The Wicked Viscount (The Campbells)

by Heather McCollum

  Blast. After spending half the night churning her reactions around in her head, she needed to admit the truth. Apparently, Nathaniel Worthington had become important to her, something she’d vowed she wouldn’t let happen. Could it be love? This sick feeling in her stomach at the thought of him marrying someone else? “My four takes the trick since it is trump,” Cat said, sliding the cards toward her.

  “Obviously,” Esther murmured.

  “That means you and Lady Stanton have won,” Danby said above her. “You two have collected the most tricks together.”

  Esther beckoned for the cards with her fingers, spreading them out to shuffle once again. “This has become boring,” she said and looked around.

  Cat had spent the time thinking about Nathaniel instead of tricking information out of the woman. “I know another game,” she said, not wanting her to go just yet. “It is about secrets.” Her voice lowered as she smiled at Lucy.

  Lucy took the cue easily and smiled back, her eyes growing wide. “I love secrets.”

  “Whose secrets?” Esther asked, sliding the cards together with expert grace, her fingers soft and flawless from never having to work a day in her life.

  Cat shrugged. “Everyone playing who has them.”

  Esther met her gaze with a sly grin. “Everyone has secrets.”

  “Then everyone may play.” She put out her hand for Esther to pass her the cards and looked to Francis and Lucy. “It is called Cards Up.”

  Esther chuckled. “A concocted game.”

  “Nathaniel… Lord Worthington,” Cat corrected herself, but not before she could watch the little dig of using his given name register in the deepening of Esther’s frown. “He taught me on our journey south. If anyone made it up, it was he.”

  Danby pulled up a chair to squeeze between Francis and Cat. “Something other than Whist. Do explain.”

  Cat dealt the large cards out before each of them, without including Danby. Five cards for each. “Now,” she said, “since there are more than just the two of us playing…” Aye, it was another little jab to let Esther know that she’d been alone with Nathaniel when he’d taught her. “We will have to pair up, so it must be four, not five, people.”

  “I will play the next round,” Danby said. Several others standing nearby pressed in to hear.

  “I do not understand,” Lucy said, her brows lowered.

  “That is because Lady Campbell is not explaining anything,” Esther said.

  Cat raised her voice. “We take turns flipping a card. If the card you flip, Lady Stanton, is red, you get to ask me a question, which I must answer. If the card you flip is black, then you will tell a secret.” She looked to Francis and Lucy. “Lady Wickley, you can be black while Lady Kellington is red.”

  “Do the numbers mean anything?” Danby asked.

  “Yes,” Cat said. “The higher the number, the more difficult the question you must answer or the more damning the secret you must tell.”

  Several men laughed about the perimeter. Lord, what would she tell if she turned up a red high card? That she was falling in love with Nathaniel Worthington? Just the thought made her heart pound under the layers of silk and boning.

  “This is a ridiculous game,” Esther said.

  Cat leaned slightly over the table, resting her fingertips on a card. “It is a game for only those who are brave, Lady Stanton.”

  “Or without any damning secrets,” Lucy added.

  Cat smiled without breaking the tethering gaze with Esther. “Yes,” she agreed, drawing out the s. “If your secrets are too damning, Lady Stanton, or you are a coward, perhaps you should give your seat to Lord Danby.”

  Esther glared at Cat. “Turn your card first,” she said.

  Without looking, she flipped her card, and people tittered. Cat glanced down, thankful to see an eight of diamonds. She smiled. “Let’s see, something a little interesting about me.” Her eyes moved to the people listening in. “I can climb a tree and do so regularly.”

  Lucy laughed lightly while two ladies behind her whispered to one another, their judgmental gazes resting on Cat. “My turn,” Lucy said and flipped up a black four. “So, I get to ask Lady Wickley a question?”

  “Aye,” Cat said. “Nothing too delicate since it is only a four.”

  Lucy tapped a finger against her red lips. “What is your favorite color ribbon.”

