by Hope Tarr
“Having a well-deserved rest,” Milread finished for her, coming up between them. Handing Claudia her broom, she said, “Jack, dearie, there’s a full stewpot that’s too heavy for me and Claudia tae lift. Would ye mind comin’ wi’ me tae the kitchen tae fetch it down before ye go?”
He hesitated and then released his hold on Claudia’s arm. “Aye, I will.” To Claudia he said, “Since you’re so in love with that bench, see you dinna budge from it until I come back.”
She opened her mouth to snap out a reply, then clamped it closed again for there was no purpose to be served. For whatever reason, Jack Campbell had resolved himself to believing the worst of her. A cruel irony since, for the first time in years, she’d tried, truly tried, to please.
Tears of frustration pricked the backs of her eyes, but through sheer force of will she held them back. Silent, she sank down onto the hard bench seat, her gaze boring holes in Jack’s back as he followed Milread to the door leading out to the kitchen.
The door closed behind them and she was left alone with the snoring man, the cat and what was left of the mouse; the latter suddenly struck her to be a kindred spirit of sorts. Thinking on how the poor, unsuspecting mouse had run headfirst into the trap, Claudia allowed she just might have more in common with those tiny, brainless creatures than she ever would have suspected.
A narrow covered walkway led from the tavern’s rear door to the kitchen dependency. Still fuming at the sight of Claudia taking her ease on the bench, Jack admitted to himself that she’d looked maybe a wee bit tired about the eyes. And yet, on the other hand, far too fresh, too lovely, to have done much of any real work.
Milread’s slamming the door brought an end to his conflicted musings. Turning about to regard her, he asked, “Well, what is it?” When she only stood glaring at him, one clogged foot tapping a tattoo on the paving stones, he added, “You could probably lift me if you were so minded, let alone a cook pot.”
“Fie, Jack Campbell, I’m minded tae take down that pot and bang it right o’er your hard head. What devil is it that possessed ye tae speak so tae the puir lass?”
Jack couldn’t believe his ears. “Puir lass! And d’ye take her part, then? What am I to think when I see her sittin’ on her arse and watchin’ you work like a slave?”
Face fierce, Milread rested her fisted hands on her hips. “Claudia labored long and hard today. ’Tis no her fault she’s no been bred for such rough work.”
“No bred for it, is she? And yet she’s supposed to have kent service as a lady’s maid in France, or so she said last night. How do you explain that?”
Milread shrugged. “Och, dressing hair and fluffing gowns is no the same thing as laboring in a public house.”
Jack bowed his head in grudging acknowledgment of the truth of those words. As much as he wanted to believe that Claudia Valemont was who and what she claimed to be, he couldn’t see her as a servant, not even as a lady’s maid. With her arrogant nose pointed north, slender back held ramrod straight and delicate white hands, she didn’t look, speak or carry herself as one who’d been beholden to any master.
“Wheesht, and d’ye no trouble yourself to wonder why it is ye’re so hard on the lass?” He opened his mouth to protest that he’d never been anything but completely fair, when Milread stalled him by raising a silencing palm. “’Tis written all o’er your face—ye fancy her.”
“I dinna!” he protested even as he felt the telltale flames blister his cheeks and the memory of that morning’s battle over the bedcovers rushing back to him.
The episode—and Claudia—had scarcely left his thoughts all day, for a bonny sight she’d been, curled on her side. Her profile had looked as finely wrought as that of a china figurine, her expression in sleep as innocent as a bairn’s, the dark lashes sweeping the delicate indentation between eye and cheekbone, the mouth soft and pink and utterly kissable.
But there’d been nothing innocent or childlike about her breasts, which were full, white, and womanly, their coral nipples showing through the thin shift, bringing to mind fresh summer peaches. Like the fruit, they’d made his mouth water. When she’d taunted him to climb in beside her, he’d been sorely tempted to call her bluff.
Milread’s broad features narrowed into an expression of shrewd assessment. “What’s more, I ken her wits maun be addled after all, for I could swear she fancies ye, too, puir wee idjut though that makes her.”
