The Pirate Laird’s Defiant Bride (Preview)
Chapter One
1653, Calder Castle
It was a cold, wet day when Lady Grizel Calder was faced with the true scope of her father’s ruin. It was not reckoned in silver, nor in acres of failing land, but in the cold, deliberate manner with which he meant to sell her. She was the price to be paid.
Outside the study windows, the March wind worried at the old stone of Calder Castle and sent a thin whistling through the cracks, so that even the fire on the hearth seemed to burn with unease. The room smelled of peat smoke, damp wool, and the bitter tang of sealing wax. Her father, Laird Amhlaidh Calder, stood with one hand braced upon the great oak desk, his papers spread before him in apparent disarray, that was too carefully arranged to be accidental. He had always loved the appearance of order most when matters were desperate.
“Sit down, Grizel.”
His voice was graver than usual, and she obeyed, though not from meekness. She sat because she wished to hear her sentence clearly, and because a lady ought, at the very least, to meet the destruction of her peace with a straight spine.
The leather of the chair was cold through her gown. She folded her hands in her lap to keep him from seeing they were not entirely steady.
“Is something the matter, Faither?”
He did not answer at once. The silence stretched, broken only by the soft hiss of the fire and the tapping of bare branches against the pane. At length he exhaled, as if what he had to say had the weight of misfortune upon it, though Grizel suspected that, to him, the chief misfortune lay in the necessity of saying it aloud.
“There has been an offer.”
She looked at him. “For the eastern grazing?” she asked, though she knew already by the strange compression in his mouth that the matter was much worse.
“Nae.”
The single word dropped between them like a stone into black water.
He moved around the writing table then and faced her straight on, and in that instant, she saw not her father as she had known him in childhood, the towering, unquestioned master of Calder, but rather as a man thinned by pride and debt, by sleepless nights and letters he did not wish his daughter to read.
The cuffs of his coat were brushed but frayed, and the signet on his hand flashed dully in the firelight. He had the look of a man who had fought ruin for too long and had at last determined to make terms with it.
“It is for ye.”
Though her breath caught, she lifted her chin. “I was nae aware,” she answered, “that I had been listed among the cattle.”
His eyes narrowed, but he let the insolence pass. That troubled her more than reproof would have done.
“This is nae time for cleverness, lass. Ye have tae marry.”
The wind rose outside, flinging sleet against the glass with a sharp rattle. Grizel heard it distinctly, and afterward, would always remember the sound of the storm scratching to be let in while her father calmly arranged to send her out into one far worse.
“Tae whom?”
He hesitated. A queer chill moved over her skin. There were names she had half-feared these last months. They belonged to grasping men with broad acres and broader appetites, widowers with inconvenient children, and dull noblemen whose conversation alone might have been counted a cruelty. Yet none of them prepared her for the name he finally pronounced.
“Laird Beathan Drummond.”
For one stunned moment, the room lost all proportion. The fire became too hot, and the air too close. Her senses heightened, she smelledthe resin of the writing table polish, the burnt edge of peat, and the faint sourness of rain-damp stone. All of it grew unnaturally vivid, the natural reaction of a body readying itself for danger.
“Drummond?” she repeated, though she had heard perfectly.
“Aye.”
“Nae.”
It escaped her before she could dress it in civility. She rose so quickly the chair legs grated across the floor. “Nae. Ye cannae mean it, Faither.”
“I wish there was another way, lass,” he sighed heavily, raking his fingers through his hair. “But there isnae.”
She was shaking her head in disbelief. “Beathan Drummond is old enough tae have dandled me on his knee.”
Her father frowned. “He is a man of consequence.”
“He is a man of violence.”
Her father’s mouth hardened. “Ye speak from rumor, just like everyone else.”
“I speak,” Grizel spoke, and now the blood had rushed to her face, warming it with indignation, “from memory.”
She could see it clear as day: the ballroom at Inveraray in the spring, awash in candlelight and beeswax and perfume, the crush of silk sleeves and murmuring voices. Drummond’s hand at her back had been too firm, and his smile too fixed. He had claimed one dance, then another, and then a third, though she had withdrawn as often as decency allowed. There had been wine on his breath, and something else beneath it, some rank odor of possession, as if he had already decided that whatever he touched had to remain in his grasp. He had not spoken to her as a gentleman spoke to a lady, but as a buyer examined cloth.
