The Gypsy woman shrugged, and stroked her index finger across the base of his thumb. “I see you have suffered a great loss recently.”
“My father,” Quin admitted. “He—he passed away.”
“Ah,” said the Gypsy. “What is your name?”
“Quin,” he said. “Quinten Hewitt—or Wynwood, I should say. Lord Wynwood.”
She made the noise in her throat again. “So many names, you English,” she murmured, dropping the hand as if she had grown weary. “Go now, all of you. Go to your carriage and leave this place. I can say nothing which will stop you from wasting your lives. Your fate is sealed.”
Alasdair cut his eyes toward the tent flap.
“Go,” said the Gypsy again. “The men have gone. They will not return. It is fate which will punish you for your sins this day, MacLachlan, not those bumbling idiots.”
Merrick jerked to his feet. Quin gave an uneasy laugh. “Sorry, Alasdair,” he said. “At least Merrick and I seem to have gotten off rather easily.” He smiled at the woman, whose exotic beauty was decidedly growing on Alasdair.
“Easily?” she echoed. She lifted her eyes to Quin’s and held his gaze. “But I have not told you your future.”
It was true, Alasdair realized. She had said much, but portended little.
Merrick had turned his back to them and was again peering through the tent flap.
“Well, go on then,” Quin encouraged. “What have we to look forward to, ma’am? Great riches? Exotic travel? What?”
She hesitated briefly. “This is no foolish parlor game, my lord,” she answered. “Do you really wish to know?”
Quin faltered. “I—yes, why not?”
The Gyspy’s gaze was distant. “What is the phrase you English say, Lord Wynwood?” she murmured. “Ah, yes, I recall it.
Your chicks are coming home to roost.”
“Chickens,” corrected Quin. “I believe it’s usually said to be chickens.”
“Are you quite sure?” Her voice was suddenly sharp. “In any case, none of you shall continue to evade the consequences of your iniquities. None of you can continue to take and use and exploit, whilst paying no price. You must begin to pay for your sins. Fate will make this so.”
“Iniquities?” said Alasdair. “Sins? Ma’am, those are harsh words.”
“Call them what you will,” said the Gypsy, with a shrug that set her long earrings jangling. “But you will pay, MacLachlan. And you will learn. And you will suffer in the doing of it. What is to come will be as real and as painful as that bruise between your eyes.”
Merrick cursed softly, but did not turn around. “I grow weary of this Cheltenham tragedy,” he snapped. “Let’s be off.”
“Wait a moment, Merrick.” Quin was studying the woman warily. “Is this one of those Gypsy curses?”
At that the woman’s eyes flashed. “Lord Wynwood, you are such a fool,” she said. “You have read too many novels. The three of you have cursed yourself, with no help needed from me. Now you must make restitution. You must make it right.”
Merrick looked over his shoulder. “Utter balderdash,” he snapped.
“Nonetheless, it shall be so,” she said quietly.
An ill wind suddenly blew through the tent, chilling Alasdair despite the summer heat. He spun around to see that his brother had thrown open the flap and was striding back down the path. Quin shrugged, and followed.
Never one easily daunted—even, perhaps, when he should have been—Alasdair smiled, and slid onto the middle stool. “My dear girl,” he said, leaning half-across the table. “Now that those Philistines have gone, I really must ask you—has anyone ever told you that your eyes are the color of fine cognac? Your lips like blushing rose petals?”
“Yes, and my arse is like two orbs of Carrera marble,” she answered dryly. “Trust me, MacLachlan. I have heard them all.”
Alasdair’s smile melted. “Ah, a pity!”
The Gypsy woman gave him a bemused look and stood. “Begone with you,” she said. “Get out of my tent, MacLachlan, and put away your well-worn charms. They do you no good here and have caused trouble enough already.”
Aladair hung his head and laughed. “It
has
been rather a bad day,” he admitted.
For a moment, the Gypsy said nothing. “Oh, my poor, poor MacLachlan,” she finally whispered. “Oh, I fear you do not know the half.”
The chilling breeze touched the back of his neck again. But this time, when Alasdair looked up, his beautiful prophetess had vanished.
Upon returning to his town house in Great Queen Street, Alasdair waved away his butler’s questions about dinner, tossed his coat and cravat on a chair, and flung himself across the worn leather sofa in his smoking parlor. Then he promptly slipped back into the alcohol-induced stupor which had served him so well on the carriage ride home.
