by Amanda Scott
“Oh, Mollie.” The words were barely intelligible. He said nothing further until they emerged from the woods and the great castle loomed ahead of them, a dense shadow now, for the moon had set. But the stars were reflected in the lake, making it look like a glittering carpet surrounding the huge bulk in the center. Hawk reined in and reached for her horse’s bridle at the same time. “If Prinny is not waiting for me in there, Bathurst will be,” he said. “But this is a great deal more important to me right now.” He slid from the saddle and lifted her down, his arms going around her in a tight hug. “I’d no idea you blamed yourself,” he said quietly.
“What else was I to think?” she asked, her words muffled against his chest. “I thought I’d failed you as a wife. Most likely,” she added bitterly, “in bed.”
Instead of denying it, he let out a long breath, guiding her gently toward the low wall of the main causeway. “Sit down, sweetheart. It was not you who failed me, but rather the reverse, I fear.”
Obeying the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, Mollie sat down, feeling the chill of the stone wall even through the thickness of her cloak and breeches. Hawk sat beside her, drawing her into the shelter of his arm. As he talked, his voice began to take on the caressing tone that was so dear to her, and she snuggled against him.
“You fascinated me from the outset, you know,” he said.
“I was a challenge to you.”
“True. So many men wanted you. But I meant to have you for my own. I was very young, Mollie. That much of what I said before was true. In fact, all of what I said before was true. But only a half-truth, as you said. I didn’t think I could make you understand the whole. In fact, until a short time ago, I didn’t understand it myself. But since I’m going to tell you the whole now, I may as well begin by telling you that you owe some of my understanding to Harriette.”
“Harriette Wilson!” She stiffened against him but relaxed again when he chuckled.
“It’s so easy to get a rise from you, sweetheart.”
“Then it is not true?”
“Oh, it’s true enough, but it’s not what you think. I’d best begin with my homecoming. I told you the truth about that, or as much of it as I was able to tell you. Wellington sent me, but he sent me because Prinny demanded that he send someone who could help flush out the spy who had been making mischief with the British plans of attack. Wellington was only too happy to do so, because the French had been playing us for fools for months, and it was only too clear to him that somehow word was getting to them of his plans. Since all communication between the Peninsula and London is conducted through the dispatches, which never leave the courier’s hands, it was fairly clear that the leak had to be in London, and that meant someone in the upper echelons of either Bathurst’s staff or one of our ally’s. So Wellington chose me, because I had the entrée to such circles socially as well as because of my military experience. Also, he informed me in no uncertain terms that it was time and more I was returning to take up my family duties.”
“Tell me about Harriette Wilson,” Mollie demanded, not caring a straw for the political details.
“Patience, sweetheart. Let me tell this in the order it happened or I’ll get tangled, and you won’t understand her part in it. I brought the true plans for Vitoria with me, and Bathurst himself met me at Hastings when we landed. He kept all the information under his hat, not even telling Prinny. The victory told us all we needed to know. Then Bathurst let the word get about that I had brought more information, including Wellington’s specific plans for the summer and fall campaigns. We hoped to stir some action that way, but I can promise you I never expected or wanted Ramsay to become involved. I’d no notion he even knew that rascal d’Épier.”
“He told me you gave him information to pass along to d’Épier.”
“Indeed. They hoped at first that I’d have something in the house, copies of maps or even copies of the plans themselves. Failing in that, they wanted Ramsay to pump me for information. We played a few games with them, in that I gave the lad certain bits to pass along, hoping we might flush out something in that fashion. And we did.”
“Whatever it was that Prince Nicolai said last night,” Mollie put in excitedly.
“Yes,” he agreed. “That, added to your information about his French mother. His motive in all this has no doubt been to retrieve the family estate in France.”
“So that was why you found that information so interesting!”
He nodded. “Unfortunately for myself and for Breck, neither a French mother nor the slip Nicolai made last night was sufficient evidence to confront the man or even to suggest his complicity to de Lieven, who was bound to support his own man against anything but unarguable fact. Breck, Jamie, and I didn’t even have a good opportunity to discuss the matter. We meant to have it out as soon as Prinny arrived, but d’Épier and his men were waiting for us when we left to meet him.”
“But no one left the castle,” Mollie objected. “That was why Ramsay wouldn’t believe Nicolai was involved.”
“Jamie probably followed the same reasoning,” Hawk replied. “We thought d’Épier was being watched in London, but he must have given them the slip. I think our capture—or mine, at any rate—was intended from the moment they knew we were coming down here. It would give them a chance to discover not only what information I had brought back but what instructions were being relayed to Wellington.”
“But surely they must have known the plans would be changed once you were captured?”
“Why? As far as they knew no one suspected who the spy was, and my disappearance might just as well be attributed to footpads as to any other cause. I daresay after a decent period of time, Breck’s body and mine would simply have been discovered in the woods near the valley road where we were taken.”
Mollie shuddered. But when he remained silent for a moment longer, she remembered Harriette Wilson. “And?” she prompted. “Where does Miss Wilson enter into all this, my lord, and how is it that I am in her debt?”
