Sarah nodded. It was true. She could see that now. Her friends had all tittered at James’s objections and tempted her to greater and greater self-indulgences. And she’d gone blithely along, refusing to see any danger in her behavior. But then, she’d always chafed at the strictures of proper society. So with each season in town she’d tested those strictures further, never considering the consequences she might someday be forced to reap. Even when Mrs. Ingleside had regaled everyone with poor Miss Tinsdale’s fall from grace, Sarah had neither taken it as warning nor noticed the underlying maliciousness in the woman’s manner. She had been too busy enjoying her new friends’ amusing company.
But they were all like Lord Penley, she now saw. Selfish and grasping and mean-spirited. She was ashamed to admit how blind she’d been. And how selfish herself.
Why couldn’t she have seen it yesterday?
Now she must take leave of London at the height of the season. No more receptions. No balls or evenings at the theater. And all those beautiful gowns she’d ordered but had yet to wear … She sighed.
At least she would be with her half-sister Olivia as well as her husband Neville and their growing brood of children.
She leaned forward earnestly. “You see before you a reformed woman, Mother.” She ignored the rude noise James made. “I shall be as good as gold,” she vowed. “Olivia and Neville shall have nothing to complain about. You’ll see. Nothing at all.”
Only two days by ship, yet when Sarah stepped off the Gulls Wing at the bustling port of Berwick-upon-Tweed, she felt worlds removed from London and, indeed, all of England. The air was crisp and salty, and colder. But that gave her reason to wear her new scarlet cloak, with its sweeping cape and sable collar and cuffs. She might be relegated to the Scottish hinterlands as punishment for her outrageous behavior, but that was no reason to wear sackcloth and ashes.
“The captain has sent for a carriage,” her maid said as they stood along the rail. She was not Sarah’s regular maid, dear Betsy. James had decided that Sarah needed someone older to accompany her on her journey, someone with a firmer hand.
As if she could get into any trouble on that ship or during the one-day carriage ride to Kelso. Sarah glanced at the stern-faced matron, only barely disguising her resentment. “Yes. I know. My dear brother has arranged everything and paid the captain well to do his bidding. And you also, I imagine.” She arched her brows at the woman, even though she knew she was being unfair. But she couldn’t help it. Two days in Agnes Miller’s humorless company had her chafing at the bit. Thank goodness the woman would not be staying at Woodford Court, but rather was traveling on to Carlisle to visit her ailing mother.
The woman frowned, but otherwise ignored Sarah’s ill temper. In a matter of minutes two men carted their luggage down the gangway and piled the numerous bags onto a sturdy but outdated carriage. Oh, well, there would be no one to see or comment about her mode of transportation, Sarah decided, once the captain saw her safely inside the vehicle.
She’d turned many a head as she’d descended from the ship and walked the short distance across the wharf, but none of them the sort she desired. Sailors, dockworkers, hack drivers. There were one or two gentlemen about, properly dressed in frock coats and tall beaver hats. But not another lady in sight. She might as well be wearing flannel, fustian, and clogs, for all anybody around here would care.
Then, recognizing the pettiness of that sort of thinking, Sarah subsided against the well-worn squabs, deflated. She was beginning to sound perilously similar to Caroline Barrett, who was widely regarded as the most frivolous goose in all of London. If the woman had one conversation beyond what she was wearing and who was jealous of her, no one had yet to report on it.
And she was acting just that silly and shallow!
Sarah leaned forward and peered through the carriage window. “Thank you, Captain Shenker,” she called out with determined cheerfulness. “You have been very considerate of my comfort, and I appreciate your many kindnesses.”
If he was surprised by the sudden sunniness of her attitude, the good captain covered it with a broad smile.
“’Twas my pleasure, miss. Indeed it was.” He tipped his hat to her. “I hope your journey to Kelso is pleasant.”
From behind the heavily laden traveling coach, Marshall Byrde heard the exchange. Only he was Marshall MacDougal again, using his mother’s maiden name, as he had on the boxing circuit.