  Francis smiled. “This is easy. Yellow.” Behind her, Danby’s friend, Lord Matthew Hunt, plucked a yellow ribbon from a lady’s fan and waved it before Francis’s face, making everyone laugh. She plucked it from him and tied a bow in one of her curls. Cat noticed then that she wore one of the little black patches near her ear. It was shaped like a flower.

  “Now your turn, Lady Stanton,” Cat said with a look that dared her to retreat.

  Esther hovered her fingers over her cards, moving between them as if wishing very hard to be able to see the reverse sides. Finally, she turned one over, and Cat’s stomach clenched at the red color.

  “Six of hearts,” Lucy called. “Something fairly simple then.”

  “Hmmm …” Esther drawled out with her breath. “A question for Lady Campbell.” Her gaze drifted around the room as if she were looking for someone. Nathaniel? Iain Padley, whom she met in the dark hallway?

  “I know,” Esther said, coming back to meet her gaze. She tipped her blonde head to the side. “Are you aware that Lord Worthington was King Charles’s lieutenant in charge of the attack at Bothwell Bridge the day that your father was killed there as a covenanter? I believe, it was under Nathaniel’s orders that the covenanters were slaughtered. Did he tell you that?”

  They were just words, strung together into a sentence, but they formed pictures immediately in Cat’s mind. Her father cursing the English in his thick Gaelic. Her mother weeping and clinging to Izzy as a cart rolled into Killin with the bodies of those who’d died at the battle, the red hair of Cat’s father fanned out as he lay on his cheek, damp, bloated, and pecked by ravens. Nathaniel standing in uniform, his face as hard as stone as he ordered the advance to cut through the Scottish line. Nathaniel raising his sword. Nathaniel lunging forward to bury his sword into her father’s chest.

  We all have secrets, something in our past that we would like to change. Regrets we wish to wash away. His words echoed in her memory from when they played cards in the cabin.

  And then again right before they threw off their restraints, letting their passions ignite. There are things you do not know about me. Sins of my past. She’d thought that he’d spoken of his role as Viscount or his need to marry well, not that he’d been a commander in the English army, a commander who’d ordered the charge against her da.

  The people around them had stilled, waiting for her response. Lucy reached forward to lay a finger on Esther’s exposed card. “’Tis but a six,” she said as if she whispered, but her words carried. “Surely, that type of question would be appropriate for a much higher card, Lady Stanton.” Lucy’s worried gaze flashed between Cat and Esther across the table while Francis just held her gloved fingers across her lips as if she’d frozen in a gasp.

  Esther smiled without looking away. “My mistake. I retract the question.” She blinked her long eyelashes and tapped her crimson lip, glancing around at the onlookers. “My question is…how many pigs and cows must you milk each morning up there in the wilds of Scotland?”

  “You do not milk pigs,” Matthew Hunt said with a snort though everyone else remained still and silent, obviously waiting for more drama to unfold.

  Esther shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Who knows what they do up in the Highlands. Maybe they get their milk from any farm animal walking around. Goats, pigs, sheep…”

  Her words dissolved under the roar in Cat’s ears. Heaviness pushed down on her as she sat in the chair. Despair and anger swirled into a tempest within her, numbing her to all thoughts but the pain of being struck with such betrayal.

  She’d given herself to Nathaniel, even wondered if she
had fallen in love with him. All this time he knew her father had died at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, and he’d never said anything to her about it. Instead she must learn of it from this viper in a room full of disapproving, English bastards.

  “Lady Campbell,” Danby said near her ear. “Are you well?”

  Cat glanced up from the intricate hexagonal pattern inlaid into the wooden table to see many gazes watching her. Noblemen and refined ladies, their eyes wide or holding curiosity or excitement, all of them waiting to see how she would react to Esther’s strike. Did they think she would swoon? Or raise her skirts and jump on the table to brandish her Highland daggers?

  “Perhaps we should go,” Danby said. “Lord Worthington has just entered the room.”

  Nathaniel stood somewhere behind her. She should care, shouldn’t she? But looking toward Esther, wearing her smug smile, Cat only cared about seeking revenge on the woman that had purposely chosen to expose her damning information in the most public place possible. Did she think Cat wouldn’t dare skewer her with a blade with the court looking on?

