Pretender's Game

by Louise Clark

  Moving closer, Olivia caught Thea’s hand and patted it affectionately. “Edinburgh can be a bleak place in the winter months and hot in the summer, but there is plenty of society to keep a person busy and everything is so close together that visiting isn’t difficult. You would be much happier here than in a desolate place like Glenmuir.”

  All the fears that had been plaguing Thea since she had learned she and James would be living at Glenmuir surfaced dangerously. She firmed her jaw, but her voice shook a little.

  “I know the trip to Glenmuir will be difficult, Mrs. Ramsey, and I am prepared for it. I believe Mr. MacLonan has written to his steward advising him that we will be arriving within a month and to have the house prepared for us. Once there, I am sure I will adapt quickly.”

  “Thea,” Olivia said urgently, “you don’t know what life in the Highlands is like! The people are savages! Barbarians!”

  Thea had heard expressions of this sort before. Until she had met James MacLonan, she had believed them. Now she shook her head. “Mrs. Ramsey, how can I accept a statement of that nature? My husband is a Highlander and he is no barbarian!”

  “James MacLonan is an aristocrat. The common people are different.”

  Doubt flickered through Thea’s mind, but she kept her features calm and confident. “As it is true I have no experience of the ordinary people of the Highlands, I cannot disagree with you. But I see no reason to worry about the common people. They are not my concern.”

  “They will be,” Olivia retorted grimly. “The Highlands are a harsh region, thinly populated. High mountains separate the valleys, making travel difficult. Thea, do you know what the name of your husband’s estate means?”

  Frowning, Thea shook her head.

  “Glenmuir—wooded valley. Does that not tell you something of what you should expect when you reach your new home?”

  Since she had been raised on her father’s small estate in Kent, Thea’s idea of country-living meant large manor houses staffed by dozens of servants, a regular round of social visits between the members of the gentry who lived in the vicinity, dances and parties that ended with overnight stays or late-night drives through the gentle countryside. She couldn’t imagine an area where such things were not possible. Smiling tranquilly, she said, “You make the estate sound very pretty. Rolling hills surrounding a lush green forest—”

  “Jutting mountains dominating a narrow valley choked with evergreens more like!” Olivia interrupted crisply.

  Thea swallowed. Olivia Ramsey was well known for her dislike of the Highlands. Now she was simply showing her prejudice.

  Olivia swept on, as unstoppable as a flooded river in the spring, and just as destructive. “The only people you’ll find at Glenmuir are MacLonans, all clansmen of your husband’s. There’ll be no other gentry but yourselves, and if he chooses to remain there through the winter, you will be imprisoned in your valley after the snow closes the passes, and will go nowhere until the snow melts in the spring. Think of the loneliness, Thea. Of the harshness of the life you will have to endure.”

  Olivia’s words destroyed what was left of Thea’s fine bravado. She was barely able to whisper, “James has told me nothing of this.”

  Olivia squeezed her fingers gently. “Stay here in Edinburgh. If your husband wishes to retreat from the town for a space, you are welcome to use our estate.”

  “I don’t know.” Thea moistened dry lips. “I—I would have to ask James.”

  Olivia laughed, confident and assured. “Then the matter is settled. I did not think you would persist in this foolish notion once you were aware of the true situation. I will write our steward and tell him that you will be staying for some weeks during the spring and summer.”

  Cornered, Thea flashed, “Mrs. Ramsey, nothing is decided yet!”

  “Nonsense! An intelligent woman can easily talk a man around to her way of thinking. Now, we have been gossiping here overlong. I see Judge Denholm across the room and I promised my husband that I would be polite to him, even though I find the man to be a dreadful Tory in his views.”

  “But—”

  “Think positively, Thea,” Olivia said breezily as she departed. “Your husband will follow your dictates once you have learned the best way to persuade him that what he wants is exactly what you want.”

