Jennifer Ashley: The Untamed Mackenzie

They entered a dining room. The walls were covered with a blue, gold, and burnt orange striped wallpaper, its many colors bright in the light of a hearth fire. A gas chandelier hung dark above, and a solitary candelabra with three candles rested on the long, empty table. A young woman was just touching a match to the candlewicks.

When the third candle was lit, she blew out the match and straightened up. “So sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen,” she said in a voice very faintly accented. “I’m afraid my mother is unable to rise. You will have to make do with me.”

Whatever Mortimer and the other gentlemen said in response, Daniel didn’t hear. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything either, except the woman who stood poised behind the candelabra, the long match still in her hand, the smile of an angel on her face.

She wasn’t beautiful. Daniel had seen faces more beautiful in the Casino in Monte Carlo, at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. He’d known slimmer bodies in dancers, or in the butterflies that glided about the gaming hells in St. James’s and Monaco, enticing gentlemen to play.

This young woman had an angular face softened by a mass of dark hair dressed in a pompadour, ringlets trickling down the sides of her face. Her nose was a little too long, her mouth too wide, her shoulders and arms too plump. Her eyes were her best feature, set in exact proportion in her face, dark blue in the glint of candlelight.

They were eyes a man could gaze into all night and wake up to in the morning. He could contemplate her eyes across the breakfast table and then at dinner while he made plans to look into them again all through the night.

She wasn’t a courtesan. Courtesans began charming the moment a gentleman walked into a room. They gestured with graceful fingers, implying that those fingers would be equally graceful traveling a man’s body. Courtesans drew in, they suggested without words, they used every movement and every expression to beguile.

This woman stood fixed in place, her body language not inviting the gentlemen into the room at all, despite her words and her smile. If her movements were graceful as she turned to toss the match into the fire, it was from nature, not practice.

She wore a plain gown of blue satin that bared her shoulders, but the gown was no less respectable than what a lady in this neighborhood might wear for dinner or a night at the theatre. Her hair in the simple pompadour had no ribbons or jewels to adorn it. The unaffected style hinted that the dark masses might come down at any time over the hands of the lucky gentleman who pulled out the hairpins.

The young woman spread her hands at the now silent men. “If you’ll sit, gentlemen, we can begin.”

Daniel couldn’t move. His feet had grown into the floor, disobedient to his will. They wanted him to stand in that place all night long and gaze upon this woman.

Mortimer leaned to Daniel. “You see? Did I not tell you she’d be worth it?” He cleared his throat. “Daniel Mackenzie, may I introduce Mademoiselle Bastien. Violette is her Christian name, in the French way. Mademoiselle, this is Daniel Mackenzie, son of Lord Cameron Mackenzie and nephew to the Duke of Kilmorgan. You’ll give him a fine show, won’t you? There’s a good girl.”

As the man called Daniel Mackenzie came around the table and boldly stepped next to Violet, her breath stopped. Mr. Mackenzie did nothing but look at her and hold out his hand in greeting. And yet, every inch of Violet’s flesh tingled at his nearness, every breath threatened to choke her.

Scottish , Violet thought rapidly, taking in his blue and green plaid kilt under the fashionable black suit coat and ivory waistcoat. Rich , noting the costly materials and the way in which the coat hugged his broad shoulders. Tailor-made, and not by a cheap or apprentice tailor. A master had designed and sewn those clothes. Mr. Mackenzie was used to the very best.

He topped most of the other gentlemen here by at least a foot, had a hard face, a nose that would be large on any other man, and eyes that made her stop. Violet couldn’t decide the color of them in this light—hazel? brown?—but they were arresting. So arresting that she stood staring at him, not taking the hand he held out to her.

“Daniel Mackenzie, at your service, Mademoiselle.”

He gave her a light, charming smile, his eyes pulling her in, keeping her where he wanted her.

Definitely danger here.

Old terror stirred, but Violet pushed it down. She couldn’t afford to go to pieces right now. She’d come down here to placate Mortimer, letting her mother, who’d nearly had hysterics when Mortimer had started pounding on the door, stay safely upstairs. Violet, who could handle a crowd of several hundred angry men and women shouting for blood, could certainly cope with less than a dozen half-drunk Mayfair gentlemen in the middle of the night.

Mr. Mackenzie was only another of Mortimer’s vapid friends. Violet saw the barrier behind Mr. Mackenzie’s eyes, though, when she risked a look into them. This man gave up his secrets to very few. He would be difficult to read, which could be a problem.

Mr. Mackenzie waited, his hand out. Violet finally slid hers into his gloved one, making the movement slow and deliberate.

“How do you do,” she said formally, her English perfect. She’d discovered long ago that speaking flawless English reinforced the fiction that she was entirely French.

Daniel closed his large hand around hers and raised it to his lips. “Enchanted.”

The quick, hot brush of his mouth to the backs of her fingers ignited a spark to rival that on the match she’d tossed away. Violet’s nerves tightened like wires, forcing the deep breath she’d been trying not to take.

The little gasp sounded loud to her, but Mortimer’s cronies were making plenty of noise as they shed coats and debated where each would sit.

Daniel’s gaze fixed on Violet over her hand, challenging, daring. Show me who you are , that gaze said.

Violet was supposed to be thinking that about him . Whatever the world believed about the talents of Violette Bastien, medium and spiritualist, she knew her true gift was reading people.

Within a few moments of studying a man, Violet could understand what he loved and what he hated, what he wanted with all his heart and what he’d do to get it. She’d learned these lessons painstakingly from Jacobi in the backstreets of Paris, had been his best pupil.

But she couldn’t read Mr. Mackenzie. He didn’t let anyone behind his barriers, not easily. But when he did . . .

When he did, worlds would unfold.

Violet snatched her hand from him and turned to the others. “Please, gentlemen,” she said, striving to maintain the calm note in her voice.

She moved to sit down and found Daniel Mackenzie’s hand on the back of her chair. Violet forced her gaze from him and seated herself, trying to ignore the warmth of his body at her side, the fold of open coat that brushed her shoulder. The breath went out of her again as Daniel eased her chair forward, his strength unnerving.

Shaking, Violet laid her hands flat on the table, trying to use its cool surface to calm herself. She needed to appear utterly composed, sugar-sweet, and ready to help.

Inside, she was in turmoil. I hate this, I hate this. Why the devil can’t they leave us alone?

She gave the others an appealing look. “Will you gentlemen give me a moment to prepare myself?”

The gentlemen agreed without argument. Many had been to the house before, most often as Mortimer’s guests, but some had returned alone for private consultations with Violet and her mother.

Mr. Mackenzie sat down beside Violet and looked her in the eye. “Prepare yourself for what?”