The Laird's Forbidden Lady
Read The Laird's Forbidden Lady Online
Authors: Ann Lethbridge
Table of Contents
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‘I’m glad I reached you in time.’
A groan broke in his throat. ‘Me too.’ His hand came to her jaw, cradling her chin, angling her head the better to kiss her back.
His lips firmed over hers, testing and teasing. Thrills ran amok in her body, making her gasp with shock at the pleasure of such an intimate touch.
Heavenly sensations coursed through her veins and turned her bones liquid.
His parted lips matched hers, and open-mouthed they melded and moved in a harmony she hadn’t expected. Tentatively, she tried a taste of her own. Their tongues met and danced and played, at first gently, carefully, and then with wild fervour.
Dizzy, breathing hard, she lay in his arms. The magic of his kiss took her out of her body. Whereas she’d been floating before, now she was flying, soaring, released from the chains of the world.
Inside she trembled.
Never in her adult life had she lost her sense of self so utterly as now, as if some part of them had fused and become something different altogether. It exhilarated. And terrified.
Fear made her struggle.
He drew back, breathing hard, looking into her face with a jaw of granite, with eyes the colour of midnight, hot and demanding.
AUTHOR NOTE
You first met Selina in CAPTURED FOR THE CAPTAIN’S PLEASURE. Selina was so different from Alice I found their friendship intriguing and I wanted to find out more. I didn’t expect to discover that, like me, Selina had spent part of her youth in the Scottish Highlands. Despite everything she told herself, she could never quite forget the place—or the young man who caught her youthful fancy. Ian is as rugged as his country and equally hard to get to know. I hope you find their story as much fun to read as it was to write.
It seems that Scotland has fought against the odds over the centuries, and the Regency was no different as the clearances continued. Illegal whisky stills and smuggling were a matter of survival for many—and aren’t we glad they persevered? Dunross and its people are figments of my imagination, but they are drawn from history and I hope you enjoy your visit. If you would like to visit me, you can find me online and at my website: www.annlethbridge.com. Drop me a note—I would love to hear from you.
About the Author
ANN LETHBRIDGE
has been reading Regency novels for as long as she can remember. She always imagined herself as Lizzie Bennet, or one of Georgette Heyer’s heroines, and would often recreate the stories in her head with different outcomes or scenes. When she sat down to write her own novel, it was no wonder that she returned to her first love: the Regency.
Ann grew up roaming England with her military father. Her family lived in many towns and villages across the country, from the Outer Hebrides to Hampshire. She spent memorable family holidays in the West Country and in Dover, where her father was born. She now lives in Canada, with her husband, two beautiful daughters, and a Maltese terrier named Teaser, who spends his days on a chair beside the computer, making sure she doesn’t slack off.
Ann visits Britain every year, to undertake research and also to visit family members who are very understanding about her need to poke around old buildings and visit every antiquity within a hundred miles. If you would like to know more about Ann and her research, or to contact her, visit her website at www.annlethbridge.com. She loves to hear from readers.
Previous novels by this author:
THE RAKE’S INHERITED COURTESAN
**
WICKED RAKE, DEFIANT MISTRESS
CAPTURED FOR THE CAPTAIN’S PLEASURE
THE GOVERNESS AND THE EARL
(part of
Mills & Boon New Voices …
anthology)
THE GAMEKEEPER’S LADY
*
MORE THAN A MISTRESS
*
LADY ROSABELLA’S RUSE
**
And in Mills & Boon
®
Historical
Undone!
eBooks:
THE RAKE’S INTIMATE ENCOUNTER
THE LAIRD AND THE WANTON WIDOW
ONE NIGHT AS A COURTESAN
UNMASKING LADY INNOCENT
DELICIOUSLY DEBAUCHED BY THE RAKE
A RAKE FOR CHRISTMAS
And in Mills & Boon
®
Historical eBooks:
PRINCESS CHARLOTTE’S CHOICE
(part of
Royal Weddings Through the Ages
anthology)
*
linked by character
**
linked by character
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
The Laird’s
Forbidden Lady
Ann Lethbridge
Lots of people are involved in getting a story
on to the shelves or up online, and I am
grateful for all their hard work. This book
I am dedicating to my amazing editor,
Joanne Grant. Thank you for your patience
and for your invaluable guidance with this project.
Without you it would never have come to fruition.
Chapter One
Scotland—1818
W
hy had she ever thought returning to Scotland a good idea? Lady Selina Albright eyed the wrought-iron candelabra suspended from ancient oak beams and the grey stone walls covered with ragged tapestries, great swords and rusting pikes, and suppressed the urge to flee.
Having run from two eminently eligible bridegrooms, one more would put her beyond the pale. Not even her father’s considerable influence would prevent her from being gazetted a jilt.
And besides, this one was her choice. Finally.
All around her, dark-coated gentlemen and sumptuously gowned women, their jewels flashing with every movement, filled Carrick Castle’s medieval banqueting hall.
‘I hadn’t expected it to be such a squeeze,’ observed Chrissie, Lady Albright, her father’s wife of only a year and the reason Selina had agreed to this trip.
Not that she would ever have been so unkind as to tell Chrissie the truth.
‘He must have invited every member of the Scottish nobility,’ Selina said. ‘At any moment I expect to see Banquo’s ghost or three witches hunched over a cauldron.’ A shiver ran down her spine. ‘I should have waited in London for the end of Algernon’s tour of duty.’
She glanced across the huge chamber to where Lieutenant the Right Honourable Algernon Dunstan, conversed with another officer in front of the enormous hearth decorated with stag antlers. Fair-haired and slender, he looked dashing in his red militia uniform. Not quite the brilliant catch her father had expected, but he was a young man of good family with a kindly disposition. The kind of man who would make a pleasant husband.
He caught her eyeing him and bowed.
She inclined her head and smiled. He was the reason she was here: to bring him up to the mark and get her out of her father’s house, where she felt decidedly underfoot.
‘I think it is all very romantic,’ Chrissie said, looking around her with wide-eyed appreciation. ‘I feel as if I have been transported between the
covers of
Waverly.
Is Dunross Keep equally enchanting?’
‘Dunross is about as romantic as an open boat on the North Sea in winter.’ It was hard to imagine she’d fallen in love with the keep when she first saw it some ten years before. She’d been a foolish impressionable child, she supposed. ‘Nowhere near as grand as this and as cold and damp in summer as it is no doubt freezing in winter. Did Father tell you the local people hate us because we are English? They think of us as usurpers, you know.’ For some obscure reason her father, the lord of the manor, wished to visit there next—something he had not told her before they left London and the real reason she was regretting her agreement to accompany him. Dunross was the last place in the world she wished to visit.
‘Oh, my word,’ Chrissie gasped. ‘Who is that?’
Selina followed the direction of her gaze.
A hard thump of her heart against her ribs was a painful recognition of the tall man in Highland dress framed within the stone arched entry. Ian Gilvry. The self-proclaimed Laird of Dunross.
The reason she hated Scotland. A knot formed in her stomach and made it hard to breathe as her gaze took him in.
He was not the gangling youth she remembered,
though she would have known him anywhere. He was virile and brawny and, despite his green-and-red kilt, exceedingly male.
His features were far too harsh and dark to be called handsome in the drawing rooms of London, and the frill of white lace at his wrists and throat did nothing to soften his aura of danger. The raw vitality he exuded drew and held every female eye in the room. Including her own.