“Lass, what you do to me.”
Eleanor’s eyes were half closed, lovely blue between black lashes. Hart’s words ran out, and he simply kissed her.
It was peaceful here. The house was quiet, he and she close, Hart kissing Eleanor on her bed on a rainy London morning.
She touched his face as they kissed, saying nothing. Sweet kisses. No hurry.
“You soothe me,” he whispered.
Her eyes softened. “I’m glad.”
Time flowed by. Hart and Eleanor were nose-to-nose, kissing, touching, enjoying the silence.
They lay together in quiet enjoyment, until Wilfred’s dry cough in the hall invaded the peace, reminding Hart of the real world waiting for him. He wanted to tell the real world to go hang.
Eleanor, sensibly, fetched a towel from her washstand and brought it back to the bed. Hart wiped her hands and himself with the linen, then kissed her as he slid from the bed, the heavy folds of his kilt once more falling to cover him.
When he married her, they would have many more days like this. No matter how busy their lives became, no matter how many people vied for their attention, Hart would make certain that the duke and duchess often retired from the public eye to lie together in joyful silence.
It was all he could do to make himself leave the room, and her, his heart full.
Eleanor blew out her breath as Hart closed the door. She went to her washbasin and bathed her hands and face in cool water, fetching yet another towel from her cupboard.
She was still shaking. What had possessed her? But it had been beautiful.
She went to the writing table, where Hart had left the book, and began gathering up the letters to return to their hiding place. Not many seconds later, she found herself sitting down to flip through the pages of the memory book, back to the photographs.
She smiled. Hart might insist he was past his first youth now, but he’d looked quite fine on her bed with his kilt bunched around his hips. Better even, than he had years ago. He’d filled out, his body reaching the potential his younger features had promised.
She sighed and began gathering the letters again. She unfolded the letter she’d found Hart reading and skimmed through it, her heart aching for him all over again.
Hart was right; she ought to have burned it. But Eleanor had reasoned the likelihood small that anyone would find the hidden letter in her out-of-the-way abode on the Scottish coast. The servants never touched her belongings, and her father went rarely to her bedchamber. She’d not thought about the letters tucked into the book as she’d packed for London; she’d simply not wanted to leave the book behind.
But Eleanor understood the danger of keeping the letter. Hart shooting his father had been an accident, she was certain—they had wrestled for the shotgun, and it had gone off. What had been in Hart’s mind the split second between the gun landing in his hands and the shot flying out of it was between Hart and God.
Whatever had happened, the duke’s death had brought Ian home to safety. But if Hart’s enemies ever got hold of the letter, it could spell disaster for Hart.
Eleanor marched to the stove and opened its door. “Let that be an end to it,” she said, using the words Hart predicted she would, and consigned the letter to the flames.
The shooting attempt made Hart rethink the travel arrangements to Berkshire. Hart would not be staying at Cameron’s the entire month anyway, as he usually did, but traveling back and forth to London as he could.
Train stations were extremely public places, full of opportunities for crazed assassins to fire at people. Hart agonized over the decision but concluded that Eleanor and her father well might be safer in public, with Mac to guard them, than they would alone in a coach on some empty stretch of country road. Hart would keep them safe by not traveling with them at all.
He climbed to the top of the house the day before they were to depart, having been told that the entire family and Eleanor were taking nursery tea in the room that had been set aside for the children.
When he entered, Eleanor looked up from sinking her teeth into a cream-slathered scone. Hart stopped. The sudden vision of him licking the cream from her lips made him dizzy for a moment.
When he could see again, he took in Mac sitting at a table with Eileen, Isabella next to him, Robert in a baby chair. Eleanor crammed in beside them at the table, while the nanny, Miss Westlock, supervised from a bench on the other side of the room. Aimee sat on a window seat with Lord Ramsay, the earl showing Aimee fossils he’d brought with him from Scotland.
Hart dragged his gaze again from the smear of cream on Eleanor’s lips and addressed Mac. “I’m leaving for Berkshire this morning. I have errands to run along the way, so I’ll take the coach. The rest of you will travel down by train tomorrow afternoon.”
“Coach?” Mac said. He licked clotted cream from his thumb and shook his head at his daughter. “Eileen, please don’t put butter in your brother’s hair.” He looked back at Hart. “Hadn’t you better come with us?”
“I told you, I have errands…”
Eleanor glared at him. “Hart, we know.” She lifted a copy of a gossipy newspaper from the chair beside her and held it up to him.
Duke of Kilmorgan narrowly escapes with his life! Shots fired outside Parliament. Have the Fenians found a new target?
“How the devil did that rag get into the house?” Hart growled. “Mac?”
Mac looked innocent, but Eleanor’s face was bright with rage. “You lied to me when I asked how you hurt yourself. You said it wasn’t important. How could you? You were nearly killed.”
Hart touched his face where the cuts were fading. “It isn’t important. The man was a terrible shot, and I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t tell you because I don’t want the lot of you fussing.”
