Indiscretion (5 page)

* * *
* *

P
atrick didn't know if foul play had been involved in Edgar's death. He didn't know if he believed Nellwyn's intentions were entirely unselfish. The silly woman had sought dangerous thrills all her life, including an excursion into the head-hunting jungles of Kali Simpang with the island's white rajah.

But he did know he couldn't give up his hopes for renewing his association with Anne. He couldn't give up the only woman who had cared enough about him to cry at his bedside, a woman with her sense of spirit. She had shown more capacity for caring than all his past lovers combined; he was too old to pretend qualities like love and loyalty didn't matter, and he was saddened to learn how much distress he had brought her with their careless act of abandon.

He told himself he would prove how much he'd changed, and that the thoughtless rogue she remembered had come to his senses.

She couldn't resent him forever for a mistake they had made in another life. They were both basically decent people who deserved another chance.

Hell, he thought philosophically, he might as well make the best of a humiliating situation. After all, he'd never get a chance to be this close to her again, not living in the same house.

He stood and sketched a dignified bow in front of the sofa. "Will there be anything else, my lady?"

She looked up at him in alarm. "Is there something seriously wrong with you?"

He put one hand on his hip, brandishing an imaginary tray in the other. "Will her ladyship be taking tea in front of the fire or at her desk?"

She blinked, startled by the sight of the rawboned Highlander mincing about like a May queen. "You look positively ridiculous. Stop it this instant."

"Ridiculous?" He tossed his imaginary tray over his shoulder and bent over her, shedding his masquerade to give her a glimpse of the dangerously determined man beneath. "You just wait, Lady Whitehaven. I will live to please you, aye, in public and in private. Your every whim will be my command, and Society will remark that no woman ever had a more devoted servant. But when I'm through with this charade, when the mystery of Edgar's death is solved, we shall see who ends up giving the orders around here."

She smiled to hide the panic his promise evoked. "I do not think so."

He smiled back to show her the cast-iron confidence of his will. "Wager on it, woman."

7

A
few days later they took the train from London to Woolwich and from there embarked on a pleasure steamer to Aberdeen. Nellwyn had arranged for them to travel the rest of the way to Balgeldie House by private coach.

Patrick envisioned intimate moments with Anne at sea on a mist-shrouded deck; the churning of paddle wheels would provide pleasant background for the love words he would whisper in her ear. They would drink champagne in the saloon, and he would soften her resistance.

Instead, he found himself banished to the damp little cabin above the boiler room with two obnoxious footmen who were traveling with the Duke of Glaswell. The footmen looked down their noses at Patrick; as butler to a widowed baroness, he was considered their social inferior.

Patrick did not enjoy his first taste of servitude and he stomped across the upper deck to the sofa
where Anne sat to tell her so. "I should like a word with you."

She frowned and put down the book she was pretending to read. "Do lower your voice. A servant does not bellow at his employer in public."

Nellwyn tapped him on the shoulder. "He does not bellow at her in private, either. Nor does he stomp about in such handsomely tailored clothes. It's a good thing I thought to bring you proper attire."

"Proper attire?" He frowned. "I hope I am misunderstanding you, madam."

She patted his arm. "You'll look bonny in knee breeches with those nicely developed calves. Did you know that good legs were a desired trait in one's manservants?"

Patrick caught a glimpse of the grin creeping across Anne's face. "I am not a damned pet monkey to be paraded about, and I'm not wearing any knee breeches."

"Well, I hope you thought to bring your guns," Nellwyn said.

"Guns?" Anne said, arching forward in alarm. "Whatever for?"

"
To protect us, of course," Nellwyn replied. "A butler often functions as a bodyguard. Our man sleeps downstairs with a pistol to keep out housebreakers. Honestly, Anne, it is time you came into the century."

"The very thought of guns for personal protection makes me nervous," she said.

"The thought of knee breeches does the same
thing to me," Patrick said. "I've never made my butler wear them."

"You are not the stickler for tradition that David was," Nellwyn retorted. "Nor are you hosting a shooting party in your fashionable Highland home. Besides, if you don't care to wear knee breeches, you may wear a kilt. Gaelic servants in costume are quite the thing."

Anne chuckled, burying her nose in her book again.

"Now take yourself elsewhere, Sutherland," Nellwyn said, sitting on the sofa with a tin of marzipan. "One does not hold intimate conversations on deck with a domestic. Oh, dear, the Duke of Glaswell is coming over to admire Anne again."

