“Good after—”
But he had raised his whip to his horses, and he was gone, sending up a flurry of dust in his wake.
Esme and Cam stared after him for a long minute, then Cam exhaled, releasing the tension in his muscles as he did so.
He heard footsteps, and he and Esme turned to see Élise and Emma approaching from behind them.
“Who was that?” Emma asked, her brows raised at the carriage that was speeding away.
“I was tempted to eavesdrop, but since we said you weren’t allowed to break rules, I decided we weren’t able to either,” Élise said.
“That was…” Esme hesitated, looking to Cam.
“My father,” Cam finished for her.
“Oh.” Emma and Élise exchanged a glance. “Oh, well, I thought…The conversation didn’t appear to be a pleasant one.”
“It wasna.”
“I see,” Emma said. Then her expression softened. “I am sorry, Cam.”
He managed a light shrug. “You never ken who you’ll be meeting in Hyde Park.”
“That’s certainly the truth,” Esme said. Then to her sisters-in-law, “Would you mind if we walked a bit longer?”
“Not at all,” Élise said. She waved toward the path. “Go on, then. We’ll linger behind, as we did before.”
“Thank you.” Esme pulled him forward. When they were out of hearing range of the other ladies, she said, “What happened between your sister and your father?”
Cam sighed. “It wasn’t just what happened with Anna. It began long before that. When we were bairns. Our mother died when I was fourteen. Anna was only nine years old, still a wee lass. Alastair was not yet sixteen, and the moment Mum died, my da decided he would go out and carouse every night and that Alastair should take on responsibility for the estate.”
“He was only a boy.”
“Aye, he was,” Cam said. “And he was never completely healthy. He was born with a weak heart.”
“Oh dear.”
“The estate immediately started careening to failure, and our da blamed Alastair for everything that went wrong. Every day, he screamed at my brother, telling him he was a fool and a worthless idiot, and not fit to follow in his footsteps as the Earl of Sutton.”
Cam winced, and Esme leaned toward him, an action that brought him some comfort in the midst of this dark memory. “I did nothing, Esme,” he said quietly. “I never stood up for my brother.”
“You were a lad, too,” she murmured. “Younger than he was.”
“Aye, but I was stronger. I was always stronger than Alastair. I could have faced my father, told him to stop. I saw how he was slowly killing my brother, and I didna do a thing.”
“But he was your father,” Esme said. “It probably wasn’t in your nature to argue with him.”
He gave her a half smile. “ ’Tis sweet how you defend me, lass.” He sighed. “Anyhow, the earl grew worse as the years went on. More tyrannical. It was the kind of abuse no one would ever speak of, but abuse was what it was. I ken he beat my brother, even when Alastair was a man full grown. He was always smaller than my da, always weaker.”
“Oh no,” Esme whispered. “That’s terrible.”
“I left as soon as I was old enough to join the army. I couldna stand being at home.”
Esme nodded. “I don’t blame you. I would have wanted to leave that environment, too.”
“Things grew even worse for Alastair after I left. My father drove him like a slave. The doctors said if he wasna under so much strain, his heart would have held out longer.” As always, the guilt felt like it was suffocating him, and he struggled to breathe against it.
“I’m so sorry, Cam,” Esme murmured.
“If I’d never joined the army—if I’d stayed with him, helped him—he might still be alive.”
“Guilt won’t bring him back,” Esme said. “There’s no way you could have known that.”
“Aye. Well…I returned home to bury my brother. And I found Anna. She had just turned seventeen at the time. But…” He broke off and shook his head.
“She’d been hurt,” Esme whispered. Suddenly, it all came together.
“Aye,” Cam bit out. “She’d been hurt. Badly. More than once. I went to my father, who’d mostly ignored Anna while we were children, as she was a lass and not worthy of his notice. But when I told him…”
“He didn’t help her?”
“Help?” He gave a bitter laugh. “Nay. He blamed her. He named her a whore and publicly disowned her.”
