Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (45 page)

Quince trudged homeward, nursing her anger as assiduously as her fear, and scrubbing the scratchy heat out of her eyes with her damp sleeve.
 

She had to think, and for the first time in her life, think her way beyond doing the first rash or impetuous thing that came into her mind. She had to think her way beyond the fear—the fear that this last straw would be the weight that would break the last bond of affection Alasdair might still hold for her.

All her life—and certainly all of the past three years—she had been so sure. Sure that she held the moral high ground. Sure that she was
right
, when she had been nothing but wrong.

All that time, she had been justifying her sins by filling her mind with anticipating the next move, and staying one step ahead of the consequences. Delighting in the dance. But the music had stopped, and she had stranded herself flat-footed in the middle of the floor. Hoping she still had a partner.

Hoping he would be willing to help her. Hoping that he could help her. Hoping that he would not, at long last, find the cost too high.
 

She would have to trust the one instinct she had left—the instinct that whispered that if she just went to him, and laid the whole of her troubles bare with no holding back, no sparing her feelings, it would all be all right.
 

If she just trusted him, all would be sunshine on heather.
 

Even when it was pouring rain.
 

And if it wasn’t already too late.

Quince broke into a run, gaining speed as she tore into the castle, calling for him. “Alasdair! Alasdair?”
 

But on this day of downpours, he was nowhere to be found. Neither McNab, nor Mrs. Broom, who seemed to know everything there was to be known at Cairn, could say where his lordship had gone. Only that he had gone.

Only Mr. Oistins, with his all-seeing eyes and constant vigilance, had an answer. “He went out to find you in the garden, my lady, after you passed by.”

Oh, nay.
 

“But I did not see him.” And she had looked, checking the path behind as well as ahead, hadn’t she? If Strathcairn had followed her, she would have seen him, wouldn’t she?
 

Dread seeped under the dam she had made of her hope, weakening the walls, eroding the strength of her trust. But she had to trust someone.

“Mr. Oistins.” She swallowed the last bitter remains of her pride. “I have made a terrible mistake, and I need Alasdair to…to help me make it right. I need him. And I need you to help me find him.”

The air is the room seemed to become thin in the long wait for Mr. Oistins to answer. “You will not find him if he does not wish to be found.”

“Oh, stop it!” she cried. Her temper—never the most even, especially on such a day when it had been hopelessly frayed—snapped. “You needn’t speak to me in riddles, to suss out if I am worthy of your trust. I’m not.” Her voice rose, high and scratchy, full of heat and desperation. “But
he
is. And I have to speak to Alasdair for no other purpose than to warn him so he can protect himself and Cairn. But if you will not help me—”
 

“If he is not in the castle, my lady, there is really only one other place to look—the hills.”

“Of course. Thank you.” Quince was astonished to feel the hot press of gratitude gathering behind her eyes. She dashed the tears away. “I ken just the place.”

She took the path across the garden at a run, retracing their steps through the hornbeams and over the stile, taking herself through the welling puddles without a care for her skirts or muddying her boots. She climbed higher onto the wet, windswept moorland, relishing the exertion that kept her mind from having to think and doubt and worry. Saving her breath to marshal her arguments.

Nay. She would not argue.
 

If she had learned anything from Alasdair, it was that argument didn’t help, and that she would be far better off to simply admit the uncomfortable truth—that everything he had feared and tried to prevent was coming to pass. All because of her reckless, unthinking choices.

The rain clamored over the moorland, clattering on stones and heather, chiding her with its incessant whisper—
too late, too late.

And she began to think the rain was right when she found the spot at the crest of the hill empty. She had already overdrawn her strength—being hit on one’s blindside by a blackmailer could do that to a person—and she collapsed upon the same boulder as she had the first day Alasdair had brought her up here, to catch her breath, and decide what to do next. Because Mr. Oistins was right—she was not going to find Alasdair if he did not want to be found.

And if he did not want to be found, or did not want to help her, she needed to face the facts, and do what she must to keep Alasdair from being forever tarred with her paintbrush.

She must leave Cairn. She must leave him.

A pain like no other pierced her heart—regret, it seemed, was the sharpest sword of all.
 

“Quince?”

He was there all at once, her Alasdair, looming over her and the moor, looking wet and weary and wonderful.
 

But her relief was both only momentary, and bittersweet, because he was not regarding her in the same way—her Alasdair looked none too pleased to see her. “What are you doing up here?”

This answer at least was easy. “Looking for you.”

“You’ve found me. And I you.” His voice was rough and weary, as if he were already tired of the excuses she had yet to give. “You look cold. And done in.”
 

How like him to think of others before himself. “Aye,” she agreed. “I am. But it’s no better than I deserve. You look little better.”
 

He shrugged, not making her way any easier. “I am sorry,” he said only. And he looked sorry indeed—his face was a mask of a sort of resigned loss, a warding off of greater pain to come. And he kept his distance. As if he knew.

She could not meet his acute green gaze, so she looked out across the expanse of moor and sky, as if it might give her the answers she sought. “There’s a lovely solitude up here, isn’t there? I can see why you once thought it the whole of the world. I wish it were, too.”

“Do you?” His brow rose slowly, weighing her sincerity more carefully than an undertaker.

“Aye. But it’s not, is it?” She made herself meet his eye. “And I have unthinkingly brought the whole of the world here to ruin it all. To ruin Cairn and you.”

The muscles along his jaw went tight, as if he were preparing to fend off a blow. “Have you?”

“You know I have. How much did you hear?”

