Johanna Lindsay - The Heir

Duncan realized then what was the cause of her anger and tried to shrug it off. "When you've a bleak-looking future, lass, the threat o' danger just doesna hold the same meaning as it might when all is right wi' your life."

"Reckless, no matter how you put it," she pointed out stiffly. He wasn't going to argue the point. "You'll be answering my question now." "Yes, certainly—if you've taken care of all of them," she replied. "All of who?"

"The poor wretches who broke in here and foolishly held Mavis and John captive all week. There were four of them in all."

"I've only encountered three—"

"Then we'll lock ourselves in up here until you're done. But do be careful. At least three of them had guns and—" She paused when a new pounding began, at the front door. "That will probably be Mickie, our coachman. Let him in. He'll help you look for the last fellow. And John's in the cellar. Please make sure he's all right."

He stood there for a moment after she disappeared back into the dark of the upper hall, still incredulous that she was there, even more incredulous at how bossy she'd just been. But then he smiled, remembering her angry upset over his wee brush with danger.

Upstairs, Sabrina returned to Mavis's room and, feeling around the doorknob for a latch, which was easy to find, locked them in. She was still amazed that the door hadn't been locked from without, as it had been when she'd been brought upstairs. She concluded that she'd annoyed those men so much with her chatter that they'd simply forgot to lock the door again after thrusting her into the room. If she'd known, she and Mavis could have vacated the house already and been away in the waiting coach out front. The authorities could have returned to release Mavis's cousin. Not that it mattered now.

"We've been rescued," she told Mavis. "Well, almost, or at least, in the process of being rescued, so we should stay here until all is secure."

"By whom?"

"Duncan MacTavish."

"But what’s he doing here?" Mavis asked.

"Looking for you, I don't doubt. Actually, I believe Lord Neville has had people looking for you since you left Summers Glade, so your parents are aware that you're not where they thought you to be."

"Oh, bother, now I'm going to be in for it," Mavis groaned. "Why ever would Birmingdale be looking for me?—Unless, hmmm, never mind."

"It's all right," Sabrina told her, realizing the direction her thoughts had just gone. "I know all about what you witnessed at Summers Glade the night you left"

"You do?"

"Yes, Duncan told me."

"Well, I suppose that shouldn't surprise me. You did seem to be very good friends with him."

"Yes, friends," Sabrina said in a voice that was starting to turn maudlin. She gave herself a mental shake. She was not going to let that "just friends" destroy her composure at a time like this. "But why did you leave the party so suddenly that night?"

"Why did you?"

Sabrina blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I saw you run off earlier in the evening, saw Duncan leave to follow you. I was hoping, I really was, that something would come of that, that he'd be asking you to marry him." A sigh. "But I guess he just wanted to make sure you were all right, because not an hour later, there he was trysting with that witch, so they'd obviously made up. It was the last straw for me. Ophelia had won again. She gets anything and everything she wants."

"It does seem that way, doesn't it?" Sabrina agreed with a sigh of her own.

"The funny part was, I'd really thought the world was righting itself finally when Duncan broke that first engagement with her. She'd instigated it, but it really did backfire on her, and she realized too late that he was a prime catch after all. Then to find out that it was only temporary, that she was going to get him after all—it was too much for me. Women like Ophelia win no matter what they do wrong. It just isn't fair! And for her to win again, so soon after she tried to blacken my name and convince everyone that I'm a liar, which isn't the least bit true, but... it brought me to tears. I had to leave, and quickly, before I made a fool of myself."

Sabrina understood that well enough, when the exact same thing had happened to her. She'd had to leave for the same reason, before the tears she couldn't hold back embarrassed her royally.

"So you came directly here?"

"Yes. I needed a little seclusion to gain a proper perspective again so it wouldn't bother me anymore. I thought it would only take a day or two— but those fool vagrants changed those plans."

"In the case of time, yes, but did the seclusion do as you'd hoped it would?"

"Yes, actually. I've concluded that I'll always hate Ophelia. She's just done too much to ever be forgiven for, and not just to me. But I'm not going to let it bother me anymore. I'm simply going to stay far, far away from her from now on, and try to forget she even exists."

"If you've always hated her, why did you chum about with her?"

"Because I didn't always hate her. She and I were actually childhood friends, believe it or not. We were very close, close enough that I was often at her house and saw firsthand how her parents spoiled her. So I understood a little why she was the way she was, and tended to forgive her for it—until I met Alexander."

"Alexander?"

"The man I fell in love with. He was actually courting me as well. And he knew Ophelia, assured me he wasn't impressed with her beauty. She didn't like the way he was completely ignoring her, though, and she set about to change that. And the very day she started giving him some of her attention, he fell into the 'worship the goddess' crowd of fools. He stopped calling on me. He started calling on her. I was devastated. And the worst of it was, I knew Ophelia didn't want him for herself, she'd just been annoyed that he could ignore her. Just as soon as he started worshiping her, she dismissed him from her mind. Of course, it was too late for me. He tried to court me again, but I wouldn't have him. Ophelia's other friends might not mind taking her leftovers, but not I. I should have forgiven him. I knew what he felt for Ophelia wasn't real, was just the awe of her beauty. But I was too stubborn, and he ended up marrying someone else."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Mavis replied. "Much of it was my own stubborn pride."

