He glanced up at Mairi’s window. The heavy velvet drapes were drawn. None of the guests would be awake yet. An urgent need to see her caught him by surprise. He wanted to talk to her. Simply being with her would steady him in some way that he could not define.
Hell.
He needed no one. Reliance on others was a weakness. He remembered the nightmare. If you opened yourself to love, sooner or later you also opened yourself to grief.
He ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the stubble rough beneath his fingers. He would grit his teeth and endure the christening ceremony, witness Robert and Lucy’s happiness, mingle with the guests, chat as though there was nothing wrong.
And then he would find a bottle of brandy and get roaring drunk. He knew he was going to do it. He knew it with a faint sense of despair and a complete sense of inevitability. There was nothing else that he could do.
* * *
“DO YOU KNOW where Jack is?” Mairi asked Lucy. It was evening and Ewan had long been taken back to the nursery along with his elder brother while his parents and their guests had dinner and talked and enjoyed some fine Highland hospitality. Mairi was exhausted. She had stood in church as her nephew’s godmother and had made her vows, promising to love and support Ewan and his family. The tears had stung her eyes and closed her throat then, tears of happiness with an edge of pain. She hoped she would be a good godmother to her nephew. But she had felt distinctly guilty when she had been standing in church since her association with Jack was so disreputable. However, it would soon be over, and then, she promised herself, she would revert to being the most proper of godmothers. Leaving aside all moral considerations, she suspected that Jack’s lovemaking had probably spoiled her for any other lovers. She would make do with needlepoint and watercolor painting as her future entertainments.
Jack had been standing with his grandmother then. She remembered how handsome he had looked, but so unsmiling and severe, his demeanor so different from Lady Methven’s joy to see another generation establishing itself in her ancestral home. When the service was over Jack had exchanged a quick word with his grandmother and then he had vanished. Mairi had seen him briefly, later, mingling with the guests, but now he had vanished again.
Lucy frowned slightly. “Jack is indisposed.”
“Indisposed?” Mairi said. “What do you mean?” It seemed extraordinary and yet Jack had been distant all day, not just with her but almost as though his mind was elsewhere.
Lucy nibbled her lower lip. Mairi thought she looked cross, and furtive and exasperated all at the same time. “Robert says I should not be angry with him,” Lucy said. “But I am. I can’t help myself.”
Mairi’s concern increased. She took her sister’s arm and led her away from the crowds milling in the hall and drawing room, finding refuge in the little book room off the library that was Robert’s office.
“Now,” she said, closing the door, “what is going on?”
Lucy subsided into a chair in a rustle of silk. “You know that Jack refused to stand as godfather to either James or Ewan?” she said. “I tried not to be too hurt because Robert explained that Jack had had a difficult time as a child. He lost both his parents young and then his sister died....” She frowned again. “And I do understand that....” Her tone implied that she did not understand it at all. “But I would have thought that someone without their own family would seize the chance to be part of ours. Yet instead Jack pushes us away at every turn.”
Mairi was thinking of Jack’s words to her at MacLeod, his claim that he cared for no one. “Sometimes,” she said slowly, thinking of her own experience, “it’s too painful to get close. The risk of hurt is too great. Perhaps that is how Jack feels.”
Lucy was looking at her blankly. “Well, I don’t see why he has to go off and get drunk!”
“Oh!” Mairi said. “That sort of indisposed!”
“Foxed,” Lucy confirmed. “And in a foul temper. He threw a jug at poor Shawcross when he went to take him some more brandy. Robert says...” She fidgeted, then looked up and met Mairi’s eyes half-shamefacedly. “Oh, I was not supposed to tell anyone this, but you have a right to know. Jack used to have a terrible problem with drink. After his sister died he ran mad for a while. He drank too much and ended up in a fight in which a man was killed. They locked him up in the tollbooth and Lady Methven had to go to buy him out.”
Mairi felt chilled. She remembered that Jack had drunk not wine but water at the Inverbeg Inn. She had thought it odd at the time. Now she realized that she had never once seen him take wine let alone brandy.
She sank down into the chair opposite her sister. “When did this happen?” she whispered.
“I’m not sure.” Lucy said. “Jack must have been about seventeen or so. He was very young anyway.”
Seventeen. The horror of it made Mairi flinch. When she had been seventeen, her father had arranged a match for her with a man old enough to be her grandfather. Even now she could remember the sense of horror and powerlessness she had felt, the way she had rushed headlong from the misery of one intolerable situation only to find herself in another. She had felt very alone and very afraid. Had Jack felt the same, losing almost everyone he cared about? Jack had told her that he had run wild as a youth. She had assumed it was the typical carousing of a privileged young man, too much gambling, too much wine, too many women. She had had no idea.
“I must go to him,” she said, starting up.
Lucy looked alarmed. She caught her hand. “I wouldn’t. Really, Mairi, I think you should wait until he is sober.”
“I’ve seen plenty of men in various stages of drunkenness,” Mairi said. “Don’t you remember what Lachlan was like when first he discovered brandy?”
