My Seduction (2 page)

“Thank you, no.”

Charlotte sighed in relief. At least Kate was saved
that
embarrassment.

Christian MacNeill waited while Kate settled herself on the sofa’s edge, looking as if she might bolt at any moment. What had gotten into her self-possessed sister? She is nervous, Charlotte realized in amazement. She could not remember when Kate had been discombobulated by anyone! Before Michael began his courtship, Kate had led a dozen young men a merry chase. No one, no matter how sophisticated or urbane, had dinted her laughing self-possession.

Charlotte scrunched forward, peering intently at the rough, gilt-haired Highlander. He’d come back into the room and stood over Kate, watching her. She’d turned her face to look out the window, and he looked amused. But still… hungry.

“I hope I am not discomforting you, Mrs. Blackburn,” he said. His voice was a rough-smooth rumble. Like water over river rock.

“Not at all.”

Liar, Charlotte thought.

“I am afraid I am a bit distracted. Forgive me.” Kate arranged her hands in her lap in the same way she had in the schoolroom years earlier when she had been practicing her conversational skills with the governess. She cleared her throat. Minutes ticked by and the tall Scot remained almost preternaturally still, not a trace of unease in his expression or a hint of discomposure in his bearing. Kate, on the other hand, looked as if she might fly out of her skin in spite of the rigid self-control that kept her statue-still. Finally, she could take it no longer.

“If I have the correct understanding of the situation, you were imprisoned. I am sorry for your ordeal.”

The words were polite and proper. His nod accepting her sympathy was the same.

“If I might ask, during the course of what battle were you captured?” she continued somberly.

“I wasn’t in a battle,” he said calmly.

“Oh.” Kate frowned. “I assumed—but then, how did you and your friends come to be in France during this time of war, Mr. MacNeill?” Real interest had replaced Kate’s conversational tone.

“I have wondered the same myself, more times than I can tell you,” he said. “It was because of the roses, I suppose.”

Kate’s smooth brow furrowed slightly, and she plucked at her fingers. She looked very young, Charlotte thought. Her skin looked pale against her dark hair, and her throat slender and vulnerable as it arched forward. And despite knowing that she was a bastion of strength, and a formidable one at that, Charlotte thought she looked very… slight. Fragile.

With the breathless sense of stepping through a door into an unknown and dark room, Charlotte wondered if all that had happened to Kate had been… well… quite as fair as she and Helena and even their mother might have made it.

“How did roses lead to your imprisonment?” she asked, her dark eyes darting up to meet Christian MacNeill’s.

Mr. MacNeill clasped his hands behind his back. He looked down at Kate, his expression enigmatic. A shiver coursed through Charlotte. He was so much larger than she’d realized, his gauntness giving an impression of lightness that his proximity to Kate now belied. He was a terribly hard-looking young man.

“It’s an uncomfortable tale, Mrs. Blackburn.”

“Tell me.”

Her sister’s stark words startled Charlotte. Their governess would not have approved. One did not make personal demands of an acquaintance, let alone a stranger. He did not seem to take offense. Indeed, something in his hard face relaxed.

“All of us had some knowledge of gardens,” he said. “One of our duties was tending the roses where we were raised.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was ripe with sympathy.

He laughed shortly. “Don’t waste your pity. It was not a workhouse. Workhouses, in my memory, do not have rose gardens. No, this was a sort of orphanage, I suppose. It doesn’t matter.”

Kate waited.

“But because of the roses, and some other skills we had developed, my companions and I were approached by a gentleman who asked us to journey to France and, among other things, bring a lady an extremely rare yellow rose. In doing so we hoped to gain entrée to her world and thereby”—he shrugged—“change the world.”

“A lady who could change the world?” Kate said incredulously, and once more Charlotte felt a prick of embarrassment. No matter what a visitor said, one must never openly doubt his veracity.

“Her name was Marie-Rose, but her husband calls her Josephine.”

Charlotte’s mouth formed a soundless O! and she dug her knuckles into her mouth, barely suppressing her gasp. This man knew Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife?

