The Seduction of Elliot McBride (Mackenzies Series) by Jennifer Ashley

keep her eyes firmly open growing up with her kind but distant, ever-so-respectable father and her self-indulgent, rather indolent mother.
    “My stepmother,” Juliana said. She had to stop and clear her throat.
    Elliot looked up, his black coat and white shirt elegant, yet his skin brown with his outdoors life, his hands blunt and worn from work.
    Juliana coughed and took a drink of water.
    “I’ll tell Mahindar not to make it so spicy next time,” Elliot said.
    “No, no. It’s fine.” She dabbed her lips with her napkin. “As I was saying, my stepmother can be very blunt. Discusses things quite frankly. When she comes to visit, shewill want to know all about Priti, and her history. What shall I tell her?”
    Elliot looked faintly surprised. “Tell her anything you like. I’m not ashamed of her.”
    “Yes, but, my dear Elliot, I’m not sure myself of the story.”
    He frowned. “I’ve told you.”
    “No.” Juliana dragged in a breath. “No, you haven’t.”
    His frown deepened. “Haven’t I?”
    “No.”
    “Mmph.” Elliot reached for the whiskey decanter and poured a large measure into the goblet. He took a generous sip then ran his tongue across his lower lip. “Sometimes I can’t remember the things I’ve said or not said.”
    “I understand. It must be painful for you.”
    Elliot stopped in the act of taking another drink, the goblet halfway to his mouth. “Don’t pity me, Juliana. I’m sick to death of pity.”
    Juliana held up her hand. “Not pity. Interest. I’d be quite curious to hear the story.”
    Elliot drank the whiskey. He set down the goblet, keeping one hand on it. “It’s not pretty. Not fit for young ladies at a drawing room tea.”
    “We’re in the dining room. And I’m a married woman now.” Juliana’s face heated as she remembered the weight of Elliot in the dark last night, the pain-pleasure when he pushed his way inside her for the first time. “In all ways married.”
    Elliot’s expression didn’t soften. “There’s a chance she’s not my daughter,” he said. “But a much better chance that she is.”
    “Which do you hope?” Juliana held her breath for the answer.
    “That she’s mine. But it doesn’t matter. Her mother is dead, Archibald Stacy is dead, and Priti will live with me, no matter what.”

Chapter 9

    Juliana let out her breath again, little by little. “Mr. Archibald Stacy was the lady’s husband?”
    “Stacy was a Scotsman I helped settle on a plantation. I’d known him in the army, given him some training. Stacy came to me when he resigned his commission, and I helped him find a plantation near mine.”
    Juliana knew from Ainsley that after Elliot had left the army, he’d become a planter, and then made a business of showing other Europeans how to live and prosper in India.
    “We were friends,” Elliot went on. “Stacy had a Scottish wife, a young woman he’d gone back to Glasgow to marry, but she grew sick and died within a month of their arrival.”
    “Oh dear. Poor lady.”
    “Illness can take one swiftly in India,” Elliot said, not without feeling. “Stacy grieved, then took a fancy to an Indian woman called Jaya.”
    A courtesan
, Juliana supplied silently. She knew that respectable young women in India were ferociously lookedafter to prevent them having out-of-wedlock affairs with European men—with any man, for that matter.
    “It was a casual affair,” Elliot said. “And I…had an affair with her too. But Jaya fell for Stacy. She feared he had no true affection for her, was using her to soothe his feelings. So, to move things along, she told him she preferred me, packed her bags, and arrived at my house. Stacy was incensed and came to fetch her back. I don’t think he realized his affection for her until she left him.” He turned the goblet with stiff fingers. “When I returned to the plantation after my capture I found that Stacy had married Jaya, she’d borne a child, and she was dead. Stacy had abandoned