“I don’t mean that,” Lucy said. “I mean that Jack will hurt you. He won’t mean to but he’ll do it all the same. This isn’t like Lachlan getting drunk on a night out in Edinburgh.” She made a helpless gesture. “Drink devastated Jack’s life, Mairi. It made him dangerous. Please—”
“I have to try, Luce,” Mairi said. She knew her sister was right. Jack would not welcome her interference, but that was not a good enough reason to leave him with nothing but his bitter memories and the brandy bottle for company. “I can’t leave him to deal with this on his own,” she said.
She stood up, smoothing her skirts, suddenly nervous although she was not quite sure why.
On the stairs she met Shawcross coming down. He confirmed that Jack was in his dressing room. He echoed Lucy’s words.
“I wouldn’t recommend disturbing him, my lady. Mr. Rutherford has an uncertain temper when he is foxed.”
This was confirmed as soon as Mairi opened the dressing room door. It was a small room, cheerful with a fire in the grate and candles burning, but it stank of spirits. Jack was sprawled in an armchair, his neck cloth and jacket discarded, his long legs stretched out in front of him and a three-quarters-empty glass dangling from his hand. He looked dangerous in every way possible.
“I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed, damn you,” he said, without looking up. “But as you’re here you can pour me another glass.”
“You’ve had enough,” Mairi said.
Jack’s green gaze came up and fixed on her in a glittering, unblinking stare. Mairi felt the intensity of it down to her toes.
“You,” he said. His voice was rough and his gaze was as hard and uncaring as though she was a stranger. “What do you want?”
It hurt. It hurt a lot but Mairi gritted her teeth. She knew that he was in pain and was trying to escape it; knew too that he could not and so he was tormented.
“I came to make sure that you were all right,” she said.
That glittering gaze did not leave her face. “Well,” Jack said, “as you can see I am absolutely fine.” He reached for the brandy bottle himself, slopping some liquid into the gl
ass, splashing it on the table. “You may leave me to go to hell on my own,” he added, turning away from her.
“No,” Mairi said.
She saw his hand check in raising the glass to his lips. He smiled mockingly at her. “No?” he echoed. “I am sorry—do you require more clarification? I said get out—if you please.”
“No,” Mairi said again. She was shaking. She went down on her knees beside his chair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry today was so painful for you.”
His eyes narrowed on her with anger and dislike. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re drinking to escape the pain,” Mairi said. “I understand. I know what it’s like to try to find oblivion. I know that you lost your parents when you were young and your sister too—”
He gave a harsh crack of laughter. “You know nothing.”
Mairi bit her lip hard against the smart of his contempt. “So tell me,” she said steadily.
Again he stared at her, but this time she was not sure he actually saw her at all. She waited, aware that she was holding her breath.
“I killed my sister,” he said. “It was my fault that she died.”
* * *
JACK RUBBED A hand across his face. His head ached and his eyes felt raw. He felt as though he had lost every last vestige of protection, as though there was nowhere to hide. He was never vulnerable. He hated the sensation, but he had no idea how to escape it.
He looked at the drink in his hand and from there to Mairi’s face. She was so beautiful, he thought. It was not a simple matter of the arrangement of features, the color of her eyes or the autumn-red-and-gold of her hair. It was in the candor that made her gaze so clear and honest. It was in the generosity that made her reach out to him when he had been so unforgivably rude to her. There was a quality of brightness and sweetness about her then that drew him irresistibly. He ached for it. He wanted to lose himself in her. He wanted to take her and forget all else.
But the sympathy in her eyes would turn to revulsion when she knew the truth.
“I’m so very sorry,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
Jack looked away from her into the heart of the fire. It might be easier to tell her if he did not have to look at her, if he was not obliged to see her disappointment and disgust.
“Our parents were desperately in love with one another,” he said. “It was almost as though Averil and I did not exist, except as a proof of their love. When my father died my mother could not bear the grief. She took her own life a few months later. I found her body. She had taken an excess of laudanum one night and simply did not wake the following day.”
He heard Mairi’s soft gasp of shock. “Jack,” she said. She put a hand on his arm, but he shook her off, rejecting the comfort because he knew he did not deserve it.
“I had tried to help her,” he said painfully. “I knew she was desperately unhappy, but I had no idea what to do and I knew that whatever I could give her would never be enough. The love my parents had for each other...” He shook his head. Love was a dangerous, destructive force and he wanted nothing of it. He and Averil had been excluded from the enchanted circle of his parents’ love, and there had been nothing that he could do about that.
“She left us alone,” he said.
“You must have been very young,” Mairi said. “Too young to carry such a weight of responsibility.”
“I was sixteen when she died,” Jack said. “Averil was twelve. We were sent to live with my father’s sister and her husband, but they did not really want us. They sent us both away to school.”
He saw Mairi flinch. Her face was very pale. “That seems harsh,” she said. “When you had both suffered so great a loss.”
Jack shrugged. “We brought no money with us and were a burden on them.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Well, I expect you can imagine what happened. I rebelled. After a while the school expelled me, my aunt and uncle washed their hands of me and for a time I ran wild and ungovernable.” He looked at the brandy bottle. The taste of the spirit was sour on his tongue, but he wanted more. He ached for it, for oblivion. He was drunk but nowhere near as drunk as he needed to be.
