He glanced back down at his hands. Could she somehow see the blood that stained them? Could she sense the cruelty bred into his black soul? Did she know the vile and unholy urges that, even now, coursed through the very fibers of his muscle?
She was right to fear him.
“All right, lads.” Liam inhaled a weary breath and took post by the axle to lift the heaviest part whilst someone affixed the wheel back in place. “Let’s get this over with.”
He felt her gaze on him as they lifted the carriage and patched it. He couldn’t figure out why he was so full of this awareness, but something about her watching him grunt and strain and sweat was damnably erotic.
He didn’t allow himself to look at her, though, even when the deed was done. Instead, he swung onto Magnus’s back and kicked him into a gallop, leaving one of the others to drive the coach back to Ravencroft.
He needed a bath and a change. If she wanted a proper marquess, she was about to meet one.
CHAPTER THREE
The rain painted the red sandstone of Ravencroft Keep a deep, melancholy shade. Mena loved it immediately, as the roof was, as her father would have said, rather crowded. She counted fourteen turrets and four towers as the carriage trundled over an ancient stone bridge arching above an emerald loch.
Renaissance architecture from the early seventeenth century overlaid defensive ramparts and the original tower that must have dated all the way back to Robert the Bruce. The windows were large and airy for such an imposing stone structure, she supposed, to optimize the view and the occasional sunlight over the sparkling sea beneath the cliffs below. She’d only begun to count the chimneys when they pulled past the fountain around the circular drive and thereby lost sight of the roof.
She’d known the keep would be large, as it was a castle, after all. But this estate had to boast at least a hundred rooms, perhaps more.
Mena took another moment to close her eyes and silently send a whisper of gratitude to the Blackwells for arranging this new life for her. Here might be that isolated place at the end of a lane where she could exist in quietude and seclusion. Just as she’d imagined at Belle Glen.
She hoped the carriage debacle would be her only unpleasant surprise for the rest of the day. If she avoided anyone like the frightening Highlander she’d met on the road, she’d likely succeed.
His men had been nice enough, one of them even going so far as to drive the carriage to Ravencroft. But his savage visage had unsettled her, so much so, her heart had yet to slow from its frantic pace.
What was it about a ferocious man that terrified her so? To date, it had been so-called civilized men that had caused her harm.
But the power in the Highlander’s body as he’d strained and lifted the carriage with his men had impressed her to a bewildering degree. It had to be his sheer, inconceivable size. And the magnitude wasn’t only pertaining to his towering height, but the breadth of his shoulders and the depth of his chest. Some of that had to be the cloak he wore, didn’t it?
Mena knew Dorian Blackwell as a well-built man, strong and broad. And likewise Christopher Argent filled a doorway with impossibly wide shoulders, his like not often seen in the boroughs of London. But … Mena didn’t think she’d ever witnessed a feat of strength to match what she’d seen today. Never cast her eyes upon a man so large and well hewn. His kilt had revealed more than it covered as he’d used his tree-trunk thighs to lift the carriage. His neck had corded and jaw clenched in a most … captivating manner. The disturbing notion that something even more intriguing was happening beneath the thick cloak still hadn’t abandoned her thoughts.
Lord help her, she hadn’t been able to look away.
Once he’d galloped off into the mist, she’d had a strange feeling, much like she’d done after stumbling upon an uncommon creature in the wild, and watching it leap into the shadows. The sense of disenchantment in the knowledge that such a glimpse was rare and extraordinary, and one was likely not to experience it again.
Which was for the best, she decided. Who knew what a man like that was capable of?
Mena sobered a bit when the carriage passed the entrance with the grand stairway and circumvented the keep toward a wide but decidedly less grand portal in the back.
The servants’ entrance.
Right. Now was the time to remember not who she had been, but who she was meant to become.
She filled her lungs with a bracing breath, though nothing could have prepared her for the streak of color in the form of what she supposed was a footman, who danced down the few stone steps. He opened the door with a flourish, covering the space with an overlarge umbrella.
“Miss Philomena Lockhart?” He swept her one carpetbag right off her lap before she had the chance to reply, and gave her the most graceful bow she’d ever seen. It was much like being accosted by a sunrise. “I am Rajanikan Dayanand, valet to Laird Liam Mackenzie, Marquess Ravencroft, and I have arrived for the purposes of collecting you and conducting you to the keep.”
The word vibrant aptly described both the lean young man’s manners and his wardrobe. A bright orange and gold silk kurta shimmered from beneath his crimson sherwani, what Mena understood to be the name of the long, lushly embroidered coat favored by the Hindu people. His legs were wrapped in bolts of umber silk, the same color as the long scarf draped around his neck.
Mena took his outstretched hand and ducked under the umbrella with him as they trotted up the stairs and into an alcove off the kitchens that served as a cloakroom.
“Thank you, Mr. Dayanand.” She shook a few stray drops of moisture off her wool pelisse as he wrestled the umbrella closed and stowed it in the stand.
“Everyone calls me Jani.” His smile was luminous and his black eyes sparkled. Beneath all the opulent drapery he wore, his true age was indecipherable. He could have been fifteen or twenty-five, though his skin was the color of teak, and just as smooth.
“Jani, then.” She offered her hand. “I am—”
“Miss Philomena Lockhart, yes, I know. We’ve all been very curious to meet you.” He swept his hand to the cluster of staff gathered in the kitchens on various perches all staring at her in peculiar silence.