The Sins of Lord Lockwood

by Meredith Duran

  “You thought a penniless English earl saw an opportunity.” Before she could deny it, he flashed a lopsided grin, boyish, which somehow mocked himself and her, too. “Yes, well, don’t think it didn’t cross my mind. We penniless earls must look for love in high places, particularly with all those crumbling castles to pay for. But that was before I knew your opinion of wenching.”

  Her face felt afire now. He had overheard that? On a deep breath, she brazened through it. “I see. I hope this doesn’t mean that you disregard whether the wenches are willing.”

  “Oh no,” he said, then leaned forward, close enough that his breath warmed her cheek as he murmured, “The wenches are always willing. But I could never court a lady who doubted it.”

  As he drew back, her heart skipped a beat. She rather believed he was right about the wenches.

  But she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing so. “It must be your vanity that impresses them.”

  “It is very large,” he said solemnly, “but I’ve not yet had complaints.”

  She sputtered on a scandalized laugh. Good heavens. Surely he didn’t mean . . . ?

  He dimpled as though in answer, and she felt herself blush. “You’re a rogue,” she said.

  “Entirely.”

  “And unashamed of it, too.”

  He laughed, an easy and relaxed sound. “You would be surprised at how far roguery can take a man. Behold: I’ve had you to myself for five minutes now. Can any other man here claim such good fortune?”

  It was not like her to fall for flattery. But she felt the odd urge to preen.

  In the space of her hesitation, he continued in a more formal tone. “I did not bring the manuscript with me tonight. But I’ll have it sent over tomorrow, if that suits you.”

  “Yes.” A smile bloomed on her lips as she fathomed the implications of his errand. “He read it, you say?”

  “He did.”

  “And he liked it?”

  “The professor would not waste his opinions on me. But judging by his manner when he handed me the manuscript, I would guess he liked it very much.”

  Now she felt purely dizzy, as though the floor were floating away. “How marvelous,” she murmured. And then, catching his gaze on her, she felt herself flush again. The light in his eye left no doubt that he was admiring her.

  Well, at the least, he was a man of fine judgment, then.

  She smiled at him, deliberately this time, and did not miss how his breath caught. Her smile was her greatest beauty; everyone always said it.

  “Do send it,” she said. “Or better yet, bring it yourself, but only if you’re in the mood for a walk.”

  “Delightful.” He bowed and turned away. But before he stepped out of view, she called after him.

  “You’ll need to arrive before daylight if you want to join us.”

  She caught his glance toward the nearby grandfather clock. It was already half past midnight. “Ambitious,” he said.

  “Quite. And if you arrive too late, I’ll be forced to conclude that you’re afraid of heights, and looked for an excuse not to come.”

  The interest on his face was unmistakable. “I’ve no fear of heights. But which heights, exactly, do you mean?”

  “The highest one,” she said. “We are climbing Ben Nevis. Don’t be late.”

  • • •

  Liam had anticipated a pastoral frolic. The proof of his misjudgment was now plain in his own ragged breath as he labored up the woodland path. In college, he’d conquered the cricket fields. At university, no rower could outpace him. But Anna Winterslow Wallace, Countess of Forth, was built of some strange mettle, the same no doubt as steam trains, so steadily she chugged along.

  He was at risk of falling behind.

  His recent routine was to blame for it. Gone were the mornings of disciplined exertion. For the past few months, he’d been on a tour of sorts—a survey of likely heiresses up and down the British Isles. He was a bachelor with a title: everywhere he went, he was welcomed and feted and flirted with. But this campaign entailed a great many late nights, and bottles of wine and rich food. Now, in his laboring lungs, he found evidence of his own dissipation.

  Lady Forth, meanwhile, was rumored to be on a campaign of her own—Professor Arbuthnot had said as much when handing over the manuscript. Don’t get any ideas, lad. She’ll be looking for a husband of substance, not a book burner. But since Scottish flirtations evidently entailed scaling mountains, Lady Forth’s desirability had turned her into an athlete.

