He made a cursory inspection of the room, tallying the fine furnishings, the ornate plaster mantel—Mistress Fraiser’s pride and joy—the satin covered settees and silver mirror.
Then his gaze returned, once more, to her.
It flowed down her body and slowly, incrementally, roved back up her person, settling on the brocaded lapels of her hunting jacket. Her pulse quickened beneath that lazy regard, and her hand instinctively fluttered to her throat.
His gaze drifted up to meet hers, the dark centers of his eyes glowing like a hot cauldron of pitch.
“As good as anything you’ll see in London, I’ll wager,” she said inanely, fingering the silk embroidered plaquets.
“Indeed.” His voice was deep, heavy and smooth.
“It’s French.”
His mouth quirked. “I thought Scottish.”
Her laughter was nervous. “Oh, no. You’ll not find many Scottish fingers working over a piece like this.”
“It would seem to require a more sophisticated hand,” he agreed suavely.
“Yes.” She nodded, knowing full well he was twitting her but unsure how. She smiled uncertainly. His lids narrowed, the thicket of lash hiding the brilliance of his eyes.
He hadn’t looked the least reproachful when she’d snapped at him a moment before. There was not one person in Fair Badden who would not have looked shocked at having heard the sharp edge of Rhiannon Russell’s tongue. There was not one person in Fair Badden who had ever heard it. She’d always been mindful of her debt of gratitude, careful never to give offense.
“I agree, Miss Russell, you’ve been well tended.”
“Yes,” she said. In a few minutes he would walk out of this room and ride away back to London. She didn’t want him to go. Not yet.
“But being well tended isn’t the only issue,” he went on. “However tardy in his assumption of the role, my father is your legal guardian. He wants you at Wanton’s Blush.”
Wanton’s Blush? She remembered that name. Her aunt had lived there. She froze. “In the Highlands?”
“Yes. Last time I was there, I believe it was in the Highlands. On McClairen’s Isle.”
The place name ambushed her from out of the past. Her heart leapt to her throat. Fear confounded her ability to breathe and she stared at him, stricken. He didn’t even realize he was uttering what to her was a threat.
“And that,” he stated, “is where you’ll go and where you’ll stay, until you marry or die or my father tires of this unprecedented whim to foster you.”
“Marry?” Relief rushed over her. She would be able to thwart Lord Carr’s demand. And if the smallest bit of regret tempered her relief, well, she’d already admitted to herself that Ash Merrick was fascinating. “Then we’ve no problem.”
“Did we have a problem? I hadn’t realized.” He held out his hand, inviting her solution to the problem they didn’t have.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I mean no, sir. We don’t. Because, you see, in three weeks I’m to wed Phillip Watt.”
Ash Merrick’s hand froze in the act of reaching for her. Seconds clicked by as unreadable emotions flickered in rapid succession over his handsome, weary face. Then he threw back his head and laughed.
Chapter Four
The gentleman from London was laughing.
Edith Fraiser straightened from where she’d had her ear pressed fast against the door. She hadn’t been able to discern much of what they’d been speaking about, but she could all too easily discern the timbre of that laughter. It wasn’t nice laughter.
She pushed the door open and waded into the room amidst the rustle of her heavily draped skirts.
“My felicitations, Miss Russell,” the dark young man was saying.
“Thank you,” Rhiannon replied. Her glance at Edith was grateful and slightly bemused but free from any alarm.
Edith bustled forward. “Ah, Mr. … Mr.—”
“Merrick, ma’am. Ash Merrick.” He executed a very nice bow. Edith beamed.
She was an uncomplicated and amicable soul, reluctant to judge others unkindly, staunchly believing the best of her fellow man. If Rhiannon hadn’t taken umbrage at the man’s laughter, then as far as she was concerned, no umbrage need be taken.
“Of course you are. And whom was it you said you represent, Mr. Merrick?”
“He isn’t a lawyer, ma’am.” Rhiannon came to Edith’s side, hooking her arm companionably in hers.
“No?” Edith asked, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice. She’d had such hopes. “Then there is no diamond brooch? Not even a wee entitlement?”
