Daring the Highlander: A Scottish Historical Romance Novel Read online

  “Nothing, Papa. Let’s get in. We do not want to be late!”

  * * *

  Donnan Young was not particularly looking forward to Lord Hammilton’s ball. For one thing, being anywhere South of the Scottish-English border made him feel as though every person he passed were glaring at him with ire in their eyes and fire in their hearts.

  This feeling was in part due to the recent difficulties between the Scots and Sassenachs thanks to the malt tax that had caused so much strife in his country. Even though he had not been among the rioters, in Glasgow or in any other Scottish city, it did not change the fact that for the time being, the English looked at him and anyone dressed like him, in a kilt, sporran, and vest, with suspicion.

  This was, in fact, why he had accepted Lord Hammilton’s invitation in the first place. There was always business to attend to as clan chief of the Youngs and Laird of Venruit Castle, but he knew how important it was to mend relations with the Sassenachs after what had happened. His father had taught him the importance of keeping peace with their southern neighbors, and Donnan was doing his best to heed the old man’s wishes even after his death.

  “Do not worry, my friend. You will not be the only one of your kind at the gathering. I have invited a veritable mass of Scotsmen, and I am sure there will be many familiar faces for you to take comfort in, though I would urge you to speak to some of my own countrymen as well. The only way we will ever solve the strife between us is with conversation and perhaps, that social lubricant, good Scotch whiskey,” Lord Hammilton had written in his letter inviting him to the ball.

  Donnan knew a few of the lairds in neighboring areas near Venruit Castle were attending, and it did indeed comfort him to know he would not be the only man to turn up to the event in his plaid.

  But that did not change the fluttering in his belly as he climbed out of the carriage he had hired to take him to the Lord’s townhouse.

  “Thank ye,” he muttered to the driver who opened the door for him. He slipped the man a coin for his troubles, and then looked around him.

  The street was lined with carriages just like the one from which he had just alighted and stepping out of them were all manner of fancy lords and ladies.

  The women were dressed in frocks finer than any he had ever seen, their hair piled high on their heads in the latest fashion. The men were turned out in soot-black coats and trousers, their boots shined to a high gloss.

  Donnan reminded himself as he ascended the steps that though they might look different on the outside, they were all the same inside; human beings trying to right the wrongs of the past. And there could be nothing wrong with that.

  His feet were inches away from the marble floor of the entryway, the chatter of the ton all around him, when he happened to raise his eyes to take in the sights in front of him. Lord Hammilton’s house was rumored to be among the finest in all of London; the man himself had told Donnan that an Italian sculptor had assisted with the flooring, and that the candelabra had taken three months and over fifty artisans to mold from glass.

  But as Donnan looked ahead, he saw not the clean gold and black marble floor under his feet, not the glass candelabra above his head. All he saw was the woman in front of him, a golden-haired vixen with her eyes locked on his.

  Och, she’s perfect. I must speak with her.

  Donnan had been to few balls in his life, but he knew enough about English society to know that introductions at a ball were usually done by an acquaintance of one or both parties. Therefore, it would be improper for him to just go up to the lass and ask her name. But at that moment, Donnan found he cared little for propriety.

  Walking toward the lass, who seemed, at least for the moment, to be unaccompanied, he smiled. “Good evenin’, me lady. I am Donnan Young, of the Young clan of Scotland. Ye seem lost. Migh’ I ask what ye call yerself?”

  The woman looked speechless for a moment, though Donnan was pleased to see that she recovered quickly and a warm smile spread across her lips as she tipped her head toward him to welcome him and she said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Young. I am Miss Bernadine Nibley. I am afraid I belong to no clan, and I hail from old Cornwall.”

  Donnan smiled, glad to see the lass had a bit of wit in her. He was about to make a pithy remark back when a hand reached out and tugged Bernadine away. Donnan could not see who the hand belonged to, and the crowd around them suddenly thickened, preventing him from following her. The last thing he saw were her blue eyes staring at him at she was dragged away.

  Chapter 2

  “Lord, it’s crowded in here. And it smells like stale whiskey and sweat…” Bernadine’s father muttered as they made their way down the corridor and into the crowded ballroom.

  She tried to ignore her father’s comments. She knew she ought to reprimand him – after all, her mother certainly wasn’t there to reign him – but the one time she had tried, he had not taken kindly to it.

  “Papa, I think you ought to be more charitable, more open to people. All this anger cannot be good for your constitution,” she had said some months before, after a particularly – spirited tirade against the influx of Indian immigrants entering London. She thought that perhaps wrapping her reprimand in the guise of concern over his health might ease the blow. It had done nothing of the sort.

  “On the contrary, it is good for one’s heart to race now and again, and nothing gets mine pumping like insulting those barbarians,” he had told her, before going back to his dinner of roast chicken and leeks.

  Guinevere had told Bernadine when she was a young girl that her father had become obsessed with his health after Lady Nibley, Bernadine’s mother, died in childbirth.

