He was greeted by name by the croupiers and smiled at by the butterflies—beautiful women hired by the casino to entice gamers to tables. More than one interested gaze of that crowd fixed on Ainsley, society there also having learned of Cameron Mackenzie’s astonishingly sudden marriage.
But Ainsley realized quickly that Cameron didn’t like Monte Carlo any more than he had Paris. He could talk and laugh with his friends, drink whiskey and smoke cheroots as he played cards, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Ainsley grew to know the true Cameron better as the days slipped by—the mildest winter Ainsley, used to Scottish cold, had ever spent. She found that she could talk easily with Cameron about many things—news of the world, sports, games, their opinions on Scotland’s history and relations with England, books, music, drama, art. Cameron was well read and well traveled, joking that he’d absorbed some knowledge at Cambridge, though it must have been in his sleep. He’d spent his waking hours drinking, gaming, racing horses, and chasing women.
He was quite open about his debauched life, rumbling that Ainsley deserved to know everything, and besides, he despised hypocrites. But even with this openness, Cameron hid some part of himself from her, never letting Ainsley so much as glimpse it. The feeling of being shut out was a lonely one, even if Cameron would make crazed love to her every night.
Most evenings the three of them dined out or went to the theatre or opera together, and there was no more talk of packing Daniel off again to Cambridge. Cameron, Ainsley saw, though he didn’t much know what to do with the lad, liked having him around. During the day, they visited museums and the gardens, or simply traversed the steep streets of Monaco. They walked from the harbor to the top of the hills so often that Ainsley declared it must be the healthiest winter she’d ever passed.
But Cameron would never, ever lie down with Ainsley in her bed.
Only one incident marred their glittering season in Monte Carlo. Daniel returned to the hotel one afternoon after New Year’s with a black eye and half his face bloodied. Ainsley fussed over him as she patched him up, but Cameron watched with a scowl.
“Did you finish it?” Cameron asked him. “Or are the police going to come to my door and arrest you?”
“I didn’t get into a fight, Dad. A chap had his toughs beat me up.”
Ainsley looked at Daniel in alarm. “Then we are the ones who should go to the police.”
Daniel shrugged. “I’m fine. I got away from them.”
“What chap?” Cameron demanded. “What happened?”
Daniel looked evasive. “You’ll go spare when I tell you. Maybe I shouldn’t with Ainsley here.”
“I’m made of stern stuff, Daniel,” Ainsley said. “I want to know about this chap, and I still think we should have his toughs arrested. What kind of man sets other men to punch up a lad?”
“Count Durand.”
Ainsley had no idea who that was, but Cameron came alert. “Durand is still alive? I thought he’d be dead of the clap by now.”
Daniel snorted, relaxing. “No, he’s here, but he don’t look good. Haggard, I’d say. Maybe he does have the clap.”
“He set his men on you?” Cameron’s words were quiet, but Ainsley sensed the fury in him rising like a geyser.
“I did hit Durand first, I admit. But that’s because he started trying to claim again that he was my pa. I told Durand that it was impossible, because his wick’s been limp for decades. Then he said that if I claimed to be a Mackenzie whelp, it meant I was as mad as my mother, so I laid him out. He screamed, and his toughs pulled me off him, and he told them to give me a good beating. Durand said he’d let them stop if I admitted I was his son, but damned if I would. I got away from them and lit out.”
Ainsley listened in shock, the rag she’d been using to wipe Daniel’s face dripping bloody water to the carpet. “Cameron . . .”
“I’ll deal with Durand. Danny, you stay the hell away from him. No thoughts of vengeance. Understand? I don’t want him to have ten toughs next time.”
Daniel looked annoyed, but he nodded.
“Who is this Count Durand?” Ainsley asked.
Daniel shot a look at his father. “I told you we should have sent her out of the room.”
“If Ainsley chooses to live with us, she deserves to know the worst. Count Durand was my wife’s lover,” Cameron said to Ainsley. “One of her most persistent.”
“Oh.” Cameron’s explanation was all the more heartbreaking for the calmness with which he gave it.