Kate, too, could not conceal her amazement. “You have met Josephine?”

Christian MacNeill’s smile held no pleasure. “Once, and briefly, ma’am. Shortly after we arrived, our plans were discovered—No.” His face hardened into an expression from which Charlotte recoiled. “Our plans were not discovered; they were revealed. By a traitor. Someone who knew of our mission. We were taken prisoner and would have been executed had your father not intervened. One of our number was executed.”

“I’m sorry.” Kate said. “I’m sorry my father’s sacrifice didn’t come in time to save your friend.” She looked up. “I mean, if one insists on being a martyr, one might as well have some good come of it—Dear God! I am so sorry! I don’t know why I said that. Please, I am… forgive me. I truly did not mean to offend you. It’s just that… often”—her voice dropped to a harsh whisper—“my father’s death feels like a betrayal.”

Charlotte edged back into her alcove, stunned by her sister’s confession. She’d had no idea Kate felt that way. She peered back into the room. The passion that had darkened Mr. MacNeill’s face evaporated as he looked down at Kate, sitting with her head bowed above her lap.

Abruptly, he bent down on his knee, bringing his eyes level with Kate’s. “I swear, ma’am, had it been in our power to keep your father from making such a sacrifice, we would have done so,” he said softly. “We understood the risks of what we sought to do, and we would never have knowingly volunteered another to pay the penalty of our actions. It was not our choice to make, however. No one asked us.”

Charlotte drew back farther, scowling. This was not a proper conversation between people who did not know one another! People did not ask one another pointed questions. People did not reveal the intimate details of their lives to one another on the basis of half an hour’s knowledge. People did not speak passionately to strangers! Why, people didn’t speak passionately to those they knew well! It was… bad form.

Charlotte was shocked, a little offended, and a great deal unsettled. She had been right to think of these young men as feral. They had come into her home and broken down the rules by which she and her family lived.

Sure enough, Kate’s next words confirmed Charlotte’s supposition.

“How did my father die, Mr. MacNeill? What happened? No one will tell us.” The whispered words seemed to emerge from deep within Kate, desperate and aching.

A muscle leapt at the corner of Christian McNeill’s jaw, a hard angular jaw recently scraped smooth. His skin was darkly tanned, not the pale, well-padded flesh of a gentleman. Little lines fanned out at the corners of his green eyes, making him look wicked. Should Charlotte do something?

With feline grace, he uncoiled from where he’d knelt and folded his hands behind his back. He moved restlessly about the room, finally stopping, half turned from Kate, fixing his gaze on the empty wall ahead.

“Lord Nash shouldn’t have been there. It was a mistake. Our names chanced to be mentioned by some drunken officer who shouldn’t have even known of our existence. Once your father heard we were being held and the duration of our imprisonment, he insisted on trading himself in exchange for our freedom.”

“We were told my father died in a rescue attempt,” Kate said.

“One does not rescue a man from a French dungeon, Mrs. Blackburn. One makes deals, promises money, or if one does not have the ready, one makes trades. Your father offered himself in our stead. Since he was a far greater prize than three filthy lads, the French colonel holding us seized the opportunity presented, doubtless thinking to make a name for himself. He proposed that during negotiations your father enter the castle where we were held.

“Lord Nash agreed, but only on the condition that we were first released,” he continued. “The French colonel was furious, but your father refused to be coerced. Lord Nash waited at the bridge until we… walked out. Then he crossed over.”

With that hesitation, MacNeill betrayed himself. However the prisoners had returned, clearly they had not simply “walked out.” He looked down into Kate’s upturned face. “He was supposed to return in a few days, a week at most, as soon as a ransom was arranged. He was supposed to have had diplomatic immunity.

“A few hours later, the gates opened again and a riderless horse emerged, a box strapped to the saddle.” His eyelids closed briefly, as though he were trying to erase some image from his eyes. “In it was a note saying that your father was dead and that henceforth all British spies would be treated similarly. He died in our place. Your father was not a spy, Mrs. Blackburn.”

