The Forsaken (McQuoid Family Saga #4)

Prologue

“Gentlemen, when the enemy is committed to a mistake, we must not interrupt him too soon.”

~Lord Nelson

London, England

Winter

On the Way to the Wedding

Miss Andromena McQuoid-Smith, of the enormous, loving, scandal-finding, Scottish McQuoid family, loved—in no particular order—the following: Embroidering—to her family’s everlasting horror.

Playing the pianoforte and singing, also to the other McQuoids and Smiths’ confusion.

A good game and jest—being jovial, the jovial Scots they were, they understood that far more.

Winning—naturally, all McQuoids did, but Andromena more than most of them.

All of them.

As a lass, in the Game of Graces she had been unparalleled. On account, none of the other McQuoid lasses had any aspirations to be ladylike.

She’d cried copiously when she’d lost at hoop and stick.

She’d stomped her foot in defiance when coming in second, third, or last at Ducks and Drakes. After all, when skipping stones, it was a good deal less clear to ascertain for sure who really was the winner.

During games of Blind Man’s Bluff, she had always lost. Only because all the McQuoids ganged up on her—is what she used to rail. Once she matured and grew into a woman, she still maintained that there’d been an element of this behind her losses.

This wild, spirited Scottish spirit and desire for a good time was precisely how Andromena convinced her cousin, Lady Fleur McQuoid, and her about-to-be-married-to-the-duke sister, Meghan McQuoid-Smith, to attend Lord and Lady Rutland’s scandalous masquerade earlier that winter.

Oh, she’d been so masterful each elder girl believed they were the one who’d concocted the scheme. But it had been all Andromena’s doing.

Just like now, for instance, broken down in her uncle, the Earl of Abington’s Hooper’s and Company carriage until help arrived for her, Meghan, and Fleur on their way to Meghan’s wedding to a stodgy, Duke of Hartwell.

Warm and toasty as the ladies were—now, the past tense—Andromena hadn’t been content to sit with the metal warming box and brick footwarmers and wait for rescue to come.

Oh, no. She got it into her head to play a game of hide-and-go-snowball fight—a clever mix, if she, as the creator, did say so herself—of hide and seek and snowball fighting.

Help was on the way.

It had been inevitable.

Her stomach fell. Women weren’t allowed any fun.

Absolutely none. Men got billiards and break-neck racing and ladies got saddled with sedate, side-saddle rides.

Gentlemen visited clubs and wagered with actual coins and not buttons and beads in quiet parlors, as the wagering ladies like her and her kin did.

Men went where they wanted, when they wanted.

And when they did, well, good Lord, did men not come out of the crevices to snatch them away as quickly as they could. For there was nothing society despised more than a lady enjoying a good time.

Through the fast-falling snow and the clouds of white left by her breath in the cold air, Andromena’s gaze rested on a form in the distance.

For a moment, she thought he—whoever he was (she was strongly pulling for it to be her bachelor brother, Camp, who still hadn’t become stodgy from marriage)—hadn’t spied her.

Tall, clad from the tip of his black tricorn hat to his swirling black cloak and black leather riding boots, it really could be any of her privateering cousins, brothers, or their privateer friends and crew.

For a much longer moment, she considered bolting back into the thicket. But he was marching not only closer, but faster, and her beloved pink cloak began snapping and waving like a flag—a brilliant wool beacon calling out, ‘My mistress is here, come rescue her.’

“Adieu, fun to be had with my last sister,” she shivered, whispering into the cold. Her sister—who had become increasingly dull since her betrothal—would be horrified to be caught traipsing around the countryside.

On the other hand, no one would twitch so much as an eyelid at the sodden state of Andromena’s satin skirts and satin, cream-colored, heeled boots.

And doing what any loyal sister and best friend would do, Andromena dashed out from the canopy of the trees, arms waving. “I see you,” she called. “I am coming…Here I am!” What she was really saying was: you, sir. Tread not a step further. Stay where you are.

Apparently, some men were capable of listening to a woman, after all.

For this one stopped and waited for her to approach.

Since he stopped, it also allowed her to slow her steps and to give her sister and cousin a chance to get back undiscovered; she shouted to the solitary figure.

“Come to rescue us, have you?” All men thought themselves that.

Far easier for them to think that than accept they were big bothers and stealers of fun.

