Mia Marlowe Read online

  But now his silence made her suspect Alexander felt like a prisoner who’d been escorted to his cell.

  She wanted to ask him what was wrong, but was afraid he might tell her and it would be horrible. Once harsh words were spoken, they could never be recalled. They hovered forever in the air, unrelentingly given and received. They settled into the heart of the hearer to fester and burn. It was easier, no, it was safer, to pretend that this silence was normal for a man who’d just been wed.

  “Where is your dressing screen?” she asked, her voice much smaller than she wished it to sound.

  He didn’t turn around. “Don’t think I have one. Not much call for modesty in a bachelor. Go ahead and prepare for bed. I won’t trouble you.”

  Something inside her crumpled. She wanted him to trouble her. She wanted him to trouble her to pieces.

  Lucinda crossed over to the commode where an age-spotted mirror hung so she could see to remove her mother’s veil. It was so delicate, if she missed a hairpin, she might rip the lace.

  An odd movement in her reflection made her blink hard. The room was dimly lit, but for a moment, she thought she saw a little old man’s thin bewhiskered face peering back at her from over her left shoulder. She jerked her head around to look behind her, but there was no one there. A sudden flare of light reflected from the fireplace. A log fell off the triangular stack and spit sparks up the chimney. When Lucinda looked back at the mirror, the man was gone.

  Then she remembered Brodie’s warning about another ghostly presence in Dalkeith. If this spirit wanted to make contact with her on her wedding night, his timing was less than ideal.

  It was a not-so-subtle reminder that she had several secrets she was keeping from her new husband.

  Alex was still transfixed by the window. He had secrets of his own. He’d said several times that he had “important” things he’d ought to be doing.

  What were they?

  She plucked out the pins and removed the veil, trying to ignore the way her hands shook. Lucinda spread it out on the bed and folded it carefully. Aileen and Mary would want it for their weddings someday.

  “May they wear it with more joy,” she murmured.

  “What was that?” Alex asked.

  “Nothing of import.” Lucinda began to undo the buttons that marched down her spine. There were five or six she couldn’t reach between her shoulder blades.

  A bell pull dangled beside the commode, but it was the middle of the night. If she gave it a tug, she’d be rousting a poor lady’s maid out of her bed, just as they’d waked the surly vicar to perform the ceremony. Lucinda had been nothing but a bother to everyone this evening. She didn’t want to add to the roll.

  “Alexander?” He was already first on the “Inconvenienced by Lucinda MacOwen” list she’d composed in her head. A little more discomfort could hardly make matters worse. “I need a bit of help here, if ye please.”

  She turned her back to him so she didn’t have to see his face as he walked toward her, but she wondered what it would show. A hint of lust? She’d welcome that. Irritation? She didn’t think she could bear it. Or what if it was worse? What if he was indifferent to her?

  His capable fingers made short work of the buttons and the back of her gown fell away, sliding off her shoulders. She held it up in front with both hands over her breasts.

  “I’ll need ye to unlace me stays too, please.” Why, oh, why had she chosen a gown for her wedding that required help to get into and out of? She was a woman fully grown. She’d ought to be able to handle her own wardrobe without assistance.

  He untied the knot at the base of her stays and worked the laces free. She hadn’t been cinched particularly tight, but she drew a deep breath in any case, enjoying the freedom of expanding her ribs fully. As he pulled the ribbon free, his fingertips brushed against her spine. Only the thin muslin of her chemise separated her from his touch.

  Her skin didn’t seem to care that he hadn’t stroked it directly. It rioted in pleasure at any rate.

  “Thank ye,” she said softly.

  He didn’t move away from her.

  “It’s no trouble.”

  Hope flickered in her chest. Perhaps she could strike his name from the “Inconvenienced by Lucinda MacOwen” list, after all.

  “ ’Tis plain ye know yer way around a woman’s garments,” she babbled to keep the silence at bay.

  “Do you really want to know more about that part of my past?”

  She shook her head. His breath flowed warmly over her nape and down her back. She barely resisted the urge to lean into him. Instead she slowly turned around to face him.

