Highland Pleasures [6] The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie

by Jennifer Ashley

  Disturbing Ian while he was working an equation . . . That was tricky.

  Fortunately, Daniel had secret weapons at his disposal. He thanked Ames and went, not to the study, but up the stairs to the nursery.

  He walked into the sunny room at the top of the house to find three children in the middle of lessons with their rather prudish governess, Miss Barnett. Hart had tried to engage Miss Barnett, one of the most sought-after governesses in England, for his own children, but the lady had preferred the quiet of Ian’s house to the constant whirl of Hart’s. Hart had gone into one of his ducal furies, but Ian, of course, had won the battle. Ian generally did.

  Ian and Beth had three children: Jamie, the oldest, going on nine; Belle, between the ages of seven and eight; and Megan, about to turn six. They each had dark hair highlighted with red and fine blue eyes. They all were spoiled rotten by their father.

  Ian was proud that his children had not turned out like him, with his strange focuses and difficulties. His children were normal, he’d boast. Beth argued with him about his definition of normal, but Ian was so pleased with his children that he won all those arguments too.

  The governess was not happy that Daniel walked in without announcement or permission, but his three cousins were.

  “Danny!” Megan hopped from her seat and ran at him, throwing her arms around his legs. “We haven’t seen you in ages. Will you take me riding in your motorcar?”

  “Me too,” Jamie said. “I have to go if Megan does.”

  “When it’s finished.” Daniel lifted Megan, reflecting that the youngest of Ian’s daughters grew every time he turned around. Beth would have something to say about Daniel taking her children out in the machine he was building, but he’d leave that discussion for later. “Now then, lad and lasses, how about a visit to your father?”

  “Mr. Mackenzie,” Miss Barnett broke in. “I really cannot have you interrupting lessons. Master Jamie will be entering school soon.”

  “And then he’ll have more lessons than he can take.” Daniel winked at Jamie. “Trust me, lad. Live while ye can.” He turned his most winsome smile on Miss Barnett, along with the innocent look that had served him well when he’d been Jamie’s age. “Surely you could spare them an hour to take tea to their poor papa?”

  Miss Barnett’s eyes narrowed, the lady not fooled. “Half an hour,” she said. “And only because it is nearly time for their morning walk. They may give up part of that to visit with their father.”

  “Hooray!” Jamie wasted no time slapping his book closed and running out of the room.

  Megan held on to Daniel as he carried her out, pleased to get away with a little truancy. Belle was the only one who looked unhappy, closing her books and stacking them with reluctance.

  “Miss Barnett is right,” Belle said as she caught up to them on the landing. “One should keep to a timetable, if one is to learn as much as one can and succeed in school.”

  “One should, should one?” Jamie said. “Ye sound like a bloody schoolmarm. I don’t need to go off to school anyway. I’m going to be a jockey. Uncle Cameron says I have the gift for riding.”

  That was true. Daniel’s father Cameron had mentioned time and again what a natural seat Jamie had, and that the lad could be a champion rider if he chose. Beth was not terribly delighted with this news, hoping her son would be more interested in pursuits of the mind than the dangerous sport of horse racing.

  “Jockeying is not for the faint of heart,” Daniel said. “Jockeys get hurt quite a lot, and sometimes can’t race anymore after.”

  “I’ve fallen off horses lots of times,” Jamie said, undaunted. “Big ones. Broke my arm once, remember?” He held up the appendage, which looked perfectly straight and whole now. “Mama was upset, but I’m resilient. Like you, Danny.”

  Daniel didn’t answer. Ingratiating himself with Ian meant ingratiating himself with Beth, so any encouragement of Jamie to dangerous sport was out.

  Belle broke in. “That’s all very well for you, Jamie. But I have to study hard to go to university, because I’m a girl.” Belle was the quiet Mackenzie who preferred reading over all other activity. Her dolls and toys were lined neatly on her shelves and rarely played with. She did ride horses, but only because others made her go out and exercise.

