Kate did not even bother to clean her face before testing the deep, downy mattress. She lay down, and at once the well-remembered luxury entrapped her. It had been such a long time since she had rested her cheek against linens so smooth they felt like satin. She closed her eyes, and the sun poured over her like a warm blanket.
The past was done, both the years that stretched behind her and last night’s few hours. It was time to look ahead.
The marquis could not have been more attentive or considerate, and the dashing Captain Watters reminded her of what it had been like to be admired and not pitied as a woman who’d fallen in the world’s estimation. Everything she wanted lay in the palm of her hand. All she had to do was make a fist.
A tear slipped from beneath her lid and trickled down her cheek.
NINETEEN
APPRECIATING THE ART OF A DISCREET WITHDRAWAL
KIT SAT IN A COPPER TUB of quickly cooling water wearing a thunderous expression. The damn maid had taken his jacket and filched his shirt and breeches, promising to “clean them up a bit,” and there was naught he could do but sit here like a damn fish until she returned.
A couple of brawny lads had hauled the tub up, though he had not asked for one, and then another set of giggling maids had come—how many servants did a fellow need anyway?—carrying kettle upon kettle of steaming water. When he had demanded to know what they expected him to do, the youngest, a tiny chit no older than his last haircut, had smirked, looked pointedly at him, and said, “Wash, I ’spect, sir,” before bobbing and fleeing with her gaggle of cackling cronies.
Tempted beyond resistance, he had washed. It was a luxury and a pleasure, and he did not deny it for a moment. He had spent too many years in conditions so vile and filthy that there had been many times he had felt he would never be clean again. Except in her arms…
Abruptly, he stood up, and water sloshed onto the floor. He looked around and snatched the towel left for his use, swiping angrily at his body. He was losing what little grip on sanity he maintained. He felt like a man who had set out on a journey with a clear map in hand, only to discover that the road was not straight and that another presented itself, one that hadn’t been charted.
He draped the towel about his hips and stalked across the room, bracing his hand on the windowsill as he stared outside. Where was she? With the marquis, no doubt, and that’s as should be, regardless of what one night had done to him. Damnation! He knew better then this. Hadn’t he had the harshest of all lessons drilled into him? He would not trust this fallible organ called his heart. He’d done so before with …soul-destroying results.
Abruptly, he hammered his fist against the wall above the window, welcoming the drill of pain.
Someone rapped at the door, and Kit swung toward it, eager for any distraction. A footman entered, carrying a neatly folded pile of clothing. “His lordship’s compliments, sir, and he begs that you would accept his sincerest apologies, but it seems that the laundress was neglectful while cleaning your shirt and breeches, and they have been scorched beyond repair.”
“What?” Kit asked stupidly. He only owned two shirts, and he had no substitute for his breeches.
“His lordship begs you accept these in their place. He realizes that they may not fit properly, but Peggy is a dab hand with a needle and should be able to make any necessary adjustments.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Yes, sir. I shall send Peggy at once. May I tell Lord Parnell that you will be ready to dine at eight, sir?”
If this was what having servants was like, Kit was glad he had never been plagued with them. Giggling maids, controlling footmen, and now this seamstress who would like as not draw as much blood with her needle as a desert warrior. “Fine.”
“Would you like me to help you dress, sir?” the man asked.
“Not in the least.”
“I shall send Peggy directly then, sir.” He deposited the pile of clothing on the foot of the bed, bowed, and departed, leaving Kit moodily regarding his borrowed finery.
A snowy neckcloth lay neatly folded atop a fine lawn shirt nearly as white. Beneath these were stockings, garters, a dark waistcoat, and a short wool jacket with silver buttons. Smallclothes had been folded discreetly near the bottom, beneath a pair of buff-colored breeches. He tossed the jacket aside, finding his own near the bottom of the pile.
Thank God, the fool laundress hadn’t attempted to boil his regimental jacket. He held it up. She had managed to scrub out some stains and repair a few tears in the fabric. The deep green cloth had faded beneath the hot eastern sun, but where she had turned out the seams, the exposed cloth was vivid against the old, like slashes of Scotland’s spring.