He snorted at that, although buried inside his breast his traitorous heart gave a hopeful little lift. “If ye maun know, the lass loathes the verra sight o’ me. According to Mistress Claudia Valemont, I’m a brainless lummox and a murderer betimes.”
She answered with a chortle. “A lot ye ken o’ women, Jack Campbell, and what ye do would fit inside a thimble wi’ room tae spare. I tell ye she fancies ye.”
He snorted. “Best ye stick to your cook pots and ale kegs, Milread, for ye’ll ne’er make for a seer—or a matchmaker, either.”
She clucked her tongue. “That may be, and yet I see a good deal more than some others I could name.”
One eye on the door behind her, suddenly desperate to escape the scrutiny of those canny eyes, he said with feeling, “For the last time, the sooner that wee meddlesome woman is out of my house—and my life—the better it will be for all concerned.” To his chagrin, Milread only chuckled. “We’ll see, Jack Campbell. We’ll just ha’ tae see about that.”
Fifteen-odd leagues away in Linlithgow, in a silk-hung bedchamber of Aberdaire Castle, a vigil was under way. Gearald Edward Allen Drummond, seventh earl of Aberdaire, sat in a bath chair staring down at the wasted form in the bed, all that remained of his son, heir and namesake. Until the week before, Young Gearald—Gerry—had been the hope of his house, his only offspring to reach adulthood and thus his final bid for forging the coveted alliance with the English.
But a freakish hunting accident had put an abrupt end to that lifelong dream. Now Gerry lay at last gasp, his lungs crushed from the weight of the horse he’d fallen beneath in an accident not unlike that which had maimed his sire. All the long week the earl had cursed fate, had cursed the curse, even as he’d kept by his son’s bedside, watching, waiting, for Gerry to recover enough breath to provide the answer as to whether or not he need bury his dream along with his son.
Not a patient man under the best of circumstances, the past seven days and nights had pushed the earl’s tolerance to its very limit. Resolved to wait no more, he reached over and grabbed the boy by the collar of his nightshirt, hauling him up from the banked pillows.
Bringing his face down to the sweat-drenched one, he demanded, “Have you managed to get that whey-faced Sassenach bitch of a wife with child, Gerry? Answer me, damn you. Did you at least do that?”
A light hand descended on the earl’s shoulder. “He’s tired, milord. We must allow him to rest.”
Aberdaire twisted his head about and glared up at the physician, one of several “experts” he’d sent for from Edinburgh. The bastards had bled Gerry all but dry, covered his crushed chest with mustard plasters and poultices, and poured their teas and tinctures down his throat, to no avail.
“Dinna presume to tell me what to do.” Aberdaire shook off the hand just as he shook off the notion that the doctor had any right to govern how his patient was treated. “He’s dying, no tired. And he’ll have plenty of time to rest once he’s six feet under, but for now by God he’ll answer me or else.”
“Perhaps he will, milord,” the doctor answered in his soft, monotone, “but after he’s had his medicine for the pain.”
Staring deliberately down at his son’s pasty face, the eyes wide and terrified, he snarled, “He’ll have it once he gives me my answer or no at all.”
Saliva bubbled from the corners of the boy’s cracked lips. Aberdaire bent his ear close to the damp face and sought to decipher the soft rasping. “N-noo.”
“Damn you, Gerry.” He released the dying man to flop back onto the pillows with no more resistance than the
corpse he soon would be.
Disgusted, Aberdaire wheeled about, turning his back on the bed so that he could better think. Brain ticking away like the ormolu clock set on the rose marble mantel, he called out, “MacDuff, where the bloody hell have you got to, man?”
His butler stepped free from the shadows that his all black attire had allowed him to disappear into. “I am here, milord.”
“Good, good.” The earl raked a hand through his thick hair. Barring the white winging his temples and the passage of nearly fifty years, it was still the blue-black of a crow’s wing. I’m still young, he told himself. Would to God I were still able. But self-pity was a luxury he’d never allowed himself nor had he the time to do so now. Shrugging it off, he said, “I need you to send a courier to Paris. Today, for there’s no time to waste.”
