The Laird’s Masked Passion (The Lairds’ Sinful Masquerade #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Had Lady Elspeth Fraser been invited to a funeral, she would have expected more cheer.

The chamber above the inn yard was handsomely appointed in that manner which proclaimed comfort without quite achieving it. A fire had been laid, though the June morning had little need of one. The air was thick with beeswax, lavender, and the salt-wet breath of St. Andrews.

Her mother, Lady Morven Fraser, stood behind her with a comb in one hand and a veil in the other, and had not spoken for nearly half an hour.

This convinced Elspeth that something was very wrong indeed.

Her mother had never been silent where a word might be shared.

Yet now she drew the comb through Elspeth’s hair with trembling fingers and behaved as if speech itself had been outlawed.

“Maither,” Elspeth spoke at last, “if ye pull any harder, I shall arrive at Rose’s wedding without a scalp, and there are some brides who might take such a sacrifice as an ill omen.”

Her mother’s hand stilled. Across the room, her father, Thomas Fraser, looked up.

He had been standing near the window for much of the morning, dressed in dark wool, with his gaze turned outward to the street below.

Elspeth’s father had never needed to raise his voice to make a room smaller. He only had to look at it.

“Dinnae be foolish,” he grumbled.

Elspeth felt the first small sting of fear gather beneath her ribs. A fear that came wearing the garments of reason: a silent mother, a cold father, a missing maid and a wedding at which the bride had not met with the cousin who had been brought, supposedly, to help prepare her.

“Where is Rose?” Elspeth asked.

No one answered. Elspeth turned upon the stool, making her mother’s hands fall away.

“I have asked three times now. Where is Rose?”

Her father looked back toward the street. “Ye will see her soon enough.”

“That is what ye said when we arrived.”

“And it remains true.”

“It is a curious, Faither, that it grows nay more useful with repetition.”

Her mother drew in a sharp breath, almost a plea. “Elspeth—”

“Enough,” her father ordered.

The word was quiet. It landed like a door barred from the other side.

Her mother’s lips pressed together. Color rose and vanished in her cheeks. Elspeth saw it, and the fear beneath her ribs sharpened.

Her mother was not merely silent. She had been silenced.

Elspeth rose from the stool. The gown they had put on her whispered around her ankles, too fine for the task of helping another woman dress.

It was ivory silk with narrow sleeves and a fall of embroidered cloth that had supposedly belonged to an aunt.

Elspeth had objected to its splendor, saying Rose ought to be the finest dressed woman in the church, but her mother had insisted with an expression that made argument feel indecent.

Now, standing in it, Elspeth felt less adorned than wrapped.

“Skye should have been here,” she reminded them. “She always travels with me. Why hasn’t she come?”

“Skye wasnae needed,” her father replied.

Elspeth gave a short laugh. “That is the first untruth ye have told this morning which lacked even the courtesy of disguise.”

His gaze cut to her. She knew that look. It had bent stronger people than she, and in younger years her as well. But she was one-and-twenty now, and though obedience had been sewn into her upbringing as tightly as boning into a bodice, it had never fit comfortably.

“Something is wrong,” she spoke. “Rose isnae here. Skye isnae here. Maither hasnae said twenty words since dawn. Ye have answered every question as though it were treason. I am nae a child tae be led about by ribbons. What is happening?”

Her mother’s eyes filled. Her father turned from the window at last.

“What is happening is that ye will dae as ye are told.”

A chill moved through Elspeth, though the fire continued its poor, smoky labor. Before she could reply, a bell sounded from somewhere down the street that seemed to enter through the floorboards and settle in her bones.

“I will see if all is ready,” her father suddenly said. “Morven, finish her.”

He paused upon the threshold and looked back, not at Elspeth, but at his wife, in a warning without words. Then he was gone.

The room seemed to exhale. Her mother seized Elspeth’s hands with such sudden desperation that Elspeth nearly cried out.

“Dae ye ken,” her mother whispered, “what happens between a man and a woman in the marriage bed?”

Elspeth stared at her. Of all the questions that might have emerged from her mother’s mouth, this was so violently unexpected that Elspeth felt as if the floor had shifted beneath her.

“I beg yer pardon?”

Her mother’s fingers tightened. “Answer me. Quickly.”

