“No, you keep it.” He shoved his hands in his pockets in that way of his and fastened his usual grin in place. “I could use the soaking.”
He deserved better than her. He deserved a wife who could let herself melt as the heat of his kiss swept through her. One who didn’t invite and then run the other way shrieking like a lunatic. He deserved a wife who would send him enticing smiles and then welcome him into her arms.
But he was stuck with her instead. Feeling the sigh from the soles of her feet, she nodded and trudged her way back to the house.
Twelve
Are they determined to go, then?”
Lilias spun around from where she stood at the edge of the garden, watching Rowena with Lady Ella and the Duchess of Stafford. She pulled out a grin for O’Malley, though it seemed every time the other maid saw her, she was as like to frown as to smile. “Pardon?”
“To Delmore.” O’Malley nodded toward the north, where the neighboring estate apparently stood. “For this house party.”
“Oh.” She looked back to the garden. O’Malley’s mistress was laughing, Rowena smiling. Good to see, and to hear her Wena humming of an evening. Coming out of her shell a bit and seeming to enjoy this new company.
Did she need any more proof that she had done right in this plan? As for the duke’s plans . . . “His Grace certainly speaks of it as indisputable fact. Is there a reason they shouldn’t?” She hadn’t forgotten the younger woman’s odd comments the day they arrived, but for the life of her she could make no sense of them.
Now O’Malley sighed and tucked a raven wisp of escaped hair back into her chignon. “It isn’t mine to tell the whole story, but sure and I can’t let you go in blind. Delmore and its mistress—there’s darkness there. It’s where Her Grace and I were held prisoner last year when the late Lord Pratt kidnapped us. It’s . . . I’d like to shake some sense into His Grace, is what, were it mine to do.”
Lilias frowned. Lewis and Lapham had told her a bit about the kidnapping, but they had failed to mention it had all happened at the place they were headed to in an hour’s time. “And the current mistress?”
“Widow of the criminal. There wasn’t evidence enough to arrest her, but we all feel quite certain she was involved.” O’Malley’s gaze, northward again, went unfocused. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Duke of Nottingham in the last two years, it’s that there’s no talking him out of something when he thinks it the right thing to do. But sure and you need to know what he’s taking you into. You need to pray, if you’re the praying type. And if you’re not, you’d best become the type mighty quick.”
The gust of wind was hardly to blame for the chill that swept up Lilias’s spine. “Ye can be sure I will. Is it safe? To go?”
“If His Grace thought otherwise, he wouldn’t be taking his family, aye?” Offering a weak smile, O’Malley turned away. “Still. Sometimes we see what the masters don’t. Or won’t. Keep your eyes open while you’re there, Cowan. And your heart inclined toward prayer. We’ll be doing the same from here.”
Not knowing what other response to make, Lilias nodded and watched the maid stride back into the safety of Whitby Park.
The week had gone too quickly. Rowena rubbed a finger absently over the smooth silk of her new dress and wished they weren’t leaving. Or that if they were, it would be to go home, not to yet another houseful of strangers she would have to learn to smile at just in time to leave yet again.
Scarcely away from home all her twenty years, and then to four separate houses in the course of a month—the Brices in Edinburgh, Whitby Park, Delmore, and only then to her new home in Sussex.
“Oh, he’s always doing that.” Ella shook her head, grinning. “I don’t know how I put up with him.”
Rowena wasn’t sure what she had missed, though she had to assume the “he” was Brice.
Brook chuckled. “Trust me, I know. If you recall, the first time we met was in such a circumstance. As if you believed for a moment that he had fallen in love with me in a thirty-second acquaintance.”
Aye, definitely Brice. Rowena’s chest went tight. She ducked her head to study the handsome little face of Abingdon, who had fallen asleep in her arms a few minutes ago. And to tell herself not to be jealous, given that Brice hadn’t fallen in love with Brook.
He claimed.
Ella’s laugh chimed sterling and bright. “I confess it took me a moment to be sure. Brice being Brice, he could well have up and announced one day that he’d met a young lady and the Lord had struck him with an epiphany that she was to be his bride.”