“She was with Durand right before she married Dad,” Daniel said. “She kept going back to him even after she married, and she gave him a lot of Dad’s money. Durand’s one of those old French aristos from an émigré family. Doesn’t have a home, and pretty much lives off his friends and his women. Probably his male lovers too.”
“Daniel,” Cameron said.
“Well, ye wanted her to know. Somehow, the man got it into his head that he sired me.”
From the look in Cameron’s eyes, the uncertainty of that had once haunted him. Daniel, tall and broad-shouldered, his stance a mirror of Cameron’s own, was certainly a Mackenzie, but Cameron must have lived with the agony of not knowing for certain before Daniel’s birth.
That was another reason Cameron hadn’t sent Elizabeth away, Ainsley realized. Cameron needed to find out whether the child Elizabeth carried was indeed his.
“But Count Durand didn’t sire you,” Ainsley said. “That’s obvious.”
“Yes, but he can’t get the idea out of his thick head. Threatens to go to the police about it, or tries to blackmail Dad for keeping me away from him.” Daniel laughed, his bruised eye swelling almost shut. “Durand doesn’t really want a son hanging on him, he just likes to make trouble and get money out of Dad. Durand couldn’t stand the expense of me.”
Cameron made Daniel drop the subject, but he was tight- lipped for the rest of the day.
That night, at the casino, Cameron abruptly abandoned a winning hand of baccarat to stride out of the card room to a slender black-haired man whose satin-lined opera cloak hung in limp folds on his bony frame. Patrons of the casino scurried out of Cameron’s way, opening a path between him and the dark-haired man.
Cameron grabbed the man by the neck and marched him into the rotunda and out the front doors. No one stopped him—the discreet guards and even the butterflies pretended to pay attention to something else.
Cameron pushed Durand down the drive in front of the pseudoclassical building, Ainsley pattering after them in her tight evening frock and high-heeled slippers. Cameron propelled the man along until they reached a place where one of the winding streets dropped to a street below it.
Ainsley followed, heart in her throat. She didn’t blame Cameron for his anger, but who knew what Cameron would do to Durand? Or how many toughs Durand had waiting in the shadows to beat Cameron to a pulp?
She rounded the corner just as Cameron threw Durand into a wall. The man tried to guard himself, but Cameron hoisted Durand up by his cloak.
“You touch my son again,” Cameron said clearly, “and I’ll kill you.”
“Your son?” Durand spoke French to Cameron’s English, but Ainsley understood well enough. “My Elizabeth said you couldn’t make your cock dance enough to give her a son. She said she’d fooled you well and good with my seed. The boy is mine.”
“She was a fucking liar, Durand.”
Durand took a swing at him, and Cameron easily caught his fist.
“She told me what you did to her, you filth,” Durand cried. “She should have had me there to hold you down when she took her revenge the only way she knew how. Elizabeth gave you what you deserved, but if I’d been there, I’d have driven that poker up your ass until I ripped your heart out of your backside.”
Cameron slammed the man into the wall again, and Durand’s head knocked against the bricks.
“I don’t give a damn what you say to me, but if you touch Daniel again, if you so much as look at him, I’ll bre
ak your bloody neck. Do you understand?”
Durand tried to spit at him, but Cameron smacked his head into the wall again. “I said, do you understand?”
Durand finally nodded, gasping. Cameron hauled the struggling man by his collar across the narrow street and dropped him over a low wall side to the street below. The count screamed as he went, then the scream abruptly cut off.
Chapter 23
Ainsley rushed to Cameron. “Good heavens, you didn’t kill him, did you?”
Cameron glanced over the wall. “No, he’s landed in a wagon. Full of shit.”
Ainsley pressed her hand over her mouth, stemming a hysterical laugh.
Cameron focused on her as though just seeing her. “Ainsley, what the devil are you doing out here?”
“Following you. I was afraid his thugs would waylay you.”
“And if they had, what would you have done? Beaten them off with your fan?”
“I was going to shout for the police. I can scream very loudly.”