  “Ye say ’tis no trouble, and yet, I’ve an inkling that ye think I’m trouble to you.” There. Maybe if she said it for him, he’d deny it.

  “It’s not that.” His hands curled into fists as if he were ready for a fight, but she sensed it wasn’t with her. It was with himself. “You have no idea who I am or why I’m really here.”

  “I would if ye took the time to tell me.” Lucinda wished she could reach for his hand, but if she did, her gown and stays would drift to the floor and she’d be standing before him in naught but her shift. “I’m a verra good listener.”

  He looked at her so intently, she felt as exposed as if she were in only her shift. “That’s just it. We should have had that talk long before we said words in church. This is all backward.”

  He strode over and plopped into the heavy-timbered Tudor chair near the dying fire.

  “My parents didna ken each other at all before they were marrit.”

  “I suppose you’ll tell me their marriage grew into a love match.”

  “That I’m no’ privy to. Some things in a marriage should be only for the ones inside its circle, but ye can tell the kind of tree by its fruit, they say,” Lucinda said, standing straighter. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was her family. “Erskine and Katie MacOwen were blessed with seven children, so there must have been some liking for each other. They buried two bairns and raised five. And my father never sought another woman to warm his bed after he laid my mother in the arms of God. They may have started as strangers, but they didna stay so. They made a life together.”

  We can too danced on her tongue, but he looked away from her, staring at the flickering embers in the grate. She forced herself to stop talking. If she let silence reign, perhaps he’d be moved to fill it.

  “It sounds as if your parents were happy, but it doesn’t always work out like that,” he finally said.

  The cryptic entry about Alexander in The Knowledgeable Ladies’ Guide to Eligible Gentlemen flashed in Lucinda’s brain. She couldn’t recall the exact wording, but there was a mention of “unpleasantness” regarding his mother and the fact that neither he nor his brother exhibited signs of madness. If his mother had lost her wits, it stood to reason his parents’ marriage wasn’t the solid comfort Erskine and Katie had enjoyed. Alex hadn’t grown up in the protected center of a circle of love as she had.

  No matter. The future was meant to knit up the ragged ends of the past. A darned stocking was often stronger and warmer than one that had never been mended. She could make things better for Alexander.

  Lucinda decided to grasp her marriage with both hands. She let her gown and stays sink to the floor in a pool around her ankles with a soft rustle of silk. The gesture might have been more effective if Alex had glanced her way. He continued to stare stonily at the fire.

  In for a penny, she reasoned. Lucinda toed off her slippers. The floors were cold underfoot and the chill shot up her shins. Then she bent over and reached under the hem of her chemise to untie her garters and roll her stockings down. She stood upright and undid the drawstring at her waist that held up her pantalets. If Alex had looked her way, he’d have been treated to the sight of her bare calves since she had to hitch up the chemise.

  He made no move toward her. She’d have to go to him.

  Barefoot on the hardwood, she padded over in only her shift and
knelt before him. “Ye asked me earlier this night to trust ye and so I did. Will ye no’ trust me now, Alexander? I’ll be a good and faithful wife to ye and do ye no hurt so long as I live.”

  He still refused to look at her, but she was close enough to see that his features were taut, strained to the breaking point. His handsome face was at war with itself.

  Lucinda took one of his hands and pressed it between her breasts so he could feel her heart hammering. “Do ye no’ see how fine I think ye are, husband?” When he still didn’t respond, a sob closed her throat, but she managed to whisper, “I know ye feel trapped by our wedding, but can ye no’ find it in ye to like me a little?”

  “Oh, Lucinda.” He reached for her then, pulling her up onto his lap. Her heart soared as he claimed her mouth and slid a hand down the low neckline of her chemise.

  Soft. Biddable. Willing. She was everything a man could wish. It had taken every ounce of his will not to look while she’d slithered off her gown, but his imagination had been running at full tilt. In his mind’s eye, he could see her alabaster arms bared in the firelight, the chemise a thin wisp of nothing, shadows of her curves wavering enticingly, the darker skin of her nipples plainly visible. When she’d bent to remove her stockings, the chemise would have fallen away and he’d have glimpsed the sweet hollow between her breasts.

