In the house Jake shoved his hands deep in his pockets as he stood at the window watching the women, his expression a mixture of stupefaction and ire. “Gawdamighty,” he breathed, glancing at Ian, who was scowling at the unopened, note in his hand. “The women are chasin’ you clear into Scotland! That’ll stop soon as the news is out that yer betrothed.” Reaching up, he idly scratched his bushy red hair and turned back to the window, peering down the path. The women had vanished from view, and he left the window. Unable to hide a tinge of admiration, he added, “Tell you one thing, that blond gel had spunk, you have to give her that. Cool as can be, she stood there tauntin’ you with your own words and callin’ you a swine. I don’t know a man what would dare to do that!”
“She’d dare anything,” Ian said, remembering the young temptress he’d known. When most girls her age were blushing and simpering, Elizabeth Cameron had asked him to dance at their first meeting. That same night she’d defied a group of men in the card room; the next day she’d risked her reputation to meet him in a cottage in the woods-and all that merely to indulge in what she’d described in the greenhouse as a “little weekend dalliance.
Once again this unspeakable man had caused her to make a complete fool of herself, and the realization made her eyes blaze with renewed fury as she turned her head and looked at him.
Despite Ian’s apparent nonchalance he had been watching her closely, and he stiffened, sensing instinctively that she was suddenly and inexplicably angrier than before. He nodded to the gun, and when he spoke there was no more mockery in his voice; instead it was carefully neutral. “I think there are a few things you ought to consider before you use that.”
Though she had no intention of using it, Elizabeth listened attentively as he continued in that same helpful voice. “First of all, you’ll have to be very fast and very calm if you intend to shoot me and reload before Jake there gets to you. Second, I think it’s only fair to warn you that there’s going to be a great deal of blood all over the place. I’m not complaining, you understand, but I think it’s only right to warn you that you’re never again going to be able to wear that charming gown you have on.” Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch. “You’ll hang, of course,” he continued conversationally, “but that won’t be nearly as distressing as the scandal you’ll have to face first.”
Too disgusted with herself and with him to react to that last mocking remark, Elizabeth put her chin up and managed to say with great dignity, “I’ve had enough of this, Mr. Thornton. I did not think anything could equal your swinish behavior at our prior meetings, but you’ve managed to do it. Unfortunately, I am not so ill-bred as you and therefore have scruples against assaulting someone who is weaker than I, which is what I would be doing if I were to shoot an unarmed man. Lucinda, we are leaving,” she said, then she glanced back at her silent adversary, who’d taken a threatening step, and she shook her head, saying with extreme, mocking civility, “No, please-do not bother to see us out, sir, there’s no need. Besides, I wish to remember you just as you are at this moment-helpless and thwarted.” It was odd, but now, at the low point of her life, Elizabeth felt almost exhilarated because she was finally doing something to avenge her pride instead of meekly accepting her fate.
Lucinda had marched out onto the porch already, and Elizabeth tried to think of something to dissuade him from retrieving his gun when she threw it away outside. She decided to repeat his own advice, which she began to do as she backed away toward the door. “I know you’re loath to see us leave like this,” she said, her voice and her hand betraying a slight, fearful tremor. “However, before you consider coming after us, I beg you will take your own excellent advice and pause to consider if killing me is worth hanging for.”
Whirling on her heel, Elizabeth took one running step, then cried out in pained surprise as she was jerked off her feet and a hard blow to her forearm sent the gun flying to the floor at the same time her arm was yanked up and twisted behind her back. “Yes,” he said in an awful voice near her ear, “I actually think it would be worth it.”
Just when she thought her arm would surely snap, her captor gave her a hard shove that sent her stumbling headlong out into the yard, and the door slammed shut behind her.
“Well! I never,” Lucinda said, her bosom heaving with rage as she glowered at the closed door.
“Neither have I,” said Elizabeth, shaking dirt off her hem and deciding to retreat with as much dignity as possible. “We can talk about what a madman he is once we’re down the path, out of sight of the house. So if you’ll please take that end of the trunk?”
With a black look Lucinda complied, and they marched down the path, both of them concentrating on keeping their backs as straight as possible.
I wonder where they’ll go,” Jake continued, frowning a little. “There’s wolves out there, and all sorts of beasts.”
“No self-respecting wolf would dare to confront that duenna of hers, not with that umbrella she wields,” Ian snapped, but he felt a little uneasy.
“Oho!” said Jake with a hearty laugh. “So that’s what she was? I thought they’d come to court you together. Personally, I’d be afraid to close my eyes with that gray-haired hag in bed next to me.”
