Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (36 page)

“I am very sorry. I don’t like being drunk.”

“I have a feeling you’ll get used to it.” He'd have to speak to Mrs. Broom about her concoctions. “But you’ll see.” He went back to the reason for her tears. “You’ll see it’s all for the best, no matter which of us—or both of us—made the choice. It was the right one.”

She did not answer in words, but in a deep resigned sigh that reminded him that she was, in fact, still recovering from her injury, and that she had every right to be exhausted.

“The journey has worn you out.” But even exhaustion looked good on her. It made her softer, pulled down her guard, and made her more approachable. More vulnerable, more human.
 

“Everything has worn me out.” Another weary sigh. She turned her head on the pillow to regard him, and her hair fanned out behind her, and her sleeping gown slipped off her shoulder to reveal the tops of her enticingly soft-looking breasts. “My arm aches. Mrs. Broom says I need to rest. But they say a change is as good as a rest. And this certainly is a change.”

“A change for the good.” He had so many hopes. So many wishes for the two of them together—to work together for Cairn. To find something of fellow feeling along with the all-consuming attraction. To act on that damnable powerful attraction that had him reaching for her even now.

“The good.” She made a wry face, and rearranged the bedcovers to cover those magnificent little breasts. “But I am not good, though for the record, I should like the chance to acquit myself of your charge against me.”

“Which one? There are so many to choose from,” he teased, not unkindly. “The one where you stole from half of Edinburgh?”

“Only the rich half.”

“The one where you robbed Sir Harry Digby at gunpoint?”

“They weren’t loaded. And they were your guns.”

Alasdair rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and suppressed his groan. Of course she was telling him now, when it was all but impossible to remonstrate with her. He would have to take the issue of his missing pistols up with her at some later point. “Or the one you made in trying to rob me?”

“The one where I was so shallow that I judged your secretary upon the color of his skin alone.”

Well, damn his eyes, but these Winthrop women certainly were direct. Points to her for not evading the subject, but this sin would be much harder to explain, much less forgive. “And?”

“Does it not occur to you, Strathcairn, that I might not want the worst part of my character known to all and sundry? That I might be afraid of a mon whose very presence and every look is a rebuke?”

“Afraid of Sebastian? No,” he admitted. “It never occurred to me.” It was something he had both admired and despaired of in her, her seeming lack of fear. “Are you sure? Are you sure your prejudice has not colored your thinking?”

“It is not his skin but his knowledge that frightens me,” she clarified while her fingers plucked in nervousness at the counterpane.

He covered her cold fingers with his own. “Quince, I have that same knowledge, and you aren’t afraid of me.”

“Of course I am. Your knowledge frightens me, too. More. If I make another mistake—which I inevitably will—when I displease you, I will be entirely at your mercy.”

“I have promised you already that I will not.”

“But you can’t make that promise for him.”

He did her the honor of not lying. “No, I cannot. But I can tell you that I know his character and scruples as well as I know my own. And I think that perhaps it is not him, but yourself that you fear. I think the rebuke you heard in his voice or saw in his eye is no more than your own guilty conscience—your own long lost scruples—coming to claim you.”

She let out a wee huff of something that wasn’t quite laughter. But she did not let go of his hand. “Don’t you dare accuse me of having scruples.”

“It’s all right,” he assured her. “I won’t tell anyone.” He leaned over and kissed her whisky-wetted lips. “I promise.”

She shifted toward him, and treated his over-weary eyes to the sight of her magnificent little breasts straining the fabric of his imagination. Even lying in bed, worn out and pale, she managed to be remarkably attractive. He would feel his steadfast resentments giving way to her dark fairy allure. And when she was like this—soft and warm and leaning into him—every fiber of his being, especially the less gentlemanly fibers, were drawn to her, as if she were a lodestone. He arms were already sliding around her warm, pliant back.

She sighed against his chest, and curled a hand into his lapel. “I suppose I should account myself lucky that it was you who apprehended me, or I might have fared much, much worse.”

“I suppose.” It had been his recurring nightmare the past two evenings—over and over in his dreams, he leveled his gun at her. “They might have been better shots.”
He
might have been a better shot if he had been deliberately trying to injure her. Another inch or two lower, and he might have taken off her arm.
 

Alasdair ran a hand through his hair, as if he could hold on to whatever sense remained within his brain, and keep her from making him mad. “Of all the hare-brained ideas—highway robbery.”

“Highway robbery was a perfectly serviceable idea,” she countered, dropping her hand, “only made hare-brained by my stupid unwillingness to shoot you.”

“And your inability to load a gun.”

“Unwillingness, Strathcairn. I chose, just as you are so fond of making me do. Don’t ever confuse a choice with inability.”

In moments like these, when she spoke with such authority and an experience far beyond her nineteen years, she was stunning—she had stunned him. And he didn’t much like it. “What am I to do with you, wee Quince?”

He wanted her to say,
why you’re to kiss me, of course
. But she did not. She retreated into the bed linens. “I’m not wee. Stop saying that. It’s as if you’re trying to make me feel small, or dismiss me. And I won’t have it.” She turned her face into the pillows, but he could see the sheen of unspilled tears glossing her eyes.
 

“Lass, you’re so damn over-sized, I’m only trying to cut you down to a manageable size.”

“That’s the problem for you, Strathcairn. I’m not in the least about to be managed.”

And to prove it, she stayed in bed. She stayed in bed and slept so long, Alasdair began to think she might never wake up.
 

