by Karen Ranney
Glancing over her shoulder at the other woman, she said, “You do realize that he has no obligation to report his comings and goings to you.”
“Of course I do,” Mary said, her cheeks deepening in color. “But he asks for my opinion on certain matters and I share my thoughts with him.”
Unfortunately, Mary shared her thoughts with everyone. As to asking her opinion, Alex was a man of great tact when he wanted to be. She didn’t doubt that her son had asked Mary’s advice on something in order to be kind.
Being pleasant to people was more important than lineage, bloodline, or even a title. That knowledge had come to her from her grandfather, the earl, as well as her husband, the eighth Duke of Kinross, a man beloved for his kindness, not the fact that he was a duke.
How nice it would be if Mary could learn that lesson.
Louise hadn’t found many people at Blackhall who liked the young woman, with the exception of her personal maid, Barbara, a woman who was known to carry tales, and the stable master, who praised Mary’s seat.
Being a good horsewoman did not equate to possessing a good character, but Louise had never made that comment to Mary.
She wished Mary would take herself off to the stables now and spend some time with the new chestnut mare Alex had given her. She didn’t begrudge her son one cent spent on his sister-in-law. She knew exactly why he did so, the same reason she would have gladly given Mary anything in order to be spared her presence. The more one kept Mary entertained, the happier everyone was.
More than once, she’d suggested that Mary travel to Inverness, there to be put under the tutelage of Louise’s cousin, who had some reputation of guiding a young woman onto the matrimonial mart. Mary had countered that she was the daughter of an earl. Such a rank should be rewarded with an appropriate union. She wasn’t, therefore, interested in marrying just anyone.
Louise wanted to tell the poor girl that she had as much chance of marrying a catch as a toad did of changing into a butterfly. She didn’t, of course. Just because Mary was rude didn’t mean she had to be.
Although Ruth had been an undisputed beauty, her younger sister hadn’t the same appearance. Their hair was the same color, but Ruth’s blond color had glorious gold and reddish highlights, while Mary’s was rather dull. Ruth’s nose had been aquiline and nearly perfect; Mary’s had a hump on it and her nostrils were, regrettably, overlarge. Ruth’s mouth had been generous but perfectly proportioned. Mary’s, on the other hand, seemed abnormally large for her face and was made even more so by the fact that she never seemed to stop talking. Ruth’s face had been a perfect oval. Mary preferred to pull her hair back into a bun, which only accentuated her wide, high forehead and pointed chin. But for the exact shade of blue eyes, one would be hard pressed to think the two women related at all.
Ruth had been amenable to change; Mary fought it. Ruth had laughed often, having the most delightful wit. Unfortunately, Mary was already curmudgeonly, although she was still a young woman.
Mary needed someone to take her in hand, smooth out her rough edges—while not revealing to her that she had any rough edges, of course—and present her as a fait accompli to a wealthy man in need of a presentable wife. Her antecedents were, as Mary might say, impeccable, perhaps even enough to counter her flaws. She might be the perfect mate for a wealthy merchant who wanted to brag about his marriage into the nobility.
The only problem with this plan was that Mary stuck to Blackhall like a burr, having adopted the castle and the family as her own, especially Alex.
She had an unhealthy fixation on her son, and it appeared to be growing stronger with each day.
“I’m certain he won’t be gone long,” Louise said. With any luck, her comment would satisfy Mary and the woman would go away.
What a pity it was a terrible day for riding.
Chapter 7
Winter left the Highlands with reluctance, evidenced by the sleet mixed with snow that greeted their arrival in Wittan Village. The interior of the carriage was warm from the brazier on the floor. The weather outside the carriage wouldn’t prove as comfortable.
Alex gathered his greatcoat around him and opened the door.
“I’ll be back in a few moments,” he told Jason.
“Shall I accompany you, Your Grace?”
“No, it’s a personal errand,” he said, not wanting an audience to the coming confrontation.
The address listed on the note turned out to be a narrow house wedged between two others on a lane in the middle of Wittan Village.
Would the note writer be expecting him? Or would she be anticipating his mother’s appearance? No doubt she thought Louise would provide any amount of money simply because she mentioned an infant. His child.
What blether.
He stood in the sleet and knocked on the door. His discomfort only fueled his irritation. He knocked again. She wasn’t going to ignore him. If she wasn’t home now, then he’d return after he’d been to Inverness.
If she balked at confessing her effort at blackmail, he’d seek out the magistrate for this county. It would be her word against his. He doubted she’d be believed when he produced the anonymous letter in his pocket.
He put a little more effort into the next knock.
The door swung open.
“Awa ye go!”
He was instantly propelled to his childhood and the tales his nurse had told of the wirrikow, the demon who took on many forms.
The woman in front of him could easily be a wirrikow, with the three hairy moles dotting her chin. They pointed the way to the deep lines beside her mouth that met the vertical lines extending from the corners of her eyes. It was like her face had been folded a dozen times and then unfolded without any effort to smooth out the creases.
