“I thought I saw Lord Cameron leaving this room.”
“You did.” Ainsley looked him straight in the eye. “He was showing me where I could sit quietly.”
Lord Rowlindson’s expression turned worried. He came all the way into the room and closed the door.
“Gisele, I must give you this advice for your own good. Beware of Cameron Mackenzie. He might be charm itself when he needs to be, but he’s not to be trusted. In truth, he’s a hard and ruthless man. He uses his ladies until they are desperate for what he gives them, and then he discards them. I would hate to see that happen to you.”
A little chill went through her. “I appreciate your concern, my lord. I truly do. But I will be well.” Now, do, please, go away.
He didn’t. “Forgive my prying. It’s simply that I don’t wish to see someone as young as yourself hurt. Please, stay and enjoy my soiree. Or, if you do not like crowds, we can adjourn to my private study. I have a friend, he’s quite a gentleman, and very discreet, who might join us—or not, as you wish. Do you enjoy photography?”
What had that to do with anything? “I really don’t know much about it, except to have my portrait done. But that was a long time ago.” After her wedding, in hastily sewn wedding attire, standing next to John Douglas. Ainsley had not worn the wedding finery to the brief ceremony; there hadn’t been time.
“It’s rather a hobby of mine,” Rowlindson said. “I’d enjoy teaching you about it.”
Ainsley still wasn’t certain Rowlindson was dangerous, but he was decidedly odd. “Perhaps another time.”
“I always show new guests my pictures—rather a treat for me. And then I could take a photograph of you.”
Definitely odd. “No, thank you, my lord. I will be returning home directly.”
Rowlindson let out a breath. “If you must. My carriage is at your disposal. Shall I fetch it?”
“No, no.” Ainsley fanned herself again. “I’ve made other arrangements. I’ll sit until the servant fetches me.”
Rowlindson watched her for a moment, then, to her vast relief, gave her a nod. “A wise idea. But if you need help, or my carriage to get you home, you must send for me immediately. Promise?”
“Oh, yes, my lord. I will. You are so kind.” For heaven’s sake, go!
“And heed my advice about Lord Cameron. No matter how he might tempt you.”
Rather too late for that. “Yes, indeed. I thank you for your warning.”
Rowlindson’s mouth softened into a smile. “Perhaps you and I can speak on a later occasion. May I send you word, through Mrs. Chase?”
“I’m not sure that would be proper,” Ainsley said, trying to sound prim.
Her worry about propriety seemed to delight him. “I will be most discreet. Good evening, Gisele.”
Rowlindson gave her a final nod, opened the door, and at long last, left her alone.
Ainsley made herself wait an excruciating ten minutes, giving Rowlindson time to get himself back upstairs, before she slipped out of her costume’s clunky shoes and crept out of the room in her stocking feet.
Phyllida was late, as usual. Cameron waited in the shadows, and sure enough, not until half past one did Phyllida casually stroll into the conservatory. She was dressed as her idea of an Egyptian queen: long, straight sheath that showed off every curve of her body, eyes painted black, gold jewelry dripping from her arms, neck, ankles, and ears.
She paused on the walkway, looking around for Ainsley. Cameron stepped from behind the screen of vines. “Phyllida.”
She gasped in a satisfying way, then she flushed. “Devil take it, Cam, what do you want? I told you I’d only make the exchange with Mrs. Douglas.”
Cameron slid the roll of money from his pocket, and Phyllida’s gaze turned sharp with greed.
“Is it fifteen hundred?” she asked. “As promised?”
“As promised. You give me the letters and never bother Ainsley again.”
Her painted eyes went wide with delight. “You call her by her Christian name now, do you? How quickly things progress.”
“Do you have the damned letters or don’t you?”
“This is delicious. Mousy Ainsley Douglas and the decadent Lord Cameron Mackenzie. How the ton will delight.”
Cameron felt rage building inside him. “Say one word about her, and I’ll throttle you.”
“You were always so violent. Did I ever tell you how exciting that was?”
