Scandal in the Night (14 page)

She hadn’t really regained her feet since.

But back then, she hadn’t wanted to.

The dawn had come mercifully early that next morning, pale and golden, filling the Doab Valley with warm, flat yellow light. Catriona had arisen early and pushed open the heavy slatted shutters to see a jackal slinking his menacing grace through the cool avenues of the cantonment toward the obscuring haze lying low across the river.

But nothing could mar the infinite possibility of the morning. Of course there were in reality myriad things—objections from Namita, an out-of-hand request from her aunt to deliver something to one of the families in the cantonment, a slight fever in one of the children—but she would not allow them to interfere with her plans. She was anxious to be up and out of the house, and riding with her friend, the great horseman Tanvir Singh. To show him that she was worthy of his mare. And perhaps to prove to herself that the gently charming friend from last night truly did exist behind the careless smiles of the handsome rogue of a horse trader.

Within the hour, she was leading her cousins across the river toward the large botanical garden in the center of the town, where Mr. John Forbes Royal was in charge of collecting medicinal plants for cataloguing and attempting to grow tea bushes smuggled over the borders from China. Their little party arrived at the garden well ahead of time, as both she and the children had been anxious to get out before the heat of the day sent them napping on their netted beds. Or at least that was the reason she had given them for her haste.

She had taken only Arthur and Alice with her. George had a slight fever from cutting a molar tooth, and Charlotte was still a bit too young for a long ride. Although Charlotte had begged and pleaded and cried to be taken along, Cat had thought it prudent not to take her up in front of her in the saddle on the first day she took the spirited mare out. “Next time,” she had promised.

Once within the gates of the garden, Cat had directed them to let their mounts walk along the cool, shaded lanes, while anticipation tumbled happy little somersaults in her belly. What a marvelous feeling—to feel happy and alive and open to all the sights and scenes that the day might bring.

As soon as she heard the steady drum of hoofbeats on the hard-packed earth, she turned to greet Tanvir Singh, but the smile of anticipation froze on her face.

It was not Tanvir Singh who approached, but Lieutenant Birkstead, the blond-haired, blue-eyed devil of the night before. The one man in all the world she had absolutely no desire to meet.

And he was coming at an angle that would surely intersect their path if she did not immediately change direction. Catriona’s instinct was as it had always been—to leave at once. To get herself as far away from the lieutenant as possible. To avoid so much as having to make eye contact with the man. To run.

She turned the mare toward another tree-lined lane where they would be out of the lieutenant’s direct line of sight. “Let us head this way, Arthur. Shall we have a bit of a race? We’ll let the ponies have their heads.” And away they clattered at a noisy gallop in the opposite direction from the red-coated intruder.

But Lieutenant Birkstead proved himself to be nothing if not supremely tenacious. And intent upon a meeting. Dangerously so.

While they were enjoying their rather sedate, pony-paced gallop, he chased them down. Catriona was concentrating on keeping her very well behaved but new mare in check so she wouldn’t overtake the children’s small but sturdy little mountain ponies, when Lieutenant Birkstead’s horse charged at her at speed.

Catriona was forced to rein the mare much more abruptly and sharply than she liked, just to avoid a collision, and her intelligent animal quite rightly took exception, rearing back from the intruder.

“Sir!” Catriona’s heart was slamming against her chest. But with her fright came something just as strong. Affront. And derision. She could not abide a man who did not know how to control himself on a horse. Such a man was a danger not only to himself, but to others and to his animal. His poor gelding was fretting and foaming, showing her the whites of his eyes and tossing his head fractiously from the constant hard bite of the bit in his mouth.

She had to bring her own mare under control with her legs rather than her hands, because the lieutenant had taken up her reins. “It’s quite all right, Miss Rowan. I’ve got your mount under control now.”

“
My
mount?” The bloody, bloody, arrogant, asinine … ass. “Sir, clearly you’ve taken too much sun. Release her immediately.” She hated that he had forced such a confrontation upon her. She was shaking, inside and out, but she could not let his behavior pass. “You are interfering with our ride and my supervision of the children. Kindly let go of my rein, sir.”

