The Heiress Bride

by Catherine Coulter

  “No, but I suspect I’ll learn.”

  “You have yet to tell me how you got knifed in the thigh.”

  Colin didn’t meet Douglas’s eyes. “It was a little bully who wanted to rob me. I knocked the man down and he pulled a knife from his boot. My thigh was as high as he could reach.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No, but I probably should have, the damned blighter. He wouldn’t have gotten much from me had he succeeded in picking my pocket. I had no more than two guineas with me at the most.”

  “I got a letter just a while ago, accusing you of murdering your wife.”

  Colin became very still. It was as if, Douglas thought, he had pulled inside himself, away from pain or perhaps guilt? He didn’t know. Colin looked beyond Douglas’s left shoulder toward the fireplace.

  “It wasn’t signed. The person who wrote it sent a boy around with it. I don’t like letters like this. They’re poisonous and they leave one feeling foul.”

  Colin said nothing.

  “No one knew you’d already been married.”

  “No. I didn’t think it was anyone’s affair.”

  “When did she die?”

  “Shortly before my brother died, some six and a half months ago.”

  “How?”

  Colin felt his guts twist and knot. “She fell off a cliff and broke her neck.”

  “Did you push her?”

  Colin was silent, a hard silence both deep and angry.

  “Were you arguing with her? Did she fall accidentally?”

  “I didn’t murder my wife. I won’t murder your sister. I gather the writer of the letter warned you about that.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Will you tell Joan?”

  Douglas blinked. He still couldn’t accustom himself to Colin’s calling Sinjun Joan. “I must. It would be preferable, naturally, if you told her, perhaps gave her explanations that you’ve not given to me.”

  Colin said nothing. He was stiff, wary.

  Douglas rose. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She is my sister and I love her dearly. I must protect her. It is only fair that she know about this. I do feel, however, that before the two of you marry, this must be resolved. That is something I must demand.”

  Colin remained silent. He didn’t look up until Douglas had quietly closed the door behind him. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He rubbed his thigh; the stitches itched and the flesh was pink. He was healing nicely.

  But was he healing quickly enough?

  Who, for God’s sake? Who could have done this? The MacPhersons were the only ones who came to mind, and it was a powerful motive they had, if they were indeed responsible. His first wife, Fiona Dahling MacPherson, had been the laird’s eldest daughter. But old Latham had supposedly absolved him, at least he had at the time of Fiona’s death. Of course her brother hadn’t, but the laird had kept Robert in line. During the past several months Colin had heard that the laird wasn’t right in the head, that his health was failing rapidly, which was only to be expected, since the man was as old as the Gaelic rocks at Limner. Ah, yes, the letter had to be from the MacPhersons, the wretched cowards, there was no one else.

  The damned letter paled into insignificance. He had to marry Joan, and quickly, or all would be lost. He closed his eyes.

  He forced himself to rest. Several hours later Colin rose from the chair and walked the length of the bedchamber, two times, then three. He was gaining strength, thank God. He just prayed it was quickly enough.

  It was during dinner that evening, Joan eating her own dinner beside him, that he made up his mind. He looked up from the fork bite of ham to realize that she was speaking.

  “ . . . Please don’t misunderstand me, the wedding gown is lovely, truly, but it’s all such a fuss, Colin. My mother would probably display you like some sort of trophy, she’s so pleased that I’m finally to be yanked off the Spinster Shelf. Oh, I do hate the trappings of it all. How I should simply like to whisk you away from here so we can begin our lives together. All this other nonsense is just that, nonsense.”

  His jaw dropped. Relief flooded him. Manna from heaven, all of it flowing from her mouth. He’d floundered and thought and thought some more, rejecting one idea after another, and here she was, giving herself to him, without reservation.

  “I’m not yet very strong,” he said, concentrating on chewing the ham.

  “You will be strong enough by Friday. Perhaps even sooner. Ah, if only you could be well right this minute.”