“Fussing? Hart, this is dangerous. This is something you tell your family. And your friends.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t want any of you with me!” Hart’s voice rang as he lost hold of his patience. “If the man is such a bad shot, I don’t want my family and friends to become accidental victims when he misses me. Eleanor, you and your father will travel with Isabella and Mac, and I will go with my bodyguards and Wilfred. Wilfred used to be in the army. He knows how to duck.”
Eleanor’s stare turned icy. “Do not try to make a joke of this. I suppose you did not even talk to the police.”
“I did, as a matter of fact. I asked Inspector Fellows to look into it, because if anyone can scare up a culprit, it is our favorite Scotland Yard detective. But he doesn’t have much to go on, only a few chipped bricks. And the man might not have been shooting at me in particular, but at anyone coming out of the building.”
Lord Ramsay broke in. “You must understand that the thought of you traveling alone makes us uneasy, don’t you, Mackenzie? You in a coach? On an empty road between Reading and Hungerford?”
“I will not be alone. I hire former pugilists as footmen for their large bodies and quick reflexes.”
“Which did not help you the night you were shot,” Eleanor pointed out.
“Because that night I was not paying attention.” He’d been thinking about Eleanor in a corset, her hair up, high-heeled ankle boots on her feet. “Now I’ve been warned,” he said.
“Hardly reassuring.” Eleanor’s eyes still held anger. “But I suppose we’ll never talk you out of it. You will send a telegram the moment you arrive, won’t you?”
“El,” Hart said.
“No, never mind. Ainsley will do it. Please make certain you inform Cameron of the problem. Or Cameron might take umbrage, and he’s larger than you.”
Hart didn’t bother to keep the irritation from his voice. “Leave it, Eleanor. I will see you in Berkshire.”
She scowled at him, but Hart only saw her in his heady vision of the corset and boots, made more erotic by a liberal addition of clotted cream. He turned away and made himself walk out the door.
Eleanor had always loved Waterbury Grange, Camero
n’s Berkshire estate, though she’d not visited it in ages. Cameron, second-oldest brother of the Mackenzie family, had purchased it shortly after his first wife had died, saying he wanted somewhere far from the place in which he’d spent his unhappy marriage.
Green fields stretched to wooded hills, and the Kennet and Avon Canal drifted lazily along the edge of the property. Spring meant lambs staggering after mothers across the field, and foals keeping close to the mares that wandered the pastures.
Mackenzie family tradition brought them to Waterbury every March. There the brothers, and now their wives and children, would watch Cameron train his racers while they withdrew from the eyes of the world. Here was their chance to be a private family for a short time before Cameron took his three-year-olds to Newmarket.
The house was old, a shapeless pile of golden brick, but from what Ainsley said in her letters, she’d been busily redecorating the inside. Eleanor looked forward to seeing her progress.
But when Eleanor, her father, Isabella, Mac, the exuberant children, their robust nanny, and old Ben climbed down from the carriages that brought them from the train, it was for Hart to meet them at the front door of Waterbury Grange and tell them that Ian had gone missing.
Chapter 12
“You know Ian does this all the time,” Beth said. She looked worriedly at Hart, and Eleanor sensed that Beth’s anxiousness was more for Hart than for her absent husband.
Beth stood in the breezy front hall with a child on each arm—son Jamie and tiny daughter Belle. The Mackenzie dogs, all five of them, wandered among the new arrivals, tails waving.
“Ian likes to be alone sometimes,” Beth said. “He doesn’t like crowds.”
“We aren’t a crowd,” Hart snapped. “We’re family. You should have told me at once that he’d gone.”
At the note in Hart’s voice, Eleanor looked up from kissing the two babies. Hart’s hands were clenched in his gloves, his jaw tight. He had a right to be worried after the shooting by the Parliament buildings, but his alarm seemed to go beyond that.
“I didn’t know,” Beth said. “Ian’s gotten better about telling me when he’s going on one of his long walks, but he was already up and out when I woke this morning.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell me,” Hart repeated.
“You were at Hungerford all morning, sending telegrams to London,” Beth said. “And I did not think it was any of your business.”
Hart went still at her words, and his look turned dangerous. Beth lifted her chin and met his gaze.
Eleanor understood perfectly well why Beth hadn’t mentioned Ian’s absence to Hart. Hart had the habit of walking into his brothers’ houses and attempting to take over their lives. Sometimes Ian felt the need to slip away, out from under Hart’s heavy-handedness. Cameron and Mac could shout at Hart when they grew angry at his interfering, but Ian’s defense was to disappear. Ian sometimes needed to be alone, to find rest from his overwhelming family before he faced them again. Eleanor had heard about the battle Beth had fought with Hart to let Ian live as he needed.
Beth spoke calmly. “I’ve been married to Ian for nearly three years now, and I know what he does. A stay in London always unnerves him, you know that. I imagine he went out today to enjoy not having people surrounding him. He’ll return when he’s ready.”