Ian was not listening. Idly he unfolded the note, knowing that Elizabeth Cameron probably wasn’t foolish enough to have written it in her own girlish, illegible scrawl. His first thought as he scanned the neat, scratchy script was that she’d gotten someone else to write it for her…but then he recognized the words, which were strangely familiar, because he’d spoken them himself:
Your suggestion has merit. I’m leaving for Scotland on the first of next month and cannot delay the trip again. Would prefer the meeting take place there, in any case. A map is enclosed for direction to the cottage. Cordially-Ian.
“God help that silly bastard if he ever crosses my path!” Ian said savagely.
“Who d’you mean?”
“Peters!”
“Peters?” Jake said, gaping. “Your secretary? The one you sacked for mixin’ up all your letters?”
“I should have strangled him! This is the note I meant for Dickinson Verley. He sent it to Cameron instead.”
In furious disgust Ian raked his hand through his hair. As much as he wanted Elizabeth Cameron out of his sight and out of his life, he could not cause two women to spend the night in their carriage or whatever vehicle they’d brought, when it was his fault they’d come here. He nodded curtly to Jake. “Go and get them.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because,” Ian said bitterly, walking over to the cabinet and putting away the gun, “it’s starting to rain, for one thing. For another, if you don’t bring them back, you’ll be doing the cooking.”
“If I have to go after that woman, I want a stout glass of something fortifying first. They’re carrying a trunk, so they won’t get much ahead of me.”
“On foot?” Ian asked in surprise.
“How did you think they got up here?”
“I was too angry to think.
At the end of the lane Elizabeth put down her side of the trunk and sank down wearily beside Lucinda upon its hard top, emotionally exhausted. A wayward chuckle bubbled up inside her, brought on by exhaustion, fright, defeat, and the last remnants of triumph over having gotten just a little of her own back from the man who’d ruined her life. The only possible explanation for Ian Thornton’s behavior today was that he was a complete madman.
With a shake of her head Elizabeth made herself stop thinking of him. At the moment she had so many new worries she hardly knew how to begin to cope. She glanced sideways at her stalwart duenna, and an amused smile touched her lips as she recalled Lucinda’s actions at the cottage. On the one hand, Lucinda rejected all emotional displays as totally unseemly-yet at the same time she herself was possessed of the most formidable temper Elizabeth had ever witnessed. It was as if Lucinda did not regard her own outbursts of ire as emotional. Without the slightest hesitation or regret Lucinda could verbally flay a wrongdoer into small, bite-sized pieces and then mentally stamp him into the ground and grind him beneath the heel of her sturdy shoe.
On the other hand, were Elizabeth to exhibit the smallest bit of fear right now over their daunting predicament, Lucinda would instantly stiffen up with disapproval and deliver one of her sharp reprimands.
Cognizant of that, Elizabeth glanced worriedly at the sky, where black clouds were rolling in, heralding a storm; but when she spoke she sounded deliberately and absurdly bland. “I believe it’s starting to rain, Lucinda,” she remarked while cold drizzle began to slap the leaves of the tree over their heads.
“So it would seem,” said Lucinda. She opened her umbrella with a smart snap, holding it over them both.
“It’s fortunate you have your umbrella.”
“We aren’t likely to drown from a little rain.”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
Elizabeth drew a steadying breath, looking around at the harsh Scottish cliffs. In the tone of one asking someone’s opinion on a rhetorical question, Elizabeth said, “Do you suppose there are wolves out here?”
“I believe,” Lucinda replied, “they probably constitute a larger threat to our health at present than the rain.”
The sun was setting, and the early spring air had a sharp bite in it; Elizabeth was almost positive they’d be freezing by nightfall. “It’s a bit chilly.”
“Rather.”
“We have warmer clothes in the trunks, though.”
“I daresay we won’t be too uncomfortable, in that case.”
Elizabeth’s wayward sense of humor chose that unlikely moment to assert itself. “No, we shall be snug as can be while the wolves gather around us.”
“Quite.”
Hysteria, hunger, and exhaustion-combined with Lucinda’s unswerving calm and her earlier unprecedented entry into the cottage with umbrella flailing-were making Elizabeth almost giddy. “Of course, if the wolves realize how hungry we are, there’s every change they’ll give us a wide berth.”
“A cheering possibility.”
