Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (5 page)

No fool Mama.

And then there was Strathcairn, no longer earl thereof but marquess, who might put one and two together, and come up with a sovereign—which was about as much money as she would get from melting down the silver from the buttons and snuffbox.
 

Speaking of which—the ruddy buttons were still digging into her skin. She tried to shift the press of her stays, but nothing worked. “Jeannie?”

“Mileddy?” The withdrawing room attendant, a local dressmaker who had once been Quince’s personal maid, came to her feet. “May I help ye?”

There were other young ladies taking advantage of the withdrawing room as well, so Quince would have to be discreet. She gave Jeannie a subtle nod before she adjusted her bodice in a way that made the two buttons fall silently to the floor at her feet, and raised her voice. “Yes, please. I’m afraid I’ve torn the lace on my bodice. If you’d be so kind?”

“Certainly, mileddy.” Jeannie picked up her basket full of sewing notions and spools of threads in every color, and set it on the floor before she got to work, while Quince smiled over her shoulder and murmured greetings as other young ladies and matrons came and went.

“There ye are, mileddy.” Jeannie bit off the thread, and scooped the buttons into her basket amongst all the other notions. “And let me get ye a cool cloth. Ye’ve gone a bit pink in the cheeks.”

“Thank you, Jeannie.” She pressed the linen to her face, and adjusted her clothing
 
“That’s better.”
 

She had been smart to come, and take a moment to calm down and collect herself. There was a time to rise to a challenge, and a time to hide away, and save temptation, like dessert, for later.
 

Quince smoothed down her skirts in preparation for disappearing back into the crowd in the ballroom, where she would do well to find an unobtrusive spot to keep a wary eye on Strathcairn. “Thank you, Jeannie, Once more into the breach, dear friend.”
 

Only to find the breach of the doorway filled with Strathcairn.

“Taking snuff, are we now, Lady Quince?” he growled as he clamped his hand around her elbow, and hauled her down the corridor with a great deal less subtlety, and far less good humor, than he had displayed in whisking her from the ballroom earlier.

Oh, nay, there was nothing gentle or humorous about the way he reeled her into an empty, unlit room—there was anger and the potential for violence in his grip. She would have to tread a very fine line indeed.
 

Because her own unruly anger was rising to the occasion.

Quince rounded her elbow out of his possession. “Strathcairn.” She polished her voice down to a hard shine. “I wish I could say this wasn’t a terrible surprise. What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“I might ask the exact same question of you, Lady Quince.” His voice had lost every last ounce of its pleasing, teasing intonation—the refined Scot’s burr was now as thorny as a thistle. “What have you done with them?”

“With whom?” She narrowed her own gaze down to a matching frown—she had the measure of him now, and would give as good as she got.
 

“I am speaking,” he bit out, “of the buttons from my coat and Fergus McElmore’s snuffbox.”

Oh, holy iced macaroons. It was he who had the measure of her, and was weighing her up as accurately an undertaker.
 

Thank goodness the only light came from the moon filtering through the windows, washing her in silver, or he might have seen her face pale. As it was, she had everything to do to control her breathing, and act affronted and confused, and not give into the impulse to chafe her arms to warm the skin that had suddenly gone cold and clammy. “My dress does not have any buttons. And I don’t take snuff. The occasional nip of whisky, aye. But not snuff.” She did not have to fake the shudder that worked its way up her spine. “Disgusting habit.”
 

The darkness of the room made Strathcairn look even more grim and unforgiving as he advanced upon her. “I should advise ye, brat, to stop attempting to bamboozle me. Just give me the damn buttons.”

Bamboozle
. In any other instance she would have delighted in his pronunciation of the word—no man should be able to make the words themselves jump up and dance to his tune. Especially when he was angry. And he was very angry. Inconveniently so.

Because she had some serious bamboozling to do.
 

She began with misdirection. “Strathcairn, clearly you have misunderstood something.” She put up her empty palms to keep him from advancing any farther. “What buttons?”

“The buttons from my damn coat.” He pulled up the tail of his coat to show her the bare swath of crimson velvet.

“Your coat doesn’t have buttons.” Misdirection worked best with the obvious. “So there is certainly no call for you to shout at me so.”

“I am not shouting.” He crossed his arms over his chest as if it were the only way he could keep himself from throttling her. “I am everything calm and reasonable considering the circumstances. And so I will warn you not to lie to me, wee Quince Winthrop, though you do it alarmingly well, and without a shred of remorse. You’re altogether too convincing, and too larcenous, for a lass your age.”

Not convincing or larcenous enough, apparently.

“Now,” he instructed succinctly. “Give them to me.”

She had much rather put the buttons up his gorgeously fine, straight Scots nose, but alas, such a feat would undoubtedly be unwise. Not to mention terribly messy. And utterly impossible.

One must pick one’s battles, Mama always said, and fight only upon firm ground.
 

Quince put up her chin. “You are grievously mistaken, if you think I have them. There were no buttons upon the coat when we met. I have nothing of yours, Strathcairn. Nothing.”

He uncrossed his arms, and stalked closer, as if he were trying to read her face in the frosting of moonlight. “Have you always lied so well, lass? Or have I just forgotten?”

It was the hint of actual admiration in his tone—at least it sounded to her a
little
like admiration—accompanying the affront that almost made her answer truthfully. Almost.

But she did not. Because she was not suicidal. And because lying
was
a skill she had cultivated as carefully as an exotic seedling in one of her father’s meticulously tended glass houses. A skill she had mastered out of necessity. A skill as necessary to survival within society as breathing. Or finding the right dressmaker.
 

The trick lay in adding just enough of the truth. “Nay, you have not forgotten. But everyone lies, at least a little. Don’t you?”

