by Deborah Hale
Instead, he clucked his tongue at her while looking intolerably smug. “I promise, you don’t know what you’re missing. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me.”
On the underside of a rock!
Claire turned away from Max, intending to toss the insult over her shoulder.
Instead, she found her slippers glued to the floor as she watched Tessa waltz past in the arms of a man.
Tessa’s partner was not quite as tall as the major, and most women might have deemed him not half so handsome. But Claire could not take her eyes off him, for he danced the way he walked, with a jaunty, athletic grace that made people turn and stare whenever he passed.
His hair, a rich dark brown, clung to his head in crisp, close-cropped locks. He had a high-bridged, aquiline nose and a wide, bowed mouth that managed to suggest both good humor and unswerving determination. Alert, roving gray eyes nestled beneath forceful dark brows. For the moment, they fastened on Tessa with an intensity that took Claire’s breath away.
“Miss Talbot?”
“Go away, Max!” she snapped. “I don’t want you for a lover any more than I wanted you for a husband.”
“Begging your pardon, Miss Talbot, it’s only me—Hutt.”
A searing blush suffused Claire’s face as she turned toward the agent. For an instant, she forgot about Tessa and her partner. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hutt! I thought you were … someone else.”
“No harm done, miss.” Not even the faintest suggestion of a smirk twitched at the corner of the agent’s thin lips.
Once again, Claire congratulated herself on having secured his services.
“My inquiries have yielded some information about the gentleman, Miss Talbot.” Though he’d succeeded in hiding his amusement over her gaffe, Mr. Hutt could not conceal his satisfaction over his own quick work. “I thought you’d want to know straightaway.”
Tessa’s fortune hunter!
Claire spun around again, her gaze combing the room in search of him.
Behind her, Obadiah Hutt began to rattle off his report in an eager voice. “I have discovered the gentleman’s name, miss. And I’ve discovered he is not an American, as Lady Lydiard supposed.”
Not an American. No.
From across the ballroom his voice drifted, mellow and musical, with the distinctive lilting burr of the Highland glens. Claire steeled herself to resist its enchantment, but failed.
When Mr. Hutt began to speak again, she held up her hand for silence.
“But, miss, don’t you want to hear the gentleman’s name?”
Across the ballroom, Ewan Geddes glanced up and caught her watching him. For an instant, puzzlement knit his full dark brows together.
Then it cleared.
His bow mouth stretched into a wide, devilish grin, and he winked at her.
“I know his name, Mr. Hutt.” The hand Claire had held aloft balled into a tight fist, as did the one by her side. “Furthermore, I know he is no gentleman.”
Chapter Two
A good job he was at a ball with an orchestra playing, Ewan Geddes thought. It gave him an excuse for dancing around the room without looking like a daft fool!
For ten years he’d worked and struggled to get where he was now—with Miss Tessa Talbot in his arms and no man having the power to take her away from him. Surely Fate had wanted them together, no matter how unlikely a match they once might have seemed. Considering how far he’d risen in the world, Ewan knew nothing was impossible for a man who had faith in himself, and the boldness to act decisively when an opportunity arose.
The music stopped, but he continued to twirl Tessa around the floor, narrowly avoiding several other couples who had paused to wait for the orchestra to begin again.
“Ewan!” Tessa squealed. “What are you doing? We can’t dance without music!”
“Ah, but there’s music in my heart, lass.” As he gazed down into her enormous turquoise eyes, the years fell away and he was eighteen again—an ardent lad in love for the first and only time. “Can ye not hear it? It’s been playing a wild, sweet melody ever since I laid eyes on ye again.”
Tessa lowered her gaze demurely, catching her full lower lip between her teeth.
That look made Ewan ache to kiss her, but he would not do it until she had promised to be his wife. And she could not make that promise until she’d withdrawn from her present betrothal.
She glanced back up at him suddenly, her eyes brimming with a reflection of his own giddy delight. “Ever since I saw you again, I’ve found myself humming a little tune day and night.”
“Ye hum in yer sleep?” Ewan teased, holding her closer and slowing their music-less waltz until it was little more than an excuse to embrace in public.