But Lieutenant Birkstead ignored her, and held on to the rein, though the mare tried to back away steadily, and tugged her head away from him, fighting him for control. “I can’t imagine what possessed your uncle to purchase this ridiculous animal for you. But I’ve got you under control now.” His tone was strangely pleased and condescending all at the same time, as if he assumed she would be grateful for his notice.

But she wasn’t in the last bit grateful. She was bloody annoyed. And growing more so by the minute. She had done everything she could to avoid the man. She would rather have left the garden and missed her appointment with Tanvir Singh than have to speak to Lieutenant Birkstead. But now that her temper had been riled, there was no going back. No retreat from the confrontation that had been forced upon her.

“Sir.” Catriona made her tone as flinty as highland granite—anger brought out the Scots in her. “My uncle, Lord Summer, was possessed to buy her because he recognized a superior animal when he saw her, and he understood that she would suit me. Perhaps
you
are not used to ladies who ride well, but I assure you, until your interruption, I was enjoying a very sedate canter with my family, on a very straight and level path. There was no need for such alarm, or interference, or for intruding upon our family group.”

But the lieutenant was proving to be as annoyingly persistent as he was impervious. “Oh, come, Miss Rowan. You needn’t poker up with me.” He smiled at her, all lazy, sure smarm, as if his condescension were a gift. “A man likes nothing so much as a damsel in distress.”

Of all the patronizing, stupid, arrogant things—to charge at another animal for nothing more substantial than some misbegotten notion of gallantry, or pride, or whatever it was. For Saint Margaret’s sake, the man didn’t even like her. What an unmitigated, unbridled ass.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say, “I’m sure my aunt Lettice will be glad to play your damsel,” but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Not with Arthur and Alice listening and watching the interplay between Catriona and the lieutenant with such deeply curious eyes.

So Catriona caught the words before they left her mouth, and forced herself to choose more moderate ones, to put a damper on the hot and scathing tone she wanted to use. “I thank you for your concern, sir, however unnecessary. You may release my rein.”

He did not. “Hardly unnecessary,” he countered, and brought his mount closer to her, as if she hadn’t just dismissed him. As if she had somehow invited him instead. His tone became low and ingratiating. “You haven’t been here long enough, I daresay, to understand a white woman doesn’t go out riding alone. As an English gentleman it’s my duty to protect you.” He smiled again, as if he expected his fair-haired good looks would dazzle her, and reached out his hand across the gap between them, as if he would actually pat her hands.

It was utterly infuriating. He was infuriating. She was infuriated. Infuriated that the man had the gall to call himself a gentleman. Catriona touched her heel to the mare’s inside flank, and the superbly trained animal instantly made a graceful pivot that removed her as far as she could from the bloody man.

The short distance afforded her some small measure of control. And with control came clarity. Behind the lieutenant, she could see Tanvir Singh with two riders a short distance away, watching and waiting with the stealthy, predatory awareness of a hawk.

A new heat spread into her lungs. She was not alone. The sight of him emboldened her. She was done with subtlety, no matter how damaging blunt speaking might prove. “You need not exercise yourself on my account, Lieutenant. I am not alone. I am with my family, and a very able escort. And I am hardly unprotected.”

To illustrate her point, she recklessly drew from the folds of her riding skirt the ancient pistol she had carried with her like a tombstone all the way from Scotland, and laid the worn but lethally efficient mechanism across her pommel in a show of controlled calm, which she did not feel in the least. Her insides were all tumbled up like cats clawing at each other in a fight.

She hated the gun. Hated it. But some instinct for self-preservation had seen her loading and providentially stowing the weapon in her pocket before their ride.

And the feeling of control, however shaky, gave her some semblance of calm. “As you so cogently pointed out to my aunt Lettice last night, Lieutenant, Scotland
is
a savage place, so we whey-faced Scots chits are quite in the habit of arming ourselves against, shall we say, unwanted and
unworthy
attention.”

