Blood Lines

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

A Paperback Original 2008

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

Copyright © Grace Monroe 2008

Grace Monroe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560414

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007281817

Version: 2018-05-22

Gordon, Caitlin, Patrick, Brogan and Keanu you are my raison d’être. Maria

Still appreciating you really, Dr Cairney. Linda xx

Contents

Title Page Copyright Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Acknowledgements About the Author By the Same Author: About the Publisher

Prologue

Ruthven Barracks August 2005

The Jacobite ruin stands high in the evening mist. Ruthven Barracks, set on a mound in the Scottish Highlands, echoes with ghosts and lovers’ tales. The settlement which had existed there for over a thousand years is long gone, but the rumours of betrayal and obsession are as fresh as if whispered yesterday. Alisdair Mor mac an Righ once made his home here, but few round these parts referred to him by that name then and nor do they do so now. One of the blackest bastards ever to walk through Scotland’s history, the son of King Robert II lived in barbarous times – times which he, the Wolf of Badenoch, made darker and more murderous every day he lived.

Now the earth which the Wolf walked is hard from the constant tramp of tourist feet. The day-buses and walking tours have long gone as the low evening clouds scurry past the moon. It is almost midnight, but it is as bright as day underneath the startling Scottish night sky. The lovers walk up the steep gravel path from the roadside and, hand-in-hand, enter the stony ruins. They sit down amongst the ancient stones, their heavy voices echoing with lust – and revenge.

A hip flask is taken from the backpack of its owner. It is handed to the other, who fingers it anxiously, thinking of past indiscretions.

‘Take the whisky and seal the deal,’ come the words as the dark fluid is thrown down a throat parched from the wanting. The breath of the lovers is sweet in the night air. They search for words, for an appropriate toast to what they feel for each other. Both seem content to drink in the surroundings and the presence of the other alongside the liquid from the pure waters of the nearby distillery.

This is a betrothal. A consummation. The reverberations of words exchanged and vows underscored will last beyond this night.

The Earl of Badenoch had ruled these lands in a cruel way – always taking more than he was entitled to, yet never satisfying himself. He knew the meaning of betrayal; he knew the cost of love. When he deserted his wife for his mistress, the Church ruled against him – and entire towns paid the cost. The Wolf sought revenge in an orgy of ransacking, burning and murder, eventually offering superficial repentance in order to win his way back into society.

But he, more than most, knew that what lies on the surface matters nothing compared to what lurks beneath.

Legend interrupts fact with the Earl’s story at this point and says that his final visit to Ruthven was for an infamous chess battle to the death – with the Devil. As the Devil called ‘checkmate’, a terrible storm of thunder, hail and lightning surrounded the place. In the silence of the morning, all of the Wolf ’s men were found blackened and dead outside the castle walls, with their master discovered lifeless in the banqueting hall, unmarked but with the nails from his boots ripped out. The Devil had won yet again – as the Wolf had always known he would.

‘Don’t you want me?’ comes the voice from the seated woman, who raises the hip flask to her lips once more as soon as she has whimpered the words.

‘Don’t you want me?’ she asks again, her craving for love more overwhelming than the feeling of fear which batters these walls. The betrothal is not going as planned. Where are the dual commitments? Where are the exchanged vows of lifelong adoration? As the woman reaches out to touch the face of her beloved, she also raises the pewter flask above her head as a sign of dedication. Her voice echoes around the ancient stones, joining the many pledges made there over the centuries.

‘Join me,’ she says, but her words do not invite, they beg.

‘May the hinges of our friendship never rust, nor the wings of our love lose a feather,’ she continues, trying to ignore the silence of her beloved. ‘Slainte.’

The whisky warms her heart as she takes another sip. Warms her heart more than the presence of the one she loves. As it trickles down her throat, the taste awakes demons. It dribbles down her chin as she tries to wipe it away with the back of her hand. Her co-ordination is all wrong – has her old friend affected her so quickly? She drinks more, but the dribbles increase, and the woman looks to her love for help.

The words that reach her do not comfort.

‘You greedy bitch. I should have known. That whisky was the one thing I needed to rely on – and the one thing I couldn’t control. You didn’t disappoint me, did you? You just had to drink it, you just had to take what you wanted, just like you always do.’

The woman beseeches her lover with her eyes. Why is there such cruelty in the words? Why is there such hatred in the face of the one she worships?

‘My legs aren’t working properly. Help me.’

