by Tracy Fobes
“It would be my pleasure.” Colin took up the balls and put them in their proper places on the billiard table. Unbidden, an image of Sarah formed in his mind as he did so. He thought of those fantastic eyes in her cat-shaped face, her fine bone structure despite those chapped hands and arms. He thought of her ugly dress and glorious hair, her atrocious speech, and the challenging glint that shone in her eyes.
A line of poetry occurred to him. Mentally he filed it. He would write it down later.
“Your daughter is going to clean up nicely,” he predicted, taking his first shot and potting two balls at once.
“Good show, Colin.” The duke worked his way around the table, looking for the best angle, then positioned his cue stick. “With Phineas’s assistance, you’ll teach her all of the qualities a lady of her stature should possess, including instruction on how to manage Inveraray Castle.”
Colin propped his cue stick up against the table. Their cigars, he noticed, had almost burned down to ash. Not often did he waste a good cigar like that. He was definitely out of sorts.
He moved to the bar, poured himself a finger of whiskey, and drained his tumbler in one brisk move. The whiskey created a path of warmth to his stomach. In fact, his gut burned like fire, and he couldn’t help questioning if the sting had more to do with the thought of losing Inveraray than the Macallan’s fine whiskey.
“Would you like one?” he asked the duke, lifting his tumbler.
“Yes, thank you.”
Colin poured the duke a few fingers of whiskey and handed it over. “Lady Sarah will, of course, inherit the estate and all of the other lands associated with the dukedom of Argyll. How well will it fare in her hands?”
“When I am dead, you mean, and she has inherited the estate?”
“My pardon —”
“No, no, death is part of life, Colin. I don’t fear it and I’m not offended at your mentioning it. When I am gone, Sarah hopefully will have learned enough to manage the estate adequately.” The duke sipped his whiskey.
Colin frowned. “Do you recall the arguments we just had regarding her bath? She gives the impression that she’s an independent sort and, while another woman might lean upon a man’s superior judgment regarding estate matters, she clearly can’t be relied upon to act predictably. She hasn’t been brought up to act predictably.”
“Perhaps that’s a good quality,” the duke observed. “In any case, her husband will likely assist her in managing the estate.”
His cue stick gripped in his hand, Colin bent over and hit the ball on the side, sending it into an accidental spin. The fire in his gut grew stronger. “When she marries, who’s to say she’ll marry someone capable of keeping a fine estate like Inveraray profitable? Perhaps her future husband will even begin a clearance like the ones practiced by the Countess of Sutherland.”
The duke watched him closely. “We all must make choices in life.”
“You’re beginning to sound like a man of the cloth.”
“I can’t give you any assurances, Colin. I don’t know what the future will bring.”
Colin put his tumbler on a side table none too gently. “Christ Almighty, I worked my arse off for nearly eight years to make Inveraray what it is today, while preserving homes for the many branches of the Campbell clan. And now you tell me you’re going to let some farm girl throw it all away.”
“She may not throw it away.” The duke was still staring at him, almost as if gauging his reaction.
Righteousness flared within Colin. “What do you expect me to do, Edward? Marry her, to preserve Inveraray?”
The idea came out of nowhere, preposterous and pleasing at the same time. He’d already acknowledged that she was easy on the eyes, and once she’d been cleaned up, she might even prove quite . . . delectable. Of course, she had that odd way with animals, but as the duke’s daughter, she’d have to give up all of that nonsense.
And wasn’t it time he married? He’d turned two and thirty months before. The duke had been after him for a long time now to provide legitimate heirs, and his mother had recently written him from the Continent twice to ask when he would marry. His father was dead, of course, and couldn’t badger him, but several elder members of the peerage had cornered him over the last season and demanded he settle down and start attending sessions in the House of Lords. As Sarah’s husband, he would not only retain management of Inveraray Castle, all of the dukedom’s lands, and its income; but he’d also gain a respite from society’s matchmakers.