Patrick frowned in annoyance at the stocky figure weaving across the deck. "The old lecher does a hell of a lot of admiring for a man who has a wife and six children waiting for him at home."

Nellwyn's fingers stopped halfway to her mouth. "Do you know him?"

"I've met him once at the races," he said, nodding politely at the captain walking on the bridge. "He was drunk at the time and I doubt he even remembers my face."

The captain, who apparently did remember Patrick, but only as a servant, did not nod back.

"Go away," Nellwyn said, swatting his knee with her gloves. "He mustn't recognize you, or my scheming will be for naught. Go."

Patrick turned in reluctance, and was only a few steps from the sofa when he heard the duke greeting Anne. "My dear, is it wise to sit in the sea breeze
with as frail a constitution as yours? Come to the saloon and have a wee nip of brandy to warm you."

Cynically, Patrick noted that Nellwyn, who was every bit as frail-boned and fragile as Anne, was excluded from the invitation for a "wee nip." And when he turned to express his disapproval with a scowl, he saw that Anne had indeed strolled off in the duke's company and that Nellwyn sat alone, smiling benignly at the pair of them.

"Do not glare at her like a dragon, Patrick," she said softly, glancing up at him. "She is, after all, an attractive woman."

"Aye." His voice vibrated with irony. "I think I know that."

She subjected him to a steady scrutiny. "I never did learn why you and she dislike each other so intensely."

"I have never disliked Anne. On the contrary."

"All right." She tightened her shawl around her wrinkled throat. "Let me rephrase that. Anne has not told me exactly what happened between the two of you to spark this antagonism."

"And you won't wheedle a word out of me," he said, grinding his jaw as he saw the duke's hand brush Anne's shoulder. The randy old goat.

"I shall ask Anne," Nellwyn said.

"Ask her."

A hint of understanding softened her face. "You must be quite attracted to her to agree to all this."

"Aye." He swallowed and turned his face to the restless water of the sea. "Quite attracted indeed."

* *
* * *

H
e got into an argument with the two footmen over his bunk when he returned to his room, and the next thing he knew he was engaged in a round of fisticuffs with the pair of them. It didn't take him long to win the fight, a few jabs and a stunning series of lefts to the chin, and in the end all three men shook hands and feigned a civilized forgiveness; his pride intact, Patrick returned to his bunk, where by this time his blood was pumping so hard he couldn't sleep a wink.

He listened to the clamor of the steam engine, the cranks, air pump, and cylinders oscillating. He tried to concentrate on the churning of the paddle wheels with their feathered floats, but it was of no use. He still thought about sex with Anne, how they had gone at each other like pagans in their youthful passion, and it had not been enough. He thought about kissing the length of her spine from her fragile nape to the cleft of her buttocks, and making love to her with a consideration it had taken him years to learn.

He stayed awake until dawn holding imaginary orgies and meaningful conversations with her so that when he actually saw her again the next day, he looked terse and haggard with shadows sculpting hollows in his face. He looked mean and angry and capable of unpredictable behavior, the sort of fellow a vulnerable widow like Lady Whitehaven should avoid.

At least that was what the Duke of Glaswell advised her as they disembarked on the silvery Firth of Tay to buy marmalade in Dundee. His Grace didn't bother lowering his voice to spare
Patrick's feelings either. He hustled Anne along the gangplank with a proprietary air.

"I do not like the looks of your manservant, my dear, I must say. He's got an antagonistic manner about him. Has he been with you long?"

Patrick swore that a spark of genuine evil sprang into Anne's eye when she answered. "Long enough, your grace, but do not worry on my account. The man knows his place, I assure you."

H
e knew his place, all right, and given the chance it would be in Anne's life as a suitor and in her bed, on top of her or beneath, whichever position she preferred, he wasn't particular as long as he had her to himself. Worshipping at her feet, he would soon restore her self-worth and faith in him.

They spent four days at sea, Patrick playing cards with the pair of footmen, Anne playing the unattainable widow. Another man might have been discouraged by her aloofness, but as he studied Scotland's bold rocky coast from the deck, he took comfort in the knowledge that he would soon fight for her on his own turf. Anything could happen in a wild land of peat bogs where dragons had devoured helpless virgins, and black lochs where monsters lurked. His beloved Grampian Hills gave home to over a hundred fairy-tale castles; it engendered legends of heroes who had been slain in the name of freedom. No invader had ever conquered the fierce Scottish spirit for long. No foreign king could challenge the wizards who cast spells from primitive cairns on the moor.

