Indiscretion (6 page)

9

"
A
re you certain you want to do this?" Patrick asked his aunt as
they stood before the wrought-
iron fence that enclosed the estate like a small fortress.

It was a house built in the Scots baronial style on a riverside crag surrounded by bleak moor and peat bog. There were no trees, nowhere a man could withdraw to hide even from himself, and there was a feeling of loneliness that cut to the bone.

"I'm good at patching up quarrels," she said. "If I'd been a man,
I would have become an ambassa
dor. My dear father always said that, even when I was little."

"What makes you think Anne and her aunt have quarreled? This is Anne's house, is it not? She is generous to shelter the woman here. It doesn't sound as if she holds any grudge against her."

He looked up at the house, a gray hulking ghost of a thing in the gloaming, and wondered again if it
was better not to disturb it. "Perhaps Anne has her reasons."

"If she does, she will not share them."

"Then leave well enough alone."

She primped her silver curls. "It is entirely improper to show up on the doorstep, but I am a woman of rank, so her aunt is bound to receive me in a cordial manner. Go up and announce my arrival, Sutherland. It's time you started to practice a little submission."

"Stop calling me that," he said.

"I like it," she said.

He saw a pale face lur
king behind the dark curtains of the house. There was something distasteful about visiting the family of a young girl you had disgraced. And it was too late for him to apologize to her parents, or to make their mistake right. Still, if there was something in Anne's past that would help him to better understand her, he would gladly make the effort.

Nellwyn studied his face. "I was in Kent the summer that Anne married David, but I've always sensed something strange about their courtship. It seemed to happen so fast that I suspected he might have gotten her pregnant, but that wasn't the case at all. What do you know of it?"

He looked out at the hills. "Not much. I was out of the country myself."

She frowned. "Will Anne's aunt remember you?"

"I never met the woman. She might have seen me on the way to church." He smiled without humor. "The one or two times I attended."

"Anne's family was always reclusive," she said thoughtfully. "I
don't think I ever actually ex
changed more than a passing word with any of them myself. But then I never stayed here long enough to socialize."

"I don't remember," he said vaguely. In those days he had given even less of a damn for social convention than he did now. He'd been furious at his father for pulling him out of school and exiling him to the Scottish Highlands. Actually, he'd been expelled from school, and he had refused to mingle with his unexciting neighbors to please his father.

Until he met Anne. He would never forget the first time he saw her riding a white stallion across the moor, a few days after they had noticed each other in church. He'd thought she was going to kill herself. The wind had dried the tracks of tears on her face, but he had known she'd been crying. To this day he hadn't understood what had made her so sad, but he did k
now that in the end, he'd proba
bly made her a little sadder, and he was sorry that time and circumstance had conspired against them.

"Are you going to announce me or not, Sutherland?" Nellwyn said, nudging his arm.

He looked back at Anne in the carriage, but he couldn't read her expression through the window.

"I'll go," he said, reluctantly, "but don't call me Sutherland aga
in, Auntie Nellwyn. It's damned
annoying."

A
flustered housekeeper admitted him to a paneled entrance hall that was striking in its plainness. No
portraits, no carpets, not even a clock. His boot heels echoed on bare wood. How had his spirited Anne grown up in this grave of a home, he wondered?

The drawing room was painted in dull green and gold, and he was struck by the cold and oppressive atmosphere, the lack of fire in the marble fireplace. The single globe gaslight hissed, accentuating the shadows and stark quiet of the house.

He was startled to find himself not alone. A young dark-haired woman sat before him on a caned chair, stabbing a needle into a tapestry pillow. She wore the black bombazine gown of a widow, and his unease mounted as she raised her face to his.

"Forgive me for intruding on your grief," he said. "My name is—"

"I know who you are."

He knew who she was too—Isobel of the silly nature who had spied on her own cousin. Yet obviously she had held her tongue; Anne's parents had never discovered her affair with Patrick. It was mildly embarrassing to face another reminder of his misspent youth.

"The Marchioness of Invermont is waiting with Anne to be received," he said. "Is your aunt in the house?"

"My aunt is taking the sea air for a lung condition," she said with a polite smile. "And I am mourning my husband, who died last month." She paused, her needle in the air. "I cannot believe Anne would take up with
you
again. I thought her papa had beaten the willfulness out of her that summer."

