Lady Kenton made frantic fanning gestures with her hands. “Oh my!” She seemed to remember that she was supposed to be taking the role of wise adviser and took a deep breath.
“Well, that is nothing to the purpose. It seems to me that it would be better for you to wed again. That would put paid to the rumors. I had already thought of Lord Donaldson as a bridegroom for you. He would be quite complaisant if you had...other interests.”
“How thoughtful of him,” Mairi said. She sighed. “Dear ma’am, I
have
no other interests! I have almost lived like a nun since Archie’s death. That incident at the ball was—” She shrugged. How to describe Jack... “A mistake,” she said. “And now I am apparently the most notorious woman in Scotland.”
“Oh well, that
is
bad luck to get caught out the only time,” Lady Kenton agreed. “What a pity! You could have been having no end of fun.” She tapped Mairi’s arm. “Be sure to bear my advice in mind, though. And should you wish an introduction to Lord Donaldson, I shall be happy to oblige. He still has all his own hair and most of his own teeth.”
“It’s a wonder he has not been snapped up before now,” Mairi said. “I know you only have my best interests at heart, ma’am,” she said, “but I am sure I can live the scandal down since there
is
no actual scandal.”
“That is all very well,” Lady Kenton said, “but what about Michael Innes? He is sure to try to take advantage of this. You know he feels that dear Archie’s fortune should have come to him as heir, and not to you. And he is a lawyer.” Lady Kenton was wringing her hands now. “He is well connected in the legal sphere. You cannot afford to give him this chance.”
A cold, cold shadow brushed Mairi’s heart. She remembered the letter she had received at Ardglen. She had tried to dismiss it as just another of Innes’s threats, but it had had that nasty undertone of gloating. Perhaps this was what he intended to use against her. In his hands these rumors would be given the worst possible construction. She would be presented as immoral and corrupt, as a woman who had betrayed the memory of the husband who had entrusted her with his estates, a completely unsuitable and unworthy chatelaine. And if Innes started digging into scandal, there was no knowing what he might find. Archie’s past might be exposed, he would be vilified, his parents destroyed, and the past would reach into the present and annihilate other lives. Lady Kenton was also right that Innes was a lawyer with extensive contacts in the legal world. He was unscrupulous enough to use every last one of them to his advantage.
“I do believe,” Lady Kenton said, watching her face, “that you should give serious consideration to my suggestions. A betrothal would protect you from further slurs on your reputation—”
“I protect myself!” Mairi snapped. “I always have done so.” She stopped and clamped her lips together tightly. It was true but Lady Kenton did not know the secrets behind her marriage to Archie MacLeod and was far too conventional to be told.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Mairi said, seeing Lady Kenton’s distress. “I did not intend to snap. I am upset.” She squeezed Her Ladyship’s hands in an attempt to convey apology and comfort. “Be sure I shall consider your advice. And thank you. I am grateful.”
Lady Kenton had brightened, a smile now lighting her face again. “You are a good girl, Mairi, and those people who say you are headstrong do not realize how good you are.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Mairi said ruefully. She bent to kiss Lady Kenton’s cheek. “Now please excuse me. I must go and prepare for our first lecture.”
“It is botany and Chinese art this afternoon,” Lady Kenton said, “and mud bathing this evening. It’s medicinal, you know. Frightfully good for the skin.”
“Of course,” Mairi said. She had heard all about Lady Kenton’s medicinal treatments from her sister Lucy. Some confusion over a massage treatment at a gathering of the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society a few years ago had led to Lucy being hopelessly compromised by Robert Methven. It seemed to Mairi that mud bathing might prove equally dangerous.
She enjoyed the lecture on botany and then chose to spend her time curled up on the window seat in the extensive library at Dornie reading old copies of the
Quarterly Review.
As soon as the dinner gong sounded and she joined the ladies in the salon, though, she was again aware of the swirl of gossip and rumor. It was so marked that she was tempted to cry off and drive away to find an inn for the night, but she knew this would only fuel further speculation.
