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Authors: Maggie Robinson

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BOOK: Master of Sin
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“What is that?” she asked, seeming more alarmed by the cry of a two-and-a-half-year-old than the menacing sinner before her.
“My son.”
One of the men was bouncing Marc into the kitchen, trying in vain to stop the child's hysterical tears. To wake in another strange place with even more strangers was the last straw for the poor little devil. Before Andrew could go to him, Miss Peartree ran across the floor.
“Bambino, cosa c'e di spagliato
?
Povera bambino! E tutu bene,”
she crooned, taking Marc and his blankets from the man. She put a grubby hand on his forehead. “Mr. Ross, your son is very hot.” Her hand lingered. “Burning up, actually. Poor mite. You need to light the stove so I can bathe him to get his fever down. Don't boil the water, just heat it a little. Tell this man to get some kindling. What I foraged won't be nearly enough.”
Surely Marc was warm from sleep. From woolen blankets. From screaming his head off. “I brought peat,” Andrew said stupidly.
“I don't care what his name is! Are you just going to stand there?”
No, he was not. He went back outside and organized the men as best he could, cursing silently in every language known to him. Marc would be fine. He had to be. It was Miss Peartree who needed a bath.
CHAPTER 2
H
is rehired housekeeper Mrs. MacLaren returned with the wagon's second load. After a bit of creative detective work on his part, Andrew had found her husband among his little work crew. He had persuaded Mr. MacLaren to fetch her from the village, offering them both employment and rooms under his leaky roof by drawing watches and dishes and beds and handing over several more crowns. The MacLarens agreed to work days only, returning to their own seaside cottage, garden, and goats. At least Andrew thought it was a goat. It may have been a sheep. Mr. MacLaren was no artist, and his own right hand did not work as well as it used to. He could barely read his own writing. He should have bought a Gaelic-English dictionary in Paris, if they sold such things. Andrew would send for one at once.
And send for a new governess. He could not possibly tolerate Miss Peartree one day longer than absolutely necessary. Right now she was pointlessly arguing with Mrs. MacLaren about Marc's luncheon. The child, already much improved, was naked, beating a wooden spoon on a bucket, his fever-flushed cheeks rosy and cheerful. The great clatter of pots and pans punctuating the women's conversation had sent Andrew from the kitchen into what he assumed was his library. There were plenty of shelves, but no books.
Andrew started a fire and stared out the sleet-spattered window. He would have to buy books to keep himself occupied, a ferry-load of them. Once, he'd purchased a very naughty set of volumes depicting virtually every sexual position known to man—even some he had not tried personally, and there were very few. Those books would not be unpacked on these shelves where his son might stumble upon them. He expected Edward Christie had crated them up with all his other possessions from the Albany and they were somewhere about. He would burn them, every last depraved page. They'd make a roaring fire and save on peat.
He would give his soul for a brandy. Well, he probably had no soul to give. Donal Stewart had taken it long ago. But surely there must be spirits somewhere in this house. On this island. They were in Scotland, after all. He could walk back through the muck and the wet to the village. He'd not seen a pub through the gloom, but there had been a tiny stone church. He'd make do with communion wine if absolutely necessary.
Andrew sat down at his desk, lay his head down, and closed his eyes. His arm ached like the very devil. He was in a hell entirely of his own making. What had possessed him to trust Christie with these arrangements? He would have been better off going to America and rubbing elbows with wild Indians. Instead he was perched on top of a windy ridge, trapped with a sick child, two unintelligible servants, and a wicked little shrew.
Now that there was a substantial fire in the kitchen, the shrew had removed a few layers of her makeshift covering to reveal a scrawny little body worthy of a twelve-year-old boy. Her dress—brown of course—was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen on a woman. He thought the only thing worse would be to remove it and catch sight of what little there was underneath.
And Edward Christie had met her. Approved of her. Damn the man to hell. He didn't deserve Caroline or all the comforts of life.
There was a tap at the door. Mrs. MacLean poked her head in.
Now what
. Andrew lifted his good hand. “Come.”
The woman didn't bother to speak but dropped a tray gently on the bare surface of the desk. She was a mind reader. Or a witch. There on the toleware sat a tumbler of whiskey and a thick ham sandwich. Andrew smiled and swore he still had some of his own magic judging from the blush on the woman's cheeks.
