A Highland Duchess (25 page)

“I’m so very sorry this happened to you,” she said. “But you’re in good hands. Dr. Carrick seems quite competent, as does Ian.”

It wouldn’t do to think of Ian.

Her task done, she returned the bowl to the sink, squeezing out the cloth. She hung up the cloth and used a towel to dry the bowl before placing it back in the cupboard.

She returned to Bryce’s side, smoothing his hair back from his brow. He hadn’t truly stirred since Dr. Carrick and Ian forced the medication into him. There were none of the side effects she dreaded. Instead, Bryce looked to be hovering between sleep and death.

At least he was here, with people who loved him, with people who knew him.

She smoothed the sheets, folding them below his chin, ensuring they were tucked in. She stood there for a moment, wondering what else she could do to ease his misery.

Finally, she returned to the chair, sitting once more, and wishing that she could at least loosen her corset. She sat as her governess taught her, knees together, feet together, and hands loosely clasped on her lap, a pleasant if distant smile curving her lips. Her bonnet was on top of her shawl on the floor beside her. That was not proper. Nor was the wish to remove her snood and loosen her hair. Or unfasten her shoes so she might wiggle her toes and cool her feet.

The curtains had been drawn against the night, but she stood and parted them with one hand, staring out at the gleaming silver reflection that was the lake in moonlight.

How could one bear to live here and see such beauty day after day?

Chavensworth was considered a structure of immense beauty, and perhaps it was to someone who didn’t know what went on within its walls. But it was beauty created by man, and nothing as spectacular as that wrought by God.

There was such utter peace in this place, which was a ridiculous reason to suddenly wish to weep. Being at Lochlaven loomed as a challenge greater than any she’d faced in her lifetime. On one hand, there was duty—caring for Bryce, the worry, the sincere and heartfelt prayers. On the other hand, there was temptation—Ian, with his slow smile and piercing gaze, who brought back memories of forbidden passion.

One was expected of her, and one was illicit.

How like her to resent one and long for the other.

Perhaps this was Eden, and she was Eve. Adam was Bryce, ill and failing. And Ian the snake who lured her to forbidden fantasies. And above it all, God watched and waited for her to make the wrong choice.

Was Eden the last time women had been given an opportunity to choose? And because they’d chosen wrong, were they forever to be dominated by man?

She was tired, that’s why she was thinking of God and Eden.

“You haven’t eaten.”

She turned to find Ian standing in the doorway, a tray in his hands.

A smile curved her lips. “Have you turned maid now? Brigand, scientist, laird, and maid.”

“If you think so,” he said. He entered the room and placed the tray on a small table beside the chair. “I prefer to think of it as caring for my guests.”

A young man followed him, carrying an overstuffed chair the match of the one already in the room. He lowered it slowly next to the first chair and stepped back, waiting.

“That’s all, Broderick,” Ian said. “Thank you.”

How very proper he was, made even more so against the tenor of her thoughts.

“Thank you,” she said, realizing she was hungry. “You are an exceptional host.”

“I wish I could’ve welcomed you here under different circumstances,” he said.

She looked up at him, wondering at the comment. Did he mean under circumstances where Bryce was not ill? Or under entirely different circumstances, where she was not married at all?

Oh, how foolish she was to even think such a thing.

He went to the cupboard and opened it, removing a small collapsible table. The clever contraption was folded flat, but as she watched, he unfolded it and moved it in front of the chair.

“If you’ll sit,” he said, motioning to the chair, “I’ll serve you.”

Amused, she sat, and watched as he unfurled a napkin and handed it to her.

“I brought you tea,” he said, pouring her a cup from the small teapot in the corner of the tray.

“You’re very kind.”

He smiled. “You’ve had a bad two days.”

“How did you know I’ve been married two days?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he sat next to her and poured a cup of tea for himself.

“Has Bryce treated you well?” he asked.

“Is that a question you should ask?”

His smile faded. “Perhaps not,” he said.

He didn’t say anything for a few moments but she had the impression that he was weighing something in his mind.

“What is it, Ian?”

He looked surprised at her question. “We know each other too well, I think, Emma.”

She shook her head. He could not say things like that to her. Not now.

Just when she was about to tell him that it would, perhaps, be better if he left her, he spoke again. “Bryce was one of your husband’s hangers-on. He liked being in the duke’s circle of acquaintances. Did he tell you?”

She had the strangest feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she were in a carriage going too fast, or in a train taking a curve.

“No,” she said. “He didn’t. Did he ever go to Chavensworth?”

Her voice was barely a whisper, not much more than a thought, but he heard her. Did he hear the fear in the question as well?

He must have, because the look he gave her was one filled with a soft and gentle emotion. Pity? Compassion?

Shame seemed to cradle his answer in a soft down, so that she felt the words rather than simply hearing them.

“On numerous occasions,” he said.

She looked away. She had an answer, then, to Bryce’s treatment of her. Her new husband had seen her as the Ice Queen of their revelries.

“Were you a visitor to Chavensworth?” She’d asked him the question before and his answer had been no. Would he be more honest now?”

“I loathed the Duke of Herridge,” he said. “Even if I had been invited, I would not have attended. I’d heard enough about his parties to be disgusted from afar.”

She heard the edge in his voice, the sharply defined anger, and felt the blood drain from her face.

Had Bryce told him? Had he a gift for description? Had he conveyed all of the horror and depravity of those nights?