She also knew that in time another scandal would come along and people would forget all about her in the excitement of another reputation to rip to shreds. Michael Innes, though, was not so easily dismissed. He was a vengeful, grasping man who would take any opportunity to try to seize her money and lands. She tossed and turned all night, trying, through broken sleep, to think of a way to prevent everything she had tried to protect from being destroyed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“T
HIS
IS
VERY
good of you, Mr. Rutherford.” Lord MacLeod shook Jack’s hand. His grip was firm but his hand cold, the skin paper-fragile. He had insisted on standing to greet Jack when he was announced, but Jack was rather afraid that his host would collapse before he made it back to the chair before the fire. Lord MacLeod moved slowly to his seat, as though each step pained him, but there was also something defiant in His Lordship’s stance that absolutely forbade any help. Jack respected that.
A footman fetched refreshments. Wine was offered but Jack chose coffee. He wanted to keep a clear head. He had no notion why the laird of MacLeod had summoned him. They were barely acquainted. But he suspected that MacLeod wanted something and he also suspected he would not like what it was. As a general rule he seldom did favors for people unless there was some very substantial benefit to himself. It was a rule that served him well. Arguably it was also selfish and dishonorable, but he cared little about that.
“My wife apologizes that her health is too poor today to permit her to see you.” Lord MacLeod had settled himself back into his chair, a glass of claret at his elbow.
“My best wishes to Lady MacLeod,” Jack said. “I am sorry to hear that she is indisposed.” He shifted in his chair. He felt uncomfortable. The room was too hot; the fire was fierce even though the sun shone outside, sparkling on the waters of Loch Carron and softening the jagged edges of the mountains. In such a light even the high peaks looked a little less forbidding. He could not imagine, though, that the dour walls of this ancient castle could do much to cheer its occupants. There was an unhappiness that weighed on the air and dampened the spirits. He was the least superstitious of men, but even he could feel the chill of it.
He had met Lord MacLeod’s heir, Ruraidh MacLeod, during his time in Canada and done some business with him. They had watched each other’s backs in some wild territory. MacLeod had been only one of a number of Scots adventurers out to make a fortune as Jack had done himself. Jack had had no notion that MacLeod was heir to a barony, still less that he was brother-in-law to Lady Mairi MacLeod. The man had been dour to the point of silence and had never spoken of his home and family. Jack had assumed that like so many of them, MacLeod had come to the New World to start a new life. It was an unwritten rule that you did not ask questions.
It was only when MacLeod had died of a fever and Jack had undertaken to return his effects to the family that he had visited Strome Castle and met Lord and Lady MacLeod, gallantly attempting to hold their lives together in the face of the heartbreaking loss of not just one but of both their sons. He had visited them a couple of times since, understanding that they had wanted to talk about Ruraidh to someone who had known him and to learn something of their son’s life in Canada. It seemed little enough to do. Jack sensed that Lord and Lady MacLeod were painfully lonely while hiding their grief behind a valiant display of strength. He admired their refusal to surrender to despair.
This morning Jack sensed, however, that Lord MacLeod wanted something more than to reminisce over his son’s time abroad. There was something even more keen and watchful than usual in the old laird’s gaze as it rested on him. They exchanged pleasantries on the weather and the state of the roads. Jack refilled His Lordship’s glass of claret and declined the offer of more coffee.
Lord MacLeod shifted in his chair, moving away from the shaft of sunlight that pinned him in its glare and into the shadow. He was toying with his glass as though reflecting on a decision. Then he squared his shoulders, looked Jack in the eye.
“I need your help, Mr. Rutherford.”
Jack felt an instinctive sense of withdrawal, exactly as he had done when Robert had asked him to stand as godfather to his son. The ties that bound other men were not for him. He almost said as much, but then he saw the bleak desolation in MacLeod’s eyes. The old laird had no one else to ask.
“Sir?” Jack said.
His reluctance must have been all too apparent because once again he saw that disquieting gleam of amusement in Lord MacLeod’s eyes. The laird of Strome might be old, but there was nothing frail about his wits.
“It concerns my daughter-in-law,” Lord MacLeod said. “Lady Mairi, widow of my younger son.”
Jack’s mouth turned dry. He swallowed hard. He and Lord MacLeod had never discussed Mairi. Her name had never once been mentioned between them. Now he had a curious sensation of guilt and fear as though he were a seven-year-old boy once more in his father’s study—on the rare occasions that his father had actually noticed his existence—and was about to be soundly berated for some sin he had committed. In Mairi’s case his sin was fairly obvious: lust.