  “I have no farm animals to milk,” Cat said, her words amazingly even. With her fingers extended, she flipped over another card from the row before her. A black ten. “A question for Lady Stanton.” She glanced up to meet Esther’s amused gaze. “Did ye rendezvous with Iain Padley along the gallery in the middle of the night to speak about what the duchess and I discussed in private or was your meeting with him a romantic liaison?”

  Esther’s eyes went wide, her mouth dropping open.

  Cat glanced at her cards. “No answer? I will continue then.” She flipped over another card, the sound of it snapping onto the wood with restrained force. A red seven. “A fact about me,” Cat said and opened her painted lips with a popping sound. “Queen Catherine sent for me to come to Whitehall, because I am a talented healer and herbalist, one who could spot poison if given to a person.”

  Someone behind her gasped softly, and several men shifted closer to the table. Stunned silence prevailed as if the onlookers were committing every word spoken to memory.

  “Shouldn’t it be my turn?” Francis whispered, leaning in, her eyes wide on Cat.

  “I have started a new game,” Cat said. “It is called laying all your cards up on the table.” She snapped over her third card. A black ten. Everyone’s eyes turned to Esther as they waited for Cat to ask her a question. “Did you buy Wolfsbane from the herbalist at the Frost Fair? Was that why ye did not want me to go to the fair, and then when I went, ye tried to trick me into drowning by sacrificing an innocent little girl?”

  A murmur rose up around them, several heads bending together to whisper as Esther’s face grew red.

  “That was two questions,” Lucy said, her eyes frantically turning to Esther and then to Cat.

  Esther stared back in stunned silence.

  “No answer for either of them?” Cat asked. “Very well, I will continue.”

  Cat flipped up a red five. “A fact about me. I carry no less than four blades on me at any given time, so whomever sent me a poisoned tonic will likely end up dead if ye try anything else.”

  A man a row back took a swig of his wine, and Cat vaguely realized that it was Dr. Witherspoon. Other faces stared at her, mouths dropped open or brows raised.

  “Nathaniel, you might want to…” Danby’s words trailed off, and Cat felt the men at her back shift, no doubt allowing the bloody commander of the English army at Bothwell Bridge into the circle that had grown to encompass everyone in the salon.

  “Lady Campbell?” Nathaniel said, his deep voice making a chord within her vibrate. She suppressed a light trembling by pressing her palms hard onto the table. “You are playing… Cards Up. Perhaps it is time we—”

  “I have one more card,” she said, her words coming with force as she raised her hand, palm toward him without looking his way. She slapped her hand down on the last card, flipping it. Several ladies gasped as the simple design of the ace of hearts lay up for them all to see.

  Cat’s heart thudded deeply as she lifted her eyes to Esther’s. The woman had thought her revelation about Nathaniel would make her run back to Scotland and hide like a whipped dog. But she knew nothing about Cat Campbell, nothing of the pain she’d suffered in life, the betrayal as bad as Nathaniel not telling her that he may have killed her father.

  The anger, which had cloaked Cat for years since her parents’ deaths, wrapped easily around her, like donning a familiar warm coat. Her lips turned upward into a smile for the woman. Women fight with words, not blades at court. Evelyn was right, and Cat would sacrifice her honor and reputation to draw Esther’s blood.

  “A red ace,” Cat said softly, and the crowd seemed to lean in. “I must reveal myself completely.”

  “Lady Campbell,” Nathaniel said, and his hand lifted under her elbow. “I am taking you in to dinner now.”

  With a quick jab backward, she pulled away. She wouldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at him, else she might crumble in despair. He was the only one she had trusted here, the only man in her life whom she’d started to…she couldn’t even think it.

  Cat stared at Esther. Did the woman think Nathaniel might love her? That he would have no interest in another and wed her? The woman’s conversation with him in the dark gallery about marriage and her obvious jealousy whenever she saw him with Cat made her guess the answer was yes. And she was willing to strip herself naked before these people to hurt her.

