Hepburn inclined his head once, a gracious, righteous movement that made Ogley want to shoot him. “No. I don’t want you to release him. You’re going to give him everything you promised. A commendation for bravery in battle, and his freedom in perpetuity.”
“He’s a thief. A damned beggar off the streets. A bastard who doesn’t even know who his parents are.” Ogley could scarcely credit such stupidity for a man of Hepburn’s background. “He’s nothing! You’re an earl. Why do you even care?”
“Why ask now? You never did understand.” And Hepburn looked aristocratic now, his nose wrinkling as if Ogley stank. He sneered at Ogley as if he knew something about decency that had escaped Ogley’s attention.
“He saved your life. That’s what you’ve been prattling about, isn’t it? Didn’t you save Waldemar’s life? Eh? So you’re even. He saved your life.” Ogley snorted. “You’re his superior. That’s what he was supposed to do.”
“Perhaps.” Robert’s gaze lingered on Ogley in a manner that conveyed Ogley’s fate if he’d ever put himself in danger. “But I place a great value my life nevertheless.”
“You price it too high. Not even your father cared about you. Do you know what he wrote to me when you came into my regiment?” Hepburn didn’t show a sign of interest, but Ogley knew better. “He said you were his heir. He said you were worthless, that he’d bought you a commission to straighten you out, and that I was to do it using whatever means were necessary. He didn’t care what I did to you. He didn’t care if you died.” The spittle formed at the corners of Ogley’s mouth again, but he no longer cared. “You embarrassed him.”
“Yes, I know. He thought I was worthless. He was wrong.” Opening his desk, Hepburn pulled forth a paper covered over with writing. “Here it is. Waldemar’s commendation and release from the army.”
Hepburn really couldn’t be bothered that his father had abandoned him to suffering and death, and that made Ogley all the angrier. Ogley’s own family didn’t believe him when he said he was the Hero of the Peninsula, and they had the proof in a leather-bound book. Their indifference made him furious, and Hepburn didn’t care? Damn him to hell. Would Hepburn always be one step ahead?
Coolly Hepburn continued. “All you have to do is sign Waldemar’s release and put your seal on it, and I’ll pay Carmen what she needs to support herself and your daughter. I’ll make sure Carmen never bothers you again—and you’ll never have to beg your wife for support.”
“How do I know Carmen won’t return for me?” Ogley asked, savage with disappointment.
“Because I keep my word and I’ll make sure she does too.”
That was the truth. The ruthless blackguard believed in honor and loyalty, and he always kept his word. With a vicious curse Ogley pulled up a chair. Hepburn placed the inkwell at Ogley’s elbow, pushed a pen into his hand. The pen trembled as Ogley dipped it into the ink, then stared at the inkwell and wondered what would happen if he knocked it over on the paper.
As if Hepburn read his mind, he informed him, “I have another agreement written up.”
So with a vicious slash Ogley signed Colonel Oscar Ogley across the bottom of the commendation and discharge.
Hepburn splashed red wax beside his name.
Ogley pressed his ring into the wax.
Hepburn took the paper, folded it, and locked it in a drawer. And they were done.
Standing, Ogley leaned over the desk toward Hepburn and with malevolent purpose said, “I’ll get even with you for this. Somehow I’ll make you pay for this humiliation.”
Hepburn was unimpressed. “I believe that’s my line, spoken when I left Waldemar behind with you on the Peninsula. I was insane with rage then. Tonight has gone a long way toward soothing that rage.” Hepburn leaned forward, pressed his face close to Ogley’s, and focused a venal intent on him that made Ogley draw back. “But we’re known for going insane, we MacKenzies, when we’re in a fury.”
With a shock Ogley saw the blue fire in Hepburn’s eyes. His eyes burned like the flames of hell, threatening Ogley with death and devastation.
“If I were you,” Hepburn said, “I would call it even with the MacKenzies.”
Ogley jerked back, horrified to see, for the first time, the real Hepburn. Hepburn was a madman, and Ogley was lucky to get away with his life.
A sound like cannon fire made him jump, and a shower of colored sparks rained down outside the window.