Judging by his silence, the fellow was less of a noble rescuer and more of an annoyed one, clearly put out at being sent to fetch his sister or cousins.

And because annoying fellow McQuoids and Smiths was what McQuoids and Smiths did best, she slowed down even more and belted out into song.

“My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;

Not that she needed to belt. With the blanket of quiet winter storms lying upon the slumbering earth, the sough of her breath and the crackling of a dead autumn leaf carried like a reaver’s shot.

“Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,

My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Gathering her heavy skirts out of the mud, she hurried toward their Savior.

Though she strove to be a lady in every traditional sense, she simply loved life too much—relishing a clever joke, a good game, and the joy of belting out a song from the very bottom of her heart.

“Farewell to the mountains, high-cover’d with snow,

Farewell to the straths and green vallies below…”

The distant laughter of her fellow McQuoids drifted over the wood copse. Oh, and I’m the senseless one? she would have screamed if she could. Get back to the carriage!

“Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods…”

A sharp wind stole the breath from her lungs, forcing her into a desperate, shallow gasp.

Her sister and cousin soon caught on, or slipped away to another hiding spot, and all went quiet. The wind howled along the old Roman road, echoing off the stone-lined ditches.

Around her, ice pellets struck the bare elms like popping embers, though they gave nothing back but a merciless chill.

Holding her fur-lined hood, she pulled the heavy pink wool tight against the wind, the soft marabou fringe tickling her chilled cheeks. She squinted at the specks of snow dissolving in her eyes and blurring her vision.

Through the soot-heavy fog, a man materialized as if he had grown straight from the knotted elms. Even the towering McQuoids could never rival the surrounding oaks the way he did, his dark over cloak swirling around powerful legs.

Dressed in black from his three-cornered hat to his Carrick cloak, he stood with the solid stance of a rider in fitted breeches. In the shifting cold, Andromena watched him as her own cloak snapped like a quiet hello in the wind.

Wrapped in black satin that hid his face, he looked every bit the ruthless highwayman. Any other woman would have shrunk from him at a glance.

Not a McQuoid lass.

All Andromena’s family knew her burning hatred of losing. Using that to Meghan and Fleur’s advantage, she took a deep breath and burst into song, loud enough for it to carry to the heart of London.

“My heart’s in the Highlands, my h-heart is not here…”

Each of her exhaled breaths created a little cloud replaced with each next verse.

At last—after much dragging of her hems, both literally and figuratively—she reached him, puffing from the exertion. Andromena needed but a single glance to confirm her fears: he was scowling. A McQuoid-Smith with a fondness for mischief, she had become an expert at reading a room’s scowls.

Trying to place him, she tipped her head all the way back, knocking her hood off.

The gentleman’s black-brown eyes—the deep-amber of polished mahogany with darker russet undertones, smooth like bold, smoky Scotch…

and just as dangerous, too—a lesson she learned after sampling those spirits with her sisters some Christmastides ago.

The way they moved over her, burned just as hot, too; leaving the same tingling in her belly.

“Who are you…? I know y—”

The jarring, harsh quality of his voice snatched away the shadowy figure just out of her memory’s reach. “You are loud.” He didn’t hide his disgust.

“And you are rude.” So, she didn’t bother to hide her indignation. Why should she?

And he didn’t deny it, but he should.

Instead, the surly one tasked with helping them to the wedding stood looking at her like she’d sprung several heads, and he’d discovered them all empty.

Ah, yes. Men and their pride. How could she forget they needed to be stoked? How could she when they gave women so many reminders?

“I am grateful for your aid, sir.” She sank into a graceful curtsy…but forgot she was in up four inches in snow, and lost her balance.

The gentleman fastened his fingers about her upper right arm. His hold was hard and punishing and yet gentle all at once, as if his reflex said, I will save you, but resent doing so.

“You may release me.”

“And risk your falling into a bank and freezing to death? I’d never…” get so lucky.

Andromena narrowed her eyes. No gentleman of her family’s acquaintance would dare speak thusly. Her brothers, Campbell and Brone, yes, and only teasingly. Oleander certainly, and with teeth when he and Andromena had a spat.

“I heard that.”

“Your ears work then, even if there’s nothing between them. Out here, running around in the middle of a storm, screeching your head off—” He continued over her gasp. “to attract any number of villains.”