A Highland Duchess (9 page)

And she didn’t think she could ever forgive herself for it.

This time she was not going to wait for them. Nor was she going to cower in this room. Instead, she would investigate, and if Ian’s entertainment was anything like Anthony’s, then she would flee this house, alone and in the darkness, if necessary.

Turning, she grabbed the latch and opened the door.

Shadows filled the corridor, and from far away came the sound of masculine laughter. This laughter was neither boisterous nor did it have a tinge of drunkenness to it. Instead, it sounded almost polite, as might a gathering before the Queen.

Slowly, she left the room, the flagstones abrasive on her bare feet. How shocking she was being. Her dress was badly wrinkled from lying on the bed most of the afternoon. She’d unbound her hair and it now fell in a mass past her shoulders. She’d removed her hoops and her corset was loose.

A lady never appeared in public without being perfectly dressed, even down to her gloves.

How idiotic that society decreed a great many rules for a woman’s behavior and comportment, and almost none to a man’s.

Yet she’d tried to obey those dictates when she could. She was to wear an endless assortment of petticoats if she did not wear her hoops. If she wore her hoops, she was not to complain about the itchiness of the tape fastenings. Her corset was to be laced at exactly the tightness required to both give her a womanly shape yet conceal that womanly shape from prying eyes. Even in the midst of summer she was to wear stockings, a most regrettable rule since even the delicate ones made at a convent in the south of France were unbearably warm—and itchy.

She was not to walk but to glide. Her breath was to come in soft, feminine pants, so as not to give the appearance of being too hearty or strong. Without a corset, a woman could breathe as well as a man, but every morning she laced her corset as prescribed. Only in the past months had she instructed Juliana to begin lacing at the third set of the eyelets and cease before the top two. In this manner, she allowed herself some freedom of movement, of breath, and relief from pain.

As a woman, she was to be meek and mild mannered. She was to defer to a man at all times, taking a man’s judgment over her own, a man’s reasoning over her own, a man’s opinion over her own. At no time was she to consider herself a man’s equal. After all, was not man created first, and woman second, from man’s rib?

If, for some reason, she was to lose all her wits and forget those lifelong lessons, then a woman’s husband was to show her where she’d erred.

Her mother had instilled those lessons in her from the time she was a child. An elderly aunt of her father’s had added her chastisement as well, rapping Emma’s knuckles with the crook of her cane when she wasn’t quick enough to obey.

For all that, she still had fond memories of Aunt Ethel, a widow for so many years she claimed not to be able to recall her husband at all.

Would she be the same? In a matter of years would someone ask her about the Duke of Herridge only for her to be confused? Would she search her memory and be unable to remember the husband she’d so hated and feared for four years?

No, memories of Anthony were forever lodged in her mind, burned into her brain by shock and horror.

The laughter was closer, and she halted behind one of the columns. From here she could see down into the courtyard, that lovely space where she’d breakfasted with Ian only this morning. Light shone behind several windows lining the courtyard, and shadows flitted against the draperies.

Her heart beat rapidly, her hands grew damp, and her feet felt encased in blocks of ice. For endless moments she stood watching and waiting, a prayer trapped in her mind. How foolish she was—God had not helped her at Chavensworth.

Perhaps she thought that if she watched the door to the courtyard, it would remain shut. The men would stay inside with their party guests. She wrapped her arms around her waist, unable to push back the fear.

The stairs were barely illuminated by a lamp in the corridor below her. She clung to the banister with a hand while she gripped her skirts with the other and took one step at a time.

At the bottom of the steps she moved across the gravel, the stones biting into her bare feet, stopping at a spot close to where she’d breakfasted that morning.

The door opened.

She stepped back, behind a tall bush. A stream of men left the room. All of them were dressed in evening wear, and most of them appeared to be smoking a cigar. The smell of tobacco, a not unpleasant scent, wafted through the air.

Ian emerged finally, dressed in a similar fashion as the others. He was handsome enough in his everyday clothes, and even more so in black and white. But some people had considered Anthony a handsome man as well. They hadn’t looked into his eyes and seen his withered soul.

Ian was intent upon shaking the hands of the men clustered around him.

“No, Sir Eustace, I will be unable to attend,” he was saying.

“A pity. You have a first-rate scientific mind.”

“Coming from you, Sir Eustace, I consider that a great compliment. Thank you.”

“Keep up the good work, my dear boy. I think you’re on to something.”

One by one the men walked to a door on the other side of the courtyard, once more entering the house. Ian and another man followed them, Ian’s hand on the man’s shoulder.

There were no women in sight. No cancan dancers or scantily clad women of society.

Several maids and two footmen entered the room the men had vacated, evidently gathering up the dishes and straightening the chamber. She heard them laughing, the kind of camaraderie that went on in well-run households.

“If I’d known you were so curious,” Ian said from behind her, “I would have invited you to dinner.”

Chapter 8

S
he turned to see Ian standing in the shadows.

He took a few steps toward her, slowly, as if not wishing to startle her.

Her heartbeat was so rapid she was faint with it.

“If you had attended, I’m afraid someone would have recognized you,” he continued. “Not to mention the fact that you would probably have been exceptionally bored.”

“Was it an exceptionally boring dinner?” she asked, feeling absurdly close to tears. Relief because he wasn’t like Anthony?

He moved out of the shadows and to her side. “Parts of it were,” he said. “But I’ve learned to take the bad with the good. Some speeches were quite illuminating. My guests are members of the Royal Society, very learned men, all in all. True, some are boors, but you find that in any group.”

