Katharine Ashe - How to Marry a Highlander

Before she realized what he was about, he cinched her around the waist and knees and swept her up into his arms.

“My lord! What are you doing?” She wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Put me down this instant.”

“I’ll make a deal wi’ ye, luve. Ye promise to wed me an I’ll put ye down. But keep me waiting an I’ll kiss ye here.”

“Hm. Which to choose? They’re both tempting.” She threaded her fingers through his hair. “Perhaps—” He kissed her. She melted into him.

“Teresa,” he said deeply. “Give me yer hand.”

“Why didn’t you say this in London?”

He let her feet slide to the ground and took her hands in his. “Ye told me ye wouldna have me,” he said soberly.

“You believed me?”

“I did, till Sorcha told me ye’d spoken. Didna ye believe yerself?”

“Yes. But I didn’t want to. Do you really love me?”

“Aye. I canna live without ye.” He cupped his hands around her face and kissed her tenderly, earnestly. “Dinna make me live without ye, luve.”

She threw her arms around him and he wrapped her in his embrace.

There were more kisses then, of the passionate and celebratory sort. The ladies watching avidly from the parlor window in the house across the street did not seem to mind. One or two might have even thought how wonderful it was for Teresa that she had finally found an activity that seemed to please her even more than telling tales.

To my wonderful readers who asked for Duncan’s story, I do hope you enjoyed it.

To my new readers, it’s lovely to have you along for the fun! Duncan and Teresa’s first encounter at Lady Beaufetheringstone’s ball takes place in my novel How a Lady Weds a Rogue, starring Teresa’s friend Diantha and her handsome Welshman, Wyn Yale. Both Teresa and Duncan play key parts in that story. You can find the first chapters of How a Lady Weds a Rogue and information about all my books on my website: www.KatharineAshe.com.

Copious thank yous for assistance go to Georgie Brophy, Mary Brophy Marcus, and Marquita Valentine, without whom this story would not have come together.

I offer very special thanks to Maya Rodale for her permission to feature in this story a cameo of Regency London’s most dashing newspaper editor. Mr.

Knightly is a central character in her fabulous Writing Girl Series, which includes his story, Seducing Mr. Knightly.

The Orphans

A Fair Somewhere in Cornwall April 1804 Three young sisters of no rank and even less fortune sat in the glow of lamplight before a table draped in black velvet.

Upon that table was a ring fit for Prince Charming.

Veiled in ebony, the soothsayer studied not her clients’ palms or brows or even their eyes, but the ring, a glimmering spot of gold and ruby amidst the shadows of everything else in the tent.

“You are motherless.” The Gypsy’s voice was rich but as English as the girls’.

“We are orphans.” Arabella, the middle sister, leaned forward, tucking a lock of spun copper behind an ear formed as delicate as a seashell. Only twelve years old and already she was a beauty—lips pink as berries, cheeks blooming, eyes sparkling. In appearance she was a maiden of fairy tales, and just as winsome of temper, though any storyteller would be obliged to admit that she was not in the least bit meek.

“Everybody in the village knows we are motherless.” Her elder sister Eleanor’s brow creased beneath a golden braid tucked snugly into a knot.

Bookish as she was, Eleanor’s brow often creased.

“Our ship wrecked, and Papa adopted us from the foundling home so that we would not be sent to the workhouse.” With the simple candor of the young, Ravenna explained the history she did not remember yet had often been told. She was but eight, after all. Restlessly, she shifted her behind on the soft rug, and the fabric of her skirts tangled beneath her slippers. A tiny black canine face peeked out from the muslin folds.

Arabella leaned forward. “Why do you stare at the ring, Grandmother?

What does it tell you?”

“She is not our grandmother,” Ravenna whispered quite loudly to Eleanor, her dark ringlets bouncing. “We don’t know who our grandmother is. We don’t even know who our real mama and papa are.”

“It is a title of respect,” Eleanor whispered back, but her eyes were troubled as she looked between Arabella and the fortune-teller.

“This ring is the key to your destinies,” the woman said, passing her hand over the table, her lashes closing.

Eleanor’s brow scrunched tighter.

Arabella sat forward eagerly. “The key to our true identity? Does it belong to our real father?”

The Gypsy woman swayed from side to side, gently, like barley stalks in a light breeze. Arabella waited with some impatience. She had in fact waited for this answer for nine years. Each additional moment seemed a punishment.

From without, the sounds of the fair came through the tent walls—music, song, laughter, the calls of food sellers, whinnies of horses at the trading corral, bleats of goats for sale. The fair had passed through this remote corner of Cornwall every year since forever, when the Gypsies came to spend the warm seasons on the flank of the local squire’s land not far from the village. Until now, the sisters had never sought a fortune. The reverend always warned against it. A scholar and a churchman, he told them such things were superstition and must not be encouraged. But he gave freely of his charity to the travelers. He was poor, he said, but what little a man had, God demanded that he share with those in even greater need—like the three girls he had saved from destitution five years earlier.

“Will the ring tell us who we truly are?” Arabella asked.

The soothsayer’s face was harsh and stunning at once, pockmarked across her cheeks but regal in the height of her brow and handsome in its strong nose and dark eyes.

“This ring . . .” the Gypsy intoned, “belongs to a prince.”

“A prince!” Ravenna gaped.

