“This one has a false bottom if I remember. Haven’t touched it in a while.”
He tugged fruitlessly at the wood. Ainsley pulled a hairpin from her coiled braid and handed it to him. “Try that.”
“Ah, the tools of your trade.” Cameron took it from her, inserted the end in a slightly gouged corner, and pulled.
The bottom of the drawer came away to reveal a single folded letter, creased from being pressed flat. Ainsley snatched it up and opened it but grunted in disappointment before she read a word. “Wrong handwriting. It’s not hers.”
She handed the paper back to Cameron and turned away.
Ainsley headed for the books on the mantelpiece, but a faint noise behind her made her turn around again. Cameron stood where she’d left him, still as stone, his gaze riveted to the unfolded letter in his hand.
“Lord Cameron?”
He didn’t appear to hear. Cameron stared at the letter, his eyes unmoving, as though he’d taken in what it said and couldn’t quite believe it.
Ainsley went to him. “What is it?”
When she touched his hand, he jerked and looked down at her, his eyes empty.
“It belonged to my wife.”
Oh dear. Ainsley’s own sadness about John Douglas could be triggered whenever she came unexpectedly across something that had belonged to him. Though Cameron had been widowed a long time now, his pain must have been intensified by Lady Elizabeth’s violent death and people’s morbid suspicions about it.
“I’m so sorry,” Ainsley said, her heart in her words.
Cameron only looked at her. His amused tolerance and the camaraderie of the search had vanished.
Without a word, he strode to the hearth, where a fire burned against the cold September night, and tossed the letter onto the flames. Ainsley hurried to him as Cameron seized the poker and jabbed the paper deep into the coals.
“Why did you do that? Your wife’s letter . . .”
Cameron dropped the poker. His hand was black with soot, and he drew out a handkerchief to wipe it. “My wife didn’t write it.” His voice was harsh. “It was a letter to her, from one of her lovers. Expressing his undying passion.”
Ainsley stopped, stricken. “Cameron . . .”
“My wife had many lovers, both before and after our marriage.” The statement was flat, devoid of emotion, but his eyes told Ainsley a different story. Lady Elizabeth had hurt him, and hurt him deeply.
From all Ainsley had heard about Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, she’d been high-strung, beautiful, and wild, a few years older than Cameron. Their marriage had been a scandal from beginning to end, finishing with her death six months after Daniel was born. Lady Elizabeth must have stood often in this very room, perhaps one day hiding the letter before Cameron or a servant came upon her.
Ainsley’s anger surged. “Not very sporting of her.”
“I carry on with married women. What is the difference?”
The difference was he didn’t enjoy it, and he despised the women he carried on with. “I imagine you don’t write those women letters expressing your undying passion.”
“No.”
Cameron rubbed his wrist, where his shirt had loosened. Ainsley saw the scars again, round and even.
“Who did that to you?” she asked.
Cameron slammed the cuff closed. “Leave it alone.”
“Why?”
“Ainsley.” The word was stark, holding rivers of pain.
“My lord?”
“Stop.” Cameron cupped her head in his hands, his fingers spreading her hair. “Just . . . stop.” He leaned to her and took her mouth in a kiss of harsh desperation.
Chapter 8
Cameron didn’t simply kiss her. He opened her mouth with his strong one, took what he wanted, made Ainsley kiss him back. Made her like kissing him back, made her want more.
His hands kept her pinned in place, but Ainsley didn’t want to go anywhere. His thighs flattened her skirts, the ridge of his hardness obvious and unashamed. Cameron knew how to make his mouth an instrument of sensuality, and he didn’t bother to hide his wanting.
Ainsley curled her hands against his chest. Beneath the linen of his shirt was warm, living male, his heart beating as rapidly as hers.
Cameron slid his hand to the top of her bodice. “You have no buttons tonight, Mrs. Douglas.”
“Clasps,” she murmured as she kissed him. “In the back.”
Cameron splayed his hand over the placket, fingers so strong that he could rip open every single clasp without thought. He kept his hand there, rock steady as he again swept his mouth across hers.
