A Well Pleasured Lady (4 page)

Mary stared at the candle she'd set in the
kitchen window. She was too numb with worry to pray and too used to the anxiety to pace. She simply waited. The wooden table before her had been washed so many times through the years it was smooth to the touch, bleached almost white and bowed in the center where the most scrubbing had been done. The clock ticked on the mantel. The fire flickered in an ever lowering ebb, and the darkness pressed in on her.

He would be all right. He was always all right.

As the hour struck midnight the door opened and Hadden swept in on a restless drift of fog.

“Sister, you shouldn't have waited up.” Her little brother had taken to Scotland with a boy's innocent pleasure in the open spaces and mighty storms, and as he walked the countryside he'd grown strong and hardy. Now he smelled like moist air and heather, and his eyes sparkled with excitement as he leaned
over and bussed her on the cheek. “I never get lost, you know that.”

She slipped the napkin off a tray and pointed to the array of bread and cheeses protected beneath. “I thought you might be hungry.”

He snorted. “Which I could have fetched myself. Dinna fash yourself.”

“I truly don't believe it is proper to use the Scottish dialect…” He grinned at her, and she realized he was teasing her. With a smile, she slapped at his arm. “So I waited up for you. I don't like the dark. It's just silliness.” Then she couldn't help adding, “Much like your mission.”

He paused in the act of tearing a chunk of bread from the loaf and gave her a warning look.

“Did you get some of them to talk to you?” she asked.

He stared at the bread in his hands, then put down the remains of the loaf. “Naturally. They
like
to talk to me.”

“I suppose they do. Who else would listen to them blathering about the old ways?”

He picked up a piece of cheese and laid it on his bread, then took a bite.

She should keep quiet. She knew she should. He showed more restraint than she did about this, their greatest conflict, but still she nagged him. “If you must listen to those useless stories, I don't know why you can't do it in the daytime.”

He deliberately finished chewing before he answered. “The poor folk of Scotland work for a living,
that's why. The only time they can talk to me is at night.” Then his control broke. Slapping his palm on the table, he said, “Since Culloden, the old ways are dying. Half of the people emigrated from the Highlands, and thousands of years of tradition are being swept away by the English and their bloody superior justice. I don't see why you can't understand that. We've discussed this a hundred times—” He stopped and took a breath. “Is this why you stayed up? So we could quarrel?”

He was resentful, and she couldn't really blame him. All their lives she been there, encouraging him, helping him, praising him as the smartest, the most talented, lad in the world. Only now she found herself at odds with him, and what could she do about it? He was nineteen. He'd been taller than she for six years. His shoulders were broad, his legs long. His deep voice sounded so much like Papa's, she had only to close her eyes to return to an earlier time—and that was the problem, really.

She tried to smile and patted the seat of the chair beside her. “Actually, tonight I waited for a different reason.”

He glowered. “What?”

“I don't know where to start.” She pressed her palms together. “I'm going to England.”

“To England!” For a single moment she saw his yearning for adventure. Then concern replaced it. “Why?”

What should she tell him? How should she tell him? “It's all so odd, Hadden.”

She seldom dithered, and he realized it, for his eyes narrowed. Putting down the bread, he grasped her hand. “What has happened?”

“That man who came tonight.”

“Lord Whitfield?” Hadden's grip tightened until the knuckles ground together. “Did he assault you?”

“No!” Horrified by his conclusion, she cried again, “No, of course not! Lady Valéry would never have allowed such a thing, and…No!”

“Then what did he do to you?”

She worked her hand away from his and shook out her aching fingers. “Nothing!”

“Don't tell me ‘nothing,' Mary. I know you better than that. You're upset, and I want to know the reason.”

She realized her baby brother was grown up. She had to tell him all of the truth. “Do you remember much about that night?”

“That night? What—” Hadden stilled.

They'd never spoken of it, but Mary saw horror darken his eyes.

“Aye,” he said. “I remember everything.”

“Do you remember when we came back from burying the corpse?” Her hand crept back into Hadden's. “There was a man who stopped us in the stable yard.”

He rubbed her fingers as if they had been touched by frost. “Aye.”