Color flooded Rhiannon’s tanned cheeks. “No, ma’am.”
“Brooch?” Ash Merrick questioned.
Edith turned to Rhiannon for an explanation. “Well, if he hasn’t brought you a brooch and he’s no lawyer, who is he?”
“He is Lord Carr’s son, ma’am,” Ash Merrick said.
Edith swung around at the silky pronouncement, abashed by her momentary lapse of manners. She could easily enough identify the source of steel in his tone; it came from being spoken of as if he weren’t present. But where the amusement came from, she could not guess.
“And who is Lord Carr?” Edith asked. London gentleman or no, this young man had something about him that made her uneasy, something more than sophistication.
“Lord Carr is Miss Russell’s legal guardian,” he replied. “I’ve come at his request to fetch her.”
“What?” Edith gasped. Recollection brought with it a surge of passionate outrage. “Merrick, you say?”
Rhiannon took her hand. “Ma’am, don’t overset yourself—”
“Merrick!” Edith squawked, stomping forward and brought up short by Rhiannon’s hold on her. “Now I remember where I know that name. ’Tis the name of that fellow who wouldn’t take Rhiannon in when she fled Cumberland’s men. Legal guardian, indeed. A coldhearted villain, sir!”
“Please, ma’am,” Rhiannon pleaded. “Everything will be all—”
Edith spun around and hauled Rhiannon into a tight embrace, pulling the girl’s face down against her soft plump neck, glaring at Ash Merrick above her hair. Poor, sweet motherless lass.
“A scoundrel, the man is!”
Rhiannon mumbled unintelligibly against her neck.
“An unfeeling knave, a—”
“I quite agree,” Ash Merrick interrupted calmly.
Edith gaped at him, her arms loosening just enough so that Rhiannon’s head popped up. She gasped for breath.
“Unfortunately his suitability as a guardian is not at issue,” Merrick said. “Miss Russell’s future is. Though, I must admit, it appears she’s rather circumvented my father’s intentions.”
Edith eyed him warily. “Come again, sir?”
“Miss Russell tells me she’s to be wed.”
“Aye, she is.” Edith’s strong jaw thrust out combatively. If this fellow tried to stand in the way of true love’s sweet course, he’d have to go through her to do it. “In three weeks time, right after May Day. She and Phillip Watt but I don’t …” Realization dawned on her like a lightning strike. “Oh …” she crooned on a low exhalation. “I see. Aye.”
“Yes,” Rhiannon soothed. “It’s all right, ma’am.”
“That does put the mud in Carr’s barrels, don’t it?” Edith said to the gentleman. His expression had more than a touch of the complacent conspirator in it. “I mean, you can’t drag a girl out of her marriage bed, can you?”
His answering smile was ambiguous. “Don’t be too fond of that thought.”
“Sir?”
“Of course he won’t,” he said pleasantly. “It would attract too much attention. No, my pater will just have to abandon his plans—whatever they might have been.”
Edith released Rhiannon. The threat to her foster daughter having appeared and been vanquished all in the space of a few minutes, she allowed herself to feel magnanimous toward Carr’s son. “You’d honor us, sir, if you’d stay for the nuptials
. You bein’ Rhiannon’s legal guardian’s spokesman and all, it would be fitting you be here in his stead to witness her marriage.”
“Witness?” Ash queried. “Now there’s one role I’ve yet to try.”
“Oh do, sir.”
Edith looked around at Rhiannon’s unexpected support. The sunlight streaking in through the west windows set the lassie’s mane aglow with highlights. Her cheeks were flushed with pleasure and the green in her hazel eyes sparkled like emeralds.
Looking at her, Edith thought she spied the vestiges of her bold Highland blood. She ignored the perception as unfair. Rhiannon had always been a dear, unassuming girl. The gleam in her eye didn’t mean a thing except that she was courteous as well.
But what did the gleam in Ash Merrick’s dark eyes mean?
Enough, thought Edith. She’d never been a fanciful sort and she wasn’t about to become one now. What would a cosmopolitan gentleman find interesting in a simple country lass—even one as pretty as Rhiannon Russell? To hear their neighbor Lady Harquist tell it, pretty women stood ten deep in London’s fashionable salons.
