Mad for Love (24 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Essex
A fine coloring heat crept up Strathcairn’s neck to his jawline. It lessened that impression of Grampian granite nicely.
He shook his head, but smiled nonetheless. “You think me foolish.”
“I think whoever complained of their missing baubles is foolish, when they are likely only victims of their own excess—how
can
they be expected to keep track of so many possessions?”
He looked at her then—really looked, as if he finally saw more of her than the ghost of her pigtailed past. “You’ve a remarkably jaundiced view of society for a lass your age.”
She was more than jaundiced. She was nearly lock-jawed with disdain. “I have a realistic understanding of human nature, Strathcairn. I think people are forgetful, and don’t want to appear foolish, so they bluster and blame others for their own mistakes. And it is easy enough to blame the powerless”—she nodded toward the servants, who were most often the first to be accused when anything went amiss—“from the safe position of privilege.”
“I take your meaning, lass.” He acknowledged the right of her argument with a nod. “Nevertheless, it is my duty to look into the matter, to determine if it is indeed only a case—or cases—of forgetfulness.”
“Then I should advise you to start with our hostess, and ask her what she does with all the flotsam and jetsam her guests leave behind after her balls.” Because not even Quince, terrible magpie that she was, could take everything that was available—her bodice could only hold so much. “Perhaps she has the footmen cart it all up, and take it to the poor box at Canongate Kirk where they’ll get better use of it.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth she wished them back. She’d let her tongue run away from her mind, and run far too close to the truth for comfort.
And her suggestion brought Strathcairn’s perilously attentive green gaze back to her. “What an agile mind you have, Lady Quince.” And then for no reason she could fathom, he smiled at her—that gorgeous, gleaming grin she remembered of old. That mischievous, sideways curve of lip that made her feel as if she were being blessedly bludgeoned over the head with a five-penny slab of butter.
Quince nearly had to pinch herself to call her wits back under starter’s orders. “Oh, pish tosh. Practical is what my mind is.”
His smile settled back down to the corner of those sharp eyes. “Perhaps, but you’ve given me an idea—perhaps what I’m looking for is not a hardened criminal, but someone with the dowagers’s vice.”
Nay, nay, nay.
Clever, too clear-eyed man.
She had to divert him with something equally clever. “Carrying a vinaigrette is a vice? What do you imagine the ladies keep in there? Undiluted opium?”
Strathcairn shook his head, but he was amused enough to still smile. “The dowager’s vice is the irresistible tendency toward theft. That is, the compulsive stealing of objects which are not rightfully theirs. It is commonly practiced by maiden aunties and elderly companions. And dowagers, of course. Hence the name.”
Oh, by jimble. That sounded far too apt.
And the skeptical Scot in him had taken over—he was frowning at the row of seats at the far side of the ballroom where the older ladies, including some rather impecunious relations and companions, sat with their heads together in a comfortable coze. “They look perfectly harmless, but one never knows what might be hidden in their reticules, or tucked into their bodices.”
Heat blossomed in that very place where Strathcairn’s purloined buttons dug into her skin. Oh, he was clever.
But so was she. “Down their bodices?” She quite purposefully, and quite inexpertly, straightened her trim bodice, drawing his attention out the side of his eye to her small, but nevertheless eminently serviceable breasts. Mama always said a man couldn’t think and look at breasts, no matter their size. No fool, Mama. And the clever padding Mama had insisted her maid sew into her stays made up for any natural deficit. “How do they find any room? Must be dreadful uncomfortable.”
His brow rose as slowly as a guillotine over that acute eye. But his self-control was not equal to the task at hand, and his gaze strayed exactly where she had meant it to.
“Lady Quince.” Strathcairn’s lowered voice was absolutely irresistible when he forgot himself enough to let the Scots burr rumble. “Let me make right sure I understand you—are you
flirting
with me?”
“Am I?” Quince ignored the blaze of heat his voice and gaze kindled under her skin, and gave him her bright, knowing smile—all pleased lips and mischievous eyes. “What I am doing is trying to make you remember your duty, and accede to my wish to dance with me.”
He regarded her with those too canny, too bright green eyes for another long moment before he answered. “Perhaps I will.” He reached for her hand, and held her at arm’s length for a lengthy perusal, as if he had not yet decided to grant her wish. “Yes, I definitely will. But before I do so, perhaps I ought to warn you, wee Quince, to be good. And be very, very careful what you wish for.”
The heat that had blossomed under her bodice spread like wildflowers across her skin along the whole length of his gaze. And she liked it.
She raised her chin and gave him her slyest smile yet. “Oh, I am always careful, Strathcairn. But I had much rather be bad, and be
right
.”
Coming soon in the Highland Brides series…
MAD, BAD, AND
DANGEROUS TO MARRY
Castle Crieff, Scottish Highlands
1792
IT WAS ALWAYS going to be a delicate, tricky thing, to marry a man one had never met before one’s wedding day. But until the moment the carriage rolled into the forecourt of Crieff Castle, Lady Greer Douglas had not suffered a single twinge of worry. For all that she had never met her bridegroom in person, she and the Duke of Crieff knew each other well.
Well enough to marry, sight unseen.
