The Seduction of Elliot McBride hp-5 Read online

  Juliana stared at the tattoo, fascinated. She’d never seen anything like it. She’d heard of sailors being tattooed on their voyages to faraway places but had never seen a gentleman with one.

  Then again, Juliana had never seen a man without his coat, waistcoat, shirt, high collar, and cravat, not even her own father. Athletes stripped to shirtsleeves or short sleeves to run, row, or play ball games, or so she’d heard tell, but Juliana had never attended a sporting exhibition. Quite a lot of gentlemen might have tattoos in places a lady would never see.

  Part of Elliot’s backside was exposed, his knee hooked over the quilt. Juliana studied his tight hip, letting her gaze move to the wiry hair that traced down his leg.

  He was a well-formed man. God had quite nicely put him together.

  Elliot had scars on his back, random white lines from long cuts, similar to those on his face. He’d hurt, those scars told her; he’d bled. The cuts had been made deliberately, by someone who’d wanted to hurt him.

  Juliana put out her finger and traced one of the scars that snaked to his shoulder. The skin was smooth where it had been cut, and she glided her touch over it, then down his arm to the delicate leaves of the tattoo.

  She expected Elliot to wake at her touch. He’d open his gray eyes and smile at her, and perhaps—her heart beat faster—he would roll her onto her back and continue kissing and tasting her. The marriage bed was a fine place indeed.

  Elliot didn’t stir. Not to be surprised—yesterday had been excessive.

  Juliana leaned down and pressed a kiss to the vine on his arm, then another, and another. Her hair tumbled forward, loosened from its braid, brushing Elliot’s back, and still he did not wake.

  Juliana lifted her hair out of the way, leaned to Elliot’s cheek, and kissed it. Then his lips.

  She wanted him to open his eyes, to smile, as he had when he’d come to Juliana’s debut ball and stolen a kiss from her on the terrace. That young Elliot had been laughing, teasing, a man with whom she’d talked and danced for hours.

  This Elliot was quiet, his smiles gone, with a tattoo on his arm and knife scars on his face and back. She kissed the scars.

  Elliot still didn’t move. Juliana sat up and looked at him.

  The covers fell from her bare body. Elliot slept on, his breathing quiet and shallow, no snoring. All men snored, Gemma had assured her.

  “Elliot?” Juliana gently shook him. His skin was hot, his body limp, and he didn’t wake.

  “Elliot.” Her alarm grew. He might be a sound sleeper, yes, but she’d feel better if he opened his eyes and growled at her for waking him.

  Her father had always done that when startled from his nap—he’d insist he hadn’t been asleep at all, never mind his head was thrown back on his office chair, his mouth open, his spectacles askew.

  Elliot did nothing so amusing. His body moved with her shaking, but he never opened his eyes, never stirred.

  Juliana kicked off the covers, found her nightgown and slid it on, buttoning it with shaking fingers. Channan had hung her thick dressing gown over the chair, and she slipped this on too and looked for a bellpull. Part of one did hang on the wall, but it had been chewed through by the mice, and Juliana couldn’t reach the attached half of it to ring for anyone.

  First thing that was fixed tomorrow…no, today—the bellpulls.

  Juliana went out into the hall to find the house deathly silent. She had no idea where Mahindar and his family had found to sleep, no idea whether Hamish lived in or trotted home to his mother every night. Shouting might only bring Mr. McGregor flying out of his room with his shotgun again.

  She hurried down the hall toward the large staircase. The gallery was dark, the only light coming from windows in the hall below. The chandelier hung dark and empty. Second thing to repair—the lamps.

  As Juliana started down the stairs, a door banged somewhere in the bottom of the house, and red-haired Hamish strode into the hall. He looked up the stairs, gave a startled yell, and dropped the armload of wood he’d been carrying. It clattered loudly to the floor, and his voice rose over it.

  “Haunt! Banshee!”

  “Hamish,” Juliana said sharply. “Don’t be silly. It’s me.”

  Hamish pointed at her with a shaking finger. “How do I know you’re really the missus? Demons wile and beguile.”

  “Do stop that. Where is Mahindar?”

  Hamish gulped, but lowered his hand. “Downstairs. Are ye sure ye’re not a ghost, m’lady?”

