The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae (37 page)

Angelica nodded. “I will. Regardless, now I know about him, I'll make sure he sees nothing but the crushed violet.”

Settling beside her, he drew her into his arms. “I'm not that fond of your crushed violet. She's . . . irritating.” He kissed her chin. “Weak.”

She brushed her lips over his. “Helpless?”

“That, too.”

“Just as well, then, that all you'll ever get is the real me.”

“Promise?”

She smiled into his eyes. “Let me show you.”

Inwardly smiling, he lay back and did.

A
sense of being watched drew Angelica from the pleasured oblivion Dominic had left her to wallow in. He'd filled her early morning with a delicious bout of lovemaking, then had risen and gone about his lairdly duties, leaving her boneless in his bed; as Mirabelle was such a late riser, there had seemed little reason to cut short her pleasured peace.

Except . . . the odd sensation dragged at her mind, insistently rousing her.

She was lying on her back, the covers over her shoulders. To convince herself that there was no one there, she raised her lids a fraction—and saw two familiar faces solemnly studying her.

Blinking, she stared at them, then struggled up to her elbows. “Ah . . . good morning.”

“Good morning,” they politely chorused back.

“You don't have a swollen neck,” Gavin informed her.

“So we thought it must be all right to come and talk to you now,” Bryce said.

It took a moment to realize they'd been told about mumps. “Ah . . . yes.” She was naked beneath the sheets. Holding the covers to her, she wriggled up so she could lean against the pillows. With a wave, she invited the boys to avail themselves of the foot of the bed; they eagerly scrambled up. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Who are you?”

“Where are you from?”

“Why are you here?”

“And why are you sleeping in Dominic's bed?”

She studied their small faces, saw the budding intelligence and native shrewdness. Decided that her wisest course would be to adhere to her usual tack of starting as she meant to go on. “To answer the last question first, I'm sleeping in Dominic's bed because he and I are going to get married—we've already decided, but it's a secret for the moment—and this bed is where his wife, his countess, should sleep.”

Slowly, Gavin nodded, hesitated, then asked, “If you'll be Dominic's wife, will that make you our mam?”

Danger, danger . . . she searched their faces; as with their older cousin, she could read little in the planes, unformed though they were, but their eyes . . . the soft blue was more revealing, showing a longing that made her heart weep. She recalled they'd been babes when their mother had died; they wouldn't remember her. “If you want me to be, then I will be—but only if you want me as your mam. If you don't, I'll just be Angelica, your friend.”

That was the right answer; their eyes widened, hope glowing.

“But,” she said, “we'll need to keep that a secret, too, until Dominic and I get married. All right?”

They both nodded solemnly. Then Bryce asked, “Will we be allowed to be at the wedding?”

“Absolutely. I promise. In fact, I swear I'll refuse to say I do unless you're there.”

They smiled hugely and bounced on the bed. “So,” Gavin said, “tell us the rest. The answers to our other questions.”

She thought back, nodded. “All right. But I need to get dressed.” Her clothes were where she'd left them, neatly laid over a stool, but being a male, Dominic had no screen behind which she could retreat. She pointed to the uncurtained window, the one opposite Mirabelle's tower. “I want you to go to the window and look out, and not turn around until I say. It's called giving me privacy.”

They immediately scrambled from the bed and raced each other to the window. Once they were in place, she slid from the bed and grabbed her chemise. “Now, as to where I come from . . .” While she climbed into her clothes, she answered their questions, those they'd voiced earlier, and the others her answers inevitably spawned.

When she was fully clothed, she called them, then sat on the bed so when they halted before her, her face was level with theirs. “Now, this is important.” Reaching out, she grasped a hand from each boy. “You love Dominic, and I do, too. I'm here to help him take care of the clan, and I'm sure both of you will do whatever you can to help him do the same.”

Both solemnly nodded. “What can we do?” Gavin asked.

