Almost Heaven (32 page)

“Did what?”

The vicar paused a moment to watch a bird hop about in the rustling leaves overhead, then he said, “she was in a rare state. Quite confused. Angry, too. On the one hand, she was afraid you might decide to express your ‘tender regard’ for Lady Cameron, undoubtedly in much the way you were doing it when I arrived.” When his gibe evoked nothing but a quirked eyebrow from his imperturbable nephew, Duncan sighed and continued, “At the same time, she was equally convinced that her young lady might try to shoot you with your own gun, which I distinctly understood her to say the young lady had
already
tried to do. It is that which I feared when I heard the gunshots that sent me galloping up here.”

“We were shooting at targets.” The vicar nodded, but he was studying Ian with an intent frown.

“Is something else bothering you?” Ian asked, noting the look.

The vicar hesitated, then shook his head slightly, as if trying to dismiss something from his mind. “Miss Throckmorton-Jones had more to say, but I can scarcely credit it.”

“No doubt it was the laudanum,” Ian said, dismissing the matter with a shrug.

“Perhaps,” he said, his frown returning. “Yet
I
have not taken laudanum, and
I
was under the impression you are about to betroth yourself to a young woman named Christina Taylor.”

“I am.”

His face turned censorious. “Then what excuse can you have for the scene I just witnessed a few minutes ago?”

Ian’s voice was clipped. “Insanity.” They walked back to the house, the vicar silent and thoughtful, Ian grim. Duncan’s untimely arrival had not bothered him, but now that his passion had finally cooled he was irritated as hell with his body’s uncontrollable reaction to Elizabeth Cameron. The moment his mouth touched hers it was as if his brain went dead. Even though he knew exactly what she was, in his arms she became an alluring angel. Those tears she’d shed today were because she’d been tricked by a friend. Yet two years ago she’d virtually cuckolded poor Mondevale without a qualm. Today she had calmly talked about wedding old Belhaven or John Marchman and within the same hour had pressed her eager little body against Ian’s, kissing him with desperate ardor. Disgust replaced his anger. She ought to marry Belhaven, he decided with grim humor. The old letch was perfect for her; they were a matched pair in everything but their ages. Marchman, on the other hand, deserved much better than Elizabeth’s indiscriminate, well-used little body. She’d make his life a living hell.

Despite that angelic face of hers, Elizabeth Cameron was still what she had always been a spoiled brat, a skillful flirt with more passion than sense.

With a glass of Scotch in his hand and the stars twinkling in the inky sky, Ian watched the fish cooking on the little fire he’d built. The quiet of the night, combined with his drink, had soothed him. Now, as he watched the cheery little fire, his only regret was that Elizabeth’s arrival had deprived him of the badly needed peace and quiet he’d been seeking when he came here. He’d been working at a killing pace for almost a year, and he’d counted on finding the same peace he always found here whenever he returned.

Growing up, he’d known all along that he would leave this place, that he would make his own way in the world, and he’d succeeded. Yet he always came back here, looking for something he still hadn’t found, some elusive thing to cure his restlessness. Now he led a life of power and wealth, a life that suited him in most ways. He’d gone too far, seen too much, changed too much to try to live here. He’d accepted that when he decided to marry Christina. She would never like this place, but she would preside over all his other homes with grace and poise.

She was beautiful, sophisticated, and passionate. She suited him perfectly, or he wouldn’t have offered for her. Before doing so, he’d considered it with the same combination of dispassionate logic and unfailing instinct that marked all his business decisions – he’d calculated the odds for success, made his decision swiftly, and then acted. In fact, the only rash, ill-advised thing of any import he’d done in recent years was his behavior the weekend he’d met Elizabeth Cameron.

“It was poor-spirited of you in the extreme,” Elizabeth smilingly informed him after dinner as she cleared away the dishes, “to make me cook this morning, when you are so very good at it.”