Grudgingly he pulled on the smallclothes and the breeches. They were too small in the thigh and constricting at the knee. He’d never liked knee breeches, preferring trews. But they had not been included in the pile. He looked over at the clock. It was half past seven.
The dress was too low-cut, the fabric too sheer, and the pale rose color inappropriate for one supposedly in mourning. But Peggy assured her that the bodice was no lower than any lady might wear at dinner and that the mourning period for Charles and Grace had not only been properly observed but that it was definitely time that His Lordship and the rest of the family got on with the business of living.
So, reminding herself to add a chapter on borrowed finery to her instructional tome and feeling decidedly naked, Kate left the bedchamber and followed the footman to the dining room, trying to quell the racing of her heart. Kit had been invited to dine, too. She took a deep breath, hoping not to appear affected, or worse, anxious.
Inside, the dining room blazed with candlelight across a sumptuous table spread with crystal and silver, porcelain and gold. The marquis, standing beside a small, birdlike old gentleman, came toward her at once.
Kit, she noted, had yet to arrive.
“Mrs. Blackburn!” the marquis greeted her. “I hope Peggy meets with your approval? If she did not, I own I cannot for the life of me see where she might have failed you.”
“Thank you, milord.”
He turned and motioned his companion to his side. “Allow me to present you to my uncle. Uncle, Mrs. Blackburn. Mrs. Blackburn, Mr. Kerwin Murdoch, my father’s youngest brother.”
“How do you do, sir?” Kate murmured, curtseying.
“How’d do,” the gentleman nodded. His bright blue eyes peered at her from beneath shelves of bushy white brows, and he cocked his head, magnifying his resemblance to some inquisitive, possibly malevolent bird. “English, ain’t you? Grace’s kin? Must be English, then.”
“Yes, sir.” Kate said, a little amused. “I am English.”
“Pity,” the old gentleman said, cocking his head to the other side. “One would think there were no likely Scotswomen within the area, what with the way my family keeps importing English chits.” He peered condemningly at his nephew.
“Uncle.”
The old man’s rancor abruptly vanished. “I am a relic. Can’t help it. No harm meant, eh, young lady?”
“I must have missed something, sir, for I cannot recall anything said to which I could possibly take exception.”
He gave a bark of delighted laughter. “English always were good at words. Even Grace, when she’d a mind to bother, could wrap enough words around a threat to make it seem a treat.”
“Enough, Uncle,” the marquis said in fond exasperation as an elderly woman arrived on the arm of a petite girl.
Kate studied the pair with interest. The old woman had thickly powdered and rouged skin in the style of the French court two decades earlier. Her highly piled hair was obviously a wig. The young girl beside her could be no more than seventeen. Fluffy ice-blond curls lay artfully around a heart-shaped face. Her mouth was red, small, and full-lipped, her eyes tip-tilted and faintly Slavic.
“Aunt Mathilde, this is Mrs. Blackburn, Grace’s cousin,” the marquis said loudly. “My father’s sister, Lady Mathilde.”
; “Yes, yes, Jamie. This morning you told us she was to arrive.” The old lady smiled at Kate. Cataracts clouded her eyes but did not veil the flash of annoyance in their milky depths.
“And this is my ward, Miss Mertice Benny, whom we call Merry.”
The young girl perfunctorily murmured her pleasure at making Kate’s acquaintance, and for a second Kate could not help but wonder if the pet name had been given in irony, for she could not think of a creature less “merry” than this girl, with her wintry coloring and chill expression. The girl’s superior gaze abruptly widened as it fell on Kate’s dress with shocked recognition.
“What a lovely gown, Mrs. Blackburn,” she said stiffly.
“Thank you.” Kate floundered. “As is yours.”
“Good heavens, don’t tell me we have admitted yet another female into the fold to discourse on the furbelows and gewgaws of feminine self-decoration?” Mr. Murdoch snorted.
“What did you say, Kerwin?” Lady Mathilde said.
“I said, my dear,” Mr. Murdoch bellowed, “that you are in rare good looks this evening.”
His sister gave him a flat look of exasperation. “I doubt that, Murdoch. And may I advise you, yet again, that you needn’t roar. A simple shout will suffice.”