  “He worried about dying suddenly and leaving you all alone. The moment the funeral was over, he fired the French cook, ordered livestock and suddenly we were eating roasts and rhubarb pudding instead of duck à l’orange and blancmange. “I confess, I did not mind the change,” Guinevere had said to a ten-year old Bernadine. “But his exercise regimen does worry me so. Surely a man should not be so tied to exercise that he walks in the snow!”

  Looking at her father now, Bernadine could see that while his concern for his and her health might occasionally border on obsession, it had served him well. Though he was a man of nearly fifty, his face was youthful, his hair thick, his posture straight. She had occasionally seen him helping the tenants with their roofs, hauling massive bales of hay by himself.

  But though his outer strength was clear, it was his inner strength that worried Bernadine. Once he harbored an opinion of something or someone, it did not change. Her father had hated Scotsmen for as long as she could remember, and while it had always distressed her, it had never embarrassed her before.

  However, it embarrassed her now. They were in a room full of Scotsmen, many of whom were within earshot, and here her father was insulting them openly. She had to say something. She had to try. But before she could open her mouth, Bernadine’s eyes fell on that man again, Donnan. She had first seen him when they were entering the house, his height setting him apart from the crowd surrounding them.

  Many of the Scotsmen in attendance were tall, but Donnan was positively gigantic. His long legs were socked up to his plaid kilt and had to reach at least to her belly, and the width of his shoulders was unfathomable. He radiated strength, and his clear, blue eyes were cold and assessing as they had turned toward her.

  But the instant their eyes had met, the blue had softened, taking on a darker, calmer shade, like the ocean on a clear, sunny summer’s day. He was facing away from her now, his front turned toward what would soon become the dance floor, so Bernadine took the opportunity to admire the back of him.

  His legs were so muscular she wondered what exactly he did for a living. She had only seen muscles like that on laborers, but there was no way that a man of such low class would be invited to Lord Hammilton’s ball.

  Though he had not used a title when he introduced himself, Bernadine suspected he must have been part of the
landed gentry in Scotland, then, though his rugged queue of dark brown hair, the scruff she had seen lining his jaw, and the raw power she sensed in his stance told her that no matter how noble a life he led, there was a touch of something wild about him. It rather thrilled her.

  “Bernadine? Did you hear me?” her father asked, and Bernadine turned to realize her father was looking at her expectantly.

  “I just said that I am going to go and find Lord Hammilton. Do you need anything before I go wade through this crowd of barbarians?” he asked her.

  Bernadine shook her head. “No, Papa. I am fine.”

  “Just as well,” he grunted. “These infernal thieves seemed to have completely crowded the path to the drinks. Lord knows how long it will take me to reach the wine. The Crown should have jailed the lot of them,” he grumbled.

  Bernadine was about to answer when the man whose form she had been so fixed on a moment before turned and leveled a murderous gaze at her father.

  “What are you looking at, you brute? Can’t you see this is a private conversation, or do they not teach the art of fine speech in your godforsaken country?” her father told the Scot.

  “What did ye say, Sassenach?” Donnan whispered, his brogue a sharp cut in the suddenly still air surrounding them. They were in a crowded room of people that numbered in the dozens, and yet at that moment, it seemed as though they were the only three people in the room. Bernadine could hear the agitated exhales of her father’s breath next to her, could practically hear the cogs in his brain turning, trying to form an answering insult to the Scot’s question.

  “I called you a brute. Are you deaf as well as dumb? For whatever language you just spoke in, it was most certainly not the King’s English,” he replied, and Bernadine had to hold back a groan. How was her father, a man so kind to her and Guinevere, capable of such rudeness? It never ceased to amaze her. And distress her, as well.

  Donnan took a step closer to Bernadine’s father, the toes of their boots nearly touching. The Scot towered over her father, a full head and a half taller than him. For the first time in her life, Bernadine thought her father looked…well, weak.

  “I’ll take ye to think of the consequences of such a speech in this room, sir,” he said.

  Bernadine’s father scoffed, dismissing the Scotsman’s words with a wave of his hand.

  “I’m sure I’m not the only one in this room wondering just what the likes you are doing polluting an English ballroom. However, for the sake of our host, I shall cease,” Lord Nibley said giving a small bow to the Scotsman.

  “Though,” he said, raising a finger as he stood back up. “I think you ought to know that in this country, we wear trousers rather than skirts. You ought to try it, my friend. Else someone might mistake you for a lady if you’re not careful,” he said, looking pointedly at the Scot’s kilt.

  Bernadine didn’t blame the Scot for what he did next, which was to lunge toward her father and grab him by the collar. It was done no doubt in an effort to halt the insults and scare him back into some sense of propriety, but it sadly had the opposite effect.

  “Unhand me, you savage!” Lord Nibley yelled, ensuring that anyone who had not yet noticed the spectacle near them was now staring straight at the trio. Bernadine wished that she could have disappeared in that moment, with so many pairs of eyes burning through her. She had never felt so embarrassed in all her life.

