Romancing the Scot (The Pennington Family)

by May McGoldrick

  “I’m sorry,” Jo said when they finally drew apart. “I had no intention of dragging you through my own misery.”

  “I wanted to know.” Grace wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “I don’t think healing happens until we confront the source of our pain.”

  Jo reached for her hand again. “Hugh told me that when you go, you want to return to Antwerp. That you believe you could recover your memory there.”

  This was Grace’s chance to speak.

  “Don’t go yet,” Jo said. “Give it a little more time. If not for your health and time to gain more strength, do it for me and Hugh.”

  “I thought a week would be—”

  “I am asking this because of my brother,” Jo interrupted. “Because of the change I’m seeing in him. For the first time in eight long years, something is happening to him. You have no idea of the effect your presence has had on him. He might finally be healing.”

  Jo’s words surprised her, stopping Grace from saying what she wanted to say. Questions burned on her tongue. Why eight years? What could have hurt him enough to have his sister worry so?

  Conflicting desires twisted within her. She wanted to know more, and yet she wasn’t certain she could afford to allow her heart to be completely lost to this man. This was the road to heartbreak, and she didn’t know why she felt so compelled to follow it.

  “No one speaks of it at Baronsford. No one mentions it anywhere—even those apostles of malice—for fear of his temper. But the clues surround us here. You might have seen them. Perhaps you even guessed that Hugh was married before and that he had a son.”

  The basket of toys in the library.

  “He lost both his wife and child eight years ago. And I’m not exaggerating when I say not a single day has passed that he hasn’t mourned their loss.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “It was during the war on the Peninsula. At the time, Hugh’s cavalry unit was covering the army’s retreat across Spain. Amelia took their son, Cameron, and went to Vigo. But camp fever was rampant. She and Cam caught it. They died while he was fighting the French at Corunna. He couldn’t reach them. By the time he did, they’d died a horrible death. He’s never been the same since.”

  Recognition ripped at her insides. Her father’s regiment was at Corunna.

  “He blames himself. He blames the French. To this day, I believe he searches for anyone or anything that he can hold accountable for what happened to his family.”

  * * *

  When you wrote to me in London, I thought you were sending me on a fool’s errand, but you were correct. Grace Ware is here at Baronsford. I have seen her with my own eyes.

  She claims, as a result of the arduous crossing in the crate, to remember nothing of her past, and her hosts believe her. If this is true or if she is acting to protect herself, I cannot say, as yet. As the daughter of Colonel Ware, she is in a peculiar position. I will take immediate steps to determine the veracity of her “amnesia.”

  I don’t know if she has the item we seek. If she does, she may not recognize its true value, or how to deliver it as her father planned.

  Lord Greysteil appears quite protective, though he clearly does not know whom he is protecting or what she has carried into this country. Still, we should avoid direct confrontation with him.

  Your men failed us in Antwerp, and this is our last chance. However we proceed, the next few days should be telling.

  Come here directly. Allow for no delay. I shall assuredly need your assistance.

  Yours, &c

  Chapter 16

  On the first day Grace did not appear, Hugh was grateful that at least one of them had enough sense to create some distance between them. They both needed time to allow their passions to cool, to take a measured look at how to behave with each other, to determine how they would present themselves in the company of others.

  On the second day, when he didn’t see or hear from her by evening, he began to worry. But his sister assured him that Grace was well. She was dividing the time between her sitting room and the libraries. The two women had been eating lunch in Grace’s suite and each day they’d walked on the bluffs along the river. Their guest was trying to regain her strength, she told him.

  By dinner the third day, he was finding her absence sorely trying. Baronsford was a large place, but not so large that a guest could go unseen and unheard, especially when he deliberately went looking for her in the places she was known to frequent. Unless, of course, she’d chosen not to be found by him. And his sister was no help, for she’d spent all of Thursday at the tower house with Violet.

