To Defy a Highland Duke Read online

  To Defy a Highland Duke

  Heart of a Scot Book Six

  COLLETTE CAMERON®

  Sweet-to-Spicy Timeless Romance®

  © Copyright 2020 by Collette Cameron

  Text by Collette Cameron

  Cover by Wicked Smart Designs

  Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.

  P.O. Box 7968

  La Verne CA 91750

  [email protected]

  Produced in the United States of America

  First Edition April 2020

  Kindle Edition

  Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.

  All Rights Reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  License Notes:

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook, once purchased, may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for you and given as a gift for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If this book was purchased on an unauthorized platform, then it is a pirated and/or unauthorized copy and violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do not purchase or accept pirated copies. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work. For subsidiary rights, contact Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.

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  CEO, Dragonblade Publishing

  Additional Dragonblade books by Author Collette Cameron

  Heart of a Scot Series

  To Love a Highland Laird

  To Redeem a Highland Rogue

  To Seduce a Highland Scoundrel

  To Woo a Highland Warrior

  To Enchant a Highland Earl

  To Defy a Highland Duke

  To Marry a Highland Marauder

  To Bargain with a Highland Buccaneer

  *** Please visit Dragonblade’s website for a full list of books and authors. Sign up for Dragonblade’s blog for sneak peeks, interviews, and more: ***

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  Amazon

  Dedication

  For castle, coffee, and cat-lovers alike.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Publisher’s Note

  Additional Dragonblade books by Author Collette Cameron

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Scottish Highlands

  29 December 1720

  I’m out of my mind for agreeing to this. Completely and utterly mad.

  With that peevish thought, her fingers ice-cold despite her gloves, Marjorie Kennedy shivered and burrowed further beneath the weight of the heavy coach blankets. Only the crown of her soundly sleeping daughter’s head peeked from within the cocoon she’d swaddled six-year-old Cora in.

  On the opposite seat, her sister-in-law, Berget Kennedy, also buried in a swath of thick coverings, cuddled Elana, Marjorie’s seven-year-old daughter.

  The bricks now skidding around the coach floor had long since lost any semblance of heat and had been abandoned as foot warmers. Wishing for a roaring fire to warm the soles of her feet, Marjorie wiggled her cold toes against the bottom of her sturdy shoes.

  “I canna imagine ’tis much farther, Marjorie.” Every bit as exhausted and miserably cold as she, Berget offered a weak upward sweep of her mouth, empathy shining in her kindly gaze. “The last time we stopped, Graeme vowed we’d arrive within the hour.”

  With chipped teeth, bruised bums, and our blood frozen solid.

  Well, Berget might not be frozen through and through. Her bright eyes and flushed cheeks, and the smoldering glance her husband bathed her with when they’d emerged from the inn’s private parlor, suggested Graeme had found a creative and effective way to warm his young bride.

  Overseeing her daughters’ use of the necessary behind the posting house meant Marjorie had never completely thawed before the troupe reboarded the coach and lurched away on the rutted excuse for a road.

  It wasn’t precisely envy that pricked her, for she didn’t begrudge Graeme and Berget their happiness or love. True, Graeme resembled her dead husband Sion strongly, and for a brief period, she’d developed a tendre for him.

  But the sentiment hadn’t been love. He’d reminded her so much of Sion, and she did so miss her husband.

  So what, precisely, was this disgruntlement chafing her? Abrasive and persistent?

  If she must put a name to the aching, fluttering behind her breastbone, she’d call it yearning. For what she’d once had and mightn’t—probably wouldn’t—ever have again: the love and devotion of a strong, loyal, devoted husband and father.

  Could one grieve such things?

  Love? Devotion? Companionship?

  Should one?

  How could she not?

  Her heart and spirit had wills of their own these days.

  Burying her fingers deeper in the furs, Marjorie attempted to ignore her discomfort while keeping her complaints constrained to mutinous musings. Vocalizing her displeasure served no useful purpose since aught could be done but to endure the remainder of the bone-rattling trip.

  Besides, it wasn’t her nature to be churly or snipe.

  This journey, however, reinforced her abhorrence of coach travel, which was why her last prolonged trip had been from England as a bride of eighteen. Starry-eyed and bubbling with hope and expectations as the young bride of Laird Sion Kennedy.

  She’d been blessed with three and a half joyful years with Sion before he’d died, far too young, five years ago. Her brawny, strapping husband, felled by a gash. A stupid infection of his foot that had turned putrid and poisoned his blood, claimed the doctor.

  Sion had left her a widow at two and twenty, in a new homeland, with an infant, a toddler, and a shattered heart and broken spirit. Her daughters were what kept her going.

