He stopped and she turned her head very slightly and he saw the sheen of tears on her cheek.
She was crying.
Hell.
Jack felt cold. His first instinct was that he could not touch her, could not offer her comfort. The last woman who had cried in his arms had been his mother and he had failed her completely. He could still hear those fractured sobs. His soul shrank from them.
Mairi had seen him. She scrubbed the tears from her cheeks in a quick, furtive gesture that had his heart lurching with recognition. He remembered that gesture from his childhood, the misery that did not want to be seen. She did not turn toward him. Instead she turned away. It was clear she did not want to speak to him.
Walk away.
And yet he lingered. He could not explain why. A moment later he realized he was walking toward her rather than away from her.
“Mairi?” he said. “Are you ill? Can I fetch your maid for you?” He wondered what the hell he was doing, getting involved. His reluctance had in all probability shown in his voice. He suspected he sounded unenthusiastic at best, churlish at worst.
Walk away, Jack. Don’t get involved.
It was one of the rules he lived by.
He took her hand. She was icy cold. He felt a flicker of alarm.
“No, thank you.” She scrubbed at her cheeks again. He could feel her shaking, from cold or something else. “I am perfectly fine.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jack said. “You are not fine.”
She looked directly at him then, and the blank desolation in her eyes was shocking, stronger, fiercer than the flash of despair he had seen at dinner. Jack understood then. He had seen an expression like that before in the eyes of men who had lost everything, family, home, livelihood. He had seen it in his mother’s eyes after his father had died. He had felt it himself when he had been at his lowest. He felt shocked as he realized he must have completely underestimated the sense of bereavement Mairi still felt. In that moment he actually wished Archie MacLeod alive again, if it spared Mairi this misery.
He had not realized that he had moved, but the next moment he had taken her in his arms. She made a little sound of surprise and protest and stiffened. He smiled then. They were such a pair, he so reluctant to give comfort, she so reluctant to take it. They could make love with all the intimacy in the world, but when it came to simple emotion they were both so wary.
After a moment, though, she drew him closer, her fingers clutching the material of his jacket. She cried silently, but harder now and Jack held her awkwardly because he had no idea how to do this and he felt terrified, although that was an emotion he was trying extremely hard to avoid acknowledging. He pressed his handkerchief into her palm and she sniffed and rubbed her eyes and after a few moments the crying stopped.
She offered him his handkerchief back again, a little dubiously. It drooped between her fingers and he smiled.
“Please keep it,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was husky. “I’m sorry.”
“Come inside,” Jack said. He had an arm about her now and was leading her to the tower door. On the staircase it was bright with torchlight flaring from the sconces. Mairi shrank back from the light, but he kept his arm tight about her and led her down the steps.
“I don’t want anyone to see me,” she said.
“They won’t,” Jack said. He took her along the corridor to the little sitting room that linked their two bedchambers. His valet was there, banking up the fire, tidying the room with the desultory air of a man who was waiting for orders. Jack jerked his head toward the door and the man vanished discreetly. He pulled a chair forward for Mairi, set it before the fire and pushed her into it gently. She was racked with shivers; although the night had not been cold, she had had no cloak and the thin gown gave little warmth.
There was a decanter on the sideboard with wine and two glasses. Jack poured one and took it over to her. She looked up and he felt another pang of physical shock at the blankness in her eyes. It was as though she had withdrawn herself completely.
He sat down opposite her. She turned her glass round and around in her hand and did not drink it. Nor would she look at him.
“I know you want to be alone and are wishing me in Hades,” Jack said, “but I am not leaving you on your own.”
For a moment it seemed she was not even going to acknowledge his words, but then she focused on him and the relief caught him like a blow in the chest. She was really seeing him this time. She had come back.
“How do you know what I am thinking?” she said.
There was a silence. The clock ticked loudly.
“Perhaps,” Jack said, “I have been where you are now.”
Her eyes opened wide. “When your mother and your sister died,” she said slowly. “Of course.”
He had been down as far—further—as she was now, in the dregs of his life, in the gutter, in jail.
“And with the drink,” Jack said. “I was lost in it, sunk in misery. So yes, I do understand.”
Mairi nodded. She put out her hand and caught his. Jack did not pull away. Her touch was comforting. So was the fact that she said nothing but he knew she understood.
He turned the subject back to her. “That night in Edinburgh,” he said.
Her lashes fell, veiling the expression in her eyes, but a small smile touched her lips. “How you do go on about that night.”
“At least I understand your reasons now,” Jack said. “You wanted someone. Anyone who could help you to stave off this darkness.”
Her gaze came up and met his. “But it was not anyone I found,” she said softly. “It was you.”
“We are not so different, you and I,” Jack said. “We both sought to forget.”
Their gazes held and he felt again that tightness in his chest. After a moment Mairi looked away, breaking the contact. “The doctors call it a depression of spirits,” she said. “They recommended opium.” She shuddered.
“Does Michael Innes know?” Jack asked.
