Joan Wolf (18 page)

Her black lashes lifted and she shot a fleeting look at him. He was very pale, his eyes sparkling like blue diamonds in his set face. Her breath began to come faster.

“All right,” she said.

“We can slip out into the garden. Will you be too cold?”

   She shook her head and he began to circle the dance floor purposefully until they were by the tall French doors. With scarcely a break in tempo they moved through the doorway and out into the garden.

   Frances, on the other side of the room dancing with the Marquis of Bermington, saw them go.

They stood together under the stars and James Campbell of Ardkinglas said fiercely, “I cannot go on like this any longer. I love you. I want to marry you. Let me talk to your brother!”

“He will say no,” said Margaret shakily. “You’ve seen the way he has been acting these past few weeks.”

There was a tense silence and then Campbell picked up her long-fingered hand. He kissed it passionately. “Marry me anyway,” he said.

“How can I?” Margaret answered brokenly.

He felt so frustrated he wanted to smash his fist into Ian Macdonald’s face. “The Campbells are good enough to guarantee his loan for him, but not good enough to marry his sister. Is that it?”

“Jamie!” She flung herself into his arms and he could feel her slender body shaking with sobs. “It isn’t just Ian.”

He rested his lips against her hair and closed his eyes. He knew that. It was Margaret herself, bound by ties of family and of clan and of loyalties he, who was Highland, perfectly understood. If her brother, the head of her family and her race, gave her permission to marry a Campbell, it would make such an action possible. If he did not, their marriage would be a breach of clan loyalty that was almost impossible to one of Margaret Macdonald’s upbringing. He could not ask it of her.

“I will talk to him,” Campbell said through his teeth. “We have to know. We can’t go on like this much longer.”

At this the door to the ballroom opened and Frances came out into the garden. She had Douglas with her. James Campbell released Margaret slowly and they turned to face the new arrivals. “I think Margaret should return to the ballroom, Mr. Campbell,” Frances said. He looked for a minute into her sympathetic eyes and then he nodded.

“Lady Lochaber is right,
m’eudail,
” he said softly to Margaret.

Douglas put a gentle hand on his cousin’s arm. “Come along, Maggie. Let me get you something to drink.”

She drew herself up to her slim height and nodded. Without looking again at Campbell or Frances she allowed Douglas to lead her back into the ballroom. He procured them both glasses of champagne and found them seats in a little recess off the anteroom. Margaret sipped her wine, then raised her eyes to say something to Douglas and was struck by the look of despair on his face. “Douglas!” she cried. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” Then as she continued to look at him in concern he smiled painfully. “I was just remembering a scene very similar to the one just now in the garden.”

“What happened?” she asked softly.

“Nothing remarkable. Then it was Ian and Frances who left the ballroom together just as you and Ardkinglas did tonight?”

“They slipped out into the garden too?”

Douglas laughed and the sound shocked Margaret. “When did you ever know Ian to do anything surreptitiously? No, he stalked into the ballroom and virtually dragged Frances off the floor with him. I had to go and bring her back, just as we came to fetch you tonight.”

“Oh.”

He turned to look at her. “Do you love that young man, Maggie?”

“Yes. I love that young man.”

“Why, then, does he not ask for you?”

“He wants to. He will. But I don’t think Ian will give his consent.” She was staring down into her lap. “He has changed. There is something wrong between him and Frances. I don’t know what it is, but Frances is deeply unhappy. She doesn’t say anything but one can tell.”

“I know,” he answered bleakly.

“He is seeing that ridiculous Condessa,” Margaret said furiously. “How can he be so stupid? You would think that any man lucky enough to have Frances ...”

She broke off as Douglas raised a hand briefly to his eyes. “Douglas!” There was an appalled silence as Margaret stared at his shielded face. She swallowed, “You love her, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer for a long time, and when he did his voice sounded perfectly normal. “Forever, it seems.”

She reached out to cover his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” There was a pause and then she asked directly, “Does she?”

He shocked his head. “You have seen it. Your mother has seen it. But Frances—she has never really noticed any other man but Ian. I don’t think it has ever occurred to her that the rest of us are flesh and blood.”

