Cameron twisted his head from his awkward position on the straw-filled manger. The man’s dark blond curls stuck out in disarray, a testament to the maid’s busy fingers. His lazy eyes fixed on James as the girl gained her feet and struggled with the buttons of her bodice. “Do not worry your pretty head over it, Meg.”
Cameron might as well have taken a hand to her, for the look on the girl’s face. She stilled. “My . . . my name is Maggie.”
Cameron at least had the good sense to look chagrined. “Er . . . Maggie. Yes, well, he won’t tell. He’s good that way, always has been. Lips sewn tight as stitching. Isn’t that right, MacKenzie?”
James curled his fingers into a fist and considered how best to respond. “Aye,” he finally said, struggling to ignore the hidden meaning in Cameron’s taunts. “I won’t tell.”
The maid patted a shaking hand over her hair, tucking errant wisps back under her cap. “I . . . I am sorry,” she whispered. “I should not have done this.”
“No,” James agreed. “You shouldn’t have. But the fault is not only yours. He should know better.”
His taunt earned a glower from the blond giant who was gaining his feet. “Why don’t you head back to the house, Maggie.” Cameron’s voice was a low rumble—a warning to James, not the girl.
Not that the poor chit could tell the difference.
With one last confused look at the man she had just been kissing, the maid lifted her skirts and darted away toward the big stone manor up on the hill. Her feet fairly flew over the manicured lawn, and David Cameron watched her go a long, studied moment. “Satisfied, MacKenzie?”
“More so than you, by the looks of things.” James eyed his former friend in distaste. Cameron was covered in hay, and without his coat and hat he resembled little more than a common groom. James had never understood why, but women were as drawn to the man’s looks as to his promised wealth. It had always been that way, even when they had been friends an age ago. It was as if women couldn’t see past the man’s handsome face and his father’s heavy purse to see the person beneath.
It had sometimes made James want to bust Cameron’s nose, just to lessen the golden, shining perfection of him.
Funny how time had not lessened the desire.
“Still up to your same tricks, I see.” James patted the black mare’s neck in lieu of using his hands for a more satisfying purpose.
“And you still have frightful taste in horseflesh,” came Cameron’s bold taunt as he worked the buttons of his trousers to respectability. “What in the devil are you doing with the beast I sold to the butcher yesterday?”
James’s mind cartwheeled in response to the question he had not anticipated. Damn David Cameron, would nothing go right today? If the horse he had just dragged through the streets of Moraig had recently been sold to the butcher, James was unlikely to find his stallion grazing contentedly in Cameron’s back paddock.
And that meant Caesar, who was descended from a sire who had won the Grand National and was arguably the finest mount in Inverness-shire, might be in danger of the fate intended for the black mare.
Panic skidded against the walls of his chest, but James forced himself to stay calm. “The mare deserves a chance to heal.” He cursed this ill-fated quest that seemed to take on a new degree of urgency with each bloody clue he uncovered. “Channing says she might still be useful as a broodmare, and she’s got fine conformation. It’s just like you to presume something is lost without taking the time to make a meager effort, or measure its real worth.”
“And you were always too quick to pick up my pieces,” the man snapped, snatching up the reins to his horse.
James did not immediately relinquish his hold on the mare. His gaze arrowed in on the flush that now darkened Cameron’s face, but he gave the bulk of his attention to the line of questioning simmering in his head. “I’ll offer you a trade: the mare for some answers.” He eased his hand away from the reins. “I’d like a word with you about last night, and the woman I was with at the Blue Gander.”
“Which woman?” Cameron asked, brushing off the bits of hay clinging to his shirt before settling a hand on the mare’s nose. “The tavern wench, Elsie Dalrymple?” He grinned through his anger, displaying the straight, white teeth of a predator. “Or the lovely Mrs. MacKenzie?”
William stiffened beside him. Though his big brother’s constant shadow was something James had cursed more than once since waking, a wave of gratitude rolled through him knowing William was here, now, ready to stand by him if need be. He stayed his brother’s forward momentum with a wave of his hand. He didn’t need his honor defended. He needed answers.
And ruining Cameron’s long, straight nose would not get him there.
“Do you know her given name?” James asked.
Cameron’s eyes narrowed, squinting through a shaft of sunlight that found its way through the open stable doors. “I can’t think why you would even have need to ask that.” He started to turn away with the mare in hand, then halted, his brow pulled down in thought. “Unless you are having trouble remembering. Didn’t think you were that drunk, MacKenzie, although Lord knows I saw the deep end of a bottle last night.” Cameron’s smile broadened, all teeth and no laughter. “What an interesting twist that would be to all of this.”
James ignored the man’s taunts. “Was it a real ceremony?”
“Well, that depends. She was a real enough woman, and you said real enough words.”
“Just answer the bloody question,” James growled. “Before I give in to the urge to take myself up to the house and ask how your little afternoon diversion is faring.” He paused, and then leaned in. “And the first person I will ask will be your father.”
Cameron laughed then, his big body shaking with it. “Threatening me won’t help matters, and well you know it. But no, to answer the question, it was not a real ceremony. ’Twas nothing but the fun of the moment. You and your bride signed no register, exchanged no ring. I may not like you, but even I would not sink so low as to marry a man without his consent.”
