One Little Sin (4 page)

Alasdair shook off the feeling. “I’m quite well, thanks.” He released his grip on the chair. “It’s just been a trying day, that is all.”

“Och, ’tis that terrible bruise between your eyes, I do not doubt,” warned Miss Hamilton, all her
o
’s coming out just like Granny MacGregor’s. “The blood’s all left your brain, man. Put some ice on it and take yourself to bed.”

Alasdair shook his head. “I’ll have this miserable business settled first,” he insisted. “Now, as I was saying, I shall pay you one hundred fifty pounds—”

“Three hundred,”
she reminded him. “Payable in advance.”

It was robbery, plain and simple, but Alasdair hadn’t much choice. “Fine, then,” he muttered. “And you’ll stay and see to the child until…until I think what next to do.”

Suddenly, her face almost crumpled. It seemed most uncharacteristic, but thoroughly genuine.

“Oh, Lord!” he said. “What now?”

She drew a shuddering breath. “It just seems such a vast step,” she admitted. “I was just taking hold of the fact that I must let my wee Sorcha go, and now this! I feel so ill prepared.”

“Well, you bloody well don’t haggle like you’re ill prepared,” he complained. “How would you like to be in my shoes? Half an hour ago, I was minding my own business and sleeping my way through the world’s most delightful fantasy, when next I know, you and Lady Sorcha here are waltzing into the middle of my life. It’s a damned inconvenience, to be frank.”

Miss Hamilton did not look particularly chagrined. “What I meant was that this isn’t what one would call a reputable household, is it?” she went on. “I shall be ruined, I daresay. On the other hand, I am not at all sure it much matters anymore.”

Alasdair drew himself up rather straight. “This is a bachelor household, true,” he admitted. “But I don’t entertain my mistresses here, or go about seducing the servants, Miss Hamilton. And I certainly don’t trifle with mere girls, if that is what you meant.”

“I don’t know what I meant!” said Miss Hamilton, patting Sorcha rhythmically on the back as she paced. “’Tis half my problem. I’ve little experience in the ways of the world. Indeed, I knew almost nothing of child rearing until Mamma died. I have lived most of my life in small Scottish villages. I
know
there are things a lady oughtn’t do, and I’m relatively certain that living under your roof is one of them. But you are offering me a terrible temptation: a way to stay with my sister.”

Her sudden vulnerability troubled him, for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Look, Miss Hamilton, if the child is to stay here, sooner or later, she will need a governess,” he said. “If you are old enough to be a governess, then why shouldn’t it be you? I have no female relations to fob her off on unless I send her back to Scotland—which, given the way gossip runs, is probably the last place she needs to be. So, have you a better idea?”

“No,” she said, her voice very small. “None at all.”

“Then I shall give you your three hundred pounds,” he conceded. “And in return, you shall make my problem go away. Does that sound fair?”

Miss Hamilton sniffed. “Oh, I am going to regret this,” she whispered. “I know it already.”

Just then, the butler came back in with tea. Alasdair motioned the tray away. “We have a change of plan, Wellings,” he said. “Be so kind as to take that up to the schoolroom.”

“The
schoolroom,
sir?”

Alasdair smiled. “Yes, it seems I have acquired a…a ward,” he answered, gesturing at the child, who had dozed off on Miss Hamilton’s shoulder. “Arising, alas, from the sudden death of a distant relation. Miss Hamilton here is her governess.” Alasdair bowed in her direction. “Wellings will have your baggage brought in and see you made comfortable for the night. In the morning, he will introduce you to the staff. And then we will do”—he waved his hand vaguely—“well, whatever one
does
under such circumstances.”

“And you will write to Edinburgh straightaway?” Miss Hamilton pressed.

“Straightaway,” he agreed. And then Sir Alasdair left his new governess in Wellings’s capable hands, and went upstairs to bed, no longer even remotely secure in life as he knew it. A child! In his house! And now, he was the last thing he’d ever wished to be. A father. Good God.
A damned inconvenience
did not begin to describe this.

