The Passionate One (24 page)

This apparently
hadn’t set well with his Highland cousins for, according to Donne, they’d long
since blotted his name from the family Bible, an act that had in no way
discomforted Donne. Instead, self-avowed coward and sybarite that he was, Donne
simply eschewed the clan that had exiled him.

It would be a waste
of time to seek an ally in Donne. Ash forced his gaze from Rhiannon. She would
be living at Wanton’s Blush. She’d learn soon enough that there would be no
champions. Every person here had been handpicked because they possessed just
exactly those characteristics that champions lacked: greed, self-interest,
cowardice, insolence, and vanity.

His own sister was
a prime example.

“I think Merrick has brought us a mute,” Fia said. “Did you have to take her tongue to keep her from
denouncing you, brother?”

This brought a
swift glare from Rhiannon.

“I assure you, she
is quite capable of denouncing me. Make your curtsey, Miss Russell,” Ash said.
“One of your Scottish baronets has introduced himself to you.”

He may as well have
spoken to stone, her disdain and self-containment were so complete and so
completely excluded him. Excluded them all. But then, he’d stolen her from her
home and family under the most feeble of pretexts. He’d taken from her her good
name and her maidenhead.

And if he’d twice
now sought to convince her of his honest concern, twice now she’d refused to
believe him. So how could he, he asked himself as he gazed at her averted
profile, who had so little experience with honesty, fail to accept the verdict
of one who understood it so well?

He was done with
trying to realign his nature. He
was
as corrupt as she imagined.

“She won’t speak to
you, Donne.”

“Not yet, perhaps,”
Donne said thoughtfully. “But, surely, as two Scots in a house full of
Englishmen, we’ll find in each other’s company a wee bit of comfort, eh, Miss
Russell?” His offer surprised Ash.

Donne’s accent, a
thing he slipped on and off as comfortably as a pair of slippers, had grown
pronounced. Its music drew another of those grudging glances from Rhiannon and
this time the light revealed her complete exhaustion, the pale mouth and ringed
eyes. She wove where she stood.

She must be near to
collapsing. He needed to get her out of here. Somewhere where she could wash
and sleep.

“Not yet?” Donne
said and Ash could not remember ever hearing such gentle tones from his mouth.
“I can wait.”

“I fear you wait in
vain, Lord Donne,” said Fia. “Perhaps the lady is discerning in her choice of
companions and simply exhibits her good taste. Would that it extended to the
matter of her attire.”

The chance
reference to her apparel caused Rhiannon’s hands to flutter hesitantly about
her heavy, muddied skirts.

“It looks as though
Ash dragged you from a particularly feverish hunt.”

“He did.” These
were the first words Rhiannon had spoken. Her glance slew up and speared Fia so
that the younger girl, in spite of an upbringing that should have inured her to
even the most violent of glares, stepped back.

Fia looked around,
disconcerted by such honest animosity. “Let me send one of the servants for
your trunks.”

“There are no
trunks,” Ash said. “She has nothing.”

“Odder and odder,”
said Fia. “Whatever is she here for?”

“That’s easy,”
Donne said, without looking at Fia but instead studying Rhiannon. “Carr dotes
on you so, Miss Fia, that he’s imported a sister with whom you might trade
girlish confidences.”

The thought of Fia,
even though still chronologically a girl, as anything in the least childish,
was absurd, and well Donne knew it. But Fia refused to be baited. Her cool,
silky gaze fastened on the tall baronet. “It’s only fair,” she said, “seeing
how he’s misplaced one sibling, that he replace it with another.”

The reminder of
Raine’s whereabouts struck Ash painfully. With an effort, he kept his
expression neutral, wondering whether Fia had chosen her words to hurt him, or
rebuke Donne. It was impossible to tell with Fia. She kept her own counsel so
completely.

“Still, new sister
or not, Carr dislikes ugliness. He’ll be horrified if he sees her like this,”
Fia said. “She looks to be near enough my size that she might borrow a dress.
If she’s to meet Carr, she’ll need all the confidence she can find—or borrow.”

