Three Little Secrets (32 page)

He left her still standing by the dressing table, one hand pressed to her heart. He moved quickly, too, and shut the door behind, lest he do something unutterably foolish—like beg.

There’s nae fools like auld anes.

T
he following morning, Madeleine went down to breakfast to find the dining room empty, save for Sir Alasdair and his wife, who greeted her cheerfully. She did not miss, however, the odd, surreptitious looks Merrick’s brother kept cutting in her direction when he thought she was not looking. He was quite likely regretting his late-night walk up the loch.

Perhaps it would have been better for all of them, Madeleine considered, had she and Merrick been left alone to finish what they had started. But finish it how? To what end? Madeleine did not know. Nonetheless, something about Sir Alasdair’s interruption last night had turned Merrick’s mood. She was still heartsick at the loss of their marriage lines. What on earth had he meant to prove?

Of course she should have been relieved. Without that little piece of paper, Merrick had no hold over her whatsoever. So why did she feel unutterable sadness instead of the total relief she should be experiencing?

Esmée came around to refill everyone’s coffee, and somehow, Madeleine forced her attention to the meal. The three of them chatted amiably enough about the weather, a village festival which was just a fortnight distant, and about the ceaseless demands of keeping up an estate as old as Castle Kerr.

“Is that what’s become of Merrick again?” asked Esmée. “Is he still off attending to that dyking?”

“Aye.” Sir Alasdair set his coffee aside and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “Whoever said ‘idle hands do the devil’s work’ was not speaking of my brother. We’ll not likely see him again before dinner.”

When she had finished breakfast, Madeleine excused herself and went to find Geoff so that she might take him up to Lady Annis’s rooms. A maid was clearing away the last of their breakfast in the makeshift schoolroom. Mr. Frost, who had been given the morning off, declared his intention of walking to the village, some three miles distant.

Geoff was in a strange mood, almost elated. “Are you pleased to be spending some time this morning with Lady Annis?” asked Madeleine as they set off.

“Mamma, I am so excited,” said the boy. “I have a hundred questions. Do you think Lady Annis will mind answering them?”

“Well, perhaps not more than a dozen or so today, my dear,” said Madeleine with a laugh. “But I believe the purpose of our visit is so that you might ask your questions—all of them, eventually.”

At the door, Madeleine bent down to neaten the boy’s coat. “Well, Geoff, you look a very presentable pupil.”

He surprised her then by darting forward and hugging her neck quite tightly in a way he had not done since he was a little boy. “Oh, it is going to be a wonderful day, Mamma!” he said, his face aglow with happiness. “I just know it is. My life is about to change, forever and ever, and soon it will be perfect!”

Madeleine felt a sudden swell of joy. Could it be she had not fully comprehended just how much these visits with his great-grandmother meant to him? Yesterday he had seemed pleased, but not euphoric. But this morning, euphoric really was not too strong a word. Geoff really did seem a different child. Sending up a little prayer of thanks for Merrick’s wisdom in bringing them here, she kissed the boy, then knocked upon the door.

After leaving Geoff with his great-grandmother, Madeleine felt at loose ends. Her happiness about Geoff dimmed just a little once the boy was gone. Feeling vaguely dejected, she decided to walk around the loch. A part of her wished to see it in the light of day, as if doing so might give her a certain clarity on all that had happened last night.

At the old boathouse, she lingered. The strange punt was still moored there, and the sight of it made Madeleine’s heart lurch. They had shared so much there, she and Merrick. One night of honesty had seemed to undo so many years of doubt. And one night of lovemaking—well, it had merely fanned the flames of a fire that would never die. She was sure of it now.

To her mortification, the tears were pressing in on her again. Good Lord, what a watering pot she’d become! Hastily, she wiped them away and set off at a more energetic pace.

Her mood had little improved, however, by the time she circled around the bottom of the loch and across the little stone bridge to the other side. Halfway down the far shore, her spate of self-pity was cut short when she met Sir, Alasdair coming in the opposite direction. He did not look as though he was out for a casual stroll.

“Good morning, Lady Bessett,” he said. “You are taking the fine Highland air, I see.”

Madeleine sniffed discreetly. “Yes, your home is lovely, Sir Alasdair.”