Alarm flared in her eyes. “No! Can you imagine? He would try to have me committed to an asylum if he knew.”
“Is this what you are trying to hide from him?” Jack asked.
For a moment she stared at him, and then her shoulders slumped. “Among other things. If Innes knew he would certainly exploit it to the full. He would claim that I was a hysterical woman, unfit to run the MacLeod estates. The courts would probably be sympathetic to him.” She swallowed hard. “They would unite Archie’s estates with the main MacLeod inheritance, and when Lord MacLeod died Innes would sell them off with no care for the people working the land. He would destroy their livelihoods for profit and he would close down all the charitable trusts that Archie established so that he could take that money too.”
“You are trying to protect everyone,” Jack said. He could see now the weight of the burden she carried and it stunned him. She had been incredibly strong but it was no wonder that sometimes the sheer pressure of it was too much for her to bear on her own. “You are very brave,” he said softly.
She blushed. It was endearing. “It’s my duty,” she said simply. She shifted. “But that is not the secret that Lord MacLeod was hiding.”
Jack took a breath. Now that the moment had come, he was not sure he actually wanted to know. Some superstitious fear breathed gooseflesh along his skin. Secrets bred emotional intimacy, and emotional intimacy was something he had rejected from the age of seventeen.
Don’t get involved, Jack. Don’t get close.
He looked into Mairi’s eyes and knew it was too late. He was already involved.
“Archie isn’t dead,” Mairi said. “He is still alive.”
* * *
“CHRIST ALMIGHTY.” MAIRI saw the rather comical look of disbelief in Jack’s e
yes fade, to be replaced by a welter of anger, disbelief and disgust. He stood up; backed away from her.
Well, maybe she could have broken the news to him more carefully, but it had been one hell of a night. Sometimes this secret felt just too huge to carry alone but there was no one she could trust, no one she could tell. Except that she had done now. She had trusted Jack Rutherford, of all people.
“Dear God,” he said, and his tone jerked her out of her thoughts, “you are still married. All those times you were with me—”
“No!” Of course he would think that. It was the natural assumption. “Jack, please.” She put out a hand to him. “The marriage was void. I told you the truth. I’ve never been unfaithful to my vows even when...” Her voice faltered. She had never been false to Archie even in the deepest despair of knowing that he could not love her as a man loved a woman.
Jack walked across to the chest of drawers, poured himself a glass of water and swallowed it straight down like medicine. “You’d better tell me everything.” His tone was curt.
“Yes.” She looked at the glass in her own hand as though she had only just realized that it was there. She did not want the taste of alcohol tonight. She felt a little sick.
“Where to start?” She frowned, her thoughts a jumble.
“Try the beginning,” Jack said. He threw himself down in the chair again and fixed her with an unnerving stare. He waited in a silence that felt intimidating.
“I was seventeen when Archie and I wed,” Mairi said. “Papa had wanted me to marry the Duke of Anwoth.”
Jack’s frown deepened. “That lecher?” He sounded incredulous. “He must have been seventy if he was a day!”
“He was sixty-five,” Mairi said evenly. “The first time we met he tried to force himself on me.” She swallowed convulsively. “Papa... He was not cruel, but he did not want to be gainsaid. I think that after Mama died some spark of humanity died in him also. Anyway, he was not interested in my objections to the match and so...” She made a slight gesture. “I did the only thing I could think to do. I asked Archie to wed me.”
“You proposed to him?” Jack said. There was the faintest hint of a smile in his eyes as he watched her. It warmed her a little.
“I did.” She raised her chin.
“You did not wait for someone else to rescue you.” Jack stirred in his chair. “It is a habit of yours, isn’t it, to take your fate into your own hands?”
Mairi blushed. “I couldn’t afford to wait around for a hero to save me,” she said dryly. “There was no time.”
“So you asked your childhood sweetheart to marry you,” Jack said.
“My childhood friend,” Mairi corrected. “Archie and I had never been sweethearts, but we were friends. He was gentle, very kind. But he was also weak. I think I knew it, even though I was young.” She hesitated. She was not sure that Jack would understand Archie’s weakness. Jack was one of the strongest men she knew.
Jack was waiting but with a shade less angry impatience now. Mairi felt the tightly wound tension inside her ease a notch.
“So we wed,” she said flatly. “It was a disaster right from the start.” She dropped her gaze. “We tried to make love but it was painful and embarrassing and although we did consummate our marriage...” She broke off. No need to tell Jack how utterly ignominious it had been, how she had felt ugly and unwanted as well as completely baffled at how dreadful the physical act of lovemaking could be. “After a week I think we realized that if we were to preserve even a friendship we had to stop trying or there would soon be nothing between us but bitterness and shame,” she said. “So we had separate bedchambers, separate lives. By this time Archie had inherited his godfather’s fortune and he established endless charitable trusts and I... Well, I threw myself into good works and tried to forget that my marriage was a sham.” She gave Jack a twisted smile. “I still loved Archie very much as a friend, but I was too young and too naive to realize the true reason for the failure of our marriage.”
