by Liz Carlyle
“Esmée.” His eyes swam with despair. “Oh, Esmée. Oh, God. I am…”
She backed away slowly, mute and horrified. His hands slid down her arms, all the way to her elbows before falling away. His gaze tore from hers. Silhouetted as he was against the morning sun, MacLachlan looked like an angel. Like Lucifer come down to tempt and torment. And he had! Oh, heaven help her, what had she done?
Esmée turned and ran.
Lydia was on her knees in the schoolroom, stacking alphabet blocks on the worktable with Sorcha when Esmée burst back into the room. “Hello, Miss Hamilton,” she said. “The young miss is awake now, and in a rare fine humor.”
Esmée looked at her wildly. “Thank you,” she managed. “I shall…I shall just be a moment.”
Ignoring Lydia’s questioning look, Esmée hastened past and into her bedchamber. She closed the door behind her and fell back against it. God. Oh, God. She covered her mouth with her hands. What had she done? She glanced almost desperately about the room and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror opposite. Her hair was disheveled. Her face deathly white. Anyone with sense could see what she’d been about.
Esmée looked away. Dear heaven! And why was this room so cold? She shivered, and ran her palms up her arms. She could still feel the warmth of his hands high on her arms. Could feel them sliding reluctantly down, lower and lower, as she stepped back.
Esmée laughed bitterly. Well, of course he’d been reluctant to let go! She had been such an effortless prize. A ripe plum, dropped unexpectedly into his hands. What man would say no to something so easily tasted? Certainly, Alasdair MacLachlan wouldn’t. He probably hadn’t said no to an easy pleasure in the whole of his life. Now he would doubtless hope for more. And it was her fault. She had surrendered to her traitorous emotions.
Like mother like daughter.
Esmée’s face began to burn with shame. That, no doubt, was just what MacLachlan would be thinking at this moment. And he would be right, too. That was Esmée’s secret. Her fear. Her shame.
She would never be the beauty her mother had been. No, their similarities went deeper than that. A rashness of temper. A wit too quick. A tongue too tart. And the other. That aching hunger. That foolish loneliness which pierced the heart like a cold fear, overwhelming good sense and restraint. Like mother, like daughter. God, how she hated those words.
A sudden screech cut through her self-pity, snapping Esmée back to reality. Through the nursery, she could hear one of Sorcha’s all-too-familiar tantrums interspersed with Lydia’s firm voice. As usual, the rare fine mood had been short-lived, and now, something wasn’t going Sorcha’s way. Perhaps she was not settling in so well after all.
Esmée dashed into the schoolroom to see that Sorcha had decided to clamber up on the window ledge. She had managed to take hold of it, and was flailing and kicking at Lydia for all she was worth.
“Let go, miss!” said the maid sharply. “You must let go!”
Sorcha screamed bloody murder.
Eschewing Lydia’s restraint, Esmée simply grabbed the child around the waist, and hauled her ruthlessly backward. “No, nooo!” Sorcha screeched. “Look out, Mae! Look out!”
Esmée set her down forcefully. “Och, ye little jaudie!” she scolded, giving her a swat on the rump. “I am ashamed of you!”
In response, the child proceeded to stomp her way to the worktable and, with surprising strength, backhanded all her blocks into the floor. Chunks of wood flew and bounced, rolling into the corners and under the chairs.
It wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t even especially out of character for Sorcha. But this time, Esmée burst into tears. Lydia rushed to her side. “Oh, miss, I am so sorry,” she cried. “I turned my back but an instant, and she got away. ’Twill never happen again, I swear it.”
Esmée sobbed even louder. “But it will happen again!” she bawled. “Because I can’t teach her any better! It just gets worse and worse! I don’t know how to be a mother! I don’t know what to do to make her behave!”
“Oh, no, miss!” said Lydia. “’Tis naught to do with you, I’m sure. Truly.”
“But she used to such a good child,” said Esmée. “Before her mother died, I mean. Yet these last few weeks, she is just getting worse and worse.”
Lydia patted her sympathetically on the arm. “I’m sure, miss, that the child misses her mother,” she said. “But ’tis unlikely that’s her trouble. ’Tis just her age, more like. They get this way. A mind of their own, and all that.”
