How to Train Your Baron (What Happens in the Ballroom)

by Lloyd, Diana

  “Aye, I brought her to the Port often enough. Miss Muireal from the dress shop came to the estate once or twice, too, with bolts of cloth and such.”

  Interesting. “Being so new to the area, I wondered which shops were the best. Is there any place else she fancied?”

  “Wouldn’t know about that. She went to the Port apothecary regular, though.”

  “Is that near the dressmakers? Perhaps I’ll stop in.”

  “’Tis not on High Street; it’s down by the dock. Always has been. Docks ain’t no place for a high-born lady.”

  “Was she unwell?” Taken aback at the thinly veiled insult to his former mistress, Elsinore wondered if Quin’s first wife had been sickly or one of those women who purchased herbals and elixirs for imaginary ailments.

  “You need anything from the apothecary, milady”—he kept his eyes on the road as he spoke—“you tell me, and I’ll fetch it for you.” Curious fellow, Angus. There was something almost brotherly in his offer.

  “How long have you been with his lordship, Angus?”

  “Since before.”

  “Before what?” She looked away as if not on the edge of her seat waiting for his response. Could it be the gentle giant was about to answer all of her questions with one simple explanation? But he paused too long before answering, as if he knew he’d already said too much.

  “Ach, well, since before you, milady.” What she had come to think of as the “Scottish noise” apparently preceded any underwhelming or disappointing news. She’d get nothing more from him, today. A change of subject was definitely in order.

  “The water is lovely,” she added, motioning to the lake that the road skirted around. “Would it have been faster to reach the Port by boat?”

  “Depends on the winds and your oarsman, milady.” Those were his last words for the remainder of the hour.

  Port Menteith wasn’t large, but it was bustling. Loaded wagons and coaches top-heavy with trunks packed the streets. Quin had told her it was the gateway to the Highlands, and it seemed everyone was either leaving or entering the Highlands that very day. Edinburgh had been full of travelers, but Port Menteith was full of Scotsmen. She heard more Gaelic and Scots than English for the first time since she’d begun her journey. She was a nobody here, a stranger in a strange land.

  There were more pubs and lodging houses than anything else in the Port, but that was to be expected for a place that hosted so many people who were on their way to somewhere else. There were a few shops, a shingle for a booksellers caught her eye, and she smiled. So far, her only friends here were the literary hound-master Oglethorpe and the serene-faced and flexible dark-skinned beauty she’d found in her other book.

  Perhaps, one day, she’d be meeting friends at the teashop on the corner. She’d tell them she met Quin in a ballroom. She’d tell them they danced and fell in love. It was such a good story, she wished it were true.

  “Milady?” Angus’s voice cut through her daydreaming like a sharp blade. “Muireal’s shop is just there.” He nodded toward a storefront with a large window display of colorful fabrics, ribbons, and bonnets. The glass was clean and the stoop swept; it was well-kept and inviting.

  “Thank you, Angus. I’ll be a bit. You may want to pop in to the pub for a pint.”

  “No, milady, I’m to stay with you.”

  “You can’t come in the dress shop with me; I’ll be in the fitting room. Your presence will make the other ladies nervous.” His brow creased with concern at that. “Did you follow the first Lady Graham into the shop?” He shook his head.

  “I’ll wait right here beside the door.”

  A small silver bell mounted over the front door chimed as she entered the shop, and a short, dark-haired woman bustled out from the back room.

  “Welcome, welcome. I’m Muireal, how may I help you today?”

  “I’m new to the area and find myself in need of a few things more suitable to the weather.” If the woman’s work was good, Elsinore would happily replace some of the gowns her mother and sisters had forced upon her.

  “If I could fashion a dress from duck feathers, the raindrops would roll right off our backs every time we shook our shoulders.” Muireal gave her shoulders a little shake as she spoke and then laughed out loud. “I’d be a rich woman, indeed.”

  “You make one, and I’ll be your first customer.”

