Page 8 of Never Kiss a Scot
“Right, you don’t, because we don’t evenknoweach other. Marriage should be based on love, not lust.”
He laughed. “Love? Lass, you are far too innocent. I’ve met only a few people who ever married for love, and those marriages didn’t end well.” His parents had married for love, but his father’s greed for power had been stronger than his love, and it had broken his mother’s heart. He would never forget what she’d told him only a few days before she died.
“Love, true love, fills the heart so completely that there is no room left for hate or greed. I thought I was enough for your father, but I wasn’t…”
Brock didn’t believe he could ever love someone that much—not because he didn’t want to but because his heart had been hardened by hate and anger. It was weighed down with stones of the past. There was a darkness inside him, one that he could not banish. A man like him could never be filled with love and nothing else. Because if he did love fully and all-consuming, whoever held his heart would make him pay dearly for it. She would crush him the way his mother had been crushed. His spirit would be broken and his will to live destroyed when he would not be loved back. Joanna was a danger to him, and she didn’t even know it. She could leave Scotland, return to her family and friends in London, and leave his castle empty and his heart in pieces on the floor. No…if they married, he would have her heart and body, and she would have his body and affection, but no love. It was too dangerous.
“I won’t marry you.” Her soft reply stung worse than any blade sinking into his chest. He hadn’t expected her to reject him.
He had been listening tonight at the assembly hall, had heard the mocking whispers that she would never find a husband, that something was wrong with her.
There wasnothingwrong with Joanna. What was wrong was that the damnedSassenachsthought their women should be meek as lambs and silly as geese. Sweet Joanna was fierce, intelligent, and had her own mind, and those bloody English fools knew it.
“I’ll ask you again after the wedding,” he said as the coach stopped at Lord Lennox’s residence.
She frowned, and the furrow between her brows made her look adorable. “I won’t change my answer.”
He smiled. “You might. A man can hope.” He opened the coach door and assisted her down, holding her close as he set her on her feet. She stared up at him, her blue eyes like dark pools beneath the muted light of the streetlamps. A loose curl of pale-blonde hair brushed the tops of her breasts, and he slowly stroked her silken strands back with his fingers. Her breasts rose in response as she took in a sharp breath.
“Sleep well, fair Joanna, and dream of me tonight.”
She scowled. “I most certainly will not.”
He cupped her chin, tilted her head back, and feathered a lingering kiss on her lips before he stepped back and climbed into the coach. “Aye, you will.”
She would change her mind. Brock had two days to convince her that marrying him was something she wanted. He would be a good and loyal husband, and he would see her well cared for and well satisfied, in bed and out.
So long as I can keep her safe from my family’s past.
He hadn’t forgotten what Rosalind had shared with him. Their father, Montgomery Kincade, had betrayed his fellow Scotsmen by helping an English spy assassinate the leaders of a rebellion more than twenty years before. That spy was still alive, and Brock’s father had threatened him with proof of their dealings being made public before he died. Rosalind had found that proof and had given it to Ashton to use against their sworn enemy. Instead, Ashton had chosen to burn it to protect her.
Brock didn’t believe that was enough. He didn’t trust the English, and he fully believed that the Kincade family and anyone they cared about would be in grave danger if the truth about their father ever came to light. He had to find a way to protect his family and his future bride from the bloody hands reaching through the mists of time, hoping to drag him down into darkness. But how could he stop a powerful English spy or his own countrymen if they cried out for vengeance?
I am not my father. I will not hurt Joanna. I will protect her with everything that I have.
Edmund Lindsey heldthe glass of ratafia, frowning as he searched for any sign of Joanna Lennox in the ballroom. He’d gotten used to finding her quickly in a crowd over the last few months. She was taller than most ladies, and her pale-blonde hair was like a shining beacon beneath the chandeliers.
“Lindsey, you continue to disappoint me,” a cold voice said from behind him. Edmund spun to face a handsome aristocrat with dark hair and even darker eyes. The man had appeared from a shadowed corner of the ballroom, unseen by the nearby guests. Edmund glanced about, expecting to spot a door or some pathway to explain the man’s sudden appearance, but there was no such place from which he could have emerged. It reminded him of just how skilled the man was and that he was not to be trifled with.
“Sir Hugo.” He bowed his head at the man who had been sending him his orders for the last three months. Those orders had been clear—that he must seduce and marry Joanna Lennox. How he had found himself in that position was a matter he preferred not to dwell upon.
“I did not spend my time and resources trying to convince the eligible bachelors in the country to avoid Miss Lennox just so you could somehow drive her off.”
Edmund tried to puff up his chest, taking some professional pride in his abilities. “I am on the verge of winning her over. In fact, I was about to ask her for a moment alone so I might confess to some of our shared interests—the ones you so kindly provided.”
“That will be difficult, seeing as she is no longer here. She fled with that Scottish brute, Kincade. It’s been three months. I was informed you had ways of winning women over, but it appears those rumors are simply that—rumors.”
The verbal slight didn’t go unmissed. Edmund would have thrown the ratafia in any other man’s face, but not Hugo Waverly. Waverly held power far beyond what his title would suggest. If it hadn’t been for the excellent funding he had received from the man, Edmund would never have taken this task on.
“Perhaps I should have picked a more aggressive man to woo her,” Hugo said, then looked Edmund up and down. “Taller as well. But I thought by now she would be more desperate. I had dearly hoped to see her shadowed with self-pity as she accepted your proposal. It seems I miscalculated either her desperation or your effectiveness.”
Edmund knew better than to react to such an insult. He knew he was attractive, and while not particularly bulky in muscle, he offered pleasure to any woman in his bed. Plenty of women had learned quickly enough that what he lacked in height he made up for in other ways. Yet Joanna had not even given him the chance to show her his charms. The little chit could barely contain her open dislike of him, and it filled him with a frustration that he barely concealed in his polite manners. Such constant rejection was no good for one’s self-esteem.
“It’s clear she will not choose me,” Edmund confessed. Oddly enough, saying the words out loud came with a strange sort of relief. “Perhaps you ought to bribe the Scot?”
Waverly’s cruel mouth twisted with a venomous smile.
“I’m afraid the Scot is not for sale. But you have given me an excellent idea. I had intended for you to make her miserable as a husband, but perhaps my plans were not ambitious enough. But that man’s father and I have a history. It opens certain…possibilities.”