  Maternal pride blossomed in her chest as she swept a love-filled gaze over the sleeping lasses. Thank God for Elana and Cora. She didn’t know how she would’ve borne the grief and loneliness without them.

  The constant rumbling, jerking, and bouncing of the coach had whittled her mischievous daughters’ good humo
r to grumpy pouts and, eventually, frustrated tears before slumber claimed the pair. Experience had taught Marjorie that they would awaken energized and quite ready to engage in more shenanigans.

  For certain, the propensity for impishness came from their Scots’ blood.

  “I’m quite looking forward to a hot bath, and a steaming cup of tea,” Marjorie admitted, realizing she’d forgotten to respond to Berget. Tiny, frosty puffs accented her words and emphasized precisely how frigid the temperature had become inside the coach since the sun began its slow descent behind the Highlands’ craggy horizon.

  A tot of bracing brandy or whisky in the tea wouldn’t go amiss, either.

  “Aye, I do, too,” came Berget’s muffled reply.

  Hours of trundling along in this inhospitable weather had chilled Marjorie to the marrow. A glance out the coach’s window revealed a cranky, charcoal-gray sky. She pulled her mouth downward and leaned forward a couple of inches, then clamped her teeth together in another bid to tamp down the wave of frustration billowing upward from her chest.

  Perfectly wonderful.

  If she weren’t mistaken, and she’d lived in the Highlands long enough to know she wasn’t, those pregnant clouds portended snow.

  Had Berget noticed, too?

  Mayhap that accounted for the single crease between her russet brows, the only indication she was less than satisfied. Berget hadn’t uttered a word of protest the lengthy journey, and she’d been traveling longer than Marjorie. Her sister-in-law was a saint and had become a good friend in recent months.

  She and Graeme had returned from Liam and Emeline MacKay’s Yuletide house party to collect Marjorie and her daughters for the trip to Trentwick Castle.

  Marjorie sincerely believed she would’ve been half-mad by now had she been required to jostle about in a conveyance as much as Berget had the past few months.

  And yet her sister-in-law remained as cheerful and patient as ever. Marjorie couldn’t help but admire her daughters’ former governess’s stamina and good nature. It was no wonder Graeme had fallen in love with Berget.

  Fending off the beginning of a headache, Marjorie pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose and wondered for the umpteenth time why she’d agreed to spend Hogmanay at Trentwick Castle.

  Not just Hogmanay, but a full week of festivities, God help her. A week amongst strangers. More on point, in the home of the Duke of Roxdale.

  Loneliness and boredom, that’s why.

  Pshaw. She silently but emphatically disregarded the impudent thought. Utter twaddle.

  She was the mother of two adorable, vivacious daughters, and she lived with her charming brothers-in-law, Graeme and Camden Kennedy, kind-hearted Berget, and a good-sized, devoted staff.

  She most assuredly was neither lonely nor bored.

  The pair of red-haired minxes currently—blessedly—sleeping soundly made certain of the latter. As for the former? Well, Marjorie refused to contemplate it. Widows with high-spirited daughters had other things to occupy their time and thoughts.

  Neither, however, was she contented.

  Eyeing the pewter, slightly pink-tinged sky, she schooled the frown once more trying to pull her mouth downward at the corners. Most definitely snow. Marjorie almost rolled her eyes heavenward in silent rebellion.

  Had that devil, the Duke of Roxdale, summoned the foul weather? Nae. Devils preferred roaring fire, not snow.

  Despite her determination otherwise, a sigh filtered past her lips.

  All they needed was to be snowed in with the austere, ill-disposed Keane Buchannan, Duke of Roxdale.

  To think, last summer—for all of five foolish minutes—she’d believed him disarming and interesting. Before his true colors had emerged. Rather, his true personality: Surly. Dour. Judgmental. His midnight, severe brows pulled together and thunderous censor heavy in his arrestingly beautiful, hazel eyes.

  The devil cannot have beautiful eyes, she argued to herself.

  No? Well, that one does.

  Probably to enchant his victims into sinning, like the sly serpent in the Garden of Eden.

  With deliberate intent, and perhaps the merest thrust of what she considered a too square chin, Marjorie pointed her thoughts in another direction and stared out the grimy window.

  In the freezing mist, she could make out the outline of Graeme’s huge horse plodding along to the right of the team.

  Always mist and fog and rain and gray. Yet, she’d grown to love the Highlands.

  Her brothers-in-law preferred to ride, rather than stuff their large frames into a cramped coach. Not that she blamed them. Towering well over six feet and boasting legs and arms to rival small trees, each was as out of place in a conveyance’s small confines as an elephant in a canary cage. But surely, they must be half-frozen themselves, even if they were Scots and accustomed to the cold clime.

