“Mercenary.” He scowled, but he didn’t drop her hand. “But not like my mother.”
“Your mother?” Lady Bess? Mercenary?
“She and I talked about this last night. She thinks I ought to wed you.”
Enid didn’t know what to think. How to respond. “She’s wrong. We will never marry. You’re not wise enough to propose. I’m not desperate enough to accept. Why do you think your mother is mercenary?”
His face contorted as if he were in pain. “When I was young, she was a good mother. Then she betrayed the memory of my father. For money.”
If MacLean weren’t drunk, he would never speak so frankly. But he was drunk, and Enid had stumbled upon the reason MacLean despised her so much. She hesitated, for she knew to pry into Lady Bess’s life was despicable, but curiosity conquered her reservations. “What did your mother do?”
“My father hadn’t been in the grave for two months when she went off to Edinburgh and found herself a merchant.” His voice vibrated in disgust. “He was old, absolutely vulgar, and very rich.”
The thought of Lady Bess, vibrant and affable, lost in the arms of an ancient, uncouth parvenu jolted Enid. “Did she say why?”
“My mother has never explained herself to anyone, and certainly not to her fifteen-year-old son left in charge of his tearful, eleven-year-old sister.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Mother and her husband went off to London. She provided his entry into society. People laughed at her. Even up here, we heard how they ridiculed her.” MacLean looked down at their entwined hands. “My sister and I stayed here, missing her, while I took charge of the estate and Elizabeth kept the house. Mother flitted about London, dressed in the finest clothing and ignoring her obligations.”
Enid could see Lady Bess flitting, but she couldn’t believe Lady Bess had ignored her obligations.
“Then, within the year, the old fool died, and my mother came back, expecting a warm welcome.” MacLean shook his head, his rancor still fresh. “She gave me her newfound fortune to tend and thought I would thank her. But I would not be so easily bribed.”
“Good for you. That’s the spirit!” Enid said sarcastically. “That’s probably because you’ve never been in need of money.”
“As usual, you are wrong.” Apparently, he’d recovered enough wit to return her sarcasm. “The troubles in the Forty-five hit my family hard.”
By that she surmised the MacLeans had been involved in last century’s futile uprising.
“The MacLeans have been recovering ever since. When my father died he left almost nothing except the lands and castle, and we counted ourselves lucky to have that. In need of money? Aye, I was fifteen years old and frantic.”
The truth burst on Enid. A truth so obvious MacLean had to be deliberately blind not to see it.
Blind . . . or trapped in a fifteen-year-old’s pain and disappointment. “Wait. Wait.” She squeezed his fingers to get his attention. “You’re telling me your mother married a decrepit old man for his money. You’re saying she did this to get away from her responsibilities here at Castle MacLean, to live the good life in England while you struggled trying to survive on a pittance. You’re telling me after the merchant’s death, she came back with his fortune in her palm, threw the entire amount into your lap, told you she was too lazy to care for it, and now never leaves the Isle of Mull?”
Straightening his shoulders, he looked at her with chilly directness. “Yes.”
“And you attribute her actions to selfishness?” Furious, she snapped her hand free from his. “You ought to know, you cold fish. You selfish swine. Your mother fixed it so you wouldn’t have to wed some disgusting heiress to save your estate!”
His green eyes narrowed, and he snarled, “That is not true!”
She brushed at the air. “Don’t talk to me. If you can’t figure out that your mother should be cherished just for being your mother, much less for being a good mother . . . you’re not just drunk, you’re stupid!”
He got to his feet looking much more sober. “No one else thinks as you do.”
“Is that what influences you? What everyone else thinks?” Enid thrust herself right under his nose and shook her finger at him. “I can assure you, everyone knows what your mother did. Ask Donaldina what she thinks.”
“Donaldina was my mother’s wet nurse.” He said it as if that explained everything.
“Fine. Ask one of the men.” Enid gestured freely. “Graeme complains about her. Ask Graeme what he thinks of your mother.”
“She sews him up. He likes her.” MacLean was groping now, unable to face the truth.
