The Passionate One (6 page)

“But Master Merrick
will be hungry and our friends are—”

What had gotten
into the girl to question her? thought Edith. Rhiannon always did what she was
told. “ ‘Our friends’ will wait. The good Lord knows they always do. Spend more
time loitering in my halls than their own! Be off with you. I’ll see Master
Merrick properly fed and introduced to your sweetheart, never fear. You join us
after you’ve cleaned the stables from your hands and hair.”

Without further
protest, Rhiannon left, sending one last lingering look over her shoulder at
the dark young man watching her so casually. Too casually. Once more a
premonition threatened Edith Fraiser’s complacence.

Edith Fraiser had
been a beauty in her day, a country beauty but a beauty nonetheless. As much as
she wanted to, she doubted that men from London were cut from so different a
cloth as men from the country. Such determined nonchalance meant the same world
round.

Happily, whatever
this Ash Merrick’s interest, Rhiannon’s was fixed on Phillip Watt. Rhiannon was
a loyal creature. There was no cause for alarm here and it might just benefit
Rhiannon if Edith could enlist the goodwill of Lord Carr’s heir. Perhaps a bit
of a dowry...

With that thought
Edith closed the door on Rhiannon’s departure and turned. Ash Merrick eyed her
with that touch of unsettling amusement, as if he knew full well what she’d
been thinking.

“Mistress Fraiser,”
he said.

She made her way to
the settee and dropped heavily into it. “She’s a sweet-tempered girl, is my
Rhiannon.”

“Yes.”

“And as biddable as
a lamb despite her blood. Highland blood, you know.”

“So I’ve been
told.”

“And a loyal girl,
too. Faithful one would say.”

“A veritable
saint.”

“No,” Edith said
consideringly. “Not
quite
a saint. You should see her on horseback,
riding like a fury. I think she ran wild in those mountains of hers,” she added
thoughtfully. “And I know she’s seen things no gel ought to see. Murderous
things. It made her... I don’t know.”

She pulled at her
hands, at a loss to describe the element of Rhiannon’s character that had
always eluded her. Not that it mattered. She loved Rhiannon without needing to
fathom every aspect of her. And because she loved Rhiannon she would do her
best for her.

Edith slapped her
broad palms on her knees, her momentary and uncommon sojourn into introspection
ending with a return to practicality.

“Will the Lord Carr
be making some settlement on her, do you think?”

Ash Merrick’s mouth curled in gentle derisiveness. “I very much doubt it.”

“No?” Edith
frowned.

“Not a farthing.”

“Well, a fine
guardian he’s turned out to be. It’s a blessing he didn’t have her care
earlier. She’d be dressed in rags if she’d been left on her own.”

Ash cocked his
head, studying her closely. “Would she now?”

“Ach, yes.” Edith’s
head bobbed. “Poor lassie arrived here half-starved and white as a gull’s
breast, wrapped in her dead father’s plaid.”

“She has
no
property?” Ash pressed.

“Property?” Edith
snorted. “A poor bit of amber and that wee pearl ring.”

“Who brought her to
you?”

“Some old hag.”
Edith dismissed the memory of the wizened, dirt-encrusted old lady with the
fierce blue eyes. “Brought her to my doorstep but never set a foot inside
herself. Delivered the goods, you might say, and went on her way.”

“And she didn’t
leave any trunks or luggage with the girl?”

“Luggage?” Edith
gave a bark of laughter. “My good sir, they
walked
here. Walked all
the way from your father’s house in London if I’ve the memory right. No, sir,
they hadn’t any luggage.”

Ash’s brows dipped
in concentration. “What about family?”

Edith shook her
head. “No, sir. Cumberland’s men killed her only brother. Burnt in a croft with
his uncle and all his cousins, so they say. Weren’t even a body to bury.”

No need to tell him
that Rhiannon’s brother may, just may, have escaped. The fellow was an
Englishman, after all, and an earl’s son, and there was still a price on the
head of any clansman who had stood with the Pretender. Besides, they hadn’t
heard a whisper of the lad in all the years since Culloden.