“What do you mean?” sniffed Esmée.
“Oh, me mum used to call it the ‘terrible twos,’ ” said the maid. “And an awful fright they are. Mum threatened to nail my twin brothers up in a barrel and feed ’em through the bunghole ’til they was three. Almost did it, too.”
Esmée managed a weak smile. Lydia was just being kind, and she knew it. Esmée’s tears began to fall anew. She could not escape the feeling that Sorcha’s escalating willfulness was all her fault. Still, Lydia did have a way with children. And God knew Esmée needed help.
“Lydia,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, “do you enjoy your work as a housemaid? Would Mrs. Henry let you take another job, do you think?”
But Lydia did not get a chance to answer. Sorcha had finally noticed Esmée’s tears. She had toddled across the room and thrown her arms round Esmée’s knees.
“No cry, Mae,” she said solemnly. “No cry. Me be good.”
Chapter Four
In which Sir Alasdair entertains an Important Guest
Alasdair stormed from his study, and watched in mute shock as Esmée bolted up the stairs. “Esmée!” he shouted after her. “I’m sorry! Stop! Wait! Damn it, get back down here!”
But Esmée seemed disinclined to take orders. Around the next turn, the drab gray skirts of her gown swirled out wildly, then vanished from view altogether. Damn and blast! He could not chase the chit up the stairs in front of the servants. And what would he do if he caught her? Kill her? Kiss her? What did he want?
He wanted his freedom back, blister it. He wanted every damned female—be they meddling and tempting, or toddling and squalling—out of his house and on the next mail coach back to Scotland.
He was not perfectly sure how long he remained at the foot of the steps, staring up into the twisting, turning ascension of balusters and treads, but when he returned to the world about him, he realized the longcase clock by the front door was striking noon, its mournful dole echoing up the stairwell.
Upstairs, he could hear Sorcha having another fit of temper, doubtless over something she’d been denied. She was a willful little minx, and he had no idea what ought to be done about it. Best leave that to Esmée—assuming she wasn’t busy packing her trunks.
Suddenly, it all pressed in on him. Alasdair felt the need to escape. To flee from his own home, his own child, and all of his appalling mistakes. Just as he’d told Esmée from the first, he was no sort of father at all. And given how he’d just treated Esmée, not much of an employer, either.
Oh, he knew what was said of him. He knew respectable mammas pulled their daughters from his path, and that only his fortune and his charm kept society from branding him a total persona non grata. He knew, too, that Julia’s stinging accusations were not far off the mark. He did lie and cheat where women were concerned. And he did sow his seed selfishly, rarely stopping to consider what the result might be, or who might suffer for it. Until today, however, he had not stooped to seducing innocent, fresh-faced virgins.
“Wellings!” he roared, starting down the steps. “Wellings, where the devil are you?”
The butler materialized just as Alasdair hit the last step. “I want my hat,” he ordered, striding toward the door. “My hat and my stick. This instant.”
Wellings’s pace did not hasten as he fetched them. “You mean to go out, sir?”
“Yes, by God, to White’s,” he answered. “And I plan to be gone awhile. Perhaps all day—probably all night.”
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“But sir,” Wellings gently protested, “Mr. MacLachlan is to take luncheon here.”
“Then by all means, feed him!” Alasdair returned.
Wellings lifted his nose as if he smelled something offensive. “And your coat and cravat, sir. They are soiled.”
Christ, the coffee! Alasdair went straight upstairs, ripping off his neckcloth as he went. When he came back down again, Wellings was still holding his hat and stick on the tips of his index fingers. Ignoring the butler’s censorious glare, Alasdair allowed himself the pleasure of slamming the front door until the windowpanes rattled, then stalking off down the street like a spoilt boy. Which, perhaps, he was. He simply did not know anymore.
It did not take Alasdair long to find Quin, and talk him into a night on the town—a night which started at two in the afternoon. They visited four or five of their favorite haunts, and as the evening came on, Alasdair had almost managed to forget the pesky females who had invaded his home. In fact, he had almost forgotten the awful thing he’d done to Esmée. Almost.
