How to Seduce a Scot

by Christy English

  “Wear this while you consider my offer. It was my mother’s. When I wrote to her of you, she sent me this.”

  “It is very beautiful,” Catherine managed to say. “Thank you. Please tell her thank you from me.”

  “You will thank her yourself, perhaps,” he answered, smiling down on her.

  That a grand lady would welcome her into her son’s life and family, sight unseen, moved her almost to tears. But she blinked, and did not weep.

  Tears would not signify. She had an entire afternoon to get through yet, and then an evening, and then a whole, sleepless night. She would think later of what they had spoken of, of what she still must do. For now, her mind was one large bruise. She could not think again.

  She accepted her glove from him and drew it on over his mother’s pearl ring. Though hidden, the weight of it dragged down the length of her whole arm.

  He offered her his arm as succor. Having no other, she took it, and let him lead her back to the others.

  The picnic site was in an uproar. It seemed Margaret had fallen into the river somehow, and had managed to dog paddle to keep afloat until Alex had fished her out.

  Catherine left her almost fiancé and went to her Highlander’s side. He was beginning to dry a little in the sun, but his coat and trousers were still wet through, though he was no longer dripping. One shoe was gone, and his stocking, it seemed, had a hole in the toe.

  She wanted to take him home, set him by a fire, and give him clean clothes to wear and whisky to drink, while she darned that sock before she sent it to the laundry.

  The odd fantasy seemed absurd, and her eyes were watery as she suppressed both mirth and terror at the sight of him. She would have to speak to him as well, but she could not bear to do it that day.

  Tomorrow. She would put off all unpleasant conversations until the morrow.

  “What’s wrong?” Alex asked, surveying her face as if he might find the answer to his question there.

  She did not know how to answer him, for she did not want to lie. “I will tell you tomorrow,” she said. “Today, I think we need to get you home.”

  “And into dry clothes,” he said, drinking from a small flask that was not his.

  “Where is your flask?” she asked him.

  He waved one dismissive hand toward the River Thames. “At Tilbury by now, most likely.”

  She did laugh then, and he quirked a brow at her, his own eyes warming a little. Still he watched her close, dissatisfied with her answer to his question. But he was gentleman enough not to press her, and for that she was grateful.

  Thirty

  Robbie was home drinking when they got back from their purgatorial picnic in Richmond. He took one look at Alex, shook his head, and poured him a whisky.

  “You need to get changed.”

  “I’m dry by now.”

  “Don’t ruin the duchess’s fancy settees.”

  When Robbie said that, Alex downed his drink and went upstairs to change. When he came back down, a quiet, chastened Mary Elizabeth stayed in her room. Contemplating her sins, he assumed. For the girl to go against the family, in even such a foolish and minor manner, told him how angry she was at their mother and, by extension, at them.

  He could not concern himself with his sister at the moment, though she clearly needed a firm hand and more guidance than he had been giving her. He could think of nothing but his angel, and the look on her face when she came back from her walk with Lord Farleigh. Like a woman going to her execution.

  It was beginning to look as if he was going to have to save her from herself.

  “How long do you think it might take to get from here to the border?” he asked his brother, a fresh whisky in hand.

  Robbie stared at him, but answered the question. “Three days, if you change horses every two hours. Why?”

  “I might have to kidnap my girl.”

  “Is she still looking at that Englishman?”

  “She is.”

  Alex swallowed his whisky and set his glass down. He knew he could not take another before dinner and still keep his head. Part of him wanted to drown himself in a vat of the stuff. But they had only brought two barrels, and he was not going to risk running out. God alone knew how long it was going to take to get Mary Elizabeth tied to some Londoner.

  God help them.

  He put his sister out of his thoughts again. He had bigger fish to fry.

  “For some godforsaken reason, she won’t let me get close enough to propose marriage myself,” Alex said. “And all the while, my girl’s trying to get engaged to the bastard.”

  “While she’s in love with you?”

  “We’ve not discussed her feelings, but I am fairly certain. Yes.”

  Robbie shook his head. “Women.”

  His brother tossed him the sealed envelope that had come from their uncle that afternoon while he was out. He found the marriage license within. “Special license, my arse,” Alex said. “These English are too pretentious to live.”

  “That must be why we killed so many of them,” Robbie said.

  Alex laughed in spite of himself.

  “You’ve got the license in hand,” his brother said. “You don’t need to run to the border.”

  “If she won’t sign it, I might.”

  “As bad as that?”

  “When she came out of the woods after being alone with the bastard, she looked as ill as if she’d swallowed a snake. I fear she may have agreed to marry him already.”

  Robbie swore. “Do you need to kill him?”

  “I doubt it,” Alex answered. “He’s too thin blooded, and too much a gentleman to offer her insult. But my time is growing short. I must be ready to make my move, if I’m forced to it.”

  “You know I’m behind you. Father and Ian will be, too. David will laugh his arse off at you, but he’ll back you. You’ve only Mother to contend with, but after you’ve married the girl, even Mother will have to overlook the abduction.”