A copious amount of brandy had proven necessary in order to endure the company of his traveling companions. Quin had become peevish about his twenty-pound wager, and grumbled all the way to Wandsworth. As for Merrick, Alasdair’s younger brother needed no excuse to behave sullenly. It was his perpetual state of existence. At least the pretty Gypsy had called that one right, Alasdair mused, drifting into oblivion.
For a time, he just dozed, too indolent to rise and go up to bed. But shortly before midnight, he was roused by a racket at his windows. He cracked one eye to see that the unseasonable heat had given way to a brutal thunderstorm. Snug and dry on his sofa, Aladair yawned, scratched, then rolled over and went back to sleep, secure in life as he knew it. But his lassitude was soon disturbed again when he was jolted from a dream by a relentless pounding at his front door.
He tried mightily to ignore it and cling to the remnants of his fantasy—something to do with Bliss, the beautiful Gypsy, and a bottle of good champagne. But the pounding came again, just as the Gypsy was trailing her fingertips seductively along his backside. Damn. Surely Wellings would answer it? But he did not, and the knocking did not abate.
Out of annoyance rather than concern, Alasdair crawled off the sofa, scratched again, and headed out into the passageway which overlooked the stairs. In the foyer below, Wellings had finally flung open the door. Alasdair looked down to see that someone—a female servant, he supposed—stood in the rain on his doorstep carrying, strangely enough, a basket of damp laundry.
Wellings’s nose was elevated an inch, a clear indication of his disdain. “As I have twice explained, madam,” he was saying, “Sir Alasdair does not receive unescorted young females. Particularly not at this hour. Get back in your hackney, please, before you fall dead on the doorstep of pneumonia.”
He moved as if to shut the door, but the woman gracelessly shoved first her foot, then her entire leg, inside. “Now whisht your blether and listen, man!” said the woman in a brogue as tart as Granny MacGregor’s. “You’ll be fetching your master down here and making haste about it, for I’ll not be taking
no
for an answer, if I have to knock on this door ’til God himself and all his angels come down those steps.”
Alasdair knew, of course, that he was making a grievous error. But drawn by something he could not name—temporary insanity, perhaps—he began slowly to descend the stairs. His caller, he realized, was not a woman, but a girl. And the laundry was…well, not laundry. More than that, he could not say. Halfway down the stairs, he cleared his throat.
At once, Wellings turned, and the girl looked up. It was then that Alasdair felt a disembodied blow to the gut. The girl’s eyes were the clearest, purest shade of green he’d ever seen. Like the churning rush of an Alpine stream, the cool, clean gaze washed over him, leaving Alasdair breathless, as if he’d just been dashed with ice water.
“You wished to see me, miss?” he managed.
Her gaze ran back up, and settled on his eyes. “Aye, if your name is MacLachlan, I do,” she said. “And you look about as I expected.”
Alasdair did not think the remark was meant to be a compliment. He wished to hell he was fully sober. He had the most dreadful feeling he ought to be on guard against this person, slight, pale, and damp though she might be. Somehow, beneath her bundle, she extended a hand. Alasdair took it, realizing as he did so that even her glove was soaked.
“Miss Esmée Hamilton,” she said crisply.
Alasdair managed a cordial smile. “A pleasure, Miss Hamilton,” he lied. “Do I know you?”
“You do not,” she said. “Nonetheless, I’ll need a moment of your time.” She cut a strange glance at Wellings. “A
private
moment, if you please.”
Alasdair looked pointedly down at her. “It is rather an odd hour, Miss Hamilton.”
“Aye, well, I was given to understand you kept odd hours.”
Alasdair’s misgiving deepened, but curiosity overcame it. With a slight bow, and a flourish of his hand, he directed the girl into the parlor, then sent Wellings away for tea and dry towels. The girl bent over the sofa nearest the fire, and fussed over her bundle a moment.
Who the devil was she?
A Scot, to be sure, for she made no pretense of glossing over her faint burr as so many did. She was dainty, almost childlike in appearance, save for her haunting green eyes. She could not be above seventeen or eighteen years, he did not think, and despite her damp, somewhat dowdy attire, she looked to be of genteel birth. Which meant the sooner he got her the hell out of his house, the safer it was for both of them.