  Very doubtful that she would have the least affect on her husband’s decision to return to Glenmuir, Thea pushed Olivia’s invitation from her thoughts. The woman’s earlier comments about the Highlands were not so easily dismissed, however, and Thea’s fears returned, stronger and more painful than before. She stared at the poet, who was just finishing his long, rambling verses, and forced a smile onto her lips as she clapped politely along with the rest of the company.

  For the rest of the evening, no one, including her husband and family, had the least idea of the foreboding that tormented her.

  *

  When Olivia Ramsey returned home that evening, she stopped to dash off two quick notes before retiring to her bedchamber for the night. The first was to her steward at Ramsey House.

  The second was addressed to one Gregor MacLonan, steward of Glenmuir.

  Chapter 8

  When they left the party that evening, Thea looked at her husband from the shadow of the hooded cloak she wore. “I feel the need to walk, James. Would you mind dismissing the chair for tonight?”

  He raised a brow, but did as she requested. The journey back to the Tilton residence close to the Castle wasn’t particularly far.

  Their footsteps echoed on the cobbled streets as they walked. Thea took a deep breath. Then somewhat tentatively, she said, “I would know more about Glenmuir, James. Where is it? What is the house like? Who are our neighbors? I… I do not mean to pester you on the subject, but I have a thousand questions that are churning about inside of me.”

  They walked on. James was silent for a long time—too long, Thea thought uneasily, remembering Olivia Ramsey’s descriptions.

  At last he said, “I have not been to Glenmuir for nearly five years. I left when Charles Edward Stuart raised the clans in ‘45, and although I was there briefly after the Battle of Falkirk, I have been gone ever since. All I can tell you is what the place was like in January of 1746.”

  “Then tell me what it was once like.”

  James glanced down at her and smiled. “Glenmuir,” he began softly, “was a rich green valley where the people lived well. It is in the mountains, so the land was mainly used for grazing. Some crops were grown, enough to feed the people, but it was in the herds that Glenmuir was rich, that and the trees which were felled for sale.”

  “Who lives there?”

  He raised his brows in surprise. “My clansmen, the MacLonans.”

  Ominously, Olivia Ramsey’s words came back to Thea. “There are no other gently bred people there?”

  James paused, then said carefully, “Thea, Highlanders are different from the English, or even the Lowland Scots. My clansmen are all free and equal and expect to be treated that way.”

  “But you are the laird—”

  “No, I am not.” He laughed. “My father is the MacLonan, the clan leader. He is the first among equals.”

  Thea bit her lip. She stared at the old stone buildings crowding High Street. Her experience was of cities and a well-stratified country life. The world James was describing was beyond her imaginings and so very threatening. “My home in Kent and the way of life there are very different,” she said. “I fear I will not know how to cope in your Highland stronghold.”

  He patted her hand where it lay on his arm. Thea looked over to find him watching her with concern. “Glenmuir will be strange at first, but in time you will become familiar with all that goes on there. I know it will be difficult, but you will adapt.”

  Unspoken was his own experience as an exile. With a pang, Thea wondered how much hardship he had endured after he landed in France, certain that he must make a new life, that he would never be allowed to ret
urn to his homeland. In some ways, he understood her fears, but in others he did not, for he was obsessed with the need to return to Glenmuir.

  Thea smiled and made the best of things. “Tell me about your home. What is Glenmuir Castle like?” She glanced at James in time to see a spasm of pain cross his face. Fear placed its icy print on her spine, and doubt brought her fears alive. She moistened her lips, then set her jaw as she waited what seemed to be a very long time before he answered her question.

  “Glenmuir Castle was a place of winding corridors and drafty rooms. It was built of stone that caught the rays of the sun, so that it often seemed to glow golden, like a place of magic. But in the winter the rooms were cold, and the warmth never penetrated in the summer. It was a place of imagination and dreams, not everyday comforts.”

  “You used the past tense,” Thea said, her voice rising dangerously. “It was, they were! Why?”

  “I told you! I haven’t been there for five years.”

