The dress was too low-cut, the fabric too sheer, and the pale rose color inappropriate for one supposedly in mourning. But Peggy assured her that the bodice was no lower than any lady might wear at dinner and that the mourning period for Charles and Grace had not only been properly observed but that it was definitely time that His Lordship and the rest of the family got on with the business of living.
So, reminding herself to add a chapter on borrowed finery to her instructional tome and feeling decidedly naked, Kate left the bedchamber and followed the footman to the dining room, trying to quell the racing of her heart. Kit had been invited to dine, too. She took a deep breath, hoping not to appear affected, or worse, anxious.
Inside, the dining room blazed with candlelight across a sumptuous table spread with crystal and silver, porcelain and gold. The marquis, standing beside a small, birdlike old gentleman, came toward her at once.
Kit, she noted, had yet to arrive.
“Mrs. Blackburn!” the marquis greeted her. “I hope Peggy meets with your approval? If she did not, I own I cannot for the life of me see where she might have failed you.”
“Thank you, milord.”
He turned and motioned his companion to his side. “Allow me to present you to my uncle. Uncle, Mrs. Blackburn. Mrs. Blackburn, Mr. Kerwin Murdoch, my father’s youngest brother.”
“How do you do, sir?” Kate murmured, curtseying.
“How’d do,” the gentleman nodded. His bright blue eyes peered at her from beneath shelves of bushy white brows, and he cocked his head, magnifying his resemblance to some inquisitive, possibly malevolent bird. “English, ain’t you? Grace’s kin? Must be English, then.”
“Yes, sir.” Kate said, a little amused. “I am English.”
“Pity,” the old gentleman said, cocking his head to the other side. “One would think there were no likely Scotswomen within the area, what with the way my family keeps importing English chits.” He peered condemningly at his nephew.
“Uncle.”
The old man’s rancor abruptly vanished. “I am a relic. Can’t help it. No harm meant, eh, young lady?”
“I must have missed something, sir, for I cannot recall anything said to which I could possibly take exception.”
He gave a bark of delighted laughter. “English always were good at words. Even Grace, when she’d a mind to bother, could wrap enough words around a threat to make it seem a treat.”
“Enough, Uncle,” the marquis said in fond exasperation as an elderly woman arrived on the arm of a petite girl.
Kate studied the pair with interest. The old woman had thickly powdered and rouged skin in the style of the French court two decades earlier. Her highly piled hair was obviously a wig. The young girl beside her could be no more than seventeen. Fluffy ice-blond curls lay artfully around a heart-shaped face. Her mouth was red, small, and full-lipped, her eyes tip-tilted and faintly Slavic.
“Aunt Mathilde, this is Mrs. Blackburn, Grace’s cousin,” the marquis said loudly. “My father’s sister, Lady Mathilde.”
“Yes, yes, Jamie. This morning you told us she was to arrive.” The old lady smiled at Kate. Cataracts clouded her eyes but did not veil the flash of annoyance in their milky depths.
“And this is my ward, Miss Mertice Benny, whom we call Merry.”
The young girl perfunctorily murmured her pleasure at making Kate’s acquaintance, and for a second Kate could not help but wonder if the pet name had been given in irony, for she could not think of a creature less “merry” than this girl, with her wintry coloring and chill expression. The girl’s superior gaze abruptly widened as it fell on Kate’s dress with shocked recognition.
“What a lovely gown, Mrs. Blackburn,” she said stiffly.
“Thank you.” Kate floundered. “As is yours.”
“Good heavens, don’t tell me we have admitted yet another female into the fold to discourse on the furbelows and gewgaws of feminine self-decoration?” Mr. Murdoch snorted.
“What did you say, Kerwin?” Lady Mathilde said.
“I said, my dear,” Mr. Murdoch bellowed, “that you are in rare good looks this evening.”
His sister gave him a flat look of exasperation. “I doubt that, Murdoch. And may I advise you, yet again, that you needn’t roar. A simple shout will suffice.”
She turned to Kate. “Would you be so kind as to escort me to the sofa, m’dear? The side closest the hearth? I feel the cold more keenly each winter, I am afraid.”
“But of course,” Kate said gladly, offering her arm. Merry’s gaze would prick her to bleeding if it grew any sharper.
“I am a trifle hard of hearing, I am afraid, thus my family’s insistence on bellowing. Unnecessary if one speaks clearly and distinctly. You have a lovely voice, my dear. Not like Merry here”—she looked back at Merry and Mr. Murdoch, trailing a short ways behind—“who has lately affected a lisp.”
