There was no chance Burton could have beaten them here, not with Caesar’s ground-eating stride. “Seven o’clock,” he told her. “At this hour, my family is probably dressing for dinner.”
“But we are not staying?” Her voice sounded childishly hopeful.
“No.” His stomach objected to the refusal. He had not eaten all day, and that bodily need now nosed its way in front of his other competing demands.
He usually took his evening meal at the Gander by six o’ clock, and more often than not was fast asleep by nightfall, which came close to nine at this time of year. Through most of his childhood, his days had followed a similar pattern. But when his father had become the earl, boisterous family meals around a scarred kitchen table had disappeared. James and William had been expected to present themselves for dinner at eight o’clock sharp, properly scrubbed and dressed, manners displayed like the museum specimens his father no longer collected.
His collar tightened at the memory of cold soup and stilted conversation. No matter how hungry he was, he could not imagine staying long enough to endure such a spectacle.
Georgette seemed not to notice his unease. She had turned to stare at the vista that spread out in front of the manor. “It’s like looking on someone’s dream,” she said, her voice hushed.
“Whether a pleasant interlude or a nightmare depends on a person’s perspective,” he replied.
She offered him a curious look. “ ’Tis a house and a view fit for royalty.”
He answered with a tilt of his head. The damned vista took his own breath away, seeing it for the first time in eleven years. He could scarcely imagine what a stranger felt.
Presumably the place had once offered an excellent outlook of the loch in order to warn of approaching danger, but now it offered simply a view to end all views. Beyond the loch, where the cool mountain water met the warmer brackish tide, the ocean sparkled in the promise of the coming sunset, still an hour or two away. On a warm evening, like today, the air carried the sting of salt off the distant waves. On the west side of the estate, just visible on the horizon, were high cliffs where James had spent one pleasant summer learning to balance himself on the edge, toes gripping the crumbling rock, and then hurl himself away to plunge into the surf.
When he shifted his gaze back to Georgette, he realized she now stood watching him instead of the view, her lips pursed in studied silence. Perhaps she had not imagined he came from castle stock. He looked nothing like a gentleman, after all. He had no idea of this woman’s circumstances, where or how she lived. She was the widow of a viscount, but peers came in all shapes and sizes and bank accounts. Did this castle, with its ostentatious view, seem to her the worst kind of excess, as it once had to him?
He had hated it when his family had first come here, and had refused to answer when the servants had addressed him as Lord James. He had been eighteen years old, chafing under his father’s stern new rules. Nothing seemed to fit. He had been raised to go barefoot in the summer, only to awaken one morning to find himself stuffed into tailor-made boots. That had been a dark time, and he had welcomed being shipped off to Cambridge, partly as a way to rebel, and partly as a way to escape.
“I suppose we need to go in,” he mused, lost in the swirl of memories.
She nodded and gathered her skirts. When he still hesitated, she cocked her head. “Is something the matter, James?” Her face colored. “Or would you prefer me to call you Mr. MacKenzie when we seek our audience with your family? It would be more in keeping with our plans, I suppose.”
He let out a breath. She could not know how she looked at this moment, hair escaping, dirt from the blacksmith’s shop smudged high on one cheek. Her dress bore ill traces of having galloped four miles on a sweating horse. But none of that mattered, because she was here with him, prepared to face down his demons in her quest to make this right.
“James,” he told her. “I want you to call me James. I see no reason to pretend we have no association, no feeling of affection in the process.”
Her eyes widened at his ill-considered confession. It was the truth, even if it was an incredible thing to admit after knowing her for less than a full day. His heart lightened a little. No matter what waited beyond that door, no matter the tomblike, echoing silence he knew would envelop them upon stepping into the earl’s domain, she had come with him.
Had insisted upon it.
“Thank you,” he told her. “For coming.” The words were simple enough, but they conveyed what he felt, to the letter.
She smiled at him, a windswept vision. “You may thank me after we speak with your family. And rest assured, I shall require more than words.” She reached out her hand and took his up. A jolt of awareness surged through him at the uninitiated contact. “Shall we?”
He braced himself. Strode up the stairs.
Knocked on the door and tumbled into madness.
The foyer into which the doorman admitted them rang with shrieked laughter and pounding feet. Overhead, high on a banister James had never once had the pleasure of sliding down, a child in some sort of red uniform leaned over, brandishing a wooden rifle. “Death to Napoleon!” the boy shouted.
A blur of white muslin and bare feet flashed by, no doubt the escaping “general” dodging enemy fire. The child squealed, the sound ringing with laughter. James felt the noise every bit as sharply as if he had a taken a bullet to his chest.
Christ above, whose house had he stumbled into?
“James!” A feminine voice burst from the right hallway, and then collided into him in a tangle of arms and skirts and rosewater essence.
“Mother,” he choked out, bowled over by the cacophony. He loosened his grip on Georgette’s hand and dazedly kissed mother’s cheek. “Who . . . what are all these children?”
