Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (42 page)

He rose upon her entrance, and bowed gravely. “Your pardon, my lady. I believe his lordship to be in the breakfast room. I believe his visitor the Duke of Crieff to be with him.”

“Aye, I thank you, I’ve just come from there.” She gathered a larger measure of courage and composure to wrap around her in the same protective manner as the fichu. “It is you, Mr. Oistins, who I wanted to see.”

Mr. Oistins inclined his head in that characteristic manner that was not a bow, but was still entirely civil. “Then I assume you wish to know that the post, with your letters, has arrived from Edinburgh.”

“My letters? I haven’t written any letters.” Not even to Plum, who wanted to know all. Mostly because Quince had yet to experience
all,
drat it.

Mr. Oistins made her another correct nod in acknowledgement of the truth of her statement. “Perhaps I misspoke, my lady. I mean to say that letters addressed to you have arrived.”

There was something about the secretary’s tone that served as a warning—against what, she could not guess, but that alert sense of alarm came padding across her shoulders like a stealthy barn cat. “Oh, I am sure they must be from my mother. Or sisters.” She had no other correspondence. Jeanne knew her numbers, and could read, but she did not write enough for a letter. “How nice.”

Mr. Oistins made no comment while he unlocked a desk drawer and drew out the letters, but even before she saw the missives, Quince could tell from his measured, almost weighty manner, that they would not be from her mother.

That stealthy sense of alarm scratched up her spine, and almost kept Quince from accepting the two letters from his outstretched palm. Because now she could see the direction, written in a cramped but decisive hand, with her name slashed across the paper. Written by someone who was most assuredly not her mother. Someone who had written not one, but two private, painstakingly folded and sealed letters to Lady Quince Cairn, from the address of Saint Cuthbert’s, West Kirk, Edinburgh—the Reverend Talent.
 

A small measure of relief eased the tension in her shoulders.

“Oh, it is only the Reverend Talent.” Who could object to a clergyman’s letter—other than her? But still, she felt compelled to offer some explanation for correspondence with a man who was not her husband—even if she was not the person initiating that correspondence. “How kind of him to write. He tended to my arm, you see.”

Mr. Oistin’s eyebrows flicked upward for the barest of moments. “Yes, my lady.”

Quince stuffed the letters deep into her pockets—she would read them later, if she read them at all. “Thank you, Mr. Oistins.”

“Lady Cairn.” His bow was minimal, but rather elegant at that—a slow stately inclination of his head. Still, there was a wealth of judgment in his eyes.

Or maybe Strathcairn was right, and what she saw in the man’s eyes was nothing more than the product of her own guilty conscience. Or maybe not.

The secretary raised one eyebrow in slow, unmistakable judgement. “Is there any other way I might assist you, my lady?”

“Aye, I thank you.” She smoothed her hand across her skirts to quell a nervous clench. “Forgive me if I am wrong, Mr. Oistins, but I detect a rather large note of disapproval in your regard.”

His stoic expression barely changed. Barely. “Not at all, my lady.”

If she had not been looking for it, she might not have noticed the change—she doubted that most people would have seen what she saw. “Unlike me, Mr. Oistins,
you
are not a very good liar—though I will say it speaks highly of your sterling character that you cannot even tell a polite, civil lie to your employer’s wife without betraying your conscience.”
 

Quince thought she could see a flicker of something that looked a very little like admiration, or at the very least acknowledgement of her truth. And something else. “Or perhaps,” Quince added in a moment of insight, “you have grown so weary of having to make polite lies, Mr. Oistins, you have simply given them up?”

This time the light in the man’s eyes was surely admiration, if not respect for her acuity. “Just so, my lady.”

“Just so. It is a stance I admire, even if I cannot emulate it.”

He inclined his head in that intriguing manner than was acknowledgement without agreement, civility without obeisance.

“As we are attempting to be friends,” she continued. “Or at least I am attempting to abide by my Lord Cairn’s request that I become more of a friend to you, Mr. Oistins—I will tell you that your nostrils flare just the tiniest amount when you tell an untruth, as if the stink of mendacity is too much for you.”

His face barely changed, but the expression in the corner of his eyes softened just as bit, but no more. “I thank you for that observation, my lady.”

“You are welcome.” She strove to keep anything of nervousness from her tone—she could not read Mr. Oistins the way she could other men. Probably because he was proving remarkably immune to her particular charms. “And through my observation, I can tell that you are a mon of careful, measured responses.”

“A man in my position has to be, my lady.”

“Your position as my lord’s secretary, protégé and friend?”

“No, my lady, my position as a man. You ask if we may be friends, my lady, but I do not know if we can be,” he said frankly. “For in my world, in my situation—a West Indian man who came to this country in bondage from Barbados—a friend is a rare and precious thing indeed. A treasure to be earned.”

“I see.” Quince understood at once, despite his steely tone. Or rather because of it. “And Lord Cairn is that rare and precious thing. He is your friend.”

“Yes, and it is not a friendship that either he, or I, take lightly, my lady. He has remained my friend and supporter steadfastly, through both easy and difficult times, though it has cost him to do so—the derision of his peers in society, and the opposition of his colleagues in Parliament and in the government, has been a steep price that he has gladly paid for my sake. I would do the same for him, Lady Cairn.”

“Aye, he’s like that isn’t he? Loyal and true. Once he makes up his mind about the right of something, I doubt any mon, or woman for that matter, could dissuade him from his chosen path. I ken I could not. But I am glad of it, for he has done that very same kindness for me, you see, demonstrating his loyalty and steadfastness and commitment by marrying me.”

