The Rogue (5 page)

“Of course not. Still, I trust you will accept this. Putting it in good hands will go some way toward assuaging my disappointment over your refusal to instruct my daughter.
Mr. Davis,” he called and the butler opened the door to the antechamber. “Convey that sword case to Mr. Sterling's room.”

The man carried it past Saint and departed.

“You needn't keep it,” Read said. “Only consider it, if you will.”

“Good night.” Saint left the room, crossed the antechamber and reached for the door handle. The panel swung open and abruptly she was before him, her cheeks flushed and lips parted. She had changed her hair and wore jewels about her bared neck now. The lamplight set them aglitter, like the candid blue of her eyes. She practically glowed.

She was an heiress, a woman of beauty and wealth and rank who had in her youth engaged in a careless flirtation with an idiotically susceptible young man. She was no grand villain. No matter that he'd spent years avoiding this moment, now he saw only the soft, quick surprise of that girl with whom he had spent one forbidden fortnight, the girl he had not for one day in six years forgotten.

H
er chin tilted up. “Did he read you a setdown?”

“For refusing to teach you?”

“For insulting me.”

Saint had to smile. “Not exactly.”

Her gaze slipped over his face slowly, settling upon his mouth.

“My father is . . .” Delicate nostrils flared. “Unpredictable.”

“To my advantage in this instance, it seems.”

“That is an impressive scar. How did you come by it?”

Unpredictable.
“By the tip of a blade.”

She met his regard again. “Then it seems you are not the invincible warrior my father believes you to be.”

“Ah, but you mistake it. A man's invincibility is not measured by the impenetrability of his skin, rather, by the imperviousness of his heart.” He bowed. “Good night.”

He passed by her so close that Constance felt the brush of his sleeve against her bare arm. Then he was through the door and gone, leaving her unbalanced as he had earlier.

Impervious
.

If he could claim imperviousness, so could she. Willing away her nerves, she knocked on the door to her father's rooms.

“Come,” he said from within. With a glass of wine cupped in his palm, he was seated before his chessboard.

“Why have you done this, Father?”

“Mr. Sterling departed without making his next move. I would have you finish his game, but I like to see how a man plays to the end. I must await his return.”

“His return? But . . . I thought he was leaving.”

“I believe he intends to stay on for a few days. He cannot be comfortable departing in the middle of a game, after all.”

She must know if he had told her father the truth: that they were not strangers. But she could not ask without revealing it. And now her father was playing his favorite sort of game, the sort that left her confused and frustrated.

“I should like an answer.”

Finally he raised his eyes to her. “I thought it would please you.”

She gripped the back of the chair his opponent had vacated. “If I wanted to learn to fence, I would have hired a fencing master in London.”

“Have a seat, if you will.”

“Why?”

“Because I am your father and still in command of your future.”

She lowered herself into the chair. From habit, her eyes studied the arrangement of pieces. Every conversation of any significance with him had taken place over this chessboard. He was a man of quiet pursuits, and since her mother had died he had changed very little about how he lived: he remained in this castle most of the year, eschewing his houses in Edinburgh and London which his wife had disliked, and he still allowed his only child to go on in most any manner she wished with only the companionship of an elderly widow.

“I would like to remove to Edinburgh, Father. I have
instructed Davis to see to hiring servants and preparing the house. I intend to go with Eliza within the month.”

“That suits my plans well,” he said.

“I—I am glad to know it,” she said in some surprise.

“Constance, you will marry before your birthday.”

“Before my birthday? In five weeks? I—”

“Loch Irvine has made his interest clear to me, and I think him an ideal candidate. His holdings are large and productive in barley, wheat, and wool, and his mercantile activities ensure additional income.”

Loch Irvine.
“I—”

“Your cousin, Leam, has informed me that Alvamoor suits his family, and that he does not intend to move here when I am gone and he ascends to the dukedom. Haiknayes is close enough so that when that day arrives you can remain chatelaine of this castle on your cousin's behalf. In this way, the breeding herd needn't be sold unless you and Leam agree to it.”

“But you are in good health, are you not?”

“Dr. Shaw assures me that my health is excellent.”

“Then I don't understand why—”

“Loch Irvine will be in Edinburgh next month, allowing a fortnight for the two of you to become reacquainted and for the banns to be read before your birthday.”

