Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (19 page)

“Aye. I daresay.” There was an awkward clearing of throat from the Lord Provost who stood beyond Quince’s line of sight. “There seems to be some…misapprehension regarding your…involvement.”

“Then don’t involve me,” Strathcairn countered. “I have my hands full with enough other business before I leave for Cairn within the week, and—”

“Nay.” The Lord Provost’s voice gained in volume what it lost in surety. “You misunderstand me, my Lord Cairn.” There was another awkward pause while the Lord Provost seemed to be swallowing his hat—his voice came out strangled and thin. “Sir Harry has attested that he recognized the fellow, the highwayman. He said he had seen the very fellow earlier in the evening. At the Marchioness of Queensbury’s masquerade. And…and several of the guests attested that you, my Lord Cairn, were seen wearing the very same highwayman’s costume. And that you were missing from the revels for quite some time.”

Oh, nay, nay, nay.

Quince’s hand rose to her mouth in something more than astonishment. More than horror.
 
Poor, poor upstanding, honest Strathcairn, to whom deception of any kind was abhorrent.

In the deathly silence that followed, Strathcairn’s voice was so powerfully quiet it was lethal. “The hell you say. I was present for the entire time of the masquerade,” he asserted. “If you be so kind as to consult with the colonel of the Royal Dragoon Guards, he will tell you that I was supervising a contingent of his men at that very masquerade.”

“Oh, aye. I see.” The Lord Provost sounded eminently relieved at such a proof of un-involvement.

“You can account for the whole of the time?” Sir Harry again, agitated and querulous. “Rumor has it you disappeared from the ballroom.”

There was an awkward silence before Strathcairn answered. “Discretion forbids me from saying—”

Another voice with a careful English accent interrupted—the servant, or secretary, who had come to fetch Strathcairn from the garden. “Does my Lord Cairn stand formally accused?”

“God, no,” the Lord Provost stammered. “Nothing so foolish. I came in the hopes of preventing any such thing. I am quite sure this can all be sorted out.”

“It was only a costume,” Strathcairn’s explanation was both exasperated and reluctant. “Worn to impress…someone who—”

“Quite. A Frenchman, you say, sir? Is there a sworn affidavit? May I see it?” The secretary was still speaking for Strathcairn. “Firstly, and most obviously, my lord is not French. And he does not ride a black horse. He rides a grey—who this moment rests in the mews, unused and clearly not ridden this night—and does not own any black horses.”

“Good, good.” Quince could hear the relief in the provost’s voice. “Good to know. Probably just coincidence. You know how tongues can wag at a masquerade, and things can get quite confused at a revel. All those masks, don’t you know.”

“Indeed.” Strathcairn’s voice was honed down to a sharp edge. “Yet it is never comfortable to find oneself the subject of even idle gossip. I can only give you my word as a gentleman—my oath—that I had no part in this highway robbery. And I can only pledge to help you in any way that you should deem necessary.”

“Thank you, my lord. I much appreciate your candor, and your offer. It has been a long time since we’ve had any highwayman business here in Edinburgh. I’m afraid we’ve grown lax and rusty.”

“Anything that I might do to assist you in remedying that, you have only to ask.”

“Again, I thank you.” There were sounds of shuffling feet, and the creak of the front door opening on it hinge. “I will take my leave. I bid you good night.”

“Good night, and thank you, my lord. Please keep me apprised.”

“I will. Good night.”

The door closed quietly, and Quince heard the sound of the lock being thrown.

“Well, hell.” That was the other man, the secretary, she now assumed, given his defense of Strathcairn and his obvious understanding of the law.

“Fuck all,” was Strathcairn’s rather more vulgar but understandably heated response.

 
And that was her cue. For all her daft, idiotic daring, Quince was too smart to stick around for Strathcairn to re-appear and read the truth of her guilt—and her own horrified satisfaction—written large across her face. She was under no illusion that she was a good enough card player to lie to Strathcairn effectively enough to hide
this.
 

She bolted for the gate.

Chapter Eleven

There was no such thing as coincidence.
 

The fact that someone had just bloody well robbed a coach while looking enough bloody like him to have him implicated, was no coincidence. At least not a coincidence he would believe.
 

Someone was deliberately making a fool of him.

And Alasdair had let himself be made a fool of by spending all his time and energy thinking about kisses and costumes and impressing wee Quince Winthrop, instead of concentrating on the business of the prime minister’s government and on Cairn. He had made himself an easy target.
 

Again. But no more.
 

“First thing in the morning,” he informed Sebastian, “I will interview Sir Harry Digby myself, without any interference, when he has calmed down, and ask my own damn questions. And then, I’m going to find my bloody pistols and hunt down the bast—”

“My lord?” Sebastian tilted his head toward the back of the house. “Your guest?”

 
Quince. In his bleeding anger and ruddy resentment, he had all but forgotten her.

“Thank you, Seb. Correction, first, I will see my
uninvited
visitor home”—it seemed important, in the face of such an accusation, that Sebastian know he had not abandoned all standards of gentlemanly behavior by inviting lasses to kiss him in the dark under the birch trees—“and then I will find out who is riding about Edinburgh making an utter bloody ass of me.”

Alasdair strapped on his sword belt and threw on a coat before he stomped his way out to his back garden, which was empty—the wayward subject of his wayward thoughts was gone.

