Lost in Your Arms (11 page)

“Not grateful, eh? You’re no dullard, Mrs. MacLean.”

“Oh, please, Mr. MacLean. Such flattery will turn this poor girl’s head.”

He grinned at her, a sudden, brilliant slash of untamed amusement.

Enid caught her breath. He hadn’t smiled for three weeks, and the transformation from brooding resentment to outgoing charm almost frightened her. If he acted like that all the time, she could forget all her grudges and, like an unwary maiden, fall in love with him as she had never been in love with him before.

Luckily for her, he couldn’t consistently stay charming.

“You said you were at Mrs. Palmer’s until you were fourteen,” he said. “What happened then?”

“Binghamton died. I was expelled from school and sent to the Home for Indigent Waifs.” A place that made Mrs. Palmer’s snob-lined corridors look like the passageways of heaven. “His Lordship’s wife and legitimate
children didn’t care to continue his benevolence.”

Placing the weights on the table beside the bed, he said mildly, “That must have been a shock.”

“To go from a school where the dancing master arrived on Tuesday and tea was served every day precisely at three, to a place filled with dirty children suffering from all kinds of disease, where stealing was the only way to get enough to eat and the steward slapped me when I used proper English?” Enid smiled tightly. “Yes, it was a shock.”

To Enid’s relief, MacLean showed no surprise or sympathy. “How did you survive?”

“The steward’s wife saw a way to make money, and when I was sixteen sold me to the vicar’s wife as a governess. The vicar’s wife had pretensions of gentility; she wanted her children to learn to speak with an upper-crust accent, as she called it.” Enid smiled with a more genuine mirth. “During my stay there I realized my vocation did not embrace teaching.”

“Then you met me.”

“It would probably be better if we both forgot how we met.” She folded the paper and prepared to rise.

She’d never told anyone her story, had scarcely allowed herself to remember, but freed from the dam of reserve, the words had tumbled out. But pride and reserve stopped her from telling what was next. She had met MacLean, and no girl before or since had ever been so stupid. So gullible. She wanted to cry for the girl she had been, and she didn’t want to tell anyone the tale of her marriage—not even the man she’d wed.

“You said I abandoned you.” Leaning forward, he
caught her wrist, halting her flight before it could begin. “Tell me those circumstances.”

“It would be better if we forgot those, too.”

“I
have
forgotten those circumstances. I’ve forgotten everything, but you resent them so much you will never forget them.” He held her wrist loosely, but she had no chance of escape. “So tell me so we can both know.”

“No,” she whispered, her gaze locked with his. “I don’t want to.” She wasn’t talking about their discussion; she was talking about the fact that he inexorably pulled her toward him. “MacLean, don’t.”

“What?” He wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her on top of him. “Don’t what?”

Sweat made him sticky to the touch. He smelled like a working man. And still she slid her arms on the pillow beside his head and bent her face to his. “Why are you doing this? Is this some kind of revenge because I told you the truth about yourself?”

“You’re my wife. The other half of me. If I take revenge on you, I hurt myself.”

His breath whispered over her skin. His voice was low, deep. His nearness vibrated through her in earthy seduction, and like a fool she wanted to kiss him as he had kissed her all those weeks ago.

He continued, “Marriage is a vow made until death do us part. I can’t kill you, no matter how much I might occasionally wish to.”

She tried to lift herself away from him, came up against the cage of his arms, and weakly retorted, “More than occasionally for me.”

He tightened his grip on her. “You and I can’t escape from each other, so we will learn to deal with each other.”

The light dawned. “You’ve been talking to Mrs. Brown.”

“I have. So have you.”

“Yes,” Enid admitted without enthusiasm.

“She’s right. I know it.” He smoothed her hair away from her face. “You know it.”

“I don’t want to be stuck with you.” She stubbornly preserved a few inches of space between their bodies.

“I’m going to tell Mrs. Brown you said that.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Not if you give me a kiss.” He was laughing at her. “A kiss, Enid. You know you want to.”

She did, blast him, and she slid downward under his urging, her lips opening softly, her eyes closing. He slanted his mouth to hers so she tasted him at once. She relished the warmth and dampness of intimacy. Bliss echoed in her mind, her heart, her loins. She slid her tongue deep, and he sucked on it gently. He encouraged her with his hands, sliding up and down her back, and it felt so good . . . and so bad. Like temptation. Like sin. Like pleasure.

