Scotsmen Prefer Blondes (21 page)

Malcolm set aside his spoon as Ferguson rose. “Ladies, shall we leave you to your gossip?” he asked.

“I’m sure we will speak of more edifying topics than gossip,” Madeleine said.

“Then you’re better souls than I — I intend to demand every bit of gossip from MacCabe,” Ferguson said.

Madeleine smiled at her husband. Amelia saw something flit across her face — just an instant of it, before it subsided beneath her grin. Persephone might have looked at Hades that way, over her dish of pomegranate seeds — like she was ruined for all other men and wouldn’t choose any other fate.

She wondered what her own face said when she looked at Malcolm. His eyes held hers for a moment, a dark lover ready to consume. His grin said he wanted to taste all of her. And his voice, when he told her not to miss him, held a contradictory command. He wanted her to think of him while she was visiting her friends, to think of nothing but returning to him.

Amelia shook her head as he followed Ferguson and the promise of a drink. She usually only thought of characters like this. Somewhere, somehow, Malcolm had become part of her story — the story of her life, which she hadn’t let herself contemplate until now. Three weeks ago, she would have called him the villain. He would cast himself as the hero.

Either way, she had to clear her head. She needed reason and pragmatism, not emotions and fantasy.

“The pudding may not have been to her liking, but I think her marriage is,” Ellie commented to Madeleine.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Madeleine responded. “I thought she’d be spitting nails at the man, and instead she looks ready to swoon at his feet.”

“I’m still capable of hearing you,” Amelia snapped. She didn’t enjoy being talked about, but at least their jesting brought some of her old spirit back. “And I won’t swoon at anyone’s feet.”

“Careful what you vow, Lady Carnach. You also said you’d never marry, and yet here you are.”

Madeleine’s French accent was most obvious when she was amused, and Amelia’s marriage had amused her enough that one might guess she was a just-arrived émigré. “You made that vow yourself, Duchess.”

Ellie stood, tossing her napkin aside. “Can we adjourn to the drawing room? I would much rather hash over Amelia’s marriage with a cup of tea and a comfortable chair.”

“The comfortable chair may be too much to expect,” Madeleine warned Amelia, leading all the ladies through the dining room doors to the nearby drawing room. “I suspect Ferguson spent every spare coin he could find on a set of chairs for his study several years ago, but until he inherited the duchy, there wasn’t enough money for the renovations this house needs.”

She was right about the chairs. No dust sprung from them, but the seats sagged so badly that perhaps the dust was trapped within the fathomless pits where the cushions had once been firm. Amelia sat gingerly on an ancient settee that might have been in service when James I had united the English and Scottish crowns. “Do you intend to remain in Scotland very long?” she asked.

Madeleine adjusted her skirts as she sat in an armchair, ignoring the ominous creak of outraged wood. “Perhaps another week. Ellie and I are making a list of everything that must be replaced, refurbished, repainted, restored — we’ve spent a fortune just on parchment.”

“I do enjoy spending my brother’s money,” Ellie said as she sat next to Amelia on the settee.

“Not as much as Maria and I enjoyed spending it on new wardrobes,” Kate interjected. The twins sat on a pair of backless, armless stools, looking like perfectly matched ladies in waiting, their elegant white day dresses an odd match to the faded, regal brocade of the wall covering behind them.

“Your dresses must be wasted in the Highlands,” Amelia commented.

“Oh, we don’t mind at all,” Maria said. “Anything is better than living with our father.”

She was so matter of fact about it, and the previous duke’s reputation was so well known, that all Amelia could do was laugh.

“Speaking of being wasted in the Highlands, when will you and Malcolm return to London?” Madeleine asked.

“If I had my preference, it would be later rather than sooner,” Amelia said.

Ellie raised an eyebrow, but a footman entered and she saved her comment until he arranged the teacart beside Madeleine’s chair. Madeleine thanked him with impeccable grace, spooning leaves into the teapot as though she had been raised with the duty.

Amelia rarely served tea. She could do it, of course, but her mother presided over the teacart at Salford House. And even if she was Lady Carnach now, her mother-in-law still ruled the servants. It wasn’t a situation Amelia had thought she needed to change — it was easier to write during the day if she didn’t have to plan menus and consult with the housekeeper.

