Jennifer Ashley - The Seduction of Elliot McBride

Elliot found Juliana in the morning room, July’s warm air carried on a light breeze through the window. She was elegantly beautiful in her pale lawn gown buttoned all the way up her throat, her hair dressed casually in a twist of curls.

As usual, she had a notebook open on the table beside her and a pile of letters and cards on a second table. Ink, paper, and blotting paper were spread out before her, waiting for her to cover them with her practical words.

Elliot walked into the room and closed the door behind him. “Good afternoon, my wife.”

Juliana scribbled something into her notebook and looked up at him. She took him in—his boots and kilt, a loose coat slung over a loose shirt—and flashed her beautiful smile. “Good afternoon.”

“We’re going on a picnic,” Elliot said.

“How delightful.” Juliana wrote down another note. “Who is going? You and Priti? Or Uncle McGregor and Mr. McPherson? Or—”

“You and I.”

Juliana’s brows rose, her pen stopping. “Are we? When?”

“Right now.”

Juliana looked at him in bewilderment. “On the moment? I’ve just started my correspondence.”

“On the moment. Right now. Put down your pen.”

“But I have all this to finish.”

Elliot started for her. Before he could reach her and snatch the pen from her hand, Juliana quickly laid it down and rose to her feet.

“Very well,” she asked. “But may I ask why?”

“Why the picnic?” Elliot shrugged. “Why not?”

Juliana cast a glance at her paper-strewn tables. “I have much to do, Elliot. When I hire a secretary, perhaps I can leave whenever I like…”

Elliot caught her hands and pulled her away from the tables. “Not when you hire a secretary. Now. I’m going to sway you away from your papers, lists, and organization. I’m going to thoroughly seduce you from it, my wife. Right now.”

He saw her soften, the desire glow in her eyes, the spark of mischievousness he’d always sensed in her, even when he was slipping the frog into her pinafore pocket. She hadn’t screamed and tried to beat it away from her. She’d calmly dipped her hand into her pocket, released the poor thing into the grass, and walked away, giving Elliot a superior look over her shoulder.

Juliana still had the mischievousness, but her frantic fears that the world would condemn her if she slipped in any point had kept her from enjoying it.

Elliot wanted to teach her to find and revel in that part of herself again.

“All right then. A picnic.” Juliana turned for the bellpull. “I will have Mahindar fix us a basket. I’m sure he will make up a splendid one.”

“No.” Elliot stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “No basket. We see what we find on the way. No planning. No organizing. No lists.”

Her lips parted. “Oh.”

“Turn around.” Elliot caught her shoulders and gently turned her in place. “Out the window. Pick a direction down the path. That is where we’ll go.”

She hesitated, ready to argue again. Elliot leaned down and bit the shell of her ear. “Go,” he said.

Juliana sped away to the windows. She stepped out of the longest one and hopped down to the path that ran around the house. There she paused, looking around, trying to decide which direction to go.

Elliot stepped out after her, took her arm, and tugged her with him down an overgrown path leading east. “This way.”

“I thought I was supposed to choose the direction.”

“You were debating which was the best way to go. Making lists of for and against in your head. Weren’t you?”

“Um. Yes.”

“This direction is random. We go.”

They couldn’t walk side by side down the narrow walk, but Elliot didn’t mind coming behind Juliana, where he could observe her small bustle swaying as she went.

The walkway led to the path that skirted the river and wended its way to the footbridge to Mrs. Rossmoran’s cottage.

As they rounded a bend, Elliot caught sight of movement in the brush. He hesitated, the wary hunter in him returning, but then he recognized the rough McIver kilt Hamish liked to wear, and the colorful silks of Nandita’s scarves. The two were standing in the shadows, very close together.

Elliot watched them for a moment, their innocence reminding him of when he and Juliana had shared their first dance, then he turned away and caught up to Juliana.

The river rushed beneath them as they walked over the footbridge together, as strongly as it had the night Elliot had stood on the larger bridge, looking over the water in black despair.

He hadn’t had any thought of ending his life that night—though he knew Mahindar still believed he had. Instead, the endless rush of sound had caught at him, making Elliot stare into the river’s depths while he fought his demons in the dark.

Mrs. Rossmoran and Fiona were both home. “Bannocks?” Fiona asked in answer to Elliot’s question. “Aye, baked this morning. And shortbread from yesterday.”

Fiona made them up a bundle in the kitchen, while Mrs. Rossmoran sat in her usual chair and regarded them all imperiously.

“So, you’ve decided to live, have you, young Elliot?”

Elliot slid his arm around Juliana’s waist. “I have.”

“Hamish says you look much better,” Mrs. Rossmoran said. “Act much better too. Haven’t tried to strangle anyone in a while. You’ve made a good choice in wife.” Mrs. Rossmoran gave Juliana an approving glance. “I said that from the start. And when you have a few babes in the nursery, ’twill be even better. But mind Hamish. He’s growing smitten with that young Indian girl who came with your manservant. He brought her to visit the other day. Sweet young lady, after she got over her shyness. Her English is improving as well. I gather she had an unhappy time of it in India, poor soul.” She sighed. “Why anyone wants to live any place but Scotland, I don’t know.”

Fiona brought them their package, giving Juliana a wink and a smile. “Off you go.”

Elliot took charge of the bannocks and shortbread and led Juliana away.

