The Highwayman (Victorian Rebels Book 1)

Ye could love me … that is, if ye wanted.

Of course I’ll love you, Dougan Mackenzie … Who else is going to?

Nobody.

Farah drifted through a mist of memories punctuated by a swift but faraway click-clack rhythm that cut through the pleasant haze with loud and perplexing consistency.

I’d never leave you, Fairy.

Truly? Not even to be a pirate?

I promise. I might be a highwayman, though.

Click-clack. Click-clack.

Her head felt quite unattached to the rest of her as the softly floating mist began to swirl away and awareness permeated her pleasant dream.

“We’re close enough to Glasgow, sir, that ye might want to dose her again so she’ll be out for the ship ferry.” A gruff Scottish voice that reminded her of sawteeth and strong drink cut through the sweet voices of her youth.

“In a moment, Murdoch.”

That voice. Dark and cultured and smooth with just a touch of … something foreign and altogether familiar. Where had she heard that voice?

Will you try to love me, too?

I’ll try, Fairy, but I havena done it before.

I’ll teach you.

“Do ye really think she’ll help ye?” The grizzled voice sounded closer now, along with those maddening rhythmic noises that seemed to heave her entire body this way and that.

“I’ll leave her no choice.” The dark voice was also closer. Terrifyingly close.

Farah was angry at them both. These men didn’t belong here in the treasured memories of her past. They were corrupting it, somehow. Especially the smooth dark one. She wanted to tell it to leave her. Dougan Mackenzie was a precious tragedy who belonged to her alone, and she wanted to order this dangerous voice far away from him. She couldn’t, though, as it reached into the miasma of her odd waking dream and wrapped cool fingers of dread around her throat.

Love is for fairy stories … No such thing.

They’d loved each other, hadn’t they? Farah felt the need to reach out as Dougan’s solemn dark eyes began to fade. His sweet boy’s voice was ripped from her and replaced by something cruel and frightening.

Yes, Farah Mackenzie, you should run.

“What will ye tell her when she wakes?” the one called Murdoch queried.

“The question you should be asking, Murdoch, is what information does she have that will be useful to me?”

Troubled, Farah tried to make sense of what she was hearing, but her thoughts seemed to be swept from her reach like fallen leaves in the first winter storm. Her limbs felt just as stiff and treelike, heavy and unbending. But still she swayed like a branch would in an errant wind.

Click-clack-click-clack.

“Ye mean, yer not going to let her know—”

“Never.” The dark voice carried a hint of passion in the vow, but pulled away from her.

“But I thought that—”

“You. Thought. What?” Cold. That man was so cold. Like the Thames in January. Or the deepest levels of hell where the souls too dark to burn went to keep the devil company.

A deep, long-suffering sigh could just be heard above the sound of the train. “Never ye mind what I thought.” Murdoch sounded cranky and disappointed rather than frightened, and Farah thought that he must likely be the bravest man in the world.

The train! Recognition slammed into Farah with a jarring crash. The rhythmic clicking, the swaying movement, the faint smells of coal smoke and moisture. Seizing the knowledge of where she was with a desperate fear that she’d lose it again, Farah also mourned the loss as the last vestiges of her dream dissipated into nothingness. The mist upon which she floated formed into a soft velvet cushion with deep pockets every so often for fashionable buttons.

When had she decided to take a journey? Anxiety flared as Farah grasped for more recent memories. Had she packed a trunk? Was she traveling for work? Why couldn’t she seem to surface from this fog long enough to open her heavy eyes or move her even heavier limbs?

The train whistle split the air and Farah noted that they began to slow. Oh, dear, she needed to move. She couldn’t very well be caught sleeping once she reached her destination, could she? Just who were her companions?

Another word slashed through her gathering consciousness.

Glasgow.

What in the world was she doing in Scotland?

Her eyelids began to flutter and she felt her muscles tense, which she took as a sign that she might be coming out of whatever fugue state she’d been trapped in. This was so unlike her. She never took any substances to help her sleep. Nor did she ever drink to excess for fear she’d be in this very position. Just what was going on? Had she been poisoned?

Fear lanced through the holes in her memory and she felt as though she barreled toward the truth with the speed of the train’s steam engine.

Let me kiss you, Farah.

She’d been with Carlton. He’d proposed—after a fashion—and she’d said … what?

“All right, then.” Murdoch’s grizzled voice interrupted her concentration. “I’ll go get everything prepared, Blackwell, whilst ye see to the lass.”