  On the fourth day, after a restless night, Hugh came down to his study at dawn, determined to put an end to the madness. She was clearly trying to offend him. If she thought she was going to remain in hiding until the week was up and then slip off to Antwerp, she was seriously deluded. She had nothing to fear from him. He was no predator, though he was beginning to feel like one. If she wished never to repeat what they’d shared by the loch, he would respect and abide by her decision. But that shouldn’t stop her from having a civil conversation with him. He wanted to see her face, hear her speak, look into her beautiful eyes. He wanted to wonder about the direction of her thoughts as she watched him whenever she thought he was unaware. He was only looking to spend some time innocently enjoying Grace’s company.

  “Very well, that last is a lie,” he muttered to himself, glaring out at the murky morning sky. But unless something had changed, he was still the master of Baronsford and he still had a sister. There was no reason why he shouldn’t employ the help of . . . Jo, Mrs. Henson, someone to bring about some encounter with Grace.

  All schemes forming in his head were immediately laid aside. Outside the study windows, he espied the golden curls of a woman wandering along the green paths of the walled gardens. It was an hour before the gardeners would start their day’s work. The household was only beginning to stir when he came down the stairs.

  With the heavy drapes shielding him, he watched Grace’s every step as she drew closer. Her face was lifted to the sky, and like a wine connoisseur he sipped at her beauty. The generous lips, the angle of her jaw, the blond hair that refused to be tamed. But there were other things he noticed too. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her midsection. Even as he watched, she dabbed under each eye. Tears, he speculated. She was clearly upset. Maybe she grieved some loss. Hugh’s thoughts immediately turned to her memory. Perhaps she’d regained what she had forgotten. It was possible that this was the reason for their estrangement.

  Perhaps Jo was right all along. Grace was attached to someone else.

  The thought of losing her landed like a sharp jab.

  “Stop,” he murmured. This was all conjecture. He was a judge. He was no carnival mind reader. One did not assume. She was the only one who could set him straight. He needed to talk to her.

  * * *

  Mariah Douglas knew.

  The letter from Nithsdale Hall had arrived late yesterday. Anna delivered it to her room with a questioning look, and for the longest time Grace simply stared at the heart and crown on the wax seal.

  As she broke open the letter, a cold sense of ruin descended on her. From the moment Mrs. Douglas looked at her from that carriage, blemishing that glorious day, Grace had been waiting for this moment, knowing it would come. Resigned to her fate, she read it.

  Without question, Mrs. Douglas knew, although there was a cleverness in her wording. She relayed her meaning without overtly revealing anything.

  How charming to find a beauty with such elegant Parisian profile in the rustic wilderness of the Scottish Borders.

  In another line, the modiste mentioned the Baronsford ball, writing that Grace’s willowy physique would be perfect for a dress she’d seen once on the dames du palais of the Duchess of Parma at a very memorable occasion some years back.

  And then the description of the dress:

  Because haute couture is a particular interest of mine,
I find I rarely forget a dress when it suits the wearer perfectly. I can see it now—the white satin petticoat with the delicately embroidered designs of golden wheat entwined with grapes and vine leaves. The matching sleeves, falling in waves and set off by white bows. The pale green body of Lyonnais silk with a darker green border of silk satin, also worked with gold cord and matching wheat and grape leaves. So lovely. So unforgettable. But I digress, and since you have never seen it and will have little chance in your present situation to ware it . . .

  But Grace had seen the gown. She’d worn it to the reception at the Hôtel de Ville after the baptism of Napoleon’s son. The deliberate misspelling of “wear” could not be missed either. Mrs. Douglas was telling Grace that she recalled their introduction down to the smallest detail.

  The rest of the letter showed no hint of a threat, but seemed to offer an olive branch. Mrs. Douglas mentioned her travels on the Continent since the war, the friends she’d made, and how old foes are now the closest of allies. She closed the letter saying that she had made a habit of taking a walk each morning—unaccompanied by Lady Nithsdale—in and about Melrose Village and that she’d greatly enjoy Grace’s company if she chose to join her.

