Ian stiffened slightly in the act of pouring some leftover coffee into a mug and glanced over his shoulder. One look at his uncle’s expression told him that the older man was well aware that desire, not a need for fresh air, had caused Ian to take Elizabeth for a walk. “What do you think?” he asked irritably.
“I think you’ve upset her repeatedly and deliberately, which is not your ordinary behavior with women.”
“There is nothing ordinary about Elizabeth Cameron.”
“I completely agree,” said the vicar with a smile in his voice. Closing his book, he put it aside. “I also think she is strongly attracted to you, and you are to her. That much is perfectly obvious.”
“Then it should be equally obvious to a man of your discernment,” Ian said in a low, implacable voice, “that we are completely ill-suited to each other. It’s a moot issue in any case; I’m marrying someone else.”
Duncan opened his mouth to comment on that, saw the expression on Ian’s face, and gave up.
17
Ian left at first light the next morning to go hunting, and Duncan took advantage of his absence to try to glean from Elizabeth some answers to the problems that worried him. Repeatedly and without success he tried to question her about her original meeting with Ian in England, what sort of life she led there, and so on. By the time breakfast was over, however, he had received only the most offhand and superficial sort of replies—replies he sensed were designed to mislead him into believing her life was perfectly frivolous and very agreeable. Finally, she tried to divert him by asking about Ian’s sketches.
In the hope that she would confide in him if she understood Ian better, Duncan went so far as to explain how Ian had dealt with his grief after his family’s death and why he had banished the retriever. The ploy failed; although she exhibited sympathy and shock at the story, she was no more inclined to reveal anything about herself than she had been before.
For Elizabeth’s part, she could scarcely wait for the meal to end so she could escape his steady gaze and probing questions. For all his kindness and Scots bluntness, he was also, she suspected, an extremely perceptive man who did not give up easily when he set his mind to get at the bottom of something. As soon as the dishes were put away she fled to her work in the garden, only to have him appear at her side a few minutes later, a worried expression on his face. “Your coachman is here,” he said. “He’s brought an urgent message from your uncle.”
A feeling of dread swept through Elizabeth as she stood up, and she rushed into the house where Aaron was waiting.
“Aaron?” she said. “What’s wrong? How on earth did you get the coach up here?”
In answer to the first question he handed her a folded message. In answer to the second he said gruffly, “Your uncle was so anxious to have you start home that he told us to rent whatever we needed, just so’s we’d get you back posthaste. There’s a pair o’ horses out there for you and Miss Throckmorton-Jones, and a carriage down at the road we can use to get back to the inn where yer coach is waitin’ to take ye home.”
Elizabeth nodded absently, opened the message, and stared at it in dawning horror.
“Elizabeth,” her uncle had written, “Come home at once. Belhaven has offered for you. There’s no reason to waste time in Scotland. Belhaven would have been my choice over Thornton, as you know.” Obviously anticipating that she would try some tactic to stall, he’d added, “If you return within a sennight, you may participate in the betrothal negotiations. Otherwise I shall proceed without you, which, as your guardian, I have every right to do.”
Elizabeth crumpled the note in her hand, staring at her fist while her heart began to thud in helpless misery. A disturbance in the front yard beyond the open door of the cottage made her look up. Lucinda and Mr. Wiley were returning at last, and she ran to Lucinda, hastily stepping around the black horse, who laid his ears back evilly in warning. “Lucy!” she burst out while Lucinda waited calmly for Mr. Wiley to help her down. “Lucy! Disaster has struck.”
“A moment, if you please, Elizabeth,” said the unflappable woman. “Whatever it is, it will surely wait until we’re inside and can be comfortable. I declare, I feel as if I were born atop this horse. You cannot imagine the time we had finding suitable servants . . . .”
Elizabeth scarcely heard the rest of what she was saying. In a torment of frantic helplessness she had to wait while Lucinda dismounted, limped into the house, and sat down upon the sofa. “Now then,” said Lucinda, flicking a speck of dust off her skirts, “what has happened?”