“Of course not, silly!” Her laughter set the cluster of golden ringlets piled high on her head into a quivering dance of their own. “But the melody runs through my dreams.”
“I know what ye mean.” Ewan caressed her face with his gaze. “The sound of yer voice and yer laugh have run through my dreams for years.”
And the way she’d felt in his arms that last night.
Fortunately for Ewan, the dance music began again—a lush Strauss waltz that perfectly expressed the buoyant, heady feelings within him. Otherwise, he might have broken his promise to himself and caused a twittering scandal among London society, by kissing another man’s fiancée in the middle of the Fortescues’ ballroom.
Tessa gave a breathless sigh. “It’s so romantic that you thought of me all those years you were off in America, working so hard to make something of yourself.”
It hadn’t seemed very romantic when he’d first arrived in Pennsylvania, a lad of eighteen, raw from the Highlands, without a penny in his pocket. But he’d had a fire in his belly, stoked by injustice and true love denied. That fire had fueled his rapid rise in the world.
“It was all for ye, Tessa Talbot. To make myself worthy of yer notice and yer company.”
Well, almost all, Ewan insisted to his bothersome conscience. True, in those early years he’d been at least as eager to take some revenge against her father, who had sacked him without a character reference. In time, however, he’d come to enjoy the challenge of making his fortune for its own sake. Once he’d had the resources to carry out his original plan, he’d assumed Tessa must have been long since married to someone else.
Then a copy of the London Times had fallen into his hands. Ewan vowed to have that blessed paper gilded and mounted. For it had informed him that the Honorable Miss Tessa Talbot, daughter of Lady Lydiard and her late husband, was engaged to be married.
Only engaged!
All his old fallow feelings for her had burst back into bloom, and Ewan had booked passage on the fastest steamer that would get him across the Atlantic.
“Worthy? What nonsense!” Tessa gave him a token slap with the hand that rested on his shoulder. “You know I’ve always thought more of real people who work for a living than I ever have of useless aristocrats.”
Her fervent declaration should have pleased him no end, but for reasons that eluded Ewan, it made him strangely uneasy. He told himself not to be so foolish. He had everything he’d ever wanted within his grasp. Nothing and no one would stop him now. Least of all some vague foreboding he could not even put into words.
It was like the feeling he used to get when stalking game in the hills above Strathandrew. When he’d slowly turn, to discover a pair of wild, wary eyes fixed on him. Try as he might, Ewan could not shake it.
When the final notes of the waltz died away, he bowed to Tessa. “Shall we get something to drink, then find a quiet spot where we can sit and talk?”
While he waited for her answer, his gaze roved over the Fortescues’ ballroom.
There! Near the orchestra dais. A tall, elegant-looking woman was watching him.
The color of her hair, her willowy grace of figure and her long, delicate features all put him in mind of a doe. But the relentless intensity of her gaze better suited
a wildcat defending her young.
Did he know the woman? Ewan reckoned he might. But from where?
Then it came to him.
The elder Miss Talbot. What was her name? Catherine? Charlotte?
Whatever she called herself, no wonder she was looking daggers at him. The lady had always twitted and found fault with him during the summers when Lord Lydiard had brought his family north to their Scottish hunting estate.
She’d especially disapproved of his obvious fancy for her half sister. Ewan wondered if she might have been the one who’d tattled to old Lord Lydiard about his midnight meeting with Tessa, on the Talbots’ last night in Scotland, ten years ago.
Well, she’d get her comeuppance when he made Tessa his bride!
Long ago, Ewan had discovered that nothing vexed the elder Miss Talbot so much as when he pretended her slights had no power to vex him. Now, he shot her a wide grin of friendly recognition, with the faintest suggestion of mockery twinkling in his eyes. He knew it was bound to send her into a sputter of indignation. After all these years, he still relished the prospect of getting a rise out of her.
Miss Talbot crossed the ballroom floor with a brisk, purposeful stride. A man followed her.
“Claire!” Tessa cried when she spotted her sister. “What are you doing here? You never go out in the evenings.”
