“So I hear. But happiness is a different thing. It’s worth a little effort.”
“I made that effort once.” Too damn bloody much effort.
“Yes, dear, I knew your wife.”
A glance at Mrs. Yardley told Cameron she’d known some of the truth about Lady Elizabeth. The memory of Elizabeth’s beautiful face, her mad eyes as she came at him, ready to strike, made his body tighten. Old pain, old darkness dimmed the bright morning.
Cameron heard Ainsley’s laughter again, and he opened his eyes, the visions dissolving.
“If you knew my wife, then you’ll understand why I view marriage as a miserable existence,” Cameron said, still watching Ainsley. “I won’t enter it again.”
“It can be a miserable existence, I don’t deny that. But with the right person, it can be the best existence in the world. Trust me, I know.”
“It’s our turn,” Cameron said curtly. “Are you up for a go?”
Mrs. Yardley smiled. “I’m rather tired, my lord. You take my turn for me.”
Cameron felt the paper of the stolen letter crackle in his pocket and watched Ainsley smile at the count.
“You’re a wise woman, Mrs. Yardley.” He lowered the mallet he’d rested on his shoulder and approached their waiting ball.
“I know that, dear,” Mrs. Yardley said behind him.
Ainsley knew the precise moment Cameron stepped from the shade to take his shot, while the slow-moving Mrs. Yardley kept her seat. Ainsley had been aware of every movement Cameron made since he’d appeared even though she’d avoided looking directly at him.
She hadn’t missed how Cameron carried Mrs. Yardley’s chair and mallet for her, slowing his long stride for hers as they moved about the pitch. He was being patient, kind even, conversing with the elderly lady, who smiled back at him in appreciation.
Cameron was this patient and gentle with his horses, guiding them with care that he rarely used on people, unless they were like Mrs. Yardley. It was a side of himself no one acknowledged, and Ainsley wondered if anyone but she even noticed it.
She saw no sign of that patience, however, when Cameron looked up from his ball at Ainsley. His eyes glinted with determination, like a billiards shark ready to win the pool.
It did not help that Lord Cameron was devastating in his riding clothes: buff breeches smooth over his thighs, boots muddy, casual coat hanging open over a plain shirt. Cameron’s large masculinity rendered the slender Englishmen pale and ineffectual, as though a bear had wandered into a gathering of docile deer. He wielded his mallet with precision, which was why he and Mrs. Yardley had already racked up a number of points, and therefore guineas, because no one who came to visit the Duke of Kilmorgan didn’t gamble outrageously.
Cameron drew back his mallet and struck his ball with force. The ball leapt with a straight trajectory up the little rise and smacked into Ainsley’s with a decided click.
Her heart jumped. “Botheration,” she muttered.
Her partner, the rather feeble-brained count, called out, “Excellent roquet, my lord.”
Cameron strode to them, mallet on his shoulder. He said nothing to Ainsley as he placed his large booted foot over his ball, Ainsley’s still touching it, and drew back the mallet. His riding coat stretched across his shoulders as Cameron smacked the ball under his foot, the impact sending Ainsley’s galloping across the green. She watched in dismay as the bright yellow and white striped sphere rolled merrily to the edge of the lawn and plunged into the undergrowth of the woods.
“I believe you’re out of bounds, Mrs. Douglas,” Cameron said.
Ainsley ground her teeth. “I see that, my lord.”
The count said in careful English, “That was perhaps not, as you English say, very sporting.”
“Games are played to win,” Cameron said. “And we’re Scottish.”
The count looked into the undergrowth and then down at his well-polished shoes. “I will fetch the ball for you, signora,” he said without much enthusiasm.
Which would leave Ainsley alone with Cameron. “No, indeed, I’ll find it myself. Won’t be a tick.”
Ainsley turned and ran for the undergrowth before the count could do more than make a token protest. She hadn’t missed the relief on the count’s face that he wouldn’t have to take his pristine suit into the bushes, nor had she missed the slow smile on Cameron’s.