As calmly as if his ferocity had never been, Hepburn said, “The fireworks are starting. They’re in your honor, Ogley. Go out and accept your accolades. After all, that hero’s pedestal is already shaky under your feet. With a little push the marble could crumble around you.” In a tone that sounded like kind advice he added, “Too many people know the truth. Be careful what you do. Be very, very careful.”
Twenty-six
No good happens after midnight.
—THE DOWAGER QUEEN OF BEAUMONTAGNE
Ogley stood apart from everyone else on the terrace. He listened to the thin, high whistle as the fireworks climbed high in the sky, watched the showers of red and gold sparks that exploded before his eyes, heard the boom a moment later. He kept his straining fists shoved into the pockets of his jacket and a grimace on his face. Maybe it would pass for a smile, maybe not, but he didn’t bloody well care.
He had watched Hepburn and Waldemar gallop down the drive, Waldemar hooting his triumph at the moon, and now Ogley was done pretending to be a good fellow. He had been outmaneuvered by the man he’d hated more than anyone in his whole life, and he wanted to beat someone, to make someone suffer. He couldn’t play the loving husband to Brenda. He couldn’t pretend to be a hero to the crowd of admirers who stood a little distance away.
What infuriated him more than anything was that Hepburn didn’t care that Ogley had usurped his deeds and his bravery. For Hepburn what he’d done in the war was nothing more than what should be done, and Ogley was welcome to take credit for all of it. Hepburn wanted nothing more than Waldemar’s freedom. He had gotten his way, and at the same time he’d managed to make Ogley feel small and insignificant. Damn the noble swine of an earl. Damn him all to hell!
“You saw them too, didn’t you?”
“What?” At the sound of a woman’s voice beside him, he turned and looked. One of the debutantes had joined him in his isolation. What was her name? He squinted as he tried to remember.
Then a boom shook the air, green sparks lit up the sky, and he clearly perceived her thin features. Ah, yes. Miss Trumbull. Miss Larissa Trumbull.
“I saw you follow them.” Her voice was thin and nasal and filled with spite. “Princess Clarice left first, sneaking out of the ballroom. Then Lord Hepburn followed her. They thought they were fooling me, but they weren’t. I know what they were doing. I saw them after they’d spent last night together.”
“What?” He felt foolish repeating the same word, but he felt that Miss Trumbull was showing him the way, shedding light on what had previously been hidden. “Hepburn and Princess Clarice are lovers?”
“I thought you knew. I thought that was why you followed them.”
No, I followed Hepburn so I could be humiliated and coerced. Of course Ogley didn’t say that. But he wondered what he could do with this information that Miss Trumbull had so freely given him, how he could use it to get a little of his revenge back.
And then get the hell out of MacKenzie Manor before Hepburn came after him. “Princess Clarice is rather lowering herself by rutting with a mere earl, isn’t she?”
Miss Trumbull laughed bitterly. “She’s not really a princess. She’s nothing but a peddler selling cosmetics and creams to all these silly ladies who—”
Ogley grabbed her arm and twisted it. “What?”
“Ouch! Ouch, you’re hurting me.” She squealed loud enough to attract attention.
He dropped her arm and muttered an apology, then said, “But you have to tell me what you mean.”
“Princess Clarice sells creams and unguents�
�and cosmetics to color the cheeks and make your eyes look more exotic. I wager every lady tonight was wearing her royal secret color emulsion to make herself look better. Everyone except me.” Self-consciously Miss Trumbull touched the spot in the middle of her forehead.
Carmen’s eyes. Her eyes weren’t the right color. “Can the princess disguise herself, make herself look like someone else?”
“She never said, but I think she could. I think she could do all kinds of deceptive things.” Maliciously Miss Trumbull added, “She’s just a strumpet masquerading as royalty, and you know what I think? I think—”
He strode away in the middle of her discourse.
Carmen hadn’t smelled right. Carmen reeked of cigars, thick and rich with the scent of tobacco. That woman in Hepburn’s study smelled of fresh flowers and sweet spices.
When he’d danced with Princess Clarice, he’d reveled in her light perfume…and that’s what Carmen had smelled like when she brushed past him in Hepburn’s study.