“We’ll build a fire,” Elizabeth said, her lips twitching. “That will keep them at bay, I believe.” When Lucinda remained silent for several moments, occupied with her own thoughts, Elizabeth confided with an odd surge of happiness. “Do you know something, Lucinda? I don’t think I would have missed today for anything.”
Lucinda’s thin gray brows shot up, and she cast a dubious sideways glance at Elizabeth.
“I realize that must sound extremely peculiar, but can you imagine how absolutely exhilarating it was to have that man at the point of a gun for just a few minutes? Do you find that-odd?” Elizabeth asked when Lucinda stared straight ahead in angry, thoughtful silence.
“What I find off,” she said in a tone of frosty disapproval mingled with surprise, “is that you evoke such animosity in that man.”
“I think he’s quite demented.”
“I would have said embittered.”
“About what?”
“That is an interesting question.
At the moment, however, she had an ever larger problem: what to do now, when two defenseless women were completely lost in the wilds of Scotland, at night, in the rain and cold.
Shuffling footsteps sounded on the gravel path, and both women straightened, both suppressing the hope soaring in their breasts and keeping their faces carefully expressionless.
“Well, well, well,” Jake boomed. “Glad I caught up with you and-“ He lost his thought as he beheld the utterly comic sight of two stiff-backed women seated on a trunk together, prim and proper as you please, beneath a black umbrella in the middle of nowhere. “Uh-where are your horses?”
“We have no horses,” Lucinda informed him in a disdainful voice that implied such beasts would have been an intrusion on their tete-a-tete.
“No? How did you get here?”
“A wheeled conveyance carried us to this godforsaken place.”
“I see.” He lapsed into daunted silence, and Elizabeth started to say something at least slightly pleasant when Lucinda lost her patience.
“You have, I collect, come to urge us to return?”
“Ah-yes. Yes, I have.”
“Then do so. We haven’t all night.” Lucinda’s words struck Elizabeth as a bald lie.
When Jake seemed at a loss as to how to go about it, Lucinda stood up and assisted him. “I gather Mr. Thornton is extremely regretful for his unforgivable and inexcusable behavior?”
“Well, yes, I guess that’s the way it is. In a way.”
“No doubt he intends to tell us that when we return?”
Jake hesitated, weighing his certainty that Ian had no intention of saying anything of the kind against the certainty that if the women didn’t return, he’d be eating his own cooking and sleeping with a bad conscience and a bad stomach. “Why don’t we let him make his own apologies?” he prevaricated.
Until that moment Elizabeth wouldn’t have believed she could feel more humiliated than she already did. Robbed of even the defense of righteous indignation, she faced the fact that she was the unwanted gest of someone who’d made a fool of her not once but twice.
“How did you get here? I didn’t hear any horses, and a carriage sure as well can’t make the climb.”
“A wheeled conveyance brought us most of the way,” she prevaricated, seizing on Lucinda’s earlier explanation, “and it’s gone on now.” She saw his eyes narrow with angry disgust as he realized he was stuck with them unless he wanted to spend several days escorting them back to the inn. Terrified that the tears burning the backs of her eyes were going to fall, Elizabeth tipped her head back and turned it, pretending to be inspecting the ceiling, the staircase, the walls, anything. Through the haze of tears she noticed for the first time that the place looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a year.
Beside her Lucinda glanced around through narrowed eyes and arrived at the same conclusion.
Jake, anticipating that the old woman was about to make some disparaging comment about Ian’s house, leapt into the breach with forced joviality.
“Well, now,” he burst out, rubbing his hands together and striding forward to the fire. “Now that’s all settled, shall we all be properly introduced? Then we’ll see about supper.” He looked expectantly at Ian, waiting for him to handle the introductions, but instead of doing the thing properly he merely nodded curtly to the beautiful blond girl and said, “Elizabeth Cameron-Jake Wiley.”
“How do you do, Mr. Wiley,” Elizabeth said.
“Call me Jake,” he said cheerfully, then he turned expectantly to the scowling duenna. “And you are?”
Fearing that Lucinda was about to rip up at Ian for his cavalier handling of the introductions, Elizabeth hastily said, “This is my companion, Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones.”
“Good heavens! Two names. Well, no need to stand on formality, since we’re going to be cooped up together for at least a few days! Just call me Jake. What shall I call you?”
“You may call me Miss Throckmorton-Jones,” she informed him, looking down the length of her beaklike nose.