The schoolroom, Esmée Hamilton soon learned, was occupied by a nine-foot billiards table, its green felt top almost bald from use. The nursery which adjoined it had long since been converted into a smoking parlor stuffed with worn leather furniture, and the shelves which should have held toys and books instead held stacks of hinged wooden boxes which Wellings called “Sir Alasdair’s numismatic collections,” whatever that meant.

Esmée was too tired to ask, so she just wrinkled her nose at the stale smell and followed Wellings, who was no longer so condescending. “And this way, ma’am, is the bedchamber, which also opens onto the schoolroom,” he said. “Will it do?”

Esmée laid Sorcha down on the bed and looked about. The room was not large, but it was high-ceilinged and airy. “Aye, thank you,” she said quietly. “’Tis lovely. I don’t suppose you have any sort of crib or cradle?”

“I am afraid not, ma’am.” But he helped Esmée position a large dresser drawer between two chairs near the bed.

She had become adept at such makeshift arrangements in the long weeks since her mother’s death. It was that, in part, which had convinced her Sorcha must have a proper home. The child deserved a better, more stable life. And she deserved a competent parent, too. Esmée was not at all sure she met that qualification. Still, surely that brazen devil downstairs was worse?

After Wellings provided hot water and a profuse apology for the bed’s not having been properly aired, he bade Esmée good night and pulled the door shut. Esmée went to it at once and turned the key. A sudden sense of relief mixed with sorrow surged through her as she stared down at the fine brass lock. Her mother was dead. Beloved Scotland was far away.

But for tonight, they were safe. For tonight, they had a proper bed, and every expectation of a proper breakfast on the morn. It seemed so little. And yet, it had come to mean so much.

Oh, how she wished she were older and wiser—and mostly the former. In eight more years, she would have an inheritance from her grandfather—a rather large one, she thought. But eight years was a long time. Sorcha would be almost ten. Until then, they had to live by Esmée’s wits—a slender reed if ever there was one. Oh, if only Aunt Rowena had come home!

Esmée returned to Sorcha’s side. The bairn was already sound asleep. Esmée sat down on the bed and tried not to cry. She was not qualified to take care of a child. And she certainly should not be here in this house. Even Esmée, gudgeon that she was, knew better.

Sir Alasdair MacLachlan was even worse than she’d been led to believe. He was not just a hardened rakehell; he was bold and unapologetic about it. And he was quite astonishingly handsome; too handsome for his own good—or any woman’s peace of mind. Even when he was angry, his eyes seemed to be filled with laughter, as if he took nothing seriously, and though his hair had been a disheveled mess, the golden locks had gleamed in the lamplight.

Her stomach had done something very odd the moment he kissed her hand. She supposed that was just the sort of shivery, flip-floppy thing one felt when one was kissed by a practiced rake. Worse, he had not for one moment remembered Mamma. God, what an embarrassment that had been! But Esmée had parted company with her pride about six hundred miles ago, and she very much feared it was going to get worse.

Dead tired, yet filled with restless energy, she drifted back into the smoking parlor, where the light from a single sconce wavered, casting odd, shifting shapes up the walls and along the shelves. She flung herself down on the tatty old sofa and was immediately struck by a warm, already familiar scent. MacLachlan. Unmistakably. Then she saw the coat tossed so carelessly across a nearby chair. She tried to ignore the tantalizingly masculine scent which teased at her nostrils, and instead picked up a fine, leather-bound book from the untidy heap on the tea table.

She studied the small gold letters on the spine.
Théorie Analytique des Probabilitiés
by de Laplace. Esmée flipped it open, then muddled along in her bad French just far enough to realize that the author’s theories, which had something to do with arithmetic, were far above her head. And far above MacLachlan’s, too, she was sure. Perhaps the book had been left out as a sort of decorative pretense? But when she looked about the messy, malodorous room, she quickly cast that notion aside. No, there were no pretensions to refinement here.

Curious now, she picked up another. This book was very old indeed, its brown leather binding badly cracked.
De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae
by someone named Huygens. This one she could not read at all, for it was in a language she’d never seen. But again, it contained a great many numbers and mathematical formulas.