Yes, when he thought of it that way, Sarah was quite a catch. Her prospective fortune and title would make her a popular commodity on the marriage mart once the duke introduced her to society. He couldn’t think of a more obvious, convenient choice for a partner in marriage. Indeed, he saw now that the duke must have had this in mind when he’d summoned him to Inveraray.
“You’ll not marry her,” the duke said mildly. “Not while I live, and I intend to see her married off long before my body is beneath the earth.”
“Pardon me?” Colin had lifted his cue stick, and now he set it down again to focus fully upon the duke.
“I said you’ll not marry her.”
Colin couldn’t believe what his ears were telling him. “Why not?”
“Because you want to marry her for all the wrong reasons: primarily her future title and wealth.”
“Since when are those reasons wrong?”
“I spent a long time alone, Colin, grieving for my wife and child.” The duke set his cue stick upon the table, too. “I ached from loneliness. I still do. For seventeen years, no one has touched me with love. If anything, these dry and dark years have taught me the importance of being loved.”
Stung, Colin shook his head. This “love” nonsense was ridiculous. He suspected the duke had used it as a convenient excuse to spare his feelings, and didn’t think him good enough for Sarah. But why? He, too, was a good catch, a much-sought-after bachelor whose inheritance — the earldom of Cawdor — was older than the hills and more respectable than the princess’s underwear.
More importantly, he knew Inveraray better than any other. The duke had to acknowledge the convenience and absolute rightness of his match to Sarah. “After all these years of pleading with me to marry, you choose now to insist I remain a bachelor?”
“Every man should marry before thirty years of age. You are long overdue. Still, I won’t allow you to court my daughter. You’re simply not the man for her.”
Colin swallowed back feelings of unworthiness.
“Now that I’ve regained Sarah,” the duke continued, “the last thing I intend to do is force her into a match solely for the sake of convenience. She will marry for love, and with God’s help, won’t suffer the same sort of life I’ve led.”
“What will you do if I marry her anyway?”
“I’ll know that you married her for her inheritance, and I’ll make it my life’s work to see you ostracized permanently from the society you so love. Don’t test me on this, Colin.”
Taken aback, Colin stared at him. “You’re very serious.”
“More serious than you can know.”
The two men faced each other. The duke was the first to look away. “I don’t mean to suggest I think you unworthy, Colin. If I have abused your feelings, I apologize. You are a favorite of mine. Surely you realize this. But I will have a love match for Sarah.” He waved to a grouping of chairs near the fireplace. “Come, sit down with me.”
Thoroughly disgruntled, Colin walked over to the chairs the duke had indicated and selected one. He sat, the fire within the grate doing little to warm him. “Tell me how, and where, you found Sarah.”
The duke collected their tumblers and grabbed a decanter of whiskey before joining Colin by the fire. He poured more whiskey into each glass, and handed one to Colin. After Colin had accepted it, he leaned back in his seat and sketched out the steps he and Phineas had taken to recover her.
“It all sounds very straightforward,” Colin observed,
when the duke had finished. “But tell me: why is she dressed so poorly? I didn’t even realize she was your daughter when you arrived earlier. I thought she was a serving maid.”
The duke sighed. “I had a damned hard time convincing her to leave that little croft of hers. Can’t blame her, really. It’s the only world she’s ever known. I needed every ounce of persuasive skill I possessed to bundle her into the carriage, and I drove off in a hurry, before she could change her mind. We had no time for clothes. I have, however, sent for a modiste from Edinburgh, who should arrive within a few weeks.”
“Until then, is she to wander about in rags?”
“She may wear my wife’s clothes. They look nearly the same size.” A suspicious moisture suddenly clouded the duke’s eyes.
Colin looked away, giving the duke a moment to collect himself, then refocused on the old man. “Sarah had an odd reaction to the tapestry in the drawing room that depicts a unicorn. She called the unicorn a ‘white beast’ and thought it really existed. Does this sound normal to you?”
