by Karen Ranney
“Using women as your foil.”
“Using anyone,” he said unapologetically. “Anyone who could suit my purposes, Cameron.”
“You might not have murdered Whittaker, but were you involved in any of the other murders along the Clyde?”
Baumann sauntered to his desk, took the chair at his side and crossed his legs, looking supremely unconcerned at the question.
“I think, if you’ll check, you’ll find the majority of the murders happened before I was in your country.”
“Except for one. A Union colonel, I believe. Was he one of your men?”
Baumann’s face took on the appearance of granite. “You’ll understand if I don’t answer that.”
“Why, exactly, are you in Scotland?”
Baumann smiled. “The scenery? The fresh air? You know why I’m here, Cameron. To investigate your firm.”
He waited, but Baumann didn’t say anything else. What did he expect the man to do, launch into a fevered confession that he was desperately in love with Glynis?
“Did you set fire to the Raven?”
Baumann tipped his head back and laughed.
“Come now, you don’t expect me to answer that, do you? I imagine you have a policeman stationed somewhere, waiting for me to make such an improvident confession. Even if I did, why would I would tell you?”
“I’ve posted enough guards around the ship to prevent you from doing it again. Just a fair warning.”
“Oh, but there are plenty of men who are unemployed, Cameron, who’d be willing to do almost anything for the right amount of money. Maybe swim to the side and plant a bomb on the hull. Or toss a bottle filled with kerosene and a lit rag onto a dock. Can you guard your ship against the whole of Glasgow?”
“Yes, dammit, I can.”
“Your mother told me you were a stubborn man.”
He held himself still with an effort.
“I should have listened to her,” Baumann said, watching him intently.
Did the man expect him to explode in questions? Is that why Baumann was taunting him?
“I’m going to break one of my rules, Cameron. She’s one of my operatives. One of my best ones. She lives in the South, you know.”
“Get out.” He pushed the words past numb lips. “Get the hell out of my office, Baumann. And off my yard. And out of Glasgow.”
“You look a great deal like your mother, you know. Did no one ever tell you?”
Baumann stood, smiling down at him. “Olivia is a lovely creature with thick black hair and green eyes like yours. She has a mole near her mouth. The years have not altered her accent. When she’s angry, I can barely understand what she says.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I told her I was coming to Glasgow and she wanted to relay a message. To you and your sister. Mary, isn’t it?”
He didn’t respond.
“She wanted to know if you could forgive her. She didn’t desert you; she just changed her life.”
He wasn’t going to respond to Baumann’s words or his goading smile.
“Very well, Cameron. Since I have some fondness for your mother, I’ll tell her you conveyed your warm wishes. Now about Glynis. Treat her well, Cameron. Or I might have to return to Scotland.”
“And do what you did to Smythe?”
Baumann’s smile slipped. “You figured that out, did you? A tragic accident. A despicable man with a penchant for near children, a dark night, and a runaway carriage. A recipe for disaster, don’t you think?”
Lennox only stared after the man long after the door closed.
FOR DAYS, Lennox treated her like she was a precious glass ornament, some objet d’art he rescued from Russia and now cherished as priceless. In addition, he’d summoned her mother, who, on learning of the injury, insisted on clucking over her like a chick who’d wandered too far from the nest. Between Lennox, her mother, Lily, and Mrs. Hurst—who proved to be an exceptional gatekeeper—she was swaddled and cosseted and prevented from doing anything. She couldn’t even cough without one of them rushing to her side, asking if she was all right.
She slept beside Lennox at night, and when she was restless with pain, he woke and was at her beck and call. Did she need some of the laudanum the doctor had prescribed? No, thank you. A jot of whiskey, a glass of wine? No, thank you again. Nor did she want something to eat or a book to read. She wanted only to lay there beside him and watch him as he slept, experiencing the joy.
She spent the time healing, each day better than the next, until one morning, she was certain, she would wake and not even notice her arm. She would have a scar, an ugly one preventing her from wearing certain evening dresses, but did it matter?
Eleanor was convinced to leave and take Lily with her when Mary and Mr. Cameron arrived home. Glynis had never seen her new sister-in-law looking so beautiful. She almost glowed with good health and happiness. Even Mr. Cameron appeared wonderfully fit. Her father-in-law hugged and kissed her.
“It’s about time the two of you wed,” he said to her surprise.
She and Lennox only smiled at each other.
Lennox was finally persuaded to go back to the yard. She doubted, however, if anything would make Mrs. Hurst stop watching her so closely.
To escape the housekeeper’s eagle eye, she took to walking in the gardens. Today was another glorious day. Hillshead’s perch on the top of its hill made the house impervious to the smoke of Glasgow. Brisk breezes carried it far away, freshening the air and making her feel as if she lived in an enchanted place indeed.
She was dressed in one of her new dresses, the feat accomplished by a dressmaker with nearly as much skill as the woman she’d employed in Washington. With only one set of measurements, the seamstresses had provided a wardrobe fitting for the wife of one of the wealthiest men in Glasgow.
