The Pursuit Read online

  JOHANNA

  LINDSEY

  The PURSUIT

  Contents:

  Chapters

  One

  “You don’t like your mother very much, d’you, m’boy?”…

  Two

  Kimberly MacGregor waved the letter in her hand to gain…

  Three

  It was an old home, maintained extremely well. Donald Ross…

  Four

  Lincoln could blame his curiosity. He’d heard of the legend…

  Five

  Melissa stared dreamily out at the countryside rolling past the…

  Six

  Lincoln knew that it wouldn’t be easy, sitting down to eat…

  Seven

  Lincoln found the lake easily enough. He’d been told to follow…

  Eight

  Melissa was disappointed that she’d missed seeing Lincoln Burnett when…

  Nine

  Lincoln might not have gotten to see Melissa that day…

  Ten

  Melissa’s disappointment was so strong after the second week rolled…

  Eleven

  This was not the country waif in frill-less garb Lincoln…

  Twelve

  It was impossible to wait until teatime that next afternoon.

  Thirteen

  Lincoln arrived at the theater that night very eager to…

  Fourteen

  “Did you find him?” Ian Six asked as he entered…

  Fifteen

  For such a big house, and with so many servants…

  Sixteen

  Lincoln opened the door to his study, where he’d been..

  Seventeen

  Justin hadn’t Worked on his right swing, as had been…

  Eighteen

  “You’re late, m’boy, and for once you really shouldn’t have been,”…

  Nineteen

  Find out what Melissa thinks? Much more easily said than done.

  Twenty

  Melissa actually considered climbing out the window of her bedroom…

  Twenty-One

  Melissa sat back in the coach opposite Lincoln. It was Plush.

  Twenty-Two

  “Your silence isn’t very encouraging,” Lincoln said with a great…

  Twenty-Three

  Melissa was amazed, looking at the clock in her room…

  Twenty-Four

  Lincoln didn’t try to delude himself that Melissa’s uncles would…

  Twenty-Five

  “We took care o’ it.” Ian One was greeted with…

  Twenty-Six

  It was much easier to rant and rave at her…

  Twenty-Seven

  When Ian Six reported that Melissa had locked herself in…

  Twenty-Eight

  Curiosity prompted the MacFearsons to arrive early at the address…

  Twenty-Nine

  Melissa was still too angry to feel just relief. Megan…

  Thirty

  Kimberly was annoyed with him. Well, in truth, steaming mad…

  Thirty-One

  “D’ye realize that Melissa actually said she might no’ obey…

  Thirty-Two

  “She’s angry,” Ian Six cautioned his brothers before they entered…

  Thirty-Three

  It took nearly a half hour for a full accounting.

  Thirty-Four

  Lincoln couldn’t remember ever being so nervous. During those few…

  Thirty-Five

  Melissa had wanted to hurry, because she’d assumed, like most…

  Thirty-Six

  Melissa had taken Lincoln by surprise with her question. Herself…

  Thirty-Seven

  Lincoln woke with the same feeling of euphoria with which…

  Thirty-Eight

  It was still early afternoon when they arrived back in…

  Thirty-Nine

  Lachlan stormed into the parlor. He was unkempt, dusty, tired-looking…

  Forty

  The journey back to the Highlands of Scotland wasn’t as…

  Forty-One

  The castle had been warned of their impending arrival. Rooms…

  Forty-Two

  “Was that wise, d’ye think, putting him down there wi’…

  Forty-Three

  Melissa went to bed seriously disgruntled with her father. She…

  Forty-Four

  Melissa marched into the castle, stopped at the bottom of…

  Forty-Five

  They were found late that afternoon about halfway home, crossing…

  Forty-Six

  More than half of the MacFearson brothers caught cold that…

  Forty-Seven

  Melissa was extremely frustrated with herself, and her body in…

  Forty-Eight

  Kregora was silent. No laughter, none of the usual banter…

  Forty-Nine

  It was very odd, to be among the MacFearsons and…

  Fifty

  It could be a serious inconvenience to be an only…

  Fifty-one

  Melissa wouldn’t let up badgering. Lincoln until he agreed to…

  Fifty-Two

  Lincoln was sitting down. He was in shock. Melissa was…

  Fifty-Three

  Lincoln had walked out. His tone had been cold, but…

  Fifty-Four

  It was the deepest sort of pain, to see all…

  Fifty-Five

  Lincoln rode back to Scotland at a normal pace. Perhaps…

  Fifty-Six

  They were married two day later. Lincoln didn’t mind waiting…

  About the Author

  By Johanna Lindsey

  Praise for Johanna Lindsey

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  “YOU don’t like your mother very much, d’you, m’boy?”

  Lincoln Ross Burnett, seventeenth viscount Cambury, glanced curiously at his aunt sitting across from him in the plush coach that was climbing ever higher into the Highlands of Scotland. The question wasn’t surprising, at least to him. Yet it was one that would simply be ignored—if asked by anyone else.