“Thank you, Mrs. MacLaren. You are a godsend in this godforsaken place. If you weren't already married to your good husband, I'd take you to bed and show you heaven, fuck you sideways and upside down. Lick a path from your toes to your iron-gray head. If I have a bed. I suppose I'll look after lunch. But we wouldn't really need a bed, you know.”
He heard the snort from the hallway.
Bloody hell
. Miss Peartree walked in holding his son, now swaddled in a nappy. In the washing of him, she'd lost some of her own grime, though her hair still looked as if Mrs. MacLaren had taken a fork to it.
“I hope when Marc is fluent in English, you will refrain from such disgusting vocabulary,” she said primly.
Andrew felt his face darken. It had been very bad of him, he knew. He didn't need this little gremlin to tell him so. “You're one to talk. I've never heard so many bloody
bloodies
in my life.”
She had the grace to color. Apparently he had put her in her place and she was done with her lecture. For now. He had a feeling she'd find something else to upbraid him about, and soon. “Marc has swallowed every drop of broth and had a coddled egg besides. I won't let that woman give him milk yet, though.
Goat's
milk, if you please.” She shuddered. “Here. Feel his forehead.” She offered his son to him, but Marc shied away, clinging to Miss Peartree's bony shoulder. She murmured to him in soothing Italian, but his face remained buried in her nonexistent bosom. “He doesn't seem to like you very much. Why is that?”
Andrew took a long pull of the whiskey. He would have to get much more before night fell, although it really was as dark as sin outside already. “He does not know me well. My late wife and I were separated for most of our marriage.”
Andrew was fairly sure she whispered “smart woman” into his son's shorn curls.
“What a pity. He asks for her, you know.”
Andrew did. He'd lain awake all through Europe hearing his son cry for Giulietta. “He'll get over it. He must.”
“How heartless you are! He's just a baby.” She kissed the top of his head and Marc snuggled deeper. “How did your wife die?”
“An accident. Really, Miss Peartree, this is too personal and painful to talk about. You are overstepping your bounds.”
Her eyes widened at the rebuke. Her lashes were very long, reaching nearly to her straight brown brows. “I'm sorry. I thought knowing might help me with your son.”
“You won't be here long enough.” Andrew bit into the sandwich and chewed noisily, hoping to repel her right out of the room.
“Oh, not that nonsense again. Surely you must know all these changes have been very hard on Marc. If I disappear, he'll only get worse.”
Andrew looked for his new watch in his pocket, but it had played a part in the negotiations with the MacLarens and it was still on the kitchen dresser. “You have known my son all of two hours, Miss Peartree. Three at the most. I hardly think he'll miss your influence.”
“You'd be surprised.
Voi come mi.
You like me, don't you, love?”
“
Ti amo
.” Marc gave her a sloppy kiss and giggled.
Insupportable. That this absolute hoyden had won his child over in a matter of hours when he had worked weeks for a smile. He pointed at his chest and then at Marc. “
Ti amo
,” Andrew repeated. Marc shook his head and stuck a finger in his mouth.
“
Abasso il
. You'll make your teeth all crooked and not grow up to be as handsome as your papa,” she said, tickling him under his chin. She turned to Andrew, all business, as though she'd just not shamelessly flattered him. He knew he was not looking his best. There were many reasons. Two of them stood before him. “I've just come to tell you that the old witch and her husband will bring a crib for Marc tomorrow. Do you want him to sleep in your bed tonight or in mine?”
“Since you are temporarily serving as his nursemaid, he may sleep with you.” Andrew had woken up urine soaked several nights running. Let her discover Marc's little problem on her own. The child was masterful at removing his diaper well before dawn.
“Very well. I'm going to put him down for an afternoon nap.”
“I thought you said you had nowhere to sleep.”
“That was because Mrs. MacLaren locked all the bedrooms when she left.”
“She what?”
“She locked the doors and took all the keys with her. I had to sleep on the couch in the front parlor, and may I suggest you replace it at the first opportunity? It smells dreadfully of damp.”
Just wait until Miss Peartree smelled Marc. “Has she unlocked them now?”
“Oh, yes. She seems resigned to me being here. If I understand her correctly, she believes if children and dogs like one, then one is worthy.”
Andrew waited to laugh until Miss Peartree left the library. Once he started, he had trouble stopping. He had gone mad, but he feared he was in good company.
