by Liz Carlyle
“Oh, God, I’ve been expecting this!” Julia’s voice was tinged with wry humor. “What is her name? No doubt she is half my age and half my weight.”
Alasdair grinned. “Not even a fraction of either, I’m afraid,” he admitted. “And her name is Sorcha.”
“Ah, a Scot, then!” said Julia. “Well done, my boy. Stick with your own kind, I always say. Now tell me, how long have you known your Sorcha?”
Dawn was flirting with the rooftops along Bedford Place by the time Alasdair finished answering that question. Early in his narrative, Julia had wisely gone to her side table and poured him a glass of his favorite whisky, which she always kept at hand. By the time his tale was told, she was pouring one for herself.
“Good Lord!” she whispered, turning from the table. “You really do think—?”
Alasdair propped his forehead in one hand. “Julia, I have just the vaguest of memories,” he said. “Memories of having done something I knew I would regret in the morning, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, too well!” she said sympathetically. “But Alasdair, you do so many wicked things, it could have been something else altogether.”
He shook his head. “The child is the very image of my brother Merrick.”
Julia made a clucking sound. “And this young woman, the sister. What of her?”
Alasdair groaned. “She is little more than a child herself.”
“Indeed? How old?”
“Oh, seventeen perhaps? No, wait. Twenty-two, she said.”
Julia laughed. “Heavens, Alasdair! She is a grown woman!”
“Hardly. The chit wouldn’t weigh seven stone were she soaked to the skin, and she’s as green as a girl from the Highlands could possibly be.”
Julia shrugged. “My dear boy, by the time I was twenty-two I’d buried one husband and cast off two protectors,” she said. “And as to naïveté, appearances can be deceiving. Now, I really must say my piece, Alasdair.”
Alasdair waved his glass. “By all means. My life could scarce be more confusing.”
But he was to be proven wrong on that score. Julia sat up very straight, set aside her whisky, and folded her hands in her lap rather primly. “This is quite shocking news, my boy,” she warned. “You are not old enough to have an apoplexy are you?”
Alasdair scowled. “I am six-and-thirty, as you well know. Out with it.”
Julia leaned across to kiss his cheek. “Alasdair, my dear—” She paused and drew an unsteady breath. “—I am…enceinte.”
Alasdair dropped his glass. It landed on the carpet with a soft thud. “Oh, God, Julia.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “You cannot possibly mean this. No. Have mercy.”
She laid her warm hand on his knee. “I am not jesting, love,” she said quietly. “I am stunned, of course, and my physician is still abed, recovering from the shock. But Alasdair, the babe is not yours.”
He made some sort of choking sound and opened one eye. “Not…mine?”
Julia frowned at him. “Alasdair, my dear, we promised one another nothing save friendship,” she answered. “Indeed, we go weeks without even seeing one another. Have you been faithful to me?”
He cleared his throat roughly. “I—well, I would have to say…that I am not perfectly…”
The grip on his knee tightened. “Alasdair, let me be blunt,” Julia interjected. “I know all about Inga Karlsson and her little flat in Long Acre.”
“Come, Julia! It was just a loan! I swear to God. We are just friends.”
“As we are just friends?” she suggested slyly. “And we won’t even talk about Lord Feald’s wife. Or that tavern maid in Wapping. Or that French dancer. I know you can’t help it. I know women adore you. Indeed, I don’t know why you trouble yourself to hide any of it from me.”
Alasdair swallowed. “I don’t hide it,” he lied.
Julia laughed. “You do hide it, my dear,” she said. “You prevaricate reflexively, like some eight-year-old scamp when one asks him what he is doing, and in his first breath he says, ‘Why, nothing at all!’ And says it with such charm and innocence, one knows immediately he is up to some sort of wickedness.”
“It just never crossed my mind, that is all,” he swore. “How could I even think of Inga when I am with you?”
“Because Inga is blond, buxom, beautiful, and so thin she slinks like a cat when she walks?” Julia suggested. “Besides, she’s at least two decades younger than I.”
