Dr. Kent had stopped by on his rounds yesterday and pronounced that Keir was healing remarkably well. The back wound had almost closed up, his lung capacity was back to normal, and according to Kent, his ribs would be fully mended within six to eight weeks.
But before Keir could broach the subject of his departure with any of the Challons, Phoebe beat him to the mark.
“It’s time for me to return to Essex,” Phoebe announced at the breakfast table one morning. A regretful smile touched her lips as she glanced first at Merritt, then Keir. “It’s been a lovely visit. I hate for it to end, but I’ve been away long enough.”
Kingston, who’d paused in the middle of opening a newspaper, received his daughter’s announcement with a slight frown. “Your mother returns from Paris in a matter of days. Can’t you stay until then?”
“I miss my husband and sons.”
“Tell them to come here.”
Phoebe rested her chin on her hand and smiled at her father. “And who would manage the estate? No, I’m leaving this afternoon on the three o’clock express to London, and then the five o’clock to Essex. I’ve already told my maid to start packing.”
“I’ll go with you as far as London, if you’ve no objection,” Keir said abruptly.
Silence.
Aware of all three gazes on him, Keir added, “I can stop there for the night and go on to Glasgow the next morning.” He set his jaw, silently daring anyone to object.
“It may have slipped your mind,” Kingston commented acidly, “that whoever nearly succeeded in spreading you across the South London docks like so much chum still hasn’t been found.”
“No one knows I survived the warehouse fire,” Keir pointed out. “They won’t be after me now.”
“Has it occurred to you,” Kingston asked, “that running back to Islay and firing up the stills will tip them off?”
Keir scowled. “I can’t bide here for months, wearing silk trousers and eating off fancy plates while my life turns into a shambles. I have responsibilities: a business to be run, men to be paid. A dog I left in the care of a friend. I’m no’ asking for permission.”
“Uncle,” Merritt interceded, her face unreadable, “we can hardly blame him for not wanting the situation to go on indefinitely.”
“No,” Kingston allowed, settling back in his chair, leveling a cool glance at Keir. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to muster a bit more patience and stay here. The day after you pop up at your distillery alive and kicking, someone will come to finish you off.”
“Let them try,” Keir shot back. “I can defend myself.”
The duke arched a mocking brow. “Impressive. Only a matter of days ago, we were celebrating that you were able to drink through a straw. And now apparently you’re well enough for an alley fight.”
Keir was instantly hostile.
“I know how to keep up my guard.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Kingston replied. “As soon as your arm muscles fatigue, your elbows will drift outward, and he’ll find an opening.”
“What would a toff like you know about fighting? Even with my ribs cracked, you couldn’t take me down.”
The older man’s stare was that of a seasoned lion being challenged by a brash cub.
Calmly he picked up a small open pepper cellar from the table and dumped a heap of ground black pepper in the center of Keir’s plate.
Perplexed, Keir glanced down at it, as a puff of gray dust floated upward. His nose stung, and in the next breath, he sneezed. A searing bolt of agony shot through his rib cage. “Aghhh!” He turned away from his plate and doubled over. “Devil take your sneakit arse!” he managed to gasp.
Through the ricocheting pain, Keir was aware that Merritt had jumped up and rushed over to him, her hand coming lightly to his back. “Shall I fetch your medicine?” she asked, her voice vibrant with concern.
Keir shook his head. Gripping the edge of the table for leverage, he sat up and shot Kingston a baleful glance.
The duke regarded him unapologetically, his point made. He pushed back from the table. “Come with me.”
“What for?” Keir asked warily.
“We’re going for a walk.” Kingston’s mouth twisted impatiently at Keir’s lack of response. “An ancient method of travel, performed by lifting and setting down each foot in turn while leaning forward.” His gaze flickered over Keir’s casual clothing, the wool sack jacket and broadcloth trousers. “You’ll need to change those leather shoes for canvas ones. Meet me at the back of the house, by the door closest to the holloway.”
The holloway. The bastard intended for them to walk down to the cove, then.