  Grace looked up absently at the blanket of lowering clouds. How truly insignificant Mrs. Douglas’s discovery was when weighed against the tragic twist of fate that now threatened to tear her heart in two.

  Hugh’s wife and child died, alone in their misery, sick with no loved one to tend to them . . . while he struggled to get to Vigo. Jo’s words echoed in her brain. He couldn’t reach them.

  Many times her father had told her about that great victory over the British. How the cavalry under his command had circled to the south of Corunna to cut off any escape. How he’d harried the flank of the entrenched English army while they tried to withstand the frontal assaults from the north. The enemy had been trying to hold out, waiting for more ships to arrive from Vigo, for more reinforcements and cannon to bombard the French while they escaped by sea. But the British ships did not come. Widespread sickness had delayed them. And as the fighting raged, her father had cut off all messengers, all riders, trying to slip through. He’d stopped them all.

  “And Hugh was one of them,” she murmured. Trying to reach his sick family.

  Her own father had stopped him from reaching them.

  The rain began to fall, mingling with the tears on her cheeks, and she pulled the shawl around her. Anguish cut into her like a knife. She was no innocent daughter of some military officer. She was the flesh and blood of the man responsible for the loss Hugh suffered.

  Grace heard the heavy footfall of boots on the path leading to the garden. It was Hugh.

  * * *

  A few scattered drops, and then the sky opened.

  Hugh hurried into the garden, his gaze scouring the area where he’d seen Grace from his window. She was nowhere in sight. Moving quickly between fruit trees and flower beds, he searched the next path, checked under the arched trellises of roses not yet in bloom and spring-flowering clematis. The rain was still coming down hard as he strode through a fragrant lane of lilac, purple and white, in the direction of the grape arbors.

  When he found no one there, he turned in frustration, running his hand through his hair and trying to imagine where she would have gone to escape the falling rain.

  He caught sight of her on the path beyond the walls, glancing over her shoulder at him before slipping through a side door into the house.

  Chapter 17

  Grace wiped the rain off her face as she hurried through the house. She’d escaped him again. A coward she wasn’t, though she was certainly acting like one. Her father would be ashamed of her. This was not the way he’d brought her up. These were not the values Daniel Ware instilled in her.

  Hugh and her father were so different, and yet so much the same.

  This week, during the hours spent with Jo, she’d asked questions of the viscount’s past. His military service. Where he’d served. The positions he’d held. He and her father were both cavalry officers. Grace could count a dozen instances where the two men had fought on opposing sides in the same battle. For more than a few of those, Grace had been traveling with him. She’d been in the French camps, doing what she could to tend to the injured or lend support to the wives who’d followed their husbands on the campaigns.

  Jo shook her head as she’d told Grace about Hugh’s wife. She could not understand why Amelia had taken the young child with her to the edge of that conflict. Grace didn’t try to explain, but she understood. She had seen and cared for so many like her, French women who even accompanied their husbands into the smoke and mud and carnage of the battlefields. Love made women do it. One’s own safety mattered very little when the man you cherished was marching headlong into danger.

  Grace had become one of those women. Her deepening feelings for Hugh surprised her and taunted her. Thoughts of him filled her every waking hour. She saw him in her dreams. But what tore at her now was the need to tell him the truth. She knew how painful it would be to leave him after.

  She stabbed at fresh tears as she ran up the stairs. Stopping at her door, Grace paused and stared down the hallway beyond her own rooms. Amelia’s suite. Jo told her how Hugh had kept those rooms just as they were when his wife and son were alive.

  After eight years, he still loved her and preserved her memory. What Grace shared with him was nothing more than a flirtation. She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the pounding drum of defeat.

  Confessions were only words, she told herself. She couldn’t continue playing this game of fox-and-seek. Perhaps once she told him everything, she wouldn’t have to wait any longer. Hugh would be happy to send her away.