Ainsley couldn’t breathe. Cameron tasted her to every corner, his mouth firm and bold, his a lover’s kiss. No stolen moments in a corner, no cooing of lovebirds, just a man bent on bodily pleasure, damn what anyone thought. He licked across her mouth, hungry, feasting on Ainsley. She wound her arms around his neck and feasted back.
Cameron raised his head. “If I asked it of you tonight, Ainsley Douglas, would come to my bed?”
The words of Phyllida Chase came back to her. Lord Cameron doesn’t take his women in a bed . . . Quite known for it, is our Lord Cameron.
“I thought you didn’t like beds.”
She felt him jerk, saw his eyes flicker. “True.” His voice changed, from soft cajoling to hard edged.
Ainsley’s own voice shook. “I should think a bed would be more comfortable.”
“Comfort is the last consideration, Mrs. Douglas.”
The tingling became hot waves of excitement. He was right: a bed was sedate, a place for a well-acquainted husband and wife who pulled on nightcaps afterward and rolled to either side to sleep. Lovers would use a chair, say, or a thick carpet in front of the fire. Or perhaps Cameron wished to learn what could be done on the top of a desk.
Words stuck in her throat. Ainsley, who could talk her way into or out of anything, suddenly couldn’t form a sentence.
She raised on tiptoe and kissed him instead.
Ainsley felt the change in him, from a man wondering what would happen in this room tonight to a man knowing what would. As he kissed her again, his competent fingers unclasped her bodice, his broad hand spreading the fabric.
Wild heat seared her body. She’d never forgotten the fire of the first time Cameron had kissed her, six years ago, and the fire had only grown hotter since. Ainsley molded hungrily to him, seeking his mouth. He kissed her back, lips taking, teeth scraping where he’d already bruised her. His hand on her back was an imprint of fire, and her bodice was falling. She wanted his touch on her breast, ached for it. She would give him anything she wanted, and propriety could go hang. She wanted this. She needed this. She arched to him, seeking.
Cameron’s whole body suddenly stilled. His kiss died on her mouth, and his hand froze on her back.
Ainsley, still swimming in dark madness, couldn’t decide what had happened. Then she felt a cool draft on her back, heard the click of paws on bare floor, and realized that someone had opened the door.
“Daniel,” Cameron said, voice hard. “Turn around and go out.”
“Fat chance.” Daniel Mackenzie blazed into the room, followed by McNab and the hound called Ruby. Both dogs circled Daniel, scattering the papers Ainsley had so carefully sorted. “I’ve come to save Mrs. Douglas’s virtue,” Daniel said. “Aunt Isabella’s looking for her, and I thought I’d better come up before she did.”
The frank expression of the boy who looked at Ainsley with his father’s eyes returned her to reality with a rush.
She’d been about to succumb to Cameron’s seductions—again. But Ainsley Douglas couldn’t afford to indulge in that joy. She wasn’t a sophisticated lady, lover to aristocrats, one who gadded off to the Continent to host salons in Paris and be wooed by wild gentlemen like Lord Cameron. Ainsley was a glorified errand-runner, trusted by the queen to solve domestic dilemmas, asked by her highborn friends to help with their social events. Dependent on others for her living. Exotic men lik
e Lord Cameron Mackenzie were not for Ainsley. That dream was dust.
Cameron removed his hand from Ainsley’s back, straightened to his full height, and stepped a little in front of her.
“Daniel.” His voice held frustration, but at the same time, Ainsley knew Cameron was keeping a rock-hard rein on his patience. “Wait for Mrs. Douglas in the hall.”
Daniel grabbed a newspaper from the top of the stack and plopped himself into a chair. His kilt fluttered around his bony knees. “She’s a lady, Dad, I told ya. I’m not taking the chance that you’ll ravish her as soon as my back is turned.”
The absurdity of it all brought Ainsley back to herself. She stepped out from behind Cameron and rescued her lace shawl from Ruby’s questing mouth.
“Not to worry, Daniel, I wouldn’t dream of letting him ravish me.” Ainsley pulled the shawl, now a bit damp with drool, around her bare back. “Tell Isabella I’ll be with her directly.”
