Stealing Midnight

by Tracy MacNish

Not a prince, after all, but close enough to make Olwyn feel completely at odds. She’d never spoken to a member of the aristocracy, and knew nothing of the world they lived in, save it was nothing like her own.

  Looking down on him now, impossibly handsome in his clean, beautifully made clothes, she didn’t think it feasible that she could feel any dirtier or unkempt than she had before, and yet, she did.

  “I didn’t tell you because I have grown so tired of never knowing if one’s interest is truly in me, or if ’tis in my titles and my wealth,” he confessed softly. “What we shared last night was more real than any other exchange I’ve ever had with someone who was not my immediate family, and I was loathe to risk ruining the moment. However, I promised you honesty, and I’m sorry I didn’t deliver it.”

  Olwyn raised her brow and gave him a half-hearted smile. “Forgive me if I cannot muster too much sympathy for you, my lord. But you see, I have spent my entire life being reviled for who I actually am, and yet, I told you no lies.”

  “You are right to be angry. Go on and hate me for as long as you need to.” Aidan leaped up easily into the wagon’s seat and removed his cloak, settled it around her shoulders, and with nimble fingers, fastened it.

  Olwyn gasped at his rudeness and slapped at his hands, but he ignored her. Aidan turned to his brother and his men. “Unhitch this mare and hitch the wagon to a stronger horse. The poor old thing will do much better as we travel if she doesn’t have to pull the wagon.”

  “Aye, my lord,” one of the men said, and he swung out of his saddle and set to do Aidan’s bidding.

  Olwyn ignored that the cloak was warm and comforting and smelled of clean wool and rich leather from the bag it had been transported in. She would not snuggle into its soft confines and let this man begin ordering her about, as if she were nothing more than a subject easily bent to his will.

  “I have no interest in continuing on with you, my lord.”

  “Well, ’tis a coincidence that I reside in Southampton and will be heading that way. You could travel there alone and vulnerable, or in relative comfort with me and my men. I have several ships docked there, and can easily see to it that you are sent safely on your way to the Americas. So what will it be, Olwyn, practicality or pride?”

  Beneath the cloak, Olwyn twisted her hands in her lap. But outwardly, where Aidan watched her every expression, she raised her chin and focused on a far treetop. She kept her voice cool and unaffected, unwilling to show in the slightest that he unsettled her.

  “To behave as though I have a choice in the matter insults us both, my lord. So why don’t you just do as you damn well please, and drop the pretense of caring a whit for my preference?”

  Aidan grinned, and she saw it in her peripheral line of vision. So she amused him, did she?

  “I have never met a woman so honest,” he said, admiration heavy in his voice, along with suppressed laughter.

  “Likewise, my lord. I, too, have yet to meet a man as truthful as I.”

  Her remark hit its target, for his grin faded. “I did say I was sorry.”

  “Aye, you did.” Olwyn turned her head to meet his eyes then. “But I do not forgive the slight.”

  “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  Aidan was silent for a moment, the only sound the metallic scrape of brass buckles and the rattle of rigging as the horses were exchanged.

  “I think you are making more of this than it is,” he said finally. “I did not do anything to hurt you.”

  “You took the warmth of my body, my whiskey, my truth, and my first kiss. You let me show you my heart, and you gave nothing in return. Must you now diminish your actions?”

  Another long pause filled the space between them, and the man who finished with the horses spared them a quick, quizzical glance before leading Nixie away. He tethered Nixie behind the wagon, and two of the men doubled up on a stronger, younger horse.

  Aidan didn’t spare them notice. He said to Olwyn, “I am sorry I hurt you.”

  “Will you tell your betrothed of your indiscretion?”

  His eyes darkened and his brows came down in a scowl. He turned his face away, and she saw a muscle in his cheek flex. “So I should hurt another woman? No matter what I do, I am forced to play the cad.”

  “There is a simple remedy, and you might want to keep it in mind for future reference. You could, next time, choose to not touch what does not belong to you,” she said. And though she knew that it was her embarrassment talking, she did not keep herself from saying, “Or has your life of privilege left you with a sense of entitlement?”