“We’ve room aplenty, Mr. Merrick,” Edith said, determined to be hospitable. “Please stay.”
Ash Merrick’s smile caught her unawares. Lord, a man with a smile like that was a danger pure and simple, but the offer had already been made and she couldn’t go back on it now.
“You are too good, madame. I accept your kind invitation. I’d be honored to join your prenuptial celebrations and stay to see Miss Russell safely wed.”
An odd choice of words but Edith attributed it to London fashion. “Good!” She clasped Rhiannon’s shoulder and spun her about. “You go have the maids fix up the master’s chamber, Rhiannon.”
“But Master Merrick will be hungry and our friends are—”
What had gotten into the girl to question her? thought Edith. Rhiannon always did what she was told. “ ‘Our friends’ will wait. The good Lord knows they always do. Spend more time loitering in my halls than their own! Be off with you. I’ll see Master Merrick properly fed and introduced to your sweetheart, never fear. You join us after you’ve cleaned the stables from your hands and hair.”
Without further protest, Rhiannon left, sending one last lingering look over her shoulder at the dark young man watching her so casually. Too casually. Once more a premonition threatened Edith Fraiser’s complacence.
Edith Fraiser had been a beauty in her day, a country beauty but a beauty nonetheless. As much as she wanted to, she doubted that men from London were cut from so different a cloth as men from the country. Such determined nonchalance meant the same world round.
Happily, whatever this Ash Merrick’s interest, Rhiannon’s was fixed on Phillip Watt. Rhiannon was a loyal creature. There was no cause for alarm here and it might just benefit Rhiannon if Edith could enlist the goodwill of Lord Carr’s heir. Perhaps a bit of a dowry …
With that thought Edith closed the door on Rhiannon’s departure and turned. Ash Merrick eyed her with that touch of unsettling amusement, as if he knew full well what she’d been thinking.
“Mistress Fraiser,” he said.
She made her way to the settee and dropped heavily into it. “She’s a sweet-tempered girl, is my Rhiannon.”
“Yes.”
“And as biddable as a lamb despite her blood. Highland blood, you know.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“And a loyal girl, too. Faithful one would say.”
“A veritable saint.”
“No,” Edith said consideringly. “Not quite a saint. You should see her on horseback, riding like a fury. I think she ran wild in those mountains of hers,” she added thoughtfully. “And I know she’s seen things no gel ought to see. Murderous things. It made her … I don’t know.”
She pulled at her hands, at a loss to describe the element of Rhiannon’s character that had always eluded her. Not that it mattered. She loved Rhiannon without needing to fathom every aspect of her. And because she loved Rhiannon she would do her best for her.
Edith slapped her broad palms on her knees, her momentary and uncommon sojourn into introspection ending with a return to practicality.
“Will the Lord Carr be making some settlement on her, do you think?”
Ash Merrick’s mouth curled in gentle derisiveness. “I very much doubt it.”
“No?” Edith frowned.
“Not a farthing.”
“Well, a fine guardian he’s turned out to be. It’s a blessing he didn’t have her care earlier. She’d be dressed in rags if she’d been left on her own.”
Ash cocked his head, studying her closely. “Would she now?”
“Ach, yes.” Edith’s head bobbed. “Poor lassie arrived here half-starved and white as a gull’s breast, wrapped in her dead father’s plaid.”
“She has no property?” Ash pressed.
“Property?” Edith snorted. “A poor bit of amber and that wee pearl ring.”
“Who brought her to you?”
“Some old hag.” Edith dismissed the memory of the wizened, dirt-encrusted old lady with the fierce blue eyes. “Brought her to my doorstep but never set a foot inside herself. Delivered the goods, you might say, and went on her way.”
“And she didn’t leave any trunks or luggage with the girl?”
“Luggage?” Edith gave a bark of laughter. “My good sir, they walked here. Walked all the way from your father’s house in London if I’ve the memory right. No, sir, they hadn’t any luggage.”
Ash’s brows dipped in concentration. “What about family?”