Enid didn’t care. She wanted justice for Lady Bess, and she needed MacLean to admit the truth for his own sake—and for Enid’s. “Everybody likes Lady Bess. Everybody worships her. She brought me up here personally, fed me some twaddle about how Robert the Bruce slept here—”
“He did.”
“—And I cried myself to sleep because I never had a mother like yours. I never had a mother at all, and you’re whining because your mother sold herself to save you from marital bondage. You ungrateful wretch.” Enid wanted to stomp her foot. Instead she straightened her shoulders and grasped for her rapidly slipping dignity. “So don’t you compare me to your mother. She is a wonderful woman, while I—I am as mercenary as you fear.”
“I sent someone to take the fishing boat back.”
“What?”
“The fishing boat we borrowed to get here.”
“Good.” He twisted her in knots with his convoluted conversation, and now she knew he did it on purpose. He did it to distract her. He would not succeed. “As long as I’ve got you here, I want to say—everyone knows we’re not married, so I’m in no danger. I want to go home.”
He looked less intoxicated, less tired, and more like the commanding jackass she’d come to know. “You are not leaving until I have remembered everything.”
“You might not ever remember everything.”
“Then you will be here for a long, long time.”
She pointed at the door. “Get out, and don’t come back.”
This time, he went.
* * *
“You can never go out alone.” Kinman leaned forward, hands clasped at his knees, and looked earnestly at MacLean.
MacLean nursed his hangover. “You’re right.”
The fire crackled in the fireplace, releasing the faint scent of pine into the air. The great hall rang with after dinner conversation and laughter. All was as it should be, for MacLean sat with the three Englishmen, and Graeme MacQuarrie, Jimmy MacGillivray, and Rab Hardie, and the women sat at the other end of the hall beside their own fireplace. There Donaldina attempted to teach Enid to spin wool with a spindle, apparently with little success by the sound of the laughter. Everything was appointed just as MacLean liked it. Man talk for him, wench duties for them.
“We shipped off most of our men today,” Kinman said, “but whoever is after you is desperate, and there must be more than one.”
Although Jackson sat on the outermost edge of their group, they included him in their counsel. He stayed, by nature of his disposition and his appearance, almost invisible, but now he lifted his hand. “May I ask, Mr. Kinman, how you know that?”
“The man you shot in the attack on the train—”
That was news to MacLean. “Jackson shot someone?”
“An Englishman, an officer in the militia with a reputation for fierceness in battle,” Harry answered.
“Apparently someone else owned his loyalty,” Graeme said.
Kinman bristled as if Graeme slurred all Englishmen.
Harry nodded, calm as always. “Apparently. He was on board as one of our defenders. He killed the engineer and stopped the train. Jackson fired when he burst into the car.”
MacLean eyed the dull, fastidious Jackson with new respect. “You can shoot?”
Jackson picked at a piece of lint on his sleeve. “My former master shot birds at his estat
e near Edinburgh, and he insisted I learn.”
“I thought your former master was a friend of Throckmorton’s. Lord Featherstonebaugh, was it not?”
Jackson turned his unremarkable blue eyes on MacLean. “I have worked for several gentlemen at different times in my life.”
Fascinating. MacLean would send to Throckmorton and ask that he investigate the valet’s past more closely.
A burst of feminine laughter distracted MacLean, and he glanced across the hall once more. He’d been with Enid perpetually for months. He couldn’t miss her just because they’d been separated a day—and not even a whole day.
He winced as he remembered his arrival in her bedchamber this morning. He couldn’t believe he’d been so inebriated that he’d sought her out. He had told her every family secret because, in some twisted place in his mind, he had decided she deserved to know.
Even now, while in his right, but hungover, mind, he thought she did. She had been with him almost since the beginning of this adventure. She was in danger because of him. Surely such devotion justified informing her of the day-to-day happenings of the castle. Even the little things that seemed of no importance.
Kinman dragged the conversation back to the topic at hand. “The other men boarded the train when it stopped.”