What on earth? She dug deeper. Beneath another six such books was a sheaf of foolscap, filled with chicken scratch and numbers. On the whole, it looked to be the ramblings of an insane mind—which fit what she’d seen of MacLachlan so far. But all the fractions, decimal points, and strange annotations were beginning to give her a headache. Esmée restacked the lot, blew out the sconce, and returned to Sorcha’s side.

Relief surged at the sight of the child’s face, so serene and happy. Yes, she had agreed to MacLachlan’s outrageous proposal. What else was she to do? Leave Sorcha, merely to preserve her own good name? One could not eat a pristine reputation. One could not sleep on it or shelter under it. And who else would give them a home together?

MacLachlan might be a rogue and a scoundrel—he was without a doubt lazy and self-indulgent—but he showed no evidence of cruelty. That surprised her. In her experience, the handsomest men were often the cruelest. Was not Lord Achanalt a sterling example?

She let her gaze drift about the room, taking in the gold silk walls and the high, narrow windows with their opulent draperies. It was smaller, yet far more elegant than anything they’d had in Scotland. It was a miracle MacLachlan had not tossed them into the street. It was what she had expected; what she had steeled herself for. Indeed, it was just what her stepfather
had
done. For a moment, Esmée’s anger got the better of her grief. Of Achanalt, she’d long expected the worst. But
her mother?
How could she just die and leave them to the mercy of that man?

As she undressed, Esmée noticed the ormolu clock on the mantel. Half past one. Her coach to Bournemouth would be leaving in five hours. If ever she were going to change her mind, the turning point was tonight. She might be a grass green girl from the Highlands, but she had every idea that once she remained alone in this house with a man of MacLachlan’s repute, her employability in a decent household would be at an end. Worse, even in a state of dishabille, he was handsome. Dangerously so. Esmée did not like him, no. But her mother’s blood coursed through her veins, and that, too, was dangerous.

But despite her fears, and her strange mix of grief and anger over her mother’s death, there was a tenuous hope kindling in Esmée’s heart. As she slowly bathed in the warm water Wellings had sent up, Esmée let herself savor the feeling.
He was going to do it.
MacLachlan was going to give Sorcha a real home. The very thought of it astonished her, and Esmée realized that in truth she had traveled all the way to London never expecting her bluff to work.

Oh, MacLachlan would not give Sorcha love, she thought, pulling her nightdress over her head. He would not nurture the child’s soul. He would not be a father in any meaningful sense of the word. But he was not going to throw her out again, and Esmée had learned to keep her expectations low and rejoice at even the slightest victory.

Just then, Sorcha began to flail about with her left leg, tossing off her blankets. Esmée went to the makeshift cradle and bent down to tuck her blankets back around her. To her surprise, Sorcha was awake. At Esmée’s appearance, she widened her startling blue eyes, laughed one of her gurgling, bubbling laughs, and clapped her hands together.

Esmée took the child’s tiny hands in her own and felt Sorcha’s fingers wrap round her index fingers, her grip warm and strong. “Are you happy now, my bonnie wee lassie?” asked Esmée, lifting one little fist to her lips for a kiss. “D’ye fancy this might be your home after all?”

“Be mo,” agreed Sorcha, her gaze growing drowsy again. “Mo, mo, mo.”

“Good God. You did
what?”
Merrick MacLachlan leaned across the breakfast table to stare at his brother.

“I told her she could stay,” Alasdair repeated. “It was one in the morning, and there was the very devil of a thunderstorm on. What else was I to do?”

“Send her packing,” advised Quin around a mouthful of kidney. “That’s the oldest trick in the world, Alasdair. Can’t believe you fell for it.”

Merrick pushed back his chair in disgust. “That must have been one hell of a blow to the head yesterday,” he said, going to the sideboard to refill his coffee. “Some tart shows up on your doorstep with a bairn in tow, tells you it is yours, and you just
believe
her?”

“She’s no tart, Merrick. She’s just a little wren of a girl.” But Alasdair was suddenly very glad he had not mentioned the three hundred pounds Miss Hamilton had extorted. He let his gaze drift round his well-appointed dining room, and wondered if his brother had a point. Or perhaps he was going a little mad. Somehow, he had believed that in the light of day, all of this would vanish like a bad dream. But it had not.

