The Tiger Prince (31 page)

Jane had witnessed the harshness of those winters for the past three years and felt the same apprehension as Margaret. “Perhaps he will change his mind.”

“He hasn’t changed it in three months. He keeps talking about Glenclaren and what he has to do this winter. He will die here.”

“Keep at him,” Jane said. “He was so excited about-the plans for the new dam.”

“A man needs to feel a sense of worth. I knew it was the only way to get him to come alive again.” Margaret grimaced. “But after telling him for three years that Glenclaren can’t get along without him, how do I convince him he should go off and bask in the sun?”

“Is that why you sent for me? I’ve already told him the mill is doing well. It’s practically running itself now.” Jane frowned anxiously. “But I suppose I could talk to him again.”

“He won’t listen to you either. It’s just as well I saw this coming and took measures.”

“What measures?”

“Ruel.”

Jane stopped in midmotion on the steps.

Margaret cast her a shrewd glance. “You’ve gone pale as the flour in the bins at your precious mill. Does even the thought of him jar you?”

Jane resumed going down the stairs. “Of course not. If I seem pale, it must be because the hall is dim and the light is fading.”

“It’s only midafternoon and the light is strong.”

“Why should it bother me if you talk of Ruel?”

“For the same reason you haven’t mentioned the scamp’s name since the first day you arrived here.” Margaret wearily shook her head. “It’s none of my concern how Ruel has managed to alienate you. I’m aware he has
a splendid facility in that direction. If you don’t wish to tell me, I can—”

“I do not speak of it because it’s not important,” Jane interrupted. “It’s all in the past.”

“The past sometimes has a bearing on the future.” Margaret took her blue wool shawl from the clothes tree beside the door and wrapped it around her shoulders. “That’s why I thought I should give you warning.”

“That you’ve written to Ruel about Ian?”

Margaret shook her head. “I wrote to Ruel three months ago when Ian first refused to winter in Madrid. I received word this morning from Edinburgh that Ruel should arrive in Glenclaren tomorrow.”

Shock took Jane’s breath. “He’s coming here?”

“I knew I couldn’t pry Ian away on my own this time and Ruel’s always managed to get his way with him.”

Ruel always managed to get his way with everyone, Jane thought. “What about Cinnidar?”

“Ruel’s character must have improved considerably since I last saw him. It appears he thinks his brother’s life is more important than digging gold.” Margaret opened the front door. “So you must put aside any quarrel you may have with Ruel until he manages to persuade Ian he must go to Spain. After that, you may flay him as you see fit.”

“Thank you.” Jane forced a smile. “But I doubt if I’ll see much of him while he’s here. Li Sung and I will be too busy at the mill to come to the castle.”

“I thought you said the mill was running itself?” Then Margaret shrugged. “Very well, if you wish to hide at the mill, I have no objection.”

“I’m not hiding. I’m merely—”

“Avoiding him.” Margaret stopped beside the hitching rail where Bedelia was tied. “I doubt he will let you. He inquires very pointedly about your doings in every letter.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “You never told me.”

“There was no need to discuss him if you did not wish it. However, he had a right to ask questions about Glenclaren and its inhabitants, since he was paying the
piper.” She glanced around the newly paved courtyard and then to the repaired and rebuilt outbuildings. “And he’s paid him very well, indeed. The money he’s been sending has kept Glenclaren alive and thriving and that means Ian has thrived.” She turned back to Jane. “You’re going back to the mill now?”

“Unless you wish me to stay.”

“Why should you stay? I know you have no liking for the castle. It was no surprise to me when you moved to that cottage near the mill.”

“If you’d needed me, I wouldn’t have gone.”

“I did not need you.” Margaret smiled faintly. “But I miss you. Why do you look so surprised? We are friends, are we not?”

