by Sara Ramsey
“Not as much as Maria and I enjoyed spending it on new wardrobes,” Kate interjected. The twins sat on a pair of backless, armless stools, looking like perfectly matched ladies in waiting, their elegant white day dresses an odd match to the faded, regal brocade of the wall covering behind them.
“Your dresses must be wasted in the Highlands,” Amelia commented.
“Oh, we don’t mind at all,” Maria said. “Anything is better than living with our father.”
She was so matter of fact about it, and the previous duke’s reputation was so well known, that all Amelia could do was laugh.
“Speaking of being wasted in the Highlands, when will you and Malcolm return to London?” Madeleine asked.
“If I had my preference, it would be later rather than sooner,” Amelia said.
Ellie raised an eyebrow, but a footman entered and she saved her comment until he arranged the teacart beside Madeleine’s chair. Madeleine thanked him with impeccable grace, spooning leaves into the teapot as though she had been raised with the duty.
Amelia rarely served tea. She could do it, of course, but her mother presided over the teacart at Salford House. And even if she was Lady Carnach now, her mother-in-law still ruled the servants. It wasn’t a situation Amelia had thought she needed to change — it was easier to write during the day if she didn’t have to plan menus and consult with the housekeeper.
But watching Madeleine, she wondered.
As soon as the footman left, Ellie pounced. “So does your desire to stay in the Highlands mean you’ve found the answers to my earlier questions? Or are you avoiding them?”
Amelia was lost for a moment. Madeleine grinned at Ellie. “I would put my money on avoidance. If you think Amelia has realized why she was attracted to Carnach, you’ve been dipping into the sherry without my knowledge.”
“Amelia isn’t stupid,” Ellie mused. “She’s surely understood the attraction by now.”
Madeleine and Ellie had grown close during their journey, close enough that they shared private jokes just as Amelia and Madeleine had always done. Jealousy added an edge to Amelia’s voice. “Could you please stop discussing me like I’m not here?” she demanded.
“Only if you can answer the questions I posed when we visited before your wedding,” Ellie said, taking a teacup from Madeleine. “What do you want from Carnach? And what will become of your writing?”
“You asked me what drew me to him, not what I want,” Amelia said mulishly.
Ellie waved a hand at that. “It’s all from the same cloth. Why stay in the Highlands alone with him if you don’t want something from him? You must have feelings for the man if you’re willing to forsake all other company.”
Amelia paused, reaching for a cup of tea to stall her words. When she spoke, she tasted the lie on her lips. “It’s not that I want to spend time with him. I just don’t want to return to London.”
“If I were Ferguson, I would say ‘bollocks’ to that,” Madeleine said.
“The theatre did not improve your language, did it?” Amelia asked. Madeleine had acted, in disguise, on a public stage for a few weeks the previous spring, which was how she had become attached to Ferguson. The milieu she had found there expanded her knowledge in ways she couldn’t acknowledge in more proper company.
Madeleine grinned. “Ferguson is even worse for it. But you like London well enough — unless you’ve a reason to be afraid of it? Have you heard anything more about Lord Kessel?”
Amelia looked at the twins. She hadn’t taken them into her confidence. Ellie saw the glance and gestured at her sisters. “Out, girls. The adults must discuss something.”
“We are one and twenty,” Maria said, cloaking herself in dignity.
“And I am nearly thirty, which is ancient, as you so kindly pointed out yesterday,” Ellie said. “So leave the ancients to our tea, and go off to play spillikins or whatever it is you children do.”
Kate stuck her tongue out at her sister, but their grins said they weren’t offended. They left, closing the door behind them.
Amelia picked up the conversation again. “I haven’t heard anything of Kessel. Still, as long as I am here, I can pretend that nothing will come of his investigations.”
She could also pretend Prudence would forgive her — and that Malcolm would never find out about her writing. Ellie didn’t let that point slip away unnoticed. “Have you told Carnach?”
Amelia shook her head.
Madeleine sighed. “You should tell him, Mellie. He seems to have a sense of humor, and enough honor that he probably wouldn’t beat you more than once for it.”
She was joking, but Amelia shivered. “I’d rather not be beaten at all, thank you.”
“Carnach doesn’t look like the type,” Ellie said, in a voice that said she knew what she was talking about. “I agree with Madeleine. Tell Carnach, before he finds out your secret from someone else. It’s always better that way.”
Ellie still spoke like an oracle on a mountainside, one who had seen more human dramas unfold than either Amelia or Madeleine could comprehend. Amelia was too far gone to heed her. “He won’t find out. There is no one who would tell him.”
Madeleine stood abruptly. “Stay here a moment — I must retrieve something from my room.”
She was gone just long enough for Amelia to regain her composure. That composure fled again when Madeleine returned with a letter in her hand.
“Am I discovered?” Amelia asked, not wanting to take the note.
Madeleine shoved it into her hand. “I haven’t read it. It arrived yesterday from Prudence, but the inside cover is addressed to you.”
Why had Prudence sent the letter to Madeleine instead of to Amelia directly? Madeleine answered the question before Amelia posed it. “Her note to me said she trusted I could pass this letter along without Carnach knowing you’d received it.”