But watching Madeleine, she wondered.

As soon as the footman left, Ellie pounced. “So does your desire to stay in the Highlands mean you’ve found the answers to my earlier questions? Or are you avoiding them?”

Amelia was lost for a moment. Madeleine grinned at Ellie. “I would put my money on avoidance. If you think Amelia has realized why she was attracted to Carnach, you’ve been dipping into the sherry without my knowledge.”

“Amelia isn’t stupid,” Ellie mused. “She’s surely understood the attraction by now.”

Madeleine and Ellie had grown close during their journey, close enough that they shared private jokes just as Amelia and Madeleine had always done. Jealousy added an edge to Amelia’s voice. “Could you please stop discussing me like I’m not here?” she demanded.

“Only if you can answer the questions I posed when we visited before your wedding,” Ellie said, taking a teacup from Madeleine. “What do you want from Carnach? And what will become of your writing?”

“You asked me what drew me to him, not what I want,” Amelia said mulishly.

Ellie waved a hand at that. “It’s all from the same cloth. Why stay in the Highlands alone with him if you don’t want something from him? You must have feelings for the man if you’re willing to forsake all other company.”

Amelia paused, reaching for a cup of tea to stall her words. When she spoke, she tasted the lie on her lips. “It’s not that I want to spend time with him. I just don’t want to return to London.”

“If I were Ferguson, I would say ‘bollocks’ to that,” Madeleine said.

“The theatre did not improve your language, did it?” Amelia asked. Madeleine had acted, in disguise, on a public stage for a few weeks the previous spring, which was how she had become attached to Ferguson. The milieu she had found there expanded her knowledge in ways she couldn’t acknowledge in more proper company.

Madeleine grinned. “Ferguson is even worse for it. But you like London well enough — unless you’ve a reason to be afraid of it? Have you heard anything more about Lord Kessel?”

Amelia looked at the twins. She hadn’t taken them into her confidence. Ellie saw the glance and gestured at her sisters. “Out, girls. The adults must discuss something.”

“We are one and twenty,” Maria said, cloaking herself in dignity.

“And I am nearly thirty, which is ancient, as you so kindly pointed out yesterday,” Ellie said. “So leave the ancients to our tea, and go off to play spillikins or whatever it is you children do.”

Kate stuck her tongue out at her sister, but their grins said they weren’t offended. They left, closing the door behind them.

Amelia picked up the conversation again. “I haven’t heard anything of Kessel. Still, as long as I am here, I can pretend that nothing will come of his investigations.”

She could also pretend Prudence would forgive her — and that Malcolm would never find out about her writing. Ellie didn’t let that point slip away unnoticed. “Have you told Carnach?”

Amelia shook her head.

Madeleine sighed. “You should tell him, Mellie. He seems to have a sense of humor, and enough honor that he probably wouldn’t beat you more than once for it.”

She was joking, but Amelia shivered. “I’d rather not be beaten at all, thank you.”

“Carnach doesn’t look like the type,” Ellie said, in a voice that said she knew what she was talking about. “I agree with Madeleine. Tell Carnach, before he finds out your secret from someone else. It’s always better that way.”

Ellie still spoke like an oracle on a mountainside, one who had seen more human dramas unfold than either Amelia or Madeleine could comprehend. Amelia was too far gone to heed her. “He won’t find out. There is no one who would tell him.”

Madeleine stood abruptly. “Stay here a moment — I must retrieve something from my room.”

She was gone just long enough for Amelia to regain her composure. That composure fled again when Madeleine returned with a letter in her hand.

“Am I discovered?” Amelia asked, not wanting to take the note.

Madeleine shoved it into her hand. “I haven’t read it. It arrived yesterday from Prudence, but the inside cover is addressed to you.”

Why had Prudence sent the letter to Madeleine instead of to Amelia directly? Madeleine answered the question before Amelia posed it. “Her note to me said she trusted I could pass this letter along without Carnach knowing you’d received it.”

Amelia slid a nail under the sealing wax, opening the sheet of paper. Whenever she’d received letters from Prudence before, they’d been densely written, crosshatched with vertical and horizontal lines to save on paper and postage. This note was bold, legible, and only one line.