Cameron took Ainsley’s arm and steered her back toward the casino, where a crowd pretending not to be interested had gathered. “We’re leaving.”
“That’s likely a good idea.”
Cameron was already signaling for his servant to run for his carriage. Another hurried back inside for Ainsley’s wraps, emerging with them as the carriage rolled up.
Ainsley and Cameron rode in silence as the coach bumped its way back to the hotel, Cameron staring out of the window.
She sensed his restlessness and knew that but for her presence, he’d have been striding up and down the streets of Monte Carlo to burn off his rage. Cameron was escorting Ainsley home for her protection, not because he wanted to go himself.
“I thought you were going to kill him,” she said into the darkness.
Cameron looked down at her. “Hmm?”
“Durand. You couldn’t have known that wagon would be there.”
His eyes glinted. “The drop wasn’t that high. I wanted to scare him off. I am many things, my wife, but not a murderer.”
“Not when there’s a cartload of dung handy, certainly.”
“I hope it ruined his opera cloak. I hate the damn things.”
Ainsley wormed her fingers under the crook of his arm, felt his rigidity, his knowledge that she’d heard every word Durand had said. “I dislike to ask an obvious question,” she said. “but why did you marry Lady Elizabeth in the first place?”
Cameron grunted. “She dazzled me, I suppose. I was still at university, saw a glamorous woman, and I snatched her up. I found out too late what she was like, and by then, she was carrying Daniel.”
And Cameron had wanted to keep her close to protect the unborn Daniel. “I know you don’t wish me to say this, but I’m sorry,” Ainsley said. “I’m sorry about all that’s happened to you. It shouldn’t have.”
Cameron rested his big hand over hers. “But it did. And I live with the ghosts.” He looked down at her, his eyes holding more warmth. “The ghosts haven’t plagued me as much lately.”
Now she did dare to snuggle into him, and he kept hold of her hand.
“I had some other news today,” Cameron said after a time. “From Pierson. I meant to tell you, but then Daniel . . .”
Ainsley felt a chill. “About Jasmine? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine, or at least, I think she is. I wrote to Pierson, and I got his answer today. Bloody man won’t see reason. I want that horse, Ainsley.”
“And he won’t sell?”
“No, but I’ve at least browbeaten him into letting me train her again. He now informs me I will do it for no training fee, in return for the money he lost because I couldn’t make her win at Doncaster.” Cameron made a noise of disgust. “I wager all other trainers turned him away, and he’s desperate. He wants to pretend he’s not desperate, that he still has the upper hand. Ingrate.”
“You’ll turn him down, then?”
Cameron looked at her, eyes still burning with anger. “Hell, no. I don’t need the money. I need Jasmine.”
Ainsley rubbed his shoulder. “You want to go back to England, don’t you, Cam? Right now, I mean.”
He didn’t look at her. “I want to train her, Ainsley. I’ll make her into a damn good racer. She has so much potential, all wasted by Pierson.”
“What I mean is, you hate it here. It doesn’t matter how many sunrises we watch from the top of the hill, or how many times you win at cards. Your heart’s not in it. You’re made to be standing in a paddock holding a lounge line, not sitting at a baccarat table.”
Cameron reached down to smooth a lock of her hair. “And what the devil will you do while I’m standing in a paddock holding a lounge line?”
“Watch. Ride. Be the lady of the manor. Trust me, I’ll have plenty to do.”
Cameron ran his thumb along the thin gold bracelet he’d given her for New Year’s. “My estate in Berkshire is far from any city. There’s nothing to do there but horses. And my brothers will drift down to the estate when I start training. They use it as an excuse to escape whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing.”
“It sounds perfect.” Ainsley grew animated. “We can invite them all, Beth and Isabella and the children if they can manage it. They’re both due in late spring. Or afterward if they can’t come in spring. I’m certain we can have a lovely summer party with everyone there.”
Ainsley broke off when she saw Cameron’s look, a man contemplating his bachelor home overrun with women, babies, and nannies.
“It’s just a thought,” she said quickly. “Are you telling me, Cam, that we’ve stayed here all this time because you thought I liked it here?”
