The Passionate One

by Connie Brockway

  Though she wanted to protest that her dishabille made her unfit to receive strange gentlemen, Rhiannon did not. She owed too much to Edith Fraiser to ever willfully contradict her, let alone refuse her directions. She’d come from the Highlands to Fair Badden a decade ago, a scrawny lassie fleeing the aftermath of Culloden, looking for some kinsman to shelter her.

  Though Edith Fraiser was only a second cousin of Rhiannon’s mother, the Fraisers had taken her in. A successful and well-respected squire, Richard Fraiser ranked high in Fair Badden’s countrified society. From the offset he’d treated Rhiannon like a daughter of the house, lavishing upon her every benefit of his wealth and prestige.

  Their unstinting affection had harried Rhiannon’s blood-soaked memories into hiding. Only at night, and then rarely, did phantoms stagger bleeding through a blasted, burning landscape, did uncles and cousins roar in torturous din as they sought to escape Butcher Cumberland’s retribution against those who’d supported Bonny Prince Charlie. During the day, Rhiannon scarcely remembered her life before Fair Badden.

  She lived in Fair Badden as though it had always been her home and she had always been accepted, at peace, content. Even her Highland brogue had disappeared over time. Then, ten months ago, Richard had died. Rhiannon and Edith clung together, finding in each other the slow healing only shared grief can offer.

  Now Edith fussed over Rhiannon’s hair, untangling knots and rubbing a smudge of dirt from her brow. That done she bussed Rhiannon warmly on the cheek, accepted a hug in return, and turned her by the shoulders. She gave her a little push.

  “Along with you,” she said, shepherding Rhiannon down the hallway. “Your friends will wait as long as there’s ale to drink and cakes to eat.” Her smile grew sly. “And your beau would wait without the lure of sweets, kisses being a sweet enough lure, I’ll wager.” She chuckled at Rhiannon’s shy expression and stopped before the library door. “Go on.”

  “You’re not coming in with me?” Rhiannon asked in surprise.

  “No.” A troubled thought shadowed Edith’s soft features. “The gentleman asked to see you alone for a few minutes. He said he had news regarding your future.

  “I’m thinking—that is, I’m hoping—he might be a lawyer sent from London with word of a lost entailment. Perhaps a little forgotten keepsake from your dear mother to act as a dowry. I only wish I had something more to give you myself, but it’s all long since bespoke.”

  Rhiannon took Edith’s hands. “You’ve already given me more than I can ever repay.”

  Flustered, Edith twitched Rhiannon’s jacket shoulders into alignment. “Go on, now! I’ll be here waiting when you come out.” She opened the door and pushed Rhiannon inside.

  A man sprawled in Squire Fraiser’s favorite chair, one foot stretched out before him, the other bent at the knee, his fingers laced over his flat stomach. He gazed out the window, his face averted. All she could see of his head was a carelessly pulled back tail of coal black hair tied with a limp ribbon.

  He wore a coat of deep burgundy velvet, a white linen shirt beneath it. Brussels lace fell gracefully over the first knuckles of his long, lean fingers, and more lace cascaded beneath his chin. His breeches were tight and made of tawny doeskin. His dark leather boots climbed past his knees and were folded in cuffs over his muscular thighs. The tip of his sword, sheathed in a leather scabbard and hanging from his belt, touched the floor beside him.

  He would have been exquisite had he not been so disheveled. The burgundy coat was dusty and the faded linen shirt went wide of being pristine. The lace of one sleeve, delicate as gossamer, was ripped and soiled. His boots were stained and scarred and the scabbard containing his sword was likewise ill-used.

  He did not look like any lawyer Rhiannon’s imagination would have conjured.

  A bit of pique flavored Rhiannon’s curiosity. A gentleman—particularly a London gentleman—visiting the Fraiser’s home should have stopped at The Ploughman’s Inn to repair the damage travel had caused. But then, honesty goaded her generous mouth into a smile; a lady receiving a gentleman should have paused to repair the damage a hunt had caused.

