The Passionate One

by Connie Brockway

  “Since Ash refuses to be civil, pray allow me to satisfy the amenities myself. Thomas Donne at your service, miss.”

  She lifted her face, her gaze latching on to Donne’s handsome, lean visage, drawing Ash’s cold consideration. She was pitifully easy to read.

  In Thomas Donne’s braw Scottish face she looked for a champion.

  A sliver of pity touched Ash. Donne was the last man who would come to her aid. He knew little about Donne; he’d never asked, but what he did know was simple. Donne had been abroad and, in some mysterious place, had won, earned, or stolen a monstrously big fortune which he kept monstrously big by the simple expedience of not giving it away to any fool that came begging.

  This apparently hadn’t set well with his Highland cousins for, according to Donne, they’d long since blotted his name from the family Bible, an act that had in no way discomforted Donne. Instead, self-avowed coward and sybarite that he was, Donne simply eschewed the clan that had exiled him.

  It would be a waste of time to seek an ally in Donne. Ash forced his gaze from Rhiannon. She would be living at Wanton’s Blush. She’d learn soon enough that there would be no champions. Every person here had been handpicked because they possessed just exactly those characteristics that champions lacked: greed, self-interest, cowardice, insolence, and vanity.

  His own sister was a prime example.

  “I think Merrick has brought us a mute,” Fia said. “Did you have to take her tongue to keep her from denouncing you, brother?”

  This brought a swift glare from Rhiannon.

  “I assure you, she is quite capable of denouncing me. Make your curtsey, Miss Russell,” Ash said. “One of your Scottish baronets has introduced himself to you.”

  He may as well have spoken to stone, her disdain and self-containment were so complete and so completely excluded him. Excluded them all. But then, he’d stolen her from her home and family under the most feeble of pretexts. He’d taken from her her good name and her maidenhead.

  And if he’d twice now sought to convince her of his honest concern, twice now she’d refused to believe him. So how could he, he asked himself as he gazed at her averted profile, who had so little experience with honesty, fail to accept the verdict of one who understood it so well?

  He was done with trying to realign his nature. He was as corrupt as she imagined.

  “She won’t speak to you, Donne.”

  “Not yet, perhaps,” Donne said thoughtfully. “But, surely, as two Scots in a house full of Englishmen, we’ll find in each other’s company a wee bit of comfort, eh, Miss Russell?” His offer surprised Ash.

  Donne’s accent, a thing he slipped on and off as comfortably as a pair of slippers, had grown pronounced. Its music drew another of those grudging glances from Rhiannon and this time the light revealed her complete exhaustion, the pale mouth and ringed eyes. She wove where she stood.

  She must be near to collapsing. He needed to get her out of here. Somewhere where she could wash and sleep.

  “Not yet?” Donne said and Ash could not remember ever hearing such gentle tones from his mouth. “I can wait.”

  “I fear you wait in vain, Lord Donne,” said Fia. “Perhaps the lady is discerning in her choice of companions and simply exhibits her good taste. Would that it extended to the matter of her attire.”

  The chance reference to her apparel caused Rhiannon’s hands to flutter hesitantly about her heavy, muddied skirts.

  “It looks as though Ash dragged you from a particularly feverish hunt.”

  “He did.” These were the first words Rhiannon had spoken. Her glance slew up and speared Fia so that the younger girl, in spite of an upbringing that should have inured her to even the most violent of glares, stepped back.

  Fia looked around, disconcerted by such honest animosity. “Let me send one of the servants for your trunks.”

  “There are no trunks,” Ash said. “She has nothing.”

  “Odder and odder,” said Fia. “Whatever is she here for?”

  “That’s easy,” Donne said, without looking at Fia but instead studying Rhiannon. “Carr dotes on you so, Miss Fia, that he’s imported a sister with whom you might trade girlish confidences.”

  The thought of Fia, even though still chronologically a girl, as anything in the least childish, was absurd, and well Donne knew it. But Fia refused to be baited. Her cool, silky gaze fastened on the tall baronet. “It’s only fair,” she said, “seeing how he’s misplaced one sibling, that he replace it with another.”