Those few inches between them that she had so carefully preserved disappeared, and her body collapsed onto his. She moaned softly at the sensation of another human form so close against hers. She’d never experienced this kind of toe-curling arousal; she wanted to eat him, drink him, absorb him into her system. She had to catch her breath, but she couldn’t bear to think he might get away—as if he could or would!—so she held his head in her hands as she lifted her head . . . and caught a glimpse of his triumphant smile.

The ass. The unmitigated ass. He dared to appear . . . to appear smug. As if her passion was . . .
was surrender. As if he could command her when he was nothing but a vagrant, an adventurer, and a seducer of women.

And how could she have forgotten that?

Tearing herself free, she bounded toward the stairs.

Mr. Kinman was coming up as she dashed down. He grinned amiably as he always did when he saw her. He held a sealed white sheet of paper. “Mrs. MacLean, I brought a letter from Lady Halifax.”

Snatching it from him, she bobbed a curtsy. “Thank you, it’s good to know there is at least one gentleman left in this world.” Without looking back, she fled.

Chapter 12

Kinman looked after her, hands on his hips, and in the puzzled tone of a happily unattached man, he asked, “What is wrong with her?”

“Must you ask?” MacLean sat up and turned himself around so that his feet dangled off the bed. “She’s a female.”

Kinman looked at MacLean, and his broad face slowly darkened. “That’s not it. I know you. You’ve upset her again.”

“I was trying to make her very happy.” MacLean reflected sourly on the irrationality of all females, and his wife in particular. “She just doesn’t know what’s good for her.”

Hurrying over, Kinman reached behind the night table, brought forth a cane and handed it to MacLean. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, MacLean. You’ve got a beautiful wife who cares for you—as if
you’re
worth saving—and what do you do? You make her run like the hounds are after her.”

With deliberate movements, MacLean put his feet on the floor and stood up. “We’ll come to an understanding soon.” He was determined on that. For the last three weeks, he’d been punishing her for telling him what she considered the truth. She’d allowed his sullenness, caring for him regardless of his resentment.

Of course, she’d answered him smartly whenever he’d snarled at her, and sometimes he’d scarcely refrained from guffawing when she’d snapped out some witty comment.

Kinman’s hand hovered beneath MacLean’s arm as he took his first steps, but eventually Kinman moved away. “You won’t need the cane for much longer.”

“Don’t really need it now.” MacLean’s feet tingled, his hips ached and the leg that had been broken throbbed, but everything worked remarkably well considering he’d been prone in that bed for over two months. Hooking the cane over his arm, he began the routine he’d established every day when Enid went on her walk.

Enid . . . he now knew why, in some distant, unremembered past, he’d married her.

Much as he had tried not to, he liked her. In spite of her tainted English heritage, if he met her today he would pursue her with all his resolve. He knew the details of her form. Each night he waited for her to step out from behind that screen clad in a sheer nightgown and a tattered pink robe, and although he didn’t remember any other women, he knew that he anticipated that glimpse of her feminine form more than a mouthful of pleasure from another.

Enid clutched him by the short hairs.

He would do his damnedest to make sure she never
knew it, for if she knew how easily she could manipulate him, she would hold the reins in their marriage. His wife already had a tendency to be domineering, when she should, as a female, be submissive, so he would take control. When he got close to her once more—and that time would be soon—he would cajole and seduce her, and make theirs a good marriage regardless of what it had been in the past.

Kinman dragged the tub out from its corner. “You want to make Mrs. MacLean happy? Tell her you can walk.”

“Not yet.” These last few weeks, MacLean’s sense of jeopardy had been steadily increasing. Disaster hovered just over the horizon, he didn’t know why or how, but he would be prepared, and his full strength eluded him. He didn’t want people knowing what he could do. He needed the element of surprise on his side. “Where’s Throckmorton?” For Throckmorton came every day to chat and apprise him of any events, and also, MacLean knew, to verify that his memory hadn’t returned.

“He’s on his way,” Kinman said. “I thought he would be here by now, but guests have started arriving for the wedding. He’s been busy today.”

“Already?” MacLean paced back and forth across the room, counting laps. “The wedding isn’t for another four weeks.”