“You know as well as I do that Scots law does not require such things,” James pointed out. “It requires only a witness, followed by consummation or cohabitation and repute.”
Cameron’s face darkened at the challenge. “And I already told you, I cannot be considered your bloody witness. I knew the thing was nothing but a farce. You’ve nothing to worry about, MacKenzie.”
Relief darted through James. His profession relied as much on reading people as on uncovering the facts of a case. His instincts told him David Cameron was telling the truth. But having the truth was not the same as having a full explanation. “Why did you even play at marrying us then, if you hate me so much?”
“I did not do it for you.” Cameron’s smile faltered, showing the cracks beneath. “I did it for her.”
There were only two women James recalled being at the Gander last night. His blood started to thump in his ears. “You did it for Elsie Dalrymple?”
“I did it for Georgette.”
“Georgette?” James felt like the most stupid man alive, but he could do no more than echo the name pricking his ears.
“Lady Thorold,” Cameron clarified. “Still can’t believe a lady of that quality would be interested in you when she could have had me, but there’s no accounting for taste.”
James’s world tilted off-kilter, moving in a long, slow slide that started in his chest and ended somewhere on the straw-strewn stable floor. Georgette Thorold. It matched the initials he had seen on the busk, suggesting she had at least told the truth about her name. He had something to call her now, vowels and consonants to accompany the lively picture he carried in his mind.
And apparently, so did David Cameron.
“She told you she was a lady?” James tried to summon a laugh, only there wasn’t much funny in how this was all unfolding. Ladies guarded thei
r reputations. They did not swill ale from stranger’s cups. They did not sit in men’s laps and laugh with wide-open mouths.
And they did not engage in mock wedding ceremonies with men they had known all of an hour.
“A lady far too good for the likes of you,” Cameron all but snarled, pulling the mare then into an empty stall and going to work on the girth.
William leaned over the wall of the adjacent stall, the deep bass of his voice making the black mare dance in agitation. “Are you saying a Cameron is better than a MacKenzie? Because being indiscriminate with your prick doesn’t make you the better man, and I’ve a fist I’m willing to sacrifice to prove it.”
“It would take the both of you.” Cameron pulled the saddle from the mare’s back and dumped it in an unceremonious heap on the stall floor. “I can hold my own against any MacKenzie.”
James positioned himself in front of William. No sense letting his brother hit Cameron before he got the answers he needed. “What would a lady be doing unchaperoned in the public room of the Blue Gander?”
“Who the hell knows?” Cameron slipped the bridle from the horse’s ears, taking care to hold the bit as he extracted it from the mare’s mouth. “But she was quality, all right, from the tip of her pert little nose to the trim ankle she flashed everyone as she climbed up on the table. Perhaps she was looking for companionship. Perhaps she came to the Gander looking for a little sport, and decided to slum it with you.”
Cameron licked his lips as he came out of the stall, as if regretting not having been able to taste the woman they were discussing. He slung the bridle over the stall door. “She’s not the kind of lady you tell no, MacKenzie. When she asked me to perform a sham wedding, I was happy to oblige. And if I had been lucky enough to have her fasten those pretty gray eyes on me, I would damned sure remember every blessed second.”
“If you were so enamored of her, you should have told her,” James pointed out. “But then again, why would you? Fighting for what you want has never been your strong suit.”
The sharp intake of breath Cameron took as he bolted the door on the horse he had just unsaddled spoke volumes. “She didn’t want me,” he ground out. “The lady had eyes only for you.”
The confirmation that the woman in question had selected James last night over the other pickings in the room should have made him all the more suspicious that it had been an orchestrated event, carefully calculated to relieve him of a heavy purse. Instead, it heightened the unexpected possessiveness James felt toward her. “That couldn’t have been easy for you, given that every woman in a room is usually fawning over you.”
Cameron’s eyes probed at him, hawklike over the straight arrow of his nose. “Aye, I admit it doesn’t make sense. So it doesn’t matter how pretty she was. She is clearly addled in the brain.”
James reacted poorly to the suggestion that the woman in his mind’s eye was something less than fully right in the head. His body’s objection was visceral, a quickening of his blood, a tightening of his fists. The woman he was beginning to remember had not been addled. She had been quick-witted, full of humor and life. Every man in the pub had wanted her, including David Cameron.
“Of course,” Cameron went on, as if he hadn’t just slandered her, “if you don’t want her, I might be persuaded to give it another go. A lady of that quality doesn’t surface in Moraig every day.”
A sharp curl of jealousy centered in James’s stomach. “It matters not whether you want her. You should have more of a care with whom you associate. The woman is no lady.”
Cameron’s incredulous laugh echoed off the stable rafters, sending horses rustling in hidden stalls. “Are you forgetting I spoke with her first? You may not remember much about her, but I do. She claimed a distant kinship to the Bonhams, and said she was the widow of the late Viscount Benjamin Thorold. I’m not in the market for a wife, but if I were, it would be a better match than I could make with any of the country misses around here.”