“Oh no,” Esme breathed.
“She’d nowhere to go but the streets. I took her in, and my da said if I took care of her, then I was no son to him.” Cam’s lips twisted. “But he canna stop me from inheriting the title and the entailed properties. So I cut all ties to him, set my sister up in a house, and returned to the army. Whenever I came to London, I avoided society, who had turned their backs on my innocent sister when the word about her disinheritance became public. I also avoided my father. I hadna seen him again until today.”
“Oh, Cam. That is a horrible story. No wonder you…”
“No wonder I what?”
Esme took a deep breath. “No wonder you dislike London society so much. If they supported your father’s cruelty, no wonder you want nothing to do with the ton.”
“Is that going to be a problem for us?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said firmly. “Not at all. I bear no love for society, either. I would not mind if we didn’t attend another ball or party or social event for the rest of our lives.”
He remembered the story Stirling had told him of the ball where she’d tripped on her skirt and the ton’s glee over it. Society hadn’t been kind to her, either. He nodded. “Thank you.”
“No, don’t thank me. I understand how malicious people can be…and your father…” She shook her head. “I hope we don’t see him again.”
“Aye. As do I.” He forced a smile. “But I do want you to meet Anna. She needs friends. And she’s only a year older than you are.”
“I hope to be her friend. But you must know that despite my best intentions, I have trouble making friends. I can only seem to make the connection of friendship with my family, and perhaps they only agree because they are family.”
“Anna will love you,” he said stubbornly. But he had a feeling he wasn’t just being stubborn. There was something intrinsically similar about Esme and Anna. If they gave it a chance, he was certain they could be friends.
“What about you?” Esme asked after a long silence.
He looked at her, raising his brows in question.
“Your father,” she clarified. “He was cruel to Alastair, and he ignored Anna then was horrible to her when she was suffering. How did he treat you?”
Cam looked straight ahead. That was the worst of it. The one thing that made it unbearable. “He treated me well,” he admitted, though he felt like he was speaking through glass cutting into his throat.
“Really?”
“Aye. Too well. He would…stand me up in front of Alastair and compare us—all my strengths contrasted with Alastair’s faults. He said I reminded him of himself. He told my brother over and over again that I was his true son, the strong one, the intelligent one. He told us that I should be his heir, not Alastair. That I would be an Earl of Sutton to make him proud, while Alastair simply disgusted him.”
Esme stopped in the middle of the path. “Cam.” She looked up at him, her big brown eyes full of despair. “That’s not treating you well. That’s terrible. That’s surely a form of abuse in itself.”
Cam shook his head. “Nay. ’Twas nothing. I was the golden boy. The favored son. And sometimes…” His mouth went dry, and he rasped out one of his greatest shames, curling his fingers into fists at his sides. “I enjoyed it. I wanted to hear how good I was. How special and strong, how much better I was than my brother.”
“You were a child. All children desire praise. You couldn’t have understood at the time h
ow damaging it was to your brother.”
Cam shrugged, not really believing her. All one had to do was watch Alastair to see how their father’s words and actions had slowly torn him apart. How they had killed him, just like they’d killed their mother.
Cam had stood by, basking in his father’s evil praise, and he’d let his mother and brother die. He’d been complicit in their deaths. And Anna…well, he’d come to his senses in time to save her body, but even now he feared he’d been too late to save her spirit.
“It was long ago,” Cam murmured. “I try to forget it. I do what I can for Anna, and…” He shook his head. “I just…try.”
I try to be a better man than him, he wanted tell her. I try…but I fail more often than I succeed.
“You are nothing like him,” Esme said, her voice throbbing with certainty. “Nothing.”
He loved her so much for saying that. No one had ever said that to him. People who knew them both—even his own sister—only ever told him how like his father he was.
He wished he could believe Esme’s words. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to.
Chapter 22
“You seem happier,” Duncan Mackenzie observed, grinning at Cam.