“Er-very well,” he replied, casting an anxious look of appeal to Ian, who seemed to be momentarily enjoying Jake’s futile efforts to create an atmosphere of conviviality. Disconcerted, Jake ran his hands through his disheveled hair and arranged a forced smile on her face. Nervously, he gestured about the untidy room. “Well, now, if we’d known we were going to have such…ah…gra…that is, illustrious company, we’d have-“
“Swept off the chairs?” Lucinda suggested acidly. “Shoveled off the floor?
Speaking of debutantes,” Jake continued cautiously when Ian remained silent, “what about the one upstairs? Do you dislike her especially, or just on general principle?”
Ian walked over to the table and poured some Scotch into a glass. He took a swallow, shrugged, and said, “Miss Cameron was more inventive than some of her vapid little friends. She accosted me in a garden at a party.”
“I can see how bothersome that musta been,” Jake joked, “having someone like her, with a face that men dream about, tryin’ to seduce you, usin’ feminine wiles on you. Did they work?”
Slamming the glass down on the table, Ian said curtly, “They worked.” Coldly dismissing Elizabeth from his mind, he opened the deerskin case on the table, removed some papers he needed to review, and sat down in front of the fire.
Trying to suppress his avid curiosity, Jake waited a few minutes before asking, “Then what happened?”
Already engrossed in reading the documents in his hand, Ian said absently and without looking up, “I asked her to marry me; she sent me a note inviting me to meet her in the greenhouse; I went there; her brother barged in on us and informed me she was a countess, and that she was already betrothed.”
The topic thrust from his mind, Ian reached for the quill lying on the small table beside his chair and made a note in the margin of the contract.
“And?” Jake demanded avidly.
“And what?”
“And then what happened-after the brother barged in?”
“He took exception to my having contemplated marrying so far above myself and challenged me to a duel,” Ian replied in a preoccupied voice as he made another note on the contract.
“So what’s the girl doin’ here now?” Jake asked, scratching his head in bafflement over the doings of the Quality.
“Who the hell knows,” Ian murmured irritably. “Based on her behavior with me, my guess is she finally got caught in some sleezy affair or another, and her reputation’s beyond repair.”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
Ian expelled his breath in a long, irritated sigh and glanced at Jake with an expression that made it clear he was finished answering questions. “I assume,” he bit out, “that her family, recalling my absurd obsession with her two years ago, hoped I’d come up to scratch again and take her off their hands.”
“You think it’s got somethin’ to do with the old duke talking about you bein’ his natural grandson and wantin’ to make you his heir?” He waited expectantly, hoping for more information, but Ian ignored him, reading his documents. Left with no other choice and no prospect for further confidences, Jake picked up a candle, gathered up some blankets, and started for the barn. He paused at the door, struck by a sudden thought. “She said she didn’t send you any note about meetin’ her in the greenhouse.”
“She’s a liar and an excellent little actress,” Ian said icily, without taking his gaze from the papers. “Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get her out of here and off my hands.”
Something in Ian’s face made him ask, “Why the hurry? You afraid of fallin’ fer her wiles again?”
“Hardly.”
“Then you must be made of stone,” he teased. “That woman’s so beautiful she’d tempt any man who was alone with her for an hour-includin’ me, and you know I ain’t in the petticoat line at all.”
“Don’t let her catch you alone,” Ian replied mildly.
“I don’t think I’d mind.” Jake laughed as he left.
Well, now, if we’d known we were going to have such…ah…gra…that is, illustrious company, we’d have-“
“Swept off the chairs?” Lucinda suggested acidly. “Shoveled off the floor?”
“Lucinda!” Elizabeth whispered desperately. “They didn’t know we were coming.”
“No respectable person would dwell in such a place even for a night,” she snapped, and Elizabeth watched in mingled distress and admiration as the redoubtable woman turned around and directed her attack on their unwilling host. “The responsibility for our being here is yours, whether it was a mistake or not! I shall expect you to rout your servants from their hiding places and have them bring clean linens up to us at once. I shall also expect them to have this squalor remedied by morning! It is obvious from your behavior that you are no gentleman; however, we are ladies, and we shall expect to be treated as such.”
From the corner of her eye Elizabeth had been watching Ian Thornton, who was listening to all of this, his jaw rigid, a muscle beginning to twitch dangerously in the side of his neck.
Lucinda, however, was either unaware of or unconcerned with his reaction, for, as she picked up her skirts and turned toward the stairs, she turned on Jake. “You may show us to our chambers. We wish to retire.”
“Retire!” cried Jake, thunderstruck. “But-but what about supper?” he sputtered.
“You may bring it up to us.”