Even now the memory left a stain of revulsion upon her.
“He would nae let me leave his side,” she reminded him, speaking softer now, because fury, if too keenly felt, always approached tears.
“Some would say that he was admiring ye,” her father corrected.
“He cornered me, hunted me.”
Her father turned away, moving back behind the writing table as if the width of it had the power to restore his authority. “Admiration in a man is nae crime.”
“Nae,” she agreed. “But murder ought tae be.”
His gaze flashed up. “Ye have tae be careful of yer words, Grizel. Making an enemy of such a man is nae good for anyone.”
“Does he deny it?”
He inhaled deeply before speaking. “There was never any proof.”
“There was a dead wife.”
He sighed. “Grizel… ye have always been outspoken, but ye can nae speak tae me of what powerful men may or may nae have done when our own house stands on the brink of ruin. Drummond offers security, settlement of debt, protection of title. Without it…”
Without it, Calder would continue its slow collapse of restless tenants, fallen revenues, emboldened creditors and neighbors akin to crows watching over a wounded beast. She knew all this. She had known it long before her father guessed she did. But knowledge did not soften the horror.
She stared at him. “Is there truly nae other path?”
He stared at her not as a man offended, but as one who had been struck in a place already bruised. His hand tightened on the edge of the parchment, then fell away from it helplessly.
“There is nae, I swear tae ye. I have been thinking on it, but… nae.”
The words lay between them, flat and final. Grizel turned her face slightly toward the window lest he should see the breadth of her unease.
On the far hills, a line of mist had settled like a grey veil. Somewhere below, in the yard, a stable door banged once, then again. The castle seemed suddenly full of sounds she had never before counted, the clink of a harness, the draft under the door, and the faint settling groan of old timber. All at once she loved it with the crushing, painful tenderness one feels only when something is being taken away.
Then, because despair was a luxury she could not afford, she forced herself to think. When she turned back, her voice was composed.
“If I must marry,” she mused, “then allow me one week.”
He frowned. “For what?”
“For a better offer.”
A bleak laugh escaped him. “Ye speak as if suitors may be plucked like apples.”
“I speak,” she returned, “as a Calder ought tae speak when cornered. One week, Faither. If I fail, ye may dae as ye please. At the end of the week, if I have nae secured an alliance better suited tae our name and safety, I shall nae oppose ye again.”
His fingers moved restlessly over the edge of the papers on his desk. “And where dae ye imagine ye will find this miraculous, better husband?”
“I imagine,” Grizel retorted, “that it is me business tae try.”
He was silent long enough that she heard a cinder collapse in the grate with a soft red sigh.
“Drummond will nae like delay.” He sounded apologetic. She knew that he was.
“He is nae asked tae like it,” she told him rebelliously.
He sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. “Ye dinnae understand the sort of man he is.”
Her laugh was thin and without mirth. “On the contrary, Faither, I believe I understand him better than ye wish.”
That seemed to strike him, though he would not admit it. He rubbed a hand across his brow and looked suddenly older, the lines about his mouth deepening in uneasy grooves.
“There is worse news,” he told her.
A thread of dread tightened inside her. “What could be worse?”
He did not meet her eyes at first. “He has already sent his men.”
The silence that followed was so complete she could hear the faint beat of her own pulse.
“Sent them where?”
“Here, tae escort ye.”
The room tilted, only slightly, but enough that Grizel had to place a hand on the chair-back.
Escort.
Such a pretty word, polished and harmless, set over an outrage like lace laid atop a wound.
“But, nae agreement has been made yet,” she reminded him.
“Aye, it has nae. There has been nae signed agreement, nor word before witnesses. But men like him usually consider such matters settled based solely on their own desires.”
Rage overtook her, burning away the last of her fear. “Then he presumes above his station.”
“He presumes because men have allowed him tae prosper by presuming,” her father spoke with a weary bitterness she had not expected. “Listen tae me now. If ye mean tae attempt this wild scheme, ye cannae dae so openly. If his men arrive and find ye gone, there will be consequence enough. If they find ye in the act of leaving…”
He stopped. The fire crackled. Rain tapped harder at the pane.
Grizel drew a slow breath. The taste of smoke sat at the back of her throat. “Then I must nae be found.”
At that, he finally looked at her, not as a laird looking upon an asset, nor quite as a father looking upon a daughter, but as a man measuring the resolve of another and finding it unexpectedly firm.
