The Laird’s Masked Passion (Preview)
Chapter One
June 1594, St. Andrews, an inn near the cathedral
Had Lady Elspeth Fraser been invited to a funeral, she would have expected more cheer.
The chamber above the inn yard was handsomely appointed in that manner which proclaimed comfort without quite achieving it. A fire had been laid, though the June morning had little need of one. The air was thick with beeswax, lavender, and the salt-wet breath of St. Andrews.
Her mother, Lady Morven Fraser, stood behind her with a comb in one hand and a veil in the other, and had not spoken for nearly half an hour. This convinced Elspeth that something was very wrong indeed. Her mother had never been silent where a word might be shared. Yet now she drew the comb through Elspeth’s hair with trembling fingers and behaved as if speech itself had been outlawed.
“Maither,” Elspeth spoke at last, “if ye pull any harder, I shall arrive at Rose’s wedding without a scalp, and there are some brides who might take such a sacrifice as an ill omen.”
Her mother’s hand stilled. Across the room, her father, Thomas Fraser, looked up. He had been standing near the window for much of the morning, dressed in dark wool, with his gaze turned outward to the street below. Elspeth’s father had never needed to raise his voice to make a room smaller. He only had to look at it.
“Dinnae be foolish,” he grumbled.
Elspeth felt the first small sting of fear gather beneath her ribs. A fear that came wearing the garments of reason: a silent mother, a cold father, a missing maid and a wedding at which the bride had not met with the cousin who had been brought, supposedly, to help prepare her.
“Where is Rose?” Elspeth asked.
No one answered. Elspeth turned upon the stool, making her mother’s hands fall away.
“I have asked three times now. Where is Rose?”
Her father looked back toward the street. “Ye will see her soon enough.”
“That is what ye said when we arrived.”
“And it remains true.”
“It is a curious, Faither, that it grows nay more useful with repetition.”
Her mother drew in a sharp breath, almost a plea. “Elspeth—”
“Enough,” her father ordered.
The word was quiet. It landed like a door barred from the other side.
Her mother’s lips pressed together. Color rose and vanished in her cheeks. Elspeth saw it, and the fear beneath her ribs sharpened.
Her mother was not merely silent. She had been silenced.
Elspeth rose from the stool. The gown they had put on her whispered around her ankles, too fine for the task of helping another woman dress. It was ivory silk with narrow sleeves and a fall of embroidered cloth that had supposedly belonged to an aunt. Elspeth had objected to its splendor, saying Rose ought to be the finest dressed woman in the church, but her mother had insisted with an expression that made argument feel indecent.
Now, standing in it, Elspeth felt less adorned than wrapped.
“Skye should have been here,” she reminded them. “She always travels with me. Why hasn’t she come?”
“Skye wasnae needed,” her father replied.
Elspeth gave a short laugh. “That is the first untruth ye have told this morning which lacked even the courtesy of disguise.”
His gaze cut to her. She knew that look. It had bent stronger people than she, and in younger years her as well. But she was one-and-twenty now, and though obedience had been sewn into her upbringing as tightly as boning into a bodice, it had never fit comfortably.
“Something is wrong,” she spoke. “Rose isnae here. Skye isnae here. Maither hasnae said twenty words since dawn. Ye have answered every question as though it were treason. I am nae a child tae be led about by ribbons. What is happening?”
Her mother’s eyes filled. Her father turned from the window at last.
“What is happening is that ye will dae as ye are told.”
A chill moved through Elspeth, though the fire continued its poor, smoky labor. Before she could reply, a bell sounded from somewhere down the street that seemed to enter through the floorboards and settle in her bones.
“I will see if all is ready,” her father suddenly said. “Morven, finish her.”
He paused upon the threshold and looked back, not at Elspeth, but at his wife, in a warning without words. Then he was gone.
The room seemed to exhale. Her mother seized Elspeth’s hands with such sudden desperation that Elspeth nearly cried out.
“Dae ye ken,” her mother whispered, “what happens between a man and a woman in the marriage bed?”
Elspeth stared at her. Of all the questions that might have emerged from her mother’s mouth, this was so violently unexpected that Elspeth felt as if the floor had shifted beneath her.
“I beg yer pardon?”
Her mother’s fingers tightened. “Answer me. Quickly.”