  The reminder of Raine’s whereabouts struck Ash painfully. With an effort, he kept his expression neutral, wondering whether Fia had chosen her words to hurt him, or rebuke Donne. It was impossible to tell with Fia. She kept her own counsel so completely.

  “Still, new sister or not, Carr dislikes ugliness. He’ll be horrified if he sees her like this,” Fia said. “She looks to be near enough my size that she might borrow a dress. If she’s to meet Carr, she’ll need all the confidence she can find—or borrow.”

  Ash hadn’t thought of that. Fia was right. Appearances were of the utmost importance to Carr. Gaining his approbation might prove prudent. The question was what Fia hoped to achieve by offering her aid.

  Her face was as serene as a Madonna’s, her eyes wells of unfathomable darkness. After an instant consideration Ash decided it didn’t matter what she wanted.

  This was Wanton’s Blush. Subterfuge and treachery were the games of his childhood, and they were compulsory. There were only two rules here: Play at one level deeper than your opponent and never forget that everyone is your opponent.

  He nodded. “Give her over to Gunna,” he said, naming the white-haired woman who had been Fia’s nanny since toddlerhood and the only bit of warmth any of them had encountered at Wanton’s Blush since their mother’s death.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s no need to rush an audience,” he added casually. “She can see Carr tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” Fia agreed once more. She moved to Rhiannon’s side and linked her arm through hers, calmly ignoring Rhiannon’s attempt to pull free. “Please come with me. I’ll order a bath and we’ll find you some clothes. Something to make you feel invincible,” she said, drawing Rhiannon away.

  “You won’t run away will you?” Ash heard Fia ask as they left.

  “No,” Rhiannon replied without a single backward glance. “I’ve nowhere to go.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The sun was full up when Fia slipped inside of the sumptuously appointed bedchamber where Rhiannon had slept. Though the girl entered on a light, furtive step Rhiannon came fully awake at once. She kept her breathing even and opened her eyelids to mere slits, studying the girl.

  Today, Fia had eschewed last night’s dramatic midnight hues in favor of an exquisitely worked butter yellow dress of astounding indecency. The tight, square bodice pushed her young breasts high above the décolletage, barely maintaining modesty. Pearls draped her slender throat and dangled from her earlobes. A tiny black patch flirted with one smooth white cheek and rosy salve coated her lips.

  She looked like a dressmaker’s mannequin, thought Rhiannon dispassionately, a dressmaker with a demimonde clientele.

  A week ago a creature as exotic as Fia would have rendered Rhiannon tongue-tied. But when one was a prisoner such matters as another’s demeanor ceased to be important. Or even very interesting.

  Besides, Rhiannon thought with a brittle inner smile, it was so patently apparent that Fia expected to unnerve her—and everyone else. Last night Fia had perched herself on the foot of the bed and watched as a maid stripped the filthy riding habit from Rhiannon’s back. In a tender, composed voice she had recited salacious stories about Carr and Ash and another brother named Raine. When her tales failed to invoke so much as a gasp, she’d become openly disconcerted. Her smooth white brow had knit with perplexity and she’d finally left Rhiannon alone.

  It was a telling point and Rhiannon re-estimated Fia’s age to be much younger than
she’d originally surmised. A faint memory came back to her, her uncle advising her to “know well one’s enemy.”

  Enemy, lover. Sanctuary, prison. Home and exile.

  Now that exhaustion no longer kept such notions at bay, they prowled through Rhiannon’s waking thoughts, mocking her with her own culpability. She’d succumbed to Ash’s potent magnetism. She’d sought his company and flirted with him, burning with curiosity over what his kiss would be like. And after discovering that, she’d still not been content. Knowledge had only fed the craving, consumed her until she’d felt she’d needed to know passion—his passion. Well, she thought, biting hard upon her inner cheeks, she now had that knowledge, too.

  If only it had been a shabby, tawdry thing, an act that felt as sordid as she knew it to be. But it hadn’t. It hadn’t felt like lust or rank sexual appetite. It had seemed her soul’s imperative. It had been … wondrous.

  If it hadn’t, she wouldn’t have hated him so much now.

  It wasn’t only that he’d deceived her but that she’d deceived Phillip, that he’d robbed her of the opportunity to confess what she couldn’t explain. And though she knew that laying such blame on Ash’s door was unfair, she no longer cared.

