Cameron stared at her while red fury rose inside him.
Ainsley—beautiful, fiery, innocent Ainsley—used and discarded by a gigolo. “Who was he?” he asked.
Ainsley glanced up at him, cheeks red. “It was a long time ago, and I’m certain he gave me a false name. I was so very young and stupid, and I believed every word he told me.”
“Damn it, Ainsley . . .”
Cameron wanted to rage. He wanted to race to the Continent, find the blackguard and throttle him. The selfish fool had ruined Ainsley’s life before she’d even tasted the world.
“This is why you married an old man and buried yourself,” he said.
Her smile was sad, full of regret. “Patrick and Rona had taken me to Rome to expand my mind with art and music. Training me to be the wife of a cultured man. And then . . .”
The look on Patrick’s face when Ainsley had told him . . . she cringed from the memory even now. But Patrick, her good brother, had put aside his disappointment and taken care of her.
Ainsley remembered her nights of weeping, from shame, over betrayal of her young, fragile love, plus the knowledge that her brother was pairing her with a man nearly three times her age to save her reputation.
Patrick was kind, but he was firm, and he knew, very realistically, what the world was like. Rona, though sympathetic, had stood solidly with Patrick. Ainsley must marry John Douglas, and marry him quickly. And she must show the world that she was happy with her choice.
John Douglas had come to the house Patrick had rented in Rome, a tall man whose fair hair had gone to gray, his blue eyes warm but worried. Ainsley had met him before but not paid much attention to him, as he’d been, to her, merely an acquaintance of Patrick’s. Now he was there to be her husband.
John had been patience itself, and when Patrick and Rona had left them alone, John Douglas had taken her hand and gone down on one knee. His grasp had been warm, steady, even comforting.
I know I’m not what you want, he’d said. A young lady wants a dashing young husband, doesn’t she? And I know what this is all about. But I promise you, Ainsley, I will look after you. I’ll do my utmost. I can’t promise to make you happy, because no one can promise that, can they? But I’ll try. Will you let me?
He’d been so kind, so aware that barely eighteen-year- old Ainsley would rather be dragged behind a cart than marry an old man, that Ainsley had burst into tears. She’d ended up sitting on the sofa with him, being held and soothed. She’d clung to him and realized that, as bizarre a match as this was, he was a man, a good man, not a villain.
She did feel safe from the world with John Douglas—Patrick had made a wise choice. Ainsley had told John that of course she’d be happy to marry him, and vowed then to be as good to him as she could. Poor man, not his fault.
John had wiped away Ainsley’s tears, pulled a silver necklace from his pocket—his mother’s, he’d said—and clasped it around her neck. It rested there even now, under her high-collared black frock.
John had taken Ainsley’s hand and led her to Patrick and Rona, who were trying not to hover in the next room. Thus, Ainsley McBride had been engaged and, the next week, married.
“John Douglas must have been a hell of a man,” Cameron said softly.
Ainsley looked up at him, eyes blurred with tears. “He was.” John had accepted a pregnant young woman as his wife, agreed to treat another man’s child as his, and not say a word. “He knew he’d not likely have the chance to marry and be a father on his own, so Patrick’s favor was welcome. He told me.”
Cameron’s face was so still that Ainsley couldn’t read it. What was he thinking? Contempt at her weakness? At John’s? Understanding for what she’d done? He sat forward on the sofa, his hands clasped loosely in front of him, his dark gold eyes fixed on her.
“This is why you put me off that night, six years ago,” he said. “You didn’t want to betray him.”
Ainsley shook her head. “John didn’t deserve it. As much as I wanted to stay with you, he didn’t deserve the betrayal.”
“I admired you for that, you know. Until I learned that you were a picklock, and a thief.” He gave her a hint of smile.
“I admitted to stealing the necklace, for a misguided reason. I thought you a blackmailer.”
“So we were at cross-purposes.”
“It was difficult to push you away. Believe me, Cameron, when I tell you how difficult it was.”
Cameron’s voice hardened. “I hope he appreciated it. What I sacrificed that night.”
“He never knew, of course. He must have wondered, though, whether I ever betrayed him. I didn’t.”
