“I planned to take the bedding with me.”
“Not this one,” Frances said cheerfully. When the footman came back with the badly scuffed boots, she thanked him in delight and handed him the blanket and a torn Paisley shawl that Ariadne had been about to throw away. “Do you think you could drag these through the garden? Get a good lot of mud—and even rubbish—on them. Oh, and maybe let the kitchen cat play with them for half an hour?”
The footman glanced rather wildly at Ariadne, who merely waved him away with amusement. He bowed and went to do their bidding.
Ariadne complained loudly when Frances tied the disgusting shawl half over her bizarre hair, and wrapped the blanket round her to cover her fine gown. She tied it around Ariadne’s middle with a piece of string and stood back to admire her work.
“Though I say it myself, your own mother wouldn’t know you,” Frances said with satisfaction. “So what chance do mere sisters-in-law have?”
“You do realize you’re talking yourself out of my diamonds? To say nothing of your own rubies.”
“Torridon’s rubies,” Frances corrected somewhat mechanically.
“Though actually, you know, I do still look like me,” Ariadne said uneasily. “I don’t really want Susan and Euphemia to see me like this.”
“They won’t look. People of a certain class don’t really see those beneath them without a very good reason. Could you describe to me the last washerwoman you saw? The last vagrant or even someone else’s maid?”
“I take your point, Frannie, but how the devil do we get out of the house like this?”
Frances, having donned her smart pelisse, picked up Jamie and wrapped him in warm—clean—shawls. “We get your kind footman to smuggle you out. Pretending to throw you out would probably work best. And when I emerge from the front door, I’ll follow you at a discreet distance to your sisters’ house to observe.”
The plan was duly followed. For a moment, Ariadne lingered at the top of the area steps while Frances, at the front gate, looked regally through her across the square. Ariadne complained that the footman had seemed to derive a little too much pleasure from pushing her out of the kitchen door. “I’d dismiss him,” she finished, “if this was not his last day.”
“You mean to stay here with no servants but Lawson?” Frances asked, surprised.
“And the cook. I told you, I would have fled to London this morning had you not given me a reason to stay—at least until tomorrow, when we’re off to Blackhaven.”
In the light of day, Frances discovered she still liked that part of the plan. She had a yearning for home, for her own stern mother and her brother and sisters… she hadn’t even met Serena’s husband or Gervaise’s wife. And she really wanted to see Serena before she went south to her husband’s estate in Devon.
Her thought jolted back to reality as Ariadne, taking her role to heart, hobbled past the gate, bent almost double inside her bulky blanket. She even muttered at the gentleman walking up the road. He glared at her as if she had no right to be in such a hallowed neighborhood. Ariadne cackled, and Frances had to smother her laughter as she closed the gate and followed her friend to the end of the square and further into Edinburgh’s gracious new town.
Ariadne waddled past most people at a good pace. Her sisters-in-law apparently kept to a strict routine, and she was anxious to catch them as they left home on their way to perform charitable work at the church. Otherwise, there would be a lot of dull waiting around. However, two thin, middle-aged women strode energetically uphill toward them, and Ariadne glanced back over her shoulder. These unfashionably dressed ladies must be their quarry.
“Good morning, ladies,” Ariadne addressed them in an impressively strong Edinburgh accent. “Spare a poor old woman a penny on such a beautiful day?”
The sky was gray and beginning to drizzle, but this didn’t seem to be what offended the Marshall ladies. “Outrageous! Begging in the street!” one exclaimed, grasping the arm of the other and trying to hurry past.
“Please, ma’am, it’s for the children…”
“I’ll have you taken up,” one of the ladies threatened. “You and your children!” And they sailed on, leaving Ariadne staring after them with theatrical fury.
Trying not to laugh, Frances passed them with the faintest nod of acknowledgement, which they barely returned. Their ill-nature seemed to have no basis in class.
Frances took a sovereign from her reticule and pressed it into Ariadne’s too-soft hand. “For your children,” she said loudly. “Make them a good broth.”
“I’m more likely to make them into broth,” Ariadne said below her breath. Then more loudly, “Thank you kindly, ma’am. God bless you!”
They turned the next corner together, and Ariadne straightened, tearing off the blanket. “This thing stinks! What on earth did George do with it?”
“Let’s not ask,” Frances said, smiling at a baffled family who were passing them. “After all, it served its purpose. They most certainly did not recognize you.”
“Well, you can’t have my diamonds yet. Let us hire a chaise to Blackhaven.”
Chapter Two
Alan Ross, Earl of Torridon, had left Ardnacraig at dawn despite the inevitable conviviality of the night before. Although still angry with his wife for her several attacks during their quarrel, he recognized he had been both unkind and unfair in imputing greed to her. She had never asked him for anything—except to come with him to Ardnacraig—and he knew in his heart her insults had come from unhappiness, not ill-nature.
Guilt for that unhappiness ate at him. She either could not see or did not care that he was taking care of her. It was not enough for her. It broke his heart that even though she had given him a son, he could not make her happy. Of course, she had been pleasing her family in accepting his offer, but he had once had reason to hope there was more to their relationship than convenience and family alliance.