“The letters, Phyllida.”
Phyllida’s gaze flicked beyond Cameron, and her face lit with genuine pleasure, an expression Cameron had never seen on her before.
“There you are, darling. Please, come and protect me from Lord Cameron’s threats. You know what I told you about the Mackenzies.”
Cameron turned to see the last person he expected: a tall, black-haired young man with the dusky skin and dark eyes of a southern Italian. Cameron thought he vaguely recognized him from the stage. Opera, perhaps.
“Apologize to the lady,” the Italian said. His accent was very slight, his English good. “I know she was your lover, but that is finished now.”
“I agree,” Cameron said. “It is finished. Phyllida, who the devil is this?”
“None of your business,” Phyllida said crisply. “He is here to see that I don’t get cheated.” She turned back to the Italian. “Darling, did you bring the letters?”
Cameron closed his fist around the money, not about to let Phyllida take it until she gave over the precious documents. The Italian reached into his pocket and brought out a stack of folded papers.
“Is that all of them?” Cameron eyed them. “Ainsley said there were six.”
“It is all.” The man held them out at arm’s length. “You can trust the signora to deal fairly.”
Fairly? Phyllida? Either the man was a good liar, or Phyllida had well and truly beguiled him.
Cameron reached for the letters. The Italian held them back. “You give her the payment, first.”
Like hell. “Let’s do this at the same time, shall we?”
The man gave a cool nod. He held out the letters again, and Cameron let the wad of money dangle from his fingers. Phyllida snatched the cash, and Cameron took the letters from the Italian man’s grasp.
Phyllida ran her thumb over the corner of the banknotes. “Thank you, Cameron. I hope I never see you again.”
Cameron unfolded the first letter. “Wait,” he said sternly. “Neither of you are leaving until I know that I have them all.”
“I’ve told you . . .”
The Italian held up his hand. “No. Let him look. The treacherous always must believe that others play treachery against them.”
Definitely opera. The man’s speeches came straight from them. Cameron seated himself on a scrolled iron bench and scanned the first page.
“You’re not going to read all of them, are you?” Phyllida said in exasperation.
Cameron didn’t answer. He would damn well read every word of them to make sure he had the letters in their entirety, no pages missing with which Phyllida could blackmail Ainsley later. Cam hadn’t lied to Ainsley when he’d said he had no interest in the letters, but he’d never promised he wouldn’t actually read them. He needed to, for her own good.
They were love letters without doubt. The lady addressed them to “My most beloved Friend,” and then the paper flowed with overblown adjectives and flowery phrases that sang of this friend’s manly physique, his prowess, his stamina.
In spite of this, Cameron could see that the writer had an excellent grasp of vocabulary and poetry, if in an overly sentimental style. The first letter eased from this poesy into a breezy, newsy epistle and then back out again to the flowery phrases. She’d signed it, “Ever your loving, Mrs. Brown.”
Mrs. Brown.
Oh, bloody hell.
Cameron opened the second letter and found it to be much like the first, noting the writer’s references in the middle of the letter to “trying children” and other such domest
ic issues. But these were the domestic issues of a palace, the trying children princes and princesses of this realm and rulers of others.
He finally understood Ainsley’s secretiveness and furtive concern. The nameless friend she’d been trying so desperately to protect was the Queen of England.
“It’s scandalous, isn’t it?” Phyllida said when he folded the last one. “She ought to be ashamed of herself.”
“Did you make any copies of these?” Cameron asked her. What a weapon Phyllida could have made of them, and yet she’d demanded, in retrospect, so little. Something was off.
“Why should I?” Phyllida shrugged. “I’m not interested in the queen’s rather pathetic fantasies.”
Cameron rose and stuffed the letters into his pocket. “These letters could utterly humiliate the queen, and you’re ransoming them to me for fifteen hundred guineas?”
“Very generous of you too. Enough for a start, I think.”
“A start of what?”