“Aye?” she said. “And what would you be wanting?”
She reeked of whiskey and he took a step back, ignoring the sleet for the ability to breathe.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
As inane a statement as he’d ever uttered, but he couldn’t imagine that she was the author of the anonymous note.
She stared past him to his carriage and the crest on the door.
“I’ve heard tell of you. You’re the Duke of Kinross, are you not? From Blackhall Castle?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Come in, Duke,” she said, holding the door open so he could enter.
He stayed where he was.
“Do you have someone living here who’s expecting a child?”
The woman’s grin took him aback. “Aye, but why would you be wanting to know, Duke?”
“I need to speak with her.”
“Then come in. I can’t heat the whole of the outdoors, even for the likes of you.”
He entered the house reluctantly, finding himself in a dim, narrow hallway. The air smelled of onions and fish. The floor was dusty, the walls bare of any decoration other than stains. The ceiling sagged in places, making him wonder if the house was going to tumble down around his head.
“Where is she?” he asked, standing as far from the woman as he could.
She glanced at him almost flirtatiously.
“I run a good house here,” she said. “I don’t hold with male visitors to my female tenants.”
“I can assure you, madam, that I have not come here for nefarious purposes. I need to speak with her about a matter of some urgency. Where is she?”
His greatcoat was sodden and his mood was as cold as the foyer. Pulling a few coins from his pocket, he extended his hand to her.
“I need to ask the woman a few questions, that’s all,” he said.
Evidently, her values were flexible as long as money was involved, because she took the coins, nodding to the second door.
Grateful to be quit of her, he strode down the hall and knocked once.
“Go ahead in, Duke. There’s no lock on the door.”
He didn’t glance back at the woman, just pushed down on the latch. When the door swung open, he
entered the room.
The light from the tiny window revealed a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, and a series of pegs holding the occupant’s clothing. The walls were stained but covered with drawings of flowers, their colors taking his eyes from the sparseness of the furnishings.
He didn’t see her at first. She stood to his right, her back pressed up against the wall, staring at him as if she expected him to rob her or do her grievous bodily harm.
“You,” he said.
He’d been right. Lorna Gordon was Marie.
He was instantly assaulted by memory. Marie, draping herself around him, her leg at his waist. Marie, kissing him mad. Marie, a virgin, the realization punctuating the whiskey and passion-induced fog.
For weeks, whenever he met anyone new on his trips to Inverness and farther, to Edinburgh, he expected to be given some carefully worded demand. He imagined being confronted by a stranger, someone who would identify himself as Marie’s “friend” who only wanted to protect her. He never doubted that the protection would take the form of money, some absurd payment he was expected to produce in order to prevent a smear to his reputation.
To his surprise, no one had ever come forward.
Evidently she’d been waiting for this moment.
Her ginger-colored hair was wind-whipped and damp. Her large brown eyes, curiously tilted at the corners, gave her an almost exotic appearance. If nothing else, they encouraged a study of her face. She possessed something less common than beauty and more arresting. Her cheeks were red, her lips pink. Had she been biting them?
She had mud on her chin and it was also dripping from the hem of her dress. A cloak she held bunched in front of her was in a similar condition.
“Lorna Gordon, I presume,” he said.
She moved to sit on the only chair in the small room, clutching her cloak in front of her.
Conscious of the landlady, he closed the door behind him and entered the room.
“The very rude Duke of Kinross.”
Her voice was curiously educated, her accent one he couldn’t decipher.
“Where are you from?”
“Where am I from?” she asked. “Does that matter?”
“Call it my curiosity. You don’t sound like a maid.”
“What is a maid supposed to sound like, Your Grace?”
“Inverness?” he asked.
“I lived there until I was twelve,” she said. “After that, I traveled with my father. Robert Gordon. He was a well-respected botanist.”
He glanced at the sketches on the wall. “Did he do those?”
“Does it matter?”
He was getting tired of her answering his questions with a question.
“Are they yours?”
This time she didn’t respond.
“If they are, you’re talented.”
“I can sleep well tonight, knowing the Duke of Kinross approves.”
He took a step toward her, noting when she tensed. Did she expect him to strike her? He’d never touched a woman in anger, and the idea that she thought him capable of it was an irritant.
“What made you come to the fancy dress ball?”
“Foolishness,” she said. “A decision I rue now.”
“Did you really enjoy it?” he asked, remembering her parting words to him.
Her eyes widened. “Now, that, I have no intention of discussing.”
Without giving her a hint of what he was going to do, he strode to the chair and jerked the cloak from her grasp, letting it fall to the floor.
One of her hands went to press against the mound of her stomach. The other clenched into a fist at her side.
He couldn’t speak. What words could he possibly say? She was heavily pregnant. He couldn’t lift his eyes, couldn’t focus on anything but the size of her belly, the perfect roundness of it beneath the dark blue of her dress.