“One week, Grizel,” he agreed at last. “And nae a day more. I cannae delay him longer.”
It was not a blessing, nor forgiveness, nor love that she got from her father, it was merely time. And time was what she needed.
She inclined her head respectfully, because triumph would have been foolish. “Thank ye, Faither.”
“Dae nae thank me.” His voice roughened, making her grasp the full severity of the situation. “I have put him off with talk of terms, witnesses and proper forms. But ye can nae underestimate Drummond. Men like him are never so dangerous as when refused.”
Grizel thought of the ballroom again, of his hand pressing too hard at her waist, of the gleam in his eye when she had withdrawn hers from his grasp. She did not underestimate him. That was precisely why she meant to run.
She left the study with her heart still beating hard, but no longer wildly. The corridors of Calder Castle stretched before her in the dimming light, familiar stone and worn rushes and the faint mingled scents of rosemary, smoke, and damp wool. A servant passed carrying linens, and somewhere in the lower hall a hound barked once. Everything looked so ordinary that she might almost have doubted the exchange had taken place, had not her entire future altered with it.
In her chamber, she packed swiftly and with care, taking a dark riding cloak, some spare linen, a comb, the little dagger she kept hidden though no one knew it, and what coin she could gather without notice. She took only what would fit into one small satchel.
There was no room for sentiment. Yet when her hand brushed the carved box that had once belonged to her mother, she paused.
Not sentiment, perhaps. Memory.
She shut the lid and left it where it was.
Night had deepened by the time she slipped down the back stairs. The air in the stable yard struck cold and wet against her face, smelling of rain, churned earth, and horses. The lantern by the stable door swayed in the wind, sending light across puddles black as ink. Storm stamped softly in his stall when he saw her, then tossed his head with a low, impatient sound, as if he too understood haste.
“Hush, lad,” she whispered, though her own breath had shortened.
His coat was warm beneath her palm, sleek and dark as night. The leather of the saddle creaked as she tightened it with numbed fingers. She could hear her blood pumping frantically in her ears, the scrape of straw and the faint clatter of tack from somewhere farther down the row. Every sound seemed perilously loud.
When at last she led him into the yard, the wind caught her cloak and flung it hard about her ankles. Above, the clouds had swallowed the moon. Calder Castle loomed behind her in massed shadow, its towers black against a sky the color of iron.
One week, she thought.
One week to save herself from Beathan Drummond.
One week to bargain with fate before fate closed its hand around her neck.
Grizel set her boot to the stirrup and mounted. Then, gathering the reins in gloved fingers that no longer trembled, she turned Storm toward the dark road and rode out of Calder lands as quietly as a prayer and twice as desperate.
Chapter Two
The harbor smelled of salt, tar, fish-guts, and rain.
Grizel crouched behind a stack of weather-darkened crates and drew her cloak tighter about her shoulders, though it was not the cold that made her fingers stiff. Oban Harbor swarmed before her in a confusion of shouting men, creaking ropes, gulls wheeling and crying overhead, and carts grinding through the mud with a wet, miserable sound. The sea beyond was the color of beaten pewter, restless beneath a low sky, and every gust of wind flung brine into the air until it lay sharp on her lips.
She had found him.
That, at least, was something.
MacAulay’s ship rose at the dock not fifty yards from where she was hiding. It was long, lean, and dark in the water, with red sails furled high above like folded wings. Men moved briskly on the deck and gangplank with the easy confidence of those who belonged there. Barrels were rolled aboard. Coils of rope were hauled into place. Orders were called in rough, carrying voices. There was purpose in every motion, and a kind of severe economy she found at once intimidating and promising.
Somewhere on that vessel was Laird Malcolm MacAulay… her last chance.
Grizel shifted her weight slightly, pressing one gloved hand to the crate beside her. The wood was rough, damp with sea mist and smelling faintly of apples long since removed. She peered around the edge again, careful not to let even a fold of her cloak betray her position.
She could not yet distinguish which of the men on the deck was MacAulay, if he was visible at all. Rumor had given him many shapes these past days: a pirate, a former privateer, a laird more loyal to survival than sentiment, a man who bent when needed and cut when forced.
In addition to all that, she had heard that the king’s decree had not spared him. The pirate lairds were to marry Highland ladies within the year or face the slow strangling hand of the Crown. A wife, then, was no longer merely a domestic ornament or private desire. She was leverage, legitimacy and, protection.