  “Quite certain. I will change my dressing gown from white to purple and red striped if it will make you feel better. Now, will you please fetch Mahindar? Tell him I’m sorry to disturb his rest, but Mr. McBride needs him.”

  Hamish gave her a salute. “Right, m’lady.”

  He charged off, jumping over the wood he’d scattered. Before Juliana could ascend again, Mahindar came rushing out of the back of the house, followed by his wife and mother.

  A door banged above, and Mr. McGregor stomped out, sure enough, with his shotgun. “Can’t a man get peace in his own house? Hamish, lad, what ails ye?”

  “It’s all right, Mr. McGregor,” Juliana called.

  McGregor tramped his way to the gallery and peered over the railing. “Why is there a woodpile all over the floor? And who is that?” McGregor brought his shotgun down, aiming at Mahindar. “Good God, it’s savages from Khartoum.”

  Mahindar put out his arms and stepped in front of the ladies, trying to protect them. Juliana rushed back to the top of the stairs.

  “No, Mr. McGregor. They’re Mr. McBride’s servants. From India.”

  “Even worse. Thuggees. I know about them. They strangle you when you’re not looking.”

  Juliana walked swiftly down the landing to him. “They’re friends. Put away that gun.”

  To her relief, McGregor lowered the butt of the gun to the railing, the barrel pointing upward, away from all human beings. “Don’t patronize me, lass. I’ve been handling a gun, man and boy, these nearly seventy years…”

  The last of his words were lost in a bang and a roar. The shotgun blast hit the ceiling high above the gallery. Juliana screamed, as did Mahindar and family, and Hamish.

  Plaster, dust, and mud slammed to the floor below, and the huge chandelier started to sway…

  Chapter 6

  Juliana held her breath as the chandelier went back and forth, back and forth, like the giant pendulum in the terrifying story by the American Mr. Poe. The others watched it with her, frozen in place as they tracked the chandelier’s path.

  The chain groaned against the ceiling, but slowly, slowly, the giant chandelier eased back to its resting place.

  Juliana let out her breath and heard McGregor’s loud exhale at the same time. She turned to him and held out her hand.

  “Give me that gun, if you please, Mr. McGregor.”

  McGregor, looking sheepish and defiant at the same time, eased his finger from the trigger and handed her the weapon. Juliana broke open the gun with the competence her father’s gillie had taught her and held it safely over her arm.

  She opened her mouth to tell Mr. McGregor to dress himself, for heaven’s sake, when Mahindar’s mother came charging up the stairs, shouting before she hit the first step. Komal held her fluttering silks in one hand, and raised the other, not at Juliana, but at McGregor. She bore down on him, her raised hand moving back and forth like an angry bird while she railed at him in rapid speech.

  McGregor retreated several steps, arms high in defense. “Don’t ye be screechin’ at me, woman. A man has a right to defend his own home.”

  Komal continued to yell, her meaning clear even if Juliana didn’t understand her words—Get back to bed, you daft old man, before you shoot the house down.

  McGregor turned and ran, Komal chasing him, her voice growing louder as she followed him down the hall. Mahindar called to her from below, but his voice was faint, nervous, and Komal didn’t pay the slightest attention.

  “Mahindar,” Juli
ana said over the railing. “I can’t wake Mr. McBride. Can you help?”

  Mahindar stopped pleading with his mother and came upstairs, Channan with him. Channan left him at the head of the stairs and went after her mother-in-law and Mr. McGregor, a determined look on her face.

  Juliana led Mahindar back to the bedchamber. Surely they’d find Elliot on his feet, demanding to know what all the noise had been about. But when Juliana opened the door, Elliot still lay on his side, sleeping his deep sleep.

  The look on Mahindar’s face renewed her alarm. “Mahindar, what is wrong with him?”

  “I hoped, I so hoped…” Mahindar trailed off as he approached the bed. “Be careful, memsahib. Sometimes he does this, sleeps like a dead man for hours and hours. But when he comes awake, he can be violent. He doesn’t know where he is, and thinks I am his jailer.”

  “But he’s safe now. He knows that.”

