She wanted a future that was patently impossible.
The baggage car sat between the locomotive and the passenger cars. Rail workers unloaded trunks, bags, crates, and boxes of various sizes while passengers handed tickets to the baggage employees to retrieve their things. Jani had taken their tickets and the other accompanying footman to the baggage line.
Even though the crowd of people had begun to disperse, Mena found the bustle a bit oppressive. It surprised her how accustomed she’d become to the remote and bucolic paradise that was Wester Ross. Certainly it lacked the convenience and diversions of the city, but it also lacked the dangers, the cloying smells, the ceaseless noises, and the endless stretches of stone and steam and winter pall of coal smoke.
Mena loved some things about London, but all she could think of now was how unhappy her life had been here. She’d grown up in the country with wood fires instead of coal, with open spaces and sweet-smelling grasses, emerald fields, and stone fences. She felt at home amongst those things.
Here she was a visitor, and it had ever been thus.
“They’re waiting to offload Hamish until the authorities arrive.” Liam sighed as Mena turned toward him and caught the baleful look he cast toward the train. “I have to remain to see him off and may be yet a while. Go to the portico and take the carriage that awaits Rhianna and Andrew.”
Suddenly struck by uneasy anxiety, Mena also regarded the train with distaste. “I hate to leave you to deal with this all on your own,” she fretted. “What if something … goes amiss?”
Liam leaned down until his warm breath caressed her ear, and sent shivers of awareness skittering along her skin, heedless of anyone who might see his actions as untoward or inappropriate. “Ye are eternally sweet, Mena mine,” he murmured tenderly. “But between Russell, Gavin, and me, not to mention the officers they’re sending to retrieve him, Hamish willna have an opportunity to cause trouble. Besides, if something dangerous were to happen, I’d not like ye or my children anywhere near.”
Mena turned her head slightly toward him, pressing her cheek against his before pulling away. “Very well.” She smiled up into the features that had become more precious than any she’d known. It amazed her how much trust and tenderness she could feel for such a big and brutish Highlander. Millicent LeCour’s words filtered back to her from the last morning she’d spent in London.
Sometimes … the safest place to be is at the side of a violent man.
She hadn’t truly understood the actress at the time. In fact, she’d wondered if the woman had fooled herself into believing that, because her own fiancé was the very cold, very lethal Christopher Argent. The man who’d snapped Mr. Burns’s neck right in front of her as though he’d done so a million times.
Mena understood now. It didn’t get more violent than the Demon Highlander, and she’d never felt more secure in her life than when she was by his side. The power and prowess that used to frighten her had, indeed, become her sanctuary.
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” she admonished, putting a staying hand on his arm before she could stop herself. “I have this terrible feeling. We’ve only just … there’s so much to say … and I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”
Liam turned his head and looked away from her, his features tightening, his jaw working and flexing, and the vein at his temple pulsed like it did when he was trying to hide displeasure. When his gaze met hers again, Mena’s heart stopped. A suspicious and shocking gloss shimmered in his dark eyes before he blinked it away.
“Are you all right?” she asked alertly.
He didn’t speak for a long time, instead staring at the her hand, still clutching his suitcoat. “It is a new experience for me to part with someone knowing that they might … wish me to return.”
Her own eyes, already misted with emotion now welled with it. “I not only wish for your return, I do not wish us to be parted in the first place.”
His smile was uncharacteristically charming, and a new softness found its way into his hard eyes. “I will hurry as fast as I am able.” He reached for her hand and kissed it over the glove. “While still taking the utmost care.”
“See that you do,” she said primly, adopting a very governesslike expression. “I’ll not be disobeyed.”
Heat simmered away any vestiges of vulnerability and Mena feared he’d melt her into a puddle of lust right in the middle of the Euston Station platform. “Tonight, lass, I’ll be yers to command.”
Flustered, she turned from him with a lightness in her step and a glow in her heart she didn’t think anything could extinguish. The children were no longer at the vending cart, nor could she see them in the milling crowd, so she headed in the direction of the portico toward the carriages, hoping they hadn’t already left for Lady Eloise’s. Though, if they had, that might give her time to stop by Farah’s home and commiserate with her about—
A hand clamped down on Mena’s wrist and nearly jerked her off her feet. Her scream was lost in the tinny whistle of a locomotive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I’ve got ’er!” a wiry, unfamiliar man crowed from beneath a grimy hat. His clawlike fingers bit into Mena’s arm as she struggled to free herself. “I’ve got the viscountess!”
A cold fear Mena had never before experienced speared her chest as five men detached from where they stood posted next to every exit to the platform, and began to hurry in their direction. They were dressed to blend with the crowd in plain clothing, but each of them had the demeanor of hired muscle. Two of them brandished clubs and one swung irons much like the ones she’d been subjected to in Belle Glen.