The two women clasped hands and touched cheeks with unfeigned affection.
Ewan had often wondered at their closeness. They were only half sisters, after all, and as opposite in temperament as any two women could be. Each had ample cause to envy the other, too. Tessa, her elder sister’s fortune and consequence in the family. Claire, her younger sister’s beauty and charm.
Claire Talbot smoothed a stray curl off Tessa’s forehead in a gesture that looked almost motherly. “I gather it’s high time I ventured out in society more often. To keep an eye on what you’ve been getting up to while poor Spencer is away. After all, we wouldn’t want any silly gossip to spoil your wedding plans, would we?”
Though she spoke to Tessa, Ewan could tell Miss Talbot’s warning was aimed at him. Did she think him too stupid to know about her sister’s betrothal?
Claire’s mild rebuke appeared to fluster Tessa, which Ewan added to his growing list of grudges against the woman.
“We’ll talk about all that another time, Claire.” Tessa glanced at Ewan and immediately recovered her usual sparkle. “You’ll never guess who’s come to London after all these years!”
“My powers of deduction are better than you may imagine, dearest.” Claire turned to Ewan and thrust out her hand. “Mr. Geddes, isn’t it?”
Ignoring her intention to shake his hand, Ewan caught her long slender fingers in his and raised them to his lips instead. “I’m flattered ye remember me, Miss Talbot.”
As he’d hoped, the gesture and the pretended warmth of his greeting succeeded in provoking her.
She pulled her hand away with the barest pretense of civility. “Pray, don’t flatter yourself too much, sir. I take care to remember a good many people. Not always for the most pleasant of reasons.”
Tessa must have sensed the tension between them, for her voice rang with forced brightness as she asked her sister, “Who is your escort tonight? I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
For a moment, Claire Talbot gave her sister a blank stare, then she turned to the man behind her. “Oh! Pardon my manners. This is Mr. Obadiah Hutt, a business associate of mine. Mr. Hutt, allow me to introduce my sister, Tessa, and Mr. Ewan Geddes … an old friend of the family.”
Ewan bridled. Did she think he was ashamed of who he’d been or where he’d come from? Was her introduction a veiled threat to expose his past?
And who was this Hutt fellow, anyway? He lacked the languid ease of a gentleman, and he shook Ewan’s hand with a firm grip, meeting his eye with a direct gaze … almost too direct.
“What Miss Talbot means, sir—” Ewan tried to stare her down, but she did not flinch “—is that I used to be a gillie on her father’s estate in Scotland.”
When a look of puzzlement wrinkled the other man’s brow, Ewan explained, “A gillie’s a sort of guide for hunting and fishing. Totes gear, loads guns, dresses the kill. That sort of thing.”
Tessa clasped his arm in a show of support that touched Ewan. “He was perfectly marvelous at it, too! Why, I can still picture him striding off to the hills in his kilt, with a gun slung over his shoulder. Like a hero of Sir Walter Scott’s, I always used to think.”
Miss Talbot’s business associate nodded at the explanation. “And what brings you down from Scotland, Mr. Geddes?”
“I didn’t come from Scotland, sir.” Hard as he tried to sound matter-of-fact, Ewan couldn’t manage it. “I left my home ten years ago, and I’ve never been back since.”
Thanks to Lord Lydiard. With a little help, perhaps, from the woman who now stood before Ewan, eyeing him with barely disguised hostility.
His old plans for revenge tempted Ewan sorely. Perhaps he should make a few discreet inquiries about Brancasters, after all.
* * *
I left my home ten years ago.
Ewan Geddes’s words, and the glint of outrage beneath his facade of casual charm, made Claire’s stomach constrict and her breath catch, as if strong hands had suddenly pulled the stays of her corset even tighter.
She’d come tonight expecting to do battle with a simple fortune hunter, like Major Hamilton-Smythe. Instead, she’d found an old adversary who might have far darker motives and a far greater capacity for mischief. One who might wish to harm the only two things in the world she cared about—her sister and Brancasters.
