The Many Sins of Lord Cameron

by Jennifer Ashley

  “I grabbed for Danny, and while I was wrestling my own son away from her, she jabbed me with the damn cigar. She said she’d leave Daniel alone if I allowed her make a pattern on my arm, so I let her. She enjoyed it. Then I carried Daniel back to his nursery and stayed with him, in case she decided to come up there and try something more awful. Elizabeth hated Daniel, because she knew he was mine. I started making arrangements that very day to send her away, but before I had the chance . . .” He made an empty gesture as he wound down.

  Ainsley pressed her arms to her chest, trying to stem her shivers. “Cam, I am so sorry.”

  “It hurts, Ainsley. I loathed her, and still it hurts.” He dragged his sleeve back down and flipped the ruined cuff closed. “That’s why I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Ainsley picked up the button he’d ripped off and rummaged silently through the dressing table for a needle and thread. Miraculously, he held still while she put the button back into place and started sewing, though she had difficulty seeing the needle through her tears. The cuff closed, hiding the round scars again.

  “Cam,” she said softly. A tear fell to his wrist.

  Cameron’s broad fingers tilted her face up. There was fire in his eyes, and anger, and pain. “Let me be, Ainsley. Don’t try to remake me in one night. I told you, I’m a wreck of a man.”

  A man I’m in love with. Ainsley kissed his palm.

  Cameron stared down at her a moment, thumb stroking the curls at the nape of her neck. Then he cupped her head in his hand and swiftly kissed her.

  The kiss held passion, hunger, need. He dragged her up to him, the kiss turning deep. They’d not be going out that night.

  Cameron didn’t speak of the matter again, but Ainsley refused to forget it. Cameron had said he didn’t like rows, and Ainsley didn’t either, but she also didn’t wish to pretend away the problem.

  Meanwhile, during the whirl of life in Paris, Daniel was packed off to Cambridge to begin the Michaelmas term. Daniel wasn’t happy about leaving, but he kissed Ainsley good-bye, shook his father’s hand, and grudgingly boarded the train.

  Ainsley’s heart ached to see him go, and she noticed that Cameron was more gruff and scowling as well. He missed his son, the son he’d endured torture to protect.

  But a mere two weeks later, Daniel was back.

  Chapter 22

  Daniel walked in out of the rain, soaked and without the valise with which he’d left. Or the servant either. He’d left both, he said, in Cambridge.

  Cameron was suffused with fury, his Highland Scots coming through with his rage. “Damnation, lad, can ye nae stay put?”

  “At a bloody boring English university?” Daniel plopped himself on a sofa, his wet coat smearing one of the cushions Ainsley had finished embroidering. “While you’re here in Paris with Ainsley? Not likely. I don’t need to go to university, Dad, especially not with the same blokes I knew at Harrow telling me what they’ll do when they start running the country. God save us. I’m going to help train the ponies with you, anyway.”

  Cameron swung to the window and glared out of it, breathing hard. Controlling himself, Ainsley realized. He didn’t want to burst out at his son.

  Ainsley sat down next to Daniel and rescued her cushion. “Danny, the acquaintances you cultivate at university might be the very men who send you horses to train later.”

  Daniel rolled his eyes. “I don’t want to cultivate acquaintances, I want to learn something. The professors at Corpus Christi are wheezy and talk a lot of philosophy and rot. It’s ridiculous. I want to learn good Scottish engineering.”

  “Perhaps, but I imagine your father paid rather a lot of money to send you to Cambridge.”

  Daniel looked marginally ashamed. “I’ll pay it back.”

  Cameron turned to him, still tightly controlled. “That’s not th’ point, son. The point is I send ye off, and ye run away, again and again.”

  “I don’t want to be sent off! I want to stay with you. What’s wrong w’ that?”

  “Because my life here is not one a boy should live, damn you.” Cameron stopped short of shouting. “My friends are hard, and I don’t want you anywhere near them.”

  “I know,” Daniel said. “I’ve met them. So why do ye want Ainsley around them?”

  “I don’t.”