  “Ye won’t go to university,” Jamie scoffed. “You’ll get married. All girls do.”

  “I won’t. I don’t want a husband to tell me what to do all day. I’m going to be a doctor and cure people of dreadful diseases.”

  “Girls can’t be doctors,” Jamie said, though he sounded less certain.

  “Yes, they can. Women go study in Edinburgh now, and in Switzerland.”

  “I know, but I bet those women are really smart.”

  Belle gave her brother a look of vast disgust, stuck her nose in the air, and swept past him. Megan hugged Daniel and said, “I want to get married when I grow up, and have lots of babies.”

  Megan liked babies. She was trying to persuade her mother to have more of them. A baby brother, Megan said, would be so much better than an older brother. Older brothers were bossy.

  “I’m sure you will, pet,” Daniel said. “A cute thing like you will have lots of men wanting to be your husband.”

  Even as he said it, Daniel felt a surge of protectiveness. Megan was a pretty child, and in ten or twelve years, gentlemen would be flocking around her. They had just better be the right ones and treat Megan as though she were a queen, or Daniel would have something to say about it.

  Megan kissed Daniel’s cheek. “I’ll marry you, Danny. Aunt Isabella says it’s common for cousins to marry.”

  “Nah,” Jamie said. “If you breed horses too close to the bloodline, the foals start being weak or having something wrong with them. Same with people. We need fresh stock.”

  “Horses aren’t the same as people,” Megan said, confused.

  Daniel bounced her in his arms. “A bit of advice, lass. Never say those words to your uncle Cameron. His horses and his children are all the same to him. Now then, let’s be getting on with talking to your da. It’s important.”

  The little procession went down the stairs, Jamie first, Daniel carrying Megan, and Belle bringing up the rear. Belle repeated stoutly that she would be a doctor and prove her brother was an idiot.

  Daniel tapped on the study door before he opened it, but he knew Ian would have heard them coming. His offspring had not learned the lesson that children should be seen and not heard. Thank God.

  Ian pushed aside his papers when the four came through the door, and rose to his feet. The three children cried, “Papa!” as though they hadn’t seen him for months instead of the few hours since breakfast.

  Megan, Belle, and Jamie ran at him with open arms. Ian swept up the younger two, sat down on his desk chair, and dragged a second chair over for Jamie, who now considered himself too grown up to sit on laps.

  Ian Mackenzie, the youngest of the Duke of Kilmorgan’s brothers, was a large man with auburn hair and whiskey-colored eyes. Those eyes could either hold keen intelligence or be as blank as a bleak moor, and could shift from one to the other as quickly as Ian could blink.

  For now, Ian gazed at his children, meeting their eyes without worry. He connected fully with them, as he did with Beth, though much of the rest of the world was still somewhat remote for him. But Ian saw no reason to embrace the world when he could embrace his family instead.

  Only when Ian had kissed his daughters’ cheeks, ruffled his son’s hair, and listened to them tell him incoherently about their lessons did he lift his head and deign to notice Daniel standing in wait. Ian gave Daniel a nod over the dark heads of his daughters.

  “Hello, Uncle Ian.” Daniel gave him a fond grin. “I wondered if you could help me find someone. A mother and daughter who disappeared in the night. I don’t know their real names, or where they came from, wheth
er they left London by train or coach, or whether they left at all. I need to find them, and I need to find them now. Do ye think you can help me?”

  Ian considered the question slowly, as he did everything else, his gaze going remote while he contemplated.

  He looked back at Daniel, a sharpness entering his eyes. “Why?”

  Daniel shrugged. “I’m intrigued. You’d like the daughter, Ian. She can make machines, and I’d like her help making mine.”

  Ian watched Daniel in silence again, pinning Daniel with his gaze, something he rarely did with anyone but Beth and his children. Whatever thoughts ran behind those eyes, Ian gave no sign.

