Almost Heaven

by Judith McNaught

  Though she had no intention of using it, Elizabeth listened attentively as he continued in that same helpful voice. “First of all, you’ll have to be very fast and very calm if you intend to shoot me and reload before Jake there gets to you. Second, I think it’s only fair to warn you that there’s going to be a great deal of blood all over the place. I’m not complaining, you understand, but I think it’s only right to warn you that you’re never again going to be able to wear that charming gown you have on.” Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch. “You’ll hang, of course,” he continued conversationally, “but that won’t be nearly as distressing as the scandal you’ll have to face first.”

  Too disgusted with herself and with him to react to that last mocking remark, Elizabeth put her chin up and managed to say with great dignity, “I’ve had enough of this, Mr. Thornton. I did not think anything could equal your swinish behavior at our prior meetings, but you’ve managed to do it. Unfortunately, I am not so ill-bred as you and therefore have scruples against assaulting someone who is weaker than I, which is what I would be doing if I were to shoot an unarmed man. Lucinda, we are leaving,” she said, then she glanced back at her silent adversary, who’d taken a threatening step, and she shook her head, saying with extreme, mocking civility, “No, please—do not bother to see us out, sir, there’s no need. Besides, I wish to remember you just as you are at this moment—helpless and thwarted.” It was odd, but now, at the low point of her life, Elizabeth felt almost exhilarated because she was finally doing something to avenge her pride instead of meekly accepting her fate.

  Lucinda had marched out onto the porch already, and Elizabeth tried to think of something to dissuade him from retrieving his gun when she threw it away outside. She decided to repeat his own advice, which she began to do as she backed away toward the door. “I know you’re loath to see us leave like this,” she said, her voice and her hand betraying a slight, fearful tremor. “However, before you consider coming after us, I beg you will take your own excellent advice and pause to consider if killing me is worth hanging for.”

  Whirling on her heel, Elizabeth took one running step, then cried out in pained surprise as she was jerked off her feet and a hard blow to her forearm sent the gun flying to the floor at the same time her arm was yanked up and twisted behind her back. “Yes,” he said in an awful voice near her ear, “I actually think it would be worth it.”

  Just when she thought her arm would surely snap, her captor gave her a hard shove that sent her stumbling headlong out into the yard, and the door slammed shut behind her.

  “Well! I never,” Lucinda said, her bosom heaving with rage as she glowered at the closed door.

  “Neither have I,” said Elizabeth, shaking dirt off her hem and deciding to retreat with as much dignity as possible. “We can talk about what a madman he is once we’re down the path, out of sight of the house. So if you’ll please take that end of the trunk?”

  With a black look Lucinda complied, and they marched down the path, both of them concentrating on keeping their backs as straight as possible.

  In the house Jake shoved his hands deep in his pockets as he stood at the window watching the women, his expression a mixture of stupefaction and ire. “Gawdamighty,” he breathed, glancing at Ian, who was scowling at the unopened note in his hand. “The women are chasin’ you clear into Scotland! That’ll stop soon as the news is out that yer betrothed.” Reaching up, he idly scratched his bushy red hair and turned back to the window, peering down the path. The women had vanished from view, and he left the window. Unable to hide a tinge of admiration, he added, “Tell you one thing, that blond gel had spunk, you have to give her that. Cool as can be, she stood there tauntin’ you with your own words and callin’ you a swine. I don’t know a man what would dare to do that!”

  “She’d dare anything,” Ian said, remembering the young temptress he’d known. When most girls her age were blushing and simpering, Elizabeth Cameron had asked him to dance at their first meeting. That same night she’d defied a group of men in the card room; the next day she’d risked her reputation to meet him in a cottage in the woods—and all that merely to indulge in what she’d described in the greenhouse as a “little weekend dalliance.” Since then she must have been indulging in more of those—and indiscriminately—or else her uncle wouldn’t be sending out letters offering to marry her off to virtual strangers. That was the only possible explanation for her uncle’s action, an action that struck Ian as unprecedented in its flagrant lack of tact and taste. The only other possible explanation would be a desperate need of a moneyed husband, and Ian discounted that. Elizabeth had been gorgeously and expensively dressed when they met; moreover, the gathering at the country house had been composed almost exclusively of the social elite. And what few snatches of gossip he’d heard of her shortly after that fateful weekend had indicated that she moved among the highest circles of the ton. as befitted her rank.