“You are acquainted with Lady Mairi, I believe,” Lord MacLeod continued.
“Yes,” Jack said. Acquaintance was not really the right description for his relationship with Mairi, but in this context it was all he was prepared to admit. “We have met.”
Lord MacLeod nodded. “I thought you must know each other as she is kin by marriage to your cousin Lord Methven.”
He paused as though expecting Jack to make some observation about Mairi. Jack remained prudently silent. Lord MacLeod smiled slightly.
“Lady Mairi is very precious to my wife and to me,” he said. “We owe her a very great deal.” A shadow fell across his eyes, as though he were looking far back into the past. “She could not have been more of a daughter to us if she had been our own flesh and blood.”
Jack hoped his surprise did not show on his face. He had not imagined that Lady Mairi MacLeod had much of a softer side. No matter. This was one situation he was most definitely not getting involved with. While he might be interested in getting to know Mairi better in the purely physical sense, he most certainly did not want to get embroiled in the MacLeod family affairs.
“I am sorry to hear that there are difficulties, my lord,” Jack said carefully, “but I do not think that I am the right man to help you.” He could feel the sweat prickling his collar. His cravat felt too tight.
I am not the man you think me.
MacLeod shifted a little in his chair. Jack, watching, could see how the movement pained him. That pain was etched deep in the lines on the old laird’s face, and yet he did not betray it with a single word or glance. He kept his eyes on Jack’s face until Jack started to feel ashamed, his refusal unworthy and lacking in courage. The sensation astonished him. Not one man in a hundred had the power to intimidate him. It was annoying that the laird of MacLeod did.
“I am sorry to hear that, Mr. Rutherford,” MacLeod said at length. His voice was dry. It crackled like old parchment. “I believe you to be an honorable man. Allow me to make my situation explicitly clear. Allow me to appeal to that honor.” He pinned Jack in his fierce dark gaze. “I am turning to you, Mr. Rutherford, because I have no son of my own now. Indeed, I have no close relatives other than my wife and my daughter-in-law. Under normal circumstances I would not dream of so importuning an acquaintance. But these are not normal circumstances.”
“You have an heir, my lord,” Jack said with increasing desperation.
Do not appeal to my honor. I have none.
MacLeod smiled. There was no humor in the look. “It is my heir, Mr. Michael Innes, who poses the problem, Mr. Rutherford. He is a distant cousin, untrustworthy and devious. My title and estate are entailed to him, but that is not sufficient to satisfy him. He wants more. He has started to make threats.”
Again there was a silence. Lord MacLeod’s gaze was as sharp as a blade on Jack’s face and it did not waver, but behind his steely composure Jack could see a man who would give all he had to regain his strength and be able to defend what was left of his family with his own sword.
“I am honored by your confidence, my lord,” he said, “but I fear I cannot—”
“The threats are against Lady Mairi,” Lord MacLeod interrupted bluntly. “I have heard that my heir seeks to take my late son’s estate from her. He will blacken her name in any way he can in order to do so. He will take her to court and attempt to ruin her.”
Jack felt a flare of protective fury that shocked him. Had Michael Innes been present at the moment, he would very likely have taken the man apart. His reaction threw him completely. It was a matter of complete indifference to him if Mairi MacLeod got herself into trouble. In fact, the way she behaved was all too likely to get her into trouble, and he was not the man to get her out of it again, absolutely not.
“I cannot imagine that Lady Mairi is easily intimidated by any man,” he said. “She should tell him to go to hell.”
He thought of the army of retainers with which Mairi surrounded herself. That private army made a great deal more sense now. It was not simply a rich woman’s whim or an example of her self-importance.
Mairi was afraid.
Again he felt that odd sensation: anger, protectiveness. He did not wish to feel protective of Lady Mairi MacLeod. It made an already complicated situation infinitely more complicated. He pushed the thought away. He was reading entirely too much into his responses. Lady Mairi was beautiful and he desired her. That was not complicated. It was very simple.