“No, you were most devoted and grateful.”
“Don’t sound so patronizing. I was grateful. John took me on out of kindness.”
Cameron gave her a withering look. “Ainsley, trust me, it wasn’t only kindness.”
“He was especially kind when my daughter . . .” Tears rushed at her. So long ago, and still the loss cut her deeply.
“I’m sorry, Ainsley.” Cameron’s voice gentled. “I truly am sorry.”
“I named her Gavina.” She raised her head, but she couldn’t see him through her tears. “Do you know what it was like when I was grieving, and all those around me told me her death was for the best? They thought they were making me feel better—I’d never have to answer awkward questions about why my daughter had black curls while John and I were both so very fair . . .” Her voice broke.
Cameron was standing above her, lifting her, holding her close. Ainsley leaned into his broad chest and let the tears come.
Gavina had been so beautiful, so perfectly formed. Had fit in Ainsley’s arms with the knowledge that she belonged there. She’d lived one day, one wonderful day, and then she’d weakened and gone. Her small body now lay in the Scottish churchyard near Ainsley’s mother and father.
His hands were warm, comforting, Cameron so tall and strong. The man who could make Ainsley’s body sing in passion now knew how to hold and comfort her, to let her know that he understood her grief.
She could remain here for the rest of her life, in this room, in his arms, and be perfectly happy.
The door handle rattled, then came a knock, followed by the hollow voice of a footmen. “My lord? Her Majesty is ready for you now.”
“Damn and blast,” Cameron whispered.
Ainsley wanted to say the same. She peeled herself away from Cameron, wiping her eyes.
“Meet me here in the morning,” Cameron said rapidly. “At nine o’clock. Can you do that? Without a bloody argument?”
Where he’d want to continue prying into her life, demanding to know why she’d not simply fly off with him. But he deserved to know. Ainsley nodded.
Cameron leaned down, gave her one hard kiss, and headed for the door where the footman was still knocking. “Yes, yes, I’m coming.”
He opened the door, shielding Ainsley from the footman’s view, then closed it, and was gone, leaving Ainsley alone with her tears.
At five minutes before nine the next morning, Ainsley was back in the drawing room, alone. She was still alone at five minutes past, still alone at half past. The clock on the mantel ticked ponderously, heavy chimes marking the quarter hours.
Cameron didn’t come.
When the clock reached five minutes before the next hour, a maid entered. She approached Ainsley, curtseyed, held out a folded piece of paper, and said, “For you, ma’am.”
Without betraying any interest in the note, the clock, or Ainsley, the maid curtseyed again and glided out of the room.
Ainsley unfolded the thick paper to find a few words written in a bold hand.
Daniel never stays where I tell him to stay. I’m off to Glasgow to extract him from a scrape. You win, mouse. On the train from Doncaster, after the last St. Leger race. The conductor will know how to find me. À bientôt.
Ainsley folded the creamy paper, pressed her lips to it, and tucked it into her bosom.
When she ret
reated to her room that night, once the queen had dismissed her for the evening, Ainsley sat down and wrote a long letter. She posted it off to Lady Eleanor Ramsay in the morning, directing it to Eleanor’s father’s tumbledown house near Aberdeen. Ainsley enclosed enough money for a railway ticket from Aberdeen to Edinburgh and told Eleanor quite sternly that she was to use it.
Ainsley Douglas and Lady Eleanor Ramsay faced each other over a corner table in the tea shop at the main station in Edinburgh a few days later, the shop a bit empty this early. A train stood ready outside, its steam hissing, the black bulk of its engine like a mighty ship.
Ainsley had not seen Eleanor in a while, though the two wrote regularly. Their mothers had been close friends, both at one time waiting on the queen. The queen had wanted Eleanor, higher born than Ainsley, to enter her household as well, but Lord Ramsay had tearfully begged for his daughter to stay home, and Eleanor couldn’t refuse him. Eleanor’s father was by no means feeble, but Ainsley agreed that the man would be entirely lost without Eleanor. That fact might explain why Eleanor had entertained no more offers of marriage after she’d famously jilted Hart Mackenzie, Duke of Kilmorgan, years before.