Oblivious to the vicar, who was standing by the fireplace looking mystified and alarmed on her behalf, Elizabeth handed Lucinda the note. “Read this. It—it sounds as if he’s already accepted him.”
As she read the brief missive Lucinda’s face turned an awful gray with two bright splotches of angry color standing out on her hollow cheeks. “He’d accept an offer from the devil,” Lucinda gritted wrathfully, “so long as he had a noble title and money. This shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
“I was so certain I’d persuaded Belhaven that we couldn’t possibly suit!” Elizabeth almost wailed, twisting her blue skirt in her hands in her agitation. “I did everything, Lucy, everything I told you about, and more.” Agitation drove Elizabeth to her feet. “If we make haste, we can be home by the allotted time, and perhaps I can find a way to dissuade Uncle Julius.”
Lucinda did not leap to her feet as Elizabeth did; she did not race for the stairs, dash into her room, and vent her helpless rage by slamming a door, as Elizabeth did. Her body rigid, Lucinda stood up very slowly and turned to the vicar. “Where is he?” she snapped.
“Ian?” the vicar said distractedly, alarmed by her pallid color. “He’s gone hunting.”
Deprived of her real prey, Lucinda unleashed her fury upon the hapless vicar instead. When she finished her tirade she hurled the crumpled note into the cold fireplace and said in a voice that shook with wrath, “When that spawn of Lucifer returns, you tell him that if he ever crosses my path, he’d better be wearing a suit of armor!” So saying, she marched upstairs.
* * *
It was dusk when Ian returned, and the house seemed unnaturally quiet. His uncle was sitting near the fire, watching him with an odd expression on his face that was half anger, half speculation. Against his will Ian glanced about the room, expecting to see Elizabeth’s shiny golden hair and entrancing face. When he didn’t, he put his gun back on the rack above the fireplace and casually asked, “Where is everyone?”
“If you mean Jake,” the vicar said, angered yet more by the way Ian deliberately avoided asking about Elizabeth, “he took a bottle of ale with him to the stable and said he was planning to drink it until the last two days were washed from his memory.”
“They’re back, then?”
“Jake is back,” the vicar corrected as Ian walked over to the table and poured some Madeira into a glass. “The servingwomen will arrive in the mom. Elizabeth and Miss Throckmorton-Jones are gone, however.”
Thinking Duncan meant they’d gone for a walk, Ian flicked a glance toward the front door. “Where have they gone at this hour?”
“Back to England.”
The glass in Ian’s hand froze halfway to his lips. “Why?” he snapped.
“Because Miss Cameron’s uncle has accepted an offer for her hand.”
The vicar watched in angry satisfaction as Ian tossed down half the contents of his glass as if he wanted to wash away the bitterness of the news. When he spoke his voice was laced with cold sarcasm. “Who’s the lucky bridegroom?”
“Sir Francis Belhaven, I believe.”
Ian’s lips twisted with excruciating distaste.
“You don’t admire him, I gather?”
Ian shrugged. “Belhaven is an old lecher whose sexual tastes reportedly run to the bizarre. He’s also three times her age.”
“That’s a pity,” the vicar said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice blank as he leaned back in his chair an
d propped his long legs upon the footstool in front of him. “Because that beautiful, innocent child will have no choice but to wed the old . . . lecher. If she doesn’t, her uncle will withdraw his financial support, and she’ll lose that home she loves so much. He’s perfectly satisfied with Belhaven, since he possesses the prerequisites of title and wealth, which I gather are his only prerequisites. That lovely girl will have to wed that old man; she has no way to avoid it.”
“That’s absurd,” Ian snapped, draining his glass. “Elizabeth Cameron was considered the biggest success of her season two years ago. It was public knowledge she’d had more than a dozen offers. If that’s all he cares about, he can choose from dozens of others.”