  Observing Cameron’s anger, Ainsley realized he truly didn’t. Cameron’s Paris acquaintance were people who lived the idle life as hard as they could—staying out all night, sleeping all day, and spending money without noticing.

  Ainsley had found it exciting at first, but she soon realized that there was no stillness in this life, no contemplation, no absorbing beauty for the sake of it, and no love. What Cameron’s friends called love was infatuation and obsession, which began with ferocity and ended in rows and drama, sometimes violence.

  These were hot-blooded people, and Cameron was as hot-blooded as they were. He thought nothing of kissing Ainsley in public or holding her to his side, and his friends looked on with amusement rather than shock. Every night was another play or opera, or a party that lasted well into morning. Each night Ainsley wore a new gown, and Cameron draped her with more and more costly jewels.

  But there was no quiet happiness among these people. No reaching for a friend and finding one, warm and comforting, at the end of your hand.

  “We should leave then,” Ainsley said.

  “Why?” Cameron demanded. “Are ye tired of it already?”

  “No, but you are.”

  Cameron scowled at Ainsley’s all-knowing gray eyes. Did she have to understand everything about him? “Who the hell told you that?”

  “No one had to tell me,” Ainsley said. “You’re not comfortable with this life, and you know it. When you’re out riding horses or even watching them, as we did at the horse fair the other day, you’re far more sweet-tempered and companionable. Too many nights under the gas lamps and you start growling.”

  Cameron made a rumbling noise in response, and Ainsley smiled. “Exactly like that. Don’t stay here for me, Cam. Go where your heart is, and I’ll follow.”

  Cameron looked out the window again, studying the Parisian rooftops. Daniel waited on the sofa, as tense as his father.

  It had been bad of Daniel to run away from school, but Cameron secretly agreed with his reasons why. Cameron had sent Daniel to Cambridge because all the Mackenzies had gone there, and he’d had a place secured there when he was born.

  Truth to tell, Cameron hadn’t minded Daniel underfoot on this trip. He’d enjoyed watching him and Ainsley laugh uproariously over whatever they found funny that day, the two of them trying every pasty in Paris or dragging Cameron to obscure parts of the city just to see what was there. Cameron knew he should be more strict about Daniel and Cambridge. A lad needed to go to university, and Cameron should be a parent in control of his son’s life. But he didn’t have the heart. If Daniel were truly unhappy, they’d think of something else.

  Cameron looked back at the two of them waiting side by side on the sofa for his answer, his wife and his son watching him with the same intensity.

  “Monte Carlo,” he said.

  Ainsley blinked. “Your heart is in Monte Carlo?”

  Cameron didn’t smile. “I’m tired of self-satisfied Parisians and artists full of their own genius. I put up with that enough with Mac. At Monte Carlo, you’ll meet a much more interesting mix of people.”

  “I will?”

  Cameron turned to them, fixing them both with his topaz gaze. “You’ll like it, Ainsley. Not one person there has pure motives in mind. A picklock might find such corruption entertaining.”

  “That does sound more interesting than self-satisfied artists full of their own genius.”

  “And the sunrise over the sea from the top of the city is beautiful.” That was true. Cameron wanted to show the view to Ainsley, to see her delight when she beheld it. He remembered Ian watching Beth watch the fireworks, finding more joy in her than the show of light. Cameron und
erstood now.

  Ainsley winked at Daniel and stretched her feet in her new patent-leather boots. “I have only one question about this oh-so-exciting Monte Carlo,” she said.

  Cameron’s gaze fixed on her ankle boots, primly buttoned against silk stockings. He imagined himself unfastening each button, licking the ankle that came into view, running his tongue all the way up to the back of her knee. Ainsley and her buttons.

  “What question is that?” He managed to say.

  She gave him a smile and Daniel a wink. “In Monte Carlo, do they have cake?”

  They did have cake, and also the casino of which her moral majesty, Queen Victoria, vastly disapproved. When they reached their hotel in Monaco, Cameron asked Ainsley to wear the dark red velvet he’d picked out for her in Edinburgh, and he took her straight to the casino.

  Ainsley found herself in a long, elegant, cupolaed building filled with glittering people. The foyer rose to a gigantic rectangular stained-glass window with classical-looking paintings and statues all around it. The game rooms opened from this rotunda, and Cameron strolled into them with ease.

