Jack Rutherford.
It could not be.
She put out a hand and grabbed the bedpost for support. No. It was not possible. She had deliberately chosen a stranger, picked him out at a masquerade ball. She had seen him across the ballroom in his black domino and mask, and there had been something about him that captured her interest. She had thought he looked a little dangerous, a little wild, unknown to her, perfect for her purpose. They had not even spoken; they had had one dance and she had been so aware of him, burning with the need that possessed her, that at the end of it she had taken him by the hand and brought him here, to the secret little house she owned in the back streets of the Old Town of Edinburgh. She had wanted the entire experience to be a secret, but unfortunately she had chosen a man who was not a stranger at all.
Jack Rutherford. She supposed that the clue had been in his name, but she had not even registered it last night. There were plenty of men called Jack. She had not recognized his voice either, but they had spent so little time in each other’s company of late that it was no wonder.
She felt shaken, completely confused. She did not even like Jack Rutherford. He was arrogant, self-assured, deplorably confident, all too well aware of his charm and the effect it had on every woman he met. They had been thrown into each other’s company when her sister had married Jack’s cousin three years before. Jack had suggested they should get to know each other better, intimately, in fact. She had rejected his advances with an icy disdain. After that they had barely spoken and held fast to an intense mutual dislike.
She tightened her grip on the wood until her fingers hurt. The blood was pounding in her ears. She simply could not understand why she had been drawn to Jack the previous night. All unknowing, she had chosen the one man she should never have gone near. They were bound by marriage and mutual acquaintance. She had no idea how she could keep her identity secret from him now.
A cold draught scuttered across the floor, setting her shivering again. She already had regrets enough about the night. She had wanted to lose herself in a world that was entirely physical, to escape the unhappiness that clouded her mind, if only for a little while. No matter how spectacular the sex had been, she had found there was no escape.
Jack stirred in his sleep and sighed as he turned over. Mairi felt another pang of fear. He must never find out that she was the woman he had spent the night with. Inevitably he would have questions, questions she did not want to answer. She would have to make sure she never saw him again. Yet with the ties between their two families, that would be almost impossible.
She rubbed her forehead in frustrated fury. It was almost as though she had deliberately chosen him, and that was a thought that disturbed her very much indeed.
She would close the door and walk away and forget all about him. She would pretend this had never happened.
She risked one last glance. Jack was a man with a hard edge, a ruthless man, but he had shown her tenderness tonight. The thought made her feel vulnerable. It was very difficult to equate the Jack Rutherford she had thought she knew, all arrogant charm and brash swagger, with this man. She felt off-kilter as though all her assumptions about him had been overset, challenged by his gentleness as a lover. He had wanted to know her, not simply know her body. That confused her.
She turned away, suddenly raked with misery, and closed the door. She had plunged them from barely civil acquaintance into profound intimacy. Now she had to turn back the clock.
Frazer materialized from the steward’s room as soon as she stepped into the hall. She wondered if he had slept.
“No need to look so disapproving,” she said. “You’re not my father.”
The steward’s expression remained, as ever, completely inscrutable. He had a dark, closed face, austere and secret. Truth was, Frazer was old enough to be her father and was in fact father to the host of handsome young men she employed as footmen and grooms. He had worked for her for ten years, ever since her marriage. Frazer was a servant, yet somehow Mairi felt she was the one who had to work for his good opinion. This morning she suspected she had lost it once and for all.
“Can I get anything for you, ma’am?” Frazer was exquisitely polite. “Would you like the maid to draw a bath for you?”
“Just the carriage, if you please,” Mairi said. She would not delay a moment. She fidgeted with her gloves. “If you could tidy the bedroom—”
“Of course, ma’am.” The steward’s voice was arctic.
“The gentleman is still asleep,” Mairi said.
“Would you like me to wake him? Give him a shave? Breakfast?” Mairi was sure she could detect sarcasm in Frazer’s voice now. She looked at him sharply. He looked blandly back at her.
“Let him sleep,” Mairi said. She could feel herself blushing at the implication. “Then show him out. Oh, and, Frazer—” She hesitated. “If he asks any questions...”
Frazer nodded. “Of course, ma’am. Not a word.”
“Thank you.” Mairi’s throat felt rough. Tears pricked the back of her eyes. Frazer might disapprove of her behavior, but she still held his loyalty. Four years now since her husband, Archie, had gone and she could still feel the pain of his leaving squeeze her heart like a vise.
Outside in Candlemaker Row the wind was sharp. A pearl-white sky was unfurling over the city of Edinburgh. Mairi drew the shawl more closely about her. By the time she reached the Royal Mile the carriage was waiting, one of Frazer’s handsome sons standing ready to open the door for her. She climbed in and set off for her house in Charlotte Square, for a bath and for clean clothes. She ached so much. Her body ached from the pleasure, but her heart ached more.
She closed her eyes. Despite the extraordinary intimacy of the night, she felt lonelier than she had ever felt in her life.
CHAPTER TWO
July 1815
“YOU LOOK BLUE-DEVILLED.” Robert, Marquis of Methven, threw down his cards and viewed his companion with amusement in his narrowed blue eyes. “Money troubles, is it?”