“What about Robert Sedburgh?”

“Perhaps Robert Sedburgh. She could not fail to notice him. But she never looked at him the way I have seen her look at Ian.”

   “Well, the looks she is giving Ian these days are hardly loving,” Margaret said bracingly. “And I don’t blame her. He is behaving atrociously.”

“Something is bothering him. Let me talk to him, Maggie. Perhaps I can help.”

She smiled at him. “If Ian will listen to anyone it will be to you, Douglas. Thank you.”

****

Frances and James Campbell remained in the garden for a few minutes after Margaret and Douglas left, and then they returned together to the ballroom. They stood for a moment inside the door, and Campbell bent his head to say something to her. In response she smiled and briefly placed a comforting hand on his arm. A shadow loomed over them and they both looked up to see Ian’s great height standing between them and the rest of the room. His black brows were drawn together, his dark face looked distinctly menacing. “Where were you?” he demanded of Frances.

She raised her chin. “In the garden,” she responded coolly. “It was stuffy in here and Mr. Campbell kindly escorted me out to get some air.”

   He put a hand on her arm and her eyes, long and very green under dark lashes, met his steadily. There was a warning in those eyes, clear to Ian and to the watching Campbell. Do not touch me, they said.
Noli me tangere.
Deliberately he slid his hand down her arm and then raised her hand to his mouth. He turned to look at James Campbell, such open hostility on his face that Campbell involuntarily stepped back a pace. Murder was looking at him out of Ian Macdonald’s eyes and Campbell, dimly, began to perceive what it was that was wrong with the Earl of Lochaber.

   “But where is the Condessa?” Frances said. “You mustn’t let us keep you from her side, Ian.”

His eyes were coal black and dangerously narrow as they moved from James Campbell back to Frances. The two pairs of eyes met and locked and Frances suddenly shivered. Her nails drove into the palms of her hands but she refused to turn away from the challenge she read in his look. “I’ll see you later,” he said softly and turned away leaving her alone with James Campbell by the window.

Frances began to shake, and James Campbell considerately moved to shield her from the eyes of the rest of the room. Ian had left the ballroom, walking past the Condessa as if he had not seen her. As, indeed, he hadn’t. “Are you all right, Lady Lochaber?” Campbell asked in concern. He was shaken himself by the intense unspoken emotions of that brief scene he had just witnessed. He could not understand how Lochaber could behave so brutally to his serenely beautiful and gentle wife.

With heroic effort Frances forced down her rising temper. She schooled her face to an expression of aloof reserve and looked at James Campbell. “I am perfectly fine, Mr. Campbell,” she said evenly.

But she could not disguise her eyes and Campbell, looking at their brilliant, glittering green, experienced another shock. Panther’s eyes, Douglas had called them, and it was a description James Campbell would have agreed with. He thought, suddenly, that he would not like to cross swords with Frances Macdonald. Unexpectedly he felt a flicker of sympathy for Ian.

* * * *

Ian walked right past Margaret and Douglas without seeing them either. “Dhé!” said Margaret. “What is wrong with Ian?”

“I don’t know, Maggie,” returned Douglas. “I think we ought to find Frances, though. She is the only person with the power to make him look like that.”

Frances, however, was uncommunicative when asked about Ian. “Perhaps he had an argument with the Condessa,” she said dulcetly. And only for an instant had the daggers shown in her cool green eyes.

Chapter Twenty-three

The long love that in my thought doth harbour,

And in mine heart doth keep his residence,

—
SIR
THOMAS
WYATT

Frances stayed at the ball until almost two in the morning. She was silent in the carriage on the way home, but she had been more silent than usual these past few weeks, so Margaret was not unduly worried. She herself was not in the mood for chatter.

Ian had not yet arrived home. When she received this information from the night footman Frances merely nodded. Ian had not been home until early morning all this week and she knew it. She knew, also, where he was. The fact that she herself had sent him there did not make her blame him any the less. All week she had treated him with gentle, cold courtesy, shutting him out as effectively as if he had been a stranger with whom she had no desire to become better acquainted. He had not tried to come near her again. But tonight. . . . She remembered his words and for the first time in their marriage, she locked the connecting door between their rooms.