  He turned his head carefully, as if he were concerned to startle her and she thus knew that he’d been allowing her time to assess him. He looked tired, worn too thin and used too roughly. His eyes were jetty dark, the brows above slanting like black wings, but the skin beneath them looked bruised. He sported an old-fashioned clipped beard amidst the shadows of lean, unshaven cheeks, and his skin was very pale and very fine and somehow fragile.

  Fleeting emotion, subtle and reserved, flickered over his aquiline features.

  “Rhiannon Russell, I presume?” His voice was baritone and suave. He didn’t bother to rise and his pose remained preternaturally still, like a cat at a mouse hole, watchful but not hungry—not yet.

  “Yes.” She became unaccountably aware of the hair streaming down her back, the sweat and grime from her leather gloves embedded beneath her short nails, and the mud splattering her bottle green skirt.

  He rose. He was tallish and slender and his shoulders were very straight and broad. His mouth was kind but his eyes were not. His throat looked strong. The torn lace ending his shirtsleeves tangled in the carved gold setting of a great blue stone ring on his little finger. He flicked it away.

  Even without the cachet of being a Londoner, the ladies of Fair Badden would have found him attractive, Rhiannon thought. Since he was from that great fabled city, they’d find him irresistible. Indeed, she herself could have found much to recommend in his black and white good looks … if she hadn’t already succumbed to a golden-haired youth.

  “You’re not English.”

  “I am. A quarter,” she said. “On my father’s side.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed.” Having spoken, he fell silent, studying her further.

  She struggled to remember the lessons in courtesy Edith had instilled but none of them applied to meeting strange, elegantly shabby young men alone in her foster father’s library.

  “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me, sir,” she finally ventured.

  “Could I only be so fortunate as to claim as much with all my acquaintances,” he said and then, “but didn’t Mrs. Fraiser inform you of my name?”

  “No,” Rhiannon said. “Mrs. Fraiser has no head for names, unless they’re the names of unscrupulous tradesmen. She only said that you’d come from London to see me and that you had news regarding my future.”

  “I am Ash Merrick.” He sketched an elegant bow, his watchfulness becoming pronounced now, as if his name should mean something to her, and when he saw that it did not, he went on. “The name Merrick is not familiar to you?”

  She cast about cautiously in her mind and found nothing there to trigger a memory. “No,” she said. “Should it?”

  His mouth stretched into a wide grin. It was a beautiful smile, easy and charming, but it never quite reached his eyes. “Perhaps,” he said, “since it’s the name of your guardian.”

  Chapter Three

  “I don’t have a guardian,” Rhiannon said and then, with her usual candor, amended, “I mean, not an official one. At least, none that I know of …”

  She trailed off, visited by an imprecise memory. She was maybe eight years old, standing on the street of a strange city, squinting up at a door frame filled with beckoning light. The old woman who’d brought her had cold, gnarled fingers. They twisted round Rhiannon’s wrist like ropy grape vines. A strangely accented voice spoke from within the warm, yellow light. “You want another Merrick, witch. Not Lord Carr.”

  She was to have lived with an Englishman. He was supposed to have been her guardian. She remembered the old lady saying so. She’d forgotten. But there’d been so much about those days and all the days preceding them that she’d forgotten. Flight and cold, fear and confusion, the days—weeks?—had bled into one long, seemingly endless nightmare from which she’d only awakened upon arrival in Fair Badden. Even when she tried to recall, it was
insubstantial, flickers of sensation and images, more emotions than actual memories.

  Rhiannon stared at the man arrayed in damaged elegance. Surely he was too young— “Are you Lord Carr?”

  Once more the gorgeous smile lit his dark visage. “No. Lord Carr is my father. And you’re perfectly correct if you’re thinking him a negligent sort of guardian. He is.”

  She was unable to read the flavor of that amused estimation. His manner, his address, were nothing like those of Fair Badden’s young men. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I, and I thought I had,” he murmured, one brow climbing. And then, “I think Carr would like you to believe that he has simply misplaced you these past years.”

  “Did he?”

