The Highwayman (Victorian Rebels Book 1)

“For God’s sake, Blackwell, quit pacing and have another drink!” Murdoch slurred, swatting at a shushing Tallow. “Ye’re making the room spin with yer to-and-fro. If you doona quit, I’ll be seasick.”

“I t-t-think that’s the whisky making the room spin.” Tallow took the bottle from Murdoch and handed it to Frank Walters who, in turn, handed it to Christopher Argent.

“Lady Blackwell ordered that ye had to be at least one or two sheets to the wind afore she lets ye in to see her. I’m upholding my end of the bargain,” Murdoch bellowed.

Dorian paused in pacing across Ben More’s gallery hall only to scowl at his drunken steward. He’d picked this open space to await Farah’s labor as the tapestries on the walls muted her distress. “Since when did everyone in this bloody castle start taking orders from the wrong Blackwell?” he snarled, still infuriated that he’d been tossed from the birthing room by his wife and a gaggle of bossy women.

In the way, they’d called him. Making things worse with his glowering and ordering them about, they’d said.

He didn’t fucking glower.

In a smooth movement, Argent poured them each a crystal glass of liquor and handed one to Dorian. “This is Laird Ravencroft’s best Highland vintage,” he said in a voice as dark and rich as the scotch in their glass. “He sent it to you for just this occasion. Now stop glowering and have a drink.”

“I don’t fuc—”

“I’m all done!” A powerful voice echoed through the great hall, and had each of the former Newgate convicts averting their eyes as quickly as they could, studying the tapestries or their boots with great interest.

Dorian tossed back his drink and set his glass down as a bundle of sable ringlets and sticky hands barreled into his arms.

“Papa, Nanny made me scones and peach jam!” Dorian’s four-year-old daughter, Faye, slapped a preserve-smeared hand over his scarred eye.

“I can see that.” Dorian laughed and scooped her up, holding her close to his chest as her chubby legs bracketed his ribs.

“You can’t see!” she reminded him plaintively. “I’m covering your fairy eye.”

Dorian smirked, pulling his daughter closer as it eased some of the crippling fear in his heart. “That’s right, but I can certainly feel the jam you’re smearing on my face.” He kissed her warm cheek, which also tasted like Frank Walter’s amazing peach preserves. He thought she’d grow out of this game by now. They’d invented it when she was a toddler and had been afraid of his scarred, milky-blue eye. He’d told her that she and her mother were fairies, and he had to have the magical eye to see them as they could choose to be invisible to everyone else, but he could always see them. Now, when she was feeling cheeky, she covered his eye to “hide” from him.

“Who are you talking to, Blackwell?” Argent asked in an exaggerated tone. “I don’t see anyone.”

Everyone at Ben More Castle and Northwalk Abbey had become very adept at pretending not to see the girl as she scampered about. It surprised Dorian that Argent joined in the game, but the deadliest assassin in London seemed to bear more than a few surprises, even after all these years, not the least of which was his choice in a wife.

“Don’t be invisible today, little Faye, your mother is having a baby,” Dorian cajoled.

“Oh, all right.” She sighed, her lovely gray eyes twinkling at him as she literally peeled her hand away from his eye. “I’m not invisible.”

Everyone “started” at the appearance of a tiny fairy girl in Dorian’s arms, and then greeted little Faye Marie appropriately, which caused her no end of amusement.

“Papa, can I name my little sister Kitty?”

“You want to name your sister after a cat?” he asked, accepting the offered cloth from Nanny.

“Don’t be absurd.” She laughed as he helped her to wash the stickiness from her hands. “I want to name her after all the cats.” She threw her arms wide to encompass all the beloved living creatures, and almost threw herself out of his arms in her exuberance.

“Of course you do,” he muttered wryly.

Her smile brightened, if that was at all possible. “That’s what Mummy said.”

Gemma appeared at the top of the stone steps. “Your wife is askin’ for you,” she announced.

“Is she well?” he demanded, clutching his daughter to him until she squirmed.

Gemma’s lips split into a wide smile, but she only motioned to the hall. “See for yourself.”

Heart hammering wildly, Dorian took the stairs two and three at a time, Faye squealing with delight in his ear.

When he reached the hall, the midwife, a middle-aged woman so thin and brittle he could barely understand how her bones didn’t clack, beckoned to him from the bedroom doorway.

Dorain found Farah reclined against a mountain of pillows, bleary-eyed but smiling.

Relief swept through him like a firestorm, and for a moment he wondered if he might pass out from the strength of it.

His Fairy had been washed and had fresh linens, her hair, tightly braided before the birth, now haloed by damp, escaped ringlets.

She looked like an angel about to drown in a cloud of fluffy white linens.

“Come in, my love,” she encouraged faintly. Her arms were wrapped around a tiny bundle huddled on her chest. “Come and meet your son.”

“Son?” He felt ridiculous, but it had somehow never entered his mind that he’d father a boy. Faye Marie had been so certain she was getting a sister that, somehow, she’d convinced her parents that it was so. He looked down and met his daughter’s surprised look with one of his own.

A son.

He was just getting used to being powerless against the will of a wild female creature that barely reached his knees. His “little Faye” might have her mother’s angelic ringlets and soft gray eyes, but ebony hair and lack of regard for rules branded her a pure Blackwell. She was everything to him, a dynamic mix of curiosity, mischief, and unconditional love. She’d stolen his heart from the first moment he’d seen her. He’d known his role, his place in her life. To love her. Protect her with his life. To offer her sanctuary and an education.

But a boy? How did someone like him teach a boy to become a man? Panic lanced his chest, and he had to fight bright spots that danced in his vision.

Faye Marie squirmed to be put down, and Dorian allowed her to slide down his leg and rush to the bedside.

Farah lifted the soft blanket to uncover a pinched, sleeping face and an impossibly small fist.

Dorian couldn’t seem to make his feet move.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” she whispered.

“Not really,” Faye piped rather dramatically. “He’s so red. And wrinkled.”

Farah gave a soft, exhausted laugh. “He’ll look better in a few days.”

“I certainly hope so.” Faye returned to Dorian and tugged on his hand. “Come see, Papa.”

He allowed himself to be led to Farah’s bedside, where he gingerly lowered himself to the counterpane, trying to remember how to blink. How to breathe. It still astounded him that the pleasure he and his Fairy shared produced such an extraordinary result.

Life. He put life inside her, and she miraculously created someone else for them to love. Someone else to give them love.

With a trembling hand he reached for his son, covering the hand she held against the boy’s back. God, but he was tiny, the entire body almost engulfed by the span of Dorian’s fingers.

The smile Farah gave him contained the pride of a legion of conquerors and all the love of a saint. “His name is Dougan.”

His racing heart stalled and he stared at her, unsure of how to land on the emotions rocketing through him. “What?”

“Dougan Mackenzie Blackwell,” she informed him gently but firmly. “I named him after a boy who deserves a second chance at childhood. And maybe, through this one and our little Faye creature here, Dougan and Fairy will be able to experience all the happiness and magic of a childhood that we lost.”

As it often did when with Farah, uncertainty and fear drained away, replaced by the love that spilled from her touch. “I lost nothing,” Dorian said as he reached for his wife and twirled a ringlet around his finger. “I found my Fairy, and that’s all the magic I’ll ever need.”