“Enter,” the countess called, and squaring his shoulders, resisting the urge to tug on the front of his coat, he stepped inside.
Even without her standing before the dressing mirror, her maid holding a pair of bonnets, he would have known the space belonged to a lass with a great deal of blunt. The light-green curtains had been embroidered throughout with wee gold-threaded birds, warblers or swallows or the like. Fresh flowers, mostly white and yellow roses, sat in an identical pair of vases on either windowsill overlooking the garden, and oddly enough a Highlands landscape painting of the Falls of Clyde that looked like it had been done by Jacob More himself, hung on the near wall.
“Ye’ve a Scottish painting?” he asked, moving closer to look at it.
“Yes. The Scottish landscape is beautiful beyond words,” she said, facing the painting as well. “And it should always be painted by Scotsmen.”
“I’m a wee bit baffled, then,” he commented.
“Why? Because I fled Scotland?”
“Aye, that would cover it.”
“I never said it wasn’t lovely. It was also lonely and desolate.”
“And full of Highlanders.”
“Not full enough.”
At that he turned around. “Ye’ve lost me now.”
“You may have noticed that your father isn’t one to … socialize.”
“Ye mean he’s nae fond of going about prancing in other people’s parlors when there’s work to be done?”
“Nor was he one to invite a neighbor over for dinner or luncheon or breakfast, or to take a stroll about the village and stop in the bakery for tea, or to do anything social at all unless it involved drinking.”
Aden narrowed one eye. “Ye did marry him, ye ken.”
“Yes, after he danced me off my feet and charmed all resistance out of me with one damned smile.” Her brow furrowed. “That is neither here nor there. As you didn’t know I had a Jacob More painting in here, I presume you came for another reason.”
“Aye.” Good. He disliked the idea of chatting about nonsense and past deeds with her, anyway.
“Does it have something to do with why you’re coming home at nearly midday and still wearing the clothes you had on at the Darlington ball? Or most of them, anyway.”
He ignored that. She likely had a good idea where he’d been after that waltz last night, but she would have known that whatever he’d decided to wear. “I’d like to borrow a thousand quid.”
Francesca drew a breath in through her nose. “Hannah, I changed my mind. I’d like to take the barouche to luncheon.”
Behind her the maid set aside the bonnets, bobbed, and hurried out the door, pulling it closed behind her. The countess took a seat in one of the green overstuffed chairs by the window, but didn’t offer him the seat opposite her. He wouldn’t have taken it, but she’d read him well enough to know that. Lady Aldriss would have made a fine card player, herself, Aden reflected.
“Now, where were we?” she asked, her dark-green eyes very like Coll’s in color, but far more sly than the oldest MacTaggert brother’s.
“I’m asking ye for a loan of a thousand pounds,” Aden said, keeping his voice cool and level.
“Ah. No. Is there anything else, my dear?”
Aden tilted his head, a bit surprised, but not willing to let her know that. She’d practically moved heaven and earth to aid Niall in his quest for Amelia-Rose Baxter, after all. The question became deciphering whether she was bluffing, or questing for more information and looking for a way to slip into his life—or if she wasn’t doing any of that and simply wasn’t interested in handing out any of her money to him.
He could get the money himself; it would simply take him longer. And there his mother sat, clearly attempting to remind him that she was not content with being relegated to his personal bank. “How confident are ye that I’ll tell ye anything of my private woes?” he asked aloud, sitting in the matching green chair without being asked. He was a card player, too, after all.
“I didn’t ask you to tell me anything,” she responded coolly, only the curved hand stretched out along the arm of the chair saying that she had more interest in this conversation than she cared to reveal. “You requested a great deal of money, and I refused.”
“Nae to give me; to lend me.”
“I do not ‘lend’ things to my children, Aden. I give, or I do not.”
“So ye reckon that now I’ll ask ye to give me the blunt, and ye’ll say nae again, and then expect me to have a conversation with ye so that I earn it. But I dunnae owe ye any conversation, or any explanation. Ye’ve nae been a participant in my life for seventeen years. I dunnae need ye to be one, now.”
