The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie (20 page)

Violet could think of only one thing to do. She shoved his hands from her shoulders, slammed her arms around him, closed her fingers in his hair, and yanked him down to frantically kiss his lips.

Chapter 16

The force of Violet’s kiss, the small pain of her tug on Daniel’s hair, made everything go foggy for him. Her mouth was hard on his, her tongue scraping inside him. Daniel opened his lips for her and tasted her desperation.

Violet’s hands scrabbled to open his frock coat, his waistcoat. She pulled on the buttons of Daniel’s shirt until a few ripped away, then she grabbed the waistband of his kilt.

Daniel broke the kiss and caught her seeking hands as one snaked down to cup him through the plaid wool. Violet’s eyes held need, but also fear, the same fear she’d shown in London the moment before she’d reached for the deadly vase.

“Love,” Daniel said. “Slow down a little. Let me savor you.”

“I can’t.” Violet yanked her hands out of his grip and seized his shoulders, dragging him against her. “I can’t go slowly. I can’t.” She kissed his lips, his chin, the rough stubble of whiskers. “Please, Daniel.”

Daniel gently but firmly held her back. Violet looked up at him with wild blue eyes in a face pale behind the dark powder.

“Lass, I’m hungry for you too. Believe me, I am. But I’m not going to fall on ye and devour you. Much as I’d like to. I want to get to know you.” His grip softened, and he drew one finger across her cheek. “I want to know all of you, Vi, my sweet South London Sassenach.”

“I can’t.” Violet grabbed his shirt, jerking it apart, the remaining buttons tinkling to the floor. “I need to do this.
I
need to.”

“Violet.” Daniel’s voice went stern. He seized her wrists to still her wild clawing. “Stop this.”

“I can’t. Why should a man be able to rip into a woman . . .” She trailed off as the fear welled up, spilling tears from her eyes. “I can’t.” Her sobs came up, heaves that shook her chest. “I can’t. It’s not fair.”

“Vi.”

Violet jerked out of his grasp, spun away, and ended up sitting on the window seat. She clasped her arms over her belly and rocked back and forth.

“I can’t have you,” she said. “I can’t . . . have . . .
you
.”

The room undulated under Violet’s feet, the window seat like a rock in a rushing tide. Her breath was coming too fast, but she could find no air. Violet heard the sobs in her throat and knew she was going to pieces, but she couldn’t stop it.

The scent of whiskey brushed her nose, and something cool and metallic touched her lips. Burning liquid poured into her mouth.

Violet gasped, started to cough, then swallowed hard. The whiskey slid down like a river of fire. The next gasp let in air, and Violet could breathe again.

Daniel sat down next to her on the window seat, his hard thigh against hers. He kept the flask at her mouth, waiting until she drank a little more before he took the flask away.

Violet coughed again, pressing her fingers to her wet lips. She had no idea where her handkerchief had got to.

Daniel’s strong arm wrapped around her shoulders, his warm hand rubbed her arm. “There now,” he said, voice low and soothing. “It’s all right.”

Jacobi used to hold her thus, when she was ten years old and scared. He’d given her comfort—and then he’d taken it all away. After that, Violet had never known comfort again.

Until now. Daniel was strength beside her, his warmth touching where she was so cold.

“Someone hurt you, didn’t they, love?” he said, his voice a soothing rumble. “I asked you that before. I’m thinking someone pushed you against a wall and forced you. They must have done.”

Violet nodded. She didn’t wonder how Daniel knew. He was good at reading people, almost as good as Violet was.

“You’re going to tell me all about it,” Daniel said. No question, no asking her.

“I can’t.” Shame, misery, and pure rage clogged Violet’s heart, stopping her words.

“I want to know, sweetheart,” he said. “I want to know what we’re fighting.”

What
we’re
fighting
.
As though she and Daniel were in this together.

She’d never told anyone except the Parisian courtesan Lady Amber, and the woman had guessed most of it. Violet had trained herself so well not to speak of it that she couldn’t think in words, only in images, sounds, impressions of pain.

Daniel caressed her shoulder. “Let me start. How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Oh, love.” Daniel brushed his lips to her hair. “Just a child.”

“Girls marry at sixteen.”

“Don’t justify it. Tell me. Who was he?”

“Jacobi.” The word slipped out before she could stop it. She hadn’t meant to say it, because it wasn’t true, but then again, it was.

“Jacobi,” Daniel said, steel in his voice. “And who is he?”

“He didn’t . . .” Violet swallowed, tasting the whiskey bitter in her throat. “It wasn’t him. Jacobi taught me everything I know. I met him in Paris, when my mother was first starting to understand her clairvoyance. He recognized that I had a gift for figuring out what people wanted . . . what they needed. I was ten. He taught me all the tricks, how to give them a show, an experience they’d never forget. I wanted . . . I pretended . . . that he was my father.”

“And he took advantage of that?”

Violet chanced a glance up at him. Daniel’s eyes held a hardness she’d not seen in him before. His ancestors, she thought dimly, had been brutal barbarians, killing each other in bloodbaths for pieces of rocky land in the Scottish Highlands. Violet had done research on Daniel and the Mackenzies—they went back for centuries, to a man called Old Dan, who’d been granted the Scottish dukedom in the fourteenth century.

That Daniel had likely carried a heavy claymore and been given the dukedom based on how many other men he’d cut to bits. Violet looked into Daniel’s eyes and saw that Highland barbarian looking out at her.

“No,” Violet said. “That is . . .” The red-bearded man had been nothing like Jacobi. Jacobi had dark hair, brown eyes that could be kind, and pale white fingers that shook if he didn’t drink enough wine.

