A Woman Scorned (4 page)

Cole was halfway down the steps in the pouring rain when he realized he had walked right past Findley, who had been holding his coat and hat. As if to remind him of his folly, a cold drop of water trickled off his hair and slithered behind the facing of his collar, sending a shiver down his spine.

Now, what the devil had he just done? And why? Cole turned around to run back up the steps, wondering if perhaps he had taken grapeshot to the head instead of the leg.

The sun had barely risen over Mayfair when an urgent knock sounded upon the door to Lady Mercer’s private parlor, a small but elegantly appointed sitting room which connected her bedchamber to that of her late husband. For a moment, Lady Mercer did not respond, so engaged was she in staring over her writing desk and through the window into the quiet street below. Lightly, she laid a finger to her lips, then took up her quill once more. The knock came again, heavier this time.

Lady Mercer sighed deeply. Apparently, there would be no escape into solitude today. “Come in,” she finally said, pushing back her chair and standing.

Her butler entered, wavered uncertainly in the door, then hastened forward, a small silver salver extended. “A message, milady,” said Donaldson in his faint Scots accent. “I asked that the boy wait belowstairs, should y’wish tae send a reply.”

Jonet Cameron Rowland, Marchioness of Mercer, Countess of Kildermore, Viscountess of Ledgewood and Baroness Carrow and Dunteith, inhaled sharply. “From whom?”

Donaldson watched her sympathetically. “I regret tae say ’tis Lord James again, milady.”

Lady Mercer snatched the note from the salver. “You say his servant waits?” she asked darkly.

“Aye, but in the kitchens!” Donaldson threw up his hands, palms out. “Cook will’na let him from her sight, she swears it.”

With a terse nod, Lady Mercer went to her desk and took up a heavy gold paperknife, delicately carved into the Celtic cross of her ancestors. With a flick of her wrist, her ladyship laid open the letter and held it across the palm of her hand as her eyes darted over it.

She was a willowy, delicately boned lady, with hair as black and slick as a raven’s wing. In her girlhood, she had been considered a great beauty, but age and experience had stripped much of the vivacity from her face, leaving in its place an intense, almost cold, wariness. One could see it in the wide, expressive blue eyes, which were quick to narrow, and in her full, mobile mouth, which was more often than not drawn into implacable lines.

Lady Mercer’s gaze was steady and certain, and capable of pinning a careless servant to the wall like the hurl of a corsair’s blade. Moreover, her wit was as quick as her temper, and she did not suffer fools—gladly or otherwise. After two children and eight-and-twenty years, Lady Mercer still had a figure to turn a man’s head, while her cutting expression could just as quickly snap it back again, should she wish it. With her patrician forehead, elegant cheekbones, and fair, flawless skin, she looked every inch the
Gaidhealach
aristocrat, and she was.

There were many who thought Lady Mercer proud, brash, and volatile, and of late, a few had callously added the term
cold-blooded
to her emotional repertoire. Whatever she was, she was much as life had made her, but by virtue of their many years of close companionship, Donaldson was also aware of a few things which were not commonly known of his mistress. That she could be generous to a fault and unfailingly devoted to those whom she trusted.

Woe betide her enemies, but those whom she loved, she loved deeply and faithfully. All of this despite a life that was very different from the one that she had wished for.

Donaldson stood stoically to one side, watching as the dull black bombazine of Lady Mercer’s skirt began to tremble. At once, her eyes began to blink spasmodically and her knuckles went white. Across her hand, the letter began to quiver. Tension thrummed through the parlor like a gathering storm.

Prudently recollecting that one word—
volatile
—the butler narrowed one eye and drew back incrementally as her ladyship hissed like a cornered cat, seized up her inkhorn, and hurled it viciously against the hearthstone with a bloodcurdling scream.

“Roast in hell, you black-hearted bastard!” she exploded, dark ink splattering up the pale pink marble of the mantel.

“Milady!” Donaldson laid a gentle, steadying hand upon her trembling forearm. “God in heaven, what now?” Gently, he dragged her toward the small sofa near the fireplace and urged her down.

