The Seduction of Elliot McBride

by Jennifer Ashley

  Chapter 23

  Standing at the jumble sale table gave Elliot a fine view of the grounds and all the people on them. Juliana and her recruits had transformed the flat space below the house to a fair of booths, awnings, tables, ponies, children, men, women, dogs, and one goat.

  The table had been placed on a little rise at one end of the grounds, and from there, Elliot could keep watch over every person who strolled about, played games, bought tea and real Scottish scones, or darted into shadows between tents. He saw Hamish in one of these shadows, but the lad was pointing out things to Nandita, his voice loud, words slow while he explained the fête to her.

  The fortune-teller’s tent, fully enclosed in bright red fabric, lay a few yards to the right of the jumble sale table. People lined up outside the tent, ducking in one at a time to have Juliana read their palms for a penny.

  It was a fine idea, that tent. Elliot would like nothing better than to slip inside, pull the curtains closed against the world, and shut out all but himself and his beautiful wife.

  Something cold and wet touched his palm. Elliot looked down at the red setter, who thumped her tail and grinned hopefully up at him.

  “No scones here,” he said. “Sorry.”

  He scratched her head. McPherson was generous to give him the dog, or at least let her live with them for the time. Elliot had decided to call her Rosie.

  “How much is the pig?” a small voice asked.

  Elliot looked down to see a girl child, her red hair as bright as Rosie’s, staring up, wide-eyed, at Elliot, who towered over her.

  What must she see? A huge man with close-cropped light hair, a hard face, and eyes like winter ice. Couldn’t be a very pleasant thing for a child. Priti didn’t mind Elliot, but Priti was used to him, and his daughter was worryingly fearless.

  Elliot came around the table and crouched down to put himself at the girl’s eye level. Giants weren’t as frightening face-to-face.

  Elliot lifted the little porcelain pig from the table. “This one? For you, nothing. Consider it a gift from Mrs. McBride.”

  The little girl shook her head decidedly. “No, me mum says I have to pay for it. It’s for the church roof.”

  Elliot recognized Highland strength in her eyes—she was afraid of Elliot the tall McBride, but she would have her pig and contribute to the church roof, damn anything in her way.

  “How much do you have?” Elliot asked her.

  The girl opened a rather dirty palm with two coins on it. Elliot took one of them.

  “A farthing for a pig. A perfect price.”

  He deposited the pig into the girl’s hands. Satisfied, she gave him a big smile, turned around, and scurried back to her mother.

  “Ye have the touch, ye do,” a male voice said.

  Elliot rose to his feet and faced the grin of his sister’s stepson, Daniel Mackenzie.

  Daniel was eighteen, broad and tall like his father, though he hadn’t quite grown into the massive man Lord Cameron was. Daniel’s body was still a little lanky, but in a few years’ time, the son would closely resemble the father.

  “I used to have the touch,” Elliot corrected him. He rearranged a few things on the table to fill in the gap where the pig had been.

  “I’d say ye still did. Ye’ve been recruited then?”

  “Commanded. Got used to it in the army.”

  “No general can compete with our ladies, though, can they?”

  “I’ve never met one who could.”

  Daniel’s grin widened. He resembled his father, yes, but he didn’t have the darkness in his whiskey-colored eyes that Cameron once had, a darkness that had been driven away by Ainsley. Elliot still saw the shadows in Cameron but not in Daniel.

  But then, Daniel was young, and life hadn’t thrown tragedy at him yet. Elliot had been much the same at eighteen.

  Daniel looked over the collection of knitted pen wipers, doilies, an odd assortment of porcelain figurines, a clock that had stopped working, books without spines, and whatever other things people had found in their attics and contributed to the cause.

  Daniel lifted the clock and looked at it with a practiced eye. “Ye have your work cut out for ye.”

  “Mrs. McBride will want it all gone.”

  “I’ll take this off your hands at any rate.” Daniel peered inside the clock. “I always need spare parts.”

  “For clocks?”

