Jennifer Ashley: The Seduction of Elliot McBride

Fiona brought them their package, giving Juliana a wink and a smile. “Off you go.”

Elliot took charge of the bannocks and shortbread and led Juliana away.

As they headed for the path that ran along the Rossmoran side of the river, Elliot heard Mrs. Rossmoran say to Fiona, “Do you think she is increasing? She had the look of it. Next spring, there’ll be a new McBride, you mark my words.”

Elliot took Juliana’s hand and led her on.

Elliot had lied when he’d said the picnic idea was completely spontaneous and unorganized. In truth, he had a goal in mind.

He’d found the place while exploring the land, looking for Stacy—who was still a guest of McPherson, though he was on the mend. Elliot and he had begun repairing things between them, talking of old times and new, Stacy planning what he’d do when he recovered. In London, Fellows had put in motion ways to keep Jaya’s brothers at bay. Fellows’s half-brother, the Duke of Kilmorgan, had much influence in politics, and ambassadors had talked to the ruling prince, who decided he didn’t like members of his extended family going after Britons. Jaya’s brothers had been called home, and there they stayed. Stacy could now live his life again, out of hiding. He would stay in Scotland, he said, and try to carve a place for himself.

Elliot found that talking to Stacy helped. He was learning how to remember the past without fighting it, without fearing it would destroy him. Perhaps one day, Elliot’s memories would be distant enough to no longer threaten. He knew it would take him a long time to reach such peace, but he had everything he needed to begin.

The place Elliot had found was a hidden meadow, surrounded by thick trees. The last few days had been rainless, so the grass was dry though still a deep green. Heather swayed across the meadow, rippling purple, interspersed with tiny white and gold flowers to make the place seem to sparkle.

When Elliot folded back the last branch to let Juliana through from the overgrown path, she gasped in delight.

“Beautiful.” She ran a few steps and spun around, laughing. “This was no arbitrary direction, Elliot McBride. You brought me here on purpose.”

“That is true.” Elliot walked unerringly to the base of a tree and fetched a bundle of blankets that he’d asked Hamish to leave there for him.

“Trickster,” Juliana said, but she was still laughing.

“Only in part. I’m trying to demonstrate that you can throw off your shackles and enjoy yourself once in a while. The world will not stop if you do.”

Juliana watched him spread out the blankets, her hands on her hips. “Oh, very well. I know I can be a bit zealous about organizing. But I like it.”

“I’m not demanding you give it up every day.” Elliot stretched out on the blanket. “Just every once in a while.”

Juliana carefully collapsed next to him, leaned down, and kissed his lips. “I think I don’t mind.” She looked at their bundle. “We have food. But nothing to drink.”

“We can take a drink from yon river,” Elliot said. When Juliana blinked, he grinned. “Or wait for Hamish to bring the jugs of water and wine as I asked him to.” He ran his hand down Juliana’s bodice to rest his palm over her abdomen. “I told him to give us an hour or so alone, first.”

Juliana’s cheeks went pink. “An excellent idea.”

“I brought something else.” Elliot reached into the pocket of his coat for the box that Mahindar had handed him this morning and opened it.

Inside, on a bed of velvet, lay two rings. One was a wide gold band; the other, a narrower band encrusted with sapphires.

Juliana took a quick breath. “Ours?”

“I told Mahindar what to order the day of our wedding. They’re finished, and here.” Elliot drew out the smaller ring, lifted Juliana’s left hand, and slid it onto her third finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

Juliana studied the ring, her smile happy. She took the man’s ring and slid it onto his finger.

“With this ring, I thee wed.”

Elliot couldn’t stop his smile. The cool band was heavy on his finger, clasping him just right, belonging there.

He took Juliana’s hand again and kissed it, right over the ring. Then he pressed their hands together on her belly.

“Is Mrs. Rossmoran right?” he asked. “Is there a wee one?”

Juliana went quiet, and for a moment, Elliot’s heart squeezed with worry. Then she smiled. “She is.”

“Dear God.” Elliot’s lungs ceased to work. He tried to say a few more things, such as, I’m going to be a father again. You’ve made me so happy, love. Do you think it will be a boy or girl?

All he could do was roll onto his back and stare up at the blue sky and sunshine.

Priti’s birth had occurred while Elliot had been imprisoned, her existence unknown to him until Mahindar had sprung it on him, releasing an ember of joy and wonder. This was the first time Elliot would be a father alongside the child’s mother, watching Juliana carry it, being there when the baby came into the world.

It was too much to take in.

Juliana blocked the sun from him, curls escaping her pins. “Elliot, are you all right?”

“I am.” Elliot sounded so calm. Inside him was a riot of noise, of joy, of beating drums and claxons, of all the sounds of India on a festival day. “I am fine. I never have been so fine.”

He tugged her down to him, wrapping his arms around her and rolling her gently to the blanket, taking care. “I am everything that is all right.”

Elliot kissed her beautiful smile, the dimple at the corner of her mouth, the tip of her tongue.

The darkness inside him, which had been reticent of late, reached for him with spidery fingers. Elliot moved his thoughts back to the little one nestled inside Juliana beneath him, and the darkness snapped away.

While Elliot had been imprisoned in the caves, thoughts of Juliana had given him the freedom he needed to keep himself alive. They hadn’t been able to reach that corner of his mind, and so hadn’t been able to imprison him entirely. Juliana had been his secret, his knowledge that no one could touch.

This child inside her was another knowledge that they could never take from him.

Elliot’s home, his wife, his family. All his, and all real.

The darkness died with a whimper, and Juliana welcomed Elliot, unhindered by pain and shadows, into her arms.

LONDON 1890

He doesn’t have the ace.

Daniel held four eights, and had backed that fact with large stacks of money.

Mortimer thought he was bluffing. He’d been trying to convince Daniel that he’d drawn the straight, that he’d been given an ace from the young woman who dealt the cards at the head of the table.

The other gentlemen in the St. James’s gaming hell called the Nines had already folded in Mortimer’s favorite game of poker. They and the rest of the hell now lingered to see the battle of wits between twenty-four-year-old Daniel Mackenzie and Fenton Mortimer, ten years older than Daniel and a hardened gambler. So much cigar smoke hung in the air that any consumptive who’d dared walk in the door would have fallen dead on the spot.

The game of choice at this hell was whist, but Mortimer had recently introduced the American game of poker, which he’d learned during a yearlong stint in that country. Mortimer was very good at it, quickly relieving young Mayfair aristos of thousands of pounds. And still they came to him, eager to learn the game and try to beat him.