Lady Mercer sank onto the proffered seat and handed the letter to him. With eyes that were momentarily horrified, she looked up at him. “A
tutor,
Charlie,” she whispered, her voice suddenly breaking. “He sends a tutor for my children! He shall force his way into this home by whatever means possible. What are we to do?”

Charles Donaldson went down onto one knee beside her and skimmed the letter. “I think . . . I
think,
milady, that we can fight this.” The young Scotsman looked up to hold her troubled gaze. “Shall I send a footman tae fetch McFadden? Or one of the other solicitors?”

Lady Mercer swallowed. “I do not know,” she admitted wearily. “I am sick to death of all this bickering! I advertised for a tutor, and heaven knows the boys need one. We cannot go on as we are, acting as if life as we knew it has ended.”

“Aye, but sich a one would be a stranger tae us, Lady Jonet,” he softly cautioned, reverting to her old name. “What d’we know of this man?”

“Nothing good,” she answered grimly. “James is sending a snake into our midst. Depend upon it.”

“Shall I have the footmen send him packing then, milady?” inquired the butler. “It says he’s tae come at three o’clock.”

Lady Mercer grasped the letter in both hands, crushing it to her lap in obvious frustration. “No, don’t send him away, Charlie.” She rallied again, just as she always did, stiffening her spine and pulling back her narrow shoulders. Her deep voice returned to normal, with its hard edge and faint burr. “Undoubtedly he is nothing more than one of James’s henchmen, and therefore only minimally qualified. Once I have met the fellow, perhaps I can unearth some shortcoming, and find a better candidate. Even James cannot argue with that.”

“Verra good, milady.” Smoothly, Donaldson stood. “You look a wee bit drained. May I send Miss Cameron to attend you?”

Her lips tightly compressed, Lady Mercer stood and shook her head. “No, I thank you. Cousin Ellen cannot understand me when I am blue-deviled. I’ll do naught but distress her, and you know that as well as I.”

“Aye, milady.” Donaldson could not help but smile. “Ye might at that.”

As was his custom, Cole rose at dawn to throw on his clothes and saddle his horse for a long morning ride. Shunning the more fashionable environs of town, he ignored Hyde Park and everything in between, riding north instead, up Gray’s Inn Road and into the countryside. On this particular day, he pushed his horse hard for almost an hour, turning toward home only when the need for breakfast compelled him to do so.

Despite Cole’s admittedly academic bent, he had always done his most serious thinking from the back of a horse. Today it was not working. Halfway through St. Pancras, with all of London now stirring about him, Cole still had no notion why he had agreed to his uncle’s mad, self-serving scheme. What had he been thinking? Just what did he hope to achieve?

Oh, matters were a bit dull within the army just now, it was true. But there were things to do. His club in Albemarle Street, the two or three academic societies to which he still belonged, and an occasional trip to the War Office to chat up old friends. Reading his scientific journals, writing letters to inquire into the welfare of his former men, and every evening, a little drinking in the local public house, which was filled at night by an eclectic mix of actors, students, and poets, along with a great many men such as himself, old soldiers with too much time to spare.

Well—!
The truth always slipped out in the end, did it not? The fact was, Cole was just dead bored with his life. After hobbling about Paris for three months, making minimal contributions to the peace effort, he had returned at last to London—how long ago? Seven months? He counted on his fingers. Yes, and damned dull months they had been, too.

His splintered thigh was solid once again, and the few shards of metal which were destined to work their way out had long since done so. Cole knew he was fortunate to have broken the bone in a fall from his horse, and that the grapeshot had been glancing and secondary. Better men than he had lost a leg to amputation. Almost a year later, only a few scars and the occasional ache remained.

And now, he no longer had any excuse to avoid going home. Home to Cambridgeshire. Home to Elmwood Manor, the estate he had not seen since leaving England before the war. As manor houses went, it was hardly a grand place. It appeared to be early Georgian, with two small but well-balanced wings, but from the rear gardens, one could see a goodly portion of the original Tudor structure. Long ago, perhaps in his great-great-grandfather’s day, Elmwood had been a vicarage. Indeed, it was still referred to as such by the villagers, because for a hundred years or better, even after the house itself had been sold by the church, someone within the walls of Elmwood had served them as vicar of Saint Ann’s. But no longer.