Even to her own ears, the words sound slurred as she falls heavily to the ground. The woman’s tights rip on the rough stony hillside of the barrack floor, but her darling moves towards her, bringing hope. Her arms are pulled together above her head and held there as she is dragged still further. There is no help, there is no hope. The soldiers’ latrines await her as she is hauled round a corner.

‘This is for you,’ whispers her darling into her ear. The woman fleetingly thinks of love, of surprises prepared by the keeper of her spirit. As she is thrown into the hard-packed six-foot trench, lovingly dug just for her, her hopes are dashed and her heart knows that it has been betrayed. Silently she screams, incapable of making a sound.

‘If I’d known you were so fond of the taste of sodium pentathol, I’d have tried it years ago,’ come the words, but the woman is too busy watching what is happening to pay attention to the one-sided conversation. Her lover has picked up the spade resting on the rough stone wall and starts to dig afresh.

‘Normally it’s injected – but I find needles really … unpleasant …’

The pile of earth is considerable now. It has also managed to change the channel into something else. With the presence of the woman within, it is no longer a trench.

It is a grave.

Such alchemy.

The legs and the arms of the woman are useless. They are drugged into stillness, numbed into inefficiency, but it is the loss of love which immobilises her totally. The voice she once adored now drones on as the owner of it continues to dig.

‘Truth serum. That’s what most people know it as. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that ironic? I couldn’t be less interested in your truths, my darling. I’ve had to put up with them for long enough. I think it’s much more worthy of reflection that this stuff is also used in executions.’

The face of the woman manages to contort with fear – no mean feat given the amount of paralysing drug she has willingly swallowed.

‘You betrayed me. You put your truths before everything. Before me. Before our love. Do you know what that does to someone? To me?’

She cannot answer, she cannot plead for her life or use her words to escape the fate she knows is awaiting her. Flecks of spittle foam around the mouth of the one she loved to kiss. She longs to wipe them away, to show a caring touch even with the knowledge that her lover has become her executioner. Pins and needles start in her fingers as the feeling spreads throughout her entire body. The winding sheet starts at her feet as her beloved ineptly wraps her in a shroud. This will be her bridal dress, this will be the culmination of their love.

‘My love, my love – why did you make me do this?’ asks the undertaker of her heart.

A tear escapes the woman’s eye as she is wrapped tenderly in her beloved’s arms who, struggling with the dead weight, lays her roughly in the grave. Still the woman cannot speak. The tears run down her face unchecked – her hands are close enough to scratch her nose but they are bound and crossed on her chest where there is no strength to break free.

The shovel of earth hits her heavily, knocking the wind and the life out of her body. Painstakingly, the grave is filled, each load crushing her body and stealing her soul.

There is hope.

Her head and neck are uncovered. She tells herself that this is no more worrying than a game children will play at the beach when they bury each other in the sand.

At any moment, her love will release her, they will embrace and their betrothal will continue.

As the knife pierces her cheek, the sensation returns to her body as pain slices through – as does the awareness that this is no childish game, this is no lovers’ diversion. The metallic smell of blood joins the stench of terror. The woman’s face is warm and wet as her beloved rubs dirt into the open wounds over and over again. Finally, strength returns to her fingers – as the first dirt lands on her face.

She tries to claw her way out.

She breaks her fingernails to the quick.

She feels the blood run down.

She cannot see for the suffocating darkness.

She cannot breathe for the earth in her nostrils.

She cannot scream for the muck in her mouth.

What starts in pleasure always ends in pain.

As the final words of the treasured one scrape against the ancient stones, the Wolf of Badenoch enjoys what he sees, savours what he hears.

‘Who will love you now?’ asks the beloved one as the knife cuts, the blood pours, and the Wolf howls with delight.

Chapter One

My knickers felt cold and squidgy when I pushed them into my jacket pocket. I tried not to notice the embarrassingly large bulge that they created. If I didn’t look at it, it wasn’t there. I liked that view of the world. At least for now. I was obviously quite good at only recognising what I wanted to recognise, given that whatever I had expected when I left the office last night hadn’t involved squelchy undies and drunken sex.

Especially with him.

I’d felt so moral going in on a Saturday – it’s usually the quietest time to work, much better than Sundays when people sometimes panic and decide to get a head start on the week. Even Lavender sometimes isn’t there to give me directions on how I should spend my time. But yesterday, a combination of dull reports and accounts followed by too much rotten wine in a nameless Rose Street pub had brought about a distinct lack of continuation of my moral superiority.