“I saw only two,” Jackson said.
“But in the dark and confusion, it was impossible to count. I know at least one more entered MacLean’s car, probably just after he escaped,” Harry replied.
Kinman grasped MacLean’s arm to recapture his attention. “So you see, MacLean, we do know someone will come after you again. Someone will try again to kill you. Someone will ambush you.”
The men glanced at each other with the kind of narrow-eyed determination men showed before battle.
“I know you, MacLean,” Kinman said earnestly. “You’ll balk at restrictions, but you must see they’re a necessity.”
“A complete necessity,” MacLean said. He couldn’t sneak into Enid’s bedchamber for conversation, because this morning he’d managed to get himself thrown out. Of course, they weren’t yet married. She didn’t yet know his intentions, and she’d made it clear she wouldn’t welcome his suit. He had no right in her bedchamber, but . . . he wanted to win that right.
Unfortunately, his mother was right. He didn’t know how to court a woman. He’d never had to; as laird, women had courted him. Of course, he knew the basics: how to flirt, how to tell a woman lies. But never before had he wanted a woman who didn’t want him. Never before had it mattered so much.
“You have to appear to be casual, and at the same time always be on your guard.” Kinman squeezed his hands together and looked as nervous as ever that large gentleman could look.
“Absolutely.” If MacLean hadn’t recovered his memory, he would have undoubtedly got her with child.
He sat up straight.
Perhaps a child already grew in her womb. In which case they would have to wed, regardless of her lack of enthusiasm.
Kinman had said it before, but now he said it again. “We don’t know what information you have hidden within the depths of your mind, but the traitor has proved its importance by doing everything in his power to eliminate you.”
“You’re right,” MacLean repeated in a daze.
A child . . . with Enid? His gut and his heart leaped at the idea.
Kinman jumped to his feet. “Blast you, MacLean, you’re not listening to me!”
MacLean blinked at the huffing, red-faced Kinman. “I’ve agreed with everything you said!”
“And how unlikely is that?” Kinman complained.
Now that MacLean had his memory back, he remembered Kinman. They had grown to know each other when MacLean had gone to England to trace Stephen. Kinman was a conscientious, kindly, dutiful man who could fight with the best of them. His shambling appearance hid a sharp mind, and MacLean respected him.
But Kinman seemed to believe MacLean was intractable, and MacLean willingly reassured him. “I’m not to go out by myself,” MacLean recited. “Most of the English guards are gone, but I’m still not safe. We don’t know what I know, but the killer has proved how important that bit of knowledge is by torching the cottage, stopping the train, chasing me through Scotland, and shooting at me.”
Kinman looked down at his feet and shuffled them. “Perhaps there is more than one killer after you.”
“That’s obvious.” MacLean looked around at the serious faces. “I’d call myself brave, but I’m not stupid. I can’t stop a bullet, and I’ll not go haring off outdoors without men guarding my back. Does that satisfy you?”
They all nodded.
“Good, then.” He stood. “I’m off to talk with the ladies. Come if you like. The worst any of them will do is stab me with her spindle.”
Harry lounged in his chair. “And we know who she would be.”
MacLean threw him a black look and headed across the great hall. The men trailed him, not to protect him, as MacLean well knew, but for the amusement of seeing the MacLean join the ladies.
All except Harry, who stayed where he was and stared into the fire.
By the time MacLean had crossed the room, the serving women were nudging each other and grinning, and his mother was shuffling her well-worn deck of cards.
MacLean almost paused to touch her shoulder.
Enid couldn’t be right about Lady Bess. His mother dressed disgracefully. She flirted constantly, and with younger men. She smoked too much, drank to excess, played cards. She couldn’t have sacrificed herself for him and his estate. It was impossible that he could have been so dim-witted as to overlook her selflessness.
“Mother . . .”
She glanced up at him. “Son?”
He looked around to see everyone observing him. He couldn’t question her here. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s of no moment.”