“That man was Lord Whitfield.”

“Dear God.” It was a prayer. Hadden stared beyond her at the dark square of window where the
candle still burned. “Did he accuse you to your face? I always thought it was my fault. I'll tell them when they come—”

“It wasn't your fault!” Now it was her turn to comfort him. “How can you say so?”

“It was me—”

“No. It was me.” She said it with finality. “I was so stupid, and so miserable, and I dreamed that some prince would come and rescue me. I lived for dreams and wishes—oh, damn Papa for that!” It had been years since she'd cried, but tears dribbled down her cheeks now.

Hadden shot up from his chair and fumbled through his pockets until he found a handkerchief, then dumped the contents—some old rocks with strange carvings on them—on the table. Thrusting the handkerchief into her hands, he asked, “Why Papa?”

She swiped at the tears already released and sternly forced back the others. “He was nothing but a dreamer. He used to spin these tales. He called me Princess Guinevere, and said that after I had fought overwhelming battles, a prince would appear and lend his strength to mine, and together we'd win everything.” She could scarcely bear to remember how eagerly she'd listened and believed. “Papa taught me to dream, and that was all I did. Even after he died, even after our grandfather rejected us, even after I had taken employment as a governess, I still dreamed.”

“You were like a different person then.”

“I
was
a different person then.” That was the
truth. Mary Rottenson had eliminated Guinevere Fairchild from her being. Guinevere was gone. Truly and completely. Yet the consequences of her actions still ruled their lives. “Guinevere allowed the earl of Besseborough to visit the schoolroom. Guinevere thought he was the prince.”

“When actually he was the slimy old toad.” Hadden's face twisted in distaste. Then suddenly he placed both his hands flat on the table in front of her. “That's why you don't like me gathering the old tales and writing them down.”

“No—”

“Aye. You think I'm like Papa.”

She hated to admit it, for she loved him too much—but he was like Papa. He sought romance and drama, and what good could ever come of that?

Yet Hadden wanted to go to university. There he would be exposed to other influences, and this nonsense about preserving the old stories would fade. In that, she placed her faith. “Lord Whitfield didn't seem to recognize me.”

“He
didn't
recognize you?”

“He knew I was the daughter of Sir Charles Fairchild. He already knew that when he arrived. Apparently Lady Valéry found out.”

Sheepish, Hadden confessed, “She questioned me not long after we'd come here, and I told her—”

“Everything?” Mary cried.

“No, no. Just about Papa, and how you'd had to hire out because Grandfather hadn't let us live with
them.” Hadden showed the acrimony he still felt, that they both still felt, at that long-ago rejection.

“I don't even know why our grandfather wouldn't take us in when we needed help so desperately.”

“Didn't Papa ever say?”

“Not that I remember.” She touched her forehead. An ache had formed there, the same ache that always formed when she thought of her father. “We never went to Fairchild Manor to visit. I didn't think about it when Mama was alive.”

“I don't remember any of it.”

Hadden's lean features displayed his longing for memories. Their mother had died when he was two. Their father when he was nine. She'd done the best she could, but she'd been too young to know how to be a parent. She'd done so many stupid things. Looking at Hadden now, Mary worried, not for the first time, that Hadden had needed a man to look up to.

“No matter.” Hadden shrugged as if he had come to terms with his loss long ago. “You know what Lady Valéry is like, and I was young then.”

“I know.” She touched his golden hair lightly. “I just wish you had told me.”

“We agreed it would be better if you could do what you thought best.” He smiled at her. “In those days, Guinevere Mary, you were a very serious girl.”

“I was, wasn't I?” As she remained.

“Tell me about Lord Whitfield.”

She dragged herself back from what had been done
to what must be done. “As I said, he didn't seem to recognize me.”

“The night was dark,” Hadden said.

“And I've changed. But he knew Papa.”

“From where?” Hadden asked.

“He said they'd been neighbors. Lord Whitfield says I look like Papa, although not so attractive, of course.”

Hadden leaned back, surprised, and studied her. “You're pretty, for a sister.”

“Lord Whitfield is not my brother, and he wasn't impressed. Really, it's not surprising, is it?” She smoothed her plain dark skirt. “Nevertheless, he wants me to return to Fairchild Manor as his betrothed.”