“Then who? Give me a name.”

“I never knew his name. Jacobi owed him money, a great deal of money, which he couldn’t pay. So when the man came to collect, and threatened Jacobi . . .” Violet swallowed, her throat tight.

“Jacobi gave him you instead.” Daniel’s words were flat.

Miserable, Violet nodded.

Daniel made no move, not even drawing a sharp breath. His eyes in the growing firelight were dark golden—hard, harsh, glittering. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

“I couldn’t believe what Jacobi had said. I thought it must be a mistake, that I misunderstood.” The words came now, loosened in the same way floodwaters loosened debris. “Jacobi left the room. He looked sad and angry, but he left.” The man with the red beard and eyes blue like faded sky had picked Violet up from the stool and shoved her against the wall. His breath had smelled like brandy. “He was strong, so strong. I tried to fight. I tried and tried. But he held me against the wall, and he . . . he . . . I was only a girl. It hurt so much.”

The hurried, wooden monotone that spoke the words didn’t match the horror Violet the sixteen-year-old had felt. It didn’t convey her screams, her pleas for mercy, the hot pain that ripped through her when her innocence had been wrenched away.

She’d limped home, torn and hurting, blood staining her skirt. Violet had locked herself in her bedchamber alone, claiming she had a fever. Violet’s mother, with her constant fear of illness, had stayed well away.

“I thought I was going to die,” Violet said. “I remember being surprised when I lived.”

Daniel’s arm tightened around her shoulders. When Violet looked up at him again, she was stunned to see his eyes moist.

“What happened to Jacobi?” Daniel asked, his voice steady. “Is he still alive?”

“I don’t think so. He’s never tried to find me, in any case, and I’ve kept an ear out—to make sure he doesn’t spring upon me. After all this time . . . I believe he’s dead.”

“Ye left him? Good for you.”

“No.” Violet swallowed, the next part coming slowly. “I forgave him.”

“Lass . . .”

She shook her head. “I was only sixteen. There was no one strong in my life—not my mother, and I had no father. Jacobi came to find me. He was filled with self-loathing. He begged for my understanding. He said the red-bearded man would have killed him had he not paid. I believed him. The man was mean and cold and carried a knife in his boot. I had tried to reach the knife when he . . . But I never could.” Jacobi had been so ashamed, filled with the need to make it up to Violet. And she’d let him.

Daniel said nothing, only sat, his body warming hers as the fire slowly heated the room. This hideaway, with him, was safe, but Violet knew how easily safety could be destroyed.

When Daniel spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I know why you forgave him. You wanted everything to go back to the way it was before, didn’t you?”

He sounded as though he understood perfectly, as though he’d experienced the same need himself.

“I did,” she said. “But it never could be the same, could it?”

“No. It never can be.”

Violet gave a mirthless laugh. “I forgave him,” she said. “I stayed with him. That is, until he tried it the second time.”

“Dear God.”

“Jacobi gambled too much. He was forever in debt. When he tried to use me to pay again, not six months later, I had enough of my wits about me to run. I was fast, and the man he owed was too rotund and slothful to catch me. I took my mother and Mary out of our rooms that very afternoon, and we left Paris. I never saw Jacobi again.”

Daniel took her hand. He squeezed it between his, the strength of him immeasurable. “Lass, I am so sorry.”

Violet let out her breath. “Nothing to be done.”

Daniel released her, anger in his eyes. “Don’t sound so bloody resigned. What he did was monstrous. You trusted Jacobi, and he hurt you, in a way no father should hurt a daughter. In a way no man should hurt
any
woman.”

“But he wasn’t really my father.” Violet’s heart bit with old pain. “That was my childhood fancy. Doesn’t mean he returned the sentiment.”

“Don’t try to make this not his fault. It is nothing
but
his fault. I will find him so I can break his neck.”

“I truly believe he’s dead. I want him to be. I never want to see him again.”

Daniel remained in silent fury, and Violet leaned her head back on the windowpane, spent. The shutters were closed behind the window, keeping out the night and the wind, but the panes were cold.

Dredging up the tale had hurt so much, like tearing scabs from closed wounds to let them bleed afresh. It had been twelve years since the red-bearded man had touched Violet, less than that since she’d run from Jacobi. And still the pain was there.

Childish confusion had receded as adult understanding had come, but the anger, shock, and horror hadn’t died. Jacobi and his red-bearded creditor had killed young Violet that afternoon, making her disappear forever.

“So that’s why you hit me so hard in London,” Daniel said. “I put you in mind of the bloke, which scared you senseless, and you struck out.”

“Yes. I didn’t . . .”

Daniel’s hand clamped down on hers. “Don’t tell me you didn’t mean to. You did mean to, every bit of it. I scared you, and you tried to defend yourself. Only natural. But I’m not sorry I tried to kiss you.
That
I’m going to do again, and again. And I’m used to women trying to kill me, so no worries there.”

The cynical look in his eyes broke through Violet’s haze of pain. She remembered what he’d said when he’d walked her home from the theatre—she remembered every word of every conversation they’d ever had.

Everyone who hears my name knows my mother tried to off me with a knife when I was a tiny babe, before my dad threw me out of the way and stopped her.

“I’m sorry,” Violet said. “About your mother, I mean.”

Daniel shrugged. “I was a wee babe. Don’t even remember.”

“But it hurts you.”

Daniel let go of her hand, pushed himself from the window seat, and walked halfway across the cluttered room. “Are you asking for a look at my haunted childhood, since I made you tell me about yours?”

Violet started to say no, but she knew that was exactly what she wanted. She’d shown her shivering vulnerability, and she wanted to see his. “Yes.”