In Your Wildest Scottish Dreams Read online

  Dedication

  To all the workers and road crews who labored so intensely on first the street outside my house and then the water drainage system in my subdivision. There were days when I despaired of ever hearing anything but beep, beep, beep, and the deafening cacophony of jackhammers.

  But you taught me patience and dedication. Because of you I will cherish the peace of each day much more now.

  Contents

  Dedication

  My darling sons

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Author’s Notes

  Excerpt from Scotsman of My Dreams

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Romances by Karen Ranney

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  My darling sons,

  When you each came into the world, I marveled at the miracle that created you. I held you in my arms and knew I would cherish you until the breath left my body.

  Now I must bid farewell to all three of you at once.

  The Almighty has indeed challenged me this day.

  I know you go on a great adventure and do so with eagerness and enthusiasm. The Highlands offer less opportunity to you of late. I know this and mourn the circumstances of your leaving even as I know you will do honor to the MacIain name.

  When someone asks me about my sons, I’ll speak proudly of you. My eldest son, I’ll say, remained in Scotland, a few days’ journey away. But one of my sons traveled to England to make peace with the conqueror, while the other set sail for America.

  You will have children of your own, each of them carrying the MacIain blood and name. Tell them about our history, how we dreamed of an empire. Tell them about the place from which we came, a corner of Scotland known for its men of greatness and nobility.

  Mention your mother, if you will, who bravely relinquished her sons to the future.

  The Almighty has not given us the power of foresight, but I cannot help but think years from now your children and your children’s children will be proud MacIains, as formidable as their ancestors.

  Love sometimes means sacrifice, and I feel that truly on this day. I sacrifice you to honor, to your heritage, and to a future only you can create.

  Go with God, my darling sons. May your dreams be realized and may He always protect you.

  Anne Summers MacIain

  Scotland

  June, 1746

  Prologue

  July, 1855

  Glasgow, Scotland

  Glynis had planned this encounter with such precision. Everything must go perfectly. All that was left was for Lennox to come into the anteroom.

  A few minutes ago she’d given one of the maids a coin to take a message to him.

  “I don’t know, Miss MacIain. He’s with those Russian people.”

  “He’ll come,” she said, certain of it.

  The girl frowned at her.

  “Really, it’s all right. Go and get him, please.”

  She could understand the maid’s reluctance. Lennox was an excellent host while his father was away in England. This ball was held in honor of the Camerons’ Russian partner, a way to offer Count Bobrov, his wife, and daughter a taste of Scottish hospitality. Hillshead, Lennox’s home, was lit from bottom to top, a beacon for all of Glasgow to witness.

  She took a deep breath, pressed her hands against her midriff and tried to calm herself. She wasn’t a child. She was nineteen, her birthday celebrated a week earlier. Lennox had been there, marking the occasion by kissing her on the cheek in front of everyone.

  The anteroom was warm, or perhaps it was nerves causing her palms to feel damp. Her spine felt coated in ice and her stomach hurt.

  When was he going to arrive?

  She pressed both palms against the skirt of her gown, a beautiful pale pink confection her mother had given her for her birthday. Pink roses were braided through her hair. A pink and silver necklace of roses was draped around her neck, and she fingered it now.

  The anteroom wasn’t really a separate room but a small area off the ballroom and accessible to the terrace stretching the width of Hillshead. A curtain hung between the door and the ballroom.

  They would have enough privacy here.

  He’d be here in a few moments. Lennox was too polite and honorable to ignore her request.

  Had she worn too much perfume? She loved Spring Morning, a perfume her mother purchased in London. The scent reminded her of flowers, rain, and the fresh rosebuds in her hair.

  Her hands were trembling. She clasped them together, took deep breaths in a futile effort to calm herself. She clamped her eyes shut, rehearsing her speech again.

  Her whole life came down to this moment. She woke thinking of Lennox. She went to bed with one last glance up at Hillshead. When he called on Duncan at their house, she made sure to bring him refreshments, amusing Lily and their cook, Mabel, with her eagerness. When they met in the city, she asked about his latest ship, his father, his sister, anything to keep him there for a few more minutes. At balls she sometimes danced with him, trying hard not to reveal how much she adored him when in his arms.

  The tips of her ears burned and her cheeks flamed. She would melt before he reached her, she knew it. She pressed the fingers of both hands against her waist, blew out a breath, then closed her eyes and envisioned the scene soon to come.

  She should be reticent and demure, but how could she be? It was Lennox. Lennox, who held her heart in his hands. Lennox, who smiled down at her with such charm it stole her breath.

  Lennox was tall and strong, with broad shoulders and a way of walking that made her want to watch him. There was no more handsome man in all of Glasgow.

  Suddenly he was there, stepping into the anteroom. Turning slowly to mitigate her hoop’s swirling, she faced him.