Ash hadn’t thought
of that. Fia was right. Appearances were of the utmost importance to Carr.
Gaining his approbation might prove prudent. The question was what Fia hoped to
achieve by offering her aid.

Her face was as
serene as a Madonna’s, her eyes wells of unfathomable darkness. After an instant
consideration Ash decided it didn’t matter what she wanted.

This was Wanton’s
Blush. Subterfuge and treachery were the games of
his
childhood, and
they were compulsory. There were only two rules here: Play at one level deeper
than your opponent and never forget that everyone is your opponent.

He nodded. “Give
her over to Gunna,” he said, naming the white-haired woman who had been Fia’s
nanny since toddlerhood and the only bit of warmth any of them had encountered
at Wanton’s Blush since their mother’s death.

“Yes.”

“There’s no need to
rush an audience,” he added casually. “She can see Carr tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Fia agreed
once more. She moved to Rhiannon’s side and linked her arm through hers, calmly
ignoring Rhiannon’s attempt to pull free. “Please come with me. I’ll order a
bath and we’ll find you some clothes. Something to make you feel invincible,”
she said, drawing Rhiannon away.

“You won’t run away
will you?” Ash heard Fia ask as they left.

“No,” Rhiannon
replied without a single backward glance. “I’ve nowhere to go.”

Chapter Twenty

The sun was full up
when Fia slipped inside of the sumptuously appointed bedchamber where Rhiannon
had slept. Though the girl entered on a light, furtive step Rhiannon came fully
awake at once. She kept her breathing even and opened her eyelids to mere
slits, studying the girl.

Today, Fia had
eschewed last night’s dramatic midnight hues in favor of an exquisitely worked
butter yellow dress of astounding indecency. The tight, square bodice pushed
her young breasts high above the décolletage, barely maintaining modesty.
Pearls draped her slender throat and dangled from her earlobes. A tiny black
patch flirted with one smooth white cheek and rosy salve coated her lips.

She looked like a
dressmaker’s mannequin, thought Rhiannon dispassionately, a dressmaker with a
demimonde clientele.

A week ago a
creature as exotic as Fia would have rendered Rhiannon tongue-tied. But when
one was a prisoner such matters as another’s demeanor ceased to be important.
Or even very interesting.

Besides, Rhiannon
thought with a brittle inner smile, it was so patently apparent that Fia
expected to unnerve her—and everyone else. Last night Fia had perched herself
on the foot of the bed and watched as a maid stripped the filthy riding habit
from Rhiannon’s back. In a tender, composed voice she had recited salacious
stories about Carr and Ash and another brother named Raine. When her tales
failed to invoke so much as a gasp, she’d become openly disconcerted. Her
smooth white brow had knit with perplexity and she’d finally left Rhiannon
alone.

It was a telling
point and Rhiannon re-estimated Fia’s age to be much younger than she’d
originally surmised. A faint memory came back to her, her uncle advising her to
“know well one’s enemy.”

Enemy, lover.
Sanctuary, prison. Home and exile.

Now that exhaustion
no longer kept such notions at bay, they prowled through Rhiannon’s waking
thoughts, mocking her with her own culpability. She’d succumbed to Ash’s potent
magnetism. She’d sought his company and flirted with him, burning with
curiosity over what his kiss would be like. And after discovering that, she’d
still not been content. Knowledge had only fed the craving, consumed her until
she’d felt she’d
needed
to know passion—
his
passion. Well,
she thought, biting hard upon her inner cheeks, she now had that knowledge,
too.

If only it had been
a shabby, tawdry thing, an act that
felt
as sordid as she knew it to
be. But it
hadn’t.
It hadn’t felt like lust or rank sexual appetite.
It had seemed her soul’s imperative. It had been... wondrous.

If it hadn’t, she
wouldn’t have hated him so much now.

It wasn’t only that
he’d deceived her but that she’d deceived Phillip, that he’d robbed her of the
opportunity to confess what she couldn’t explain. And though she knew that
laying such blame on Ash’s door was unfair, she no longer cared.