He cocked his head. The lilting voice of the woman had drawn his interest first. But it was the reference to Kelso that made him tense to hear more. He too was heading for Kelso, for he’d heard his mother mention the place now and again.
After a fruitless search for his father in London, he was banking on the belief that if she had come from Kelso, his father might have lived there too. Perhaps the woman in this carriage might know something useful to him. Anything to speed up his frustratingly slow search for his bastard of a father.
He’d been a month at sea, ten days in London, and another several days en route to Scotland. All he’d learned for his trouble was that although his father’s letters had been posted from London, the man had not been born, wed, or buried there. Nor did he live there now, according to the detectives he’d hired.
His mother’s reticence on the subject of her life in her homeland had added nothing to his knowledge of the man. All he knew was that Maureen MacDougal had loved Cameron Byrde—and that he had not loved her in return.
So he’d decided to restart his search on his mother’s side of the family. Only this time he meant to be smarter. This time he would infiltrate society by wearing the mantle of a gentleman and conspicuously flaunt his wealth. That’s why he was in Berwick, purchasing a smart vehicle, with a showy team of horses, and a spirited saddle mount as well. He would infiltrate Kelso’s society while his new batman fit in with the servant classes. For he was certain the answer to his question lay here, in Lowland Scotland.
And now, in the cumbersome coach near his own, he might have the first opportunity to see if he was right.
Except that with a snap of a whip, the coachman sent the heavily laden vehicle rumbling away from the dock and into town. Marsh muffled an oath of frustration. “How much longer?” he prodded Duff, his newly hired servant. “We need to be on our way.”
The wiry fellow eyed him. “I’ve got to replace this broken leading strap. Take ’bout a quarter hour, guv’nor.”
Marsh grimaced. Bloody hell. Then he spied a man staring after the carriage, and his eyes narrowed. Perhaps all was not lost.
“Excuse me,” he said, strolling up to the fellow, who had the widespread stance of a sailor and wore a captain’s hat. “Did I hear someone mention Kelso?”
The man gave him a quick look-over. “You’re American, aren’t you?”
Marsh responded with a friendly grin. “Guilty as charged. Would you like a smoke?” He held out a decorative case of neatly rolled cheroots.
When the captain’s bushy brows arched in appreciation, Marsh went on. “I’m here on business. First time in Scotland. I’m heading for Kelso myself. That’s why I asked.”
The captain took one of the cheroots and sniffed it. “Virginia tobacco, or Cuban?”
Marsh smiled genially. He had him. “It’s a special blend I have made to order.”
A fifteen-minute conversation garnered him three bits of information. Though usually Highlanders, MacDougals could be found in the Lowlands too; the road to Kelso was best not driven after dark; and the young woman in the carriage was English, beautiful, and too spoiled for her own good.
“A right winsome bit a’ fluff. But an expensive bit.”
Marsh thought about that now as he urged the matched pair of bays into a steady, ground-eating pace. He hadn’t had a woman since before his mother’s death. Not on the ship, nor in London. But he found himself thinking of women now. Not that a haughty English miss was likely to provide him the sort of relief he needed.
He chirruped to the horses, preferring
to handle them himself, rather than give them over to Duff. But his thoughts remained on the woman en route to Kelso. What was a young Englishwoman doing traveling in Scotland with only her maid anyway?
But he didn’t really care. All he knew was that he had a hankering to have a pretty woman smile at him. If nothing else, it would remind him of his old life in Boston and Washington. Before his mother’s death. Before her secret cache of letters had thrown his entire life on its ear.
He touched the lead horse lightly with the whip. Soon enough he would reach Kelso. And he would stay till he had his answers, and follow his father’s trail until he had his revenge.
Chapter 2
Sarah pushed up the collar of her cloak, cold despite the fire Agnes stoked in the fireplace of the private dining room they’d taken. They’d stopped for the midday meal at a cheerless-looking place. But the stew smelled delicious and her stomach rumbled hungrily.