Forgive me. -P

Amelia’s heart rose into her throat, carried by a crest of bile. She should have been the one to beg for forgiveness.

What had Prudence done?

Ellie looked over her shoulder, shamelessly curious. Her voice was gentle when she spoke. “You should tell Carnach, dear. I’ve no idea what Prudence wants forgiveness for, but your writing seems the likeliest source.”

The award Kessel offered for information was only three hundred pounds, but that sum would be enough to keep Prudence and her mother for another year if they lived frugally in the country. And there was no denying that Prudence and Lady Harcastle had left Scotland as women bent on revenge.

Her heart sank, but the nausea remained. If Prudence had betrayed her, Amelia deserved it.

But it didn’t make the thought of telling Malcolm any easier. The moment all the hunger in his eyes flared out and crumbled to ash, she would have to face the reality of being married — and if he knew about her writing, he would surely take away that comfort.

Could she use his attraction to her to win him over? Or was that the surest way to ruin what was good between them?

“Can you write to Prudence and learn why she is asking forgiveness?” Amelia asked Madeleine.

Madeleine sighed. “This is your fight, not mine. Shouldn’t you ask her yourself?”

She felt small and childish, but in that moment, for the first time in over a decade, she wished someone could sweep her up and fix everything for her.

“I will deal with it,” Amelia said. “But no more talk of it now.”

They didn’t let her off that easily, of course, but nothing they said could dissuade her. And when Malcolm came to the drawing room to retrieve her, she hoped her smile looked real.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

They were less than two miles from home when a storm came down from the Grampian Mountains, so suddenly that there was no time to reach the castle safely. The curricle had been a stupid choice. Malcolm knew it even when he chose it; the weather could be unpredictable, and he should have taken his wife out in a closed carriage, with a driver left to the elements instead of her.

But he wanted her to see Scotland the way he did, with nothing between her and the wilds. He wanted her to feel something deeper, something that went beyond the vague dreaminess he sometimes caught in her eyes.

And so they were about to be drenched — not the ending he wanted.

“Will we make it home?” she asked, nearly shouting over the wind.

He shook his head, turning the curricle off the road and onto a smaller lane, half overgrown by weeds. “If the rain holds another five minutes, we can shelter in the old dower house.”

The rain only gave them three. By the time they raced up to the dower house, under a sky suddenly dark with angry clouds, the rain was sheeting down, pelting them both with drops that were just this side of hail. He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it to Amelia. She huddled under it, but even through the wool, she was drenched.

He steered the horses around to the back, where the disused stables still stood. As soon as they stopped, he jumped down and ran around the side to lift Amelia out of the curricle. He didn’t bother to set her down in the rapidly forming quagmire of mud — instead, he scooped her up and ran with her to the kitchen door of the dower house.

As soon as he pushed the door open, she struggled out of his arms and landed on her feet on the cold stone floor. “I can handle myself,” she said, her voice breathless.

“I know,” he said, smoothing back her hair and tossing her ruined hat to the floor. “But if you caught your death...”

Amelia laughed. “Go see to the horses, if you don’t want them to drag the curricle away. I won’t die in the next five minutes.”

She was right. He ran out into the storm again. The wind sucked away his breath. It was like wading half-dressed into a pond. His clothes were plastered around him, streaming water behind him. The horses hadn’t bolted yet, but a crack of lightning in the distance warned him that he needed to shelter them before the thunder drove them away.

The stables were up to the task. No one had lived in the old dower house in three decades, but the house and stables were maintained just enough to provide shelter for stranded shepherds. He unhitched the curricle and dragged the horses into the stable, fighting the wind and their fear with every step. He quickly removed their tack, rubbed them down with straw, draped a blanket over each of them, and tossed some aging oats into a trough.

A nest of mice squeaked in protest when he disturbed the grain, but he ignored them. His attention was focused on Amelia. He never should have brought her with him in an open carriage over such a long distance, not when something like this could so easily happen. It was reckless, stupid, irresponsible — all the things he’d tried to wean himself of when he inherited the estate. He would deserve her anger.