Even if things were different … He was still an outlaw in this land. Soon he would need to flee England, most probably forever if he valued his neck. Which he did.
And Fia? Fia was still Carr’s daughter, and a week of gentle concourse and a few hours of passion did not change who she was. He knew Fia well enough to entrust his life to her, but he did not know her well enough to entrust others’ lives to her. But that didn’t stem the longing he felt for her.
If they were to make love again—for surely there was more of love than rutting in what they had done together—it would only turn “longing” into “yearning.” Perhaps a lifetime’s worth.
Damn, he thought. For a man who’d only sought to erase all things Merrick from his life, he’d made a bloody mess of it.
He pulled his boots on and stood up, wanting to touch her but afraid, because it would only stoke the attraction that simmered so close to the surface. “ ’Tis too soon dark to return to the manor, and the path is too faint to follow. We’ll have to stay at Maiden’s Blush this night.”
She turned, her smooth countenance at variance with her all-too-readable eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll not press myself on you. There are rooms already finished within the castle walls, some with rudimentary furnishings. You’ll stay in one and I’ll stay elsewhere.” Under the stars, he thought, though he did not tell her. He dare not consider being so near what he wanted so badly. He was only a man, after all.
She nodded and waited while he found their mounts and returned with them. With commendable restraint, he lifted her into the saddle and swung atop his own horse.
The path led to the thin, flinty land-bridge connecting the headland to the island. They crossed just as twilight’s shadows dissolved into night’s dark mantle. Overhead, nighthawks spiraled and wheeled in the indigo sky, as below, insects chirruped from the grasses. Torchlight flickered across the newly reconstructed terrace, where a few masons still chipped away at blocks of stone.
Fia recognized one of them as the giant, Jamie, who’d greeted them on the beach. He lifted his massive head at the sound of their approach and, recognizing Thomas, came to greet them.
“Sooo.” Jamie released the word slowly, his bright gaze flickering knowingly between Thomas and Fia. “ ’Bout time.”
“Shut up, Jamie,” Thomas said with more ire than the giant’s friendly if suggestive words warranted. “Have one of the men take the horses. Lady MacFarlane will be staying the night.”
The big man opened his mouth but one look at Thomas’s hard face made him rethink the wisdom of whatever he’d been about to utter. He called out over his shoulder for one of his men.
Thomas dismounted, and without waiting for Fia’s consent, clasped her waist, lifting her to the ground. He dropped his hands and stood back, all of this accomplished without a glance at her.
Pain lodged in Fia’s heart, but no bitterness, no regret. It was not distaste that kept Thomas’s gaze averted and his touch impersonal. On the contrary, it was desire, foolish, hopeless, hurtful desire. She knew because it filled her, too.
All the long ride down from the mountain, she’d watched his straight back, his broad shoulders, the way his hips moved with well-oiled ease to accommodate the movement of the horse beneath him. It had set pulses of desire shooting through her, the memories only moments old of his hips moving against her, his chest covering her, his arms wrapped around her.
She should count herself fortunate that he’d realized the folly of surrendering to desire as had she.
She’d never had a lover because she’d never wanted one. And now that she’d had one, she wanted more. She wanted Thomas. Not for just a few hours, but all the hours she could imagine. She wanted tomorrow and tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that. But wanting would gain her nothing. Except Thomas’s death.
If Carr ever discovered what she’d done, he’d have Thomas arrested and hanged, and his head on Temple Bar within a fortnight. She could not live with that.
She should be grateful. Six years ago she’d given up all her fantasies about Thomas, and now, amazingly, she’d been allowed a taste of those dreams and they had been more wonderful than all her imaginings had conceived. She should be grateful, content with what she’d been allowed. But she was not, she wanted more, because she was greedy and selfish. Like Carr.
But unlike Carr, she needn’t be ruled by her rapacity. She would not make Thomas pay the price of her greed.
She forced herself to look around at her surroundings, and as she did, wonder washed over her, releasing her from her painful conclusions.