Mr. Oistins raised one eyebrow in that lethal manner, but finally inclined his head to acknowledge her point. “I suppose he has.”

“You ken I am no good, Mr. Oistins, for you saw me upon the heath with your own eyes. But I am not a wholly bad, either. I am told I have misjudged you, and I owe you an apology. And so I give it to you—please forgive any slight I may have served you. I will not do so again.”

“I do not take account of slights, for there are too many to count. But I thank you for your civility, my lady.”

“You are welcome.” But still she felt there was something more to say. “I am, and will be, as loyal and steadfast to my husband as he has been to me, Mr. Oistins. It would pain me if you continued to think me unworthy of his trust.”

“I must think as I see fit, Lady Cairn, for no man can make me do otherwise. No woman either.” He inclined his head once more. “I will watch, and observe, and reserve my judgment.”

“As you watched and saw and looked for my mistake the night I held up your carriage.” It wasn’t really a question—she just wanted to get it all out in the open.

“Yes. Just so.”

“You’re not a very forgiving mon, are you, Mr. Oistins?”

“It is not my place in this world to forgive, Lady Cairn. That I leave to God. My job is to guard his lordship, and be vigilant.”

“And work with his lordship to pass a bill to end slavery.”

He agreed with another stately nod. “Just so, my lady.”

“I should like to join your fight, Mr. Oistins. Firstly, because anything near and dear to my husband is now near and dear to me. And secondly, because I have been wrong about a great many things, and I should like to become right, both in your eyes, and more importantly, in his.”

Mr. Oistins inclined his head to her. “I would welcome your assistance, my lady. But I will not be any less vigilant.”

She gave him a nod of her own. “Just so, Mr. Oistins. Just so.”

And so should she be vigilant, for she had finally met a man who was not only determined, but quite able to resist her all of her charm.
 

It was most unsettling. It put her right off her game.
 

So she was not in the least bit prepared to open the first of her two letters, and read the only words the Reverend Talent had written—
You must come meet me at once
.

Chapter Twenty-six

Alasdair saw Ewan into his traveling coach, wished his friend godspeed, waved him upon his way, and went in search of his wee, alluring, enticingly-dressed young wife.

Who proved very difficult to find.
 

“On ’er way up to ’er bed chamber, milord,” seemed a promising direction from one of the housemaids, until that room proved empty.

“Oh, the library, milord,” was Mrs. Broom’s suggestion. “She was speakin’ with Mr. Oistins.”

Was she now? That boded well, he hoped.

But in the library, he found Sebastian working alone. “Good morning, my lord. I take it your visit with His Grace of Crieff went well?”

“Tolerably well, aye. He sends his regards. He’s getting married. Have you seen my wife?”

“Felicitations, to His Grace and Lady Greer Douglas, my lord.” Sebastian indicated several neat piles of papers on the desk. “There are a number of matters that require your attention, my lord, chief among them, the conversion and refurbishment of the old granary into the dye and carding houses alongside the new mill for wool production, my lord.”

“That’s at least two too many ‘my lords’ for the applicable sentence, Sebastian.” Alasdair moved behind the desk, and paged through the papers that his secretary had arranged for his perusal.

“My apologies, my lord.” At Alasdair’s obvious hesitation, he prompted, “Will you sit, my lord?”

“Nay. I think not.” On any other day, the conversion of the estate’s old medieval granary would have consumed his attention, as he was deeply concerned about the displacement of the crofters from the hill farms—a concern that had arisen from his young wife’s all too pointed, but ultimately true accusations. And he had come to be as adamant as she was that there be some alternative local employment available to the crofters. So rather than ship the wool from Cairn flocks off somewhere else to be processed and woven into material, he was determined to make Cairn a center of woolen production, using the buildings and natural resources readily available—the river spilling in and out of the loch—to power waterwheels for mills fulling, carding, teasing and spinning woolen yarns.

“I’m sorry.” His mind was elsewhere. “Did I ask if you’d seen my wife? Mrs. Broom seemed to think Lady Cairn came in here.”

“Yes, my lord,” Sebastian answered in his grave manner. “She was here. But she left. She had some private letters that she wanted to read.”

There was something in Sebastian’s tone, some subtle warning that Alasdair had no time to fathom, because he could swear that Quince’s head skimmed past the window outside. “Never mind. There she is.”

Alasdair crossed to peer through the watery pane into the garden. It must have been Quince, though she was dressed like a housemaid. But no housemaid at Cairn walked with that characteristic quick, skipping pace. And he had seen that nondescript, practical ensemble of jacket and quilted petticoat before, the day he had come upon Quince, her mother and sister on the High Street in Edinburgh on their way to their dressmakers.

He unlatched the window and shoved up the sash despite the summer rainstorm that began to pelt against the panes. “Quince?” He raised his voice to carry across the garden, but the rain drowned him out.

Alasdair shoved himself away from the window. “You’ll excuse me, Sebastian. There is an important matter—” The matter of his wife flirting and very clearly wanting to be seduced. And he aimed to please. As soon as possible.

He tore after her like the greenest of lads, eager for a kiss, instead of like a mature, experienced man of six and twenty. He was through the old oak door and down the old circular stairway that led to the servants’ kitchen entrance, and striding into the garden only in time to see the tailing hem of her long, forest green cloak whisk out of sight at the far end of the allée of trees that led toward the wood edging the burn.