“Not really,” Ian said mildly as he poured brandy into two glasses and carried them over to the chairs by the fire. “The only thing I know how to cook is fish – exactly the way we just ate it.” He handed one to Duncan, then he sat down and lifted the lid off a box on the table beside him, removing one of the thin cheroots that were made especially for him by a London tobacconist. He looked at Elizabeth and, with automatic courtesy, asked, “Do you mind?”

Elizabeth glanced at the cigar, smiled, and started to shake her head, then she stopped, assailed by a memory of him standing in a garden nearly two years ago. He’d been about to light one of those cheroots when he saw her standing there, watching him. She remembered it so clearly, she could still see the golden flame illuminating his chiseled features as he cupped his hands around it, lighting the cigar. Her smile wobbled a little with the piercing memory, and she lifted her eyes from the unlit cigar to Ian’s face, wondering if he remembered it, too.

His eyes met hers in polite inquiry, flicked to the unlit cigar, and moved back to her face. He did not remember; she could see that he didn’t. “No, I don’t mind at all,” she said, hiding her disappointment behind a smile.

The vicar, who had observed the exchange and noticed Elizabeth’s overbright smile, found the incident as puzzling as Ian’s treatment of Elizabeth during the meal. He lifted his brandy to his lips, surreptitiously watching Elizabeth, then he glanced at Ian, who was lighting his cigar.

It was Ian’s attitude that struck Duncan as extremely odd. Women routinely found Ian almost irresistibly attractive, and as the vicar well knew, Ian had never felt morally compelled to decline what was freely and flagrantly offered to him. In the past, however, Ian had always treated the women who fell into his arms with a combination of amused tolerance and relaxed indulgence. To his credit, even after he lost interest in the female, he continued to treat her with unfailing charm and courtesy, regardless of whether she was a village maid or an earl’s daughter.

Given all that, Duncan found it understandably surprising, even suspect, that two hours ago Ian had been holding Elizabeth Cameron in his arms as if he never intended to let her go, and now he was ignoring her. True, there’d been nothing to criticize about the
way
he was doing it, but ignoring her he was.

He continued to study Ian, half expecting to see him steal a glance at Elizabeth, but his nephew had picked up a book and was reading it as if he’d dismissed Elizabeth Cameron completely from his mind. After casting about for a conversational gambit, the vicar said to Ian, “Things have gone well for you this year, I gather?”

Glancing up, Ian said with a brief smile, “Not quite as well as I expected, but well enough.”

“Your gambles didn’t entirely payoff?”

“Not all of them.”

Elizabeth stilled a moment, then picked up a towel and began to dry a plate, helpless to ignore what she’d heard. Two years ago Ian had told her that if things went well for him he’d be able to provide for her. Evidently they hadn’t, which would explain why he lived here. Her heart filled with sympathy for what she imagined had been his grand dreams that had not come to fruition. On the other hand, he was not nearly so bad off as he might believe, she decided, thinking of the wild beauty of the hills all around and the coziness of the cottage, with its large windows overlooking the valley. It was not Havenhurst by any stretch of the imagination, but it had an untamed splendor of its own. Furthermore, it did not cost a fortune in upkeep and servants, as Havenhurst did, which was vastly to its credit. She did not own Havenhurst, not really;
it
owned
her.
This beautiful little cottage, with its quaint thatched roof and few spacious rooms, was rather wonderful in that regard. It gave shelter and warmth without requiring whoever lived here to lie awake at night, worrying about mortar coming loose from its stones and the cost of repairing its eleven chimneys.

Obviously Ian didn’t realize how truly lucky he was, or he wouldn’t waste his time in gentlemen’s clubs or wherever he gambled in hopes of making his fortune. He’d stay here, in this rugged, beautiful place where he looked so completely at ease, where he belonged . . . So intent was she on her thoughts that it did not occur to her that she was close to wishing
she
lived here.

When everything was dried and put away, Elizabeth decided to go upstairs. At supper she’d learned that Ian hadn’t seen his uncle in a long while, and she felt the proper thing to do was leave them alone so they might talk privately.

