Teresa Medeiros (43 page)

“Not everything,” she whispered, but he did not hear her.

“But one knock to your precious Cameron crown and you turn into a whinin’, snivelin’ brat. Showed your colors true enough, didn’t you?” He leaned forward. She pressed herself into the pillows, but there
was no escaping his righteous wrath. His voice softened, audible only to her. A smile of savage good humor lit his eyes. “If I’d have known you were goin’ to be such a bitch about survivin’, I’d have shot
you
instead of Pookah.”

Sabrina’s hand crossed his face with a solid crack. The crowd gasped, totally aghast. Morgan didn’t even flinch. He was as immovable as a rock. Sabrina’s desperation grew.

She slapped him again, hard enough to leave the mark of her hand on his cheek. He just stared down at her, this man who could crush her skull between his bare hands, the anger in his eyes replaced by a quiet pain that had nothing to do with her blow. His face was so beautiful, so resolute—like an angel hewn of marble.

Its chiseled planes swam before her. Warm tears swelled in her eyes. She was terrified they would spill down her cheeks and she would cry before them all.

The words tore from her raw throat, resounding shrilly through the silent room. “Why won’t you just let me be? What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you man enough for a real woman?”

Morgan flinched then, almost imperceptibly, the sun-crinkled lines around his eyes betraying him. He straightened slowly, as if a great weight rested on his shoulders, and Sabrina knew she had finally succeeded in committing an unpardonable sin. She had humiliated him publicly, and to a MacDonnell there was no worse affront.

His eyes were as distant as the Highland mists she would never see again. He bowed from the waist, the restrained dignity of the gesture damning them both. “My apologies if I offended you. Good evening, Miss Cameron.”

As he wound his way stiffly through the crowd, Sabrina knew he had not meant to say good evening, but good-bye.

Rain pattered on the flagstones outside Sabrina’s window, its rhythm both melancholy and soothing. It struck the leaded glass of the terrace doors and ran down the panes in wavy rivulets, blurring the garden beyond to bearable shades.

A timid knock sounded on the door.

Without shifting in the wheelchair, Sabrina said, “Come in.”

The door swung open behind her. “I brought you some tea, miss. Cook thought you might enjoy some fresh scones. Bought the apples from a street vendor with her own wages, she did.”

Sabrina summoned up a smile as Bea’s freckled visage bobbed into view. “Why, thank you, Beatrice. Tell Cook I’m sure they’ll be wonderful.”

Bea set the tray on the tea table at Sabrina’s elbow, then stood, wringing her apron and shifting from foot to foot.

“Is there something else, Beatrice?”

Bea was staring at the worn Bible resting beneath Sabrina’s folded hands. It had been sitting on her lap for three days, but no one had ever seen her open it. “I was just wondering if I might bring you another book to read. Or perhaps a bit of embroidery to lift your spirits.”

Sabrina shook her head, resuming her dreamy perusal of the rain-drenched garden. “No, thank you. But it’s very kind of you to ask.”

Still Bea hovered behind her. “Shall I comb your hair for you, miss?” The touch of her fingers was feather-light in the thick mass that rippled past Sabrina’s shoulders. “I never would have guessed there was so much of it.” She snatched her hand back as if realizing she’d been too familiar.

But instead of a rebuke, Sabrina gave her another gentle smile. “I can comb it myself, but thank you for asking.”

Bea sighed, forced to content herself with tucking the eiderdown quilt tighter around Sabrina’s legs. “I’ll send Teddy up with some wood for a fire. We don’t want you catching a chill in the damp. Would you like me to move you away from the door? There might be drafts.”

Sabrina shook her head, the motion as unfocused as a sleepwalker’s. She heard Bea pause to pat a pillow and toss a stray stocking over a chair back. Sabrina could see the maid’s reflection in the window; her homely face was screwed tight with concern.

“If there’s anything you want, miss—anything at all—you’ll ring for me, won’t you?”

Sabrina nodded. The door had already closed behind the servant when Sabrina whispered, “Don’t worry, Bea. I’m a Cameron. We always get what we want.”

She leaned her head against the chair back and closed her eyes, even the dismal light beyond the window too bright to bear.

•  •  •

Bea entered the kitchen two hours later, carrying the untouched tea tray.

She shook her head sadly, dimming Cook’s expectant expression. “Not a drop. Nor did she eat so much as a crumb.”