She lowered her
face and dabbed piously at her eyes before lifting the clear orbs once more to
Ash’s. “So you see, sir, the lass hasn’t a thing to call her own. Nor any
family to tend her. I’m only distantly related to her myself, you know. Not
that I don’t love Rhiannon like she were my own. I do. But love doesn’t provide
food or shelter, does it?”

When he didn’t
reply she pushed on, determined to make him, as his father’s agent, see his
duty.

“Master Merrick,
let me be clear. I’ve no property of my own to settle on Rhiannon. I have the
manor and the income from the land until I die because that’s the way Squire
Fraiser wanted it, bless his soul. But upon my death everything goes to my son that
lives in the heathen orient and works for the East India Company.” She included
this last with undeniable pride.

“Really?”

“Yes. I was hoping
what with Rhiannon being set to wed and all, perhaps you might enjoin your
father to dower her a wee bit. Nuthin’ grand, mind you. Just something to make
the dear couple comfortable. Phillip, he’s a third son and lucky enough that
his father is willing to settle a sum on him at his marriage.”

“Unusual. Most
younger sons don’t fare so well.” His eyes were shuttered behind the thicket of
dark lashes. His voice was as still as ice.

“Aye. But Watt
dotes on Phillip. He’s the child of his old age and he would not deny him
whatever is in his power to give.”

“But who would want
an impoverished orphan for a bride?” he quizzed, his dark brows dipping.

“Any man that knows
her worth,” Edith said staunchly.

“But how is a man
to discover that?” he murmured.

Chapter Five

“—if both men died,
who paid the wager?” Rhiannon heard Margaret Atherton ask as, combed, clad, and
freshly doused in rose water, she slipped unseen into the drawing room.

“The earl’s widow
paid,” Ash Merrick said, “claiming it was worth the price just to see her
husband finally complete a ride.”

Scandalized laughter
broke out amongst the group of Rhiannon’s friends clustered at the far end of
the room. Phillip; pretty, silly Susan Chapham; ripe Margaret Atherton; and
steady, sensitive John Fortnum... every head was turned toward Ash like
seedlings toward light. Even Edward St. John, the Marquis of Snowden’s
grandnephew—whose already generous conceit had been further puffed up by
several seasons in London—hovered near.

“Ah! Here she is.
Our Diana,” John Fortnum cried upon spying her.

“My
Diana.” Phillip Watt broke from the group and came toward her, his
face alight with possessive pride. Taller than any man in the room by half a
head, brawny and robust and golden-haired, he was extraordinarily handsome. He
caught her around the waist and lifted her above his shoulders, spinning until
she gasped with laughter.

“Phillip!” she
begged. “What will Mr. Merrick think of us? I doubt London ladies let their
beaus toss them about like this.”

“But I’m more than
a beau, I’m a fiancé,” Phillip said, smiling triumphantly. His blue eyes
sparkled with proprietorship. “Mr. Merrick knows this is not London and if he
thinks less of us for our country ways, then he’s the worse for it, ain’t he?”

“But Mr. Merrick
does not think the worse of you,” Ash said. “I think Mr. Watt is an exceptionally
lucky young man.”

“Well, whatever Mr.
Watt and Mr. Merrick think,” Edith Fraiser said, glowering from the doorway,
“Mrs. Fraiser thinks it a right improper way to act and reminds Mr. Watt that
she can still wield a switch with the best of them. If a man acts the bumptious
lout, ’tis a lout’s penalty he’ll suffer!”

“Say not so!”
Phillip enjoined, setting Rhiannon on her feet and striding through the room
toward the door. There he gripped Edith about her ample waist and hefted her up
and over his head. “ ’Tis jealousy that speaks, ma’am, and with no cause. Only
your refusal to accept my hand forces me to make do with this chit.”

The belligerent
expression evaporated from Edith’s square face and her cheeks grew scarlet as
she batted at Phillip’s head, huffing insincere castigation. “Let me down, you
young rogue! Let me down, I say. You best save these demonstrations of your
manly vigor for your wedding night!”

