by Julia London
“Aye.”
“What do you want from me, then?” he asked as he refilled his glass.
“Want? Nothing at all,” she said as she set her tot aside. “I’m passing time in the best way I know, that’s all.” She began to move around the room and paused for a moment under Glenna’s portrait. Hamlin looked at it. It had hung there so long that he didn’t see it anymore. He should store it, put it away, out of sight. Eula would ask where the painting had gone, and again ask where Glenna had gone, and he preferred to avoid that conversation. She was young yet, too young to understand the wickedness that dwelt in the hearts of some.
“Will you take her into your employ?” Miss Mackenzie asked.
Hamlin realized she’d moved again, was looking at him as he looked at the portrait of Glenna. He’d spent too many evenings in this very room with too much whisky and suddenly lost the taste for it. “Have I any choice?” he asked, setting his tot aside, too.
“One always has a choice.”
“I beg to differ,” he said. “But I’ll keep her.” He leaned back against the sideboard, his gaze on the bonny Miss Mackenzie again. There was still a hint of a blush on her smooth skin.
“You’ll no’ regret it.” She smiled.
He wasn’t so certain of that.
“Verra well, your grace, I’ll take no more of your time, then.” She curtsied.
“You’ve helped me all you can, have you?”
She laughed. “For today.”
For today. He couldn’t begin to guess what other help she had in store for him. He pushed away from the sideboard and walked to the wall and tugged on the bell pull. The door opened a moment later, and a footman entered, bowing at the waist. “See Miss Mackenzie out,” he said.
“Feasgar math,” she said, and with a flurry of her fingers, she quit the room.
Hamlin stood for a long moment after she’d gone. He was imagining things, obviously, for it was almost as if he could feel warmth sliding out of the room in her wake.
* * *
JUST AS HE SUSPECTED—all right, then, maybe hoped—it was not the last Hamlin saw of Miss Mackenzie that week. Not two days later, a messenger arrived with a letter. In a sprawling script, with blots of ink in places they ought not to have been, as if the note had been dashed off at a great hurry, Miss Mackenzie wrote and inquired if she might call on Eula at week’s end. As the lass had said she enjoyed painting best of all, Miss Mackenzie would very much like to introduce her to a friend, an artist, who might show her a thing or two.
As Hamlin was at breakfast with Eula, he lowered the letter and looked at her over the edge of it. “Did you say to Miss Mackenzie that you enjoyed painting more than any other diversion, then?”
Eula nodded eagerly. “I like to make colors. Did you know that yellow and blue make green when mixed altogether?”
He lowered the letter to his lap. “I thought your favorite diversion was your music lessons, aye? When did painting rise to supremacy?”
“I donna remember.”
“No memory whatsoever?”
“No.”
“No, what?” he asked, trying to remind her that, if nothing else, she ought to at least remember her manners.
“No memory whatsoever,” she said, mimicking him.
He couldn’t help smiling and abandoned this morning’s attempt at manners, which were clearly beyond his ability to teach, or beyond his student’s willingness to learn. He lifted the letter once more and studied the sprawling, blotted script.
Later that morning when he met with Bain, he asked him what he thought about Miss Mackenzie’s desire to bring an artist to Blackthorn Hall.
Bain didn’t have to think about it as much as a moment. “I see no harm.”
No harm? Aye, well, Bain had not yet had the pleasure of making the notorious Miss Mackenzie’s acquaintance. He’d understand once he met her.
“She’s brought us a lady’s maid. Are we to take an instructor from her, as well?” Hamlin asked irritably.
Bain looked confused. “Aye. I would recommend, your grace, that as your attention is necessarily turned elsewhere—”
“Aye, aye,” Hamlin said, waving his hand before Bain could remind him that he was quite well occupied in being every man to everyone. “Send a favorable reply, then.” He tossed the letter across the desk at his secretary. It skidded over the highly polished surface and fluttered to the floor. With a sly look, Bain picked it up off the floor between finger and thumb. “Of course, your grace.”
