As Richard sat in the other armchair, a maid bustled in, ferrying a large tray with the promised sustenance. Catriona poured as Heather and Breckenridge fell on the fare—scones, clotted cream, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, damson jam, plus sandwiches stuffed with ham.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Catriona shake her head at Richard, plainly signaling him to hold off his inquisition until Breckenridge and Heather had at least taken the edge from their appetites.
Silence reigned for several minutes, then Heather set down her plate, picked up her cup and saucer, and sat back with a contented sigh. “We haven’t really had that much to eat, not since we left Gretna Green.”
Catriona blinked and fixed her gaze on Heather. “Gretna Green?”
Heather nodded. “That’s where the kidnappers took me. But I should start at the beginning.”
She promptly did.
After a moment’s consideration, Breckenridge sat back and let her tell their tale in her own way, in her own words, from the moment she walked into Lady Herford’s salon.
For which Heather was sincerely grateful. She knew her cousins—knew Richard—too well not to recognize what was behind his unusually stiff reception, not so much of her but of Breckenridge. She was determined that no whisper of blame should attach to him; she was all too conscious of just how understanding and supportive he had been, even to the extent of reigning in the overprotective impulses that beat in him just as much as in her cousins.
She felt beholden to him, immensely grateful for his steady, unwavering support. She seriously doubted many other men would have done as he had—accepted and bowed to her wish to learn what she could of the truth of the kidnappings in order to better protect her sisters and cousins.
Instead of arguing, he’d done what he’d been able to do to keep her safe, which in turn had allowed her to continue with her role as kidnapee with confidence, in the sure knowledge that if anything had threatened her, he’d stood in the shadows, close, ready, willing, and able to haul her to safety.
Everything he’d done, all the rules he’d broken, he’d broken for her, and she would not hear of him being held to blame.
To his continued credit, he interrupted only to add those details she hadn’t known, such as how he’d come to locate her at the inn at Knebworth. Her refusal to escape with him that night made Richard frown, but her reason for doing so forced him to bite his tongue.
Between them, she and Breckenridge told the story of her kidnapping and his subsequent pursuit in concise but accurate detail.
Breckenridge was impressed by how clear and open Heather was; one glance at Catriona’s face, then Richard’s, reassured him that they, too, had realized that, for all the attendant drama, Heather had sailed through the ordeal with no real damage—no lasting fear. Not just from her words but also from her tone and irritated expression as she recounted their failure to find any real clue to the identity of the mysterious laird, it was clear she was more exercised by the need to learn what lay behind the kidnapping than anything else.
Of course, she’d skated, very neatly, over the small matter of their intimacy. She’d remembered to return his signet ring as they’d approached the manor, so not even that detail remained to raise awkward speculation. Nevertheless, Breckenridge felt, sensed, Richard’s suspicious glance, but he pretended not to so he wouldn’t have to meet it. He fully intended to speak with Richard as soon as he could and make a clean breast of the situation, but not with the ladies present.
Not with Heather present, and until Breckenridge was sure which way Catriona would lean, he wasn’t inclined to include her in his confidence, either.
Regardless, he knew that Richard’s initial stance—the battle-ready tension that had thrummed through his large frame when he’d met them in the forecourt—had faded, steadily receding as Heather recounted all that he, Breckenridge, had done in order to protect her.
Heather didn’t see the half of it, but Richard did. The occasional, increasingly understanding glances Richard threw him bore witness to that.
Reaching the end of her recital, Heather concluded, “And so we walked down and into the Vale.”
Breckenridge stirred, finally met Richard’s eyes. “The horseman—he followed us to the edge of the Vale.”
“What?” Heather stared at him. “I didn’t see him.”
“He halted at the top of the lane down from the last village—Knockgray?” When Richard nodded curtly, Breckenridge went on, “I glanced back before walking around the bend—the one where you lose sight of the lane down. He was there, calmly sitting a huge horse—a prime piece of horseflesh. I waited, but he didn’t make any move to follow. Eventually, I rejoined Heather and we came on. Clearly he didn’t follow.”