  Alex felt grim. He, the man who had to push women off him most times, was actually contemplating taking a girl away to the border to be wed. The Apocalypse truly was nigh.

  “I am not best pleased,” Alex said at last.

  “I imagine not.”

  The brothers sat in silence, contemplating the large pianoforte that Miss Margaret Middlebrook had knocked out of tune with her overenthusiastic playing.

  “I’ll go see my girl tonight,” Alex said.

  “An evening call?”

  “A midnight call, more like.”

  “If you have to head north, go. I’ll look after Mary Elizabeth.”

  “Something’s wrong with the girl,” Alex said.

  “Something has always been wrong with her. Da indulged her too much, I’d say.”

  “No,” Alex said. “It’s more than the usual. I think Mother sending her away has broken her heart. She cried yesterday. And she almost cried today. She would have, and in public too, if I hadn’t hugged her.”

  Robbie swore again, this time louder. “Mother was harsh to her when last they spoke. And sending her south to marry—I would not wish that on a Campbell, much less my own flesh and blood.”

  “Aye.”

  “She needs a woman’s touch. Your girl’s too distracted to be of much help.”

  Alex smiled. “And when I marry her, she’ll be more distracted still.”

  Robbie laughed, and held up both hands as if to shield himself. “Say nothing more, Brother. Think of my delicate ears.”

  Alex laughed out loud. His brother was the only one on earth who could always get a laugh out of him, whatever disaster was rising. “And how is Madame Claremont?”

  “Still from Cheapside, I warrant. I had an amusing time with two of her girls earlier this afternoon before you came home.”

  “Not here.”r />
  “Do I look like I’ve suddenly gone daft? No, I kept my whores where they were, happy in their own rooms. I pay so I can leave, you know. Otherwise they’d never let a fine-looking man like me out of their sight.”

  Alex swatted his brother, and Robbie swatted him back. They were halfhearted, glancing blows that subsided at once. They both went back to silence, each contemplating the afternoon they had spent. Alex knew his brother had had a much better one. But Alex would rather be miserable and in his angel’s presence than happy and apart.

  He was certainly doomed. But he would go to his own end whistling.

  “I’ll go to her tonight,” he said.

  All the advice Robbie offered was this: “Wear black.”

  Thirty-one

  Catherine did not sleep that night, as she knew she would not. She did dress for bed, putting on her night rail of thick cotton edged with lace, its pearl buttons shining dully in the light of her one candle. She tried to read, but Mrs. Radcliffe could not hold her attention. She tried to pray, but it seemed as with King Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, her prayers did not to heaven go.

  She fingered the pearl her father had given her mother on the night they were wed. She put it around her neck, opening her gown just by its top two buttons so that she could see the pearl gleaming. It was a symbol of her parents’ love for each other, love that had been evident every day of her life, until the day her father died.

  She raised the pearl ring that shone on her left hand, catching the light of the candle. If she took it off, she might lose it, but it didn’t feel right against her flesh. It wasn’t a promise of good things to come, but a shackle that tied her to her fate as strong as a chain of adamant. She did not weep, for it seemed her tears had dried up along with her hope. In the end, she could not stand to look at either piece of jewelry anymore, so she added the ring to the chain around her neck, and hid both beneath her dressing gown.

  Something rattled against the window above the side yard around midnight, but it might have been a trick of the night wind. At the same time, though, the smell of smoke came from somewhere close. It was stronger than her candle stub, stronger than a lamp in the hand of someone passing in the hall. She looked to the window over the back garden; a glow came from it that was too bright to be a street lamp.

  There were no lamps in the garden. The glow was coming from the back of the house.

  She opened her window and leaned out, only to find that the kitchen was on fire.

  Someone began shrieking then, over and over. She ran from her room to find her mother shaking Margaret awake.

  “Catherine, that rope your friend gave you. Where is it? Quickly!”

  Margaret woke slowly, but Catherine knew where the rope ladder was. She drew it out from beneath her sister’s bed.

  She did not hesitate, but opened the window over the back of the house. Smoke blew in from below, and she said a word she had heard Alex use once under her breath.

  “Catherine! Language!”

  “I am sorry, Mother. The fire is burning below. We must find another way out.”

  She watched as the servants began to line up in the back garden, making a sort of bucket brigade from the garden well to the kitchen door. She turned and took her mother and sister by the hand, the rope ladder tucked under one arm.

  “Come with me.”

  Catherine’s hands were shaking as she ran with them to the front of the house, where the smoke was bad, but where there were no flames visible. The fumes choked her, and she covered her face with one arm as she tried to go down the staircase to the front hall. Halfway down, the smoke was so thick that she could not even see. She dragged her mother back up the stairs, Margaret sandwiched close between them.

  Her heart pounding, she stopped at the second floor, trying to think of what Alex or Mary Elizabeth might do. She opened a window in the formal drawing room. People crowded below, gaping. No doubt the news of this mishap would be one of the talks of the Town come morning. But there was no time to worry about propriety or of what people might think of her. She tossed the rope down the side of the house, securing it carefully to the windowsill.