Cook sank down heavily on a stool, poking her finger into one of the cold, gummy scones. “If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be trying to tempt the young miss’s appetite with anything more than arsenic, I’d have thought them batty.” Her face cheered. “What if I fix her up a nice poultice for her chest?”

Bea shook her head. “She hadn’t any bodily complaints. She hadn’t any complaints at all. I’ve never heard so many thank-yous and if you please, ma’ams in all my life. She’d have probably served me the tea if I had asked her to.”

Cook rested her dimpled chin on her palm. The two women sat in glum silence, both surprised to realize they preferred the challenge of Sabrina’s tantrums to her painful politeness. The last light had gone out of the young miss’s eyes, leaving them as vacant as an extinguished candle. She had abandoned her elaborate dressing gowns and cashmere shawls for a plain lawn nightdress and a faded eiderdown quilt. She wore her hair loose around her shoulders or in two simple plaits like a child.

She refused to leave her bedroom, sitting in that uncomfortable wheelchair for hours on end, staring out the casement windows into the garden as if waiting for something that would never come. Or someone.

Thumps and curses no longer resounded from her room at night. There was nothing but that same empty silence.

Cook shook her head woefully. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the young miss was suffering from a broken heart.”

Bea took a sip of Sabrina’s cold tea, then grimaced. “A week ago I’d have sworn she had no heart.”

Cook topped off the tea with a splash of gin from a bottle marked
vanilla
. “Well, as my old ma used to
say, God rest her dear soul, whatever don’t kill you will probably cure you.”

Bea lifted the cup. “I’ll drink to that.”

They clinked the bottle and cup together in a gesture that was as much prayer as toast.

Someone was tugging the sleeve of her nightdress.

Sabrina opened her eyes, moving from sleep to wakefulness with unnatural ease. There seemed to be very little difference between the two these days. Both were colored in comforting shades of gray. She gazed up at the wooden canopy without blinking, weighed down by a sense of loss so keen and overwhelming, it lingered in her mouth like a bitter aftertaste.

“Sabrina, oh, please wake up!”

She turned her head to find Enid crouched by the bed. Her cousin’s nightdress was sodden with rain. She wore slippers encrusted with goo that looked suspiciously like garden mud. Lank ringlets tangled around her face. But her cheeks were rosy and her eyes sparkled with such life that Sabrina wanted to shield her face from their brightness.

“You’d best get out of those wet things,” she said. “You don’t want the baby taking a chill.”

“Later. But right now I need your help. It’s Ranald.”

Sabrina ruthlessly quenched the hope that leapt in her throat. “Ranald? I would have thought he’d gone back to the Highlands by now.”

“So would I.” A dizzy laugh escaped her cousin. “But he hasn’t. He refused to leave until he could see me one more time. He wants to discuss our future.”

Sabrina frowned, the future a concept so foreign, it seemed beyond understanding. For her, there was only the passage of minutes that blended seamlessly into hours.

Enid clutched her arm, her words tumbling out in a frantic litany. “Philip has invited me to the masked ridotto at Vauxhall tomorrow night. But it’s Ranald I plan to meet, since it’s a masked ball and he can move
freely among the guests. But Mama refuses to let me go unless you promise to accompany me. She seems to think I have a way of getting into scrapes when I go off by myself.”

Sabrina’s gaze slid down to Enid’s rather prominent stomach. How much more of a scrape could Enid get into? She suspected her aunt’s insistence that she accompany Enid had more to do with getting herself out of her bedroom. And out of the house. She was left with only one question.

“Will he be there?”

Enid bowed her head. Firelight sifted through her pale hair, painting it gold. “No. He’s making ready for their journey home.”

Home
, Sabrina thought. Morgan’s feet propped on the hearth. A verdant flush of green creeping over the glens. Melted snow sluicing down the mountainside in a silvery cascade. Home, where he would be free of her at last. It was only a pity she would never be free of him. Not even the documents her father was bringing for her signature at the end of the week would set her free.

Enid’s expression was more expectant than her rounded belly. “Please say you’ll come.”

Sabrina remembered kneeling at Enid’s bedside at Castle MacDonnell, begging her to leave the warm cocoon of Ranald’s arms and brave the snowy night. She had been running from Morgan that night too. But he had been fool enough to come after her. He would not make the same mistake again.