Although Keir was tempted to tell him to bugger off, he held his tongue and watched him leave. Clasping a hand to his sore ribs, he stood and looked down at Merritt, who had remained beside him. He felt a flash of regret, knowing his impulsive leave-taking must have struck her like a bolt from the blue.
But there was no accusation or sign of distress in the quiet dark pools of her eyes. Her composure was ironclad. She had the dignity of a queen, Keir thought in admiration.
“I can’t stay here any longer,” he told her.
“I understand. But I’m concerned about your safety.”
“I’ll be safe on my own territory,” he said. “I have friends to guard my back, and a watchdog who’ll let me know if a stranger comes within a mile of my property.”
“Wallace,” Merritt surprised him by saying.
He blinked in surprise. “Aye, that’s his name. I told you about him?”
“Yes, over dinner. Wallace likes to attack your broom when you’re sweeping. And he can retrieve a penny-piece from a field of standing corn.”
His prickly annoyance melted away, and Keir felt a smile spread across his face as he stared down at her.
“Poor lass,” he said huskily. “I must have jabbered your wee ear off that night.”
Merritt smiled faintly. The surface of her lips was plush and fine, like the velvet skin of orchid petals. “I did my share of the talking.”
“I wish I could remember.”
She laughed, a pretty sound with a fractured crystal edge. “I’m glad you can’t.”
BEFORE KEIR COULD ask what she’d meant, Merritt coaxed him to leave the breakfast room and change his shoes for the walk to the cove.
She returned to the table and sat beside Phoebe, who wordlessly reached out to take her hand. The tight clasp was nothing less than a lifeline.
Merritt was the one to finally break the silence. “You’re about to tell me it’s too soon to be sure how I feel,” she said huskily, “and after I spend some time apart from him, my perspective will change, and I’ll stop hurting. I’ll find someone else.”
Phoebe nodded, her gaze soft with concern.
“All that would be the right thing to say.” Merritt squeezed her friend’s hand before letting go. Her cheeks felt stiff and resisting as she tried to smile. “But ten years from now, Phoebe, I’ll still say it was love. It was love from the beginning.”
WHEN KEIR MET Kingston at the back of the house, he was glad to discover the family dog, Ajax, was going to join them on the excursion. The boisterous black and tan retriever helped to ease the tension as they walked along the holloway, a narrow sunken lane that had once been an ancient cart path. Slender trees bracketed the high banks on either side, forming a delicate canopy overhead.
Casually Kingston said, “You mentioned you have a dog. What breed?”
“A drop-eared Skye terrier. A good rabbiter.”
Ajax bounded ahead of them and emerged onto the beach, where high tide had turned the shallows into a froth of white and brown. Farther out, the water thickened into bands of green and blue, darkening to blue-black where the distant shape of a steamer inched across the horizon. The cold, salted morning breeze winnowed its way through tussocks of marram grass and bindweed on the dunes.
Barking in excitement, Ajax dashed off to chase foraging birds on the shore
. Kingston shook his head and smiled as he watched the happy retriever cavorting. “Witless animal,” he said fondly, and went to a painted storage shed near a bank of dunes. After taking out a few supplies, he gestured for Keir to follow him to a pit that had been dug in the sand and rimmed with large stones.
Realizing Kingston intended to build a fire, Keir asked, “Should I collect some driftwood?”
“Only a few knots for kindling. For the rest of it, I prefer birch—there’s a rick on the other side of the shed.”
They spent a few minutes making a proper fire, starting with dried grass and seaweed, adding a layer of driftwood knots, then a stack of split birch logs. The familiar process, something Keir often did with friends on the island, eased the tension in his neck and back. He lit the fire with a Lucifer match, watching in satisfaction as flames rushed through the kindling, and caught at the driftwood with flashes of blue and purple.