Phyllida laughed, and for the first time since he’d met her, Cameron saw the hardness depart from her. “To leave my husband, of course.” She slid her hand through the crook of the Italian’s arm. “Thank you, Giorgio. Shall we?”
Giorgio. Now Cameron recognized him. He was Giorgio Prario, a tenor who had recently taken London by storm. Isabella had hosted a soiree to help launch his career, one of those little gatherings that Isabella loved and Cameron avoided like the plague.
Prario regarded Cameron with deep brown eyes and a proud tilt to his head before he drew Phyllida away. Phyllida had her claws into him all right, poor sod.
Cameron watched them walk away, Phyllida swaying into the body of the large man. Phyllida Chase, who loved her comfort and social position above everything else, was ready to throw it all away to run off with a young opera singer. The world was becoming a strange place.
Still more bizarrely, Cameron was becoming more and more entangled with the young lady in red who crashed through the palm fronds next to him, breathless and pink- faced.
“Did you get them?” she asked.
Chapter 13
Cameron’s eyes betrayed his anger, but he didn’t growl at Ainsley for not waiting in the anteroom. He must have known that she would never be that patient.
Ainsley held out her hand for the letters, but Cameron didn’t give them to her. “I’ll keep them for now. I don’t trust Phyllida not to waylay you and try to steal them back.”
Ainsley kept her hand out for a moment, her fingers itching to feel the letters in them. “My friend will be most grateful for what you’re done.”
“Your friend, Mrs. Brown? Dear God, Ainsley.”
Ainsley lowered her arm, eyes wide. “I asked you not to read them. I remember distinctly.”
“I did it to make certain Phyllida wasn’t holding anything back. I’ve got them all, even the one with the missing page.”
He was so tall and solid. And angry. “Cameron, for heaven’s sake, please don’t tell your brother. Hart Mackenzie is notorious for opposing the queen’s policies. I can’t think what he’d do with letters like these.”
“Probably toss them onto the fire.”
Ainsley blinked. “What? But he could embarrass her, sway people’s opinion of her, turn those on the fence to his side.”
“If you think that, you have a wrong view of Hart.” Cameron closed his warm hand over her cold one. “Hart wants to win by proving he’s right—about everything—not with tittle-tattle and bedroom gossip. Hart wants to be God Almighty. No, he already thinks he’s God Almighty. Now he wants to prove it to everyone else.”
Ainsley ran her thumb over Cameron’s fingers, which were calloused and rough from his days working with horses. These weren’t the well-kept hands of a gentleman who lifted nothing heavier than cards or a glass of brandy. Cameron worked alongside the other men in the stables, doing whatever jobs had to be done.
She kissed one broad, blunt finger. “Please,” she said. “Don’t tell him. Just in case.”
“I don’t intend to. This is none of Hart’s bloody business.”
His eyes sparkled with heat, and Ainsley lifted herself on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Thank you.”
Cameron scooped her up to him and caught her mouth with his in a full kiss. As she kissed him back, Ainsley wormed her hand inside Cameron’s coat and touched the letters in his pocket.
Strong fingers clamped her wrist. “Devil.”
Ainsley reluctantly let go. “When do I get them back?”
“When you leave Kilmorgan. I’ll hand them to you when you get into your carriage.” Cameron closed his arms around her. “Now, stop playing. I’m kissing you.”
He was in a playful mood himself, she thought. He nipped and kissed her lips, and she nipped and kissed back, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw stark need. No playfulness at all.
She drew a breath, steeling herself for what she’d decided. “I want to spend tonight with you,” she said.
Heat flared in his eyes. “I hope so.
How could he sound so casual? “But not, I think, here.”
“Good God, no. We’ll go somewhere far more comfortable and far less sickening.”
She tried to match his light tone. “I thought you said comfort was the last consideration.”
“Minx. I meant I want you to be comfortable.”
“While you thoroughly debauch me?”
“Damn you, don’t look at me like that. Or I won’t be able to stop myself, no matter where we are.”
Ainsley’s heart beat faster. Why did such declarations excite her?
