“Oh, dear, should I have called you ‘Lord Brandon’ then? My mother said as I should, but the mistress told me not to, and I’m that confused. . .”
His damned mother! He should have known Charlotte Rohan would accomplish the impossible and arrive ahead of him. She hadn’t wanted him to go haring off again, and she’d done everything she could to keep him here.
It wasn’t enough. “Where’s your mistress?” he demanded in a dangerous voice. “I have a few words for her.”
“Last time I saw her she was in the kitchens. Cook is new, you see, and she was trying to explain simple country cooking. . .”
Brandon walked past her without another word, into the house that smelled of beeswax and honey and the earliest of spring flowers, straight into the kitchens that hadn’t been used for more than twenty years. The kitchens that had provided him bannocks this morning, he realized.
It had never looked so good. The massive copper pots were shining, every surface was scrubbed, the ancient flag-stone floor was spotless, and there was only one woman in the vast room, and it wasn’t his mother.
Tammas had been trailing at her skirts with abject adoration, but seeing his master was too great a temptation, and he bounded over to him, whining a happy little greeting, dancing around in joy.
And the woman turned around to face him.
She was beautiful, but there had never been a time when Emma Cadbury had been less than stunning, even battered and bruised and covered in mud. Her color was good—in fact, it almost looked like she was blushing. She’d added some healthy weight to her too-thin frame. Her thick dark hair was in some loose topknot, not the severe arrangement she usually favored, and the sun that speared through the windows seemed to capture bright crystalline wetness in her eyes. Emma didn’t blush, Emma didn’t cry. Emma didn’t suddenly appear where she knew he’d come—she ran away.
But she was definitely here, and she was trying very hard not to cry, her smile a bit wobbly, her gray eyes almost panic-stricken.
The maid from the front of the house dashed in, coming to an abrupt halt when she saw him before turning to Emma.
“Beg pardon, mistress, but Mr. Ellis says I was to inform you that Mr. Rohan has arrived. Er . . . that is . . . Lord Brandon . . .”
“Mr. Rohan will do,” Brandon said, never taking his eyes off Emma. She was trembling slightly, and he wondered what in the world she was afraid of.
He heard the girl scuttle away as they looked at each other. “Ellis,” he said finally. “As in my sister’s butler?”
She started to say something, choked, coughed, cleared her throat and began again. “He was tired of the Lake District,” she said finally. “And tired of the Scorpion’s ramshackle behavior. He wanted a more settled household.”
Brandon had been moving closer, slowly stalking her, but she held her ground, when he knew damned well that part of her wanted to cut and run as she always did. For once she held still, her gray eyes huge and uneasy, as if she were a cornered hare. “Mistress?” he said, and Emma’s flush disappeared.
“I know that’s not appropriate,” she said, eyeing him nervously now that he could almost reach her. “But I didn’t want to be Mrs. Cadbury and a simple ‘miss’ would be more difficult to explain.”
“You’ve never been a simple miss in your life. Mistress will do. Lovers. Bane of my existence. Harpy. Mrs. Rohan. Unless you prefer Lady Brandon. I’d think you’d hate that, but I’m game if you happen to want it.”
There were tears in her huge gray eyes. The tears he had never seen before spilled over, sliding down her cheeks.
“Brandon, you can’t marry me and you know it! The scandal would never go away. I’ll stay with you as long as you want me, but I can’t marry you. You’ve worked too hard to throw it all away on someone like me.”
“You mean to tell me that you ran off and nearly got yourself killed because you were trying to protect me?” he said, astonished, amused and infuriated at the same time. “You darling idiot! I’m a Rohan. We thrive on scandal. We wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She backed away from him, coming up against a cupboard. “But I’m . . . I’m barren. I know I can’t have children.”
He felt only the tiniest hint of pain and dismissed it. “I’m sorry for that, but more for you than for me. My sister is busy populating the Lake District and Benedick is trying to catch up. We’ll have enough little Rohans around to destroy the world, should they take it in their minds to do so.”
“Brandon, think about what you’re suggesting,” she pleaded but he was done, crossing the last few inches between them and pulling her into his arms.
“I’ve had five endless weeks to think about it, you cruel woman, and if you ever run away like that again I’m going to beat you severely.”