Hart tried to pin Beth with his stare, but Jamie squirmed to get down from Beth’s arms, and Beth turned her full attention to her son. Hart’s jaw went tighter as Beth blatantly ignored him, and he turned and strode out of the house. Two of the dogs broke free and followed him.
Eleanor caught up to Hart in the drive. She dodged in front of him to make him stop, and Ruby and Ben roamed around them, tails moving.
“I know you’re worried about the shooting,” she said. “But Ian’s not a fool. He’s more careful than you are, in many ways. I telegraphed Ainsley about the incident in case you didn’t bother telling anybody, so Ian would have known to take precaution. I’m certain he only went fishing. You know how he loves to fish.”
The terrible worry did not leave Hart’s eyes. “He does. Says the water calms him.” He scanned the empty fields. “I’m going to look for him.”
He started to walk on, but Eleanor got in front of him again. “I believe you are the one in the most danger, Hart Mackenzie. Whoever it was shot at you.”
“I won’t go alone. I have my own men, and Cameron employs a horde.”
“Ian will be distressed if a horde comes upon him,” Eleanor pointed out.
“Better he’s distressed than dead.”
Hart’s words were quiet, but Eleanor read profound fear in his eyes. She knew he’d never admit to that fear outside of being tortured, but Hart was deeply afraid, and Eleanor knew why.
Protection of Ian had been Hart’s driving force for three decades. Eleanor had first seen that drive when Hart had taken Eleanor to meet Ian in the asylum. She remembered Hart questioning and bullying the doctors about Ian’s care, his routine, his accommodations. Whatever Hart Mackenzie had done for the last thirty years of his life, good or ill, he’d done most of it for Ian.
Eleanor touched Hart’s chest, feeling his heart hammering beneath her palm. “I do agree with you, Hart. If people are shooting, then you need to keep an eye on Ian. But even so, we must be calm. We’ll find him.”
His focus switched sharply to her, anything but calm. “There is no we. You need to stay here.”
“I can help look, you know. We all can.”
“No.” The word was fierce. “Finding Ian will be difficult enough. I do not want to have to scour the countryside for you and all my sisters-in-law at the same time. If Ian returns on his own, I need you here to help Beth keep him home.”
“You mean you don’t want me underfoot.”
“I don’t. You’ll distract me. I can’t afford to be distracted just now.”
“I distract you. How flattering.”
Hart leaned to her. “Which means I’m having difficulty thinking of anything but you. That is your fault. You seduced me like the siren you are. Now stay here and let me look for my brother.”
He needed to search, Eleanor saw that. Ian would be annoyed at Hart when Hart interrupted his fishing trip, but Ian knew how to put Hart in his place. The world thought that the “slow” Ian obeyed Hart, but the family knew differently.
“Godspeed,” Eleanor said softly.
Hart cupped her cheek and brushed a sudden, hot kiss to her lips. Then he strode away from her and made for the paddocks, where the huge forms of his brother Cameron and Cameron’s equally tall son, Daniel, waited for him.
Hart knew that Beth and Eleanor were right—in all likelihood, Ian had gone off on one of his rambles to collect himself before the rest of the family arrived. Ian had difficulty responding to people, or at least understanding how they wanted him to respond to them.
Ian said what he thought, not the expected or polite thing. From brutal experience, he’d learned to keep quiet and withdraw when he was with too many people, but sometimes he had to turn his back on the world altogether until he felt better able to cope with it.
Hart kept up his conviction that Ian would be fine, but as the hours passed, his worry settled in and stayed. He found no sign of him, no Ian fishing on the banks of the canal, no tall man in a kilt wandering across fields.
When the sun went down, Hart met Cameron, Mac, and Daniel in Hungerford, the three reporting they’d still not seen Ian nor found anyone who’d seen him.
Hart’s worry turned to crawling fear. He could not banish the picture of Ian lying facedown in a field, shot, bleeding, dying, or already dead. Either that or tied and blindfolded in some filthy room, his enemies refusing to let him go until they had Hart.
Cameron’s and Mac’s eyes reflected Hart’s uneasiness. Daniel, who’d initially scoffed at the idea that Ian of all people could be lost and hurt, now worried too.
“Daniel, go south to Coomb,” Hart said. “He likes to climb the hill to the old gibb
et and watch the world go by. Cameron, search the canal east to Newbury. If Ian has spent all day studying a lock, I’ll pummel him. Mac, I want you to go back to the house and make sure the ladies don’t get the idea to go searching as well. I told Eleanor not to, but you know the Mackenzie females.”
Mac scowled. “Hell, Hart, can’t you find something easier for me to do? Go up against an army of assassins in my underwear, maybe?”
“I am not letting any of them wander the countryside to be a target. Keep them home and protect them.”
Mac raised his hands in surrender, but Hart knew his brother agreed with him. Mac would keep the ladies safe. “Fine,” Mac said. “But I’m stuffing my ears with cotton wool.”
Hart and his brothers and nephew separated, each taking a few men with him, and Hart resumed his search.
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