Kingston seemed in no hurry to talk. He removed his shoes and stockings, rolled his trouser legs to his ankles, and lounged on one of the wool blankets he’d brought from the shed. Keir followed suit, sitting on his own blanket, and extended his bare feet toward the fire’s radiant heat. In a few minutes, Ajax came padding up to the duke, wet and sandy, holding what looked like a round stone in his mouth.
“God, what is that?” Kingston asked ruefully, extending his hand.
Gently the retriever dropped the object into his palm. It turned out to be a disgruntled hermit crab, withdrawn tightly in its shell. In a moment, a set of tiny legs and a pair of eye stalks emerged as the crab investigated its new terrain.
A faint smile touched the duke’s lips. He stood in a limber movement and went to set the hermit crab at the edge of a nearby tide pool. Carefully he positioned it close to a rock crevice where it could easily duck for cover.
As Kingston returned to settle by the fire, he said wryly, “Stay, Ajax. You’ve harassed the local wildlife enough for now.”
The retriever plopped down beside him, and Kingston stroked the dog’s head as it rested on his thigh, his long fingers playing idly with the floppy ears.
Keir had watched him with growing interest, having assumed Kingston would toss the unlucky crab aside, maybe fling it toward the sea. Any of Keir’s friends would have thought nothing of chucking it into the path of a foraging herring gull. But to show consideration for an insignificant beastie … take the trouble to carry it to a safe place … it revealed something wholly unexpected about the man’s character. A regard for the fragile, the vulnerable.
Now Keir wasn’t sure what to make of Kingston. An aristocrat of staggering wealth and position, notorious for his decadent past … a devoted father and faithful husband … there seemed no way to reconcile those two versions of him. And here was yet another version, a man lounging casually next to a fire on the beach with his dog, his bare feet dusted with sand, as if he were an ordinary human.
Keir’s thoughts were interrupted as a footman emerged from the holloway and approached carrying a small polished wood chest.
The duke reached up to take the box from the footman. “Thank you, James.”
“Your Grace, shall I—”
“No, I’ll take care of it,” the duke said pleasantly.
“As you please, Your Grace.” The footman bowed smartly and made his way back to the holloway with sand-filled shoes.
Kingston opened the latch of the chest and pulled out a small whisky decanter. He held it up with a questioning lift of his brows. “Too early?”
Keir smiled, thinking the morning was improving rapidly. “No’ for a Scot.” He watched with anticipation as Kingston proceeded to pour the whisky into a pair of crystal tumblers.
After taking the pleasantly weighty glass, Keir studied the glowing amber color appreciatively. He gave it a swirl and bent his head to take in the aroma.
His breath caught. His fingers tightened on the glass. Dazedly he wondered how it was that a smell could go straight to the part of the brain where memory lived.
The whisky was from the special forty-year-old batch his father had made.
“You brought samples to Jenner’s,” he heard the duke say. “I happened to be there that day, and we spoke briefly. Do you remember?”
Keir shook his head. To his horror, his throat had gone very tight, and hot pressure was accumulating at the corners of his eyes.
“My steward placed an order for all two hundred and ninety-nine bottles of Lachlan’s Treasure,” Kingston continued. “To my regret, it was destroyed in the warehouse fire. But we still had the samples.”
A long silence passed, while Keir struggled to gain control of his emotions. Breathing in the dry, woody, smooth fragrance of his father’s whisky made him feel as if Lachlan were close by. He could almost see the craggy face, and black eyes snapping with humor. He could almost feel the wiry, compact arms that had once held him with such strength.
When Keir was finally able to lift his head, the duke gestured with his glass. “To Lachlan MacRae,” he said simply.
Bloody hell, Keir thought. He’d just been guddled. He drank, the mellow heat of the whisky sliding over the hard lump in his throat … and noticed something in Kingston’s eyes he’d missed before. A quiet glow of understanding and concern. A paternal look. Being the focus of it felt … not bad.
After taking a swallow, Kingston spoke carefully. “Had I been told about you, Keir … I would have taken you in and raised you with all the care and devotion a father could give a son. You would have been a joy to me. From the moment I received that letter from your mother, I’ve run the gamut from fury to fear, wondering what your life had been like. My only consolation in all of it has been hearing that MacRae was a loving father. For that, if he were still alive, I would kiss his feet.”