She didn’t particularly like being an object of pity. Nor did she want to be a target for scorn. But those were the only two choices left her, having been the Duchess of Herridge as well as the Ice Queen.

Emma didn’t know what to say. Words were like tiny moths in the face of a gale. However frantic their flutters, they were incapable of changing anything.

She closed her eyes, wishing herself away from this room, from him. Wanting to be a child again, capable of changing the course of her life. The implausibility of that wish, the sheer impossibility of it, forced her to look at him.

She would not be a coward here and now.

“You know what happened, then,” she said, her voice carrying the faintest whisper of fear. “You know what I did.”

She didn’t think he was going to answer her. He refilled his cup, moved the table, and stretched out his legs. Finally, he sat back and looked at her, his eyes flat, his face somber.

“How could I not? I traveled to London often enough to hear the rumors. A beautiful duchess with skin like alabaster, naked and aloof. Available to see, to dream of, but never to touch.”

“No wonder you were so filled with contempt for me that first night.” How very calm she sounded. There was no shame in her voice, or humiliation, while her skin felt shriveled with it. Her lungs were too constricted, and tears were too close.

“I had nothing but rumors by which to judge you, Emma. It was only later when I realized they could not be true.”

“They were,” she said flatly. “I was the Ice Queen, as Anthony labeled me.”

He smiled at her, the expression too tender for this room and their respective roles. He didn’t touch her. Nor did he say a word. But in the silence she could almost feel his compassion.

“Pity the girl I was,” she said, her voice steady. “There’s no need to pity me now.”

“Because he’s dead.”

She smiled. How quick he was.

“Because he’s dead,” she said.

She stood and moved to the window, waiting until she was certain she could speak without her voice trembling.

“You should have told me, then, that you knew,” she said, her voice vibrating with emotion.

She was only too familiar with the looks of derision from men and women alike. As if they’d said to her: We choose to participate in Anthony’s entertainments. You have no such choice. And because she didn’t, she was less of a human, less of a woman, less of a person.

“When, exactly, do you propose that I should’ve told you, Emma? Around the same time you told me you were going to marry my cousin?”

She glanced at him, startled at his vehemence, and when she saw his expression, she almost took a step back.

He was as angry as she.

“In the garden, when we had breakfast together? Or the night in my bed? When, exactly, should we have been honest with one another?”

“You dared me to be honest,” she said, her anger dissipating as she recalled his words. “And I made the choice not to be.”

Moonlight glittered on the water. She had no fondness for boats or vessels of any kind, but right at the moment, the lake offered some type of freedom. What would it be like to simply take one of those boats and sail away?

“I didn’t know Bryce’s name then,” she said. “But if I had, I’m not certain I would have mentioned it. So perhaps your accusation is correct. I didn’t tell you everything.”

“And I didn’t demand it.”

“One of us should have,” she said, daring herself to turn and face him. His expression had softened, his eyes revealing too much emotion. She glanced away again.

“The truth would have done no good,” he said. “It wouldn’t have stopped me from wanting you or taking you to my bed. As for Chavensworth, and the Duke of Herridge, a starved dog is not responsible for his emaciation, Emma.”

Her smile broke free. “I know you didn’t mean to liken me to a dog, but I get your point well enough.” She didn’t look away. “Don’t paint me as an angel, Ian. I fervently wished for his death. I prayed for it each night, may God forgive me.”

“Then you should thank God for His blessing,” he said bluntly. “Otherwise, I would take great pleasure in killing the bastard for you.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. “I don’t know what to say. No one’s ever offered to kill someone for me.”

“He deserved it, didn’t he?”

She looked down at the floor. The boards were bare, well waxed. Were carpets not allowed in here because of disease? She would have to ask Ian later, some other time when other—more important—words weren’t trembling on her tongue.

“Someone evidently thought so,” she said, glancing at him. “Enough to murder him.”

Chapter 22

H
is face was immobile, his eyes flat and unreadable.

“Are you going to tell me exactly what you mean, Emma?”

Her gaze moved to Bryce’s bed, then resolutely back to him.

“I’ve never told anyone before,” she admitted. “Only one other person knows for sure. The housekeeper at Chavensworth.”

She came and sat on the edge of the chair, clasping her hands tightly together.

“We thought he’d died because of his heart,” she said. “Anthony was not a young man, despite his actions. He was found in his library, seated behind his desk. Only later, when the body was being prepared for burial, did the marks become visible.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist.

“There were bruises all over his neck. Bruises that looked like finger marks. Someone had strangled him.”

“Why didn’t you go to the authorities?”

She smiled. “And admit that a great many people had reason for killing Anthony? The fathers of the servant girls he raped at Chavensworth? The husbands of the wives he used as trophies? The men he humiliated? Even me? It wasn’t a case of finding someone with a motive to kill Anthony but eliminating all of those who did.”

“Not to mention that what happened at Chavensworth wouldn’t simply be rumor anymore,” he said. “The press would have publicized all the lurid details.”

She nodded. “Perhaps.”

“You allowed a murderer to go unpunished, Emma.”

She stared down at her hands. “I allowed a murderer to go unpunished,” she agreed. “I gave instructions that the coffin was to remain closed for the wake. I attended the funeral and Anthony’s interment, and never once thought to contact the authorities.”

“And the housekeeper?”

She smiled again. “Servants wear a mask around us, have you ever noticed? At least the ones who worked for Anthony did. I saw more emotion in Mrs. Turner’s eyes that day than I ever had before. She felt only relief that he was dead. I know that she’ll never speak of it.”