It took a long moment for Lieutenant Birkstead to look beyond the sleek pistol and understand what she had just told him. She saw the moment when the realization struck him like a hammer to his forehead, because he finally had the grace to color. But not, unfortunately, the intelligence to let the matter drop, and take his leave. Indeed, her response seemed to have awakened, rather than dampened, his misplaced enthusiasm. Instead of apologizing, like a
gentleman,
his tone became even more intimate and even insinuating. “Did she tell you I said that, your aunt Lettice? I daresay she’s a little jealous at having such a beautiful young rival living in her house.”

That wasn’t the line he had fed her aunt in the cozy dark of the gazebo, but it was horrible of him to try and lay the entirety of the blame on Lettice’s head. Especially in front of Catriona’s young cousins. Odious, selfish, self-deceiving man. He actually
liked
the idea of two women fighting over him.

“Sir, you overstep.” She spoke for the children’s benefit, as well as her own. “I am not her rival in any way.”

He smiled, and slouched closer. “She clearly does not see it that way. Let me give you a little piece of advice, dear girl. You will want a friend here to help you find your way amongst the jealous Lettice Summerses of our world. And I can be that friend.”

Sweet Saint Margaret. Catriona would have laughed if she hadn’t been so deeply disgusted. And deeply afraid. The lieutenant was a practiced, practical liar. Did the women of his normal acquaintance swallow such bouncers? Did Lettice buy his obvious lies? He must think all women the rankest idiots.
Friendship,
indeed—but at what cost? Men like the lieutenant did not offer things so extravagant as friendship if they did not expect something astonishingly compensatory in return.

The man continued to smile at her in a way that was meant to be charming, but to Catriona, Lieutenant Birkstead’s version of tawny handsomeness brought to mind nothing so much as the golden jackal she had seen that very morning, hungry and amoral, slinking through the dawn, already having stolen its full. Dangerous and lethal.

Catriona felt her hand tighten around the smooth stock of the gun, and she had to force herself to relax her stiff fingers.

What did the lieutenant think to steal from her—apart from the obvious, which was hardly necessary since he was currently getting it from Lettice? Or had Lord Summers been so imprudent as to share the fullness of his intended generosity—the size of the fortune he meant to settle upon her—with the lieutenant? After Birkstead’s pointed dismissal of Lettice’s suggestions, nothing else could account for the lieutenant’s sudden interest. Nor his dogged determination. His interest in her must have been lit by avarice, and not by anything so unprofitable as love or admiration.

“I hope we can be very good friends, you and I,” he lied pleasantly to her face. He even reached out again, as if he would touch her cheek with the back of his glove, but she drew the mare back abruptly so that his hand only reached her forearm before it fell back to his side. “Very good friends.”

She could suffer neither his touch, nor his presence a moment longer. “Perhaps, sir, you don’t understand me because of my accent as thick as porridge, so please listen closely.” She leaned toward him, and quietly enunciated each word in a flawless imitation of her aunt’s cutting, upper-class ennui. “I have no interest in the sort of friendship you pretend to be offering, nor the kind of
friendship
you are currently pursuing with other men’s wives in dark gardens and no doubt darker bungalows. No interest whatsoever.” She tried to back the mare again. “You will excuse me now. Good day to you, sir.”

But Birkstead would not be outmaneuvered. He swung his foaming and fretting mount alongside Catriona to look at her more closely, his face darkened with some emotion other than embarrassment.

And for the first time in her rather eventful life, Catriona felt her flesh crawl, as if a snake had slithered across her skin. She had clearly done the wrong thing with her anger and her brash words. She had awakened rather than averted his interest.

“Oh, no.” The lieutenant smiled that all-too-self-possessed smile even as he shook his head. “I will not excuse you, dear Miss Rowan. And here I thought you were a quiet little Scottish mouse—a quiet little nothing. But you’re really nothing of the sort. Well, well, well.” He let his eyes slide down the length of her body in appreciation of his discovery. “Bringing you to hand is going to be much more fun than I had thought. You’re a hot-tempered little thing. You’ve got spark. And I think I’m going to like letting my fingers get burned.”

Chapter Nine