So she did recognize him. There was no question of pretending to be a butler; or of Nellwyn's making a polite social call. He released a breath. "Beaten her?" A chill went down his spine. "Is that what you said?"

She nodded hesitantly, perhaps regretting she had revealed such an ugly family secret. One did not expose these things to Polite Society. "He wanted her to go to her husband a submissive wife. Of course poor David was so smitten with her, he would have taken her if she'd come to him on a broomstick." She frowned. "Her father beat her unmercifully that last time, all because Anne would not smile at David during their betrothal ceremony."

Patrick sank into the chair, the image she had invoked so awful he couldn't speak for several moments. The Anne he remembered had smiled at him so easily.

Isobel regarded him shyly. "Sometimes I wondered if Anne did not half hope you would return to rescue her."

"Did she speak o
f me?" he asked quietly.

"Never. But once or twice after you left, she returned to the castle."

He sighed. "So this house does not hold pleasant memories for her?"

"No," Isobel said. "I suppose not."

"Did Anne's mother never intervene when her father became violent?"

"She was afraid of him too," she whispered. "I do believe he loved Anne in his way. He only meant to
rid her of that wild streak before she became a wife. She was a willful girl."

He looked about, envisioning his wee Anne standing up to her father. "Perhaps it is better after all if she does not come in here."

She looked up in surprise. "Does she want to? I should adore—"

"No," he said quickly. "She doesn't."

He rose to leave. The conversation had been as unpleasant as facing enemy fire in the infantry. But at least it answered the question that had nagged at him for years. It told him why Anne had been crying the day they met. It told him what a rare pearl she was, beautiful and unique, formed from a dark atmosphere of criticism and physical intimidation.

It told him why Anne had those bruises on her shoulder, and idiot that he was, he had believed the hellion's story about tumbling from her horse.

It told him why she had given her heart and body to him so unwisely when he had never promised her anything. Desperate for love, she had accepted it from the first man who had shown her any attention, and he too had wounded her.

10

"
W
hat did she say?" Nellwyn demanded the instant he returned to t
he carriage. "Are we invited to
tea?"

He glanced at Anne before taking his seat. She refused to meet his gaze, but Nellwyn had put on her elbow-length gloves and a pair of jet earrings.

"It isn't a good time to call. Anne's aunt is away, taking the sea air, and Isobel is in mourning for her husband." He looked at Anne. "I believe she is lonely for your company, Anne."

Her face softened. "Silly Isobel," she said, and all he wanted to do was hold her, to chase away the hurt he and her father had inflicted.

"I am an impulsive old woman," Nellwyn said, watching Anne in concern. "I should have known better than to spring up on the door like a mushroom."

The carriage was circling the drive. The house receded into the purple-gray shadows of the crag,
and the hills seemed to engulf it until it vanished. Patrick caught Anne staring back in a combination of longing and dread, shaking her head as if she were denying something inside her own mind. He ached to sit beside her, give comfort, and make everything right.

"I think we'll go a few miles farther before we stop to stretch our legs again," Nellwyn said, apparently sensing something was not well. "Would that be all right with you, Anne?"

She stirred. "Of course. Why wouldn't it be?"

T
hey veered off
the main road, skirting a peat-
track and a distillery
until they came to a path that
was nothing more than mossy rocks and heather. Fog e
ngulfed them as they found a burn
and ate a snack of ham sandwiches and cranberry tarts on the bank of bracken fern and broom.

"I'm going to offer the coachman something to eat," Nellwyn said, shaking off her skirts. "Can I trust you two to be civil to each other in my absence?"

Anne sprang to her feet. "I'll walk along the water."

She wasn't surprised when Patrick followed her. "Do you remember, Anne, that we skimmed stones on the water and made wishes?"

She tossed a fern frond into the swift-flowing current. She remembered, all right. She remembered wishing they would be together forever and that he would love her the way she ached to be loved. She had wished he would redeem himself and approach her father with a request for her hand.

He pressed a gray-veined stone into the palm of her hand, closing his eyes. "We'll wish together. I know what I want."

