She had not heard the library door open, but she saw that Mairi was standing on the edge of the Turkish rug, watching her. The candlelight glittered on the silver thread in her gown. Mairi’s gaze went to the glass in Lucy’s hand. Her eyebrows shot up.
“I saw Lord Methven leaving,” she said.
“We were discussing literature,” Lucy said. She drank some more claret and felt it slip through her veins, soothing her.
“Of course you were, Lucy,” Mairi said dryly. “I always find literary discussions so exciting they leave me looking as dazed as you do now.”
“It’s the drink,” Lucy said.
“And the kissing,” Mairi said. “You should see yourself.”
Lucy looked up at her reflection in the big mirror that hung above the fireplace. Her eyes looked a hazy dark blue. Her lips were stung red and slightly swollen. She pressed her fingers to them and felt an echo of sensation through her body. Her hair had come undone from its remaining pins. She had no notion how that had happened. She had no notion how any of it had happened. She was not sure what disturbed her more: the kiss or those sweet moments after in Methven’s arms when she had felt protected and safe.
Now you know how Alice felt.
Immediately Lucy felt the cold fear take her. It was impossible. She had never felt physical desire, not when she had read the erotic tales, not even when she had written her own sensual poetry. Yet one minute in Lord Methven’s arms had awakened emotions in her that she had never known, feelings that terrified her because she knew where they could lead.
She did not want to feel any of them.
Lucy shrank in on herself, the cold lapping around her again. Alice had given herself up to love and passion, given her heart, given her whole self, body and soul. It had ended in shame and misery and pain, and Lucy would never, ever make the same mistake as her twin had done.
“It mustn’t happen again,” she said aloud.
There was a mixture of amusement and cynicism in Mairi’s eyes.
“How naive you are,” she said gently, taking Lucy’s arm and steering her toward the door. “Once it has happened once, of course it will happen again. The only real question is when.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“ROBERT NEEDS TO find another bride now that his first choice has fled.” The Dowager Marchioness of Methven, radiating energy and disapproval, seated herself with orderly care on the upright chair Robert held for her. She had a habit of speaking about people as though they were not present. Certainly it felt to Robert as though his input into the conversation was not required.
It was a week after the wedding and they were in the library at Methven Castle. Mr. Kirkward, the family lawyer, had traveled up from Edinburgh to advise them. He was sitting on a lumpy gilt-and-cream sofa and looking most uncomfortable. Lady Methven was seated opposite and Jack drew up a chair to one side. Robert preferred to stand. He crossed to the window and looked out; a soaking gray haze hung over the far mountains, damping the day down and casting dark shadows across the glen.
This was how he remembered his grandfather’s castle, as a dripping, mournful edifice that had been barren of pleasure. In those days it had been his older brother, Gregor, who had brought light and laughter to the old place, but now Gregor was gone. As always, Robert felt the profound ache in his chest that memories of Gregor brought with them. Gregor’s death had changed his life and his future. He had been the second son, the spare. Methven should never have been his. His grandfather had told him so, that fierce old man who had made no secret of the fact that Robert was a poor substitute for his brother.
“It is indeed most unfortunate that Miss Brodrie eloped,” Mr. Kirkward agreed, his dry, precise tones recalling Robert to the room with its sterile shelves of uncut books and its uncomfortable furniture. “Such volatility in a bride quite ruins one’s plans.”
“Better before the wedding than afterward,” Robert said laconically.
He saw Kirkward’s pale gray eyes blink rapidly behind his bottle bottom spectacles. Like Lord Brodrie and the minister before him, the lawyer was evidently thinking him a cold fish.
“Quite so.” Mr. Kirkward shuffled the papers he had taken from his document case. Robert noted his discomfort. He had seen it in other men who had been uncertain how to deal with him. His brusque manner, his lack of warmth, intimidated many people. He knew that. It could be useful; he had never seen the need to change. Charm was a concept that was alien to him.
“Any preferences for your next choice, Rob?” Jack asked. He threw Robert a glance laced with malicious amusement. Jack was one man who was most certainly not intimidated by him. But his cousin knew him better than most men.