  “Mother, you climb down first, and hold the rope steady for Margaret.”

  Olivia Middlebrook clutched both daughters close, then climbed down quickly, and with amazing nimbleness for a woman over thirty.

  She waved to them from the ground below, and held the rope ladder steady as Margaret scurried down like a monkey.

  “Thank God for Mary Elizabeth,” Catherine heard her sister say. Thank God indeed.

  Catherine tried to breathe in as much clean air from the window as possible, but the smoke was rising and her eyes began to sting. She said a prayer to the Holy Mother and began to climb down.

  The hemp scraped against the skin of her palms, and she had a nonsensical thought that she ought to have worn gloves. At least a bonnet was not needed to keep the sun off her face, as it was the dead of night.

  A touch of hysterical laughter threatened to bubble in her throat, but she swallowed it down. She was still six feet above the ground when she felt strong hands take hold of her waist.

  “Let go of that blasted rope, Catherine. I’ve got you.”

  Alex Waters’s voice sounded in her ear like a voice from another life. He drew her down and into his arms, and she clung to him like a cocklebur. Once her bare feet touched ground, she found that she was shaking.

  “What are you doing here?” She heard the tears in her voice before she felt them on her cheeks. He held her close, not showing any sign of letting her go.

  “I am here to see you. I didn’t think to find you climbing down to the street, your house on fire.”

  She laughed a watery laugh. Her mother was quietly fussing over Margaret, who was standing close by, none the worse for wear, swathed in Alex’s oversized coat. The sleeves dangled far past her hands, and she kept trying to push them back, and failing.

  “Come into the garden,” Alex said. “They are trying to put it out. I’ve got to help them.”

  A chill of horror ran along her spine, cold down her back like the fingers of a corpse. “Giles,” she said. “Did someone think to get Giles out?”

  “I have no idea,” Alex said. “Is he your dog?”

  “He’s the butler,” Catherine said, her voice rising with the hysterics she was trying so hard to repress. She took a deep breath. “He is on the fourth floor, up a narrow stair. His leg is broken.”

  Alex suddenly looked even more grim, soot beginning to line his face. She wondered how ghastly she looked, having climbed out of their house, if he looked like that from simply standing too close on the street.

  Catherine turned to go back inside, but Alex held her fast.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I must help him. He’ll suffocate up there. The smoke is rising!”

  Alex’s touch was soothing, but she could not budge the strength of his arms. He drew her with him into the back garden, so that they were at least off the street. The kitchen was still burning, the fire an almost merry blaze. Half of the lower floor was gone; how could the building still be standing? Surely it was going to collapse.

  Margaret and her mother stood in the back of the garden, as far from the flames and smoke as possible. The wind was shifting in their favor, but the flames were a tide that would not yet be stemmed. Catherine looked frantically at the servants gathered to haul water and watched as her mother went to join them, after giving Margaret strict instructions to stay where she was.

  There were Jim and William, and the young bootblack, Charlie, who was a sort of boy of all work. She saw Marie, still dressed in her maid’s blacks, carrying bucket after bucket, as Mrs. Beam did the same. Her mother’s French maid was helping, but without a great deal of efficiency. But Giles was nowhere to be seen.

  “Dear God, Alex, he
’s not here.”

  Alex kissed her once, fiercely, as if to silence her. The touch of his lips on hers grounded her, and her hysteria began to recede. He did not speak but turned and went into the house through the back door, heedless of smoke and flames, his white shirtsleeves bright in the light of the fire.

  This fire was her punishment for her sins of wickedness. She had loved one man while allowing herself to be courted by another. All this was God’s judgment. She could feel it in the hollow of her bones.

  If Alex died trying to save her people, she would never forgive herself.

  It seemed an eternity as she paced in the garden, trampling down good grass as her nightgown grazed her lilacs. She had said almost an entire rosary before Alex appeared again, this time rounding the house from the front, carrying a disgruntled Giles on his back.

  A cheer went up from all the household, and tears wet Catherine’s cheeks again. She did not wipe them away, but went to the bench where Alex set her butler down, and threw her arms around the man who was the last link to her father.

  Giles stopped grousing that he was man enough to walk on his own, and patted her back. “There, there, Miss Middlebrook. No need to fret. It is just plaster and paint. We will build again.”

  “I am not weeping for the house,” she said. “I am weeping for you.”

  “Well, as you can see, there’s no need for that. If you want to be useful, go help your mother put the flames out.”

  Alex stood by, getting his breath as Margaret began fussing over Giles. Catherine looked up into his soot-smeared face, more tears running from her already sore and reddened eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You might as well thank the sun for rising,” Alex answered her. “Wherever I go, and whatever I do for the rest of my life, will be done in your service.”

  She wanted to put her arms around him again, but he turned away to help the bucket brigade. She followed him, and stayed, even when he tried to send her back to Margaret and Giles. She kept crying all the while she was carrying buckets. If only her tears might be of use, and put out some of the flames.