  Liam wanted to tell her now that the professor’s spectacles were as thick as windowpanes: on that fateful night in the Bodleian, he’d mistaken Liam’s attempt to beat out the flames for an effort to fan them. But it seemed rather late to launch his self-defense. Getting tossed out of Trinity had led to some grand times abroad, and so Liam had never minded the rumors, nor imagined a time when they might irk him.

  For that matter, he’d never foreseen himself laboring to keep up with a woman, much less struggling to impress her. Why, as recently as last night, he’d gone to sleep quite content. Countess Forth was attractive, clever, and prickly enough to make it interesting. Wealthy enough, too, to solve his problems, which was the reason he’d bothered in the first place. He’d envisioned this walk as a chance to evaluate her—not to be evaluated. For what rich young heiress, denied a season in London and kept sequestered in the north, would look on a gentleman such as himself, and not think of the fun they could have?

  The answer: Anna Winterslow Wallace, who, despite his best and most charming discourse over the last hour of walking, seemed thoroughly unimpressed by tales of London, Rome, Geneva, Madrid—and not at all out of breath, either, though the slope continued to steepen.

  He was shamefully grateful when she drew up by a waterfall, a sparkling ribbon that danced down the granite flank of the mountain. “You’ve certainly traveled a great deal,” she said. Usually these words came lofting on a warm current of admiration, but her tone was arid.

  Of course, there had been other pretty young women at the Camerons’ last night—all of them seeming excited to make his acquaintance. Perhaps one of them had money. He looked up the path, but their companions had taken a half hour’s head start. “We had been waiting for an hour already,” Countess Forth had told him when he’d arrived, “and they went ahead, fearing it would rain.”

  He’d overslept. It was one of his vices.

  Lady Forth crept near to the falls to refill her canteen. The other women—he had caught sight of them above, as the trail twisted sharply—were dressed in sensible but respectable woolen gowns. The countess, in all her scientific glory, was wearing split skirts, the hems of which she had tucked into tall boots. Nor, he suspected, was she wearing a corset. She looked like a Zouave soldier; all she lacked was the mustache and medals.

  Troubling, then, that he found himself staring at her backside. She had a narrow waist, and magnificently broad Scottish hips. He was perverse. The experience of failing to charm a woman was somehow seducing him.

  “Should we try to catch up with the others?” he asked when she sat down on a mossy rock and began to drink. “They may be waiting for us.”

  It was only water that she was drinking—water no doubt flavored by deer droppings. But she swallowed it with such obvious relish that he felt a stirring in his groin, and that, paired with the hoarseness in his breath, was too much for his vanity.

  She was as tall as a man, and wearing trousers. No matter that she had two hundred thousand pounds to her name, or that her hair looked brighter than the fire in the Bodleian that night. He had standards to keep.

  She glanced up, her green eyes cool. “No,” she said, “they won’t be waiting. After all, it was I who invited you on this walk. It is not their responsibility to see to your comfort.” Her gaze dropped significantly to his boots. “Are your feet all right?”

  “Brilliant,” he said. These boots were the height of fashion. They had started pinching a mile ago. He would h
ave sliced off his toes before admitting it.

  “I see.” She paused. “I had thought you were limping. My mistake!”

  He bit back a rueful smile. She had standards as well—and he clearly did not meet them.

  She rose and set out without a backward glance. He was reminded, as he trailed her, of equally miserable adventures as a child—crammed between his mother and cousin in some carriage, his head aching from the rattle of the windows and jostling of springs, while Stephen delivered some ingratiating monologue on the historical sights ahead, to Liam’s parents’ encouragement—Tell us more, Stephen; how clever you are—while all the while Liam tried not to vomit, praying the journey would end before he disgraced himself.

  The memories faded as he caught up with Lady Forth, leaving melancholy in their wake.

  He missed his parents.

