My Seduction

by Connie Brockway

  “Is that all?” she asked. “There are still some things missing.”

  Kate nodded in agreement. “A good deal, I am afraid. The same thieves that ruined my dresses ransacked Grace’s belongings. There were some books that the thieves defaced and which I gave to the marquis to see if he might repair. The embroidery box is here, but the hoops are broken. Several snuffboxes, a clock, and all of the medicine vials were shattered.”

  The girl shook her head petulantly. “No. None of those things matter. Perhaps a pastel painting or Grace’s diary?”

  “There was no diary. And those”—Kate gestured to the folio of now scattered watercolors—“are the only artistic pieces.”

  “A jewelry box?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The girl glared at her, as though suspecting her of keeping something back. “I know you are very poor. Grace told me as much.”

  Kate, in the process of rising, froze.

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you kept something for yourself. As Grace’s only blood relation, you deserve it. But I can assure you that whatever it is means a great deal more to me, and I would be more than willing to see you adequately compensated for it.”

  “There is nothing.”

  At the chill in Kate’s voice, Merry stretched out her hand imploringly. “I have offended you.”

  “You sound surprised,” Kate said icily. “Perhaps you are accustomed to being accused of theft. I am not.”

  The girl turned brilliant red. “Of course I’m not. Please.” Her lips trembled. “I miss her so very much.” There could be no doubting her sincerity. “She is gone, and I have been left behind.”

  Nothing the girl could have said could have done more to secure Kate’s sympathy. She knew what it felt like to feel abandoned and angry.

  “I understand,” she said, coming to her with her hand outstretched.

  “No!” Merry said, backing away. “You can’t possibly understand, so don’t say you do!”

  Kate did not take offense. Since her arrival, the girl’s mood had vacillated wildly: one minute seemingly lost and vulnerable, the next, bitter and combative. Very much like Kate herself had been the year of her husband and father’s deaths.

  The girl wiped at her cheeks. “If only I could read her last words. See if she spared me any thoughts at all.”

  “Are you certain that would comfort you?” Kate asked carefully.

  “I suppose it might only make it worse,” the girl whispered, her hands twisting at her waist. “But I would like to know she was happy before she died. That would be a comfort.”

  Undeniably, a bond existed between them. Both had lost loved ones to violent, unnecessary ends. But where Grace had been a victim of crime, Kate’s father had volunteered for his death. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. Still, she would have liked to know her father’s state of mind before he died. Had he been looking for some means of testing himself, or had his death truly been a matter of circumstances, as Kit seemed convinced it was?

  She wished her father had written something so that his family might have comforted themselves with the knowledge that in the days before his death, he had thought of them with pleasure and, perhaps, pride. But her father had never been much of a correspondent, so she would never know.

  And neither would Merry.

  “I am truly sorry, Miss Merry, but Grace sent no additional letter to me. Only the one saying that she and Charles would soon be moving to London and asking if I would store her things in anticipation of their arrival.”

  “Did you keep the letter?” Merry asked.

  Kate shook her head. “No. It was quite short. A matter of a few lines.”

  The girl wrapped her arms around her waist, staring unseeingly out of the window. Across the courtyard, Captain Watters appeared, his gold epaulets flashing in the morning light. He looked around the courtyard, and seeing Kate and Merry standing at the upper window, smiled and bowed deeply.

  “If it comforts you, the marquis has every confidence in Captain Watters,” Kate said. “After meeting him I, too, feel he is a man who will not stop until he has achieved his purpose.”

  Merry colored faintly. “He is an extraordinary man.”

  The militia captain had evidently made a conquest of the girl.

  “And here I thought you only admired the smugglers,” Kate said, hoping to tease her out of her sadness. It worked.

  Merry gave a derisive scoff. “Mr. Murdoch mistakes me. I don’t admire smugglers. They are unspeakably low.” She waved her hand airily. “Oh, at one time I might have imagined them an object of romance in my mind.”

  “Callum Lamont?”

  Merry glanced sharply at Kate. “He has a certain coarse appeal,” she admitted. “And a certain presence.”

  Kate tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

  “There are leaders, and there are followers. The former are few, the latter many.” Her gaze was drawn once more to Captain Watters crossing the courtyard with four men at his heels. “Like the captain there.”

  “A good man,” Kate said approvingly.

  Merry looked at her pityingly. “Don’t be naive. Goodness has naught to do with it, Mrs. Blackburn. It is the will of the leader that describes the movement of the led. Most men will follow the strongest leader and live by whatever rules he adopts.” She let out a small sigh. “Goodness rarely stands against strength.”

  “You are concerned Callum Lamont may prove too formidable a foe for Captain Watters.”

  Merry shrugged.

  “Having met both men, I can say with every confidence that Captain Watters could not fail to inspire more men to his purpose than Mr. Lamont to his,” Kate said. “So according to your own philosophy, in this instance the good must win as well as the strong.”

  The girl’s gaze fixed on Captain Watters’s manly figure with undisguised admiration, and Kate felt relief on the Murdoch family’s behalf. Obviously Merry had traded her infatuation with Callum Lamont for a more acceptable idol.