  “Are you in need of walking dresses? A riding habit?” She walked closer and plucked at the front of Elsinore’s gown. “Or something with a little more room perhaps?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway.” Elsinore’s hand instinctively went to her abdomen. It was a true answer, as far as she knew. Her courses weren’t due for another week. Whether they would come or not was in God’s hands. “Day dresses, I should think.”

  “Step in the back room, and I’ll be around in a minute to measure you up. I’ve some lovely new fabric just in from Edinburgh. It came all the way from India and should suit your coloring beautifully. I’ll fetch it for you.”

  She was shown to a room at the back of the shop that was divided into private dressing areas with colorful screens made of Chinese silk stretched over lacquered wood frames. Behind each screen was a chair, a small table, and a stepping stool. She chose one, put down her basket, and removed her bonnet and gloves, setting them on the table. She was just unbuttoning her spencer when she heard the jingling of the silver bell announcing another visitor to the shop.

  The new customers called out a greeting to Muireal before making their way to the back room with giggles and the chatter of friends out for a carefree day of shopping. It seemed like years ago that she’d done the same thing. She would write to her sisters and friends as soon as she returned to Lochwode. After thinking of nothing but escape and adventure for so long, it was a rude surprise to realize how much she missed them.

  She thought of calling out to introduce herself to her dressing room companions, but her greeting withered in her mouth when she heard them speaking.

  “It seems Lord Graham brought a new bride to Lochwode House yesterday.” The first voice announced.

  “With Sorcha and the bairn barely cold in their graves?” the second voice asked. “The nerve.”

  “I heard she walked right up to the front door and snatched the mourning sash down from the lintel.”

  “No!”

  “Yes,” the first woman replied with the tone of authority. “My maid, Aggie, told me all about it.”

  Elsinore held her breath, and her hands began to shake. It was the wind that blew the sash down; all the servants had seen it. Which one of them had spread such a false tale? Her heart beat so loudly, it pounded in her ears, drowning out a bit of their conversation until she could breathe again.

  “What sort of a woman would marry a man who killed his own wife and son?”

  “I heard she was English,” the first woman said, as if that fact explained everything. “Besides, my mother says the reason he killed them was because he found out that the boy wasn’t his child.”

  “That would put any man in a foul mood, wouldn’t it?” This was followed by a cruel snicker of laughter.

  “I think he killed his parents as well.”

  “Oh, Davina, that happened all the way over on Ben Lomond.”

  “The man can ride a horse, can’t he? All he had to do was break the axle on their carriage and let the mountain roads do the rest.”

  Elsinore shoved her bonnet back on her head and grabbed her basket. She couldn’t bear to hear any more. Cheeks burning with embarrassment and mortification, she put her head down, ducked around the screen, and ran from the shop.

  “Excuse me. I beg your pardon.” Elsinore pushed her way through the crowd barely able to see. Eyes filled with tears, she crashed her way back to the carriage. “Take me home,” she managed when she spotted Angus, not sure if she meant Lochwode House or London.

  It wasn’t until Angus handed her back up into the carriage that she realized she’d left her gloves behind in the
dress shop. She wasn’t going back for them now. She had a dozen more packed away in a trunk somewhere.

  She was glad for Angus’s silence on the way back; it gave her time to think. The front doors to Lochwode were at least nine feet tall, so she wouldn’t have been able to snatch down the bunting unless she were sitting up on Quin’s shoulders. And yet the nasty gossip had spread. The speculation of Quin’s involvement in murder could be just another false tale repeated for scandal broth.

  But she’d seen the room with her own eyes. Violence had been done in that room, had murder? This was what Quin had been hiding from her. His wife and son didn’t just die; they were murdered. And everyone thought he’d done it. He wouldn’t, she told herself. But could he?

  …

  Quin nodded his silent approval as he read the notes Elsinore left for him. Lochwode needed a mistress who cared, someone who would set things to rights. If anyone could, it would be his Elsinore. He smiled at the sheet of paper, the sight of her perfect, small, graceful handwriting bringing him unexpected pleasure.