He turned and offered her his arm. “May I join you?” he asked. “I confess, you see, that I have deliberately waylaid you.”

Madeleine had little choice but to take the proffered arm.

Sir Alasdair set off at a sedate pace, pausing from time to time to point out bits of flora or fauna he thought might interest his guest. There was an abundance of wildflowers along the meadow. Butterflies and hawkmoths flitted here and there. In the distance, the gorse and heather were about to burst into bloom. Alasdair rattled on, and Madeleine attended with half an ear.

Eventually, her disinterest seemed to dawn on him. “I perceive, Lady Bessett, that I owe you an apology,” he finally said. “My intrusion last night was not welcomed.”

Madeleine cut a sidelong glance at him. “It was not unwelcome, by any means,” she said. “Besides, it hardly matters now.”

He looked at her strangely. “My brother thought it mattered,” he said. “Of that, you may be sure.”

“Did he say as much?”

“Oh, he did not need to,” said Alasdair. “The Black MacLachlan can speak volumes with his glower.”

She gave him an odd half smile. “He is the Black, and you are what? The Fair?”

He laughed. “Aye, something like that.”

They continued along the loch in silence for a time. “You do not like me very much, do you, Sir Alasdair?” she finally said. “I am very sorry to have come here, and cut up your peace—and during your wedding trip, of all times. In my defense, I can only say that your brother insisted.”

“Yes, I have been wondering about that,” he said musingly. “And I do not in any way dislike you, my dear. But I dislike immensely the life my brother has been consigned to these many years.”

“And you think it my fault,” Madeleine finished.

He surprised her then by covering her hand with his where it lay upon his coat sleeve. “I think there is blame enough to go around,” said Alasdair. “You and Merrick made some bad choices, aye. But I look back now, and think that perhaps we, his family, stood idly by, too. It is possible we could have brought pressure to bear on your father, had we but tried.”

Madeleine gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, what is that wonderful Scots’ expression?” she asked. “‘Save your breath to cool your porridge?’ Yes, that’s the one wanted here—for you surely would have wasted it on my father.”

Sir Alasdair shrugged. “Aye, most likely.”

“In any case,” Madeleine went on, “you may set your mind at ease. Merrick has found a way to put an end to our marriage once and for all.”

Sir Alasdair cocked one of his beautiful eyebrows. “The devil?” said. “I should like to know how.”

“I don’t know if he has told you that the record of our marriage was destroyed at Gretna Green,” she began. “It was done within days of the wedding—my father’s work, I gather. And then, last night, Merrick…” She could not find the words.

“Yes? Go on.” Sir Alasdair squeezed her hand.

“Last night, after…after you brought me home, he came to my bedchamber, and he—well, he b-b-burnt our marriage lines.”

“The devil!” said Alasdair again. “He
burnt
them?”

Madeleine was crying in earnest now. “He—he dropped the paper down my lamp,” she said. “And-and he w-would not let me get it out again!”

Sir Alasdair drew her near and set an arm about her shoulders. “Now, now, my dear!” he said, extracting a handkerchief with something of a flourish. “Dry your eyes, please. Now tell me again—and leave nothing out.”

She repeated the story, and added in much of what Merrick had said, too.

Mortified, Madeleine finished her snuffling. Sir Alasdair resumed his sedate pace, which felt a little soothing now. “So you are free now to marry whom you please,” he said. “As is my brother. After all these years. How truly remarkable!”

Madeleine nodded. “There is no evidence that our first marriage ever took place,” she said a little sadly. “Everyone who knew anything is dead or has disappeared. All the records are gone. So…so any risk of embarrassment to your family is now over. I hope you are relieved.”

“Indeed, I am.” But strangely, he was grinning. “Maintaining my family’s good name has always been my foremost concern. Ask any of those rogues and roués I used to run with.”

“Kindly do not make fun of me, Sir Alasdair,” she said. “I am quite serious.”

Again, he crooked his head, and looked at her strangely. “You would not try to hold the old boy’s feet to the fire, my dear?” he suggested. “You might get away with it, you know.”

Madeleine blanched. “After all that Merrick has been put through?” she said, horrified. “I certainly would not.”

Sir Alasdair nodded. “So all’s well that ends well, eh?” he said. “Unless, that is…” His words fell away, and the eyebrow went up again.