  A particularly powerful shiver scuttled up Marjorie’s spine, spreading across her shoulders and raising the flesh. Shuddering, she silently cursed the weather, her sense of duty, and most of all, the domineering man she’d encounter all too soon.

  Come now, she chided herself, are you going to allow the likes of that bounder to keep you in a temper?

  Aye. The duke abraded her worse than scraping her naked bottom upon splintered wood.

  Hunching lower in the blankets’ folds, Berget offered a sympathetic smile.

  Marjorie’s frustration must’ve shown in her expression despite her efforts to appear unperturbed.

  Trentwick Castle cannot be much farther. It cannot.

  Marjorie hoped as she clamped her teeth against another shiver and burrowed into the furs pulled to her ears.

  This gathering would be the first time the feuding Kennedys and Buchannans had marked Hogmanay together in over three decades. Roxdale’s father had impregnated Graeme’s aunt, and Gordan Buchannan had been forced to marry Winifred Kennedy at blade point. She’d been as reluctant a participant as the old duke.

  According to Camden, family lore claimed his aunt had wept copiously throughout the ceremony, and all the while, the fifth duke had vehemently vowed he’d never bedded the lass. She’d died a mere month after giving birth to Roxdale—some said from a broken heart.

  Roxdale’s strong resemblance to his sire—the entire ducal lineage, in truth—refuted the old duke’s adamant claims that he hadn’t fathered the bairn.

  Henceforth, the families had avoided each other. Until now.

  And she was to blame, in part.

  Blast her interference and attempts at peacemaking.

  Chapter Two

  Marjorie had encouraged Graeme to invite Roxdale to the cèilidh festival last August. Yes, and look where your insistence has landed you? she scolded herself. Freezing, dreading the upcoming week, and forced to be gracious to their brusque, curt host who’d soundly insulted her the last time she’d seen him.

  Nonetheless, in recent months, Graeme and Roxdale had decided to put past offenses behind them, and as the former laird’s widow, Marjorie felt it her duty to attend the house party. Even though Roxdale’s behavior when they’d last met was nothing short of appalling.

  She winced slightly at the offending memory, seeing that day as clearly in her mind as if it had been yesterday. She closed her eyes to block out the intrusive recollection, but to no avail.

  Cora and Elana, their little cheeks stuffed squirrel-like full of clootie dumpling, had giggled hysterically while they talked, causing a spray of crumbs to fly forth onto the table. They’d never been deliberately ill-behaved before. Apologizing to Roxdale, Marjorie couldn’t hide her dismay and mortification.

  Eyebrows arched in a superior fashion, he’d sternly criticized her daughters’ table manners before she had a chance to gently correct them. It hadn’t been his place to admonish the girls, his cold disapproval meted out in clipped, critical tones, reducing Cora and Elana to tears.

  Nor had it been his place to reprove her and remark on her shortcomings as a mother. Oooh, even now, her blo
od heated. He’d all but implied she was an empty-headed nincompoop incapable of properly raising her daughters.

  It only happened rarely, but Marjorie had lost her temper, giving credence to redheads’ reputations for having fiery temperaments. Fury goading her outrage, she’d whispered in his ear in similarly starchy syllables as his own, precisely what he could do with his opinions and admonitions.

  Her suggestion may have contained a reference regarding what cavity into which he could stuff his handsome, arrogant head. And perhaps another reference to said head being so inflated with self-importance and self-righteousness, it wouldn’t fit in said cavity.

  She might’ve also asserted he wasn’t so different from the other ignoble blackguards who’d held the title before him, and she’d been grossly misguided in badgering Graeme to invite him to the celebration.

  His features chiseled from granite, Roxdale’s hazel eyes had gone cold as steel. Wordlessly, he’d risen, sweeping a condescending gaze over Marjorie and her daughters. He took her measure, inch by insolent inch, and given the snide tilt of his lips, he’d found her wanting.

  One of his raven brows had shied upward, just this side of contemptuous, and she’d balled her fists and bitten her tongue to refrain from telling him in front of her daughters to bugger himself. Stiff-shouldered, his anger and derision palpable, he’d strode away, his strapping legs moving with a lithe grace a man his size should not possess.

  And a woman as peeved at him as she was had absolutely no business noticing.

  Later, Marjorie had learned Cora and Elana had been mimicking the antics of a pair of rascally clan Buchannan lads who were sitting behind her and the duke. Nevertheless, the girls washed dishes for a week for their discourtesy.

  She’d contemplated requiring them to write Roxdale notes of apology. But then Roxdale’s proud, angular features arranged into a derisive mien sprang to mind, and instead, she itched to slap the superior smirk off his lovely, sculpted mouth.