One Little Sin (7 page)

Suddenly, she jerked back from the mirror. Good heavens, what a time to fret over her looks! Despite her slight stature and exasperatingly youthful appearance, she was of an age that put one firmly on the shelf, and that was not apt to change. Perhaps there had been a time when she had longed for a season in London. But her mother’s marriages had taken them from one isolated estate to another, each deeper in the Highlands than the last, it seemed.

Although Lord Achanalt never invited Esmée to accompany them on their frequent travels, once or twice a year, Esmée’s mother would take her to Inverness or Edinburgh to shop. And of course there had been houseguests and dinner parties. Until Achanalt put a stop to it, her mother had possessed a coterie of admirers, for she loved to make her husband jealous. But when Esmée finally began to press for more, her mother’s bottom lip would always come out.

“Wait,” she would say. “Wait until Aunt Rowena returns from abroad. Then you shall have a proper season, my love, I promise you.”

I promise you.

But after burying three husbands too young, her mother had developed an entrenched fear of being alone. Esmée realized now she’d been the only constant in her mother’s life. Achanalt, whom her mother had married when Esmée was sixteen, had quickly become dour and withdrawn. Within two years of the happy nuptials, the word
divorce
was already rumbling round the old castle.

“Aye, like a tomcat after his own tail, he was,” she’d once heard their head gardener cackle. “The auld de’il didna know what to do w’ her once he had hold of her, and ’twas not near sae much fun as the chase.” Which more or less summed up the whole of Lord and Lady Achanalt’s romance.

Well, the “auld de’il” had never borne Esmée’s presence with much grace. She had been strangely, perhaps foolishly, relieved when he’d put them out. Panic was a luxury she could ill afford, given the responsibility Achanalt had suddenly thrust upon her. Certainly she could not panic now. She simply would not allow herself to be unsettled by Alasdair MacLachlan, no matter how charismatic or handsome he was. And that thought reminded her that she was dawdling. Quickly, Esmée repinned her hair, and hastened down the stairs.

She found MacLachlan in his study as expected. He had changed into a dark green coat over a waistcoat of straw-colored silk and snug brown trousers. His starched cravat was elegantly tied beneath his square, freshly shaved chin. Indeed, he looked breathtakingly handsome, and his ability to do so after a night of debauchery somehow annoyed her. He ought, at the very least, to have the decency to look a little green about the gills.

Surprisingly, MacLachlan sat not by the coffee tray, but at his desk, his posture no longer loose and languid. Instead, he sat bolt upright, like a bird dog on point, fervent and focused. If he were suffering any ill effects from his night on the town with Mrs. Crosby, one certainly could not now discern it.

Upon coming farther into the room, she realized he was not working. Instead, he was intent on some sort of card game, his heavy gold hair falling forward, obscuring his eyes. Suddenly, with a muttered curse, he swept up the cards, then shuffled them deftly through his fingers in one seamless motion. He shuffled again, his every aspect focused on the cards, as if they were an extension of hands, which were long-fingered and elegant. And surprisingly quick.

She approached the desk, sensing the very moment when he recognized her presence. At once, he set the pack away and looked at her, something in his gaze shifting. It was as if she’d awakened him from a dream. He stood, and in an instant, the lazy, somnolent look returned to his eyes.

“Good morning, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “Do sit down.”

She moved to the seat he had indicated, a delicately inlaid Sheraton chair opposite the tea table. This room was beautifully decorated in shades of pale blue and cream. The blue silk wall coverings were accented by floor-to-ceiling pier glasses between the windows, and the creamy carpet felt thick beneath her feet. A footman carried in a small coffee tray and set it on the far end of the tea table. MacLachlan asked her to pour. The coffee was very strong, and rich, reminding her, strangely, of black velvet.

“Wellings tells me you took the child out for a stroll yesterday,” he said. “I hope you both enjoyed it?”

For some reason, she did not wish to tell him about her visit to her aunt Rowena’s. Perhaps because it made her look desperate and a little foolish. “London is a large place,” she murmured. “But we had a pleasant outing.”

“How far did you go?”

“Why, to Mayfair, I believe.”

“A fine part of town,” he remarked. “But I have always preferred the tranquility of this little neighborhood.”