  He wore formal black, his snowy white shirt adorned with pin tucks down the front.

  His black hair was brushed straight back from his forehead. Intelligence as well as humor shone in gray-green eyes the color of the River Clyde. A stranger might think life amused him. Yet from boyhood he’d been intent on his vocation, fascinated with anything to do with ships and the family firm.

  His face was slender with high cheekbones and a square jaw. She could look at him for hours and never tire of the sight.

  “Glynis? What is it?”

  She took a deep breath, summoned all of her courage, and approached him. Standing on tiptoe, she placed her hands on his shoulders, reached up and kissed him.

  He stiffened but after a second he kissed her back.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on as he deepened the kiss. She hadn’t been wrong. She thought kissing Lennox wou
ld be heavenly, and it was. If angels started singing she wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Long moments later Lennox pulled back, ending the kiss. Slowly, he removed her arms from around his neck.

  “Glynis,” he said softly. “What are you doing?”

  I love you. The words trembled on her lips. Tell him. Tell him now. All the rehearsing she’d done, however, didn’t make it easier to say. He must feel the same. He must.

  “Lennox? Where have you gone?”

  The curtains parted and Lidia Bobrova entered the anteroom. She glanced at the two of them and immediately went to Lennox’s side, grabbing and hanging onto his arm as if she’d fall if he didn’t support her.

  Lidia was as frail as a Clydesdale. Tall and big-boned, she had a long face with a wide mouth and Slavic cheekbones. Did Lennox think she was pretty?

  The girl had been introduced to her as the daughter of Mr. Cameron’s Russian partner only an hour earlier. Lidia had barely glanced at her, dismissing her with a quick, disinterested smile, the same treatment she was giving Glynis now.

  “What is it, my Lennox?”

  My Lennox?

  “My father wishes to speak to you.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “He mustn’t be kept waiting. You know there’s something important he wishes to discuss with you.” She patted his sleeve. “The future, perhaps?”

  Glynis pressed her hands against her midriff again and forced herself to breathe.

  Lidia was clinging to Lennox, and all he did was glance down at her.

  The Russian woman’s gown of green velvet was too heavy for a Scottish summer. Gold ribbon adorned the split sleeves and overskirt and was threaded through Lidia’s bright blond hair. Her hoop skirt was so large it nearly dwarfed the room, but she still managed to stand too close to Lennox.

  Surely no unmarried girl should be wearing as many diamonds at her ears and around her neck. Were the Russians so afraid their wealth would be stolen that they wore it all at once?

  “Come, Lennox.” Lidia’s voice wasn’t seductive as much as plaintive.

  The Lennox she’d known all her life wasn’t charmed by whining and wheedling.

  “Come and talk to my father and then we’ll dance. Lennox, you promised. Please.”

  He glanced down at Lidia and smiled, an expression she’d always thought reserved for her. A particular Lennox smile made up of patience and of humor.

  Until this moment he’d never treated her like a nuisance or a bother. Although she was Duncan’s younger sister, he’d always seen her as herself, asking her opinions, talking to her about his future plans. Yet now he was as dismissive as Lidia.

  She might not be there, for the attention either of them paid her.

  Embarrassment spread from the pit of her stomach, bathing every limb in ice. She was frozen to the spot, anchored to the floor by shame.

  “Please, my Lennox.”

  Grabbing her skirt with both hands, Glynis turned toward the curtains. She had to escape now. She didn’t glance back as she raced from the anteroom, tears cooling her cheeks.

  The last thing she heard was Lidia’s laugh.

  “OH, DO let the silly girl go, Lennox,” she said. “We’ll go meet with my father and then dance.”

  Lennox turned to Lidia Bobrova. He’d known the girl nearly as long as he’d known Glynis, having traveled to Russia since he was a boy.

  She smiled back at him, a new and curious calculating expression that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

  “Has the child always been so rude?” she asked.

  “I’ve never found her to be so.” Nor would he consider her a child, not the way she’d just kissed him.

  Why hadn’t her mother noticed the décolletage of Glynis’s dress was far lower than normal? He wanted to pull it up himself to conceal the swell of her breasts. Wasn’t her corset laced too tight? He’d never noticed her waist was that small.

  He glanced toward the door, wondering how to detach himself from Lidia. She’d latched onto him at the beginning of the evening, and from her father’s fond looks, her actions had familial approval.

  Cameron and Company was in the process of selling their Russian shipyards to Count Bobrov. Negotiations were in the final stage and he didn’t want to do anything to mar them. Yet allowing Lidia to signal to everyone that there was more to their relationship was going too far.

  Lidia leaned toward him and a cloud of heavy French perfume wafted in his direction. Her face was dusted with powder and she’d applied something pink on her lips.

