Nicola Cornick: Claimed by the Laird

“I am the sort of man who prefers a direct approach,” Lucas agreed, adding drily, “but can you imagine what would happen if I walked into Kilmory Castle and said that I suspected someone there of killing my brother and I had come to find the culprit and bring him to justice? They would throw me out—or have me clapped in bedlam.”

He stopped. His dry tone had masked all kinds of emotions, but Jack had not been fooled. Lucas saw the sympathy in his eyes.

“I’m sorry about Peter,” Jack said, a depth of sincerity in his voice that Lucas could not doubt. “I understand that you want to know what happened—”

Lucas cut him off with a sharp gesture. “I want justice,” he said through his teeth. “It was no accident.”

He could see that Jack was struggling for a response.

Don’t, Lucas thought viciously. Don’t say that you understand how I feel. Don’t tell me that Peter’s death was investigated, that if others could not find a culprit, neither will I.

Rage and frustration welled up within him and he clenched his fists. He had met his half brother only once as an adult after years of estrangement. They had laid a foundation that they had both hoped would develop into a strong bond. And then Peter had died, robbing them of that chance and that future. He had been nineteen years old, no more than a boy.

When his half brother had first written to say that he was coming to Scotland and wanted to meet, Lucas had ignored the letter. He had had no contact with his family since his mother’s death and had wanted none. His childhood memories of life in Russia were not happy ones.

You’re a bastard and your mother is a whore, the other children had whispered to him, the ugliness of the words so incongruous amidst the opulent beauty of his stepfather’s palace.

Bastard, bastard...

The taunt echoed in his head and he pushed it away, shutting it out, closing down the emotion, the response, as he had done since the time the words first had a meaning for him. His parentage did not matter. In fact, he was grateful for those taunts because in the end they had given him the incentive he needed to prove himself. He had worked tirelessly to build a business empire that would give him wealth and influence to outstrip anything his family possessed. His hatred of his relatives had inspired him.

Then Peter had come and all that had changed. He could still see his half brother standing on the doorstep of his house in Charlotte Square, a tall, lanky youth who had not yet fully grown into his own skin but whose bearing showed the man he would one day become. Peter was hunched against the wind that whistled down from where Edinburgh Castle stood stark against a cold blue autumn sky.

“Dear God, but this country is cold!” His brother had walked straight in without invitation. He had spoken in Russian, and had embraced Lucas, who had stood there in astonished silence. Very few things had the power to surprise him; Peter had achieved that within five seconds.

“I wrote!” Peter had said enthusiastically.

“I know,” Lucas had said. “I did not reply.”

But there had been no resisting Peter, who cloaked a steely determination behind an irrepressible spirit that reminded Lucas of a puppy. Lucas recognized the determination because he had it, too, and he could not withstand his brother’s affection. They spent a riotous fortnight together in Edinburgh; Peter got gloriously drunk and Lucas had to rescue him from the tollbooth where he had been locked up in order to sober up; Peter threw himself into the social round of parties and balls and dinners—as a Russian prince he was much celebrated. Peter’s tutor, a long-suffering fellow who was trying to escort the boy and three companions around Europe, also insisted that they attend the talks and exhibitions for which Edinburgh’s academia was famous. Peter slipped out of one lecture halfway through to visit a brothel. Lucas had to rescue him from there, as well.

After two weeks, Peter and his companions had set off for the Highlands.

“I must see Fingal’s Cave!” Peter had exclaimed. “So wild, so romantic.” He had written after the boat trip to the island of Staffa, waxing lyrical about its beauty and telling Lucas that they were visiting Ardnamurchan on their way south. He wanted to see the most westerly point on the British mainland.

Then the news had come of his death. His body had been found by the side of a coastal track at Kilmory, a village at the end of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. He and his companions had dined the previous night at Kilmory Castle with the Duke of Forres and his family. After that Peter had apparently returned to the Kilmory Inn, only to go out later, alone. No one knew why or whom he was meeting, but his body was found the following morning, half-clothed. He had been beaten and robbed. Robbery and murder were unusual in the Highlands despite the wild reputation of the land and its people, but that was no consolation to Lucas, who had lost the half brother he had barely had chance to know.

The fall of logs in the grate recalled him to the room and he realized that Jack was speaking. He forced down his grief and anger and tried to listen.

“I truly believe that Lord Sidmouth is using you for his own ends, Lucas,” Jack was saying carefully. There was something in his eyes that was almost but not quite pity. “He’s using your grief to manipulate you.”

Lucas shook his head stubbornly. “I offered to help Sidmouth of my own free will,” he said, “in return for information and resources.”

After Peter’s death, the home secretary had sent men from London to try to find his murderer, but they had drawn a blank. Lord Sidmouth was certain that the case was connected to the illegal trade in whisky distilling with which the Highlands were rife. It was his contention that Peter had inadvertently stumbled over the notorious Kilmory smuggling gang and had been killed to ensure his silence. Lucas had no reason to doubt the home secretary’s assessment and he had a burning desire to avenge himself on the gang of thugs who had taken Peter’s life.

“I know it’s a long shot,” he said, “but maybe I can discover something that those fools from London could not. If the whisky smugglers were responsible for Peter’s death, then I have a better chance of learning of it than Sidmouth’s men had, and to do that I cannot approach Kilmory openly.” He fixed his gaze on the fire. It burned low in the grate, filling the room with heat and light. Yet Lucas felt cold inside. He could not remember the last time he had felt warm, could not remember if he had ever felt warm, not inside, where it mattered.

He was the illegitimate son of a Scottish laird and a Russian princess, the product of a night of youthful passion when his father had been traveling through Russia. His birth had scandalized Russian society and disgraced his mother. She had made an unhappy dynastic marriage five years later to a man who had been prepared to overlook her sullied reputation because he was dazzled by her dowry.

Lucas had gone with his mother when she had married, but he had been a changeling, unwelcome in his stepfather’s house, keenly aware of the difference between him and other children. His grandfather had asked Czarina Catherine to legitimize him, but that had made matters worse rather than better. His cousins and his stepfather still called him a bastard; his mother still had such grief and shame in her eyes when she looked at him. Peter had been the only one unaware of the dark shadow cast by Lucas’s existence. He was little more than a baby, open, trusting and loving.

His little brother, his life snuffed out by a stranger in a strange land. The coldness swept through him again and with it an ice-cold determination to discover the truth.