“Aye, ’tis much nicer here.” Esmée sipped gingerly from her hot coffee. “Tell me, do you play at cards regularly, MacLachlan?”

There was a cynical look about his eyes today, and it made her a little wary. “I think you know I do, Miss Hamilton,” he said in his low, husky voice. “How is it, by the way, that you keep making me feel as if I am still back in Argyllshire? I wonder you don’t put an imperious ‘the’ before my name—
The
MacLachlan—as if I am the only one.”

“To your clan, perhaps you are,” she answered simply.

His eyes hardened. “I have no clan, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “I have lands, yes, though nothing one would wish to boast about. My grandfather fought against the Jacobites, and for his service, he was tossed a bone, in the form of a baronetcy, by the King.”

“Of England.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He was given a baronetcy by the King
of England.”

MacLachlan lifted one brow. “A dyed-in-the-
wool Highlander, are you?”

“Aye, and I dinna ken there was any other kind,” she said in a thick burr.

He laughed. “So tell me, Miss Hamilton, are you one of those treasonous holdouts still toasting ‘the king over the water?’ ” he asked. “Am I harboring a secret Jacobite?”

Esmée smiled faintly. “Perhaps you are harboring a stickler for historical accuracy,” she suggested. “Do you wish me to call you Sir Alasdair?”

He shrugged, and began to stir his coffee with the same slow, languorous motions he seemed to use for everything else in life. Everything save his card playing. “I don’t think I care,” he finally admitted. “Call me what you wish. I am not a stickler for any sort of accuracy at all.”

“I don’t entirely believe that,” she said. “I think you are a very accurate sort of cardplayer.”

He looked up from his coffee and smiled thinly. “I collect you think little of my talent,” he murmured. “But when carefully honed, Miss Hamilton, card playing is a skill by which an impecunious young Scot can make his way in this world.”

“Aye, sair sarkless, were you?” She let her gaze drift to his elegantly cut coat, which had probably cost more than half her wardrobe.

“No, never quite that.” His eyes glittered a little dangerously. “But now I am, as you recently reminded me,
a very rich gentleman.
And I can assure you I did not get that way by living off my tenant farms.”

“Perhaps you got it by means of other people’s weaknesses,” she suggested. “Games of chance are inherently unfair.”

“I don’t care a jot about another man’s weakness, Miss Hamilton, if he is fool enough to sit down at the table with me,” he replied evenly. “And nothing is left to chance when I play. It is strictly a matter of probability and statistics—something so real and so tangible, it can be calculated on the back of an old newspaper.”

“How ridiculous that sounds!” she returned. “You are just trying to paint up a vice as a virtue. Everyone knows card playing is a matter of luck.”

“Do they indeed?” He reached behind him for his pack of cards. With an artful flourish, he fanned it across the tea table. “Pick a card, Miss Hamilton. Any card.”

She scowled across the table at him. “This isn’t a village fair, my lord.”

“Are you afraid, Miss Hamilton, that despite your vast and worldly experience, you just might, for once, be wrong about something?”

She snatched a card.

“Excellent,” he said. “Now, Miss Hamilton, you are holding a card—”

“How astute you are, MacLachlan.”

Tension was suddenly thick in the room. “—A card which is either black or red,” he went on. “It has a fifty-fifty chance of being either, does it not?”

“Yes, but that is hardly a matter of science.”

“Actually, it is,” he said. “And there is, of course, yet another variable.”

“I should have imagined there were fifty-two variables.”

The brow went up again. “Work with me, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “The card you are holding is either an ace, a face card or a numbered card. At present, with fifty-one cards still facedown on the table, the probability of your holding an ace is four out of fifty-two. Not, admittedly, the best of odds.”

“As I said, a game of chance.”

He held up one finger. “And the probability that it is a face card is twelve out of fifty-two, is it not?”

“Well, yes.”

“And the probability that it is a numbered card is thirty-six out of fifty-two, correct?”

“I daresay.”

“Then I believe, Miss Hamilton, that you are holding a numbered card. That is a distinct probability, you see. And I shall venture to say, more specifically, that it is a red card.”

Esmée looked at her card and blanched.

“May I see it, please?”

Reluctantly, she laid down the eight of diamonds. “Still, it was just a lucky guess,” she complained.