“Unless what?”

He stopped, and shrugged. “Unless one of you still
wished
to be married.”

Wordlessly, Madeleine looked at him.

“Or both of you,” he went on. “But now you would be in a dashed awkward position, would you not? You would have to stop spitting at one another like cats, and one of you would have to…well, to court the other properly, would you not? Indeed, one of you would have to
propose
to the other.”

Madeleine blinked, trying to clear her head. “Propose—?”

He nodded as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “Propose marriage,” he said. “One of you would have to admit that you very much wish to be married to the other. Personally, I can highly recommend the married state. And after all, you are very young to be a widow, my dear.”

“But-but I am not a widow,” she said. “
Am
I?”

Alasdair lifted one shoulder. “Well, it would certainly seem so to me,” he countered. “And now, you get to decide what you will do with the rest of your life. I caution you to choose wisely. Marriage is forever, you know.”

His gentle irony escaped her. Madeleine felt suddenly as if she could not get her breath. All of life’s possibilities—her hopes and her dreams—all of them flooded forth. And all of them included Merrick. They always had.

Sir Alasdair cleared his throat a little roughly. “In any case, my dear,” he said, “it would be the most natural thing in the world for my brother to bring his chosen bride home to be married in the village church on such a special occasion, would it not? After all, Esmée and I cheated everyone of that pleasure. The wedding bells would likely ring for two or three days.”

Madeleine was still on the verge of hyperventilating. “Sir Alasdair, this is quite an incredible notion.”

“Well, it is merely an option to consider,” he remarked. “But you might wish to move in haste. Fortune favors the bold, and the twenty-second of July is a lucky day, I am told, for weddings. If you rush that courtship along and pop the question pretty promptly—why, I daresay you just might make it.”

Madeleine sucked in a deep breath. “Sir Alasdair, whe—”

“Across the main road,” he interjected, pointing at the wood opposite the castle’s forecourt. “There is a little lane—a cart track, really—which leads to an old barn, and in the glen below, we are putting in a dry-stane dyke—a sort of fence.”

“Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much.” Impulsively, she popped onto her toes and kissed his immaculately shaved cheek. “I should just go then, do you not think?”

“Oh, it is not my job to think, my dear,” said Sir Alasdair. “I am just a pretty face. Ask anyone who knows me.”

But Madeleine barely heard the last. She was off at a most unladylike pace, her heart in her throat.
Was she to be given a second chance?
There was no way to be sure—not unless she was willing to dredge up her courage and ask for it.

Perhaps it really was not too late. She would risk anything, anything save her child, on even the slenderest chance at the happiness and the marriage she had so foolishly deferred. This time, she knew too well what was at stake. This time she would neither waver in her certainty, nor doubt her husband’s affection. She would be strong, for better or for worse.

She remembered then something he had once said to her.
“Only the heart can bind a person, Maddie,”
he had said,
“To a home. Or to anything else that truly matters. A piece of paper is otherwise meaningless.”

He had been right. The paper meant nothing. But Merrick—oh, he meant everything!

It took no more than five minutes to make her way down to the glen, which rolled out like a carpet of green and was dotted with sheep. At the foot of the pasture, she could see half a wall and a straggle of stones along its future course. And beyond them, a lone figure, dark and broad-shouldered, stripped to the waist, swinging a sledgehammer high and bringing it down strong.

She went down the glen at a run.

Merrick was half–turned away from her, shaping stone as neatly as another man might cleave a piece of wood. His back looked broad and powerful in the morning light. As he turned to position one-half of the stone into the wall, he must have noticed her. Madeleine slowed her steps from a run to a girlish trot, and approached the wall, breathless.

He stood looking at her for a moment, his forehead already sheened with sweat, and tossed down his sledgehammer. “Good morning, Madeleine,” he said, dragging an arm across his forehead. “You’re coming in a great haste. Naught’s amiss, I hope?”

She shook her head, then tried to catch her breath. “No, I just I wanted to ask—” she began awkwardly. “I wanted to know, Merrick, if…if I might…or if you would like to—no, that’s not quite right.”

With a smile, he propped one elbow on the wall and leaned his taut, rangy body halfway across it. “Why, I’ve never known you to be tongue-tied, Maddie.”