“Nae, I canna,” came a querulous reply from the vicinity of the sofa. “I be felled by amazement. You had an heiress right there in your arms and you turned her aside. I may die of pure horror.”

“Don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping.”

Taran’s grizzled head popped up over the back of the sofa behind which he’d thrown himself upon Marilla’s arrival. “Are you out of yer bleedin’ mind, lad? She’s got a fortune and she’s the prettiest one amongst the lot of them and she’s hot-blooded. True, she’s a hellion, but a strong man could tame her. And, most important of all, she wants you.” His tone held a hint of jealousy. “You best take what’s freely offered.”

“She doesn’t want me; she wants a castle.”

“Same thing.” With a click and rattle of knee joints, Taran hauled himself upright. “Besides, ye got no choices left.”

“Really?” Robin drawled. “How is that?”

“Well, the duke is offered for Catriona Burns, and Oakley has himself all in a lather over Fiona Chisholm, and I know you ain’t man enough to encroach on your cousin’s claim.”

“And here I’d thought of it as being honorable all these years,” Robin murmured.

“Da ye no have an ounce of Scottish blood in yer veins? A Ferguson takes what he wants no matter what the law says.”

“Ah,” Robin said, nodding sagely. “Suddenly, all the abrupt termini on the family tree make sense. They were decorating another tree entirely. The Tyburn tree.”

“Ach,” Taran spat in disgust.

“But you said I have no other choice,” Robin said, returning to the prior subject. “What of Lady Cecily?” He was gratified by how indifferent he sounded.

“No hope there. Not anymore,” Taran snapped.

“And why is that?”

“Because no woman with an ounce of pride would have you after witnessing Marilla rubbing all over you like a tabby in heat.”

Robin checked. “What do you mean?”

“Lady Cecily was out in the hall just now. She was aboot to come in but then she saw the two of you locked together at the lips. Stopped her dead in her tracks, it did. No great loss if you ask me. In spite of her great dower.”

“Taran—” Robin’s voice held a note of warning few had ever heard.

“Oh, she be pretty enough,” Taran admitted, unfazed, “but prissy. She jerked back like the pair of you were naked and on the floor.”

Robin took a breath and squared his shoulders. What matter? As Marilla had so succinctly pointed out, he was a very, very bad man, and if Lady Cecily hadn’t known it before, she did now.

Very calmly, very carefully, he lifted his drink and in one long, slow draught drained the glass.







Chapter 19

Lady Cecily Tarleton was not only lovely, well connected and due to have an unimaginably large sum settled on her upon her marriage, but she respected her elders and never put herself forward. And if some people thought her a bit of a cipher, and others opined her too good to be true, and a few old tabbies purred that a statue had more animation, they were deemed to be jealous sorts. The vast majority of society mamas considered Lady Cecily to have all the makings of a perfect daughter-in-law.

Which made the fact that she was not yet anyone’s daughter-in-law extremely vexing.

What on earth was wrong with Maycott? Why did he not approve some fellow’s suit and get on with it?

It never occurred to anyone that Maycott was not at the bottom of the mystery and that the unfailingly demure Lady Cecily was neither so demure nor so tractable as they assumed, and that she had been encouraged since birth to follow her heart. When it came to choosing a husband, she’d been told to wait for “someone special,” and when she’d asked how she would know who that was, had been assured by her mother that “when you meet him, you will know.”

Unfortunately, the only sort of men she attracted were somber, dignified fellows who mistakenly thought they’d found in her a matching gravitas, and after three seasons, Lady Cecily had begun to fear she would never meet the man her mother had promised she would know on sight, and end up a spinster. With this specter in the forefront of her mind, this past season Lady Cecily had decided to put aside dreams of heated kisses, easy laughter, and passionate nights and concentrate on achieving more realistic goals: a nursery full of beloved children, and earnest conversations with a . . . a really very nice man.

So she’d told her father to give his consent to the man he liked best of those who’d asked for her hand. At which point, her father had whisked her and the rest of the family off to Scotland, where, away from the distractions of London, she could “make your own drat choice.”

Which is how Cecily came to be standing in Bellemere’s newly refurbished ballroom when a group of large, gray-bearded men clad in none-too-clean kilts burst in and tossed her and some other young ladies over their shoulders and carried them off to the appreciative applause of the other guests, who’d assumed it was all part of the entertainment.

Though Cecily well knew being kidnapped had not been part of the entertainment, she had not been particularly frightened. First, because one of her fellow kidnappees, Catriona Burns, obviously knew the men and had declared them harmless; second, because the Duke of Bretton was soon discovered to be sharing their—or rather his—well-sprung carriage; and finally, because upon their arrival at Finovair Castle, a scandalously handsome man with a head of loose black curls and a wicked smile had taken her hand and looked down at her with beautiful, black-lashed, laughing eyes, and she had realized, Mama was right.