She stared down at the stone in her hand as a wicked impulse took hold of her. Then she pulled back her arm and hurled it, hitting him in the chest.

"Hell," he hollered, really upset. "What did you do that for?"

She just chuckled. Odd how an act of physical aggression could make a woman feel so much better.

"Well, hell," he said, "Woman, that was uncalled for."

Nellwyn hurried back toward them, her face alarmed. "A butler cannot walk around hollering obscenities at his mistress. I could hear you from the other side of the hill."

Patrick scowled at the innocent-looking woman beside him. "She hit me with a stone when I was making a wish."

"Well, Patrick," Nellwyn said, "I would have hit you with a stone too if you were swearing at me like that. Goodness gracious, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

He didn't say another word in his own defense. What would hav
e been the point? Anne was grin
ning like a she-devil, and for all Auntie Nellwyn claimed he was her favorite, it was clear the two women had formed some sort of ungodly conspiracy against him.

He stared down at the stone he held. Then he threw it into the silvery water, and defiantly, he made his wish.

* *
* * *

A
n
ne smiled ruefully as she climbed back into the waiting carriag
e. She remembered the day she'd
learned Patrick had left Scotland. The rowan leaves along the wayside had begun to fall, and their red berries looked like pinpricks of blood from a broken heart. Eighteen years old, she wept until she was as empty as a husk. She never understood what David saw in her, w
hy he would want to marry a too-
thin woman with haunted eyes who rode like an Amazon and who cried whenever he touched her. He never even asked why she was crying. He just held her hand and told her he understood.

Patrick, she supposed, remembered almost nothing of that time. He was probably carousing with the other young raw recruits, or so dead-drunk he wouldn't even recognize her while she was weeping her heart out.

She had wished him back so hard in the days before her wedding, it was frightening. And now, seven years later, her wish had been granted, and what on earth was she supposed to do with the man?

11

T
he huntsman raised his rifle and aimed at the hawk perched on the crag. The bird sensed the threat and stared, seemingly transfixed. The man squinted; he was aware of a rush of anticipation, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

Before he could shoot, however, a familiar female voice blasted the s
ilence of the moor with the sub
tlety of canonfire.

"Papa!" Her voice was petulant and frantic. "Papa, where have you been?" she wailed. "I
need
you."

He lowered the rifle before briefly considering shooting himself in the head. The hawk had taken refuge in a crevice seconds before. "What dire emergency is it this time, Flora? Another pimple on the chin? Another unpaid bill come back to haunt you?"

"Oh, Papa." She clumped up beside him with her hand on her chest to control her breathing. "The
most dreadful thing has happened. The most ominous, the most awful—the prediction has come true."

He removed a handkerchief from his tweed jacket and dabbed his upper lip. "Prediction?"

"I told you, but as usual you ignored me. Black Mag predicted that she was coming back, and it's true."

"Black Mag?" His handsome face hardened. "Haven't I warned you to stay away from that old hag?"

"She isn't a hag. She's a genuine Scots-Romany herbwoman and she sees into the future, and she said we have a blot on our souls and that a woman of whiteness is coming back to remove it."

"Woman?" he said, paying attention for the first time. "What woman is the old witch talking about?"

He was awaiting her answer when a pair of ravens burst into flight from a rocky overhang. Their hoarse caws filled the air with ungodly noise. They were evil things, those birds; they brought nothing but trouble, or so weak-minded individuals such as his daughter believed, and even he felt a twinge of anxiety as he faced her and tried to make sense out of what she had said.

"What woman?"

"The English baron's wife, the beautiful one with black hair who was always riding across the moor at all hours."

He blinked. His anxiety had shifted to a different kind of stirring. In his mind he saw Anne cantering
through the mist like a pagan queen, her hair tangled, her slim body moving with the animal in the most unladylike, the most arousing manner he could imagine. He had always wondered how a woman of her spirit had ended up with a moth of a man like David, but she had rebuffed any discreet suggestion of a liaison years ago at the last house party she had attended.

"She's a widow now," he said, tucking his handkerchief into his
pocket. "I wonder why she's com
ing back."

"Everyone in the lodge is wondering the same thing." Flora chewed a strand of limp red hair that had escaped her straw hat. "Black Mag is certain she's going to stir up things like the storm witches who live over the mountains."

