Cameron resisted punching the man in the mouth, set down his glass, and turned to take his greatcoat from the servant who brought it. If he struck Pierson and relieved his temper, Jasmine would suffer, and Cameron couldn’t let that happen.
The servant—who was English, Cameron noted—led Cameron to the door and opened it for him. Cameron clapped on his hat and stepped out into the rain.
He strode down the street, misty rain obscuring sky, buildings, and people, relieving his anger by walking fast and hard.
Bloody arrogant bastard. In usual circumstances, such a man wouldn’t get under his skin, but Cam liked Jasmine and wanted her. He thought about enticing Pierson into playing cards with him and winning Jasmine, but Pierson wasn’t a gambler. He didn’t even bet on the horses.
Cameron could calm Jasmine down to run her at Doncaster, but not to win. If he pushed her too hard, he risked her health. Jasmine might win but drop dead at the finish line—or, if Pierson had his way, the moment the buyer walked off with her. That was the way Pierson did things.
Damned bloody English Philistine.
Cam’s thoughts cut off abruptly when he saw the woman dressed in gray, with hair the color of sunshine, dart out from a jeweler’s shop. Ainsley slipped a little pouch into her pocket, glanced surreptitiously about, opened her umbrella, and hurried away down the misty street.
Chapter 10
Ainsley felt the presence of Cameron even before his large gloved hand closed around her umbrella handle.
Did he tip his hat, give her a polite hello, offer to escort her down the street? No, he regarded her with angry eyes from a granite face and wouldn’t let go of the blasted umbrella.
“I told you I’d give you the money for the letters,” he said.
Ainsley gave him a cool nod. “Good afternoon to you too, Lord Cameron. I know you did.”
“So why were you in a damned jeweler’s? You don’t have the money to shop. You were trying to sell jewelry to pay Phyllida, weren’t you?”
And didn’t he look enraged about it? High-handed, arrogant Scotsman. “I wasn’t trying to sell the jewels, I was having them valued. For collateral.”
“Collateral? What collateral?”
Ainsley again tried to take back the umbrella and was surprised when he let it go. “For the loan you offered me. I give you collateral, and then when my friend sends me the money, you return the jewels to me.”
Cameron’s eyes became topaz-colored slits. “I never said it was a loan. I’ll pay Phyllida, and that’s the end of it. Your ‘collateral,’ if you insist on it, is to have a conversation with me that’s not about the damned letters. I’m sick to death of them.”
“I can’t take a gift of money from you and remain a lady,” Ainsley said. “Unless it’s a loan, a business transaction, and then only because I’m a friend of the family. Of Isabella.”
“You make it too complicated. No one has to know that I gave you the money.”
“Mrs. Chase will know, or she’ll guess. And you can be certain she would tell everybody.”
Ainsley turned away and resumed walking.
Cameron had to stride quickly to catch up. Hell, if anyone had told him that one day he’d be racing through the streets of Edinburgh, chasing a lady determined to shut him out with her umbrella, he’d have laughed uproariously. Cameron Mackenzie didn’t chase women, those with umbrellas or otherwise.
“The jeweler said my mother’s earrings and brooch were enough to cover the five hundred,” Ainsley said. “Which is lucky.”
Cameron decided not to tell her that Phyllida now wanted fifteen hundred. He didn’t need Ainsley sending home for the family silver.
“They were your mother’s?”
“Yes. The only thing I have from her, really. I’ve always regretted that I never knew her.”
The sadness in her voice tugged at him. Cameron’s own mother had been a terrified creature admonished to stay away from her own sons. She’d died right after Cam had turned eighteen, while he was away at university, from a fall, he’d been told.
Hart had related the truth to Cameron later, that their father had killed her, shaking her so hard when he fought with her that he broke her neck. Hart had deduced this over time—the only witness had been Ian, and their father had locked ten- year-old Ian into an asylum even before the funeral, in case the very truthful Ian blurted out what really had happened.
Cameron had nothing of his mother’s, his father having rid the house of everything belonging to her after her death. The way Ainsley mentioned her regret in not meeting her mother did something to his heart.