Cameron brushed another kiss to her lips. “Walk out with me, and I’ll hunt down my carriage. I don’t want you out of my sight.”
Ainsley didn’t much want to move from his sight either. Not in this house. “My shoes are in the anteroom.” She wondered whether they could rush back and fetch them without encountering Rowlindson or anyone else, but her thoughts cut off when Cameron swept her up into his arms.
Cameron’s strength took her breath away. He didn’t waver under her weight and the drag of her skirts, cushions and all, as he strode for the door at the end of the conservatory and out into darkness. The night was cold, but Ainsley would never be cold tucked up against Cameron.
“You’ve done so much for me,” she said, touching his face. “I’m not sure how I can—”
“If you start talking about repayment, I will drop you in the bushes.” His breath fogged in the chill. “I don’t want the money back, or your gratitude, or payment with your body.”
“If you won’t even accept gratitude, then what do you want?”
His voice lost all humor. “What I can’t have.”
Ainsley started to quip that surely a Mackenzie could have anything he wanted, but something in his face made her stop. Ainsley had lived in the queen’s houses long enough to know that money and position were no guarantee of happiness. They made life more comfortable and less desperate, but there could still be grief, anger, emptiness.
“I want to do something,” Ainsley said. “I am obliged to you—” She broke off and squealed as Cameron pivoted and strode straight for a line of rhododendrons. “Very well, very well. I will do nothing.”
Cameron lowered her to her feet on a patch of grass. “The business with the letters is concluded. I don’t want it between us.”
“No, I see that.” Ainsley didn’t want it between them either. “But you can’t stop me from being grateful. Thank you for your help, Cam.”
She half feared he would make good his threat and drag her to the nearest clump of bushes, but Cameron only cupped her face with a gentle hand.
He hadn’t had to help her. He could have demanded the price Phyllida had said he would before he’d even lend Ainsley the money. But he’d fought this battle for her, and now he’d turned back to what was between them.
Cameron’s coachman must have been alert, because a carriage circled the drive not far away, its coach lights
bright. Cameron picked up Ainsley again and made for it.
Stars were out in profusion, the night dry and cold. “I miss this sky when I’m in London,” Ainsley said. “It’s breathtaking.”
“It’s bloody freezing.”
“I notice most Scotsmen complain about the weather while we’re surrounded by beauty.”
“Right now, I’d rather be surrounded by warmth.”
They reached the carriage. A footman materialized out of the dark as the carriage rolled to a halt and opened its door.
“In you go.” Cameron lifted Ainsley inside, where she sank onto comfortable cushions.
Cameron dropped a tip into the footman’s hand, glanced up at his coachman, and made a circling motion with his finger. “Right ye are, sir,” the coachman said cheerfully.
Cameron folded the steps and pulled himself into the carriage as it jerked forward. He slammed the door and dropped onto the seat next to Ainsley, smelling of the night and the good scents of the outdoors.
Without a word Cameron pulled off her wig and mask and tossed both to the opposite seat. Cool air touched Ainsley’s face, and her head felt suddenly light.
“That’s better,” Cameron said. “My little mouse is back.”
“Hardly flattering to call a woman a mouse, you know.” She knew she was babbling, nervous, but she couldn’t still her tongue.
“You hide behind my curtains and scuttle around my rooms. What else should I call you?”
“You said ferret, once. But you wouldn’t give a diamond necklace to a mouse or a ferret. Well, not unless you were very silly. They’d try to eat it or use it to line their nests.”
“I don’t give a damn what you use the diamonds for.” Cameron slid his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “As long as you like them.”
“I do. They’re lovely.”
“No more talk about giving them back or not accepting them?”
“I wouldn’t accept them from any other gentleman, no,” she said in a decided voice. “But for you, I will make an exception.”
“You’d damn well better not accept them from any other gentleman. Any other man tries to give you jewelry, and I’ll pummel him. Right after I pummel Rowlindson for letting you come here tonight.”
The Many Sins of Lord Cameron hp-3 Page 13