  Finally Ian looked away then back down at Megan, kissing the top of her head. He glanced back at Daniel, but didn’t focus on him again.

  “Yes,” Ian said.

  Chapter 7

  “Why do I have to be the countess?” Celine asked, pushing out her lower lip. “I still do not understand why you insisted we leave London, Violet. I’m not well.”

  “I know, Mama. I’m sorry.”

  Violet gazed out the window of their small boardinghouse flat, two floors above the street. Flaking plaster, exposed walls, and crooked shutters looked picturesque in this French seaside town, but the reality was cold and damp rooms with wind coming through cracks around the windows.

  Though many people wintered in the cities of southern France, good for Violet’s trade, they did not come because it was terribly warm. About ten degrees warmer than England, yes, but hardly the tropics. Warmth was found farther south, in Italy and the Greek isles beyond.

  “I liked being Madame Bastien,” her mother continued. “Madame Bastien was kind and helpful. The countess is such a haughty woman. Cool and distant. And the turban makes my head ache.”

  “You do not have to wear the turban if you don’t want to.” Violet drew her shawl closer about her shoulders and turned from the windows.

  Her mother sat in the warmest chair in the house, pulled next to the white porcelain stove. A knitted shawl wrapped her upper body, and she’d laid another over her knees. It was true that Celine easily took sick, and also that she must keep warm and well, because she was the real draw of their show.

  “Why do I have to be the countess at all?” Celine asked fretfully. “It is difficult to remember to speak with a Russian accent all the time. They don’t come to see me because I’m a countess, or Russian, or whatever you’re having me be this time. They come for my gift.”

  “I know,” Violet said.

  Her mother was amazing. Her trances were real, Celine having no memory of what went on in most of them. She’d speak in a variety of voices, from the child who was her spirit guide, to men and women from all walks of life and all nationalities. Violet had never been able to decide whether the spirits truly spoke through her mother or whether she was simply an extremely gifted mimic. All in all, people came to see Celine perform, and even the most skeptical left entranced by her.

  “Then why the costumes?” Celine asked.

  “To attract punters,” Violet explained patiently. “They’ve not heard of us here. Once they’re inside the theatre, then they understand why you are special, and they’ll tell everyone they know. But we have to have a hook to make them come in the first place.”

  “Jacobi always used to say that,” Celine said. “Tiresome man.”

  “He was right.” Whatever Violet thought of Jacobi now, he had understood the importance of showmanship. “You must admit that we did very, very well in London as the Bastiens, the frail mother and her daughter, her guide.”

  “The guide part is real, you know. I rely on you, dear Violet.”

  Her mother did. Any thought that Violet would leave her—to travel, to be a wife, to do anything—was met with terror and weeping. Celine needed her Violet. How could she survive otherwise?

  But while Celine was a slave to her weak health and her gift, she could also be keen-minded and strong as an ox when she wanted something.

  “I still don’t understand why we had to leave London,” Celine said again. “We’d have found a way to come up with the rent. We had another performance at the end of the week.”

  Violet didn’t answer. Neither she nor Mary had told Celine what had happened with Daniel Mackenzie, or the true reason they’d fled in the night.

  Violet hadn’t seen any mention of Mr. Mackenzie in the newspapers here, but the French papers didn’t always take much notice of what went on in England. The few English newspapers she’d glimpsed had not screamed out about his death. For the most part, though, Violet was avoiding English newspapers, to preserve the fiction that she and Celine spoke little English. Even here, inside the boardinghouse, they spoke only French.

  The story for the stage Violet had wrought was that Celine—now Countess Melikova, a widow—had been forced to flee Russia when her gift for clairvoyance was deemed too dangerous. She’d left the splendor of her late husband’s manor house for a peripatetic existence in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, giving readings and séances for coin.

