Claimed by the Laird (12 page)

“It is literature,” Christina said. She cleared her throat. “Literature and art.”

“That is one description for it,” Lucas said. “I begin to see what a wide education you have had, Lady Christina.”

Christina looked so ruffled and confused, as though the experience earlier, his proximity, his obvious desire for her, had completely overwhelmed her usual cool competence. Her blue gaze touched his and slid away. “I shall leave you to...ah...research in peace,” she said. “I hope you do not find it too disturbing an experience.”

“On the contrary,” Lucas said. “I—”

He stopped. Christina had bent to pick up a flower basket from the floor. Evidently before the contretemps with the book, she had been arranging the peonies that glowed a soft pink in the vase on the desk. The sun was burnishing the auburn of her hair, picking out threads of gold and copper and rich brown. It also struck the jewel-bright colors on a painting on the shelves to the left of her, a painting showing the baby Jesus clasped in his mother’s arms. It was no bigger than the size of a book and it stood in a recessed alcove, half-hidden by the books around it. Lucas felt a chill rush through his body like icy water. Very slowly he walked forward to stand in front of it.

“This is unusual,” he said. His voice was steady, surprising him.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Christina had come back down the aisle to join him. Her head was bent as she traced the line of Mary’s face with one finger. “What a serene expression she has. It looks very old and...” She paused. “I don’t remember seeing it in here before. It’s Russian, I think. I believe Papa has some other ones in his collection. He must have decided to exhibit them.”

“Where did it come from?” Lucas asked. He knew the answer; it had been Peter’s and before that their mother’s. It was an icon, a Russian religious picture. He remembered it from his childhood. He had loved it for its delicate beauty. His mother had told him it was ancient and very precious. The sunlight seemed to dance in front of his eyes, the colors blurring.

Christina was shaking her head. “I am not sure.” A shade of uncertainty entered her voice. “As I say, I believe that Papa has a number of them. He bought them when he was on his Grand Tour.”

She was frowning, and the look she gave Lucas was edged with doubt. “Why do you ask, Mr. Ross?”

“No reason,” Lucas said. “I thought it pretty, that is all.” His mind was racing. Once again the Duke of Forres was implicated in Peter’s death. Yet was so slight and frail a man really capable of murder? It seemed unlikely, if not impossible. Perhaps the duke had been the unknowing dupe of the real murderer who had sought to capitalize on his crime by selling off those items he had stolen.

He fell into step beside Christina. “I think I will bring the plans from the drawing office so that I can compare them with the designs in the book,” he said. He wanted to talk to her, to find out more about her father’s collection and about Peter’s visit to Kilmory but he did not want to keep Christina standing in the library lest it aroused her suspicions. He opened the heavy oak library door for her and stood back to let her pass.

“May I escort you anywhere?” he asked.

“Oh...” She seemed taken aback at his offer. “I was going to return my basket to the hothouses and then check on Mr. Hemmings’s gout. I know it still pains him.” She glanced up at Lucas’s face. “But there is no need to walk with me, Mr. Ross.”

“It’s no trouble,” Lucas said. “We are heading in the same direction.”

It did not look as though his answer pleased her, but short of dismissing him directly there was little she could do. Lucas knew she had been avoiding him and did not particularly want his company. She was attracted to him and she did not want to be. In her eyes he was a servant, a man younger than she was and so far beneath her socially that he barely registered on the scale at all. It was an improper attraction in so many ways and she was sensible to try to ignore it. Lucas knew that he should do the same. He was certain now that Lady Christina MacMorlan was innocent of Peter’s murder. Her response to the icon had been the same as it had to the silver clasp; she had no knowledge of their true origins. If he were not to deceive her further, if he were not to hurt her as he had promised Jack he would not, he needed to keep out of her way and continue his investigation without her involvement.

He glanced down at her. She looked very neat this morning in a prim yellow gown, her hair in a no-nonsense chignon. Yet he knew what it was like to feel the silkiness of that hair between his fingers as he kissed her. He knew the curve of her breast beneath that prim bodice and the crisp shift underneath. And he really should not be thinking such thoughts since they did nothing to ease his arousal.