“I don’t have the luxury of choice,” Robert said tersely. “As I understand it, there is no one suitable. I have to wed a descendant of the first Earl of Cardross, and sadly his line was not very fecund. Only Miss Brodrie and one other cousin are eligible.”
“That would be Lady Annabel Channing,” Lady Methven said, nodding. “Pretty girl, but a complete lightskirt. You would never know if your heir was yours or someone else’s.”
Mr. Kirkward made a choking noise. He took off his glasses and polished them feverishly on a white handkerchief.
Jack laughed. “I wouldn’t mind a brazen bride,” he said. “That might have its benefits.”
Robert did mind, but there was little he could do about it. “My attempts to find a suitable wife have foundered,” he said. “I might as well choose an unsuitable one since she is the only eligible woman left.”
If only he had not kissed Lucy MacMorlan. One kiss had made him ache to take Lady Lucy to his bed when what he was obliged to do was take another woman as his bride. He did not like Lucy very much. Her meddling had cost him dearly. He certainly did not trust her. But liking had little to do with wanting, and he wanted her badly.
“You will do nothing so unbecoming to the name of Methven as marry a lightskirt, Robert,” his grandmother corrected him.
“I’ll do what I have to do,” Robert said bleakly. “Grandmama, there is no alternative.” He would marry an entire brothel of lightskirts if that were the price he had to pay to keep his lands.
“I regret to inform you that Lady Annabel wed last month in London,” Mr. Kirkward said primly.
“Then we are in some difficulty,” Robert said. He felt a violent fury to be so hamstrung by fate. All his life he had taken control, wrested it to him when he had none, fought for it. To be outmaneuvered by a royal decree three centuries old, to be able to do nothing to secure his estates and the future of his clan was intolerable.
“We simply cannot allow ghastly Wilfred Cardross to take Methven land,” Lady Methven said. There was a plaintive note in her voice, as though she suspected Robert of backing off from the fight. “He is a horrible man and he will clear the people from the estate and destroy their communities and sell off everything that he can and squander it all on the cards.”
“I have no intention of allowing Cardross to take the Methven estates,” Robert said. The earl was a hard landlord who Robert knew would force the crofters from their traditional homes and livelihoods. Many of the families of men who had fought for the Methven clan for generations would be turned off, abandoned into poverty, families divided and their strong community spirit extinguished. Those on the far-flung northern islands that were part of his patrimony would simply starve in these hard economic times.
He could never allow it. It was his duty as laird to protect the welfare of his people, and he was not going to fall at this, the very first hurdle. It was his fault that they were in this position in the first place. If he had not turned his back on Methven and on his duty as heir all those years ago, he would not have been in Canada when his grandfather had died and would not have taken so long to claim his inheritance. He realized that his fists were clenched tightly. Tension seeped through every muscle in his body. It was impossible to allow Wilfred Cardross to triumph. Yet how to prevent it...
Mr. Kirkward cleared his
throat. “My lord, if I might mention...” He sounded timid. Robert wondered if the lawyer genuinely was afraid of him. Surely his reputation was not that bad.
“Of course, Mr. Kirkward,” he said.
“There is one other family line we have not previously explored,” Kirkward said. He searched through the sheaf of papers in his case with agitated fingers, and Robert saw he was holding a family tree. “We discovered it a number of weeks ago, but as you were already betrothed to Miss Brodrie it seemed irrelevant....” He placed the parchment on the table and smoothed it with his hand. “There is a slight problem, my lord, but perhaps, as you are—forgive me—desperate...”
Robert felt a prickle of irritation. He preferred directness to all this circumlocution.
“Spit it out, Kirkward,” he advised.
“You would be obliged to be brother-in-law to the man who stole your bride,” Kirkward murmured. “A sacrifice, but a small one perhaps, given that half of the Methven estates is at stake—”
Robert cut him off with a chopping motion. “Kirkward,” he said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Mr. Kirkward flapped the genealogical list in his hand. “We had been interpreting the terms of the royal decree very strictly by looking for direct descendants of the Cardross earldom in the male line,” he said. “However, when we looked in the female line we found another line of descent.”
