A Highland Duchess Read Free

earlier.
    Her hand gripped the curtain as she stared out at the square. The night was a stormy one, the flash of lighting against an ebony sky curiously absorbing. The cobbles were wet, and the wheels of the carriages made a ssshhh sound as they traveled through puddles. The streetlamps were blurred, shielded behind a curtain of rain.
    Emma would have liked to go to the country, to leave London behind, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the city, tethered to this place and her role in life as if a rope were wound around her waist and tied to the foundation.
    She didn’t close the drapes. She loved the night, loved the softness of it, the gentleness of the darkness. One of the lamps close to the house was suddenly extinguished, then another. Was the wind truly that fierce tonight? No matter, the watchman would come by in an hour or so and light them again.
    Emma leaned her forehead against the glass and wished herself one of the people passing through the square in a carriage. Let her be on her way somewhere, anywhere but here. Let her be anyone but who she was.
    If she were brave enough, she might walk among the shadows, become anyone she wished. Someone who wasn’t the widowed Duchess of Herridge. Someone who was simply Emma.
    A woman who felt as if she were a spot of blood in a pool of water, flowering slowly before disappearing forever.
    What would the world say to know that she’d loathed being the Duchess of Herridge? Her predecessor was reputed to have been a lovely, charitable woman whose death Anthony did not mourn at all. They’d married less than six months after Morna’s death. Perhaps Fate had a sense of humor, after all, or an ironic sense of justice. Society would be scandalized, again.
    She sat in the chair beside the window. Dear God, she could not do it. She could not marry again. Did the youth of the husband truly matter?
    Anthony was forever dining on oysters and other foods he claimed were powerful tonics for his manhood. He smelled of the sea, a beast of the ocean, equipped with a living trident that wasn’t particularly pleasant.
    Please, God, save me. The prayer was one she’d uttered before, in just such a tone of resignation. Panic, however, laced the words with more emotion now. Please, God, save me. Please, I beg you.
    For most of her life, she’d done what propriety decreed was right. For the whole of her marriage, she’d maintained a rigid control in order to survive what was happening around her. In the last eighteen months she’d become a hermit, a proper and silent ghost dressed in black, not simply to redress the horror of her marriage, but to be overlooked by society.
    She knew too much.
    For her efforts, she’d been rewarded, not with freedom, laurels, or commendation for her sense of decorum, but with the prospect of another husband, another marriage.
    She turned and noticed her reflection in the window. Several tendrils of hair had come loose and were framing her face. Her maid did not have to use an iron on her hair, it curled on its own, and rain only made it worse. She removed the hairpins and her snood.
    A gloved hand slammed against the windowpane.
    She stared at the window, her heart pounding rapidly from the fright. The hand had abruptly disappeared, and for a moment Emma wondered if she just imagined what she’d seen. No, it had been real.
    She stood, quickly walked to the bellpull and was reaching for it when a voice spoke behind her.
    “Please do not do that, Duchess.”
    She whirled to find a man standing in front of an open window on the other side of the room. He was dressed all in black, not unlike her own garments. But she doubted it was mourning that dictated his attire as much as a wish to escape detection from the watchman.
    The intruder was a tall man, too large for her delicate sitting room. Black hair tumbled over his brow and might have softened his features if they hadn’t been so strong. A proud nose, squared chin, and full lips marked his face as one