Her eyes narrowed just a touch. He’d scored a hit, then. “But you do need a thousand pounds from me.”
Abruptly this chat wasn’t so much interesting as it was stifling. Aden rose. “I dunnae need it enough to give ye whatever it is ye want in return.” He turned for the door. “I’ll likely nae be about for the next couple of days. I have some things to attend to.” Time was the one thing he couldn’t control, but he would have been willing to wager that he didn’t have much of it. And once Matthew spoke with Vale, he would likely have even less.
“I’m going to say a few things,” she stated, to his back. “For every one I get wrong, I will give you a hundred pounds. How does that sound to an accomplished wagerer?”
There it was, her demand for information in exchange for the money, couched in a way that would make it a game he would want to play—wagering her conjectures against his hopefully well-hidden facts. And having the damned money to hand would make things so much easier. “Aye. I’ll give ye a go. And aye, I’ll answer ye honestly, if ye had that on yer mind.”
“I did not.” She sat up straighter, both hands folding into her lap. “The money involves Miranda Harris.”
Aden nodded. “Aye.” The simplest of observations could have told her that.
“You’ve asked her to marry you.”
“That’s a hundred pounds to me.”
“The money is so you can ask her to marry you.”
Indirectly, but he would agree in principle. “Aye.”
A brief smile touched her face before she smothered it again. “The money is for a betrothal gift.”
“Two hundred pounds.”
“You’re trying to demonstrate to Miranda that you don’t rely on me for your every need.”
That sounded like a bit of a jab, but other than noting it, he let it pass. “Three hundred.”
Francesca sat where she was, silent, for a long moment. “Are you attempting to buy off your rival? What’s his name? Captain Vale?”
Her description made him frown. In a sense, yes, he supposed the money was the beginning of him making an attempt to convince Vale to go away. But then again, it wasn’t. And Vale wasn’t so much a rival as he was a crook and a blackmailer. “I reckon that one’s worth fifty quid to me.”
This time she nodded. “I’ll allow that.” Taking a breath, she sat back again. “You are difficult, my middle son.”
“This is yer game. I was about to leave,” he responded, leaning sideways against the closed door.
“So it is.” She studied his face for a few seconds, though he doubted she would see anything he didn’t wish her to. “Miranda is in trouble of some sort.”
Hmm. Perhaps he needed to work a bit harder, if she’d seen that. “Aye.”
“She asked you for money.”
“Four hundred fifty quid.”
“She asked you to get something for her.”
That wasn’t close enough to anything to qualify except in the broadest of interpretations. “Five hundred fifty.”
“Miranda can’t or won’t go to her parents regarding this trouble.”
“Aye.” That was interesting; Francesca kept flirting about the correct path, but couldn’t quite find it in the forest—likely because she was an only child and couldn’t fathom a brother or a sister causing such upse
t.
“Matthew has been gambling again.”
Or mayhap she could imagine it. “Aye.”
At that, the countess scowled. “You’re giving him the money so Elizabeth and Albert won’t know that he’s strayed again. Aden, I will not h—”
“Six hundred fifty.”
She closed her mouth. “You are helping him repay his debt.”
It would have been closer to say that Matthew was helping him repay the lad’s debt. “Seven hundred.”
“I’m close, then. Is … what you’re doing illegal?”
“That’s nae a statement.”
His mother blew out her breath. “What you’re doing is illegal.”
Not yet, it wasn’t. Gambling wasn’t illegal, and even Vale likely hadn’t cheated as much as he’d chosen the perfect bird to pluck. Eventually, well, he’d cross that bridge when he rode up on it. “Eight hundred.”
“Thank God for that. Your brothers are assisting you, at least.”
“Nine hundred.”
She stood up. “I will give you the last hundred if you will make certain you’re not in this alone, whatever it is. Tell Niall. Tell Coll. I know you trust them, at least.”
