A Highland Duchess (30 page)

“I think that’s exactly why he came, to show her off.”

“The poor thing,” Patricia said.

Not exactly the description he would give the former Duchess of Herridge but he didn’t illuminate his sister either to Emma’s nature or his feelings for her.

“Where are they?”

“He’s very ill,” Ian said.

That comment drew her up short.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He decided to give her the brief version. “Bryce became ill on the journey here,” he said. “I’ve put him in the sickroom. Dr. Carrick is treating him.”

She glanced at Fergus. “Is it something that we should be concerned about, Ian?” she asked.

Evidently, the brief version wasn’t going to be satisfactory.

“He was poisoned,” he said. “Arsenic.”

She returned to Fergus’s side. Her husband wrapped one arm around her shoulders but Patricia didn’t seem to notice.

“Poisoned? By whom?”

“We haven’t been able to determine that. Bryce hasn’t awakened yet.”

“Do you think he will?”

He gave her the truth. Patricia would ferret it out anyway. “I don’t know. Dr. Carrick doesn’t know. He’s survived this long, which is a good sign.”

“Where is his wife? Is she with him?”

Before he could answer Patricia’s questions, she began to walk toward the sickroom.

He exchanged a glance with Fergus. Once Patricia was in the mood to do something, little stopped her.

“She’s not there,” he called out.

She halted so suddenly that her skirts swung around her as she turned.

“Where is she?”

“She was up tending to Bryce all night, Patricia. She’s gone for a well-deserved rest.”

She advanced on him, and once again he exchanged a glance with Fergus. What had he revealed? Something important, or Patricia wouldn’t be looking at him with that calculating gleam in her eye.

“You can meet her later,” he said.

“Tell me about her.”

Now
that
he was not going to do. He saw Mrs. Jenkins lingering in the hall, and summoned her to his side.

As the two women greeted each other, he took the opportunity to slip away, retreating to his laboratory. He was only postponing the inevitable. Patricia would find a way to assuage her curiosity, one way or another.

Perhaps he should warn Emma.

E
mma sat on the edge of the bed. Although she was tired, so tired that she felt empty inside and incapable of speech, sleep felt as far away as a distant country.

Juliana hadn’t been in her room when she’d entered it. Nor had her trunk been unpacked. Rather than summoning the girl, Emma simply opened her trunk, withdrew a nightgown, and undressed herself.

She wasn’t up to dealing with Juliana at the moment. She wasn’t up to dealing with anyone else, either, especially Ian McNair.

Emma pressed her hands against the edge of the mattress, staring at her bare feet.

For the four years of her marriage, she’d held onto a sense of decency. Even if propriety had only been a façade, she’d clung to it in desperation. Yet here she was, of her own accord, admitting to wanting to be immoral.

The fact that her union was legal and binding dictated that she act in certain ways, despite what she wished or felt or wanted.

She needed her sleep. But for the first time in a very long time, she lay back on the bed, her hands folded atop her stomach, and wished for dreams. Let her recall that day in London. Let her remember those hours in Ian’s arms. Let her body feel that passion, that fevered longing, once again. Let her feel all of that desire, if only in her sleep.

D
inner that night was a boisterous affair, with Patricia and Fergus relaying tales of their recent travels. Despite the company, and the conviviality, Ian found himself irritated. The cause wasn’t hard to determine—Emma was not at the table.

He directed his attention toward his fiancée. Rebecca’s cheerfulness had never been grating before, and he knew quite well why it annoyed him right at the moment. Because a woman with calm, assessing blue eyes was not seated across from him. A woman whose expression was more often solemn than happy, whose smiles were so rare that he ached to coax them from her.

Rebecca was of such an amiable disposition that she rarely frowned. There was nothing mysterious about her past, nothing that she wished to keep hidden. She was just as she appeared, a doctor’s daughter excited about her future, planning on becoming a countess, and overjoyed at the prospect.

At the moment, she was looking at his sister fondly. Did Rebecca think that their marriage would be as warm and loving as Patricia’s?

He should warn her now, pull her aside and tell her, in words that would no doubt be hurtful, that he couldn’t demonstrate that same type of feeling toward her. He didn’t have it in him. He didn’t possess the capacity for such emotions any longer.

They’d been stripped from him by a certain woman with soft blue eyes.

He forced his mind away from those thoughts and concentrated on his dinner. Because Patricia was a particular favorite of the staff, most of the people employed at Lochlaven had appeared in various guises during this dinner.

Duties that would normally be performed by a footman in London were easily done by young women at Lochlaven. As one of Cook’s helpers began to serve the courses, another decanted a bottle of wine, pouring each glass half full.

He stopped her when she came to his side, took the bottle and inspected it. Something niggled at him. Something he’d forgotten or not noticed.

Ian stood and pushed back his chair, glancing at the four of them. Albert was concentrating on his dinner. Patricia and Fergus were speaking in low tones to each other. Rebecca looked up at him in surprise.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “There’s something I must do.”

“Now, Ian?” Rebecca asked.

“Most assuredly now,” he said.

He entered his laboratory, went to the rubbish bin and carefully picked up the three wine bottles he’d discarded. He hadn’t been paying attention at the time, but one of the bottles was different, the slope of its shoulder not as pronounced, and the punt deeper. Two of the wine bottles were the same.

He knocked on Mrs. Jenkins’s door, apologizing for the intrusion when she answered a moment later.

