Cameron thought of the inquest, everyone watching him as he gave evidence in a dead voice, everyone believing he’d killed Elizabeth. The eyes of the villagers, the journalists, Elizabeth’s family, her lovers, his own father, the jury, the coroner—hard and cold, waiting for him to confess.

Only Hart had believed him, and Hart had perjured himself, telling the coroner that he’d seen Elizabeth drive the knife into her own throat as he’d broken open the door. Cameron had been across the room, holding Daniel, trying to still the lad’s terrified screams. Hart had related the story, using the right mix of Mackenzie charm and horrified sympathy for his brother.

What Hart said had been true, but he hadn’t seen it. Elizabeth had already been dead before Hart made it into the room. Hart had lied to save Cameron, and Cameron would be forever grateful. Hence, Cameron endured Hart’s house parties and entertained Hart’s guests by letting them watch him train his racers.

Ainsley’s fingers landed on his arm, pulling him back from darkness. Her cool voice flowed over him, along with her scent—vanilla and cinnamon, that was Ainsley.

“People do speak of it, I can’t deny that,” she was saying. “But I don’t think it’s true.”

“How the devil can you know?” Cameron heard the growl in his voice but couldn’t stop it.

“I’m good at reading people, is all.”

“That only means you’re too damn trusting.”

“It means it’s my opinion, whether you like it or not. So cease trying to insult me, or bully me, or whatever it is you’re doing.”

She was waking him from his half-numb state again, sharpening the world around him. “But you’re a liar and a thief, Mrs. Douglas,” he said, lightening his tone. “A confidence trickster. How can I take you at your word?”

Her hand remained on his arm, and Cameron liked that she didn’t pull away. “You’ve met me under unfortunate circumstances. I am usually most reliable.”

Cameron wanted to laugh. “You pick locks like a professional thief, search rooms, deal with blackmailers, and then ask me to believe in you.”

Ainsley shot him an exasperated look. “I will remind you that I haven’t seen you in the best of circumstances either, my lord. The last time we spoke, you unbuttoned my frock.”

Yes, he remembered. Each button revealing more of her, the warmth of her skin, the brush of breath on his fingers. Cameron reached for her again, seeking that heat once more.

He touched her collarbone, cold even through the leather of his gloves. “Balls, woman, you’re freezing.”

Cameron slid off his coat and pulled it around her shoulders before she could protest, and then he held the lapels, not wanting to let go. Sweet Mrs. Douglas, looking into his face and saying she believed in him. No one else did. Only because of Hart had the verdict of the inquest been suicide. Cameron exonerated. The case finished.

Officially. Public opinion said otherwise, but only in whispers, because Hart wouldn’t tolerate slander. Women in the demimonde and wives and widows wanting excitement sought Cameron because of the danger he represented, while respectable young ladies were swept out of his way. Cameron didn’t care. He’d never sought to marry again—once was enough of that—but he doubted that anyone would have him even if he asked.

Now Ainsley Douglas looked at him with her clear gray eyes and told him she believed his innocence. No proof needed.

He wanted to taste the mouth that said such things. He wanted to pull her to him, feel her body under his, peel back her clothes and kiss every inch of her. Ainsley wore her hair in a tight coil tonight—he imagined loosening it, letting her hair flow over his body like warm silk.

McNab’s tail lashed Cameron’s legs, and Ainsley laughed and bent to pet the dog’s head. “Lord Cameron, I need to ask you a favor.”

Didn’t she know it was dangerous to ask him for favors? Just because Cameron was innocent of murder didn’t mean he was kind.

“What?”

“I searched Mrs. Chase’s rooms, but I never found the letters. I’ve taken the opportunity to look over the rest of the house as well, but I’ve not been able to find them.”

Cameron imagined Ainsley happily picking her way past the locked doors of every room in Hart’s mansion. Assisting Isabella with the party would have given her an excuse to go almost anywhere in the house. Hart Mackenzie, the most careful and controlling man ever born, was no match for Ainsley and her hairpin.

“Of course you searched,” he said. “Are ye certain you were thorough?”

“I am always very thorough, my lord. But there is one place I haven’t looked.” She touched her tongue to her lower lip, to the tiny bruise Cameron had left there. His mark. He who didn’t always like kissing his women couldn’t stop thinking about kissing Ainsley. “The one place she’d be able to stash the lot,” Ainsley said, “where I’d likely not go, would be your chambers.”

His heart missed a beat. “You did some searching in my chambers too, minx. Angelo told me someone had pawed through the wardrobe.”

“But I wasn’t able to finish.”

No, Cam and Phyllida had come blundering in, Cameron seeking refuge from his ennui in mindless coupling.

Ainsley went on. “Would Mrs. Chase have had the chance to hide the rest somewhere in your rooms?”

Phyllida had latched on to Cameron the moment she’d arrived at the house party, and Cameron hadn’t discouraged her. “Aye, she’d have had chance. But not, I’m thinking, the chance to retrieve them.” He’d not invited Phyllida back to his chambers after last night, and she’d understood what his cool indifference meant.

“Excellent. Perhaps I could go in and look for them while you’re training tomorrow? Would you be able to keep the servants away?”

The thought of her bustling around his rooms made him sweat. “Why wait for the morning? If you want to find the letters so much, go on up and have at it.”

Ainsley’s eyes widened. “What, now?”

“Why the hell not? The guests are riveted to Hart’s pyrotechnics, and the house is empty. I’ll show you the most likely places to look.”