“I rarely go for that sort,” said Alasdair truthfully. “Besides, Julia, what we have is something…special.”
“Yes, I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said dryly. “That’s frightfully special.”
He seized her by the arm. “You certainly are not,” he responded. Then he looked at her with grave concern. “But you are a little old, Julia, to be with child. Good Lord. Who is the father? What are you going to do?”
“Pray,” she said with a muted smile. “And the father is Henrietta’s brother. We have been dear friends for twenty years, you know.”
“Edward Wheeler, the playwright?” Alasdair looked askance at her. “Do you love him, Julia?”
She laughed, a light, tinkling sound. “Lud, what a question, coming from you! I respect and adore him.” She set a hand on her abdomen. “And I want this child, Alasdair, if there is any way possible.”
“Do you mean to marry him, Julia?” He scowled at her. “You should, you know.”
Again, she laughed. “Oh, Alasdair!” she said. “What kind of rakehell are you? I begin to think you are not quite as advertised!”
“Don’t tease, Julia. This is serious.”
Her face fell. “I know,” she said. “And I do not know what I shall do. I’ve told Edward, of course. We are in quite a quandary. It would be terrible at our ages to rush to the altar, when my chances of carrying the child to term are…well, not good.”
“God, Julia. I wish you all the best, of course.”
She smiled a little sadly. “Another year or two, and it would have been quite impossible,” she said. “Indeed, I thought it was something else altogether until the morning sickness struck.”
Alasdair knew what she was getting at. Julia was forty if she was a day, probably more—possibly a lot more. She was a former actress, and knew how to disguise the signs. But with child? He was more than a little worried. “He will do the right thing?” Alasdair demanded. “Wheeler, I mean?”
“I think so,” she said. “He’s still in a state of shock. But I want the child, regardless.”
He stood and kissed her hand. “You need a husband, Julia. I mean to insist on it.”
She looked up at him with damp eyes. “Yes, you are probably right,” she answered. “I will think on it, my dear.”
“Do you wish me to have a little chat with Wheeler? By God, I will, and gladly.”
Julia blanched. “Good Lord, no! What I am trying to say, Alasdair, is that we cannot continue to see one another at all.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “It would feel wrong, somehow, don’t you see? So tonight was—well, just for auld lang syne, as you Scots might say.”
Alasdair had reached for his shirt, and was pulling it on over his head. “So it’s good-bye, then?” he said teasingly. “After all we have been to one another, I’m to be cast off like an old shoe, without a second thought?”
Julia’s smile began to return. “Well, that would look a bit odd, wouldn’t it? Since everyone knows we are dear friends.”
Alasdair kissed her nose. “Dashed odd, old thing.”
Her eyes sparkled again. “No, no, Alasdair, I could never completely cast you off,” she said. “I just won’t go to bed with you again.”
“Ah, now that,” he said regretfully, “is a true loss!”
Esmée was standing at the schoolroom window, and staring down into Great Queen Street when she saw Sir Alasdair MacLachlan crawl gingerly out of a hackney cab and make his way up the steps. Though Esmée had taken breakfast some four hours earlier, MacLachlan was still
wearing the evening clothes Ettrick had been brushing yesterday. Out all night, then—and God only knew where he’d left his other clothes. Well, she had suspected as much. All day yesterday, she had sensed his absence in the house. The strange feeling had carried into the night.
“Ma’am?”
She spun away from the window to see one of the footmen standing behind her.
“Where do you wish these?” The wooden chairs were so small, he held one in each hand.
Esmée’s eyes widened. “Are there more?” The footmen had been carrying in furniture for the last hour.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the footman. “Ten in total.”
Ten chairs? “But that is wasteful,” said Esmée. “What was Wellings thinking?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, ma’am.”
Esmée just shook her head. “Put them round the table with the other four,” she said. “Then set the others against the wall, I suppose?”
And there was another problem. Just as MacLachlan had claimed, everything she said was beginning to come out sounding like a question. She knew how to be a lady, and give polite instructions to the servants. But it was another thing altogether to be one of them, or almost one of them. The truth was, she was neither fish nor fowl in this very English house, she considered, turning back to the window. If there was anything Scottish about Sir Alasdair MacLachlan save his fondness for whisky, it had long ago vanished. A pity, that.
