by Karen Ranney
“You do?”
He sighed. “I do. A decidedly odd reaction, one that I’ll need to study. I haven’t been myself since the day I met you.”
She stilled, listening.
“I can see nothing of you, yet I find myself looking toward you, watching you, as if you hold the answer to all the questions I have.”
She waited, but when he didn’t continue, she trailed her hand down his arm, then curled it into a fist, tucking it against his chest.
“What questions do you have?”
“No,” he said. “Not now. There’s a time for that later.”
He reached down and pulled the sheet and blanket over both of them.
What had begun in passion muted to become something dear, a tenderness she’d rarely felt. She lay in his arms, feeling protected and cherished. Foolish emotions, and no doubt false ones, but she’d allow herself to pretend, just for a while.
“Where were you? All those days you were gone. Where did you go?”
“Did you miss me?”
“My meals were amazingly serene,” she said, smiling when he bent and pretended to bite her shoulder.
“I had something I needed to do.”
“A nonanswer.”
“May I tell you later?”
“Will you?”
“Another promise?” he asked. “I promise to tell you everything. Later.”
When he slept, she didn’t pull away or demand he leave her room.
Just another sign of her foolishness.
Chapter 21
The smell woke him.
Mark left Catriona’s bed, walking to the window naked. He parted the curtains, revealing a scene from Hell itself.
The carriage house was burning.
Noxious black clouds burst upward from the structure like orange-limned bubbles. Tongues of flames licked outward from the carriage bay. Soot clung to the window, as if wanting to render the scene as monochromatic as a daguerreotype.
A stable boy shouted at the others, while the far-off peal of the fire brigade brought hope that the fire wouldn’t travel to the town houses of Charlotte Square.
The sight was bringing out spectators. A group of residents huddled at the end of the alley. Two of the maids, still attired in their nightclothes, were staring in horror at the blaze. As he watched, Dina MacTavish came into sight and, with a militaristic precision he’d previously admired, immediately began giving orders.
She was one of those people who performed admirably in a crisis.
Remembering the paraffin oil the coachman had used, he wondered if the man was trapped now, and turned to gather up his clothes and dress.
“What is it?” Catriona asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and turning her back on him.
“The carriage house is burning.”
The light from the fire illuminated the room as bright as day. She bent to retrieve her veil, and he didn’t chastise her for doing so. He understood, in a way he hadn’t last night.
As a physician, he touched his patients to discern the angle of a broken bone, the shape of a lump. His hands were tools, capable of conveying information from a patient’s body to his mind.
The one touch on her face had given him a map of scars, of twisted flesh and distorted features.
He knew, in that one instant, how badly she’d been injured.
His heart expanded, filling with gratitude that she hadn’t been killed.
One day she might feel the same, just as one day he might tell her that he didn’t need to see her to know the truth.
She affixed her veil, grabbed the sheet and wrapped it around her.
Turning, she looked at him.
“Perhaps it’s a good thing I seduced you,” she said.
“Did you?” he asked, grateful that her voice held a note of humor.
“Will your room survive?” she asked.
He shook his head, just now realizing that the room he’d been given for his ruse was engulfed in flames.
“They may need me,” he said, forgetting his role of footman for that of physician.
Thankfully, she only nodded.
The pretense must end. He should have spoken hours ago. Instead, he’d kissed Catriona and his conscience and his will had faded to nothing. However, now was not the time. People were shouting outside and the fire brigade was growing closer.
Yet it would be a simple matter to walk to the bed, help her stand, and look into her veiled face.
Catriona, I’m a physician, not a footman.
The words seemed more a betrayal than a revelation.
Regret infused him for all the things he should have done, and all his unwise acts. He felt uncomfortable, in a way that was alien to him. He was not given to such questioning. The lives of his patients depended on his ability to make decisions quickly. Yet everything he’d done with regard to Catriona Cameron had been second-guessed, even this moment when he stood in the doorway looking back at her.
The veil obscured everything but hints of her luscious body. Had there not been a fire, or if sense hadn’t trumped lust, he might have returned to her bed.
His practice had suffered because of his fixation on her. He’d lost his focus, his single-minded pursuit of medicine.
He’d altered his relationship with Anne. Could he blame that on this ruse as well?
Without thinking, without censoring himself, he walked to the bed, grabbed her upper arms and pulled her, naked, up to him. Before she could say a word, he folded his arms around her, holding her. She stood stiff and unyielding for a moment, before her hands reached out and pressed against his back.
“Catriona,” he said, his cheek pressed against the soft lace of her veil.
He couldn’t thank her for last night. Doing so smacked too much of making her a whore. He couldn’t explain the truth, so he settled for repeating her name.
He dropped his arms and walked away, closing the door of the bedroom behind him.
Catriona dressed but she didn’t hurry to join the melee in the alley. Her best vantage point was from her sitting room window, and she stood there, out of sight, intent on the drama.