She raised her head. “But you were spies. You and the others.”

“We knew the risks,” he answered obliquely. “We were prepared to pay the penalty. I did not foresee another doing so in my place, though. I have to live with that. That’s why we are here.”

“I see.” Her gaze fixed unhappily on some place only she could see. “And are you still… spies?”

“I am, as you see me. A man without occupation or home or family.”

“Hardly in a position to offer aid to another,” Kate said, but mildly.

A little smile turned his hard mouth. “Without much, but still in possession of some talents. And determination.” The smile faded. “That I own in abundance, ma’am.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” he asked, suddenly fierce. “Can you understand?”

“Yes. Of course,” Kate answered, but she sounded distracted. “You were going to be heroes. Young men aspire to be heroes, do they not? It is perfectly understandable. Only my father beat you to it, didn’t he?”

“He had no right, you know.” Kate’s voice deepened, became husky with emotion. “He never had the right to put himself in such danger. Not knowing, as he must have always known, that his death would see us—”

Impoverished. Charlotte silently provided the word Kate choked off. But it hung there, as clearly as if she’d shouted it. Kate never shouted anymore. She never did anything untoward or unseemly or rash or passionate, yet this young man had peeled back all her social defenses, exposing her, revealing all her hurt and doubts and anger to Charlotte.

She hated it. It frightened her, and the world was already a frightening place; enough things had changed. She couldn’t lose the idea of Kate she had held so long.

“I cannot promise to make use of your offer, Mr. MacNeill, however nobly meant.” Kate took a deep breath. “I have had enough heroes in my life,” she whispered. “I am done with them. You must find someone else to benefit from your gesture.”

“You misunderstand if you think our offer noble or gallant.”

“I
do
understand, though. I understand that you feel the need to repay us. You don’t. Your debt is to my father.”

He shook his head, and the light caught in his shining hair and carved shadows in the hard planes of his face. “You ask me to shoulder an impossible burden, Mrs. Blackburn, one which we cannot be relieved of unless we do something.
I
do something.”

“I have to believe that someday I might be able to repay some of the debt I owe your family, just as I have to believe that someday I will discover who betrayed us. As you can see, Mrs. Blackburn, I haven’t much in this world left to me but… honor. I must repay my debts and avenge my losses. So I will wait. For however long it takes.”

Without another word, he strode from the room.

ONE

UPON BEING ABANDONED BY ONE’S SERVANTS

The southern edge of
the Scottish Highlands, 1803

Mrs. Blackburn,

This jurnie is mad and I am not one as to give no filthy hiwayman a chans at killin us even if you pays me double my wages which I do not think like to happen. I no you won’t give me a refrence neether but don’t care because what good is a refrence to a dead woman? Good luck to you, you been a fair mistress and I will say a prayer for yore soul.

Sue McCray

WELL NOW, THOUGHT KATE, just when she’d thought life couldn’t hold any more surprises, here was another; she’d no idea Sue McCray could write. At least after a fashion, Kate thought, eyeing the word
jurnie
.

The laugh escaped before she could stop it. At the sound, the din from the next room faded, and the men who made it stared across the half-wall separating the White Rose’s public area from the “private room” where Kate sat. She edged closer to the miserly fire she’d bullied the innkeeper into setting.

Crunching up the note, she dropped it into the embers, amazed her maid’s desertion had taken her by surprise. Her situation had been farcical for so long now that one would think she’d have grown accustomed to such things.

First, a pickpocket in Edinburgh had relieved her of her purse. Then, not thirty miles out of the city, their carriage had broken down, and she and Sue McCray had spent a cold night huddled under too few blankets while the driver, Dougal, fixed it. After which Dougal had demanded pay additional to that owed his company by the marquis of Parnell, who’d employed him from afar. Added to which, a winter storm had then come upon them so precipitately one might reasonably suspect the elements of being in cahoots with the blackguard.