Miss Mackenzie appeared two days later with a man she boasted had come all the way from Stirling. He wore a tattered coat and waistcoat, a cap that looked as if it had once been jaunty but was jaunty no more and a leather satchel that he wore across his body, stuffed with paintbrushes. His hands, Hamlin noticed, looked permanently stained with paint.
Miss Mackenzie was all smiles, of course, lighting the bloody room. “May I introduce Monsieur Kenworth,” she said with flourish.
“French?” Hamlin asked the gentleman.
“No, your grace. A proud Scotsman, like you, aye?” the man said, lifting his chin.
“I was jesting,” Miss Mackenzie said, as if she and Hamlin were so familiar as to trade jests. “Mr. Kenworth tells me that all the best artists are French, but I assure you, he’s as good as any of them.” She punctuated this statement with a wink, as if she and Hamlin shared a secret. She bloody well winked at him. It happened so quickly that Hamlin wasn’t certain he’d seen it. Except that he was quite certain he had.
Eula was enthralled, of course, and by the end of the session, Hamlin was pressed to purchase paints and canvases from Monsieur Kenworth, as well as agree to twice-weekly lessons for the course of the summer. “The lass might attend her skill at landscape while the weather is warm,” Kenworth had suggested, and had gestured to the open doors to the gardens.
Hamlin muttered his opinion of landscape paintings in general under his breath but gave the man a curt nod, for there was no man who could look at the upturned face of Miss Eula Guinne and believe he had a fighting chance at denying her.
In the course of Miss Mackenzie and her artist taking their leave, Miss Mackenzie happened to notice an archery field just below the gardens. There ensued quite a lot of discussion about archery, and her general chastisement of Hamlin’s failure to instruct Eula in the art. And naturally, Eula was suddenly very keen to learn.
“I donna have the time just now to teach you, lass,” he said. “And Aubin has injured his elbow, aye, Eula?” Hamlin reminded her. The mysteriously talented man had taken a tumble off his horse last Sunday, the day all the servants had to themselves. Hamlin suspected he’d been returning to Blackthorn Hall well into his cups when the mishap occurred.
“A Frenchman! For archery!” Miss Mackenzie exclaimed, and clucked her tongue.
“I canna bear the suspense, Miss Mackenzie. No doubt you’ve a lad who is in want of an instructor position,” he drawled in her general direction as he studied the back of his hand.
“A lad!” She laughed as if that were preposterous. “I grant you, I’ve brought Mr. Kenworth round to teach Miss Guinne art, that I have, for I’ve no talent for it. But my father and my brothers have trained Highland soldiers, your grace. I can teach her archery as well as any man, on my word.”
He looked at her. “You.”
“Me!”
“With a bow and arrow?” he added skeptically, in the event she meant something else entirely.
“Is there any other way to teach archery, then? Why do you look so disbelieving?” she asked laughingly, without offense. “I happen to be an excellent shot.”
He snorted.
Miss Mackenzie began to fit her hands into gloves as she prepared to take her leave with Mr. Kenworth. “If you donna believe me, then perhaps you ought to attend the lesson, as well.”
The woman never failed to disappoint him with her cheek.
“Aye, please, your grace!” Eula begged him.
He looked at Miss Mackenzie. She smiled. “I mean only to help,” she said, but that smile of hers suggested otherwise.
It was the memory of the smile that haunted him for the remainder of the day and well into the night. It made him privately rage with fury and desire all at once. He could not recall ever being so curious about a woman. His thoughts before his marriage had been almost entirely prurient, and after his marriage, his thoughts had become increasingly resentful about the woman he had married. The prurience was still there and thrumming to the point of discomfort. But it was his interest in the way her pretty head worked, in her fearless approach to life, that flummoxed him. He had not felt such a burning interest in a woman as this that he could recall. Miss Mackenzie had laid siege to his thoughts and was setting up camp in his brain and other regions of his body, and Hamlin didn’t know what to do about it.