“I… nay. Of course, I dinnae. Why should I?” Heat rushed into Elspeth’s face, chasing shock with mortification. “Maither, why are ye asking me such a thing? It is Rose who marries today. If anyone requires instruction, surely—”
“Hush.” Her mother glanced toward the door. “There is nay time.”
“Nae time fer what?”
Her mother’s eyes returned to hers, and Elspeth saw then something worse than fear. She saw pity.
“Me darling,” her mother whispered, and the endearment broke as it left her, “it isnae pleasant.”
Elspeth went still.
Her mother’s words came faster now. “Ye must lie still if ye can. Dinnae fight him unless… unless he is the sort of man who will be made worse by it. It is best nae tae scream. Tears may anger him. If he is anything like—”
She stopped. Elspeth’s blood seemed to withdraw from her hands.
“Like Faither?” she whispered.
Her mother closed her eyes. The room changed. It remained the same in its outward particulars of green curtains and the smoking fire, but Elspeth knew she would never see it again without remembering the sudden sickening comprehension that her mother had not been speaking from instruction received, but from experience endured.
“Nay,” Elspeth replied, because denial was easier than understanding. “This is absurd. Why are ye telling me this?”
Her mother swallowed. Her eyes flew again to the door.
“Maither,” Elspeth gasped, and her voice no longer sounded quite her own. “What have ye done?”
The latch lifted. Her mother dropped Elspeth’s hands and snatched up a veil with trembling haste. Her father entered, bringing with him the cold authority of the corridor.
“The wedding is prepared,” he announced. “We leave now.”
Elspeth looked from him to her mother. “Are we going tae Rose’s wedding?”
Her father’s expression did not alter. “Come.”
For the first time in her life, Elspeth didn’t merely suspect her father could be cruel. She felt the shape of it closing around her.
“I willnae move,” she mustered, “until someone tells me what is happening.”
Her father crossed the room in three strides and took her by the arm. His fingers closed hard enough to bruise.
Her mother made a small sound. “Thomas—”
He looked at her, and the sound died.
Elspeth’s fear flared into anger, as it often did, like a candle touched to dry straw.
“Walk,” he ordered.
“I was walking perfectly well before ye mistook yerself fer a gaoler.”
His grip tightened. Pain lanced up her arm, but Elspeth would not give him the satisfaction of seeing it. She lifted her chin, gathered what dignity she could from an ivory gown that suddenly felt like a shroud, and walked.
The inn stair smelled of stale ale and tallow. Voices hushed as they descended. The innkeeper bowed too low when her father passed. His wife crossed herself when she saw Elspeth. Outside, St Andrews lay before them in pale stone and sea-wind, its narrow streets glistening from a shower that had passed before dawn.
The cathedral was within walking distance, its towers and broken grandeur rising above the town like the bones of a giant saint. People had gathered along the street, far more than Elspeth had expected for Rose’s marriage.
“Why are they looking at me?” she whispered.
Her father didn’t answer. Her mother walked on Elspeth’s other side, with her hands clasped so tightly before her that the knuckles showed white through the thin skin. Every step toward the cathedral seemed to remove her from the ordinary world. The great doors stood open, swallowing guests into an interior smelling of cold stone, incense, damp wood, and the faint sweetness of crushed rushes beneath many feet.
Inside, light fell in long, pale shafts, turning dust into drifting gold. The nave was filled.
Elspeth stopped just within the entrance.
There were clansmen, ladies in dark silks, men with swords at their hips and calculation in their eyes. Near the front stood several figures whose attire bore the sober richness of royal service. Why were men of the Crown present at this wedding? Rose’s people were respectable, certainly, but hardly so powerful as to require royal witnesses.
The Frasers, aye. The MacKenzies, perhaps. The great lords of the north and west, certainly. But Rose?
They moved down the nave. At first, Elspeth tried to angle herself toward the side, the proper place for family who had arrived late. Her father jerked her forward.
“We are family,” he murmured. “We stand at the front.”
“The front is for the bride’s parents and closest kin.”
“Precisely.”
His tone closed the matter, but not her mind. Her thoughts ran ahead, collided, scattered, reformed. Perhaps there had been some last-minute change in ceremony. Perhaps her father had arranged some matter of Fraser precedence and meant to display them before rival clans.