On that thought, he returned to the parlor door and threw it open again. She looked up from the sofa with a disapproving frown.
“I fear my butler may have mistaken your circumstances, Miss Hamilton,” said Alasdair. “I think it unwise for a young lady of your tender years to be left alone with me.”
Just then, the bundle twitched. Alasdair leapt out of his skin. “Good Lord!” he said, striding across the room to stare at it.
A little leg had poked from beneath the smothering heap of blankets. Miss Hamilton threw back the damp top layer, and at once, Alasdair’s vision began to swim, but not before he noticed a tiny hand, two drowsy, long-lashed eyes, and a perfect little rosebud of a mouth.
“She is called Sorcha,” whispered Miss Hamilton. “Unless, of course, you wish to change her name.”
Alasdair leapt back as if the thing might explode. “Unless I wish—wish—to
what?”
“To change her name,” Miss Hamilton repeated, her cool gaze running over him again. “As much as it pains me, I must give her up. I cannot care for her as she deserves.”
Alasdair gave a cynical laugh. “Oh, no,” he said, his tone implacable. “That horse won’t trot, Miss Hamilton. If ever I had bedded you, I would most assuredly remember it.”
Miss Hamilton drew herself up an inch.
“Me—?
Faith and troth, MacLachlan! Are you daft?”
“I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “Perhaps I am confused. Pray tell me why you are here. And be warned, Miss Hamilton, that I’m nobody’s fool.”
The girl’s mouth twitched at one corner. “Aye, well, I’m pleased to hear it, sir,” she answered, her gaze sweeping down him again. “I’d begun to fear otherwise.”
Alasdair was disinclined to tolerate an insult from a girl who resembled nothing so much as a wet house wren. Then he considered how he must look. He’d been sleeping in his clothes—the same clothes he’d put on at dawn to wear to the boxing match. He’d had rampant sex in a pile of straw, been shot at and chased by a madman, then drunk himself into a stupor during a three-hour carriage drive. He had not shaved in about twenty hours, he was sporting a purple goose egg between his eyes, and his hair was doubtless standing on end. Self-consciously, he dragged a hand through it.
She was looking at him with some strange mix of disdain and dread, and inexplicably, he wished he had put on his coat and cravat. “Now, see here, Miss Hamilton,” he finally managed. “I really have no interest in being flayed by your tongue, particularly when—”
“Och, you’d be right, I know!” The disdain, if not the dread, disappeared. “I’m tired and peevish, aye, but in my defense, I’ve been on the road above a sen’night, and another two days trying to find you in this hellish, filthy city.”
“Alone—?”
“Save for Sorcha, aye,” she admitted. “My apologies.”
Alasdair reined in his temper. “Sit down, please, and take off your wet coat and gloves,” he commanded. When she had done so, he laid them near the door, and began to pace. “Now, tell me, Miss Hamilton. Who is the mother of this child, if you are not?”
At last, some color sprang to her cheeks. “My mother,” she said quietly. “Lady Achanalt.”
“Lady Acha-
who?”
“Lady Achanalt.” The girl frowned. “You—you do not recall the name?”
To his consternation, he did not, and admitted as much.
“Oh, dear.” Her color deepened. “Poor Mamma! She fancied, I think, that you would take her memory to the grave, or some such romantic nonsense.”
To the grave?” he echoed, fighting down a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Where the devil is she?”
“Gone to hers, I’m sorry to say.” Her hand went to the dainty but expensive-looking strand of pearls at her neck, and she began to fiddle with them nervously. “She passed away. It was sudden.”
“My sympathies, Miss Hamilton.”
Miss Hamilton paled. “Save your sympathies for your daughter,” she said. “Her full name, by the way, is Lady Sorcha Guthrie. She was conceived at Hogmanay, over two years past. Does that jag your brain a wee bit?”
Alasdair felt slightly disoriented. “Well…no.”
“But you must recall it,” Miss Hamilton pressed. “There was a ball—a masquerade—at Lord Morwen’s home in Edinburgh. A bacchanalian rout, I collect. You met her there.
Didn’t
you?”
His blank face must have shaken her.
“Good Lord, she said you told her it was love at first sight!” Miss Hamilton protested, her voice a little desperate now. “And that—why, that you had been waiting all your life for someone like her! Mother was a brunette. Full-figured, and tall. Very beautiful. Good Lord, do you remember
nothing?”