A rakehell might ruin a young girl, then repent and win her back years later as ancient chieftains had abducted brides and turned them into loving wives.

He could already feel the magical power of the "haars," the sea mist that haunted the wild cliffs and smugglers' coves of the Meams coast. The conqueror in his soul awakened; the warrior in him rose to forge into battle, the only hitch in the fantasy being that he would carry a silver tea tray as his shield.

8

`
"
I
don't know what you're up to, Auntie Nellwyn," Anne said as they steamed into the granite city of Aberdeen. "I only want you to know I don't believe you're doing this solely for Uncle Edgar's sake."

Nellwyn snorted, gathering her mantilla and embroidered gloves. "You have a most suspicious mind, my dear."

"If you're hoping to make a match between us, it won't work. Patrick was, and is, a scoundrel."

"Not the Patrick I knew. And know," Nellwyn said staunchly. "He is the heart of kindness."

"Now I know he has deceived you," Anne exclaimed.

"He was a strong, spirited lad," Nellwyn said, stuffing her gloves into her reticule. "He found my dear Richard wandering at the roadside after his stroke and carried him all the way back to the house."

"You should have checked your silver afterward," Anne said. "He probably wanted money for drink and gambling. Have you forgotten he stole the minister's carriage the day of Richard's funeral and crashed it into the crag?"

"Grief does strange things to a person's mind."

"Grief?" Anne said in astonishment. "Are we talking about the same person? Patrick was a veritable demon. He probably wasn't grieving at all—he was probably stone drunk." And Anne ought to know. She had made her own excuses for him at the time, too drawn to his physical presence to acknowledge his flaws.

"Richard taught Patrick how to play chess," Nellwyn said, smiling fondly. "They spent every Sunday morning on the moor moving rocks about as chess pieces. My husband lived for those games. I vow it is what kept him alive that last year."

Anne sighed in frustration. Of course she couldn't very well categorize
Patrick's past sins without con
fessing her own, and she had once been attracted enough to his hellfire ways to compromise herself; he certainly hadn't forced her. But oh, how she resented him for coming back into her life at a time when she should have been free to find peace.

"You have become hard, Anne."

"And you
…
you are a liberal, Auntie Nellwyn."

Nellwyn sniffed. "But we shall both obey the Queen, won't we?
And perhaps you will stop play
ing the prude long enough to enjoy our little adventure."

"It is not an adventure," Anne said hotly. "It is a
private query. Oh, it is absurd, unfair. I have no wish to return to Scotland."

"Make the best of it, Anne," she said unsympathetically. "One must do what is for the highest good."

T
he next day they struck out from Aberdeen's High Street; their coach clattered over cobbles toward Aboyne, passing Macbeth's cairn at Lumphanan where Nellwyn insisted they take a picnic. They climbed north past Glenshalg and rumbled over the heather-clad hills and uninhabited expanse of Corrennie Moor. In no particular hurry, they detoured through market towns, and spent an hour at a holy well where Nellwyn made a mysterious wish.

On their fifth night together they stopped at a coaching inn to savor smoked haddock soup. The next morning when they awoke, mist covered the ground and wafted through the stone circles that overshadowed the road.

The moment they passed through the mist, magic happened. Anne instantly felt the difference, as if she had stepped through a mirror into another world; she fought an impulse to tear off her tightly laced boots and stockings and
run
in the pools of rainwater on the moor until her sides ached and she had shed the last vestiges of civilization.

Yet she knew she had to be extremely careful of her own behavior,
or she would end up in trouble
again.

"I don't think Patrick should ride in the carriage
with us for the rest of the way," she said, out of the blue. "It doesn't seem proper, a butler on equal footing with his mistress. He ought to sit up on the
box."

"Hell's bells," he said. "I'm not your butler yet."

"No," she conceded, "but we might be seen together by someone traveling to the village."

"It is misting," he said.

"I'm sorry about that," she said unconvincingly. "Would you like to borrow my veil?"

"I am
not riding on the box like a piece of old luggage." He grinned. "And I don't look good in a
veil."

"Hellfire and damnation," Nellwyn said, waking up from her nap. "If
the two of you don't stop fight
ing, I'm sitting up on the box myself to get some quiet."

They crossed a packhorse bridge and heard the distant croaking of ptarmigan on the moor. Anne counted blue hares on the cairns to avoid talking to Patrick. The moorland air was so pure, it almost burned her lungs to breathe it; she felt afraid without knowing why. Then suddenly it began to rain and she couldn't help thinking about their affair, as much as she resented the man. She couldn't help thinking about what they had shared. Rain, like so many things, reminded her of Patrick.