But each explanation felt flimsier than the last, and beneath them all her mother’s whisper persisted.
Dae ye ken what happens between a man and a woman in the marriage bed?
Elspeth shivered.
Then she saw the man at the altar. The sight of him stopped every thought in her head.
He was standing beside the priest with three men slightly behind him, and though all four were formidable enough to draw attention, the first commanded it without seeming to seek it. He was tall, lean rather than broad, and dressed in dark garments cut for function more than vanity. His hair was black, his face severe, and his posture possessed that stillness that did not suggest ease but danger held perfectly in check.
Elspeth knew, with instant and inconvenient certainty, that she had never seen anyone so frightening. She knew, with equal distress, that she had never seen anyone so arresting.
His features were not gentle enough to be called handsome by timid women, nor agreeable enough to be praised by those who preferred charm to consequence. But there was power in the hard line of his cheek, intelligence in the cool watchfulness of his eyes, and something about his mouth that made Elspeth’s breath catch before she could prevent it.
Shame on ye, Elspeth. This is Rose’s groom. This is yer cousin’s husband-tae-be.
Elspeth looked away quickly and fixed her gaze upon a carved pillar.
What sort of woman noticed the shape of a groom’s mouth on his wedding day, ever more so when the bride was her own cousin? A foolish woman. A wicked woman. A woman who had been frightened beyond the limits of sense and was now misplacing her faculties in the direction of a stranger’s face. She ought to have been thinking of Rose.
Where is Rose?
They were nearer the altar now.
Elspeth slowed. “Faither.”
Her father did not.
“Faither,” she repeated more loudly.
A whisper moved through the church. The man at the altar turned his head. His eyes found her. Elspeth had the absurd impression of being touched as a blade touches the space before it cuts. His gaze travelled over her face, her veil, her gown, and returned to her eyes with a cold curiosity that made her both wish to retreat and refuse to do so.
Her father brought her to a stop directly before the priest… directly beside the groom. Then he released her arm. For one second, Elspeth did not understand the absence of his grip. She looked down at her arm as if it might explain the matter, then back at him. Then, her father stepped away among the family witnesses, his face as cold and blank as carved stone.
Elspeth was standing alone at the altar in a bridal gown.
Understanding did not come gently. It did not enter by degrees, like dawn. It struck.
“Nay,” she whispered.
The priest, a nervous man with thin lips and damp eyes, glanced at her father, then at the Crown men, then at the groom. Elspeth turned to him because he seemed like the weakest point in the nightmare, and therefore the most likely to yield.
“I beg yer pardon,” she urged with all the composure she could gather while her heart was beating like a fist against her ribs. “There has been a mistake. I am nae meant tae stand here.”
The priest swallowed.
“This place is for the bride,” Elspeth continued. “Me cousin Rose is tae be married today. I am Lady Elspeth Fraser. I am only—”
“Lady Elspeth Fraser?”
The voice came from beside her so singularly controlled that it seemed to travel beneath the skin rather than through the air.
Elspeth turned. The groom was looking at her and his eyes were the color of peat water under storm cloud. They betrayed nothing.
“Aye,” she replied, though the word had to be forced past a dry throat. “I am Elspeth Fraser.”
His gaze sharpened. “Daughter of Thomas Fraser?”
A tremor went through her, so fine she hoped no one saw it. “Aye.”
“And Lady Morven Fraser?”
At her mother’s name, Elspeth’s eyes flew sideways. Her mother was standing near her father, with her face lowered, and with one hand pressed to her mouth. She was weeping now, silently, as she seemed to do all things under her husband’s eye.
Elspeth looked back at the man.
“And who are ye?” she demanded.
A murmur stirred the first rows. Someone inhaled sharply, as though ignorance itself had offended the company.
The man inclined his head, not in a bow, but in acknowledgement of a fact. “Colin MacKenzie.”
The name moved through Elspeth like cold water.
MacKenzie.
The Black Lord of the Passes, some called him. She had heard stories, as any woman with ears and a family fond of caution must hear stories. He was the laird of Wester Ross, a man whom enemies did not provoke twice, because few survived the first attempt.
“I dinnae ken what business has brought ye tae Rose’s wedding, Laird MacKenzie, because there must be a mistake—”
“There isnae mistake,” he announced. “I am Colin MacKenzie, laird of Wester Ross. And ye, Lady Elspeth Fraser, are me bride.”