Eleanor had never revealed the reason she’d broken her engagement with Hart, though Ainsley, knowing Hart Mackenzie even the little she did, had some inkling. Hart had been enraged at the jilting and had a little while later married an English marquis’s daughter. The wispy Sarah Graham had died trying to bringing Hart’s son into the world, the child dying as well. Hart never spoke of Sarah, nor had he ever made any indication he would pursue marriage again. Eleanor had remained quietly at home and that had been that.
“Thank you for making the journey, El,” Ainsley said warmly.
Eleanor heaped sugar into her tea, stirred, then put her spoon backward into her mouth and licked it clean.
“Not at all, my dearest Ainsley. A summons to Edinburgh to stuff myself with cakes is quite the most exciting thing that’s happened in a twelvemonth. The entire household walked me to the station—cook, maid, the gardener. Even dear father left his books to escort us, though he had to stop along the way and collect every botanical specimen he saw. They put me on the train and waved me off, all cheering like mad and fluttering handkerchiefs. I felt like a princess.”
Eleanor paused to sip her tea, and Ainsley laughed, feeling better already.
In the last ten years, Eleanor’s father, Earl Ramsay, whose finances had always been shaky, had slowly slipped into poverty. Lord Ramsay wrote books on science and philosophy, and Eleanor assisted him. But though the books were highly praised by scholars, they brought in no money.
None of this had changed Eleanor’s frank disposition or her sense of humor. Her hair was gold with a touch of red, elegant under her out-of-date hat, and her eyes were delphinium blue. She regarded Ainsley with keen intelligence while she piled cake on her plate with a long-fingered hand.
“Now, then,” Eleanor said. “Your letter said that you wanted my advice about one of the maddening Mackenzie males. But Ainsley, dearest, you neglected to tell me which Mackenzie. Never say it’s Daniel.” She spoke lightly, but her eyes tightened.
Ainsley felt sudden remorse. “Oh, Eleanor, I’m so sorry. I assumed you’d naturally conclude who I meant. I’d never be so callous as to ask you for advice about Hart.”
Eleanor let out her breath. “Well, that is a relief. I was preparing myself to be generous and tell you that I wished you every happiness, but truly, Ainsley, I think I’d rather have clawed your eyes out.”
“I am sorry, El,” Ainsley said. “I should have made myself clear. I didn’t realize you still cared for him.”
“You never forget the love of your life, Ainsley Douglas, no matter what he did to anger you, and no matter how much time has passed.” Eleanor took another sip of tea, making her voice light. “Especially not when he’s paraded through every newspaper and magazine you set eyes on. But we are not here to talk about me; you invited me all this way to talk about you. The remaining unmatched Mackenzie male is Cameron, so I conclude that it is he. Now, tell me everything.”
Ainsley did, leaning forward and relating the entire tale in a low voice. Eleanor listened while she ate seedcake, avidly interested. Ainsley ended with Cameron’s sudden visit to Balmoral, and her promise to give him her answer after the races at Doncaster.
She finished, and Eleanor sipped tea in thoughtful silence. Ainsley picked up her now-cold tea and drank, not noticing its chill.
Finally, Eleanor set down her cup and fixed Ainsley with a sharp look. “The fact that we are discussing Cameron’s proposition at all means that you didn’t simply slap him in high dudgeon and storm away. So, my dear, the question is, have you asked me here to persuade you into it or out of it?”
“I don’t know.” Ainsley pressed her hands to her face. “Eleanor, I can’t possibly go off with him, but oh, if I don’t . . . He’ll move on to the next woman in the wings, won’t he? I’m under no illusion that he wants to marry me. He said once that he even hated the sound of the word marriage . I understand, I suppose. I didn’t know his wife, but she sounds ghastly.”
“She was more than ghastly, my dear,” Eleanor said around her next sip of tea. “Lady Elizabeth used to beat him.”
Chapter 18
Ainsley’s mouth dropped open. “She beat him?”