Blackwell. Farah’s heart raced and her mind struggled to catch up. It was almost there. Blackwell … Scotland … Kiss … Oh, why couldn’t she put it together?

I hope you enjoyed that kiss, Mrs. Mackenzie … For it shall be your last.

Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More. He had her. He’d taken her!

Farah’s eyes flew open in time to see a silver flask pass between two black-clad gentlemen who, once she looked at their faces, didn’t appear to be gentlemen in the least.

They were alone in a private railcar, the luxury of which she’d never before seen. Blurry images of wine-red silk damask and velvet dripped from windows and upholstery and startled her overwhelmed senses. The color of blood. Aside from the hulking shadows of the men in the middle of the car, the color pervaded the décor to excess.

That didn’t make any sense, Farah thought. If anyone were drenched in blood, it was Dorian Blackwell. From everything she’d heard, he swam in rivers run thick with the blood of his enemies. So why did it seem so incredibly wrong that his silk cravat and collar rose so pristine beneath his hard jaw?

Farah’s lids fought her, but the urgency that thrummed through her told her to run. To fight. To scream.

“Doona forget to dose her before the train pulls in,” Murdoch reminded before his shadow opened the door to the railcar, letting in a blast of frigid air and daylight.

“Worry not.” Dorian turned to her, the particulars of his face lost to the shadows of her unruly vision. “I never forget.”

*   *   *

The next time Farah woke, she found the transition from dream to reality much easier, for no alarming voices or movement jarred her body. The sensation of floating on a cloud lingered for quite some time, and she stayed as long as she was able in that soft and safe in-between place. Not yet awake. Not quite asleep.

The first thing she registered was the sound of the ocean being tossed about by a storm. Thunder growled in the distance. A howling wind threw rain against a window in strong gusts, and the air hung heavy and cold with clean but briny moisture. Farah breathed it in, letting it evoke the memory of a place she’d left behind seventeen long years ago.

Scotland.

Her eyes flew open. Night greeted her with a heavy, velvet darkness. Windows told her that her chamber was large, but only with minimal outlines as the moon and stars were hidden by storm clouds.

Still a little too muddleheaded to panic, Farah flexed her numb limbs, testing their movements, and found, to her great relief, that she was not bound or restrained. Sending a silent prayer of thanks, she tried to gather her thoughts. She was on a bed with the softest linen she’d ever felt beneath her cheek. More movement told her she was still fully dressed, though her corset felt as though it had been loosened.

Who’d done that? Blackwell?

The thought sent a shiver through her, despite the warm, heavy covers. She needed to get moving. She needed to figure out just where he’d taken her and how to escape. The middle of the night felt like a good time to try, though the storm could definitely be a problem. If she guessed correctly, she’d be at the Blackheart’s fortress, Ben More Castle. Which meant the ocean surrounded the Isle of Mull and that made escape more than just a little tricky.

Maybe impossible.

First things first. She recited one of her mantras, unwilling to let fear incapacitate her. One had to be able to stand in order to escape anything, so she shouldn’t get too far ahead of herself. Wondering just what he’d given her, she carefully slid her feet from beneath the covers. How would she find her slippers in the dark?

Perhaps she could feel around for a lamp or candle.

Her arms trembled weakly as she attempted to push herself into a sitting position. The room spun, or was it her head? She blinked a few times and clutched at the bedclothes to keep herself from pitching back over.

A silver streak of lightning arced through the diamond-paned windows and flashed several times. The impression of a tall, sprawling bed and a fireplace that would fit a rather large man in it barely registered as she locked eyes with the shadowed figure sitting motionless in the high-backed chair close to her bed.

Dorian Blackwell. He’d been watching her sleep. He’d been close enough to reach out and touch her.

The lightning passed, plunging them both back into darkness, and Farah froze for the few seconds it took for the thunder to shake the stones of the keep. Though she could see nothing, she blinked several times, trying to rein in the beats of her runaway heart.

Any moment, she expected him to leap on her like the predator he’d evoked in her memory, and she knew she didn’t have the strength to fight him, or to run.

“Please,” she whispered, hating the weakness in her voice. “Don’t—”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the darkness said. He was so close, she thought she could feel his breath on her skin.

Farah wasn’t certain she believed him. “Then why? What am I doing here?” She wished for an impression of movement, but the shadows remained still and absolute.

A few silent moments passed before the voice reached for her through the inky black. “There is something very important I need to do. You have the capacity to either help me or be in my way. Regardless, it’s better to have you where I can keep an eye on you.”