“The first supposition was not,” he countered. “But the latter was. And that, Miss Hamilton, is the difference between probability and luck. Now, place your card facedown, and take another.”

“This is absurd.” But she did as he asked.

“Now, Miss Hamilton, you have just altered the probability,” he said, his gaze locked with hers. “We now have but fifty-one cards, for your red eight is out of play.”

At his insistence, they repeated the process a dozen times. On four of them, Sir Alasdair was wrong. Esmée tried to gloat, but regrettably, his accuracy improved with play, and after each card was laid aside, he would recite the new probabilities. Red versus black. Faces versus numbers. Soon, he was able to guess not just the color and style, but soon the suit, and eventually the number.

Esmée’s head was swimming. But what was worse, no matter what was drawn, Sir Alasdair seemed to recall precisely what had been played, and knew, therefore, what remained. She thought of the pile of arcane, unreadable books she’d found in the smoking parlor. It galled her to admit that he must have read—and comprehended—every blasted one.

When he had guessed four cards in succession correctly, Esmée gave up. “This is all perfectly silly,” she said, tossing aside her last card. “Surely, sir, you did not call me down here for a card game?”

He lifted one broad shoulder and swept up the deck with the opposite hand. “It was you, Miss Hamilton, who disparaged my means of making a living,” he said calmly. “I am merely defending my honor against your cruel and scurrilous accusations.”

Esmée laughed. “Surely you do not
live
by your wits?”

“You think I have none?” he challenged.

She hesitated. “I did not say that.”

“But you did once suggest that I am little more than a—now, let me see—yes,
a pretty face,
was it not?”

“I suggested no such thing,” she said, then realized she’d just lied. “Nonetheless, card playing is hardly an intellectual endeavor.”

“Have you ever played
vingt-et-un,
Miss Hamilton?” he asked darkly. “Go back upstairs and get that three hundred pounds out of your inkpot or your hatbox or wherever it is you have secreted it if you are so sure, and let us put your high-minded assumptions to the test.”

Esmée opened her mouth, then closed it again. With his golden good looks and raspy bedroom voice, MacLachlan was the very devil—worse, a devil who looked like an angel—and she had no doubt he would strip her of every ha’penny just to make his point. “No, thank you,” she said. “I do not gamble.”

“You gambled rather boldly, Miss Hamilton, when you came all the way to London with that child in tow.”

“She is not
that child,”
said Esmée. “She is—”

“Yes, yes,” he interjected, waving his hand in obviation. “She is Sorcha. I recall it. Give me time, Miss Hamilton, to adjust to this vast change in my life.”

They drank their coffee in silence for several moments, Esmée searching for some neutral topic, and finding none. “How is she?” he finally asked. “Sorcha. She is settling in well?”

“Oh, aye,” said Esmée. “She’s a resilient child.”

“What do you mean?”

Esmée opened her hands expressively. “’Tis hard to explain,” she said. “But Sorcha is strong-willed, and she possesses a—well, a sort of trust in her own ability to charm everyone around her and get what she wants.”

Suddenly, Sir Alasdair smiled, deepening the dimples on both sides of his too-handsome face.
“Hmm,”
he said. “I wonder where she got that?”

Esmée looked at him over her coffee cup. “Now that I think on it, sir, I’m afraid the poor child may have gotten a double dose.”

“Ah.” Languidly, he finished his coffee and pushed the empty cup away. “No doubt you are right.”

Esmée felt suddenly churlish and unsporting. It wasn’t his fault he’d been born handsome and charming, and knew how to put both to good use.

Absently, he drew a card from the spread, and began to flick it adroitly back and forth between the fingers of one hand, but his eyes never left hers. Esmée searched for something constructive to say. “Thank you for the furnishings,” she blurted. “There seem to be a great many chairs. But it was terribly kind of you.”

“Kind?” he echoed, still lazily turning his card. “I rarely do anything kind for anyone, Miss Hamilton. If I do, it is either out of self-preservation, or simply to please myself.”

“I see.” His disarming honestly perplexed her. “Which was it, then?”

“To please myself,” he answered. “I wished to see the warmth kindle in your eyes again when you thanked me—as you did just now. You have fallen, Miss Hamilton, into my trap.”