“What?” Hadden exploded out of his chair.

She grabbed for his wrist and hung on when he would have stormed out of the kitchen. “It's necessary. I swear it's necessary.”

“Tell me, Mary.” He stared down at her forbiddingly. “And this had better be good.”

Swiftly she told him the tale of Lady Valéry's diary, and when she finished, he rose and paced across the kitchen, then came back and towered over her. “He must realize he's putting you in danger. The Fairchilds are totally disreputable. They threw us into the gutter to starve. They wouldn't cavil at killing you.”

Weakly, she said, “I'm sure it's not so desperate as that.”

“I'll go with you, Mary.” He put his arm around
her shoulders. “It's clear this Lord Whitfield is more than you can manage, and anyway, it's time I started taking some of the burden.”

“No!” She started up under his demand. “I can handle this.”

“You can't. Guinevere Mary, you know you can't. Let me grow up. Treat me like a man.” His eerie resemblance to their father disturbed her, but he sounded mature, reasonable. “I won't fail you, and maybe, just maybe, you could be happy once more.”

Giving up a little of her burden sounded so tempting. But how could she? No. She had to retain control of this situation. Once she'd been to England and returned, unmarked by scandal,
then
Hadden could make his way as an adult. Protecting him for a little bit longer was the only sensible thing; she'd grown up in a swift and brutal manner, and she could save him from that.

Patting his shoulder, she said, “Please don't make this more difficult for me than it already is.”

He straightened, obviously ready to argue once more.

“I can only do it if I believe you're safe here in Scotland. If I had to worry about you—” Her voice broke, and she let it. She hated to use guilt to control him, but right now she needed every weapon in her arsenal. “Just stay here this one last time. Please, Hadden. Please.”

He walked to the table and stood looking down at those rocks he'd collected. The old people he'd interviewed had told him they were ancient stones,
carved with markings that could tell the future. He'd tried to show her once, but she'd cut him off.

Now he idly arranged them in a line as he listened, and when she'd finished, he looked up, expressionless. “Of course, sister, you're right. It would be better if you think that I'm safe in Scotland. Go in peace, and I'll see you once more when the time is right.”

As she shut the door, she wondered what he had seen in the stones that caused his sudden capitulation.

“
A good housekeeper goes where she's
needed.”

Sebastian heard the muttered phrase in the doorway behind him and turned. Mary was looking down at Lady Valéry's opulently decorated carriage with an expression so grim, she might have been looking down at her own hearse.

Good God, she talked to herself. Miss Perfection Fairchild talked to herself. What an entertaining eccentricity. An unscrupulous man would enjoy having a weapon to wield when dealing with Miss Guinevere Mary Fairchild.

Sebastian
was
an unscrupulous man. “Pardon me, Miss Fairchild, I'm afraid I didn't quite understand you.”

He would have sworn she hadn't noticed him standing off to the side, but she didn't recoil. Her hands were clasped before her, fingers threaded
together as if in prayer, and Sebastian thought he'd seen nuns who moved more restlessly. He'd seen nuns, too, who gave off more womanly warmth.

Mary looked him over without enthusiasm, and her breath puffed white into the cold air. “I wasn't speaking to you, Lord Whitfield.”

He glanced around at the empty steps that stretched from the open door of the mansion and down to the line of carriages that waited to carry them to London, and then on to Fairchild Manor. “To yourself, then? All the Fairchilds have a reputation for eccentricity, but none of them, to my knowledge, are mad.”

She turned her head away. “But then, you don't know as much about Fairchilds as you think you do.”

“Ah, but I will.” He relished reminding her, “After all, we
are
betrothed.”

The heavy knot of blond hair at the base of her neck must have tilted her head back, for he knew Mary the housekeeper would never have looked down her nose at him as Miss Fairchild did now. “We are betrothed, yes, but only when we reach Fairchild Manor, and then only for the purposes of recovering my employer's diary.”

He stepped close to her, crowding her back toward the door, and caught the hand she raised to ward him off. “Ah, but you're discounting the pleasure we could seek in each other's arms.”

