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Prologue
DEVIN MACLEOD
1875
I REMEMBER THE DAY I rode ahead of my lumbering coach. It was so long ago, but that day remains strongly emphasized in my memory. It was, for me, a turning point in my life.
Until then, I had spent a year conflicted by warring emotions.
I was on my way to MacLeod Castle—my ancestral home from London.
It had been a damned long trip, but along the way, I made promises to m’self, to m’late uncle, m’father and m’mother—promises I meant to keep.
I couldna go on wallowing in my solitude and grief. I had to pick myself up and do the right thing.
Finally, I could see the pinnacles of the home m’uncle had always told me one day would be mine. It was a sad fact.
As I approached our family seat, I stared at the fairy-tale castle of turrets and pinnacles against the blue sky. It was magnificent.
Awe swept through me and the feeling that always accosted me as a child, returned. I was proud of the men who had carried the title before me. I wanted to be, or at least try to be, as good and just as they.
In a few minutes, I would enter the castle and be addressed as his lordship by all the staff—some of whom would be strangers to me.
Here was a responsibility I meant to honor with fortitude and to the best of my ability.
I had not seen m’uncle since m’mother’s passing just over a year ago. I should have visited him because he had written and asked me to come. I meant to, but I thought I had time. I didn’t know he was ill. I should have known, but I didn’t.
Thus, I lost the chance to be with him in his last year.
I loved m’uncle—how had I not realized from his letters that he was ill?
When I received a letter from his solicitor advising me that m’uncle had passed quietly in his sleep, I had to read the words over and over for the unexpected, and unwelcome, truth to sink in.
I was the last one left in my immediate family.
He had no children, and I was next in line for the title, as well as the sole recipient of his considerable wealth. All mine, the title and all MacLeod estates. I would have preferred to have him alive and with me still.
When I recovered from the shock, at least two new emotions raced through m’heart.
One was profound grief.
M’uncle was a rare sort, forever jolly, forever kind. He had never married and had always treated me like a son. He and m’father had always been close.
I should have spent more time with him.
All through school, he maintained our bond by writing to me often when I was home with m’parents at MacLeod Manor. He would visit often when we couldn’t come to him at the castle.
His loss on top of both m’parents’ loss was deeply felt and I was overcome with sadness.
Selfishly, the second emotion I felt was a sudden determination to be a better man than I had ever been before.
This past year I had behaved like a self-absorbed bastard.
Bloody hell, as I look back, perhaps I deserved what was soon to become m’fate? Ah, but nae, nae, I dinnae think anyone deserved the fate I was slammed into.
Aye then, I had spent a devil of a year. I behaved as though I was surely hell-bent and hell-bound.
Excuses are just that, but if I give m’self one for the way I was that last year, it was that I was young—four and twenty. It was shortly after m’birthday that I lost both m’parents. First m’da, and then within months, m’dear mother.
It was said that m’mother died of grief after m’father’s passing. Aye, so they said, and so I know, for I watched it happen. I couldna do anything to stop it.
I went into a frenzy of misery and sought out the wrong kind of consolation.
I went through m’comfortable inheritance (m’father was m’uncle’s only and younger brother) and though not wealthy, he had managed to leave me quite enough to carry on his legacy. I am ashamed now to admit how I selfishly dived into excessive hedonism to forget…forget how helpless I had felt watching first m’father and then m’mother die. She went into a decline, right before m’eyes, and never recovered. Ye cannae know how useless I felt saying her name as her hand went limp in mine.
In short order, I ran to London from our estates just outside Inverness, and immediately got swept up into a whirlwind of drinking, gaming, and women—so many women.
I behaved like a coward unwilling to face life. There are never any excuses for weakness. I see that now.
Aye, but I was four and twenty…and bloody hell, I was on fire.