  It was unfair that Ash had ridden into her life a scant three weeks before her wedding. It was unfair that his eyes were dark, his wrists scarred, and his soul as tattered and patched as a gypsy’s cape—and that she recognized the cut.

  A ruthless man, Fia had said. A dangerous one. Well, the Highlands had bred a rare, pure line of that sort. Hadn’t she been ruthless in getting what she wanted, never thinking past the morrow, or of where her headlong dash into pleasure would lead her? Or anyone else. She turned her cheek into her pillow, sickened with guilt. She could see again the knowledge of her betrayal in Phillip’s beautiful eyes, the disappointment, the hurt— She jerked upright in bed.

  Startled by the sudden movement, Fia spun around. “You’re awake.”

  Rhiannon seized on the distraction. “Yes. I’m sure you knew that, though. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come in, would you have?”

  The girl tipped her head in calm agreement. “Of course.”

  “You wished to see me?” Rhiannon settled back against the thick bolster of pillows. Calm. Breathe. Yesterday she’d been a victim but today she needn’t be.

  “Gunna is outside. She wishes to see you.”

  “Gunna?” Rhiannon asked. “The nanny? Why would your nanny wish to see me and why would she need you to act as a vanguard to that fact, Miss Merrick?”

  “She’s brought some gowns for you to try on and I— Well, Gunna is most … unprepossessing. Actually quite hideous. But—” Fia hesitated. Whatever she’d been about to confide she decided against it. “She’s served me faithfully. I would not want her hurt.”

  Fia smiled wryly at Rhiannon’s obvious skepticism. “She still has her uses,” she explained coldly.

  “Bring her.”

  The young woman’s eyes narrowed fractionally at the commanding tone and Rhiannon smiled. She was Rhiannon Russell and her distant cousin had been laird of McClairen. Ash had dragged her back to this place, rousing that long dormant knowledge. Let him see what he’d awakened. Whatever airs this hybrid English girl owned, she’d adopted. In Rhiannon’s warrior heart five hundred years of pride and audacity churned for expression. “Now, Fia. Before I fall asleep again.”

  The girl smiled once more, this time an honest, rueful smile of such poignant charm and humor that in spite of every instinct that told her to beware of her, Rhiannon found herself warming toward the young girl.

  Without a word, Fia drifted—there was simply no other term that adequately described Fia’s modus of locomotion—toward the doorway and opened it. “Gunna!”

  A moment later a bent and twisted figure in black wool crept in, a half-dozen gowns filling her arms. A mantilla-like veil of black lace covered her head, pinned so that one side draped over the left portion of her face, concealing it. The open side exposed a deformed jaw, a large drooping eye, and a twisted caricature of a nose.

  If poor Gunna had chosen this side of her face to present to the world, Rhiannon could only be moved to pity imagining what the rest of the veil concealed. The woman turned to Fia who hovered by her elbow in an oddly protective manner. “Jamie says yer father is looking fer you.” Gunna’s deep voice was thick with a Scottish accent. “Best be to him. Go on. Sooner gone; sooner back.”

  With a disgruntled sniff, Fia twirled and departed. The old nurse chuckled at her ward’s flouncing departure before looking back at Rhiannon.

  “Highlander, they said ye were, in the kitchens. What clan?” she asked, hobbling closer. Her tone was slightly brusque, the manner in which she regarded Rhiannon touched with enmity.

  Rhiannon swung her feet over the sides of the bed and dropped lightly to the cold floor. “McClairen.”

  A flicker of surprise passed over the exposed side of Gunna’s face. “McClairen? Ye don’t have the look of the McClairen. They’re a black-haired breed with white skin.”

  Rhiannon tugged the blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. She didn’t want to be reminded of those old clan affiliations. She’d left them behind a decade ago.

  Wordlessly, she moved past the old woman and went to the window. Below, a gunmetal gray sea battered the island’s base.

  “Forgive me, miss,” she heard Gunna say. “I don’t know my place and that’s a fact.”

  Pride and coldness had replaced the woman’s former grudging interest. Rhiannon felt ashamed. It wasn’t Gunna’s fault that she’d been brought here.