  “M’lord?” He looked up, still smiling, to see Cook filling the doorway. His smile evaporated as soon as he saw what she had in her hand. Shite. It was a teacup. The teacup. How many times as a boy had he heard Cook go on and on about that damned cup? It was the very last existing piece of the grand three hundred-piece set from her father’s dining hall. Her nurse had smuggled it out in a hidden pocket. English soldiers smashed the rest of the set to bits while the women and children of the clan were forced to watch the destruction of their home.

  “What can I do for you, Brigit?” Quin reined in his smile and avoided looking at the cup.

  “It’s gone,” she blurted out with no preamble or explanation as she waived the empty cup over his desk.

  “What’s gone?”

  “The key. She took it—you know she did.” A hundred memories flooded his brain, none of them happy. The key. The room. The search and the fatal outcome.

  “You can’t be sure of that.” Quin worked to make his voice sound calm.

  “Oh, sure I am of it. She was asking questions about that room in that sneaky English way of hers.”

  Quin frowned but let the insult pass. The old gal’s hatred of all things English was deep-seated and nonnegotiable. Her family had suffered much after the ’45 rebellion. Her clan’s keep was burned to the ground as were the houses of all their tenants. The men were either killed, arrested, or transported and women and children left to fend for themselves. By the time the small group of women she traveled with presented themselves at the back door of Lochwode looking for occupation, they’d endured years of beatings, rape, and near starvation.

  “I believe I asked you to hire staff to empty that room while I was away in London.” Quin softened his tone but refused to argue.

  “Who could have known you’d return so soon? And with a new wife? I hardly had time to make inquiries, what with the second cuttings in the garden and—”

  “I didn’t ask for gardeners,” he said, cutting her off.

  “Lazy bastards, the lot of them.”

  “Spare me yet another lecture on the shortcomings of the male species, Brigit. I asked for carpenters and craftsmen.”

  “Hardly matters now as the key has gone missing,” she snapped back.

  “I have a copy…somewhere. I’ll find it. Then I’ll have MacLean oversee the renovations. You can concentrate on running the kitchen as you were meant to.” Cook clutched the teacup to her breast, turned, and walked out. Not for the first time he wondered if he should defy his father’s wishes and simply pension the old girl off. What would his father, a man so consumed with honor, tradition, and loyalty, think of that? Honor could be a bloody burden.

  The way Cook paraded distant relatives and clansmen through the estate to take up one menial task after another, it was no wonder the key had been lost. The damned thing was probably nestled in someone’s pocket or sitting on a shelf in a wash room as just one more errant item found on laundry day. Probably.

  He’d find the duplicate and then calm old Brigit down. Maybe she wouldn’t burn tonight’s supper. Half an hour after he began his search, with drawers emptied and stacks of paper littering his desk, Quin realized that his quest was going to be a little more difficult than he imagined. No one in the household would have dared to disturb the sacred teacup and take the damn key on purpose.

  Except… Elsinore had been asking questions. Last night with him and, apparently, with the cook as well. But…no, she wouldn’t have. After all he’d confessed to her, Elsinore would have told him if she’d seen the room. Of course, he hadn’t told her everything, but she didn’t know that.

  “Do you know where the lady of the house is this afternoon?” he asked a footman as he ran up the stairs.

  “Mr. Angus took milady out to Port Menteith today, milord.”

  Quin nodded, and the footman rushed off to wherever footmen rushed off to in the middle of the day. She would be safe with Angus. He hoped. It was best to search his room with Elsinore out of the way, anyway.

  The key wasn’t on the bedside table, not in the small writing desk, not under the mantel clock, not in his jewelry box with his cravat pins, not with the loose coins on the tray in his dressing room, and definitely not on the shelf with his hats. He looked over at Elsinore’s dressing table. It couldn’t hurt to just have a peek. He didn’t want her to have taken it, but Cook had seemed so convinced. He slid one drawer open and poked around, no key. He was a sneak thief in his own home. But, once started, he decided to do a proper job of it, and he began to investigate her other personal belongings.