Duncan’s voice was laced with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “That was before she encountered you at some party or other. Since then it’s been public knowledge that she’s used goods.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You tell me, Ian,” the vicar bit out. “I only have the story in two parts from Miss Throckmorton-Jones. The first time she spoke she was under the influence of laudanum. Today she was under the influence of what I can only describe as the most formidable temper I’ve ever seen. However, while I may not have the complete story, I certainly have the gist of it, and if half what I’ve heard is true, then it’s obvious that you are completely without either a heart or a conscience! My own heart breaks when I imagine Elizabeth enduring what she has for nearly two years. And when I think of how forgiving of you she has been—”
“What did the woman tell you?” Ian interrupted shortly, turning and walking over to the window.
His apparent lack of concern so enraged the vicar that he surged to his feet and stalked over to Ian’s side, glowering at his profile. “She told me you ruined Elizabeth Cameron’s reputation beyond recall,” he snapped bitterly. “She told me that you convinced that innocent girl—who’d never been away from her country home until a few weeks before meeting you—that she should meet you in a secluded cottage, and later in a greenhouse. She told me that the scene was witnessed by individuals who made great haste to spread the gossip, and that it was all over the city in a matter of days. She told me Elizabeth’s fiancé heard of it and withdrew his offer because of you. When he did that, society assumed Elizabeth’s character must indeed be of the blackest nature, and she was summarily dropped by the ton. She told me that a few days later Elizabeth’s brother fled England to escape their creditors, who would have been paid off when Elizabeth made an advantageous marriage, and that he’s never returned.” With grim satisfaction the vicar observed the muscle that was beginning to twitch in Ian’s rigid jaw. “She told me the reason for Elizabeth’s going to London in the first place had been the necessity for making such a marriage—and that you destroyed any chance of that ever happening. Which is why that child will now have to marry a man you describe as a lecher three times her age!” Satisfied that his verbal shots were finding their mark, he fired his final, most killing round. “As a result of everything you have done, that brave, beautiful girl has been living in shamed seclusion for nearly two years. Her house, of which she spoke with such love, has been stripped of its valuables by creditors. I congratulate you, Ian. You have made an innocent girl into an impoverished leper! And all because she fell in love with you on sight. Knowing what I now know of you, I can only wonder what she saw in you!”
A muscle moved spasmodically in Ian’s throat, but he made no effort to defend himself to his enraged uncle. Bracing his hands on either side of the window, he stared out into the darkness, his uncle’s revelations pounding in his brain like a thousand hammers, combining with the torment of his own cruelty to Elizabeth the past few days.
He saw her as she’d been in England, courageous and lovely and filled with innocent passion in his arms, and he heard her words from yesterday: “You told my brother it was nothing but a meaningless dalliance”; he saw her shooting at the target with jaunty skill while he mocked at her suitors. He saw her kneeling in the grass, looking at his sketches of his dead family. “I’m so sorry,” she’d whispered, her glorious eyes filled with soft compassion. He remembered her crying in his arms because her friends had betrayed her, too.
With a fresh surge of remorse he recalled her incredible sweetness and unselfish passion in his arms last night. She had driven him mad with desire, and afterward he had said, “I’ll spare us both the ritualistic proposal. Marriage is out of the question—I’m fresh out of large rubies and expensive furs.”
He remembered other things he’d said before that—“Why the hell would your uncle think I have any desire to wed you?” “Lady Cameron is a very wealthy young lady, Duncan.” “No doubt all the rooms at Havenhurst are covered with furs and filled with jewels.”
And she’d been too proud to let him think anything else.
Scolding rage at his own blindness and stupidity poured through Ian. He should have known—the minute she started talking about bargaining for price with tradesmen, he damned well should have known! Ever since he’d set eyes on Elizabeth Cameron he’d been blind—no, he corrected himself with furious self-disgust, in England he’d recognized instinctively what she was—gentle and proud, brave and innocent and . . . rare. He’d known damned well she wasn’t a promiscuous little flirt, yet he’d later convinced himself she was, and then he’d treated her like one here—and she had endured it the entire time she’d been here! She had let him say those things to her and then tried to excuse his behavior by blaming herself for behaving like “a shameless wanton” in England!
