Claimed by the Laird. Nicola Cornick

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      But there had been no resisting Peter, who cloaked a steely determination behind an irrepressible spirit that reminded Lucas of a puppy. Lucas recognized the determination because he had it, too, and he could not withstand his brother’s affection. They spent a riotous fortnight together in Edinburgh; Peter got gloriously drunk and Lucas had to rescue him from the tollbooth where he had been locked up in order to sober up; Peter threw himself into the social round of parties and balls and dinners—as a Russian prince he was much celebrated. Peter’s tutor, a long-suffering fellow who was trying to escort the boy and three companions around Europe, also insisted that they attend the talks and exhibitions for which Edinburgh’s academia was famous. Peter slipped out of one lecture halfway through to visit a brothel. Lucas had to rescue him from there, as well.

      After two weeks, Peter and his companions had set off for the Highlands.

      “I must see Fingal’s Cave!” Peter had exclaimed. “So wild, so romantic.” He had written after the boat trip to the island of Staffa, waxing lyrical about its beauty and telling Lucas that they were visiting Ardnamurchan on their way south. He wanted to see the most westerly point on the British mainland.

      Then the news had come of his death. His body had been found by the side of a coastal track at Kilmory, a village at the end of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. He and his companions had dined the previous night at Kilmory Castle with the Duke of Forres and his family. After that Peter had apparently returned to the Kilmory Inn, only to go out later, alone. No one knew why or whom he was meeting, but his body was found the following morning, half-clothed. He had been beaten and robbed. Robbery and murder were unusual in the Highlands despite the wild reputation of the land and its people, but that was no consolation to Lucas, who had lost the half brother he had barely had chance to know.

      The fall of logs in the grate recalled him to the room and he realized that Jack was speaking. He forced down his grief and anger and tried to listen.

      “I truly believe that Lord Sidmouth is using you for his own ends, Lucas,” Jack was saying carefully. There was something in his eyes that was almost but not quite pity. “He’s using your grief to manipulate you.”

      Lucas shook his head stubbornly. “I offered to help Sidmouth of my own free will,” he said, “in return for information and resources.”

      After Peter’s death, the home secretary had sent men from London to try to find his murderer, but they had drawn a blank. Lord Sidmouth was certain that the case was connected to the illegal trade in whisky distilling with which the Highlands were rife. It was his contention that Peter had inadvertently stumbled over the notorious Kilmory smuggling gang and had been killed to ensure his silence. Lucas had no reason to doubt the home secretary’s assessment and he had a burning desire to avenge himself on the gang of thugs who had taken Peter’s life.

      “I know it’s a long shot,” he said, “but maybe I can discover something that those fools from London could not. If the whisky smugglers were responsible for Peter’s death, then I have a better chance of learning of it than Sidmouth’s men had, and to do that I cannot approach Kilmory openly.” He fixed his gaze on the fire. It burned low in the grate, filling the room with heat and light. Yet Lucas felt cold inside. He could not remember the last time he had felt warm, could not remember if he had ever felt warm, not inside, where it mattered.

      He was the illegitimate son of a Scottish laird and a Russian princess, the product of a night of youthful passion when his father had been traveling through Russia. His birth had scandalized Russian society and disgraced his mother. She had made an unhappy dynastic marriage five years later to a man who had been prepared to overlook her sullied reputation because he was dazzled by her dowry.

      Lucas had gone with his mother when she had married, but he had been a changeling, unwelcome in his stepfather’s house, keenly aware of the difference between him and other children. His grandfather had asked Czarina Catherine to legitimize him, but that had made matters worse rather than better. His cousins and his stepfather still called him a bastard; his mother still had such grief and shame in her eyes when she looked at him. Peter had been the only one unaware of the dark shadow cast by Lucas’s existence. He was little more than a baby, open, trusting and loving.

      His little brother, his life snuffed out by a stranger in a strange land. The coldness swept through him again and with it an ice-cold determination to discover the truth.

      “Peter deserves justice,” he repeated. “I can’t just let it go, Jack. He was the only family I had left.”

      “No, he was not,” Jack corrected. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. What about your aunt?”

      Lucas smiled reluctantly. “All right, I’ll give you that.” His father’s sister was a force of nature. She had come into his life when he was living rough on the streets of Edinburgh. Even though he had told her to leave him alone, she had refused to abandon him. He had been a sullen, ungrateful youth, eaten up with bitterness of his father’s family, but she had driven a coach and horses through his resentment. She had forced him to pull himself up out of the gutter and he loved her fiercely for it. She was the only woman he did love, the only one he could imagine loving.

      There was silence in the room. “You never speak of your father,” Jack said after a moment.

      Lucas shrugged. There was discomfort in it. He could feel the tension knotting his shoulders again. “There’s nothing to say about him.”

      “He left you his estate at the Black Strath,” Jack said. “That must count for something.”

      To Lucas, it counted for absolutely nothing. He could feel the anger and hatred stir within him. These days he seemed to be angry all the time: angry that Peter had died, angry that no one had been brought to justice for it, angry that no one really cared. Jack was right; he knew that Lord Sidmouth was using him. Sidmouth wanted to bring an end to the whisky-smuggling gangs who ran rings around his excise officers. He wanted the members identified and jailed. Peter’s death was a convenient means by which to engage Lucas’s help. But that did not matter if they both got what they wanted.

      “I’ve always wondered why your mother waited so long to tell you about your inheritance,” Jack said. “Your father died when you were only a baby.”

      “I think she was afraid,” Lucas said slowly. He could still remember the clutch of his mother’s fingers, clammy and cold, and see the desperation in her eyes.

      Don’t blame your father, his mother had said. He was a good man. I loved him.

      But Lucas had blamed Niall Sutherland. He had never forgiven his father for abandoning his mother, for his cowardice and weakness. Their romance had been secret, her pregnancy only discovered months after Sutherland had left. Although Princess Irina had written to tell him, he had never returned to Russia. Lucas felt nothing but contempt for him for condemning Irina to the shame and stigma of bearing an illegitimate child, and Lucas to the endless taunts and mockery that went with bastardy. If he had anything to be grateful to his father for, it was that his example had taught Lucas to be the opposite of him: hard, ruthless and strong.

      Jack was watching him. Lucas took a mouthful of brandy. It tasted bitter and he put the glass down abruptly.

      “She was unhappy,” he said. “I think she was afraid I would leave her and go to Scotland to claim my inheritance. Even as a child I was headstrong.” He smiled ruefully. “She was wrong, of course. I would never have left her.”

      “But you went when she died,” Jack said.

      “There СКАЧАТЬ