Lord MacLeod was smiling. “It seems you know my daughter-in-law well, Mr. Rutherford. I imagine that would be her initial response. She is not easily frightened. But there is more to this than a threat against Mairi’s reputation.” His fingers gripped the head of his cane, the knuckles showing white. “If my heir is trying to dig up scandal, he may stumble upon old secrets that would destroy all of us.” He fell silent, staring into the red heart of the fire.
“What is the nature of these secrets?” Jack asked. He could think of nothing that could be so scandalous that it would warrant such a description. Yet the laird of MacLeod was not a man to scare easily, and his thin face was bleak with fear as well as anger.
MacLeod’s gaze came back to him. “I cannot tell you,” he said. “Should you choose to accept my commission, it will be Mairi’s decision as to whether she entrusts the truth to you. It is your choice, Mr. Rutherford.” He was staring into the distance with the faraway expression of a man whose mind was focused on times long past. His hand shook as he reached for his glass. He brought his gaze back to Jack’s face and suddenly he looked tired, withered and worn. “I cannot act.” He gestured down his body. “I am an old man, racked with illness. But you—you could help my daughter-in-law. You could give her your protection and...persuade...Mr. Innes that it is not in his interests to threaten her.”
The answer was obviously no. Jack did not even have to think too hard about it. He was not in the business of helping either old men or beautiful women out of trouble. This was nothing to do with him. The inappropriate sense of protectiveness he had felt toward Mairi faded and the hard carapace settled once more about him, reassuringly cold and unemotional.
“It is my cousin, not I, whom you should be approaching, my lord,” Jack said. “As Lady Mairi’s kinsman, Lord Methven would, I am sure, be willing to offer his help.”
Robert would curse him, he imagined, for involving him in someone else’s disputes, but he was a man who took his family duties very seriously. While Jack was not. Not at all. Suddenly he longed for a glass of brandy and, equally strongly, to be free of Strome Castle and its dark secrets and the sense of responsibility that Lord MacLeod was trying to place upon him.
Lord MacLeod nodded. “I thought of asking Lord Methven, but I imagine it would be more difficult for him to keep this matter private. Whereas you—” He smiled. “You are a solitary man, are you not, Mr. Rutherford, accustomed to keeping secrets?”
He paused, giving Jack the opportunity to feel uncomfortable. MacLeod was right, of course. He was a loner by inclination. Which made him all the more disinclined to embroil himself in other people’s problems.
“My lord—” he said again.
“It would not prove difficult for you to help us,” the old laird continued as though he had not spoken. “Besides—” Lord MacLeod looked up, directly at him. “The assistance I have in mind cannot be provided by Lord Methven. I had it in mind that you should become betrothed to Lady Mairi.”
Jack almost choked on the dregs of his coffee. For a moment he thought he had misheard, but the laird was still smiling gently at him as though he had made him a particularly tempting offer that Jack surely could not refuse.
Jack put his cup down gently and cleared his throat. His neck cloth felt even tighter now. He resisted the urge to loosen it and thereby show quite how shaken he was.
“My lord—” he said for a third time.
“As Lady Mairi’s fiancé you would able to give her the protection she requires and have the right to deal with the threat posed by my heir,” MacLeod continued, quite as though he had not heard Jack’s strangled objection. “Find out what he knows. Persuade him to withdraw his lawsuit. Once that threat is removed you would be free, of course, to end the engagement should you wish to do so.”
Jack took a deep breath. “Sir, I am honored you consider me a suitable fiancé for Lady Mairi, but I fear you have the wrong man,” he said. “It would do nothing to help her reputation were she to be betrothed to me. On the contrary, it would probably sink it without trace.”
Lord MacLeod’s gaze was shrewd. “I appreciate that you are not a man whose natural state is in wedlock, Mr. Rutherford, but that is not what is needed here. What is needed is a man who is strong enough to protect Lady Mairi and ruthless enough to deal with Mr. Innes. You are both of those.”
Jack knew flattery when he heard it, but he was also obliged to admit that Lord MacLeod had a point. He was most certainly not intimidated by the thought of a lawyer who intended to destroy Lady Mairi MacLeod’s reputation. But it was impossible that he should get involved. It simply was not something he would do. Even now he was wondering why it was so difficult to give a simple refusal.
“Does Lady Mairi know of your plans, my lord?” he asked. “I hardly think she will welcome your suggestion.”