by Marie Laval
His hand clasped around Rose’s waist, he bent down to nuzzle her neck. She was too stunned, too weak suddenly to fight him off. So the McKenzies were right. McGunn was right. Cameron had lied. He was getting married to another.
‘For the last time,’ McGunn called again, ‘I’m asking you to leave the lady alone.’
The man snorted. ‘If you want her, you’ll have to fight me for her.’
McGunn narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s not a problem.’
Calmly, he unfastened the buttons of his black jacket, shrugged it off and threw it on the back of a chair. Next he rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt to his elbows.
‘What are you waiting for? I’m hungry and my stew’s getting cold.’
Her throat tight with dread, Rose glanced up at the big man still holding her. He was as tall as McGunn, but looked a lot bulkier and meaner. His nose was bent to one side, a long scar barred one side of his face, and his hands were huge and rough, with grazed knuckles as if he’d recently been in a fight.
He looked down at her. ‘This won’t take long, my lovely.’ He gave her bottom a squeeze, pushed her aside and lunged at McGunn.
He was right. It didn’t take long.
McGunn’s first punch hit him squarely on the nose, the second in the stomach. The man doubled over, fell to his knees with a grunt, and collapsed on the floorboards. He remained there, eyes closed, snuffling loudly through his bloodied nose.
McGunn picked his jacket up and slid it back on.
‘Get him out of here,’ he ordered a couple of men before looking sternly at Rose. ‘Come with me.’
In silence she followed him to a table tucked away in a corner of the room. A half-full pint of ale stood next to a steaming plate of stew and a thick slab of bread.
He pulled a chair out. ‘Sit.’
She did as he said.
‘I told you I didn’t want to attract attention, and you come down here dressed like… that.’ His eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Why didn’t you stay in your room?’
‘I was hungry. The maid didn’t come to bring any food.’
‘Ah.’ He sighed and looked a little contrite. ‘That was probably my fault. She came to my room earlier. We started… ahem… talking and I forgot to ask her to bring you a tray.’
She heaved a breath and clasped her hands together under the table.
‘I see.’
Her brain must be completely muddled because right now the thought of him cavorting with the red-haired maid hurt even more than having her worst fears confirmed about Cameron.
He pushed the plate of stew and his fork in front of her.
‘I’ll tell you about it later. For now, you’d better eat while it’s hot.’
She tilted her chin up.
‘I don’t want to know about your frolicking with the maid, thank you very much, and I couldn’t possibly eat anything. You heard that horrid man at the bar. The McKenzies were right. You were right. Cameron is going to marry this Lady Fairbanks.’
Her voice broke. ‘How stupid I have been. He did deceive me after all.’
‘It seems that way.’
She expected him to gloat or at least smile with the satisfaction of having been right all along, but the only thing she saw on his face was concern. He pointed to the plate.
‘You’re exhausted and you’ve had a nasty shock. You need to eat.’
Protesting once again felt useless. Reluctantly and with a shaky hand she took hold of the fork, speared a piece of mutton and brought it to her mouth. It was a little tough but she forced herself to chew and swallow it, then she ate some more. Chunks of melt-in-the-mouth carrots and tasty turnips followed, and before she knew it, she had eaten almost half the stew.
‘That’s better.’ Lord McGunn slid the pint of beer in her direction. ‘Now have a drink.’
She took a few sips. The bitter ale made her wince. She may not like whisky, she liked beer even less.
‘There’s something I really need to know,’ he said as she put the glass down. ‘I asked you before but you didn’t answer. Why did McRae leave you behind the day after your pretend wedding instead of taking you with him on the Sea Lady?’
Rose’s heart tightened. If there was one thing she didn’t want to talk about, and with him especially, it was her wedding night. However, from the determined glint in his eyes, it was clear he wouldn’t give up until he had answers. Perhaps she could tell him some of the truth.
‘We had an argument.’
He arched his eyebrows. ‘What about?’
