The Scot Who Loved Her: The Scots of Honor Series Read online

  THE SCOT WHO LOVED HER

  The Scots of Honor Series

  ELIZA KNIGHT

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  More Books by Eliza Knight

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  After a brutal fight to secure a vital military secret, Scottish lord Malcolm Gordon, codename Raven, races from Edinburgh to deliver the news to his commanding officer in London. But before he arrives, he crosses paths with a lady’s bullet.

  Miss Olivia Aston is horrified that she’s shot a man while hunting. Fortunately, he’s still alive. But what to do with the gravely wounded Highlander? Her father despises the Scots and will likely turn him out once he’s discovered. With this latest blunder, there is also the very real possibility that her father will permanently remove her from society as he did her sister. But she can’t simply leave him to die.

  Malcolm awakens to discover that the information he carried has been stolen, and there’s no evidence of the culprit, other than a memory of her soft voice and bonny face. Time is running out. Despite his wound (mysteriously stitched), he must now hurry to get to the duke. When he reaches London, Malcolm learns the secrets he carried have already been compromised. He is charged with ferreting out the traitor amidst Edinburgh society. Begrudgingly, Malcolm is thrust into one soiree after another, only to come face to face with his beautiful, charming female assailant.

  Will she shoot him again? Though he has no solid evidence against Lady Olivia, she has to be linked to the traitors. He could drag her from the ballroom, present her to the powers that be as a possible suspect, but instead, he takes the dangerous flirtation to the next level. There is something utterly alluring about a woman who holds a weapon as well as she dances. Malcolm’s determined to make Olivia swoon until she confesses everything—that is, until someone makes an attempt on both their lives. What started as a game of cat and mouse turns into a deadly adventure, revealing startling intelligence neither of them sees coming.

  August 2022

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  COPYRIGHT © 2022 ELIZA KNIGHT

  THE SCOT WHO LOVED HER © 2022 Eliza Knight. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part or the whole of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or utilized (other than for reading by the intended reader) in ANY form (now known or hereafter invented) without prior written permission by the author. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal, and punishable by law.

  * * *

  THE SCOT WHO LOVED HER is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and or are used fictitiously and solely the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, places, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental.

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  Cover Design by Dar Albert

  Edited by Erica Monroe

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  MORE BOOKS BY ELIZA KNIGHT

  Scots of Honor

  Return of the Scot

  The Scot is Hers

  Taming the Scot

  * * *

  Prince Charlie’s Rebels

  The Highlander Who Stole Christmas

  Pretty in Plaid

  * * *

  Prince Charlie’s Angels

  The Rebel Wears Plaid

  Truly Madly Plaid

  You’ve Got Plaid

  * * *

  The Sutherland Legacy

  The Highlander’s Gift

  The Highlander’s Quest

  The Highlander’s Stolen Bride

  The Highlander’s Hellion

  The Highlander’s Secret Vow

  The Highlander’s Enchantment

  * * *

  The Stolen Bride Series

  The Highlander’s Temptation

  The Highlander’s Reward

  The Highlander’s Conquest

  The Highlander’s Lady

  The Highlander’s Warrior Bride

  The Highlander’s Triumph

  The Highlander’s Sin

  Wild Highland Mistletoe (a Stolen Bride winter novella)

  The Highlander’s Charm (a Stolen Bride novella)

  A Kilted Christmas Wish – a contemporary Holiday spin-off

  The Highlander’s Surrender

  The Highlander’s Dare

  * * *

  The Conquered Bride Series

  Conquered by the Highlander

  Seduced by the Laird

  Taken by the Highlander (a Conquered bride novella)

  Claimed by the Warrior

  Stolen by the Laird

  Protected by the Laird (a Conquered bride novella)

  Guarded by the Warrior

  * * *

  The MacDougall Legacy Series

  Laird of Shadows

  Laird of Twilight

  Laird of Darkness

  * * *

  Pirates of Britannia: Devils of the Deep

  Savage of the Sea

  The Sea Devil

  A Pirate’s Bounty

  THE THISTLES AND ROSES SERIES

  Promise of a Knight

  Eternally Bound

  Breath from the Sea

  * * *

  The Highland Bound Series (Erotic time-travel)

  Behind the Plaid

  Bared to the Laird

  Dark Side of the Laird

  Highlander’s Touch

  Highlander Undone

  Highlander Unraveled

  * * *

  Touchstone Series

  Highland Steam

  Highland Brawn

  Highland Tryst

  Highland Heat

  * * *

  Wicked Women

  Her Desperate Gamble

  Seducing the Sheriff

  Kiss Me, Cowboy

  HISTORICAL FICTION

  Releasing April 12, 2022

  The Mayfair Bookshop

  * * *

  Releasing 2023

  The Other Astaire

  * * *

  Tales From the Tudor Court

  My Lady Viper

  Prisoner of the Queen

  * * *

  Ancient Historical Fiction

  A Day of Fire: a novel of Pompeii

  A Year of Ravens: a novel of Boudica’s Rebellion

  * * *

  French Revolution

  Ribbons of Scarlet: a novel of the French Revolution

  PROLOGUE

  Scottish Highlands, 1797

  The boar was the final straw for Malcolm’s mother.