“This is the hard bit—the best way you can help him at this time is to do what he asks you to without question or grumbling.” She looked into their faces, met their eyes. “I'm not ill, but he wants you to, just for the next few days, keep your distance from both me and him, at least while we're inside the keep. Inside your tower, in your rooms, there's no difficulty, but otherwise within the keep, it will make it easier for him and me to do what we have to if you both play least in sight.” She searched their eyes. “All right?”

They glanced at each other, then Gavin asked, “Just for a few days?”

She nodded. “It'll all be over soon.” It had to be.

“All right,” they chorused.

After another brief exchange of looks, Bryce gripped her hand and jiggled it. “Can we go for a walk all together? Outside the castle, I mean?”

She smiled and rose. “I can't promise, but I'll see what I can do.”

O
n receiving the expected summons to attend Mirabelle in her sitting room, Angelica allowed Brenda to escort her thither, her tack for the day clear in her mind. Mirabelle again instructed her to sit on the straight-backed chair facing Mirabelle's comfy armchair; knowing the position was deliberately designed to demean her, even deep in her crushed violet role, Angelica still felt a spurt of temper. The instant she sat, clinging outwardly to her role, she launched into her prepared monologue, illustrating that the crushed violet had accepted her lot to the extent of contemplating how to make her way as a “ruined lady.”

In between wheedling, imploring, and begging Mirabelle to help her escape, tossing out vague mentions of family gratitude—none of which, perhaps unsurprisingly, garnered any response—she subtly and consistently underscored her belief in her own ruination; every request, every suggestion of making a new life was firmly predicated on the assumption that she was already irrevocably ruined, and, in polite terms, beyond the pale.

“Perhaps in Edinburgh? I have a good eye for fashion and can sew—perhaps I'll be able to find a place with a modiste there?” She fixed weary, helpless eyes on Mirabelle. “Are there fashionable modistes in Edinburgh?”

Finally able to get a word in, Mirabelle snapped, “I have absolutely no interest in what you do with the rest of your life. What I want to hear from you is . . .”

The catalog of her questions was as well thought out and significantly more extensive than Angelica's preparations. Stuck with the inevitable, she answered Mirabelle's queries about the Cynsters' connections, the other major ton families, the wider nobility presently in London, the patronesses of Almack's . . . it finally dawned that the questions revolved about all the ton luminaries with whom the Cynsters rubbed shoulders.

Angelica found that a touch unsettling. She countered by embellishing her answers with breathless speculation of how those named would react on learning of her ruination, how shocked they'd be, how horrified . . . only to see Mirabelle's vindictive avidity reach new heights.

Of course—that's what she hopes will happen.

The longer they spoke, the clearer it became that Mirabelle took real pleasure, nay
joy,
in imagining the ramifications of Angelica's—Celia's daughter's—social ruination.

Finally the gong for luncheon sounded; Angelica couldn't wait to leave the room and the blackness that surged within it.

But over luncheon, Mirabelle continued to cast sly, expectant glances at her, continued to ply her with leading questions, no longer about individuals but about the wider ton's likely reaction to such a sensational case of a young lady of good family being ruined.

Dominic growled and put a stop to the interrogation.

Mirabelle got huffy and declared that she'd heard enough from “the little twit” anyway.

“Does that mean you're prepared to hand over the goblet?”

“Not yet. I have to digest what she's told me . . . but soon.” Her gaze distant, her expression coldly pleased, Mirabelle nodded. “Soon, very soon, I'll have gained all the revenge I want.” She glanced at Dominic. “And
then
you may have your precious goblet back.”

Pushing back her chair, she rose and swept from the hall.

Dominic watched her go, then murmured, “Do you have any idea what she's thinking?”

Eyes on her plate, Angelica replied, “I haven't a single clue.”

“I
s it my imagination, or is she waiting for something specific?” Dominic paced back and forth along the crenellated wall at the top of the keep.

He'd let Brenda escort Angelica back to the store room, then had gone down the secret stair, led her up to his rooms, and from there up the main stairs to the top of his tower, to where the air was fresh and they could speak freely.

