Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (23 page)

Oh, she felt the veriest blackguard. Something that had to be those scruples she claimed not to have tangled up her breath. So she gave him her sunniest smile as an antedote. “So have I, Strathairn. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not a marvelous dancer.”

“But now I must return you to your mother, mustn’t I, and show her that I have not secreted you off to the dark of the garden. And—” He stopped and frowned down at her. “What’s that on your dress? There’s—” He reached down as if he would flick away a piece of lint or—“Is that my ribbon?”

 
He put a hand up to find his neat queue had indeed come untied, and his lovely thick russet hair was spread across his shoulder. But he smiled at her, even as he frowned. “How did you—? You must give it back.”
 

“Nay. I think not.” She was not done twitting him. He couldn’t have everything his way. It would go to his head. “Be happy you still have all your buttons.”

Oh, holy, holy, holy—

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wished them back. But there was nothing she could do. Nothing she could say. Her chest and throat strangled tight from the breath she was holding. “I mean,” she stammered. “I—”

“Don’t.” His voice was as sharp as a guillotine. “Don’t say anything.”

She could not have done so if she had tried. Her throat was as hot and tight as her palms, clenched into fists at her side. But she forced herself to look at him, to face what she had done.

Strathcairn’s sharp gaze cut into her like a blade, carving up every one of her misdirections and evasions and lies. “It was you all along.”

It was a statement of fact, not a question.

There was nothing she could say to fill the gaping, growing void between them. Nothing that could stop the unbearable agony of the moment. But she had to try.

“Don’t.” He stopped her before she could begin. “Please don’t deny it.” His voice had gone quiet, and weary. “You lie far too well, far too convincingly for a lass your age. And that would only make things worse. Much, much worse.”

“Nay. I can expl—“

“Oh, I’m sure you can. I’m sure you’ll have me bamboozled and besotted in under a minute. You’re altogether too convincing. Ought to have trained you up for the government—the army is always looking for low, back alley spies.”

 
The cool cruelty of his assessment hit her as hard as the slap she had once given him—the burning pain was the same.

“What am I to do with you, wee Quince Winthrop?” His voice was lethal in its softness.

“Why, you’re to kiss me, of course,” she said, but her voice was the merest shred.
 

He let out his breath. “I don’t think that’s possible now.”

 
A low ache started hard in her middle.

“Or ever again.” He stepped away, as if the touch of her skin against his—as if her very presence—was painful to him.
 

The loss was like a blow. “Strathcairn. Please. I can explain.”

He set his face like flint. “You couldn’t possibly.”

She could no longer meet his eyes—no longer endure the raw betrayal she knew she would see reflected in those dark green depths. She closed her lids against the heat building in them, as if she could block the thought of him looking at her so. But it was impossible. He was everything she saw. Every pain she felt. Everything she regretted.

Because she knew she was abhorrent to him.

Chapter Fourteen

“Lady Quince?”

Quince nearly jumped out of her skin at the intrusion. The sober voice belonged to the black suited clergyman who stood less than two feet away. “Reverend Talent.”
 

“My lady.” He had planted himself like an oak tree in the middle of the floor.
 

What a strange triangle they must make—the clergyman in black, the liar in palest white, and the politician with his indignation blazing red.
 

“Is this gentleman importuning you?” The reverend asked in an ironic reversal of their first triangular conversation at the masquerade.

“Nay. I—” She pulled a lungful of thin air into her chest. She did not know what to say to the vicar either. He was certainly the last man she thought might come to her rescue. Especially as he had not even been on her mother’s guest list.

“I came in the hopes that I might speak to you, to thank you, most ardently, for your recent assistance.”

“My dear sir.” She had to stop the vicar from saying anything more, especially in front of Strathcairn. “I cannot think what you mean.”

The reverend was intelligent enough to look from her to Strathcairn. Who looked from the reverend back to her. Who looked back to Strathcairn.
 

Oh, holy rolling eyeballs. “Would you please be so kind as to give us a moment?” She had to stop the situation from going from bad to worse.

“No,” Strathcairn said, all unyielding granite. “I think not.”

“My lord,” she began, putting up her chin, and finding something of her former bravado. “You
will
excuse me.” And to prove it to them both, she took a step away from him, toward Talent. And then another. Leaving Strathcairn no option but to let her go, or make the most horrendous scene.

“I will be waiting to speak to you again, Lady Quince,” Strathcairn said to her back. “We are not done here. Not by a long shot.”

Nay. She didn’t doubt him in the least. But she didn’t stop walking.

“Your pardon, my lady,” Talent was saying as he caught up with her as she headed for the doors. “I was not sure whether I ought to interrupt your conversation. But you appeared distressed.”

That was putting it mildly. And if Talent could see that she and Strathcairn were at a total impasse, who else had seen? “Thank you for your timely intervention, Mr. Talent. The interruption was most welcome.”
 

She needed the moment away from Strathcairn to think, and figure out what he was going to do next, so that she might come up with a plan. A plan that did not involve her groveling for forgiveness.
 