  One more place. The thought hit him hard. He could hardly not look there. After all, it was the same place Sorcha had hidden the poison in the room next door. He approached the bed warily, telling himself he’d find nothing. He dropped to his knees and reached underneath the mattress. Starting at the head of the bed, he slid his hand down along the underside of the mattress. His stomach clenched when his fingers brushed against a thin, paper-wrapped bundle.

  Wrenching it loose, he sat on the edge of the bed, not trusting his legs to hold him against the lightheadedness of bad memories rushing to the forefront. After a calming breath, he creased back the plain brown paper to find…books.

  Books? Relief bubbled up in a bark of mad laughter. His wife was hiding books. He opened the first one, distracted by the colorful illustrations for only a second. He’d seen a copy back in his university days, but not since. Why on earth would she have such a thing? He thumbed through a few pages, eyebrows arching at a few of the illustrations, lips curling into a satisfied smile with some others. No wonder she’d been such an adventurous virgin. She’d told him she’d read a book; this must be it. He’d let her know there was no reason for her to hide her curiosity from him. In fact, he’d pick out his favorite position and challenge her to give it a go tonight.

  The other volume made no sense—it was a book about dog training. He kept no dogs and, as far as he recalled, there was only one small lapdog in the Wallingford household. Did Elsinore hope to raise dogs? There were a few pages marked with bent corners as if referenced often. He turned to them and read the passages there. How to Calm a Hound, How to Gain the Trust of Your Hound. Why would she bother to hide such a thing?

  He looked inside for hidden notes or scandalous confessions written in the margins. Nothing. Why would she hide it? He read a bit of the marked pages again and something tickled his memory. Baron Hound. She’d called him that once; he was sure he’d heard it.

  Good Lord. He was being trained. And he’d done everything but roll over and play dead.

  He flipped through a few more pages, his anger and humiliation growing with each paragraph. What a daft fool he’d been. Last night, he had dared to think all could be well between them. He’d bared his soul, exposed his greatest fear, and admitted his love. He had dared to hope that she would someday understand his pain and come to love him anyway. That hope died in his heart, leaving
it colder and harder than he thought it could be.

  She’d been manipulating him from the very start. The heartfelt honest conversations, the shy smiles, the loving kisses—it had all been a ruse. What was left of his heart fractured as the rasp of a disused lock sounded from the adjoining room. She’d played sneak thief in his house and taken the damn key. What else had she done? Elsinore was no different from Sorcha.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “There is no recourse for a hound that turns on its pack. Remove the cancer swiftly and deliberately.” Oglethorpe’s Treatise on the Obedient Canine

  “Find all that you were looking for?” Quin stepped into the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

  “I didn’t know you were home.” Elsinore pushed the curtains aside, and a stripe of late afternoon sun bisected the baroness’s bedchamber. After what happened in Port Menteith her only thought had been to get to the root of the mystery. Because the truth lay somewhere between gossip and whatever truths she could find in Lochwode. There seemed no better place to start than in this ravaged room.

  “Clearly.” Quin reached out and uprighted one of the overturned chairs, tossing her books on the seat where she could plainly see them. “Have anything else interesting hidden around my house?”

  “Our house,” she corrected, gathering up the books and holding them to her chest like a shield. The books had been her traveling companions and at times her only friends. She’d not part with them lightly. “I can explain these.”

  “Should I go sit on the rug by the hearth like a good pet while you tell me all about it?”

  “It’s not like that, Quin. I didn’t know how to be married. I didn’t know how to…”

  “Manipulate? Is that the word you’re looking for? You didn’t know how to manipulate me?”

  “You were so secretive, so determined…I didn’t know how to get you to change your mind. I thought I could learn. I thought my future, our future, depended upon it.”