He contemplated that. Generally, he slipped out of his messes alone; three MacTaggerts caused a stir, where one of them—him, at least—by himself could be more subtle. But fifty damned thousand pounds wasn’t subtle. They knew the most important part of this already—that he was after Miranda Harris. “Ye’ve a deal. A thousand pounds. I’ll need it by this evening.”
“You’ll have it.”
Aden pulled open her door. “Da always said I reminded him of ye. I reckon I can see why, now.”
* * *
Francesca collapsed into the chair again as the door clicked shut behind her middle son. Aden Domnhall MacTaggert, twenty-seven years old and more mysterious than the Sphinx. After all that, she’d discovered almost nothing, with one very important exception: He meant to marry Miranda Harris.
That should have been enough. A second son had plans to wed an English bride, and before the deadline she’d set of their sister’s own wedding. That was what she’d asked, and when they’d first arrived, she’d had serious doubts that any of them would bend that far.
But she’d learned tantalizing bits of other things. He hadn’t asked her yet, and something about the thousand pounds stood between them. She was in some sort of trouble, and while Aden hadn’t directly admitted that this was something that had been kept from the Harris parents, she thought it had been. Or rather, the trouble with Matthew’s wagering wasn’t the main issue.
Drat. She was generally much more proficient at deciphering the comings and goings—and needs and wants—of the people around her. Aden was clever, and tricky. Even his brothers, on the rare occasions she managed a chat of any length with them, adored him but kept to generalities such as “likes wagering” and “always has some lass or other after him.”
His admission that he’d found a lass therefore seemed especially significant, and that increased her frustration. She knew almost nothing of the how or why or where of it all, and even less about the circumstances surrounding the trouble in which Miranda seemed to be embroiled. Had Aden caused the trouble? That actually seemed likely, given that Miranda Harris was highly admired for her grace and poise and her cool, calm demeanor.
Francesca stood to collect one of the hats Hannah had set aside for her approval. She couldn’t inquire of Miranda’s mother without overturning the apple cart, or so Aden had hinted—unless that had been done precisely for the purpose of keeping her at bay. Oh, this, he, was maddening. And he’d said that Angus saw her in their middle son. Had Angus found her maddening, then?
That thought made her pause in the doorway. She wasn’t like Aden. Certainly she didn’t go about screaming her feelings and emotions and thoughts for all the world, but that was just common sense. It did no good to complain unless she could also find a remedy. Half the things she had attempted to discuss with the great nodcock of a man had flown straight past him, unnoticed, anyway.
Perhaps she could concede that not everyone was as observant and … intuitive as she was. As Aden was, rather. But everyone should be, which would make every interaction much less complicated, and would also entail many fewer explanations, apologies, and excuses. The—
Hannah appeared in front of her. “My lady, the barouche is being brought around, and Lady Eloise awaits you in the foyer.”
Francesca opened her mouth to point out that the barouche had only been a ploy to give her a few moments to think before she began fencing with her son, but she abruptly decided against it. She’d asked for a task to be completed, and Hannah had seen to it. Her underlying thoughts were hers alone. How could they be otherwise? And now she had several new things to contemplate later. The next two hours were reserved for dining with her daughter and Elizabeth and Miranda Harris, and figuring out how she could help when no one would tell her what in the world was going on.
* * *
“Don’t be a spendthrift, George,” Captain Robert Vale said, lifting a hand to acknowledge young Matthew Harris approaching from across the main paddock. “I’ve an idea that fox hunting might be a splendid hobby for me to take up.”
“Then borrow a hunter and go fox hunting,” Lord George Humphries grunted, making notes on his Tattersall’s auction sheet.
“That bay, Steadfast, should do me nicely,” Vale went on, ignoring the protest. “He’s out of Sullivan Waring’s stable. And his other brother is owned by Wellington.”
“Do you expect that makes you a relation to Wellington? That damned hunter is going to go for four hundred quid, at the least.”
