He was a man of medium height, solidly built and muscled, and no longer young. His beard was entirely gray, as was the mane of hair severely combed back and tied in a queue. His face was still beautiful—there was no other word for it—but even in such perfectly proportioned features, his eyes drew attention. They were wide set and intensely blue-green, a color Elizabeth had never before seen. Aunt Merriweather would have found them excessive, and for once Elizabeth would have to agree. But he had an easy air about him, and a keen intelligence and calm that were as obvious as the strange color of his eyes and his odd habit of wearing gloves throughout the meal.
Contrecoeur’s English had only the hint of an accent. “Mrs. Bonner.” He focused his unsettling gaze on Elizabeth.
“Sir?”
“I understand that you grew up in Devon?”
“I did, sir, at Oakmere. Lady Crofton is my aunt. Have your travels taken you to Devon, Madame Vigée?”
“Devon?” Madame Vigée’s head reared back and she looked at Elizabeth down the long slope of her nose. “There is nothing worth seeing south of London. It is all cows and peasants.”
“Ain’t France south of London?” Nathaniel asked, and Elizabeth hid her smile in her wine glass.
Madame Vigée pursed her mouth at him, but addressed Elizabeth. “Despite all its beauties, you left Devon for the Colonies, madame. How very … enterprising of you.” Her gaze flickered toward Nathaniel and away again. Elizabeth had spent too many hours in drawing rooms to mistake her: You could not find a husband at home, and so you cast your net in other waters.
“I went to New-York to start a school,” Elizabeth said. “And that is what I did. I will return to it, as soon as I may.”
“A school?” Madame Vigée’s eyes narrowed. “What an astounding thing for a young woman of fortune and family to do. Did your father not stop you?”
“He tried,” Nathaniel said dryly.
Madame Vigée’s wine glass paused in its path to her mouth. “But who could there be to teach, in your wilderness?”
“The children of the village, of course,” Elizabeth said. “Quite a number of them.”
Madame Vigée drew herself up into a disdainful posture. “The poor?”
“I suppose poor is about all we’ve got in Paradise. By your standards, anyway.” Nathaniel sent a sidelong glance toward the earl.
But he had nothing to contribute to the conversation, and Madame Vigée clearly took this for approbation. She set her sights more firmly on Elizabeth.
“Madame Bonner. Do you not realize that by teaching the lowest classes to read and write, you take them out of the station assigned to them by Providence and nature? It is this kind of foolish egalitarianism that is destroying France, madame. Have you not heard of the guillotine?”
The earl cleared his throat, and she turned to him eagerly. “Do you not agree, my lord Earl?”
He considered her for a moment, and then he shook his head. “No, madame. I dinna. The guillotine has mair tae do wi’ bread than books.”
Madame Vigée gave him a very disappointed look. “So the rabble would have us believe.”
One white brow shot up in amusement. “Are ye callin’ me gullible, madame, or rabble?”
The older woman’s complexion went very pale beneath her rouge. “Neither, my lord. You mistake me. My point was simply that Madame Bonner has taken on a task of dubious merit. She should have stayed at home in Devon, where she could do no damage.”
Before Elizabeth could respond to this impertinence, Nathaniel laughed out loud.
Madame Vigée looked at him as if he had belched. “I amuse you, sir?”
“By Christ, you do. Here you sit in Scotland, tellin’ my wife she should have stayed at home. I’m right glad she didn’t. England’s loss was New-York’s gain. And mine, to be blunt about it.” And he ran a hand down Elizabeth’s arm. It was such an affectionate and intimate gesture that she blushed to the roots of her hair, but it pleased her inordinately.
Madame Vigée’s own jaw dropped in amazement, but Monsieur Contrecoeur jumped in before she could comment.
“I have visited Devon on business. It is a beautiful place, but it cannot be compared to the great forests of New-York.”
Nathaniel turned to him with real interest. “You know our forests?”
“My work has taken me many places,” said Contrecoeur.