“She does have some strange qualities,” the duke admitted. “She also mentioned a white beast to me, on the way to Inveraray, and claims that it rescued her from the moors after the accident. I wish it did exist. I could use a little magic in my life.”
The two men fell silent, Colin thinking that the duke’s desire to believe in magic was yet another instance of sentiment getting the better of him.
“And the fox is her pet?” Colin eventually asked.
“Yes. He’s called Sionnach, by the way. She wouldn’t leave her village without him.”
They both stared into the flames eating away at the wood in the fireplace.
“While I was sitting in the Murphy farm kitchen, waiting for Sarah, Mrs. Murphy told me she’d often thought of Sarah as a changeling,” the duke said, his tone reflective. “Sarah came from nowhere. She looked nothing like them, petite and fine-boned where they were tall and stocky. You must admit, Colin, she has none of the stocky peasant build you might find in the lower classes.”
“No, indeed,” Colin assented, remembering the fine curves he’d noticed beneath her gown.
“Even the townspeople of Beannach have come to regard her as one of the faerie folk, sent to walk among mortals and charm their animals.”
Startled by the closeness of the duke’s description to his own rogue thoughts of Sarah’s fey quality, Colin shifted in his chair. “She looks made of flesh and blood to me.”
“You clearly find her quite attractive,” the duke murmured, looking up from the flames to fix Colin with a direct stare.
Colin smiled. “I do.”
The duke lifted one gray eyebrow. “Colin, I see something in your eyes that worries me.”
“I assure you, you have cowed me quite thoroughly with your threats. I won’t bother her.”
“Don’t think that with age I’ve grown stupid, boy. I know you’re a lady’s man, accustomed to hiding your affairs. But don’t think I won’t catch you.”
“You’ve misread me completely,” Colin protested. “I have no illicit intentions toward her. I would not dream of insulting either you or her.”
The duke appeared not to have heard him. “And don’t even attempt to use your ‘bad blood’ as an excuse for an ill-considered seduction.”
Colin sighed. “Bad blood? Perhaps ‘hot’ blood might fit better.”
His parents, the Earl and Countess of Cawdor, had belonged to a fast set whose exploits had been legendary in the king’s time. They’d drank, gambled, put a serious dent into the Cawdor fortune, and sold Cawdor Castle, which had no entailment and therefore no protection. Fortunately, a scandal involving Colin’s father and a viscount’s underage daughter forced them to leave England before they could completely bankrupt the estate. The earl and countess had fled rather than face the viscount’s pistol and society’s censure, for even the ton had its limits.
But they hadn’t taken Colin with them. Instead, they’d sent their ten-year-old son to live quietly in the Scottish Highlands with the Duke of Argyll, who’d recently lost his wife and daughter and rarely left his country estate. The duke had taken Colin, the only living heir to his estate, not because he had any affection for the lad, but because he recognized the fact that someday, Colin would assume control of the Argyll dukedom. As such, Colin needed to learn the intricacies of estate management, something his parents couldn’t have cared less about.
Colin, who had up to that point associated only with immoral people and their immoral children, remembered finding the duke’s upright code of ethics ludicrous. Inveraray, his new home, had struck him as so far from civilization that he might as well have fallen off the end of the earth. With time, however, he’d come to appreciate the duke and Inveraray — love them, even — though he’d still longed for the days in London where the beautiful people laughed and danced.
Recalling those years of hard work and sacrifice, Colin stared into his glass of whiskey. “Do you realize that you were the one positive influence in my life?”
“Aye, I know. As I’ve said before, your parents should have been horsewhipped. Have you heard from your mother lately?”
“She’s still on the Riviera with that French comte,” Colin admitted. He had never missed either her or his father, never wanted them back. His father had died about five years ago, in a riding accident in Italy. Colin hadn’t bothered to attend the funeral.
“God keep her safe,” the duke murmured. “I wish I could have spared you their mismanagement, boy.”