The suggestion that Cameron knew the woman better than James grated like steel wool on soap. He had spent the night with her, while Cameron had done no more than moon over her. And yet, the man spoke with the calm assurance of someone who knew such things.
Someone who remembered.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” James muttered. He, of all people, knew that pedigree did not make the gentleman. It stood to reason it did not make a lady either.
Cameron sobered and looked at James with a speculative gleam in his eye. “Are you saying you don’t believe she’s a real lady?
“I’m saying she’s a bloody thief. Took my money purse and the fifty pounds I had inside. And if she had any notion of your worth over mine, I suspect it would be you in this situation this morning, missing your horse and lacking your life’s savings.”
That, finally, seemed to shut David Cameron’s mouth. James had expected laughter at the confession, but instead the man stood a long, silent minute. Beside them, William shuffled in the straw, breaking the tension as cleanly as a knife through butter.
Cameron ran a hand through his tousled hair. It was a gesture James knew well, a look he had seen over the judicial bench and actually respected.
David Cameron had just shrugged off the insolent air he usually wore and put on his magistrate’s hat. “I suppose that explains why you are here,” he said speculatively. “What do you need from me?”
What did James need? He needed to find the woman who had stripped away the town’s respect he had been working so hard to earn. And, God help him, he wanted to punish her for leaving him this morning as much as for stealing his purse.
He had been chasing nothing but the shadow of the mystery woman’s skirts across Moraig. But now that he had a name, he was chasing a person, not just a memory. He would catch her, eventually, and when he did he intended to be armed to the teeth.
“A summons should do nicely.” James was more sure of this next step than any he had entertained so far.
“MacKenzie,” Cameron said, shaking his head. “Are you sure you want to do that? You don’t know with certainty she took your purse.”
“Hence the summons.” James crossed his arms and tried to look like the imperious solicitor he was supposed to be. “She is lucky I don’t charge her with theft outright.”
“You don’t need to charge her with anything,” Cameron countered. “Your father is one of the wealthiest men in the county. Why in the devil are you doing this, and all for a piddling fifty pounds?”
James grimaced. Accepting William’s charity today had been damning enough; his pride would never withstand such a blow as to admit a weakness to his father. Fifty pounds might not seem like a lot of money to David Cameron, but it was everything James had in the world.
“Just do it,” he growled. “And be sure to make it out to Lady Georgette Thorold.”
Chapter 11
NO SOONER HAD Georgette mentioned the need to feed the kitten than her own hapless stomach grumbled as loud as the Bealltainn hammers working steadily up and down Main Street.
She wasn’t just hungry, Georgette realized. She was ravenous. She literally could not remember the last thing she had eaten. And while perhaps not as tragic as forgetting whom she had married, it demanded equal attention.
Her gaze settled on a bright red awning a half a block away, and she pointed toward it with her free hand. “Shall we try over there?” The tea shop that had caught her eye was busy, with a dozen or so patrons sitting outside at wrought-iron tables. It looked like an utterly pleasant place for a luncheon, particularly after the disgrace of their ride into town.
The maid, however, did not seem as impressed as Georgette’s rumbling stomach.
“Oh no, miss. I can’t eat there.” Elsie shook her head. “We should try the back kitchen at the Gander. They know me well enough, and I’m sure they could make us up something quick.”
Georgette�
�s face burned hot at the thought of sitting down to a meal in the same establishment where she had achieved infamy the night before. “Definitely not the Gander. What is wrong with the tea shop?”
Elsie rubbed a hand over her faded cotton skirt. “I can’t afford to eat there.”
“You are not expected to pay for your own meals, Elsie.”
The maid’s thin shoulders refused to relax. “I would rather just wait outside.”
Georgette reminded herself to go slowly. After all, the girl was just learning her duties. “If you are to excel at this new role, you must act the part. A ladies’ maid is expected to accompany her mistress into shops.” Why was Elsie making this so difficult? Georgette was leaving for London as soon as her circumstances allowed, and the maid needed to learn these skills quickly in order to find another position.
Elsie lifted her chin. Sunshine glinted off her auburn hair as clearly as the stubbornness glinting in her eyes. “People here know me, and they will judge you for it. You are a lady, miss. I am not fit company to sit at a table with you.”
“That didn’t bother you two hours ago when you were soaking in my tub,” Georgette pointed out. Exasperation edged into the hunger, making her cross. “I thought you were looking to improve your situation.”
“I was!” Elsie exclaimed. “I mean, I am. But I didn’t think this through.” She looked up at the sun and shaded her eyes. “I don’t have a hat,” she grumbled. “How can I be someone better if I don’t even have a hat?”
That was when Georgette realized the maid’s problem was more complicated than a lack of funds, or want of a smart new bonnet. Sympathy struck with the efficiency of the hammers ringing in her ears. She knew what it was like to be measured by strangers’ eyes and come up short. The London Season, with its glittering balls and women so impossibly beautiful it made her eyes ache, had been a snake’s nest of just such self-doubt. In some ways, the stranglehold of mourning, with its rigid requirements for clothing and comportment, had been a relief.
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