Not yet done making her its goat, Fate had finally led her here, to the guilefully misnamed White Rose, where the number of evil-looking—and far more evil-smelling—refugees from the storm swelled its cramped quarters. Now, to ice the cake, her lady’s maid—who had not only worked cheap but had been relatively good in spite of being half-soused most days—had decamped. What more could possibly happen?

Kate’s bemused eyes strayed to the men in the other room. Alcohol-clouded gazes slunk toward her.

Ah, yes. That.

She pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders, weighing her options. By now her gossiping host would have spread the word that her maid had left and she was alone except for Dougal’s dubious protection. She probably shouldn’t stay out here, but one of the “gentlemen” in the next room might see her withdrawal to her room as an invitation. Men, in her recently acquired experience, were always seeing invitations where none existed. Especially from impoverished widows. On the other hand, staying here “on display,” as it were, might be construed as even more of an invitation. And she still hadn’t eaten since… why, early this morning.

She flipped a mental coin and chose to stay despite the anxiety sitting like stones in her stomach. At least here the men would be forced to take one another into account. Despite the sloppy sounds of masculine bonhomie, they were not friends. They were forced together by weather, not inclination.

Only the cluster of four men sitting around a low table seemed like cohorts. Through the haze of wood smoke, she couldn’t make them out clearly, but they were all big, rough-looking fellows with thick shoulders and bullish necks, beefy hands cupping tin mugs the innkeeper kept filled with strong ale. The rest of the travelers had straggled in alone or in pairs, finding shelter before darkness added its misery to the ice storm that was shaking the windows and howling at the door.

She darted a sidelong glance toward where the latest arrival sat. Unlike the majority in the room who were lowland Scots, he was a Highlander.

He’d come in with his great, worn plaid billowing out from his shoulders like the wings of some giant bird of prey, his face obscured beneath the wide brim of a battered hat. Wordlessly, he’d retreated to a dark corner and an empty seat. Flinging the raggedy-looking plaid back, he’d tipped his chair against the wall and stretched out long legs wrapped to the calves in scarred leather boots. Beneath the plaid he wore a dark green jacket figured with black braids and silver buttons.

He drew worn leather gloves from his hands and, digging into a pocket, retrieved a clay pipe and pouch. He’d been sitting there ever since, the pipe clenched between his teeth, his chin sunk into his collar, the only part of his face visible the glint of dark gold stubble on his jaw. Pale eyes flickered in the erratic light from the bowl of embers. He made no effort to join in the growing camaraderie of his fellows, just as he made no effort to disguise the direction of his gaze.

He was watching her.

Kate disliked it. In fact, it was primarily his gaze that kept her here, tired and aching after a long day on bad roads in a worse-sprung carriage. He alarmed her.

She darted another quick glance at him. The smoke from his pipe drifted up and was absorbed in the shadows beneath his hat’s brim. The bowl had grown fallow. Darkness obliterated his eyes.

She looked hastily away, struck anew by how far she’d become removed from the sheltered young woman she’d once been. There had been a time when the notion that his path and hers could converge would have struck her as ludicrous. But three years had taught her that her sort, the genteel poor, was constantly “converging” with undesirable types.

And not always to her detriment.

For instance, she’d learned that a drunken maid without references could fix hair quite acceptably and that an accommodating schedule might entice such a maid into overlooking being paid irregularly. Though, Kate thought with a small smile, apparently travel to “hethen parts” constituted an unforgivable rift in the employer-employee relationship.

She must commit that to memory: Never force a hazardous journey on an unpaid maid.

Perhaps she ought to write an instructional book? A pamphlet. Something along the lines of
A Necessary Guide for the Well-bred Gentlewoman Anticipating a Life Spent in Reduced Circumstances
. Certainly the merchant class devoured instructional books on how to emulate the aristocracy. Why not a book dedicated to maintaining a dignified poverty? If that wasn’t an oxymoron.

