Stella Cameron

by Fascination

  Stella Cameron

  Fascination

  FASCINATION

  This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1993 by Stella Cameron

  Excerpt from Only by Your Touch copyright © 1992 by Stella Cameron

  All rights reserved.

  For Denis Farina,a Dangerous Man.

  And for Adventurous Women everywhere.

  Chapter 1

  March 1822. Castle Kirkcaldy, Scotland

  “Teeth? Teeth!” Arran Francis William Rossmara, Marquess of Stonehaven, flung wide his arms and collapsed onto a sofa. “Teeth, Calum? I ask you to describe this female and you tell me she has good teeth! In God’s name, man, we are not discussing a brood mare.”

  “Are we not?” Calum Innes’s dark eyes shone with innocent surprise.

  Arran leveled a finger. “You, my friend, are trifling with a desperate man, a man who may shortly take your miserable throat in his hands and squeeze out your miserable life.”

  “Hm.” A broad smile revealed the true, irreverent, and wholly roguish nature of Calum Innes. “As you say, we are definitely not discussing a brood mare.”

  “Well?”

  Calum inclined his head, and firelight sought the red in his brown hair. He was a tall man, almost as tall as Arran himself, his lean elegance and economy of movement guaranteed to turn the heads of many men—and every female with an eye for a handsome man.

  He arched a brow. “Grace Wren? That’s who you’re asking me about?”

  “Yes, Grace Wren.” With a single irritated tug, Arran wrenched off his black neckcloth. “That is the name of this woman I’m supposed to welcome into my home, is it not?”

  “It’s the name of the woman you sent me to London to find.”

  “I did not know the woman’s name when I sent you to London. I did not know the woman. Confound it, I still know nothing of her.”

  “Her name is Grace Wren.”

  “Calum,” Arran said warningly.

  “And she has good teeth. At least, from what I could see—”

  “Calum!” Arran roared. “Enough. I am considered a quiet man. A patient man. But, as you well know, this matter holds no humor for me.”

  “Nor for me,” Calum said with a deep sincerity his twitching mouth belied. “Securing a wife for the Savage of Stonehaven is an exceedingly serious matter, one that carries weighty responsibility.”

  Arran had known Calum since they were both small boys when, through circumstances neither of them ever mentioned, Calum had come under the protection of Arran’s parents. They had grown up together, attended Eton and Oxford together, and bedded their first woman together—a lusty and willing farmer’s daughter who had been bright-eyed and still eager for more energetic games when her two young partners wanted only exhausted sleep. Together they had grown to manhood and had already watched the passing of their thirty-third years, yet Calum Innes’s merciless baiting could still drive his oldest friend, companion, and trusting employer to near madness.

  At this moment Calum was regarding Arran’s thunderous face with feigned surprise. “Could it be, my lord, that I have caused you some annoyance?”

  “The Wren female is coming—if she comes—strictly on approval,” Arran said coldly. “If she suits, there will be a marriage.”

  “Almost her exact words.”

  Arran draped his arms along the back of the sofa. “Surely I have misheard you.

  Calum cleared his throat and went to examine sheets of hand-drawn music strewn atop one of three pianos in the vast, heavily paneled gallery that was Arran’s music room. Calum rested the tip of a long forefinger on a page and began to hum.

  “No, no, no!” Arran shot to his feet and strode to jerk the music away. “Not like that. You murder every note you attempt, so do not attempt them at all.”

  “You wound me. Is this a masterpiece intended as an offering at noble George The Fourth’s visit to our honored land?”

  Arran had to smile. “You are particularly bloody tonight, Calum. We both know that neither Sir Walter Scott’s Fat Friend nor any other shall ever know who penned this piece. Not that it is likely to be heard outside these walls.”

  “No doubt it is terrible,” Calum said with an enormous sigh. “A monstrosity, as are so many other works being played around the world for people who applaud yet do not know that yours is the name that deserves the praise.”