Where the hell was my left shoe? I was at the stage where staying and looking would have probably been more embarrassing than leaving in my bare feet and answering lecherous questions from a taxi driver.

‘Are you looking for this?’ a voice called from the bedroom.

Shit.

No escape.

I’d have to go back and retrieve it now or have him think I was too lovestruck to face him rather than too hung over to think about it. If only I had just gone home after the office. If only I hadn’t bumped into him making his way back from a Saturday shift. If only I hadn’t said hello and noticed how bloody gorgeous he was. I hobbled my way along the hallway like Long John Silver on a bad day – although, for all his worries, I’m sure he didn’t have to deal with not taking his mascara off and being covered in stubble rash the morning after.

With one shoe off and the other dangling from his hand, I lurched towards him. Towards it. Towards my shoe. Towards Mr Jack Deans, Esquire.

I was very upset. Very, very upset. Unlike me, the bastard looked good. Even in the morning light after a very heavy session I could see why I’d finally been unable to resist. Before last night, I’d only ever seen him in his work clothes – crumpled suit, clichéd raincoat. Now, covered only by an impressively white bath towel, he looked damn fine. Just back from the South of France – research, I’m sure, not a piss-up – he was dark, handsome, and absolutely chock-full of himself. A very useful bout of food poisoning had knocked a stone off him and there wasn’t a moob in sight.

‘I bet you’re just thinking what a lucky girl you are,’ he crooned as he launched himself off the bed and walked towards me, twirling the shoe on one finger.

‘No, no … I was “just thinking” that fat looks better when it’s brown.’

‘Liar,’ he whispered into my ear, giving it a surreptitious lick for good luck.

I was back to our familiar double-act of winding each other up much quicker than he was. I took the end of my jacket and wiped the inside of my ear dry. My gesture of dismissal was wasted because Deans was already in the kitchen – with my shoe.

What had once looked a very attractive half of an LK Bennett leopard-print combo was now just pissing me off. It was a shoe, not the bloody Holy Grail, yet he was dragging it from room to room as if I was in thrall to the wonder of a well-turned heel at the cost of my pride.

The offending article was on top of the kitchen table.

‘Don’t you know that’s bad luck?’ I said, forcing my foot into the shoe. It scraped on my skin, hurting my little toe. Actually, come to think of it, they’d always nipped – I should have left the buggers whilst I had the chance.

‘Let me guess, Brodie – that’s one thing you don’t need more of?’ He wriggled his pelvis at me in a way that would have put a geriatric Chippendale to shame. ‘Aw, I don’t know – looks like your luck might have turned. Do you want sugar in your coffee?’

‘You know I don’t take sugar.’

‘With a face like yours this morning, you look as if you could do with a little sweetness.’

‘You weren’t complaining about my face last night.’

Damn. I was the first one to obviously refer to the sex thing.

‘Last night I thought I was the sugar you were needing, darling.’

‘You must have been drunker than I thought then. But definitely nowhere near as comatose as me – obviously.’

‘Frankly, Brodie, I was a bit hurt that you were going to sneak out without saying goodbye. I felt used. A piece of meat. Just a plaything for you.’

For the first time that morning I actually looked into his eyes – only to see his smile lighting them.

‘I’m in no mood for jokes, Jack. I’m pissed off, I’m late, and my shoes hurt.’

‘I can see that. Well, I can see the pissed-off bit anyway. Christ knows what you’ll be like when you get a look at your face – it’s dragging along the ground.’

I tried to ignore him, took my coffee and wandered round his tiny kitchen. I did what I could to avoid facing the fact that he was almost naked.

‘What are you up to today?’ he asked.

I hesitated to answer in case he was going to ask me out.

‘Don’t worry – you’re safe. I’m just going to bide my time and catch you when you’re lonely – again.’

‘Was I that pathetic?’

I didn’t have to turn to know that Deans was nodding his head.

‘Actually, I do have plans. I’m supposed to be seeing my grandad and my moth— and Kailash – they tell me they’re worried about me, so I need to go and calm them down.’

‘They’re not the only ones bothered,’ he commented.

I looked at him sharply. Insulting me, glorying in finally getting me into bed, I could take – but care and concern?

‘Not me.’ He looked as aghast as I felt. ‘It’s the hairy-arsed sheep-shagger you hang around with who’s all het up.’

‘Glasgow Joe?’

‘Aye, the one and only.’

‘Jack – you’re the only one I know who could consider Glasgow the heart of sheep-shagging land. It fits in so well with your impeccable journalistic credentials. Never let facts get in the way of a good insult.’