Of course. Carmen wasn’t there. That woman hadn’t been Carmen, she’d been Princess Clarice in disguise. Hepburn had made a fool of Ogley and he was laughing right now. Bursting with laughter, slapping Waldemar on the back with laughter, laughing until his eyes ran with tears.
But—Ogley headed across the terrace toward Princess Clarice—Hepburn wouldn’t be laughing tomorrow when he returned. No indeed. Because Hepburn was an honorable man, and he wouldn’t want his compatriot, his lover, hurt.
No! Ogley changed course and headed toward the stables. No, better than that. Ogley had seen that look in Hepburn’s eyes. Hepburn adored his phony princess, and somehow Ogley was going to destroy her. Really, it couldn’t be too hard, could it? She was a peddler. A false princess. A liar and an actress. There had to be people who wanted her dead.
All Ogley had to do was find them.
Dawn was trying to break through the gathering clouds as Robert and Waldemar staggered toward the ship. The ship that would carry Waldemar from Edinburgh to London.
“I can’t believe ye did it.” Waldemar’s accent was thicker than coney stew. “I can’t believe ye finally bested the ol’ cocksucker.”
“Someone had to bring him down.” Hepburn was so tired and happy, he almost felt intoxicated. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and at last he was free. “In the end it wasn’t that hard to outwit him. Rather like fighting an unarmed man.”
The two men fell on each other’s necks and howled with laughter.
“Ah, ye’ve got a way wi’ words, ye do.” Waldemar took a deep breath. “We couldn’t have done it wi’out the princess, and I never got a chance t’ thank ’er.”
“I’ll tell her.” The dock thumped hollowly beneath Robert’s boots. He couldn’t wait to tell her…everything. He imagined talking to her, their heads on the pillows, their bodies exhausted from making love.
“Tell ’er more than that. Tell ’er ye love ’er.”
“What?” Hepburn peered blearily at his friend. “What are you talking about?”
“Ye love ’er, man. Didn’t ye know?” Waldemar rumpled Hepburn’s hair. “Ye’re the brains in this operation, and ye didn’t recognize yer own pitiful state?”
“Huh.” Hepburn let the meaning sink into his brain. He loved her?
Nonsense. It hadn’t been love that had sent him into her arms.
True, she had been a virgin, and he always made it his custom to avoid virgins.
Yet after that fight he hadn’t had a choice. He’d made an instinctive, desperate lunge for her. He been desperate for her. For Clarice. Only for Clarice.
Then the next night—my God, he’d made love like a man with something to prove. “I love her?”
Waldemar laughed. “Any fool can see it.”
That second night he had had something to prove, for she’d made him angry when she mounted and rode him as if he were Blaize, that damned stallion she controlled with the power of her honeyed voice and the strength of her thighs.
Robert grinned. Although that was an apt description of him. A stallion who had caught the scent of his mare. He had thought of nothing but impressing the memory of that night on her so that she would never look at another man without seeing him.
“I do love her.” He tasted the amazement the words brought him.
“Plain as the nose on me face.”
“I love her.”
“I’m starting t’ think ye’re telling the wrong person, ol’ champ.” They stood at the foot of the gangplank. The freshening wind tugged at all the vessels in the harbor and blew Waldemar’s hair into a cloud around his sharply intelligent face. “What are ye going t’ do about it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t realize it before.”
“If ye’re interested in me opinion—”
“I am.”
“I’d go t’ an inn and get a good day’s sleep.”
Robert’s soaring heart sank. “I can’t do that. She might leave. I left instructions that she be detained if she tries to go, but she is more intelligent than any woman I’ve ever met. I fear to be away for long. I fear she might slip away.”
Waldemar laughed rudely. “Nay, she won’t leave ye.”
“How do you know?”
“I could say that she’ll wait fer ’er reward fer successfully pulling the wool over Ogley’s eyes, but the truth is—she’s fond o’ ye.”
“You’d better be right.” Still, Robert shook his head. “Ogley’s leaving today, and I must make sure he goes.”