  Cat’s voice came smooth and strong, like a python to wind around everyone listening. “Nathaniel Worthington is an amazing lover. I have given him my maidenhead, and the passion he has kindled in me has ruined all other men for me. He does not love ye, and he will never wed ye, ye glittering, cold trout of a woman. Bàs an fhitchich ort.”

  With her final curse in Gaelic, Cat stood, her chair scraping back from the table in the overpacked, awed, room. She didn’t look at anyone, especially not Nathaniel, but she could feel him at her back as she turned away. Taking one step and then another, her toes tightly gripped in her slippers, she walked through the parting courtiers. She stepped out through the arched doorway and paused, because now… She had no idea where to go.

  …

  Nathaniel walked up behind Cat where she stood just outside the room. Proud and beautiful, she had shredded her reputation before them all.

  “Lady Campbell,” he said. “Cat?”

  “Go away,” she said, her voice soft and thick with turmoil.

  He caught her arm, tugging her farther down the hall where a sconce illuminated darkened windows. “What the damnation was all of that?” he asked, his fingers shooting up to rake through the hair he’d left free of the blasted wig. “Before everyone. I but left you amongst them for less than an hour.”

  Cat swung around to meet his gaze, the candlelight reflecting tears on her cheeks. She threw her arms out, leaning into him. “Ye led the charge that killed my da five years ago,” she said, her brogue thick with emotion. “I told ye, back on our journey, that he was killed at Bothwell Bridge. How his death brought my mother such pain.”

  Hurt and fury twisted on her face. “Ye wanted to know when I first climbed a tree.” Cat withdrew, her hands fisting in the folds of her skirts. “It wasn’t when I was a lass, it was when I found my mother swaying from a tall birch, hung herself after my father was killed. I had to climb up to cut her down. She had learned to tie a noose in preparation.”

  Nathaniel’s breath lodged in his chest, the heaviness of her pain seeming to push the air out of the alcove where they stood. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t say that James had argued for him to continue his silence about the battle, but Cat wasn’t giving him a chance.

  “Ye knew he had died there, that my family and I had suffered from it, and ye said naught before ye took my body, before ye swayed my…” She turned away from him to stare at the blackness of the glass panes. “My heart.”

  His breath tangled with the ache in his throat as he inhaled. He glanced
toward the salon where several people peered out, but no one followed. “Cat…how did you—?”

  “Lady Stanton of course,” Cat said before he could finish his question. “Iain Padley must have discovered the connection for her. She informed me of your treachery before everyone in the salon. Made it part of the card game to get back at me for defending Princess Ekua and for possibly catching your attention.”

  “Damn,” he murmured, reaching both hands up behind his head, elbows going out. His chest contracted with the movement almost as if he were giving her a target for her dagger. “Cat, I never would have allowed her to—”

  “To what?” she demanded, turning back to him. “Tell me the truth? The truth that ye have my father’s blood on your hands. The truth that five years later, ye seduced his daughter into believing ye to be…” She paused, her face pinching in on itself as more tears gushed from her eyes. He’d never seen Cat cry before, and each drop tore through him. “Believing ye to be trustworthy and honorable.”

  The fallen look of her face was the most horrific thing he’d ever seen. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and wash away all the pain and betrayal she was feeling. He dropped his hands, leaving them to fist at his sides to keep from reaching for her because he knew she would only slap them away. He deserved nothing less.

  “I do not remember seeing your father. I, however, was in command of Charles’s army. I was the one to issue the orders to charge.”

  The battle had been a bloody one, despite him giving orders to spare as many as possible. He did not agree with Charles’s dealings against the covenanters who wished to practice their religion up in Scotland, but those who gathered to plot against the crown were traitors. Nathaniel had pledged to uphold the crown, and when he’d ascended to lieutenant of the regiment, that meant putting down the more radical Scots who were gathering, not to practice their faith, but to plot an assassination.

  Upon returning to Whitehall, King Charles had twisted the truth about the battle in an effort to stop other radical Presbyterians from rallying for war. Instead of revealing that the group at Bothwell Bridge had been gathering to attack, he made Nathaniel swear to say it had been a religious meeting, which the crown would not tolerate. Either that or he shouldn’t speak of it at all.