“What makes you think I would ever help you?” she asked imperiously, as outrage began to smother her panic. “Especially after you’ve taken me from my home, my life. That was a reckless move. I work for Scotland Yard, and they’ll be looking for me.” Farah hoped her threat struck home. She remembered Blackwell in the strong room. He’d been collected, seemingly fearless, but she’d seen the sweat in his hairline, the tension in his coiled muscles, the pulse throbbing at a vein in his strong neck. “You don’t like enclosed spaces, I think,” she ventured. “If they find me here, you won’t be able to avoid kidnapping charges. They’ll send you back to Newgate for certain.”

“You don’t think I can make it so that you’re never found?” His inflection remained the same—cold, uncaring—but Farah gasped as though he’d slapped her. Silently, she fought a tremor of terror. Had he meant they wouldn’t find her? Or her body? She had to remember that the Blackheart of Ben More left a mountain of devastation in his wake in the form of the dead or missing. Regretting her threats, she groped inside her murky thoughts for something to say.

“Do you love him?”

The question caught her completely by surprise. “Pardon?”

“Morley.” The name could have been blocked in ice. “Were you going to accept his proposal?”

Farah had the oddest sense that the question had astonished them both. “I fail to see how that’s any of your—”

“Answer. The. Question.”

Farah resented being ordered about. However, something about the shroud of night made her uncharacteristically frank. “No,” she confessed. “While I have a great deal of respect and fondness for Carlton, I do not love him.”

“You let him kiss you.” The dispassionate words still managed to convey accusation. “He put his hands on you. Are you in the habit of allowing men you do not love to take such liberties?”

“No! I … Morley’s the first man I’ve kissed since—” Farah blinked rapidly. How could a man such as Dorian Blackwell put her on the defensive over a measly kiss? Didn’t he have a harem of beautiful courtesans? Wasn’t he the most notorious blackguard in the realm? “I don’t have to explain my actions to you! I’m not a thief, a kidnapper, or a murderer. I’m a respectable, employed, self-possessed widow, and may allow whatever liberties I deign appropriate.” Her head still swam, and the more excited she became, the worse she felt. Whatever he’d dosed her with was making her reckless, impulsive, and emotional.

The darkness was silent and still for so long, she wondered if his specter had been a hallucination brought on by the drug in her veins.

“A widow?” Dorian Blackwell murmured as though bemused. “You may play the respectable matron with others, Mrs. Mackenzie, but you are a woman with terrible secrets. And I happen to know what they are.”

The arrogance in his tone provoked her, but Farah’s heart kicked behind her ribs at his words. That was entirely impossible. Wasn’t it? Her secrets had died ten years ago and were buried in a shallow, unmarked grave.

Along with her heart.

“What is it you think you know?” she whispered. “What is it that you want from me?”

Another streak of lightning forked through the storm, illuminating his bulky shadow, turning the ebony of his hair a blue-black and his scarred eye an unnatural silver. Farah only caught his expression for a moment, but it was an unguarded moment, and what she saw stunned her into silence.

He was leaning closer, his head dipped down, but his deep-set eyes burned at her through dark lashes. His hand hovered in the space between them, his expression a mixture of exquisite pain and longing.

The vision was gone as swiftly as it had appeared, and Farah sat in the dark, awaiting the pressure of his fingers.

He left her untouched, his shadow appearing as a wide outline against the window as he stood and moved away from her. “Yours are questions best left for the morning.”

Confused, Farah couldn’t dispel the image of his eyes as he’d reached toward her. His scar marred the chiseled symmetry of his swarthy features. It added to his menace, to be sure, but the naked, yearning agony she’d glimpsed colored her fear with mystification.

Had it been an effect of the storm and her unruly vision?

A door opened on the far side of the room and Farah was once again astonished. He’d moved so stealthily in the pitch-blackness, without running into furniture or making a sound.

“How long do you intend to keep me prisoner here, Mr. Blackwell?” she asked, her hands fisting in the sheets, her eyelids heavy.

“I do not intend for you to be my prisoner,” Blackwell said after a slight pause.

“Captive, then?” She had the impression that she’d amused him, or was it exasperated? The sound he made was impossible to correctly interpret without seeing his face.

“Get some sleep, Mrs. Mackenzie,” he prompted. “You’re out of danger tonight, and everything will be clearer on the morrow.”

He left her then, to contemplate just what he’d meant by, You’re out of danger tonight.