Elspeth could not breathe. Behind her, the cathedral doors groaned as the wind pressed against them.
Colin’s gaze held hers without mercy. “Ye belong tae me.”
Chapter Two
For several moments after Colin MacKenzie declared her his bride, Elspeth could do nothing but stare at him.
It was not that she had no words. On the contrary, she had so many that they crowded together in her throat and strangled one another. Elspeth’s whole life had been taken from its proper course and thrust, without warning, into the hands of a stranger.
Behind Colin MacKenzie stood three men who had the unmistakable air of belonging to him without serving him. They were not guards, though each looked capable of turning a church into a battlefield before the priest finished a prayer. They were his allies, men who knew what was happening, while she herself had not been granted even the courtesy of knowledge.
“There has been some mistake,” she urged.
Colin MacKenzie looked down at her. He was near enough now that she could see the faint scar at the edge of his jaw and the darker lashes that made his eyes seem colder by contrast. He possessed the sort of face a woman remembered against her will.
“I dinnae think so,” he replied calmly.
“Ye dinnae think so?” Elspeth repeated, and some wild spark of temper leapt up inside her. “How fortunate fer us all that me life has been arranged upon the strength of yer thinking.”
One of the three men behind him made the smallest sound, quickly smothered.
Colin’s gaze didn’t leave hers.
“I was told ye kent.”
There was a slight flicker of confusion in the cold depth of his eyes.
“I kent,” she snarled through clenched teeth, “that I was tae attend me cousin Rose’s wedding. I ken me maither was frightened intae silence. I ken strangers bowed as though I were being led tae me own execution. That is what I kent, Laird MacKenzie. If there is more, then it has been spared me.”
She stepped back… or tried to. His hand closed around her wrist. His grip did not bruise flesh. It merely stopped her as easily as a wall might stop rain. Elspeth looked down at his hand, then slowly back up to his face.
“Release me.”
“Nae until I understand what game yer faither is playing.” He moved closer, and to everyone watching, they were merely adjusting their positions before the priest. “What were ye told?”
“That Rose was tae marry.”
“And ye?”
“I was tae stand beside her.” Her throat tightened. “Nae in her place.”
Colin turned his head slightly, his attention cutting toward the first rows. Her father stood with his face as immovable as carved stone. Not a flicker of remorse disturbed him. If anything, he appeared impatient, as if she were delaying a matter of business by having the poor taste to possess feelings.
Beside him, her mother looked as if grief had hollowed her out. Her eyes lifted once to Elspeth’s face and instantly fell again. That single glance told Elspeth more than any confession might have done.
“When,” she asked, “was this arranged?”
He looked at her for a moment, perhaps weighing truth against convenience.
“At the Masquerade,” he revealed. “One week ago.”
“One week,” she whispered.
Those were seven mornings in which her father had looked upon her at breakfast and said nothing, and seven evenings in which her mother had sat across from her and swallowed whatever grief threatened to rise.
Elspeth almost laughed. It would have been a terrible sound.
“One week,” she whispered. “And in all that time nay one thought tae inform me?”
Colin’s jaw tightened. “Yer faither gave his word that ye had been told.”
“Me faither gives many things that dinnae belong tae him.”
This time his eyes sharpened. She hated that some foolish, detached part of her mind observed the line of him, the quiet force, the dark attention now fixed wholly upon her.
“How was this arranged?” she asked.
Colin’s answer came without softness. “I bought ye.”
The world went very still. Elspeth did not understand him. Or rather, she understood every word, and her mind rejected them as one rejected poison before the tongue could name it.
“Bought?” she echoed.
The music began in a hymn that should have been sacred and instead seemed monstrous. The sound filled the cathedral, drowning her next breath, her next question, her next protest. She turned toward her father, but the priest had begun to speak.
“Dearly beloved—”
“Nay,” Elspeth declared.
The priest faltered. Colin’s hand still encircled her wrist. He didn’t move to hurt her, nor to comfort her. He simply kept her in place.
“Nay,” she said again more loudly.
The music wavered. Her father’s face hardened. The Crown men watched. Whatever bargain had placed her here, it had not been hidden from them. It had been witnessed.
