A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2)

by Sarah MacLean

He was dark-haired and big as a house—Bernard had never seen a man so big—well past six and a half feet, he imagined, with what might have been twenty stone on his broad, muscled frame, and none of it fat. Bernard could tell that bit, because the man wasn’t wearing a shirt. Indeed, he wasn’t wearing trousers, either. He was wearing a kilt. And carrying a broadsword. For a moment, Bernard wondered if he’d traveled through time as well as space on the journey to Scotland. It was, after all, 1829, despite the Scotsman appearing as though he’d arrived via three centuries earlier.

“You said you loved me.” He tilted his head. “Did I?” She was out of space. Of time. Her body no longer hers. The moment no longer hers. She shook her head. “You did. You said it. We said it. We were to be married.” He laughed. Laughed. The sound echoed in the gasps and whispers of the crowd beyond, but Lily didn’t care. His laugh was enough to slay on its own. “Dear girl,” he mocked. “A man of my caliber does not marry a woman of yours.”

That’s sharp enough to cut.

Younger sisters were clearly a punishment for ill deeds in former lives.

“No one. She does not have friends.”

That sounds familiar.

this particular dress would not be unnoticed. It was a gold and bronze monstrosity, with skirts that filled the staircase and sleeves that dwarfed her. That would have dwarfed him, he’d wager. As though that weren’t enough, gold and bronze seed pearls were sewn into the skirts, arranged in little echoes of the canine form, and the bodice—impressively fitted despite Lily having had mere hours to adjust it to her form—was covered in ornate gold fastenings, each a different dog—spaniels and terriers and bulldogs and dachshunds. His gaze fell to her waist, where a large gold belt accentuated her shape in a garish display—a greyhound in full, extended motion, spanning the width of her. Jewel, no doubt. And all this before he considered her headwear, an elaborate pile of auburn curls, fastened with an array of hound-shaped pins, and shot through with a golden rod topped with a hound on the hunt, in mid-leap,

“To see her was to love her, love but her, and love for ever . . .” She stilled on the top step, the words shocking her. She turned to look at him. “What did you say?” He continued. “Had we never lov’d sae kindly, had we never lov’d sae blindly . . .” he recited, and the low burr, its wicked rumble, loud enough for her ears alone, made her forget where they were, and what she was wearing, and what awaited them inside. “Never met—or never parted . . .” She shook her head as if to clear it. They did not even know each other. She was simply drawn to the poetry. This Robbie Burns was exceedingly talented. “We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”

There were five names scrawled on it. An earl, two viscounts, a baron, and a duke. She looked to him. “What is this?” Alec did not reply, but his cheeks went slightly ruddy, as though he had been caught in a particularly damning act. And perhaps he had. She scanned the list again, looking for the unifying theme of the names. They were all titled. All with extensive lands. All decent men, if gossip was to be believed. And all poor as church mice.

“Cross the damn duke off the list. Replace it with a butcher, a baker, or a goddamn candlestick maker. But you’re going to marry if it kills me.” “Warnick,” Eversley warned. “Language.” Lily didn’t hesitate. “Killing you might be the only benefit to marrying.”

the only companionship you’ll be able to find is your brutal duke and a handful of men who want you for just that—companionship.” The shame came again. Hot and angry and desperate.

Their situations are very similar.

“Palm to palm,” she whispered, and he heard the barely-there teasing in the words. The reference to their earlier discussion of Romeo and Juliet. He should let her go. He meant to. He didn’t mean to say, “The only part of the play that’s worth anything.” He didn’t mean to look at her, to find her too close and still infernally far away. He willed himself to move. To sit back. To release her. And then she whispered, “Let lips do as hands do.” “Fucking Shakespeare,” he cursed, tightening his grip and pulling her to him, his other hand, still gloved, capturing her, sliding over her jaw, his long fingers curving around her neck and into her hair, scattering pins as he set his lips to hers and kissed her like he was starving and she was a banquet.

“Do you know about Selene?” She smiled, small and sweet. “She was goddess of the moon.” He nodded. “She was also sister to the sun and the dawn, the daughter of Titans and a beauty beyond words. She was the scandalous child—the one who was changeable and unsettling. She could move the tides and light the heavens and provide cover for the nefarious deeds of the world if she wished. The sun came every day, as did the dusk, but the moon, it was like joy. Purposeful and inconstant. She was queen of the night.” Lily watched him with rapt attention, and his fingers itched to touch her, but still he kept himself from her. “One night, as she moved across the sky, her light touched on a sleeping shepherd.” “Endymion,” Lily said, the name a rapt whisper. He nodded. “He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen—peaceful and good, and everything she’d ever wanted. Selene fell immediately in love, despite keen awareness of the impossibility of their match. She could not be with him, not every day. Not all day. Her time with him was limited. Ephemeral.”

“I asked him to want me—and he refused.” “Because all men are addlepated imbeciles who deserve to be strung up by their thumbs in St. James Park and set upon by bees.”