“Tight-fisted Scotsmen,” Agnes muttered when she found nothing but kindling in the log bin.
Sarah smiled, for her spirits had improved considerably over the course of the morning. “You’ll have to watch that tongue, Agnes. For my sister is half Scots on her father’s side, and my brother-in-law, Lord Hawke, is fully Scots, as are some of your mother’s family, I am told.”
Sarah took a secret pleasure in the dour woman’s discomfort. Part of her good mood came from her anticipation of seeing Olivia and Neville. Life with them would certainly not be as exciting as London during the season, and there were no men of any merit to be flirted with in Kelso.
But there were other rewards. Neville kept one of the finest stables she’d ever had the privilege of riding from. That meant she would have access to the finest horseflesh and take real hell-for-leather gallops. Plus she would be free to ride astride, without her mother’s constant scolding. And then there were also young Catherine and little Philip to enjoy.
So she ate a hearty luncheon, ignoring Agnes’s muttered complaints. She would sleep away the afternoon, and by the time she awoke, they would have arrived.
When they returned to the coach, however, it was to find the coachman standing beside the team of rested horses, in conversation with a well-dressed gentleman. Sarah knew her role as a young woman of good breeding. Never acknowledge a gentleman to whom she had not been properly introduced—and coachmen were hardly considered suitable to provide that proper introduction.
She knew all that, and yet she slowed as she neared the coach, slowed and stared at the stranger longer than she ought. There was something intriguing about him. Not just his solid build and excessive height. Not just his wide shoulders and unfashionably long hair. There was something else, something she could not quite specify.
He was definitely not the sort of English gentleman she was accustomed to.
Then again, she was no longer in England.
She let her gaze meander over him, admiring the muscular legs beneath his breeches and the strong profile shaded somewhat by his beaver topper. A funny little tingle ran down her back and settled in the vicinity of her stomach. If this was an example of Scottish manhood, perhaps her sojourn to the hinterlands might not be so boring as she’d feared.
Then he looked up and caught her staring, and for a long, suspended moment she could not tear her gaze away. His eyes grew dark as jet, dark and yet glittering in the sunlight.
Agnes must have noticed their locked gazes, for with a none-too-subtle elbow to Sarah’s side, the maid broke the mesmerizing pull of the stranger’s eyes. In truth, it was a relief for Sarah to drag her gaze from his. Yet still, she resented the maid’s interference. “You overstep your bounds,” she hissed as she turned stiffly for the carriage door. But Agnes only folded her arms and stared unrepentantly at her.
Muffling a curse that would have done her brother proud, Sarah reached for the door to swing it open. But another hand was already there.
“May I assist you, miss?”
Sarah turned abruptly, startled by the low, masculine voice. She was startled also by the impact of that dark, appreciative stare, so much nearer now. She shot a so there look at the disapproving Agnes, then refocused her attention on the man holding the coach door open with one hand while he extended his other to help her up the narrow steps.
Really, but he was a bold one. Hat on, gloves off. Any London gentleman would know better. But then, London gentlemen had proven to be a shady, unreliable lot. So she allowed the tiniest smile to curl the corners of her mouth, and considered him for a long, assessing moment. She folded her gloved hands neatly at her waist. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced, sir.”
His grin increased. Then he removed his hat and made a short, neat bow. “I am Marshall MacDougal, at your service, Miss … Miss …”
Her smile increased also, just a fraction. “You are not British, are you, Mr. MacDougal?”
“I’m American,” he conceded. “Is it my accent that gives me away?”
Primly she pursed her lips. “No. Your manners.” She affected a scandalized expression, but one she knew he would not believe. “In our society a gentleman does not introduce himself to a lady.”
“Oh?” He replaced his hat on his head. “Then how do women and men ever meet?”
Sarah could feel Agnes’s disapproving stare, and the coachman’s nervous one. But that only egged her on. “They meet through proper channels, of course. Family. Friends.”