“Well, I ken you know how that feels,” Cam said. Mackenzie had scarcely stopped grinning since he’d married Lady Grace. Except, of course, since Fraser had been killed.
Their failure to find the culprit was eating the Knights alive. They’d been discussing laying a trap for the man, and that would be their next step, but not until after the wedding.
For now, Cam was trying to focus on his upcoming nuptials. Sarah, even though she had gone into her confinement, had arranged for a wedding breakfast to be held at Trent House, so Esme had sent Cam a list of invitees, which Cam had approved and added to. Their announcement had been posted in the papers, and Esme wrote to him about visiting well-wishers. He’d been thankful that not many people knew where he lived. He had no interest in people visiting him and wishing him felicitations on his upcoming nuptials.
Which would take place the day after tomorrow.
He couldn’t wait to bed Esme again. There was so much more he could teach her about the pleasures of the flesh, and just thinking about how responsive she’d been last time—even though he’d been so rough with her—made him hard.
Bailey, the Knights’ man-of-all-work, opened the drawing room door, and Cam looked up from the newspaper he hadn’t been reading.
“Mr. McLeod, there is a lady here to see you.”
Cam shoved the paper aside and rose. “Lady Esme?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mackenzie grinned at him. “D’you wager she came against her brother’s wishes?”
Cam shrugged. He didn’t care. What mattered was that she was here.
“I canna wait to meet her.”
“She’s shy,” Cam warned, already halfway out the door. “Dinna scare her.”
Mackenzie laughed. “If she isna scared of you, then she’ll think me a mere pup.”
Cam frowned as he left the study and went to the entry hall to meet Esme. Was she afraid of him? She’d been shy at first—apparently frightened, but in retrospect he thought that was more fear of him discovering her identity and the contents of her notebook than actual fear of him.
Esme turned, smiling as he approached. He held out his hands to her, needing to touch her but managing to stop himself from dragging her into his arms and kissing her until they were both out of breath. There were only two days until his wedding. A bit of propriety was in order.
“You came,” he said, beaming at her.
“I begged and begged Trent. He’s being ridiculous and old-fashioned about this, and it’s driving me mad.”
“He’s just wanting to take advantage of his position of elder brother before you leave his household.”
She rolled her eyes. “I suppose.”
“But he allowed you to come today?”
“Yes. He said if you were here, there were sure to be a few other Highland Knights, and they wouldn’t allow anything untoward to happen.”
Cam couldn’t help but smirk. “Of course they wilna. Come, let me introduce you to the others. Innes is with Lord Pinfield tonight, but I ken you’ve already met him. All the other men are here, as well as Lady Grace and Lady Claire.”
She nodded, and he saw the subtle straightening of her shoulders, the determination hardening her features. He couldn’t blame her trepidation. In two days, these women and men she didn’t know at all would become her new family. They were all up to the task, but she couldn’t know that.
Taking her hand and squeezing it in reassurance, he led her down the corridor to the office, where Mackenzie rose the second he opened the door.
—
Esme’s heart was about to beat out of her chest. This was a good thing—she knew—better to meet the Highland Knights now rather than on her wedding day, when she’d be overwhelmed for about a thousand different reasons. After the wedding, she’d be living here with the Knights—and Lady Claire and Lady Grace, the wives of Major Campbell and Duncan Mackenzie.
Right now, she stared at the smiling man in front of her. He was a russet-haired hulking brute of a man, but his smile had to be about the kindest one she’d ever seen in her entire life, and it calmed her immediately. She liked this man on sight.
“Mackenzie, this is Lady Esme. Esme, this is Duncan Mackenzie, the youngest knight, but one you definitely want at your side in a battle.”
“I can see that,” she said, then immediately wondered whether that had been a gauche thing to say. But it must not have been, because the man’s smile grew even stronger.
“Milady,” he said, his Scottish brogue deeper and heavier than Cam’s—perhaps he’d lived more of his life in the Highlands than Cam had. “ ’Tis good to finally meet you.”