  “I’m not a McClairen,” she said. “My father was a chieftain in his own right but when McClairen called for men to fight in forty-five, my father answered.” She closed her eyes. “And my brothers. And my uncles.”

  “Yer an orphan then,” Gunna murmured, her manner thawing slightly. “No one left?”

  “No,” Rhiannon said. “They were all hunted down and murdered. Out there.” She pointed at the bleak landscape outside the window. She stared at it unseeing. “Dear God, how I hate being here.”

  A light touch on her sleeve begged Rhiannon’s attention. Gunna had moved to her side. Her hand was rough-skinned, the nails bitten down to the quick, but the long fingers were surprisingly elegant.

  “Aye?”

  “Of course,” Rhiannon said impatiently. “Who wouldn’t? This place is filled with ghosts and a bloodied lot they are.”

  Gunna sighed, her one eye following Rhiannon’s gaze out over the sea. “I find,” she said carefully, “that the ghosts that follow closest are those we’ve fled.”

  Rhiannon glanced at her and frowned. “There were no ghosts where I came from.”

  It wasn’t strictly true, but those phantoms faded with the light. Not these. In one day she’d remembered more of her life in the Highlands than she’d thought about—or allowed herself to think about—in over ten years in Fair Badden.

  The exposed corner of Gunna’s mouth tucked into a smile. “Not all hauntings are hurtful.”

  She only meant to be kind and though Rhiannon doubted her wisdom, she appreciated her concern. “I hope so.”

  Gunna tugged on her arm, leading her back to the bed where she’d spread out the gowns she’d carried in. She scooped up one shimmering leaf-green damask and held it to Rhiannon’s face.

  “Ye’ll be a beauty in this and that’s a fact. Carr will be pleased.” She watched Rhiannon carefully. It mattered little to Rhiannon what Carr thought of her appearance. Apparently Gunna read her lack of concern in her expression for she shook her head. “You seem a fair bit unconcerned what yer groom thinks of yer appearance.”

  “Groom?” she echoed dumbly, staring as the implications of that single word took hold. The woman’s former disapproving attitude suddenly made sense, wringing a harsh laugh from Rhiannon. “I’m not going to marry Lord Carr.”

  “Truly?” Gunna asked.

  “Truly,” Rhiannon returned, r
egarding the old woman dryly.

  “They say Mr. Ash brought you,” Gunna said after a second’s hesitation.

  His name brought a flood of warmth sweeping up Rhiannon throat and face. “Yes.”

  “Carr’s beast of burden.” Both women spun around at the sound of Fia’s voice. She was standing inside the door, leaning back against the panel. “Poor Ash.”

  Gunna ignored her charge’s smooth, false tone, replying to the words rather than the timbre—a course of action that Rhiannon thought she might do well to emulate.

  “Carr best have a care,” Gunna said, returning the dress she held to the bed. “Methinks Lord Carr will get no more service out of that particular beastie until he gives up one of the carrots he’s been danglin’ in front of Mr. Ash’s proud nose. Here, miss, let me take that blanket from you. We best get you dressed.”

  “Ash will do whatever he has to do,” Fia replied, coming forward as Rhiannon complied and Gunna scuttled across the room to fetch a water pitcher and basin. “Ash would never do anything that might harm Raine.”

  “Raine? Carr’s younger son?” Rhiannon could not help but ask. The one that was supposed to have raped the nun?

  “Ye dunna ken, do you, Miss Russell?” Gunna said. She dipped a soft towel into the water and rubbed it with soap and handed it to Rhiannon. “About Ash and Raine.”

  “No,” Rhiannon said tersely, her voice muffled by the towel as she scrubbed at her face.

  “It’s an interestin’ tale,” Gunna went on. She took the dirtied towel and splashed more cold water in the basin in preparation for a cold, but much needed hip bath. Even with just her face clean Rhiannon felt better.

  “And one we don’t have time for right now,” Fia interjected. “Carr wants her in the gallery before the hour.”

  “What?” Rhiannon asked, her gaze flying to the mantel clock. It was barely fifteen minutes before the hour.

  Fia shrugged. “I told him I thought that would be fine.”

  Rhiannon looked down. She still wore the same soiled chemise she’d had on for five days. She had no time to bathe now and Fia knew it. So much for last night’s concern about Rhiannon making a good impression.