Katharine Ashe - When a Scot Loves a Lady

“May I help you, monsieur?”

Leam handed him a calling card. “Fesh me yer master.”

The manservant’s nostrils flared. He nodded, ushered him into the foyer, and took his coat and hat.

“Swith awa, man.” Leam gestured impatiently. “A dinna hae aw day.” He could gladly wait forever to have this conversation, but the time had come, and he had purpose now he’d never had before.

“Je vous en prie, my lord,” the manservant said with stiff disapproval. “If you will wait in the parlor.”

Leam went into the chamber and to the window, and stared into the gray day at the neat row of elegant buildings across the street. By God, he wanted out of town houses. Out of London. Out of England. She would never have him anyway. Not for long, at least. For all the passion and warmth beneath her society hauteur, she had been made for this world. The world he had lied to for years.

A footstep at the threshold turned his head. Nearly as tall as Leam, with a slash of straight black hair falling across his brow, penetrating green eyes, and a Gallic elegance to his clothing and air, Felix Vaucoeur was a handsome man.

“I saw your card,” he said without any trace of accent, his English as fluid as Leam’s when he wished it, “but did not quite believe it.”

“Your manservant is an impertinent snob, Vaucoeur. Do you pay him to frighten away callers?”

The comte moved to the sideboard and took up a carafe of dark liquid.

“Rather late to be paying me a call finally, Blackwood.” He poured out two glasses, then turned and came across the chamber. He handed one to Leam and met his gaze. “And hypocritical.”

Leam studied the man who had killed his brother. In nearly six years their paths had not crossed.

To protect both Leam and James from scandal, their uncle, the Duke of Read, had seen to it that Vaucoeur received a pardon, and the duel was put about as a hunting accident. Vaucoeur had gone into the countryside to avoid gossip, where he remained until the war ended and he returned for a time to his estate on the Continent. But the English half of Vaucoeur’s blood had always been stronger, despite his French title.

Leam set his glass on a table. “You haven’t any idea why I am here.”

“Ah.” The comte turned and went back to the sideboard.

“I need your help.”

Vaucoeur paused in lifting the carafe.

“I am looking for a man who claims to have served with you and my brother on the Peninsula,” Leam said. “David Cox. Fair, good-looking. Says he is in insurance now. Do you remember such a fellow?”

“Why not inquire at the War Office?”

“I’ve more interest in him than his address.”

Vaucoeur’s eyes narrowed. “What business is that of mine?”

“I don’t know that it’s any. Cox has been following me, and he has threatened those close to me. I must make certain it hasn’t anything to do with my brother before I pursue other avenues.”

“You imagine I might have had something to do with him, this tradesman who claims to have known James. A good-looking fellow, one of our regiment mates.” Vaucoeur set down his glass with a quiet click. “What?”

“What do you mean?”

“What business might I have had with this Mr. Cox that could have involved your brother?”

For a long stretch of silence they stared at each other.

“Why did you allow me to goad you into it?” Leam finally uttered. “Even so, I exaggerate. I barely had to nudge you to challenge him.”

Vaucoeur spoke slowly. “He violated my sister.”

“He violated a great many men’s sisters,” Leam replied. “But he was in love with you.”

“That was his misfortune.” The reply came too swiftly, too smoothly, practiced, as though he had been waiting to say the words for almost six years.

It did not suit Leam. Not after so long.

“What happened on the Peninsula, Felix? Two young men thrown together at war, sharing the same battlefield and tent, like Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion marching across the desert against a heathen enemy. Which one were you? Young King Philip, the tease? The opportunist.” His mouth tasted metallic. “To my brother’s anguished Richard.”

“Get out, Blackwood.” The words were like ice, but something in his eyes arrested Leam, something keen and deeply scarred even after years. Vaucoeur had not yet made peace with his part in James’s death.

“You did care for him. Didn’t you?” It had never before occurred to Leam. Not in such a manner.

“Of course I did. He was my best friend.”

“But not your lover.”

“Never.” His gaze bored into Leam’s. “I am, you see, quite exclusively fond of women.”

Finally Leam understood his brother’s torment, and perhaps this man’s pain and regret as well.

Vaucoeur had never been what James both wanted him to be and feared. For years anger had burned in Leam for how his brother had lied in not telling him about Cornelia’s baby. James might have married her; men like him married women they did not want frequently enough. But the desperation that had driven James to bed every female he could had made actual marriage to a woman impossible. His brother had wanted someone he could not have and it had driven him to the edge of insanity. The Blackwood passion had not been reserved to Leam alone.

“Am I to understand then,” he said, “that you have nothing to help me in the matter of David Cox?”

The comte turned away, replacing the stopper on the brandy. “I don’t remember him.”

Leam nodded and went toward the door, an odd emptiness in his chest.

“He hated himself.” Vaucoeur’s voice came behind him, steady and certain.

“Yes,” Leam said quietly. “And he suffered for who he was,” in a way Leam had never in his life suffered. While James despised his own nature, Leam hadn’t given a damn what his fellow classmates thought of him. Quietly he studied and wrote and took the teasing along with his high marks and masters’ praise. But he hadn’t cared about any of it, only the poetry, the expression of true emotion he’d believed in so deeply at the time.