“You’re never an intrusion, Your Lordship,” she said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“My cousin brought a case of wine with him. Do you know where it is now?”

She thought for a moment. “I believe all his belongings were taken to his room. The one that he’s always used,” she added. “Would you like me to see?”

“It’s not necessary,” he said. “I’ll check myself.”

“If you’re certain, Your Lordship,” Mrs. Jenkins said.

He smiled his thanks and left her, taking the stairs to the third floor. Bryce’s room was across the hall from his own suite.

What had Bryce done to get himself poisoned? Ian suspected it had its roots in London.

He opened the door to Bryce’s room, to find two trunks and a crate stacked in the corner. He rang for a maid and when she arrived instructed her to have one of the stable lads carry the crate to his laboratory.

He should have examined the crate before. Maybe it wasn’t a suitor, an admirer of Emma’s, after all. Maybe the answer to who had poisoned Bryce was closer to home.

Chapter 26

T
hank God Emma didn’t care for wine.

Ian couldn’t help but wonder if her avoidance of spirits had something to do with having been the Duchess of Herridge. No doubt she’d witnessed the effect of alcohol on others, and didn’t wish to experience the same lowering of inhibitions in herself.

Except with him.

He pushed that thought away and motioned to the young man to place the crate on the table next to his microscope. The lid of the crate had been opened, then carelessly fastened again.

Ian opened each full wine bottle in order of its placement in the crate. When each bottle had been tested, he discovered exactly what he’d suspected. None of the other bottles in the crate contained arsenic, which meant that the contaminated bottle was one of the three. Which one?

He glanced at the mantel clock. Hours had passed since he left the dining room, and thankfully, everyone had left him alone. At the moment, however, he needed to see Emma.

After leaving the laboratory, he strode toward the sickroom. When he saw Glenna there, sitting in the glow of the lamp and evidently comfortable with her knitting, he only smiled in greeting, then glanced at Bryce.

“How is he?”

“He stirred a little while ago, Your Lordship,” she said. “I think, in a few days, he’ll come out of it completely.”

“Good,” he said, nodding. “Good.”

Without another word, he left the sickroom, heading for the foyer of Lochlaven and the grand stairs that led him to the upper floors.

He walked to the door of the room she’d been given, hesitating only slightly before rapping on the door with his knuckles. She was probably still asleep, and he had no right to disturb her.

If she didn’t answer his first knock, he’d simply wait until morning. But just as he was beginning to turn away, she opened the door.

Her coloring was somewhat better but she still looked tired.

She held onto the edge of the door, and in the space, he could see that she was dressed for night in a filmy gown of black. Her widow’s nightgown.

He resolutely kept his gaze on her face, congratulating himself on his resolve.

He braced his hands on either side of the door, leaning toward her. “Would your maid have any reason to want to kill Bryce?”

Confusion shadowed her face.

“Juliana? Why do you ask?”

“Because Bryce drank three bottles of wine. One of them was poisoned. The other bottles in the crate weren’t poisoned.”

Her eyes widened. “None of the other bottles?”

When he shook his head, she folded her arms in front of her, her gaze on the floor.

“The chances are that Juliana poisoned the wine she bought in Inverness. Were you with her the whole time?’

She shook her head. “I was with Bryce,” she said. “I’d sent her off to get food for the journey.”

“So she would have had the opportunity,” he said.

A moment later she looked up at him. “If you’re going to see her, I’m coming with you.”

He waited in the hallway while she dressed. When she joined him, Emma was attired in Rebecca’s blue dress.

“We must see about a seamstress for you,” he said.

She glanced quickly at him and then ahead. “I hope not to be here that long,” she said. Abruptly, she halted and looked at him. “I do apologize for the bluntness of my comment. It’s just that, for a variety of reasons, it would be better if we continue our journey as soon as Bryce has recovered.”

“To where?”

Instead of answering him, she only shook her head.

“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you wish,” he heard himself saying, the exact opposite of what he should have said. He should have bid her on her way, done anything in his power to ensure that she and his cousin were soon gone. Instead, he’d issued an invitation.

“This is Bryce’s home,” he said. “The only one he’s known.”

She halted again, and in deference to the hour, whispered the question. “If this is his only home, and you are his only family, then why does he seem to have such antipathy for you?”

“Does he?”

He continued walking, simply because it was easier to be about his errand than to answer her question.

She caught up with him soon enough.

“I would not have expected you, of all people, to avoid answering a difficult question.”

“Why am I any different than anyone else?”

“Because you are.”

They were at the stairs now, and instead of taking them, he turned to face her.

She looked up at him, her face cast into shadow. The scent she used wafted up from her body, warm and seductive, urging him to recall those hours when she was in his bed. He wanted, almost desperately, to kiss her, to grab her hand and pull her down the stairs and into his suite. He’d bar the door to everyone, say to hell with every virtue he’d learned. If it didn’t concern Emma, he didn’t care.

Instead, he remained where he was and gave her a version of the truth, not about his need but about his past. “From the moment Bryce came to Lochlaven,” he said, “he resented us. We were prepared, Patricia and I, to consider him our brother. He didn’t want to be part of our family. Why?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it was because he disliked feeling like a poor relation, even though none of us ever said anything to him about his parents. I can’t give you an answer. Dealing with scientific principles is one thing, Emma. Dealing with people quite another.”

“Thank you,” she said to his surprise. “For your honesty. For answering me.”