  “Enough of this.” He could not face another discussion about the way he chose to live his life. “What did you mean when you said my words were almost the same as Miss Wren’s?”

  “Merely that Miss Wren absolutely agrees with the terms you laid forth.” The mythic garden scene in an Oudry Tapestry Calum must already know thread by thread suddenly became freshly interesting.

  Arran eyed him suspiciously. “Good.”

  “She is rather a small thing.”

  “How small?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Calum frowned and held out a hand. He made airy estimates at varying heights from the glistening, dark wooden floor. “Perhaps this small.”

  Arran found his palms were unaccountably damp, and folded his arms tightly. “If that is correct, then you have arranged to bring me a child.”

  Calum raised his hand several inches and leveled it against his body. “There,” he said, smiling afresh. “The top of her head definitely approached my shoulder. Yes, that is her height.”

  “Good God.” He hated this, all of it. “One of those wretched, simpering, weeping, frail creatures who need a firm anchor in the mildest of breezes.”

  “I really don’t think Miss—”

  “I told you she must be healthy and strong, and you know why.”

  “She assures me she is very healthy and strong. Lack of height does not always denote frailty.”

  “What of her body?”

  Calum pulled his watch from a waistcoat pocket and consulted its face. “Hector left a message for me. He wants to see me as soon as possible.”

  Hector MacFie was Arran’s faithful estate commissioner, a tireless man who tended to be overzealous. “Hector can wait. Do not change the subject. Her body, Calum, and do not continue to toy with me.”

  “Diminutive.”

  Arran curled his lip. “Scrawny, you mean?”

  “Slight might be a better description.”

  “A pox on you, Calum. You’ve retained a fragile waif.”

  “Be calm, my friend. I hardly think retained is the appropriate term. And the lady is delicate, nothing more.”

  “Puny!”

  Calum caught Arran’s shoulders in strong hands. “Miss Wren is a small woman of extremely compact and appealing proportions. I would never have approached her with our proposal had she not met all the requirements you stressed.”

  “Do not use the word proposal.”

  “That is what it is.”

  “It is no such thing. We are merely offering a trial period to see if she will suit.”

  Calum’s hard fingers dug deeper. “She will suit, Arran. She must. You need heirs, man, and you need them now.”

  Arran closed his eyes. “There is time.”

  “Not if you want to be certain there is at least one thriving offspring in your nurseries to ensure that Sir Mortimer Cuthbert and his son never get their hands on the Rossmara estates.”

  “Do not speak my cousin’s name in my hearing. Not tonight.”

  “Two years, Arran. All you have is two years, and if you still have no heirs, Mortimer—your cousin will have the right to be consulted on the—”

  “On the administration of my estates in consideration of their eventual passage into the hands of his oldest son, and he will immediately draw a portion of all revenu
es,” Arran finished, the ice-cold spear of disgust driving at his gut. “You need not remind me. How my father could have allowed such an outrage, I cannot collect.”

  “He gave you thirty-five years to ensure the continuation of your line. The old marquess knew what he was about. He knew you might need incentive to tie the ball and chain of matrimony around your ankle.”

  “I tied it once,” Arran said through gritted teeth, and instantly regretted the remark. “If Father hadn’t died on my wedding day, he’d have written the new will he promised to write.” Their eyes met, and the other, the episode he could never forget, was present and horribly alive again. There had been a woman, and a child …

  “Forget Isabel,” Calum said gently.

  Never. “Struan could have saved me this,” Arran said, referring to his younger brother. “He’s the stuff of good husbands and fathers. The will provided for him to produce an heir in my stead—and gave him until my fortieth year to do it.”

  Calum clapped Arran’s shoulders. “Do not torture yourself with these reminders. Let it all go. Struan will never be a husband or a father, and you are taking the steps that must be taken.”

  Arran turned away and went to draw back heavy red draperies from the casement. Only the blackness of a wild early March night greeted him.