“You do like it here.”
“Well, yes, it’s exciting, but not what I want to do forever.”
Cameron watched her with a pensive look. “You’re a woman, Ainsley.”
“Yes, I know that. I have been for many years.”
“You’re supposed to want a constant flow of gowns and jewelry and to be seen in them every night.”
“The endless parade of fashion can become a bit dull.”
“You’re bored?” His frown deepened. “You should have told me. I can take you anywhere. Rome, Venice, even Egypt if you want.”
Ainsley put her fingers to his lips. “Why should we flutter around the world? I don’t wish to if it means I watch you be unhappy and impatient.”
Cameron gave a restless sigh. “I don’t understand what you want, Ainsley.”
“I want to be with you.”
“While I’m knee deep in mud? My estate is miles from any restaurant.”
“Good. I’d love a bit of old-fashioned Scottish cooking. Your Berkshire cook knows how to make bannocks and porridge, doesn’t she?”
“She’s Scottish.”
“Well, then that’s settled.”
“Ainsley, stop. Stop being so damned cheerful about everything.”
“I can be grumpy if you want.” She gave him a mock scowl.
Cameron didn’t laugh. “I can’t give you what you want if you don’t tell me what it is.”
Ainsley lifted the fist he’d rested on his thigh and kissed his large fingers. “I’m trying to tell you. You’re a generous man, and I can’t lie and say I don’t want the beautiful frocks and jewels you give me. But really, I ran away from my respectable life to be with you. You, Cameron Mackenzie. I don’t care if we’re in the most expensive hotel in Monte Carlo or in a hovel with nothing but oat cakes for dinner.”
The look he gave her bordered on the anguished. “Why the hell would you want that?”
“I like oat cakes. Especially with a little honey.”
“Damn it, I mean why would you want me? Look at you. I’ve introduced you to the most corrupt of the demimonde, and you sit there all pristine and innocent, smiling at me, for God’s sake.”
“What should I be doing? Demanding more jewels? Breaking plates and screeching if I don’t get them? Threatening to leave you for
a man who will buy me more?”
“It’s what they all do.” His voice was hollow.
“You see, you do despise women. I told you that before, remember?”
“I despise women like what you describe, yes.”
“Then have nothing more to do with them. Let’s go to Berkshire and say to hell with the lot of them.” When Cam eyed her skeptically, Ainsley wrapped her arms around him and ruffled the hair on the back of his neck. “It’s what I truly want, Cameron. The horses, the mud, and you.” She kissed him.
And so, they went to Berkshire.
Cameron had never brought a woman to his Berkshire estate, Waterbury Grange, which lay south of Hungerford. He’d bought the place after Elizabeth’s death, needing a retreat far from Kilmorgan and his father and Elizabeth’s grave.
He’d hired a houseful of servants, let Daniel run wild, and concentrated on horseracing. Newmarket, Epsom, Ascot, the St. Leger—these were the events around which his world revolved.
Needy mistresses didn’t fit into that world. Ainsley, on the other hand, slid into it without breaking stride. She took over the running of the house from the moment she arrived, soon discovering and curtailing the servants’ long-running practice of keeping the best foodstuffs for themselves while serving the offhand Cameron what was left over.
Cameron found her indignation about the way they took advantage of him amusing. “These people kept me alive when I first moved here, and they looked after Danny for me. I don’t begrudge them.”
“There is a world of difference between begrudging them and dining on gristly salt pork while they feast on tender beefsteak.”
Cameron shrugged. “Do what you like. I’m not good with domestic arrangements.”
“Obviously not,” Ainsley had said with a frown.
Cameron couldn’t deny that Ainsley had been right to bring them back here. January winds were brisk and raw, but the worst of winter’s grip soon departed and he and Angelo, with Daniel in tow, began training in earnest. Cameron found that he looked forward to rising before dawn every morning and leading out the horses with Daniel as the sun rose.
Pierson had not yet rolled up from Bath with Jasmine, and Cam wondered whether the man would bring her at all. Other than that, training commenced in a satisfactory way.
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