A Highland Duchess (37 page)

“Has it always made you sick?”

The realization of what he was asking came swiftly. Abruptly, she sat on the bench.

“Oh, dear God,” she said softly. “Ian, you don’t think . . . But of course you do. What else could you think?”

She pressed her hands over her face, then dropped them and studied the gravel path.

“No,” she said slowly. “It hasn’t always made me sick. Not until the last year.” She glanced up at him. “Was the wine meant for me?”

“I doubt it. He would need to rid himself of Bryce, first. But I suspect you were next on his list if you returned home a widow.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist.

“What do we do now?”

He took a deep breath. Somehow, the words would have to be said. Somehow, he would have to find a way to believe them.

“You and Bryce will go on with your lives, somewhere away from your uncle. You and I will have to find a way to deal with the feelings between us.”

“Why does that sound so difficult?” she asked, standing.

“Because it will be.”

“Ian,” she began, reaching up with one hand as if to place her palm against his cheek.

He stepped back before she touched him. For a moment they just stared at each other. Darkness added a regality to her features. The silence of the garden rendered the moment almost poignant.

She nodded, understanding. She dropped her hand and straightened, growing taller in those moments. Growing older, in a way, or perhaps it was simply that she became distant. The proper former Duchess of Herridge, the Ice Queen, his cousin’s wife.

His love.

Chapter 32

T
he drawing room was strangely masculine, almost Georgian in its purity. The furniture was French but sparse. Only a settee, sideboard, two chairs, and a small table between them occupied the whole of it. No pianoforte sat against the wall, no curio cabinet filled with collections of objects stood in the corner. The walls, a pale French blue, were offset with panels of white, and cornices of carved thistles, like the ones she’d seen in a London garden.

Emma sat on the settee, turning to face the windows. The sky was gray-white; raindrops trickled down the glass. Fog erased the landscape, muted the sounds of the lake lapping at the apron of beach, and seemed to slow life itself. Wind, carrying a hint of autumn in its gusts, whined around the corners of Lochlaven, seeped in through the window pane, whispering her name.
Emma, come and walk with me. Let me billow your skirts, allow me to banish the cobwebs of your memories, and render you fresh and new.

She almost succumbed.

Had it not been for the advancing wall of cold gray fog, she might have ventured outside while Bryce slept. As it was, she’d escaped to this room, needing some change of scenery.

She brushed the hair from her cheek with the back of her hand, wishing she might find a way to escape. Above all, she wanted to lose herself, become someone else for as long as she was able. Let her be a wraith, a ghost of the fog. Let her feel something other than this horrible emptiness that laced every hour and every minute of her day.

Tomorrow, she would leave Lochlaven.

Bryce was still weak, physically. His will, however, outpaced his body. He was determined to leave Lochlaven and Ian’s hospitality with all possible speed.

Dr. Carrick had returned from Inverness three days ago. His demeanor, however, was not the same as it had been. Gone was the ready smile, and his eyes bore a troubled look. Emma couldn’t help but wonder if he blamed her for his daughter’s broken engagement. She didn’t know what to say to him, so they avoided each other for the most part. When he came to examine Bryce, she would slip out of the room, although she had conferred with him about the mystery of Bryce’s weakness.

“It is, no doubt, an effect of the arsenic,” he said.

“Will he always have it?”

He looked as if he didn’t want to answer her, but he finally did. “I don’t know, Mrs. McNair. He ingested a great amount of the poison. He’s fortunate to still be breathing. A little weakness is small enough price to pay.”

Except that it wasn’t a “little weakness.” Bryce needed help to sit, and although he’d gradually gotten back enough strength in his hand to hold a cup, someone still had to feed him.

Serving as Bryce’s nurse would keep her mind occupied, especially after tomorrow when they left Lochlaven.

She turned back from the window, knowing that her respite was drawing to a close. She would need to return to the sickroom, to Bryce’s side.

Tears were too close to the surface of late but they wouldn’t serve her now. Instead, she needed to show the same determination and stoic resistance she’d demonstrated during her marriage to Anthony.

Once, she’d thought about love in a theoretical way, almost as if it were an emotion she could harness, or an aged cask she could tap at will. She knew now that loving someone changed you from the inside out, made you more receptive to joy, made you think of others before yourself, opened your heart to kindness and laughter.

Love was simply there, like the moon and the stars.

When the heart was opened to love, life changed. Even if it wasn’t right or proper or accepted by the world, once love came into a life, nothing was the same. Even if she could never touch him again, could not ever welcome him to her bed and to her body once more, she would love Ian McNair with her whole heart for her whole life.

When it had happened, she had no idea. Yesterday, or the day before, or in London when she’d stood at the window and willed him to return, brigand that he was. Or perhaps it had even happened earlier, that first night when he grabbed her hand and together they’d flown from her house. Or later in a shadowed garden or when she discovered passion in a stranger’s arms.

Tomorrow, she would leave Lochlaven, this strange and fey place on the edge of a magical loch. She’d never see Ian again, or if she did, it would be years and years from now.

She could not bear this. But somehow, she must.

Glenna rushed into the room, her usual rosy face leached white, her voice quavering.

“Mrs. McNair,” she said, “you must come quickly. Something terrible . . . please. Come.”

Without waiting for Emma, she turned and ran out of the room.

Emma entered the sickroom only steps behind Glenna.

“I was gone just for a little while,” Glenna said, her voice trembling. “Just to get some biscuits from Cook. I thought Mr. Bryce would like some, that it might tempt his appetite.” She turned and looked at Emma. “He was asleep and I thought it would be all right. It wasn’t long. I swear.”