  Grace’s gaze was drawn to the closed door of Amelia’s rooms again. She also needed to make peace with a departed soul who was still alive in spirit. Death was never the victor when someone was truly and eternally loved.

  Taking a deep breath, she moved down the hall.

  * * *

  Grace had seen him. Hugh was certain of it. And then she’d run away.

  Well, he wouldn’t have it. Whatever sadness had ensnared her, Hugh decided he had a right to help her through it if he could. He wouldn’t have her here under his roof and feeling as forsaken as she appeared. She was a guest at his house, under his protection. He was still responsible for her. He was only interested in her welfare. He could come up with myriad reasons why he would care about her. And common decency demanded that she not run away at the mere sight of him. He’d definitely like an answer for that.

  By God, propriety be damned. He’d go to her suite and wait at her door until she gave him one.

  As he made his way through the house, Simons waylaid him with some nonsense about breakfast. Hugh’s impatience must have shown, for the butler quickly decided to curtail the report and back out of the way. Passing his study, he was practically tackled by one of his clerks, who’d just begun his morning’s work. The young man, seeing Hugh’s fierce scowl, scurried out of his employer’s path.

  He crossed the checked floor and climbed the steps two at a time. Standing at her door, he was about to knock when his gaze was drawn down the hallway. He paused. A door into Amelia’s suite was ajar.

  Mrs. Henson saw to it that the rooms were looked after on a regular schedule, but it was still early for the household servants to be cleaning. He walked to the door and entered. The sitting room was empty. But he heard the sound of footsteps from the nursery.

  * * *

  The little boy sat contentedly in his mother’s lap, his hands tucked between them. His face, cherubic with its halo of dark curls, lay against her breast. It was a portrait of security and peace, and the painter had captured it perfectly. Like a modern Madonna and Child, the serenity it exuded conveyed the trusting assurance that the world he knew would be there tomorrow. That he would be protected from all that was wrong.

  But as Grace looked into the faces, she could read the hint of anxio
usness in the mother’s mien. Something in the set of the mouth, in the eyes. Amelia knew that life was not the stuff of the child’s dreams. Even in the boy’s face she saw the serious gray eyes that matched his father’s. Averted from the gaze of the painter, they seemed to be looking for something else, for something he’d lost.

  Grace’s heart shattered as she stared at their portrait. Two lives lost as a result of a meaningless quest for . . . for what? A child at the beginning of life, his pulse flickering and fading away. For what? A mother, desperate for a husband’s safety, and yet unable to save herself or her son. Suffering and dying alone because he could not get to them. For what?

  War. The indiscriminate life-taker. The man-made plague of carnage. For land or riches or power, cities and villages reduced to rubble by the cannon’s barrage. Fields and farmhouses put to the torch to keep anything of value from falling into the hands of a foe. Men of honor turned into raging killers, and boys who should have been in classrooms slaughtered mercilessly.

  Grace had seen it. She’d walked through battlefields where a thousand men lay in their own blood, crying out in pain. Or worse, in eternal silence, never to utter another sound. Men and boys whose heads had rested on their mothers’ breasts—like Hugh’s son—not so long before. So many times had she taken an inconsolable woman or child into her arms, knowing there was nothing she could do to bring back their loved one. Grace had gone through it. She’d experienced the ravages of war. It was hell on earth.

  Hot tears streaked her face. How could she make peace with this child? Grace stepped toward the mantel and lifted a trembling hand to the portrait, wishing she could change everything. Wishing she could bring them back.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The stern voice made Grace turn sharply. Hugh filled the doorway. She could not see his face through her tears.

  There was no holding back.

  “I am Grace Ware, the daughter of Colonel Daniel Ware. The man who fought and stopped you at Corunna. He was the commander of a French cavalry brigade. He was the reason why you were too late reaching Vigo. Too late to get to your family.”