“Your cousin sent his children for the summer, and we are glad for the company. Of course, if you would call on us here once in a while, instead of leaving the visiting to fall squarely on my shoulders, you would have known that.” His mother gave him the merest hint of a reproachful smile, then drew a sharp breath as her gaze moved upward. “Oh, Jamie,” she breathed. “What on earth has happened to you? Do I need to fetch a doctor?”
He shook his head. “Patrick Channing has seen to my head, and the other is little more than a scratch. It looks much worse than it is.” He swallowed his reluctance as if it was a spoonful of horrid boiled pudding. “Is Father about? I . . . I need to speak with him. Immediately.”
“He’s probably napping. The children wore him out. They insisted on going fishing this morning. I’ll go find him.”
James’s mouth dropped open. The image of his father, fishing with children, was so incongruous with the image he held like a miniature portrait in his mind that he could not quite bring himself to speak.
“Shall I fetch William too?” His mother’s voice wriggled through his thoughts.
“Er . . . no.” James hesitated. “Not yet.” He owed his brother an apology, true enough. But first he needed to sort things out with his father.
His mother’s hands fluttered nervously and finally settled at her side. “It is good to see you here.” She smiled at him, her cheeks coloring with emotion. “Your father will be so pleased.”
The little general darted by again. James could see now the boy was about five or six years old, and moreover, that he was a MacKenzie, with green eyes of a color to rival his own. The redcoat on the banister was harder to see, but showed every promise of growing into his uniform, with time and good meals. That the house he remembered as quieter than hell itself could ring with such sounds of family seemed impossible, and yet, even as he grappled for logic, the boy let out a war whoop and slid down to land in a puddle at his feet.
“You can wait in his study, it you would like.” His mother stepped over the boy, who lay groaning in glee on the floor, a hand clasped to his pretend injury. She motione
d for James to follow. “And I’ll see if I can’t find an old coat of William’s to replace that torn, bloodied one.”
That shook him from his reverie. “I don’t want a coat.” His voice turned out gruffer than he intended. He didn’t want anything from this house, or this family, but his quarrel was not with his mother. He softened his tone. “I am fine, Mother. Truly.”
He stepped forward, meaning to make his way to his father’s study, but pulled up short as his movement took him from the woman standing patiently behind him. His mother’s eyes settled with surprise on Georgette. She waited, no doubt for some hint of the manners she had once drilled into his eighteen-year-old head. He drew a breath. He had forgotten to introduce his . . . Well, what was she? Georgette wasn’t his wife, or anything easily explained. He settled for the obvious.
“Mother, I would like to introduce you to Lady Georgette Thorold. From London, and presently staying in Moraig.” He glanced at the woman who had pushed him here, the woman who made his blood jump to attention even now, with circumstances as they were. “Lady Thorold, this is my mother, the Lady Kilmartie.”
Georgette gave his mother a nod, and her lips curved upward. The sight bounced around in his chest. He glanced to his mother and realized her lips had settled into a matching smile.
A delighted smile.
His mother nudged aside his surprised silence and stepped around him, holding her hands out to Georgette. “Welcome. I cannot tell you how happy I am to meet you.”
SHE HAD NOT expected children.
Everywhere she looked, they were skittering about, shouting, knocking into things. The two little ruffians bore a strong familial resemblance to the man before her, leaving no doubt of their distant heritage. Georgette had never seen eyes that color outside of Scotland.
But more than that, it occurred to her they looked as James must once have, with picked-at scabs along their arms from old mosquito bites and noticeable gaps in their bright, eager smiles. This was what she was poised to give up if she pursued the dissolution of this marriage. Children of her own, children that looked like this. She was not so naïve as to imagine she would be brave enough to make a match with someone else.
Her heart settled sideways and refused to be righted.
She wasn’t convinced she could have children, or that she deserved them. Two years of marriage had produced only the one hopeful seed. The loss of it sat knifelike in her memory. She had loved the promise that unborn child had brought to her life, even if it originally had been conceived through nothing more than jaw-gritting duty. She had felt all the more guilty when she had proven too insufficient a wife and widow to merely hold on to it.
Georgette turned her head about, looking for James. She found only Lady Kilmartie, watching her with a bemused expression. “He’s gone into the earl’s study,” his mother said. “A man’s domain. I don’t recommend the experience.”
Georgette read between the unspoken lines. He does not want you there.
“I . . . had not realized he left.” Georgette shifted uncomfortably.
“Have you eaten?” his mother asked.
Georgette eyed the woman who waited patiently for her response. The countess looked nothing like James. Her gray hair bore evidence of having once been a sunny yellow, and her eyes were soft blue instead of a penetrating green. But she carried the same hint of warmth in the lines around her eyes, a suggestion that she would be quick to smile or laugh, though she was doing neither at this moment.
“I had something to eat near noon, thank you,” Georgette answered slowly. “James has not.” She fought the flush that threatened to submerge her skin at the use of his given name in front of his mother. No doubt Lady Kilmartie would think her the most forward kind of woman.
No doubt she would be right.
She was not what Georgette would want for her own son, a lady who forgot herself and behaved so shamefully after only a glass or two of brandy. His mother was a countess. Surely she would think he deserved better, once the shameful circumstances of their meeting came to light. He did deserve better. But still, a hot curl of jealousy flamed inside her at the thought.
