The Lady Most Willing . . . (20 page)

“I’m to apologize,” Marilla said, her voice scratchy from crying. “Taran insists.”

Fiona didn’t even glance over her shoulder. “I accept. I’m going to the carriage to find my reticule. I’m sure it must be there.”

“What are you talking about? You’re going out in the snow?”

“The carriage is in the stables.”

“Just tell a footman to fetch it for you!”

“I would welcome some fresh air. Do go to sleep without me.”

“You cannot do such a stupid thing as walk out into this storm! You’re pouting, Fiona, and it’s a very unpleasant, childish thing to do. I
have
apologized.”

“There’s a cord that leads from the kitchen to the stables. Mr. Garvie told me about it the first night.” She almost added,
So don’t worry about me
, but the words died in her mouth. She was tired of pretending that there was something more between them than the potent reek of Marilla’s dislike.

“I truly am sorry I told the earl about Dugald’s death,” her sister said.

Fiona had discovered a pair of gloves that, although ancient and cracked, were lined with fur like the cloak. All that remained was to find something warmer than her slippers to put on her feet. She began poking at the bottom of the wardrobe.

“Are you ignoring what I just said?” Marilla’s voice rose a bit.

Fiona had exhumed something that felt like a sturdy pair of boots; she backed out of the cupboard, straightened, and turned around. Her sister was looking at her with tearstained defiance. “No,” she stated. “It will never be all right with me. Once this accursed storm ends, I shall move to my own house. It will be easier for all of us. Papa can hire a chaperone for your next season.”

Marilla stared at her, her jaw dropped.

Fiona pulled the boots on, and then the gloves. She probably looked like an ancient crone wearing a bear costume inside out. But when she glanced at the mirror, she didn’t even see her own reflection: instead, she saw Oakley’s blue eyes. They were an extraordinary color, the color of the sky on a summer day, when one lay on one’s back in a meadow.

“Good-bye,” she said, walking out and closing the door behind her.

“I didn’t mean it!” Marilla called shrilly. Fiona pretended that she hadn’t heard, and kept walking, down the stairs, through the baize door, and into the kitchen.

She stopped only to grab a bag of apples and a bottle of wine from the kitchen staff. The apples were for the horses, and the wine was for her. She’d never drunk to excess before. Ladies never became inebriated. But she wasn’t a lady. She was ruined, ruined,
ruined
.

The blowing snow was like a slap to her face, like a scream turned into material fact. Walking away from the warmth of the kitchen and into the howling wind felt like a punishment, but she didn’t mind.

She couldn’t bear to sleep in the room with her sister that night. Nor to be down the corridor from a man who actually thought—howsoever briefly—that she was worth making his countess. Who had kissed her like . . . like that. And then regarded her with no expression at all in his eyes, as if she were no more than a strange, distasteful woman, who happened to be seated beside him at supper.

She bent her head down and kept her hand tight on the cord. Luckily, the wind was scouring the courtyard and driving the snow around the other side, so drifts of snow hadn’t been able to settle the way they would when the wind died down. A wooden wall loomed out of the moving wall of snow before her so suddenly that she bumped into the door.

A second later she was tumbling into the warm, dim stable. “Who’s there?” came a cracked voice. And then, “Ye’re a woman!”

She nodded, throwing back the hood on her cape and shaking herself to remove some of the snow. “Mr. Garvie said you could return to the castle for the night if you wished. I shall remain just long enough to look for my reticule in the carriage, and then I’ll follow you.”

“I ain’t leaving any
woman
alone with my horses,” the old man cried.

“Away wit’ ye!” she barked, her voice emerging in a perfect Scottish burr.

She reached out and took the lantern from his hand. “Get off with ye, then,” she commanded, with a jerk of her head.

“What are ye doing here?” he demanded. “This ain’t no place for ladies. You won’t have a bit of yer reputation left.”

That did it. “I’m not a lady,” she shrieked. “I’m Fiona Chisholm.” She saw his eyes widen and felt a primitive surge of pleasure at the fact that he recognized her by name. “I’ve got no reputation, and I’ll do whatever in the bloody hell I choose to do. I might stay here all night. You have got no say in it!”