Ainsley cut off the discussion by opening the door of another establishment, where a well-dressed shop assistant smiled up at them. Ainsley looked at Cameron in surprise when he followed her in.
“This is a dressmaker’s,” she said.
“I know what it is. I take it you’re here for a wardrobe, not baked bread. And put down that umbrella before you spear someone with it.”
Ainsley let the assistant take the umbrella, but she quailed as Cameron followed her straight into the back room. Madame Claire gave him a welcoming smile. “Now then, your lordship.”
Isabella waved at him from her comfortable chair. “Oh, Cameron, excellent. Just who we need.”
Cool as he pleased, Cameron rid himself of his greatcoat, seated himself in an armchair, and accepted the glass of port the assistant brought for him.
“You look very comfortable,” Ainsley said.
“I’m a good customer.”
Which meant Cameron sent his mistresses here. Ainsley slapped open one of the fashion books and busied herself looking at the colorful dresses inside, not seeing a line of them.
“We’re fitting out Ainsley,” Isabella said. “I want her to be radiant.”
Ainsley sat still, her throat dry, while Isabella showed Cameron the fabrics that she’d chosen and told him what each were for. Cameron voiced his approval at her choices and seemed to know all about gussets and half sleeves and fichus. Ainsley might not even be in the room.
“I’d like to see her in red,” Cameron said.
“Not with her coloring,” Isabella answered. “Bright red will wash out her skin instead of enhancing it, and her eyes will be lost.”
“Not bright red. Dark. Very dark. And velvet. A cozy winter dress.”
Madame Claire brightened. “His lordship has exquisite taste. I have just the thing.”
Ainsley should shout, protest, tell them to stop. She could only watch, half dazed, as Madame Claire returned with a swath of red velvet so dark its shimmer was black.
Cameron rose, took the velvet from Madame Claire, and approached Ainsley with it. Ainsley jumped to her feet, half afraid he would simply throw the cloth over her head if she remained seated on the stool.
Cameron cradled her face with the folds, the velvet soft as down against Ainsley’s skin. “You see?” Cameron said to Isabella.
“Yes, that’s excellent.” Isabella clasped her hands. “You have a wonderful eye, Cam. She’ll be beautiful in that.”
Ainsley couldn’t speak. Cameron’s hands were firm through the velvet, all his strength from working his horses now softened to caress Ainsley.
She caught sight of Beth watching beyond Cameron. The look in Beth’s blue eyes was knowing, understanding. Beth had been ensnared by a handsome, irresistible Mackenzie, and she knew full well that Ainsley had been ensnared by one too.
More rain the next afternoon meant indoor entertainment at Kilmorgan, so Isabella arranged a scavenger hunt. She and Beth and Ainsley drew up the lists of items to obtain and handed them out to the guests. Those who had no interest in the game retired to the card room in the main wing and proceeded to win and lose fortunes.
Daniel scoffed at the rather tame scavenger hunt and enticed Ainsley into the billiards room for a game. Isabella, relieved to have Daniel out from underfoot, released them both.
“Isabella says your brothers taught you to play,” Daniel said
to Ainsley. “I don’t quite believe a girl can do it.”
“No? Then prepare to be amazed, my boy.”
Ainsley let Daniel bring out the cues and red and white balls, while she fingered the note in her pocket that Phyllida Chase’s maid had brought her that morning.
Phyllida wanted the money tomorrow night, she said. Rowlindson, Hart’s nearest neighbor, will host a fancy-dress ball on the morrow, Friday evening. Meet me in the conservatory of his home at one o’clock in the morning, and we will make the exchange there. Only you, Mrs. Douglas, not Lord Cameron.
Ainsley had read the note in exasperation. Really, why did the woman have to be so clandestine? All Phyllida had to do was visit Ainsley in her bedchamber, and they’d finish the matter.
But, very well, Ainsley would meet Phyllida at the fancy dress ball. Ainsley hadn’t even been invited to the dratted ball, and Isabella hadn’t mentioned it. But later that morning, Morag had given her a hand-delivered note from Lord Rowlindson’s secretary that included an invitation. Phyllida was certainly thorough. Morag was even now putting together a costume for Ainsley.