Alasdair searched his mind, and felt sicker still. He
had
been in Edinburgh some two years ago. He had taken the unusual step of going home for the holidays because his uncle Angus had returned from abroad for a brief visit. They had spent Hogmanay together. In Edinburgh. And there
had
been a ball. A raucous one, if memory served. Angus had dragged him to it, and more or less carried him home afterward. Alasdair remembered little, save for the roaring headache he’d suffered the following day.
“Oh, well!” Her voice was resigned. “Mamma was ever a fool for a pretty face.”
A pretty face?
Was that what she thought? And who the devil was this Lady Achanalt? Alasdair wracked his brain, this time dragging both hands through his hair. The young woman was still sitting on the sofa beside the sleeping child, staring up at him. Her gaze was no longer so cool and clear, but instead weary and a little sad.
“Sorcha is precious to me, MacLachlan,” she said quietly. “She is my sister, and I will always love her dearly. But my stepfather—Lord Achanalt—he does not love her. From the very first, he knew.”
“That he was not the father?” asked Alasdair. “Are you quite sure?”
The girl’s green gaze fell to the carpet beneath her soggy shoes. “He was sure,” she whispered. “Because he and Mamma had not—or would not…”
“Oh, Lord!” said Alasdair. “What, exactly?”
“I don’t know!”
she cried, her face flooding with color. “I don’t understand any of it. He
knew.
That is all Mamma would say. And then one day, it just all blew up! She flung it in his face. She made it sound like a grand passion. Faith, did she never write to you? Nor you to her?”
Alasdair pressed his fingertips to his temple. “Dear God.”
She looked at him sorrowfully. “’Tis rather too late for prayers,” she said. “Look, MacLachlan, the last two years have been the very devil for all of us. I did what I could to smooth o’er a bad business, but now, there is nothing more to be done. Mamma is dead, and it falls to you. I’m sorry.”
The room fell silent for a moment. Alasdair paced back and forth before the hearth, the sound of his bootheels harsh on the marble floor. A child. An
illegitimate
child. Oh, God. This could not be happening to him. “How did she die?” he finally croaked.
“’Twas a fever,” she answered hollowly. “A very ordinary thing. She always wanted to die dramatically—
a poetic death,
she used to call it—but a fever went round the Highlands like a wildfire. It was God’s will, I suppose.”
Alasdair wondered if God hadn’t had a little help from the lady’s husband. “I am deeply sorry for your loss, Miss Hamilton,” he finally said. “But I simply cannot take the child. Is that what you thought? That she would be better off here? Nothing, I assure you, could be further from the truth.”
She looked at him strangely. “What I think little matters, sir.”
But Alasdair was determined to throw off this treacherous burden. “I am persuaded that in your grief for your mother, you have been overcome by romantic notions, Miss Hamilton,” he responded. “But I am a hardened gamester. A practiced wastrel. A womanizer of the worst order. The very last sort of man who ought to be rearing a child. Go home, Miss Hamilton. There was no passion, grand or otherwise, between your mother and me. Lord Achanalt is Sorcha’s father in the eyes of God and the law. Indeed, I am sure he must be worried sick by now.”
At that, Miss Hamilton laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “Then you are the only romantic fool in this room, MacLachlan,” she returned. “Worse, perhaps, than my poor mother. Achanalt cares not one whit for the opinion of the law, and in the Highlands, he might as well
be
God. Sorcha and I have no home. Do you not comprehend me, sir?”
Alasdair stopped in his pacing and turned to stare at her, clutching his hands behind his back to keep from putting a fist through something. “Good God,” he whispered. “The man has turned you out?”
Miss Hamilton lifted one of her wrenlike shoulders. “Why should he not?” she answered. “We are neither kith nor kin to him. We share not one drop of his blood. We have no siblings, no grandparents. Achanalt owes us naucht. If you do not believe me, just write to him and ask. He’ll readily tell you so.”
Alasdair fell into a chair. “Christ Jesus, your mother died, and he…he just…?”
“Our things were put out in the carriage drive before the doctor could declare her dead,” said Miss Hamilton. “Fortunately, he was kind enough to take us up in his curricle on his way home. We have been living with his family all this time, a dreadful imposition.”