“I imagine,” Jack said, “that your husband preferred men to women.”
Mairi nodded. “I had no idea. He started to disappear at night. I thought he had a mistress and I never questioned where he went because it was too painful.” She knotted her hands together. Those nights had been endless as she had lain awake, wondering, torturing herself. “I suppose I was to blame in a way,” she said, “because I pretended there was nothing wrong—”
There was an ugly set to Jack’s mouth. “You were not to blame,” he said gruffly. “In any way.”
Mairi stood up. She felt too agitated to keep still, hemmed in, restless. “Finally four years ago Archie disappeared one night and never reappeared. He left a letter. He said he was sorry, that our marriage had been a sham from the start and was void in the eyes of the church and the law because he had wed me only to conceal his preference for men. He had said he had wanted to help me when my father threatened to marry me off but that he had not had the courage to tell me the truth about his nature.”
She heard Jack swear under his breath.
“He ran off with his lover,” she said. “He said he could not bear the pretense any longer. He staged his own death to spare his family the scandal. Afterward I discovered that he had made all his fortune over to me, out of guilt, perhaps. I do not know. I never understood why he could not have told me the truth. We would have managed somehow.”
“It’s difficult to see how you could have done so without tearing yourselves apart,” Jack said. He came over to her and took her cold hands in his. His touch was warm. It comforted her. After a moment he drew her into his arms. They felt strong, like bands of steel. He smoothed the hair away from her hot face, and although she did not want to rely on him emotionally, Mairi let herself rest for a moment in his arms.
“No wonder you feel so alone,” Jack said. His tone was hard, but Mairi knew he was not angry with her. His anger was for a man he could not help despising. “He left you with too great a burden to carry on your own.”
“Lord MacLeod knows,” Mairi said. She shivered, feeling hot and cold at the same time as though she had the ague. “He is the only one. It was he who hushed the whole matter up, paid people off, made sure that I was legally free. Not that I had any desire to wed again.” Another shudder racked her. “Archie writes to him, I believe, and Lord MacLeod sends money sometimes. He never tells me any news and I do not ask. God help me, but I cannot forgive Archie. It still feels too much of a betrayal.”
Jack cupped her face in his hands and tilted it up so that he could look at her. “And throughout it all,” he said, “you never once betrayed him in return.”
“I was tempted,” Mairi said. She felt her skin heat beneath the cool touch of his fingers. “To start with I felt crushed by Archie’s lack of interest in me, but there were plenty of men who made their admiration for me plain, so I realized I was not unattractive. Why are you smiling?” she added.
“You are correct,” Jack said. “You are not unattractive.”
Mairi smiled too, reluctantly. “Yes, well, I could have taken a lover, but I was stubbornly loyal to my marriage vows.”
“And after he left and you were free?”
Mairi bit her lip. “I was too unhappy in the beginning. I did not want to remarry and I was too inexperienced to know how to manage an affair. So I pretended.” She gave a little shrug. “I flirted but it was all for show. ”
Jack’s gaze scanned her face and she felt vulnerable and exposed beneath that clear appraisal. “I wish I could find him,” Jack said. His tone was fierce, the violence just beneath the surface, controlled but no less powerful for that. Mairi felt the force of his anger in the same way she had done when Wilfred Cardross had attacked her. “It would give me the greatest pleasure to kill him myself,” Jack said, “and make the fiction a reality.”
Mairi pressed her fingers to
his lips. “No,” she said. “Please—”
She broke off as he silenced her with a kiss. It was hard and full of turbulent emotion.
“Mairi,” he said. Then: “Damn him for hurting you.”
He kissed her again, so swift and fierce and yet with a tenderness in it that made her heart race. She clutched the lapels of his jacket and tried to draw him even closer. Her head spun. She wanted him very badly. The emotions of the night had stripped away all her defences.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Stay with me. Please.”
Unbelievably she felt him hesitate. “I don’t think—” he started to say, and she kissed him again, desperate.
“Don’t tell me you have scruples about taking advantage of me tonight,” she said, when their lips parted. “I thought you were no gentleman.”
She felt him smile.
“So did I.” He loosed her, scanned her face again. She could see hesitation and wariness in his, almost as though he were afraid. Then he gave a sigh, as though he were surrendering, and scooped her up in his arms and carried her through to his bedroom.
* * *
JACK LAY AWAKE watching Mairi as she slept. He knew that he should carry her back to her own room. By now it would be abundantly clear to her maid that Mairi was in his bedchamber and had been there for some considerable time. The poor girl was probably desperate to retire for the night and would not know whether to wait or simply go to bed. The discreet fiction that he and Mairi had been practicing over their affair had been blown to pieces.
The problem was that he wanted to keep her here with him. He was tired of pretense, of creeping around like a backstairs lover who was ashamed of his behavior. He had already resigned himself to the fact that his lust for Mairi was not going to burn out. What he felt for her was not so simple. He was also determined to protect her, even more so now that he knew her secrets.
One Night with the Laird Page 21