Kinman shrugged. “These aristocrats have nothing to do but visit the great manor houses, and Throckmorton’s hospitality can’t be faulted.”

When MacLean had done as many laps as yesterday, he added another ten. “He serves good brandy?”

“The best.”

MacLean jerked his head toward the stairs and Kinman descended. When he returned, he said, “The coast is clear.”

Gripping the cane in his hand, MacLean climbed the stairs, up and down, until his muscles clenched. His thighs, especially, burned from the exertion, but he didn’t give up until he’d exceeded his previous record. Then back and forth across the room again, pushing himself, always pushing himself. Only when he’d walked so long that he feared Enid would return did he sink onto a chair to rest.

“Are you ready for your bath?” Kinman asked.

MacLean nodded, taking deep breaths, pleased at his improvement and at the same time cursing the weakness. He needed to be prepared. For what, he didn’t know, but he needed to be prepared
now.

“I’ll call for the water, then.” Kinman leaned out the window and waved, and almost at once MacLean heard the sound of activity in the room below. At this time of day, the water was always boiling in the cauldron. Men’s voices sounded, then the first of a long line of footmen clomped up the stairs, carrying up the heavy buckets of alternately hot and cold water. Two maids, Sally and Jennifer, dusted and swept, stripped the bed and remade it with fresh linens, and took his dirty clothing away. Jackson brought fresh linens and an ironed white shirt, sans collar and cuffs, and an ironed pair of trousers, cut off at the knee.

MacLean grinned as the valet made clear his opinion of the trousers with sniffs and disgusted head shaking. Jackson really was a stick, a slump-shouldered English fool. MacLean would have dismissed him with
the scorn he deserved, except for the fact that he was a genius with a razor. Despite the scars that marred MacLean’s cheek and neck, Jackson could shave him cleanly with never a nick, and MacLean refused to risk his skin just because the little worm suffered a misplaced sense of importance.

MacLean rubbed his hand across his chin. His day-old beard chafed his palm. That would never do. Enid’s skin was as softly tinted and delicate as a peach, hinting at the delights within, and he wouldn’t take the chance of marring it when he kissed her again, as he intended to do—and soon.

With a flick of the wrist, Jackson placed a towel on the table beside the basin and laid out his razor, his cup and his brush. He clapped his hands and pointed at one of the footmen. “I need hot water!”

The footman poured water from his bucket, slopping a bit on the table.

Jackson gave a long, suffering sigh and mopped up the mess. Then, with the efficiency that characterized all his motions, he shaved MacLean.

Throckmorton arrived in the midst of the organized chaos, greeting the men by name. When the tub was full, the footmen gone, and Jackson packed up and left, he said, “It’s a rare valet whose work is as good as he claims.”

“He is very good.” MacLean rubbed the satin of his unscarred cheek. “But he’s not much given to pleasantries.”

Kinman’s mouth twisted in disgust. “And if he’s so good at shaving, why doesn’t he shave himself? He looks as if caterpillars are crawling down his face.”

Throckmorton laughed. “As long as he does his job, he can look like anything he wishes. Did you get your walk, MacLean?”

“A good one,” Kinman said. “He doesn’t need me here anymore.”

“You’ll stay with him, please,” Throckmorton instructed. “I would not wish to face Mrs. MacLean if he falls.”

“If I fall and hurt myself, just put me out of my misery at once, for if Mrs. MacLean finds out, she’ll torture me to death.” MacLean began to strip.

Throckmorton and Kinman turned their backs and stared fixedly out the window. When MacLean had eased himself into the tub, Throckmorton said, “We may have to move you.”

MacLean had anticipated this. “Because of the wedding guests?” The warm water alleviated the pain in his muscles. He would have loved to soak, but he lathered himself immediately. He always feared Enid would return early and catch him still in the tub, and wonder why a bath should take so long.

“The more people who know you’re here, the less I can guarantee your safety.” Throckmorton rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands clasped behind his back. “With your permission, I’ve made arrangements to return you to Scotland.”

MacLean dropped the soap with a splash. “Scotland?”

“I hope a return to your home will jog your memory.”

“Aye.” MacLean dug the bar out of the tub. “Though they won’t welcome me back if I’m the wastrel Enid claims.”

Throckmorton stopped rocking. During the long, thoughtful silence that followed, MacLean saw Kinman and Throckmorton exchange glances.