Robert thrust the hair back from his forehead in a quick, impatient gesture. “Would that meet the terms of the original treaty?” he asked swiftly.
Mr. Kirkward sighed with the air of a man at the end of his tether. “All the legal advice I have taken suggests it would meet the terms, my lord.”
Robert felt a flash of hope. Then he remembered the lawyer’s previous words. “When you said I would be obliged to be brother-in-law to the man who stole my bride...”
“Mr. Kirkward is referring to Lachlan MacMorlan,” Lady Methven said. She was squinting upside down at the family tree, head on one side. “The Duke of Forres’s daughters are kin to Cardross.”
Robert looked up sharply. “I know the Forres are kinsmen,” he said, “but I thought it was too distant a connection.”
Mr. Kirkward was shaking his head. “Straight down the line from the youngest daughter of the first Earl of Cardross.” His eyes darted from Robert’s face to Lady Methven to Jack. “There is, however, an impediment.”
“Naturally,” Robert said ironically. “When was it ever easy?”
“You may not wed any lady over the age of thirty or a widow,” Jack murmured, quoting from the original royal treaty. “No lady under the age of seventeen, no foreigners, especially no lady with English blood—”
“I need no reminders,” Robert said dryly. He could not quite believe that when he and Jack had first heard the ridiculously tight terms of the royal treaty they had actually laughed at it.
“Lady Christina MacMorlan is one and thirty,” Lady Methven said. “And Lady Mairi is a widow, so they are both ineligible.”
That left only Lady Lucy.
Lady Lucy MacMorlan was his only chance.
Lady Lucy who wrote erotic love letters like a wanton and kissed like an innocent. Lady Lucy who had ruined his betrothal, lied to him, caused scandal after scandal, was deceitful and manipulative and had done it all for the money.
Lady Lucy whom he wanted with a fierce lust that was quite inexplicable.
Jack shifted in his chair. “And suddenly it’s your birthday, Rob,” he said dryly.
There was an abrupt silence in the room. Everyone looked at Robert.
“Whatever can you mean, Jack?” Lady Methven said.
“Only that Rob likes Lady Lucy MacMorlan rather a lot,” Jack said, his grin broadening.
“Thank you, Jack,” Robert said dryly. “A helpful intervention, as always.” He stood up. “You mistake. I do not like Lady Lucy at all and I do not trust her an inch.”
Lady Methven looked scandalized. “Robert! She is a sweet girl.”
“She is a manipulative little minx,” Robert said brutally. He thought about Lucy. He had every right to be angry with her, but he could not deny that he was still attracted to her. He thought about the taste of her and the feel of her in his arms. She might be a deceitful hussy, but there was a spark that burned between them like a flame on dry tinder. That heat and desire were exactly what he would have wanted from the woman in his bed.
If only he could trust her.
Mr. Kirkward cleared his throat. “Lady Lucy is heiress to sixty thousand pounds, which will be paid upon her marriage.”
Jack whistled. “A not inconsiderable sum. Not that you need the money, Rob.”
Robert did not. He had made a vast fortune of his own in Canada, trading in timber, but to marry an heiress was never a bad thing.
“She is also a most generous donor to charity,” Mr. Kirkward continued.
Robert’s head snapped up. “With what?”
Mr. Kirkward looked confused. “With the earnings from her writing, my lord. Lady Lucy is a benefactor to both the Foundling Hospital and the Greyfriars Orphanage. She donates anonymously, but it was not difficult to discover.”
“Your skills of detection impress me, Kirkward,” Robert said. He remembered Lucy claiming that she wrote for the money. The one thing she had not done was to justify her actions by telling him she gave the money away to charity. He wondered about her motives.