As the orchestra struck up a new tune, Claire turned to Obadiah Hutt. Behind the cover of her gloved hand, she whispered, “Ask her to dance.”
When he seemed not to hear, or perhaps not to understand, she hissed, “My sister! Invite her to dance.”
“Miss Tessa?” Mr. Hutt extended his arm, as Claire had bidden him. “May I have the honor?”
When Tessa cast a doubtful glance at Ewan Geddes, Claire urged, “Go ahead, dearest. There’s apt to be less talk if you’re seen dancing with a number of different gentlemen while Spencer is out of town.”
“Very well, then.” Tessa shot her sister a look as she took to the floor with Mr. Hutt—half warning, half pleading with Claire not to make a scene.
Claire and Ewan stood for a moment in awkward silence, watching Tessa and Mr. Hutt ease their way into the swirl of dancers.
“Well?” she challenged, when it became obvious he meant to ignore the opportunity. “Aren’t you going to invite me to dance?”
She quashed a foolish flicker of eagerness to feel his arms about her once again. Hadn’t ten years and a succession of men like Max Hamilton-Smythe taught her anything?
The Scotsman raised his dark, emphatic brows and thrust out his lower lip in a doubtful expression. “Ye wouldn’t think it too forward—a former servant taking liberties with the laird’s daughter?”
Claire skewered him with an icy glare, but she kept her tone and smile impeccably polite. “That would not be a first for you, would it?”
That wasn’t fair, her conscience protested. Ten years ago, she’d craved every liberty Ewan Geddes had been prepared to take with her. The trouble was, he’d only ever wanted to take them with her beautiful, vivacious younger sister.
For a moment, his gray eyes darkened like thunderheads over Ben Blane. Then, just as quickly, they cleared like the morning mist off Loch Liath. Both stirred something in Claire that she did not wish to have stirred. Heaven help her if she let this man gain any of his old power over her heart, or, worse yet, guess that he had.
He made a bow, so deep and sweeping it verged on mockery. “In that case, Miss Talbot, as my folks say, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Will ye do me the honor of a dance?”
No one had ever roused her usually temperate emotions the way he did. Claire struggled to subdue them.
“Only as many as they needed to keep from starving after they were driven from their land.” He spoke in a tone of cheerful banter quite at odds with his words. But when he took Claire’s hand in his and slipped his arm around her waist, she could feel the taut clench of his muscles.
Perhaps she provoked a more intense reaction in him than he had ever permitted her to see. The possibility restored a bit of her self-respect.
Remembering the reason she had lured him to the dance floor in the first place, she ignored his bait about starving Highlanders. “You look very prosperous now. You’ve done well for yourself in America?”
Not so well, surely, that the Brancaster fortune would fail to tempt him?
“Well enough.” His reply confirmed Claire’s suspicion. “There’s no limit, in the New World, to how far a man’s brains and hard work will take him.”
And if that wasn’t far enough, thought Claire, he could always cross the Atlantic to see how far hollow charm and a total lack of scruples would take him.
“I believe a truly determined man will succeed anywhere, Mr. Geddes. My grandfather, for instance. He built Brancasters from nothing, and he didn’t have to go all the way to America to do it.”
Ewan acknowledged her point with a nod. “A great achievement, to be sure. Then he was able to marry his daughter off to a laird.”
That stung. Had her father’s hurtful warning about fortune hunters been the voice of experience speaking? Claire refused to let Ewan see her flinch. One needed a tough hide to trade barbs with the man these days.
“If you think that gives you leave to pursue my sister, Mr. Geddes, I beg to differ. Poaching a few sheep is one thing. Poaching another man’s fiancée is quite another. Exactly what are your intentions toward Tessa?”
“Only the most honorable, I can assure you.” The hand that held hers tightened, as did the one around her waist. “I agree, Miss Talbot, there is a difference between sheep thieving and courting a lady. Sheep, curse their stupid heads, don’t give a hang who shears them. But a lady may have a strong preference about who she weds. If she changes her affections from one man to another before she gets to the altar, I’d hardly call that poaching.”