She turned to Kate. “Would you be so kind as to escort me to the sofa, m’dear? The side closest the hearth? I feel the cold more keenly each winter, I am afraid.”
“But of course,” Kate said gladly, offering her arm. Merry’s gaze would prick her to bleeding if it grew any sharper.
“I am a trifle hard of hearing, I am afraid, thus my family’s insistence on bellowing. Unnecessary if one speaks clearly and distinctly. You have a lovely voice, my dear. Not like Merry here”—she looked back at Merry and Mr. Murdoch, trailing a short ways behind—“who has lately affected a lisp.”
“I haven’t!” Merry denied hotly.
Lady Mathilde ignored her. “Grace had a lisp, and Grace”—she leaned confidingly toward Kate—“had much influence over young Merry. She misses her fiercely. Ah! Here we are. Thank you, m’dear.”
The old lady took a seat as her brother waddled over to poke at the fire, and the marquis came to stand beside Kate.
“I thought we were to have a real Scotsman dining with us this evening,” Mr. Murdoch suddenly declared, as if he’d just realized he’d been promised a sweet and none had appeared.
“I expect you’ll have to make do with me, sir.” A deep, familiar voice spoke from the hall, and Kate spun around.
Kit MacNeill’s great kilt swung freely with his long stride, the muscles in his legs flexing as he came across the room. He wore his plaid draped in the Highland manner across the chest and shoulder of his regimental jacket, the silver buttons freshly polished and gleaming. A brilliant white neck cloth accentuated the darkness of his lean, freshly shaved jaw. His hair gleamed, curling up where it brushed the collar of his shirt. Kate’s cheeks warmed with appreciation, and she looked away to find Merry smiling at her in a knowing manner.
“Mr. MacNeill!” the marquis greeted him. “Come, let me present you to my family.”
Kit stood easily while the marquis introduced him to members of his household, and Kate felt an utterly unwarranted pride in him. Certainly no one in the household could be measured against him. Not even the marquis. Nor should he, she reminded herself. Kit was a soldier; the marquis was a gentleman.
The introductions complete, the marquis’s uncle returned to Lady Mathilde, and the marquis excused himself to give some last-minute instructions to the butler, leaving Kate with Kit and Merry.
“Mrs. Blackburn, I am pleased to see you looking so well.” Kit bent over her hand and brushed his lips across her gloved knuckles. Her heart raced. He thought himself graceless and rough, but in truth he was steel to the others’ gilt, beautiful, lethal steel.
He lifted his head. His eyes held hers a space too long.
“But of course no introductions are necessary here.” Merry smirked. “You must know Mrs. Blackburn rather well, after how many days on the road?”
Heat washed through Kate. Expressionlessly Kit looked down at the girl. “Your point, miss?”
His flat query disconcerted Merry. Kit and she were supposed to have been mortified into dumb silence, Kate realized. His forthrightness had jammed her guns.
“Point?” she stammered. “Oh, I have none, I am sure. Only …Mrs. Blackburn was married to an officer of the regiment, wasn’t she? Perhaps that is why she is so comfortable with soldiers.”
Kit did not speak, but his green-gray eyes narrowed thoughtfully on the chit. She was beyond rude. With relief, Kate saw the marquis returning to join them.
“It’s too bad Watters couldn’t join us, poor blighter,” the marquis said, oblivious to anything being amiss.
“Who is Watters?” Kit asked.
“The man sent to replace the militia’s commander, Captain Greene. The fellow had the poor taste to get himself killed,” Merry said, with a great deal of blasé sophistication, “making his attempt to rid the area of crime not particularly successful.”
“Captain Watters seemed very confident he will succeed,” Kate said.
“You met him?” Merry looked surprised.
“Yes. Earlier today. A most capable-seeming man.”
The young girl tilted her head sideways, regarding Kit with the air of the practiced coquette, her mannerisms vaguely familiar and oddly disconcerting. “Not nearly as capable-looking as others.”
She batted her lashes in a thoroughly vulgar manner.
“You don’t think he will be victorious, Miss?” Kit asked.