“Are you going to eat those?” asked Quin, pointing at the pile of kippers Alasdair had mechanically piled on his plate.

“Have them, by all means,” offered Alasdair, too late, as it happened, since Quin had already forked half of them up. “Though how you can eat all that after the day we had yesterday, I cannot fathom.”

“Cast-iron stomach,” said Quin, finishing his eggs. “You’re getting soft, Alasdair. Any more coffee, Merrick?”

Merrick filled Quin’s cup, then returned to his chair. “What have you told the servants, Alasdair?” he demanded. “The house must be abuzz.”

“The staff round here is beyond being shocked,” he answered evenly. “I told Wellings the child was my ward, and he actually believed it. Especially since Miss Hamilton is so obviously Scottish and looks more like my daughter than my usual sort of lightskirt.”

“But Alasdair,” said Quin, “someone is bound to remember your trip to Scotland and put two and two together. You go so rarely.”

Alasdair turned to face him. “Very rarely,” he agreed. “I’ve been home but once in the last three years. But that particular year, if you’ll recall, you and I spent the shooting season in Northumbria at Lord Devellyn’s hunting box.”

“Yes, I recall it,” said Quin.

“And we’d meant to spend the holidays, too,” Alasdair continued. “But then you and Dev found those two French girls in Newcastle, and I was odd man out, so to speak.”

“We did offer to share,” Quin grumbled.

Alasdair shook his head. “I decided I wanted to go
home,”
he said. “Especially since I was already better than halfway there. And I hadn’t so much as my valet with me.”

“Good God, what is your point?” snapped Merrick.

“That no one save Quin and Devellyn are apt to remember I went within a hundred miles of Scotland that year—or any other recent year.”

“I still say you must get rid of her, Alasdair,” his brother warned. “Thus far, you’ve admitted no real responsibility—and even if you had, there’s nothing this bit of baggage could do about it.”

“God knows I don’t fancy having a brat about the house, Merrick,” said Alasdair darkly. “But I’m damned if I’ll let the chit starve on my account. I remember too well what it was like to feel unwanted as a child.”

“Father was strict, aye,” said Merrick. “But we were never starved, Alasdair.”

“Speak for yourself,” his brother snapped. “There are many kinds of starvation.”

“Well, best put her up in an inn, at the very least, until all this sorts out,” said Quin, as if to forestall a quarrel.

Alasdair shook his head. “I haven’t the heart,” he admitted. “The bairn is barely past infancy, and Miss Hamilton is little more than a child herself. She seems so callow and tenderhearted. I rather doubt the chit’s been south of Inverness in the whole of her life.”

“A likely story,” said Merrick. “You’re a fool if you don’t send the little jade
and
her child packing. Besides, Uncle Angus can tell you nothing. They sailed in April for the Malay Peninsula.”

“Did they, by God?” asked Alasdair. “I’d forgotten.”

“What does it matter?” challenged Merrick. “He’d likely tell you this Lady Achanalt is little better than a common tart, and that there is no way they can prove the babe is yours.”

Alasdair pushed away his plate. “There, dear brother, is where you just might be wrong,” he returned. “And I begin to resent your attitude.” On impulse, he rang for one of the footmen, but the butler himself came back into the room.

“Yes, sir?”

“Is Miss Hamilton awake yet, Wellings?”

The butler’s eyes widened. “Indeed, sir,” he answered. “She rose before dawn and asked for a sheet of letter paper.”

“Letter paper?” Alasdair echoed.

Wellings nodded. “She had a piece of correspondence she particularly wished to go out on the first mail coach to Bournemouth this morning,” he answered. “I believe she is now in the schoolroom.”

Ah, yes. Her retired colonel in Bournemouth. So she really was staying, then. Alasdair relaxed into his chair. “Fetch her down here, please,” he said. “And tell her to bring the child.”