Her lips twitched with amusement, and she recalled how once she’d thought she’d never smile again. Thank God, she’d been wrong. Still, she reminded herself, this was no time for levity. Her sense of humor may have saved her from the despair that had so quickly taken her mother’s life, but it could also cause problems. Such as the time she had convinced the butcher that as the Jaspers’ houseguest was a strict vegetarian, they wouldn’t need the roast he’d trimmed up for their Sunday dinner, and she would take it off his hands. At a reduced cost, of course. Mrs. Jasper never had spoken to her after that.

A loud bang announced the arrival of another refugee from the storm. A red-faced youngster stumbled through the doorway, pushed by a curtain of sleet, his hands clamped under his armpits, his face raw and frost-rimed.

“Shut the door, you fool!” bellowed one of the men at the table, pushing to his feet.

The lad didn’t appear to hear. He’d doubled over at the waist as soon as he’d crossed the threshold and was blowing desperately into his cupped hands, wincing as he did so. His fingertips looked white and glassine. The poor lad could lose those fingers—

“I said, shut the bleedin’ door! ” The big brute grabbed the boy by the shoulders and shoved him against the wall. The boy’s outstretched hands struck the wood and he screamed. Kate’s heart thundered in sympathetic response.

“Out with you, boy! No one wants to hear yer blubberin’!” As the man grabbed the lad’s collar, preparing to pitch him back through the open door, Kate recognized the man. It was Dougal, her driver. Her driver.

The room had fallen silent. A few faces twisted derisively, one of Dougal’s compatriots sneered in amusement, but most of them simply looked on uncomprehendingly.

With a sick sense of inevitability, Kate realized she had stood up. She was shaking as thoroughly as the boy, yet incapable of retreat. Because, along with that completely fallacious sense of her own worth she’d once had, she’d also had an equally overblown sense of responsibility. And that damned characteristic she never had been able to make tractable. She did not want to speak. She wanted to shut her eyes and turn away like some of the others. But… but Dougal worked for her. He was her responsibility.

Her heart was racing now and she was afraid. Nearly paralyzed with the fear of what would happen if she interfered. Nearly paralyzed.

Her feet dragged her over the threshold into the public room. Dougal gave the howling boy another shake. “Maybe I’ll let you in when you can remember how to close a—”

“Let him go,” Kate heard a calm voice say. Thank God, it was not hers.

Dougal looked about to see who dared interfere with him. It was the tall man in the ancient plaid.

“And,” the Highlander continued mildly, “close the damn door, will you?”

“Who the bloody hell are you to be giving me orders?” Dougal demanded, the cringing boy dangling from one ham-fisted hand.

The front legs of the chair settled gently on the floor, and with an eerie, silky grace the ragged figure rose, his face still obscured by his hat. “A fellow who’s gettin’ cold—and,” the man reminded Dougal, “you still haven’t let the lad go or closed the door.” Something dangerous slipped beneath his tranquil tone.

“Go to hell!” Dougal said. “I’ll shut the door after I throw out this—”

The lad was plucked as neatly as a ripe pear from a low-hanging branch, one moment cowering in Dougal’s clasp, the next being pushed toward a pair of young men, crofters by the look of them, who had been watching in silent but obvious distress. Then, just as smoothly as he’d appropriated the boy, the Highlander reached past Dougal and slammed the door shut.

“There. Sooner begun, sooner done, as my old mater would have said.” The man cocked his head and continued ruefully. “Well, if I’d had a mater, I’m sure she would have said some such thing.”

A few of the other men in the room chuckled nervously, but Dougal was not to be cajoled. His face had turned beet red.

“I don’t like meddlers, mister. And that’s what you are. Ain’t he?” Dougal turned to his companions. They nodded, regarding the boy’s deliverer narrowly. Worse than snatching Dougal’s prey from him, they’d been deprived of their night’s entertainment.

The Highlander didn’t appear overly concerned. But Kate was. The fear that had begun slowly loosening its clamp around her chest began constricting again.

“I suspect you’re right,” the tall man allowed. “A failing more than one has tried to beat out of me.”

