Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (17 page)

And Lady Plum was not yet done rebuffing him. “I’ve heard the old rumors, even if she hasn’t, and I shan’t let you amuse yourself with her as some sort of a diversion while you rusticate north of the Borders, my lord. My sister is not a plaything.”

Only when she herself wanted to be. But he took Lady Plum’s meaning. “I understand, Lady Plum. Your sister told me much the same thing herself.”

“Did she? Good for her.” But she looked at him with narrowed eyes, as if she were still not prepared to trust him.
 

Him, the most trustworthy, loyal, honest man in all of London. Everyone said so. He had built his entire reputation there, both in the government and in society, upon the bedrock of upstanding, gentlemanly behavior. He was a Strathcairn. He could do no less.

“Please forgive me if I gave any impression that I have anything less than the utmost respect and admiration for your sister, Lady Plum. But I shall take your advice, and take care with how I am seen with her.”

“Good,” she repeated with more surety. “Because if you don’t act the gentleman, I will make sure that everyone in Edinburgh knows how you have treated her. I shan’t let her be cowed into silence. So you’ll have to be a gentleman one way or another.”

It was as uncomfortable a thing as it had ever been, to be threatened with blackmail. But he took her point. “I understand you, Lady Plum.”

They seemed to have arrived at the end of their discussion. But still they stood on the edge of the dance floor. “Do you still care to dance, Lady Plum?”

“It is unnecessary now,” she admitted. “But I suppose it will do my reputation no great harm to be seen dancing with a marquess. And it seems only fair that we Winthrop sisters get some
public
use out of you, my Lord Cairn. So yes, you may have this dance with me.”

“I am honored.” He led her into place in the set. “And pray tell me, Lady Plum,” he asked as they joined hands for the lead around. “Do you Winthrop sisters spend all your time trading quips and sharpening your wits in order to skewer the unsuspecting?”

“Indeed we do, my lord. Not
all
our time, but enough, I should think.”

“Indeed, my lady. More than enough.”

“Thank you. But you, my lord, are hardly unsuspecting. Or undeserving.”

She had him there. Lady Plum deigned to complete the rest of the set of the cotillion in blessed silence. But when the dance was done, and before he walked her back to her mother, he had one more question. “Could you tell me, Lady Plum, if I promise to be circumspect and gentlemanly, where in this cavernous place your sister might be hidden? Or am I not allowed to know?”

“You are allowed, my lord.” She retrieved her crook from the waiting footman. “But she is not hidden away in this cavernous place. She has gone home.”

Gone? Or sent? He didn’t have the heart to ask which. This time, Alasdair knew the tight, hollow feeling of the air leaving his lungs for what it was—disappointment.
 

“Thank you, my lady.” Alasdair decided he had been the victim of more than enough Winthrop wit and whimsy for one day. He bowed. “Your conversation has been most edifying, my lady.”

“Was it?” She put her nose in the air in much the same way her sister brandished her aggressive little chin. “It was meant to be terrifying.”

Oh, aye, these girls had certainly practiced sharpening their wits to well-honed blades.

He bowed more formally, as to an opponent at swords. “A hit, my lady. Acknowledged. I will count myself lucky not to have been mortally skewered, and take my leave of you.”

“Good night, Lord Cairn.” She swept him a very commonplace curtsey, and turned away, as if dismissing him completely from her thoughts.

Would that he had the ability to do the same. But he did not. Her words—along with those of her mother, Lady Winthrop—stayed with him. The thought that he might not have acted in a manner fitting the house of Cairn haunted him all the long way home, across New Bridge to the New Town.
 

Were his intentions toward wee Quince Winthrop strictly honorable? Was it gentlemanly—was it right—for him to take advantage of her curiosity and inexperience so he could have his “London rake’s way” with her?

Never mind that he wasn’t a rake, and never had been. Never mind that wee Quince Winthrop had asked him for lessons in kissing. Never mind that despite her inexperience, wee Quince Winthrop was certainly no innocent.
 

If he answered as the gentleman his grandfather had raised him to be, the answer was a resounding nay. He had no business giving wee Quince Winthrop anything, much less lessons in kissing.
 

But devil take him, he had certainly enjoyed the tutelage.

It had only been six days since he had returned to Scotland, and only a few hours of those days had been spent with her. But every other intervening hour had been spent thinking, hoping, planning, and simply indulging in fantasies about her. Six days and he had formed a
tendre
.

 
Clearly a brandy was needed to help sort out the matter.

And mercifully, his secretary Sebastian Oistins—a young freedman originally from the West Indies island of Barbados who had, under Alasdair’s patronage, become a formidable writer of essays against the slave trade—was awake, and had a keen sense of occasion. Sebastian took one look at Alasdair as he crossed the threshold of his rooms in Prince Street, and gestured to the well-stocked tray. “The decanter is full, my Lord Cairn.”

“Thank you, Sebastian.” Alasdair made straight for it. “And don’t ‘my lord’ me.”

“If I may inquire, my lord?” It was a game they played, this battle over titles and formalities. A battle the young abolitionist always won. “The pistols?”

“Misplaced.” Alasdair was too embarrassed to admit the whole of the truth— that he had given them up for a kiss, and promptly forgotten them. Instead he poured himself a healthy splash of brandy—desperate times called for desperate measures. And he felt desperate, so he poured himself another desperate measure.
 

He would send a quiet inquiry round to the Marchioness of Queensbury’s butler for the pistols in the morning. It would be just as wee Quince Winthrop had said. The footmen were probably even now collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the revel—finding discarded masks, forgotten shepherdess’s crooks and lost pistols strewn about in dark corners around the house and grounds.
   