Catriona’s eyes grew distant, but then she shook her head and refocused. “He didn’t set foot on Vale land—I would know.”
Breckenridge hesitated, then said, “That suggests he knew the place.”
Richard grimaced. “Not necessarily. People often feel an aversion to entering the Vale if they intend to do harm.”
Heather, still absorbing the fact that Breckenridge hadn’t mentioned the horseman, felt grateful for Catriona’s power. If the horseman had decided to run them down . . . but then Breckenridge had had a pistol in his pocket, so most likely he would have been safe.
Richard smoothly rose. “I’d best send a courier south, posthaste.”
Heather looked up. “Can I send a note, too? To Mama and Papa?”
“That,” Richard said, “would no doubt be best.” He waved her to the desk that sat at the far end of the room, before the velvet curtains drawn against the evening gloom.
While Richard and Heather sat at the desk and composed their respective notes—Heather’s to her parents, Richard’s to Devil, his half brother and head of the family—Breckenridge sat by the fire and asked Catriona about the Vale. He was curious, and she was happy to indulge him, educating his ignorance, as he suspected she saw it. He didn’t mind; he felt strangely comfortable, more relaxed than he’d expected to be.
More relieved.
The irony in that occurred to him when, the letters dispatched with a rider, Catriona swept Heather off upstairs to find clothes and luxuriate in a bath, leaving him at last alone with Richard; given the necessity of leg-shackling himself to Heather, his relief was surely misplaced.
Before he had a chance to assemble his wits enough to find the right words to broach the subject, Richard, returning to stand before the fire after closing the door on the women, then detouring to pour them each a glass of much-need whisky, looked down at him as he handed him a glass, caught his gaze, and stated, “I appreciate and accept that you had to do everything you’ve done. I know Heather well enough to realize that she left you with no real choice. That said, given the circumstances, given who you are and who she is, what now?”
Breckenridge appreciated Richard’s directness. Holding Richard’s gaze, he succinctly stated, “I’d rather assumed a wedding was in order.”
Richard studied his face, then blew out a breath. “You’ll agree to marry her?”
He would fight to marry her, but he saw no need to admit that. “It seems to me that our principal goal in this has to be to protect her reputation. The way I see it, given she’s to be my bride, that’s of paramount importance—without her reputation intact, she won’t be able to fulfill the social position that should be her due.”
Richard nodded. “You’ll get no argument from any Cynster on that.”
“Just so.” Breckenridge paused to sip the whisky; it was a seriously fine malt, too good to gulp. “The reality as far as the ton is concerned is this: I have to marry and reasonably soon, and Heather is already twenty-five. After this Season, if she doesn’t marry, she’ll be considered to be on the shelf. The tale I suggest we tell is that, as we already knew each other, some kind soul—Lady Osbaldestone
springs to mind—suggested that we would suit, or rather that both our situations could be resolved with one ceremony. Consequently, in lieu of Heather and her parents visiting Baraclough, it was agreed that we should meet privately here, under your and Catriona’s eyes, to decide if we could agree on a wedding.”
“Why aren’t Martin, or at least Celia, here, too?’
“Because Celia has two other daughters to chaperon through the balls and parties, and her sudden disappearance from the social round, together with Heather, would have occasioned considerable speculation, which both families were keen, given the true circumstances, to avoid.”
Richard considered. Head tipping, he said, “From what we’ve heard, the family’s managed thus far to keep Heather’s disappearance a secret. Celia and the ladies have put about some tale that Heather’s taken ill and might have something catching, so none of her friends and their mothers are falling over themselves to call.”
Breckenridge inclined his head. “That will work. When our truth becomes known, they’ll no doubt dub the tale romantic.”