  Maybe he should have looked. He’d lost the battle in any case. But who could blame him when she knelt before him? The sweet cloud of her scent wafting around her, the beating of her heart under his palm like some wild young thing, terrified, but willing to trust—she wore down his resistance with gentle persistence, like a drip of water hollowing out solid rock.

  He crushed her to him, palming one of the globes of her bum, his fingers brushing the crevice between them.

  “We’ll do better,” she assured him as she kissed along his jaw.

  “Better than what?” At the moment Alex couldn’t imagine anything better than this sweet armful of woman. Unless she were out of her chemise . . .

  “Better than yer parents, o’ course.” She nibbled up to his ear and then latched onto the lobe to give it a quick suck. “I’m too thick-headed to run mad and ye show no sign of it.”

  He pushed her away and held her at arm’s length. “What do you know of that?”

  Her mouth formed a silent “oh,” then she hurried on. “No’ much. Only what I’ve read in a silly book full of gossip and questionable advice. Dinna worry. The writer said as yer mother’s madness was no impediment to ye bein’ considered quite the catch.”

  No impediment.

  The memories of that distant time were cloudy, as if someone had pulled down a scrim on his life and rendered it hazy, etched softly in shades of sepia and wheat. But the sounds came through loud and clear, if the words were somewhat garbled. There was interminable shouting. That was from his father. And endless weeping. Those keening sobs could only have come from his mother. Then they turned to shrieks when strange men pulled Alex from her arms and took her away. He toddled after them, tripping and scraping his knee on the pavers, but he couldn’t catch up.

  That empty place in his chest ached afresh. It confirmed what he’d always believed. There was something broken inside him. Something elemental that made him what he was. Solitary. Driven. Unwilling to risk losing someone ever again. Like his mad mother, he was damaged. He was like a watch spring that had been sprung or a clasp that had been bent too far. Nothing could put it back to rights without breaking it completely.

  “So I’m considered quite the catch,” he said woodenly.

  “Aye, truly.”

  “Well, that just goes to show you can’t believe everything you read.” Alex moved her off his lap, rose to his feet, and braced both hands on the mantel lest he be tempted to touch her again. Her heart might be hurt, but she’d heal. He didn’t want his brokenness to corrupt her too. “Go to bed, Lucinda.”

  She stood stock still for a moment and he feared she was about to put up a fight. Then he was afraid she might do worse and begin to cry. When she turned away without a word, he could have kissed the curve of her instep in gratitude.

  After he heard the bedclothes rustle enough to confirm that she was in the big featherbed, he sat back down in the chair. Even though his arousal had settled, the ache in his chest throbbed enough to keep him from sleep.

  No matter.

  On the morrow, they’d leave for Bonniebroch. Since he’d lost his usefulness at Dalkeith by nearly defiling a daughter of Scotland under the noses of the local nobility, he decided to turn to the countryside to try to flush out any Radical elements. Besides, once he and his bride were ensconced in his own home, he could arrange for separate bedchambers for them. It was his only hope of eventually obtaining an annulment and his freedom. The only way to return to a life that made sense, one that didn’t keep dredging up his past or offering him glimpses of an unobtainable future he didn’t deserve and could never have.

  But the separate bedchambers were a must. One night listening to Lucinda’s breathing, knowing she was near, knowing she was willing, would be more than enough.

  “Never in all her years of matrimony will a woman have more power in the marriage than in those halcyon days immediately following the wedding. When preparing for one’s honeymoon trip, the knowledgeable lady will pack lightly. If one suddenly discovers one needs another gown or reticule or just the right necklace to go with that darling little riding habit, one’s new husband will be more inclined to spend on his bride then than at any other time.”

  From The Knowledgeable Ladies’ Guide

  to Eligible Gentlemen

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was a damned long night.