It was cool under the trees, the mud sticky. Ainsley walked about ten yards into the woods before she spied the painted stripe on the ball under the thickest bush. She stuck her mallet into the brush and thrashed around for it.
“Allow me.” Cameron was beside her, no apology, no explanation. His longer arm allowed his mallet to reach under the brush, and in a few seconds, he scraped Ainsley’s ball back to bare mud.
“Thank you.” She started to tap the ball back, not wanting to pick up the mud-caked thing, but Lord Cameron’s body was in her way. A screen of trees blocked them from view of the green, making them effectively alone.
“Why are you all buttoned up like that?” Cameron ran his gaze down the blackberry-shaped buttons of her bodice. A smart frock, Ainsley had thought when Isabella had coerced her into buying it. Gray with darker gray piping along the little peplum jacket and skirt, the chin-hugging collar trimmed with a bit of black lace.
“You were happy to bare all last night,” Cameron said. He let his mallet handle hover an inch from her chest. “Your bodice was down to here.”
Ainsley cleared her throat. “Low neckline for evening, high for morning.” She’d tried to tell Isabella that the ball gown was too revealing, but Isabella had said: “It has to be, darling. I’ll not have my dearest friend look like a frumpy matron.”
“This doesn’t suit you,” Cameron said.
“I can’t help the fashion, Lord Cameron.”
Cameron poked the top button with his gloved finger. “Undo this.”
Ainsley jumped. “What?”
“Unbutton your damned frock.”
She nearly choked. “Why?”
“Because I want you to.” Cameron’s smile spread across his face, slow and sinful, and his voice went low. Dangerous. “Tell me, Mrs. Douglas. How many buttons will you undo for me?”
Chapter 5
This could not be happening to her. Lord Cameron Mackenzie could not be standing in front of Ainsley, asking her to unfasten her bodice for him. Here in the woods, steps away from the crème de la crème of Europe playing croquet on the Duke of Kilmorgan’s front lawn.
“How many?” Cameron repeated.
All of them. Ainsley wanted to tear open the placket and sink down into the mud and let the brand-new dress be ruined.
“Three,” she croaked.
Something wicked gleamed in his eyes. “Fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” The blackberry buttons were close together, but fifteen would bare her to the middle of her corset. “Four.”
“Twelve.”
“Five,” Ainsley countered. “That is as much as you can expect, and I’ll have to do them up again before we return to the game.”
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you do before you return to the game. Ten.”
“Six. No more.”
“Ten.”
“Lord Cameron.”
“Ten, bloody stubborn female.” He leaned closer, breath touching her skin. “I’ll ask politely until I get tired of asking, and then I’ll rip off those pretty buttons myself.”
Her world sharpened. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
Ainsley wet her lips. Her pleas of propriety were false, and he knew it. “Ten then.”
“Done.”
She had to be mad. She could not stand here and let Lord Cameron unbutton her frock. Once upon a time, she’d let him half undress her, and she’d barely gotten away with her sanity intact.
Untrue. She’d lost her sanity that night and never regained it.
Ainsley watched, one heartbeat at a time, as Cameron tugged off his glo
ves and reached for her top button.
His smile held triumph as the button slid through the hole. The fabric sprang back, as brazen as Ainsley felt. Cameron brushed the tiny bit of flesh he’d bared, licking heat all the way down her body. She would die before he reached ten.
Buttons two and three. Cameron touched her after he opened each one, as though learning her as she came undone for him.
Ainsley closed her eyes as he unfastened buttons four and five. He brushed the hollow of her throat, his touch like fire, before moving down to button six.
A skilled seducer, she told herself at buttons seven and eight. He was a man who knew how to make women yearn to give him what he wanted. Ainsley, for all her seeming recklessness, had learned to be cautious—everything done for a reason, every risk calculated against its reward. But with Cameron, the old reckless Ainsley reared up, wanting him to undo her bodice down to her waist and take what he pleased.
She almost begged him to at button nine.
At button ten, Ainsley opened her eyes.
“Done,” Cameron said softly, and he pulled open the placket.