"Black Mag?" He shook himself. "Is all this based on that crone's prediction?"

"It wasn't just Mag," she said with assurance. "The chambermaid at the lodge said Anne had sent word she was arriving in a few days, and she was sorry for the short notice, but that the staff should be prepared."

"It is her lodge," he said.

"She never liked the lodge. And she never liked shooting, or me for that matter."

"Now Flora, do not start imagining things again. One of these days the w
rong person is going to believe
you."

"Lord Kingaim was her un
cle-in-law." She whispered the realization, watching the ravens circle over some unseen prey on the moor. "She's
bound to wonder about his death. It's only been a year."

He gripped her by the shoulders. "There's not much to wonder about. He died of a heart ailment on the loch. He wasn't exactly a young man."

She looked him in the eye, easing away. "Neither are you."

"Thank you for the reminder," he said sourly.

She took a few steps away from him, making a face as her slippers brushed a rain puddle. The hawk flew overhead, as if taunting, certain of its freedom, but sudd
enly the girl seemed more inter
este
d in the mud on her shoes, and h
er father was definitely more interested in what Anne's visit would mean to him.

Anne had never exactly responded to his subtle attempts at flirtation, but she had not been a widow then either, and he told himself that a woman in her position was going to need a protector, and that such a person should probably be a nobleman with a respectable background and the maturity to take a vulnerable lady in hand. A smile crossed his face as he looked across the moor toward her estate. So Anne was coming back, alone this time. It seemed his hunting urges would have to be redirected toward a gentler type of game.

T
hey traveled for two more days before reaching the hamlet o
f Glenferg in the Grampian foot
hills. Patrick remarked that it was about time the railroads ran through this part of the Highlands. Anne disagreed and said she liked her birthplace
unspoiled, and who wanted a smelly train chugging over a sacred cairn anyway? Nellwyn told them both to cease their arguing because it was giving her the megrims.

They reached the lodge early on the evening of their eighth day together. Tucked away in a forest of fir trees, a traveler could search for weeks and never find it. David had act
ually bought the fortified tow
erhouse with dormer windows and a turret staircase on a whim, claiming he needed a castle for his princess. He had added a white-harled block and four pavilions before his death, but the tower remained the heart of the house.

Nellwyn took Patrick aside in the unlit courtyard after Anne had gone ahead to see if any letters had arrived. "Why are you looking so sour, Sutherland?"

He frowned, watching Anne disappear into the darkened tower. Ever since his confrontation with Isobel he had been obsessed with protecting her. "I didn't know I was looking sour."

Nellwyn shook her head. "Perhaps sour isn't the right word. You look rather wistful whenever you watch Anne, but then again, so does the wolf when he stalks a doe in the woods." She paused. "Something happened bade there in her old house, didn't it?"

"Some stones are. better left unturned
,"
he said quietly, and he thought of Anne's father beating her, and his entire body tightened in the blackest anger he had ever known.

He stopped, taking a breath. Her father was dead. He was beyond anyone's reach now, and it was left to him to repair the damage, not seek revenge.

"We can't stand here all night," Nellwyn said. "We have work to do."

"Aye," he said quietly. "Lead on, Auntie Nellwyn."

Anne had assembled her small staff in the Great Hall, which smelled of beeswax from a quick cleaning and a lingering hint of must from months of being dosed off. The carpet had been swept with wet ashes, and a hasty log fire lit in the vast stone hearth. Billows of smoke began to circulate and curl around the hammer-beam rafters.

"I appreciate your loyalty to both me and my late husband in remaining here during my prolonged absence," Anne began, her slim figure silhouetted by the firelight. "The lodge appears to have been beautifully tended as always."

Patrick leaned up against the rough stone wall as she gave the hearten
ing aristocrat-pats-peasant-on-
the-head speech. He wondered where in this gloomy tower she was going to sleep, whether she had slept with David every night, how often they had made love.

He knew that if he had been her husband, he wouldn't have been able to keep his hands off her for an hour straight. They would never have left the bedroom. Weeds would probably have grown high enough to choke the windows. The tower could fall apart, stone by stone, and their finances could be in ruins, but Patrick would be a happy man if he woke up every morning with her in his arms.