She started forward, drawn by what she saw. It took her breath away. She tilted her head back, barely conscious that she was smiling in recognition of … Maiden’s Blush.
“ ’Tis said,” she heard Thomas murmur behind her, “that Dougal McClairen first saw Lizabet McIntere at her father’s keep when she was but thirteen years old. ’Twas the only time Dougal saw the girl, but ’twas enough.
“Dougal left McIntere’s house, knowing the old brute planned to align his family with a wealthier one by marrying off Lizabet. That didn’t matter to Dougal. He swore to have her. He came here to this island and he built this castle, knowing it would be impenetrable and impervious to siege.
“It took him four years, and when he was done he gathered together seventy well-armed Highlanders and went awooing. Luckily, Lizabet hadn’t yet wed—though Dougal swore it wouldn’t have mattered to him if she had—and after one look at Dougal’s men, McIntere agreed to the marriage.
“Dougal brought Lizabet to this island, to his unnamed castle.…” Thomas’s voice roughened and faded.
“And they stopped at the crest of that hill, near sunset,” Fia continued in a hushed voice, for she knew the story well, had heard it from childhood, recited in Gunna’s broad burr. Her gaze traveled with loving appreciation over the rough, silvery stone, the glinting, deeply recessed windows and high turreted towers. “And Dougal made a solemn oath. Once in his castle’s walls Lizabet would remain forever innocent of any man’s touch save his own.
“And Lizabet blushed, and the Highlanders that were with them, who heard the vow and saw the lady’s cheeks, looked at the great gray fortress, and it seemed to them that in the setting sun it, too, blushed at its master’s ardency. And so, forever thereafter, the castle has been called Maiden’s Blush.”
She turned and found Thomas’s gaze upon her and she thought that no matter how ardently Dougal looked upon his bride, his expression could not have matched the intensity of Thomas McClairen’s gray-blue gaze.
“Until Carr,” Jamie said, breaking the odd, still moment. He stood a ways back, smiling bitterly.
Thomas looked away. “Aye,” he said under his breath, “until Carr.”
Her father had bought the castle by betraying the McClairens’ Jacobite sympathies to the Crown, and then, to close the net, secretly testified against his own benefactor, Ian McClairen, and thus secured the execution of the castle’s laird and rightful owner.
Having received the castle as payment for his treachery, Carr had gone about the business of prostituting the great gray dame. He’d tarted her up, adding bizarre excrescences to her silhouette and hiding her beneath a garish veneer.
But now … her stately towers no longer cringed beneath a tiara of unlikely gables and flying buttresses. Crenellation lined her summits like a simple circlet on an ancient ruler’s brow. Gray stone melded with gray stone. All of it fit together; all of it was of a piece.
“It’s magnificent, Thomas,” Fia said quietly. “However have you managed? However could you afford it?”
“The privateering trade has been very good to me,” he said with a tiny smile.
She turned. “But I thought that you owned a merchant shipping company.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes one overlaps the other.”
“I see.” And she did. The dangers of sailing in pirateinfested seas were grave enough, but the dangers entailed
in chasing down and engaging enemy ships would be immense. She disliked that he’d risked so much and, obviously, so often.
“I am very good at what I do, Fia,” he said, his gray-blue eyes unwavering. “And ’tisn’t only my efforts that finance what you see here. Jamie Craigg and a dozen others here have hazarded the sea-plying trade, too.”
“I see. Yes.” Heat pricked the back of her eyes. She looked away. She had no right to feel so angry with him, even less to feel frightened for him. A single instance of lovemaking invested her with no such privileges. He would see it as possessive, perhaps take a distaste of her.
She composed herself, looking up at the formidable building that had demanded so much of Thomas, her pleasure in it tempered by her knowledge. “How did you know what to do?” she asked, striving to keep her thoughts away from the dangers he’d faced and would face again.
“We rely much on the memories of those who lived in the castle before Carr,” he answered.