Slowly, Emma approached the bed. Bryce wasn’t asleep. His legs were nearly off the bed, his body angled strangely. Biscuits were scattered over the floor along with a silver tray.

“Shall I fetch His Lordship?”

“Yes,” Emma said, wrapping her arms around her waist. “Please do.”

Bryce’s face was tinged blue, his eyes bulging. Both hands were clenched, and there was a froth of blood around his nostrils.

Emma walked around the fallen biscuits and to the bed. She placed her fingers against Bryce’s neck in a vain attempt to find a pulse.

Arsenic hadn’t killed Bryce. But someone had.

She turned and carefully walked to the corner and sat in one of the chairs arranged there, sitting primly, as she’d been taught by her governess, her face carefully expressionless, as she’d been taught by her years of marriage to Anthony. No one looking at her would know what she was thinking or feeling.

The Ice Queen had frozen solid.

She couldn’t think of what to do next.

How long did it take for Ian to arrive? She wasn’t certain she knew, only that every passing second grew stranger, her mind incapable of resolving what her eyes saw.

She heard a noise and glanced toward the doorway to see Ian standing there, staring at Bryce. A look of disbelief washed over his face, no doubt the match to her own expression. He took a few steps into the room, followed by Glenna. The closer he came to Bryce’s bedside, the stiffer he became. His shoulders straightened, his jaw rigid, his expression fixed.

“Emma,” he said softly.

She looked up to find him reaching down to grip her hands in his. How very warm he was. Suddenly, she was standing up and his arms were around her.

That wasn’t proper, was it? The widow being embraced at the scene of the murder.

She lay her cheek against Ian’s chest, feeling as if her bones were turning to liquid. If he hadn’t wrapped his arms around her at that moment, Emma was certain she would have lost the ability to stand on her own.

She let him lead her from the room, heard him give instructions to Glenna to summon Dr. Carrick. She wanted to say the words but somehow they wouldn’t come—a physician couldn’t help Bryce now.

B
ryce was buried in the churchyard of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in the village of Trelawny, his companions in death his mother, father, and baby sister.

Despite the fact that Ian had sent out letters of invitation to the funeral, the occasion was sparsely attended. Albert was present, along with his wife, Brenda; and Rebecca, who refused to look in Ian’s direction, although she frowned at Emma from time to time. Patricia and Fergus were not present, Fergus deciding that too much travel would not be judicious for Patricia in her condition. Ian and Patricia’s mother, the woman who had insisted that the parentless Bryce be brought home to Lochlaven all those years ago, was traveling in France and could not be reached.

Glenna sat to her right, with Ian beside the nurse, close enough that Emma could look over and see him but not so close as to be improper. Half his face was in shadow, revealing his strong, chiseled features. He stared straight ahead for most of the service. The one time he glanced at her, their gazes locked and each had been forced to look away.

For some reason, the Reverend William Marshall chose to dwell on the thought that Bryce had not been lost but simply gone before God, and that the congregation should give thanks for his three birthdays: his physical birth, his spiritual awakening, and his birthday into glory.

The minister sent several looks in her direction, no doubt in approval for Emma’s tears. What would he say if he knew that her grief was for the promise of Bryce, for what he might have been, more than for who he was? She cried for the young boy who’d had no family, for the man who’d refused to be loved, for the invalid who’d been smothered.

Once the service was over, the carriage delivered them back at Lochlaven. Emma exited the carriage with Ian’s help but didn’t look at him again. Without a word to anyone, she simply mounted the stairs and went to her room, trying not to wonder who, among them, was a murderer.

Chapter 33

S
omeone at Lochlaven had killed his cousin.

Someone at Lochlaven was a murderer.

Emma had retreated to her room, and Ian couldn’t blame her. He had no explanation to give her, no rationale for what had been done to Bryce. He couldn’t even explain it to himself.

Three days passed, and Ian felt as if he existed in a clear glass case not unlike those that held his experiments. He was changing, altering in some profound way, but he didn’t know how to measure the change.

The home, of which he was so fond, had ceased to be a haven. Someone who walked among them had killed Bryce. Worse was the fact that, as the days passed, he became more and more certain of the identity of the murderer, and the thought sickened him.

A month ago everything was peaceful at Lochlaven. The winds blew across the lake, the pines gave off their pungent scent, the summer was advancing into autumn.

Emma had come to Lochlaven with Bryce. Glenna had come back from her schooling in London. Patricia and Fergus had visited. In addition, one thing had substantially altered his life in the last month: the fact that he’d broken his engagement to Rebecca Carrick.

Ian walked into his laboratory and closed the door slowly behind him. Only rarely did he lock the door but he did so now, the snick of the mechanism sounding too loud in the silence.

He placed his hand flat against the door and leaned into it, wishing that he could push away his thoughts as easily. Slowly, he turned and walked through the first room, then into the second, reaching the third too quickly. He stood in the doorway and waited until Albert sensed his presence.

The older man was intent upon his microscope, his back curved, his head tucked into his neck like a turtle.

How many times had he seen Albert in such a pose? Ten years of work, a few days of every week—he couldn’t even calculate it.

“Good morning, Albert,” he said softly.

Albert slowly straightened. “Good morning, Ian,” he said, turning slowly on his stool to face Ian. “Did you not sleep well? You don’t look rested.”

“I didn’t, no,” Ian said, advancing on his old friend. He pulled a stool close to Albert and sat. “I spent a goodly number of hours thinking.”

Albert only smiled. The expression, coupled with that thick mass of black, springy locks, made Albert look like an aging, mischievous cherub.