As he stared, he had the curious notion of movement, as if the baby were greeting him in his own way. He wanted, in a way that was unlike him, to put his hand there on that exact spot.
He dragged his attention back to her face.
“When is the baby due?” he asked.
“In a month or so.”
“You were a virgin,” he said. “Or was that some type of trick?”
She smiled, startling him again.
“I have no idea how to masquerade as a virgin, Your Grace.”
“Are you trying to tell me that it’s mine?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything, except that you’re not welcome here. Please leave.”
“I don’t believe you. It can’t be mine.”
“I didn’t say it was,” she said, giving him that look again. As if he’d marched into her spartan room with outrageous demands. “Please leave. Take yourself off. Go back to Blackhall. Forget me. Forget you and I ever met.”
“We engaged in intercourse, Miss Gordon, but we never actually met.”
She stared at a spot to his left. It took him a moment to realize she was trying to calm herself. The frantic beat of her pulse at her neck was clue enough that she was agitated.
“Then there’s no reason for us to do so now,” she finally said. “I shall pretend ignorance of your existence and I pray you’ll do the same. Please leave. Get out of my life, Your Grace.”
The last was said between clenched teeth.
He heard a noise and glanced at the door, certain that the slattern of a landlady was listening to them.
“What do you want? Money?”
Her eyes widened. “Is that all you can think, Your Grace? That people want something from you? I would think that would be a terrible way to live, always expecting someone to treat you abominably.”
“That isn’t an answer, Miss Gordon.”
“What do I want? For you to leave. For you never to return. For you to forget that night as I have. For you to scrub your mind free of my name, my face, and anything else about me.”
She’d called him a mouse. He’d never been able to forget the insult. A prancing mouse who’d been afraid someone would step on his tail.
“You wrote my mother.”
“I did not.”
The words were too emphatic to be a lie.
“Then who did?”
“It was a mistake. Accept that and forget it, Your Grace. Go away.”
Even if he was able to forget her, there was the matter of his mother. She was not going to ignore Lorna’s presence.
She stood quickly, grabbed the back of the chair and steadied herself.
“Please, leave. I want nothing from you but your absence.”
He studied her and had the curious thought that she was telling the truth.
Her heart was thumping loud enough to wake her child, who used his heels to punch at her from the inside. She pressed a hand reassuringly against her stomach and received another kick.
Sitting again, she stared up at the duke.
She’d never seen him anything but perfectly turned out. Never a hint of stubble. A wrinkle wouldn’t dare appear on his person. Now he commanded her room in his severe black suit. His black hair was brushed back from a face that had always been clean shaven. His blue-green eyes sparkled with annoyance.
If she’d had watercolors she would have tried to replicate the exact color of his eyes, but all she had were her charcoal pencils. Her imagination always furnished the exact hue, however. Even as an old, old woman she’d be able to remember the Duke of Kinross.
He stood motionless, studying her. Even the curtains on the window stilled, the cold draft subdued by his presence.
Did he expect her to swoon because he was in her cold, dark room? Well, she wasn’t. He hadn’t been invited here. She could live for an eon without seeing him again.
Why was he staring at her belly? Hadn’t he ever seen a woman carrying a child before today? No doubt the women of his acquaintance hid themselves away in the latter months of their pregnancy.
One thing she did know: why she’d been so fascinated wi
th him. He hadn’t lost any of his good looks in the intervening months. If anything, he was more handsome than she remembered.
Instead of leaving, he pulled a letter from inside his jacket.
“Who wrote this?” he asked.
She saw no reason to involve Nan simply to answer the duke’s question.
“It doesn’t matter, Your Grace. Please leave. There’s no need for you to be here.”
“Is the child mine?” he asked.
She pressed her hand against the base of her throat, the better to slow her pulse a little.
How did she answer that? If she told him the truth, what would be the ramifications?
“Well?”
“What does it matter? I don’t want anything from you.”
“How will you support yourself?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business. Why do you care?”
“Is the child mine?” he repeated.
“You’re as annoying as a magpie,” she said. “The same call over and over again. Very well, I can be the same. Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away.” She added one more for good measure. “Go away.”
Perhaps she should have been more cautious in her speech. After all, he was the Duke of Kinross, capable of changing a person’s fortunes on a whim. Yet she’d never heard of him behaving capriciously.
His sister-in-law still lived at Blackhall even years after her sister died. Mary Taylor was an exceedingly annoying woman yet the duke had opened his home to her. Surely that showed a generous nature. There were other tales of his kindness, some of which might simply be rumors. He was supposed to be rebuilding the roof of the Wittan Village church and making other changes there as well. She knew, for a fact—having been delegated to arrange the donations—that Blackhall was generous to the poor. Plus, the duke always gave the staff an annual Christmas present. She’d saved that money, the amount making up most of her savings.