“Daniel,” Cameron said after a time. “I know I’ve been the worst father a lad can be stuck with.”

“Not your fault, Dad. You’re a Mackenzie.”

“So are you. Don’t forget that.” Horses thundered toward them, Chance’s Daughter smoothly pulling into the lead. “Don’t make the mistakes I did.”

“I’ll make plenty of my own, I warrant. But I have an advantage, ye know. All you got was a dad who beat his sons and was jealous of them too. I have a dad who tries to do the right thing, even if he mucks it up most of the time. And then there’s my sweet aunties and my stepmother to show me that some women ain’t so bad. They don’t all just want our money. Some of the lasses even like us.”

Cameron let out a laugh. “Yes, some of them do. Now, I’m going to do something to embarrass you.”

He grabbed Daniel and jerked him to him in a big bear hug. Instead of stiffening, Daniel laughed and hugged his father back. The embrace grew tighter and tighter until Cameron couldn’t breathe. Daniel had certainly grown strong.

The two broke. “Come back to us soon, all right?” Cameron said.

“Of course. You’re going to teach me everything you know about working with the ponies, so once I’m done with university I can become a partner in your stables. We’re going to be world famous, Dad.”

“You have that all planned out? What about your engineering and your architecture?”

“I can do that too. Might even invent a better transport for horses or build a better stable. Plus I’ll work on the chaps at university and have them and their dads to send the horses to us.” He clapped his father on the shoulders. “I already said good-bye to Ainsley. She cried and kissed me on the cheek, and then gave me a packet of cakes. Marrying her was the smartest thing you ever did, Dad. There’s hope for you, yet.”

With that pronouncement, Daniel hugged his father again. Cameron returned the embrace, then reluctantly released him.

Daniel waved at Angelo, who was coming to join Cam, and then strode back toward the house and the carriage waiting to take him to the station. Daniel walked as tall and strong as Ian or Mac, even Hart.

“They grow up so fast,” Angelo said when he reached Cam. Cameron glanced at him, thinking the man joking, but Angelo’s dark eyes were serious. “Childhood is gone in the wink of an eye, and then they have to be men. You Anglos are strange, sending your sons out into the world as soon as they get tall enough. My family has been together forever.”

“I notice you don’t live with them, Angelo, so don’t become sentimental. Besides, my family is together. Just a bit spread out.”

“Rich Anglos need too much space.”

“That is true, but it keeps us from killing each other.”

Angelo grinned. Daniel climbed into the coach, and Cameron watched it roll down the drive with a pang in his heart.

He’d miss Daniel with everything he had, but he took Angelo’s words in the way the man meant them. Daniel would be welcome to stay with Cameron any time and for as long as he wanted. He’d done everything in his power to make damn certain that Daniel never had to fear coming home.

At that endeavor, Cameron knew he’d already far surpassed his own father.

Ainsley found the house emptier without Daniel, but Cameron now stayed all night every night with her, which meant that Ainsley got very little sleep. He’d wake her in the morning with loving, and they’d separate, sandy-eyed to their morning activities.

Cameron was unhappy about the loss of Jasmine, Ainsley could see, although he told her adamantly when she brought it up that it didn’t matter. He had plenty of other horses that would do well, and Chance’s Daughter would probably win the five top races of the year.

Ainsley wished Cameron could make his peace with Lord Pierson—or rather, that Lord Pierson wouldn’t be such a pompous fool. Jasmine was the suffering for their quarrel, and Ainsley’s heart went out to her.

But Ainsley had ideas for solving the problem. Legally of course. She wrote to her brother Steven, hoping to recruit him, but Steven replied that he couldn’t get leave from his regiment. Sinclair was too busy with his practice, Elliot was out of reach in India, of course, and Patrick . . .

Hmm, perhaps Patrick would do very nicely.

Before Ainsley could put any plans in motion, however, a telegram came to jolt her out of the new and pleasant hum of her life.


Chapter 26


Cameron walked in while Ainsley was packing. Her upstairs rooms were a mess of boxes and bags, the maids hurrying in and out with articles of clothing. Ainsley had known she’d have to confront Cameron sooner or later, but she’d rather hoped his training would keep him out of doors a little longer.

She took the telegram from her pocket and thrust it at him. “Before you ask, this is what it’s all about.”

Cameron’s eyes flickered as he read the words. Mr. Brown is gone. Come to me at once.

“Brown?” Cameron rumbled. “He’s dead?”

“Apparently.” Ainsley stopped a maid. “No, not the blue. I need the gray and the black. The queen will expect me in mourning.”

Cameron held the telegram between two fingers. “Why does she want you? She must have other ladies who can hold her hand.”

“She confided deeply in me about John Brown, how fond she was of him. He saved her life, really. I understand what she’s feeling.”

“What I mean, Ainsley, is why the devil are you going?”

“It won’t be for long,” Ainsley said. “A few weeks, maybe a month.”

“No.” The word burst out of Cameron, and Ainsley looked at him in surprise. “A month is far too long.”

“It will give me a chance to finish a few things I left hanging. To make a clean end of them.”

“What things?”

“Things from my old life. I packed and left rather abruptly, as you know, once I’d made up my mind to.”

Cameron slapped his hand to her open trunk lid, and the thing clattered shut. The maid looked startled then discreetly faded out the door.

“The queen has a houseful of servants and ladies at her beck and call,” Cameron said. “Why should you go?”

Ainsley had seen Victoria grieve before, how ill she made herself with it. The queen was a robust woman, but she did not handle loss very well. She loved hard and she grieved hard, rather like Cameron in that respect.