“Why do you say that?” Jack Rutherford placed his own hand slowly on the table and reached for his cup of coffee. It was rich, warm and exceptionally good and it did nothing to soothe his spirits. What he really wanted was brandy but these days he never drank it. He had had an unhappy relationship with alcohol in his youth and he had no intention of ever letting his drinking get out of control again.
“You’ve been playing as cagily as a spinster aunt betting a shilling at whist,” Methven said cheerfully. “Your mind is elsewhere. And it cannot be a woman who’s spoiling your game since you never let them get to you—”
Jack shifted edgily. Some coffee spilled. He looked up to see his cousin laughing at him.
“Damn you, Rob,” he said, without heat.
“Never seen you like this before,” Methven said. “I suppose it had to happen sometime. Who is she?”
Jack paused. The club was three-quarters empty and wreathed in silence, which was good since he did not fancy rehearsing his romantic disasters to an audience. It was a situation he seldom if ever found himself in. Usually he was fighting women off rather than pining for their company.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, after a moment.
Methven raised a quizzical brow. “No name?”
“We didn’t talk much.”
His cousin sighed with weary acceptance. Robert knew him well. “Description?” he said.
“She was tall,” Jack said. “She was slender and she had long hair. I don’t know,” he repeated. “It was too dark to see.”
Methven almost choked on his brandy. “Devil take it, Jack. Where did this...uh...encounter occur?”
“At a masked ball,” Jack said. “At least that was where it started. It finished...” He shrugged. “Elsewhere. Somewhere in the Old Town.”
Methven was laughing now. J
ack supposed it was funny in a way; he had a reputation for leaving women before the sheets were cold, and here he was, craving a woman who had used him and discarded him with a ruthlessness that stole the breath. It had not happened to him before. He did not like it. He was always the one to walk away first.
Yet that was not why he wanted to find her. He felt unsettled, distracted. Three months. It was ridiculous. He should have forgotten her two months and twenty-nine days ago. Yet her memory lingered. Only the previous day he had let a business deal slip through his fingers because he was not paying attention and someone else had undercut him with a better offer. Women had never come between him and his work before, and the fact that this one had done so frustrated him and made him angry.
“What do you know about her?” Methven was asking.
Nothing much that he wanted to discuss, Jack thought. He knew she was lovely and lissome, with skin that smelled of jasmine and was as soft as silk. He knew her hair curled deliciously. He had traced the contours of her face and knew it was fine-boned with a straight nose and a haughty little chin. He knew she had high, rounded breasts, small but perfect, and that her stomach curved in a way that made him ache to have her again and that the skin of her inner thighs was the softest of all.
He knew he was getting an erection merely through thinking about her and that if he did not find her soon he would run mad. He was sure his determination to track her down was no more than a physical compulsion, driven by lust, and that it would burn itself out once it was satisfied. But until he could find her he remained very unsatisfied indeed.
“She was a lady,” he said, remembering the cut glass accent and the note of command. Not a virgin, for surely a virgin would not have been so utterly without inhibition. And yet for all her apparent experience, he had sensed her vulnerability. And she had been sad. He remembered the way she had cried out in her sleep and the tears on her cheek, and felt a sharp, unwelcome pang of protectiveness.
“Forget her,” Methven was saying. “You know what Edinburgh society is like. She is probably a bored wife or a predatory widow. You will only be one of many. It sounds as though you both got what you wanted.” He raised a shoulder in a half shrug. “Don’t spoil the memory, Jack.”
It was good, if unpalatable, advice. Jack did not flatter himself that his mystery seductress had bedded no one but him. The anonymous black carriage and the luxurious love nest both argued against it. He was probably only the latest in a long line of conquests. He had experienced a night of unbridled passion with absolutely no commitment given, wanted or required, the sort of night many a man would kill for. He should be grateful. And he should walk away. Most certainly he should not make a fool of himself a third time by returning to the house in Candlemaker Row in a vain attempt to find her or to persuade the steward, tight as a clam, to reveal even one tiny detail that might help him in his search.
Methven pushed the coffeepot toward him. “She must have been good,” he said. “Or bad in the best possible way.”
Jack did not reply. His mouth tightened. Oh yes, she had been good, very good indeed. He had never known a woman like her, never been so lost in carnal pleasure, never felt this ache of longing.
“Have you tried bedding a harlot for the sake of a cure?” Methven asked. “Replace one whore with another—”
Jack was already half on his feet, his hand going to his sword, before he realized what he was doing. He saw his cousin raise his brows in laconic amusement, realized that he had been set up and wondered what on earth was showing in his eyes.
“I apologize,” Methven said swiftly. “I did not realize it was like that.”
“It isn’t,” Jack growled. He subsided into his seat with a sigh and splashed some more coffee into his cup. “I don’t know...” He stopped. He did not know why he had reacted so badly when his cousin had, in all likelihood, been correct and the woman had probably been a high-class harlot. Except that somehow he knew she was not. And for some reason it mattered.
“She wasn’t a whore,” he said stubbornly.