“Yes.” But Margaret had never said those words before, and it indicated how disturbed she was that she uttered them now. They had formed a strong bond in their efforts to save Ian and Glenclaren, but Margaret guarded her core of privacy as rigidly as Jane did her own and would allow no one too close. Perhaps she should have stayed at the castle and tried to make Margaret’s lot easier. Margaret was so strong, Jane sometimes forgot what tremendous problems the other woman had to overcome. It was she, not Ian, who was the guiding force behind everything that happened at Glenclaren, but she never let her husband see it. She had nursed Ian, bullied him, and by sheer force of will gotten him to the point where he could sit up in bed and, infrequently, in his chair. Two years before she had sent for the vicar and insisted the wedding take place. “I’ll come back to the castle if you like.”

“Don’t be foolish. You have your duties and I have mine. We would scarce see each other if you were here.” Margaret started across the courtyard.

“Where are you going?”

“Kartauk.” Margaret’s lips set grimly. “It’s not enough I must deal with Ian’s stubbornness, now I’m forced to try to curb the rutting of that bull of a goldsmith.”

Jane smothered a smile. “Again?”

“You did me no favor when you brought him to Glenclaren. Ellen MacTavish came weeping and wailing to me yesterday morning because Kartauk had taken advantage of her innocence.”

“That’s a serious charge.”

“And a false one. She spreads her legs for every lad in the glen.” Margaret frowned. “But that’s neither here nor there. It’s the third time in two months I’ve had to deal with his philanderings. Does he think I have nothing better to do than listen to that drivel from his leamans?” She clutched her shawl closer about her. “The dratted man needs to be told a few things.” Her stride lengthened as she hurried toward the stable.

Jane’s smile faded as Margaret disappeared into Kartauk’s workroom. She noticed her hands were trembling on the reins as she mounted Bedelia.

She kicked Bedelia into a trot as she left the courtyard but impulsively turned south instead of north toward the mill as she had originally intended.

A short time later she stood on the hill looking down at the ruin of Annie Cameron’s cottage. She had gone there only once before, and that had been during the first month she had come to Glenclaren. At the time she had told herself she had been drawn only by curiosity, but she had known it had been a desperate attempt to exorcise Margaret’s haunting words about Ruel and his mother. She had known she had to harden her heart if she was to forget him. She had thought if she saw these ruins she would realize the child who lay alone and abandoned all night in this cottage dying of snakebite was not the Ruel she knew. The hour she had spent here had been both painful and unsuccessful. The memory of that boy still lingered in this glen.

Which was why she had come here today, she realized. There was nothing to fear in that child. He had been vulnerable to pain and had not yet formed the tough determination of the Ruel of Kasanpore. She needed to remember Ruel was very human and could be vanquished. She needed to reassure herself there was nothing to fear.

Not that she was really afraid, she thought quickly. She had merely been shocked by the news Ruel was coming. She could not still love him. She had worked hard to extinguish any lingering embers of that passion she had thought would last forever. Surely her discomposure was a natural reaction when she had not seen Ruel since that last intimidating glimpse at the dock.

How did she know he still felt any bitterness toward her? The separation had made them strangers. He could have changed, softened over the years. He would be eager to get back to his Cinnidar and, if she was fortunate, she might not even see him during his stay at Glenclaren. He might not seek her out.

She closed her eyes and muttered a prayer.

Dear God, let him not seek her out.

“Merciful heavens, this place smells.” Margaret wrinkled her nose as she stepped inside the door of Kartauk’s workroom. “Dung has a better odor than that foul mixture you use to fire your furnace.”

Kartauk grinned at her over his shoulder. “That’s because dung is a primary ingredient. It’s cheap fuel.” He swung open the door of the furnace and slid a tray containing a clay form into the oven. “Which should please your miserly soul, madam.”

“Well, this odor does not please me.” She strode forward to stand before him. “So I will have my say and be gone.”

“Not if you wish me to listen. I must position this tray just right in the furnace.” He jerked his head toward the high stool across the room. “Sit down.”

“But I have no time to—” She stopped as she realized, as usual, he was paying no attention to her. He never did when absorbed in his blasted work. She sat down on the stool he had indicated and hooked her heels on the rungs. She had been right to come. She was already experiencing an infinitesimal easing of tension as she settled into the familiar pattern they had woven between
them.
“You
have no comfort here. You should spare a day from your dabbles to fashion a chair or two.” “It’s good enough for me.”