As Daniel set up the balls, Ian Mackenzie walked into the room and shut the door behind him. Ian never spoke much to Ainsley, but he’d become comfortable with her during her visits to Isabella, which meant he didn’t avoid her. But he didn’t seek her out either; he simply accepted her presence as he did his family’s.
Ainsley noticed the change in Ian from her visits in previous years. He moved more confidently now, his quick agitation replaced with a calm watchfulness. Whenever he held his tiny son, his stillness became even more pronounced. Quietude, that’s what it was, the sort of peace that came from deep, unshakable happiness.
“Not on the scavenger hunt?” Ainsley asked Ian as she lined up her cue to the white ball.
Ian poured himself whiskey and leaned against the billiards table. “No.”
“He means he’d win it too quickly,” Daniel said. “Same reason he don’t like to play cards.”
“I remember every card on the table,” Ian said.
Ainsley imagined the other players wouldn’t much like this. “Sporting of you to stay away then.”
Ian looked uninterested in being sporting, and Ainsley understood in a flash that he stayed away from card games because they weren’t a challenge to him. He had a mind so quick that it solved problems before others were aware there was a problem.
Cameron was a bit like that with his horses, Ainsley mused, knowing when one would founder before it happened, and exactly why. She’d watched him stop a training session and lead a horse away, with his grooms protesting that nothing was wrong, only to have the horse doctor confirm that Cameron had been correct.
As Ainsley lined up her cue, Ian tapped the table two inches to his right. “Aim here. The red ball will fall into that pocket and the white will return there.” He pointed.
“Aw, Uncle Ian, no fair helping.”
Ian sent Daniel the barest hint of smile. “You should always help the ladies, Danny.”
Ainsley knew enough about the mathematics of billiards to know that Ian had given her good advice. She shot. Her white ball struck the red, sending it exactly where Ian pointed. It caromed off the wall and into the pocket, the white ball gently rolling back toward Ainsley’s cue.
Daniel grinned. “You’re good for a lady, I’ll give you that.”
“I’ll have you know that I’ve rousted my brothers on many occasions,” Ainsley said. “They regretted teaching me all these games after they started losing money to me.”
Daniel chuckled. “Good for you. What else do you know how to do?”
Ainsley lined up another shot. “Shoot a pistol—and hit the target, mind you. Play cards, and not womanly games like whist. I mean poker.”
“Aye, I’d love to see that. There are some games going in the drawing room even now.”
Ainsley shook her head. Ian, more interested in the billiards than the conversation, again tapped the table where Ainsley should aim.
“I don’t wish to embarrass Isabella by draining her guests dry,” Ainsley said with good humor.
She’d thought of joining a card game to try to win the money to pay off Phyllida, but while her brothers Elliot and Steven had taught Ainsley to be a good player, there was still the risk that other players might be better. Many of Hart’s guests were hardened gamblers, and one needed a large amount of money to even enter the games. Thousands of pounds moved around those tables in the drawing of a breath. She couldn’t risk it.
Ainsley tapped her ball. That ball struck the second, which bounced against the cushion where Ian’s hand had rested and rolled into a pocket with a definite thud.
Daniel whistled. “I wish you would play for money, Mrs. Douglas. The two of us, we could win a great deal together.”
“Certainly, Daniel. We’ll get a wagon and travel about, waving a banner that says ‘Champion Exhibition Billiards by a Lady and a Lad. Be Amazed! Test Their Skill and Try Your Luck.’ ”
“A gypsy wagon,” Daniel said. “We’ll have Angelo do acrobatics and Dad show off his trained horses. And you can shoot at targets. People will come from miles to see us.”
Ainsley laughed, and Ian completely ignored them. When Ainsley finally missed her shot, Daniel took the balls from the pockets and lined them up for himself. Ian abandoned the table and came to stand in front of Ainsley.
The golden gaze that roved her face before settling on her left cheekbone was as intense as any of the Mackenzies’, even if Ian didn’t look directly into her eyes.
Ian had spent his childhood in a madhouse, and while Ainsley knew that Ian never had been truly insane, he wasn’t an ordinary man either. He had intelligence that came out of him in amazing bursts, and Ainsley always had the feeling that his enigmatic exterior hid a man who understood everyone’s secrets, perhaps better than they did themselves.