The priest’s mouth trembled. “Me lady—”
“I am nae supposed tae be married,” Elspeth urged. “I havenae consented. I… have nae even been told.”
A stir moved through the church, swift and hungry as wind through dry leaves.
Colin leaned closer, his voice low enough that only she could hear. “If ye refuse now, it willnae free ye.”
“How comforting. Is that what passes fer courtship in Wester Ross?”
His mouth almost changed. It wasn’t a smile, but something more dangerous because it had not decided whether it wished to be one.
It was in that very moment that she turned to her mother. Her father’s grip had shifted from her mother’s hand to her wrist. His thumb pressed into the tender inside of it with deliberate force. She made no sound, but pain pinched her mouth. Elspeth’s whole body went cold. If she resisted, her mother would pay first.
She looked at Colin again. The priest began faster this time, as though speed might lend holiness to coercion. Elspeth heard very little. Words passed around her in a solemn blur.
Duty. Union. Obedience. Covenant.
She stood in her ivory gown and felt herself becoming a possession before the eyes of God and men, while her father held her mother in pain and her bridegroom held her by the wrist.
When the moment came for her vows, silence opened before her. Elspeth’s mouth remained closed. Her father’s fingers tightened around her mother’s wrist.
Elspeth smiled. It was not a pretty smile. It did not belong to a bride. It belonged to a woman who had found, amid terror and humiliation, a single sharp weapon and meant to keep it hidden until it could draw blood.
“I will,” she nodded.
The words tasted like ash. The vows passed. Hers were spoken clearly. His were spoken with such cold steadiness that one might have thought he had pledged himself to a treaty, not a woman. And yet each response pulled the invisible knot tighter, until Elspeth could scarcely breathe beneath the weight of what had been done.
Then, a sound rose outside. At first, it was nothing more than a disturbance beyond the great doors. Then another shout came more sharply, of metal striking metal.
Colin’s head turned. So did the men behind him. The polished one moved first, and the iron-built man’s hand went to his sword. The wolfish one looked toward the doors with an expression that made him seem almost pleased to have been proved right about the world.
The priest stopped speaking entirely. Colin’s eyes snapped back to him.
“Finish it,” he snarled.
The poor man found his tongue. His words tumbled now, holy phrases made breathless by fear, while the noise outside grew louder. Elspeth’s heart hammered so violently she felt it in her fingertips. Then, the priest pronounced them husband and wife.
The words had scarcely entered the air before Colin turned to her. Elspeth knew what came next. Even in her ignorance of the marriage bed, she knew enough of ceremonies to understand the public seal of a kiss.
She turned her head slightly and hissed. “If ye dare kiss me, I will kill ye.”
For the first time since she had seen him, Colin MacKenzie laughed. The sound brushed over her skin in a way that made her furious with him, and still more furious with herself.
“Will ye?” he murmured.
“With great satisfaction.”
His hand rose, not to seize her, but to cup the side of her face. The contact was shocking. His palm was warm, and his fingers callused, but his touch was gentler than she had expected and therefore more alarming than force would have been.
“Then I shall count meself warned.”
He kissed her anyway. Elspeth had no time to turn away. His mouth came down on hers with a certainty that robbed her of thought. It wasn’t the soft, ceremonial brush she might have expected before witnesses. It was brief, yes, but it was no timid thing. His lips were firm and warm, tasting faintly of wine and winter air, and for one treacherous instant something low in her belly tightened with a startled, unfamiliar pleasure.
Horrified by herself, she bit him… hard. Blood touched her tongue.
Colin drew back. A gasp moved through the nearest witnesses. The priest made a strangled sound. Elspeth braced herself for the cruel lash she had learned to expect from men who did not enjoy being opposed.
But Colin only looked at her. A line of red marked his lower lip. Slowly, he touched it with his thumb, looked at the blood, then looked back at her. Then he smiled, as if she had amused him, as if she had interested him… as if he had liked it.
The smile transformed him into a colder, darker kind of handsome, the sort of man a sensible woman would flee, if she had not already been married to him before an audience and a terrified priest.
At that moment, the cathedral doors burst inward. Screams tore through the church. Men in black surged through the entrance like a spill of night, bearing weapons. For one stunned heartbeat, no one seemed to understand that violence had entered the house of God. Then the first man fell near the doors, with blood dark against the rushes, and the whole church broke.