  “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  Goaded, he snapped, “You are right, there is more! Much more! I did use the past deliberately because Glenmuir Castle is gone! After the defeat at Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland decided to rid the Highlands of the clans. He burned and raped and murdered. But you knew of that, did you not, Miss Tilton?”

  His anger cut through Thea’s fears and drew her defiant temper to the surface. “MacLonan!” she countered fiercely. “Mrs. James MacLonan. Remember that, sir! And kindly remember as well that I was not in Scotland during the rebellion or the period directly afterward. Nor was anyone in my family.”

  A muscle flexed in James’s jaw. They had turned into a narrow wynd. The Tilton residence was halfway down the short street. As they reached the steps, he bowed with elegant irony. “I shall endeavor to recall the fact, madam.”

  As he raised his hand to knock on the door, Thea asked softly, “Mr. MacLonan, if there is no castle at Glenmuir, where will we be living?”

  He raised his brows and rapped sharply with the knocker. “My clansmen are building us a house, in honor of my return.”

  “A house?”

  “A cottage actually.”

  The image of a two-room hovel leapt into her mind. “How large will this house or cottage be?”

  “I don’t know!” he retorted impatiently. “It will be the kind of house that is fit for the clan leader of the MacLonans and his family to live in.”

  “And what is that? How can you not know a detail such as the number of rooms in the house being constructed for you, on your lands?”

  The door opened. The butler welcomed them home and announced that Sir Frederick and Lady Tilton had not yet returned. Neither James nor Thea acknowledged this useful bit of information.

  “My father’s steward wrote that a suitable house was being built by the clansmen,” James said impatiently. “I did not inquire further because it would be an insult to do so.”

  Thea’s doubts, born of her husband’s poorly managed method of telling her that they would be living at Glenmuir, encouraged by Olivia Ramsey’s carefully worded phrases, and nurtured by Thea’s own experiences in Scotland, compacted in to an insurmountable barrier. “You did not wish to insult one of your clansmen, yet you were content to take your wife to live in a building which could be nothing more than a hovel! Your consideration for my feelings astounds me!”

  The butler took their outer garments and hastened to leave them.

  James glared at Thea. His eyes were an icy blue. “I am needed in Glenmuir.”

  “And I was needed to get you there,” Thea retorted, her dark eyes blazing.

  James bowed with an elegance that was decidedly French. “Just so, madam.”

  “Then be glad, sir, that I have given you the opportunity to return to your beloved burned-out ruin, for I will not be accompanying you!”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “We leave for Glenmuir as soon as the roads are passable.”

  “You leave!” Thea balled her hands into fists. “I do not intend to live in the crude cottage your clansmen are making for you. I shall stay here, in Edinburgh. You may visit me whenever the whim takes you.”

  He caught her shoulders in a tight grasp. “Then I will be visiting you very often indeed, wife, because you will be sleeping in my bed, beside me, at Glenmuir!”

  “I will not!”

  “Thea,” he said grimly, “the people of Glenmuir need me—us. We cannot linger here in Edinburgh indulging in our own pleasure.”

  “Us!” She pulled away, anger once again sparking from her eyes. “If your barbaric Highlanders feel as you do, James MacLonan, they will not want an Englishwoman in their midst! What need have you of my presence in your desolate Highland hills? If you must go to Glenmuir, then allow me to remain here, in civilized society!”

  There was nothing she could have said more calculated to inflame her husband’s temper. “Never! You come with me to Glenmuir the day I get word the roads are clear.”

  They glared at each other for a long, tension-charged moment. Then Thea dropped her gaze submissively. There was nothing submissive in the deep curtsy she swept him, however. Indeed, there was more defiance in the act than dutiful obedience.

  *

  In her bedchamber, Thea rang for her maid with such force that the bellpull was almost ripped from the wall. Then she paced the room with all the fury of a trapped wildcat. When her maid mistook her annoyance for the impatience of a new bride to be ready for her husband’s evening visit, Thea’s temper almost snapped. She did not tell the maid that the last thing she expected was a visit from her husband, but it was true. After their argument tonight she was quite certain James would not be joining her.