She raised her brows. “Finally?”
“Aye.” He flashed a grin at Cam. “McLeod hasna stopped thinking about you since he met you at your brother’s dinner party.”
She smiled, glad that Cam hadn’t told him the truth about where they’d actually met.
“Thinking?” Cam asked in mock annoyance. “Are you a mind reader now, Mackenzie?”
Mackenzie snorted. “Aye, well, ’tisna so hard, when you’re lookin’ all moony-eyed all the time.”
If Esme wasn’t mistaken, Cam turned a little pink at that, and it made her like Duncan Mackenzie even more.
“My wife is upstairs with her sister.” Mackenzie turned back to Esme. “Come with me. I’ll introduce you to them.”
Mackenzie led her and Cam upstairs, where they entered a small bedchamber. They interrupted the animated discussion of two ladies seated side by side on a sofa, both of them blinking in surprise when Mackenzie threw the door open.
One of them, slender and petite, rose to her feet when she saw Esme. The other rose as well. The sisters looked very much alike—both blond and pretty, but the second sister towered a good six inches over her more petite counterpart.
The smaller woman’s face immediately brightened. “Oh my goodness! Lady Esme! It is so wonderful to see you again.”
Esme had met Lady Claire and Lady Grace at a social gathering once, but she hadn’t spoken with them very much. She’d found Lady Claire, the shorter one, a bit overwhelming, with her engaging, animated demeanor. Lady Grace seemed more refined and reserved, which Esme found intimidating in a wholly different way.
Her heart was beating rapidly again, and her breaths were coming in short bursts, her fingers dripping sweat. Her poor gloves would probably be ruined.
Lady Grace stepped forward, and Mackenzie slipped an arm around her, beaming in pride as he faced Esme. “This is my wife, Grace. We’ve been married these six months, though she’ll probably say it feels like forever and warn you to run as fast as your feet will carry you from this house of wild Scots.”
Lady Grace laughed. “Nonsense.”
Esme tried to plaster on a smile. “It i
s good to see you again, Lady Grace, Lady Claire.”
“Please, call me Grace.”
“And you must call me Claire,” Lady Claire piped in. “You’re to be a Highland Knight’s wife now. All the Knights are brothers, which means we must all be sisters.”
Esme flushed. “Thank you. That is very kind.”
Lady Claire drew Esme into her arms. “I’ll be so glad to have you here, Esme. We need more of the women’s calming influence in this house.”
“Thank you.” Esme smiled, but her voice was emerging as if she were a shy fourteen-year-old, which made sweat beads burst on her temples and her breaths become even shorter thanks to embarrassment. “You are very…kind.” She had just said that, hadn’t she? Now she sounded like a repetitive fool. Heat rushed to her face.
“Nonsense.” Claire laughed. “I am not kind at all. But I’m honest, and I’m honestly glad to have you here.”
“The best part of it,” Grace interjected, her tone softer and smoother than her sister’s, “is that you make McLeod happy.”
“I do?” Esme asked—the words slipping out before she could think them through.
“Oh, definitely. I’ve never seen him so happy,” Claire said.
Cam cleared his throat. “You do realize I’m standing right here, aye?”
“Of course we do,” Claire said. “But we speak the truth, don’t we?” She winked at Esme. “As I’ve said, I’m honest.”
“Have you toured the house?” Grace said.
“Not entirely.”
“We’ll show you everything,” Claire said. With a wicked grin, she added, “Except Mr. McLeod’s bedroom, which I assume you’re already familiar with.”
“Claire!” Grace exclaimed, widening her eyes at her sister. She turned back to Esme and spoke apologetically. “You’ll have to forgive her. She’s always been rather embarrassingly forward.”
At that, Esme’s lips curved into a smile. “It’s quite all right,” she assured Grace.
“I think it’s time to leave you two to whatever you were discussing,” Cam said. “Before you embarrass Esme so thoroughly she’ll never want to return.”
Highland Awakening Page 18