The silence fell quick and heavy. Rowena glanced up, ready to look away again quickly.
But the horror in Ella’s eyes at the realization of what she just said was eclipsed by the laughter that soon spilled from her lips again. “And so he did!”
“And aren’t we glad of it?” Brook smiled over at Rowena, her eyes certainly clear of any dark emotions. “I’m so pleased we’ve had these days to get to know each other, Rowena. I only wish we had more of them. Good friends are too hard to come by.”
Rowena could nod her agreement to that. “Aye. Though I can’t imagine ye have too hard a time of finding them.”
Brook breathed a laugh. “Don’t you? I’m not exactly what most English expect of their nobility. Am I, Ella.”
Ella, of course, grinned. “You’re so much better.”
“Ha! I like to think so, of course, mais alors. Most disagree. I am headstrong and thumb my nose at tradition and am all the time doing what society thinks I ought not.”
Her? Rowena gave her finger to the sleeping bairn, who obligingly curled his tiny hand around it. And granted the thumbing of her nose, anyway. But how could society help but love someone so bold? So beautiful?
They couldn’t.
“She disbelieves me,” Brook said in a mock whisper to Ella, gaze still on Rowena and a smile hovering at the corners of her mouth. “I am being perfectly honest, Rowena. Had your husband not made such a show of being fond of me—he being the darling of London long before I arrived on the scene—I probably would have been laughed out of Town.”
“Which you would have happily seized as an excuse to come home. She hates the Season.” Ella waved a hand as if dismissing her friend’s foolishness.
Rowena was stuck on that being fond. A show, she said. But of course she would. She married another, and Brice would surely have laughed off his affections, if he’d had them, wouldn’t he have done? Or maybe it really was a show. Which just pointed to how skilled he was at putting one on.
Confusing, all the same.
“Of course I hate the Season. It’s a bunch of deceptive nonsense. Isn’t that right, Duke?”
Rowena’s head snapped up, around. Brice was just stepping into the garden’s entrance, his grin as bright as usual.
“I haven’t the foggiest notion what you’re talking about, Brook, but I don’t dare argue.” His attention moved from Ella to Rowena. “Are you ladies ready? The bags have been loaded, and it’s time to go.”
Rowena stood, careful to hold the baby as motionless as she could. “Aye.”
“I suppose.” Ella pushed herself up too, though a pout had overtaken her dimples. “If we must.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.” Frowning, Brook stood too and approached Rowena with her arms outstretched for her son. She said something in French that Rowena couldn’t follow.
Brice sighed. “We’ve been through this. It’s necessary.”
“Hmm.” Taking the wee one with practiced ease, Brook managed to smile at Rowena in one second and scowl at Brice in the next. “We have different definitions of that word, n’est pas?”
“So it would seem.”
“And we shall see which of us is right this time—statistically, it has to be my turn soon.”
“We shall, indeed, see.” Brice offered his elbow to Rowena. But his grin wasn’t so bright anymore. “Come, darling. We’re in the car again.”
Rowena let h
erself be ushered out of the garden and around to the drive. Wondering more with every step what in the world they weren’t telling her.
O’Malley was right—darkness gathered here. Lilias felt it the moment she stepped inside Delmore with the other servants, and it didn’t abate at all through the afternoon. She folded away the last of Rowena’s new gowns, sidled over to the window, and let loose the shudder that had been threatening to shiver its way down her spine all day.
Her cousin in Ireland would insist they must have built this place over a fairy path. Her grandmother would be more apt to murmur about witches and devils. Lilias didn’t pretend to ken what it might be. But something lurked here. Something slithered through the corridors and clawed up the walls. She felt its cold breath. Saw its shadow from the corner of her eye.
Were it up to her, she would never have unpacked—they would have headed straight back to Whitby Park. So close, but a world away.
The door opened, and she spun to see Rowena slipping in, face flushed. “What happened?”
The lass shivered. “Nothing. Just . . .”
