Authors: Elizabeth Thornton
The viscount was on the point of making his excuses when Cynthia's next remark riveted him to his place.
"Now that the thaw has set in, I expect we shall be seeing a good deal of Maddie's beau. I hear he's come home to stay."
The words dropped casually from her lips as she turned the pages of an out-of-date copy of
The
Edinburgh Review.
Deveryn relaxed against the cushioned back of his commodious chair and spoke with equal negligence. "I wasn't aware that the girl had a beau."
Violet eyes widened fractionally as they gazed guilelessly into his. "Weren't you? I thought I mentioned, oh aeons ago, that Donald had warned Maddie of the ineligibility of the connection."
Deveryn cast back in his mind, and a remnant of some forgotten conversation came into focus though still hazy at the edges. Of course, at that time, three months ago or more, Maddie had been just a name to him. It wasn't likely that he would remember what was said about a chit that held no interest for him. Things were different now. "I'd forgotten. I believe you did mention something. What was it?"
Under that hooded, neutral stare, Cynthia became restless. Her eyes dropped, and her fingers became involved in arranging the folds of her elegant, sarcenet mourning gown. "Donald was infuriated by the gossip about Maddie and a local boy. Some of it was quite nasty. Personally, I thought he should have encouraged the match. The boy's family is poor, but their connections are quite respectable. Donald, of course, would not admit to the truth of the stories that were circulating."
Deveryn brought his hands together, the tips of his fingers barely touching. "I'm all ears," he said, in an amused tone. "Who is the lucky man?"
"Malcolm Moncrieff. He's the vicar's son, and older than Maddie by a couple of years. They've been in each other's pockets since they were in leading strings."
"It seems to me that their connection is closer to kinsmen than lovers."
"That's what Donald thought at first, and perhaps they were until Malcolm went away to university. It was a case of 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' I suppose."
"I don't think I follow."
The journal was laid aside, and Cynthia braved a direct glance at those blue eyes brilliant with an emotion that was held in rigid control. There could be no turning back now.
Beneath the concealing folds of her gown, her fingers tensed.
"They were too close for Donald's comfort. Some poacher found them together at one of the
bothies
that the shepherds use for shelter when they're driving their flocks down from the hills. They weren't very discreet. That's why Donald came back every summer and Christmas—to keep an eye on Maddie when Malcolm was sure to be home for the holidays."
One brow arched, and he drawled, "Why did Sinclair not simply have the girl with him in London? Why leave her here at all?"
Cynthia looked to be slightly pained by his words. She touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips and her head lifted. "I know what you're thinking and you're wrong, Jason. I wanted Maddie with us. But the girl preferred to remain at Drumoak. Donald was an indulgent father. Whatever Maddie wanted, she got."
The viscount's bored eyes travelled the shabby interior in a slow, appraising circuit, missing nothing, and finally came to rest on his elegant companion. "An indulgent father?" he repeated, and there was just enough bite in his voice to give the lie to his dispassionate expression. "Appearances can be deceptive, I suppose." He rose to his feet in one smooth, catlike motion and, for a long moment, stood gazing about him. The cynical curl of his lip, more pronounced than ever, twisted the generous mouth into a parody of a smile, cold and intimidating.
"If the boy is a pauper, I don't wonder that her father forbade the match. What kind of life would the girl have? With her lack of fortune, they wouldn't have two pennies to rub together."
"She would have the sort of life that she prefers," Cynthia returned, striving for calm. "Malcolm has prospects. He's studying for the Bar. They would make their home in Edinburgh, where Maddie has friends. She went to school there. We did have her in London with us for a time, you know. She was miserable."
"I shall be the first to wish them happy," he responded with imperturbable civility. "Though, of course, the girl's guardian may not care a straw for my felicitations."
He left her then, the cool mask of indifference staying with him till he had gained the hall. He went immediately in search of Maddie but was not to meet up with her again till dinner time.
He was sampling Donald Sinclair's fine French brandy when the object of his thoughts pushed into the parlour, her cheeks a trifle warm from her last minute exertions in the kitchen, and one hand combing her fiery hair in a gesture of acute distraction.
She spoke in calm, deliberate accents, and though she addressed the company in general, her eyes were only for Deveryn. "Dinner is served," she said, then added a little breathlessly, "Janet asked me to make the announcement." Miss Spencer arched her brows in a telling gesture. "Everyone knows we're short-handed, Aunt Nell," said Maddie with a candour that Deveryn was coming to recognize as typical of Maddie's transparent nature.
Deveryn offered Maddie his arm to take her in to dinner. "What's on the menu?" he asked
sotto voce
as she slipped into the chair he held for her.
"You're to be honoured," she responded, and his brows snapped together when he noted the sparkle that lightened her eyes to the colour of fine sherry. "Janet means to treat you like royalty."
The first course was a piping hot broth that tasted exceptional by any standards.
"This must surely be ambrosia," Deveryn told Janet gravely as she made to remove his plate.
"He means that he likes it," Maddie translated when Janet looked a question at her mistress.
With a shy smile, Janet replied, "Ye maun like it. That's no broth boiled from yer scraggy second day bones, ye ken. That were made from a fresh sheep's head."
The viscount kept the smile fixed on his face till the old housekeeper had retired. It was still there a moment later when he addressed Maddie between his teeth. "How fresh?"
"Very fresh—poor beastie," she intoned mournfully, but there was an irrepressible glint in her eye.
Deveryn's smile tightened fractionally. "I have an awful presentiment that this dinner is going to be one of the most memorable of my life."