He shook his head. “Nothing, really. Couldn’t hear over the rain.” He looked her in the eye. “Is it over then?”

“Over? Nay.” She didn’t understand him. “I fear it’s only beginning.”

He heaved in a great breath and blew it out. “That’s some relief, then. Let me take you home, lass. You can tell me all in the comfort of a warm fire, where you won’t catch your death of a chill.”

“Nay,” she insisted. She deserved no such comfort. Not until she had earned it. “I need to tell you now, before I lose my nerve.”

His face screwed down into a wince, even as his mouth twisted up in a wry, sideways smile. “Hard to imagine you, lass, without your nerve.”

“Aye. It’s unnerving.”

The wry smile slid to the other side of his mouth. “Well, have at it, lass. Do your worst, for it can’t get better until you do.”

She wanted to move closer, to be able to read his face clearly. To be able to touch him, and hold him close and convince him—

“Just tell me what happened today, Quince. Tell me what has made you weep?”

He saw too much, and not enough, her Alasdair.
 

Quince pushed a tight, unhappy exhalation out of her chest, and raised her chin so she could look him in the eye. “My conscience came to call.”

“Is that what he calls himself?” He moved closer to the boulder, standing so that he blocked the worst of the blowing rain. “That doesn’t sound entirely pleasant.”

“It was awful, if you must know.” The heat in her chest and throat and eyes was mortification, and no less than she deserved.

“I think I must know, wee Quince.” He came close enough to slip an arm around her shoulder, bracing her—or himself, she could not tell—for the worst.

She allowed herself the luxury of leaning against him a little, and warming herself for a moment or two on his surety, borrowing his strength. “Do you remember,” she chose her words carefully, “when I told you I would lie for you, if you asked me?”

“The night the Lord Provost came to my house.”

“Aye.” She tried to read his face. “And I would still, now, to protect you. Because that’s what you, did in a way, when you married me. You didn’t exactly lie, but you stood up for me, and saved us both from the necessity of lying by marrying me, which was nearly the same thing.”

“The end result,” he admitted reluctantly, “was to keep you safe.”

“The end result was also to keep you safe, as well.” It had eased her conscience, and made her decision easier, knowing there had been benefits to them both. “And I always thought that the ends justified the means, but now I am not so sure.”

Alasdair cut through her prevarication. “What happened today, Quince?”

What happened was that she found herself upon the edge of a great yawning precipice, poised upon on a knife’s edge. “What would you do if you were ever blackmailed?”

“I’d break his nose.”

Quince was so astonished, she gaped at him. “You would? How remarkably bloodthirsty of you.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “I did break the nose of the last bastard who tried to blackmail me. It was the mon I told you about, the friend for whom I had taken the blame. I left him flat on his arse on the cobbles, dripping in his own blood. Of course, he took his tale to my grandfather, so much good it did me. Though the bloodletting did give me a certain satisfaction.”
 

“Alasdair, you surprise me.” Quince felt her mouth curve into a wry smile. “You always manage to surprise me. But unsurprisingly, as well as unfortunately, I have acquired another nose for you to break, if you would be so kind.”

“What a remarkably bloodthirsty lass
you
are. But I like that about you. You don’t quiver and quail in the face of adversity.”

She noted that he did not ask whose nose. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Alasdair, but I am nothing but quivering and quailing now. Because the good Reverend Talent is blackmailing me.” The name tasted like poison on her lips.

“The vicar? That dirty, dicky bastard.” Alasdair’s face screwed up as if he had tasted the same vile drink. “But what I can’t understand is how a clergyman is even mixed up in all this?”

“He knows the whole of it. Because—”

Alasdair interrupted her by turning her chin up to him. “Do
I
know the whole of it?”

“Mostly, but not his part.”

He dropped her chin and stood, putting distance between them. “And what is his part?”

“Firstly, he threatened to tell you. He could not know that I had already confessed—”

“Is that what you call getting caught red-handed, with a pair of pistols filling your grip?”
 

He was teasing her—she could tell by that lopsided crook of a smile. And also because he took her hand, and held it against his chest where she could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart. Telling her without words that he was protecting her.

“Aye, euphemistically.”

“I still cannot fathom how Reverend Talent should be involved in any way?”

Quince took a deep breath. “There was this lad, you see—it all began with him, a long, long time ago. He was out at Winthrop House’s gate, all alone. And he was even younger than me at the time.” She felt the chill of the damp boulder beneath her, as if the burden of the old story, of carrying it all these years, was weighting her down. “Or at least he seemed younger. He was a scaffy wee thing—small and thin. Malnourished, I understand now. And even if I didn’t understand it then, I could see that he was hungry. That he was dirty. And that he was on his own. Orphaned I supposed. Or one of too many mouths to feed with not enough food.”
 

“It’s a common enough story.” His expression grew serious. “Paris, London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham—they’re all littered with such children.”

“
Littered
. Listen to yourself. As if they were rubbish, to be thrown away.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Quince.”

“Well, I did.” She could hear the fury rising in her voice, but she didn’t care. “Because people talked as if they’re lazy and sinful to
let
themselves get hungry. Because in the end, that child was thrown away. He died on our street corner from the hunger, curled up like a rag, and they just threw him into the back of a cart, and hauled him away. I decided when I was old enough to do something about it, that even though I hadn’t fed him, I would feed the rest of them.” Heat bottled up in her throat, and her heart was slamming against her chest, but it was the truth, and it needed to be said. She raised her voice against the shriek of the wind. “And I’m not sorry in the least. Not in the least. I’m only sorry I got caught.”