That was yet another of life’s crossroads which Cole had managed to circumnavigate. For a time after leaving his position at Cambridge, he had acted as curate, with every good intention of stepping into the pulpit at some future date. But in the end, he had chosen muscular Christianity over the more pastoral sort, and had resolutely beaten his plowshare into a sword.

Cole still was not perfectly sure why he had done it. He knew only that he had felt driven to join the army; driven toward war by an emotion he could not name. Patriotism, he had called it at the time. Certainly, he had not done it for financial gain. His officer’s commission had been expensive, and he had had a wife at home for whom to provide. And although Cole was far from being a rich man, his mother’s marriage settlements had provided him a steady income upon his twenty-fifth birthday and his father had left him Elmwood Manor.

Elmwood consisted of a small home farm and five tenant properties, whose holders tilled the same land their fathers and grandfathers had before them. Since the war, Cole had taken the unheard-of step of leasing the whole of it, parceling the home acreage into fifths, and giving it over to his trusted tenants. The manor, for all practical purposes, now ran itself.

Three months past, unable to reconcile himself to the thought of going home, he had sent along Moseby, his orderly, to look things over. All was well, according to Moseby’s infrequent reports. Cole’s plan to follow shortly thereafter had come to naught. And now, he had to admit to himself that he had no wish to return.

Cole spent the remainder of the morning at his club, taking a late, leisurely breakfast and debating with his cronies the state of the empire’s residual military strength. But as always, Cole came away a little empty, finding himself unable to fully savor the morning despite the intellectual stimulation it afforded him. Such occasions merely served as a poignant reminder of those men who had been left in the ditches of Portugal. Good officers and valiant men who would never again argue field strategy, never again take up arms for their king.

Other men seemed to accept such things more readily, and Cole often suspected that his scholarly devotion to religion and philosophy had left him singularly unsuited for an officer’s life—or at least unsuited to the aftermath of such a life.

Eventually, Cole returned to his rooms to catch up on correspondence, and then, with unerring care, he shaved and dressed for his meeting with Lady Mercer. He was half reluctant, and yet more than a little curious, to meet the lady once again after all these years. Although Cole was certain she would not remember him. No, she would not. Would she?

He presented himself in Brook Street, only to find that he had arrived a quarter hour early. Cautioning himself that it would not do to wait upon the marchioness betimes, Cole resolved to spend his excess energy in pacing further up the street, then turning the corner to stroll through the mews behind. Like any good military man, he reconnoitered the establishment from all angles as he went.

It was a typical Mayfair townhouse, though somewhat larger than most. Four rows of deep windows across the front, a service entrance below the ground floor, a narrow, well-shaded backyard with an elegant garden, and a row of fourth-floor servant’s dormers in the rear. Opposite the yard lay the mews. The quarters could probably house two carriages and provide accommodations for another half dozen servants.

On this side of the alley, no one stirred. But in the back garden, a servant lingered, a huge, red-haired fellow, who was rather aimlessly hoeing about in a freshly turned flowerbed, seemingly unaware that he had just trod across a swath of spring daffodils. At Cole’s approach, the man tensed and lifted his eyes to stare malevolently across the low fence at him. The message was clear. Cole touched his hat respectfully and moved on past the garden gate. Lady Mercer’s servants, it would appear, were not the sociable sort.

“
Psst,
Stuart!” In a sunny shaft of dust motes, Lord Robert Rowland stood, tugging plaintively upon his elder brother’s coattail, nearly yanking him off the crate on which he perched. Precariously balanced on his knees, Stuart, Lord Mercer, shook off his pesky young sibling, then stretched up to meet the high attic window, peering out over the dusty sill.

“Quit jerking, Robin!” he cautioned his brother, looking down from the crate over one shoulder. “If you make me fall, Nanna shall hear it, and we’ll both be put to bed without supper!”

Standing on tiptoes, Robert pulled a pitiful face. “But what’s that fellow in the mews doing now, Stuart? Let me up! Let me up! I want to see, too!”

Stuart turned back to the window. “He’s just walking around the back.” The boy grunted a little as he tried to scrub the grime from the glass with his coat sleeve.