  “I wonder where they’ll go,” Jake continued, frowning a little. “There’s wolves out there, and all sorts of beasts.”

  “No self-respecting wolf would dare to confront that duenna of hers, not with that umbrella she wields,” Ian snapped, but he felt a little uneasy.

  “Oho!” said Jake with a hearty laugh “So that’s what she was? I thought they’d come to court you together. Personally, I’d be afraid to close my eyes with that gray-haired hag in bed next to me.”

  Ian was not listening. Idly he unfolded the note, knowing that Elizabeth Cameron probably wasn’t foolish enough to have written it in her own girlish, illegible scrawl. His first thought as he scanned the neat, scratchy script was that she’d gotten someone else to write it for her . . . but then he recognized the words, which were strangely familiar, because he’d spoken them himself:

  Your suggestion has merit. I’m leaving for Scotland on the first of next month and cannot delay the trip again. Would prefer the meeting take place there, in any case. A map is enclosed for direction to the cottage. Cordially—Ian.

  * * *

  “God help that silly bastard if he ever crosses my path!” Ian said savagely.

  “Who d’you mean?”

  “Peters!”

  “Peters?” Jake said, gaping. “Your secretary? The one you sacked for mixin’ up all your letters?”

  “I should have strangled him! This is the note I meant for Dickinson Verley. He sent it to Cameron instead.”

  In furious disgust Ian raked his hand through his hair. As much as he wanted Elizabeth Cameron out of his sight and out of his life, he could not cause two women to spend the night in their carriage or whatever vehicle they’d brought, when it was his fault they’d come here. He nodded curtly to Jake. “Go and get them.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because,” Ian said bitterly, walking over to the cabinet and putting away the gun, “it’s starting to rain, for one thing. For another, if you don’t bring them back, you’ll be doing the cooking.”

  “If I have to go after that woman, I want a stout glass of something fortifying first. They’re carrying a trunk, so they won’t get much ahead of me.”

  “On foot?” Ian asked in surprise.

  “How did you think they got up here?”

  “I was too angry to think.”

  * * *

  At the end of the lane Elizabeth put down her side of the trunk and sank down wearily beside Lucinda upon its hard top, emotionally exhausted. A wayward chuckle bubbled up inside her, brought on by exhaustion, fright, defeat, and the last remnants of triumph over having gotten just a little of her own back from the man who’d ruined her life. The only possible explanation for Ian Thornton’s behavior today was that he was a complete madman.

  With a shake of her head Elizabeth made herself stop thinking of him. At the moment she had so many new worries she hardly knew how to begin to cope. She glanced sideways at her stalwart duenna, and an amused smile touched her lips as she recalled Lucinda’s actions at the cottage. On the one hand, Lucinda rejected all emo
tional displays as totally unseemly—yet at the same time she herself was possessed of the most formidable temper Elizabeth had ever witnessed. It was as if Lucinda did not regard her own outbursts of ire as emotional. Without the slightest hesitation or regret Lucinda could verbally flay a wrongdoer into small, bite-sized pieces and then mentally stamp him into the ground and grind him beneath the heel of her sturdy shoe.

  On the other hand, were Elizabeth to exhibit the smallest bit of fear right now over their daunting predicament, Lucinda would instantly stiffen up with disapproval and deliver one of her sharp reprimands.

  Cognizant of that, Elizabeth glanced worriedly at the sky, where black clouds were rolling in, heralding a storm; but when she spoke she sounded deliberately and absurdly bland. “I believe it’s starting to rain, Lucinda,” she remarked while cold drizzle began to slap the leaves of the tree over their heads.

  “So it would seem,” said Lucinda. She opened her umbrella with a smart snap, holding it over them both.

  “It’s fortunate you have your umbrella.”

  “I always have my umbrella.”

  “We aren’t likely to drown from a little rain.”

  “I shouldn’t think so.”