“Have you been back to the place you met?” Methven said. His blue eyes were steady and watchful now, measuring Jack’s reaction. Jack kept his expression studiously blank.
“I have,” he said. The masked ball had been held at Lady Durness’s town house in Charlotte Square. The house was closed now for the summer and the butler had been less than helpful on the subject of her ladyship’s guest list. The anonymous black carriage had had no family crest. The house in Candlemaker Row, so opulent, had given no clues.
He had to accept that she did not want to be found, and as he was not a man who forced his attentions on unwilling women, that was the end of the affair. He was left with nothing but frustration, anger at having been used and a sense of thwarted lust.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He summoned up a smile. “Was there something in particular you wanted, Rob? Your note mentioned a favor.”
His cousin nodded. He was staring thoughtfully into the middle distance in a way that made Jack feel uneasy. Then he raised his eyes to meet Jack’s gaze. “You know that Ewan is to be christened at Methven in a month’s time?” he said. “We would like you to be present.”
Robert had married Lady Lucy MacMorlan three years before and they already had two sons, the second baby having been born two months previously. James, the heir, had been baptised at a grand occasion the previous year. Now it seemed that the spare would be getting the same treatment.
“I suppose this will be another of your grand clan gatherings,” Jack said.
Robert played with the stem of his wineglass. “The christening will certainly be a formal occasion,” he said at last, “but the house party is a family event.”
Jack tried not to groan aloud. He hated family occasions, formal or informal, and this one would no doubt prove even more uncomfortable than the last. Traditionally the Methven and the MacMorlan clans had been enemies. Some members of the family still seemed to think that they were.
“Surely your marriage should have been sufficient to heal the rift between the clans?” he said. “Must you do more?”
Robert’s blue eyes were amused. “Yes, I must. Lucy and I have not seen Lachlan and Dulcibella since they eloped. They had the tact to stay away from James’s christening last year.”
“Well, you are not missing anything,” Jack said. “Don’t invite them. Grandmama can’t stand them. No one can. You had a very lucky escape there, Rob.”
Robert’s eyes warmed and Jack knew he was thinking of his wife. Three years previously Robert had been betrothed to marry Miss Dulcibella Brodrie when she had eloped with Lucy’s brother, Lachlan. Robert, Jack thought, had been immensely fortunate; Lucy was charming, clever and beautiful and loved him to distraction. Dulcibella was spoiled, shallow and spiteful and loved no one but herself. There were already rumors of a rift in her marriage to Lachlan.
“I have to be on good terms with Lachlan,” Robert said. There was an edge to his voice now. “Now that Dulcibella has inherited the Cardross estates, we are neighbors. I don’t want any border disputes.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “There was something else, Jack. We wondered... Will you stand as godfather to Ewan?”
The atmosphere changed; silence settled. Jack could find no words. He felt cold to his bones at what his cousin was asking. To be a godfather he would have to embrace family ties, family responsibilities. He would need to be a real active presence in his godson’s life. God forbid that anything might happen to Robert and Lucy, but if it did he might even be required to act as both boys’ guardian, a role for which he was supremely unfit. Jack repressed a shudder.
“You don’t need me,” he said lightly. “Ewan has a whole clan of relatives far more suitable than I.”
Robert’s eyes narrowed. “Jack,” he said, “should anything happen to Lucy or I, I would want you to
stand as guardian to both James and Ewan.”
Cold fear seeped through Jack’s body. It was impossible.
“Rob—” he said, with difficulty.
“Lucy and I would like it very much,” Robert said gently. “If you feel able to accept.”
Jack did not look at him. He kept his gaze fixed on the dregs of the coffee that swirled in his cup.
“I am not exactly an ideal role model,” he said, striving for a light tone. “Ewan deserves better.”
“On the contrary,” his cousin replied evenly. “Ewan could not do better.” Then as Jack remained silent, his tone quickened with impatience. “Jack, for God’s sake, give yourself some credit. I know what you are thinking, but you did what you thought was best for Averil—”
Jack cut him off with one swift gesture. He never talked about his sister and he was not going to start now. “I left her to rot in that terrible school, Rob,” he said. “I did nothing for her.”
There was silence, heavy with unspoken comment. Then Robert sighed. “Very well. I respect your frankness and I do understand.” He shifted in his chair. “You will still come to Methven for the christening, though?”
“That’s not really a question, is it?” Jack said. “You are ordering me.”
Amusement gleamed in Robert’s eyes. “I can do no such thing, as you are well aware.” He allowed a moment’s quiet. “Grandmama would appreciate it. She has been in poor health lately, as you know. Seeing you would cheer her.”
“I don’t respond well to blackmail,” Jack said mildly. He let out a long sigh. “Oh, very well. As long as she has no further plans to marry me off.”
“It would make her happy to see you wed,” Robert said.
“You’re looking shifty,” Jack observed.
His cousin sighed. “Grandmama may—and I only say may—have invited a number of eligible ladies to Methven for the house party—”
“Like a cattle mart,” Jack said. His mouth twisted. “You’re not selling this to me, Rob.”
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