“I… nay. Of course, I dinnae. Why should I?” Heat rushed into Elspeth’s face, chasing shock with mortification. “Maither, why are ye asking me such a thing? It is Rose who marries today. If anyone requires instruction, surely—”

“Hush.” Her mother glanced toward the door. “There is nay time.”

“Nae time fer what?”

Her mother’s eyes returned to hers, and Elspeth saw then something worse than fear. She saw pity.

“Me darling,” her mother whispered, and the endearment broke as it left her, “it isnae pleasant.”

Elspeth went still.

Her mother’s words came faster now. “Ye must lie still if ye can. Dinnae fight him unless… unless he is the sort of man who will be made worse by it. It is best nae tae scream. Tears may anger him. If he is anything like—”

She stopped. Elspeth’s blood seemed to withdraw from her hands.

“Like Faither?” she whispered.

Her mother closed her eyes. The room changed.

It remained the same in its outward particulars of green curtains and the smoking fire, but Elspeth knew she would never see it again without remembering the sudden sickening comprehension that her mother had not been speaking from instruction received, but from experience endured.

“Nay,” Elspeth replied, because denial was easier than understanding. “This is absurd. Why are ye telling me this?”

Her mother swallowed. Her eyes flew again to the door.

“Maither,” Elspeth gasped, and her voice no longer sounded quite her own. “What have ye done?”

The latch lifted. Her mother dropped Elspeth’s hands and snatched up a veil with trembling haste. Her father entered, bringing with him the cold authority of the corridor.

“The wedding is prepared,” he announced. “We leave now.”

Elspeth looked from him to her mother. “Are we going tae Rose’s wedding?”

Her father’s expression did not alter. “Come.”

For the first time in her life, Elspeth didn’t merely suspect her father could be cruel. She felt the shape of it closing around her.

“I willnae move,” she mustered, “until someone tells me what is happening.”

Her father crossed the room in three strides and took her by the arm. His fingers closed hard enough to bruise.

Her mother made a small sound. “Thomas—”

He looked at her, and the sound died.

Elspeth’s fear flared into anger, as it often did, like a candle touched to dry straw.

“Walk,” he ordered.

“I was walking perfectly well before ye mistook yerself fer a gaoler.”

His grip tightened. Pain lanced up her arm, but Elspeth would not give him the satisfaction of seeing it. She lifted her chin, gathered what dignity she could from an ivory gown that suddenly felt like a shroud, and walked.

The inn stair smelled of stale ale and tallow.

Voices hushed as they descended. The innkeeper bowed too low when her father passed.

His wife crossed herself when she saw Elspeth.

Outside, St Andrews lay before them in pale stone and sea-wind, its narrow streets glistening from a shower that had passed before dawn.

The cathedral was within walking distance, its towers and broken grandeur rising above the town like the bones of a giant saint. People had gathered along the street, far more than Elspeth had expected for Rose’s marriage.

“Why are they looking at me?” she whispered.

Her father didn’t answer. Her mother walked on Elspeth’s other side, with her hands clasped so tightly before her that the knuckles showed white through the thin skin.

Every step toward the cathedral seemed to remove her from the ordinary world.

The great doors stood open, swallowing guests into an interior smelling of cold stone, incense, damp wood, and the faint sweetness of crushed rushes beneath many feet.

Inside, light fell in long, pale shafts, turning dust into drifting gold. The nave was filled.

Elspeth stopped just within the entrance.

There were clansmen, ladies in dark silks, men with swords at their hips and calculation in their eyes.

Near the front stood several figures whose attire bore the sober richness of royal service.

Why were men of the Crown present at this wedding?

Rose’s people were respectable, certainly, but hardly so powerful as to require royal witnesses.

The Frasers, aye. The MacKenzies, perhaps. The great lords of the north and west, certainly. But Rose?

They moved down the nave. At first, Elspeth tried to angle herself toward the side, the proper place for family who had arrived late. Her father jerked her forward.

“We are family,” he murmured. “We stand at the front.”

“The front is for the bride’s parents and closest kin.”

“Precisely.”

His tone closed the matter, but not her mind. Her thoughts ran ahead, collided, scattered, reformed. Perhaps there had been some last-minute change in ceremony. Perhaps her father had arranged some matter of Fraser precedence and meant to display them before rival clans.

But each explanation felt flimsier than the last, and beneath them all her mother’s whisper persisted.

Dae ye ken what happens between a man and a woman in the marriage bed?

Elspeth shivered.