Hanging the towel on a peg, she untied her makeshift apron and went to bid the men good night. The vicar smiled and wished her pleasant dreams. Ian glanced up and said a preoccupied “Good night.”

After Elizabeth went upstairs, Duncan watched his nephew reading, remembering the lessons in the vicarage that he’d given Ian as a boy. Like Ian’s father, Duncan was intelligent and university-educated, yet by the time Ian was thirteen he’d already read and absorbed all their university textbooks and was looking for more answers. His thirst for knowledge was unquenchable; his mind was so brilliant that Duncan and Ian’s father had both been more than a little awed. Without requiring quill and parchment, Ian could calculate complicated mathematical probabilities and equations in his head, producing the answer before Duncan had decided how to go about finding it.

Among other things, that rare mathematical ability had enabled Ian to amass a fortune gaming; he could calculate the odds for or against a particular hand or a spin of the roulette wheel with frightening accuracy – something the vicar had long ago decried as a misuse of his God-given genius, to absolutely no avail. Ian had the calm arrogance of his noble British forebears, the hot temper and the proud intractability of his Scots ancestors; and the combination had produced a brilliant man who made his own decisions and who never permitted anyone to sway him when his mind was made up. And why would he, the vicar thought with an unhappy premonition of doom as he contemplated the topic he needed to discuss with his nephew. Ian’s judgment in most things was as close to infallible as was human, and he relied on it, rather than on the opinions of anyone else.

Only in one area was his judgment clouded, in Duncan’s opinion, and that was when it came to the matter of his English grandfather. The mere mention of the Duke of Stanhope made Ian furious, and while Duncan wanted to discuss the ancient topic once again, he was hesitant to broach the sore subject. Despite the deep affection and respect Ian had for Duncan, Duncan knew his nephew had an almost frightening ability to turn his back irrevocably on anyone who went too far or anything that hurt him too deeply.

A memory of the day Ian returned home at the age of nineteen from his first voyage made the vicar frown with remembered helplessness and pain. Ian’s parents and sister, in an excess of eagerness to see him, had journeyed to Hernloch to meet his ship, thinking to surprise him.

Two nights before Ian’s ship put into port, the little inn where the happy family had slept burned to the ground, and all three of them had died in the fire. Ian had ridden past the charred rubble on his way here, never knowing that the place he passed was his family’s funeral pyre.

He’d arrived at the cottage, where Duncan was waiting to break the wrenching news to him. “Where is everyone?” he demanded, grinning and slinging his duffel to the floor, walking swiftly around the cottage, looking into its empty rooms. Ian’s Labrador had been the only one to greet him, racing into the cottage, barking ecstatically, skidding to a stop at Ian’s booted feet. Shadow – who’d been named not for her black color, but for her utter devotion to her master, whom she’d worshipped from puppyhood – had been delirious with joy at his return. “I missed you, too, girl,” Ian had said, crouching down and ruffling her sleek black fur. “I brought you a present,” he’d told her, and she’d instantly stopped rubbing against him and cocked her head to the side, listening and waiting, her intelligent eyes riveted on his face. It had always been that way between them, that odd, almost uncanny communication between the human and the intelligent dog that worshipped him.

“Ian,” the vicar had said somberly, and as if he heard the anguish in the single word, Ian’s hand had stilled. He’d straightened slowly and turned, his dog coming to heel beside him, looking at Duncan with the same sudden tension that was in her master’s face.

As gently as he could, Duncan broke the news to Ian of his family’s death, and despite the fact that Duncan was well-schooled in soothing the bereaved, he’d never before encountered the sort of pent-up, rigidly controlled grief that Ian displayed, and he was at a loss how to deal with it. Ian had not wept or raged; his whole face and body had gone stiff, bracing against unbearable anguish, rejecting it because he sensed it could destroy him. That night, when Duncan finally left, Ian had been standing at the window, staring out into the darkness, his dog beside him. “Take her with you to the village and give her to someone,” he’d said to Duncan in a voice as final as death.

Confused, Duncan had halted with his hand on the door handle. “Take who with me?”