  “Her hair is pale,” Calum said from behind him.

  “Perhaps she is so small and so pale that I shall not notice her at all. Perhaps I shall be able to accomplish what must be accomplished and scarcely notice the event.”

  The sound Calum made was probably a cough, but it sounded more like a choked laugh. “Come, Arran, do not tell me you’ve lost interest in that for which you once held a formidable reputation. Surely my tireless lord of the bedchamber—and anywhere else where he could find his way beneath a fetching piece’s skirts—surely he has not become indifferent to planting himself between soft, white, and welcoming thighs.”

  Despite himself, Arran felt the stirring of arousal. “How do you know that Miss Wren’s thighs are soft, white, and welcoming?” he asked in low tones.

  “I have a talented imagination,” Calum responded, equally low. “The lady is a fetching piece. She has a tiny waist and hips rounded just so.” He drew the appropriate outline in the air. “Her neck is slender, and her breasts … small, certainly, but firm and high, and … Ah, yes, Miss Wren has breasts that should not be wasted either on spinsterhood or on a man who does not appreciate the very best.”

  Stirring became insistent pressure inside Arran’s breeches. “You observed the lady who may become my wife very closely.”

  Calum bowed, all hint of amusement lost to his finely drawn features. “I tried to see her with your eyes. Who better to do so than your best friend and adviser? You charged me to find a woman who would satisfy your requirements, and your instructions were exacting. I could hardly select a suitable candidate without looking at her. When she is your wife, you may depend that my regard will be of a very different nature.”

  Calum’s reputation as a rogue and a rakehell was legendary in the best of circles. “It will be different from this moment forth,” Arran said. “And, yet again, she may never be my wife.”

  “As you say.” Calum spread the tails of his dark blue coat and dropped into a leather wing chair close to a white marble chimneypiece that shimmered like an ice sculpture. “Her hair is pale, a silvery blond. She has dark brows and dark brown eyes—delightful in a startling manner. And I am assured that she will meet all your requirements.”

  The hour grew late and Arran was anxious to return to the work he intended to accomplish before dawn. “She is mature, then?”

  “Indeed. Four and twenty and nothing of a foolish paperskull.”

  “Modest?”

  “Exceedingly modest.”

  “Of a docile nature?”

  Calum leaned to toss a coal from the hearth back into the fire. “I found her most agreeable.”

  “She would disdain excitement?”

  Another coal required attention. “Miss Wren gave not a single report of any exciting event in her life.”

  Arran put a fist to his mouth. “And the, er, other?”

  “I gained the distinct impression that the lady will be more than satisfactory in the capacity that concerned me most during my search.”

  “So you say.” Nothing in his experiences with women encouraged him to trust their word. “You made it plain to her that my habits are … unusual.”

  Calum hoisted a boot atop a long-muscled thigh. “I told Miss Wren that you are confined … er, reclusive, I think was the term I used.”

  “She fully understands what that means?”

  “Well ...” Calum’s brow furrowed. “Now that I think of it, I should probably have mentioned your habit of using a disguise to masquerade as a peasant. And that you spend your days in the said disguise whilst working among your tenants—who think you are another man entirely from the Marquess of Stonehaven. And—”

  “You will never speak a word of that,” Arran said.

  Undaunted, Calum continued, “And I definitely omitted to speak to Miss Wren of your need for almost no sleep, that you work here all night and require physical labor upon which to vent your pent-up strength during the day. I did not tell her that I suspect you might turn to violence were there no outlet for that strength. Hah! Yes, and in faith, I forgot to inform Miss Wren that you have a friend!”

  There were times when Arran itched to pounce upon Calum as he would have when they were children. “Which friend would that be?”

  “Why, the fair actress in Edinburgh, of course. Naturally, since you are so set upon complete openness, you will wish your prospective bride to be aware of your mistress.”

  Arran approached Calum with determined steps.