  “For whatever gadget I’m trying to put together. I’m an inventor. I already have a patent on a new pulley system for trams.”

  A sharp mind. Elliot’s mind at eighteen had been filled with visions of glory in the regiment, of conquering a nation, of the praise of a beautiful woman when he finished.

  “Five shillings for it,” Daniel said, digging into his pocket and dropping the coins in the money box. He shrugged at his extravagance. “It’s for the church roof, I’m told.”

  “I thank you,” Elliot said gravely. “My wife thanks you. The church roof thanks you.”

  Daniel chuckled then studied Elliot with the same scrutiny he’d given the clock. “How is married life, eh? Ainsley said she’s relieved you’ve got someone to look after you.”

  “Did she? But my sister enjoys playing nursemaid.”

  “Aye, she does. She’s me mum now, and is good at it. I like to call her Mum in front of people. It makes her wild.”

  Ainsley was only eleven years older than Daniel. Elliot shared a grin with him.

  He glanced again at the fortune-teller’s tent, where lads from the village were waiting for the lovely Juliana to run her fingers over their palms, and his grin vanished.

  “Daniel,” he said. “Help me shift this lot.”

  Daniel followed his gaze to the tent. “Aye, Mrs. McBride is doing well in there. Promised me all kinds of riches and beautiful women. She’s got the touch too.”

  “We’ll sell everything on this damned table,” Elliot said. “The minister will die of happiness.” And then Elliot could go into the fortune-teller’s tent and kick out the eager crofters’ sons.

  “The fair Juliana might kiss us,” Daniel said. “Me on the cheek, of course, like a good auntie.”

  “Shut it, and sell things,” Elliot growled.

  Daniel joined him behind the table. For the next hour, the two of them held up objects and, like the best hawkers in Covent Garden, cajoled people to come and buy them. Daniel was good at it, and Elliot lost the avoidance of people he’d had since his imprisonment and remembered what it was to be young and brash.

  “A pen wiper, dear lady,” Daniel said, holding up a round piece of knitting for a woman with a basket on her arm. “Why not two, or three? Ye have more than one pen, surely.”

  “A glass vase, lad,” Elliot said to a young man. “To put wildflowers in for your lady. Ye can barely see the crack here. Ye fill this with flowers from yon meadow, and she’ll be baking ye oatcakes in no time.”

  The table quickly became popular, the villagers drawn to Daniel’s and Elliot’s outrageous style. The ladies, in particular, flocked to them, blushing under Daniel’s blatant flirtation.

  The contents dwindled, and the tin box for the money filled up. When Elliot and Daniel were down to the last two or three items, they decided to hold an auction. They sold an old bonnet for thirty shillings, the most dismally cracked porcelain vase for twenty, and a pair of misshapen antimacassars for a guinea. Daniel raised his hands at the end.

  “We’re all done, ladies, thank you! And the minister thanks you.”

  “Yes, very well done, brother dear.” Ainsley came out of the crowd, her little girl, Gavina, on her arm. She kissed Elliot’s cheek. “Juliana will be pleased.”

  “’Tis what he’s hoping.” Daniel chortled.

  Elliot secured the lid on the box of coins and handed it to Ainsley. “The villagers were generous.”

  “Of course they were. Two handsome Highlanders in kilts begging the ladies to give them their coin? They could not resist. You wouldn’t even have had to give t
hem the things. Which, by the way, they’ll simply bring back to contribute to next year’s jumble sale.”

  “Och,” Daniel said in dismay. “I might go to America instead.”

  “If I’m recruited, you are too, lad,” Elliot warned. He gave Daniel a thump on the shoulder, left the table, and headed for the fortune-teller’s tent.

  No one was waiting outside it at the moment—the villagers had all collected at the jumble sale table and hadn’t drifted back to the tent yet.

  Elliot raised the flap, walked inside, and found Archibald Stacy sitting on a chair in front of his wife.

  Juliana watched Elliot change from her husband who’d obviously slipped inside to dally with her, to a cold being of ice. His warm smile vanished, and his gaze became fixed, every bit of heat in him dying.