Planting himself in front of Enid, he wondered what he should say. He could scarcely demand if she’d had her menses. So instead he stared at her downturned head and noted how the candlelight flickered on the dark waves of her upswept hair, how wisps slipped down her slender neck, the way the new white gown Celeste had sent clung to her curves. Enid was beautiful. He wanted her. His body and his very instincts identified his gentle, perfect mate.
Looking up, his gentle, perfect mate snapped, “Either go away or sit down. You’re standing in the light.”
Chapter 23
What had Enid been thinking when she’d thrown MacLean out of her bedroom?
Of course, she knew. She’d been thinking she would go home soon—wherever home was. It was certainly not here at Castle MacLean, where an Englishman lurked in every corner and a Scotsman lurked behind each of them, and Enid ran into all of them with suspicious regularity. In the four days since her arrival, she’d begun to suspect they were following her.
Turning swiftly, she peered behind her. Shadows filled the long upstairs gallery, but nothing could account for her attack of nerves. She glanced at the marble bust set on a pedestal. She examined the window alcoves. Nothing. All she could see outside was the constant, drenching rain and the advent of purple evening.
She had to take herself in hand and remember who she was. Enid MacLean, a female who would soon be back in a dull job where one day would follow another without change or excitement—or futile yearning or long evenings in the great hall wherein Kiernan MacLean sat, staring at her and brooding.
Everyone in the castle observed his preoccupation with obvious glee.
She avoided looking at him at all costs. But she always knew he sat there, in the traditional Scottish garb with the hand-knit wool stockings gartered at the knee, his precious sporran, tied about his waist, and a kilt that allowed for occasional, breathtaking glimpses of his muscled thighs—and beyond.
She sighed. That explained why she dragged her feet on her way down for supper. For four days she’d dealt with this constant, tiresome scrutiny, and she was starting to spill things, to forget what she’d bee
n saying, to blush for no reason. The whole situation was wearing on her.
If only something would happen. If only the villain would reveal himself! But while none of the men would discuss the situation with her—they didn’t want to upset her delicate, female sensibilities—she knew they must be pondering the probability that their criminal had left with the English guards. How long would they wait before declaring MacLean out of harm’s way and her able to return home?
Sometimes, she wondered whether MacLean kept her here for the pleasure of tormenting her. He knew the location of her bedchamber, and although she now kept the door locked, he could obtain the key. She was determined to bar him from her bed. But, oh! How she wished to avoid that test, for at night her body yearned for his touch. When she slept, her mind wandered through the Scottish hills in his company, and always they found a small hut where the wind was still and the sunshine warm, and they made love while the very mountains hummed their approval. She imagined that, somewhere in the castle, MacLean sent tendrils of desire chasing after her, and it seemed that every night he commanded with ever-increasing vigor that she come to him.
That was why she imagined someone watched her. Always, she hoped it was MacLean.
Hands clasped behind her back, she again started down the gallery, looking up at the walls crowded with portraits of long-dead lairds, their dogs, their horses, and their wives.
The portrait on the end in particular attracted her—the painting that showed the last laird with his wife, Lady Bess, their children, Kiernan and Elizabeth, Lady Catriona . . . and Stephen. Enid stared at the two lads, standing together as if they had been friends. Stephen had been older than Kiernan, seventeen to Kiernan’s eleven, but already Kiernan topped Stephen in height and breadth. The artist had well captured the charm Stephen cultivated and Kiernan’s rough impatience at being constrained. Two MacLeans, raised together, yet so different.
“He was handsome, wasn’t he?” a breathy feminine voice asked beside Enid.
Enid jumped and turned.
Although she hadn’t laid eyes on the lady since the first night, she recognized Lady Catriona. Lady Catriona’s gray hair was swirled in a knot and topped with a black lace widow’s cap. Her face was worn, her garb unremitting black, and she crumpled a handkerchief in her nervous fingers. She couldn’t have been much older than Lady Bess; indeed, Enid thought she should be younger, but the years showed on Lady Catriona in her stooped shoulders, her stout figure, and the wrinkles around her drooping mouth and red-rimmed eyes.
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