Lady Kilmartie smiled and beckoned with one hand. “We can’t leave you standing here waiting. James has not spoken to his father for eleven years, and it is certain he will prefer discretion for some of what must be said. This will likely take a while.”
Georgette grimaced. “James mentioned how long it had been.”
His mother shook her head. “Fools, the both of them. Alike as two men could ever be, stubborn to their last breath. ’Tis a wonder he’s come at all, and I suspect that has as much to do with you as anything.”
Georgette could not disagree. It was definitely her doing that had brought James to this point. Only it was not the motivation this kind, gracious woman suspected. Guilt was setting in, with claws as sharp as a raptor’s. The conversation James was getting ready to have with his father was her fault, and would never have been necessary if she had not been so stupid as to take that first glass of ill-advised brandy last night.
“Let’s stop by the kitchen,” Lady Kilmartie went on, oblivious to Georgette’s churning thoughts. “Before I go to fetch his father.”
Georgette took a step in the indicated direction, relieved to have the situation so quietly discharged. A thought occurred to her, one spurred by the rumble she had caught from James’s stomach as they stood outside. “Might we send a plate into the study?” she asked.
His mother smiled approvingly. “Indeed, I think we should insist upon it. James never did remember to eat, was always too busy to stop and take the time. It will be one of your sorest trials as his wife, I can assure you of that.”
“I . . .” The flush that had started on Georgette’s neck some minutes ago deepened into a full-body rush of embarrassment. “You mistake matters. I am not your son’s wife, Lady Kilmartie.”
The woman’s light brows drew down, perplexed. “Forgive my presumption . . . I saw his ring on your finger, and I thought that is what he had come to tell us.”
Georgette fought the urge to shrink against the polished marble floor of the foyer. She worried the damning bit of jewelry on her finger. She was without a ready answer here, had not imagined the woman would be so astute. She wasn’t sure why she was still wearing the ring. She should have given it back to James the second he found her outside his offices.
“It is more that I shall not be his wife shortly,” she clarified. “It was a mistake.” She thought back to James’s explanation they would need to present the facts of the marriage before some commission in order to ascertain if it was legal or not. “One we are both planning to see undone,” she added.
His mother’s lips parted. “I see. And the affection you hold for each other does not sway that thinking?”
Georgette blinked against the question. There was no accusation in Lady Kilmartie’s voice, just a far too observant inquiry. She could not deny an unexpected affection for the man who would not be her husband.
Indeed, she felt more strongly toward James after a day’s acquaintance than she had ever hoped to feel for her first husband, even after two years of marriage. But her desire for some measure of independence after such a poor first experience would not be swayed. “I . . . I honestly am not sure if affection is enough,” she admitted.
Marriage should not be something a body undertook so lightly. How a man treated his wife was one consideration, and whether his family would accept her, although those things seemed pointed in a hopeful direction. There was also the matter of a man’s financial acumen to ponder. James’s performance in that matter was questionable, given that he had become so overset at the threatened loss of a mere fifty pounds. Georgette had learned the hard way that having a man who was undependable in the matter of making and keeping money was a hard burden to bear.
Then, of course, there was the smallish matter
of whether a man might keep a mistress in addition to a wife. Georgette had learned that the hard way too.
At her reluctant silence, Lady Kilmartie laughed, looping her arm through hers. “Good for you.” Her face dissolved into the smile promised by the fine lines that framed her eyes. “I knew I liked you, from the moment I saw my son’s hands linger after he pulled you off the horse and you stood up straight instead of falling at his feet.” She leaned in with a conspiratorial air. “I was watching from the drawing room window as you rode up. Anyone can see he cares for you, but I am happy you are not going to make this easy for him.”
Georgette’s mind squirmed in protest. She wrangled her words into something precise. “You do not understand, Lady Kilmartie. I am not going to make this anything for him.”
His mother waved a hand in dismissal. “ ’Tis far too late for that, dear. The pieces of a pairing are there, you simply need to fit them together. My son is a hard man to understand, contrary to the extreme. Like as not he would toss the gift of your love away if you presented it tied up in a neat little package.” The older woman pursed her lips. “Both of you need to work for it, to see if it’s right. Only then will it show some promise of growing into a marriage worth pursuing.”
Georgette’s throat swelled shut, as much in astonishment as worry. His mother spoke of love. It was preposterous. Love was a quality that grew in time between two people, nurtured by fond feelings and shared life experiences. Her mother had explained upon her come-out, in no uncertain terms, that such a sentiment only came with hard work and kind intentions, following a smart match. Georgette had tried her best to find it with her first husband, but night after night, month after month, her heart had remained locked up tight. She had thought there might be something wrong with him, a deficiency of spirit or regard. She had done everything she knew to win his favor, and he had become increasingly critical of her every move.
And then one afternoon she had seen him walking in Hyde Park with his red-haired mistress. The woman was animated and colorful and everything Georgette was not. Her husband’s head had been bent low over his mistress’s, his face lit with a delighted smile. That was when she had realized the faithless man was capable of love.
What Happens in Scotland Page 21