  He needed to get out of the anteroom before anyone attached significance to his being alone with her. He needed to find Glynis and explain. Then they’d discuss that kiss.

  He hadn’t expected her to kiss him. His thoughts were in turmoil. He was just grateful Lidia—or anyone else—hadn’t entered the anteroom a few minutes earlier.

  What would he have said?

  She startled me. Hardly a worthwhile explanation although it was the truth.

  He should have pushed her away, not enjoyed kissing her. It was Glynis. Glynis of the merry laugh and the sparkling eyes and the pert quip. Glynis, who had managed to muddle his thoughts tonight as well as confuse him thoroughly.

  Lidia said something, but he wasn’t paying any attention. He began walking back to the ballroom. Since she’d gripped his arm with talonlike fingers, she had no choice but to come with him.

  With any luck, Duncan would help him out, take the possessive Lidia off his arm and waltz with her, leaving him to find Glynis.

  He didn’t know as he left the anteroom that it would be seven years until he saw Glynis again.

  Chapter 1

  Glasgow, Scotland

  July, 1862

  “You’ve come home,” Lennox said.

  Glynis wanted to pull away but stood still. Precipitous gestures could be misunderstood. Better to allow him to hold her hand than cause a scene, especially when whispers swirled around them.

  “It’s the MacIain girl, home after all these years.”

  “Wasn’t there some scandal about her?”

  “Is this the first time she’s been seen in public?”

  Were people recalling those times she followed after Lennox as a child? At five years old she marked him as hers. As a young woman she was prepared to tell him she adored him.

  Foolish Glynis.

  He must not affect her. She wouldn’t allow it. She was no longer nineteen and desperately in love.

  “Why didn’t you come home sooner?” he asked now, still holding her hand.

  Instead of answering, she only smiled. The diplomatic ranks did not value honesty, and so she became adroit at sidestepping it.

  He still smelled of wood and the ocean. Whenever anyone said the word “ship” or she tasted a brine-filled breeze, he would appear in her memory with a twinkle in his eye.

  The hint of beard showing on this important occasion wasn’t due to any sloth on his part. He had to shave more than once a day to eliminate a shadow appearing on his cheeks and chin.

  “I think God wants me to have facial hair,” he said to her. “But God and I are going to disagree.”

  He was a foot taller than she was, dressed in black evening wear accentuating his shoulders and height. All his life he’d worked hard, and it showed in the breadth of his chest and muscled legs. Something about him, though, hinted at power and always had. In a crowded room people sought him out the way they looked to leaders and confident men.

  Lennox Cameron resembled a prince and a devastating Highlander and he’d been the hero of most of her childish dreams.

  No longer, however. Too much had happened in the intervening years.

  She’d grown up.

  She needed to say something to ease his intent look. Some words to make him stop staring at her as if he were comparing this Glynis to the impetuous, reckless girl she’d been.

  Did he think she appeared older? When she smiled, the skin at the corners of her blue eyes crinkled,
the only sign that seven years had passed.

  “Do you find Glasgow changed?”

  Thank heavens he eased the silence with an innocuous question, one simply answered. She was capable of prattling on for hours about places, countries, people, or the recent weather. Ask her something personal, however, and words left her.

  “Yes, I would say so. Your firm seems prosperous.”

  Was that an adequate word? Duncan said that a dozen docks along the River Clyde bore his company’s name.

  “We’ve been fortunate.”

  His shipyard was famous even in Washington. Members of the War Department said Cameron and Company affected the outcome of the war by aiding the enemy.

  Lennox wouldn’t care if the world talked about him; he’d continue to do what he wanted. Such bravado might be laughable in another man, but this was Lennox.

  “Thank you for coming. My father will appreciate it.”

  “Duncan told me of his blindness. How horrible for him.”

  He nodded. “You’ll find he’s sanguine about the accident. He’s just grateful to be alive.”

  A comment necessitating only a nod and a smile.

  “Your husband died,” he said, the words stark.

  An odd way to offer condolences.

  “Yes.”

  An accident, they said. What a terrible and senseless tragedy, and his wife so young.

  He pressed her gloved hand with his. Her fingers were icy. Did he feel them through her gloves? Or suspect her lips were numb?

  They were strangers and yet not. They never would be. They’d shared their childhood and too many memories.

  He stared down at her. A woman could get lost in his eyes. Unless, of course, she was wiser, older, and tested by experience.

  She pasted a formal smile on her mouth, a similar expression to one she’d worn when introduced to the matronly harpies in Washington. This occasion seemed no less important.

  He dropped her hand. She almost sighed in relief, but restrained herself.

  One must not attract attention.

  “Thank you for inviting me,” she said, the comment pulled from the bag of rote phrases she repeated without thought. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and greet your father.”