  He was greeted by name by the croupiers and smiled at by the butterflies—beautiful women hired by the casino to entice gamers to tables. More than one interested gaze of that crowd fixed on Ainsley, society there also having learned of Cameron Mackenzie’s astonishingly sudden marriage.

  But Ainsley realized quickly that Cameron didn’t like Monte Carlo any more than he had Paris. He could talk and laugh with his friends, drink whiskey and smoke cheroots as he played cards, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  Ainsley grew to know the true Cameron better as the days slipped by—the mildest winter Ainsley, used to Scottish cold, had ever spent. She found that she could talk easily with Cameron about many things—news of the world, sports, games, their opinions on Scotland’s history and relations with England, books, music, drama, art. Cameron was well read and well traveled, joking that he’d absorbed some knowledge at Cambridge, though it must have been in his sleep. He’d spent his waking hours drinking, gaming, racing horses, and chasing women.

  He was quite open about his debauched life, rumbling that Ainsley deserved to know everything, and besides, he despised hypocrites. But even with this openness, Cameron hid some part of himself from her, never letting Ainsley so much as glimpse it. The feeling of being shut out was a lonely one, even if Cameron would make crazed love to her every night.

  Most evenings the three of them dined out or went to the theatre or opera together, and there was no more talk of packing Daniel off again to Cambridge. Cameron, Ainsley saw, though he didn’t much know what to do with the lad, liked having him around. During the day, they visited museums and the gardens, or simply traversed the steep streets of Monaco. They walked from the harbor to the top of the hills so often that Ainsley declared it must be the healthiest winter she’d ever passed.

  But Cameron would never, ever lie down with Ainsley in her bed.

  Only one incident marred their glittering season in Monte Carlo. Daniel returned to the hotel one afternoon after New Year’s with a black eye and half his face bloodied. Ainsley fussed over him as she patched him up, but Cameron watched with a scowl.

  “Did you finish it?” Cameron asked him. “Or are the police going to come to my door and arrest you?”

  “I didn’t get into a fight, Dad. A chap had his toughs beat me up.”

  Ainsley looked at Daniel in alarm. “Then we are the ones who should go to the police.”

  Daniel shrugged. “I’m fine. I got away from them.”

  “What chap?” Cameron demanded. “What happened?”

  Daniel looked evasive. “You’ll go spare when I tell you. Maybe I shouldn’t with Ainsley here.”

  “I’m made of stern stuff, Daniel,” Ainsley said. “I want to know about this chap, and I still think we should have his toughs arrested. What kind of man sets other men to punch up a lad?”

  “Count Durand.”

  Ainsley had no idea who that was, but Cameron came alert. “Durand is still alive? I thought he’d be dead of the clap by now.”

  Daniel snorted, relaxing. “No, he’s here, but he don’t look good. Haggard, I’d say. Maybe he does have the clap.”

  “He set his men on you?” Cameron’s words were quiet, but Ainsley sensed the fury in him rising like a geyser.

  “I did hit Durand first, I admit. But that’s because he started trying to claim again that he was my pa. I told Durand that it was impossible, because his wick’s been limp for decades. Then he said that if I claimed to be a Mackenzie whelp, it meant I was as mad as my mother, so I laid him out. He screamed, and his toughs pulled me off him, and he told them to give me a good beating. Durand said he’d let them stop if I admitted I was his son, but damned if I would. I got away from them and lit out.”

  Ainsley listened in shock, the rag she’d been using to wipe Daniel’s face dripping bloody water to the carpet. “Cameron . . .”

  “I’ll deal with Durand. Danny, you stay the hell away from him. No thoughts of vengeance. Understand? I don’t want him to have ten toughs next time.”

  Daniel looked annoyed, but he nodded.

  “Who is this Count Durand?” Ainsley asked.

  Daniel shot a look at his father. “I told you we should have sent her out of the room.”

  “If Ainsley chooses to live with us, she deserves to know the worst. Count Durand was my wife’s lover,” Cameron said to Ainsley. “One of her most persistent.”