Eventually, of course, Quin wanted to go whoring—Quin always wanted to go whoring—but Alasdair didn’t care if he never saw another female of any age ever again so long as he lived. So they split the difference and went to Mother Lucy’s, a fine Soho bawdy-house and all-purpose hell. With her unshaved chin and burly arms, Lucy didn’t really look female, but she employed a few more delicate creatures.
Seeing the way of things, Lucy sent Quin upstairs with one of her more practiced tarts, and settled Alasdair in the back room for a few hours of gaming and drinking—though ordinarily, Alasdair made it a point never to combine the two to any degree of excess. By midnight, however, he had made one hell of an exception. He was down by a thousand pounds, so cup-shot his clubs appeared to be turning into hearts, and unable to recollect so much as the name of the chap who was beggaring him.
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, he felt Quin heave him into a hackney coach and send him bouncing home again. Someone—Wellings and Ettrick, he thought—hauled him up to his bedchamber, shucked him down to his shirt and trousers, then, surrendering to the forces of gravity, left him lying on his chaise without troubling themselves to draw his drapes.
Alasdair did not stir until sometime after daybreak, cursing the clean blade of light which cut across his eyes. The light did not oblige him by going away. Lord God, his head hurt. This serious drinking, he feared, might soon be the death of him. He needed to stick with the vices he was good at: high-stakes gaming and unrepentant womanizing. With a grunt of disgust, Alasdair rolled onto his side and drifted off again.
He had just begun to snore when something warm and damp touched his forehead. He jerked awake with a start to see a small, wet finger blurring before his eyes. “Wha—?”
Someone softly giggled.
Giggled? Alasdair forced his eyes into focus, only to see his brother staring up at him from the floor. No, no. Too small. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and tried again. Ah, the child. The child that looked like his brother.
Alasdair was almost relieved. “You, is it, eh?” he asked her. “What are you doing there, crawling about on my floor?”
“Me gee up,” said Sorcha, grasping the leg of his side table and pulling herself up.
“Oh, ho!” he said, stabbing a finger at the child. “Going to toddle about now, are you? Are you old enough to walk? Oh, yes! I remember now.”
Sorcha seemed to find that supremely funny. She giggled and spit, pointing back at him.
Alasdair ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, aye, mine looks funny, does it?” he returned. “Have you seen yours? It is but three inches long, and sticking straight up. How do they put you to bed, eh? On that hard MacLachlan head of yours?”
Her eyes merry, Sorcha clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed again. “Me be go out,” she said. “Mae go wee me. We go par’n ducks.”
Alasdair couldn’t quite make it out, so he changed the subject. “Look here, are you supposed to be on the loose like this?” he asked. “Oughtn’t someone be after you?”
But Sorcha had begun to poke about on his table. The pocket watch she eschewed, going instead straight for the crown jewel. “Dink,” she said, pinching the rim of his whisky glass. “Gi’ me dis.”
His whisky glass? Oh, holy damn. He had the vaguest recollection of ordering Wellings to pour him one. And of being argued with. Obviously, he’d won—then drunk not a drop of it before passing out again.
Sorcha was pulling the glass toward her. “Me tink it,” she said. “Gi’ me tink.”
“Oh, no!” he said, setting the glass away. “That’s not for weanlings like you, no matter what they taught you back in Scotland.”
Sorcha screwed up her mouth, obviously getting ready to cut loose. Alasdair knew his head could not possibly take it. So he rolled to one side and hoisted the child onto his chaise. “Oh, come up here, then,” he said, settling her across his lap. “And for pity’s sake, don’t squall at me. Now go to sleep. No child of mine ought ever be awake at such an ungodly hour.”
Sorcha giggled again, then surprisingly, she settled back against him, curled her hand into a fist, and promptly closed her eyes.
Alasdair crooked his neck to look down at her froth of baby-fine hair, wild red-blond curls which tickled his nose and smelled of something fresh. Innocence, perhaps? The child was a snug, warm weight on his chest; a weight which was surprisingly effortless to bear. But she looked as if she meant to stay awhile.
“Now someone will come round to fetch you, won’t they?” he found himself asking. “They won’t just…leave you here, will they?”