“Cameron’s wife hated him,” Ian said without preliminary. “She did everything she could to hurt him. It made him a hard and unhappy man.”
Ainsley caught her breath. “How very awful of her.”
“Aye,” Daniel said cheerfully from the billiards table. “Me mum was a right bitch. And a whore.”
Ainsley’s correct response would be to admonish Daniel for speaking so harshly of his mother, especially when she was deceased. Good heavens, Daniel, that cannot be true. But from what Ainsley had heard about Lady Elizabeth, Daniel likely spoke the unvarnished truth.
“I never knew her,” Daniel said. “But people tell me about her. I used to punch the fellows at school for saying that my mother had bedded every aristocrat in Europe, but it was mostly true, so I stopped.”
The matter-of-fact tone in Daniel’s voice made Ainsley’s heart ache. Lady Elizabeth’s reputation had been bad, but to hear the facts of it so baldly from her son’s lips was heartbreaking.
“Daniel, I’m sorry.”
Daniel shrugged. “Mum hated Dad for not wanting her to go tarting about after they were married. She thought she could carry on as before, you see, but with all Dad’s money behind her. Plus she had the prospect that she might become a duchess if Hart pegged it. In retaliation for Dad not letting her run wild, she tried to convince him that I wasn’t his son, but as ye can see, I’m very much a Mackenzie.” Daniel was, with that sharp Mackenzie stare. No denying it.
“How could she?” Ainsley asked indignantly. That a mother could use her child as a pawn in a game with her husband made Ainsley sick. Stupid Elizabeth—she’d had Cam’s wicked smile, the warmth in his dark gold eyes, his kisses of fire all to herself, and she hadn’t treasured them.
“Like I say, she was a right bitch.”
Ainsley didn’t question how Daniel knew this about his mother. He’d have been told—by the servants, his schoolmates, well-meaning friends, not-so-well-meaning acquaintances. She imagined the anguish of the little boy learning that the mother he didn’t remember hadn’t been the angelic being a mother was suppose to be. Ainsley h
ad very few memories of her own mother, and she could imagine how she’d feel if she were told repeatedly what a horrible person she’d been.
“I’d like to give Lady Elizabeth a good talking-to,” Ainsley said. A good tongue-lashing was more like it.
Daniel laughed. “So would Aunt Isabella and Aunt Beth. And my uncles. But Dad never let anyone go up against her. Well, no one but him.”
Ian broke in. “I never knew her. I was in the asylum when she was married to Cameron. But I heard what she did to him.”
Ian, not a man who showed emotion except in his love for Beth, held a spark of rage in his eyes for his brother.
“Daniel.” Cameron’s voice rumbled from the other side of the room. “Out.”
Daniel looked up at his father without surprise. “I was just telling Mrs. Douglas things she needed to know.”
Cameron gestured at the door he’d just opened. “Out.”
Daniel heaved an aggrieved sigh, shoved the cues back into the rack, and shuffled out of the room. Ian followed him without a word, closing the door and leaving Ainsley and Cameron alone.
Chapter 11
Cameron looked at Ainsley, her color high, her eyes sparkling with righteous anger, and he wanted her. He’d take her on the billiards table, on the chair near it, or the settee, he didn’t much care. He wanted to kiss the lips parted in indignation, run kisses down the chest that rose with agitated breath. Cam wanted to bury himself inside the woman who’s said with such outrage, I’d like to give her a good talking-to.
He could imagine Ainsley, with her frank eyes and bold stare, telling Lady Elizabeth Cavendish exactly what she thought of her. Elizabeth, the rich, spoiled daughter of an aristocrat, as wild and bright as a tropical bird, wouldn’t have stood a chance against Ainsley. Ainsley was more like a sparrow—a matter-of-fact woman, more interested in the practical matter at hand than displaying her plumage.
No, not a sparrow. That was too plain for someone like Ainsley. Ainsley was deeply beautiful, with beauty that shone from the depths of her. Cameron wanted to learn that loveliness, every single inch of it.
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