CHAPTER TEN
CATRIONA APPEARED FOR breakfast Saturday morning dressed for riding and a bit of archery. She wore her hair in a loose tail down her back so that she might fit a proper hat on her head, and leather boots for trekking down to the archery field at Blackthorn.
She swept into the breakfast room for a quick bite. Her uncle was at his usual spot at the table and had been joined by everyone but Mr. and Mrs. Wilke-Smythe, and Mr. Vasily Orlov, who had come sneaking into Dungotty at half past three in the morning. The only reason Catriona knew this was because he’d been so drunk he’d crashed into the wall just outside her room and had let forth a colorful string of what she surmised was Russian cursing.
Uncle Knox looked up from his paper and over the tops of his spectacles. “Where are you off to this morning, darling?”
“To Blackthorn Hall,” she said as she bit into a piece of ham. “I’m giving an archery lesson to the duke’s ward.” She leaned over Chasity’s shoulder and snatched a biscuit from the table.
“A better instructor she could not have,” he said. “I recall when you were scarcely as tall as a reed, piercing the smallest targets from thirty paces.”
This news caught the old goat Furness’s attention, and he looked up. “What sort of target?”
“An apple,” Catriona said. “A rotten one, but an apple all the same.”
“I don’t believe it,” Furness said, his gaze on Uncle Knox.
“Then perhaps we might place a rotting apple on top your head and allow her to prove it,” Uncle Knox said.
“I thought we might ride into Crieff,” Chasity said with a bit of a pout. “There is a modiste there, and I am desperately in need of a new gown for London’s Little Season.”
The Little Season, as Catriona understood it, was a social calendar that filled around a short parliamentary session in the fall. It was months away yet. “Another time, aye? I promised Miss Guinne.”
“So there is indeed a ward,” Countess Orlov said. She was still in her robe and bedclothes, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. “What else have you learned about our secretive duke?”
“Surprisingly little,” Catriona answered truthfully.
The countess gave Catriona a pert smile. “But we are depending on you to solve the mystery for us.”
“I’ve seen the portrait of his missing wife. Will that appease you?”
“Really?” Chasity asked. “How did she appear? As pretty as they say?”
Quite pretty. So pretty that Catriona had felt a wee bit faded in comparison. “Quite bonny. Ginger hair, green eyes. She was portrayed with a mischievous gleam in her eye.”
“Where is the portrait?” Chasity asked.
The portrait was in the main salon. She wondered why. Was it possible that he missed her? She had seen a glimpse of a softer side. Her brother Rabbie was like that—very gruff on the outside, and as soft as butter on the inside. Was it possible the duke was the same sort of man? He obviously cared a great deal for the lass. Wouldn’t that indicate a warm heart? Perhaps what had happened to his wife was the very opposite of what everyone believed. Perhaps his wife had been the one to end it.
But that made no sense to Catriona. How could a woman sharing the intimacy of marriage with a man who was handsome, rich and perhaps even kind want rid of him? No, she couldn’t imagine it. There was something more there. “The portrait?” she said when she noticed Chasity waiting for her answer. “In the main salon. It’s as tall as a window, it is. Well, then, I’m off,” she said, and gave them all a wave as she made her way to the door.
“Mind you have a care, Cat!” Uncle Knox called after her. “The last time you rode, you gave poor Mr. Bartles a fright when you went thundering by. He thought the Grim Reaper had come calling for one of them.”
Catriona laughed roundly at that as she strode from the room.
* * *
CATRIONA ARRIVED AT Blackthorn to find Eula sitting on the steps of the portico. She was dressed in a smart little coat and cap, her boots polished to a sheen. Miss Jean Burns was waiting with her, bundled in a brown wrap and a faded cap.
Eula stood up as Catriona slid off her horse, waving as if perhaps Catriona had not seen her.
“Madainn mhath!” Catriona said, and tapped her crop against Eula’s cap. “You’re ready, then, are you?”
“Aye,” said Eula.