  She never came out and said as much, but on the afternoon of his ninth birthday, the only son of the Earl of Dunlyon returned from a Highlands hunt with his very Scottish father to find his very English mother staring at him with a mixture of horror and shame. Mouth agape, her pretty green eyes as wide as the boar’s he’d just maimed, following the path of the bloody cross smeared on his forehead. His battle mark.

  His mother, Gemma, recoiled. Her accusing gaze shot to the earl, who’d joined them in the grand entrance of the opulent house he’d built for her. “What have you done to him?” Her face scrunched up as though she’d sucked a lemon. “He’s covered in gore!”

  A frigid moment of silence passed. His father’s massive hand tightened on Malcolm’s shoulder possessively, or was it protectively? Contempt rolled between the earl and countess like a ball being passed. Only this wasn’t a friendly game.

  Finally, the earl’s brogue rumbled with pride. “Our son has become a man today. A hunter. Ye should be proud.”

  Malcolm wanted his mother to be proud of him too. But she was staring at his hands, drawing his gaze to the blood on his palms and caked beneath his fingernails. He tried to wipe the crimson onto his torn hunting shirt, but little good it did. “There’s nothing to fear, Mama,” he’d said. “I fought the boar, and I won. Papa said all lads eat the heart of their first kill. He says I’m a natural hunter.”

  “Eat the heart?” Lady Dunlyon’s hand came to her throat as she blanched.

  Hoping to ease her temper, wee Malcolm held out a bloody tusk and grinned, offering her the prize in the hope she would understand. “Look, I saved this for ye.”

  His lady mother did not accept his gift. Instead, she struck out, knocking the trophy to the ground. She gave a shudder. “Vile!”

  Malcolm’s smile faltered. “Mama?” He reached for her, longing for a simple touch, a word of affection or acceptance.

  Leaping back, the lady shouted, “Do not touch me with those bloody hands.”

  Tears welled in Malcolm’s eyes. His hands fell to his side, and all the honor he’d felt on the hunt plummeted with them. ’His mother’s face softened for a split second, so fleeting it could have been his imagination.

  But then she flicked her hate-filled gaze back to the Earl and hissed, “You’ve ruined him. He’ll never make a worthy lord and gentleman, only the savage you’ve created.”

  M
alcolm’s lip quivered. Was he a savage? He couldn’t tell whether his mother meant her anger for him or for his father. Perhaps his father didn’t know either.

  “Wife,” his father warned.

  The countess shook her head. “No civilized Englishwoman should be subjected to this, much less the gently born and bred daughter of an earl.”

  “Need I remind ye that I am an earl?” Tension laced his father’s words.

  “Not an English one.” She jabbed her finger at his father’s chest. “You, sir, are nothing more than an incorrigible Scotsman and an ill-suited embarrassment. In the ten years that I’ve been forced to live in this dreary, godforsaken country, I’ve wanted nothing more than to escape back to London and polite society where I belong. To the land of manners and propriety. Where men wear trousers and not pleated skirts that only come to their knees. Skin! Frightful skin, showing at all hours! I need a world where men are dignified, and ladies are not expected to rear their children without a proper governess. Where children do not come home covered in blood, grinning like heathens.”

  Malcolm could make no sense of this diatribe at his age, but he understood that he must have done something wrong. He retrieved the boar tusk, intent on offering it again. His mother must not understand that he meant to make it a gift for her, a treasure. “Mama—”

  But before he could explain, Gemma whirled away from them both and charged up the stairs. And by morning, the Countess of Dunlyon, along with wee Caroline, Malcolm’s infant sister, was gone.

  Which, in retrospect, was for the better. For this taught young Malcolm a lesson that he would require no reminding of as he came into his own as the Earl of Dunlyon: women were cruel, unreliable she-devils. And he would never let one close enough again to get the better of him.

  1

  Aston House

  London

  Autumn, 1817

  “Ladies do not pour punch on gentleman.” The Viscountess Helvellyn swept into the room, a whirlwind of disapproval—as usual. Her voice was noticeably higher when she was in this mood.