“I haven’t!” Merry denied hotly.
Lady Mathilde ignored her. “Grace had a lisp, and Grace”—she leaned confidingly toward Kate—“had much influence over young Merry. She misses her fiercely. Ah! Here we are. Thank you, m’dear.”
The old lady took a seat as her brother waddled over to poke at the fire, and the marquis came to stand beside Kate.
“I thought we were to have a real Scotsman dining with us this evening,” Mr. Murdoch suddenly declared, as if he’d just realized he’d been promised a sweet and none had appeared.
“I expect you’ll have to make do with me, sir.” A deep, familiar voice spoke from the hall, and Kate spun around.
Kit MacNeill’s great kilt swung freely with his long stride, the muscles in his legs flexing as he came across the room. He wore his plaid draped in the Highland manner across the chest and shoulder of his regimental jacket, the silver buttons freshly polished and gleaming. A brilliant white neck cloth accentuated the darkness of his lean, freshly shaved jaw. His hair gleamed, curling up where it brushed the collar of his shirt. Kate’s cheeks warmed with appreciation, and she looked away to find Merry smiling at her in a knowing manner.
“Mr. MacNeill!” the marquis greeted him. “Come, let me present you to my family.”
Kit stood easily while the marquis introduced him to members of his household, and Kate felt an utterly unwarranted pride in him. Certainly no one in the household could be measured against him. Not even the marquis. Nor should he, she reminded herself. Kit was a soldier; the marquis was a gentleman.
The introductions complete, the marquis’s uncle returned to Lady Mathilde, and the marquis excused himself to give some last-minute instructions to the butler, leaving Kate with Kit and Merry.
“Mrs. Blackburn, I am pleased to see you looking so well.” Kit bent over her hand and brushed his lips across her gloved knuckles. Her heart raced. He thought himself graceless and rough, but in truth he was steel to the others’ gilt, beautiful, lethal steel.
He lifted his head. His eyes held hers a space too long.
“But of course no introductions are necessary here.” Merry smirked. “You must know Mrs. Blackburn rather well, after how many days on the road?”
Heat washed through Kate. Expressionlessly Kit looked down at the girl. “Your point, miss?”
His flat query disconcerted Merry. Kit and she were supposed to have been mortified into dumb silence, Kate realized. His forthrightness had jammed her guns.
“Point?” she stammered. “Oh, I have none, I am sure. Only… Mrs. Blackburn was married to an officer of the regiment, wasn’t she? Perhaps that is why she is so comfortable with soldiers.”
Kit did not speak, but his green-gray eyes narrowed thoughtfully on the chit. She was beyond rude. With relief, Kate saw the marquis returning to join them.
“It’s too bad Watters couldn’t join us, poor blighter,” the marquis said, oblivious to anything being amiss.
“Who is Watters?” Kit asked.
“The man sent to replace the militia’s commander, Captain Greene. The fellow had the poor taste to get himself killed,” Merry said, with a great deal of blasé sophistication, “making his attempt to rid the area of crime not particularly successful.”
“Captain Watters seemed very confident he will succeed,” Kate said.
“You met him?” Merry looked surprised.
“Yes. Earlier today. A most capable-seeming man.”
The young girl tilted her head sideways, regarding Kit with the air of the practiced coquette, her mannerisms vaguely familiar and oddly disconcerting. “Not nearly as capable-looking as others.”
She batted her lashes in a thoroughly vulgar manner.
“You don’t think he will be victorious, Miss?” Kit asked.
“I am sure he will make an admirable attempt,” she drawled. “But I prefer to put my faith in men who do not understand the concept of ‘attempt’ but only ‘success.’ Are you such a man, Mr. MacNeill?”
Kate bit down hard on the inside of her cheeks.
“No, Miss Benny,” Kit said gravely. “I am all too familiar with failure.”
“Are you? La! And here you look positively menacing. How disappointing. I thought we’d found a champion. Is that not disappointing, Mrs. Blackburn?”
“On the contrary, I am not disappointed in any manner in Christian MacNeill,” she said quietly.
The girl snickered, and Kit, rather than accepting the accolade with a smile, looked away, his expression unreadable. Feeling a subtle rebuff, Kate’s own gaze faltered. The marquis’s gaze moved from Kit’s aloof mien to Kate’s pink one.
“Is Merry waxing poetic about the smugglers again?” Mr. Murdoch appeared at Kate’s side, saving the moment from growing even tenser. “As a child, she was quite smitten with the idea of a smuggler king.”