  “Yes, yes, when he is awake and fine, he understands this.” Mahindar touched his forehead. “But inside his head, sometimes he is still confused. You must understand—he was left alone in the dark for a long, long time. Sometimes they fed him, sometimes they didn’t bother, sometimes they left him alone, sometimes they beat him for nothing.” Mahindar looked sad. “I know they must have done much more to him, but that is all he has told me.”

  Juliana looked at Elliot, lying so quietly on the bed, his chest barely moving with his breath. His body was whole, only the scars on his back and face attesting to his ordeal. But perhaps healing outside and healing inside were two different things.

  How did a man face such horrors and then return home to normal life? He’d never be the same, would he? How did he speak with people who’d never known his horror, people who’d lived in comfort and safety all their lives, who could never understand?

  Such a man did what Elliot did. He kept to himself, bought a run-down house in a remote corner of the Highlands, and lost himself in the depths of sleep.

  “What do I do?” Juliana’s question came out a whisper.

  Mahindar, with his thickset body and intelligent eyes, gave her a look of vast sorrow. “I do not know, memsahib. I have tried everything to heal him. I hoped that when he came here to this country he loved so much, he would get better. Maybe now, that he is married to you, he will.”

  Juliana drew her dressing gown more tightly about her and looked at her husband, her marriage one day old. “I barely know him, Mahindar. Not this Elliot.”

  The Elliot of her youth, who’d helped her retrieve a kite from a tree, who’d smiled in triumph when she’d kissed his cheek, had vanished into the past. This Elliot was hard, marked with scars, and had been through more than any man should face. The world expected him to shrug it off, to keep a stiff upper lip, to ignore his pain, but how could he, in truth?

  She’d have to get to know him all over again before she could even hope to understand him.

  “I will help you, memsahib,” Mahindar said, with a quietness like a deep river. “You and I, we will bring him back together.”

  “Ah, you are awake at last.” A voice swam out of the darkness to Elliot. “Thank all the gods. Your sister, she is here.”

  Elliot peeled open his eyes to see a face hovering mere inches above him. He experienced a moment of panic—What now? What now? Couldn’t they leave him alone?

  Then he realized that it was Mahindar’s kind and worried countenance studying him, thick brows drawn together under his white turban, the man’s beard tucked neatly inside his tunic.

  “Damn it, Mahindar.”

  Mahindar’s distress did not abate. “Lady Cameron has come to visit the memsahib. Your sister-in-law, she is here too, and she insists she see you.”

  Rona and Ainsley. Elliot’s redoubtable sister-in-law and pretty, lively sister. Not what a man needed to face when he’d awakened feeling like he had a three-day hangover.

  Elliot rubbed his face, finding it full of bristles. He must have been asleep for a long time. Another spell must have taken him, leaving him no idea how long he’d lain in darkness.

  And where the hell was he? He squinted at the bedroom empty of drapes and filled with large, square furniture, the bed in the middle of the floor. “Is this McGregor’s place? How did we get here?” Only Great-uncle McGregor’s house could look solid and falling apart at the same time.

  The last time Elliot had come here, to purchase the house, he’d bunked down in the warm kitchen—much more comfortable.

  Mahindar looked troubled. “Do you not remember? Yesterday, you were married.”

  Yesterday was a blank; all days for a long time had been a blank…except…

  “Married? What the devil are you talking about? Tell me you brought me whiskey.”

  “No, indeed. Her ladyship, your sister, forbade it. She said I was to get you up and down to the drawing room by any means necessary, except whiskey.”

  “Ainsley said that?” Elliot wanted to laugh. He’d always been close to his little sister, who knew him in ways no one else ever could. That was the old Elliot, though. No one knew the Elliot of now.

  Elliot threw back the covers. He was naked, but Mahindar neither noticed nor cared. “Draw me a bath. I’m not fit to be seen by decent women. Not even my resilient sisters.”

  As Mahindar bustled around preparing the bath with ewers of steaming water, Elliot fought his way from the dense fog of his sleep. Mahindar was speaking, and Elliot struggled to focus on his words.

  “I have put them in the morning room with the memsahib,” Mahindar said, “and there they wait.”

  “The memsahib?”

