Page 1 of The Scot Who Loved Her

PROLOGUE

Scottish Highlands, 1797

The boar was the final straw for Malcolm’s mother.

She never came out and said as much, but on the afternoon of his ninth birthday, the only son of the Earl of Dunlyon returned from a Highlands hunt with hisveryScottish father to find hisveryEnglish mother staring at him with a mixture of horror and shame. Mouth agape, her pretty green eyes as wide as the boar’s he’d just maimed, following the path of the bloody cross smeared on his forehead. His battle mark.

His mother, Gemma, recoiled. Her accusing gaze shot to the earl, who’d joined them in the grand entrance of the opulent house he’d built for her. “What have you done to him?” Her face scrunched up as though she’d sucked a lemon. “He’s covered in gore!”

A frigid moment of silence passed. His father’s massive hand tightened on Malcolm’s shoulder possessively, or was it protectively? Contempt rolled between the earl and countess like a ball being passed. Only this wasn’t a friendly game.

Finally, the earl’s brogue rumbled with pride. “Our son has become a man today. A hunter. Ye should be proud.”

Malcolm wanted his mother to be proud of him too. But she was staring at his hands, drawing his gaze to the blood on his palms and caked beneath his fingernails. He tried to wipe the crimson onto his torn hunting shirt, but little good it did. “There’s nothing to fear, Mama,” he’d said. “I fought the boar, and I won. Papa said all lads eat the heart of their first kill. He says I’m a natural hunter.”

“Eat theheart?” Lady Dunlyon’s hand came to her throat as she blanched.

Hoping to ease her temper, wee Malcolm held out a bloody tusk and grinned, offering her the prize in the hope she would understand. “Look, I saved this for ye.”

His lady mother did not accept his gift. Instead, she struck out, knocking the trophy to the ground. She gave a shudder. “Vile!”

Malcolm’s smile faltered. “Mama?” He reached for her, longing for a simple touch, a word of affection or acceptance.

Leaping back, the lady shouted, “Do not touch me with those bloody hands.”

Tears welled in Malcolm’s eyes. His hands fell to his side, and all the honor he’d felt on the hunt plummeted with them. ’His mother’s face softened for a split second, so fleeting it could have been his imagination.

But then she flicked her hate-filled gaze back to the Earl and hissed, “You’ve ruined him. He’ll never make a worthy lord and gentleman, only thesavageyou’ve created.”

Malcolm’s lip quivered. Was he a savage? He couldn’t tell whether his mother meant her anger for him or for his father. Perhaps his father didn’t know either.

“Wife,” his father warned.

The countess shook her head. “No civilized Englishwoman should be subjected to this, much less the gently born and bred daughter of an earl.”

“Need I remind ye that Iaman earl?” Tension laced his father’s words.

“Not an English one.” She jabbed her finger at his father’s chest. “You, sir, are nothing more than an incorrigible Scotsman and an ill-suited embarrassment. In the ten years that I’ve been forced to live in this dreary, godforsaken country, I’ve wanted nothing more than to escape back to London and polite society where I belong. To the land of manners and propriety. Where men wear trousers and not pleated skirts that only come to their knees. Skin! Frightful skin, showing at all hours! I need a world where men are dignified, and ladies are not expected to rear their children without a proper governess. Where children do not come home covered in blood, grinning like heathens.”

Malcolm could make no sense of this diatribe at his age, but he understood that he must have done something wrong. He retrieved the boar tusk, intent on offering it again. His mother must not understand that he meant to make it a gift for her, a treasure. “Mama—”

But before he could explain, Gemma whirled away from them both and charged up the stairs. And by morning, the Countess of Dunlyon, along with wee Caroline, Malcolm’s infant sister, was gone.

Which, in retrospect, was for the better. For this taught young Malcolm a lesson that he would require no reminding of as he came into his own as the Earl of Dunlyon: women were cruel, unreliable she-devils. And he would never let one close enough again to get the better of him.

1

Aston House

London

Autumn, 1817

“Ladies do not pour punch on gentleman.” The Viscountess Helvellyn swept into the room, a whirlwind of disapproval—as usual. Her voice was noticeably higher when she was in this mood.

With a dramatic flop, her daughter, the Miss Olivia Grace Aston, kicked off her blue silk dancing slippers, which matched her ball gown, and tossed herself onto the gold brocade chaise longue in her bedchamber with a decidedly indelicate huff. If only her mother knew the reason why she’d given his lordship a punch bath, she’d not think her such a spoiled child.

This season was proving to be the most wretched of them all. To think that Olivia had considered things might improve from the previous disastrous months she’d spent in London during her coming out. She longed for the quiet of Scotland. What a terrible dilemma that her parents preferred England.

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