  Colin drew a deep breath. “I must tell you something, Joan. No, please, listen to me. It’s very important. Your brother will forbid the marriage. He has told me he will, that he must, to protect you.”

  Sinjun just looked at him, the peas on her fork, hovering above her plate. She waited, slowly ate the peas, then drank some of her wine. She continued to wait, saying nothing.

  “Oh, the hell with it! Your brother believes that I killed someone. He will tell you about it if I don’t. He must protect you, as I said. He wants everything resolved before we marry. Unfortunately, there is no way to resolve any of it, ever. I didn’t tell him that, but it’s true. We won’t marry, Joan, I’m sorry. Your brother won’t allow it and I must go along with his wishes.”

  “Who did you supposedly kill?”

  “My first wife.”

  Without hesitation, Sinjun said, “How utterly absurd. Not that you are so young and already once wed, but that you would hurt her or anyone for that matter, and certainly not your wife. Nonsense. How did he hear such a ridiculous thing?”

  “An anonymous letter.”

  “There, you see. Someone is jealous of you; that, or someone simply has taken you into dislike because you are so handsome and have cut such a dash in London. I will speak to Douglas and set him straight on this.”

  “No.”

  She heard the determination in that one word. She said nothing. She waited. Patience was difficult, but for once she managed it.

  She was rewarded after an interminable wait when he said slowly, looking right into her eyes, “If you want to marry me, we will have to leave, tonight. We will go to Scotland and marry over the anvil, but not in Gretna Green, for that would be the first place your brother would go. It will be done, and your brother will not be able to do a thing about it. We will stop at the Kinross house in Edinburgh and have a proper wedding.” There, he’d done it. Dishonor filled him. But what else could he do? There was no damned choice, and she had offered herself to him on the proverbial platter.

  Sinjun was silent for a very long time. When she spoke finally, he nearly fell back against the pillow with relief. “I wasn’t weighing your suggestion, Colin, I was planning. We can do it. My only concern is that you aren’t at your full strength just yet, but no matter. I will take care of everything. We will leave at midnight.” She rose and shook out her skirts. She looked every bit as determined as her brother had. “This will hurt my brother, but it is my life and I must choose to do what I believe is best for me. Oh goodness, there is much to be done! Don’t worry. You must rest and regain your strength.” She leaned down and kissed him. He had no chance to respond, for she was already striding toward the door, her steps so long that the material of her gown pulled across her buttocks and thighs. She turned, her hand on the doorknob. “Douglas isn’t stupid. He will know immediately what we’ve done. I will plan an alternate route. We must throw him off. It’s a good thing that I’m tightfisted. I have a good two hundred pounds of my own. After we’re wed, Douglas will have no choice but to give you my dowry, and you won’t have to worry about losing everything anymore. He must do it quickly—we will make him understand that—I know that you must have the money very soon. I’m truly sorry about that letter, Colin. Some people are the very devil.” With that, she was gone. He could swear he heard her whistling.

  It was all right. He’d won; against all odds, he’d won, and he was doing only what she wanted, after all. She’d been the one to push it, not he. Ah, but
the guilt was there, deep and roiling inside him. Even having known Joan only a short time, Colin had no doubt that she would have them off exactly at the time she’d determined, in a very comfortable carriage that her brother would have a devil of a time tracing. He wouldn’t be surprised if she even had matching grays pulling the carriage. He closed his eyes, then opened them. He had to eat everything on his plate. He had to become strong again, and very soon.

  My brothers will kill me, she thought as the closed carriage bowled through the dark night toward the Reading road. Colin was sleeping beside her, exhausted. She leaned over and lightly kissed his cheek. He didn’t stir. She tucked the blankets more closely around him. He was quiet, his breathing deep and even. Excellent, no nightmares. It still surprised her that the illness had so weakened him. But it didn’t matter now. He would be well again, very soon, particularly since she would be the one to see to him.

  She loved him so much she hurt with it. No one would ever come between them. No one would ever harm him again. It is my life, she thought, not Douglas’s or Ryder’s or anyone else’s. Yes, it’s my life, and I love him and trust him and he is already my husband, my mate in my heart.