It was unfair that
Ash had ridden into her life a scant three weeks before her wedding. It was
unfair that his eyes were dark, his wrists scarred, and his soul as tattered
and patched as a gypsy’s cape—and that she recognized the cut.

A ruthless man, Fia
had said. A dangerous one. Well, the Highlands had bred a rare, pure line of
that sort. Hadn’t she been ruthless in getting what she wanted, never thinking
past the morrow, or of where her headlong dash into pleasure would lead her? Or
anyone else. She turned her cheek into her pillow, sickened with guilt. She
could see again the knowledge of her betrayal in Phillip’s beautiful eyes, the
disappointment, the hurt— She jerked upright in bed.

Startled by the
sudden movement, Fia spun around. “You’re awake.”

Rhiannon seized on
the distraction. “Yes. I’m sure you knew that, though. Otherwise you wouldn’t
have come in, would you have?”

The girl tipped her
head in calm agreement. “Of course.”

“You wished to see
me?” Rhiannon settled back against the thick bolster of pillows.
Calm.
Breathe.
Yesterday she’d been a victim but today she needn’t be.

“Gunna is outside.
She wishes to see you.”

“Gunna?” Rhiannon
asked. “The nanny? Why would your nanny wish to see me and why would she need
you to act as a vanguard to that fact, Miss Merrick?”

“She’s brought some
gowns for you to try on and I— Well, Gunna is most... unprepossessing. Actually
quite hideous. But—” Fia hesitated. Whatever she’d been about to confide she
decided against it. “She’s served me faithfully. I would not want her hurt.”

Fia smiled wryly at
Rhiannon’s obvious skepticism. “She still has her uses,” she explained coldly.

“Bring her.”

The young woman’s
eyes narrowed fractionally at the commanding tone and Rhiannon smiled. She was
Rhiannon Russell and her distant cousin had been laird of McClairen. Ash had
dragged her back to this place, rousing that long dormant knowledge. Let him
see what he’d awakened. Whatever airs this hybrid English girl owned, she’d
adopted. In Rhiannon’s warrior heart five hundred years of pride and audacity
churned for expression. “Now, Fia. Before I fall asleep again.”

The girl smiled
once more, this time an honest, rueful smile of such poignant charm and humor
that in spite of every instinct that told her to beware of her, Rhiannon found
herself warming toward the young girl.

Without a word, Fia
drifted—there was simply no other term that adequately described Fia’s modus of
locomotion—toward the doorway and opened it. “Gunna!”

A moment later a
bent and twisted figure in black wool crept in, a half-dozen gowns filling her
arms. A mantilla-like veil of black lace covered her head, pinned so that one
side draped over the left portion of her face, concealing it. The open side
exposed a deformed jaw, a large drooping eye, and a twisted caricature of a
nose.

If poor Gunna had
chosen this side of her face to present to the world, Rhiannon could only be
moved to pity imagining what the rest of the veil concealed. The woman turned
to Fia who hovered by her elbow in an oddly protective manner. “Jamie says yer
father is looking fer you.” Gunna’s deep voice was thick with a Scottish
accent. “Best be to him. Go on. Sooner gone; sooner back.”

With a disgruntled
sniff, Fia twirled and departed. The old nurse chuckled at her ward’s flouncing
departure before looking back at Rhiannon.

“Highlander, they
said ye were, in the kitchens. What clan?” she asked, hobbling closer. Her tone
was slightly brusque, the manner in which she regarded Rhiannon touched with
enmity.

Rhiannon swung her
feet over the sides of the bed and dropped lightly to the cold floor.
“McClairen.”

A flicker of
surprise passed over the exposed side of Gunna’s face. “McClairen? Ye don’t
have the look of the McClairen. They’re a black-haired breed with white skin.”

Rhiannon tugged the
blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. She didn’t want to be
reminded of those old clan affiliations. She’d left them behind a decade ago.

Wordlessly, she moved
past the old woman and went to the window. Below, a gunmetal gray sea battered
the island’s base.