“Is that how you met Monsieur Dupuis?” Elizabeth asked in the same polite and disinterested tone she might have asked him the time of day.
The earl put down his wine glass with a thump. “The gentlemen are colleagues.”
Elizabeth said, “It is unfortunate that Monsieur Dupuis is too ill to join us tonight. He expressed an interest in meeting my husband.”
Carryck’s head came up slowly, his displeasure clear to see. “I canna allow it. The cancer has unsettled his mind.”
Elizabeth remembered with great clarity the many dinners like this one she had endured at Oakmere. In polite society—in this kind of polite society—older ladies might speak their mind, but the young ones were not to discuss anything of importance, to ask a substantive question, or to express a real opinion. If a young woman was so brash as to turn her attention to anything but the affairs of the neighborhood, music, or needlework, it was taken as a sign of excessive reading, a naturally intractable disposition, or an indulgent upbringing. Clearly Carryck—and Madame Vigée—were convinced she was a product of all three.
The old rebellious spirit that had gotten her through so many years at her aunt’s table rushed up through her.
“It is a very unsettling disease indeed, my lord, if it gifts him with the knowledge of the Mohawk tongue while it robs him of his life.”
There was a moment’s awkward silence.
Monsieur Contrecoeur said, “Merchants are by nature inquisitive, madame, and must develop an ear for languages. I myself learned Huron during my time in Canada. And I speak French, Polish, German, Italian, and Russian.”
“Huron?” Nathaniel asked, rather sharply. “How do you come to learning Huron?”
“The fur trade in Canada,” said Contrecoeur. “I spent a number of years there.”
Mademoiselle LeBrun’s expression had not changed through all the table conversation, but she suddenly woke up from her daydream.
“Maman is in Russia.” She had a very pretty smile in spite of a crooked front tooth, and it occurred to Elizabeth that she might not be so much bored with her company as simply shy and homesick.
“I have always been curious about Russia,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps you can join your mother there one day?”
“I will. Monsieur Contrecoeur is taking me with him to Russia to see her. The Russian court is very civilized,” the girl offered, as if Elizabeth had expressed concern. “They all speak French.”
Madame Vigée gestured to the footman for more wine. “We shall see about Russia, my dear. We shall see.”
Nathaniel took her arm as they walked through the night garden in a hush punctuated by the soft trill of crickets and the rustle of Elizabeth’s skirts along the path. Even in the cool dark the scent of the roses and phlox hung heavy in the air. Behind them, light still burned in the windows of the dining room.
“You let that woman get to you,” Nathaniel said, slipping an arm around her shoulders. “I thought any minute you’d start quoting your Mrs. Wollstonecraft at her.”
Elizabeth was irritated still, but this made her smile. “I was tempted, I admit it.”
“I wish you had,” Nathaniel said. “I would have liked to see her face. Now, what do you suppose that visit’s really about?”
She glanced back over her shoulder. “Monsieur Dupuis.”
“You haven’t even laid eyes on the man, but he’s on your mind a lot. Is there something you ain’t told me?”
“Nothing concrete,” Elizabeth said. “Just a vague feeling. Which I might have discounted, if it weren’t for Carryck’s defensiveness when I raised the subject.”
br /> “Maybe it ain’t about Dupuis at all,” Nathaniel said. “Maybe it was the visitors who put him in a sour mood. I got the idea that maybe the aunt is trying to marry the young one off to Carryck.”
Elizabeth pulled up in surprise. Such matches were not unknown, and in fact Julie LeBrun was typical of those young girls of good—but impoverished—family who were often married to rich old men. Men with lands and titles, in need of an heir. It made some sense, and she wondered why it had not occurred to her.
“I guess not,” said Nathaniel, seeing her expression.
“No,” Elizabeth said. “There may be something to what you say, Nathaniel. But a French woman? And why wait so long, if he is hoping to father another heir? It has been a few years since his daughter ran away.”
“Because he had high hopes for my father,” Nathaniel said. “Or me, or Daniel.”