  “Oh.” Cameron’s explanation was all the more heartbreaking for the calmness with which he gave it.

  “She was with Durand right before she married Dad,” Daniel said. “She kept going back to him even after she married, and she gave him a lot of Dad’s money. Durand’s one of those old French aristos from an émigré family. Doesn’t have a home, and pretty much lives off his friends and his women. Probably his male lovers too.”

  “Daniel,” Cameron said.

  “Well, ye wanted her to know. Somehow, the man got it into his head that he sired me.”

  From the look in Cameron’s eyes, the uncertainty of that had once haunted him. Daniel, tall and broad-shouldered, his stance a mirror of Cameron’s own, was certainly a Mackenzie, but Cameron must have lived with the agony of not knowing for certain before Daniel’s birth.

  That was another reason Cameron hadn’t sent Elizabeth away, Ainsley realized. Cameron needed to find out whether the child Elizabeth carried was indeed his.

  “But Count Durand didn’t sire you,” Ainsley said. “That’s obvious.”

  “Yes, but he can’t get the idea out of his thick head. Threatens to go to the police about it, or tries to blackmail Dad for keeping me away from him.” Daniel laughed, his bruised eye swelling almost shut. “Durand doesn’t really want a son hanging on him, he just likes to make trouble and get money out of Dad. Durand couldn’t stand the expense of me.”

  Cameron made Daniel drop the subject, but he was tight- lipped for the rest of the day.

  That night, at the casino, Cameron abruptly abandoned a winning hand of baccarat to stride out of the card room to a slender black-haired man whose satin-lined opera cloak hung in limp folds on his bony frame. Patrons of the casino scurried out of Cameron’s way, opening a path between him and the dark-haired man.

  Cameron grabbed the man by the neck and marched him into the rotunda and out the front doors. No one stopped him—the discreet guards and even the butterflies pretended to pay attention to something else.

  Cameron pushed Durand down the drive in front of the pseudoclassical building, Ainsley pattering after them in her tight evening frock and high-heeled slippers. Cameron propelled the man along until they reached a place where one of the winding streets dropped to a street below it.

  Ainsley followed, heart in her throat. She didn’t blame Cameron for his anger, but who knew what Cameron would do to Durand? Or how many toughs Durand had waiting in the shadows to beat Cameron to a pulp?

  She
rounded the corner just as Cameron threw Durand into a wall. The man tried to guard himself, but Cameron hoisted Durand up by his cloak.

  “You touch my son again,” Cameron said clearly, “and I’ll kill you.”

  “Your son?” Durand spoke French to Cameron’s English, but Ainsley understood well enough. “My Elizabeth said you couldn’t make your cock dance enough to give her a son. She said she’d fooled you well and good with my seed. The boy is mine.”

  “She was a fucking liar, Durand.”

  Durand took a swing at him, and Cameron easily caught his fist.

  “She told me what you did to her, you filth,” Durand cried. “She should have had me there to hold you down when she took her revenge the only way she knew how. Elizabeth gave you what you deserved, but if I’d been there, I’d have driven that poker up your ass until I ripped your heart out of your backside.”

  Cameron slammed the man into the wall again, and Durand’s head knocked against the bricks.

  “I don’t give a damn what you say to me, but if you touch Daniel again, if you so much as look at him, I’ll break your bloody neck. Do you understand?”

  Durand tried to spit at him, but Cameron smacked his head into the wall again. “I said, do you understand?”

  Durand finally nodded, gasping. Cameron hauled the struggling man by his collar across the narrow street and dropped him over a low wall side to the street below. The count screamed as he went, then the scream abruptly cut off.

  Chapter 23

  Ainsley rushed to Cameron. “Good heavens, you didn’t kill him, did you?”

  Cameron glanced over the wall. “No, he’s landed in a wagon. Full of shit.”

  Ainsley pressed her hand over her mouth, stemming a hysterical laugh.

  Cameron focused on her as though just seeing her. “Ainsley, what the devil are you doing out here?”

  “Following you. I was afraid his thugs would waylay you.”

  “And if they had, what would you have done? Beaten them off with your fan?”