Sorcha had tucked her thumb into her mouth. “Be mo,” she said around it. “Me be mo.”
Esmée had always been an early riser. In Great Queen Street, Lydia had standing orders to wake her each morning at half past six, so it was vaguely disconcerting when she heard her bedroom door open sometime before dawn. Drowsy and dreading the morning’s chill, Esmée drew the covers over her head. But Lydia did not call to her, and Esmée gratefully drifted back to sleep.
Moments later—at least it seemed like moments—Esmée awoke to find her windows backlit by morning sun. “Good morning, miss!” said Lydia, energetically drawing open the first set of draperies. “A fine, fair day it is. Young miss will be wanting a jaunt in the park for sure.”
Esmée threw back the covers and set her feet on the plush rug beneath her bed. “I daresay you’re right,” she said on a stretching yawn. Then memory struck. “Lydia, did you come in earlier?”
Lydia turned from the next window. “Earlier than what, miss?”
“Before daylight, I mea—” Suddenly, Esmée froze, eyes fixed on Sorcha’s new bed. “Oh, dear God.”
Lydia let go of the next drapery cord and ran to the bed. Desperately, she patted the wad of covers as Esmée searched the room. “But how, miss?” asked the maid. “How on earth could she?”
“I don’t know.” Esmée headed into the schoolroom at a run. Lydia went directly into the nursery. Frantically, they searched, meeting at the connecting door.
“Nothing, miss,” whispered Lydia. “Oh, dear heaven! Where can she have got to?”
Esmée was already throwing on her wrapper. “Go down the back stairs, Lydia,” she ordered. “Ask Mrs. Henry to send up help. I’ll take the front, and fetch Wellings.”
Esmée hit the bottom staircase at a run. “Wellings!” she cried. “Wellings!”
He materialized round a corner. Esmée grabbed him by the upper arms, looking, no doubt, like a mad-woman. “Oh, Wellings, Sorcha is gone!”
“Gone?” The butler drew back an inch. “What do you mean gone?”
“From her bed!” cried Esmée. “Gone! I awoke and—and she just wasn’t there.”
Wellings paled. “That seems impossible.”
“Kidnappers?” cried Esmée. “Oh, God! Have you any kidnappers in London?”
Wellings shook his head. “No one got into this house, Miss Hami
lton,” he said. “Nor out of it, either, I’ll wager. She probably crawled out and landed on that hard head of hers, with no harm done.”
“Oh! Oh, dear.”
“She’s somewhere near the schoolroom, I’m sure,” Wellings assured her. “Let us go make a search of the closets and cupboards.”
Together, they rushed to the schoolroom. Esmée’s heart was in her throat. In short order, the entire floor was swarming with servants. Closets, cupboards, even the linen press was searched. There was no sign of Sorcha. Tears running down her cheeks, Lydia was soon searching corridors and corners which had already been checked twice, and Esmée was on the verge of being sick.
“Search the rest of the house and the gardens, Wellings,” she whispered, her fingertips pressed against her mouth. “I shall go and tell him.”
Wellings turned to look at her. “I beg your pardon, miss? Tell who what?”
“Sir Alasdair,” she answered. “I must go and tell him that…that I’ve lost Sorcha!”
Wellings hesitated. “Miss Hamilton, you are in your night attire.”
She looked at him a little wildly. “Aye, but he’s seen such before.”
“Nothing quite like that, I fear,” murmured the butler, staring at her high-necked flannel wrapper. Esmée did not heed him, and hastened to the stairs. On the next floor, she rushed along the corridor to what she thought was the master’s suite, then tapped lightly on the door, which was slightly ajar.
“Come!” cried a muffled voice.
Hand on the doorknob, Esmée hesitated. “Are you decent?”
“Not in the least,” came the answer. “But I have clothes on.”
She poked her head inside to see MacLachlan splayed out on a chaise near the hearth. Holding back tears, she approached. “I’m afraid, sir, that something dreadful has ha—”
It was then Esmée noticed the sleeping child. On an incredulous gasp, she crept forward. Sorcha’s little hand was curled into the thick hair of MacLachlan’s chest; a very muscular chest, which was laid almost bare by his open shirt.