The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie

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