Flummoxed, Mena stared at him, her mouth agape. He still seemed irate, in fact his voice continued to rise in volume and intensity. But it sounded as though he’d paid her a compliment.
“So that causes a man to wonder,” he continued. “What is a wee bonny English lass like ye doing all the way up here? Why are ye not warming the bed of a wealthy husband and whiling yer hours away on tea and society and the begetting of heirs?”
Had he just called her “wee”? Was she mistaken or didn’t that word mean little?
And bonny? Her?
A spear of pain pricked her with such force, it stole her ire and her courage along with it. Was he being deliberately cruel? Had she left one household that delighted in her humiliation and sought refuge in another?
“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern.” She hated the weakness in her voice, the fear she’d never quite learned how to hide.
“Everything that happens within the stones of this keep, nay, on Mackenzie lands, are of concern to me. That now includes ye. Especially since ye’ll be influencing my children.” He took another step forward, and before Mena could retreat, his hand snaked out and cupped her chin.
The small, frightened sound Mena made startled them both.
Ravencroft’s gaze sharpened, but he didn’t release her.
Her jaw felt as substantive as glass in his hand. Mena knew it would take nothing at all for him to crush her, a simple tightening of his strong, rough fingers. His dark eyes locked on her lips, and they seemed to part of their own volition, exuding the soft rasps of her panicked breath.
He leaned down toward her, crowding her with the proximity of his forceful presence.
She saw him clearly now, as so many must have at the violent ends of their lives. Inhumanely stark features weathered by decades of discipline and brutality frowned down at her now, as though measuring her coffin.
Suddenly the fire and candles cast more shadows in the grand room than light.
Mena knew men like the laird of Ravencroft Keep rarely existed, and when they did, history made gods of them.
Or demons.
The rough pad of his thumb dragged across the split on her lip as light as a whisper. She felt his caress in her bones. And elsewhere. It raised tingling prickles of awareness on her skin and washed all the way to her core, and lower, where something soft and warm bloomed within her.
Was he going to kiss her? Mena’s heart sputtered in her chest, then stalled before taking a galloping leap forward.
His own mouth parted, his lids narrowing with something that looked like heat, but also like … suspicion. His grip on her chin gentled as he turned her face slowly toward the illumination of the candelabra and lifted an unused linen from the table to gently wipe away the powder she’d applied to hide the bruise beneath her eye.
“Tell me, Miss Lockhart.” His voice gentled to a rumble. “Tell me the truth of what happened to ye.”
Mena stood stock-still, but for the little trembles seizing her limbs. She was his captive. Though he only held her jaw, she might as well have been bound at every joint.
“I a-already did.” She forced herself not to whimper as he revealed more and more of her wounds to him.
“A carriage accident,” he repeated evenly.
“Yes.” That had sounded like more of a question than an answer, and Mena closed her eyes, fully expecting him to declare his knowledge of her falsehood, to uncover the entire farce.
And what would a man like him do to someone who’d lied as completely as she had?
“My lord?” Mena winced at the breathless panic creeping into her voice.
“Aye?” he rumbled, distracted by his examination of her wounds, particularly that of her lips.
Brittle as she was, in his presence Mena felt enormously fragile and frighteningly transparent. He could do what he would with her and no one would question him. Something about the way he regarded her told her that he knew it as well as she did. She was at his absolute mercy. And she was deceiving him.
“Permit me to … that is … it isn’t seemly for us to…” Her hand lifted of its own volition, and rested on his forearm as she attempted to lift her chin from his grip.
He stared at her hand resting on his suit coat for a protracted moment as though it were an insect he feared would sting him.
Then, just as abruptly as he’d seized her, the marquess let her go.
Turning away from her, he curled his hands into tight fists at his sides. “Ye’ll find, Miss Lockhart, that I lack many of yer gentle English ways,” he said gruffly.
Mena couldn’t think of a single reply to that, so she silently regarded the way his dinner coat strained over the uncommon width of his back.
“Ye’re here for my children, and I’ll thank ye to leave by the wayside any notions of turning me into something I’m not.” The firelight gleamed off a few hidden strands of silver in his dark hair as he glanced over his shoulder. “I may be a nobleman by birth, but I’m far from noble. I think it’s best we stay out of each other’s path. We’ll not need to interact but for dinner, or if I have a concern over the children’s progress.”
Mena knew he was offering her a gift, a chance to live at her discretion, so long as the objective of her employment here was accomplished.
She wanted nothing so much in all the world.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Laird,” he corrected. “In yer land, I’m the Marquess Ravencroft. In my land, I am the laird. The Mackenzie.”
He’d neglected to mention the Demon Highlander, but that was impossible to forget, especially now that she saw that demon looking out of his eyes.
“Of course.” Mena dipped in a curtsy, mostly so she no longer had to look at him. “Laird Mackenzie.”
He nodded, the firelight playing with the silhouettes and shadows of his bold features. “Ye may go.”
The moment he dismissed her, Mena made her escape, though she didn’t break into a run until she’d reached the hallway. Rich brocaded tapestries blurred into a mélange of blues, greens, and golds as she rushed by them. She’d catch sight of a majestic stag, or a frolicking faerie creature, and she’d want to stop and study it, but didn’t dare.
She felt the cold kiss of something on the back of her neck. Like she’d left the Highlander behind, but his demon might be following her. In fact, when she glanced behind her, the shadows seemed to merge with the suggestion of movement. She’d catch a glimpse of something—someone—before it was gone.
Weaving through the halls of the keep, she didn’t slow until she’d found the familiar door of her room. To her surprise, she’d been stationed on the second floor of the west wing, where the family’s quarters were located, rather than below stairs with the servants. She supposed, so she’d have more access to the children and they to her.
Bursting into the chamber, she pushed the door closed and turned the key, effectively locking herself inside. Collapsing against the sturdy oak, she pressed her cheek against the wood, warmed by the crackling fire someone had laid in the hearth.
She willed her galloping heart to slow and her lungs to find their rhythm as she stood against the door frame and trembled. Unbidden, her fingers found her cheek, still tingling from the strong grip of a battle-worn hand. For a man so large, with the capability of such extraordinary strength, he’d handled her gently.