  Ash Merrick’s enigmatic smile spread. “I doubt my father has ever misplaced so much as a toothpick.”

  Each of his answers only provoked more questions, and each statement this Ash Merrick made only increased her discomfort. She once more felt she was standing at the door leading into that forbidden, enticing house. She was afraid to step over the threshold. It would cost her a price she could not name and was uncertain she could afford. And yet it beckoned.

  “What is it you want, sir?”

  “I? Nothing. I’m merely here to escort you to Wanton’s Blush because he wants you, Rhiannon Russell.”

  “Why?” The sleek cat had tired of watching, he was playing with the mouse now.

  “Your aunt was cousin to his wife,” he said.

  “We’re cousins?” she asked. Impossible to believe that this black glossy creature and she were related.

  “Oh, no. No. My mother had the distinction of being the first Lady Carr. Your mother was related to his second wife … or was it the third? Carr has an unhappy habit of losing wives to early graves.”

  “I see.” But she didn’t. With his explanation the exhaustion had returned to his dark, mobile face, touching her tender heart. “You’ve traveled a great distance, sir. Would you like something to drink? To eat?”

  He looked up abruptly at the offer, his brows knit with surprise. “No,” he said. “Thank you. We’ve business to conduct, you and I. Perhaps later.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rhiannon said. “Why now, after all these years has your father sent you to find me?”

  “Unreasonable chit,” Ash Merrick chided comfortably. “You are not supposed to ask questions. You are to fall into paroxysms of joy that Carr has deigned to offer you his protection … such as it is.”

  She studied him in consternation but forbore comment.

  “What?” he queried when she did not reply. “No paroxysms? He’ll be disappointed. But to answer your question, Miss Russell, Carr sends you the message that now that he has found you, he is willing—nota bene, my dear, he did not go so far as to declare his eagerness, merely his willingness—to accept his responsibility for you.”

  Her frown was severe, her concentration fierce. He spoke obliquely and his manner was mocking but impersonal, as though the jest he saw was more at his expense than hers.

  “And what do you say, Mr. Merrick?” she asked carefully.

  “Miss Russell, a lady never puts a gentleman in the onerous position of making a judgment,” he said. There was kindness—or perhaps pity—underscoring the ironical tone. “Particularly about his sire’s motives. I never make judgments, Miss Russell, ergo I never misjudge. If I were following my own inclination, I would never have come here. I am only my father’s agent. I do not question his edicts. I follow them.”

  His voice had grown terse. It was as if he’d decided to dislike her before they’d ever met. She could think of no reason he should do so—unless he resented his father’s interest in her. Perhaps he was profligate and his purse light, she thought, eyeing his shabby raiment, and feared his father would be overly generous with his newly discovered ward.

  The idea explained Ash Merrick’s subtle antagonism and melted her earlier resentment. She could put him at ease. She didn’t want his father’s protection or his guardianship or his generosity. Nor did she need them.

  “What did you do to your face?”

  His question caught her off guard. He’d come closer while she’d been lost in thought. He grasped her chin, tilting her face into the shafts of late afternoon sunlight.

  “My face?” Was he, too, going to scrub her cheek clean? She went still, embarrassed and unnerved and not at all certain it wouldn’t be a touch thrilling to have this exotic, masculine creature offer so intimate a ministration.

  At the wayward thought, heat climbed to her cheeks. “Forgive me, sir. We just finished hunting and I didn’t have an oppor—”

  “You received this wound hunting?” he asked incredulously, lifting his other hand and lightly tracing her cheek.

  Warm little tendrils of sensation danced beneath his touch. His fingertips were rough, the knuckles large, and his wrists braceleted with old scars. No gentleman had hands like that. Not even a London gentleman. Particularly a London gentleman. Who was Ash Merrick?

  Her gaze roved over his face as he frowned at the mark on her cheek. The lashes framing his dark eyes were as black as his hair, thick and spiky and long as a lassie’s, and that was the only soft or feminine thing about him. This close, even his fashionably pale London skin seemed nothing more than a comely happenstance. The single purpose of that fine flesh was to shed water, avert wind, not to attract. Though it did that, too.

