Page 1 of The Villain
CHAPTER ONE
Scotland, 1819
ady Daphne Fairchild lowered her head against the rain and spurred her mount toward her destination. Looming against a backdrop of angry, storm-cloud-riddled sky, a huge black shape thrust up from the summit of a steep cliff. A flash of lightning illuminated it briefly, a menacing roar of thunder seeming to warn her away.
Turn back, it cautioned.
I cannot, she replied.
Not after she had hastily fled London in the dead of night, with only the clothes on her back and the meager provisions she could carry. She’d braved ruin and scandal to come here—and now that winds and torrential rain had lent themselves to the frigid cold, she also risked catching her death.
Yet, nothing would stop her from reaching the summit, from striding right up to the front door of the imposing Scottish castle and demanding an audience with its owner. Even if it was the middle of the night, when no decent young woman would dare pay a call upon an unattached man. Even if she felt more than certain he would throw her out upon her arse the moment she opened her mouth to proclaim herself a Fairchild. Even if she had risked everything, with no certainty that she would find what she’d come for.
Squinting to see through the unrelenting sheet of rain seeming to actively fight her horse’s every step, she spotted the only path leading up the steep escarpment. Winding up what might be a grassy slope in the light of day, it would lead her straight into the maw of the very devil.
“Courage, Daphne,” she whispered to herself as she approached the lane. “Have courage.”
She craned her neck to better see her destination, but could make out no more than the enormous black silhouettes making up the famed Scottish keep.
Lightning flickered again—once, twice—followed by a roar of thunder. In the brief moment that the sky had crackled with jagged light, the devil’s lair had revealed itself.
A jumbled collection of outbuildings sitting behind a stone curtain wall, and, somewhere outside her view, the palace itself.
Castle Dunnottar.
Once a well-fortified place of defense and center of political intrigue; now a legendary relic, restored to become the home of a man who lived like a king. However, the ruler of this castle was no monarch. Nor could he be likened to some gothic novel hero—despite residing in a place that would serve as the perfect backdrop for such a story.
No, this man was the thing nightmares were made of. The whisper of his name caused her heart to pound and tears to well up in her eyes.
He was a rogue. A thief. A blight upon the Earth.
A villain.
Rounding a bend in the path, she approached the curtain wall and the looming gatehouse built into it. An old iron portcullis barred anyone from entering, but as she drew near, she spied a lone man just within the stone structure.
Dismounting and grasping the reigns of her horse, she peered through the metal bars. A wooden door stood open to the gatehouse, revealing a man seated near a glowing hearth inside. She envied him the warmth of even so small a fire while her fingers had grown so stiff from the cold, she feared they would break away from her hands.
“Pardon me,” she called out to be heard over the rain.
Lifting his head, the gate keeper spotted her, his eyes going wide. Daphne clung to the bars of the portcullis, tightening her grip to still her shaking hands.
“What on Earth are ya doin’ out here in the dead ‘o night—and in a storm, no less?” he bellowed in a rough, Scottish burr as he approached the gate.
“I’ve come to see Lord Hartmoor,” she replied, doing her best to deepen her voice.
With her disguise of breeches, boots, and a man’s coat, she hoped to pass as a male until she could obtain an audience with the master of the house.
The man wrinkled his brow, looking at her as if he thought her an escapee from Bedlam. Not altogether impossible, as only madness could have prompted her to do such a foolhardy thing. Now, here she stood with no intention of leaving until she’d gotten what she’d come for.
“Are ye daft?” he exclaimed. “’Tis the middle o’ the night, and the master cannae be expectin’ ye!”
“I have traveled all the way from London on horseback in this ghastly weather,” she argued. “I will not be turned back now. Please … my business with the earl is most urgent.”
With a shake of his head, the man waved her off as if she were some bothersome fly buzzing about his head. “Your urgent business can wait ’til tomorrow. Back down the mountain with ye.”
Desperation clogged her throat as he turned away, heading back toward his little nook in the gatehouse. That was it? After she’d come all this way, some stodgy old gatekeeper would turn her away at the gate?
No … she couldnotbe turned away.