He chuckled again. “I spent my time in London talking to anyone and everyone who might point us in the right direction, and Harriette Wilson has more connections in the beau monde than anyone, sweetheart. She was one of the first people I went to in my search for the most likely person to be our quarry. I confess I met her during my first Season and even went to a few parties at her house. We became friends of a sort, but because I knew perfectly well that she was also friendly with my father, the connection never became an intimate one. Nonetheless, during one of our meetings last month, she asked me how my marriage was faring after so long a separation. What with one thing and another, we got to discussing certain matters, and she made me see one or two things more clearly.”
Resentment struggled with curiosity, and curiosity won. “How so?”
“Do you remember our wedding night, sweetheart?”
Mollie nodded, biting her lip. His hand moved idly up and down her upper arm. “I was terrified,” she said. “Fascinated, but terrified. It was wonderful at first, and I thought everything would be fine, but then something happened, and suddenly it wasn’t fine. I thought I must have done something wrong.”
“You cried out because I hurt you,” he said. “I thought…God help me, I thought you hated it as much as my mother did. You were so small, and I’d hurt you, and I was certain I would always hurt you.”
“But it only hurt the one time,” she told him earnestly. “It never hurt again.”
“I know that now. But I had heard for years all about the pain and the indignity of such things, you see, and I had had little experience myself, and only with women of a lower order, the sort my mother had insisted were made for such primitive business. I told you once before that I had feared I might be like my father. But that was only one side of the coin. Far more than that did I fear that you were like my mother.”
“But I’m not!”
“No, I know that now. I had never been the first with any woman before, you see,
and no one had ever told me what it was like. I was very young, and my father certainly never talked to me as a young man’s father ought to talk to him. Nor did Uncle Andrew, of course. Or anyone else. And while it’s very true that we discussed sex to the exclusion of a good many more academic subjects at Eton and Oxford, we never somehow got around to discussing the fact that the first time for any woman is painful. Boys know a good deal more sometimes than the adults around them think they know, but when you get down to it, they only know bits and pieces of the whole. Rarely is there one among them who knows it all. It was only a small bit of information, but it was a crucial bit in my case.”
“But surely, you must have learned about such stuff eventually, sir.”
“Do you take me for a skirt-chaser, sweetheart? I assure you I never was one. I had been raised to feel sorry for my mother. I knew next to nothing about the facts of life other than that gently nurtured ladies detested being with their husbands in the bedchamber. And when I discovered that I could scarcely keep my hands off you, it scared me silly to think I might put you through the same hell my mother had been put through all those years. That was only a part of the whole picture, of course, but at the time it made it easier to leave than to stay.”
“Your nobility was misplaced, sir,” Mollie told him, wrinkling her nose. “I welcomed your touch. Always.” She turned toward him, lifting her face, inviting him to kiss her.
Before he did, he said, “I think I began to realize that from your response to me when I came home.”
“Only you attributed that to the fact that I’d had a dozen affairs,” she reminded him tartly.
He looked rueful. “That was also Harriette’s doing, I’m afraid. Her suggestion, plus things I began hearing once we reached London. It didn’t take long to realize they were wrong.”
Mollie’s lips twisted into a crooked grin. She peered into his eyes. “Did you actually discuss me with that woman?”
“That was not my specific intention,” he said, “though I asked questions about young women in general that I’d never asked anyone else. And she no doubt guessed how matters stood,” he added honestly, “for she told me some home truths about my mother, which she had gleaned after some years of acquaintance with my father.”
“Surely, she never took everything he said for truth,” Mollie said indignantly.
“No, of course not. But Harriette has a good deal of experience in such matters, you know.”
“I daresay,” Mollie said sardonically. “Kiss me, sir, before I favor you with my candid opinion of your behavior.”
He obliged her at last, drawing her more firmly into his arms and kissing her thoroughly. Mollie strained against him, returning his kisses passionately and thrilling to his touch when he impatiently pushed her cloak aside and began to unbutton her waistcoat. Within moments his hand was stroking her breast beneath the shirt, and she gasped as his fingers brushed against her taut nipples. For a moment she indulged herself in a mental vision of what it would be like to be taken by him right there in the middle of the main causeway. But it had also occurred to her husband that their activities might well lead to just such a scene, and reluctantly he straightened, pulling the panels of her shirt back together, and fumbling for the lacing.
“No,” she murmured in protest.
“Yes,” he replied, making her sit upright again while he buttoned her waistcoat. “This is scarcely the time or the place. Prinny and Bathurst will be in a pother to hear what has been going forward these past hours, and much as I should like to keep them waiting, it will not do for you to be seen like this, or for either of us to be found here in the midst of what we should be found in the midst of, if you take my meaning.”
Mollie chuckled. “At least you know now that I should not dislike it, sir.”
“Unprincipled baggage,” he teased, buttoning the last button and pulling her to her feet to stand between his knees just in front of him. His expression altered slightly as he looked at her, and there was a touch of sternness in his tone when he spoke again. “We have not finished with the other matter, you know.”
She groaned. “Gavin, we have already plucked that crow. Surely you do not mean to scold me further for following the prince.”