“I drank too much,” he said. “I fought and stole. I was no more than seventeen years old....” The misery and bitterness twisted inside him. “And throughout it all I abandoned Averil. I thought she was safe in school and that she would be well cared for. I knew she was better off there than she would have been with me. What could I do for her? I had not even been able to help our mother. I had not been able to make her happy, to stop her from deserting us. I knew I would be no good for Averil, no good at all.”
He drained his glass. The bottle clinked against the rim as he topped it up again.
“And then one day I heard that she had died.” He took a deep breath. “She had died in a typhoid epidemic that swept the school. It was only then that I discovered that it was a terrible place—cold, dirty, with little food and what there was poorly cooked and rotten.” He stopped. “She died alone, lonely and afraid, because no one gave a damn, least of all me.”
“Jack,” Mairi said. “That isn’t true—”
“It is!” The fury and guilt in him was like a live thing, making him want to lash out at her. “I failed my mother and I failed Averil and that is why, my sweet—” he spoke mockingly and saw the blood sting her cheeks “—you should get up now and leave me and never look back because I will be no good for you either.”
He saw Mairi close her eyes. For a second a tear dampened her lashes, but she rubbed it away angrily. “I don’t want to hear you say such things,” she said. Her gaze was stormy. “You were little more than a child, Jack. You should not have to bear the responsibility for this. It was not your fault.”
“Are you trying to comfort me?” It was the last thing he wanted from her. “I am afraid that there is only one thing I want from you and that is what I took last night in the gallery.”
He heard her catch her breath and saw her eyes open wide as the cruelty of his words struck home. She recoiled from him, stumbling backward, almost falling over her skirts with the haste that she stood up.
“I don’t understand why you have to be so brutal,” she said. “Why are you trying to hurt me?”
He was hurting her because he hated himself. He very nearly hated her too for refusing to walk away from him. Jack’s throat closed. There was a burning pain in his chest. He would not answer that. He could not. Why could the damned woman simply not leave him? She reminded him of his grandmother coming to the tollbooth, stepping daintily through all the filth and squalor to save him when he deserved to be abandoned. Mairi had the same strength and the same indomitable spirit. She refused to leave him too. She was far, far too good for him.
She stepped forward, but before she could speak he turned on her, grabbing her by the shoulders.
“I warn you, Mairi,” he said, “that if you stay a moment longer I will take you and use you, just to forget.” He cocked his head toward the door. “Now go while you still have the chance.”
* * *
MAIRI’S HEART WAS pounding. She was afraid of Jack in this mood and yet she was not; beneath the cruelty was a man who was in so much pain that she wanted to help him. If this was the only way to reach him, then so be it.
He did not move. His fierce, angry eyes scanned her face, yet he made no attempt to touch her. She put one hand on the back of his neck and drew his head down to hers, kissing him gently. She could feel the resistance in him. For a moment he did not respond at all and then he gave a despairing groan and his arms went around her. His mouth crushed hers. She opened her lips to him at once and he kissed her with desperation and frantic need. She held nothing back, offering kiss for kiss, clinging to him as the room spun about her and the floor seemed to shift beneath her feet.
He was shaking as h
e shed his clothes and pulled hers haphazardly from her. They sank down onto the bed, his hands roaming over her body like those of a man starved of touch, starved of love. There was nothing of gentleness in him; his lovemaking was starkly physical. He rolled her beneath him, spread her, plunging into her without tenderness. She held him, smoothing her hands down over his shoulders and back, drawing him close, sensing the tumult of emotion driving him. She whispered endearments as he took her. She knew that her body was nothing more to him in this moment than an escape from pain, but it was enough that she could give him that.
When it was over he rested his cheek against her breast, eyes closed, panting.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded wretched. “So very sorry.”
She stroked his hair and held him close as he fell asleep. She understood now why Jack was afraid to love anyone and why he did not want the responsibility of a wife and a family. Her heart ached for him and she drew him closer into her arms. She did not know how she could convince him that he had not failed. He had been so young and had lost so much. It was hard to heal such old and deep scars. She was afraid that it might be impossible. And she was even more afraid that he would not want her to try.
* * *
JACK WOKE STIFF and aching, with a headache hammering his temples and a vile taste in his mouth. He eased himself out of Mairi’s arms, stood up and slid out of the bed. Cold air washed about him; he missed the warmth of the bed but even more the comfort of Mairi’s touch.
Pulling on his trousers and shirt, he walked over to the dresser and splashed water over his head and neck, welcoming the cold shock it gave him. He slicked back his wet hair, reaching for a towel. He felt deathly tired and bitterly ashamed. He had not drunk so much in years. It had not helped him escape the brutal memories. Only Mairi had tried to help with that and in return he had been cruel to her and had taken her without consideration for her feelings while she had shown him nothing but sweetness and generosity. The guilt and shame in him deepened. There was no excuse for his behavior. Nothing could justify it.
One Night with the Laird Page 18