A taut silence held sway over the dining room whilst they waited, but in just a few minutes, a soft knock sounded at the dining room door. Miss Hamilton came into the room looking even smaller than she had the evening before. The luminescent green eyes filled half her face, which was oval, and finely boned. Today she wore a brown wool dress which should have looked drab, but instead looked graceful. The shade perfectly matched her hair, which was twisted into a loose arrangement. The combination somehow emphasized her fine ivory complexion, and for the first time Alasdair realized that the girl was not plain at all. Instead, she possessed an elegant, subtle beauty—and it was a
woman’s
beauty, not a girl’s. The knowledge was a tad unsettling.

“Do come in, Miss Hamilton,” he managed, as the gentleman rose.

She sketched an awkward curtsey and led the child forward into the room. This morning, the little girl wore a lacy frock over pantaloons gathered at the ankle with blue ribbons. She toddled forward unhesitatingly, pointing and chortling at something beyond the window.

“Miss Hamilton, my brother, Merrick MacLachlan,” said Alasdair. “And this is the Earl of Wynwood. They wish to see the child. Would you be so kind as to show her to my brother, please?”

Miss Hamilton looked both discomfited and confused, but obediently, she led the child round the table to Merrick. Merrick shocked them all by kneeling down to study her. “What is her age, please?” he demanded.

“She’s to be two in October,” said Miss Hamilton, who had begun to nervously toy with the strand of pearls about her neck. It was a habit he’d noticed, but not registered, amidst all of last night’s uproar.

Merrick was still studying the child’s face. In response, the child blinked and put a hand on his knee as if she meant to crawl into his lap.
“Gee ’atch,”
she said, her plump fingers reaching for Merrick’s watch chain. “Pretty ’atch. Pretty.”

Coloring faintly, Miss Hamilton forgot her pearls and hastened to lift the child away. “No, no!” squalled Sorcha, thrashing against her sister’s arms. “Gee ’atch, Mae! Gee ’atch!”

“Whisht, now,” cooed Miss Hamilton, bouncing the child on her hip. “Be a good girl.”

Merrick stood, his gaze snapping to his brother’s. “I take it you wished me to see the bairn’s eyes,” he said coolly.

“Aye, I did,” admitted Alasdair.

“It proves nothing,” said Merrick.

“Does it not?” asked Alasdair. “Where were
you,
dear brother, on Hogmany two years past?”

“Alasdair, don’t be a fool,” said his brother dismissively. “It certainly isn’t mine.”

“Well, those eyes are a dashed odd color,” remarked Quin. “All a bit unsettling when one considers what happened with that Gypsy yesterday.”

“We shall discuss this another time,” said Merrick, still looking at Alasdair.

“I think we’ll discuss it now,” said Alasdair. “They are MacGregor eyes, are they not? As cold and ice-blue as any I’ve ever seen.”

“Pale blue eyes are not unheard of,” said Merrick. “It could be anyone’s babe.”

“I wish,” snapped Alasdair. “But that particular shade is extremely rare.”

“Perhaps discretion is in order, old chap,” said Quin, flicking a concerned glance at Miss Hamilton.

But Alasdair was intent on his brother. “Merrick, don’t be an ass,” he insisted. “I’ve no interest in taking responsibility for the child of some woman whom I can barely remember bedding, but—”

“Och, a bed, was it now?” snapped Miss Hamilton, cutting him off dead. “As I heard it, sir, there was no bed involved in doing the deed! ’Twas just a quick pump-’n’-tickle behind the draperies at some drunken New Year’s celebration!’ ”

Merrick and Quin turned to gape.

“Miss Hamilton!” Alasdair began, as she clutched the child tighter. “I say!”

“No, I’ve heard quite enough blather out of you three!” Miss Hamilton’s creamy complexion had turned fiery pink, and she was quivering with indignation. “You people have the manners of swine. And Sorcha is not an
it,
if you please! She is your
daughter,
and she has a
name.
And I’ll thank you to use it—all of you.” Suddenly, she turned on Merrick. “And you, Mr. MacLachlan! I do not care for your manner one whit! Rest assured Sorcha could not possibly be yours. Even my mother, starry-eyed fool that she was, couldn’t have been seduced by a midge-brained maundrel with nothing which might remotely pass for charm.”