MacDuff took a halting step forward. “But milord, the situation in France is—”
“Dinna presume to tell me the situation in France. Do you ken you’re the only one to read a newspaper?”
“Of course not, milord, ’tis only that—”
“Tell Gunn I’ll pay him thrice his normal retainer—that should put some fire in his belly. And that I’ll double, no, triple that sum provided he comes back with the prize.”
“The prize, milord?”
“Aye.” Aberdaire wheeled himself over to the window, shoved aside the heavy draperies that had been drawn to keep the light from hurting the invalid’s eyes, and stared out to the boxwood-bordered lawns below. “Aye, something of mine I left behind in Paris nigh on five-and-twenty years ago. I’ve a mind to fetch it home.”
Chapter Eight
“Do you have a lover, Jack?” Claudia asked two weeks later as they lingered over their breakfast before leaving for the inn. Jack nearly choked on the healthy swallow of tea he’d just taken.
“What the devil…” He plunked his stoneware mug down and stared across the table to Claudia.
Serenely sipping her morning tea heavily laced with honey and cream as she liked it, she sent him a blithe smile from over the rim of her cup. “An amante, a mistress. Someone who shares your bed?”
He speared her with a hard look. “I kent your meaning—I’m no daft. What I dinna ken is why it is ye care to know.”
She glanced down at the puddle of spillage he’d made with his cup. “Oh, but I have embarrassed you.”
“You havna,” he shot back but already he could feel the heat creeping up past his collar.
She picked up her half-eaten oatcake and broke off a bite-size morsel. Nibbling at it, she said, “It is only that in France we speak openly of such things.”
“This isna France.” Appetite spoiled, he pushed aside his bowl of parritch, barely touched.
“Non, I suppose it is not.” She sighed, lancing him a look that seemed to say, “more is the pity.” Aloud she said, “I was but curieuse, that is all, for it is obvious that you—” she hesitated, “—appreciate women.”
Jack glared at her, every hair on his head and body bristling. It was one thing to make a vow of celibacy and abide by it, another matter entirely to have one’s manliness called into question—and before five in the morning!
“Well I dinna ‘appreciate’ lads, if that’s what ye’re worrit for.”
“Oh, non, I did not mean to imply…” Another sigh brought Jack to the edge of his seat and then, “Ah well, perhaps it is best that we speak of it no more.”
Her lush mouth curved into a full smile this time, one that touched her eyes. The latter shone like sapphires, but then why wouldn’t they, fired as they were by the luster of pure, unadulterated mischief?
Jack folded his arms across his chest and dug in his heels. “Nay, we’ll speak of it a’right. Neither of us is to budge from this table until I ken your meaning, the whole of it.”
“Very well, if you insist.”
She took a moment to moisten her lips, and Jack knew the sudden, strong urge to cover her mouth with his and taste her fully, deeply. To wipe away that oh so smug smile with his lips and tongue and teeth.
“When we first made our acquaintance in the tavern and my cloak, it fell open, your eyes they grew so wide, so big.”
His eyes hadn’t been the only body part that had grown big, but Jack would rather be stuck and spitted like a pig on fair day than admit it. Nor did he much care for being toyed with like a fish left to wriggle from the hook.
Determined to give as good as he got, he shot back with a question of his own. “If ye dinna wish to be stared at, why is it then that ye display yourself so?”
The slender hands fingering the oatcake sifted it to dust. Gaze lowered to the mess she was making, Claudia said, “My English…I am afraid I do not understand your meaning.”
For the first time since she’d been committed to his keeping Jack sent his gaze on a deliberate and leisurely perusal, starting with the very top of her black witch’s head and ending with the milky mounds rising above that tautly laced, indecently low bodice.
Holding his gaze there, just there, he felt his mouth lifting in a smile of its very own. “Oh, I think ye ken me well enough, but in case ye dinna…”
He reached out and she started, nearly toppling backward onto the floor. Wound tight as a spring, are ye? Well then, that’s all the better. Smile broadening, he held his hand so that the tip of his index finger hovered a bare hairbreadth from the soft flesh in question. “Like this.”