  Even as she insulted him, Olwyn could not keep from noticing the square shape of his hands that held her reins. Everything about him looked good, even his hands. Especially his hands. She could scarcely stop looking at them—smooth skin, wide palms, and long, blunt-tipped fingers. They looked like the man himself: strong yet elegant, capable yet sensual.

  Olwyn hated the way that his handsomeness made it difficult for her to stay angry with him. Her own appearance caused the opposite reaction in others, made them instantly dislike her. Didn’t she want people to see beneath her face to the woman within? And what did it say about Olwyn that she, too, was shallow, wanting to forgive him because looking at his handsome face faded her anger?

  Perhaps it stemmed from her life of isolation and the surety of her own ugly face, she mused, that she could not quite dismiss that for a few moments, he’d made her feel desirable. Even pretty.

  Hadn’t Rhys even said that a man would call any woman beautiful if it got him between her legs?

  The memory of her shameful arousal haunted her. A few more kisses and a few more compliments, and she’d have stripped her skin bare, right along with her soul. Lóchrann. Aidan. My lord. It didn’t matter what she called him; she craved the desire he’d shown her when it had been just the two of them alone.

  Her weakness sickened her.

  Aidan would return to his beloved, a woman he’d described as fragile and pretty, like a princess. Olwyn thought it perfect—a fair princess and her handsome prince, a fairy-tale existence.

  Perhaps he didn’t regret their stolen kiss, but she did. Olwyn knew that as long as she lived, she would never forgive him for stirring her emotions to such turmoil. She had never felt as ugly as she did now—a beast of a woman beside a beautiful man.

  Padraig called out to his brother, “We’ll head to the nearest town and get fresh horses and a carriage. I’ve already sent word to Mira. She was overjoyed to hear that her beloved lives, and has plans to go to Beauport and reunite with you there.”

  The men on horseback kicked their mounts into motion. Without looking at Olwyn again, Aidan lifted the reins and slapped the back of the flashy, magnificent stallion that now pulled her rickety, weather-beaten wagon.

  And Olwyn wished, rather fervently, that she had not said any of the things that had formed the uncomfortable silence that now hung between them.

  Mira Kimball swayed in time to the carriage as it bore her south through England’s countryside. The roads were muddy and pitted, but the conveyance had the very best springs, and the interior boasted the finest appointments: plush velvet seats, cushioned pillows, hanging lanterns, a warming pan that gave off the soft essence of vanilla, and thick robes to keep her warm. And so she and her father traveled in relative comfort, pleasant enough as they each read to pass the time in companionable silence.

  Mira found herself absolutely riveted by Bret Kimball’s journals.

  The pages were yellowed and brittle, the penmanship ofttimes scrawled as though written in a mad rush.

  But the story it told was nothing less than galvanizing.

  She carefully turned the page and dove back into the past, when her great-uncle had been betrothed to Aidan’s grandmother, Camille Bradburn.

  London, 6 January, 1744

  I am unmanned, unmasked, and undone. I am forsaken, forbidden, and for my great sins,
forever un-forgiven. Oh, that I could kill her, that hag of a harridan who owns my soul, I would, for I am already damned. But in her power I am trapped, and by her power I am pricked.

  Mira knew from her previous readings that he spoke of Camille’s mother, Amelia, when he referred to the harridan. Amelia had been the Duchess of Eton, and by all Bret’s accounts, knew secrets that could have ruined the Kimball family name. Amelia had apparently wielded these secrets like a whip, keeping Bret in her control.

  Today marks my greatest sin. A pathetic word, sin. ’Tis a word too soft and pale for the deed I committed. A word too small for the pain I inflicted.

  That whore of a duchess is my taskmaster. She moves my hands, blinks my eyes, forms my thoughts, until I am merely a puppet on her strings, dangling, twisting, and acting on her whims.

  Would that I had the strength, I would take my own life.

  I look forward to a future that is charted for me, and my one consolation, my beautiful rose, Camille. I know, however, that her heart belongs to another. She will never look upon me as she did him, never want me, never love me.