“I had another telegram, from one of her ladies,” Ainsley said. “The queen can’t walk, is unable even to rise from her chair. If I can ease some of that, if I can help her again, take my leave of her as friends, then I can return here and begin my life.”

“Begin your life? What the devil have you been living these past five months?”

“Please, Cam, this is important. She needs me.”

“Damn it all, I need you!”

Ainsley watched him in silence. Cameron held himself rigidly, fists clenched in dusty gloves.

“Cam,” Ainsley said. “I’ll come back.”

“Will you?” The words were bitter.

“Of course. We’re married.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s rather a lot, to me.”

Cameron knew she didn’t understand. Her gray eyes were still, hands halted in the act of folding a shawl. The shawl complemented her, silver and satiny, dripping down her arms the same way her hair slid over Cameron’s body when they made love.

Ainsley was leaving—Cameron losing her. The very thought made him break into a cold sweat.

“By the time I return, Daniel will have come home for his short holiday,” Ainsley said. “We’ll be a family again.”

A family. Again. She sounded so certain, as though everything were simple. Cameron and Daniel had only ever been tense satellites circling each other, and they had both known it. Until Ainsley. Daniel had tried at every turn to shove Ainsley into Cameron’s life, had turned up to winter with them, to make sure his father and Ainsley stuck it out. Now Daniel had gone, believing that everything was well.

“You won’t come back,” Cameron said.

“Yes, I will. I’ve just said.”

“You’ll intend to. But the queen will get her clutches into you, drag you back into her world, where she is the sun and the moon. She doesn’t like the Mackenzies, and she’ll do whatever she can to get you away from us.”

Ainsley looked puzzled. “The queen takes your advice on horses. You even turned up at Balmoral to speak to her about it.”

“Because she wants her horses to win. That doesn’t mean she likes or even respects me. Victoria knew my mother, thought her a fool for putting up with my father. She pitied my mother and despised her at the same time. She thinks Mackenzie sons are cut from the same cloth as the father, and she’s not far from wrong.”

“She is wrong. I know that. Isabella told me about your father. He sounds horrible.”

“But he’s here.” Cameron pressed his chest. “He’s in here. The bully who beat us, who killed my mother, who locked Ian away in an asylum—he’s in here with me. He’s in all of us. You might have noticed that my family is not exactly sane.”

She gave him her little smile. “Eccentric, certainly.”

“Stark, raving mad. I ease the madness with the horses, but between seasons, I barely keep it contained. Until this year, with you. Instead of drinking and sexing until I couldn’t remember which day was which, I strolled in parks and went to museums and to gardens, for God’s sake. I watched you and Daniel discuss the virtues of pastries and play draughts together on rainy evenings. My friends in Monte Carlo told me I’d gone domestic, and I laughed, because I didn’t care.”

Ainsley sent him another puzzled look. “You were miserable in Monte Carlo.”

“Restless, yes. Miserable, no. Hell, no. There, and in Paris, I was seeing everything as though it were new. All the things I took for granted for years suddenly had color and substance. Why? Because I saw them anew, through your eyes.”

Ainsley couldn’t know how beautiful she was standing there listening to him, brow puckered in confusion. “But your heart is here,” she said. “In Berkshire. With your horses at Waterbury Grange. I’m not wrong about that.”

“My heart is where you are, Ainsley. So when you leave . . .” Cameron made an empty gesture.

“I’ll come back,” she said stubbornly.

“To this wreck of a man? Why should you?”

“Because I love you.”

Cameron stopped. She’d said that before, though not often, as though worried how he’d respond.

But damn it, Ainsley could say it as often as she bloody well pleased. Plenty of women had told Cameron they’d loved him, even Elizabeth had. Usually they cooed it after he gave them some expensive present. Ainsley stood forlornly in the middle of a room and said it.

With Ainsley, something whispered to him, it just might be true.

“Then why go?” he asked.

“Because of the things I need to do. Important things. I would ask you to accompany me, but I know you can’t leave the horses, and you being with me would complicate things.”

“What things?”

“Cameron . . .”

Cameron unfolded his arms and moved to the window. Out in the paddock Angelo was letting the horse he rode slowly canter, winding down from a gallop.

He felt her come up behind him then her soothing touch on his shoulder. “That night six years ago in your bedchamber,” she said in a soft voice. “When you tempted me so sorely, and I refused you . . .”

“I remember.” The horse was going well, Angelo riding as though he were one with the beast. “What about it?”

“I refused you because I wouldn’t betray John, my husband. And I won’t betray you now. I’ll come back, Cameron. I promise.”

Cameron turned and pulled her to him. They stood together, swaying in the sunshine. He felt Ainsley relax, relieved that he’d stopped fighting her. But Cameron was far from yielding.

“I don’t want you back because you feel obligated to me, love,” he said. “That’s the devil of wedding vows—they make you do things for a person you maybe should run away from. Come back to me because you want to, not because you think you ought to. Do you understand?”

Ainsley looked up at him, her eyes a mystery. “I think I do understand you, Cameron.”

Cameron heard more in the sentence than the bare words, but he couldn’t decide what. He kissed her, dissolving in her warmth, and then he let her go.

Angelo went with her. Cameron insisted. Cameron said that he trusted Ainsley but not whatever fools she might meet on her journey. A maid and a footman weren’t enough to guard her. Angelo, he knew, wouldn’t let a damn thing happen to her. So Angelo went, without argument.