  His Aunt Henry—only her husband and Lincoln had ever been permitted to call her Henry—was a sweet, cherubic woman in her forty-fifth year. A bit scatterbrained, but that merely made her more adorable. She was short, pudgy, and had a round face surrounded by an arch of frizzy gold curls. Her daughter, Edith, was identical, just a younger version. Neither was classically pretty, but they grew on you; each had her own endearing qualities.

  Lincoln loved them both. They were his family now, not the woman who had remained in the Highlands after she’d sent him off to live with his uncle in England nineteen years ago. He’d been only ten at the time, and had been devastated to have been ripped from the only home he’d known and sent to live among strangers.

  But the Burnetts didn’t remain strangers. From the beginning they treated him like a son, even though they had no children yet. Edith was born the year after his arrival, and they were told, unfortunately, that she would be their one and only. So it wasn’t surprising that his Uncle Richard decided to make him his heir, even changing his name so that the Burnett name would be preserved along with the title.

  It shouldn’t bother him any longer. He’d lived more years in England now than he had at his home in Scotland. He’d lost the Scottish burr years ago, and he fit so well into English society that most people he was acquainted with had no idea he’d been born in Scotland. They thought Ross was merely his middle name, rather than his original surname.

  No, none of this should bother him a bit after all these years, but it bloody well did. He kept his bitterness firmly in hand, though—at least he’d thought no one had detected it. Ye
t his aunt’s question suggested she knew the truth.

  Oddly, one of the things that Lincoln admired greatly in his aunt was that although she could bully with the best of them if it was a matter of health or welfare—and he’d spent many an unnecessary extra day in his bed getting over a cold to prove it—she didn’t assert herself otherwise. If a matter was considered none of her business, she wouldn’t try to make it her business. And how he felt about his mother was his business alone.

  Nor was he inclined to own up to those feelings, and so he asked Henriette evasively, “What gives you that idea?”

  “This brooding you’ve been doing since we left home isn’t like you, and you’ve never been so tense—nor so silent, I might add. You haven’t said a word since Edith dozed off.”

  Thankfully, he had the perfect excuse. “I’ve had a lot on my mind since you announced Edith was going to have her come-out in the grand old style this season and volunteered me as her chaperone. I don’t know the first bloody thing about chaperoning a young miss who’s shopping for a husband.”

  “Nonsense, there’s nothing complicated about it. And you did agree it’s past time for you to do that shopping for yourself, since you’ve no one in particular in mind yet either. You should have already got your own family started. You’ve been tardy, which is fine for a man, but Edith can’t afford to be. So you accomplish the same goal together. It’s a brilliant plan, and you know it. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Well, then, we are back to my question, aren’t we?” Henriette persisted.

  “No, actually, I’ve answered that, and if not to your satisfaction, at least be assured there is nothing for you to be concerned about.”

  “Nonsense,” she disagreed again. “Just because I haven’t nagged you about the direction you choose for your life, doesn’t mean I haven’t been immeasurably concerned when you’ve trod down the wrong paths.”

  “Immeasurably?” He raised a brow, accompanied with a grin he couldn’t hold back.

  She humphed over his amusement. “You will not dillydally around the subject thinking you can avoid it this time.”

  He sighed. “Very well, what else has led to this amazing assumption that I don’t like my mother?”

  “Possibly because you haven’t visited her in nineteen years?”

  It had been ripping him up, the stark beauty of the view out the coach window. His mind hadn’t been playing reminiscent tricks on him all these years. The Highlands of Scotland were as wild and magnificent as he remembered—and he’d missed his homeland more than even he had realized, to go by the effect that seeing it again was having on him. But even that hadn’t been enough to draw him back here sooner.

  “There’s been no need to visit her here, since she’s visited England numerous times,” he pointed out.

  “And you managed to be busy elsewhere most of those times,” she countered.

  “Unavoidable circumstance,” he maintained, though her expression said she wasn’t buying that either.

  “I’d say pulling teeth would be easier.”

  “The timing was never convenient.”

  “Faugh, none of your reasons ever washed. Excuses all. Goodness, don’t think I’ve ever seen you blush, m’boy. Hit the mark, did I?”

  His blush, of course, just deepened, now that it had been pointed out. The increased embarrassment turned his voice quite stiff. “This conversation is not productive, Aunt Henry. Do leave it go, before we wake Edith.”

  She was hurt that he refused to share his feelings with her. He saw it briefly before she masked it with a tsk, a twist of her lips, then a shrug. Henriette didn’t pout. She probably didn’t know how. But she wasn’t usually so persistent either, and he was afraid the subject wasn’t over, that it would be brought up again at another time.

  His Uncle Richard had known what the problem was, but he’d had no answers for Lincoln. Richard Burnett had never been close with his only sister, so he couldn’t explain her reasoning with any degree of certainty, but neither did he take her side in the matter. The best he’d been able to offer was that she was raising Lincoln alone, without a father to guide him—then the trouble began and she didn’t know how to handle the situation. Besides, Richard had been in the middle, very grateful that she’d sent Lincoln to him, thus providing him with an heir, so he preferred to ignore the reasons for it.