"But you were still friends with her after that, weren't you? Or did this only just happen?"

"Actually, I did end our friendship back then, but she came to me and begged me to forgive her, swore she didn't try to steal him from me, and if he could turn his affections so easily to someone else, then he wasn't worth having. Be that as it may, I let her talk me around because we had been such close friends.

But it was never the same again between her and me, and slowly I just got more and more bitter, watching the way she manipulated people to always get her way, watching her spiteful little antics whenever she got jealous of someone. Even you were one of the victims of her jealousy."

"Me?" Sabrina almost laughed at the very notion of anyone being jealous of her, but Ophelia in particular.

"I'm not talking about normal jealousy," Mavis clarified. "She's never really been interested in any man in particular, to become jealous in the normal way. And I know you probably won't even believe this coming from me, after she publicly branded me a liar, but she's the one who started up that old family scandal of yours again. It wasn't just a slip of the tongue on her part either. She did it deliberately when she noticed the attention you were getting from a few of her regular admirers. That's what she was jealous of. She really can't stand it when she isn't the absolute center of attention. Just thought you ought to know, since you still seemed to be chummy with her yourself."

Sabrina was a bit incredulous. She didn't doubt what Mavis had just said. She just found it rather extreme, that Ophelia would do something like that for such a petty reason. It wasn't that she had been devastated that the old scandal had made the rounds again, nor that her chances for marriage had been ruined. But if it had been some other girl who took the matter more seriously, devastation could have been the result. Did Ophelia not think of the consequences of her actions? Did she just not care whom she hurt?

"I had already realized that Ophelia has never been a friend to me," Sabrina admitted.

"Good. At least you aren't being fooled anymore, like poor Edith and Jane are. For myself, I finally began to really despise her, and the only reason I continued to be in her crowd was I was waiting, hoping, that someone, anyone really, would finally put her in her place. I just wanted to be there to see it. Petty of me, I know. But she never has received her comeuppance and probably never will."

"Perhaps it will help you to know that Duncan doesn't really want to marry her."

"Then why were they having a lovers' tryst?"

"They weren't. What you walked in on wasn't what it seemed."

"Oh, come now, Sabrina, don't be naive," Mavis scoffed. "Ophelia was half clothed. They were obviously about to get into bed."

"In a room she shared with many others? When any one of those others could have arrived at any time?" Mavis frowned. "I didn't consider that. Then what was he doing there?"

"Letting his temper get the better of him, or so he confessed to me. He was confronting her, had sought her out to demand answers, nothing more."

"Now, that doesn't surprise me. She is well known to drive people to rage, the result being they do things they wouldn't ordinarily do."

Sabrina blushed slightly, to have her own appalling reaction to Ophelia that night described so perfectly. "Yes, well, they are engaged again, but only because she convinced his family that you would spread the tale of it to ruin her. This is why Lord Neville has been looking for you. He doesn't want Duncan to

marry her. Duncan doesn't want to marry her either. But he can't in good conscience not do so, when it was his own temper that caused him to be there and would result in her ruination if he doesn't marry her."

"Good Gawd, you mean she won him because of me? I've handed him to her on a silver platter, as it were? Oh, no, absolutely not. If that is the only reason he is marrying her, then he will have my assurance that what I saw will never be told to anyone. Her blasted reputation is quite safe in this instance, if it means she won’t get what she wants—finally"

Sabrina smiled, relieved for Duncan's sake at least. "I rather thought you would feel that way."

Sabrina expected Duncan to be knocking on their door any time now. She didn't expect the door to open without her aid, but that it did, the reason being she'd forgotten there was a key to it.

The fourth ransom demander stood there just inside the doorway, key in hand. He was the one who was less unkempt than the others, the one without a weapon—at least, none that he'd revealed thus far. Which didn't mean that he didn't have one on his person somewhere, just that he seemed the less dangerous of the lot—so far.

His first words didn't give cause for alarm either. "Come along, ladies, I'm here to save you. There's a bloody big Scotsman on a rampage downstairs."

"That Scotsman happens to be a friend of ours," Sabrina pointed out.

"I was afraid of that," he said, chewing at his lower lip in a way that revealed just how worried he was now. "Well, one of you is coming along with me, to save me, then. And I'd rather it not be you, Miss Never-Shuts-Up."

Sabrina, a bit indignant over his description of her, replied stiffly, "You are not inconveniencing my friend here any further than you already have in detaining her here. If you mean to save yourself, I suggest you get to it. There's a window right there."

"We are upstairs," he complained, as if she had overlooked that fact.

"So? I would imagine any fall you might take on your way down will be less painful than if Duncan MacTavish gets his hands on you."

He turned more fully to face Sabrina to argue with her. "Now, look, lady, I'm the one in charge here, and I'm not about to give up using one of you as my ticket to escape this mess, especially when you didn't even give us the bloody forty pounds you owed us!"

"Well, if that's all you still require—"