  “It’s true that one must believe Captain Watters will achieve whatever purpose he undertakes,” Merry murmured. She looked around at Kate, slyness stealing into her expression. “Your Captain MacNeill looks like he might have been such a man.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Kate replied.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Was there a trace of disbelief in Merry’s voice, or simply scorn? “Well, I daresay I’ve kept you from your toilette long enough,” she said and without any further word, hurried out of the room as Kate stared in bemusement at Grace’s belongings still littering her floor.

  * * *

  As soon as she’d cleared the mess, Kate went down to breakfast. She found the marquis already seated. He rose to see her seated, asking after her health and explaining that his family kept later hours. Then he beckoned a footman, and before long a plate heaping with food—kippers and salt herring, eggs and porridge and cakes—was placed before her.

  She toyed with her food while the marquis kept her company, regaling her with delightful anecdotes about his family history. She made every effort to attend him, but her eyes kept straying toward the door, anticipating Kit’s arrival.

  “You must miss your sisters, Mrs. Murdoch.”

  Kate started. “Oh. My sisters. Yes. Very much.” In truth, she hadn’t given much thought to her sisters these last few days. She had been entirely caught up in her own affairs. But now, she did.

  How Helena would love this castle. She would love the beauty of it, the graciousness. She would find in the library any number of companions to keep her company over the long winter months. Charlotte, on the other hand, would not be so captivated. She would find the isolation burdensome—unless she found a worthy opponent for her acerbic tongue and agile mind.

  “I hope someday that they, too, will be able to visit my home. I know how important family is. My own is most dear to me.” For a moment, a shadow of melancholy crept over the marquis’s handsome face, but he shook it off. “I have spent so many years put
ting to rights my inheritance, I have neglected my personal life, I am afraid. I think it is time to change that.”

  Kate did not reply. She was thinking of her sisters and wondering how she could have left them so far from her thoughts.

  The marquis cleared his throat, drawing Kate’s attention. “I believe it is time that my family came out of mourning,” the marquis said, setting down his napkin with the air of a man who has come to a momentous decision.

  “Milord?”

  “We cannot shut ourselves away in the castle forever. Especially here in the north, where the customs regarding mourning are not so strict and every person’s absence from our small society is counted a hardship by their friends and neighbors. Unless”—he looked at her worriedly—“you think we have not yet paid adequate respect to the deceased?”

  “I am certain you have,” Kate hastened to reassure him.

  The marquis smiled with brilliant and undisguised relief. “Good. Well, the thing is, we have been invited to a small gathering at the MacPhersons’ two days hence. I had written and declined, but now I think perhaps we ought to go after all. I would not like you to think we are dull.”

  “Please, milord, I do not need to be entertained.”

  “Of course not. But”—he leaned forward, charming in his sincerity—“I want you to like us.”

  “I would have to be of a particularly unpleasant disposition not to do so, sir.”

  “Well, then,” he said, “I want you to like us a great deal. For I hope you will stay with us.”

  Kate froze. He could not possibly mean what she thought he’d implied.

  Seeing her embarrassment, he hurried on. “At least until spring. The trip back would be too uncomfortable to contemplate. You will stay, won’t you?” His gaze was warm and direct, without evasion or pretense:

  The marquis was courting her. Kate stared.

  “I can send for your sisters to join us.”

  My God! He really was courting her! She waited for the ecstatic leap of her heart. It did not come.

  “I hope you do not think me precipitous? What with the house party and all.” He was decidedly not talking about the party and they both knew it. “Tell me, Mrs. Blackburn,” he asked worriedly, “do you think it too soon? I have often recalled your delightful company in Brighton, and I am so very glad to become… reacquainted.”

  She didn’t know what to think. Certainly she had realized he once felt a certain partiality for her—it was the basis upon which she had shored up the courage to ask him for financial aid. But she never imagined that he felt anything deeper. Now, he waited for her answer.

  She would be a fool not to encourage him, but the words she ought to say lodged in her throat. She would force them out. “I will be guided by you in this, milord.”

  “You will? Of course you will.” He smiled, pleased, and leaned back in his chair. “We will visit the MacPhersons. It will only be a small gathering, most suitable for our first appearance in public, just five or six families for the weekend.

  “We live far enough apart that we generally stay a bit when we go. Not overlong,” he said hurriedly, as if she might be seeing a future as a perennial house-guest. “Four or five days.”

  “Yes, milord.”

  He rose from the table. “I shall send word at once that our circumstances have changed, and we would be honored to accept their invitation. Uncle Kerwin adores Mrs. MacPherson. Her family was stripped of their title in ’45, and he derives no end of pleasure in calling her countess and she no end of pleasure in hearing it. And Lady Mathilde will be delighted to be let loose on the neighbors once more.”

  She smiled, feeling like a cheat and a fraud and hating herself for feeling that and hating Kit for causing that feeling.

  She would not feel this way. It was ridiculous. She was not some silly heroine in a medieval troubadour’s song, eternally belonging to one man because she had spent a night in his bed. Other ladies both grander and lower than she had had lovers and married elsewhere and lived happily thereafter. She would be one of them. She would think of Kit MacNeill and she would smile, and if right now she felt closer to tears, she must be nearing her courses because she wasn’t such an imbecile!

