The Husband Hunt

by Jillian Hunter

  "Where did she go?" he demanded, not caring that several guests turned to stare.

  Arabella sighed. "She's out on the terrace with Olivia."

  "She's with Olivia?" He stopped in his tracks, telling himself he had read too much into her escape. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. With Olivia and some late arrival she was expecting. My goodness, Knight, Catriona will never survive a single night with you hovering over her like a thundercloud."

  "Who is this late arrival?" he asked. He sensed that there was more to it than that, an undercurrent of conspiracy he did not like.

  Arabella shrugged. "Some old friend, that's all I know. Olivia was very secretive about it. Oh, look, here's Wendell coming now. Perhaps he can enlighten us."

  * * *

  It was over. Catriona released her breath as she reached the doors to the terrace. She stood for a moment in the evening air, allowing it to soothe her, and she felt relief wash over her in waves as she recognized Olivia outside talking to a stranger. Olivia turned, giving her a warm smile of recognition, which meant she had absolutely no idea of what had just happened in the ballroom. There would be rejection for Catriona when Olivia found out, of course. Rejection and hours of lonely humiliation.

  But for now, Catriona took refuge in the woman's acceptance, and without a thought for the tall man with a rugged profile who stood beside Olivia, she rushed down the terrace steps to join her.

  "Oh, good, Howard gave you my message," Olivia said, clasping Catriona's hand. "There is someone here who is dying to meet you."

  "What message?" Catriona asked; she was praying that she would be allowed a few moments of peace before someone told Olivia what had just occurred at her perfectly orchestrated ball.

  "Never mind," Olivia said. "Sir Alistair, this is Catriona, Lionel's cousin. Catriona, I want you to meet a neighbor and a fellow Scotsman, Sir Alistair Stone. Alistair lost his wife the same year Lionel died, and, understandably, he is a most difficult man to bring out of his house. Like you, Catriona, he shuns most social events and prefers the solitude of his garden."

  "Oh," Catriona said, suddenly feeling faint, as if the evening's disaster had just begun to take its toll. "How . . . pleasant for him."

  Olivia frowned as Catriona stepped into the lantern light, her face drained of color. "You look positively exhausted," she exclaimed. "You must have danced a hole in your slippers."

  "Exhausted is not perhaps the word," Sir Alistair said pensively. "She looks more like a deer that has been cornered by a pack of hounds. I know I always feel so at these parties."

  Catriona looked up as if noticing him for the first time, surprised to discover he was a handsome man, older then she'd thought, with dark, perceptive eyes and glints of silver at his temples.

  "Sir Alistair is from Dundee, Cat," Olivia said quickly, as if afraid that her protégée would commit some atrocious social blunder if given half a chance. "Perhaps it's near your brother's castle."

  "No," she answered succinctly, glancing over her shoulder into the ballroom. "Not anywhere near."

  "Is something wrong, my dear?" he asked kindly.

  Olivia's smile was strained, concealing her sudden anxiety. She would murder Knight with her bare hands if he'd misbehaved again. "She's just a little overwhelmed—"

  "I ruined everything," Catriona said, no longer able to keep the humiliation inside her. "Your godmother hates me and probably will never set foot in this house again." She covered her face with her hands, her voice unsteady. "In fact, if my vision was right, she won't set foot anywhere ever again."

  "Vision?" Olivia turned white, hoping against hope that Sir Alistair had not caught the word.

  Unfortunately, he had. His manners might not be the most refined, but his powers of observation were acute. "You have the Sight, do you?" he asked, sounding intrigued.

  Catriona lowered her hands to stare at him. Who was this stranger, anyway, who reminded her of how homesick she was? "I should never have left Scotland," she said in misery. "I'm sorry you went to all this trouble, Olivia. You were right when you said I was hopeless. Everyone is talking about me, and your godmother—" She stopped, shivering as she remembered the vision which was slowly beginning to recede like a dream.

  "Is the woman truly in danger?" Sir Alistair asked. He didn't mock her at all but seemed genuinely to accept what she had said.

  She nodded. "She didn't believe me. I think her footman might have but she did not."