If she hadn't been wearing woolen gloves, her fingernails would have dug into his skin. As it was,
her frigid tone and the gaze from her frosty blue eyes flayed him. “I find pleasure in no man's arms.”

She objected to his handling, that was clear. He didn't care.

Readjusting his hold to ease the pressure of her grip, he said, “Perhaps you haven't been in the right man's arms.”

“You misunderstand me, Lord Whitfield.” She looked pointedly at their clasped hands. “I have been in
no
man's arms.”

She had to be jesting.

“And I intend for that situation to continue.”

She wasn't.

And he believed her. Believed a Fairchild, a liar by definition, because hunger writhed in his gut every time he looked at her. He'd told her she looked like a housekeeper, and that was true.

She wore a black dress and held herself rigidly erect with the help of an unfashionable corset. She eschewed the new, freer fashions and wore a whalebone petticoat, secure in the knowledge no man could discern her shape beneath the unbending hoops. She stuck her hair up in a bun, then used one of those netlike things to make sure her curls were sufficiently trapped, and sometimes she added a plain mobcap. No cosmetics brought color to her rounded cheeks, and no patches accented the disapproving, puckered mouth.

It was also true that those whalebones couldn't quite contain her generous breasts, and nothing kept
those wisps of blond confined for long. Cosmetics might have hidden the betraying ebb and flow of color in Miss Fairchild's face, and he wondered—when he kissed her, would his lips leave a mark on her fair flesh? When he removed that dour headgear, would her hair taunt him with its ebullience? When he stripped her of that miserable corset and dress and touched her rosy parts, would she yield, become soft and generous, make him forget his enmity toward her entire intemperate clan?

He shuddered. No. No, he could never forget. That would be the betrayal he could never live with.

On the long trip up from his London town house, he'd made his plans. He would whip in and wheedle this Fairchild into doing his will. He hadn't thought it would take much effort—God knew the entire family responded well to flattery. Superficial emotions were all any of them understood. When he blasted her with his charm, she would melt like all the other Fairchilds.

Trouble was, when he was with her, he didn't use his charm. He felt compelled to incite her instead.

He shouldn't, he knew. He needed her cooperation. But something about her made him want to make the caged bird sing. Perhaps it was the way she spoke: softly, as if she feared being overheard, and slowly, as if she considered each word before she allowed it egress. Perhaps it was the way she moved: gracefully, as if she feared to cause an accident, and precisely, as if each motion should be measured and weighed.

He released her hand, then followed her as she glided down the stairs toward the carriage. She might not like it, but she was quite human, and beneath that shapeless black frock, very female.

He thought—he hoped—she would do him proud when dressed in silks and lace and presented as his betrothed to her family. They would know he had won a prize. That mattered to him. It mattered more than it should.

“Where's your brother?” he asked. “I thought he would be here to see you off.”

Miss Fairchild smiled, a tight curve of the lips made up of half nerves, half defiance. “Hadden wished to speak to an old woman in the Highlands. He said she knew about the hauntings at the field of Culloden, and he's much interested in…the war.”

She lied. Sebastian knew it as well as he knew the scar on his hand, but how could he prove it? His gaze scoured the landscape. Wisps of snow decorated those Highland peaks, and each night he'd been here, the ground had frozen hard. The road would be easier to travel because of the frost, but he also felt positive that Mary had deliberately kept her brother hidden away. Surely her actions bespoke a guilty conscience of some kind.

Her guilty conscience, rather than her integrity, had no doubt prodded her to pack efficiently. As promised, she had been ready to leave in two days. He hadn't had to wait on Guinevere Mary Fairchild.

Then he grinned. His godmother was another story.

“Sebastian, did you make sure every
bit
of my luggage was loaded into those carriages?” Wrapped in a fur cloak some long-forgotten Russian lover had given her, Lady Valéry stood high on the steps of her mansion and stared down her nose at him as if he were some peasant born to do her bidding.

And while he wasn't a peasant, he was born to do her bidding. She was the only woman in this world he respected—and feared. He was going into the jaws of hell—which some called Fairchild Manor—and he was doing it for his country, to save it from a political disaster. Yet he was doing this for Lady Valéry, too. He owed much to her, and he served her faithfully.