“I am not smitten any longer, I assure you.” Merry snapped, the coquette suddenly replaced by a petulant child. “But that does not mean that I do not understand what every man, woman, and child in Clyth already knows: that smugglers are a law unto themselves, fearing no one and nothing.”
“By heavens, Merry, you sound as if you admire them,” the marquis reproved her. “Pray recall they are responsible for the deaths of family members.”
The young girl’s face crumpled, her sophisticated facade proving nothing more than a veneer. “Forget? How could I forget?” she asked with such deep-felt anguish that Kate forgot her earlier dislike. “I will never forget.”
How hard it must be to lose your only confidante, Kate thought. In fact, in hindsight she realized that the girl had been enacting a very passable impersonation of Grace: hard, flippant, and worldly.
The marquis, too, seemed to realize the depth of Merry’s pain, for his anger vanished. “There, now. I know you didn’t mean anything. And do not worry, Watters will see the scoundrels caught.”
“Of course he will,” Mr. Murdoch agreed, patting her arm.
Rather than appearing comforted, Merry gave a short bark of bitter laughter. “Yes. Of course he will. Excuse me. I think Lady Mathilde beckoned.”
“She has not been herself since Grace’s death,” the marquis explained, watching her go. “As the only child in the castle she has been overindulged, and I confess I have let her run wild.”
“Often as not to Clyth,” Mr. Murdoch agreed, nodding portentously.
“Uncle?”
“She rides toward Clyth some nights. Saw her last night, riding out in the moonlight. Rides like Diana, that girl.”
“Why ever didn’t you say anything before this?” the marquis asked.
Kate looked at Kit. If he felt any of her embarrassment, he showed none. Uncomfortable, she began to edge away but the marquis stopped her. “Please. I am sorry. We are none of us ourselves.”
“Understandably so,” she murmured.
“You are kind.”
She lowered her eyes. She was nothing of the sort. She was simply trying to make these people like her well enough that they would agree to aid her and her sisters. She would have embraced the devil if it would buy her peace and security.
She blushed at the realization, and she felt Kit stiffen beside her. What must he think of her? He who had never bartered one whit of pride for tangibles?
Mr. Murdoch cleared his throat, his eyebrows wiggling like antennae as he searched for a way to fill the awkward silence. He looked at Kit, and his face cleared.
“I see there is more than one captain at the castle,” he said. That’s the Ninety-fifth Rifleman’s jacket you’re wearing, ain’t it? A captain’s. I didn’t realize the Rifles had been demobbed.”
“They haven’t, sir,” Kit replied. “I asked for a leave.”
“Of course you have,” the marquis said staunchly. “You’ve done your duty. Earned a bit of peace, I would imagine. Can always go back, I suppose?”
“Aye,” Kit answered. “There’s always a dearth of officers nowadays. But first I have some personal matters to attend to, some old debts that need to be paid.” He smiled, making it seem that these debts were simple, homely things. But she knew better. He was going to hunt the man from the castle. A man who had tacitly threatened to kill him. The realization of the danger he would be deliberately putting himself in hit Kate with the force of a blow.
“Is something wrong, Mrs. Blackburn?” the marquis asked solicitously.
“When will you be leaving?” she asked, ignoring the marquis’s solicitous query. Indeed, she was barely aware of the marquis anymore. Everything faded around them, the people, the room—she didn’t know where she was, nor did she care. While they’d been traveling, she’d forgotten that Kit’s nemesis was nearby. It had been easy to forget the future that awaited him, just as she’d conveniently forgotten her own.
“When are you going?” she insisted. “I thought you were staying a few days?”
But if she had forgotten where they were, Kit had not. He smiled at the others. “Mrs. Blackburn fears she will be marooned here without a driver,” he explained readily, “and thus forced to impose upon your hospitality should the roads close. Mrs. Blackburn is—forgive me for the familiarity, ma’am—most proud.”
The marquis, whose brows had been drawing together in uneasy consternation, relaxed. “Ah!” he breathed. “You mustn’t think that your company could ever be an imposition, Mrs. Blackburn. I may close the roads myself just to avail myself of your charming company.”
Kit smiled easily at the marquis, a gentleman approving another gentleman’s chivalry. He had bought her a few minutes to recover her aplomb, but a few minutes would not be enough. Dread pooled in her stomach. She could not look at him. She touched her fingertips to her temples. “I…I beg you excuse me.”
“What is wrong?” the marquis asked in concern.
“Oh, pray do not be alarmed. I am sometimes visited by sudden headaches.”
“But what can we do for you?” he asked. Kit watched her expressionlessly.