Spellbound & Seduced by Marguerite Kaye Page A

you, will die a year to the day upon which you married him.’
    Lilias’s words held the villagers transfixed. The flames licked higher now, the heat was making her choke, but the pain was, as yet, bearable. ‘And so it will be for each generation of my female kin in the years to come. To them I bequeath my powers and my curse until a true and perfect love does break the cycle.’
    Smoke filled her lungs. Pain seared her flesh. Lillias fortified herself with a final look at her petrified daughter and corrupt son-in-law, then closed her eyes and waited for death to take her.

Chapter One
    December, 1822
    The snow was falling heavily, thick flakes fluttering down from the leaden sky like a lace curtain. Lawrence Connaught reined in his horse and pulled his beaver hat from his head to brush it clean. Blinking away the melting crystals which clung to his lashes, he shook the damp from his hair, which was unfashionably long and curled over the high collar of his many-caped great coat. The rutted road, by London standards no more than a track, meandered ahead of him, dipping and climbing in a most contrary way, which made it impossible to tell how far he had still to travel. The last village was about five miles back. If his mother was to be relied on—which she rarely was—then Dunswaird was another mile, at most two, further on.
    â€˜You’ll spot the place easily,’ Moira Connaught had told her son with a shudder of distaste. ‘It looks more like a medieval keep than a castle. It is quite old but quite plain too. I doubt it will appeal to your architectural sensibilities.’
    For once, Lawrence had been inclined to agree with her. Tower-house-style castles were, in his experience, durable but rather dour. He was, however, curious about this unexpected legacy. Dunswaird Castle had come into his ownership following the death of his mother’s uncle, a confirmed misogynist whose will, twenty years out of date, named her brother, Lawrence’s uncle, as heir. Since he had joined his maker some ten years previous leaving a clutch of daughters, all as yet unwed, and had no other male siblings, Lawrence found himself, six months after the death of a relative he had never met, the possessor of his castle and his title, provided he paid, according to some ancient tradition, the price of a thistle and a rose to the crown each Lady Day.
    The most recent of Lawrence’s architectural commissions had been completed in October. He had not yet decided on the next. More importantly, he was in urgent need of an excuse to avoid yet another of his mother’s house parties and the parade of eligible young ladies she produced for him in an increasingly desperate attempt to see her eldest son settled. But her eldest son was not in the least bit interested in settling. The very word, so staid and dull, bored him.
    Variety was the spice of Lawrence’s life, in both work and women—especially women—at least it had been until recently. Recently, even variety had begun to pall. His boredom threshold was becoming alarmingly low. The thrill of the chase, the witty banter with its double entendres and seductive undertones which he had once enjoyed almost as much as the consummation which followed, now seemed to him pointless. Horrified by the notion that he might be growing arrogant, one of those tedious, seen-it-all boors, he had begun to spend more and more time alone. His last liaison had ended six months ago now, and he felt no inclination to embark upon another. Something was missing from his life, but it was not another affair. He needed a change of a more substantive kind.
    â€˜And change, these Highlands of Scotland most certainly are,’ he muttered to his horse. ‘Though just exactly where I am for the present quite defeats me.” Jamming his hat back on his head, Lawrence set off once more, wondering if he’d been unwise not to spend the night with his baggage at the last