  With a dramatic flop, her daughter, the Miss Olivia Grace Aston, kicked off her blue silk dancing slippers, which matched her ball gown, and tossed herself onto the gold brocade chaise longue in her bedchamber with a decidedly indelicate huff. If only her mother knew the reason why she’d given his lordship a punch bath, she’d not think her such a spoiled child.

  This season was proving to be the most wretched of them all. To think that Olivia had considered things might improve from the previous disastrous months she’d spent in London during her coming out. She longed for the quiet of Scotland. What a terrible dilemma that her parents preferred England.

  “My dear,” Lady Helvellyn said, wafting herself furiously with the pearl-handled fan she used whenever wearing her famous Aston pearls. The wind she created with her frenzy of fanning caused the oil lamp lit on the side table to flicker, or perhaps the flicker was from her still swishing satin skirts. “Whatever has got into you? You cannot expect any gentleman to propose with your disconcerting demeanor. It is unacceptable, especially after the trouble I went to having you re-approved at Almack’s.”

  “Almack’s, smallmack’s,” Olivia muttered and reached up to unpin the curls that had been painstakingly placed in her honey-colored hair by her maid hours before. Though most young ladies would beg, borrow or steal to get into the famously snobby social club—for to be a part meant you were pre-approved as acceptable marriage material—Olivia had been given the cut direct the previous season. She was well on her way to achieving it again this year, much to her mother’s horror. Secretly, she hoped her punishment would be that she was sent to their estate in Scotland, and then she would fake pout all the way there.

  “Olivia Grace Aston.” Her mother’s shrill tone would normally have been enough to pull Olivia from her mood, but not today.

  Even if the Prince Regent himself walked into her boudoir at that moment, she’d not be able to do more than stick her tongue out at him. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Prinny wouldn’t like that. So, she’d have to whip out her own extravagant fan and do it behind there.

  She let out an exaggerated sigh, tossing pins toward her dressing table. “Mother, I am tired.”

  “You’re tired?” The viscountess approached with such sharp steps Olivia feared her mother’s legs might snap clear off. She tapped her fan onto the dressing tabletop, accentuating every word. “How am I going to explain this to your father?”

  A sarcastic remark was on the tip of Olivia’s tongue. But one glance at her mother, whose brown eyes bore a particularly pained look this evening, had her biting her cheek instead.

  “Pouring your punch on that poor Lord Hibbert.” Lady Helvellyn snapped her fan closed and tapped it against her thigh.

  Olivia sat up straighter, her hands gripping the edge of the chaise. It took everything she had not to shout out her frustration or, at the very least, grab the blasted fan and defenestrate it. “He deserved it, Mother.”

  Lady Helvellyn scoffed. If she frowned any harder, the powder she’d put on her face would crack. “Ladies do not pour punch on gentlemen,” she said again. The fan snapped back open to flutter once more. If she continued at this pace, her mother wouldn’t need her maid to take her hair down as the fan would do the task for her.

  Olivia pursed her lips, keeping her eyes on her mother, and said what she’d been avoiding since their silent carriage ride home from Almack’s. “Well, then we are in agreement, for Lord Hog-Grubber is not a gentleman.”

  The viscountess stopped fanning, slapping the opened silken fan against her chest and causing Olivia to wince as though it had been her cheek.

  “Olivia! Such vulgar language. I’ll not be in the least bit surprised if the patronesses decide to revoke your voucher again, even with my cousin being a part of the set. You’ll not be invited to any more balls. There will be no proposals forthcoming. Your season will end. Again.” Lady Helvellyn’s cheeks had gone red, and her breathing was labored. If she didn’t calm down, she’d suffer a fit of the vapors.

  Olivia considered standing in case she needed to break her mother’s fall. The familiar sting of tears burned, and she fought to hold them back. What did she care if there was no proposal? She didn’t want to marry a goat anyway. Besides, Lord Hibbert and his pompous friends were not gentlemen. He, and so many others like him, had not been simply asking for a dance. He’d insulted her. Gutted her. And she couldn’t even tell her mother about it because Lady Helvellyn would suffer a fit of apoplexy if she knew the truth.

  With a deep breath, she tried to push away her anger. Tried to push away the vile words the blackguard had hissed. “I am sorry, Mother, for having embarrassed you and for possibly ruining my chances once more.”

  But I am not sorry for dumping my punch on that swine.

  Her mother’s eyes flickered with panic, and she spoke hurriedly, as if she didn’t get all the words out, they would dry up. “We shall write a letter tomorrow, begging forgiveness of Lord Hibbert. And then another to the patronesses.”

  Olivia nodded, all the while knowing she would never write such a letter. Never. She just needed her mother to leave her be.