He shifted, raising his brooding gaze from the floor to hear her voice ringing across the hall.

"Snap to it, man."

He sighed, his expression bored as he gazed around the room wondering who she was speaking to in such an uncharacteristically rude way.

"Did you hear me, Sutherland?" she said.

Sutherland. Oh, hell.

He straightened, embarrassed, as every eye in the hall turned to observe his reaction to her ladyship's sharp reprimand. Anne was not known for her sarcasm.

"Gathering wool, Sutherland?" she said, with that gloating smile that made him want to spank and kiss her at the same time.

He bowed, his face a mask of dark irony. "Forgive me, madam. I had my mind on other matters."

"A woman, no doubt," she said under her breath.

"How did you guess?"

"I want you to meet my most loyal and dedicated staff, Sutherlan
d," she said, beckoning him for
ward. And to the curious servants waiting to catch a glimpse of their new leader, she explained, "Sutherland isn't usually this much of a wallflower."

"A wallflower," he said.

"Goodness," she said in mock dismay. "He isn't wearing his knee breeches either."

"Well, good heavens." He looked down at his Bond-Street tailor-made trousers. "I wonder how that happened."

Entranced, the staff of Balgeldie watched this rather unconventional exchange between mistress and servant. Their support would unquestionably
go to her ladyship's side. This new butler was an unproven entity in their social equation, and since Anne had always treated her staff with kindness and generosity, any intruder would have to prove himself before being enfolded into the bosom of the domestic family.

"A bit on the stubborn side," whispered Mrs. Forbes the housekeeper, to G
racie, the upper cham
bermaid.

"A rebel," said Sandy, the head gardener. "I've seen his sort. He willna last the year."

"He's a braw fine-lookin' mannie," said the kitchen maid to Fergus the footman.

The footman grun
ted, eyeing Patrick's muscular le
gs and enormous shoulders. "If you like giants waitin' on you."

"I could learn to,"
the kitchen maid retorted, gig
gling.

Mrs. Forbes gave the gossiping group a loud harrumph of disappr
oval and shouldered her way for
ward. "Welcome to our staff, Mr. Sutherland," she said with dignified warmth. "A good man is hard to find."

"So is a good woman," he said without thinking.

This comment, unexpected from a servant, brought comp
lete silence to the hall. Anne cl
osed her eyes in exasperation and Nellwyn, sitting at the table with a glass of port, let out a chortle of amusement.

"What I meant," Patrick said,
"is
—"

"Never mind what you meant," Anne said briskly. "See about t
he supper arrangements. I'm fam
ished."

"Supper?" he said bleakly.

She edged up beside him. "
It's your job," she said in an undertone. "They're expecting you to show your mastery."

"Aye, I intend to."

"As my butler, I meant."

"For now." He brushed around her, his blue eyes glittering. "And afterward as your lord and master."

"Sutherland," she said in an imperious voice before he took another step.

He made a mocking bow. "My lady?"

"I will not tolerate insubordination in a servant."

The staff had begun to file from the hall with Nellwyn rising to fire out instructions at the door. Anne and Patrick stood practically alone with the massive pinewood table between them.

"Do you really want to punish me, Anne?" he asked, the creases in his cheeks deepening in amusement.

She pressed her palms down on the table. "Don't tempt me."

"Do I still tempt you?"

"Not in the least."

Their eyes connected in a brief silent battle, and Anne felt more conflicting emotions than she could count. His rugged virility had been her ruin seven years ago, and it was no less potent now.

"Breakfast at eight before I go riding," she said in a dismissive voice.

"Is that a good idea?"

She looked surprised. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Have you forgotten why we're here?" he asked.
"If Uncle Edgar met with foul play, then there is a chance that his murderer is still in the area. Mrs. Forbes has shifty eyes, do you not think?"

He was mocking her again, making gentle fun of her as he had when they were lovers, and despite herself, she felt another infuriating flurry of anger and attraction.

"No, I do not think her eyes—oh, you are aggravating. Go away. I always ride alone, and we both know Edgar wasn't murdered."

She faced the fire, faming, her arms clasped across her chest. He came up behind her, his big body both a threat and a comfort.

"Lock your door tonight too," he said.