  “Ah, ah.” Calum leaped from his seat and moved to put it between them. “I jest, of course. No mention of Mrs. Foster shall ever pass my lips in front of the marchioness.”

  “There is no marchioness. Go and plague Hector. He probably wants to discuss his damnable sheep or some crippling new scheme for Yorkshire. I’ll inform you if I decide we should send for Miss Wren.” He went to the piano and began picking out notes. Solitude was what he needed.

  Calum cleared his throat.

  The music began to make patterns in Arran’s head. Perhaps the piece would do after all.

  “We seem to have misunderstood one another,” Calum said loudly.

  “Later, later.”

  “I fear it will not be later.”

  “What do you mean?” Arran looked up to find Calum crossing toward the door on tiptoe.

  “Miss Wren and her mother were to depart London within the fortnight.”

  “No! I will not be ready for this ordeal within a fortnight. Send word that I will let her know when the time is convenient.” Which it might never be.

  “That won’t be possible.”

  “Of course—”

  “No, Arran. You forget that I did not return to Scotland direct from the drawing rooms of London. I had to deal with the West Indies issue and—”

  “Get to the point, man.”

  Calum opened the door. “It has been well more than two weeks since I last saw Miss Wren. By my calculations she is very likely to arrive … tomorrow.”

  Freedom! Grace Wren all but bounced upon the carriage seat. Freedom, and at last the hope that her mother would stop wishing her only child had been a son. No more pinching pennies. No more wistfully watching other ladies decked out in marvelous finery she could never hope to possess. No more walking when she might prefer to ride. No more trying not to notice threadbare furnishings in less than salubrious rented accommodations. No more deferring to the wishes of any other human being!

  “Grace, do settle. You quite exhaust me with all that wiggling and grinning. Really, grinning is something you should not do at all with that large mouth of yours.”

  “Yes, Mama,” Grace said.

  No more trying to entertain and indulge h
er mother when the available means were definitely not adequate.

  “I do wish you had not chosen blue for today.” Mama primped pale pink ribbons that secured a rose satin bonnet decorated with full white ostrich feathers. “Blue does not at all suit you, Grace Charlotte Wren. Particularly so dark a blue. It accentuates your unfeminine lack of flesh. It is positively dull. It makes you appear far too thoughtful. Gentlemen do not at all appreciate thoughtful females. If only you would listen to me in these matters.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Poor Mama, her life with dear Papa had been so confining. Little wonder she had such an insatiable appetite for frippery, endless gossip, and what she termed “her little pleasures” now that she was a widow. Ichabod Wren, a barrister of moderate success, had provided tolerably well for his little family. The inheritance he left Blanche should have been more than enough to sustain her and their daughter in passable comfort for many a year. Really, it was difficult to understand why, only five years after Papa’s death, they were evidently already almost penniless.

  “I hope we shall soon become acquainted with the marquess’s neighbors.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Oh, really, Grace! Can you say nothing other than ‘yes, Mama’?”

  Grace sighed and smiled. “I’m sorry. We shall be there quite soon, and I confess that I am preoccupied.”

  “No doubt. I know little of Scottish society, but assuredly the marquess moves in the very best of circles, so we shall be invited absolutely everywhere.”

  “We shall see.” There was no point in ruining Mama’s happy dreaming so soon by reminding her that the peculiar circumstances under which they were to take up their new positions were unlikely to lead to amiable socializing. Grace looked at the scenery beyond the carriage. “Is it not beautiful? So green and wild.”

  Mama sniffed. “Uncivilized. I am a Town woman. Give me a crescent of beautiful London houses and the rattle of fine carriage wheels on London streets. Far preferable to this barbaric wilderness.”

  Silently Grace agreed that the hills they’d passed since traveling north from Edinburgh were indeed barbaric. A thrill climbed her spine and she hunched her shoulders. “Not all of London is fine, Mama.” Their own rooms in St. John’s Wood, the best they could afford after selling the Chelsea house to pay off debts, had been anything but fine.