“Yeah? Well, we’ll just see if this time we can make the lesson stick, eh, lads?” Dougal promised.

The men growled their assent. At the same time, the two young men who had been given custody of Dougal’s intended victim stepped forward.

“See now,” the stockier one addressed Dougal. “We don’t much like the odds of what you’re proposing—”

“Back away, friend,” the Highlander cut in. “I appreciate your gesture, but what with four such braw warriors planning me demise, I don’t have time to spare fretting over your welfare.”

The two young crofters exchanged startled glances.

“Sit down, lads, and I’ll stand you a pint.” The Highlander turned toward the innkeeper, stripping off his faded green jacket, and Dougal, like a jackal that sees an exposed piece of flesh, charged.

“Watch out!” Kate cried, but the Highlander had already ducked beneath Dougal’s two-fisted blow, pivoting, his fist exploding up into Dougal’s thick gut. With an Uff! Dougal doubled up and fell to the floor.

Dougal’s friends launched themselves forward as the other men in the tavern surged to their feet to better see the unfolding spectacle. One of Dougal’s cohorts grabbed a heavy metal platter and began swinging its edge forward like a hatchet. The tall Scot jerked back, his hat falling off, freeing a tangle of overlong red-gold hair.

Kate had an impression of a sharp jaw and a lean face streaked with the grime of hard travel, and then he was backing away, Dougal’s largest companion following his retreat. The other two flanked him, herding him toward the wall, and… and the ring of spectators closed in front of her, leaving her outside, Dougal still gasping at her feet.

The crowd erupted in shouts. Hats waved, arms windmilled in the air. Some of the watchers winced at what they saw, others bellowed louder. She could see little; a flurry of fists, a dark red-gold head, a blurred glimpse of taut, sweat-streaked faces. Curses and invectives rose from the mill along with the thud of fist on flesh.

Someone let out a warning cry, and abruptly the circle of men split open in front of her. She saw two of Dougal’s drinking companions, one lying in an insensate heap, the other trying to drag himself to his knees. And then, suddenly, there he was, directly in front of her.

He’d shed his tartan, and his linen shirt had been yanked from the waist of his trousers, one sleeve torn across the shoulder, exposing a glimpse of a broad, muscled back. His hair clung in dark, damp strands to his neck as he fought Dougal’s most fearsome-looking cohort. He was winning, slapping away the man’s swings as if they were inconsequential.

He fought like some sort of diabolical machine, methodical, his movements concentrated, invested with a terrible, economical beauty. He parried each of the other man’s punches precisely, taking advantage of the smallest opening with immediate and savage dispatch. Finally, an upward blow caught his opponent beneath the jaw, lifting him from his feet and sending him careening across the floor and sliding to a stop at Kate’s feet.

The Highlander followed, the attitude of his shoulders, the look in his face, frightening her. The man at her feet flopped over on his belly and began crawling away. The Scot leaned down and grabbed the fallen man’s collar. His teeth, startlingly white in his dark face, flashed in a grin.

With a grunt, he heaved the big-bellied brute to his feet. “You wouldn’t be thinking of deprivin’ me of your company so soon, would you, me friend? Well, if go you must, so be it. But first I’ll be takin’ that dagger from you, the one you nicked me with, since I’ve no mind to feel it in me back.”

He had forgotten about Dougal.

So had she.

Dougal roared a challenge and launched himself up from the ground straight for the Highlander, heedless of Kate standing between them. The Scot let go of the man he held, sweeping his foot beneath his heels and felling him like an oak. With lightning reflexes, he dropped to a knee, reached out, grabbed Kate’s wrist, and jerked her out of Dougal’s path, pitching her into the wall of spectators. The young crofters caught her before she fell.

She scrambled around just in time to see Dougal raise his dirk and plunge it downward. Still braced on one knee, the Highlander grabbed Dougal’s wrist, arresting it in midflight. His shoulders bunched and strained. His throat corded in his effort to keep the blade from its lethal descent.