“I don’t know that I would call it scolding,” he said quietly, “but I certainly mean to assure myself that you’ll never do anything so cock-brained again. I shall also have a word or two to say to my idiotish brother on the subject, I assure you. It is bad enough that he should have taken you to a boxing match…oh, yes,” he added when she gasped, “I figured that out long since. That was foolish, but this was a good deal worse.”
“But I have told you it was necessary,” she protested. She stroked his face, feeling the slight prickle of his rising beard. “What we did was follow the most sensible course, my lord,” she murmured more huskily, leaning forward to kiss him.
“Do not hope to muddle my senses again, sweetheart,” he warned her, capturing her hand in one of his own and giving it a squeeze as he pushed her away. “I have been learning to let you be yourself and not to try to force you into any established mold, but you deserve that I should be very angry with you for putting your sweet life in danger as you did. If I were to use you as a properly autocratic husband would, you would find yourself across my knee right now, receiving severe punishment for your foolhardiness.”
“Oh!” She took a little step backward at the thought that he might yet do such a thing, but her temper stirred, too. “That is a fine attitude,” she told him roundly, “considering that you already admitted owing your life to my actions.”
He sighed. “Your capability with a bow no doubt helped at the time, sweetheart, but I assure you there was not the slightest necessity for your interference in the matter. Breck and I are well able to take care of ourselves, and even if we had not managed to secure our freedom before morning, Jamie or Ramsay must have found us by then. The fact is, my love, that such affairs are always better handled by men. You might just as likely have made a mull of it, you know, for that is what usually happens when women meddle in things that do not concern them. But we will not discuss the matter further tonight, my…Mollie!” His last word came in a shout of dismay as he tumbled backward, assisted by a mighty shove from his diminutive wife. She had a fine view of his upturned rump and thrashing legs before he disappeared with a satisfying splash beneath the dark waters of the starlit lake.
She did not wait to see his head break the surface again before snatching up the reins of both horses and springing to her saddle. As she dug her spurs, into Baron’s sides, she heard Hawk bellowing after her, but she did not dare to look back. Instead, tugging on his horse’s reins, she forced the animal to a trot behind her and rode on through the central courtyard to the stableyard. Sliding to the ground, she flung the reins at the sleepy groom who came to meet her, mumbled something to the effect that his lordship was just coming, and ran into the rear hall and up the stairs. The hall itself was empty, but she had no doubt that if Bathurst was not waiting up in the great hall to greet whoever came to bring word of Hawk and Breckin, one of his minions would be keeping a lookout to warn him if anyone came back to the castle. No doubt, even now, word would be reaching him of their return. Nevertheless, Mollie was perfectly certain that her husband would not allow himself to be detained for long before he came in search of her.
Rushing into her bedchamber, she began hastily to pull off her clothes, flinging them wherever they might fall. Naked, she pulled the knitted cap from her head, letting her hair fall free again. Then she hurried to the wardrobe to find her laciest nightdress. Once this article had been slipped over her head, she felt less vulnerable and better prepared to greet him when he came to her, as she knew he would. He was not a man to take a drenching without doing something about it. With any luck he would finish what he had begun on the causeway before he left her again. She grinned at her reflection in the dressing-table glass as she sat down and picked up her hairbrush.
She had taken fewer than ten strokes through her tangled tresses before she heard his boots on the stones of the corridor just outside her door. Almost at the same time the door opened, and she turned to see her dripping husband filling the doorway.
“Madam wife, you will pay for your impertinence,” he announced, but to her astonishment there was a grin on his face and his eyes were twinkling.
“You cannot deny the provocation, sir,” she retorted warily. “You talked a deal of nonsense.”
“Granted,” he replied, moving toward her and kicking the door shut behind him. “I apologize for suggesting that you are not the most capable of creatures. Nonetheless, I hope you do not think to get away with such tactics unscathed.”
Mollie leaned away when he reached for her. “The Regent,” she reminded him anxiously. “Lord Bathurst. Really, sir, you must—”
But it was no use. Grasping her arm firmly, he pulled her to her feet and into his arms. “I’ve sent them both to the devil, sweetheart, so that I may attend to my naughty wife.” He hugged her, lowering his head to nuzzle his face against her soft curls.
“Gavin!” she shrieked as his dampness promptly made itself felt up and down her body through her thin nightdress. “For heaven’s sake, take off those wet clothes first, my lord.”
“In time,” he retorted, chuckling with delight as his large hands moved tantalizingly down her back to cup her hips, pulling her more tightly against him. “In due time, my sweet, incorrigible love.”
About the Author
A fourth-generation Californian of Scottish descent, Amanda Scott is the author of more than fifty romantic novels, many of which appeared on the USA Today bestseller list. Her Scottish heritage and love of history (she received undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Mills College and California State University, San Jose, respectively) inspired her to write historical fiction. Credited by Library Journal with starting the Scottish romance subgenre, Scott has also won acclaim for her sparkling Regency romances. She is the recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award (for Lord Abberley’s Nemesis, 1986) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. She lives in central California with her husband.