Even yesterday morning when he had wakened her, her eyes had been soft and welcoming, her voice husky with desire as she told him their son still slept. It had taken extraordinary self-denial not to ravish her where she lay, but his mother had told him he must not touch his wife in that way for at least six months after the birth, not until her body was fully healed.
It appalled him now that Frances might have offered herself through boredom, as a means of persuading him to let her see other people, and if things were as wrong as that, then he was responsible and needed to try to make them right. And so, he left Ardnacraig several hours before he’d meant to, and rode hard through the glen to Torridon House, with every intention of spending the afternoon with his wife doing whatever she wished to do. And talking over what would make her happier. Providing it did not compromise her safety or Jamie’s, he would move heaven and earth to give it to her.
His heart beat faster as he finally rode up to the house. In truth, his wish to see her was not unselfish. It never had been. And now that she had forced him to see her isolation from her point of view, he thought they could compromise and be better friends once more. In the two months left of his self-imposed abstinence, he would court her all over again, worship her, tame her wicked tongue, win her…
He threw himself from the horse, his body hot with a longing he would not indulge, and yet there was excitement in that, too…
“Drummond,” he said, spotting his butler as he all but threw his overcoat and hat at the footman, and strode across the hall to the stairs. “Where is her ladyship?”
“Her ladyship has not yet come home, my lord. The dowager countess is in the morning room.”
Torridon paused, frowning. “Not come home? Where did she go?”
“Into the village, sir, with his wee lordship. Gordon took her in the coach.”
Despite his disappointment, Torridon had to hide a smile. She was paying him back. Still, it gave him time to wash the mud and sweat from his body and change his clothes.
Two hours later, she still had not come home, and Torridon began to
think of his afternoon as wasted. Perhaps this was how Frances regarded all her afternoons… although she had the baby to care for in ways he could not. It was she who had insisted on feeding Jamie herself, instead of employing the wet nurse his mother had recommended.
The trouble was, he had so many things to do on the estate, for he was learning as he went. He was never meant to have been the earl, and had known nothing of land management when his brother Andrew had died so unexpectedly. Alan was a soldier, conscientiously learning a new “trade” for which he was ill-suited.
“Did she not say when she would be back?” Torridon demanded of his mother as he stared out the window at the teeming rain.
“She didn’t say anything at all,” his mother said tartly. “At least, not to me. She left without troubling to say goodbye.”
Torridon frowned. “Well, she isn’t obliged to report her outings to you. You certainly don’t report yours to her.” He flung himself away from the window, heading for the door. “I’m going to meet her.”
“In this downpour?” his mother demanded, affronted.
“In this downpour,” he agreed over his shoulder.
“Alan, don’t be angry with her,” his mother called after him. “She does not mean to be so selfish. In fact, I’m sure she does not wish to drag you out in such weather…”
Her words followed him across the hall, setting up his hackles because they sounded more like criticism than defense. No wonder Frances had not cared to be left to keep his mother’s company if she was in this kind of mood.
Demanding a fresh horse be saddled immediately, he struggled into a dry greatcoat.
*
“Oh aye, I saw the carriage go by,” Mrs. MacSorley at the village shop told him. “But it didn’t stop.”
Torridon scowled, unease beginning to tug at him, but he remembered to thank Mrs. MacSorley before leaving the shop and remounting. On this road, within visiting distance, there was really only the church and the manse. He supposed she might have gone to the church and then been buttonholed by the minister’s wife, who was not really a great friend of hers. He rode in that direction and eventually discovered the minister about to take tea with his family. Mr. MacDonald welcomed him with delight and bade him join them.
“Thank you, no, I’m looking for my wife. Mrs. MacSorley thought she came this way, and I wondered if she had called on you?”
“Oh no,” Mrs. MacDonald said, her eyes widening, no doubt with a special thrill at the possibility of juicy gossip from the big house.
“I saw the coach,” one of the children piped up, “driving away from the village. Pulled by two beautifully matching black—”
“Ah, thank you,” Torridon interrupted hurriedly. “I must have misunderstood her. Sorry to interrupt you, ma’am! I’ll leave you to your tea.”
Escaping, Torridon threw himself back onto the horse and galloped for home. A terrible suspicion had begun to form in his mind. Now that he really thought about their last encounter, was his wife’s behavior not that of a woman at the end of her tether? He might not understand how or why, but he had known of her unhappiness and done nothing about it, preferring to wait patiently until the old Frances reemerged.
Shame on you, Ross. Although he had been the earl for over a year, he still thought of himself as Captain Ross rather than Lord Torridon. Shame on you for being a selfish, stupid monster of a man…
Even so, he could not help hoping he was wrong, and that he would find her already returned and waiting for him. And this time, this time, he would lay his heart at her feet, as he should always have done instead of… whatever it was he had done and hadn’t done. He would worry about such details later. Of the first importance was her safety and their son’s.
But she had not come home. Barging into her chamber, still dripping from his hair and boots, he rang for her maid, and threw open cupboards and drawers. But he could not tell what was missing, not from her things or from Jamie’s in the nursery. When Carter, the maid, arrived, he commanded her to look.