Amelia slid a nail under the sealing wax, opening the sheet of paper. Whenever she’d received letters from Prudence before, they’d been densely written, crosshatched with vertical and horizontal lines to save on paper and postage. This note was bold, legible, and only one line.
Forgive me. -P
Amelia’s heart rose into her throat, carried by a crest of bile. She should have been the one to beg for forgiveness.
What had Prudence done?
Ellie looked over her shoulder, shamelessly curious. Her voice was gentle when she spoke. “You should tell Carnach, dear. I’ve no idea what Prudence wants forgiveness for, but your writing seems the likeliest source.”
The award Kessel offered for information was only three hundred pounds, but that sum would be enough to keep Prudence and her mother for another year if they lived frugally in the country. And there was no denying that Prudence and Lady Harcastle had left Scotland as women bent on revenge.
Her heart sank, but the nausea remained. If Prudence had betrayed her, Amelia deserved it.
But it didn’t make the thought of telling Malcolm any easier. The moment all the hunger in his eyes flared out and crumbled to ash, she would have to face the reality of being married — and if he knew about her writing, he would surely take away that comfort.
Could she use his attraction to her to win him over? Or was that the surest way to ruin what was good between them?
“Can you write to Prudence and learn why she is asking forgiveness?” Amelia asked Madeleine.
Madeleine sighed. “This is your fight, not mine. Shouldn’t you ask her yourself?”
She felt small and childish, but in that moment, for the first time in over a decade, she wished someone could sweep her up and fix everything for her.
“I will deal with it,” Amelia said. “But no more talk of it now.”
They didn’t let her off that easily, of course, but nothing they said could dissuade her. And when Malcolm came to the drawing room to retrieve her, she hoped her smile looked real.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They were less than two miles from home when
a storm came down from the Grampian Mountains, so suddenly that there was no time to reach the castle safely. The curricle had been a stupid choice. Malcolm knew it even when he chose it; the weather could be unpredictable, and he should have taken his wife out in a closed carriage, with a driver left to the elements instead of her.
But he wanted her to see Scotland the way he did, with nothing between her and the wilds. He wanted her to feel something deeper, something that went beyond the vague dreaminess he sometimes caught in her eyes.
And so they were about to be drenched — not the ending he wanted.
“Will we make it home?” she asked, nearly shouting over the wind.
He shook his head, turning the curricle off the road and onto a smaller lane, half overgrown by weeds. “If the rain holds another five minutes, we can shelter in the old dower house.”
The rain only gave them three. By the time they raced up to the dower house, under a sky suddenly dark with angry clouds, the rain was sheeting down, pelting them both with drops that were just this side of hail. He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it to Amelia. She huddled under it, but even through the wool, she was drenched.
He steered the horses around to the back, where the disused stables still stood. As soon as they stopped, he jumped down and ran around the side to lift Amelia out of the curricle. He didn’t bother to set her down in the rapidly forming quagmire of mud — instead, he scooped her up and ran with her to the kitchen door of the dower house.
As soon as he pushed the door open, she struggled out of his arms and landed on her feet on the cold stone floor. “I can handle myself,” she said, her voice breathless.
“I know,” he said, smoothing back her hair and tossing her ruined hat to the floor. “But if you caught your death...”
Amelia laughed. “Go see to the horses, if you don’t want them to drag the curricle away. I won’t die in the next five minutes.”
She was right. He ran out into the storm again. The wind sucked away his breath. It was like wading half-dressed into a pond. His clothes were plastered around him, streaming water behind him. The horses hadn’t bolted yet, but a crack of lightning in the distance warned him that he needed to shelter them before the thunder drove them away.
The stables were up to the task. No one had lived in the old dower house in three decades, but the house and stables were maintained just enough to provide shelter for stranded shepherds. He unhitched the curricle and dragged the horses into the stable, fighting the wind and their fear with every step. He quickly removed their tack, rubbed them down with straw, draped a blanket over each of them, and tossed some aging oats into a trough.
A nest of mice squeaked in protest when he disturbed the grain, but he ignored them. His attention was focused on Amelia. He never should have brought her with him in an open carriage over such a long distance, not when something like this could so easily happen. It was reckless, stupid, irresponsible — all the things he’d tried to wean himself of when he inherited the estate. He would deserve her anger.
But when he raced back across the courtyard and flung himself through the kitchen door, she didn’t look angry. She looked oddly thrilled, with a flush across her cheeks that made him think she’d caught a fever.
“Have you taken ill already?” he asked, stopping just short of running her over.
She laughed at him again. “Really, Malcolm, it’s only rain. Unless some dread pestilence lives here, I’m sure we’ll be quite safe.”
She had found the tinderbox on the ancient wooden trestle table and lit a candle. The reek of cheap tallow wasn’t enough to cover the damp, musty smell of disused rooms, but Amelia didn’t seem to mind.
He stripped off his gloves and ran his hands across his scalp. He’d lost his hat somewhere, and the water he wrung from his hair trickled down his neck.
Amelia watched him, oddly sympathetic given the censure he expected. “Your shirt is soaked through, Malcolm. Is there anything here you might change into instead?”