"
I
can't stay, Patrick. I think my cousin Isobel knows about us. I think she followed me here."

"Isobel is a silly pea hen."

"Aye, but—"

He pressed her against the castle wall, and went down on his knees. Anne was excited; she could not resist him, but she was afraid, too, and even the jackdaws that occupied the castle turrets seemed unnaturally raucous in the afternoon silence. She wanted to tell him what she feared, but they had only a few hours together. Then his head disappeared under her skirts, and his tongue was making a furrow between her flesh; he was loving her with a concentration she dared not interrupt.

It started to rain—that was another bad omen. There hadn't been a cloud in the sky when they had met on the moor, and it was only afterward, after they'd made love and were getting dressed, that Patrick noticed the bruises on her shoulder.

"How the hell did those happen?" he demanded.

She didn't tell him the truth. He had a quick temper; he'd already beaten up half the boys in the village for the hell of it, and she was afraid if she admitted her father had struck her with his walking stick for riding alone, Patrick would confront him. She was starting to believe Papa's assertion that she was a wicked creature, she would never have given herself to Patrick otherwise, but she didn't want him to fight with her papa. The two of them were so different. Patrick had such a liberal view of life, and his father moved in high social circles. Her papa rarely visited town, not since selling his shipping interests. He spent his days praying and judging people. He saw sin everywhere.

"I fell off my horse," she whispered, pulling on her gown before he could question her further. She
was shivering with anxiety, relieved that he accepted her explanation. In those days neither she nor Patrick had done much thinking anyway. They had acted on instinct, and they were fortunate their behavior had not brought them more heartache.

I
nstinct.

Anne wished she had learned to ignore her baser instincts, but
obviously where Patrick was con
cerned she hadn't. Now she was older and supposedly wiser, but it didn't seem as if her experience had done much good. How else had she gotten into this situation?

She lifted the carriage curtain, her skin prickling as she recognized the recumbent stone circle in the distance. Suddenly she knew where she was. She knew that a sleepy hamlet lay just beyond those hills. If the carriage continued past the ruins of a thirteenth-century castle, it would take them to the manor house where she had lived with her parents, until they had married her off in a relief that was almost comical. She'd had little contact with them after her wedding.

Her ailing Aunt Mildred and Mildred's daughter Isobel lived there now
. As part of her strict upbring
ing, Anne had been ordered to spend endless nights at Mildred's house, reading to the woman and keeping her daughter company. But half of the time, after Anne had seen to their needs, she had escaped them to steal a few hours riding her horse on the moor. And once she had stolen away to meet Patrick.

She glanced at him now. "Did you know we were coming this way? Did you know we were passing by my old house?"

He looked annoyed. "Believe it or not, I am not responsible for the fact that the main road, built in Roman times, runs past your family estate."

Nellwyn looked over Anne's shoulder. "Well, bless me, the butler is right. I suppose we shall have to stop."

"Stop?" Anne bit her lip. "Whatever for?"

Nellwyn made an impatient gesture. "One simply doesn't gallop past the home of an aging relative without paying a call. Life is short, Anne. Your aunt may not be alive the next time you come this way, and it's the proper thing to do."

Anne's heart began to pound. Nellwyn knew about Anne's estrangement from her parents and that they had arranged her marriage to David, but she certainly didn't know what an unhappy home theirs had been, or that Anne had vowed never to set foot in that house again.

"It's too late to call on Aunt Mildred," Anne said. "She always retired early, and it would be rude to disturb her. We should have sent word ahead."

"Nonsense," Nellwyn said, hunting for the shawl she was sitting on.

Patrick looked at Anne. "We don't have to stop."

She didn't acknowledge his concern, which came years too late to be of any good. She couldn't blame him for her rigid upbringing that she had fought against with defiance and disobedience. And for which she had paid.

"I don't wish to see Aunt Mildred and Isobel today." Anne's statement was so contrary to her usual nature that Nellwyn dropped the earring she had fished out of her reticule. "They may visit me at Balgeldie House when we've settled in."

Nellwyn and Patrick stared at each other in silence for several
seconds. Then Nellwyn said qui
etly, "You and I will pay a call, Sutherland. Anne may wait in the carriage. We'll say she's feeling sick."

Heartsick, he thought, totally unprepared for the anguish in Anne's eyes, and wondering what was behind it.