Ainsley’s breasts swelled over the top of her corset. Ladies were supposed to be slender, hence the cage of the corset, but Ainsley always seemed to overfill her stays.
Cameron pushed the placket out of the way, his hand going almost reverently to her skin.
“Ainsley,” he said in his raw voice. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”
When he touched her, when his voice flowed over her, she felt beautiful. “You are kind to say so.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with kindness.” He sounded irritated. Cameron slid his thumb over her breast then leaned and kissed her there.
Even him lying fully on top of her hadn’t burned her as his lips did now. Ainsley’s feminine places grew hot as he kissed her flesh, slow kisses, taking his time. His lips were warm, practiced, the rough warmth of his hair brushing her chin. She wanted to pull him to her, to cradle him against her as he laid her down in the sticky mud, even with the tap of croquet balls not far away.
Cameron kissed the top of her cleavage, his unshaved whiskers a pleasant burn. Then he straightened up, stepped away, and slid a folded paper down between her breasts.
Ainsley’s eyes widened, and she clapped her hand over her corset. “What—”
“I believe that is yours, Mrs. Douglas.”
Ainsley snatched out the letter, unfolded it, and saw the even strokes of the queen’s handwriting, words to her horseman, John Brown.
“I decided I didn’t have any interest in your letters,” Cameron said. “Or your be-damned intrigues.”
Ainsley stared, openmouthed, then she crumpled the page and thrust it into her jacket pocket. “Thank you,” she said, heartfelt. “I can’t explain, but thank you.”
“You’re still unbuttoned.”
Ainsley looked down at her gaping placket, her breasts welling over the plain corset.
Cameron’s wicked smile returned. “I don’t mind. But if another ball comes rolling out here, you might be embarrassed.”
Ainsley stripped off her gloves and started buttoning with shaking fingers. It took what seemed forever, while Cameron did nothing but watch, but at last Ainsley closed the top button. She snatched up the mallet she’d dropped, but when she turned to go, she found Cameron still barring her way.
“We have unfinished business, Mrs. Douglas.”
“Do we? What business would that be?”
Cameron touched the handle of his mallet to her chin. “The business you began when you came to my room six years ago.”
“I told you, that was a mistake. I thought you were withholding the emerald necklace from Mrs. Jennings.”
“Forget about the damned necklace. I mean what you started with me that night. You half seduced me to keep me finding out what you were up to, then wriggled out of it with your pleas about your good husband.” His eyes were hard, glints of angry gold.
“I’d not planned any of that. I expected to be finished and gone before you returned. Besides, you were perfectly willing to seduce me, even though you knew I was married.”
“I’m used to women seeking me as refuge from their dull husbands.”
“Like Phyllida Chase?” Ainsley heard the bitterness in her voice but couldn’t mask it.
“Exactly like Phyllida Chase. Her husband ignores her and blatantly philanders, so she turns elsewhere for entertainment. Why not? Other women are much the same.”
“You despise them,” Ainsley said in surprise.
“What?”
“You despise these ladies who cuckold their husbands. And yet you seduce them. Why do you want to be with women you despise?”
Cameron’s brows shot down, but the look he gave her struck her to the heart. “Men enjoy pleasure, Mrs. Douglas. We want it, we crave it; we think of little else. Even men who pretend to be prim and pious are driven by it. The beast lies very close to the surface. If a lady cuckolds her husband to provide me that pleasure, so be it, but I refuse to admire her for it.”
“It sounds so lonely,” Ainsley said softly.
“I’m rarely alone.”
“I know,” she said. “That makes it worse.”
Cameron’s gaze focused hard on her. Again the shutters between him and the world fell, and again Ainsley saw the lonely depths of him. For a split second only. Then the shutters were restored, his scowl back in place.
“You’ve misbuttoned yourself.”
Ainsley looked down at her placket. “Blast.”
Cameron leaned to her. “Unfinished business, Mrs. Douglas. Before you leave at the end of the week, we will finish it. Depend on that.”