He shook his head. “That’s too bad. I fear I am in for a lonely time of it, then, for I am newly arrived here after a short jaunt in London. And unfortunately I have neither friends nor family in Scotland to recommend me.”
For a moment longer their gazes clung, and Sarah felt clearly the crackling tension between them. It was scary and exhilarating, and she knew one thing without a doubt. This was not a man who would ever want for company, especially female company. There was something in his eyes, some spark caused not solely by the spring sunshine. She felt a little thrill shoot through her every time he looked at her.
No, not merely a little thrill. She’d felt a little thrill when Harlan Bramwell had looked at her. She’d felt a little thrill when Ralph Liverett had taken her hand. And Lord Penley, the cad.
What she felt now, however, was quite different from those little thrills of conquest. This was hot and tickling, trembling its way right through her body, making her heart race and her stomach clutch.
Fortunately, caution raised its head in the nick of time.
This impulsive surrender to her emotions was what had gotten her into trouble in the past, this reckless attraction to everything she ought to avoid. And one thing she knew instinctively: This man was someone she ought definitely to avoid.
So she schooled her face into a more serious expression and banished any flirtatious tone from her voice. “I suspect you will get the hang of things, Mr. MacDougal. Good day.” And without further ado—or his assistance—she stepped lightly into the hired coach.
Agnes followed, slamming the door behind them, and in a moment they pulled out of the inn yard. As the coach rocked down the dusty roadway, Sarah congratulated herself that she’d behaved precisely as she ought: polite, but not friendly. Certainly she had not encouraged him, at least not toward the end.
But as she removed her hat and gloves and positioned a small pillow behind her back, she allowed herself the luxury of imagining just who this American was, and why he’d come all the way across the wide ocean to Scotland. Marshall MacDougal was his name, a Scottish name for an American man. Dark chestnut hair that glinted red in the sunlight. Black eyes that glinted blue.
Again she felt that traitorous little tremble in her belly, and she sighed at her own perversity. If the smooth and charming Lord Penley had been wrong for her, a forthright American like Mr. MacDougal would be disastrous. She had already learned, the hard way, that she was an exceedingly poor judge of men. She must work now to remember that fact.
But it was going to be hard, she acknowledged, closing her eyes.
It was going to be so hard.
Marshall trailed a quarter mile behind the lumbering coach. The incident with the pretty young woman at the posting house had been instructive. If Boston’s society was bound by intricate rules after less than two hundred years, English society was mired in them. He’d bought his way into Boston’s elite. After all, in America, money was the primary arbiter of class. But British society was more complex, as Duff had swiftly apprised him.
“Fell flat, did you?” the outspoken fellow had said when the Englishwoman’s coach had left Marsh standing in the yard, covered with dust.
Marsh had fixed him with a thunderous glare, but the man had continued on unperturbed. “The thing is, guvnor, this ain’t America. There’s women, an’ then there’s ladies. You’ve got to decide which ones it is you’re interested in.”
“And what of servants? Are they different here too, speaking up even when their opinions are not welcome?”
Unfazed by his new employer’s ire, the man squinted at him. “You look the sort who kin handle hisself in a brawl, otherwise I wouldn’t’ve took you on.”
“You took me on?”
“That’s the right of it. You’re up to somethin’, even if you ain’t ready to tell me what. But I’m the adventurous sort, meself. I don’t take you for the type as needs someone to fold his clothes and carry his bags. I’m thinkin’ you have other reasons for hiring me than that. Don’t know what, not yet. Meanwhile, best you understand that we Scots got our own ways. If you want to get along here, best that you learn’em. An’ I’m the one as can teach you.”
Much as he’d resented the man’s observant remarks, having lived by his wits all his life, Marsh had respect for others who survived the same way. Now, as he stared after the carriage ahead of him, he considered Duff’s words. Maybe he could use a little assistance on that score. After all, that coachman hadn’t been especially forthcoming, and even less so when the red-caped beauty had advanced so regally upon them.
The Matchmaker Page 33