Edith shook her head. “No, sir. Cumberland’s men killed her only brother. Burnt in a croft with his uncle and all his cousins, so they say. Weren’t even a body to bury.”
No need to tell him that Rhiannon’s brother may, just may, have escaped. The fellow was an Englishman, after all, and an earl’s son, and there was still a price on the head of any clansman who had stood with the Pretender. Besides, they hadn’t heard a whisper of the lad in all the years since Culloden.
She lowered her face and dabbed piously at her eyes before lifting the clear orbs once more to Ash’s. “So you see, sir, the lass hasn’t a thing to call her own. Nor any family to tend her. I’m only distantly related to her myself, you know. Not that I don’t love Rhiannon like she were my own. I do. But love doesn’t provide food or shelter, does it?”
When he didn’t reply she pushed on, determined to make him, as his father’s agent, see his duty.
“Master Merrick, let me be clear. I’ve no property of my own to settle on Rhiannon. I have the manor and the income from the land until I die because that’s the way Squire Fraiser wanted it, bless his soul. But upon my death everything goes to my son what lives in the heathen orient and works for the East India Company.” She included this last with undeniable pride.
“Really?”
“Yes. I was hoping what with Rhiannon being set to wed and all, perhaps you might enjoin your father to dower her a wee bit. Nuthin’ grand, mind you. Just something to make the dear couple comfortable. Phillip, he’s a third son and lucky enough that his father is willing to settle a sum on him at his marriage.”
“Unusual. Most younger sons don’t fare so well.” His eyes were shuttered behind the thicket of dark lashes. His voice was as still as ice.
“Aye. But Watt dotes on Phillip. He’s the child of his old age and he would not deny him whatever is in his power to give.”
“But who would want an impoverished orphan for a bride?” he quizzed, his dark brows dipping.
“Any man what knows her worth,” Edith said staunchly.
“But how is a man to discover that?” he murmured.
Chapter Five
“—if both men died, who paid the wager?” Rhiannon heard Margaret Atherton ask as, combed, clad, and freshly doused in rose water, she slipped unseen into the drawing room.
“The earl’s widow paid,” Ash Merrick said, “claiming it was worth the price just to see h
er husband finally complete a ride.”
Scandalized laughter broke out amongst the group of Rhiannon’s friends clustered at the far end of the room. Phillip; pretty, silly Susan Chapham; ripe Margaret Atherton; and steady, sensitive John Fortnum … every head was turned toward Ash like seedlings toward light. Even Edward St. John, the Marquis of Snowden’s grandnephew—whose already generous conceit had been further puffed up by several seasons in London—hovered near.
“Ah! Here she is. Our Diana,” John Fortnum cried upon spying her.
“My Diana.” Phillip Watt broke from the group and came toward her, his face alight with possessive pride. Taller than any man in the room by half a head, brawny and robust and golden-haired, he was extraordinarily handsome. He caught her around the waist and lifted her above his shoulders, spinning until she gasped with laughter.
“Phillip!” she begged. “What will Mr. Merrick think of us? I doubt London ladies let their beaus toss them about like this.”
“But I’m more than a beau, I’m a fiancé,” Phillip said, smiling triumphantly. His blue eyes sparkled with proprietorship. “Mr. Merrick knows this is not London and if he thinks less of us for our country ways, then he’s the worse for it, ain’t he?”
“But Mr. Merrick does not think the worse of you,” Ash said. “I think Mr. Watt is an exceptionally lucky young man.”
“Well, whatever Mr. Watt and Mr. Merrick think,” Edith Fraiser said, glowering from the doorway, “Mrs. Fraiser thinks it a right improper way to act and reminds Mr. Watt that she can still wield a switch with the best of them. If a man acts the bumptious lout, ’tis a lout’s penalty he’ll suffer!”
“Say not so!” Phillip enjoined, setting Rhiannon on her feet and striding through the room toward the door. There he gripped Edith about her ample waist and hefted her up and over his head. “ ’Tis jealousy that speaks, ma’am, and with no cause. Only your refusal to accept my hand forces me to make do with this chit.”
The Passionate One Page 4