  In that she was wrong. She was curled up in her bed, the covers pulled up to her chin and her eyes firmly closed, though she was far from sleep, when the door quietly opened. Thea froze. If this was her mother or sister coming in to talk, she was in no mood for a cozy conversation tonight, and if it was James… He wouldn’t consider lying with her tonight—would he?

  He would.

  She opened her eyes a crack, still pretending sleep. He stood beside the bed, holding a candle. He was wearing a blue velvet bed gown and nothing else. It was clear that he had not come to her chamber to continue their discussion.

  “Open your eyes, Thea. I know you’re awake.”

  Her eyes flew open. “I am very tired,” she said, not moving.

  A smile flickered across his set features and was gone. “Then you will soon be exhausted.” He set the candle on the table beside the bed and shrugged off the velvet bed gown.

  Thea’s breath caught. She still hadn’t gotten used to the intimacy that a physical union with a man brought, and she found herself looking as closely at James’s muscular body as if she had never seen it before. Still, when he slipped in beside her, she stiffened.

  He lay on his side, one arm bent to prop up his head, and looked at her soberly. “Do you wish you could deny me your bed?”

  Thea swallowed. “What would you do if I did?”

  His free hand wrapped around her waist, drawing her close, and his other hand tangled in her hair as he moved to kiss her slightly parted lips. “I will not be denied, Thea.”

  He was talking about more than whether or not she accepted his caresses tonight, but at that moment Thea didn’t care. He was seducing her, there was no doubt about it, but she wanted to be seduced. She accepted his caresses and his passion, for her body was already warming with remembered pleasure. Desire, she discovered, was a very potent force.

  In the aftermath, she sighed and curled against his warmth. She was sated and lazy, and did not feel like arguing with him again, but she did not want him to think that her physical submission was also a mental one.

  “James…”

  He rolled on his side with a little murmur and kissed her lingeringly. Then he smiled faintly and said, “I like the sound of my name on your lips.”

  Thea’s mouth slowly curled into an an
swering smile. He looked as relaxed and contented as she felt, and she believed that his words were spoken from the heart. She stroked her fingers along his short, dark hair. “It still seems very strange. I am not used to being a wife yet.”

  He kissed her again, shifting her so that she was on her back. His kiss deepened. “Nor am I used to having a wife. You please me greatly, Thea.”

  He meant physically, for surely he could not want a wife who fought him on issues he considered trivial. Still, for those few pleasurable minutes, Thea allowed herself to believe that nothing could be that bad with this man by her side.

  She was breathing heavily and her heart was pounding when he released her lips once again. “James—”

  Laughing, he stroked his hand down her rib cage, teasing the side of her breast. Her nipple peaked. Thea groaned.

  “Yes, my dear? Did you want to discuss something with me?”

  “Yes,” she managed to grit out before desire got the better of her and she gave up the attempt to talk so she could concentrate on the wonderful sensations created by his hands and mouth.

  This time when her body arched beneath his, she cried out his name in fierce exaltation and heard him hiss, “Yes!” in triumph. His strokes quickened and he kissed her roughly, sending her cascading into a fiery climax that left her limp. She slept through the night, cradled in his arms, well content.

  *

  James was still asleep when Thea woke the next morning. Her thoughts were confused as she lay beside him, thinking of the pleasure he had given her and of the arbitrary way he had planned for their removal to Glenmuir. Try as she might, she could not understand how the same man could be both so gentle and so cold. Drawing away in an attempt to look into his face, to see if she could find the answers she sought, she woke him.

  He smiled lazily. “Good morning, wife.”

  He looked smug and distinctly pleased with himself. Thea’s dimple appeared as she tried not to laugh. “Good morning.”

  Brushing her thick, golden hair away from her face, his hand lingered for a moment. “What a pleasure it is to know that the woman sharing my bed is not only beautiful at night, but when she wakes in the morning.”