  Elizabeth drew a steadying breath, looking around at the harsh Scottish cliffs. In the tone of one asking someone’s opinion on a rhetorical question, Elizabeth said, “Do you suppose there are wolves out here?”

  “I believe,” Lucinda replied, “they probably constitute a larger threat to our health at present than the rain.”

  The sun was setting, and the early spring air had a sharp bite in it; Elizabeth was almost positive they’d be freezing by nightfall. “It’s a bit chilly.”

  “Rather.”

  “We have warmer clothes in the trunks, though.”

  “I daresay we won’t be too uncomfortable, in that case.”

  Elizabeth’s wayward sense of humor chose that unlikely moment to assert itself. “No, we shall be snug as can be while the wolves gather around us.”

  “Quite.”

  Hysteria, hunger, and exhaustion—combined with Lucinda’s unswerving calm and her earlier unprecedented entry into the cottage with umbrella flailing—were making Elizabeth almost giddy. “Of course, if the wolves realize how hungry we are, there’s every chance they’ll give us a wide berth.”

  “A cheering possibility.”

  “We’ll build a fire,” Elizabeth said, her lips twitching. “That will keep them at bay, I believe.” When Lucinda remained silent for several moments, occupied with her own thoughts, Elizabeth confided with an odd surge of happiness, “Do you know something, Lucinda? I don’t think I would have missed today for anything.”

  Lucinda’s thin gray brows shot up, and she cast a dubious sideways glance at Elizabeth.

  “I realize that must sound extremely peculiar, but can you imagine how absolutely exhilarating it was to have that man at the point of a gun for just a few minutes? Do you find that—odd?” Elizabeth asked when Lucinda stared straight ahead in angry, thoughtful silence.

  “What I find odd,” she said in a tone of frosty disapproval mingled with surprise, “is that you evoke such animosity in that man.”

  “I think he’s quite demented.”

  “I would have said embittered.”

  “About what?”

  “That is an interesting question.”

  Elizabeth sighed. When Lucinda decided to work out a problem that puzzled her she would not leave it alone. She could not countenance behavior of any sort that she didn’t understand. Rather than wonder about Ian Thornton’s motivations, Elizabeth decided to concentrate on what they ought to do in the next few hours. Her uncle had adamantly refused to waste a coach and coachman in idleness while she spent the requisite time here. At his instructions they’d sent Aaron back to England as soon as they reached the Scottish border, where they’d then hired a coach at the Wakeley Inn. In a sennight Aaron would come here to fetch, them. They could, of course, return to the Wakeley Inn and wait for Aaron’s return, but Elizabeth didn’t have enough money to pay for a room for Lucinda and herself.

  She might be able to hire a coach at the inn and pay for it when she reached Havenhurst, but the cost might be more than she could manage, even if she did her most brilliant bargaining.

  And worse than all of that was the problem of her Uncle Julius. He was bound to be furious if she returned in two weeks’ less time than she was to have been gone—providing she could manage to return. And once she arrived home, what would he say?

  At the moment, however, she had an even larger problem: what to do now, when two defenseless women were completely lost in the wilds of Scotland, at night, in the rain and cold.

  Shuffling footsteps sounded on the gravel path, and both women straightened, both suppressing the hope soaring in their breasts and keeping their faces carefully expressionless.

  “Well, well, well,” Jake boomed. “Glad I caught up with you and—” He lost his thought as he beheld the utterly comic sight of two stiff-backed women seated on a trunk together, prim and proper as you please, beneath a black umbrella in the middle of nowhere. “Uh—where are your horses?”

  “We have no horses,” Lucinda informed him in a disdainful voice that implied such beasts would have been an intrusion on their tête-à-tête.

  “No? How did you get here?”

  “A wheeled conveyance carried us to this godforsaken place.”

  “I see.” He lapsed into daunted silence, and Elizabeth started to say something at least slightly pleasant when Lucinda lost patience.

  “You have, I collect, come to urge us to return?”

  “Ah—yes. Yes, I have.”

  “Then do so. We haven’t all night.” Lucinda’s words struck Elizabeth as a bald lie.

  When Jake seemed at a loss as to how to go about it, Lucinda stood up and assisted him. “I gather Mr. Thornton is extremely regretful for his unforgivable and inexcusable behavior?”