Just then, there was a sound at the open door. She turned again to see Wellings inspecting the furniture. “Is everything satisfactory, ma’am?” he asked.
“Aye, thank you.” She motioned toward the nursery door, which was slightly ajar. “Sorcha is already napping in the little bed. But why so many chairs?”
Wellings lifted his brows. “I’ve no notion, ma’am,” he replied. “Sir Alasdair decided to do the shopping himself yesterday afternoon. I suppose he wished to purchase everything the child might possibly need.”
“I see.” They did fit the room very nicely, Esmée secretly admitted. But it seemed extravagant, something no good Scot would condone. Perhaps MacLachlan was expecting a crowd. Perhaps he had a whole regiment of illegitimate children dotting London’s landscape.
Wellings made a little bow. “Sir Alasdair asks that you join him for coffee in his study,” he added. “In half an hour, if that suits?”
“I fear I cannot,” Esmée answered. “Sorcha might awaken and—”
“Sir Alasdair says Lydia is to come up,” he interjected.
Esmée had already met Lydia, the fresh-faced girl who brought up their tea and turned down their beds. Still, Esmée was surprised MacLachlan had troubled himself to anticipate their needs.
“Lydia is the eldest of eight,” said the butler reassuringly. “She is extremely skilled with children.”
Something inside her shriveled a little at that. Lydia could scarcely be less qualified than Esmée, could she? Perhaps Wellings already suspected his master had hired a fraud. Perhaps if she had not agreed to stay, Sorcha would have been given into the care of someone who knew what to do. Someone who was actually qualified to raise her. Until rather recently, Esmée had done little more than romp and play with her sister. It seemed such a luxury now. And a lifetime ago.
“Miss Hamilton?” said the butler. “The coffee?”
Her head jerked up. “Aye, then,” she said. “In half an hour.”
Lydia soon appeared with a basket of darning to occupy her time. Esmée went into her room to tidy herself. As she did so, she caught her reflection in the looking glass which hung above the washbasin. Two wide-set green eyes under dark, arching brows looked back. They were, she knew, her mother’s eyes, and her finest feature.
Esmée had often been told she resembled her mother, but the thought frightened rather than comforted her—especially when she was around men like MacLachlan, and felt her pulse ratcheting wildly up. But her mother’s hair had been a rich chestnut, whilst Esmée’s hair was a nondescript brown, so fine and heavy it was forever slipping from its arrangement. Her nose was…just a nose, her chin just a chin, unlike her mother, whose features had been perfect in very way. Esmée had no charming tip-tilt or dimple or cleft to catch the eye.
Suddenly, she jerked back from the mirror. Good heavens, what a time to fret over her looks! Despite her slight stature and exasperatingly youthful appearance, she was of an age that put one firmly on the shelf, and that was not apt to change. Perhaps there had been a time when she had longed for a season in London. But her mother’s marriages had taken them from one isolated estate to another, each deeper in the Highlands than the last, it seemed.
Although Lord Achanalt never invited Esmée to accompany them on their frequent travels, once or twice a year, Esmée’s mother would take her to Inverness or Edinburgh to shop. And of course there had been houseguests and dinner parties. Until Achanalt put a stop to it, her mother had possessed a coterie of admirers, for she loved to make her husband jealous. But when Esmée finally began to press for more, her mother’s bottom lip would always come out.
“Wait,” she would say. “Wait until Aunt Rowena returns from abroad. Then you shall have a proper season, my love, I promise you.”
I promise you.
But after burying three husbands too young, her mother had developed an entrenched fear of being alone. Esmée realized now she’d been the only constant in her mother’s life. Achanalt, whom her mother had married when Esmée was sixteen, had quickly become dour and withdrawn. Within two years of the happy nuptials, the word divorce was already rumbling round the old castle.
