Page 3 of The Seduction of Viscount Vice

Mairi’s lips twitched. People were ill-informed to use words like puritan and frigid and dull when describing the English. “I am…not at liberty to say.”

“Bah,” the woman said with an irritable sigh. “Off you go, then. Someone else will know all about that strapping Scot.”

“Have a pleasant evenin’,” Mairi said, before lowering her head and hurrying toward the kitchen entrance. She didn’t have all the information she needed, but if Vice was Scottish, it was time to flee. Under no circumstances could she bump into a man who might know—

The thought disappeared in a rush of terror as a large hand clamped over her mouth and something unforgiving and metallic jammed harshly against her side. A pistol!

Mairi struggled hard against her assailant as she was dragged into a side room, but whoever it was might have been made of cast iron for all the good it did. “Lemme go, ye clunch-headed dandiprat!”

“So, the alley rat speaks. But I would advise you to drop that fucking appalling false accent, laddie. It is only irritating me further, and I’m already itching to put a bullet in you.”

She froze.

After ten years absence, the pure lilt and burr of the Highlands would steal anyone’s senses. But her sudden dizziness and frantically thundering heart signaled far more than a yearning for home. She knew that strong, deep voice. But it couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be.

“Dunno what yer talkin’ about, sir.” She kept her gaze resolutely on the floor as her mind turned to mud. “Just tryin’ to do me job and I bloody well get grabbed.”

In the blink of an eye, she was shoved hard against a wall, the pistol muzzle buried in her ribcage. “I warned you about the accent. Now. You have precisely one second to look me in the eye and tell me who you are and who you are working for. Begin.”

Oh God.

Mairi shuddered, tears burning her eyes as an agonizingly familiar scent tormented her senses. Heat, and the light sweat of physical labor. Whisky. An herbal-blend cologne. The delicious combined fragrance that had enveloped her just once before—the day she deliberately surrendered her virginity to the young man she’d loved beyond all, but was forbidden to have. The young man she had used to end an unwanted betrothal and then abandoned.

“I…er…” she mumbled as long-suppressed memories clawed her mind. The cornered young lady she’d been, willing to do anything to escape her fate. A sweet and awkward viscount, two years her junior, who for some unknown reason thought her the most beautiful woman in the world. The way he had kissed and stroked her for hours, gaining in confidence and expertise. Learning how to make her come again and again, before settling her onto a soft woolen rug and filling her completely as the sun warmed their naked skin. He was even bigger now—unlike most men, a good head taller than her—with broad shoulders and chest, muscled thighs outlined to perfection in tight breeches, and a steely strength she could feel in the powerful grip that trapped her.

“Fucking answer me, laddie.” His hand slid up past her collarbone to encircle her throat. “And it better be…Christ! I’ll be damned. You must forgive my lapse in manners. Fucking answer me, lass.”

His grip had loosened, his tone softened, and yet she knew the danger had magnified tenfold as her lack of an Adam’s apple revealed another level to the deception. Now her only hope was to somehow brazen it out, to hide the regret and sheer longing twisting her stomach into knots. This would truly test her potential stage mettle.

Mairi took a deep breath, lifted her head, and looked him straight in those captivating hazel eyes. “Hello, Iain.”

…

He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. And he was probably hallucinating.

Staggering back a step, Vice threw the uncocked pistol down and rubbed a hand across his face. But the tall, slender figure of Lady Mairi MacNair remained in front of him.

“Mairi,” he said hoarsely, unsure if he’d be able to utter anything coherent beyond her name. Fierce, wild joy surged through his body. She was alive. The only woman he’d ever loved hadn’t died in Paris as her parents had claimed. She was here, in his home, and even more beautiful than he remembered.

In breeches and a wig, dressed as a Fallen footman.

The truth hit him like a bucketful of ice water. He’d loved her beyond reason; Mairi had used him. He’d proposed; she’d skipped away to the continent without a backward glance. He’d mourned her death for years; she’d been hale and hearty the whole bloody time.

Fucking lying, scheming witch.

Taking a long, slow breath so he didn’t shake her for what she’d done, Vice instead raised an eyebrow. “You look…surprisingly well for a dead woman, my lady.”

Mairi grimaced. “Don’t call me that. I discarded my title over ten years ago, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you how that came about. But I am sorry I neglected to thank you for your superior efforts in freeing me from the worst engagement in history.”

Her cool, calm demeanor when he felt so volatile damn near shredded him, but somehow Vice managed a careless shrug. “A fuck is a fuck. I was hardly going to say no to finally ridding myself of the virgin cap. Just would have preferred to know the plot ahead of time—that you had no intention of marrying me, either.”

“Iain. Surely you cannot be holding a grudge. My midnight escape saved you from a terrible mistake. You barely even knew me.”

“No,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t. Not at all, as it turned out. And you may call me Vice, or my lord.”

“Really? But Iain is such a fine Scottish name.”

“No one calls me that. Ever. Not even my mother or sister nowadays.”