People scattered. Women screamed. Steel rang against steel. Colin seized her hand and dragged her sideways just as something hissed through the air where she had stood. A dagger struck the wooden rail behind them.
Elspeth stared at it.
“That was meant fer—”
“Me,” Colin said.
He pulled her behind him. The three men who had stood as witnesses were already fighting. The polished one had drawn his blade with lethal grace. The iron-built man struck like a breaking door. The wolfish one moved so quickly Elspeth could hardly follow him, his sword flashing through the grey light.
Colin shoved her toward the side aisle.
“Run.”
She gathered her skirts and ran. The gown, which had been an insult before, now became an enemy. Silk tangled around her legs. The embroidered hem caught beneath her shoe. She stumbled once, regained herself, and heard Colin curse behind her with admirable restraint.
Another attacker appeared ahead. Colin’s arm shot around her waist, hauling her back against him as his sword came up. He pushed her behind him, met the man’s attack, and dispatched him with a brutal efficiency that made Elspeth’s stomach twist. Then, his eyes swept over her as if counting every breath.
“We have tae keep moving.”
He took her hand again, and Elspeth ran. They reached a side passage where the noise of the nave became muffled but no less dreadful. Her slipper skidded on the worn floor. The cursed gown twisted about her legs once more.
“I cannae—”
Before she could finish, Colin turned, swept her up into his arms, and continued running.
Elspeth gasped. “Put me down!”
“Nay.”
“If we survive this, I shall hate ye with great dedication.”
“Ye may begin now if it helps.”
It was intolerable. It was also, most inconveniently, effective. Held against him, Elspeth could feel the violent strength of his body and the hard beat of his heart where her hand had landed against his chest. She wanted to be outraged by the indignity of being carried, a bride stolen from a raided church.
The yard beyond the cathedral had become chaos. A body lay half in shadow beside the wall. Elspeth forced herself not to look closely. Colin set her on her feet only when they reached the horses.
“Up,” he commanded.
“I can mount without—”
He put his hands at her waist and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. Elspeth landed sideways upon the saddle with a most unladylike gasp.
“Hold the reins.”
“I ken how tae sit a horse.”
“Then dae it quickly.”
An attacker lunged from the side. Colin turned at once, placing himself between the man and the horse. The attacker’s blade glanced across Colin’s hand, drawing blood. Elspeth’s anger faltered. He had taken the cut because he had kept his body between danger and her. The attacker fell a heartbeat later. Colin flexed his bleeding hand as though it were an inconvenience.
Elspeth stared. “Ye are hurt.”
He glanced at the wound. “I have been worse.”
“What an inspiring standard for domestic happiness.”
His eyes flicked up to hers. For one impossible moment, amid smoke and screams and the ruin of the morning, she thought he might smile again. Then a woman cried out from the cathedral steps. Elspeth turned sharply.
Her mother stood near the doorway, half-hidden by fleeing bodies, with one hand pressed to the stone as if she could not keep herself upright. Elspeth’s heart tore toward her.
“Maither!”
Her head lifted. Their eyes met.
Elspeth tried to slide from the horse. “I am nae leaving her.”
Colin swung up behind her in one fluid movement. “Nay.”
His arm came around her waist, hard as iron. With his wounded hand he seized the reins.
“Me maither isnae safe!”
“Neither are ye.”
“I dinnae care!”
“I dae.”
The words struck strangely. There was no tenderness in them, no confession of concern. They were said with cold finality, as if her survival were now a fact under his command.
Elspeth twisted against him, desperate, furious and terrified. “If ye take me from her, I will never fergive ye.”
Colin’s body went still behind her for the briefest instant. Then he drove his heels into the horse. The animal leapt forward.
Elspeth cried out, reaching back toward the cathedral as distance opened between her and the woman who had looked at her with heartbreak and no power to save her. The last thing she saw was her mother’s pale face in the crowd. Then Colin’s arm tightened around her, the horse thundered into the street, and St Andrews began to vanish beneath flying hooves.
Elspeth didn’t know whether she had been rescued or stolen. She knew only that the man who now held her against him was her husband, her enemy, her only protection, and perhaps the first man she had ever truly wanted to kill.
Curious how a single masquerade can turn political bargains into passionate battles? Preorder all books from the series here.