Bile rose up in his throat, suffocating him, and he closed his eyes. She was so damned sweet, and so forgiving, that she even did that for him.
Duncan hadn’t moved; in taut silence he watched his nephew standing at the window, his eyes clenched shut, his stance like that of a man who was being stretched on the rack.
Finally Ian spoke, and his voice was rough with emotion, as if the words were being gouged out of him: “Did the woman say that, or was that your own opinion?”
“About what?”
Drawing a ragged breath, he asked, “Did she tell you that Elizabeth was in love with me two years ago, or was that your opinion?”
The answer to that obviously meant so much to Ian that Duncan almost smiled. At the moment, however, the vicar was more concerned with the two things he wanted above all else: He wanted Ian to wed Elizabeth and rectify the damage he’d done to her, and he wanted Ian to reconcile with his grandfather. In order to do the former, Ian would have to do the latter, for Elizabeth’s uncle was evidently determined that her husband should have a title if possible. So badly did Duncan want those two things to happen that he almost lied to help his cause, but the precepts of his conscience forbade it. “It was Miss Throckmorton-Jones’s opinion when she was under the influence of laudanum. It is also my opinion, based on everything I saw in Elizabeth’s character and behavior to you.”
He waited through another long moment of awful suspense, knowing exactly where Ian’s thoughts would have to turn next, and then he plunged in, ready to press home his advantage with hard, systematic logic. “You have no choice except to rescue her from that repugnant marriage.”
Taking Ian’s silence as assent, he continued with more force. “In order to do it, you’ll have to dissuade her uncle from giving her to this man. I know from what Miss Throckmorton-Jones told me, and from what I saw with my own eyes in that note over there, that the uncle wants a title for her and will favor the man who has it. I also know that’s not uncommon among the nobility, so you’ve no hope of persuading the man he’s being unreasonable, if that’s what you’re thinking of trying to do.” Duncan watched his words hit home with enough force to make Ian’s skin whiten, and he made his final push: “That title is within your power, Ian. I realize how deep your hatred for your grandfather goes, but it no longer signifies. Either you let Elizabeth wed this despicable man Belhaven, or you reconcile with the Duke of Stanhope. It’s one or the other, and
you know it.”
Ian tensed, his mind locked in furious combat against the idea of reconciling with his grandfather. Duncan watched him, knowing the battle raging inside him, and he waited in an agony of suspense for Ian to make his decision. He saw Ian bend his dark head, saw him clench his hands into fists. When at last he spoke, his infuriated curse was aimed at his grandfather: “That miserable son of a bitch!” he bit out between clenched teeth. “After eleven years he’s going to have it his way. And all because I couldn’t keep my hands off her.”
The vicar could scarcely conceal his joyous relief. “There are worse things than having to marry a wonderful young woman who also had the excellent judgment to fall in love with you,” he pointed out.
Ian almost, but not quite, smiled at that. The impulse passed in an instant, however, as reality crushed down on him, infuriating and complicated. “Whatever she felt for me, it was a long time ago. All she wants now is independence.”
The vicar’s brows shot up, and he chuckled with surprise. “Independence? Really? What an odd notion for a female. I’m sure you’ll be able to disabuse her of such fanciful ideas.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Independence is vastly overrated. Give it to her and she’ll hate it,” he suggested.
Ian scarcely heard him; the fury at having to capitulate to his grandfather was building inside him again with terrible force. “Damn him!” he said in a murderous underbreath. “I’d have let him rot in hell, and his title with him.”
Duncan’s smile didn’t fade as he said with asperity, “It’s possible that it’s fear of ‘rotting in hell,’ as you so picturesquely phrased it, that has made him so desperate to affirm you now as his heir. But consider that he has been trying to make amends for over a decade—long before his heart became weak.”