Summoning up a smile, she stroked Enid’s hair, remembering all the sacrifices her cousin had made for her. “Of course I’ll come. Perhaps it will give me a chance to make amends for being such a selfish beast.” She threw back the blankets in invitation. “Now, climb in here before that babe of yours starts to sneeze.”

Kicking off her muddy slippers, Enid obeyed, bounding into the bed with a cheerful force that set the bed frame rocking.

•  •  •

The following evening, Sabrina was already regretting her decision as Philip rolled her chair to a deserted spot against the wall of the assembly room where the ridotto was being held. Curious stares pierced her skin like tiny darts. It was her first public appearance since her row with Morgan had scandalized society. Hoping to avoid notice, she had chosen a simple white gown and dressed her hair in a coronet of braids.

Perhaps she should have worn a mask as well, she thought, then smiled ruefully to realize that would have made her no less recognizable. None of the other guests were being wheeled in like tea services.

Outside, the gentle spring rain had ceased, but a low growl of thunder boded another storm. Lamps festooned along the walls punctured the gloom of the long, high-ceilinged room, giving the masked guests a mysterious air.

Philip parked the chair with a flourish. He thrust his face into hers, enunciating each word with painstaking care, as if her infirmity had rendered her both deaf and daft. “There now, Miss Cameron, are you quite comfortable? I can’t help but feel responsible for you. After Enid and I are wed, I do hope you’ll come to think of me as a brother.”

Enid mercifully saved her from replying by appearing at his elbow with a crystal cup of punch and a napkin piled with sweetcakes. She was lifting a cake to her lips when Philip plucked it away.

He favored her with a patronizing smile. “I do believe that will be quite enough, dear. You do want to be able to fit into that beautiful wedding gown after the little one is born.”

Enid’s eyes blazed behind her mask, but at that moment the door at the far end of the room flew open, letting in a gust of wind and the piquant scent of approaching rain.

With a dismayed gasp Sabrina dropped her handkerchief. “Oh, dear! I’ll never be able to reach it. Philip, if you would be so kind …”

Philip bent to retrieve the scrap of linen. By the time he straightened, Enid was gone, shooed by
Sabrina toward the dark-eyed, devilishly handsome masked stranger standing in the doorway.

“Well, I do say,” Philip said, handing her the handkerchief. “Where the devil did she go?” He swiveled his thin neck to scan the milling crowd, his pinched features so crestfallen that Sabrina felt a moment’s pity for him.

But that didn’t stop her from pointing out an overweight girl in a feathered mask identical to Enid’s. “Why, there she is! If you hurry, you might be able to catch her before the first dance.”

He jerked his coat free of invisible wrinkles and darted after the girl. Sabrina sighed with relief when no one rushed over to take his place. She sensed a sly fear in the curious looks she was getting. Perhaps they had decided she was not only crippled, but dangerous. She was glad they were ignoring her. She found their pity repugnant to her now, just another shameful reminder of what pride had cost her.

The crowd was a young and lively one. The orchestra struck up a merry quadrille, the country dance a striking contrast to the sophisticated gowns and jeweled masks. Sabrina tapped her feet without realizing it, measuring out the rhythm of the Highland fling Fergus had taught her.

A fresh gust of wind rippled the flames of the lamps. Both her feet and her heart seemed to grind to a halt as she saw the golden giant silhouetted against the darkening sky.

Hope took wing in her heart. She had been wrong after all. Morgan had come back for her.

But the wings of hope folded, sending her crashing to earth when she saw the masked beauty clinging to her husband’s arm.

Morgan’s face might have been hewn of polished marble. It was utterly impassive, utterly beautiful, giving no sign that it might ever crack into something as human as a smile or even a scowl. Sabrina’s heart contracted with longing.

She wanted to hate him, wanted to resent the tall, leggy beauty pressed so intimately to his side. But wasn’t this what she had desired for him? A woman who could walk into a room on his arm, who could dance, who could give him everything she could not?

All Sabrina could do was stare, frozen by a hunger so keen, it stole her breath away. Their gazes met across the crowded room. Sabrina thought she saw the flicker of a scowl darken his brow. But it might have been only a trick of the unreliable light. Then the orchestra began to play and Morgan’s companion tugged him into the genteel steps of a minuet.