  He didn’t ask how Stacy came to be there—Elliot would discern that Stacy had pulled up a stake in the back of the tent and ducked inside while Juliana was busy ushering out another villager.

  Juliana had returned to the tent after walking out the young lady, who was happy to have been told that a young man of the village fancied her—not difficult to guess, because Hamish was friends with the lad in question—and found Mr. Stacy sitting at the table. He’d said, “Will you tell my fortune, Mrs. McBride?” and held out his empty hand.

  Stacy said now, “Are you going to shoot me, McBride? If so, get it over with. I’m growin’ too old for this.”

  “I don’t have a gun with me,” Elliot said, in a chill, dead voice Juliana had never heard from him before. “But I don’t need one.”

  “No, they made you a savage, didn’t they?”

  The two men looked at each other, Stacy not rising from his seat.

  Stacy was as tall as Elliot, but his red gold hair touched his shoulders, and he wore a short beard, somewhat unruly from his life out of doors. His eyes were pale blue but not soft—they were cool, like Elliot’s. His nose had been broken once and so had the fingers on his left hand, all healed but a still little crooked.

  Stacy locked his gaze on Elliot, and Elliot looked straight back.

  “He has been telling me interesting things,” Juliana said.

  “I didn’t come here to kill you,” Stacy said.

  Elliot didn’t answer either of them. He stood rock still, his hands at his sides, his gaze on Stacy.

  “I came here to talk to ye,” Stacy said.

  Elliot finally spoke, his voice cold. “Talk, is it? Ye’ve made a damn good pretense of wanting to kill me.”

  “No, I’ve been watching ye. Trying to decide how to approach ye. Because I knew the minute I showed myself to ye, you’d try to kill me.”

  “Give me a reason I shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  Juliana watched, her hands twined together on the table. She wanted to intervene in some way, babble that all would all be well if they only sat down and talked things through. But she also sensed that these were two very dangerous men, and for this moment, silence was best. She needed to discover the lay of the land now, offer advice later.

  “If you touch Priti…” Elliot growled.

  “I haven’t come for the child. I know she’s yours.”

  Stacy’s eyes took on a vast sadness. He’d hoped, Juliana realized, that Priti was his, but now he knew she wasn’t. When she’d caught him looking at Priti in the kitchen garden that day, he must have seen Elliot in her, and realized.

  “Then what have you come for?” Elliot demanded.

  “To reconcile,” Stacy said. “Or try to. And to ask ye—beg ye—for your help.”

  Chapter 24

  “Ye left me to die.” Elliot’s voice was soft but clear.

  Stacy’s face colored behind the beard. “I know. I can never explain to you how much I regret that.”

  “I cannae explain how much I regret it.”

  Stacy went quiet. Juliana saw the fear and guilt in his eyes, but he closed his mouth, a thin line behind his beard.

  “Mrs. McBride,” Elliot said. “Will ye tell this man his fortune?”

  Juliana remained silent, Elliot’s rage pressing on her like a humid summer night. Outside the tent children shouted, men laughed, women called to one another, and dogs barked—ordinary life in all its aspects. Inside the tent was a bubble of anger, old and new, and fear.

  Juliana had dressed as a stage Romany, with silk scarves borrowed from Channan, bangles from Nandita. She’d spread a colorful silk cloth across the rickety wooden table and laid a brass bowl, into which people had been dropping pennies, at her elbow.

  Stacy glanced at her then back at Elliot. Elliot didn’t move. Still looking at Elliot, Stacy slowly stretched out his hand and put it, palm up, on the cloth.

  “Tell him that he will die by the hand of one he wronged,” Elliot said.

  “Elliot…” Juliana began.

  “Tell him.”

  Juliana got to her feet, her bangles jingling. “I think, Elliot, that you should listen to him.”

  “He told me he’d get them to safety and come back to help me fight. Together, we could have gotten away. Alone, I had no chance.” Elliot pressed his finger to his temple. “Because of him, I live in darkness. It waits for me every day, not wanting to let me go. Because of him.”