Every time he slipped into her rooms to check on her, he found her asleep. Or maids with their fingers to their lips, drawing the curtains. Or Mrs. Broom closing the door behind her carrying medicines and tempting cups of broth that seemed to be returned cold and untouched. Or even McNab, damn his hoary old hide, tiptoeing about with a spray of heather in a vase, “To cheer the wee lassie up.”

After three days, Alasdair’s curiosity, not to mention his conscience, got the better of him.
 

“Ought we to send for a doctor?” he asked Mrs. Broom, when he ran his housekeeper to ground in her small parlor off the kitchens. “Is she really that ill? Has she taken a turn for the worse, and her wound suppurated?”

“Now, now, my lord. No need tae borrow trouble. She’s as fine as can be. The arm seems tae be healing, but…” Mrs. Broom began to look a bit pinched between her brows, as if she were more worried than she let on. “I’m sure a good rest is what’ll cure her.”

“But..?”

“Oh, yer lordship. I dunno.” Mrs. Broom pursed her lips. “Nothin’ I’ve tried seems tae tempt her. ‘I’m no’ hungry,’ she says, and then rolls right over and goes back tae sleep. I ken her body needs tae heal, but…”

“Have we any iced macaroons, Mrs. Broom?”

“Iced…?”

“Macaroons.”

His housekeeper gaped at him. “No, yer lordship. I’m fashed to tell ye so, but we’ve no pastry chef here at Cairn as you mun had in London. But I’ll try and find a receipt for cook, if it please ye.”

“It does please me, Mrs. Broom, I thank you. But more importantly, I believe it will please Lady Cairn.”

“Am I tae understand her leddyship has a sweet tooth, my lord?”

“I am not exactly sure, Mrs. Broom, but I aim to find out.”

“Oh, aye, I see. Iced macaroons it is then.”

“Aye.” He patted her shoulder in thanks and encouragement. “And perhaps lemon ice. Or tarts.”

“Lemon, sir?”

“Yes, lemon tarts.” He racked his brain. “And sticky toffee pudding.”

“Oh, aye tae the pudding, my lord. Cook’s a fair hand at a pudding. We’ll have that tae her leddyship in a trice—for tea time, if ye like?”

“Excellent. I do like, Mrs. Broom. Very much. I thank you.” His mission accomplished, Alasdair was better pleased to return to his book room to bury himself in estate work.

“Weel, I ne’er thought I’d see the day.” Mrs. Broom let out a gusty sigh.

“Mrs. Broom?” He was almost afraid to ask. “And which day is that?”

“I ne’er thought I’d live to see the day our wee Alasdair was in love.” She shook her head ruefully. “I thought they’d succeeded in shamin’ the heart out of ye.”

Everything within him stilled. And stopped. And started up again in painful cacophony, as if someone had taken a hammer to his ribs—he could barely draw breath.
 

Alasdair wasn’t sure what shamed him more—the thought that he was in love with his magnificently inappropriate wife, or the fact that many of his servants, like Mrs. Broom, and McNab—who had served his grandfather for nigh unto fifty years—still remembered the youthful disgrace that had cost him his grandfather’s esteem, and seen him all but banished from Cairn.

It all came back as if it were yesterday, instead of five years ago—his happy stupidity, his grievous error. He certainly could have given wee Quince Winthrop a run for her money in the heedlessness stakes. He had gambled with his allowance, and ridden his horses too fast, and generally been recklessly oblivious to the consequences of his actions. He had been as rash and generous and stupid as wee Quince Winthrop had ever been.

And he had spent the past five years atoning. “It was the rashness they shamed out of me, Mrs. Broom.”

She pursed up her lips. “Is that what they called it?”

“I was young, Mrs. Broom. And in the wrong.”

“That’s not the way I heard it, Lord Alasdair.”
 

It seemed an atrociously bad precedent to set—gossiping with one’s housekeeper. He had made his peace with the past, and his part in it. He had atoned, and his grandfather had since passed away, secure in the knowledge that his grandson had become enough of a man to be Marquess of Cairn.

But all of Alasdair’s accumulated self-discipline was not equal to resisting the chance to finally find out, “And what was it you heard, Mrs. Broom?”

“That ye helped a wee young leddy out of a sad jam that another young mon had put her in.” She dusted her hands of imaginary dirt. “And simply, that ye’d done the right thing, the way a Cairn would, tho the diffy were no on account’a ye.”

Diffy. What a charming euphemism for the overwhelming difficulty of the situation he, and the young lady, had been put in.

He had done what he thought was the right thing. But not exactly in the manner Mrs. Broom seemed to have thought. He had only done what needed to be done. “I was not all sainted selflessness, Mrs. Broom.”

“Oh, aye, ye were a rascal, you and those bonny lads who were yer true friends, there’s na doubt aboot that. But ye didn’t have tae gie young Lady Lucy that money, and ye certainly didn’t have tae take yer grandfather’s blame.”

He was as grateful for her honest kindness now as when he had been a lad, and she had tended his scraped elbows and knees. “Thank you, Broomie. But the fact was, I gave Lucy the money to emigrate because I could not make anyone else do the right thing. There was no one left but me to take the blame. And it was all my fault—the man who seduced her was my guest.”

“Ye did what another should’a done, and then took the whole of yer grandfather’s wrath for yer troubles.”

“Just as he’d raised me to do, Mrs. Broom. I am a Strathcairn. I could do no less.”

“Weel, ye certainly could do nae more. But ye let his lordship, bless his soul, go frae this world thinkin’ ye’d been the one that done her. And that be what ye ne’er shoulda done. Ye shoulda told him the honest truth.”