Elizabeth did not like to think of it, but it was true: Daniel alone would serve the earl’s purpose. The question was, just how desperate was he?
Nathaniel said, “Maybe it’s finally getting through to him that we don’t want to be here. Maybe he’s still thinking of his wife. Or maybe he didn’t want the trouble of a girl that young. A man that age—they say with some the urge just goes away.”
“Not in his case,” Elizabeth said. “There was a woman in his chambers a few nights ago. I saw her at the window.”
“Is that so? Did you recognize her?”
“It was Mrs. Hope,” Elizabeth said. “At first I thought I must be mistaken, but as I look back on it I am more and more sure. You do not seem surprised.”
“I ain’t, especially. She’s a widow woman, and he’s lost his wife. I wouldn’t call it unusual if they take some comfort from one another now and then.”
“Curiosity thinks that Jennet is the earl’s daughter.”
Nathaniel laughed. “What else have you two figured out between you when I wasn’t listening?”
“I didn’t say that I agreed with her, Nathaniel. It seems to me unlikely that the earl …” She paused. “There is a great difference in their ages, and in their stations.”
“You sound like your aunt Merriweather,” Nathaniel said. “You know as well as anybody that the rules don’t count for much when things start to happen between two like-minded people.”
Elizabeth paused. “It is not so simple as you would make it. Those rules, as you call them, are still very much in place here, Nathaniel. If they are truly attached to each other, why have they not married? No, I will tell you. Because it would be a scandal of the first order for the earl to marry his housekeeper, no matter how well suited they may be.”
“I don’t doubt what you say, Boots. You know this world better than I do. But I’ll tell you this much—if Mrs. Hope bore him a son, he’d marry her right quick. And I’d wager quite a lot on that.”
The truth of this could not be denied. “You do not know she is at fault, Nathaniel. It might be—” She stopped.
“That he’s infertile? With a daughter he claims as his own?”
Elizabeth broke off a sprig of lavender and brushed it against her cheek as she thought. “You are right, it is unlikely that the fault is entirely his. It does give Mademoiselle LeBrun’s visit a new angle. It would speak to the earl’s desperation. If it is so, I feel some sympathy for Mrs. Hope.”
“And for the earl,” Nathaniel added. “It’s a high price to pay, turning the woman you love away because she cain’t give you a son. I still don’t understand what’s at the bottom of all this, Boots. But I’ll tell you this much. Tomorrow I’ll get some straight answers, or we’ll leave this place with or without my father.”
They walked on for a moment in silence. An owl called from the woods that climbed the hill, once and then again.
Finally she said, “Where are we going?”
He smiled a little. “What makes you think we’re going anywhere at all?”
She tugged at his arm. “I know you well enough to tell when you’ve got a plan, Nathaniel Bonner. And why else would you suddenly get an urge to see the grounds?”
He sent her a sidelong glance. “Maybe I just want to be out-of-doors.”
“You can be outside whenever you please, after all.”
His expression went very still, and his whole posture changed. He steered her toward a bench under an arbor draped with twisting wisteria.
“Nathaniel?”
“Let me rest my leg here for a minute.”
The garden spread out around them, silver stippled in the moonlight. It was a pleasant spot to sit, but Nathaniel’s unease made it hard to take any diversion in the fine night.
He said, “I wonder sometimes how Carryck breathes, with so many people around him all day long. Don’t it bother you, Boots?”
His tone was easy, but there was a tautness in his hand where it rested on her leg. He was asking something important, and perhaps he did not even realize it himself.
She took up his hand—she wondered sometimes if he knew what an effect even the sight of his hands had on her—and held it between her own two. “Nathaniel. I would wish us home this moment, if I could. This place—” She gestured around them. “None of this means anything to me.”
He pulled her closer, wrapped his arms around her to bury his face in the crook of her shoulder.
“Thank God,” he muttered.
“You did not really think I might want to stay in Scotland? Surely you know me better.”