Galloway was in the hall. His long face lengthened even further when he saw Lucas.

“Mr. Ross! Should you be inside the house?”

Lucas gritted his teeth but it was Christina who answered. “Papa has asked Mr. Ross to do some additional work on the plans for the grotto,” she said. “He is to be permitted to come and go as he pleases so that he may use the library.”

That was even more helpful to Lucas’s search than he had hoped. He shot her a grateful look. “Thank you, ma’am.”

They went outside and walked side by side down the uneven path toward the hothouses. Tall cedars shaded the path, but even so it was bright, the sunlight startling after the shade inside. Lucas could not focus on the day. All he could see was the tiny icon that had belonged to his brother. Unlike him, Peter had been brought up in a religious tradition all his life. He had loved the little icon and had told Lucas that it would protect him on his travels. It seemed it had failed him.

He squared his shoulders. Now, more than ever, it seemed that something had happened to Peter at Kilmory Castle. He could ask the duke directly how Peter’s icon came to be in his collection, but the danger was that if Forres really were implicated, his inquiries would do nothing other than cause suspicion. He needed to tread carefully.

He looked at Christina. She had not stopped to collect a bonnet and so his view of her face was unimpeded. She looked preoccupied, a little distant, as though she was thinking about something that troubled her.

“Wasn’t there a Russian lad met with an accident around here a few months ago?” Lucas asked. Then, catching Christina’s upward glance, “I read about it in the Edinburgh newspapers.”

He thought she relaxed very slightly. “I see,” she said. “Yes, there was a young man, scarcely more than a boy, really. He was attacked and robbed whilst out walking on the cliffs near here. It was terrible.” Her voice had softened into regret. “I felt so sorry for his tutor having to take his family such terrible news.”

“Had you met him?” Lucas said. His heart pounded as he waited for her reply.

“He dined at the castle,” Christina said. The stiffness was back in her voice, as though she did not want to talk about it. “They all did, all four of them. They were young men on a tour of Europe who had wanted to see something of the west coast because it has such a wild and romantic reputation.”

A cloud covered the sun for a moment. Lucas thought he saw her shiver.

“What was he like?” he asked.

A sudden smile lit her eyes. “Oh, he was charming! Funny and sweet and eager for the experience of travel and so young...” Her smile vanished. “It was a dreadful tragedy,” she said. “We were all very upset.” She spread her hands. “I tried to help...afterward. The tutor wanted to return to Edinburgh as quickly as possible. He was a superstitious man. I think he was afraid something might happen to another of his charges.”

“Probably afraid for his job,” Lucas said. He could only imagine what his stepfather might have done by way of retribution to the man who had failed to protect his only son and heir.

Christina slanted a look up at him. “You are a cynic, Mr. Ross.”

“On the contrary,” Lucas said. “I am a realist.”

Christina sighed. “The authorities investigated. They sent men from London but they could not find the culprits. They think he fell foul of some ruffians who make a living from highway robbery and theft. It is unusual these days, but not unheard of.” There was vivid regret in her expression. “I am only sorry he was so unlucky to fall in with such a band near Kilmory.”

To Lucas’s mind there had been nothing of bad luck about it. He wondered if robbery alone would have been sufficient motive for murder. It seemed unlikely. Peter had been rich and his possessions valuable, but there had been no need to kill him for them.

“The papers were full of the lurid details of the case,” he said. “It was a sensation.”

“Really?” Christina’s expression showed her distaste. “Well, scandal sheets will print anything if they think it will sell more copies. How unpleasant to make profit from it, when it was such a tragedy. That must have hurt his relatives even more.” She fell silent for a moment. “He spoke of his family, you know,” she said. “His father, his brother...” A frown touched her eyes. “There had been some estrangement, I believe. He was so happy to find his brother again. He hero-worshipped him, as young men are so inclined to do. I often wonder—” She hesitated. “How his brother must have felt when he heard the news.”

He felt angry, cheated, despairing...