  “Believe me, I had no idea what they’d do to you,” Stacy said.

  “You have no idea what they did do. When I was screaming in hunger, they cut off bits of my own flesh and tried to force me to eat them. They thought it was funny. They also thought it funny to shove me into a tiny hole for days and days and make me sleep on my own filth.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Stacy said in a hollow voice.

  Elliot’s eyes glittered, but he kept his tone even. “You were reported dead in Lahore.”

  “I know that. I was nearly beaten to death there. While I lay recovering in some back alley hole, I read in a newspaper that I’d been listed as one of the dead in the quake. I decided not to dispute it, and let it be official.”

  Elliot raked his gaze down his old friend’s face, taking in the broken nose, the twisted fingers. “Who did that?”

  “Jaya’s brothers.”

  Jaya, Juliana said silently. Priti’s mother.

  “And you were in Lahore to…?”

  Stacy nodded. “Hide from Jaya’s brothers. They came to my plantation with hired ruffians after she died, wanting to kill the one who, in their opinion, defiled her. I fled, choosing Lahore because I had little reason to go to that city. But they found me there, and their ruffians did me over and left me for dead. I hoped that when I was reported dead in the newspaper, they’d assume my body had been found and lumped in with the other poor souls lost in the quake. When I recovered, I left the Punjab and never returned. Had to abandon everything I had.”

  “Why are you here?” Elliot asked. “Wanting my help now?”

  “They tracked me. Bloody persistent, Jaya’s brothers—never offend an Indian prince. They found a boat I’d worked on and discovered that I was still alive, and where I’d gone. I left for England. There I read of your marriage and learned that you’d purchased this house. I came up here to ask you to help me go into hiding.”

  “But why should you have to go into hiding?” Juliana broke in. “They would not chase you all the way from India, surely?”

  Stacy gave her a wry smile. “You would be surprised, Mrs. McBride. Jaya came from one of the native states. Small principalities surrounded by British India,” he explained when he caught Juliana’s puzzled look. “Her family was related to the ruling prince. She was rebellious and ran away from home, which ruined her forever. When I married her, I brought her under the protection of British law, but her family never forgave her—or me, the blackguard who ruined her. They decided to dedicate themselves to avenging her, once she was dead. They blamed me for her death as well. But they don’t have to follow me here, in fact. They can afford to hire agents here to do the job for them.”

  Elliot’s voice was cold. “So yo
u’ve brought assassins down upon me and my family.”

  “Not necessarily. I managed to elude pursuit in Edinburgh. I’m asking for sanctuary here until I can decide what to do. You can tell your friends that I’m your distant cousin from Ullapool, or somewhere.”

  “No.”

  The word was as hard and icy as Elliot’s eyes. Juliana rose again, supporting herself with the table. “Elliot…”

  “No.” Elliot’s tight stare moved to Juliana. “I will not put my wife and my daughter in danger, nor my family and my friends, to harbor the man who destroyed my life.”

  “I don’t blame ye,” Stacy said. He curled his fingers closed. “I don’t blame ye at all.”

  “Get up and get out. I want you miles away by tomorrow. Don’t hide in my woods, or under my house, or above the river. I’ll give you food, water, and money, and you get yourself away by foot, or horse, or boat, or whatever you want. Cross the ocean to Germany, hide in the Orkneys—I don’t care. Just get away from me and mine.”

  Juliana had to press her hands together to stop herself from arguing. She had a decided opinion, but she knew that if she spoke it now, Elliot would storm away and not listen.

  “Juliana, go back to the house,” Elliot said.

  “To the…No, I can’t. The fête…”

  “How did you get in here, Stacy? Through the back wall? Then that’s how we’re going out.”

  Elliot grabbed Stacy and pushed him toward the loose flap in the tent. As Stacy scrambled through, Elliot looked back at Juliana, his eyes like a winter storm. “Stay here if you won’t go to the house. Don’t move until I come back.”