Claudia shot a quick glance downward. When she lifted her eyes to him, the faintest trace of pink shaded her high cheekbones. “In France this décolletage is considered modest.”
“This isna France,” he said for the second time, only this time his voice was softer, shakier. Drawing his hand away, he was reminded of the old adage about how those who played with fire ended up themselves getting burned.
And God, how he burned.
The tingling heat rushed his lower belly, then overflowed, flooding the reservoir of need between his legs where it pulsed and churned and all but groaned to be sated. He was hot, he was hard and, above all, he was ready.
Like a man who’d labored too long beneath a hot summer sun, he shivered even as the inner heat burst forth into little beads of perspiration on his forehead, his back. Parched, he grabbed for his mug and pulled a long draught of the now tepid tea to clear the dust from his throat.
Swallowing—hard—he summoned his most high-minded tone and, hoping he sounded avuncular rather than randy, said, “’Tis Scotland. In wearin’ such a thing—and to a public house, nay less—ye risk no only lung fever but a great many other results that I dinna ken ye’d find verra pleasant.” No to mention ye’re driving me mad.
She lifted her chin a notch higher, her lush lower lip sticking out in defiance. Even so, he fancied there was a bit of a quiver to it when she said, “I regret that the sight of my body offends you, monsieur, but in truth I do not have anything but this to wear.”
Bloody hell, what an idiot he was. He thought of her traveling bag, so light, so small. Too small to accommodate a gown, let alone the armoring of undergarments that went beneath one. Not only had he shown himself to be an ass, a brute, but also he’d managed to hurt her feelings into the bargain. A fine day’s work, Jack, and it isna even full light yet.
Even though he already surmised her answer, to show her that he’d meant no harm, he asked, “No even in that wee bag of yours?” He jerked his chin toward the bed, its quilt pulled up, the traveling bag set at the foot.
The sudden sheen in her eyes as she shook her head made him feel the brute indeed. “When I left France, I did so in haste and with little more than the clothes on my back.”
Seeking to restore both the peace and Claudia’s smile, smug or no, he held off asking why then it was that she kept her bag so close. Instead he said, “I’ll have a word with Milread. It may be that she has something you might wear.”
“Mademoiselle Milread has been most generous with her offer to share her wardrobe such as it is but, if you have not noticed,
she is much larger than I. The gown she gave me to try, it falls from my shoulders and drags upon the ground. There has not been time to alter it and even if there was…” Her violet gaze dropped to her clenched hands and she drew a long breath before admitting, “I am not so clever with my needle as I could wish.”
A lady’s maid-cum-seamstress who couldn’t sew—further confirmation that Mistress Valemont was neither who nor what she claimed to be. And yet Jack tossed this latest bit of evidence atop his mounting pile of suspicions and moved on to the problem at hand. All that lovely flesh needed covering and quickly, for sure he wasn’t the only male in the village with a working pair of eyes. With her indecent French gown clinging to every delicious curve, the fabric growing more threadbare by the day, Claudia Valemont could coax a cockstand from a eunuch.
And there weren’t any eunuchs in Scotland, at least none that Jack knew of.
She needed a dress. A decent dress, a modest dress, a covering dress. A dress that would, if not exactly hide those gifts God had so generously bestowed, at least camouflage them a bit so that any poor unsuspecting male drawn into her orbit might have some hope of going about his day without being turned into a babbling, lust-crazed beast.
And by God, she would have such a dress even if it meant that Jack had to beg, borrow or steal it off the back of some like-size female.
Or worse yet, far worse, see the inside of a dress shop.
The single dress shop on Selkirk’s High Street wouldna do, he decided, for though Claudia’s gown was worn to a rag, he could tell the fabric must have been verra fine when new. And she was small, so small. The gowns ready-made with the crofters’ and town burghers’ wives in mind would swim on her lithe faerie form, he felt sure.
There was any number of things he’d rather do with his day than ride hell for leather to Edinburgh and back again in time to fetch Claudia home from the tavern. Yet even as he debated with himself, came up with all manner of objections and counter objections, he knew he would go.