  He glanced at Olivia. "Perhaps I ought to take a ride over to Lady Bennett's estate later on, just to be sure. It's a half-mile from my home."

  Olivia hesitated. This was certainly not a complication she had foreseen. "No. I want you to enjoy yourself, Alistair. I'll have Howard and Smythe go. I'm afraid I have come to learn that Catriona's visions must be heeded."

  "They'll have to hurry to be of help," Catriona said, her eyes distressed.

  "I'll go this instant," Olivia said.

  Sir Alistair smiled at Catriona. "Do you want me to take you back into the ballroom? The sight of me is usually enough to keep most people at bay, gossips included."

  She hesitated. She realized he was a veritable giant of a man, capable of keeping his word. And good-looking enough, except that his fatherly manner reminded her of Thomas, adding to her sense of homesickness, but it was Knight she wished for. "I'm never facing them again."

  "Yes, you are," Olivia said firmly. "You will sit through dinner with a smile on your face even if it kills you. Alistair, walk her around the garden while I run inside. I trust you will keep her out of trouble until I've sent Howard and Smythe on their way."

  "Tell them to hurry," Catriona called after her.

  ******************

  Knight had been on his way to the terrace when Aunt Marigold intercepted him. A few other guests had wandered outside, but he couldn't see a sign of Cat or his sister. Curbing his impatience, he lent the older woman his arm for support, but his attention was not on their conversation.

  "Take me to the terrace for some air, Knight. No. Fetch me a drink. After that scene, my nerves need fortification. I shan't sleep all night now, not knowing whether Frances is murdered in her bed. I imagine Catriona's gone into hiding—an awful way to launch oneself, and Frances is such a dreadful gossip. Not that she'll do much talking if she's dead. I'd have listened to young Cat if it were me. The Scots have uncanny foresight."

  Knight looked down into her worried face. He couldn't make a word of sense of what she'd said. "Why would Cat go into hiding?"

  "She'll have to get herself under control before she has a proper come-out. But maybe Olivia's right. Maybe that time will never arrive."

  "Aunt Marigold, answer me. Why would she have to hide?"

  "To escape the scandal broth, you jackanapes. Where have you been all the evening?"

  He gritted his teeth. "I thought she was supposed to be on the terrace with Olivia."

  "The terrace?" Her face brightened. "Of course. I forgot in all the commotion about Olivia's little secret."

  "What little secret?"

  "Are you shouting at me, young man?"

  He swallowed a curse. "What secret, Aunt Marigold?"

  "The man. The Scotsman Olivia is hoping will toss the handkerchief. It's true he isn't a peer, but he has pots of money." She retreated a step. "Knight, are you all right? You've gone quite queer in the face."

  "I am going to hang you up on the chandelier if you don't give me a straight answer. Marigold. There isn't a Scotsman in sight. Who are you talking about?"

  She compressed her lips. "Not until you apologize."

  "Hell's bells!" he roared. "I apologize."

  "Everyone is looking at us now," she said in a haughty voice. "As if there hasn't been enough trouble stirred for the evening."

  He glanced around the dance floor, frowning back at the guests who stared at them. "Lady Ellis, I apologize from the bottom of my heart for threatening to hang you from the chandelier."

  "And for raising your v
oice."

  "Yes. Yes. For that, too." He grabbed her hand and propelled her toward the doors to the terrace. "Now, who is this mysterious suitor? There isn't a Scotsman in this room."

  "Not those twiddlepoops, Knight. And you are right. Mysterious is the word for him, now that I think of it. What does he do all day in that house? Count his money? Talk to his dead wife's shade? There's never a light in the window when one passes by. Not a soul stirring behind the gates, and the brambles have grown neck-high ..."

  Then, suddenly, he knew who she meant. He'd forgotten the man even existed, but she could only be talking about Sir Alistair Stone. Made a fortune in woolen imports. Lost his wife the same year Lionel died, and no one had seen him socially since. Knight had passed him once or twice on the moor road to Arabella's home and suspected he kept a mistress in the village on the sly to satisfy his sexual needs. They had spoken only once when they had met by chance at a bank. Alistair had asked about investing in the pottery works, and Knight had invited him to the house for a business meeting.