“I wouldn’t call you a wastrel,” Kinman said.

“Not lately,” Throckmorton added.

They were cautious. Conspiratorial.
They’d been lying to him
. “What would you call me?”

“A gentleman who has reformed,” Throckmorton said firmly.

How terrifically interesting. “I needed reformation?”

Throckmorton and Kinman exchanged glances again.

Before Throckmorton could speak, MacLean said, “It’s time to tell me the whole story.”

Throckmorton sighed. “Not yet.”

The admission made MacLean furious. “Not yet? You’re withholding information on a
whim
?”

“Not a whim. It’s for your own safety.”

“That’s bloody hard to swallow.” But if MacLean had learned one thing over these weeks, it was that Throckmorton wouldn’t be forced or cajoled. “When will you tell me the whole truth?”

“In Scotland. Kinman will go with you. He’ll tell you everything.”

MacLean finished bathing himself with the vigor of rage. “Lying to a man with no memory is a damned dirty trick.”

“We hoped we’d be done with this by now,” Throckmorton said. “That you’d remember.”

“
You’d
hoped,” MacLean muttered as he hefted himself out of the tub. After that one, glorious moment when he had recalled his sister, he had had no stirrings
in his brain. All of his straining toward remembrance had been for naught. All of his frustration had been worthless. The only thing he knew for sure was the nature of his character—and Enid claimed that memory faulty. So he had nothing.

As he wrapped the towel around his middle, he asked, “Is my wife lying to me, too?”

“Mrs. MacLean is just as she appears to be,” Throckmorton assured him.

So the woman with the sweet face and tart tongue hadn’t been lying to him, too. A part of MacLean’s wrath—most of his wrath—died with the admission.

He dried himself and dressed. “So Enid is not in your employ?”

“Do you mean is she an actress playing a part?” Throckmorton asked. “Not at all.”

“All right, I’m dressed.” MacLean waited until the two men had turned to face him. Then, arms folded across his chest, he told them, “For the moment, we’ll do this your way. But I want some assurances. I want some control. I want possession of some items. I expect that you will get them for me now.”

Enid was returning to the cottage when she rounded the corner and walked into Celeste, walking slowly along the path arm in arm with an elegant, aged couple.

Celeste looked horrified.

Enid
was
horrified. She hadn’t forgotten the warnings she’d received when she’d arrived, or that MacLean could be in danger, but in all her walks she had never come upon a stranger, and she’d grown secure in her surroundings.

She should have known better.

Ducking her head, she curtsied and stepped aside, hoping her plain garb would distinguish her as a servant, albeit one of the higher servants, and that the aristocrats would ignore her.

But aristocrats were ever contrary.

The tall, stout lady was clad in shimmering lavender shantung from the top of her ruffled parasol to the bottom of her full skirt, and her full chins quivered as she peered at Enid through her quizzing glass. “Who is this young woman, Celeste?”

“She is . . . one of my friends from the Distinguished Academy of Governesses,” Celeste said.

Enid wanted to applaud Celeste’s quick thinking. Not a lie, really, but a tale that should lead them astray.

“My lord, my lady, won’t you come and look at the chrysanthemums?” Celeste said, gesturing toward the great display of gold and orange that blazed down the winding path.

“Introduce us to this lovely young lady first.” The lord tottered forward, peered into Enid’s face, and actually pinched her cheek.

When Lady Halifax had said there was no fool like an old fool, she might have been talking specifically about this man. Thin, tall, and wearing the highest black top hat Enid had ever seen, the gentleman smirked and waggled his eyebrows at her as if she were some green miss who knew no better than to flirt with a lord. And before his wife!

Enid wanted to smack him. But that would never do.

“Introduce you? Introduce you, my, yes, how silly of me.” Celeste smiled like the silliest of girls. “Sometimes I just bobble the simplest courtesies. It’s because
I’m the gardener’s daughter. Yes, I should introduce you.”

And Enid remembered—her last name would betray all.

Taking a breath, Celeste said, “Lord and Lady Featherstonebaugh, this is—”

In the brisk, no-nonsense tone of a woman not included to wait on the civilities, Enid said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, my lord and lady. I’m Enid Seywell.”

Lady Featherstonebaugh frowned thoughtfully, then brightened. “Seywell? That’s the earl of Binghamton’s family name.”