  “Of course.”

  “And this afternoon, might I entice you into taking a ride? I have a well-behaved lady’s mare in the stable. Or we could drive along the cliffs. The views are spectacular. The choice is yours.” He held his hands palm up and grinned boyishly, teasingly, charmingly. “What do you want?”

  “A drive would be lovely.” What do you want?

  “I shall see to it at once. Shall we say one o’clock?”

  “Yes.”

  He left to finish up some correspondence and free his afternoon, and she stayed behind in the breakfast room, somberly regarding the china plate before her. It was edged in gilt, bracketed by heavy silver knives and forks. A crystal goblet stood at its upper edge. Beneath her feet lay a thick carpet. A footman stood beside the door, stationed there for one purpose, to see to her every comfort. A fire blazed in the hearth, and the room was warm, blessedly warm even here, in the most northern reaches of Scotland in the middle of November.

  What do you want, Kate?

  She closed her eyes and saw her mother’s face, dulled with sadness, and Helena’s hands, the bones showing through the backs, the nail beds blue with chill, and finally Charlotte, her pretty face animated by her extraordinary relief as she swept out of the bare rented rooms, kissing her sisters’ cheeks and whispering, “The entire season, Katherine! Can you imagine the Weltons’ generosity? I shall be in London for the season!”

  But Charlotte wouldn’t have a season, not unless the marquis provided one. Kate’s lips twisted with self-derision. She would not offer her sisters as an excuse for her intentions. Helena and Charlotte were only part of any reason she would accept the marquis if he should offer for her. Did she intend to accept him?

  What do you want, Kate?

  She rose from the table, and the footman leapt to open the door for her. She walked out into a large, well-lit hall, moving past generations of painted Murdochs toward the library on a carpet so thick her passing was soundless. She needed to think. What do you want, Kate?

  The question, she decided, should be what she did not want. She did not want to be hungry. She did not want to be cold. She did not want to worry about her future or that of her sisters. She did not want to be afraid. She did not want to be desperate. She did not want to be poor.

  There. She had answered the question.

  She put her hand on the library handle, her jaw clenched in frustration because while she knew quite clearly what she did not want, she knew just as clearly what she did.

  The door opened. Kit MacNeill looked down into her eyes.

  And he was standing right before her.

  TWENTY-ONE

  MAKING RESPONSIBLE CHOICES

  HE HADN’T ANY RIGHT to look so good when he looked so disreputable. The stock about his throat was cheap, his linen shirt threadbare, his coat old, and his boots scarred. But his hands …Kit had beautiful hands. Not soft and pink, but calloused and rough, his fingers lean and strong and masculine. They were, she noted, scrubbed clean. But where was his regimental jacket?

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a captain?” Where had that come from?

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “The matter never came up in the course of our conversations. Besides, it hardly bore mentioning.”

  “I thought you were an enlisted man.”

  “I was an enlisted man, and as such found myself in the right places at the right times, or perhaps I should say the wrong places at the wrong times. Either way, I survived and was given battlefield commissions for my luck.”

  He tilted his head regarding her sardonically. “And if I was an enlisted man, why would I be here rather than with my regiment? Surely the daughter of a colonel must have wondered about that?”

  She looked away, embarrassed. “I thought you might
have deserted.”

  “Such a kindly estimation of my character.”

  “You have gone to great pains to tell me your character is flawed and unworthy; you can’t suddenly decide that I am being unfair when I take you at you word.”

  “Touché.” He grinned, and she wished, profoundly, that he wouldn’t. He was far too handsome, far too approachable, when he smiled like that.

  “Besides,” she continued gruffly, looking away from him, because looking would become wanting, “I could not conceive that you would sign up after all that had happened to you.”

  “I was drunk.”

  No one would ever accuse MacNeill of sugar-coating his history. A twisted smile played about his lips, as though he had read her thoughts. “I play the lead in no heroic tales, Kate, just common and vulgar ones. You mustn’t see things that aren’t there. But I didn’t come to confess my shortcomings. You know those full well.”

  “Do I?”

  “Covetousness.” He raised his hand as if to touch her face and hesitated. “Anger. Pride.” The backs of his fingertips brushed a tendril of her hair slowly away from her face. “Bigotry against my betters.” She stilled, apprehensive lest he take a greater liberty, more apprehensive that he would not.

  “Yes. You know in how many ways I’ve failed.”

  “You have never failed me,” she breathed, her gaze tangling with the silvered frost of his.

  His thumb touched the corner of her eye and lightly brushed her lashes. She turned her head, just a small movement, but enough to force a closer contact. She heard his breath check, and then his thumb was feathering a line down over her cheek, along her jaw to the point of her chin. He tilted her head up, looked down into her eyes. “I’ve come to tell you that I will be leaving soon.”

  Her heart beat thickly in her throat, flutters of alarm taking flight in her belly. No. “When?” No! “Not today?”

  “There is no reason to stay and every reason to go,” he said soberly.

  She shook her head. “No. Not today.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, evidence of some inner struggle flickering briefly across his lean features. “When will you be ready for me to leave?”