  She thought of her mother and how she’d managed to grind poor Finkle under just that afternoon, and sailed into Colin’s bedchamber like the Queen’s flagship. Colin had grinned as he’d told Sinjun that her mother had stood there, eyeing him for the longest time, and then she’d said, “Well, young man, I understand you want to marry my daughter for her dowry.”

  Colin smiled at Joan’s mother and said, “Your daughter resembles you greatly. She’s lucky, as am I. I must marry for money, ma’am, I have no choice in the matter. However, your daughter is beyond anything I could have expected. I will take good care of her.”

  “You speak with a honeyed tongue, sir, and it is entirely acceptable to me that you continue doing so. Now, pay attention to me. Joan is a hoyden. You will have to find some way to control her pranks, for she is quite good at them; indeed, she is known far and wide for them. Her brothers have always applauded her escapades, for they are imbeciles when it comes to proper feminine propriety. It is thus your responsibility now. She also reads. Yes, I am being truthful to you, I feel I must. She reads”—the dowager drew a deep, steadying breath—“even treatises and tomes that should rightfully be covered with dust. I am not responsible for this failing. It is again her brothers who haven’t shown her the correct way to comport herself.”

  “She truly reads, my lady? Tomes and such?”

  “That is correct. She has never bothered even to hide her books beneath her chair when a gentleman visits. It is provoking and I try to scold her, but she only laughs. What could I do? There, I have told you the truth. Joan may suffer for it if you decide her character is too malformed for you to wed her.”

  “It will be my problem, my lady, as you said. I will ensure that she reads only those things I deem appropriate for a young wife.”

  The dowager countess beamed at him. “This is excellent. I am further pleased that you don’t speak like a Scottish heathen.”

  “No, ma’am. I was educated in England. My father believed that all Scottish nobility should speak the King’s English.”

  “Ah, your father was a wise man. You’re an earl, I understand. A seventh earl, which means that your title goes back a goodly way. I don’t approve of newcomers to the peerage. They’re upstarts and believe themselves to be equal to the rest of us, which, of course, they’re not.”

  He nodded, his serious expression never faltering. The interrogation had continued until Sinjun had flown into the room, gasped, then said firmly, “Is he not handsome and terribly clever, Mother?”

  “I suspect he’ll do, Joan,” the dowager countess said as she turned to face her daughter. “He has come to rescue you from a spinster’s fate, thank the good Lord. Were he ugly or deformed or obnoxious of character, I should have to refuse him—though it would be a close thing, since you grow older by the day, and thus fewer gentlemen want you for their wife—but our consequence would demand it. Yes, this is a good thing. He is handsome, although too dark. He resembles Douglas. Odd that neither you nor Alexandra seems to mind. Now, Joan, you will not allow him or yourself to fall into slovenly Scottish ways once you return to that place. I am glad you brought him here to the house. I shall visit him every day and teach him about the Sherbrookes and his duty to you and to our family.”

  “I should be charmed, ma’am,” Colin said.

  That had gone off splendidly, Sinjun thought, calming her breath. She’d been scared to death when Finkle had told her that her mother had descended upon Colin. She saw that Colin was grinning at his own cleverness, and she leaned down and kissed him. “You did well with her. Thank you.”

  “I outlasted her, that’s all. And I heaped her coffers with Spanish coin. She likes Spanish coin.”

  “It’s true. Neither Douglas nor Ryder is much in the habit of flattering her. She misses it. You did well, Colin.”

  She wanted to kiss him now, but she feared to awaken him. There would be time, all the time in the world. By the time they reached Scotland, by way of the Lake District, she would not be a virgin any longer, she was planning on that. A girl couldn’t elope with a gentleman and emerge unscathed. She would ensure that she was very well scathed indeed. Their marriage, once in Scotland, would be a mere formality.