She swallowed hard. ‘My father’s diary, mainly.’
‘I don’t understand…’
‘He wanted it, there and then, but I couldn’t give it to him because I had put it in my mother’s safe at the Banque d’Algérie a few days earlier, after my hotel room was broken into.’
She paused to take a long breath.
‘Cameron was so angry when I told him he would have to wait until the bank reopened he stormed out and only came back the following morning. That’s when he announced he was sailing back to Scotland. He asked me to retrieve the journal and wait for the Sea Eagle to come for me.’
‘Why the rush? He could have waited until the bank opened.’
So she would have to confess to her inadequacies after all…Bending her head, she spoke very quickly. ‘I think he was annoyed with me for… Well, for not being the wife he’d expected and… he wanted to teach me a lesson. At least, that’s what he said.’
McGunn did not say a word but stared at her for a long time. What was he thinking? That she was a hopeless fool, probably.
After a while, he finished his ale and put his empty glass down.
‘Well, sweetheart, there’s only one thing to do now. I need to see that diary, and since I don’t speak French, you’re going to have to read it to me.’
Chapter Eight
‘You want to read my father’s diary? Why?’
Bruce sat back on his chair and crossed his arms on his chest.
‘Because I’m intrigued. Lady Patricia sent her precious son all the way to Algiers just to read it…’
‘Oh no,’ Rose interrupted. ‘Cameron didn’t just want to read it, he wanted to buy it. He offered me a ridiculous sum of money to tear out the pages relating to his father and give them to him and was quite put out when I refused. I made it clear that were he to offer a thousand gold Napoleons, I would never sell the diary, not even a page, because I promised my mother to look after it.’
Blood drained from her face.
‘My mother…She’ll never forgive me when she finds out what I’ve done.’ She let out a sigh and shook her head. ‘I always was a disappointment to her, to everybody in fact, and once again I have proved how stupid I am…’
A tear rolled down her cheek. This time, the compulsion to touch her was too strong. Leaning across the table, he lifted his hand to her face to catch the transparent pearl with his finger as it reached the side of her mouth – that soft, yielding mouth he burned to taste again. His body tightened in a raw, primitive response, his breathing quickened. As if she felt the need inside him, her eyes widened and she pulled back.
‘Don’t blame yourself too much,’ he said, his voice a little hoarse. ‘McRae is a consummate liar and a scoundrel. You were naïve and easy to fool.’
She stared at him. ‘You have a real way with words, Lord McGunn. You just made me feel a lot better.’
‘I only meant…’
‘I know exactly what you meant, and for once I agree with you. I was completely taken in by Cameron’s flowery words. All my friends knew he was just pretending, that it was impossible a man like him should fall in love with me and want to marry me, but I only heard what I wanted to hear and believed what I wanted to believe. I was a fool indeed.’
Her lips quivered, and her eyes swam with tears which she quickly wiped away with the back of her hand.
‘I am deeply ashamed for having been so stupid.’
He banged his fist
on the table, so hard the glass and the plate jumped up and startled her.
‘If anyone should be ashamed, it’s McRae for lying to you and for… ahem… whatever else he’s done to you.’
He swallowed hard. God knew the idea of McRae’s hands on her slender body, of his mouth on her skin, knotted his gut in a fist and made angry, red hot flashes flare in front of his eyes.
‘So what about that diary?’ he resumed gruffly. ‘Why do you think the McRaes, mother and son, are so interested in it?’
‘I told you already, it’s because my father wrote about the night he spent at Niall McRae’s deathbed after Quatre-Bras and the instructions he left him.’
‘What instructions?’
‘About his last will and testament.’
He whistled between his teeth. ‘Now that’s interesting. How did McRae react when he read the diary?’
‘The first time Cameron read the entries about his father, he was shaking so much he couldn’t even turn the pages properly. I had to prise the diary from him for fear he would inadvertently rip pages out.’
She frowned.