  They had never taken him to Scotland. It had not been in fashion in his youth. But his mother would have adored these surroundings—the path bedecked by green ferns and shoots of heather, and below, in the shadow cast by the mountain, foothills studded by alder and birch trees whose bright leaves rippled in the wind.

  She would have liked the Countess of Forth, too. His mother had been hot tempered, elegant, strong willed. She had loathed a sidesaddle, and spoken fondly of her youth, when women had sometimes stepped out wearing only a single petticoat, and had “the full use of their limbs,” as she’d put it, allowing them to tramp for hours across hill and dale.

  He missed her. He missed her even more now than in the year immediately following her death. While his father had still lived, they had remembered her together, so often and so openly that she had seemed still to hover between them. But now, with both parents gone, Liam felt truly alone.

  An image came to him suddenly, vivid and frightening: his own figure, reduced to slightness by the looming debts, the crumbling estates, the hungry and hollow-cheeked tenants staring toward him in search of hope.

  The Countess of Forth would not be his solution. But he needed to find one quickly. For while life could be a grand adventure for a gentleman born to his station, money was the trick—and without it, this adventure would quickly become far more unpleasant, not only for himself.

  “Are you thinking of England?” asked the countess.

  Startled, he lied: “No.” Then, with a frown—could she also be a witch?—he asked, “Why do you wonder?”

  “You had a very grim look on your face.” She cut him a mischievous look, and then laughed.

  He found himself startled again. One moment she seemed like a plain gorgon. The next, her wit flashed out, dry and clever, and when humor lit her face, she abruptly seemed beautiful.

  He cleared his throat and fixed his gaze on the trail. If she was not the solution, then she was at least his temporary hostess on this mountain, and he would treat her with respect.

  Not with leers. He would reserve those for the solution, he hoped. His father had not strayed, and had not raised Liam to do so, either.

  “England’s beauty is less dramatic,” he said, “but no less remarkable. Surely you’ve visited the Lake District?”

  “I have never been south of the border.” His unconcealed surprise made her laugh again. “Is that so unimaginable?”

  “Most ladies of your station do spend a season in London, at least.”

  She shrugged. “I never saw the use.”

  A thousand objections sprang to mind. What kind of cramped and calloused soul proved indifferent to the lure of strange places, distant cities?

  But he was determined to be pleasant for the remainder of their walk. “Was it here, then, that you met Professor Arbuthnot?”

  “Yes, at his lecture in Edinburgh. Every scientist of note passes through that city eventually, and when I am in residence, I attend all the engagements.”

  For a woman of such broad mind, it seemed very odd that she did not wish to explore the world. “You must have impressed him a great deal,” Liam said. “He took far less interest in my work as an undergraduate.”

  “Oh, I privately suspect that the good professor has a weakness for redheads.” She winked at him.

  His jaw nearly dropped. “I . . . see.”

  “I approached him after his lecture, inquiring about his work on the spectroscope. I was having some trouble reproducing his results, you see. He was tremendously kind to take the time to explain my error. And later he proposed a most ingenious way to simplify the whole business, which proved useful for little fingers.”

  His glance dropped down to her hands; she gave him a sideways smile.

  “Not my fingers.” She held them up. “These hands I have heard my own aunt call paws. ‘Manly paws,’ to be precise.”

  His denial was automatic: “Nonsense.” But in truth, her hands matched the rest of her: uncommonly large for a woman.

  She snorted. “Flattery only appeals when rooted in truth.” She stretched her hands to their full span and beamed at them. “Far from little! But I’ve dozens of cousins with children of their own, and their hands still have growing to do.”

  He realized he was smiling. Women often took opportunities to slight themselves in order to invite his compliments. But Lady Forth looked visibly pleased with, even fond of, her own supposed flaw. His reassurances would be superfluous. “So the children assist your experiments, then?”