A man only slightly less wealthy, thanks to his generosity. Duncan had not refused Lennox’s draft. To do so would be stupid, revealing an excess of pride. She’d already demonstrated how foolish a MacIain could be. Let there only be one idiot in the family.
She’d told Lennox about Washington. Instead of condemning her, he’d urged her to forgive herself.
Would that be possible? Or was she going to have this stain on her soul forever? Would she always have to deal with what she’d done? She suspected she was, just as it would probably be the right penance. She’d never considered that what she was doing would have ramifications far beyond the moment. Just as she’d never thought marrying so precipitously would affect other people.
Perhaps every person had a worn spot on their soul. A place where a bad deed, an inconsiderate remark, a bit of cruelty, burned away the goodness. Could you ever patch those threadbare spots? Could you ever make up for those mistakes?
If regrets were ships, she’d have enough to fill the Clyde. Yet she had love as well. On balance, she had more love than regrets. She loved her mother, Duncan, Lily, and Mabel. They were all her family and would always have a spot in her heart. She adored Lennox. She always had. She knew she always would.
The sun faded behind Glasgow as if embarrassed, leaving a blushing sky behind. The Clyde reddened, mirroring the sky, bustling with activity as day turned into night: a barge belched upstream, a ship slid out of dock. Slowly, ships became shadows and spires in the darkness.
Stars blinked hazily in the sky as if rousing from sleep as the moon tucked itself behind the riffling clouds.
The air was warm, scented with roses and mint. A soft breeze caressed her cheek and danced up her skirt. Lights began to shine in Hillshead’s windows. She heard a frog’s low-pitched bellow, the chirping of an insect, the rustle of something in the taller grass just beyond the garden.
How long had it been since she’d taken the time to simply hear the world around her? Not the chatter of people or the hum of voices. Not the clatter of wheels on cobblestones or the drone of engines, but the sound of nothing but life.
The beating of her heart in her chest, the indraw
n breath and exhaled sigh, the clench of her fingers against the hewn wood of the bench, were all signs of her own life. The temporary permanence of it, the proof of her existence.
In this instance, in this moment, in this exact time, she felt strangely more Scot than she ever had. She was as elemental as her ancestors, all those proud women who’d marched over the craigs and through the glens of the Highlands, determined to aid their men in protecting their homes. They’d done so clad in plaids and almost nothing else, and here she was in a new dress, sitting outside a magnificent home built by one of their descendants.
If they could have seen through the mists of time, what would the Camerons have thought about Lennox? For that matter, what would the MacIains, proud Highlanders themselves, have thought of her?
Would they have uttered words of caution to the heedless Glynis? Or would they have had any measure of compassion for her?
She heard him coming, his feet crunching on the gravel. When Lennox sat beside her, his shoes dug into the path, making runnels in the shells. She let the silence build between them until it was a third participant in their nonconversation.
Darkness enshrouded them, creating a perfect place, an island in the world. They were far away from murder, war, revenge, or drama. Here only the echoes of a joyous childhood intruded, scenes of her racing along the paths or climbing one of Hillshead’s great oak trees. Lennox shouting at her to stop, he’d catch up with her soon enough. Or telling her she was going to fall, which is exactly what she’d done.
Most of her sweetest memories included him, and now, some of her worst.
She turned to him, wishing the moon would emerge from behind a cloud and illuminate him.
“Why didn’t you tell me what you felt all those years?” he asked.
“I tried,” she said, looking away.
“When?”
“The night you were entertaining the Russians. When Lidia Bobrova couldn’t walk without hanging onto you.”
“Just before you disappeared.”
She turned to look at him. “What would you have said if I’d managed to tell you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I would have been shocked, but then I was already feeling a little odd. You had just kissed me, you see.” He reached over and placed his arm around her shoulders. “I wasn’t able to forget that kiss for a very long time.”
“I should have seduced you,” she said. “You would have had to marry me.”
He laughed. “If Duncan hadn’t shot me.”
“When did you know you loved me?”
“It began the night we kissed. But before I knew it, you were married and here I was, feeling as if I’d been hit by a cannonball. In all those years I told myself to forget you. To go on with my life. I met a nice sensible woman I discovered I couldn’t marry because she wasn’t you.”
She sighed and put her head on his shoulder.
“I can’t be sorry, Lennox,” she said. “If you’d married her we wouldn’t be here now.”
“In the garden with my wife.”
My wife. She loved the sound of that. Mrs. Cameron. That, too.
“When you came home you were Glynis, but all grown up. Everything crystallized in that moment.”
“I tried to forget you,” she said. “I tried, truly. But every time I turned around and saw a man with black hair, I was reminded of you. Every time the wind blew the scent of the sea to me, I thought about you.”
“Every day’s a new day, Glynis. A new start. We shouldn’t carry around the past like sacks of coal. We’re married and we’ve the rest of our lives together. Let’s not waste time regretting what happened.”
Could she do that? Could she simply accept her good fortune and turn her face to the future? She was going to try.
“We’ll shock the gossips of Glasgow with how happy we are,” she said. “Still, I imagine they’ll carry on for a while with tales of me. Mrs. Cameron, involved in a shooting in the Lafayette Hotel. Or Mrs. Cameron, knifed by a madwoman.”