  Mira pulled her gaze away from the journal and recalled the day she’d met Aidan’s grandmother, Camille.

  There had been the faintest interest in Camille’s vivid green eyes, and Mira could remember her reaction to Aidan’s announcement. Camille had raised her brows, turned to her husband, Patrick, and said, “And so we have come full circle.”

  Mira had wondered what in the world she’d meant. Now she could only muse upon the Kimball-Bradburn connection. Why, she asked herself for the hundredth time, had Camille Bradburn Mullen not seen fit to tell Aidan that she had known Mira’s great-uncle well enough to agree to become his wife? Why had Camille kept that secret? And what sin had Amelia Bradburn forced Bret Kimball to commit?

  Mira returned to the journal, hoping that Bret would reveal the answers in his own way.

  If only I could go back and change everything, I would never have sold my soul.

  If I were not such a coward, I would confess my sins here in the sanctity of my private journal. But there will be no absolution for me, and were someone to see the words, only condemnation and the hangman’s noose.

  Camille, Camille, Camille. Her name resounds through my mind, consuming me with obsession, with regret, with sorrow. How can one so sweetly innocent be the offspring of one so wretched and bitter?

  I do not know precisely the day I became snarled in this trap, but I am caught in it now and will never be free. The guilt is haunting me, plaguing me. ’Tis my daily wish that I will succumb to an illness that will take my life, and end my guilty misery.

  “Are you unwell, my pet?” Andrew asked of his daughter, peering at her over the top of his reading spectacles.

  “Why do you ask, Papa?”

  “You are pale, and clenching at the cushion beside you as if for your very life.”

  “’Tis only this journal.” Mira brought her gaze up to her father’s. “There was something very dark between my uncle and Aidan’s grandmother.”

  “Ancient history,” her father declared, dismissing its importance with a wave of his hand. “Why fret over something that happened so long ago?”

  Mira held the musty journal to her breast, deeply offended to have her passion for her family’s history so disregarded. “Why, indeed. I shall tell you why. Amelia Bradburn was able to manipulate Bret Kimball because she knew his secrets. My great-uncle lost his life at the hands of that woman as a direct result, and I mean to find out what she made him do, and what she held over his head.”

  “To what end, darling? Perhaps when you are as old as I, you will value the wisdom of letting sleeping dogs lie.”

  “I do not wish to be disagreeable, but I wholeheartedly differ. When I marry Aidan Mullen and join our families, I will not suffer to sit in his grandmother’s presence knowing that she knows secrets about my family that I do not.”

  Mira settled back in her seat, and readjusted her robes and pillows so she was once more cushioned against the jostling of the carriage. She arranged the journal on her lap once more, and laid her hand open upon its yellowed pages, splayed wide as if she guarded the truths and mysteries contained in Bret Kimball’s words.

  “Full circle, indeed, Papa.” She narrowed her eyes as she thought of the clues Bret had left, the guilt and remorse, his obsessions and sins. “I will find out what happened, and I will protect our family’s interest in the process.”

  Andrew clucked at his daughter, a tender little tsk-tsk at her obstinate nature, her fierce familial pride. And then he gave in and smiled benevolently. “Of course, Mira, pet. You shall have whatever you wish, my darling girl. Whatever you wish.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Olwyn and the men arrived at an inn late in the night. Stone weary and nearly delirious with fatigue, Olwyn allowed herself to be steered to a room, Aidan’s firm grip on her arm. He put her before a big tester bed, thick with quilts and plump pillows.

  She noticed that the fireplace burned fragrant logs and not peat, that the candles were wax and not tallow, and that the room was clean and appointed with luxury. On a small table stood a tea service, linen napkins, and a plate heaped with cakes and scones and biscuits. Even the chamber pot was elegant, painted with cheery flowers and set behind a wooden screen. Such was wealth, she thought.

  “We’ll leave first thing in the morning,” Aidan said. He set two of her sacks on the floor. They looked as she must, out of place in the graceful surroundings, dirty, tattered, and shabby.