  Lincoln wasn’t quite sure why he’d finally agreed to revisit his old home. Most likely because he had made the decision to find himself a wife and get his own family started—a new life, a new start—and he wished to put his old grievances to rest first. It was a major undertaking, starting a new family. He planned to do it right and to have no brooding influence from the past mucking it up. But what had him so worried were the strong doubts that he could put those resentments to rest. He was afraid that seeing his mother in the home she had denied him was just going to fan it all to the point of rage again. The previous rage had lasted two years after he’d arrived in England, two long years before it tamped down to mere resentment.

  He did want it all gone, though, all behind him. There was even the remote hope that he could forgive his mother. He was almost thirty, too old to be holding childhood grudges. And the blame wasn’t even all hers. She’d merely been too much the coward to confront their neighbor and insist he put a leash on his sons, who were determined to kill Lincoln every chance they got. Numerous things could have been done to end the savage onslaught. But she chose not to face it, chose instead to uproot Lincoln, sending him away from his home, his country—and her.

  Two

  KIMBERLY MacGregor waved the letter in her hand to gain her husband’s attention as he entered her sitting room. “Megan has written again,” she told him. “She has invitations piling up, too many as usual, but in this case that’s ideal. Lets her pick and choose which will be more pertinent to the task at hand. She’s sounding really excited. ’Course, she did own up to how bored she was when she made the suggestion, what with Devlin away on business and expected to be gone the whole summer. Want to read it?”

  “Nay.”

  That answer was too abrupt and a bit disgruntled-sounding for a man of Lachlan MacGregor’s easy temperament. “You aren’t having second thoughts about letting Melissa go to London, are you?”

  “Aye.”

  “Lachlan!”

  His disgruntled tone now had a matching look to it when he said, “I dinna like asking the duke and duchess o’ Wrothston for favors.”

  Kimberly relaxed. She should have known. Lachlan might get along famously these days with Devlin St. James when he and his wife, Megan, came to visit them at Kregora Castle, or vice versa, but it wasn’t always that way. They had in fact met under bizarre circumstances…well, not so much bizarre as well planned and executed.

  Lachlan had been reaving in those days—the polite term for robbing—reaving the English along the border, to support kith and kin after his stepmother ran off with his inheritance. And Megan and Devlin happened to pick Scotland to elope to, which was how they crossed paths with him.

  That might have been well and fine and the end of it, except that Lachlan fancied himself smitten by the lovely Megan and elected to steal her away as well as Devlin’s purse that day. Even that had ended well enough, since Devlin gave hot pursuit to retrieve his duchess-to-be and thrashed Lachlan soundly for his audacity.

  Oddly, that still wasn’t the end of it, however, because unbeknownst to them both, the two men were related by marriage, sharing the same aunt, and when Lachlan decided to put reaving behind him—it had never really worked to support his clan—and marry a wealthy heiress instead to solve the problem of his lack of funds, he turned to that aunt to help him find a likely bride. And his Aunt Margaret just happened to be visiting her grandnephew Devlin in England at the time.

  Kimberly had met Lachlan there at Wrothston—was there for the same reason as he, actually, to find a spouse. He was distracted from that
purpose briefly, not having known that the lady he’d tried to abduct with matrimony in mind the previous year was now happily wed to his host. That Megan was now the Duchess of Wrothston didn’t deter him from trying to lure her away from her duke.

  Kimberly had been aware of his fancy for the lovely Megan, so she had immediately scratched him off her possible-husband-for-herself list, despite her strong attraction to him. But they ended up crossing paths much too often, having been put in the same wing of the huge mansion, and although on the surface they rubbed each other wrong—causing many a harsh word—as fate would have it, the attraction was actually mutual, and Lachlan ended up seducing Kimberly instead.

  Devlin, of course, hadn’t been too happy about letting the Scottish reaver who’d tried to steal his bride abide under his roof, even if they were somewhat related by marriage through their mutual aunt. Not surprisingly, he’d jumped on the first excuse to give Lachlan a more thorough beating than the previous one he’d administered. To grant Lachlan his due, that was accomplished only because he’d made himself sick unto death with drink—because of Kimberly. He was a bit over six and a half feet tall, after all, and had a strapping, muscular body to go with that height, so he was easily able to come out the winner in most fights.

  Devlin might have had to apologize for accusing Lachlan of stealing some of his prime horse-flesh, which he was innocent of, and the beating he gave him because of it, but they’d become friends in the end—well, a few years down the road anyway—and were still good friends. Which didn’t account for Lachlan’s remark about favors, which Kimberly addressed now.

  “This was Megan’s idea, so there’s no favor involved,” she reminded him. “As soon as she heard that all of Melissa’s beaus were being frightened off by my overprotective brothers, she suggested Meli come to England, where the MacFearsons are unknown. You agreed it was a good idea. I agreed it was an excellent idea. And Meli is looking forward to it. So don’t be having second thoughts now.”

  “I assumed she’d be staying at Wrothston as we do when we visit them in England, no’ in London town,” he grumbled. “The lass has been tae Wrothston enough tae be comfortable and feel right at home. London’s no’ the same, and she’ll be nervous enough—”