Lucas felt an echo of that anger ripple through him. Of course she could not know of his connection to Peter, but it hurt to hear her speak of him; it felt like an open wound. It was even worse that she spoke with such compassion when it could have been the jackals in her smuggling gang who had stabbed his brother and taken the signet ring from his finger and the clothes from his back and had sold his belongings.

He cleared his throat. “You are always worrying about the feelings of others,” he said. “What makes you grieve for his brother when you do not even know him?” The words came out more harshly than he had intended, but she did not seem surprised.

“I know what it is to lose someone dear to me,” she said quietly. Her blue gaze was clouded. “My mother died when I was young. My life changed completely.” She looked away across the sweep of the park. “One is so unprepared for loss,” she said, half to herself, “and yet one’s whole future can change in an instant. I think it better not to love than to lay oneself open to that pain.”

“You have too much of a loving spirit to do that,” Lucas said roughly.

Don’t become like me,
he thought. It was too late for him—he had cut himself off from love many years before when his stepfather had cast him out. Christina was different, though. She cared too much for people to deny the love that was in her.

“I am sorry you lost your mother at a young age,” he said. “I imagine that must have been very hard for you. But it does not mean that you should never risk loving someone again.”

Something flickered in her eyes, like a door closing. Lucas had the strangest sensation that she was deliberately shutting down the memory. “I imagine you must have found it difficult, too.” Her gaze appraised him. “You mentioned that you were an orphan.”

“My mother died when I was twelve years old,” Lucas admitted. “Yes, it was hard.”

“And your father?”

“I never knew him. I was illegitimate, a bastard.”

He heard her catch her breath at the bitterness of his tone. He had not intended to show his feelings quite so openly. It was completely unfamiliar to him, uncomfortable, strange. Yet her gaze on him was steady and sure, with no pity, only compassion in it and the same understanding she had shown that night in the tower when he had admitted he was orphaned.

“It is hard for a boy to grow up fatherless,” she said. “I imagine you had to learn very quickly how to survive.”

“Yes,” Lucas said. “I begged, I stole food, I picked pockets, I was cold, always hungry. There were plenty like me in the back streets of Edinburgh.” He shrugged. “As I grew older, I got work sometimes. I didn’t want to be a thief all my life.”

“How did you come to train as a servant?” There was a spark of interest in her voice that was not feigned. “It must have been difficult to persuade anyone to give you that chance.”

“By a very roundabout route,” Lucas said truthfully. He did not want to lie to her. In fact, the urge to tell her everything was dangerously strong. He did not understand why. “We were speaking of you,” he said. “Do not think that I had not noticed that you turned the subject.”

She laughed. “Oh, I am a very dull topic.”

“I don’t believe that,” Lucas said. “I heard that after your mother died you gave up your own future to raise your younger brothers and sisters.”

Again he saw that flicker of expression in her eyes, a flash of pain, but her voice when she answered was quite steady.

“Who told you that?”

“Servants talk,” Lucas said. He was not even sure why he was pushing her on it except that it interested him. He wanted to know more about Lady Christina MacMorlan.

“Of course they do.” She sounded weary. “Well, there was not a great deal of future to give up.”

“I heard there was a betrothal,” Lucas said. “A marriage of your own.”

“It was hard for them.” She swept aside her own loss with a dismissive wave of the hand. It was as though it simply did not count—or was too painful to remember. “My little sisters were so young when mama died. And Papa... He could not cope on his own. He needed me.”

“You worked very hard to keep your family together,” Lucas said. “You still do. The whole village is your family now.” She had put everyone else first for years, he thought. She had taken the love that might otherwise have been lavished on a family of her own and had given it freely to those about her. It was generous, it was endearing, but it was also maddening that she had so little thought for her own needs and desires. He wondered what those desires had been before the Duke of Forres’s selfish whim had set them aside.

“Family is important.” She spoke simply. “People are important. We all need to belong.”

“I don’t agree,” Lucas said. He thought of the Black Strath, the estate his father had left him, another place where he did not belong. “I have no real home,” he said, “or family, and I am happy enough.”