  Mercifully, Lucinda wasn’t the sort to sob into the coverlet, though she moved restlessly every few minutes and pummeled her pillow into submission more than once. Eventually, she settled, but then her soft breathing was a different type of torment.

  Alexander waited for dawn in the Tudor chair, not dropping off to sleep from sheer exhaustion till the darkest watch of the night. He woke with a sore back and a crick in his neck.

  He cast a longing gaze at the still form in the bed, but there wasn’t a moment to waste. Escaping the bridal chamber before Lucinda stirred, he made for the kitchen where he took a cold breakfast, breaking all sorts of protocol by eating alongside the help. News of the middle-of-the-night wedding had spread through the Dalkeith gossip mill, quick as a case of the measles. Alexander was treated to stifled giggles and knowing looks from the staff while he pumped the servants for information about Bonniebroch. The Master of Horse seemed the likeliest source of reliable information since he traveled often in search of new stock to keep up the palace’s herd.

  “I understand the steward of Bonniebroch is here at Dalkeith,” Alexander said between sips of surprisingly good coffee. It was black and hot and stout enough to cause new hairs to sprout on his chest. “Callum Farquhar by name. Have you seen him?”

  The horseman scratched his wire-haired pate. “Dinna know as I have. There be a powerful lot of new folk here the now, both above and below stairs. I mighta met the fellow and no’ known it, but I’ll leave him know ye wish to speak with him an’ I see him.”

  “I haven’t time to wait.” One night of sharing a chamber with his new wife was all he could bear. “I need to get to Bonniebroch and I haven’t found anyone who can tell me where it lies.”

  Farquhar had tried during their strange conversation, waxing poetic about hills and rivers and declivities, but Alex had cut the man off.

  “Weel, in truth, the castle isna so far. Ye can reach it in a long day’s travel,” the Master of Horse said before he crammed a bite of day-old bannock slathered with butter into his mouth and chewed noisily.

  Alex lifted a surprised brow. No one had named Bonniebroch a castle before this. He revised his mental picture of the estate. “Castle, you say.”

  “Och, aye. Broch being Gaelic for ‘tower,’ ye ken, and as for bonnie, weel, I’
ll leave that to yer own judgment since beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, they do say.”

  Bonniebroch might not be a croft with sheep on the roof, but a castle could still be a crumbling ruin. Better to keep his expectations low. “You’ve been there?”

  “Nae, but there’s no’ many as goes that way, ye ken. The folk what lives in Bonniebroch keeps to themselves. There’s something a might queer about them. Only a few tradesmen venture up the River Tay to bring them goods and news from the outside.”

  Outstanding. The residents at his new estate had raised clannishness to an art form. They’d likely not be terribly forthcoming when he tried to gather information from them.

  “What road do we take to get there?” Alex asked, feeling more certain by the minute that Sir Darren MacMartin had lost Bonniebroch to him on purpose.

  “No road. The hills are steep ’round about the tower. Ye might make it on horseback, I suppose, if ye were to follow the game trails.”

  Alex still couldn’t manage Badgemagus on a level patch of ground. He certainly wasn’t going to trust his neck to a Highland game trail. And besides, he had no mount for Lucinda.

  “I doubt my bride’s luggage will fit in a saddle bag,” Alexander said.

  The Master of Horse laughed. “Nae, it willna. A man may make do with his plaid and his dirk, but women need a powerful lot of things to get them through their day. Ye’ll have to take the ferry barge then.”

  He gave Alexander directions that would take them back to Edinburgh and then on north to the place where they’d find the ferryman on the River Tay.

  “From there, ye’ll have to trust the ferryman. Busby MacFee is his name, but his friends call him Beans.”

  Alex decided he didn’t want to know why.

  “The Tay is a tidal river so ye may have to wait for the water to be favorable,” the horseman warned.

  “Isn’t there a towpath?”

  “Part of the way. For the rest, ye must go when the river allows ye.” The Master of Horse thanked Cook for his breakfast and crammed a disreputable tam on his head. “Godspeed, milord, and a Merry Christmas to ye and yer good lady.”