“Aye, like a tomcat after his own tail, he was,” she’d once heard their head gardener cackle. “The auld de’il didna know what to do w’ her once he had hold of her, and ’twas not near sae much fun as the chase.” Which more or less summed up the whole of Lord and Lady Achanalt’s romance.
Well, the “auld de’il” had never borne Esmée’s presence with much grace. She had been strangely, perhaps foolishly, relieved when he’d put them out. Panic was a luxury she could ill afford, given the responsibility Achanalt had suddenly thrust upon her. Certainly she could not panic now. She simply would not allow herself to be unsettled by Alasdair MacLachlan, no matter how charismatic or handsome he was. And that thought reminded her that she was dawdling. Quickly, Esmée repinned her hair, and hastened down the stairs.
She found MacLachlan in his study as expected. He had changed into a dark green coat over a waistcoat of straw-colored silk and snug brown trousers. His starched cravat was elegantly tied beneath his square, freshly shaved chin. Indeed, he looked breathtakingly handsome, and his ability to do so after a night of debauchery somehow annoyed her. He ought, at the very least, to have the decency to look a little green about the gills.
Surprisingly, MacLachlan sat not by the coffee tray, but at his desk, his posture no longer loose and languid. Instead, he sat bolt upright, like a bird dog on point, fervent and focused. If he were suffering any ill effects from his night on the town with Mrs. Crosby, one certainly could not now discern it.
Upon coming farther into the room, she realized he was not working. Instead, he was intent on some sort of card game, his heavy gold hair falling forward, obscuring his eyes. Suddenly, with a muttered curse, he swept up the cards, then shuffled them deftly through his fingers in one seamless motion. He shuffled again, his every aspect focused on the cards, as if they were an extension of hands, which were long-fingered and elegant. And surprisingly quick.
She approached the desk, sensing the very moment when he recognized her presence. At once, he set the pack away and looked at her, something in his gaze shifting. It was as if she’d awakened him from a dream. He stood, and in an instant, the lazy, somnolent look returned to his eyes.
“Good morning, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “Do sit down.”
She moved to the seat he had indicated, a delicately inlaid Sheraton chair opposite the tea table. This room was beautifully decorated in shades of pale blue
and cream. The blue silk wall coverings were accented by floor-to-ceiling pier glasses between the windows, and the creamy carpet felt thick beneath her feet. A footman carried in a small coffee tray and set it on the far end of the tea table. MacLachlan asked her to pour. The coffee was very strong, and rich, reminding her, strangely, of black velvet.
“Wellings tells me you took the child out for a stroll yesterday,” he said. “I hope you both enjoyed it?”
For some reason, she did not wish to tell him about her visit to her aunt Rowena’s. Perhaps because it made her look desperate and a little foolish. “London is a large place,” she murmured. “But we had a pleasant outing.”
“How far did you go?”
“Why, to Mayfair, I believe.”
“A fine part of town,” he remarked. “But I have always preferred the tranquility of this little neighborhood.”
“Aye, ’tis much nicer here.” Esmée sipped gingerly from her hot coffee. “Tell me, do you play at cards regularly, MacLachlan?”
There was a cynical look about his eyes today, and it made her a little wary. “I think you know I do, Miss Hamilton,” he said in his low, husky voice. “How is it, by the way, that you keep making me feel as if I am still back in Argyllshire? I wonder you don’t put an imperious ‘the’ before my name—The MacLachlan—as if I am the only one.”
“To your clan, perhaps you are,” she answered simply.
His eyes hardened. “I have no clan, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “I have lands, yes, though nothing one would wish to boast about. My grandfather fought against the Jacobites, and for his service, he was tossed a bone, in the form of a baronetcy, by the King.”
“Of England.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He was given a baronetcy by the King of England.”
MacLachlan lifted one brow. “A dyed-in-the—
wool Highlander, are you?”
“Aye, and I dinna ken there was any other kind,” she said in a thick burr.
He laughed. “So tell me, Miss Hamilton, are you one of those treasonous holdouts still toasting ‘the king over the water?’ ” he asked. “Am I harboring a secret Jacobite?”