“Aye. Ye feel it too.” Lilias bustled forward with Rowena’s warm wool wrap. The fire had been set an hour ago, but the chill wouldn’t leave the room, and the silk Rowena was wearing today may be pretty as the morning mist, but it would be no warmer. “Here, lass. How was tea?”
Rowena sighed, slipped her arms into the wool, and folded herself up into the chair nearest the hearth. “I dinna ken. The men were all elsewhere, and the women . . .” Her brows knit. “I dinna ken why we’re here, Lil. Ella and Charlotte—they quite obviously dislike our hostess.”
“Well, I should think so.” Any woman who chose to live amidst these shadows . . . Lilias shook her head. “I dinna ken why we’re here either. Did yer husband tell you how Lady Pratt’s husband kidnapped the Duchess of Stafford? Well, it was before she wed the duke, but all the same. The servants at Whitby Park think the lady must have had something to do with it.”
Rowena’s mouth gaped. “But they . . . they’ve said nothing to me, none of them. Neither Brice nor his mum nor Ella. And it isn’t as though I avoided any of them these last few days, as I had before.”
Perhaps Lilias should have kept her own lips sealed on the matter too. But no, O’Malley was right—if their hostess were the type to play in darkness, then they all needed to be on their guard. And one would think that His Grace and his family would recognize as much. She perched on the arm of Rowena’s chair and smoothed back the soft brown curls that framed her face. “Ye’ve been more sociable the last bit at Whitby Park, true enough. But ye still look so sad, lass. What has you so puggled? When ye seem to be getting on better with His Grace?”
Rowena drew her knees up to her chest and pressed her cheek to them. Were Lady Lochaber to see such a posture, she would chide her something fierce. Her mother would have too, once upon a time. But Nora had given up caring too soon. And how was Lilias to enforce what she herself had never learned?
She trailed her fingers through the girl’s hair, plucking out pins as she went. The low chignon wouldn’t do for tonight’s dinner. “I heard you laughing with him last night in the hall. That’s something, aye? And I glimpsed you in the garden, holding the duchess’s baby. Ye must have made friends.”
One of Rowena’s shoulders lifted, settled. But it was the look in her eye more than the shrug that made Lilias straighten with a sharp breath. “The babe, is it? Holding hers made ye miss the idea of yer own. But Wena, ye must be practical. Ye must ken ’tis best this way. Ye’ll have a child—a legitimate one, the duke’s, soon enough. Ye just go to him and—”
“Will ye stop it?” Rowena shot up so fast she knocked Lilias from her perch. She was still quick enough on her feet to keep from hitting the floor, despite her years, so she didn’t need the hand Rowena held out to steady her. “Will ye stop telling me I must go to him? I canna. Ye ken? I like him, I find him attractive, I want to want to, but when I get close to him, I just . . . I canna—”
Her breathing turned to gasps that ate up her words until Lilias could understand nothing but the panic within them. She clutched at Rowena’s outstretched arms and pulled her close, ran a hand in circles over her back and prayed the girl wouldn’t feel her shaking.
Ye’re a glaikit idiot, Lilias Cowan. It was too soon, far too soon. Of course the girl would see nothing but Malcolm before her eyes when a man had his arms about her. “Ye’re right. Ye’re right, Wena. Forgive me. Ye’ve no need to rush, no need to pressure yerself. The horror and fear will fade eventually. His Grace will be patient.” She hoped. “There now. Breathe, lass. Breathe.”
It took an eternity, it seemed, for the gasps and shaking to ease. It left them both exhausted, but Lilias managed to get Rowena tucked into her bed for a rest and took her own in the form of drawing a hot bath for Rowena and turning her attention toward the evening.
The tasks that soothed her, though, didn’t seem to have the same effect on Rowena when she forced her through the motions. An hour later, as the lass sat before the mirror at the dressing table, she looked ready to run all the way back to Scotland.
Lilias withdrew the three evening gowns the seamstress had finished in time. “Which one, a leanbh?”
The endearment she hadn’t used since Rowena really was a “little one” earned her a brief smile. “You decide, Lil.”