“And are those many?”
“Nay. Too few, and their memories too weak,” Jamie said, deep furrows in his broad, ruddy brow. “I meant to talk to you on this very matter, Tommy.” He gnawed his lip. “We’ve run into a wee spot of difficulty.”
“Aye?” Thomas said, his attention finally arrested.
“There’s no one here can recall the private rooms of the central hall,” Jamie said. “We have the north and south wings to rights because there are those here who lived in suites in those parts of the castle. But while they took meals in the main hall, they rarely went beyond it to the chambers behind.”
“ ’Sblood,” Thomas cursed softly. “Surely we can make an educated guess?”
Jamie looked doubtful. “The foundations give scant clues as to the arrangement of those rooms.”
“Mayhap I might be of some assistance,” Fia said. She knew those rooms by heart, and not only the division of the rooms that Carr had imposed upon the castle, but the original layout as well.
Thomas turned to her, a warning expression on his face. She regarded him evenly. She would not betray her identity. She knew better than he the danger that being Carr’s child could bring.
Jamie was watching her curiously.
“I was a guest at Wanton’s Blush,” she said simply. “Indeed, I spent an entire season here one year.”
Jamie’s speculative expression increased and too late Fia realized that six years ago, when the castle had burned, she had been a child—at least in most people’s estimation. It would be unlikely for her to have been Carr’s guest. Quickly she salvaged the situation.
“I should say my father was invited to visit here,” she said. “As my mother died when I was small, I accompanied him. Lord Carr allowed me the use of his library. A vast one it was, too. There were folios there, sheaves and sheaves of watercolor pictures of the castle, done by a young McClairen lass. Many of them were interior studies of the central portion of the castle. I assumed from the number and detail of the pictures that the central portion of the castle is where my unknown artist lived.”
“Is this true, lass?” Jamie breathed, staring at her as though she was manna sent from on high.
“Yes,” she said.
“And you remember these pictures?”
“Very well. I copied them,” she said, and at Jamie’s incredulous look smiled. “There was not much else to do for a girl of my age.”
“Ah!” Jamie breathed, and his big, blunt face split into a wide grin. He clapped Thomas on the shoulder. “So this is why you brought the girl here! I never thought you’d be one to mix pleasure and work, though I warrant after one look at this girl, I’d not have blamed you if you had.”
“Shut up, Jamie,” Thomas said once more, disapproval and anxiety mixing in his expression. Jamie took no umbrage at Thomas’s tone. His problem had been solved, and expeditiously, too.
“Can you begin to draw some sketches for us tomorrow, Lady MacFarlane?”
“Of course. I’ll work on them at the manor, too.”
“Manor?” Jamie declared indignantly. “Now, there’s a pretty waste of time. I’ll tell you what, I’ll have a room here at the castle all cozied up for ye before noon. No need to be exhausting yerself riding back and forth. And if ye’re here ye can quicker tell us if we misstep, eh?” He turned to Thomas. “ ’Tis best if the lass stays here, Thomas.”
To be at Maiden’s Blush with Thomas? To speak with him, to have only to look outside her door or a window and know there was the possibility she might see him? Like a siren song, the idea bewitched her. She could not turn her back on the possibility of owning a few more days of the fantasy.
She stepped up to Thomas, lifting her face to his dark, scowling one. “Aye, Thomas,” she said. “ ’Tis best if I stay.”
A little flame flickered in the depths of his eyes. His hand moved a fraction of an inch toward her, and stilled.
“She can stay,” he said.
Chapter 21
The traffic leading to London’s dockyards was impassable. James Barton stuck his head out the carriage window and shouted up at the driver. “I’m getting out here and walking.”
“Foine fer yer ta say, now as ye have me tangled in this broil and no fare fer me trouble. ‘Tain’t goin’ to be easy work turnin’ round,” the driver said sourly, and spat.