 
Gemma brushed the hair from little Marc's damp forehead. His temperature was not quite right, but children could quickly spike a fever and return to normal in the blink of an eye. He had eaten well, and now he rested in her Spartan room. She wished she could do the same, but she was a bundle of nerves, startling each time the hail hit the window glass. The ocean roared below, which added to the ominous ambiance of Gull House. During the fourteen days' hideous weather she'd actually seen—and eaten—fish thrown up to the grass by the force of the waves. Waiting for the Rosses to arrive had been beastly, but she was very much afraid their arrival was even worse.
She could not like Mr. Andrew Ross, which was just as well as he seemed to dislike her. She knew she'd made a very bad first impression. She wasn't beautiful or elegant or charming like her Italian mother, or as cultured and correct as her Austrian stepfather. And of course, she was absolutely nothing like her English father—that went without saying. If she didn't know better from her old nursemaid Caterina, she would have believed she'd been switched at birth by gypsies or elves or whichever creatures did such things to innocent babies. She was as good as a changeling, orphaned, homeless, and adrift in the Atlantic.
But she was no longer innocent.
She caught sight of herself in the freckled mirror and rolled her eyes. She was not merely adrift—she had drowned and sunk to the bottom of the sea. If she weren't such a coward she'd climb down the beach path and plunge in the sea to wash, as young men had done in the frozen Danube in wintertime in Vienna. She shivered just thinking about it. Her stepbrother Franz had been a member of an adventurous outdoor club and had been insufferably smug about his bravery. Girls were not invited.
What she needed was a bath. A hot, hot bath, some scented soap. A hairbrush. A complete change of underthings. She sniffed her armpit. Certainly a new dress. This one would have to be burned. Her trunk had gone missing before boarding the boat that took her island-hopping through the archipelago in a storm-tossed ocean. She'd been promised when it was found it would be sent along, but it had not come today in Mr. Ross's belongings. It might never come, which meant she'd have to ask the witch to help her again, but that had worked out very badly before.
Of all the bloody luck. She was stuck here, as good as naked, even if Andrew Ross had other ideas. He'd not get rid of her so easily. She had her contract and would abide by every letter. That baron who hired her had not been entirely forthcoming about the hardships of the job, however. The little boy was adorable, but Gemma had pictured a country house set on a rolling green meadow with sheep, perhaps a bit of salt-scented spray in the air, not this violent, volcanic lump. To prove her point, the windows rattled like gunfire in the endless storm.
And then there was Andrew Ross. Handsome as the devil and knew it, too. Not just handsome—dazzling, golden, kissed by the gods.
Well, perhaps not. His wife was dead, his son hated him, his arm flopped about when it wasn't in its sling, and he'd chosen to bury himself in the outermost reaches of the British Isles. No doubt he had a dark secret, but then didn't everyone?
“Mamma!” Gemma hurried to Marc's side. He was thrashing around, still sleeping, a tiny frown on his perfect face. He was the image of his father.
“Shh, my darling. It's just a bad dream. Gemma's here.” She stroked his arm and spoke to him in Italian and English, repeating each idea in the other language. It is what her mamma had done for her, to make sure she knew her father's tongue, even if she didn't know
him
.
She knew him now and wished she didn't. Sighing, Gemma inspected the contents of her dresser. She found a dusty powder puff, two hairpins, and a mostly toothless comb, but as in people, some teeth were better than none. She set about to bring some order to her person, in the very remote chance that Mr. Ross asked her to dine with him. Which she hoped he would not. She'd be better off with the MacLarens in the kitchen, trying to make sense of what they were saying to each other. Who knew? With her facility for languages, she might just add a seventh.
 
Mrs. MacLaren had set two places in the dining room, so it didn't seem sporting to request that Miss Peartree take her plate and cutlery and go back into the kitchen. The MacLarens were leaving anyway. True to the little pictures they drew, they were going home through what was now a snowstorm to sleep in their own beds. Andrew hoped they wouldn't fall into a ditch and freeze to death, for Mrs. MacLaren's lamb stew smelled delicious and Mr. MacLaren had done a creditable job moving boxes and trunks to where they needed to be unpacked. He wanted them to come back tomorrow and forever. Andrew had many things planned for Mr. MacLaren—planing the front door for example, which continuously blew open unless the heavy hall bench was dragged in front of it. Washing and caulking windows. Climbing up the roof to fix the tiles when he wouldn't get tossed off in a gale to Ireland. Andrew knew he'd lose Mr. MacLaren in the spring when he went back to fishing. He hoped by then Gull House would be snug and comfortable.
BOOK: Master of Sin
13.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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