Daniel threw down the newspaper and sprang to his feet. “I’ll walk with ye.”
Ainsley looked back as she left the room behind Daniel. Cameron remained by the fireplace, stance rigid, his shirt open to reveal his brown throat. For the first time, Ainsley saw something naked in his eyes, not anger or frustration or old pain, but a longing so intense it stabbed at her from across the room.
Then Daniel slammed the door, and Ainsley’s view of him was lost.
“I’d better do up your back.”
“Pardon?” Ainsley stopped at the top of the stairs as Daniel jumped two steps past her. The dogs slithered by and ran all the way down the staircase, then hurried up again to see what was keeping the human beings.
“If someone sees ye like that, they’ll talk,” Daniel said. “Especially when ye disappeared so sudden.”
She’d forgotten about the undone clasps under her shawl, but Daniel had a point. Running about with a bodice undone would make even the dullest person realize what she’d been up to.
Smothering a sigh, Ainsley lowered her shawl and turned her back. Daniel, at her head height when he stood two stairs down, quickly hooked the clasps together. His skill told her that he, at sixteen, already had experience doing up women’s dresses. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, she supposed.
“How did you know I was in your father’s study?” Ainsley asked Daniel when he finished.
“I saw you go inside the house with him. I always keep an eye on my Dad. Don’t worry, I made sure no one else noticed.”
When she turned around, Daniel was studying her with his Mackenzie eyes, darker than his father’s, his face sharp and fine boned rather than hard. Daniel could look at a person with remarkable percipience, seeing through every layer they tried to put in his way. While Ian Mackenzie didn’t like to meet a person’s gaze directly, Daniel Mackenzie bored into their eyes to the point of rudeness.
“Do you like my dad?” Daniel asked it without rancor. He simply wanted to know.
“I barely know your dad.”
“You were about to let him have his way with ye. I hope you like him a little.”
Ainsley flushed. “Well, if you put it like that.”
“I do put it like that. I like you, ye see, and I know Dad does too. But I don’t want him toying with you and then turning his back on ye a month later, with a pretty gift for compensation. I told him tonight that I was interested in you meself, and you should have seen him come over growling, telling me to stay away.” Daniel grinned. “I only told him that to see if he fancied you enough. I guess he does.”
“You shouldn’t have said it at all, Danny,” she said. “He probably believed you.”
“Naw, Dad don’t take much heed of what I say.” Daniel folded his arms. “But I don’t want him leading you down the garden path, so to speak.”
Ainsley adjusted her shawl. “Well, you have nothing to worry about on that account, my boy. I’m not naïve, nor am I the sort of woman your father prefers.”
“No, but I’m thinking you’re the sort of woman he needs.” Ainsley slowly let out her breath. Her body still sang from Cameron’s touch, and she found it difficult to focus on his son’s practical words.
“Put that out of your head,” she said. “At the end of the house party, it’s back to Balmoral and the queen for me. I’ll not likely cross paths with your father for a long time.”
And won’t that be a shame?
Daniel didn’t hide the disappointment in his eyes. “Mrs. Douglas, ye have to try.”
“No, I don’t. I need to get into my ball gown and go play hostess with your aunts.” But wouldn’t it be grand to be a glittering lady in bright silks, with diamonds on her bosom, dancing waltz after waltz in a sumptuous ballroom? Her partner would be Cameron, a big man who moved with grace.
Daniel stopped arguing, but his glower spoke volumes. He finally turned and led the way down the stairs, dogs scampering with him. He moved so fast that by the time Ainsley caught up to him at the bottom of the staircase, she was running.
Whiskey didn’t calm him. Cameron tried to make himself feel better by using his foot to scatter the stacks of papers Ainsley had made, and then kicking them. Neither helped much.
He stormed back into his bedroom, did up his shirt, and pulled on another coat, not bothering with the cravat. He could never tie the bloody things decently. That’s what women and valets were for.
He drank as he dressed, but half the decanter of whiskey couldn’t erase the taste of Ainsley from his mouth. If Daniel hadn’t come charging in, Cameron would be inside her by now, finally learning what she’d feel like around him.