“With a poker mostly.” Eleanor’s voice was quiet but held vast rage. “Cameron is a large and strong man, of course, so he’d stop her, but usually he’d take the brunt on himself because he was keeping her away from Daniel. Or, Elizabeth would wait until Cameron was drunk and asleep, and then she’d go at him. She slipped him laudanum once or twice, Hart told me. Cameron had to begin ensuring he didn’t fall asleep anywhere near her.”
Which explained why Phyllida Chase had said that Cameron never took a woman to his bed. He had her everywhere else, yes, but not in a bed. That must have been a habit he’d cultivated, to avoid the chance that the woman he fell asleep with would wake him with a poker across his back. The scars on his thighs suddenly took on new and horrible meaning.
Ainsley realized she was clenching the handle of her teacup too tightly for fragile porcelain. She set it down. “Dear heavens.”
Eleanor shook her head. “Elizabeth was a cruel and crazed woman, and she resented Cameron for trapping her in marriage. She was a few years older than Cameron, and according to Hart, Cam fell wildly in love with her. I imagine that Cameron being the son of one of the richest men in England, standing to inherit the title if anything happened to Hart, was too tempting for Elizabeth to resist. Her parents did nothing to warn Cameron about her, being happy to be rid of the girl. Elizabeth had thought she’d simply do what she pleased, you see, after she married, with whatever man she pleased, and she did at first. When Cameron insisted that Elizabeth be faithful to him, she grew uncontrollable. It was an unfortunate match from the beginning.”
Ainsley thought about the Cameron she knew—single- minded, stubborn, knowing what he wanted and letting nothing stand in his way. He could laugh, but there was always a bitter tinge to his laughter. Cameron had a reputation for taking up with women here, there, and everywhere, and he’d never fixed on one woman after his wife’s death.
Ainsley had assumed he played the rakehell from boredom, but Eleanor’s explanation told her a different tale. After a wife so awful to him, who’d destroyed whatever trust he had, Cameron would not have rushed eagerly back to the altar. This was Cameron’s view of women then: Grasping and selfish like Phyllida Chase, or cruel and tormenting like Lady Elizabeth Cavendish.
“Poor Cameron,” Ainsley said.
Eleanor smiled as she lifted her teacup. “Do be careful, Ainsley. They entice you, these Mackenzies, first with their wickedness and then with all that is heartbreaking.”
“Why did Cameron not divorce her?” Ainsley asked. “He surely had grounds. Or at least tuck her into a remote house somewhere, away from him and Daniel?”
“Precisely
because of Daniel.” Eleanor refilled their cups then dropped five lumps of sugar into her freshened tea. “Elizabeth became with child very soon after they married, which infuriated her. She never wanted to be a mother. She would fly into rages, threaten to harm herself or to try to rid herself of the baby. Cameron didn’t want to let her out of his sight—he was protecting Daniel from her even then. Elizabeth tried to tell Cameron—repeatedly—that Daniel wasn’t his son, claiming any number of men to be his father. The trouble was, you see, any one of them could have been. Elizabeth was most generous with her body.”
Ainsley remembered the look on Cameron’s face when he’d found the letter from his wife’s lover in the hidden drawer. The anger, the disgust, the old pain that hadn’t quite dispersed. He’d kissed Ainsley right after that with a desperation, a need to forget.
“I think I rather hate her,” Ainsley said.
“I’m not much fond of her myself,” Eleanor said decidedly. “Cameron has a big heart, and it didn’t deserve to be broken by someone like Elizabeth.” She looked thoughtful. “Though I’ve come to believe that her need to rush about with other men was a kind of illness. Father read a piece from a scientific journal to me that explained that some people become obsessed with coupling just as others have a mania for gambling or alcohol. They can’t stop themselves. They must lie with someone and experience that . . . ecstasy, let’s call it, or they go a little mad. Father and I decided that perhaps Elizabeth must have been one of those people.”
Ainsley blinked. “Good heavens, Eleanor, your father talked of this with you?”
“Of course. Dear Father has no idea that such things shouldn’t be mentioned in the presence of a young lady. He’s keen on all branches of science and has a wide-open mind, which means he’ll discuss the mating habits of frogs or human beings and not have an inkling that there’s a difference between them. Proprietarily, I mean. Frogs reproduce rather differently from human beings, of course.”
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