The others broke
into cheers and Phillip, grinning hugely, lowered Edith to the ground and swept
a low bow before her. “I heed your sage advice, ma’am. Pray consider my...
vigor duly hoarded,” he said, his gaze fast on Rhiannon.

It was too warm a
jest. Rhiannon’s skin heated as knowing winks turned in her direction.

“What say you to
that, Rhiannon?” Edward, ever the instigator, demanded.

“I? I know nothing
of men.”

Hoots met this
demure evasion and Rhiannon, smiling with an uncharacteristic impishness,
stilled her audience with a wave of her hand, aware of Ash Merrick’s gaze
resting on her with dutiful patience. She suddenly wanted to prick that
indolent lack of expectation from his face, prove her wit was as sharp as any London lady’s.

“But of beasts I
know much,” she continued, “and it is my observation that what a squirrel so
dutifully hoards in anticipation of his winter bed, ends all too often nothing
but... rotten nuts.”

Laughter erupted in
the room. Even Edith, after a gasped “Rhiannon!” broke into loud guffaws. And
Ash Merrick’s eyes, which Rhiannon had been watching, widened with gratifying surprise
before he, too, joined in the laughter.

Only Phillip did
not fully appreciate her wit. She was seldom forward, never ribald, and the
look in Phillip’s eye suggested he’d fostered a kitten and just discovered it
was a fox. For an instant his handsome face soured before his innate good
nature reasserted itself.

“Mr. Merrick!”
Phillip called to their guest. “In London what would a man do with so saucy and
bold a wench?”

“It depends—” Ash
answered consideringly, coming toward Rhiannon. Once at her side he put his
hand on his hip in the attitude of a connoisseur looking over offered goods.
Her friends, alert to the fun, moved in, encircling them.

Slowly, he began
walking around Rhiannon. She notched her chin up at an angle, her pert attitude
delivering him a challenge she found herself incapable of explaining.

“Depends on what?”
She refused to turn like some cornered hind. She did not need to. She could
feel the heat of his regard as intensely as if he touched her.

“On many things.”
His voice was as smooth as French brandy warmed over a candle, intimate and
close. His breath—surely it was stirring the hairs on the nape of her neck?
Surely his lips hovered inches from her skin? He couldn’t under Phillip’s eye—
He shouldn’t—

She spun around. He
raised his brows questioningly... from a good five feet away. Their gazes met
and locked. Gray. Clear. Soft as an April fog, cool as a November sea.
Impossible to look at anything besides those dark-thicketed eyes, to look
deeper into their depths and find... Weariness. Such awful weariness behind the
calm, pleasant façade—

“For instance?”
Phillip prompted.

Ash’s gaze broke
from hers, severed like a spider’s strand by a razor’s blade. “For instance,”
he said, “where in London ‘the wench’ is. There are different customs for
different countries,” he said.

“Countries?” Susan
Chapham asked.

“Yes,” Ash
answered. “London isn’t simply one great heap. It’s an entire world with a
myriad of tiny countries existing side by side, each barely aware of the other.
Covent Garden and Seven Dials, Spitalfields and Whitechapel. In London’s vast acres these are principalities ruled by kings and princes without so much as
a last name.”

“And would Rhiannon
be a princess there?” Susan Chapham asked, and dissolved into giggles.

“I’d think she’d be
a princess anywhere,” Ash said with calculated charm.

“Well, then she
best not go to London since it would mean a coming down in the world,” John
Fortnum stated.

“How’d you figure
that?” Phillip asked.

“In three weeks’
time, she’ll be queen of Fair Badden,” John offered.

“Queen?” Ash Merrick asked as the others laughed.

“Queen of the May,”
Susan explained, her tone resigned. “Three years running now. ’Tisn’t fair.”

“True enough,”
Edith cut in. “I don’t see an end to it until the girl is wed and ineligible.
Only virgins can rule on May Day, you know.”

“No,” Ash said. “I
didn’t.”