Richard snorted. He sipped, then glanced at Breckenridge. “Two quibbles. First, it’s a commonly held axiom that Cynsters marry for love.”
Breckenridge shrugged. “It simply didn’t happen in this case, and with Heather having reached the age of twenty-five without tripping over her one true love, she decided a viscountess’s coronet, with a countess’s tiara to come, was preferable to remaining a spinster.”
Richard nodded. “Fair enough. The other quibble is why meet here, rather than at Baraclough?”
Breckenridge smiled cynically. “That’s easy. Because Baraclough’s a short drive from London, and anyone might have dropped by to see m’father while we were there. The Vale, on the other hand, is a very long way from the curious ton.”
Richard grinned. “Ah—I see.” After a moment of thought, he nodded. “That just might work.”
“What might work?”
They both glanced up to see Catriona closing the door behind her.
She came forward, brows arching in query.
Richard explained, not the need for a wedding—that, Breckenridge realized, Richard and Catriona had already discussed—but that he, Breckenridge, was willing to marry Heather, and the story they would tell to cloak her absence from London, thus protecting her reputation from the censorious ton.
At the end of Richard’s exposition, Catriona remained silent for a heartbeat, then looked at Breckenridge. “Have you discussed this with Heather?”
He felt his lips thin, disguised the reaction by raising his glass. “No. Not yet.”
“Well.” Her brows rose. “I suggest you do. However, in the meantime, you had better repair to the room Henderson’s prepared for you, and restore yourself to your customary sartorial state.” Her eyes scanned both pairs of shoulders before her. “Richard can lend you some clothes.” She rose.
Breckenridge perforce rose, too. As he set down his glass, Catriona continued, “It’ll be dinnertime soon. All else can wait until later.”
She somehow succeeded in shooing both him and Richard from the room. In the hall, she instructed Richard to find Breckenridge some clothes and dispatched her husband up one turret stair, then she handed Breckenridge into the care of Henderson, to be led up another winding stone stairway to his room and an awaiting bath.
Hands on her hips, Catriona stood at the bottom of the spiral stairs and watched Breckenridge ascend. When he passed beyond her sight, she continued to stare, then she slowly smiled, shook her head, and with that faintly patronizing smile still flirting about her lips, swanned off to attend to her other duties.
Returning from Breckenridge’s room, having escorted thereto and introduced Worboys, his terribly correct gentleman’s gentleman, who naturally had insisted that only he could adequately clothe a gentleman of Breckenridge’s caliber and had therefore usurped the task of selecting and carrying a selection of garments drawn from Richard’s wardrobe to Breckenridge, Richard reentered the large chamber he shared with his witchy wife to discover her already gowned for dinner. Seated before her dressing table, she was brushing out her long hair.
Firelight danced along the gilded red strands.
Dragging his eyes from a sight he still found mesmerizing, he closed the door, shook off the distraction, and remembered what he’d meant to ask. Catching her eyes in the mirror, he let a frown color his. “What was all that about?”
He didn’t need to elaborate—she knew what he meant. Her “all else” that was to wait until later. He wasn’t at all sure what tack she was taking, but he was perfectly clear on where he stood.
At least, he thought he was.
She refocused on the lock of hair through which she was drawing her brush. “Did you notice how eager Heather was, how intent she was, on ensuring you, I, and, by extension, the family, understood that Breckenridge was in no way to blame for the length of time she’s been away?”
Halting behind her, watching her face in the mirror, Richard slid his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “Understandable enough. She’s never been one for lying, or even gilding the truth, so she’d feel horrendously guilty if we rained fury on Breckenridge’s head for an outcome that was, in fact, her fault.”
“It was in no way her fault.” Catriona’s tone didn’t materially change, but he heard the censure nonetheless. “Any fault in this lies at the feet of the kidnappers, and more, on the head of this mysterious laird.”
Richard tipped his head. “All perfectly true, but that’s not how society will see it.”