He must have been scowling ferociously, for she all but cowered as she passed him.
“The small portmanteau is gone,” Carter reported in a shaken voice. “Also, her ladyship’s brown travelling dress, the peach day dress, and the new blue evening gown. Some undergarments. Her walking boots and a pair of evening slippers.”
Torridon swung away to the window and closed his eyes. “And jewelry?”
The maid opened another drawer. “No, there is nothing gone… oh.” She scratched around a little more until he swung impatiently back to her. “The rubies,” she blurted. “The rubies are gone.”
He had never felt, never expected such fierce pain, such emptiness. Almost like when his brother had died, or when his comrades had been killed in Spain…
But she was not dead. He would not grieve. She had run away from him, taking the rubies that he had given her, to pawn, perhaps, or to keep herself. More than that, much more, she had put herself and their son in danger, and he could never forgive that.
In the meantime, she’d also put him in the damnably difficult position of saving her honor. The scandal of her flight would be instant, and as soon as she tried to pawn the rubies, the stones would be recognized and then…
“Her ladyship has gone earlier than planned to visit her family in Blackhaven,” he barked at the maid. “She wants to see her sister before she departs for Devon.” He turned and glared at Carter. “And if you even hint at anything different, you’ll be dismissed without a character. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, yes, my lord,” Carter stammered, curtseying several times, as if she didn’t know what else to do.
Torridon, who could not abide people who were afraid of him, stormed out of the room in disgust and went to prepare for his own departure.
*
Not for an instant did Torridon himself vary from the tale he had given the maid. For one thing, once he thought about it more calmly, he was pretty sure it was true. For another, he couldn’t bear the speculation of his affronted parent. He told her he had found word in his wife’s chamber, which was true enough in its own way. Then he retired early to bed, and in the morning, set off in his travelling coach, taking with him his valet and a trunk containing his own clothes and several more of his wife’s.
After some thought, he did not take Carter or the nursery maid with him. If Frances had valued either servant, she would have taken them with her. Even through his hurt and fury, he recognized that fact and the likelihood that she was correct in her judgment. Either that, or she was shrugging off everything connected to him—apart from his son.
Pausing for dinner at the usual inn, The Rampant Lion, he learned that Frances had indeed spent last night there. It was a relief, but it also called out the hunter in him. He was on her trail. And being still with Gordon the coachman and his boy, she was as safe as anyone could be on the road. He would have pressed on through the night in the hope of catching her, except that Frances had taken his horses, and the spare animals The Rampant Lion had to offer didn’t seem to be up to much. He decided he would be quicker and kinder to let his own horses rest for the night and re-harness them in the morning.
The roads were easier on the following day. But as they came to the crossroads—straight on for Carlisle and the south, or east to Edinburgh—he leaned forward on impulse and rapped on the roof for the driver to halt.
Only about a week ago, she had mentioned Mrs. Marshall being in Edinburgh to sell her husband’s house. Torridon hadn’t paid much attention, for he didn’t care for the brash widow. He enjoyed flirtation as much as the next man, but not after his engagement and certainly not with the friend of his betrothed. In his opinion, she was fast and grasping and quite untrustworthy, and he could not like Frances’s friendship with her.
And Frances knew that. Frances was angry with him.
Making the detour to Edinburgh would add at least a day to his journey to Blackhaven. But if she was there…
He o
pened the window and gave the instruction.
*
No one he spoke to in Edinburgh seemed to find it odd that a gentleman should be asking for Mrs. Marshall’s house when it was close to midnight. When he eventually found his way to Charlotte Square, there was a light in the kitchen but not in the main part of the house. He wondered if they had all retired to bed, or if, as seemed more likely, Frances was out with her friend at some party. If the latter, he hoped grimly they had left Jamie with proper care. By God, if they had not…
He rapped sharply on the door and rang the bell. When no one answered, he did both again rather more impatiently. Eventually, a faint light flickered in the arched window over the front door, and a moment later, he heard the bolts being pulled back.
A half-dressed footman stuck his bedraggled head and shoulders around the door. A woman stood poised behind him with a large candlestick raised like a weapon.
“Is Mrs. Marshall at home?” he snapped.
The man blinked. “No, sir. She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Why would she tell me? I’m dismissed like everyone else. The house is sold.”
“Take a guess,” Torridon said unpleasantly.
“South,” the footman blurted. “London, probably.”
“Did she have companions?”
“Lady Torridon and the baby, sir. And Lawson, Mrs. Marshall’s maid.”
“In her ladyship’s coach?”
“Oh, no, sir. A hired chaise called for them at five o’clock. With postilions and everything.”
Relief washed over Torridon. They were safe. Whether they were heading to Blackhaven or London, they were safe.
“Are you Lord Torridon?” the footman asked reluctantly, probably because the woman with the candlestick was nudging him so forcefully.
“I am. Why?”
“Her ladyship left a letter for you. I was to post it in the morning, but since you’re here…”
Regency Scandals and Scoundrels: A Regency Historical Romance Collection Page 28