James tossed him several coins and clambered down out of the carriage. It was only a few miles to where the Sea Witch was moored. He’d promised Thomas he would take the Cape route, and that he would, two days hence. In fact, today he was making a preliminary inspection of his ship preparatory to sailing.
Besides, ’Twould help pass the time, especially since he’d decided it wouldn’t do for him to call on pretty Sarah Leighton three afternoons in a row. He’d been spending too much time in Miss Leighton’s company since Fia had disappeared and Thomas had gone chasing off in a half-crippled vessel, to God knows where.
The day he’d taken Miss Leighton and Pip from St. James Park he’d been impressed by her gentility and concern for her brother. The next day he’d returned the shawl she’d left in his carriage, and she’d invited him in to thank him properly for his aid. From there one thing had led to another until he’d found himself in danger of monopolizing her time.
“Barton!”
James wheeled around, looking for the source of that imperious voice.
“Here, sir!” On the street where traffic had come to a standstill, a silver-topped walking stick emerged from the window of a black-lacquered carriage and struck the door. Within the interior James could just make out two figures, one cadaverously thin, the other wearing a puffed and piled wig atop a handsome countenance. Lord Carr.
“Don’t stand there gawking, sir,” the voice commanded. “Come here.”
It had been exactly what he and Fia had wanted, for Carr to seek James out and demand to be made a part of his insurance swindle. James would agree only if Carr signed over Bramble House, which he, in turn, would deed to Fia. But now that the moment was here James felt a tingle of fear.
Of Carr. James Barton had always confronted danger head on but he’d never before had the sensation of willingly putting himself in the presence of true evil. He did so now as he reluctantly unlatched the door.
“Get in. Get in, I say, Barton.”
For Fia, James thought, and entered the carriage.
Inside, Carr sat across the narrow confines from Lord Tunbridge, long rumored to be Carr’s familiar and his agent of ruination. Carr motioned for James to take the seat beside Tunbridge, and James did so. Tunbridge did not glance his way but sat as still as an automaton awaiting Carr’s hand to wind it up.
Carr regarded James from behind hooded lids. His long, elegant fingers relaxed over the knob of the walking cane. “Been a long time, eh, Barton?”
“Indeed, sir,” James replied.
Carr’s mobile mouth curved. “Imagine you’ve been expectin’ me, what with Fia’s tiresome machinations and all.”
James could not ke
ep the surprise from registering on his face. Carr saw it and chuckled. “I fear Fia grew simpleminded while living on that Scottish farm. Of course I know what she’s up to. She’s my get, ain’t she?”
James swallowed; the evil he knew resided in this man had revealed itself. It was in his voice, the viscous, near sexual exultance of his triumph.
Carr’s smile abruptly dissolved. His gaze lifted past James’s face to stare out the window. “That’s right, Janet!” he said. “I knew as soon as Fia told me about Barton’s affection for the country what she was after, just like I know what you want!”
Startled, James looked around. A crush of working-class people moved slowly along the sidewalk, past their vehicle. Within the churning crowd he thought he glimpsed a lady’s fine skirts and a fashionable hat.
“What’re you lookin’ at, sir?” Carr demanded. “I’m speaking to you!”
Confounded anew, James turned back. Beside him Tunbridge remained fixed and unseeing, but his aquiline nostrils spread in a subtle expression of derision.
An evil glint had entered Carr’s brilliant sapphire eyes. Was this some sort of game Carr played with him? James wondered in disgust.
He was a simple, forthright man, but in the few short moments James had spent in Carr’s company, he realized the magnitude of Carr’s madness and the lengths to which he would go to win. He should have realized it before. They should have realized it.
How could Fia and he ever hope to win against the likes of Carr? Had Carr not killed Fia’s mother and the two other wives that followed? And most probably others, as well.
The thought made James tense. Carr saw his reaction, relished it.
“The reason I stopped you, sir,” Carr said, “is this. I have a message for my darling Fia. Please convey to her that your little scheme has floundered rather badly, almost as badly as, say, the Alba Star will shortly.”
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