“Ye’re off yer onion,” the man grumbled, moving backward. “There’s no call to scream at me like a banshee. Ye be careful with that lamp, you hear? I don’t want to find my stable on fire.”

“I’ll be careful.”

The moment the door closed behind him, Fiona heaved a sob. But she refused to let herself be dragged into that morass of self-pity. Never again. Instead, she walked down the center aisle of the tiny stable.

The four horses that had drawn the Duke of Bretton’s carriage put their heads over their stalls’ doors and nickered at her when she began offering apples. They were beautiful, with soft noses and shining eyes.

After the four of them came a pretty mare, and finally a gelding who took his apple carefully from her flattened hand, his lips curling as if with disdain.

“They should call you Byron,” she told him, stroking the star on his forehead. His black ears flicked back and forth, and then, as if in sympathy, he rested his chin on her shoulder. His apple-breath was sweet.

“You just want another apple,” Fiona said, choking back tears. She gave him one and realized she’d come to the end of the horse stalls.

The Duke of Bretton’s carriage had been pulled in through wide doors at the opposite end of the stable. It was so large that the shining black end of the vehicle loomed in the dusky light. She walked around, opened the door, and listlessly held up the lamp, but no reticule was visible.

Another row of stalls, mostly empty, lay opposite those she had just visited. The last, back where she had started, contained an ancient pony. The pony lumbered to her feet as Fiona approached, her belly almost as round as she was long.

A tear slid down Fiona’s cheek, because the self-pity she had sworn not to allow herself wasn’t easily vanquished. She would never have a child, and so never have a pony . . . Still, she made herself stop after one quivering sob. She slipped into the stall with the pony, who ate an apple and promptly lay down in the straw once again.

She hung the lantern safely from a hook on the wall, and then removed her cloak and dropped it in the straw. Finally she sat down and, leaning against the pony’s fat tummy, pulled the cork from her bottle of wine.

The wine was rich and fruity, like the earth in the springtime, if dirt was good to eat. She took another swig. It was peppery too, like . . . like pepper. She peered at the label. It was quite dim in the stable even with the lantern, but she could make out that the wine had come from Italy.

As she upended the bottle again, it came to her: she needn’t stay in Scotland with a father who didn’t care very much for her, and a sister who cared not at all. She had money. No—she had a
fortune
. She could leave Scotland.

She slowly put down the bottle, the happiness caused by this epiphany exploding in her heart. She would go to Italy and travel to the vineyards. She would buy a little house in the countryside . . . or in Venice . . . or Rome. She needn’t even stay in Italy; she would travel wherever she wished. She need never see an English earl again in her life.

Idea after idea came to her: she would like to see the Parthenon, and a camel, though she had the vague sense they weren’t to be found together. A camel had come through the village in a fair when she was a child. She had never forgotten his long, curled eyelashes, and the way he chewed, thoughtfully, as if he were solving the world’s problems and just not bothering to share the solutions.

Lying there, drinking as she considered the adventures she would have, she began to feel chilled. A bit of a search turned up some horse blankets, and she made a nest with these. Then she curled up and pulled her cloak over herself, fur side down, and resumed her reverie. Only when the bottle was nearly half gone did she come to another epiphany.

She could take a lover. An Italian lover. A man with loopy black curls and golden skin, as far from a pallid, blond earl as could be imagined. “I don’t have any reputation anyway,” she told the pony. “Everybody thinks I did all . . . all
that
with Dugald. I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do as I wish. Maybe I’ll have a child after all.”

The pony twitched her ears encouragingly.

“I
will
have a child,” Fiona decided, taking another drink. “I’ll tell people I’m a widow. I have more than enough money for the two of us. Who needs Scotland anyway? My father won’t even notice I’m gone.”

Her tiresome conscience had just reminded her that her father likely would notice if his elder daughter never returned, when she became aware of a banging noise coming from the wall next to her stall.

“What’s that?” she asked the pony, who didn’t seem to have an answer. Fiona balled up her fist and thumped back on the wall.