  However, distasteful as the goings – on might be, they would not cease without her intervention, and so Bernadine mustered all her strength and abilities, put a hand to her forehead, and began to sway back and forth.

  A few women near her gasped, no doubt realizing the signs of a woman near to fainting. The arrival of a new modiste in town who specialized in the tightest of whalebone corsets meant that more than one young female of the ton had fainted that season, and everyone was on high alert for woozy young ladies.

  “Sirs! Stop this! Your daughter!” Lord Barrett, one of her father’s friends in Parliament, cried from next to Bernadine.

  Her father looked around, his mouth open, no doubt in preparation to spew further insults at the man whose hand was still grasping his wilted white collar. Donnan looked toward her as well, his brow creasing with worry when he saw her swaying. He released her father at once, and then turned toward her, as though he wanted to reach out to her, to steady her.

  “Bernadine? Are you well?” her father asked, his voice hoarse from being choked.

  “No,” she said, letting her voice waver slightly. “I’m feeling terribly ill…” she said, purposefully tripping over her own feet. Of course, her train was so long that a fake trip turned into a very real one, and Bernadine nearly went face down on the glossy ballroom floor.

  The sheer shock of nearly ending with her skirts in the air, combined with her strong attraction to the Scotsmen and her fear that her father was making rather a fool of himself, resulted in Bernadine’s actual fainting.

  Thankfully, Lord Barrett was nearby to catch her, though not so deftly that he did not cause her bodice to go slightly askew in the process. Which was how Bernadine Nibley ended up baring quite a lot of skin at Lord Hammilton’s ball, an occurrence that would not doubt follow her for the rest of the season, and perhaps the one beyond, as well.

  * * *

  “I cannot begin to express my apologies, Laird Young. Please forgive both me and my friend Lord Nibley for tonight’s events,” Lord Hammilton told Donnan later that evening.

  He felt for the poor man. He knew that Lord Hammilton was trying to do a good thing with this ball, bringing the Scots and Sassenachs together and trying to mend the rips between them. And it wasn’t Lord Hammilton’s fault that his friend was ill-mannered and resistant to change and deserved a sound thrashing.

  Still, that didn’t mean that his odium for Lord Nibley did not cause him to clench his fists as he made his way past the refreshments and toward the house’s exit.

  Donnan had planned at first to dismiss the encounter and give the poor old man the benefit of the doubt. After all, he had caused his daughter to faint, and surely that was punishment enough for his crimes of slander.

  But when Donnan had offered to help carry the Sassenach lass to a drawing room where she could recover, her father had not only refused, but had managed, though he was carrying his daughter’s lower half as he did, to mutter words far more insulting than any others he had said thus far that evening.

  “Get away from her, you perilous thing. You think I would let someone like you sully her with your hands? Go back to your ale and get your fill of free English malt. No doubt you’ll need the energy it gives you to incite a riot over some other trifling matter when you return home, which I do so hope you do soon. London has enough pollution as it is,” he had rasped.

  Donnan would not be insulted without recompense. A clan chief, a laird, and a warrior, he had generations of strength in his blood that meant he did not back down from a challenge. And once insulted, he would accept nothing but revenge from the offending party.

  He was only too happy when the revenge involved a beautiful woman, as his did on that particular evening. For no sooner had Donnan taken leave of Lord Nibley’s company than a plan had formed in his mind, one that involved kidnapping his daughter. It was only fair, after what the man said to him. Donnan operated on the principle of an eye for an eye, a concept that had served mankind well for the last few thousand years or so. And who was he to argue with tradition?

  As Donnan had made the rounds in the ballroom, introducing himself to one nobleman and another, he had managed to stealthily inquire about the living arrangements of Lord Nibley and his daughter, one Bernadine Nibley, the true object of his inquiries. He needed to be certain that the house he was breaking into that night was the one that housed the blonde beauty.

  “Miss Nibley is unmarried, yes. Still lives with her father, I think, in that old house in Mayfair. Isn’t it correct my dear?” Lord Shipley, Earl of Derby, had asked his wife.

  “Indee
d, yes, right near that lovely little hat shop I always take the girls to. Number 41 or 42 Mount Street, I believe, though it does have an official name as well,” Lady Shipley had replied. Donnan was confident that it would take little more than a bit of coin to bribe the Nibley’s footmen for him to discern exactly which room housed the lass, which window he needed to climb into to abscond with her in the night.

  Once that was done, he could slip inside, and steal what Lord Nibley seemed to hold most precious: his daughter. It was what he deserved, after his insults. No one treated a Scotsman thusly. Donnan would teach that lord a lesson, one he would never forget. And in the process, he would get himself the finest maiden that he had ever seen. He did not yet know just what he would do with her, but he could figure that out later. Once she was in his arms, everything else would fall into place.

  Chapter 3