  Mahindar looked up, the water dribbling, unheeded, to the floor. “Yes, the memsahib,” he said in careful tones. “Until yesterday she was called Miss Sinj.”

  Mahindar, who’d worked for Britons all his life, prided himself on getting British titles correct. He did have some difficulty pronouncing the names, however—and who can blame him? Some are bloody impossible.

  Elliot rubbed his face again. “Miss Sinj? I’ve never heard of anyone called Sinj…” His eyes slammed open, letting in too much light. He rolled out of the high bed, landing hard on his bare feet, and the room spun.

  “You mean Miss St. John?”

  “Of course.”

  “Bloody hell, and damn everything.”

  Snatches of yesterday came to him—Juliana plopping down on his lap in a billow of white, her hopeful smile, her beautiful blue eyes.

  The memory of her skin under his fingertips, the kiss he’d pressed to her palm. Elliot had drawn her warmth into him, which he’d clung to as though he hadn’t felt warmth in years. He’d longed to kiss her lips there in the chapel, but couldn’t bring himself to with a mouth sour with whiskey.

  Then he remembered standing at the front of a packed church, almost panicking at the press of bodies, all those eyes staring at him as he promised to be a good and true husband to Juliana St. John.

  Bits and pieces came to him of the journey here, too slow when all he’d wanted was to be with Juliana. Then they’d been at the run-down house, Elliot coming to himself with his knife at the throat of the terrified Hamish, Juliana’s voice cutting through the darkness.

  His mind gave him back the next thing, the bliss of Juliana’s heat, her touch, the scent of her surrounding him. A moment, that was all, of drowning in her and forgetting everything.

  But the darkness had decided to rob him of even that. It wanted to take Juliana away from him, snatch back peace as Elliot reached for it.

  No. I need this.

  He plunged into the bath, letting it bite his flesh and the scars on his back. Mahindar knew better than to try to wash Elliot or help him into or out of the tub. Elliot soaped himself down, getting plenty of water on the floor, then curbed his impatience to lie back and let Mahindar shave him.

  Mahindar finished as quickly as he could, unhappy he couldn’t wrap Elliot’s face in a hot towel and perhaps finish with a massage. Elliot ignored the man’s complaints, rubbed himself dry,
and dressed.

  Hamish was clattering around the hall below, making a great deal of noise when Elliot descended, but Elliot couldn’t stop to decide what he was doing. He noticed that a fist-sized hole had been punched into the lacy stonework of the ceiling, only a few inches from the big chandelier.

  Elliot barreled into the morning room to find three elegant ladies in the act of lifting teacups. A clock somewhere in the house chimed three. Ainsley smiled at him, and Rona, his prim sister-in-law, gave him a look of appraisal.

  Juliana studied Elliot over the rim of her cup, then she set the cup back down, her eyes full of concern.

  Did he look that much like hell? He should have glanced into a mirror, but the bedchamber had none, and Elliot had learned to avoid mirrors. He trusted Mahindar to make sure his clothes were straight but never bothered anymore with anything beyond that.

  “Here you are, Elliot,” Ainsley said, her voice overly bright.

  “Yes, here I am. Where else would I be?”

  He heard the growl come out of his mouth, but he couldn’t stop it. Ainsley, his tomboy sister, was resplendent in some creation of cloth that subtly changed hue when she moved. Rona, plump and regal, wore a dark dress she’d assumed befitted her age of fifty-odd, with a cap of ruffles, bows, and floating lacy bits. All his life, Elliot had seen Rona in some kind of cap—plain ones and Sunday best, caps for calls and for receiving calls, for visiting one’s doctor and for shopping. Whenever he thought of Rona, his first vision was of caps.

  He took all this in swiftly, then observations were shoved to one side of the room, and the only being who existed was Juliana.

  Her lawn gown was cream colored with thin black piping outlining her bodice, placket, collar, and cuffs, the skirt deeply ruffled down the front. A high collar framed her chin, softening her face and emphasizing the slight dimple in the left corner of her mouth. She’d woven a cream-colored ribbon through the dark red of her hair, little ringlets left to float from her forehead and the back of her neck.

  She resembled the china figurines he’d seen in shops throughout Europe, elegant ladies frozen forever in time, their porcelain hands plucking at swirling porcelain skirts.