Before Maddie could answer, Duncan entered bearing a platter with one lone sheep's head on a bed of tiny roast onions. Jacob followed at his heels with a sparkling silver tray loaded down with suet puddings and pies.
The sheep's head, complete with apple in its mouth, was set before the viscount. He looked it in the eye for a long moment. "Poor Yorick," he murmured softly and quelled Maddie's snort with a quick frown.
"You have the honour of carving the beastie," she said, looking pointedly at the carving knife and fork which Duncan had placed on the table before his lordship's place.
"So I observe. But how is it to be done?"
"Spear it with the fork and hack it to pieces as though the knife were a claymore. It's really not that hard."
As Deveryn set to work to demolish the sheep's head, Duncan waited patiently in the background to serve the delicacy as soon as this should be done. As the meal progressed, Maddie took it upon herself to describe each dish in detail to her honoured guests who soon discovered that the hearty appetites they had brought to the table had considerably dulled.
Janet entered and proudly placed a huge crystal bowl which was filled to the brim with whipped cream in front of Maddie's place. At her heels came Jacob, no less proud, bearing a platter of grapes and apricots which had been culled from Drumoak's small greenhouse the day before.
Maddie picked up an ornate silver server and ritualistically cut into the froth of whipped cream.
"What is it?" asked Deveryn as he watched Maddie dig to the bottom of the bowl with a silver ladle.
"A trifle," she said, and heaped a generous portion into a small china bowl. "That's the name of the dish, by the way, not a personal comment."
The dishes were distributed and everyone politely sampled the dessert, a rare and fancy treat which the plain Scots reserved for special occasions only. Maddie waited anxiously for the viscount's verdict.
"There's something in it which gives it a distinctive flavour. What is it?" asked Deveryn as he savoured the moist cake which was to be found beneath the layers of cream and
egg custard.
"Glenlivet," said Maddie. "That's the best whisky that Scotland has to offer."
Cynthia leaned over the viscount, her breast carelessly brushing against his sleeve, and she retrieved a small cluster of black grapes from the platter that Jacob had placed in the centre of the table. She negligently dangled the grapes above her parted lips, her head tilted back, and she said provocatively, "Whisky and sheep are the only things worthy of note that the Scots export to England."
With mingled aversion and fascination, Maddie watched as her stepmother's sharp, white teeth nibbled on one of the plump grapes which brushed her mouth. There was something suggestive if not downright obscene about the gesture. Without volition, Maddie's glance travelled to the viscount. Stranger though she was to a man's passions, she knew intuitively that his senses were stirred. The fingers of his right hand toyed restlessly with the slender stem of his wine glass and a dark tide of colour had deepened his eyes to slate. He watched Cynthia as if mesmerized, like a
puir wee
rabbit watches a weasel before, too late, it realizes its jeopardy, thought Maddie; wrath, boiling and bitter, rose like bile in her throat.
Her gaze dropped to the trifle in her dish. Suddenly, all the joy had gone out of the evening, and the dinner she had spent all afternoon helping Janet prepare seemed to have been so much wasted effort. She picked up her spoon and forced herself to swallow a mouthful of whipped cream, painfully aware of the undercurrents that passed between Deveryn and Cynthia. Silently, vehemently, she denied that the game they were playing had any other effect than cause her a disgust that was nauseating in its intensity. She lied and she knew it.
Deveryn watched Maddie covertly out of the corner of his eye, and with no little difficulty, contrived to keep his lips grave. They had retired to the front parlour at the conclusion of a dinner that he had been at some pains to convey was the best it had ever been his good fortune to sample north or south of the border. Maddie had accepted his extravagant compliment with something less than grace, and had intimated that Janet would be delighted to hear him say so. Her indifference to the vagaries of his lordship's highly developed palette could not have been more evident.
She had been shocked, he knew, by Cynthia's blatant sexual overtures at the table, and more shocked by his own swift response, thoroughly masculine in nature, which he had wrongly supposed he had concealed. The trouble with Maddie was that she was abysmally ignorant of men. His reaction had been automatic—something any redblooded male would comprehend. The finer feelings had not entered into it. The girl saw too much and understood too little, he thought with a stab of impatience, and his eyes, carefully devoid of expression, came to rest on Cynthia as she rose gracefully from the piano bench. She moved in a rustle of silk skirts to take the vacant place on the faded chintz sofa beside the viscount. Deveryn swallowed the faint sigh that rose to his lips. Maddie's attention had not wavered since she had opened the book which she held up to the candle at her elbow. He wondered if she would deign to notice him if he began to show some attention to Cynthia. He discarded the notion as being unworthy of him. Maddie's feelings were fragile, and he would not hurt her for the world. In time, she would learn to trust the husband who intended to cherish her as if she were a piece of priceless Sevres porcelain. His eyes warmed with laughter when he observed her turn a page. It was the first she had turned in the half hour since she had sat down to read.
Maddie doggedly focused all her powers of concentration on the printed page in her hand. "Of all things that live and have intelligence," she translated for the umpteenth time, "we women are the most wretched species." Amen, she said under her breath, turned the page, and went on. But her thoughts this night were far from Euripides's wretched heroine, Medea, and her diatribe against men. They were all for little Maddie Sinclair whose emotions were so confused and lacerated that she scarcely recognized the distraught girl who presented, she hoped, a tranquil exterior to the world. Her sombre eyes, unguarded, lifted to meet Deveryn's mocking gaze.
Deveryn caught that forlorn look and it brought him to his feet. A rush of memory carried him back to their first encounter under the lamplight outside Inverforth's church— Maddie and her sad, haunted doe eyes.