“A blanket on a haystack would be good enough for you. What about Li Sung?”

“He only sleeps here now that the mill is running.” He cast her a glance. “You’re the only one who complains of lack of comfort. If it offends you, why don’t you bring over some of your fine furnishings from the castle?”

“So that you can ruin them with your carelessness?”

“I’m not careless about the things that are important to me.”

She could not argue with him on that score. In all the details pertaining to his work he was fanatically scrupulous and painstaking. She had watched him spend two hours positioning one of his figures in the furnace. “It would be better for all of us if something besides those dratted dabbles mattered to you.”

He did not glance up. “Have you come to give me a tongue-lashing? What transgression have I committed now?”

“If you’d stop and pay attention for a moment, I would tell you,” she said tardy.

“Presently. You may get yourself a cup of coffee if you like.”

“And curdle my belly with your vile brew?” She got down from the stool and moved toward the stove. “I suppose I have no choice, if you persist in keeping me waiting.”

“No choice at all.”

She poured coffee into a cracked but spotlessly clean cup. She had discovered it was one of Kartauk’s idiosyncracies that, though shambles might exist around him, everything he touched or used must be gleaming with cleanliness. She stared curiously at the clay bust on the worktable by the furnace; it was in the first stages, the features unrecognizable. “What are you working on this time?”

“Li Sung. I started it this morning.”

She strolled back to her stool and sat down again. “I would have thought you’d have done him before this.”

“Not while he could see me working on it. There’s too much pain in Li Sung. Pain and pride. He believes no one can see his torment and it would disturb him to know that is false.” He glanced at her. “Sometimes it is best to hide knowledge when it hurts too much.”

She met his gaze and saw wisdom, cynicism … and understanding. Too much understanding. She pulled her stare away with an effort. “On occasion you actually display good sound Christian feelings. I wish you’d be as sensitive toward females.”

He went still. “You have never asked me for sensitivity before. I didn’t think you required it.”

“I don’t,” she said quickly. “I was not speaking of myself.”

He relaxed. “Thank God. For a moment I thought I had read you wrong. What a humiliation that would have been.”

“Ellen MacTavish.”

He smiled. “A lusty maid. She brought me great pleasure.”

“More than you brought her. She came running to me wailing you had stolen her virginity.”

His smile faded. “Not true. A man has his needs, but I have no traffic with women who lack experience in the joust. Jock assured me she was—”

“Jock? Now you have Ian’s servants procuring your harlots?”

“A man has his needs,” Kartauk repeated. He sat down on the stool before the worktable. “Is Ellen MacTavish to be the subject of your harping?”

“And Deidre Cameron
and
Martha Belmar.”

“Good God, Scottish women are garrulous. They all came to you?”

“I’m the laird’s wife. It’s the custom for the women of the glen to come to the castle if there’s trouble.”

“I brought them pleasure, not trouble, and I made no promise of marriage to any woman. Did they say I had?”

“No.” Margaret frowned in distaste. “They were mewing like cats in heat because you had not come back to them.”

Kartauk’s laughter boomed out. “It would not have been fair.” He tapped his massive chest with his fist. “To be struck once by the divine lightning is a blessing, more than that would have made them forever dissatisfied with other men.”

She closed her eyes. “Sweet Mary, what an arrogant coxcomb you are. I do not know how I can bear to be in the same room with you.”

“Because you need me.”

“Need?” Her lids flew open. “I don’t need anyone. Certainly not an impudent braggart who believes all women are useless if not in bed or posing for one of your infernal statues.”

“Not totally useless. I tolerate you who refuse to pose for me and give me neither pleasure nor—”

“
Tolerate
me.” She stood up, glaring at him. “It’s I who tolerate
you.
You occupy this stable, which we now need for horses and livestock, and give neither aid nor—”

“You’re right.”

“What?”

He smiled gently. “I’m a selfish scoundrel who causes you nothing but grief.”

“You certainly are.” She gazed at him suspiciously. “Why are you being so agreeable?”

“Perhaps I am lonely and do not wish you to leave. Sit down and finish your coffee.”

“You, lonely?” She slowly sat back down on the stool. “You’re never lonely.”