No one answered. “I won’t ever think about him,” Fiona told the pony. “Never, ever, ever.” She looked at her bottle. It was dangerously close to half empty. Tomorrow she’d probably have a “head,” as her father called it.

Never mind; it would pass. Tomorrow she would be planning her trip. There were likely travel guides in Taran’s library. She’d be halfway to Italy before anyone noticed she was gone.

“An’ I’ll never even think of him,” she said, hiccupping as she put the bottle down.

There was a crash as the stable door flew open and bounced off the wall.

“Lords a mercy,” Fiona murmured, huddling deeper into her furry nest. She had just begun to feel sleepy.

Then the door slammed shut, and footsteps stamped down the corridor to the accompaniment of someone cursing a blue streak. An Englishman, she thought, not caring much. Probably the duke’s coachman, coming to check on his horses.

“
Fiona!
” Her name emerged from the Englishman’s lips in a dark growl that had her eyes springing open.

It wasn’t the coachman.

“What in the bloody hell are you doing here?”

“We say
bloudy ’ell
in Scotland,” Fiona told him, pulling her fur a little higher around her shoulders. “When in Scotland, do as the Scots.” And, because she really didn’t want to see those blue eyes ever again, she closed her own.

Chapter 16

B
yron could not believe what he was seeing. After Fiona’s hell-born sister had blurted out where she had gone, he had risked his life making his way to the stable, stumbling around the side of the castle in the storm, sick with fear that he was about to walk over Fiona’s fallen body . . . only to find her tucked down in a stall nestled against a fat old pony, the two of them peacefully asleep.

He pulled off his gloves with a muttered curse. Thank God the stable was so small, and preserved heat so well. His fingers burned with the cold, and his toes felt as if they might fall off. He took another irritable look at the sleeping girl at his feet.

Her hair had fallen out of its bun. Tousled strands of it curled around her face and unfurled over the pony’s rough winter coat.

He squatted down and put a hand on her cheek. The skin burned hot under his fingers, and her eyes flew open on a little shriek. “Take your hand off me!”

“You’re warm. And,” he said, catching sight of a bottle of wine, “you’re drunk.”

“I am not drunk,” she told him, tilting her little nose in the air. “Though I may as well point out, since you do not know me, it could be that I am an invet— an inveterate inebriate.” She said the last two words carefully.

He bent down and pulled off his boots, which were covered with snow. That strange joy that Fiona Chisholm seemed to inspire in him was spreading through him again like liquid gold. Like the kind of dizzy, silly joy he distantly remembered experiencing as a child.

“What are you doing here?” Her eyes were suspicious.

“I came to rescue you.”

“
What?
”

“I thought I would find you dead in the snow,” he said conversationally, knocking snow from his hat before hanging it on a hook. “I think it was a near go myself, in truth. I kept losing the castle as I was trying to get around to the stable. I was completely blinded by the snow. Needless to say, we don’t have storms like this in London.”

She sat up, a molting fur cape slipping from her shoulder. “Didn’t you follow the rope from the kitchen door?”

“The kitchen?” He shook his head. “I knew nothing about that, so I went out the front door. Your sister said you went to the stable; I looked out the window and thought it was a damned foolish and dangerous thing to do. So I followed the castle around to the stable, but I kept losing touch of the walls. Blasted amount of snow out there.”

“You could have died!” Her voice cut straight through the muffled sound of the wind howling outside.

“Would you have cared?”

She lay back down. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

But Byron heard her voice wobble. “I couldn’t stay away,” he said, staring down at her. “I know your reputation is . . . whatever it is—”

“Stupid Englishman,” she said, opening her eyes again. “I know you heard what Marilla said. Every word of it is true.”

He took off his greatcoat and shook the snow off in the corridor before he came back into the stall. “Your fiancé, Dugald, had the brains of a gnat, if he thought ivy would bear the weight of a grown man. You’re better off without him.”

“I won’t be your mistress just because everyone thinks that of me!” she said, her voice very sharp, wrapping her arms tight around herself. “Believe me, I’ve had plenty of offers, especially in the first year after Dugald’s death.”