She looked up into his eyes, his beautiful wounded bird, no longer broken, no longer lost, and the wry quirk of her mouth told him just how seriously she took his ridiculous threat.
“And I’m not suggesting anything,” he continued. “I’m telling you. You’re marrying me and I’ll build you a hospital wherever you damned well please. I’ll go where you want to go, I’ll do. . .”
“Um . . .” she said, breaking into his declaration of adoration with her usual practicality. “I’ve already made arrangements in Inverness. I’ll go there twice a week for surgery and look after the local people the rest of the time. That is, if . . .”
He kissed her then, long and deep, cradling her head with his hands to keep her still, tasting, sucking, biting as she sank against him, and he felt the fight leave her body, leaving nothing but welcome.
Tammas had no sense of propriety and began leaping around them, making encouraging noises, but Brandon didn’t let it distract him. He had no intention of stopping until he . . . he had no intention of stopping, ever. He’d kiss her in the kitchen, reach beneath her skirts and lift her up onto the work surface behind her, unfasten his breeches. . .
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Rohan,” came Ellis’s precise voice, and Brandon lifted his head to growl at the man, while Tammas did the same in an act of solidarity with his oddly-behaving master, but Emma reached up, grabbed his long hair in her fist, and yanked him back to her mouth, and he wondered what Ellis might do if his new employer came in his breeches.
“Go away, Ellis,” he muttered when they both took a breath. “Or I’ll fire you.”
But Ellis wasn’t going anywhere, curse the man. “I’m afraid I have a confession to make, Mr. Rohan. I have been working here under false pretenses. I am still attached to your sister’s household—Lady Rochdale simply sent me here to ensure that everything was ready, but I do have the perfect candidate in mind for your permanent majordomo.”
Brandon dropped his head down to claim Emma’s mouth once more, but she put a hand against his lips, forestalling him. He ran his tongue over her fingers and began to suck one, well out of Ellis’s sight, and her eyelids half closed in reaction.
“What do you mean, ‘everything was ready’? Ready for what?” Her breathless voice held deep suspicion.
“Lady Rochdale and her family should be arriving in the next day or two, the Viscount and his wife a few days later, accompanied by his lordship’s parents. I believe your father will be bringing a special license with him.”
Emma appeared dumbfounded, a rare occurrence for his beautiful bride. “No,” she said. “That is . . . I didn’t say yes . . . I still think we should. . .”
Brandon took care of her protests in the most efficient way possible, and when she was too breathless to speak he glanced at Ellis. “Well, for the time being you’re my butler, and you will leave and see that no one disturbs us for the next hour.”
“Hour?” Emma said, sounding alarmed.
“Make that two.” He focused all his attention on Emma. “And take the damned dog.”
When they were finally alone he turned back to her, and she was wiping tears from her cheeks. “Damn these things,” she muttered. “I only starte
d crying five weeks ago and now I can’t seem to stop.”
“That’s all right, Harpy,” he murmured. “I’ll always be here to dry them. Accept it—there’s no way you can win against the assembled might of the Wicked Rohans. You’ll marry me and live happily ever after.”
“No one ever does,” she said.
“You will,” he said firmly. “I promise you.”
Epilogue
The marriage ceremony was a wild affair, given that it was the Wild and Wicked Rohans. The special license proved entirely unnecessary with Scotland’s appropriately random marriage laws, and Emma Rose Magdalene Cadbury and Brandon George Rohan were joined in holy matrimony by no other than a lapsed Catholic by the name of Noonan.
The bride continued her medical calling, despite her faulty diagnosis of her own fertility, and over time she presented her doting husband with four pledges of her affection.
And then, true to her husband’s words, they lived happily ever after.
About the Author
Anne Stuart has been writing since the Dawn of Time. She’s been published by every major publisher, and made the NYT, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller lists. She’s won numerous awards, including four RITAs, as well as RWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and she’s known for her dark heroes, black humor and hot sex.
Follow her on her website at Anne-Stuart.com social media at:
Also by Anne Stuart
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Contents
Reader Letter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Anne Stuart
Anne Stuart, Heartless
(Series: The House of Rohan # 5)
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