  “Of course.” She looked startled. Was she blushing? Some marvelous glow spread across her skin, darkening the freckles on her plump, rosy cheeks. “Did you imagine that I . . . Goodness!” Now she grinned, a toothy and entirely unself-conscious expression of delight, girlish and deeply charming. “You were imagining me as a true scientist, weren’t you? Presiding over experiments of my own design!”

  She sounded delightfully gratified. He said, “I confess, the vision held appeal.”

  “Alas! Perhaps if I’d been born a man. Or born a Nightingale, even!” She shrugged. “I’m no true scientist, sir. I took an interest for the sake of my estates—it seems that every day brings some new revolution in agricultural chemistry. But from there, I kept reading. We live in such a marvelous, modern age—I like to keep abreast of new discoveries.”

  “And to keep your small cousins abreast as well.”

  “It does entertain them. And when all of them are under the same roof, you would not believe how useful it proves.”

  “Oh, I believe it.” For part of the journey, he had shared a train carriage with an apologetic matron and her five small boys. The nanny gave sudden notice, she had said weakly to him, as the boys ran riot over the benches. “That must make a pretty picture, all the children gathering to assist you.”

  “Not pretty in the least,” she said cheerfully. “We get very dirty in our experiments. Once or twice, somebody has blown something up.”

  “How fearsome.”

  “Oh, we’ve only lost one eye and two fingers to date.”

  Her delivery was so deadpan that it took him a moment to realize she was joking. She laughed at him again.

  “And the manuscript,” he said, smiling back. “Is it a memoir of these misadventures?”

  “Who would want to read that? No, it’s a book in the style of Mrs. Marcet and Mrs. Lowry. They were the great heroes of my youth, writing tales of science that even a little girl could understand.”

  “Not only little girls.” He had adored Mrs. Marcet’s volumes as a boy. He could still recall their exact placement on the little bookshelf, which he’d insisted on keeping directly next to his bed. “I found those primers tremendously interesting.”

  The countess nodded. “Chemistry and geology, the animal kingdom and the wonders of plant life . . . Mrs. Marcet and Mrs. Lowry retired, of course, but science has kept marching onward. For my cousins’ sake, I decided to take up their banner.”

  “I think that’s marvelous,” he said sincerely. How lucky that she had not taken a liking to him—he would not have known what to do with such a talented wife. He would have ruined her.

 
The vegetation was thinning now, and as the path twisted around a scree-covered slope, one side abruptly dropped away, the rocky bank sloping at a deadly angle into a gully far below. The sun slipped behind clouds, the temperature beginning to drop. They walked in silence for several long minutes until a thin layer of mist began to rise around them.

  “Oh dear,” said the countess.

  Was there some cause for concern? He opened his mouth to inquire, and the chill abruptly became icy. In the space of a moment, the mist reached them and solidified, rising to form a freezing and impenetrable wall.

  The countess came to a stop, and he nearly bumped into her.

  “Ah, Ben Nevis,” she said, an affectionate scolding note in her voice. “This is its greatest trick, you know—blind the walker, so he plummets to his death off a cliff.”

  “How cheerful,” he said dryly. “Shall we take shelter until the mist clears?”

  “No need. I’ve done this walk a hundred times.”

  But he hadn’t. “Very well,” he said, unwilling to be outdone by her.

  She adopted a slower pace, but not slow enough for his liking; his brain remained acutely aware of the sudden drop to his right and shrieked at his stupidity as he blundered forward, regardless. He had never seen mist so thick, save in the worst London pea soupers, which certainly concealed runaway carriages and open sewers, but no cliffs, a fact for which he now realized he should be grateful.

  A voice floated down to them. “Anna!” it cried. “Anna, can you . . .”

  “That’s Moira,” exclaimed his regrettably plucky guide. “Moira!” she bellowed—directly beside his ear, causing him to wince. She had missed her calling as an opera singer. “Moira, are you at the summit?”

  They waited silently in a milky white haze for a reply that never came. “Did she sound distressed?” asked the countess, her former blitheness nowhere in evidence. “I hope somebody hasn’t twisted an ankle.”