She was very tired, worn out with nerves and pregnancy and the lateness of the hour. She closed her eyes while her maid brushed her hair and only opened them when the woman lifted the heavy, palely gleaming mass to plait it. “Leave it, Mary,” she said wearily. “I’m too tired to sit here any longer.”

“Very well, my lady,” Mary answered obediently. She took the rich velvet robe that Frances handed her and watched as her mistress, clad only in a thin white hand-embroidered nightgown got into bed. “Goodnight, my lady,” she said then.

“Goodnight, Mary,” Frances said sleepily. As the door closed behind the maid Frances snuggled down under the covers. In ten minutes she was asleep.

Ian came home at three. He had gone to Brooks’ after leaving the ball and the intervening time he had spent drinking. Drinking and thinking of Frances. By the time he reached Mount Street he was in a savage mood. He went upstairs to his bedroom, allowed his valet to help him off with his coat, and then suddenly dismissed him. He waited until the man had gone down the hall before he moved with decision to the door that connected his room to Frances’s.

It was locked.

For a stunned moment Ian didn’t realize what was the matter. Impatiently he rattled the knob, but nothing happened. Slowly it dawned on him.
She had locked him out.

White-hot temper seared through his veins. He put his shoulder against the door, testing. Then, with three strong thrusts that sounded thunderous in the quiet of the sleeping house, he forced the door open.

   Frances was sitting up in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, her wide eyes fixed on the door. “What do you think you are doing?” she asked in a low, trembling voice.

He was standing in front of the open door, a candle in his hand. With his free hand he reached behind him to close the door. It crashed, shuddering, into its frame and he walked a few more paces into the room, his eyes on his wife. He held the candle up so he could see her better and then said softly, “Come here.”

Suddenly Frances was afraid. She had never seen him this angry before, and the fact that his voice had been carefully controlled only made him seem more dangerous. “Ian,” she said. “Please ...”

He put the candle down carefully. She could see that his fists were clenched. Her heart was hammering. “I said ‘come here,’ “ he said again in that same frighteningly level tone.

Slowly she got out of bed until she stood, barefoot, on the cold floor. He didn’t move and she came across the room to stand before him, her eyes enormous in her pale face. She was afraid of what he was going to do and said the only thing she could think of to stop him. “Ian. Please. I’m going to have a baby.”

His head rocked back a little as if she had struck him. He stared at her as if she were a stranger. The candle threw its light upward, illuminating the planes and angles of her beautiful face. She was tearing him apart and he wanted to hurt her. “Oh?” he said finally, in a cold, galling voice. “And whose is this one?”

There was a stunned silence then Frances suddenly whirled and, picking up a thin china vase that stood on a table beside her, struck out at him furiously. “I hate you!” she cried.

He raised his arm instinctively to protect himself and the vase crashed against it, smashing before it even hit the floor. Blood stained the white lawn of his shirt sleeve. He heard the sharp intake of her breath but, curiously, the pain had served to clear his own head. Without looking at her he rolled his sleeve up exposing his hard forearm, brown and strong and torn now with an ugly red gash. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Frances. “Tie it up for me,” he said in a voice that was almost normal.

She had been staring at his arm with huge, dilated eyes. Now she took his handkerchief and with shaking hands bound it tightly around the wound. She was standing very close to him and when she had finished she tipped her head back to look up at him. His arms went around her and he bent his head. Their mouths met with a passionate violence that shocked them both. He lifted her in his embrace so that her feet were off the floor. She could feel the powerful muscles of his back under her hands. Then she was lying on the bed. His deep voice, murmuring in Gaelic, was in her ears. She clung to him, wanting him to take her, moving with him in violent intensity.

He had wanted to hurt her. When he had broken into her room, rape had been on his mind. But it was not just her revelation about the baby that had defused his hostility. With the feel of her under his hands, the sweetness of her mouth under his, it was impossible to think of anything except his love of her, his need of her. The unexpected wildness of her response released all his own brakes. But behind the almost brutal power of his passion there was, unmistakably, love.