“A prince?” Eleanor frowned.

“Our . . . father?” Arabella held her breath.

The bracelets on the woman’s wrist jingled as she ticked a finger from side to side. “The rightful master of this ring,” she said soberly, “is not of your blood.”

Arabella’s shoulders drooped, but her dainty chin ticked up. “Mama gave it to Eleanor to keep before she put us aboard ship to England. If it belongs to a prince, why did Mama have it? She was not a princess.” Far from it, if the reverend’s suspicions were correct.

The fortune-teller’s lashes dipped again. “I do not speak of the past, child, but of the future.”

Eleanor cast Arabella an exasperated glance.

Arabella ignored it and chewed the inside of her lip. “Then what does this prince have to do with us?”

“One of you . . .” The woman’s voice faded away, her hand spreading wide above the ring again, fingers splayed. Her black eyes snapped open. “One of you will wed this prince. Upon this wedding, the secret of your past will be revealed.”

“One of us will wed a prince?” Eleanor said in patent disbelief.

Arabella gripped her sister’s hand to still her. The fortune-teller was a master at timing and drama; Arabella could see that. But her words were too wonderful.

“Who is he? Who is this prince, Grandmother?”

The woman’s hand slipped away from the ring, leaving it gleaming in the pale light. “That is for you to discover.”

Warmth crept into Arabella’s throat, prickling it. It was not tears, which never came easily to her, but certainty. She knew the fortune-teller spoke truth.

Eleanor stood up. “Come, Ravenna.” She cast a sideways glance at the Gypsy woman. “Papa is waiting for us at home.”

Ravenna grabbed up her puppy and went with Eleanor through the tent flap.

Arabella reached into her pocket and placed three pennies on the table beside the ring, everything she had saved.

The woman lifted suddenly wary eyes. “Keep your coins, child. I want none of them.”

“But—” The Gypsy grabbed her wrist. “Who knows of this ring?”

“No one. Our mama and our nanny knew, but we never saw Mama again, and Nanny drowned when the ship sank. We hid the ring.”

“It must remain so.” Her fingers pinched Arabella’s. “No man must know of this ring, save the prince.”

“Our prince?” Arabella trembled a bit.

The Gypsy nodded. She released Arabella’s hand and watched as she picked up the ring and coins and tucked them into a pocket.

“Thank you,” Arabella said.

The soothsayer nodded and gestured her from the tent.

Arabella drew aside the flap, but the discomfort would not leave her and she looked over her shoulder. The Gypsy’s face was gray now, her skin slack.

A wild gleam lit her eyes.

“Madam—”

“Go, child,” she said harshly, and drew down her veil. “Go find your prince.”

Arabella met her sisters by the great oak aside the horse corrals around which the fair had gathered for more than a century. Eleanor stood slim and golden-pale in the bright glorious light of spring. Sitting in the grass, Ravenna cuddled the puppy in her lap like other girls cuddled dolls. Behind Arabella the music of fiddle and horns curled through the warm air, and before her the calls of the horse traders making deals mingled with the scents of animals and dust.

“I believe her.”

“I knew you would.” Eleanor expelled a hard breath. “You want to believe her, Bella.”

“I do.”

Eleanor would never understand. The reverend admired her quick mind and her love of books. But the Gypsy woman had not lied. “My wish to believe her does not make our fortune untrue.”

“It is superstition.”

“You are only saying that because the reverend does.”

“I for one think it is splendid that we shall all be princesses.” Ravenna twirled the pup’s tail with a finger.

“Not all of us,” Arabella said. “Only the one of us who marries a prince.”

“Papa will not believe it.”

Arabella grasped her sister’s hand again. “We must not tell him, Ellie. He would not understand.”

“I should say not.” But Eleanor’s eyes were gentle and her hand was cozy in Arabella’s. Even in skepticism she could not be harsh. At the foundling home when every misstep had won Arabella a caning—or worse—she had prayed nightly for a wise, contemplative temperament like her elder sister’s.

Her prayers were never answered.

“We will not tell the reverend,” Arabella said. “Ravenna, do you understand?”

“Of course. I’m not a nincompoop. Papa would not approve of one of us becoming a princess. He likes being poor. He thinks it brings us closer to God.” The puppy leaped out of her lap and scampered toward the horse corral. She jumped up and ran after it.

“I do wish we could speak to Papa about it,” Eleanor said. “He is the wisest man in Cornwall.”

“The fortune-teller said we must not.”

“The fortune-teller is a Gypsy.”

“You say that as though the reverend is not himself a great friend to Gypsies.”

“He is a good man, or he would not have taken in three girls despite his poverty.”

But Eleanor knew as well as Arabella why he had. Only three months before he discovered them starving in the foundling home, and Eleanor about to be sent off to the workhouse, fever had taken his wife and twin daughters from him. He had needed them to heal his heart as much as they needed him.

“We shan’t have to fret about poverty for long, Ellie.” Arabella plucked the ring out of her pocket and it caught the midday sunshine like fire. “I know what must be done. In five years, when I am seventeen—”

“Tali!” Ravenna’s face lit into a smile. A boy stood at the edge of the horse corral, shadowy, in plain, well-worn clothes.

Eleanor stiffened.

Arabella whispered, “No one must ever see it but the prince,” and dropped the ring into her pocket.