He jerked her up to him in a sudden movement and caught her lower lip between his teeth. Before Ainsley could gasp or pull away, he let her go, shouldered his mallet, and strode off, back through the curtain of trees.
He moved like a god in charge of his world, used to leaving panting females behind him. Ainsley’s lip throbbed from Cameron’s bite as she tried to grasp buttons with her shaking fingers, and she still felt his grip on the back of her neck. Lord Cameron was strong and dangerous, and she should be frightened of him. But the reckless Ainsley only mourned that he’d walked away too soon.
Something rustled in the brush, followed by a bleating voice. “Signora? Can you find not your ball?”
“Yes, yes, I have it!”
Ainsley jerked her placket together and swiftly buttoned it, then snatched up her muddy ball. She burst out of the brush to the waiting count and found that Cameron Mackenzie was no longer in sight.
“Dad!”
Under the fireworks in the dark gardens, Cameron’s thoughts jerked from the memory of Ainsley’s firm breasts under his lips when he’d unbuttoned her in the woods. Her pulse had been beating as fast as a rabbit’s—would it beat as quickly in passion?
“Dad!”
Daniel Mackenzie planted himself in front of Cameron. The lad’s kilt sagged from his hips, and his shirt was stained and jacket askew as though he’d been running through the woods. Probably he had been.
Daniel had inherited Elizabeth’s eyes, a deep, rich brown, with only a hint of the Mackenzie gold. Likewise, his hair was very dark with mere highlights of red. Elizabeth had been a beautiful woman, and Daniel reflected this in the sturdy structure of his face, the straight, clear lines that age would never erase.
His eyes now held a mixture of rage and uncertainty. “Did ye forget?”
“Of course I didn’t forget.” Cameron dug through his brain trying desperately to remember what the devil he was supposed to remember. “Your aunt Isabella tethered me all morning.”
“Yes, I know, the croquet. But I wanted to talk to you.”
No one had explained to Cameron when he was twenty years old and proud as hell that he’d managed to get his wife with child, how difficult it would be to raise a son. Nannies and tutors and schools were supposed to do that, weren’t they?
But
sons needed so much more than food, clothing, and tutoring. They expected fathers to know things, to teach them about life, to be there when needed. Cameron’s own father had set no good example, so most of the time Cameron found himself floundering in deep waters, searching for his footing.
It had been damn hard going, and Cameron knew that he’d never, ever done enough. He thanked God for his brothers, as unruly as they were, for helping take Daniel under their collective wing. Between the four of them, and then Isabella and Beth, they’d somehow managed to bring Daniel up.
“I’m here now,” Cameron said.
Daniel heaved an aggrieved sigh, tall enough to look his father directly in the eyes. “What I wanted to ask was—how old ye were when ye first took a mistress?”
Cameron felt the floundering start, but Daniel was perfectly serious. The lad’s face was full of curiosity and something anxious as he waited for Cameron’s answer.
“Why do you want to know?” Cameron had been fifteen, the lady in question, eighteen, knowing that a rich man’s son eager for his first encounter would probably pay well. Cameron had had enthusiasm but no finesse, and he’d been under no illusion as to why a sophisticated courtesan had put up with him.
“Why’d ya think? I’m sixteen, and it’s high time I had me own. You and Uncle Hart, not to mention Uncle Mac, had mistresses when you were still in school. Even Uncle Ian had one. The reputation of the Mackenzie family is no secret. I should know. I live with th’ bloody lot of ye.”
Bloody hell. Cameron’s own father’s advice on the matter of women had been: Keep your cock happy with tarts, take a lady to breed heirs, and don’t mix the two of them. Women should be sauce, not the meal, or they’ll make your life hell. Not what Cameron wanted to tell his son.
“A tart who takes up with a lad as young as you only wants your money,” he said carefully. “It’s no slight on you, Danny. It’s the only way they know how to live.”
“I don’t mean a courtesan, Dad. I mean a real lady.”
Cameron held on to his patience. “A real lady, as you call her, will expect marriage. If you want someone to bed, stick with tarts, but understand why they’re with you. Then you’ll both know where you stand.”
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