Ainsley pursed her lips, the soft pucker making him want to pull her close and finish what he’d started with her in the woods. He’d had to make himself walk away then or risk the count or Isabella or someone turning up looking for her, to find her in a most compromising position. No one at the croquet match seemed to have noticed her gone too long with the notorious Lord Cameron, though, probably thinking that Cameron wouldn’t have anything to do with the nobody friend of his sister-in-law. Few of them noticed Ainsley at all, the blind fools. She kept to the shadows, certainly, but Cameron could see her there in all her blazing glory.

Ainsley finally let out a long sigh and nodded. “Very well, let us search. It’s too blasted cold out here anyway.” She turned without another word and headed for the house, his coat billowing behind her.


Chapter 7


Cameron followed Ainsley Douglas’s swaying gray bustle up the steps to the dark end of the terrace. His coat half slid from her shoulders, her slippers were muddy, and one curl straggled down her back.

Why Cameron should come so alive watching a woman who had no intention whatsoever of sleeping with him, he didn’t know. He only knew he was grateful for it. The only thing he could compare it to was waking on the opening day of an important race meet, knowing that the day would be filled with excitement, hurry, and elation. He’d spend the day with Daniel and his horses, and even the disappointments would be colored by the overall joy of the time.

Cameron held open a door on the end of the terrace, and Ainsley moved confidently inside and across the dark room without waiting for him.

“You know your way around,” Cameron said when he caught up to her.

“I know Balmoral and Buckingham Palace like the back of my hand,” Ainsley said. She stepped from the room into the empty hall beyond. “This house is easy to navigate in comparison. We can get from here up to your wing unseen.”

Ainsley opened another door, this one leading to a slanting back stair, which she started to ascend without hesitation.

“How do you know the servants won’t see you?” Cameron asked as he followed. “Or did you tie them up and lock them in the kitchen?”

Ainsley answered breathlessly, skirts swishing as she climbed. “The only servant who uses these stairs is your man, and he’s currently in the stables.”

That was true enough. Angelo liked looking after Jasmine. “You’d make a bloody good jewel thief, knowing the back ways through other people’s houses like this,” Cameron said. “You could work house parties all over the country.”

Ainsley looked back down at him over the banisters. “Don’t be silly. I do have some morals, Lord Cameron.”

Pity. Cameron followed her out through a narrow door to the landing to his floor. His rooms were two doors down, and he moved past her to unlock his bedchamber with his key.

“Saves you the time of picking it,” he said.

Without comment Ainsley slid off Cameron’s coat, handed it to him, and walked inside. She went straight to his wardrobe, opened it, and started to rummage. Cameron tossed the coat to a chair and watched the fine perspective of her backside moving as she lifted his shirts and collar boxes, peeked under lids and felt through fabric.

He stripped off his gloves and his too-binding formal waistcoat before moving to pour himself a cut crystal glass of whiskey. Taking up the whiskey, he leaned against a bedpost to continue watching her work.

Ainsley closed the wardrobe and turned to the glass- fronted bookcase. “You’re an odd sort of man, Lord Cameron. You drink whiskey and smoke cheroots in front of a lady without asking leave, not to mention smacking away her ball in croquet instead of allowing her to win. In my world, that is simply not done. You’d be looked upon with horror.”

“Lucky that I don’t live in your world then. Besides, I know you’re not a lady.”

She shot him a startled look as she opened the bookcase. “What?”

Cameron gestured with his glass. “You pick locks and sneak into my bedroom, you know the back ways through my ancestral home, you’re blatantly searching my bedchamber, and last night you wrestled with me on my bed.” He took a deliberate sip of whiskey. “I’d say that makes you not a lady.”

“Circumstances sometimes require odd behavior, my lord.”

“Circumstances be damned. You haven’t checked under the mattress.”

“That is next.” Ainsley plucked a book from the shelf and started leafing through it. She realized what kind of book it was and turned bright red.

Cameron suppressed his laughter as Ainsley stared at a page of blatantly naked Courbet figures, twined in an interesting position. He made a wager with himself whether she’d throw down the book in disgust and storm out, or whether his Mrs. Douglas would soldier on.

He won the bet when she drew a deep, determined breath and continued to fan through the pages.

Finding nothing, Ainsley placed the book back on the shelf and gingerly opened the next one, which was much the same. “You—read—this?”

“Of course I do. I collect it.”

“It’s in French.”

“Don’t you read books in French? Isabella told me you went with her to her fine ladies’ academy.”

“I learned it, yes, but I doubt any of these words were in our primer.”

Cameron stopped trying to contain his laughter and let it burst out. It felt good.

“I would finish much more quickly if you helped me,” she said.

Cameron leaned on the bedpost again. “But it’s much more entertaining to watch you.”

Ainsley made an exasperated noise, shoved the book back into the bookcase, and untied and opened a folio. She studied the first drawing. “I know I’m unworldly, Lord Cameron, but I’m not certain that what they’re doing is quite possible.”

Cameron leaned over her shoulder to look at the sensual sketch by Romano, drawn three centuries before. Admittedly the people depicted were in an awkward pose. “I buy it for the beauty of it, not for instruction.”

“Well, that’s a mercy, or you’d never have had a son.”

Cam let out another laugh, the power of true mirth filling his body.

Could anything be more sensual than watching a lovely young woman leaf through page after page of his erotic pictures?

There was nothing of the prude about Ainsley, nor did she send him suggestive glances, using the drawings as seduction. She looked through each folio carefully, her cheeks sweetly pink, her breasts rising against her décolletage.