Prologue
The woman hummed a tune she had heard recently and fancied, as she prepared the final fatal dose of poison for her current husband. Excitement gripped her, anticipation of the long-awaited denouement. She liked to draw it out, to watch them suffer and decline as they looked to her to care for their needs. And she did. Sympathetically. Lovingly.
They deserved her special treatment. Most of them had been very good to her. She worked hard to make their short time together full of happiness.
She brought the steaming cup, poison masked in rich broth, to her husband. He was older than the others, but wealthy and kind. Handsome in a distinguished way, with graying black hair and dark eyes, and a finely muscled form before the poison had wasted the muscle from his bones. He’d reminded her of another man.
The memory soured her pleasure, so she was rather brusque when pressing the broth into her husband’shands, sloshing some down the front of his snowy white nightshirt. He looked up at her uncertainly. So worried and dependent that her heart softened to him.
She sat on his bedside and dabbed up the spill. “There, there, my love. This will make it all better, methinks.”
He drank it down. When he was finished, she took the cup from his palsied hands and set it aside.
And then she watched him, waiting. Soon the first signs of the poison began. The skin around his mouth and eyes drew tight. His hands clutched his belly. His gaze jerked to her, eyes bulging with fright.
“That’s it,” she cooed and slid beneath the blankets, putting her arms around him. “It will only hurt a moment.”
His mouth opened and he gasped her name, his body drawing rigid in her arms. His throat worked, expelling garbled words. He fought her embrace, but he was weak and she was strong. Excitement flowed through her, gathering deep in her belly, sending heat and tingling down her thighs. She held her lover tight in her arms as he convulsed, her own pleasure contracting her body in perfect harmony with his. It was beautiful. It always was. But when it was over, she did not feel sated.
It was not enough anymore. There had been a time when she could live happily with a man for years. Sometimes she would take lovers and seek her pleasure there before ending her union. But of late, her marriages grew shorter and shorter. This one had barely lasted a month. She would have to move on; people would suspect.
As she looked down at the still face of her husband, his mouth contorted in pain, eyes wide and staring, she knew it was not her failing, or even her dear husband’s. It was the one that got away. He haunted her, still living. She’d failed him and so failed herself.
She pressed a soft kiss to her husband’s still-warm lips and decided it was time to set things right.
1
Nicholas Lyon, twelfth earl of Kincreag, raced across the heather, his horse foaming in a flat-out run. He never mistreated his animals, but then never before had he received such a missive as he had on this night. Alan MacDonell of Glen Laire was dying.
This was not exactly startling news. Alan’s health had been failing for some time—all knew death would soon take him. Even so, he continued to linger, giving Nicholas hope that his friend would beat the mysterious illness that gripped him. Tonight that hope had been shattered.
He arrived at the loch that surrounded Lochlaire. After handing off their horses to the stable hands, Nicholas and his men clambered into three skiffs and rowed to the castle. The entrance glowed softly from the torches within. The creaking of the rising portcullis echoed in the distance. The night was dark. Quiet. Ominous.
Inside the bowels of Lochlaire, Nicholas leapt onto the stairs that disappeared into the water. The castle was subdued, fires dampened, hall deserted. As if already in mourning. Was he too late? He strode straight to Alan’s chambers, misery constricting his chest. Before he could knock, it opened, and Hagan slipped out, shutting the door behind him.
“You came,” the big, black-haired Irishman said. Barrel-chested and harsh featured, Hagan cut an imposing figure and was a bulwark shielding Alan from the world.
“You knew I would.”
“Aye.”
Hagan hesitated, which was odd. Nicholas had never known Hagan to be unsure of himself. But then Alan’s illness had taken its toll on everyone, most especially Hagan, who had become nursemaid to Alan.
“I must see him,” Nicholas said and pushed past, opening the door.
A candle flickered on a table near the bed. A woman sat at the table, a book open before her. Her voice, soft and feminine as a dove’s wings, glided softly over him, easing the crushing fear in his chest. Candlelight bathed the delicate line of her jaw, but the rest of her was in shadows. Alan’s deerhound lay at her feet, its nose between its paws. It did not lift its head; it merely shifted its strange, cloudy eyes to look at Nicholas.
She stopped her reading and raised her head. Her eyes and hair appeared black in the gloom, but Nicholas remembered them well. Eyes the soft gray of a Highland sky after a storm. Hair a rich sable, thick with curls. The candlelight was full on her face now, illuminating the alabaster texture of her skin, so fine that it shone with a radiance he’d only seen before in paintings of the Madonna.
Another of Alan’s duplicitous daughters. Gillian was her name. The meekest of the three. He should have insisted on her from the beginning—then maybe he and Alan would not be estranged.
“You came,” she said, fine brows arched in surprise.
As if he wouldn’t have. He ignored her and went straight to the bed. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Alan—not just yet—and so he busied himself with lighting the candelabra beside the bed. He felt Gillian’s gaze on him, searching, questioning. It was this one that Alan had tried to foist on him after his oldest daughter had run off with some renegade knight, practically leaving Nicholas at the altar. It was a woman who had caused this rift between Nicholas and his best friend. Women were the authors of all his problems. He was finished with them—especially with the MacDonell sisters.
He took a deep breath, then finally allowed his gaze to rest on Alan, bracing himself to see gaunt cheeks and a deathly gray pallor. His brow lowered in surprise.
Alan was sleeping—quite peacefully, it seemed. He’d clearly gained weight in the past month, and there was a healthy pink tinge to his cheeks above his white-streaked auburn beard.