  Sir Alistair had never come, until tonight. The man lived like a virtual hermit, and Olivia must have painted a very seductive picture of Catriona to lure him out of his seclusion.

  "Where are you going now?" Aunt Marigold asked in consternation as he pushed around her.

  "Onto the terrace. It appears that my party has moved outside, and I wasn't invited."

  She caught his sleeve. "Not yet," she whispered. "Olivia's scheme was to give the two of them a few moments alone together. Let us hope Sir Alistair is too charmed by Catriona to care—"

  He wrenched his arm free.

  "Don't you understand what I am saying, Knight? If you go out there right now, you might interrupt a tender moment."

  "I understand all too well," he said, the look on his face so ferocious that she could only put her hand against the wall, trembling with the realization that the scandal in the ballroom was nothing compared with what was about to ensue outside.

  Chapter 14

  He strode out onto the terrace, ignoring the few guests outside who called for him to join their conversation. The austere look on his angular features discouraged further invitations. It was generally assumed he had just learned of his Scottish ward's "prediction" and that he was hunting her down to discipline her in private. None of the guests gave Catriona's vision any credence. No one wanted to think of murder during such a pleasant party. A small crowd converged in anticipation, speculating on how long it would be before Knight sent Miss Grant back to Scotland. But nobody in West Briarcombe dared ask Viscount Rutleigh anything of a private nature, especially not in the last few years since he had returned from the war.

  "I wouldn't like to be in her slippers when he gets a hold of her," one young man remarked from the steps, where he leaned against the statue of a sleeping lion.

  A woman, watching Knight's powerful figure disappear into the darkness of the garden, sighed. "I would. Isn't it time he took a wife?"

  "Arabella told the parson that Knight was still in love with her. The rogue's heart was broken by her marriage."

  "Well, he didn't dance with her once all night," the woman said with a sniff. "Or look at her much, for that matter. I don't think he has a broken heart at all. I think Arabella has a swollen head."

  "Perhaps his Miss Grant is a witch, after all," another man murmured. "His clay pits are producing ten times the others in the area."

  Knight had heard them discussing him and didn't give a damn. The anger inside him had burned away the last vestiges of his tolerance for social niceties. He would insult, if not pummel, the first person who blocked his path. And if his instincts proved correct, if Sir Alistair was reacting to Catriona the way any red-blooded male would do in a similar situation—

  He stopped, allowing his emotions to subside only long enough to take stock of his surroundings. The woods lay in darkness, undisturbed. There were no sounds from the distant lakeside where Knight had staged one or two classic seductions himself. But that was an eternity ago. The faces of those long-ago lovers had faded, the promises made forgotten. Life had become so much more complicated and unpredictable.

  The soft echo of feminine laughter from the stables felt like a knife thrust to the core of his heart. He stood, paralyzed by the tantalizing sound. He saw the door left slightly ajar. He could imagine Alistair easing that provocative gown off her shoulders, coaxing her down onto the straw, taking selfish pleasure in her body. Alistair, who visited whores in secret. A fellow Scotsman commissioned to seduce Catriona by Knight's own sister.

  He could have strangled Olivia with his bare hands for doing this, and if Cat lost her innocence on a filthy stable floor, he would murder Alistair, society and sister be damned. He should never have allowed Olivia's scheme to go this far, and had he guessed she'd had a covert romance in mind, he would have thwarted her in her tracks.

  He had worked himself into an insensible rage by the time he reached the stables. At first, as he stood outside, he heard only the nickering of the horses within, and it was not only anger but irrational jealously that consumed him, a torment beyond bearing. He wondered if he was too late. He didn't think he could stand to see her with someone else, to watch her respond to another man as she had to him. The pain was worse than he had imagined, rocking him to the marrow.

  Then he heard them talking, and he released his breath at the relief that flooded him. It seemed he had misread the situation in his own obsession. He had assumed that Alistair would be tempted by her, too.