‘The second time wasn’t much better either. I’d left him alone to give him the privacy he requested, but I realised I’d forgotten my parasol and returned into the room. I found him kneeling next to the fireplace, trying to rescue the diary from the fire where he’d inadvertently dropped it.’
‘A fire?’
‘He said he was overcome by a great chill while reading the diary and had to make a fire. When the diary dropped into the flames, he was so shocked he didn’t even think of using the tongs! Thankfully I was quick-witted or the diary would have been lost there and then.’
Bruce shook his head. McRae had inadvertently dropped the diary into the fire? His hands shook so much he almost ripped pages off? The woman was really too naive for her own good.
‘You mentioned that your hotel room was burgled,’ he remembered.
She nodded. ‘Twice in a week! The manager of the Excelsior was mortified, and so apologetic. He said it’d never happened before and couldn’t understand how the burglars had gone past the security guards in the lobby. He suggested they might have had some inside help… Anyway, thankfully nothing of any value was stolen. The first time the thieves took a few trinkets I had left on my dressing table. The second time, they emptied my travel trunks, pulled out the desk drawers and had strewn all my papers around but left with nothing.’
She sighed. ‘The hotel manager wanted to call the gendarmes but Cameron refused categorically. He said he couldn’t possibly have my name – and his – mixed up in a scandal. He was staying at the Excelsior too, you see.’
‘Where was the diary?’
‘After the first burglary I hid it under a loose floor tile on the terrace,’ she answered with a tight smile. ‘But after the second, I decided to store it in my mother’s safe at the Banque d’Algérie.’
‘So yours was the only room broken into…’
‘That I know of.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason, I‘m just curious.’
It seemed clear that McRae was somehow behind all this. What if McRae had commissioned the burglaries after failing to destroy – or buy – the diary? When the thieves had been unable to locate the document, he had gone through the charade of courting and marrying Rose. He must have expected her to hand over the diary during their wedding night, for him to destroy once and for all. Then he would have sailed back on the Sea Lady. Alone. He had been away from Scotland, and Lady Fairbanks, for too long. The date of his real wedding was fast approaching, the banns had to be read and preparations had to be made, so it was imperative he returned to Westmore.
Still, what were a few more days when he had been away several weeks already? He could have gone with Rose when the bank reopened.
No, he thought, raking his fingers in his hair, something had happened that night, something that had prompted his hurried departure.
‘I think we’ll take a look at that diary now,’ he started, but his words were drowned in the strong, regular beat of a bodhrán. A lively fiddle tune followed and several couples took place on the dance floor. The ceilidh had started.
Rose turned to him, a smile on her lips and her eyes shining like stars.
‘What beautiful music, it makes me want to dance too!’
It was as if all her sorrows, all her worries, had vanished with the first notes of the fiddle. An overwhelming feeling swept through him, fierce like a winter gale. He wanted to see her smile this way again. Every day. Nothing mattered at that moment but to make sure she was safe and happy, whatever the cost.
He was being ridiculous. He had never felt like this before, about anyone. Hell, he didn’t want to feel this way ever. So he’d taken a fancy to a woman…it wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. He couldn’t afford being distracted by Rose or anyone else, not when he had his estate to save from ruin, and a killer to catch, and a riddle to solve. And that Saintclair diary was a riddle indeed.
He rose to his feet. ‘We’re not here to dance or listen to music. We’ve wasted enough of the evening already. Let’s go and read that diary of yours.’
A familiar voice called his name across the crowded room and stopped him in his tracks.
‘Lieutenant McGunn!’
He turned, frowned as he scanned the crowd and broke into a smile at the sight of the tall, fair-haired and solidly built man waving and striding across the room.
‘Wallace! What the devil are you doing here?’ Bruce clasped the man’s hands in his and gave him a slap on the back.
‘I could ask you the same question, Lieutenant. You’re a fair way from Wrath.’
Bruce nodded. ‘I have some business to attend to in Westmore.’