She knew him by the hundreds of letters they had exchanged since the day she turned fourteen years old, some eight years ago. Letters he had faithfully, and hopefully joyfully, written up until one month ago. That last letter—the one telling her he was at last ready to marry, if she was also—was folded deep in the pockets beneath her petticoat, tucked away for safekeeping, like a talisman she could touch for strength and reassurance.
And she needed reassurance now, as the coach rolled to a stop, and the grey gravel crunched under the grooms feet. This was the moment it all began—the life she had been waiting, preparing, planning to lead.
From the backward facing seat, Papa beamed at her. “You look beautiful.”
“And you
are
beautiful.” Beside her, mama gave her words an entirely different, but no less heartfelt, meaning.
“Thank you. Thank you both.” Greer knew she was not a conventional beauty—she was too-flamed haired to be considered pretty anywhere but Scotland—but she knew she was loved. And she knew that gave one a different sort of beauty—a beauty that came from confidence in one’s merits.
And if her knees were knocking together, it was from excitement, not apprehension. Because the day had at last come for her to meet the man she loved. Any moment now, Ewan Cameron, His Grace the Duke of Crieff was going to throw open his doors, and greet her with the smile she had been waiting eight years to receive.
She herself was already smiling in readiness, happy to receive him, at last.
And yet, he and his smile did not come. The door remained closed.
“Curious,” was all papa said before stepped down from the coach, and took a fraction of a moment to straighten his coat. “Robert,” he instructed the footman, “pray ply the bell and inform them that his grace’s betrothed has arrived.”
She certainly felt as if she had indeed arrived—in more ways than merely standing on the doorstep of her soon-to-be-new home. Greer sat another moment or two, admiring the beautiful proportions of the Palladian mansion, and buff stone balance and pleasuring symmetry. Ewan had described it so perfectly she felt like she were coming home instead of coming to a place she had never been.
On the seat beside her, Mama took her hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze.
“It’s quite alright, Mama.” She made herself everything calm and unruffled, like a swan gliding along the top of the water, while beneath all was determined work. “I am sure it will all be right as rain.”
“Good girl.” Mama patted her silk and lace clad arm. “No need to fret or fash.”
And yet there was a need for…something.
She had expected that he would have set up a signal from the gatehouse, and been out on the forecourt waiting for her—she would have been, if their situations had been reversed.
“Come, my dear.” Papa handed her out just in time, because the huge oaken door finally opened to revel a man in black who must be the house steward.
He was just as Ewan had described him—thin, angular and proud, with a stoic demeanor. “My leddy.” He bowed deeply at the waist. “I welcome ye to Crieff.”
“Thank you.” Greer very composedly smoothed down her embroidered silk skirts, and moved toward the door on her own, as papa handed out mama. “You must be MacIntosh. His grace has told me so much about you.”
The man looked so pained that for a moment Greer feared she had said the wrong thing. “His words were everything complimentary,” she assured him.
“Thank ye, my leddy.” But somehow he looked more anguished at such a compliment.
It was most awkward.
“You are quite welcome. I know I shall come to value you just as greatly as his grace does.” And speaking of her duke. “And his grace?”
The steward pleated his lips between his teeth. “It pains me, my leddy—“
“I am here.”
Greer turned and felt the warm smile freeze to her face.
This couldn’t be her Ewan. Nothing about the sharp-faced, unsmiling man in the grey powdered wig and black embroidered silk suit—which, by the way needed tailoring to make it fit him properly—was familiar. His hair was not blond. His eyes were not green. He was not so tall and ungainly that he might frighten children, as Ewan had once told her he was.
And furthermore, no spark of welcome, no soft flare of recognition lighted his eye. Everything was stiffness and unease.
“Welcome to Crieff, my lady.”
He was as correctly polite and formal as if they were strangers. As if she did not already know the private longings of his heart, and he hers.
Greer curtseyed because she knew she should, and because several other men, Creiff’s—and very soon her own—retainers had come out into the forecourt. But she could not keep from asking, “Are you Ewan Cameron?”
Perhaps it was her patent disbelief, but there was a twinge, a twitch of narrowing at the corner of his clear blue eyes, as well as a clenching along his jawline, before he covered his discomfort with a pleasant smile. “I am his grace.”
Which was not what she had asked.
Because she had been raised to be everything polished and polite, Greer did not allow her annoyance to show. But neither did she falter—she stuck to her point like a burr. “But you are not Ewan Cameron. You cannot be.” Everything about him was wrong—different. Unless…
An unwelcome, entirely disloyal thought jumped into her head—what if all his letters, all the words she had cherished and practically memorized for the past eight years, were a lie?
His answer was another almost imperceptible twinge—this one at the corner of his wide, mouth—before the man finally spoke. “No,” he admitted. “I am Murdock Cameron, his cousin, and Duke of Crieff now.” He looked away, as if he did not like to meet her eyes. “Ewan Cameron is dead.”
Thank You for Reading
Thank you for reading
Mad For Love.
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The Highland Brides
Mad for Love
is an introduction The Highland Brides. While each book reads as a stand-alone, the series is best enjoyed in chronological order.
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Marry
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Books by Elizabeth Essex
Dartmouth Brides
Reckless Brides