“Father.” She grappled for words. Here was what she wanted, what she had hoped. “This is unexpected.”

“Since Jack Doreé's death, I have allowed you virtual autonomy. In the five years since your mourning ended, you have refused offers from a number of suitors who applied to me and, as I understand it from Mrs. Josephs, directly to you as well.”

“But, Ben and I—”

“I have long known that you and he never intended to wed. He suggested it to me more than once.”

“He did?” This struck her painfully. She had trusted Ben never to tell anyone that they had agreed not to wed, that their extended courtship was a sham to allow them each to pursue their own interests in London. “I see,” she said.

“I have not pressed you to wed because none of your suitors satisfied my wishes for you.”

“The Duke of Loch Irvine does?”

“Yes. More importantly, time has run out. According to the terms of your mother's dowry, on your twenty-fifth birthday your portion from it will be folded into any marriage contract you enter into. I would prefer that this money remain in your control. If you marry after your birthday next month, along with your dowry of twenty-five thousand pounds, this money will also become your husband's.”

“My
mother's
dowry?” This was news indeed. “How much money?”

“Fifty thousand pounds. Not a trifling amount.”

“
Fifty
thousand pounds? But that is a fortune. Why didn't you tell me this before? Years ago?”

“After Jack's death I had no desire to see you marry in haste merely in order to collect that money.”

“You wound me, Father. I would not have done so.”

“Perhaps. But that concern is now moot. You must marry before your birthday. Loch Irvine will do.” He stood and his dogs lifted their heads from their paws. “When he arrives in Edinburgh he will inform me. Until then, I have a number of matters to attend to here. I will advise Mrs. Josephs that she should see to your trousseau. You will marry from the house in town.” He snapped his fingers and six sleek spaniels followed him through the door to his dressing room, tails wagging.

Constance stared at the chessboard, the pieces carved in the East Indies from marble. The game was advanced, with white and black perfectly matched, neither at an advantage yet. Mr. Sterling, it seemed, could hold his own against a chess master. Perhaps an impervious heart helped him with that.

She stroked a fingertip along the white knight's mane. With this set, her father had taught her to play the game, carefully instructing her how to maneuver and plan tactics and outflank. He had shown her that to gain a king a player must sometimes sacrifice other valuable pieces, and
that she must always anticipate her opponent's guile. Yet, six months ago, she had not heeded those lessons. She had trusted a man she thought was a friend only to discover that he was not.

If her father knew how Walker Styles had played her for a fool, he would despise her.

She did not understand her father. She never had. She had never asked him for anything, but he had always been generous. Generous and untouchable, when she would have given every gown, horse, and London luxury for a moment of his affection.

Now he intended her to wed Gabriel Hume, the duke everyone believed to be a monster. And yet hiring a master to teach her fencing was even more surprising.

She would use it to her advantage. If the Duke of Loch Irvine was the Devil rumor claimed, her father was giving her precisely what she needed to learn to defend herself.

Invincible.
Six months ago, she had been far from invincible. Now she could become so. It seemed only fitting that Frederick Evan Sterling would be her teacher, the man who had misled a naïve girl into believing that men could be trusted.

Bracing two fingertips against the corner of the board, with a single thrust of her arm, she pushed. The board jerked to the edge of the table, teetered, and fell, scattering marble and teak across the floor. She stood up and left the room.

“L
ADY
C
ONSTANCE IS
positively stunning.” Dylan was sprawled in a chair in Saint's bedchamber. On the ground floor, it was a sizeable room with arched ceilings painted white and a massive recessed fireplace that must have once been a kitchen hearth. Narrow slits cut through the thick outer wall proved the room's former utility; he could aim a rifle or crossbow directly through any one of them.

“Stunning, I say,” his cousin repeated.

Stunning.

Confident. Brazen. Direct.

Breathtaking.
She halted his lungs and turned his insides out with the briefest caress of her gaze. Still.

“Is she?” he mumbled.

“Good Lord, yes. Are you blind?”

He wished he were. Even so, the music of her voice would plague him to distraction.

“And what a delightful dinner companion! It's a shame the duke entrapped you. Mrs. Josephs is an amusing conversationalist too. And Dr. Shaw, Read's bosom bow, as I understand it. His daughter dined with us as well. Fifteen. Bookish. They've come for a lengthy visit. Shaw is a good enough fellow. Too taciturn for my tastes, of course. But Lady Constance ensured an entertaining evening all around. Why, she's been in Scotland for nearly two months yet knows all about what everybody's doing in London this very week.”