Catriona glanced at the door. She expected Montrose to come out and greet her. Maybe she had indeed worn out her welcome here. It wouldn’t surprise her if she had—she knew how impetuous she was, both in action and in speech, and no matter what else she suspected about the duke, he did not care for her impetuosity—he’d made that abundantly clear.
“Aye, good day, Miss Burns,” she said, nodding at the small woman. “How do you find Blackthorn Hall, then?”
“’Tis as bonny a hoose as I’ve ever seen, aye,” Miss Burns said. “You’re to wait, you are, for Mr. Aubin.”
Catriona looked at Eula.
“Montrose said he’s to carry our arrows,” the lass said.
“What’s this?” Catriona exclaimed. “We’re strong lassies, are we no’? We’ll carry our own arrows, aye?”
Eula shrugged. Miss Burns shook her head. “She’s no’ to go doon to the field withoot him, no.”
Catriona groaned. “Where is he, then?”
“There,” Eula said, and pointed at a man walking toward them with two quivers on his back. He was taller and thinner than she recalled, and possessed an air of confidence about him that seemed a wee bit too much for the task of carrying quivers and a small bow. He paused directly before her, clicked his heels, bowed deeply at the waist and said, “A pleasure to see you again, Miss Mackenzie.”
“Aye, and you as well, Mr. Aubin. How is your elbow?”
“On the path to recovery.” He cast his arm in the direction of the path that led round the side of the house. “Shall we proceed?” With another bow, he walked on, his stride long and sure.
Catriona glanced at Eula and wrinkled her nose. “Will he interfere, do you suppose?”
Eula nodded.
“That’s our lot in life, lass—there will always be gentlemen to interfere. They think they know better by the mere virtue of being male. Is that no’ so, Miss Burns?”
“Aye,” Miss Burns agreed, and with a cheery wave, she disappeared back inside Blackthorn Hall.
Catriona and Eula followed Aubin, who was yards ahead of them now.
“What do you mean, then, that gentlemen know better?” Eula asked.
“Well, they are the stronger sex, that canna be denied, aye? But men often make the mistake of assuming that their physical strength means that their minds are stronger, too. Do you see, then?”
Eula giggled. “No.”
“That couldna possibly be true, could it?” Catriona said airily. “Our minds are all the same in the beg
inning, and it hardly matters if it is male or female. My late aunt once told me that because we are physically the weaker sex, we must be more clever than men to get what we want, aye? ’Tis the only way we might outdo them, to use our minds instead of our physical strength to match them.”
Eula wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Pardon?”
“Say, for example, that you want something verra badly.”
“A cat!” she declared. “I should verra much like a kitten, for I’ve no one to play with, aye? But no’ a barn cat. One that might come into my room.”
“You should have a cat, lass, if that’s what you want.”
“Montrose willna allow it. He says animals belong outdoors and no’ indoors.”
For heaven’s sake, Blackthorn Hall was as large as a small village. What difference would a cat make to the duke? “A beastly thing to say, if you ask me,” Catriona whispered. “Why, you’ve never seen so many dogs as those that wander about my home at Balhaire.”
“In your house?”
“In our house. In our beds,” Catriona whispered.
Eula gasped with surprise.
“So how might we get your cat, leannan? You canna fight him for it, can you?”
Eula shook her head.
“You must be clever, then. You must devise a plan that somehow leads Montrose to believe it’s all his idea. You must be smarter than the duke.”
“I donna think anyone can be smarter than Montrose,” Eula said.
Perhaps not, but Catriona chafed at the benefit of thought men were given simply for breathing. “I shall cover my ears and sing loudly if you say so again. Never believe you are less than a gentleman because you are female, lass. Promise me this.”
Eula thought about it a moment, then nodded. “I promise.”
They had reached the archery field, where Aubin had set up three straw targets covered in burlap, on to which concentric circles had been drawn. But in the center of each target, different figures had been added. One looked like a chicken. Another, a deer. And the third, the figure of a man. Catriona squinted at the figure. “Who is that, then?” she asked Aubin.