  “Did you?” He released his clasp of her chin.

  Ah, yes. He’d asked about her wound.

  “No,” she answered, no longer concerned with the words they spoke but rather with some other interplay occurring between them, some communication happening just beyond the scope of her mind to facilitate.

  “Then how did this happen? One would imagine such a prize would awake the instinct to protect.”

  She did not understand. Her skin was unmarked by pox and not too browned by the sun, but no one had ever deemed it a prize. He looked into her eyes and his facile smile wavered and disappeared.

  For the first time since she’d entered the library, Ash Merrick did not seem completely master of the situation. He drew away from her, looking puzzled, like the lad who has unlocked a secret drawer and found something he’d not anticipated and wasn’t sure he liked.

  “You were about to say?” His voice was smooth enough.

  “Footpad,” she answered faintly. “We were coming home from the neighbor’s when we were accosted by a villain. He shot his pistols at our carriage as our driver whipped up the team. One of his bullets grazed me. As you can see, we escaped.”

  “Highwaymen? Here?” His tone was incredulous.

  “Rare enough,” she admitted. “But it happens.”

  He’d turned away from her and was rubbing his thumb along his dark, stubbled jawline.

  “It looks worse than it ever felt,” she offered, obliged by his obvious concern. His eyes slew back toward her, a flicker of astonishment in their dark depths.

  “Ah … good.”

  “I’m afraid it will leave a scar, however,” she added apologetically.

  His expression grew bewildered. “Scar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nonsense. One won’t even notice it,” he dismissed the mark roughly.

  It was gracious of him to reassure her—if that’s what those grudging words had been an attempt at—but she really wasn’t sensitive about her looks.

  She knew her assets well enough and a two-inch line traversing her cheek hadn’t devalued their worth. Phillip certainly didn’t seem to find her any less attractive … Phillip.

  With a start she realized they had not yet finished discussing the reason for Ash Merrick’s presence here.

  “I appreciate your kindness, Mr. Merrick,” she said, moving away from the magnetism surrounding him and taking a chair, “but you needn’t worry about me. I am perfectly fine. I’ve been fine for over ten years and while I am …” she searched for some gentle way to reveal to him
that his long journey had been unnecessary “… I am very warmed by your father’s offer, I must refuse it. And your escort to his home.”

  “Offer?”

  “Yes,” she nodded, “of his guardianship. You see, I already have a wonderful family who have seen that all my needs have not only been met but are surpassed.”

  “I don’t think you should view this as an offer, Miss Russell.”

  “No?”

  “My father is determined you’ll come live with him.”

  He simply didn’t understand. His expression was cold, aloof, giving her a glimpse of the hard implacable will driving him. With a frisson of trepidation, she tried another smile. He couldn’t very well kidnap her from her home.

  “I hate to disappoint the gentleman,” she said, “but as I’ve tried to explain, there’s no need for him to assume his guardianship of me. Indeed, I would much oppose it. Mistress Fraiser, with whom I’ve lived these many years, is but recently a widow and I could not repay her loving care by abandoning her now.”

  “I assure you, my father will provide any accoutrements of wealth and privilege you should require,” Ash Merrick said, his gaze on the ring adorning her hand.

  “My affection for Mistress Fraiser is honest, sir,” she snapped with uncharacteristic ire, stung by his inference that she wanted to stay here simply to keep herself well clothed. “My support of her is heartfelt. And I would not have you suggest otherwise!”

  She took a deep breath, unnerved as much because he’d provoked her so easily as by his offensive suggestion.

  “Perhaps Mistress Fraiser can ill afford the luxury of your heartfelt support,” he suggested, looking pointedly at her pearl ring.

  The notion of Edith Fraiser selling off the family silver to buy her a second-rate piece of frippery restored Rhiannon’s usual good humor. This time her laugh was warm and spontaneous. “This ring and a piece of amber are all I have from my mother, sir, and its value is almost solely sentimental. I pray you only look about you. I assure you I am not causing Mistress Fraiser any financial hardship.”