Colin found himself defending them, for in explaining them, he was defending himself. “They didn’t mismanage my upbringing. Rather, they were simply living as society demands. Manners and money vie for importance with each other. Gluttony and gambling are fashionable vices. The more wild the behavior and appalling the extravagance, the more successful the gentleman.”
“Things never seem to change,” the duke observed. “And to think, I’m the one who sent you back into society’s clutches, after working so hard to make an honorable man of you.”
Colin sighed deeply. “Did you know that in showing me the values of self-control and perseverance, you taught me in some ways to loathe myself?”
“Loathe yourself? What do you mean?”
“When I look back to my days at Inveraray, and compare them with my life now, what I feel most is unworthiness.”
“Why did you never come back to Scotland, then?” the duke asked in a grumpy tone. “At Inveraray, you could have embraced these positive influences you speak of.”
Colin shrugged. “Even though at times I regret the life I’ve chosen, I have to admit I prefer it. I enjoy London’s vices, its colors and smells and sounds and tastes. I love its women and its intrigues.” And yet, even as he stated his partiality for society, he admitted that the odd dissatisfaction he’d felt lately had been growing.
“You loved Inveraray once,” the duke reminded him.
“That was very long ago.” Shifting on his chair, Colin took a sip of whiskey. He was beginning to feel very unsettled, although exactly why, he couldn’t say. “I believe we’ve spent enough time cataloguing my faults.”
The duke took a deep breath. “While I can’t help myself from chiding you, ultimately I’m not blaming you for your attitudes. I know they are the attitudes of the day and considered sensible by all. But I repeat, I will not have you toying with Sarah’s affections in any way.”
Colin stared at him, nonplussed.
The duke finished his tumbler of whiskey, then set it firmly on a side table. “You have only one purpose here: to teach Sarah how to act like the daughter of a duke, and in general what is required of the aristocracy. You have a little more than three months to complete her transformation, after which I will present her at a ball held here. Of course, I’m counting on your discretion. I don’t want rumors about her past to surface. Ever.”
“In this I am your faithful servant,” Colin murmured.
“Good. You and
Phineas shall begin with Sarah tomorrow.”
Colin shifted back in his seat, thinking that this evening’s sleep might prove the last good one he enjoyed for a quite a while. It wasn’t in his nature to keep his hands off a woman whom he found both attractive and intriguing. And yet he must, for the stakes were very high.
And while he taught her to dance, and to eat with the proper silverware, and to flirt with the best of them, he would reiterate his promise to quietly investigate her origins. He would make sure that the duke hadn’t placed all of his bet on a mare destined to lose the race.
6
S arah yawned and stretched, the smell of hay all around her. She smiled as her dream of Colin fragmented, then disappeared from her mind, leaving her warm and achy in its aftermath.
Pieces of straw poked through her nightgown, while early morning sunlight found its way through chinks in the roof to shine upon dust motes floating in the air. Disoriented, she sat up straighter and looked at the polished wooden beams supporting the roof. Herbs and corn hung in sheaves from the rafters.
It took her a moment to remember where she was. This, she realized, was the duke’s barn. She looked for Sionnach and found him curled up nearby and almost covered with hay. Her faithful companion, he’d complained not the slightest when she’d insisted on abandoning her bedchamber in the middle of the night.
Heaven knew the bedchamber had been very fine, laden with gilt-edged white furniture and fancy chairs supported by legs so thin she suspected they would break if she sat on them. The bed, full of feathers, had puffed up around her when she’d lain upon it, and enfolded her with a silky embrace.
But after hours of tossing and turning, the feather mattress had become stifling, and the covers too hot. She didn’t like the canopy over her bed, either. It turned the bed into a large box, reminding her of a cage. In the moonlight, the white chair legs had looked like glittering bones, and a faint mustiness had pervaded the air, one that made her sneeze. Each sneeze had reminded her that she’d actually bathed earlier, rousing worries that she was becoming ill.