“Perhaps not, but we’ve strayed from the point.” Setting down her brush, she raised her hands and swept back her hair, preparatory to winding it into her usual neat knot that never remained neat for long. “What I found most interesting in the tale of their adventure was firstly Heather’s efforts to make it clear that the outcome was entirely due to her decisions, not Breckenridge’s, and that he, patently, had not just accepted those decisions of hers, accepted her right to make them, but had then supported her, selflessly and largely, it seems, without complaint. That, I find most interesting, don’t you?”
Richard frowned, considering. After a moment he replied, “I really can’t see what else he could have done. This is Heather, after all. Much as none of us like it, she’s a Cynster to her toes, and with a threat against her sisters and possibly Henrietta and Mary, too, in the wind, she would have been like a terrier with a bone—impossible to detach and lead away.”
Catriona held his gaze for a moment, smiling fondly in a way that told him he’d missed some utterly obvious point, then she softly said, “Tell me—what is Breckenridge?”
Not who, he noted, but what.
He knew what she meant, could follow her argument, but . . . he pulled a face. “We can’t tell what really went on—how much argument there actually was—but I still believe that, no matter what he did, Breckenridge wouldn’t have been able to turn Heather from her path.”
It was Catriona’s turn to lightly shrug. “Perhaps not. I suspect we’ll never know, and I’m not sure it’s relevant, not anymore.”
She started to slip pins into her topknot.
Richard studied her face. She wasn’t wearing her “Lady” mask, the serene assurance she could project even in the face of disaster, yet she was happy, genuinely pleased with the situation.
Frowning, uncertain over just what she in fact saw, what she was expecting—what it was in all this that she saw and he didn’t—he ventured, “You do realize, don’t you, that they’ll have to marry?”
Her smile widened. “You do realize, don’t you, why the Lady steered them here?”
Richard straightened. “The Lady?” His witchy wife did not invoke her deity without good cause, and he’d learned to be wary when she did. “She’s involved in this?”
“Well, of course. Where else would she send a pair
of lovers who need to sort themselves out?” Hair anchored to her satisfaction, Catriona swiveled on her dressing stool and leaned back to look up at him. “You of all people ought to know that the Vale is a place for lovers who fail to see the obvious to realize what is meant to be.”
Richard hesitated, but had to ask, “They’re meant to be?”
Catriona shook her head at him. “You really need to pay more attention. Even I knew they were meant to be, and I’ve only seen them together twice before.” She spread her hands. “And now here they are, and all is plain.”
“It is?”
“Of course! So our role is to encourage them to remain here until they see it, too.” Rising, she undid the wrapper she’d worn over her alabaster shoulders, largely bared by the wide neckline of her dinner gown. “I doubt it’ll take too long—Heather’s never been blind, and I rather doubt Breckenridge is either. Indeed, his reputation would suggest that when it comes to women, he sees more than most.”
That won’t save him. Richard kept the words to himself.
Laying the wrapper aside, Catriona shook out and resettled her gown, then swung around and presented him with her back. “Lace me up—and then you’d better change, too. The gong will ring at any moment, and we should be in the drawing room when they arrive—I want to see their faces.”
Having no real quibble with that plan, Richard put aside his confusion along with his misgivings, set his long fingers to her laces, and complied.
He didn’t truly care if the Lady was involved, just as long as Heather and Breckenridge fronted the altar. Ensuring that happened was his duty to the family, but how it came about . . . no one would care.
Tying off Catriona’s laces, then turning to doff his clothes and don the garments Worboys had left out for him, the words he’d uttered to Breckenridge replayed in his mind. He didn’t think of himself as prescient, yet it seemed his words had been a warning.
Cynsters married for love.
If he was interpreting the Lady’s interest in Heather and Breckenridge correctly, and he was fairly certain he was, then it seemed he’d have the honor and the unmitigated delight of welcoming Breckenridge—Breckenridge of all men, the ton’s foremost and favorite rake—to their club.