Mena shook her head, astounded. “I can’t even imagine.”
“He said that if I wished, he’d feed me, train me, and protect me. He promised that if my anger grew to hatred as I grew into a man, he would be always close, and I could have my revenge whenever I wanted to take it. He said he would not fight me.”
Plunking onto the bed behind her, Mena just shook her head in disbelief. “You had to have been tempted.”
Jani’s eyes lost some of their luster as they gazed into the past. “I would sit on my cot eating the supper he brought me. He always provided a sharp knife, even when there was no meat to cut, and we’d eat in silence. For years I went to bed, fully intending to slit his throat while he slept.”
“What stopped you?” Mena breathed.
“I think it was the way he looked at me every night before he blew out the lantern…” Jani paused, glancing up at Mena as though remembering that they were not so well acquainted.
“How was that?” she inquired, unable to stop herself from asking.
“Like he wanted me to do it.” Jani gathered an armful of her new skirts and carried them to the wardrobe, leaving her to stare after him in dumbfounded amazement until he glided back for more.
“But he has children.”
“Yes, he does.” Jani’s expression turned contemplative. “But he’s never really allowed them to know him.”
With movements that felt stilted and stiff, Mena rose to help, but her mind wouldn’t stop racing. “Even after all these years, you can’t have just … forgiven him.”
“The marquess, he has kept his promise. He took me with him all over the wide world, and even provided for me in his will should he die. I do not know, Miss Mena, if he’s responsible for the deaths of my parents, but I do know that we were both part of an empirical war machine that was built long before that day.” Jani paused in his work to look out her window and over the forest that rolled down to the sea. “The first time he brought me to this place, I understood that Ravencroft was bred to be a warrior, it was his destiny.” He turned back to her with that white smile, though this time it was not so bright. “Can you imagine him as anything else?”
“No,” Mena admitted, her heart bleeding for the pure tragedy of it all. “No, I don’t suppose I can.”
“I did not mean to distress you, Miss Mena,” the young man said earnestly. “I am content with my life here, and there are … other reasons for me to stay.”
It was strange, Mena thought, that for the first time in their entire conversation, Jani truly seemed sad.
She had a good idea as to why. “Rhianna?” she prompted softly.
He looked at her, and his heart was revealed.
“Does she return your feelings?”
“She does not know.” Fear crept over his features and Mena hurried to comfort him.
“It’s all right,” she murmured to him, placing a hand on his silk sleeve. “I’ve mentioned it to no one. I have secrets of my own to keep, and would never betray a confidence of a friend.”
He searched her gaze, then nodded. “It is not to be, Miss Mena. The daughter of a marquess doesn’t marry a valet, especially a foreigner. I mean, is that not why you are here, to teach her how to be the wife of a gentleman and a nobleman?”
Mena lifted her hand to his smooth cheek and rested it there, a lump of emotion in her throat. “I think, sweet Jani, that there may be no man alive more gentle and noble than you.”
A curious sheen glimmered in his dark eyes before he quickly turned away. “Then you will allow me to arrange your writing desk to further maximize your efficiency,” he said with forced brightness. “When you reply to your letter, you will be thanking me.”
“If you must.” She offered him a tremulous smile, allowing him to alter the course of the conversation. She stepped back to her trunks to finish sorting and unpacking them. She and Jani worked in relative but comfortable silence, though, she suspected, their thoughts were anything but.
The dinner bell interrupted them not long after, and Mena decided she and the sweet valet had made sufficient progress.
“Miss Mena,” Jani exclaimed upon opening the door.
She looked up from her dressing table, where she hastened to tidy her coiffure.
“This was left in the hallway outside your room.”
What lay in his hands instantly softened the sharp edges of her heavy thoughts, and brought back the memory of her encounter with the marquess.
And the heat.
Standing, Mena reached for the tidy, if indelicately arranged, bouquet of the very same flowers she’d abandoned that afternoon. There was no note, no card, and nothing but a small knot made from the Mackenzie plaid to hold them together.
But there was no question as to just who had left them at her door. And as she wrapped careful fingers around the fat stems of the few roses, Mena noticed something that melted the very cockles of her careful heart.
Ravencroft had stripped them of every thorn.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Liam ran his hands through the soft green of the fresh peat moss and tried not to compare it to the vibrant shade of Miss Lockhart’s eyes. Was this the newest torment to his endless search for peace? Was there no escaping the lass? He couldn’t even examine something as innocuous as fucking moss without conjuring some part of her to his mind. She’d been at Ravencroft two weeks, and he could barely get through dinner every night without hiding arousal beneath the table.
Crushing the soft little buds in his hand, he growled at Russell. “Just how many barrels of peat did Grindall order?”
“Enough to roast the entire harvest,” his steward said carefully. “He said he discussed it with ye.”
“I’ve no memory of that.”
Russell swiped his hat off, revealing tufts of wild orange hair, and scratched his scalp nervously. “Well, if ye doona mind me saying so, my laird, ye’ve been a bit … distracted lately.”
Distracted by a ripe mouth and a round arse.
“I do mind ye saying so.” Because it was true. He’d always been a focused, driven, and determined man, and no tempting wee English lass was going to change that.
The Ravencroft distillery had almost collapsed under the drunken tyranny of his father, and Liam would be goddamned if he added the failure of the livelihood of so many to his already tainted legacy.
Employing a breathing technique he’d learned from an Indian guru, he took a breath in through his nose, and counted slowly as he controlled the exhale with his throat.
Russell likewise employed another tactic. “This shipment was expensive, and we could barely afford it due to the new copper mash tuns for the barley we acquired last year without dipping into the tenant rents. Grindall said that the peat would hasten the kiln fire of the barley and add smoke to the taste. So many of the Highland distilleries are implementing the practice.”
Goddammit. He’d wanted the distillery to be self-sustaining. He’d do anything to avoid dipping into his other sources of income.
Liam looked to his right, counting a few bricks of the warehouse which held rows upon rows of aging Scotch in their blond oak casks, then back to the kiln fires over which he was aiding Thomas Campbell, the cooper, in assembling and charring the insides of the imported casks for this year’s offering of spirits. The work was backbreaking for most men, but Liam found that he appreciated the mental monotony of it. Once Andrew fit the wet slats of oak into the bottom ring, he passed them to Thomas Campbell to char the inside over the flame.