My Devilish Scotsman (MacDonell Brides Trilogy #2)

Prologue

The woman hummed a tune she had heard recently and fancied, as she prepared the final fatal dose of poison for her current husband.

Excitement gripped her, anticipation of the long-awaited denouement.

She liked to draw it out, to watch them suffer and decline as they looked to her to care for their needs. And she did. Sympathetically. Lovingly.

They deserved her special treatment. Most of them had been very good to her. She worked hard to make their short time together full of happiness.

She brought the steaming cup, poison masked in rich broth, to her husband.

He was older than the others, but wealthy and kind.

Handsome in a distinguished way, with graying black hair and dark eyes, and a finely muscled form before the poison had wasted the muscle from his bones. He’d reminded her of another man.

The memory soured her pleasure, so she was rather brusque when pressing the broth into her husband’s hands, sloshing some down the front of his snowy white nightshirt. He looked up at her uncertainly. So worried and dependent that her heart softened to him.

She sat on his bedside and dabbed up the spill. “There, there, my love. This will make it all better, methinks.”

He drank it down. When he was finished, she took the cup from his palsied hands and set it aside.

And then she watched him, waiting. Soon the first signs of the poison began. The skin around his mouth and eyes drew tight. His hands clutched his belly. His gaze jerked to her, eyes bulging with fright.

“That’s it,” she cooed and slid beneath the blankets, putting her arms around him. “It will only hurt a moment.”

His mouth opened and he gasped her name, his body drawing rigid in her arms. His throat worked, expelling garbled words.

He fought her embrace, but he was weak and she was strong.

Excitement flowed through her, gathering deep in her belly, sending heat and tingling down her thighs.

She held her lover tight in her arms as he convulsed, her own pleasure contracting her body in perfect harmony with his.

It was beautiful. It always was. But when it was over, she did not feel sated.

It was not enough anymore. There had been a time when she could live happily with a man for years.

Sometimes she would take lovers and seek her pleasure there before ending her union.

But of late, her marriages grew shorter and shorter.

This one had barely lasted a month. She would have to move on; people would suspect.

As she looked down at the still face of her husband, his mouth contorted in pain, eyes wide and staring, she knew it was not her failing, or even her dear husband’s. It was the one that got away. He haunted her, still living. She’d failed him and so failed herself.

She pressed a soft kiss to her husband’s still-warm lips and decided it was time to set things right.