For in that moment, an odd welling had arisen from deep within Lady Cecily’s heart alongside a bone-deep sense of rightness, of finally having arrived at a destination she hadn’t even known she’d been journeying toward. So it was that Lady Cecily Tarleton, the dutiful, proper daughter of the Earl of Maycott, recognized with absolute certainty that she’d found in Robin, Comte de Rocheforte, unapologetic scoundrel, self-proclaimed pauper, the scandalous Prince of Rakes, the man she would marry.

She’d known who he was and all about his reputation, of course. He had been pointed out to her on the streets of London. It didn’t matter. The only question was what she was to do about it.

It was a question that had her hourly more anxious, especially since Robin had spent the last two days as conspicuous in his absence as, well, Marilla was conspicuous in her availability. In point of fact, his determined nonappearance was beginning to substantially threaten her plan to marry him. Which is what she planned to do, because having finally found love, she saw no reason to relinquish it.

However, she couldn’t just tell him that she loved him. Since birth, it had been deeply ingrained in her that a lady waited for a gentleman to notice her and then commence his courtship. That wasn’t going to work here. Time was of the essence. Soon the storm would end, the passes clear, and her father arrive.

So when Robin had once more failed to appear for dinner, she’d gone looking for him and now stood in a dark hall outside the castle library, her cheeks scalding and tears welling in her eyes. It had taken all her self-control to keep from stomping back into the library, shoving Marilla Chisholm out of Robin’s arms, and taking her place.

Only one thing had kept her from doing so: what if Robin did not want her to take Marilla’s place?

She had no reason to believe he did. She had nothing on which to base her certainty that he felt this . . . this connection, too, other than the way he’d looked at her outside Byron’s carriage, the profound awareness that had penetrated his amusement and left him, for one telling instant, looking staggered and vulnerable.

She edged away from the doorway and began walking, her thoughts floundering between hope and despair. She didn’t note the direction her feet took until she heard a masculine voice hailing her.

“Lady Cecily. Are you all right?”

She turned to find Lord Oakley striding toward her. He looked anything but pleased to see her.

“Did you take a wrong turn? Are you lost?”

“Pardon?” She glanced about and realized that in her distraction she’d wandered into a part of the castle she didn’t recognize. The hallway was unlit and uncarpeted and chilly. “I may be.”

“You must be near frozen,” he said.

“No. I’m quite comfortable,” she said, which was true. The velvet material she’d scavenged from her room to act as a shawl was warm if not fashionable.

Beneath the shawl she’d once more donned the dimity blue ball gown in which she’d arrived, the black morning dress having fallen apart at the seams earlier in the day.

“I doubt that,” Oakley said, recalling her attention. “Allow me to see you back to a warmer part of the castle.”

His attitude was impatient, and clearly, his thoughts were on other matters.

“Thank you,” she said, turning in the direction he indicated.

Though she’d never met Oakley in London, she knew his reputation as a stickler of the highest order. She had seen him several times in the company of Lord Burbett, her most solemn suitor, but had never asked for an introduction. He seemed the sort of man who would always find fault with a person, and she never purposely courted self-doubt.

Now Oakley was scowling deeply, his hands behind his back as he walked alongside her. “I am sorry about all this,” he finally said. “Burbett will have my head when he hears about it.”

She frowned. Apparently, Oakley thought Burbett entertained a position of greater importance in her life than he did. She could hardly inform Oakley that she had turned down his friend’s offer. It was Burbett’s place to reveal that information in whatever light he chose.

Taking her ensuing silence for a rebuke against overfamiliarity, Oakley flushed. “And now I must apologize again.”

“Good heavens, m’lord,” she said, “this is the eighth or ninth time you’ve apologized for something or other. You can’t possibly blame yourself for everything. I assure you, I do not.”

“As no one else in my family seems to comprehend the gravity of the situation or claim culpability in bringing it about, if only for pride’s sake, I must.”

“You do not consider your uncle or . . .” She hesitated. “ . . . your cousin to be properly conscience-stricken?”

“Uncle Taran has no conscience,” Oakley muttered.

“And your cousin?” she prodded.

For a moment she thought he might rebuff this overture but then the stiffness that seemed an essential part of his demeanor dissolved. He smiled rather ruefully.

“I suppose in all fairness if you are going to acquit me of blame, you must do the same for Robin,” he said. “Though it is nigh well impossible to tell from outward appearances, I suspect he is as shocked as I am by Taran’s fool antics.”

“Is he?” Now here was a topic far more interesting than Burbett.

Again that unexpected—and unexpectedly charming—smile. “One can but hope.”

The opportunity to learn more about Robin was irresistible. “For a gentleman noted for his, ah, appreciation of young ladies, the comte certainly makes himself absent a great deal of the time.” It was an appallingly bold thing to say and she could scarce believe she’d uttered it.