“And you owe me twelve thousand quid.”
“By my reckoning, I owe you two thousand now, taking into consideration your living at my home, meals, parties, clothes, sundry expenses, and all the introductions I’ve made for you—in addition to a probationary membership at Boodle’s.”
“And yet not one for White’s.”
“Yet.”
“Our bargain is not yet completed, George. I am not a married man.” He shifted, making room for his second drudge. “Good morning, Matthew. Any news?”
That put a frown, quickly stifled, on Mr. Harris’s face. “Just my usual request that you leave Miranda out of this and allow me to work off the debt I’ve incurred.”
“As I’ve said, Miranda is the reason for all this. Did you discuss Aden MacTaggert with your dear sister?”
A nervous twitch of Matthew’s mouth. “She likes him.”
“Yes, he’s quite large and muscular and pretty, I suppose, as if any of that signifies. George, do buy me that horse, cousin.”
Muttering beneath his breath, Lord George waved his paper in the air, placing a bid for Steadfast. Good. A proper man should have a proper mount for a proper hunting of small, skittish beasts.
“He’s also Eloise’s brother, Robert. Neither she nor I can simply tell him to go away.”
Vale dug his nails into the wood beneath his fingers. Yes, MacTaggert had slipped through the only crack in his entire plan—one that hadn’t even existed when he’d begun this two months ago. Yes, Matthew had just become engaged to Eloise, but that young lady had been the doted-upon only child of Lady Aldriss. The damned trio of giant Scottish brothers hadn’t made an appearance until well after he’d seen Miranda Harris and begun putting a rope around her brother’s neck.
“A woman may only marry one man, Matthew. That’s the law in England, anyway. She’s marrying me. What’s so difficult about making him understand that?”
“Scotsmen are stubborn,” George put in, flicking his paper again as the bidding continued.
“They are that,” Matthew agreed.
Good God, it was like standing between two parrots, both mindlessly repeating everything they’d heard while understanding none of it. “I don’t want commentary. I want him gone. Is that clear?”
Matthew shifted his stance to focus on a
very small mouse hiding beneath a very small weed at the base of the paddock railing. Not even a place with the reputation of Tattersall’s could entirely eliminate its vermin. But Matthew wasn’t sharing that thought, Vale knew. Matthew was attempting to conjure an excuse, or a lie—neither of which was acceptable.
“I am growing tired of reminding you that I didn’t force you to make any of those wagers, Matthew,” Vale pointed out, even if he had coerced the majority of them. Encouraging a sin in someone else didn’t make him guilty of sinning, himself. “Presenting a single one of the notes you owe me would see you cut off from your family, and you would still be in debt to me for the remainder of your life.”
“Damn it all,” Matthew swore, and kicked at the mouse. The thing scurried toward one of the stable buildings and dove out of sight. “She’ll never forgive me, you know.”
“Very likely. Not my concern. What is it you’re hesitating to tell me?”
“Aden knows. About my debt, and about you. She told him everything, while … while they chatted last night.” He moved closer, lowering his voice. “I went into her room this morning to tell her what you’d said, and he was in there. With her.”
Vale clenched his jaw, his fists, every part of him that could still feel fury. He wanted to think he’d heard wrong, to demand a repeat of Matthew’s statement, but that would have been both pointless and a useless waste of time. That damned Highlander thought he’d won, then. MacTaggert thought that by taking Miranda’s virginity, he’d saved her from some villain’s clutches. “And no doubt he called me a blackguard,” he said aloud, keeping his voice level and cool.
“I don’t know what they called you, Rob—”
“And I don’t care. It doesn’t signify. I didn’t despoil her. I will make her a greater paragon of Society than she could possibly have dreamed. The grandest of the grand will beg for invitations to our soirees, and our dinners will be the most exclusive in Mayfair. No one else will know that some Highlander once led her astray, and she will be grateful to me for that fact. George, buy me that damned horse!”
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