“I’ve no affinity for science.”

“Do you know that for certain?” he asked. “Or are you only saying that because you’ve not been exposed to much of it?”

“I’m not even entirely certain I know what science is,” she said. Why was she always so lamentably honest with him?

“I shall have to show you one day,” he said. “Perhaps after all of this, we’ll have the opportunity.”

“A friendship between an abductor and his prisoner.”

“Perhaps,” he said, smiling.

“Brigand and scientist. What else do you do?”

“A great many things,” he said.

“Do I have your word that I will be safe here, Ian?” she suddenly asked. She hadn’t meant to ask the question but she was still conscious of the fear she’d felt earlier.

Was she always going to be just a little afraid?

He frowned at her, then just as suddenly his frown eased and a look came over his face that she couldn’t decipher.

“I give you my solemn word, Emma, that you are safe here.”

He didn’t speak or ask the reason for her question. She was more than a little embarrassed for having spied on him, as well as insisting upon his reassurance now. A man’s word was worthless if he had no honor. People in Anthony’s circle were cleaved in two: a private persona and a public one. No one was truly honorable in either guise.

She shouldn’t have considered this man who’d invaded her home, who’d abducted her, an honorable man. Yet she believed him, and strangely, trusted in his word.

“Thank you for the books,” she said.

“You’re welcome. I’m glad my sister is such a prodigious reader.”

The silence was oddly intimate, as if each held back thoughts they shouldn’t say.

“I haven’t heard from your uncle, yet,” he said. “But I’ll send a man to your house tomorrow.”

She nodded. Uncomfortable with the silence, she spoke again. “Did you give a speech tonight?”

“I did,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps that’s why parts of the dinner were so boring.”

“I should like to hear it,” she said.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I very much would,” she said. The startled look on his face, coupled with his obvious reluctance, encouraged her to insist. “Truly, I would.”

“The sun’s light reveals its track when passing through a dark room by the dust floating in the air. The same particles are invisible by candlelight,” he said.

She glanced at him in confusion, then understood. He was reciting his speech to her.

“In my research on decomposition by bacteria, I was troubled by the appearance of floating matter, and compelled to remove these atoms and dust. I wanted my experiment to have no taint of these diffuse particles.”

Two maids walked along the corridor, and he leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. His mouth was only an inch or so from her ear. She could feel his breath on her skin.

She shivered.

“I therefore constructed a box to track these atoms before the air which contained them reached my experiment.” His voice was low, the words less important than his delivery of them. He could have recited the Book of Common Prayer and made it sound like a decadent and forbidden volume.

“The box was lined with a vitreous solution.”

She heard the sound of laughter, then he moved still closer and she couldn’t pay attention to anything but him.

“As I had postulated, within a day the air coming into my experiment was devoid of these particles.”

“It sounds like an enormously interesting speech,” she said when he’d finished. In truth, she’d barely heard a word of it and understood even less.

The air around them was still, the courtyard silent. Not a leaf stirred. Not a bird sang. The servants were gone, all but two of the lamps extinguished. The two of them stood alone in the garden.

“I should leave,” she said. Why was it suddenly so difficult to breathe?

She took a cautionary step to the side, then another, but he only turned to face her, the faint light illuminating the side of his face, the curve of his smile.

“Have I given you any reason to fear me?” he asked.

“Besides entering my sitting room? Other than crawling across my roof?”

He chuckled, holding up his hands as if in surrender. “Other than that,” he said.

“Other than that. You’ve been a gentleman. A kind and generous host.”

His smile faded. Had she insulted him?

“Emma,” he said, then stopped.

She waited but he didn’t speak further. Instead, his attention was captured by something across the courtyard. A flicker of light? The movement of the branches in the gentle night wind? Or perhaps he just simply wished himself away from her. She took another step to the side, gripping her skirts with both hands.

If nothing else, she should be mindful of the sheer romance of the night, of the moonlight casting shadows onto the walkway, the scent of roses, the whisper of wind through the branches, and the far off call of a night bird.

“Your guests will be missing you,” she said a few minutes later, her eyes on the shadowed forms of the bushes and the flowers.

“I’ve plied them with spirits and tobacco,” he said. “I doubt they will miss me unless either runs out. Scientists are largely a parsimonious lot. They spend most of their money on their experiments. To be treated to a fine dinner, cigars, and brandy is a luxury.”

“Are you truly a thief?” she asked. “Is that how you’ve managed to acquire money for a fine dinner, cigars, and brandy?”

He didn’t speak for a moment.

“Shall we be relentlessly honest with one another, Emma?” he said finally. “Shall I confess to you my identity? If I do so, then I want the truth from you as well.”

The truth was an ugly thing, and this garden was too lovely to be soiled by it.

She shook her head.

“Then can we pretend, for however long we’re destined to be in one another’s company, that we are who we choose to be?”

“Who would you choose to be, Ian?”

“A scientist, a man who might be independently wealthy, with myriad responsibilities but a love of learning new things. And you? Who would you be?”

When she was a child, Cook had prepared pattern biscuits for her on special occasions or when she was ill. She would roll out a certain measure of dough, and using a wooden die, press a design into the soft dough. The biscuits were spicy, sweet, and uniform, each like the other.

During her marriage to Anthony, Emma had wanted to be like a pattern biscuit. She hadn’t wanted to be singled out, made special or unique. She simply wanted to exist, anonymous and unseen.