But then again, perhaps groveling was in order—she did have a lot to be forgiven for. So many, many things, and the appalled look in Strathcairn’s eyes was enough to make her wish she had never stolen a single one of them. And he didn’t even know she was the highwayman.
 

And she must keep it that way.
 

Which meant keeping the Reverend Mr. Talent quiet. “Reverend Talent, why don’t we go outside, where we can talk more privately.”

“Yes, I thank you for the invitation.” He escorted her out the long glass doors that gave way to the torch-lit lawn. “I am glad then that I took advantage of your family’s hospitality to take the chance to speak to you. I came so I might tell you that your great act of charity—”

“Pish and tosh, sir.” Quince cut him off before he could say anything more damaging. Who knew if Strathcairn had footmen hiding in the hedges? A glance over her shoulder revealed that the marquess had not budged from the spot where she left him, and that he was still watching her. Let him watch. As long as he didn’t hear. “You must have me confused with another.”

The Reverend Talent did take at least some of her meaning. “My apologies, my lady. But, for the life of me, I cannot think of a reason that you might not want your beneficence known.”

She could think of several reasons, all of which centered on the man staring a hole in her back. Even through the glass door, she could feel the cold heat of his anger.

“Reverend Talent,” she began. “You’re laboring under a misapprehension. You must stop thanking me. You must stop seeking me out, and speaking to me.” She had not given him the money to receive accolades. “It won’t do. Does not the Bible say one ought to do good by stealth, and not broadcast any such reports across ballrooms?”

“Yes, I suppose it does. But surely a report of your beneficence can only be to your benefit?”

“Nay.” She tried to make her tone less sharp, less combative, but she had to keep the vicar quiet. She had to think of what Strathcairn was seeing, staring through the glass door. She had to think of Jeannie and Charlie, and how to keep them safe. “I care nothing for my benefit, Mr. Talent, but for the benefit of those in need. Say nothing of me, please. Nothing at all,” she insisted. “Only then will I account myself satisfied.”

“But I must be allowed to tell you your most recent gift of funds has allowed us to assist a number of families, and even go so far as to purchase tickets for them to emigrate to Upper Canada.”

“That is very good, sir.” Quince let a small measure of satisfaction ease into her lungs. But she was not done. “I congratulate you on such good work. But I assure you, I had nothing to do with it.”

The vicar smiled at her, and reached for her hand, which she did not want to let him take—Strathcairn was still watching. “You are too good, my lady. And I admire you greatly for it. But I fear that our work is not yet at an end. Our need, my lady, is still so great.”

The need was always so great. The need was endless. It was like a death knell only she could hear, quietly reverberating in her ears until she thought she would go mad—more, more, more.

She had nothing more left. “What did Christ say, Mr. Talent? The poor will be with us always?”

He made a sound of pleased demurral, and patted her hand. “But I don’t think, my lady,” he chided, “that the Lord meant for us to take that as an excuse. Not when so many have so much, and others have so very little.”
 

He gestured to two gentlemen who had come out onto the lawn from the card room—Sir Harry Digby, and a well-dressed African man she did not recognize. A man who smiled and shook Sir Harry’s hand, and tucked what looked to be a brown suede pouch full of coins into his brocaded waistcoat pocket. A man who had beaten Sir Harry Digby at cards.

And there he was. Her next victim.
 

Fate was all but handing him to her on a silver platter. Because she had tried to be good, and confine herself to stealing hearts and ribbons, and she had failed spectacularly.
 

And because if she was going to be bad, she might as well be utterly rotten.
 

And so she didn’t even bother trying to resist the temptation.

She abandoned the vicar. Right there on the lawn. In the middle of her mother’s ball.

“Lady Quince? Where are you going?” The Reverend Talent gestured awkwardly back toward the house. “I—what should I tell…them?”

Them? “You may tell
him
that I’ve gone to the devil, Reverend. And that I aim on enjoying the trip.”
 

She went away at a run, down through the maze of dark yew hedges, across the lawn to the long glass house, where she locked the door behind her, and secreted the key safely down her bodice. Strathcairn could stand all night on the edge of the dance floor, for all she cared, waiting for her to come back and atone. She wasn’t atoning. And she wasn’t returning. Not without a sack of gold to show for her trouble.

The soft, pungently scented air of the glasshouse slowed the hard rush of defiance, but filled her with that calm determination that had always seen her through. The determination to plot her own course, and face down whatever was going to happen now that Strathcairn knew she was his thief.
 

He would undoubtedly tell her parents. And the Lord Provost. And who knew whom else— in his present state of mind, he might be angry enough to tell all of Edinburgh.

Not that she cared. All of Edinburgh could go to the devil as well—she would be happy to show them the way. She would once more become
Monsieur Minuit
, her Captain Midnight. She had been successful before, and she would be sure to be successful again. And this time when she held up a coach, she’d be damned if her hands were going to shake.
 

This time, she was prepared. After her last foray, she had stored all the accoutrements of her highwayman’s costume—black suit, mask, boots, rapier and guns—in an old trunk she had hidden under the seedling flats in the overfilled glass house. The only thing she did not have to hand was the hair powder. But no matter. The hat and mask were enough to hide her identity from this man she had never seen before, and if all went well, never would see again.