“Gossip?”

“'Pon my word, she never uttered a salacious phrase. Mostly praise of this fellow's new high steppers and that lady's musicale. You know the sort of thing.”

Dylan always spoke to him like this, as though he fluttered about from clubs to drawing rooms every day too. A man of good nature and little thought, Dylan had never entirely understood the difference between his life and his cousins'. Throughout their childhood Georges Banneret, the baron's steward in Jamaica and the man who taught them the sword, treated them all as equals. It had made a permanent mark on the baron's heir; Dylan was thoroughly egalitarian in spirit and entirely oblivious to his own actual privilege.

“Both Shaw and his daughter dote on her,” Dylan continued. “The servants, too. She's a favorite here, as she's always been in London. How else would she have been able to go around for years without a wedding ring?”

Perhaps by giving everyone she encountered the intimate perusal she had offered him in the duke's antechamber, and instantly rendering them senseless too. He scraped a hand over his face, but with his eyes closed he still saw her.

“If my heart weren't already lost to a pearl,” Dylan said, “I would make a play for that diamond. Read likes me. I had a tasty glass of claret with him before he sequestered you for dinner. And he's a civilized man, not a screwy Methodist like Edwards. Rich as Croesus, too. Saltpeter, of course. Come to think of it, Lady Constance's fiancé, Ben Doreé, was an East India Company man.
Is
a Company man, rather.
Was
her fiancé. He married another girl recently, elegant redhead, nothing to compare to Lady Constance, though. No girl is.”

Saint didn't usually mind Dylan's ramblings. Tonight he did.

“Peculiar . . .” Dylan mused, “Doreé passing up a beautiful heiress for another girl, especially after a betrothal of years. I wonder which of them held the thing up for so long? His elder brother, Jack, perished in a tragic accident along with their father. Did you know?”

“I believe I had heard something of it.” This was unendurable.

“Ben inherited it all, including Jack's bride-to-be. But I'm sure that was years ago, and he only just married that other girl in January.” He tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the bowl of his glass. “They say Lady Constance was devoted to her first betrothed.”

“Is that what they say?” He tugged at his neck cloth. The room was too hot. He looked to the hearth where the fire was barely embers.

Dylan scrunched up his brow. “Perhaps Ben finally decided he'd rather not play second fiddle to his dead brother for the rest of his life. I certainly wouldn't want to.”

Saint stood up and went to the sword case. “You don't have a brother.” He opened the case.

“It cuts me to the heart to hear you deny me so,” Dylan said dramatically and came to his side. “What's this?”

“Read gave it to me.”

“As payment? Good God, cousin, I didn't realize you were so expensive.”

“As a gift.”

Dylan took it up, running his fingertip half the length of the blade and around the tip. “This is a fine piece. Dull as a butter knife, though.”

To keep a blade of this caliber in such an impotent condition was a crime.

“Tomorrow I will find a smithy and see what can be done with it.”

Dylan's head came up. “You've accepted the post, after all?” He grinned. “Great g—”

“I haven't.”

“Damn it, Saint.” He raised the sword between them. “I would use this on you if I thought it could cut through a jelly.”

“I dare you to try.”

“You cur.” The sword drooped downward, mimicking Dylan's posture. “She invited me to Edinburgh. But the house there isn't ready yet. Repainting and furnishing and what not. The move won't happen for some weeks, I imagine.”

“She?”

“Lady Constance.” He returned to the chair and slouched down into it, fondling the sword in the manner of a boy with a toy he had already tired of. “Haven't you been listening? She's the veriest darling. And she's a brilliant hostess. She'll entertain everybody who's anybody, politicians, churchmen, precisely the prosy sort of dullards Edwards likes. He couldn't possibly refuse me then.”

“Lady Constance invited you to reside in her house in Edinburgh? With her?”

“And her father and Mrs. Josephs. And Dr. Shaw and Miss Shaw, I believe. She said we'll have a merry time of it.” He sent a narrow frown across the room. “Don't tell me you disapprove? What, have you reformed since that preacher's daughter put one over on you the other day?”