Keir grinned crookedly, staring into the contents of his glass. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever seen his feet.”
He heard Kingston chuckle, and he found himself relaxing. And as they sat there on the beach listening to the endless rustle of waves, with the taste of Lachlan MacRae’s whisky on their lips … they were finally able to talk.
Chapter 24
MERRITT HAD NO ILLUSION that Uncle Sebastian would be able to persuade Keir to stay at Heron’s Point. She’d seen the tension in Keir’s posture, the way he’d gripped one hand inside the other. It was the look of a man whose nerves had been chafed raw. Short of chaining him to a heavy article of furniture, there was no way to keep him from leaving, regardless of what danger awaited him.
She supposed she should make plans for her own departure. She would leave tomorrow morning.
A feeling of utter gloom rolled toward her like a bank of storm clouds. She couldn’t let it engulf her.
Before she returned to London, she would go to Hampshire. She needed to see her family, especially her mother, who would surround her with inexhaustible warmth and vitality. Mama would hug her tightly, and demand to hear every detail, and send for a tray of sweets from the kitchen, and ask the butler to bring wine, and they would talk for hours. By the end of it, life would seem bearable again. Yes, she would go home to Stony Cross Park tomorrow morning.
Clinging to her resolve, Merritt wrote a telegram and dispatched a footman to post it, and went to find a quiet place to read correspondence. She settled on the tapestry room, a cozy wood-paneled space hung with glowing French tapestries. Sitting at a small gilt-wood desk positioned in front of a window, she read a detailed letter from Luke about meeting with insurance executives, and putting a vessel into dry dock for repair, and getting a builder’s estimates on constructing a new bonded warehouse.
What a fine manager Luke was turning out to be, she thought with pride. Reliable, attentive to detail, confident in charting a difficult path. A natural leader. She couldn’t imagine leaving the company in better hands than his as she went on to the next stage of her life … whatever that turned out to be.
She could stay in London, surround herself with people, go to dinners and parties, a
nd become a patroness of worthy causes. But that would be far too similar to her life with Joshua. She’d outgrown all that. She wanted something new, something challenging.
Before she made any decisions, perhaps she should travel abroad. Italy, Germany, Spain, Greece, China, Egypt … She could visit the seven wonders of the world and keep a journal. What were the seven wonders? She tried to recall the poem a governess once taught her to help remember them. How did it go? … The pyramids first, which in Egypt were laid … Next Babylon’s garden, which Amytis made … Now that she thought of it, who had made the list in the first place? In a world full of wonders, seven seemed an awfully stingy number.
Gloom started to creep back over her again.
I’ll compile my own list of wonders, she decided, far more than seven. She would become an adventuress. She might even try mountain climbing. Not a large, life-threatening mountain, but a friendly mountain, with a nearby resort that served afternoon tea. Being an adventuress didn’t mean one had to suffer, after all.
A sound at the threshold caught her attention, and she turned in her chair.
Keir had come to the open doorway. He leaned a broad shoulder against the jamb with his hands tucked in his trouser pockets. He was rumpled, sandy, his form loose-limbed and athletic. The outdoor air had heightened the color in his face until the brilliant light blue eyes were almost startling in contrast. The carelessly disheveled layers of his golden-wheat hair practically begged to be smoothed and played with. Too handsome for words, this man.
As Keir stared at her intently, Merritt felt her insides turn clattery and heavy, like a drawer of jumbled flatware. This was it, she realized. The moment he would leave her for good. Again.
She felt her face arranging itself into the expression of a woman far too well-mannered to fall to pieces. “How did it go?” she asked.
“Better than I expected,” Keir admitted, and paused. “He was crabbit after I told him I wouldn’t change my mind about leaving. But he said he wouldn’t stand in my way if I agreed to stay at his club tonight. He says I’ll be safer there.”
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