Perched on a buttress nearby, with Gwarr, who'd followed Dominic from the hall, slumped beneath her feet, Angelica shook her head. “I didn't get that feeling, at least not while talking to her in her sitting room. As for her later comments, she seems to think she'll come to a decision—the right decision for us—soon.”

“So she intimates, but I'm not about to believe I'll have the goblet back until I have it in my hands.” Halting before Angelica, he looked into her upturned face. “What did you and she talk about this morning?”

She told him, ending with, “Looking back, she seems to have accepted my ruination as fact—she didn't appear to doubt or question that. Her focus today was on the outcome of my ruination. Yesterday's gloating had transformed to something more like glee—and yes, it's an anticipatory glee, but it didn't seem to be contingent on any other happening. She wanted to dwell on the result as she imagines it will be.”

Reading her expression, the distaste conveyed by the set of her lips, he guessed, “She wanted to dwell on the pain you being publicly ruined would cause your mother.”

She met his eyes, then sighed and nodded. “Yes. It was . . . more disturbing than I'd thought it would be, listening to her, knowing what she was taking such delight in.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault. If any fault could be laid, it would be at your father's door, but even then his obsession was innocent in itself. It's what Mirabelle has twisted it into that's so black and awful.”

He hesitated, then asked, “Do you want to call a halt?”

“No.” She looked up at him, determination and stubbornness infusing her features. “I'm not such a weak creature that confronting a little nastiness will make me cut and run. There's far too much at stake, and never doubt that in this, I'm now as committed as you.”

He looked into her eyes, now flashing gold more than green, and smiled. Reaching for her face, he tipped it up and kissed her.

She kissed him back, one hand rising to cradle the back of one of his. He straightened and, wrapping one arm around her, drew her off the buttress and into his arms.

She sank against him; he angled his head and deepened the kiss, accepting the invitation that she, with her lips and tongue and the caress of her small hands, laid before him.

Beside them, Gwarr stirred.

Then the big dog barked.

They broke off the kiss. Both stared at Gwarr. He was on his feet facing the door they'd used to reach the battlements—the one at the top of the main east tower stairwell that gave access to Dominic's rooms.

A low growl reverberated in the dog's chest.

“Quick—behind the buttress.” Dominic urged Angelica into the lee of the stone abutment.

She crouched down, out of sight of the stairwell door.

Gwarr barked again. She heard Dominic stride toward the door. Then he asked, “What is it?”

“I wanted to speak with you,” Mirabelle said. “I looked in your study, then felt the breeze from up here.”

“Let's go back to the study—we can talk there.” A second passed. “Gwarr. Come!”

The dog had stayed as he'd been, on guard between Angelica and the door. He whined, but then went.

Angelica waited a few seconds, then peeked out from behind the buttress—just in time to see Dominic send Gwarr down the stairs and pull the door closed.

Exhaling, she rose. She couldn't risk going down the stairs, not until she knew Mirabelle had left the east tower; Dominic would come and fetch her when it was safe.

Strolling to the wall, she decided she might as well enjoy the enforced interlude. Leaning on the stone, she looked out over the rippling waters of the loch, over the green spires of the forests to the wild mountains beyond, and let her senses spread, drinking in the scents, the sounds, and the abiding peace of the place she intended, from now until forever, to call her home.

“I
s that all you wanted?” Standing before the desk in his study, Dominic laid aside his mother's latest dressmaker's bill. Although her allowance was generous by anyone's standards, she invariably outran the constable and had to apply to him to bail her out.

Despite the fact she never attended balls, never went anywhere, every year she ordered the most expensive of the latest fashions and threw out the previous year's acquisitions unused. He'd long ago stopped caring; the women of the clan enjoyed the lovely blouses and skirts the castle's sempstresses fashioned from Mirabelle's castoffs.

“Yes, that's all.” Mirabelle turned to leave.