  Violet was now Princess Ivanova, the countess’s deceased best friend’s daughter. Princess Ivanova had left a string of broken hearts behind her from Saint Petersburg to Budapest, and had been forced out of Russia because four men had fought to the death over her. She’d been told never to return. The princess and the countess had agreed to travel and live together, and here they were.

  Violet and her mother had used the personas once before, in Italy, where they had worked well—at least, until the winter had turned unusually bitter, sending tourists home. Violet and her mother had moved to a milder climate then and transformed themselves into Romany women.

  Violet turned to the window again to avoid her mother’s continuing questions about why they’d left London. Violet had relived the dreadful moment in the dining room of the London townhouse again and again—her fear clearing to reveal Daniel giving her a look of confusion before he fell to the floor.

  He alone of the gentlemen that night had been kind to her. He’d discovered Violet’s secrets, but instead of being outraged and exposing her, he’d laughed and been interested.

  And the kisses . . . Violet remembered the smoke on Daniel’s breath, the touch of his lips. His gentle kiss in the upstairs room had awakened fires in her—fires, not fear. For the first time in her life, Violet had kissed a man without terror.

  Why, why then had she struck him when he’d tried again in the dining room? She wished she could be transported back to that moment, wished she could change her split-second decision. In the new scenario, her hand would never have landed on the vase, and she’d not have swung it, not seen his blood . . .

  Violet had left him on a doorstep like unwanted trash. A man, a human being, and Violet had left him alone, ready pickings for any thief.

  The kind doctor or a constable must have found him, Violet told herself once again. Found Daniel, found out who he was, sent him home to his family.

  Violet’s breath caught on a sob. She didn’t want him to be dead. She wanted that night back, to slow down with him and get to know him, to hear his warm laughter one more time.

  The police would be investigating what had happened. They’d learn that Mr. Mackenzie had been to the house Violet and her mother rented. Violet had been right to flee, or else she, Celine, and Mary might be in a prison cell right now.

  As always, Violet had done what she’d had to do. She couldn’t take it back, and she had to move on. She and her mother would perform, they’d count the takings, and they’d survive. That was Violet’s life.

  Her tedious, empty life.

  Marseille.

  Daniel stared down at the note he received from Ian a few days after he’d sought his uncle’s help. The thick sheet of writing paper bore the one word in careful script, nothing more.

  “Could you be more specific?” Daniel said to
the air.

  “Sir?” Simon appeared from the back parlor, which held two-thirds of a motorcar and not much else. He’d been helping Daniel reseat the pistons. Daniel had wiped his hands and come out to answer the door, finding a delivery boy with the note.

  “Never mind,” Daniel said to Simon. “My uncle Ian can be so very cryptic. If he says they’re in Marseille, they’re in Marseille. Fancy a trip to the south of France, Simon?”

  Simon looked doubtful. “Never been, sir.”

  “Your chance to go now. I need to send off some telegrams. Kill a few birds with one stone.”

  Simon didn’t answer, having, in the last few days, come to realize that Daniel talked a mile a minute in several different directions and didn’t always expect a reply.

  Even as Daniel readied himself to go, looking regretfully at the motorcar before shutting the parlor door, he wondered why he should bother. Violette’s volatile reaction to his kisses meant she wanted nothing to do with him. The fact that she or someone in her household had carried him out and left him on the street reinforced that fact.

  Then came the memory of Violette in the curve of Daniel’s arm, her lips puckering around the black cigarette. He hadn’t been able to resist the temptation of her red mouth. She’d tasted of honey, smoke, and desire. One sip of her had made Daniel want more, and more.

  In the dining room, Daniel had wanted to kiss her again, then lift her to the table, pull their clothing aside, and lose himself inside her. Something in his heart had craved her, and it craved her still.

  Who was Violette Bastien, and where the devil was she?

  Marseille, Ian’s note said. “Pack me some clean shirts, Simon,” Daniel called, folding the note and tucking it into his pocket. “When I get back from the telegraph office, we’re off to France.”