desperately in love, so determined to be free of her father’s rules for her. They’d managed nearly a week of blissful union, had made it to Gretna Green, had married. They were on their way to his parents’ home when her father’s men found them and dragged the two of them back to Highfield.

      Bernadette had mistakenly believed that as she and Albert had legally married, and had lain together as husband and wife, that there was nothing her father could do. Oh, how she’d underestimated him—the marriage was quickly annulled, and Albert was quickly impressed onto a merchant ship. There was no hope for him—he was not a seaman, and was, either by accident or design, lost at sea several months later.

      She had learned a bitter, heart-rending lesson—a father would go to great lengths to undo something his daughter had done against his express wishes. A vicar could be bribed or threatened to annul a marriage. Men could be paid to impress a young man in his prime and put him on a ship bound for India. A woman could watch her reputation and good name be utterly destroyed by her own actions, and a father’s invisible shackles could tighten around her even more.

      After that spectacular fall from grace, everyone in and around Highfield knew what had happened. No one would even look at her on the street. Her friends fell away, and even her own sister had avoided her for fear of guilt by association.

      No one seemed to know about the baby she’d lost, however. No, that was her family’s secret. Her father would have sooner died than have anyone know his daughter had carried a child of that union.

      “Bernadette! There you are.”

      She hadn’t seen Avaline, who appeared almost from air and grabbed her hand. “I don’t like it here,” she whispered as she glanced over her shoulder at Mr. MacDonald, who was standing in the entry. “There is nothing here, nothing nearby.”

      “I’m sure there is,” Bernadette said. “I beg your pardon, Mr. MacDonald, but there is a village nearby, is there not?”

      “No’ any longer,” he said.

      “Not any longer? What does that mean, precisely?”

      “I mean to say the English forces...” He paused. “Removed it.”

      Removed it. “Ah...thank you, sir.” Bernadette glanced at Avaline. “It’s all right, darling—Balhaire is very near. Come and help me remember the things your father wants done, will you?” she asked, and pulled Avaline into a sitting room. Lady Kent was within, staring out the window, her arms wrapped tightly about her.

      “What things?” Avaline asked.

      “Pardon?” Lady Kent asked, turning about.

      “I was reminding Avaline that there were several things his lordship wanted done, and asked that she help me remember them all,” Bernadette responded. “We must make this place pleasing for your fiancé,” she said to Avaline.

      “Don’t call him that,” Avaline said.

      “But that’s what he is. The betrothal has been made.”

      “I don’t want the betrothal!” Avaline said, jerking her hand free of Bernadette’s. “He is ghastly.”

      She was a petulant child, only a moment away from stomping her foot. “That’s enough, Avaline!” Bernadette said sternly. “Enough.”

      Lady Kent gaped at Bernadette, shocked by her tone.

      Bernadette groaned. “I beg your pardon, but you both know as well as I that there is nothing to be done for this engagement.”

      Mother and daughter exchanged a look.

      “This is what you were born to,” Bernadette said to Avaline. “To make your father rich and prosperous by furthering his connections. You can’t pretend it isn’t so or believe that petulance will change it.”

      Avaline began to cry. So did her mother. They were like two kittens, mewling over spilled milk.

      “For God’s sake, will you stop?” Bernadette pleaded. “Best you meet your fate head-on than like a tiny little hare afraid of her own shadow. He will respect you more if you don’t cower.”

      “Oh dear,” Lady Kent said. “She’s right, darling.”

      That surprised Bernadette. She watched as Lady Kent shakily swept the tears from her cheeks. “She’s quite right, really. I’ve cowered all my life and you know very well what that has gained me. If you are to make this marriage bearable, you must find your footing.”

      Avaline’s eyes widened with surprise at this unexpected bit of advice from her mother. “But how?” she asked plaintively. “What am I to do?”

      Lady Kent and her daughter both looked to Bernadette for the answer to that.

      Good Lord, they were the two most hapless women she had ever known. Bernadette sighed. “You must prepare to meet him a second time and make him welcome. We’ll start there.”

      Avaline nodded obediently.

      Bernadette smiled encouragingly, but privately, she could think of nothing worse than having to meet that cold-hearted man a second time and pretend to welcome him. She’d known men like him, men who thought themselves so superior that civility was not necessary. Her first instinct had been visceral, and her humor when he was near quite deplorable. She would give a special thanks to heaven tonight that she was not the one who would have to spend the rest of her days in misery with him.

      Poor Avaline.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      HE FIRST NOTICES her at the Mackenzie feill, an annual rite of celebration where Mackenzies and friends come from far and wide for games, dancing and song. She is wearing an arasaid plaid that leaves her ankles bare, and a stiom, the ribbon around her head that denotes she is not married. She is dancing with her friends, holding her skirt out and turning this way and that, kicking her heels and rising up on her toes and down again. She is laughing, her expression one of pure joy, and Rabbie feels a tiny tug in his heart that he’s never felt before. The lass intrigues him.

      He moves, wanting to be closer. He catches her eye, and she smiles prettily at him, and that alone compels him to walk up to her and offer his hand.

      She looks at his hand, then at him. “Do you mean to dance, then?”

      He nods, curiously incapable of speech in that moment. Her soft brown eyes mesmerize him, make him think of the color of the hills in the morning light.

      “Then you must ask, Mackenzie,” she teases him.

      “W-will you dance, then?”

      She laughs at his stammering and slips her hand into his. “Aye, lad. I will.”

      They dance...all night. And for the first time in his twenty-seven years, Rabbie thinks seriously of marriage.

      * * *

      RABBIE’S MOTHER PUT her foot down with him, as if he was a lad instead of a man in his thirty-fifth year. As if he was still swaddled. “You will go and pay her a call,” she said firmly, her eyes