That was all he needed to make his evening complete—for wee Quince Winthrop to be waylaid by a highwayman or footpad, or worse, a drunken aristocrat.
 

He took the length of the garden at a run, just in time to see her disappearing through the mews gate. “Quin—” He stopped himself from making an even greater ass of himself by broadcasting her name throughout the mews. “Wait!”

Characteristically, she did not. She disappeared through the locked gate—at least it was supposed to be locked—and was making her cautious way down the darkened mews when he caught up with her. “Quince.”

She practically jumped out of her skin. “Oh, Strathcairn, it’s you.”

Something about her tone—the strange, panicky nervousness—gave him pause. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“Yes, frankly.” She gave him a nervous smile. “I thought it might be your servant come to shoo me home.”

“Nay.” Her explanation gave him relief—he hadn’t wanted to face the ugly possibility that she was running away from him because she thought him an ungentlemanly brigand who had spent the better part of the night robbing a coach at gunpoint. “I’ve come myself to shoo you home, or at least to escort you there, just as I said I would.” He reached to pull up the hood of her evening cloak over her head, so she might be concealed should they be seen, but she flinched away from him. “Quince? What’s wrong?”

She let out a tight little breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I ken I shouldn’t have, but I was listening at the door. About the highwayman.”

It was so like her—both to have listed at the door and to have admitted it—that he wasn’t angry. Disappointed, perhaps. And definitely apprehensive. “You needn’t fear the roads are filled with brigands, Quince. It was only one incident. But I’ll escort you home, just to be safe.”

“Oh, I wasn’t afraid. Not of highwaymen.” She shook her head a little, as if she had changed her mind. “It’s just that…you’re very angry.”

Alasdair let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Aye.” It was the bare truth. “But not at you.” He made a point of taking her hand, enlacing his fingers with hers. “I’m angry at whoever is making such a comprehensive ass out of me.”
 

And this wasn’t the first time someone had set him up to take the blame for a crime he did not commit. The ramifications were enormous, as the coincidence. But there was no such thing as coincidence.

Quince bit her lower lip. “They cannot possibly think you, of all people, are a highwayman.”

“Nay.” Her disbelief was more than comforting—it was a relief so profound and heartening, it shored him up for the fight he was going to have to make to save what was left of his good name. And if Quince didn’t know of his past brushes with infamy, he’d rather not enlighten her. He wanted there to be at least one person in all of Edinburgh who did not automatically think ill of him. “The misapprehension is likely all due to my bloody costume.”
 

What an ass he had been to choose it, wanting to surprise and impress her. If his grandfather had been moaning in his grave at Lady Winthrop’s caution, or Lady Plum’s assertion that he had acted as less than a gentleman, the old man must be positively thrashing about his coffin now, to find his grandson taken for a highwayman.

Devil take it. How could anyone who knew him think it possible?
 

But that was the trouble, wasn’t it? No one in Edinburgh—including the Lord Provost and the rest of the Winthrop family—really knew him. They only remembered the rather feckless young man he had once been before he had gone to London, and learned to be serious and earnest and ambitious. It was as if everything that he had worked for, every sacrifice he had made for five long years, had vanished in an instant.

“It was a very good costume,” Quince said sympathetically. “I can see how someone might have convinced themselves that you were the genuine article. Are you going to be in a great deal of trouble?”

The compliment salved his wounded pride a little. A very little, because he didn’t deserve to have his vanity soothed. “Nay.” He tried to assure her. And himself. “It is just a mistake—a case of mistaken identity—not a serious charge. Or someone at the masquerade attempting to make trouble. My petty thief, most likely, wanting revenge for me making life difficult for him. Who knows? It’s too hard to prove a negative.”

“
Your
petty thief? And what do you mean, prove a negative?”

“It means that it is very difficult to prove that one did
not
do something. Much easier to prove that one did. The fact of the matter is that I didn’t rob anyone, but it is going to take a great deal of time and effort on my part to prove that fact.” The roiling admixture of seething anger and outright shame was burning a hole in his gut—in his very person.

Quince cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Strathcairn, do you need me to lie, and say that I was with you the whole time? Because I will, if you ask me.” She smiled up at him from under her brows in that openly appealing way that had already inveigled him into so much trouble. “And ask me nicely.”

“I would never ask you to lie for me.” For one thing, it was plain wrong. And for another, were it known that he had spent even a small amount of time alone with wee Quince Winthrop, it would only add to the scandal—to have his name linked with another innocent young woman would do far more damage than good.
 

“Pity.” She let out one of her theatrical sighs. “Because I would, Strathcairn.” She looked him in the eye. “Lie for you. Anytime. You have but to ask.”

He couldn’t quite tell if she were joking, or dead serious. “Thank you. But however well-intentioned, it would be wrong to let you do so.” If he had learned anything in the past five years, it was that one lie never made up for another, no matter how well intentioned. “And a gentleman would never ask that of a lady.”
 

But this time, he wasn’t only going to do the gentlemanly thing and keep silent while others slandered his good name. This time, he was going to put all the lessons he had learned about justice and the law to good use. And no matter the time or effort, he wouldn’t stop until he had brought to account the miscreant who was setting him up for the fall. And he knew exactly where to look for the bastard.

“We both ken I’m not much of a lady.”