Waldemar’s eyes gleamed with glee. “Don’t worry about the colonel. ’E thinks ye’re like ’im. ’E thinks everybody’s as low and despicable as ’e is. I’ve been his valet and his whipping boy long enough t’ assure ye—by now ’e’s convinced ’imself ye’re going t’ change yer mind and tell ’is poor wife the truth about who did all that heroics on the Peninsula. ’E’s got another ball t’ go t’, and ’e’s a coward. ’E specializes in running. ’E’s hoping ye’re going t’ forfeit the pleasure of ’umiliating ’im more. Out o’ sight, out o’ mind, ’e’s thinking.”
“Are you positive?” Robert demanded.
“Positive,” Waldemar answered. “Do ye want t’ see Princess Clarice before ye’ve had a chance t’ clean up?”
Robert looked down at himself. He smelled like sweat from the hard ride, but—“I want to see Clarice now.”
“Ah, me dear friend.” Waldemar slung his arm over Robert’s shoulders. “ ’Ye shouldn’t propose marriage t’ the girl in yer state.”
“Propose marriage.” Robert took a long breath. “Of course. I shall propose marriage.” Marriage! Four days earlier he would have said marriage was the furthest thing from his mind. Now the idea dominated him. “But, Waldemar, it’s not that easy. She won’t have me. She’s a princess.”
“Princess, ’ell. She’s a woman. I’ve seen the look on ’er face. She adores ye.” Waldemar ruffled Hepburn’s hair again. “Women do, ye know. Must be that way ye have about ye o’ keeping ’em up all night ’umpin’. Where ye get yer stamina, I’ll never know.”
“Oatmeal,” Hepburn told him.
Waldemar pointed his finger at Hepburn’s nose. “Ye’re lying. Tell me ye’re lying.”
“All Scotsmen eat oatmeal, and all of us can make love all night.” At Waldemar’s palpable disgust, Hepburn fought to ward off his grin.
“Might be worth it,” Waldemar muttered. Then aloud he said, “Besides, a bird in the ’and is worth two in the bush.”
That caught Hepburn off guard. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, better a wealthy, handsome earl that she’s caught than a prince she might have.” The captain yelled a warning, and Waldemar waved a hand. “I’ve got t’ go, and I don’t know ’ow t’ say it, except just—thank ye. Thank ye always and forever.” He caught Hepburn in a rough hug, then released him and ran up the gangplank. As the crew pulled it up, he leaned over the rail and yelled, “Remember! A real princess from the fairy tales wi
ll follow ’er true love, not some pansy-breeched prince she’s never met wi’ pretty-girl hair and a fancy lisp! Princess Clarice is yers fer the taking. Ask ’er! Ye’ll see!”
Twenty-seven
God sends us adversity as a moral tonic.
—THE DOWAGER QUEEN OF BEAUMONTAGNE
Clarice woke to a sense of urgency she hadn’t experienced since…well, never. That was because she had never before been derelict in her duty to Amy. She tried to argue with herself as she dressed in her familiar black-and-red riding costume. It had been only three days. Amy couldn’t get into trouble in that amount of time.
But Amy had come to MacKenzie Manor wanting to talk about something, something she must have thought was urgent, and Clarice had paid her little attention. And Amy was barely seventeen. A mere adolescent. She could get in trouble in three days, horrible trouble, and Clarice needed to go and check up on her.
And on the villagers. She’d promised to play checkers with the old gentlemen at the alehouse, and to help the ladies in the village with their complexions. Once she had ascertained that Amy was all right, she would do those things. A princess never broke her word—and lately Clarice hadn’t been acting like a princess. She’d been acting like a woman in love.
She stopped combing her hair and pressed her palm to her forehead. What had she been thinking?
Grandmamma would say it wasn’t so much what she’d been thinking as what she’d been thinking with.
And Clarice had to stop it. Stop it now. She was in love. In love with a Scottish earl. In love, without a future, without a home, without anything but this fierce adoration for a man who…who guarded his mind so carefully, she didn’t know what he thought. About her, about them, about anything.
She had gotten herself into a dreadful predicament, and she didn’t know how to get herself out. But she did know the right things to do, and the first was to see to Amy.
The ladies and gentlemen who had attended the ball until the wee hours of the morning were barely stirring when, at noon, Clarice sneaked out of the house and down to the stables. Blaize welcomed her with an eager whinny, and before long she was galloping toward Freya Crags, a belated panic stirring her blood.
Some Enchanted Evening Page 25