“Mrs. Cameron, solving a murder.”
“There was that, I suppose,” she said.
“Mrs. Cameron, adored by her husband.”
Her toes curled.
She glanced up at him, his face limned by moonlight. He was her best friend and always had been. Now they were lovers with a thrumming need stretching between them.
“And I want you, Lennox. I have for a very long time.” When he bent and kissed her softly, her breath left her on a gasp.
She tilted her head and looked at him.
“Lennox,” she said softly. “Are you trying to seduce me in the garden?”
He bent until his lips hovered just over hers. “Now that’s an idea, Glynis Cameron. Would you dare to be so brazen?”
He stood and pulled her up to him. His mouth landed on hers, crushing her lips. His hand slid around her neck, cupping her head as his mouth opened, demanding surrender. His tongue slid between her lips, inciting her moan as she dropped her head back into his palm.
His body fitted against hers as if they were designed for each other. He kneed her legs apart, his thigh rubbing against her, the friction almost unbearable.
Her hands scrabbled inside his shirt, desperate to feel him, to taste him. Heat sizzled through her, danced with fiery feet up her spine and back down, settling in her abdomen.
Suddenly, they were on a grassy spot near the intersection of garden paths. To her left was the kitchen garden. To her right was the path to the flower gardens. And Lennox’s fingers deftly unfastening the buttons of her bodice.
“I’ve noticed you’ve no hoop,” he said, his moonlight grin charming her.
“I’m at home. I’m only wearing a petticoat.”
“Good, as long as it doesn’t spring up and hit me, we’ll manage fine.”
She didn’t have a chance to ask him how, exactly, they would manage before he’d freed her breasts, leaving them exposed to the moonlight and his seeking lips.
He yanked her close, her back arching, his mouth branding her with his touch. Her hands gripped his arms as he lifted her and just as gently deposited her on the grass.
She realized he had no intention of removing her clothing at all, not with his hand insistent beneath her skirt. All she could do was reciprocate, but he was placing kisses all over her breasts, driving every thought from her head.
“Take your trousers off,” she managed to say to his answering chuckle.
“I’ve no wish to be bare-assed naked, my darling Glynis.”
“I don’t know why,” she said. “It’s a beautiful ass.”
Laughter added another spice to passion. The sensation flooded through her body to puddle low in her stomach.
She wanted him now and needed him forever.
The moonlight accentuated the planes and shadows of his face. He was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen, monochromatic, alluring, and hers.
Her breath left her on a groan when he found her with his fingers.
“Ah, Glynis, you’ve spoilt me for any other woman.” He levered himself over her. “No one else will ever love me like you do, my darling girl.”
Pushing her skirts aside, he found the open slit in her pantaloons and entered her.
“They won’t make the top of my head explode. Or make me feel like I’m out on the ocean with a new ship surging beneath me.”
“Are you calling me a ship?” she asked, feeling an exultation she’d never before experienced. She wanted to laugh and shout at the same time.
“You’re my ship, Glynis. Mine.”
Words were beyond her. All she felt was delight and need and tears and joy and a wanting deep in her bones.
He withdrew, entered, and withdrew again, a movement like the endless tide. She toed off her shoes, wrapped her legs around his, her heart racing and her breath sawing in her lungs.
His talented mouth drugged her with his kisses, teased her nipples until they were erect and begging.
She could see the moon ove
r his shoulder bathing them in a bluish light. Pagans in the garden, loving on the good earth of Scotland, mating in hunger and near desperation.
The explosion of feeling caught her unaware, forced a startled cry from her, one silenced by Lennox’s kiss. Then he joined her in bliss, the moment frozen in time, a recollection she’d use to replace other memories not so dear.
When she came back to herself she was lying on the ground with her skirt still thrown up around her waist and her breasts bare to the night breeze.
“I’ve lost one of my shoes,” she said dazedly, remembering the bay in the stable. Now, at least, she knew how a shoe could be lost.
Had the estimable Mrs. Hurst engaged in a passionate interlude with the bearish stablemaster? They were both unmarried and of a similar age. She pondered the thought until Lennox spoke.
“It’s over there in the flower bed,” Lennox said. A moment later he abruptly sat up. “I forgot about your arm,” he said.
“So did I. I’m fine.” The wound ached a little, but that was a small price to pay for the bliss the rest of her was experiencing.
She fiddled with her skirt, pushing it over her bent knees.
“Are you certain?”
She placed her hand on his bristly cheek. Her heart expanded in a futile effort to hold all her happiness.
“I’m very certain, Lennox,” she said softly.
He arranged himself next to her, his arm a pillow for her head. She stared up at the sky and its panorama of swiftly moving clouds and stars. The moon seemed to wink at her as if promising not to speak of what he’d witnessed. Somewhere not far away, an animal scampered through the grass, no doubt to tell the tale of what he’d seen to his interested brethren.
“We have gamboled in the garden,” she said.
“That we have.”
She really should be more horrified but she only felt wonderful, her body still echoing with satisfaction.
“Do you think we were seen?” she asked, looking up at the windows.