“I am sure he will make an admirable attempt,” she drawled. “But I prefer to put my faith in men who do not understand the concept of ‘attempt’ but only ‘success.’ Are you such a man, Mr. MacNeill?”
Kate bit down hard on the inside of her cheeks.
“No, Miss Benny,” Kit said gravely. “I am all too familiar with failure.”
“Are you? La! And here you look positively menacing. How disappointing. I thought we’d found a champion. Is that not disappointing, Mrs. Blackburn?”
“On the contrary, I am not disappointed in any manner in Christian MacNeill,” she said quietly.
The girl snickered, and Kit, rather than accepting the accolade with a smile, looked away, his expression unreadable. Feeling a subtle rebuff, Kate’s own gaze faltered. The marquis’s gaze moved from Kit’s aloof mien to Kate’s pink one.
“Is Merry waxing poetic about the smugglers again?” Mr. Murdoch appeared at Kate’s side, saving the moment from growing even tenser. “As a child, she was quite smitten with the idea of a smuggler king.”
“I am not smitten any longer, I assure you.” Merry snapped, the coquette suddenly replaced by a petulant child. “But that does not mean that I do not understand what every man, woman, and child in Clyth already knows: that smugglers are a law unto themselves, fearing no one and nothing.”
“By heavens, Merry, you sound as if you admire them,” the marquis reproved her. “Pray recall they are responsible for the deaths of family members.”
The young girl’s face crumpled, her sophisticated facade proving nothing more than a veneer. “Forget? How could I forget?” she asked with such deep-felt anguish that Kate forgot her earlier dislike. “I will never forget.”
How hard it must be to lose your only confidante, Kate thought. In fact, in hindsight she realized that the girl had been enacting a very passable impersonation of Grace: hard, flippant, and worldly.
The marquis, too, seemed to realize the depth of Merry’s pain, for his anger vanished. “There, now. I know you didn’t mean anything. And do not worry, Watters will see the scoundrels caught.”
“Of course he will,” Mr. Murdoch agreed, patting her arm.
Rather than appearing comforted, Merry gave a short bark of bitter laughter. “Yes. Of course he will. Excuse me. I think Lady Mathilde beckoned.”
“She has not been herself since Gra
ce’s death,” the marquis explained, watching her go. “As the only child in the castle she has been overindulged, and I confess I have let her run wild.”
“Often as not to Clyth,” Mr. Murdoch agreed, nodding portentously.
“Uncle?”
“She rides toward Clyth some nights. Saw her last night, riding out in the moonlight. Rides like Diana, that girl.”
“Why ever didn’t you say anything before this?” the marquis asked.
Kate looked at Kit. If he felt any of her embarrassment, he showed none. Uncomfortable, she began to edge away but the marquis stopped her. “Please. I am sorry. We are none of us ourselves.”
“Understandably so,” she murmured.
“You are kind.”
She lowered her eyes. She was nothing of the sort. She was simply trying to make these people like her well enough that they would agree to aid her and her sisters. She would have embraced the devil if it would buy her peace and security.
She blushed at the realization, and she felt Kit stiffen beside her. What must he think of her? He who had never bartered one whit of pride for tangibles?
Mr. Murdoch cleared his throat, his eyebrows wiggling like antennae as he searched for a way to fill the awkward silence. He looked at Kit, and his face cleared.
“I see there is more than one captain at the castle,” he said. That’s the Ninety-fifth Rifleman’s jacket you’re wearing, ain’t it? A captain’s. I didn’t realize the Rifles had been demobbed.”
“They haven’t, sir,” Kit replied. “I asked for a leave.”
“Of course you have,” the marquis said staunchly. “You’ve done your duty. Earned a bit of peace, I would imagine. Can always go back, I suppose?”
“Aye,” Kit answered. “There’s always a dearth of officers nowadays. But first I have some personal matters to attend to, some old debts that need to be paid.” He smiled, making it seem that these debts were simple, homely things. But she knew better. He was going to hunt the man from the castle. A man who had tacitly threatened to kill him. The realization of the danger he would be deliberately putting himself in hit Kate with the force of a blow.
My Seduction Page 20