But for too long he had watched his brother suffer and felt it in his own heart. After a time, he wanted to suffer as well, to finally share some of that pain. Cornelia Cobb had offered him the perfect opportunity.

Her youthful levity had attracted him. But not for its own sake, he understood now. Falling for her had finally made him feel like he was betraying his nature. Fool that he was, he had reveled in knowing she was not suitable for him with her gay, light smiles and superficial flirtations. After all those years watching his brother and hurting for him, Leam had welcomed the suffering too.

He had not paused a moment to consider what would actually happen if she accepted him.

“You did not kill him.” Vaucoeur’s voice was hard. “I would like to believe that even I did not. He wanted to die and he used us because he hadn’t the courage to pull the trigger himself.”

Leam looked into the man’s glittering eyes and saw a coldness there he never wished to live again, a cold that Kitty’s wide gaze and eager touch had begun to thaw within him.

He bowed. “Vaucoeur.”

The comte nodded. “My lord.”

Leam departed. The city streets were still crowded with vehicles and people, the sky thick with rainclouds the color of her eyes. He must head for the War Office and the information on Cox that might or might not be there. Still he felt peculiarly adrift, without anchor.

He paused to allow a cart to trundle past on the muddy street, the clatter of wheels and shouts and the smell of rain all about.

Not adrift.

Free. Free of guilt. Free of regret and pain.

His hands tightened on the reins and he sucked in a lungful of damp air, water dripping off his greatcoat capes and the brim of his hat. He pushed his mount forward toward the War Office.

Kitty did not speak to her mother about Viscount Gray’s suspicions of Lord Chamberlayne. She simply did not know where to begin. Mama, I have had an affair—and it seems that perhaps I still am having it—with Lord Blackwood, whose fellow spies believe your beau is involved with persons planning sedition, and they have asked me to assist them in acquiring information about Lord Chamberlayne’s family and possible illegal activities . No, that would not do. But she could not do what Lord Gray asked and conceal it from her mother either.

Standing by her bedchamber hearth, she drew her letter to him from her pocket and placed it on the grate. She must have time to consider, especially to understand how important Lord Chamberlayne was to her mother in truth.

The following day she joined her mother in paying calls. The day after that passed much the same, including a drive with Lord Chamberlayne in the park. The days crept into a week. Leam did not return.

“Kitty, you are fidgeting,” her mother said to her as the carriage halted at the curb on Berkeley Square to collect Emily and Madame Roche.

“I am not. I never fidget.” She untangled her fingers from her reticule strings. “Mama, where were you when you did not come home in the evening a sennight ago?”

The dowager met her placid look with a glimmer in her eye.

“I wondered when you would ask that.”

“I was waiting for you to make an announcement. I expected you to. Where were you?”

“There is no announcement to be made. I was at your brother’s house. Serena was feeling poorly, and you know I am the only mother she has now. You might have asked me at any time.” The dowager folded hands gloved in the finest kid on her lap of striped taffeta.

“I am sorry Serena is unwell. I will call on her tomorrow.” She exhaled sharply. “But this is ridiculous. When will Lord Chamberlayne make an offer?”

“He already has.”

She stared, a tangled mess of relief and disappointment inside. “You did not accept him?”

Her mother reached across the seat and took her chin into her hand as though she were a child.

“Kitty, I spent nearly thirty years married to a man who ill suited me. I am tempted, but I shan’t dive into another marriage quite so swiftly.”

Kitty nudged her face away. She must make certain.

“But you have had ample time. He has been courting you for months.”

“And what of your suitors, daughter? Several have been calling on you for years.”

Kitty looked out the carriage window. Emily and her companion were descending the steps of their house. Her mother had never asked her this. Never pressed her. Why now?

“They do it mostly for the novelty of it,” she said. “None of them have a sincere attachment. It is the image of cool, reserved inaccessibility in the face of rumor that attracts them, not I.”

Her mother’s thin brows dipped into a V.

“Katherine, I never wish to hear you say such a thing. You disrespect a gentleman by judging his attentions in such a manner.”

Kitty’s head snapped around. “Mama, you cannot be serious.”

“Your pride has outrun you, daughter. You have become far too comfortable dismissing any man you don’t feel lives up to your exalted idea of what a gentleman should be.”

Kitty’s cheeks flamed. “And what precisely is that?”

“He must be extraordinarily learned, well placed in fashionable circles, an exceptional conversationalist, titled, wealthy, a man of taste and elegance, as loyal as yourself to his loved ones, and I daresay handsome as well.”

“I never said such a thing.” Her heart beat very swiftly.

“You needn’t. You live it. But you will not find such a paragon, daughter. Men like that do not exist. Most of them are rather more like your father.” There was no bitterness to her mother’s voice, only the clean, uncluttered sense Kitty had always admired. But, even so, this was not honesty.

“Mama, I must know something. Why did you never—” The carriage door opened.

“Bonjour, Katrine! My lady.” Madame Roche was all gracious smiles, black and red and white fluttering with frills. Emily tucked her slender frame into the seat beside Kitty and placed a book in her hand.

“Here is the one I promised you. It is not nearly as tumultuous as the Racine play Lord Blackwood lent me, but I think you may like it, and you said you had seen Phaedra before, in any case.”

“It was such a plaisir to encounter His Lordship again so soon. What a kind gentleman!”