  Olwyn didn’t respond, but stood swaying on her feet, wondering if she had the strength to wash before falling onto the bed.

  Aidan moved to stand in front of her. He seemed awkward, unsure. He took her hand. “In the hut, Olwyn,” he began, clearing his throat. He used her given name again, and it irritated her that he did not think her worthy of polite formality. “In the hut when you were so honest…”

  “Leave me alone.” She tried to pull her hand away.

  “The first words you’ve spoken since your parting insult in the meadow, and you sound just as angry. I would have thought so many hours on the wagon seat would have dimmed your anger, or at least, exhausted it a bit.”

  Olwyn wouldn’t dignify his words with an explanation. “I don’t care to have this conversation with you. I’m weary, and I just want to go to sleep.”

  “Aye, and you will.” He bent down to his knee and began removing her muddy boots as if he were a prince helping her with a fancy slipper.

  She looked down at the expanse of his shoulders and the crown of his head. His dark gold hair gleamed like burnished bronze in the light of the fire and the candles. He set her boots before the fire so they would dry, a thoughtful gesture.

  The boots sat sadly on the marble hearth, slumped and filthy.

  Aidan turned to her and met her eyes for a split second, and in the flickering light she thought she saw desire. She struggled to remember that she was angry with him for lying to her, and for letting her reveal herself to him while giving nothing in return. She reminded herself he was engaged to be married.

  Aidan took his cloak from her shoulders, and draped it over the back of a chair before following with his coat and his shirt.

  He shucked his boots, removed his stockings. He moved to the washstand, and began to wash.

  And as he stood there in his breeches, his wide chest naked and gleaming in the firelight, iridescent soap bubbles clinging to his wet skin, Olwyn realized he meant to spend the night with her.

  “Get out.” It was a snarl, a vicious snap.

  Aidan half-turned, cast a glance to the door. “No.”

  “I’ll not bed down with you.”

  “You will,” he replied calmly.

  “I am poor, I am defenseless, and I am not of noble blood, but that does not put me under your rule, and it most certainly does not make me your whore.”

  “The last thing you are is defenseless,” Aidan said as he rinsed the soap from his
skin.

  He toweled off, and Olwyn had to avert her eyes from the sight of all that male flesh and muscle.

  Aidan poured himself a cup of tea and bit into a small cake. He swallowed it down and let out a satisfied sigh. “These are good. You should eat.”

  “You’re not my lord and master.”

  He met her eyes, dark sapphire blue against flinty, stormy gray.

  “No. I’m not.”

  “I demand to be left alone.”

  “No,” Aidan answered easily. “I know you’re furious with me, aye? And I know you’ve got as much pride in your blood as I do. ’Tis likely you’d decide to try to leave, because if I were in your position, hopping angry and feeling out of place, it’s what I’d do. So see, Olwyn, I’m treating you as an equal. A woman to be reckoned with.

  “Do you understand? This is a sign of my esteem for you, that your pride would forbid you to take the comfort my coins have bought, and that you’d strike out on your own, not taking anything from me. I ken how you feel, and I respect it. But frankly, I’m tired, Olwyn. I don’t have the energy to chase you down into the night, and as a man, I’d have to do it anyway, you see. I’ve got some pride of my own, aye? So to keep things simple, I’ll keep you here by my side, and we’ll both get some rest. Perhaps in the morning, you’ll have a bit more perspective.”

  Olwyn lowered her eyes to the floor. Her feet were cold, as were her hands, and her heart. “There is nothing simple about our situation.”

  “No, maybe not. But we’re stuck with each other for a bit. Let’s make the best of it.”

  She inclined her head to the bed. “For my best, or yours, my lord?”

  “I’m not a rapist, nor am I a cad, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  She stared at him, wordless. Perhaps her silence would win out where her words did not.

  Aidan moved a little closer to her, and she could smell the soap on his skin. It made her feel dirtier. His chest seemed to fill the room, wide, expansive, compelling. She knew the feel of it, the warmth of it. Must he stand so close?