My heart started racing at the thought of how Joe would react if he knew what we’d done.

‘Whatever you want to call him, he’s the one who’s concerned.’ I sighed. One problem after another. Right now, there was one particular issue that I had to bring up with Jack.

‘Jack? Do me a favour? Don’t mention last night to Joe.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t – under usual circumstances it would be the talk of the steamie, but …’

‘But you’re rather attached to your bollocks?’

‘No, it’s not that – actually, Brodie, you won’t understand this, but I like Joe and I wouldn’t want to hurt him.’

‘Don’t give me that crap – if you really felt like that you wouldn’t have dragged me back here last night,’ I countered.

‘As I recall, Miss McLennan, it was you doing the dragging.’ He paused for effect.

Jack moved towards me at the kitchen table – I expected him to kiss me or try to do the dragging to bed this time. I don’t really know whether I felt relieved or disappointed when he only reached down for his battered briefcase which he threw on the table.

‘Like I said, Kailash and old man MacGregor aren’t the only ones who are concerned,’ he said, handing me some sheets of paper. ‘Take a look at this.’

‘You sad git, Jack. I didn’t know you were into tracing family trees. It’s the new train-spotting for blokes your age, isn’t it?’

‘No – blokes “my age” have got other things to do with their time.’ He managed to say this whilst looking lecherously at me – I was touched: I looked a right state but he was still so desperate he wasn’t kicking me out.

‘It’s your family I’m digging at, Brodie, not mine. Now stop being so vain and put your specs on to look at it properly. Don’t worry about me seeing you less than perfect – I’ve seen it all now, even …’

‘I’m putting them on,’ I said loudly, cutting him off mid-sentence.

I looked at what was in front of me.

My line.

My blood.

The blood that I didn’t even know I had running through my veins until just about this time last year. At the bottom of the page, I saw my own name and that of my parents. If you could really call them that – a paedophile and a whore. A match made in heaven. My blood parents.

Alastair MacGregor ———Kailash Coutts

|

Brodie McLennan (bastard)

The line ended with me.

Even on the sheet of paper I looked lonely.

‘Cheers, Jack, I’m moved. It makes me feel all warm inside. How nice of you to remind me what I came from.’

I threw the papers down on the table.

‘Don’t get bloody touchy with me, Brodie. Those bits of paper simply state facts. You always knew your dad wasn’t around, you always knew you were a bastard – you just have to understand that now you are a high-class bastard.’

He poked his fingers at names above my own.

‘All high-court judges. All above the law. They’re protected, Brodie. To a man.’

‘My father wasn’t safe, though, was he?’

I still felt odd calling the man who had raped Kailash by that title. And poor dead Mary McLennan, cold in the ground with only me to remember that she was the woman I considered my real mother. She’d taken me on with more love than most people receive in a lifetime. Running through it all in my head made me think I was reading the TV listings guide for a particularly tempting episode of The Jerry Springer Show. There wasn’t much to laugh at when it was my own life, though. Jack’s words dragged me away from my reflections.

‘Alastair MacGregor was protected, Brodie. He was protected by the law – not the law that you and I live by, but the law that has protected men like him and their interests for centuries. That’s why Kailash had to kill him. He had gotten away with it for decades. All those girls, all those boys, with no families to worry about them, being taken out of the care homes and sent to be abused by good, upstanding legal men like your father? Fucking protected to the hilt, the lot of them. I’d rather there were a thousand Kailashes than one of him. She may not be the usual type of mother, but she knows right from wrong – and she fights for what’s hers.’

I imagined my mother in her work guise as Scotland’s most notorious dominatrix, running her girls across the country, and doing it all with beauty and style. I wasn’t much closer to understanding her than I had been a year ago when I represented her – not knowing then that our connection was so much more than lawyer and client – but I did realise that she loved me – in her own way.

‘You’re not your father, Brodie. Just like he wasn’t his. All the stuff you learned last year might make your head spin, but it’s true – it’s your truth, the truth of who you are. It’s not every day your mother asks you to defend her for killing your father. But there are decent people in your blood, Brodie – your grandfather is a good man. Like Kailash, he loves you and knows that his only son was an evil bastard. What more evidence do you need? He saved Kailash, he stands by her now – and they both want one thing: they want you to be careful.

‘Yes, you have enemies. You’ve made a lot in the last year – but they’ll back off if you decide to toe the line. You have to listen to the old man, Brodie.’