The Pretender by Jaclyn Reding

exchanged hugs with her sisters before extricating herself to greet her waiting parents.
    “Mother. Father.”
    The duchess took her hands. “Isabella, my dear, how are you? Is . . . is everything all right?”
    “Yes, Mother, but—”
    Margaret’s attention drifted to the open door of the coach, where Elizabeth was just then emerging. No outward signs of injury, she noted with relief. But what of illness? Elizabeth did look a bit pale. . . .
    “Mother . . .”
    “Oh, Elizabeth, is everything all right? You look peaked. Did something happen on the road to Scotland?”
    “In a manner of speaking, yes, something did happen. Something quite unexpected.”
    “I knew it. I knew there was a reason you had come back so soon. I—”
    It was then Margaret realized that a third person was emerging from inside the coach—a very male, very Scottish third person. She stood back and watched in bewilderment as the figure of a man stepped out.
    Her first thought was to wonder how all three of them had fit inside the coach. He was tall, fierce-looking, and stood proudly as every pair of eyes immediately fixed upon him. He wore a tartan plaid thrown carelessly over a coarse linen shirt that was open at the neck. His dark hair was tied behind him and his eyes, she noticed, missed nothing as he assessed his new surroundings.
    He was a man. He was a Scot. And quite a magnificent one at that.
    “Girls,” Margaret finally managed, “I see you’ve brought us home a guest.”
    “Yes, that is what I had started to say,” Elizabeth said. “Father, Mother, Katie, Mattie, and Caro . . . I’d like youall to meet Douglas Dubh MacKinnon. He is from the Isle of Skye. . . .”
    The duchess immediately offered her hand in greeting. “Mr. MacKinnon, a pleasure to meet—”
    “. . . and he is my husband.”
    The last thing the duchess heard before she fainted was the unmistakable sound of her husband’s bellow.
     
    Caroline Drayton was quite an adept one at slipping her slight, eight-year-old body into the most inconspicuous of places. If it wasn’t inside the cellar storage cabinets to sneak one of Cook’s biscuits, it was in the back of her sister Matilda’s wardrobe, or under the housekeeper, Mrs. Burnaby’s, bed.
    It was a particularly useful talent to have when one wanted to know what was going on in one’s own family but was considered too young to learn of it firsthand. From her bedchamber on the second floor, Caroline could slip out the window and make her way undetected across a network of intersecting gables all the way to the main section of the house. From there, she could access any number of places—the parlor where her mother liked to sew, or even the downstairs kitchen where she had once spied on the footman, Harry, kissing Meg, the housemaid. Caro didn’t quite understand why he’d felt it necessary to put his hand under her skirts, but whatever his reasons, Meg must not have minded too much. Instead of pushing him away, she had only moaned just like her sister Catherine sometimes did when she ate her favorite strawberry dessert, the one with all the custard poured on top. From that day on, Caroline had alwayswondered if Harry’s kisses perhaps tasted like strawberries and custard.
    For this day, however, Caroline chose the window that opened onto the upper corridor, right outside the door to her father’s study. Experience had taught her that once everyone came inside from the carriage drive, and once her mother recovered from her swoon, this would be the place for the discussion that was certain to follow. It was the room where all the important things were discussed, and Caro had discovered that she could learn a great many things simply by climbing inside the huge Chinese urn that stood in the far corner by the window, as long as she removed her dress panniers and all but one of her petticoats, that is.
    She had just managed to do just that, dipping her slippered feet inside, when she heard