On that note, Miss Hamilton whirled about and strode from the room with as much grace as she could muster given the toddler balanced on her hip. Lady Sorcha, however, was reluctant to go. She strained to lean out of her sister’s embrace, opening and closing her little fist in Merrick’s direction. “No, Mae, nooo!” she shrieked, flailing wildly. “Gee me ’atch! Gee ’atch!”

As soon as they had disappeared from view, Quin collapsed into his chair with a paroxysm of laugher. Alasdair turned to look at him. “I am so glad you enjoyed that.”

“Oh, she’s so callow!” Quin could barely stop laughing. “So innocent! Just a little wren of a girl! Oh, Alasdair, you are in for it now.”

“What the devil do you mean?”

“It isn’t enough that you’ve been cursed by a Gypsy,” Quin returned. “You’ve just been stuck with a ball of fire—and a dashed pretty one, too, especially when she blushes. I begin to think your eyesight has gone the way of your appetite, old chap.”

Esmée rushed through MacLachlan’s town house, the fine carpets and elegant staircase nothing but a blur as she flew round the newel posts, holding Sorcha close to her side. Dear God in heaven. Could there have been a worse time to let her temper get hold of her tongue? At least her trunk was not yet unpacked. It would save everyone time and effort when her arse landed in the street again.

She reached the nursery and burst through the door, only to come face-to-face with one of the footmen. The worn leather furniture was gone, and servants were clearing the last of the boxes from the shelves. “Your pardon, ma’am,” said one of them stiffly. “Wellings said Sir Alasdair wished the room cleared out.

Cleared out
was an apt description, thought Esmée, looking about the room. Nothing but an old Pembroke table and two wooden chairs remained. Even the stench of stale tobacco was waning. “Thank you,” she said to the footman. “I don’t suppose there is any more appropriate furniture to be had?”

“Of what sort?” The low, rumbling voice came from behind her.

Esmée spun round to see that Sir Alasdair MacLachlan had followed her into the room. Her heart leapt into her throat. “I—I beg your pardon?”

“What do you need, Miss Hamilton?” he said more gently. “I shall send Wellings to fetch it.”

Panicked, Esmée searched her mind. “Well, a…a worktable, I suppose,” she answered, setting Sorcha down. The child went at once to her toys.

“Yes, go on,” he said. “What sort of worktable?”

He did not mean to throw them out again?
“Something low enough for Sorcha to use?” she managed. “With small chairs? And—and a child’s bed, perhaps?”

MacLachlan smiled, his brown eyes warming. “Miss Hamilton, you are ending all your demands with question marks now,” he remarked. “It is most uncharacteristic of you. And surely Sorcha requires more than a table and a bed?”

“Why, I—I daresay she does,” said Esmée, cursing her own stupidity. What
did
children need? She had but recently learned how to feed the child. How to keep her from tumbling into the fire. How to induce her to nap—well, sometimes. “Perhaps a high chair and a rocking chair?” she continued, struggling to remember what Lord Achanalt’s nursery had contained. “And one of those odd little buggies one sees in the parks?”

“Ah, a yes, perambulator!” he said. “And a bigger, thicker carpet, perhaps? Just in case she decides to throw a tantrum?”

Esmée felt her blush deepen. “She is a bit spirited, aye.”

MacLachlan flashed his too-charming, toe-curling grin again. “Ah, the truth will out, won’t it, my dear?” he said. “Now, what was it you said last night? Ah, yes!
‘A good, quiet child! Not a drop of trouble to you, I swear it!’ ”

Esmée looked away. “’Tis just the travel, I’m sure. The—er, the disruption in her life.”

The smile softened at once. “Ah, well,” he returned. “Better a racehorse than a dray horse, I daresay.”

The footman departed with the last box and gently pulled the door shut. MacLachlan strolled deeper into the room. He stopped before one of the windows and stared down into the street below. “You do not like me very much, do you, Miss Hamilton?” he finally said. “Indeed, I think it safe to say you quite loathe me.”

Esmée opened and closed her mouth soundlessly for a moment. “I—I apologize for my behavior earlier,” she whispered.

He made a strange choking sound. A stifled laugh? “You do have a dreadful temper,” he managed. “I’m not sure Merrick will ever be quite the same again.”