He touched her hair, smoothing it back from her face. “I was getting worried. Seeing you like this—” His fingers plucked at her gown. “I don’t know, Boots. Seems like you were born to this kind of life.”
“Oh, Nathaniel.” She pulled his face closer and kissed him. “I left this world of my own free will once before. I was never happy. Why would I want to stay now?”
He shrugged, and she could feel him searching for words. “It ain’t an easy life, back in Paradise.”
“Ease is highly overrated.”
“Is it? I hope you’ll still feel that way in ten years or so.”
“Nathaniel Bonner, do you doubt me?”
He pulled her close. “Never in this world.”
This kiss was nothing playful; it was rough and sure, as purposeful as the hand that cupped her breast. He tasted of red wine and spiced peaches; his cheeks were rough with new beard.
When he let her catch her breath she said, “You take delight in putting me in these awkward situations.”
“Want me to stop?” Even while his hands slipped into her bodice.
“Oh, no,” Elizabeth said, pulling his face back down to kiss him of her own accord. “Nothing so rash as that.”
A whirlwind of a kiss. She let it pull her along, feeling the center of herself go liquid and soft, no matter what her rational mind was saying about this exposed place, the nearness of the castle, the many windows where light still burned.
He lifted her so that she knelt over his lap, her skirts flung out. The shoulder of her gown had slipped to explose one breast and he tipped her backward to nuzzle, licking and suckling until she gasped with it.
“Your leg?” She touched his thigh where it was bandaged beneath his breeches.
“Never mind my leg.” He caught her hand and put it where he wanted it. And then his own hands worked their way under petticoats and up her thighs, thumbs seeking. He was short of breath, this man who could run a mile without a hitch or pause, and how that pleased her. To have him want her so much: it was a gift he gave to her. And still, the wind moved in the gnarled limbs of the fruit trees and called her out of herself.
She raised her head. “Nathaniel. Perhaps we should—”
But he cut her off. Used his mouth and tongue and the strength of his desire to distract her, drawing her so close that she could not have taken note of the rest of the world even if it were to burst into flame. His hands busied themselves with silk and gauze and the flies on his breeches. Knuckles rasped against her tenderest flesh and then he lifted he
r, spread fingered.
“Aye,” his breath warm against her ear as he fit himself to her, seeking and finding, and losing himself in the process. “We should.”
They started back by way of the north side of the castle, arm in arm.
“You’re asleep on your feet, Boots. Maybe I should carry you.”
It was a tempting idea, as each and every one of her bones felt twice its normal weight.
“I should make you carry me,” she said. “Perhaps then you would begin to see the advantage of keeping this kind of activity in the bedchamber.”
His thumb traveled down her spine. “What kind of activity is that?”
“Public fornication,” she said.
He choked on a laugh, and she pinched him.
“You needn’t be so very satisfied with yourself. Someday we will get caught out. And I will leave the explaining to you.”
“But I am satisfied,” he said, pulling her in close as his hand traced her backside. “And so are you, darlin’. Ain’t that explanation enough?”
She batted his hand away. “I should like to see you make that argument to Mr. MacQuiddy,” Elizabeth said. “I believe he would box your ears, though he should have to climb up on a ladder to do it.”
Nathaniel’s laughter died away suddenly.
Before them was Elphinstone Tower. Hannah called this the secret tower, but it looked anything but secret at this moment. Some kind of gathering was going on, and no one had bothered to close the draperies.
Nathaniel took her arm and pulled her away, around the corner and toward the gates into the courtyard. They did not speak until they were out of the guard’s hearing.
“What did Hannah say about that tower?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Not so very much, Nathaniel. Apparently Lady Carryck’s chambers were locked at her death, on the earl’s orders. She did not admit to it, but I would not be surprised if Jennet took her there somehow.”
He said, “Right now it don’t look locked at all.”
“Perhaps the earl likes to spend some time there in privacy,” Elizabeth suggested. “Perhaps he took his guests to see his lady’s portrait. Did you recognize anyone?”