‘Westmore? Don’t tell me you’re invited to McRae’s engagement ball.’
‘No, but I need to see the man about a rather sordid and complicated affair.’
‘Isn’t it always when that scoundrel is concerned?’ Wallace retorted with a shrug of his powerful shoulders.
‘What about you? I thought you were still in India. When did you come back?’
‘Three months ago. I didn’t re-enlist when my time was up. My father died last year and my mother can’t cope on the farm on her own, so I came back to help. Actually there are a few of us who are back home. The lads will be well jealous when I tell them I bumped into you.’
His weather-beaten face suddenly creased into a broad grin and he shook his head.
‘It’s good to see you, Lieutenant. Let me buy you a pint of ale or a dram of whisky.’
Bruce’s chest constricted. ‘You know I don’t have any right to be called Lieutenant, not anymore.’
Wallace waved his large hand.
‘That’s rubbish. The men and I always knew who was to blame for what happened at Ferozeshah. It was damned unfair you were made to carry the can for that poltroon of Frazier. If he hadn’t run away, we would have mounted a diversion and our men would have rigged the depot before it exploded.’
Bruce’s heart seemed to stop a second, his throat tightened. ‘What’s done is done,’ he said in a low voice. Whatever Wallace or anybody said, the ultimate responsibility for his unit lay with him. He had failed his men, and that’s all there was to it.
‘Will you have that drink with me?’ Wallace asked again.
Bruce snapped out of his dark thoughts and forced a smile.
‘I will, but I’m buying. First let me introduce you to Rose Saintclair, the young lady I’m travelling with.’
He gestured towards the table where Rose sat, her eyes riveted on the musicians and the dancers.
Wallace opened his eyes wide and let out a curse.
‘She looks beautiful, just like a princess from a fairytale. Who is she?’
Bruce couldn’t repress a smile. ‘I didn’t know you read fairytales, Wallace. Come, I’ll introduce you.’
After brief introductions, Wallace pulled a ch
air to sit down and Bruce made his way to the bar. It was busy so it took him a while to get served. As he pushed his way back into the room, carrying two pints of ale and a small glass of sherry for Rose, the noise level seemed to suddenly increase. The music became louder, faster. The crowd cheered, clapped and tapped their feet on the wooden floor.
What was happening back there? And where the hell were Rose and Wallace?
He put the drinks on their table, scanned the room and let out a resounding curse. Sure enough, there they were, dancing in the middle of the floor as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
Had Wallace gone mad, and Rose taken leave of her senses? Had she already forgotten what trouble she'd narrowly avoided by showing up in her exotic costume only an hour before? She must have asked Wallace to dance and the big fool had probably been too dazzled by her smile to refuse.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and leant against a wooden post to watch. Rose’s cheeks were flushed a deep pink, her eyes glinted with pure happiness. Her lips parted in a breathless smile at she swirled at Wallace’s arm. Her blonde hair caught the light as it skimmed past her waist and bounced onto the swell of her hips.
Her feet hardly touched the ground and she looked about to fly straight into Wallace’s arms, which judging by the wide grin on his former sergeant’s face, he wouldn’t mind at all. Not surprising, he thought with a pang of longing, a man would do anything to have a woman look at him like that. No, he corrected. A man would do anything to have this woman look at him like that.
Was it only six days ago that she had come into his life, blown into his winter by the gailleann? Wallace was right. She was a princess, a fairytale creature from a sunny, faraway land, a woman whose very scent drove him insane. Right now, it felt like he had known her, desired her, ached for her all his life. He let out a ragged breath and turned away. He had no right to feel that way. No right at all.
As he started back to his table, his attention was drawn to a man standing near the entrance. Even though he had his back to him, there was something familiar in the way he stood, his shoulders hunched in his thick brown coat, his dark hair flicking in his thick neck under a grey woolly cap. Bruce narrowed his eyes. Strange, he looked just like his man McNeil…