“Nay.” He answered straightaway. “Deception of any kind is abhorrent to me.”

Well. Quince deliberately made her tone light, as if she were too much of a flibbertigibbet to understand the gravity of the topic at hand. “Pish tosh, sir. I thought you were a politician. You’ll not get far in
that
racket if you can’t tell a well-told lie.”

“It’s not a racket.” He ground the last word down as if it were grist from a Glasgow mill.

“Oh, aye.” She batted his protestations away with an airy wave. “I’m sure the English Parliament is as important and necessary as all get out. But that doesn’t give you the right to come back to Scotland, and just accuse people of things. Goodness, Strathcairn, did you listen to nothing I said?”
 

“Oh, I listened. Which is exactly why you’re here.” His gaze pored over her, cataloguing every blemish and defect, as if a closer look might reveal the deeper flaws of her character. “Your conversation told me you’re clever and curious and observant and bored. And you had your hands on my back. I am not stupid, so don’t you be, wee Quince. I am not a man to be trifled with.”

That was clearly true. And she was not stupid either, so she abandoned her plan to trifle with him. “Then I will go.”

He came at her with such speed she could not prepare herself for the rough grasp of his hands upon her shoulders, as if he meant to try and shake the truth out of her. “For God’s sake, lass. Don’t. Don’t willfully misunderstand how dangerous this is.”

“To be closeted up in a dark room with you while you’re in the grip of some violent passion?” She tried very hard not to be intimidated by him looming above her. “I completely agree. It must end immediately. And now that you’ve made your point so clearly, I’ll heed your advice, and go.”

She tried to duck around him, but he snagged a strong arm around her waist, and pulled her back against his chest. “Not so bloody fast.” He slid his big hands to either side of her waist, so that his thumbs pressed at the side of her stays with just enough pressure to make her bodice gape away from her body, while he looked over her shoulder, straight down into the shallow valley between her breasts. “If you won’t show me, I’ll just have to see for myself then, won’t I?”

Quince immediately put up her hands over the rise of her breasts to preserve what modesty she could, but she could feel the angry heat of his body searing into her—feel the power he had over her, and feel her own fear burning its way down her throat—the sliver of space between them felt as wide as a gulf.

“Strathcairn!” Her voice was as thin and frail as a willow. “I have no idea of what—”

“You’ve some idea,” he countered with another rough shake. “You probably had the idea to slide the damn things right down your trim wee bodice.” And with that, his big, clever fingers slid straight down along the line of the busk, beneath the thin protection of her chemise, completely against her bare skin.

Oh, holy ice picks.
 

But instead of swearing as she might be forgiven for doing under the circumstances, she let out an undignified sound very much like the frightened squeak of a mouse. And managed no more. Her breath was trapped inside her chest—a fist of aching heat stopping up her throat. Her stupid brain was entirely incapable of thought.
 

She was frozen, though knew she ought to do something. Laugh. Or slap him. Hard.

But this was the new Strathcairn. He might just laugh and slap her back.
 

And his arm was still wrapped around her waist, girding her like a sapling he could snap in two if he but chose, while his other hand was groping under her breasts.
 

Heat prickled everywhere on her body. Everywhere.

How ridiculously lowering. How entirely infuriating.

No matter what she had done, she did not deserve to be groped.

“Strathcairn!” She abandoned modesty to dig her sharp fingernails into the soft skin inside his wrist, and screw his thumb out of its socket, and out of her bodice. “This is not the way a gentleman treats with a lady.”

“Devil take you” He wrung his wrenched thumb out of her grip. “If I do not act the gentleman,” he countered grimly, “it’s because you do not act the lady. Where have you stashed them?”

She took advantage of her freedom to simply haul back and slap him hard across the face. Hard enough that her hand left a vivid print across his cold cheek. So hard, the crack of her palm against his flesh echoed against the four walls.

The force of her fear and anger left her stunned. And livid. And very nearly afraid. She was alone with a man twice her size, three times her strength, and four times her influence. She had waved her cape at the wrong bull.

Seconds of stunned silence ticked by. She stood her ground, and braced herself for the force of his reprisal. But somehow, sense prevailed.
 

Strathcairn was thankfully gentleman enough not to slap her back. Or worse. Instead, he took her stinging rebuke like a man—he stepped away. “My apology, my lady.”

Quince was too vexed to be properly relieved or grateful—she was still shaking with the awful admixture of guilt and fear and unholy, desperate anger. “Your apology is barely sufficient.”

“I am sorry.” He took another step back from her. “I thought— I was sure—” He shook his head as if he might realign his thinking. “I seem to have made an error.”

Indignation spurred her on where common sense might have held her back. “You’ve made more than an error, Strathcairn. You’ve made an enemy out of a friend. I am no one’s pet or plaything. No matter what you think, my body is my own, and I play by my own rules.” She tried to speak with heat and force, but her voice was strained—the hot ache of tears threatened to rob her of bravado. Every bit of her, from the top of her head to the bottom of her shoes, was pinched tight with the awful tension. Her stinging right hand was fisted at her side, her fingernails digging into the flesh of her palm.

His righteous anger faded in the face of hers. “Indeed, my lady.” He spread his open hands before him in apology, and shook his head in wonder. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Devil take me, but I was sure—”

He had been sure because he was diabolically clever, as well as correct in his assumptions—she
had
taken his blasted buttons. And the snuffbox. Only she did not have them now. Her well-honed instinct for self-preservation had urged her to rid herself of the evidence, and pass the items off to Jeannie as soon as possible. Or, perhaps it had simply been that the buttons digging into her skin like a brand had made her too uncomfortable. Too guilty.