And Grizel, could offer herself as means to meet that need.
The first problem stood across the harbor mouth in the shape of two broad-shouldered men who had not ceased haunting her steps since the outskirts of the town. Drummond’s men did not wear his colors openly, but they had his look upon them. One was leaning against a post near a fishmonger’s stall, speaking to no one and watching everything. The other loitered nearer the quay, with his cap pulled low, his hands tucked in his belt, and his attention wandering with too much purpose to be mistaken for idleness.
The second problem was worse yet.
MacAulay did not seem to come ashore.
Since dawn she had watched, hidden where she could, shifting from alley to stacked cargo to the lee of a cooper’s shed, only to discover that the man she sought seemed to have no intention of setting foot on the dock at all. Whatever business he had in Oban, he conducted it from the ship. Men went to him, none summoned him down. If she meant to speak with Laird Malcolm MacAulay, she had no choice but to board his vessel.
A gull landed atop the crates above her, gave a harsh, laughing cry, and flapped away again. Grizel closed her eyes for a moment.
This was madness. It had been madness in Calder. It had been madness on the road. It was madness here, in this reeking, noisy harbor at the edge of the sea. Yet there are moments when a lady’s alternatives are so poor that the only reasonable path is boldness in the face of chaos.
She looked again toward the ship. The tide had shifted. A longboat had just come in. Two sailors were arguing over a cask. The nearer of Drummond’s men had turned his head toward a cartload of herring being unloaded with much profanity and confusion.
And the ship was to depart within hours.
Now, then. If ever, now.
Grizel drew one careful breath, tasting salt and rain and the iron tang of fear at the back of her throat. Then she gathered her skirts in one hand, adjusted the satchel at her side, and slipped out from behind the crates.
At first, she moved with measured speed, keeping her head bowed, as though she were nothing more than another woman of the port with business of her own. Her boots struck the slick boards of the quay with soft, quick sounds. A rope brushed her ankle. A porter shouted behind her. She did not look left or right.
Ten yards… fifteen. The gangplank lay just ahead, crowded by two sailors lifting a chest between them.
Then someone barked. “There!”
Her blood turned to fire. Grizel ran.
Behind her came the unmistakable pound of heavy boots and a curse flung in the wind. She darted past a stack of barrels, nearly collided with a boy carrying nets, and heard him yelp as he stumbled aside. The harbor exploded into motion around her. She could both hear and see men turning, voices rising, gulls shrieking upward in alarm. Her cloak streamed behind her. Her breath tore in her chest. The wet boards slipped beneath her boots, and only desperation kept her from falling.
“Stop her!”
She reached the gangplank just as one of MacAulay’s sailors straightened in astonishment.
“What the devil—”
That was all he managed to say before she brushed past him with all the dignity of a hunted fawn and flew onto the deck.
The ship seemed to lurch beneath her, though perhaps it was only her own panic. The boards were dark and damp, smelling of pitch, salt, and old storms. Voices raised around her in sudden confusion.
Two of Drummond’s men came up after her at once. One caught her cloak from behind. The cloth jerked hard against her throat and nearly dragged her backwards. Grizel twisted with a sound that was more fury than fear and tore herself half-free, leaving the clasp in his fist. He lunged again. There was no room now for hesitation, and no safety in pleading. She snatched the dagger from beneath her cloak and slashed blindly.
The blade caught his sleeve and opened skin beneath. He swore viciously and came at her harder.
Everything after that happened with a speed so bewildering that memory later rendered it in flashes: a hand grabbed for her wrist, then the sting of salt wind in her eyes, followed by a sailor shouting for arms, the ring of steel and finally, a body colliding with another body hard enough to rattle the deck.
MacAulay’s men were on them in an instant.
The ship, so orderly a breath before, erupted into a brutal storm of movement. Sailors seized belaying pins and knives. Someone drove a shoulder into one of Drummond’s men and sent him crashing into the rail. Another caught the second by the collar and struck him across the jaw with enough force to spray blood across the boards.
Grizel tried to pull away from the fray, but one of Drummond’s men, maddened and red-faced, lunged toward her again. She slashed with the dagger once more, but in the scramble her foot skidded on wet timber. Pain shot hot and sharp through her leg as she struck the deck awkwardly on one knee. The world flashed white for a moment. She bit back a cry.
When she looked up, half breathless and half blinded by the sting of it, she saw him.