  “Well, yes, I guess that’s the way it is. In a way.”

  “No doubt he intends to tell us that when we return?”

  Jake hesitated, weighing his certainty that Ian had no intention of saying anything of the kind against the certainty that if the women didn’t return, he’d be eating his own cooking and sleeping with a bad conscience and a bad stomach. “Why don’t we let him make his own apologies?” he prevaricated.

  Lucinda turned up the path toward the house and nodded grandly. “Bring the trunks. Come, Elizabeth.”

  By the time they reached the house Elizabeth was torn between relishing an apology and turning to flee. A fire had been lit in the fireplace, and she was vastly relieved to see that their unwilling host was absent from the room.

  He reappeared within moments, however, minus his jacket, carrying an armload of firewood, which he dumped beside the hearth.

  Straightening, he turned to Elizabeth, who was watching him with a carefully blank expression on her face. “It appears a mistake has been made,” he said shortly.

  “Does that mean you’ve remembered sending the message?”

  “It was sent to you in error. Another man was being invited up here to join us. Unfortunately, his message went to your uncle.”

  Until that moment Elizabeth wouldn’t have believed she could feel more humiliated than she already did. Robbed of even the defense of righteous indignation, she faced the fact that she was the unwanted guest of someone who’d made a fool of her not once but twice.

  “How did you get here? I didn’t hear any horses, and a carriage sure as hell can’t make the climb.”

  “A wheeled conveyance brought us most of the way,” she prevaricated, seizing on Lucinda’s earlier explanation, “and it’s gone on now.” She saw his eyes narrow with angry disgust as he realized he was stuck with them unless he wanted to spend several days escorting them back to the inn. Terrified that the tears burning the backs of her eyes were going to fall, Elizabeth tipped her head back and turned it, pretending to be inspec
ting the ceiling, the staircase, the walls, anything. Through the haze of tears she noticed for the first time that the place looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a year.

  Beside her Lucinda glanced around through narrowed eyes and arrived at the same conclusion.

  Jake, anticipating that the old woman was about to make some disparaging comment about Ian’s house, leapt into the breach with forced joviality.

  “Well, now,” he burst out, rubbing his hands together and striding forward to the fire. “Now that’s all settled, shall we all be properly introduced? Then we’ll see about supper.” He looked expectantly at Ian, waiting for him to handle the introductions, but instead of doing the thing properly he merely nodded curtly to the beautiful blond girl and said, “Elizabeth Cameron—Jake Wiley.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Wiley,” Elizabeth said.

  “Call me Jake,” he said cheerfully, then he turned expectantly to the scowling duenna. “And you are?”

  Fearing that Lucinda was about to rip up at Ian for his cavalier handling of the introductions, Elizabeth hastily said, “This is my companion, Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones.”

  “Good heavens! Two names. Well, no need to stand on formality, since we’re going to be cooped up together for at least a few days! Just call me Jake. What shall I call you?”

  “You may call me Miss Throckmorton-Jones,” she informed him, looking down the length of her beaklike nose.

  “Er—very well,” he replied, casting an anxious look of appeal to Ian, who seemed to be momentarily enjoying Jake’s futile efforts to create an atmosphere of conviviality. Disconcerted, Jake ran his hands through his disheveled hair and arranged a forced smile on his face. Nervously, he gestured about the untidy room. “Well, now, if we’d known we were going to have such . . . ah . . . gra . . . that is, illustrious company, we’d have—”

  “Swept off the chairs?” Lucinda suggested acidly. “Shoveled off the floor?”

  “Lucinda!” Elizabeth whispered desperately. “They didn’t know we were coming.”

  “No respectable person would dwell in such a place even for a night,” she snapped, and Elizabeth watched in mingled distress and admiration as the redoubtable woman turned around and directed her attack on their unwilling host. “The responsibility for our being here is yours, whether it was a mistake or not! I shall expect you to rout your servants from their hiding places and have them bring clean linens up to us at once. I shall also expect them to have this squalor remedied by morning! It is obvious from your behavior that you are no gentleman; however, we are ladies, and we shall expect to be treated as such.”