Elizabeth saw the blank look on Jake’s face, and she endeavored to translate, politely, what the irate woman was saying to the startled red-haired man.
“What Miss Throckmorton-Jones means is that we’re rather exhausted from our trip and not very good company, sir, and so we prefer to dine in our rooms.”
“You will dine,” Ian Thornton said in an awful voice that made Elizabeth freeze, “on what you cook for yourself, madam. If you want clean linens, you’ll get them yourself from the cabinet. If you want clean rooms, clean them! Am I making myself clear?”
“Perfectly!” Elizabeth began furiously, but Lucinda interrupted in a voice shaking with ire: “Are you suggesting, sirrah, that we are to do the work of servants?”
Ian’s experience with the ton and with Elizabeth had given him a lively contempt for ambitious, shallow, self-indulgent young women whose single goal in life was to acquire as many gowns and jewels as possible with the least amount of effort, and he aimed his attack at Elizabeth. “I am suggesting that you look after yourself for the first time in your silly, aimless life. In return for that, I am willing to give you a roof over your head and to share our food with you until I can get you to the village. If that is too overwhelming a task for you, then my original invitation still stands: There’s the door. Use it!”
Elizabeth knew the man was irrational, and it wasn’t worth riling herself to reply to him, so she turned instead to Lucinda. “Lucinda,” she said with weary resignation, “do not upset yourself by trying to make Mr. Thornton understand that his mistake has inconvenienced us, not the other way around. You will only waste your time. A gentleman of breeding would be perfectly able to understand that he should be apologizing instead of ranting and raving. However, as I told you before we came here, Mr. Thornton is no gentleman. The simple fact is that he enjoys humiliating people, and he will continue trying to humiliate us for as long as we stand here.”
Elizabeth cast a look of well-bred disdain over Ian and said, “Good night, Mr. Thornton.” Turning, she softened her voice a little and said, “Good evening, Mr. Wiley.
Would you be willing to tell me how the ladies came to be here? I mean, who are they?”
Ian drew a long, impatient breath, tipped his head back, and absently massaged the muscles at the back of his neck. “I met Elizabeth a year and a half ago at a party. She’d just made her debut, was already betrothed to some unfortunate nobleman, and was eager to test her wiles on me.”
“Test her wiles on you? I thought you said she was engaged to another.”
Sighing irritably at his friend’s naiveté, Ian said curtly, “Debutantes are a different breed from any women you’ve known. Twice a year their mamas bring them to London to make their debut. They’re paraded about during the Season like horses at an auction, then their parents sell them as wives to whoever bids the highest. The winning bidder is selected by the expedient measure of choosing whoever has the most important title and the most money.”
“Barbaric!” said Jake indignantly.
Ian shot him an ironic look. “Don’t waste your pity. It suits them perfectly. All they want from marriage is jewels, gowns, and the freedom to have discreet liaisons with whomever they please, once they produce the requisite heir. They’ve no notion of fidelity or honest human feeling.”
Jake’s brows lifted at that.
Jake opened one eye and blinked confusedly at the sunlight pouring through the window high above. Disoriented, he rolled over on a lumpy, unfamiliar bed and found himself staring up at an enormous black animal who flattened his ears, bared his teeth, and tried to bite him through the slats of his stall. “You damned cannibal!” he swore at the evil-tempered horse. “Spawn of Lucifer!” Jake added, and for good measure he aimed a hard kick at the wooden slats by way of retaliation for the attempted bite. “Ouch, dammit!” he swore as his bootless foot hit the board.
Shoving himself to a sitting position, he raked his hands through his thick red hair and grimaced at the hay that stuck between his fingers. His foot hurt, and his head ached from the bottle of wine he’d drunk last night.
Heaving himself to his feet, he pulled on his boots and brushed off his woolen shirt, shivering in the damp chill. Fifteen years ago, when he’d come to work on the little farm, he’d slept in this barn every night. Now, with Ian successfully investing the money Jake made when they sailed together, he’d learned to appreciate the comforts of feather mattresses and satin covers, and he missed them sorely.
“From palaces to a damned cowshed,” he grumbled, walking out of the empty stall he’d slept in. As he passed Attila’s stall, a hoof punched out with deadly aim, narrowly missing Jake’s thigh. “That’ll cost you an early breakfast, you miserable piece of living glue,” he spat, and then he took considerable pleasure in feeding the other two horses while the black looked on. “You’ve put me in a sour mood,” he said cheerfully as the jealous horse shifted angrily while the other two steeds were fed. “Maybe if it improves later on, I’ll feed you.
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