Alasdair sank into the down-filled upholstery of his favorite chair, and propped his booted feet upon a leather ottoman sofa.

“Shall I see to your boots, my lord?” Sebastian asked.
 

“You’re my secretary, not my valet,” Alasdair groused. “I’ll get myself out of them, thank you.” He was in a fine mood, wasn’t he? Too restless, too unfulfilled, too empty to take pleasure in anything.

 
Which was precisely why he aimed to fill himself to the gills with brandy. So he would not spend the next two hours in the same manner that he had spent the two previous—thinking, hoping, and fantasizing about wee Quince Winthrop.

Alasdair took a too large a gulp of the heady liquor, and found himself gasping for air. Much like he had been under the blackthorn tree with Quince kissing him into oblivion. Which was precisely his trouble—she was so mischievously enthusiastic. And it had simply been too bloody long since he had allowed himself to misbehave.

Alasdair took a more measured sip, closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the cushion. He felt exhausted, as worn out as if he had spent all day convincing MP’s on a vote, instead of doing nothing but getting dressed for a party and kissing a lively lass. Kissing a lass, followed by several hours of fruitless searching so he might kiss her some more.

Sebastian’s voice interrupted his inner tirade. “I can’t help but notice that you've been spending a great deal of time with the piquant Lady Quince Winthrop.”

“Have I?” Nonchalance seemed the best defense.

“You have, my lord.” Sebastian’s smile was all at Alasdair’s discomfort. “You have singled her out. It has been noticed. People will talk.”

“People with nothing better to do.”

“Quite true,” Sebastian acknowledged. “Yet such people are often acute observers.”

There was something in his careful tone that chafed. “Do you object to the lady?”

“It is not my place to do so, my lord. But I can’t help observing that she does seem an odd choice for a man of your character.”

“Staid? Without a trace of larkiness?”

“Just so, my lord. While the word I hear most commonly associated with Lady Quince is flibbertigibbet.”

Alasdair could not help but smile. Even Quince had called herself that. The word was apt, conjuring up that dark fairy mischief.

Sebastian misread his smile. “Then is it serious, sir? Am I to be wishing you happy?”

“Don't be ridiculous.” Alasdair would have shied his boot at his friend, except that he hadn’t bothered to take his boots off. “She's an interesting enough girl, but she’s…” Troublesome. Too intriguing. Too exciting. For reasons he could not quite articulate. “She’s inappropriate. Now leave be, I beg you."

Sebastian’s own smile was all at Alasdair’s expense. "Never thought the day would come when I'd hear you beg."

“You’ll be the one begging—for a position—if you don’t leave off. I’ve had more than enough twitting for one night.”

“Then may I suggest a bath, my lord? The housekeeper has heated the water. And from the looks of you, a good soaking might do you a world of good.”

“I suppose it might.” Alasdair knocked back the rest of the brandy and refilled his glass before he excused himself to head upstairs to his dressing room where a bath indeed stood steaming in readiness.
 

He set the drink aside as he disrobed. Thus far, the brandy had only served to make him restless and exasperated with himself, and he took out his frustration in the senseless rebellion of tossing his clothing in heaps on the floor, instead of folding them neatly as was his usual habit.

He settled into the oversize copper tub, took another drink, and let the heat and alcohol wash away the lingering feeling of disappointment. He allowed himself the further rebellion and pleasure of not thinking for a minute or two. Not thinking about Quince Winthrop, or her lessons in kissing, or her lips, which he reckoned were the color of the inside of a seashell. Or a summer peach. Ripe and soft and—

The window in his dressing chamber rattled, as if a sudden rain squall had driven in across the firth. Alasdair turned his head to listen. The night had seemed clear on his walk home, but perhaps he hadn’t been paying adequate attention. Perhaps his mind had been too full of lips and lusciousness.
 

He took another swallow of brandy, let the pungent liquor sear its way down his throat to warm his gut, and closed his eyes to lean back against the rim of the tub and—

And the rattle—this time he could distinguish it for a spray of pebbles against the glass at his back—returned. Followed by a familiar, mischievous voice.

“Strathcairn. Straaath—”

Alasdair rose, dripping wet and steaming, irate and irrationally pleased. He didn’t even have to ask to know who was wandering about his back garden in the middle of the night. The elation singing in his veins was identification enough. He unlatched the window. “Damn your eyes, lass. What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Chapter Ten

“Waking you up.” Quince felt her face split into a wide, unbridled grin—he hadn’t even bothered to ask who it was.

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“How obliging of you.” She cupped her hands around her mouth to project her voice upward. “Come down.”

“I’m naked. And wet.”

“How
very
obliging of you.” She was smiling like lunatic, rocking up and back on her toes, trying not to laugh out loud. “Come down.”

“Come—” The warm light from his chamber practically flared blue at the invective he sputtered just loud enough for her to hear every off-color word.

“Though you do curse prodigiously well, Strathcairn, I shan’t be put off.” Not when she had come so far—both figuratively and literally—to be with him. It had been a near-run thing to make it back to the city, dump Strathcairn’s pistols over to the back wall of the Queensbury estate near enough to their trysting spot to test her theory about footmen collecting all the forgotten bits and bobs. And then she’d had to sneak back into her father’s stable to rub down and put up the horse, and then tiptoe into the house, up to her room, and out of the costume, and into a bath, and back into her own normal clothing with no one the wiser.