She watched Mark, curious about him in a way that she couldn’t remember ever being about a man. He was taller than most of the men in the fire brigade and, she would wager, more muscular as well.
All she had to do was close her eyes to see his physique as he’d stood at the window. Had she ever taken such delight in the sight of a man’s body? He was all carved chest and taut stomach, muscled thighs and round buttocks. When he’d turned to look at her, a flame leapt to life inside her.
She’d wanted to stretch out her hand and urge him back to bed. Let her stroke her hands over his chest, lick his nipples, grip his backside with clenched fingers. Let her drive him mad with soft kisses over his cock until he strained not to erupt in her mouth.
Or let her feel his muscled chest tapering down to his waist, his thighs. His buttocks fascinated her, tight with muscle, they seemed ridiculously sensitive.
She’d run her fingers over him, and he’d twitched away from her touch.
“I’m not,” he said, when she had accused him of being ticklish.
“Of course you are,” she countered, and moved to the end of the bed to tickle the soles of his feet.
He was more intelligent than his position required. He was loyal, since he never spoke against Aunt Dina. He’d never divulged the mysterious errands her aunt had sent him on from time to time.
Why was she so fascinated with him? Was it because he was her lover, when other men would have shied away? Or because she was lonely, and he was kind, amusing, and as obstinate as she was?
Or was it simply something about Mark? He had a confidence that made her think he’d held a position of importance once, and a way of walking that decreed he was a man of power. Yet he was only a footman.
Did it truly matter what position he held? He was Mark, and she was too interested in him.
She’d never allowed a man to h
old her as tenderly as he had last night. If she never saw another person in her hermitage, he would be enough, and wasn’t that a frightening admission?
She suspected that she would have felt just as vulnerable around him with all her beauty as she did now. The yearning she felt, uncomfortable and new, was not due to her scarred face but for some other reason.
Attired in his black greatcoat—had an appreciative and wealthy woman given it to him?—she watched him hand off buckets. With two other men, he used a long forklike tool to poke at the remains of the stairway and the ceiling. As they walked away, the ceiling fell in a cloud of embers and ashes.
The bay was only a yawning black maw, and the windows above had been blown out, but the shell of the carriage house remained. The fire had not started from the outside, but from the inside.
Was it another improbable accident?
She wrapped her arms around her waist. She was seeing things that weren’t there.
A carriage approached from the end of the street. She wondered if there were more onlookers, come to see the fire and the destruction.
People liked to view a tragedy.
Some kind people had attempted to help poor Millicent and her right after the accident in London. But just as many people had stood there, all agog about the carriage accident. No doubt they’d congratulated themselves on not being one of the occupants.
Below, Aunt Dina was scurrying everywhere. At one point she, Artis, and Elspeth emerged with trays of tea, coffee, and scones for the men in the fire brigade.
Aunt Dina turned and watched as a woman exited the carriage and strode up the alley as if she had a destination in mind. Without even greeting Dina, the woman walked right up to Mark.
He’d said he wasn’t married, but had he lied?
Andrew hadn’t bothered to lie. His marital status hadn’t concerned him. He hadn’t cared about his own adultery. In fact, he’d bragged that his wife was comfortable with it.
As long as I come home periodically, and always dole out the money, she doesn’t care what I do.
She had a sickening feeling in her stomach as she watched Mark and the woman converse.
The woman appeared older than Mark, her cloak a plain serviceable brown. Her bonnet was the same, utilitarian rather than fashionable. She tilted her chin up at him, folded her arms, then made a wide sweeping gesture of her arm, her gloved hand pointing toward the square. A moment later she was shaking her head, then nodding.
Mark glanced up, his gaze on her bedroom window. She pulled back, but not so much that she lost sight of them.
He nodded again, and the woman looked mollified enough to step back and bury her hands in the pockets of her cloak.
Mark turned, escorted her to Aunt Dina’s side, and the two women spoke.
Whatever secrets Mark possessed, Aunt Dina evidently knew them.
The feeling of betrayal felt like acid in her stomach.
From the window of his bedroom, Andrew could see the billowing black clouds of smoke over the tall roofs of Charlotte Square.
He smiled in satisfaction.
How strange, that of all his hobbies, murder might be the most fascinating.
His father had died and left him a fortune. He had no ancestral estates to manage and couldn’t be bothered with the duties of husband and father. Although he liked a good whiskey and enjoyed port, he was adverse to being intoxicated on a daily basis. Gambling always seemed like a fool’s occupation. Therefore, he’d had to come up with something to interest him, something on which to focus. This year it seemed to be killing Catriona Cameron.
Surprisingly, it had been easy to use the ladle, trailing a path of paraffin oil from the door of the room above the carriage bay all the way down the wooden stairs to the dirt floor below. The flames were hypnotic, but he’d escaped before being seen.
A crowd was gathering at the end of the alley now. He grabbed his coat and scarf and left the house, becoming one of many concerned neighbors. He mingled with the residents of Charlotte Square, listening to the comments.