He was fighting not ten feet away.
Impressive was too small a word for such a man. He seemed cut from the same dark violence as the sea itself. He was tall and broad through the shoulders, moving with a terrifying steadiness amid the chaos. His coat was open to reveal a plain dark waistcoat beneath, and his dark hair, wind-tossed and too long at the collar to be fashionable, only sharpened the severity of his face.
There was nothing ornamental about him, as he fought with the clean, efficient force of a man who had done so often and disliked wasting time upon it.
One of Drummond’s men risked a swing at him. He caught the blow, turned, and drove the man back with such brutal precision that Grizel heard the impact of body against rail even over the uproar of the deck. The fellow doubled over. The man seized him by the coat and flung him bodily toward the gangplank, where two sailors finished the matter by throwing him off the ship amid a shower of curses.
Grizel had no leisure to marvel at it. Another of Drummond’s men had broken free of the sailors and lurched toward her. His face was dark with fury, and his hand was closing hard about the hilt at his belt. She tried to scramble back, but her injured leg failed beneath her, and the deck tilted horribly under her palm.
He was almost on her. She drew her breath to scream, but he reached her first. His hand clamped around her upper arm, cruel fingers biting through the sleeves of her gown, and he hauled her upright with enough force to wrench a cry from her throat. Her bad leg buckled at once. For one sickening instant, she was hanging in his grip, helpless.
“Got ye,” he snarled.
That’s when the man, the one who had captured her attention, moved like a lightning bolt. He crossed the space between them with startling speed, catching the attacker’s wrist before the blade could clear its sheath. Then, he twisted. The man gave a strangled cry and released Grizel at once. In the same motion, the stranger drove his shoulder into him and sent him staggering backward into two MacAulay sailors, who seized him at once. The blade clattered across the planks and came to rest near Grizel’s skirt.
For one absurd instant, even through pain and terror, Grizel could only stare up at the man who had saved her. He didn’t ask whether she was harmed. He didn’t even try to soothe her, nor waste a breath in gallantry. He merely glanced down at her, as if taking measure of whether she would live long enough to become another difficulty.
Then rough hands closed about her arms.
“We’ve another!” cried one of the sailors. “Off with her too!”
“Nae!” She twisted, but her injured leg buckled as soon as she tried to stand. Pain went through her sharply enough to turn her voice thin. “Let me go!”
The sailor tightened his grip. “Ye came aboard with them.”
“I did nae!”
“A likely tale.”
“Please… I must speak tae yer laird.”
That earned her a bark of laughter from someone nearby. “Must ye indeed?”
She lifted her chin despite the breathlessness clawing at her lungs. Her hair had come half-loose, and she could feel it whipping across her cheek in the wind. Her palms stung, her knee throbbed, and the deck seemed to shake with the aftermath of violence. But there are moments when a lady could save herself only by becoming more outrageous than anyone expected.
Her gaze moved, against her will, back to the man who had saved her. He was watching her now with such unnerving attention that heat climbed into her face despite the fear still rattling through her bones. He stood among the wreckage of the fight as though a storm had shaped him: hard, dark and impossible to look away from.
And though Grizel knew she ought to fear such a man, her foolish heart could only consider the fierce manner in which he had dispatched her attacker. She banished the thought and brought herself back to the present moment.
“Aye,” she urged. “At once.”
“And why,” asked the man holding her, “should our laird receive a creature who boards his ship with armed men at her heels?”
Grizel drew a breath. Dark, fathomless eyes narrowed, waiting for her answer, as if they already knew she was about to cause even more trouble.
“Because,” she told him clearly, “I am going tae marry him.”
The words fell into the sudden hush like a cannon shot. For a heartbeat, the ship seemed to pause with them. Several sailors stared outright. One made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh if he had dared let it free. Another crossed his arms and looked delighted by the prospect of scandal. Even the man holding her loosened his grip slightly in surprise.
And that’s when he stepped toward her.
Up close, he was more formidable still. His face was all hard lines and controlled strength. His mouth was severe, his jaw shadowed by the day, and his eyes dark enough to seem nearly black beneath lowered brows. There was sea-salt on his coat and a faint smear of blood across one knuckle that did not appear to be his own. He had the look of a man long accustomed to command and less accustomed to being amused.
Yet, amused he was… only a little, but still dangerously.
“Marry him, ye say?” he asked.
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