  Sinjun slipped her hand beneath the blanket and closed her fingers around his hand, a strong hand, lean and powerful. She thought of his wife, a woman now dead. She’d asked him nothing more about it, and she wouldn’t. If he wished to tell her more about his first wife and how she had died, he would. Sinjun wondered what her name was.

  She also wondered if she would ever tell him that her brother had spoken to her of the letter long before she’d gone to his room. She’d even read it, twice. She’d argued only briefly with Douglas, knowing well he was worried about her, and knowing as well that she must argue with him, else he would be suspicious. Oh yes, she’d agreed with him, yielding to his demand that the marriage be postponed until the charge of murder could be resolved. All the while she was determined to elope with Colin that very night. Perhaps Colin would find out that it had been she who had maneuvered him into making his elopement suggestion, perhaps sometime in the misty future.

  It was a pity that she must hold her tongue when it itched to be nothing more than truthful, but she knew men abhorred the notion that they could be manipulated. The thought of a woman managing them sent them into a rage. She would spare his male pride, at least until he was completely well again. And perhaps until he came to care for her. For a moment, the thought of telling him the truth made the misty future look on the dark and gloomy side.

  CHAPTER

  5

  “WE ARE ONLY going as far as Chipping Norton, to the White Hart,” Sinjun told Colin when he stirred. “We will be there in another hour. How do you feel?”

  “Bloody tired, dammit.”

  She patted his arm. “You didn’t say that with much heat, Colin, which means you’re probably a good deal more than tired; you’re exhausted, what with all our hurrying and sneaking about. But you’ll get your strength back more and more each day. Don’t worry. We won’t be to Scotland for another six days as best as I can figure it. You will have plenty of time to mend.”

  Because it was dark inside the carriage Sinjun couldn’t see the irritation in his eyes, and it was there, for he felt helpless, unmanned, like a small child in the care of a nanny, only this nanny was just nineteen years old. He grunted.

  “Why in God’s name did you pick the White Hart?”

  She giggled. An unexpected sound from a nanny, Colin thought with surprise. “It was because of the stories I heard Ryder and Douglas telling Tysen, and he was appalled, naturally, since he was studying to be a man of the cloth. Of course Ryder and Douglas were laughing their heads off.”

  “And none of them had any idea that you—the infant daughter of the house—were eaves
dropping.”

  “Oh no,” she said, waving her hand airily as she smiled. “No idea at all. I got quite good at it by the time I was seven years old. I have this feeling you know all about the White Hart and how the young gentlemen at Oxford spent many evenings there with their light-o’-loves.”

  Colin was silent.

  “Are you remembering your own assignations?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. The wife of one of my dons used to meet me there. Her name was Matilda, and she was so blond her hair was nearly white. Then there was the barmaid at the Flaming Dolphin in Oxford. She was a wild one, insatiable I remember, loved the feather ticks at the White Hart. Then there was Cerisse—a made-up name, but who cared? Ah, all that red hair.”

  “Perhaps we shall have the same bedchamber or bedchambers. Perhaps we should simply hire the entire inn, to cover all the possibilities, so to speak. A symbolic gesture of your sown wild oats.”

  “You’re a very inappropriate virgin, Joan.”

  She looked at him closely. The moon had finally come from behind thick dark clouds, and she could at last see his face. He was pale, she could see that, and looked dreadfully pulled. The fever must have been more devastating than she’d thought to have left him so very weak. “You don’t have to worry about merely sleeping next to me tonight, Colin. You can even snore if it pleases you to do so. I don’t mind being a virgin until you have all your strength back.”

  “Good, because that’s what you’re going to remain.” He felt the rawness in his thigh and wondered why he yet cared that she shouldn’t know about it. It didn’t really matter, not now.

  “Unless, of course,” she said, leaning closer to him, her voice dropping to what she hoped was a seductive whisper, and wasn’t at all, “you would like to tell me how to go about accomplishing what it is that should be done. My brothers always accused me of being a dreadfully fast learner. Would you like that?”

  He wanted to laugh, but ended by groaning.

  Sinjun was forced to assume that was a no, and sighed.