Then she saw the man at the altar. The sight of him stopped every thought in her head.

He was standing beside the priest with three men slightly behind him, and though all four were formidable enough to draw attention, the first commanded it without seeming to seek it.

He was tall, lean rather than broad, and dressed in dark garments cut for function more than vanity.

His hair was black, his face severe, and his posture possessed that stillness that did not suggest ease but danger held perfectly in check.

Elspeth knew, with instant and inconvenient certainty, that she had never seen anyone so frightening. She knew, with equal distress, that she had never seen anyone so arresting.

His features were not gentle enough to be called handsome by timid women, nor agreeable enough to be praised by those who preferred charm to consequence.

But there was power in the hard line of his cheek, intelligence in the cool watchfulness of his eyes, and something about his mouth that made Elspeth’s breath catch before she could prevent it.

Shame on ye, Elspeth. This is Rose’s groom. This is yer cousin’s husband-tae-be.

Elspeth looked away quickly and fixed her gaze upon a carved pillar.

What sort of woman noticed the shape of a groom’s mouth on his wedding day, ever more so when the bride was her own cousin?

A foolish woman. A wicked woman. A woman who had been frightened beyond the limits of sense and was now misplacing her faculties in the direction of a stranger’s face.

She ought to have been thinking of Rose.

Where is Rose?

They were nearer the altar now.

Elspeth slowed. “Faither.”

Her father did not.

“Faither,” she repeated more loudly.

A whisper moved through the church. The man at the altar turned his head.

His eyes found her. Elspeth had the absurd impression of being touched as a blade touches the space before it cuts.

His gaze travelled over her face, her veil, her gown, and returned to her eyes with a cold curiosity that made her both wish to retreat and refuse to do so.

Her father brought her to a stop directly before the priest…

directly beside the groom. Then he released her arm.

For one second, Elspeth did not understand the absence of his grip.

She looked down at her arm as if it might explain the matter, then back at him.

Then, her father stepped away among the family witnesses, his face as cold and blank as carved stone.

Elspeth was standing alone at the altar in a bridal gown.

Understanding did not come gently. It did not enter by degrees, like dawn. It struck.

“Nay,” she whispered.

The priest, a nervous man with thin lips and damp eyes, glanced at her father, then at the Crown men, then at the groom. Elspeth turned to him because he seemed like the weakest point in the nightmare, and therefore the most likely to yield.

“I beg yer pardon,” she urged with all the composure she could gather while her heart was beating like a fist against her ribs. “There has been a mistake. I am nae meant tae stand here.”

The priest swallowed.

“This place is for the bride,” Elspeth continued. “Me cousin Rose is tae be married today. I am Lady Elspeth Fraser. I am only—”

“Lady Elspeth Fraser?”

The voice came from beside her so singularly controlled that it seemed to travel beneath the skin rather than through the air.

Elspeth turned. The groom was looking at her and his eyes were the color of peat water under storm cloud. They betrayed nothing.

“Aye,” she replied, though the word had to be forced past a dry throat. “I am Elspeth Fraser.”

His gaze sharpened. “Daughter of Thomas Fraser?”

A tremor went through her, so fine she hoped no one saw it. “Aye.”

“And Lady Morven Fraser?”

At her mother’s name, Elspeth’s eyes flew sideways. Her mother was standing near her father, with her face lowered, and with one hand pressed to her mouth. She was weeping now, silently, as she seemed to do all things under her husband’s eye.

Elspeth looked back at the man.

“And who are ye?” she demanded.

A murmur stirred the first rows. Someone inhaled sharply, as though ignorance itself had offended the company.

The man inclined his head, not in a bow, but in acknowledgement of a fact. “Colin MacKenzie.”

The name moved through Elspeth like cold water.

MacKenzie.

The Black Lord of the Passes, some called him. She had heard stories, as any woman with ears and a family fond of caution must hear stories. He was the laird of Wester Ross, a man whom enemies did not provoke twice, because few survived the first attempt.

“I dinnae ken what business has brought ye tae Rose’s wedding, Laird MacKenzie, because there must be a mistake—”

“There isnae mistake,” he announced. “I am Colin MacKenzie, laird of Wester Ross. And ye, Lady Elspeth Fraser, are me bride.”

Elspeth could not breathe. Behind her, the cathedral doors groaned as the wind pressed against them.

Colin’s gaze held hers without mercy. “Ye belong tae me.”