“You see!” Lady Methven said triumphantly. “I told you she was a sweet, generous girl.” She sighed. “I’ll allow that Lady Mairi might have been a better choice of bride, though. She is older, widowed and therefore has no false illusions about the married state—”
“Thank you, Grandmama,” Robert said, “for the vote of confidence.”
Lady Methven snapped her fingers. “You know what I mean, Robert. Besides, Lady Lucy is very particular. She had two seasons in London and three in Edinburgh and refused every suitor.” Lady Methven wrinkled her nose up. “The gossips say Lady Lucy’s heart was broken when her fiancé died and she has never met another man to match him, but personally I think that is so much nonsense. Duncan MacGillivray was a dry old stick and no suitable match for a young gel, but whatever the case, she has turned down many proposals of marriage.”
“She will not have the chance to turn me down,” Robert said smoothly. “I cannot afford a refusal.”
He pushed the hair back for his brow. He knew he had no choice other than to marry Lucy. “Do you know whether Lady Lucy returned to Forres or to Edinburgh after the wedding, Grandmama?” he asked Lady Methven.
Mr. Kirkward cleared his throat delicately. “My lord, I made discreet inquiries into the whereabouts of the duke’s daughters once I realized they might be eligible....” He flicked through the papers. “Apparently they belong to a club called the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society. It is an elite and prestigious society for Scottish ladies with academic credentials and it meets regularly in a different castle each month.”
“So I have heard,” Robert said. The Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society was as famous for its secretive nature as for its scholarly interests. No one who was not a member could attend the meetings, and no one quite knew what those meetings entailed. Robert imagined an esoteric group of ladies sitting around discussing dry-as-dust history and literature all day before changing for dinner and indulging in more discussions on intellectual subjects.
“Unfortunately,” Mr. Kirkward continued, “I have been unable to ascertain where they are currently meeting. It is secret information.”
“Grandmama?” Robert said. He knew that Lady Methven was not a member of the society, but she knew plenty of ladies who were.
Lady Methven smoothed her skirts. “Really, Robert,” she said. “The Highland Ladies is a secret society. The clue is in the word secret. You cannot expect me to give away any details.”
“Even to save Methven?” Robert queried. “I need to find Lady Lucy quickly and make her an offer of marriage.�
��
“What unromantic haste!” Lady Methven looked down her nose. “You should be trying to woo her, Robert, not dragoon her into marriage!”
“I do not have time to be romantic,” Robert said.
“I’d like to see you even try,” Jack murmured, sotto voce.
Lady Methven gave an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, very well, but do not let it slip that I told you or I will be drummed out of Edinburgh.” When Robert merely raised his eyebrows she said, “They are meeting at Durness Castle.”
Robert managed to swallow the instinctive curse that rose to his lips. It would not do to offend his grandmother with his language. She already considered him sadly uncouth. But Durness was remote, in the far north of Scotland; it would take him several days to reach it, longer if the weather turned bad. Worse, Wilfred Cardross owned the estate adjoining Durness. It seemed more than a coincidence. He had seen Cardross paying court to Lucy at Brodrie, and now he wondered what the earl was planning.
“The Highland Ladies like to travel,” Lady Methven said. “It broadens the mind.”
Robert sighed sharply. Some of his own estates, including the northern Methven stronghold of Golden Isle, lay in the same area. He had not been there since Gregor had died.
The day seemed darker all of a sudden, the gray clouds gathering and thickening into rain.
“It will be good for you to wed a member of the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society, Robert,” his grandmother said thoughtfully. “An educated woman will have a civilizing influence on both your manners and your mind after all those years living in the wilds of Canada. She may instruct you in both the social refinements and any intellectual accomplishments in which you are deficient—literature, mathematics, astronomy, geography, manners and conduct...”
Behind him, Robert heard Jack give a snort of laughter and made a mental note to threaten his cousin that if a word of this conversation ever reach the inns and clubs of Edinburgh, he would be a dead man.
He half expected his grandmother to start issuing him with instructions on how to fulfill the other requirement of the treaty, the need to produce an heir within two years. Her advice on that would be a step too far.
Nicola Cornick - [Scottish Brides 01] Page 7