“We’re lucky it hasn’t spread.”
“The fire brigade won’t let that happen. My nephew’s a member, you know.”
“Damned nuisance in this weather.”
“Who lives there, do you know?”
“Was anyone hurt?” he asked a man standing at the front of the crowd. His vantage point was better than anyone’s, and from the sprinkle of snow on the man’s shoulders, he’d been standing there awhile.
“I’ve not seen any sign of it, praise God.”
That was a disappointment.
“A miracle,” he murmured, and the man said something Andrew didn’t hear. His attention was suddenly on the window on the second floor, where a curtain fluttered. Someone stood there, wreathed in darkness, or a veil.
His stomach clenched.
Catriona was proving to be surprisingly difficult to kill.
A pity that he was going to need the maid’s services one more time. She was the type to try and use her little bit of knowledge for her own personal gain. It couldn’t be helped.
In the last five years, he’d learned how to paint passably well. His skills as a marksman had improved with his year of intense study of guns and his annual hunting expeditions. He’d grown proficient at French and Italian during his years studying languages.
He would have to learn to excel at murder.
Chapter 22
Sarah’s lecture had been fervent and blistering, and Mark couldn’t blame her. Brody had returned home last night, uncertain about what to do and nearly freezing. He’d forgotten about his driver and the fact shamed him.
As he moved through the chaotic scene, he was stopped by two members of the fire brigade. The first challenged his presence there, and when he explained that he was a physician and looking to see if he was needed, he was pressed into service by a second man, wanting him to see about one of his fellow firefighters. All of them wore long and scruffy beards, the better to protect their faces from smoke.
The man on the ground had a badly burned left arm, and he instructed that his jacket be cut away and a wet cloth placed on top of the burn. After giving instructions that he be transported to the hospital, Mark saw to two other people who were coughing badly, helping move them to an area with less smoke. He also was able to determine that the stable boy was not among the injured, that he had been away when the fire had broken out in the carriage house.
The fire brigade, one of the oldest in Scotland, had managed to contain the fire. Luckily, all of the horses survived, having been led away by the stable boy to another stable on the other side of the square.
Dawn found the smoke turning to feeble gray plumes. Here and there heat blurred the air, but no more flames were visible.
His eyes hurt and he smelled of smoke, but rather than return home, he would make what calls he could in Old Town. He’d lost four days, and his patients were depending on him.
Sarah would be taken back to his house by Dina’s driver. He was happy to discover that the man had been ferrying Dina to a meeting the night before, and away when the fire started.
He was making his way to his carriage when he heard a voice.
“Is that your wife?”
He turned to find a ghost standing there, one arrayed in black lace and wool. The hem of Catriona’s veil blew about the shoulders of her cloak until she placed a gloved hand atop it.
He didn’t comment on her being outside on what promised to be a blustery winter day. Instead, he focused on her question.
“Is who my wife?”
She nodded in the direction of the kitchen door, where Dina and Sarah had disappeared. The brigade was storing the hoses of the pump truck, each man’s breath held in the air like puffs of smoke. Everyone else had sought a warmer place.
“No,” he said, realizing the time, the moment, had come.
He could end it with words, and she’d never wish to see him again. He didn’t want it to end that way. Or perhaps h
e didn’t wish it to end at all. What he wanted to do was explain himself to her, have her understand. Perhaps then she could forgive him.
“Would you like to know what I do each morning?” he asked. “Discover where I go? I promised you other answers as well.”
She glanced at the carriage, at Brody who sat atop the seat wrapped in enough wool to keep him warm. His scarf was over the lower half of his face, extending above his nose, and his hat was pulled down over his forehead. Even his eyes were half closed against the frigid air.
He owed the man an apology, perhaps even a bonus.
“Come with me,” he said, holding out his hand. “The carriage is ours.”
“Hardly proper, footman,” she said.
He smiled. His position was such that it was doubtful gossip would attach itself to him. To other people, he would be Catriona Cameron’s physician.
“I’ll promise nothing will come of this.”
Curiosity was evidently warring with prudence, because she looked at the carriage, then at him, then back at the carriage.
“What are you about, footman?” she asked, as if they hadn’t spent the last night wrapped in each other’s arms.
Catriona used that tone to push people away. He had neither the patience nor the time for either.
Turning, he opened the carriage door. “I have to leave now,” he said. “If you’re coming with me, then come.”
“I’ve received more gracious invitations.”
He didn’t respond.
She took a step toward him, then hesitated before entering the carriage. She rearranged her skirts and the veil while he gave instructions to Brody.
“I’m sorry,” he added to the coachman. “I should have sent word to you that I’d be delayed.”
Brody only nodded, not quite meeting his eyes.
As much acceptance as he was going to get, and probably more than he deserved. For the first time in his life he wanted to be someone other than he was. Who, a footman?
A moment later he climbed into the carriage and sat with his back to the horses.