As they headed for the path that ran along the Rossmoran side of the river, Elliot heard Mrs. Rossmoran say to Fiona, “Do you think she is increasing? She had the look of it. Next spring, there’ll be a new McBride, you mark my words.”

Elliot took Juliana’s hand and led her on.

Elliot had lied when he’d said the picnic idea was completely spontaneous and unorganized. In truth, he had a goal in mind.

He’d found the place while exploring the land, looking for Stacy—who was still a guest of McPherson, though he was on the mend. Elliot and he had begun repairing things between them, talking of old times and new, Stacy planning what he’d do when he recovered. In London, Fellows had put in motion ways to keep Jaya’s brothers at bay. Fellows’s half-brother, the Duke of Kilmorgan, had much influence in politics, and ambassadors had talked to the ruling prince, who decided he didn’t like members of his extended family going after Britons. Jaya’s brothers had been called home, and there they stayed. Stacy could now live his life again, out of hiding. He would stay in Scotland, he said, and try to carve a place for himself.

Elliot found that talking to Stacy helped. He was learning how to remember the past without fighting it, without fearing it would destroy him. Perhaps one day, Elliot’s memories would be distant enough to no longer threaten. He knew it would take him a long time to reach such peace, but he had everything he needed to begin.

The place Elliot had found was a hidden meadow, surrounded by thick trees. The last few days had been rainless, so the grass was dry though still a deep green. Heather swayed across the meadow, rippling purple, interspersed with tiny white and gold flowers to make the place seem to sparkle.

When Elliot folded back the last branch to let Juliana through from the overgrown path, she gasped in delight.

“Beautiful.” She ran a few steps and spun around, laughing. “This was no arbitrary direction, Elliot McBride. You brought me here on purpose.”

“That is true.” Elliot walked unerringly to the base of a tree and fetched a bundle of blankets that he’d asked Hamish to leave there for him.

“Trickster,” Juliana said, but she was still laughing.

“Only in part. I’m trying to demonstrate that you can throw off your shackles and enjoy yourself once in a while. The world will not stop if you do.”

Juliana watched him spread out the blankets, her hands on her hips. “Oh, very well. I know I can be a bit zealous about organizing. But I like it.”

“I’m not demanding you give it up every day.” Elliot stretched out on the blanket. “Just every once in a while.”

Juliana carefully collapsed next to him, leaned down, and kissed his lips. “I think I don’t mind.” She looked at their bundle. “We have food. But nothing to drink.”

“We can take a drink from yon river,” Elliot said. When Juliana blinked, he grinned. “Or wait for Hamish to bring the jugs of water and wine as I asked him to.” He ran his hand down Juliana’s bodice to rest his palm over her abdomen. “I told him to give us an hour or so alone, first.”

Juliana’s cheeks went pink. “An excellent idea.”

“I brought something else.” Elliot reached into the pocket of his coat for the box that Mahindar had handed him this morning and opened it.

Inside, on a bed of velvet, lay two rings. One was a wide gold band; the other, a narrower band encrusted with sapphires.

Juliana took a quick breath. “Ours?”

“I told Mahindar what to order the day of our wedding. They’re finished, and here.” Elliot drew out the smaller ring, lifted Juliana’s left hand, and slid it onto her third finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

Juliana studied the ring, her smile happy. She took the man’s ring and slid it onto his finger.

“With this ring, I thee wed.”

Elliot couldn’t stop his smile. The cool band was heavy on his finger, clasping him just right, belonging there.

He took Juliana’s hand again and kissed it, right over the ring. Then he pressed their hands together on her belly.

“Is Mrs. Rossmoran right?” he asked. “Is there a wee one?”

Juliana went quiet, and for a moment, Elliot’s heart squeezed with worry. Then she smiled. “She is.”

“Dear God.” Elliot’s lungs ceased to work. He tried to say a few more things, such as, I’m going to be a father again. You’ve made me so happy, love. Do you think it will be a boy or girl?

All he could do was roll onto his back and stare up at the blue sky and sunshine.

Priti’s birth had occurred while Elliot had been imprisoned, her existence unknown to him until Mahindar had sprung it on him, releasing an ember of joy and wonder. This was the first time Elliot would be a father alongside the child’s mother, watching Juliana carry it, being there when the baby came into the world.

It was too much to take in.

Juliana blocked the sun from him, curls escaping her pins. “Elliot, are you all right?”

“I am.” Elliot sounded so calm. Inside him was a riot of noise, of joy, of beating drums and claxons, of all the sounds of India on a festival day. “I am fine. I never have been so fine.”

He tugged her down to him, wrapping his arms around her and rolling her gently to the blanket, taking care. “I am everything that is all right.”

Elliot kissed her beautiful smile, the dimple at the corner of her mouth, the tip of her tongue.

The darkness inside him, which had been reticent of late, reached for him with spidery fingers. Elliot moved his thoughts back to the little one nestled inside Juliana beneath him, and the darkness snapped away.

While Elliot had been imprisoned in the caves, thoughts of Juliana had given him the freedom he needed to keep himself alive. They hadn’t been able to reach that corner of his mind, and so hadn’t been able to imprison him entirely. Juliana had been his secret, his knowledge that no one could touch.

This child inside her was another knowledge that they could never take from him.

Elliot’s home, his wife, his family. All his, and all real.

The darkness died with a whimper, and Juliana welcomed Elliot, unhindered by pain and shadows, into her arms.

LONDON 1890