He took the candle from her and caught her arm with his other hand. “I’m more concerned about you — we must remove your gown before it chills you completely.”
“You usually don’t need an excuse to undress me.”
She had been oddly tense after leaving her friends, but her voice still held heat for him. The last two weeks had felt entirely like a honeymoon, even though they hadn’t left the estate — a blessed few weeks before real life would begin again.
Would her comfort with him survive? Or would they subside into the bloodless political marriage he’d claimed to want?
He didn’t allow those thoughts. He pulled her through the empty rooms instead, seeking something that would make her comfortable. After all, if she didn’t survive his stupidity, any question of their future would be meaningless.
The dower house had been old before Malcolm was born, built on earlier plans in which each room connected to the rest. The furnishings had long since been removed, other than a few pieces that were too large to be transported easily or too out of fashion to be bothered with.
He didn’t like seeing houses in this state of decay. Amelia, however, had no such aversion.
She stopped to run a finger over the intricately carved wooden doorframe connecting the old dining room and drawing room. He handed her the candle and left her to her examination. The drawing room held two chests of extra clothes and linens, as well as a heaping pile of firewood in the far corner. He threw one of the chests open and found several plaid blankets. Like the house, they were musty and cold, but dry enough.
He took the blankets back to where she still surveyed the door. It bore an intricate combination of snakes and knots, an old Gaelic motif that had survived the centuries.
She looked up at him. In the dim light, her eyes sparkled. “This is lovely, Malcolm. Think of what it must have been like to live here.”
“Cold, damp, and depressing,” he said, unfurling one of the blankets. “Or so my grandmother thought. It should have been hers when my grandfather died, but she refused to move into it. My father built her a more modern cottage, and this house was left to rot.”
“It’s far from rotting,” Amelia said, sidestepping the covering he offered to walk into the drawing room. “All this stone — it’s like the castle in miniature. With tapestries and carpets, it would be quite charming.”
He finally caught her and began undoing the buttons down her back. “You can tell yourself all the stories you like about the charm. But when you are widowed someday, I hope you have enough sense to live somewhere warmer than this.”
Her shoulders tensed under his hands. He softened his tone. “Don’t worry, darling. I don’t intend to leave you for at least a few decades.”
She bowed her head. Her hair didn’t glow in the candlelight — it was too wet for that — but the curls that had escaped from her chignon had a burnished edge. He needed to start a fire so her hair would dry, but clothes had to come first.
“You seem sure that I will outlive you,” she said.
She was somber — a tone she rarely used. As the final button slipped free, he tried to reassure her. “It seems likely, after all. The men in my family live long enough, but I am older than you.”
Amelia didn’t respond. She stepped out of her gown, picking it up to drape it on one of the chests. The dress had once been white, but the hem had turned black from the dust she’d trailed through in the dower house.
“Are you upset about your dress?” he asked, trying to read her pensive look.
She snorted. “I’d rather have my writing desk than a thousand dresses.”
“Who are you in such a rush to write to?” he asked.
“Oh, just my acquaintances in London.”
She let him unlace her stays, but that bit of obedience wasn’t enough to quiet the doubting voice in his head. Amelia wasn’t the type to sound vague — which meant her letters might be the first clue to whatever it was she was hiding.
“You haven’t as
ked me to frank anything yet,” he said.
Her stays came away. She turned around to face him. “Alex franked the postage for my letters. Old habits die hard.”
Something about her tone was off, even if her answer made sense — with another peer in residence, she didn’t need Malcolm for free postage. But he forgot the question when she reached down and grasped the hem of her chemise. When she pulled it over her head, he sucked in a breath. Even after two weeks spent more in bed than outside of it, the moment when he saw her body made him want her again.
He draped her in one of the blankets, tucking it around her like a makeshift dress and cloak rolled into one. She raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you really intend to act as a nursemaid, Malcolm? I’m not even sick. And I’ve never seen you want to cover me up before.”
Her voice wrapped around him, warming him more thoroughly than any blanket. The heat in his blood urged him to follow her lead.
Instead, he turned his back on her and gathered an armload of firewood. “You’re not sick, but you won’t get sick on my watch,” he said, dumping the wood beside the fireplace.
He found another tinderbox and a small pile of kindling, sealed in a barrel against the damp. As he started the fire, Amelia came to kneel beside him. “You can’t stop me from becoming ill, you know.”
He struck the flint and steel together savagely, showering sparks onto the hearth. “I made a vow to protect you, Amelia.”
“I know,” she said, stroking his thigh. “But not every vow can be kept.”
“I keep my vows, whether you do or not.”
The kindling caught flame. Her hand stilled. “What do you mean to imply?”
“Nothing, darling.” He moved away from her, grabbed a piece of wood and laid it in the kindling.
She sat back on her heels. “You don’t think I intend to keep my vows?”
“You could barely say the word ‘obey,’ let alone mean it,” he said.
He didn’t know where the words had come from — he hadn’t meant to bring it up, certainly not now. But even though he didn’t look at her as he built the fire, it felt like his whole life hung on her answer.