“Well then. Not much of a decision.” She reached for the deep red that would bring out roses in Rowena’s cheeks and set off so perfectly the rubies—the only jewels she had at the moment, though the Nottinghams had promised her more as soon as they got to Sussex.
Rowena said nothing as she put it on, though it surely felt a far cry from any dress she’d donned before, aside from her wedding gown. She sat on the stool as if it were just another tweed skirt, not even looking in the mirror.
A cold draft whistled in through the window, but this time Lilias didn’t offer her a heavy wrap. She needed nothing in her way as she fetched the curling tongs from the fire and set about styling each lock, pinning it just so. Only once that was done did she reach for the jewels and fasten them around Rowena’s slender neck and wrist.
She stepped back and beheld her creation with a smile. Nora would be proud, if she could see her. So would be the Kinnaird, when next he did. “Stand up. Look at yerself, lass.”
Rowena looked as though she would rather slip it all off again and crawl back into bed. But she obeyed and slid over to stand before the full-length mirror in the corner. Eased forward and lifted a hand to touch the silvered glass.
“’Tis you, Wena. Here and now. And as ye were always meant to be.”
The girl shook her head. “That isna me.”
“It is.” Lilias joined her at the glass and rubbed her hands over Rowena’s chilled arms. “Ye were raised to be a countess, lass. An heiress, worth every bit as much as any of those women, if you care to tally worth in pounds and land. Ye’ve nothing to be ashamed of in their presence.”
Rowena’s gaze dropped, but Lilias had seen the moisture in her eyes. “I dinna care to though. And neither do they. They see only that Father’s a miser. Backwards. Backwater. They hear only how I speak, not what I say.”
“Aye, and what if they do?” Lilias gripped her shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “Ye’re a Highland woman. Daughter of the chief of Clan Kinnaird and the Earl of Lochaber. A heritage worth bragging about if ever there was one.”
For a moment, she thought it would pass right through Rowena’s ears as most of her other words had lately. But then the lass drew in a deep breath. She straightened her shoulders. And she turned, determined, toward the dressing table again.
Lilias stood back, at a loss as to her intention until she saw her pull the brooch from a box of trinkets. Then she clapped her hands together. “Aye, that’s the spirit. Let me help you pin it on.”
“I’ve got it.” Rowena moved back to the mirror, hands and eyes both steady as she fastened the tartan flower front and center, whe
re the neckline dipped into a V.
Lilias nodded at their reflection. “Good lass.” She would have said more, but a knock interrupted. With a few steps and one hard tug on the door that wanted to stick, she let in the dapper-looking duke—who looked at his duchess as though she’d just stepped from the pages of a fairy tale.
Lilias gave Rowena a smile and slipped silently from the room.
Fragile. That had been the word that had crowded Brice’s mind the past few days, whenever he spent time with his wife. She had a delicacy about her that had nothing to do with her slender frame or petite height. Something twined through her hesitant smiles and wary company. Something warning that one false move on any of their parts and she’d run away like a startled hare.
Brice smoothed his tie and wondered where that girl had gone. The one standing before him now radiated . . . beauty. Confidence. The softest kind of pride. His lips tugged into a smile even as his pulse kicked up. “You look stunning, darling.”
The girl standing before him, however, didn’t smile. She just regarded him with a cool detachment that said he’d made a false move somewhere along the line—but rather than run, she’d turned to ice. Regal as a queen, she waved a hand toward a chair near the fire. “I assume you came early because you have something to tell me. Something you could have mentioned before you brought me here, don’t you think?”
Blast. He slid over to the chair and settled on the edge of the cushion, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry. I . . . you were finally emerging from your shell a bit, and I didn’t want to ruin it with talk of unhappy things.”
She didn’t fold her arms. Didn’t scowl. Didn’t so much as lift a brow. She just kept regarding him with cold, empty eyes. “A misstep on your part.”
Brice sat back, unable to avoid a frown. In high emotions, her accent thickened. Just now, it had all but vanished. “Again, I’m sorry. You’re right—I should have spoken with you sooner. What have you heard?”
The Reluctant Duchess Page 15