  "Go ahead," the Scotsman said with a deep laugh. "Rub his neck. He won't mind. I bought him last year in Ireland. I'll wager you have a gentle touch."

  "Oh," she murmured. "He's so soft for a big beast."

  "He likes you," Alistair said in a low voice that raised the hackles on Knight's neck. "And what male of any species would not?"

  She sighed. "Oh, I can think of one in particular who doesn't seem to like me very much."

  "Then the man's a fool. I, for one, find you completely irresistible, and I tell you in all honesty, I did not expect to feel this way. I thought Olivia had exaggerated our compatibility."

  Knight stepped into the stables as she cocked her head, Alistair moving forward to wedge her against the thoroughbred's shoulders. "Sir Alistair?" she whispered, her voice amused but uncertain. "What are you doing?"

  He put his hand over hers, stopping the motion of her fingers on the horse's neck. "You and I both know what Olivia had in mind for us."

  "No. I didn't know." The spirit had returned to her voice. Knight couldn't see her face at all. "I didn't even know you existed until—oh, I can't stop worrying about Lady Bennett. Do you think that footman took me seriously?"

  "The woman will be fine," Sir Alistair said gently.

  He placed his hands around her shoulders and drew her against him. "Sir Alistair, this isn't proper," she whispered in polite disapproval.

  "Proper?" he said. "Aye, and are we not a more passionate breed than those Sassenachs in that house with their formalities and fancy calling cards? A true man leaves a mark in a more memorable way."

  He dipped his head to kiss her. Knight could still not see her expression to gauge her reaction, but her resistance, if she resisted at all, was far too belated for his liking, and that moment of uncertainty, not knowing what she felt, was anguish for him.

  "Sir Alistair?" he said behind them, his jaw clenched.

  The older man stiffened, seeming more annoyed than embarrassed that he'd been caught seducing an innocent in a stable. "What do you want?" he said gruffly, glancing around.

  "Just to leave my calling card. On your face. Here." And Knight deftly maneuvered Catriona around the horse with his left hand as he punched the man squarely beneath the chin, propelling him back several feet into an empty stall.

  Sir Alistair fell hard against a bale of straw, looking stunned by the attack. Before he could even rise to retaliate, Knight kicked the door shut and turned his attention to Catriona, who was st
aring up at him in total astonishment.

  "And what did he do to deserve that?" she demanded, looking so vulnerable in the darkness that he wanted to kiss her himself and remove every trace of the other man.

  "He kissed you."

  She put her hands on her hips. "Aye, and so did—"

  There were footsteps outside before she could finish, the creaking of hinges as the door opened. Wendell and Olivia walked into the stable, the same expression of disbelief mirrored on their faces at the scene they had happened upon. Knight barely spared them a glance. He had a more important problem on his hands.

  "Oh, that's the limit," he said in a furious undertone, his arm resting on a stall door, his pose deceptively relaxed when every muscle in his body was wound like a spring. That the hoyden found no wrong in Sir Alistair kissing her. That she could stand there looking so innocent and desirable. "Why didn't you faint or cry for help like any other decent young lady would have done?" he fairly shouted at her.

  "He didn't do anything to hurt me, Knight," she said softly.

  He didn't have a response to that. That kiss had certainly hurt him. "Oh, get up off the damn floor, Stone," he said, kicking the door back open so hard that it shook the stall. "I only hit you once."

  The man levered himself up on his elbow. "Was that what it was?" he added wryly. "I thought Catriona had clobbered me with a hammer."

  "Perhaps she should have," Knight said, his anger refueled at the man's casual use of her Christian name. "Get up off the floor so that I can hit you again."

  "There are more civilized ways to handle this," Wendell remarked behind him, sounding amused.

  "A duel?" Alistair struggled to his feet, his gaze going from Knight to Catriona. "What a lovely grace note to a young woman's debut."

  Knight glanced at her from the corner of his eye, gratified to see that her composure was finally crumbling. "And taking advantage of her was meant to enhance her reputation, I suppose? You might want to explain that to me, Stone."

  Alistair straightened the tails of his rumpled evening coat. "What happened in here is a private matter," he said in a cautious voice.