“Your luggage, my dear, rides within those extra vehicles.” He waved at the two lumbering conveyances waiting behind her own well-sprung carriage. “Miss Fairchild's carpetbag rests on the knees of one of the lady's maids you brought, and my paltry trunks ride on the top, exposed to the weather.”

“As it should be, my dear.” She frowned as she descended the steps. “Except for Mary's carpetbag, of course. We'll have to spend some time in London, you realize, creating a persona for her.”

“She has a persona,” he retorted. “What she needs is some clothes.”

“That, too,” Lady Valéry replied tranquilly.

He heard a little snarl, and turned his head. Miss Fairchild was glaring at both Lady Valéry and him.

“Sensitive, isn't she?” he asked his godmother.

“She hasn't ever been before.” Lady Valéry stopped on the bottom step and watched Miss Fairchild
enter the carriage. “I wonder what brought that on.”

Sebastian glanced at Lady Valéry's thin, upright figure. By God, she was the opponent of every man in England. A power-dealer, knowing more about the government and its works than most of Parliament and knowing, too, how to direct the course of legislation. He had to get that diary, not just to protect Lady Valéry's privacy, but to halt the spread of her sedition through all of the British Empire. If other women discovered it was possible to rule, and wisely, too, what use would they have for men?

He handed her into the carriage and stepped away, knowing the ladies would need time to arrange themselves and their belongings before he could join them. With a meticulous eye for detail, he studied the three vehicles. The wheel hubs shone from the labor of the wheelwright. Beside each coachman on his high seat sat a footman armed with pistols—highwaymen were always a problem. And each carriage carried an extra footman, his own or Lady Valéry's, in case of accident or in case the horses, excellent animals all, needed tending. The two lady's maids rode in the second carriage while his very efficient valet supervised the servants from the last.

Even now, a well-bundled Gerald strode along the length of the procession, doing his own last-minute check, and when he came abreast of Sebastian, Sebastian said, “We should reach London within the fortnight, God grant us good weather.”

When the man turned his head toward him, Sebastian
realized his mistake, and wondered why he'd made it. This fellow wore rough wool, not elegant broadcloth, and the muffler that covered his head and mouth had clearly been knitted by some granny in the hills. Gerald would never have been caught dead committing such a sartorial sin, yet this man—this footman?—had the same air of command that distinguished the upper servants from the lower.

But when he spoke, he used English well leavened with a Scottish accent. “God'll grant us good weather until we leave Scotland, m'lord,” he said, “but after that we'll be in the Devil's hands.”

“A proper Scottish sentiment.” Sebastian couldn't help it; he grinned. Such a defiant spirit amused him. “Why are you going, if you find England so repugnant?”

“Someone has to go along to watch Miss Fairchild.”

Normally, such impertinence would only amuse Sebastian more, but something about the way those blue eyes watched him wiped the smirk from his lips. The fellow was confronting Sebastian, man to man, and Sebastian didn't care for the challenge. “She'll be fine, I assure you.”

“Nay,
I
assure
you
,” the fellow said. “And that's why I should continue inspecting the procession.”

“You're a footman?” Sebastian asked.

“The ostler.”

And did this ostler imagine himself a suitor to Guinevere Mary Fairchild, descendent of a noble English line? “What's your name?”

“Haley, m'lord.”

Sebastian hesitated. He should dismiss the man, tell him he'd lost the right to care for his beloved Miss Fairchild by his effrontery, but something about the way Haley stood—shoulders back, hands on hips—told Sebastian he would be wasting his breath.

“Very well,” he said. “Watch over Miss Fairchild if you wish, and do that by making sure our journey is a smooth one.”

“To that end, my lord.” Striding to the back of Lady Valéry's carriage, Haley eased a large wash pan from beneath the ropes that held it. “Take this.”

Sebastian gingerly took the banged-up old thing between two fingers. “What is it for?”

Now Haley was grinning. Sebastian could tell by the crinkles of merriment around his eyes.

“It's for Miss Fairchild,” Haley said. “She is
not
a good traveler.”