He wasn’t sure what to make of Daniel’s interruption. His look at his father had been one of annoyance, not jealous rage. Daniel’s story about wanting Ainsley for a mistress seemed to have faded to smoke, the boy using it as a ploy of some sort.
Hell, Cameron never knew what Daniel really thought or wanted. They never talked—they bantered. Or argued. Daniel wasn’t a bad lad, but his idea of obedience was doing what Cameron wanted only if Daniel had already decided on the same course. If Daniel disagreed with Cameron, he did what he damn well pleased.
Cameron gave up and let him. Cameron’s own father had been the devil himself, controlling his sons so tightly that Cameron was surprised that any of the Mackenzies could still breathe.
The old duke had gone easiest on Cameron, because Cameron had been interested in horses and erotic pictures—As a man should be, their father had said.
The old duke had regularly beaten Ian, saying that Ian was being sullen when he wouldn’t look at anyone. He’d beaten Mac for his love of art, like a bloody unnatural; and Hart every day regardless, to make a man of him. When he’s duke and beset by fools, he’ll be strong.
Cameron had stood by, troubled and angry, unable to stop any of it. Until the day he’d returned from Harrow at the close of a term and realized he’d grown bigger and stronger than his father. He’d entered the house to hear eleven-year-old Mac’s terrified screams and found his father about to break Mac’s fingers. Cameron had wrested his father from Mac and thrown the man against the wall.
After their father had taken himself out of the room, roaring, Mac had looked up from the beautiful pictures he’d drawn, bravely trying to blink back tears. “Damn good toss, Cam,” he’d said, wiping his eyes. “Would ye teach me?”
Cameron had vowed that Daniel would never know fear like that. Daniel might run a bit wild, but that was a small price for Cameron to pay for Daniel’s happiness. Cameron would be damned if he’d become the kind of monster who would think nothing of breaking his own son’s fingers.
He got himself downstairs and to the main wing of the house in time to hear strains of music coming from the ballroom. Scottish music, a reel. Hart Mackenzie always made sure that, along with the popular German waltzes and polkas, his hired musicians played plenty of Scottish dances. No one was allowed to forget that the Mackenzies were Scottish first, the entire branch of their clan nearly wiped out in ’45, except for young M
alcolm Mackenzie who survived to marry and rebuild the family. He’d kept the title of duke bestowed on the family in the 1300s but lived in a hovel on the grounds that had once housed Malcolm and his four brothers, all but Malcolm gone under English guns. Hart Mackenzie enjoyed stuffing the Mackenzies’ current prosperity down English throats.
As Cameron strode toward the ballroom, Phyllida Chase glided down the hall from the guest wing, fashionably late as usual. Intent on adjusting her gloves, she didn’t see Cameron until she nearly ran into him.
“Do get out of the way, Cam,” she said in a cool voice.
Cameron didn’t move. “Give Mrs. Douglas back her letters,” he said. “She’s done you no harm.”
Phyllida gave her glove one last tug. “Gracious, are you her champion now?”
“I find all blackmailers disgusting.” Yes, Ainsley had asked Cameron not to interfere, but he refused to stand by while Phyllida plied her extortion. “Give her the damn letters and leave her alone, and I’ll think about not having Hart throw you out.”
“Hart won’t throw me out. He’s trying to cultivate my husband’s support. If you hadn’t been so thickheaded as to give Mrs. Douglas back that page, she’d have been able to come up with the price.”
“Give her the letters, or I will make your life hell.”
Phyllida’s eyes flickered, but damned if she didn’t return a stubborn look. “I doubt you could make it any more hell than it already is, my lord Cam. I’m selling Mrs. Douglas the letters because I need the money. As simple as that.”
“For what, your gambling debts? Your husband is rich. Go to him.”
“It has nothing to do with gambling, and it is my own business.”
Damn the woman. “If I give you the money you need, will you cease troubling Mrs. Douglas?”
Phyllida’s worried look dissolved into a smile. “My, my, you are smitten, aren’t you?”
“How much do you want?”
Phyllida wet her lips. “Fifteen hundred wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Fifteen hundred, and you return the letters and let it go.”
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