Mia Marlowe (14 page)

“Aye, truly.”

“Well, that just goes to show you can’t believe everything you read.” Alex moved her off his lap, rose to his feet, and braced both hands on the mantel lest he be tempted to touch her again. Her heart might be hurt, but she’d heal. He didn’t want his brokenness to corrupt her too. “Go to bed, Lucinda.”

She stood stock still for a moment and he feared she was about to put up a fight. Then he was afraid she might do worse and begin to cry. When she turned away without a word, he could have kissed the curve of her instep in gratitude.

After he heard the bedclothes rustle enough to confirm that she was in the big featherbed, he sat back down in the chair. Even though his arousal had settled, the ache in his chest throbbed enough to keep him from sleep.

No matter.

On the morrow, they’d leave for Bonniebroch. Since he’d lost his usefulness at Dalkeith by nearly defiling a daughter of Scotland under the noses of the local nobility, he decided to turn to the countryside to try to flush out any Radical elements. Besides, once he and his bride were ensconced in his own home, he could arrange for separate bedchambers for them. It was his only hope of eventually obtaining an annulment and his freedom. The only way to return to a life that made sense, one that didn’t keep dredging up his past or offering him glimpses of an unobtainable future he didn’t deserve and could never have.

But the separate bedchambers were a must. One night listening to Lucinda’s breathing, knowing she was near, knowing she was willing, would be more than enough.

It was a damned long night.

Mercifully, Lucinda wasn’t the sort to sob into the coverlet, though she moved restlessly every few minutes and pummeled her pillow into submission more than once. Eventually, she settled, but then her soft breathing was a different type of torment.

Alexander waited for dawn in the Tudor chair, not dropping off to sleep from sheer exhaustion till the darkest watch of the night. He woke with a sore back and a crick in his neck.

He cast a longing gaze at the still form in the bed, but there wasn’t a moment to waste. Escaping the bridal chamber before Lucinda stirred, he made for the kitchen where he took a cold breakfast, breaking all sorts of protocol by eating alongside the help. News of the middle-of-the-night wedding had spread through the Dalkeith gossip mill, quick as a case of the measles. Alexander was treated to stifled giggles and knowing looks from the staff while he pumped the servants for information about Bonniebroch. The Master of Horse seemed the likeliest source of reliable information since he traveled often in search of new stock to keep up the palace’s herd.

“I understand the steward of Bonniebroch is here at Dalkeith,” Alexander said between sips of surprisingly good coffee. It was black and hot and stout enough to cause new hairs to sprout on his chest. “Callum Farquhar by name. Have you seen him?”

The horseman scratched his wire-haired pate. “Dinna know as I have. There be a powerful lot of new folk here the now, both above and below stairs. I mighta met the fellow and no’ known it, but I’ll leave him know ye wish to speak with him an’ I see him.”

“I haven’t time to wait.” One night of sharing a chamber with his new wife was all he could bear. “I need to get to Bonniebroch and I haven’t found anyone who can tell me where it lies.”

Farquhar had tried during their strange conversation, waxing poetic about hills and rivers and declivities, but Alex had cut the man off.

“Weel, in truth, the castle isna so far. Ye can reach it in a long day’s travel,” the Master of Horse said before he crammed a bite of day-old bannock slathered with butter into his mouth and chewed noisily.

Alex lifted a surprised brow. No one had named Bonniebroch a castle before this. He revised his mental picture of the estate. “Castle, you say.”

“Och, aye.
Broch
being Gaelic for ‘tower,’ ye ken, and as for
bonnie
, weel, I’ll leave that to yer own judgment since beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, they do say.”

Bonniebroch might not be a croft with sheep on the roof, but a castle could still be a crumbling ruin. Better to keep his expectations low. “You’ve been there?”

“Nae, but there’s no’ many as goes that way, ye ken. The folk what lives in Bonniebroch keeps to themselves. There’s something a might queer about them. Only a few tradesmen venture up the River Tay to bring them goods and news from the outside.”

Outstanding.
The residents at his new estate had raised clannishness to an art form. They’d likely not be terribly forthcoming when he tried to gather information from them.

“What road do we take to get there?” Alex asked, feeling more certain by the minute that Sir Darren MacMartin had lost Bonniebroch to him on purpose.

“No road. The hills are steep ’round about the tower. Ye might make it on horseback, I suppose, if ye were to follow the game trails.”

Alex still couldn’t manage Badgemagus on a level patch of ground. He certainly wasn’t going to trust his neck to a Highland game trail. And besides, he had no mount for Lucinda.

“I doubt my bride’s luggage will fit in a saddle bag,” Alexander said.

The Master of Horse laughed. “Nae, it willna. A man may make do with his plaid and his dirk, but women need a powerful lot of things to get them through their day. Ye’ll have to take the ferry barge then.”

He gave Alexander directions that would take them back to Edinburgh and then on north to the place where they’d find the ferryman on the River Tay.

“From there, ye’ll have to trust the ferryman. Busby MacFee is his name, but his friends call him Beans.”

Alex decided he didn’t want to know why.

“The Tay is a tidal river so ye may have to wait for the water to be favorable,” the horseman warned.

“Isn’t there a towpath?”

“Part of the way. For the rest, ye must go when the river allows ye.” The Master of Horse thanked Cook for his breakfast and crammed a disreputable tam on his head. “Godspeed, milord, and a Merry Christmas to ye and yer good lady.”

Feeling a bit like Daniel re-entering the lion’s den, he trudged back to his chamber. To his great relief, there was an abigail with Lucinda. A dressing screen had been found and moved into his room.

His bride stood behind it, her shoulders bare except for the long auburn locks teasing around them.

Lucinda in nothing but her skin.
His imagination went into full gallop at the thought of heavy breasts, a supple waist, and heaven between her silky thighs. If he hadn’t ever heard of Lord Liverpool and his web of intelligence gatherers or been convinced he was doing her a favor by not being a true husband, Alex would have pulled down the screen and enjoyed the sight of his beautiful wife in the altogether.

Instead, he couldn’t even tell her why he was really in Scotland. A marriage based on lies and half-truths had no chance at all. His head argued that he was right to keep his distance.

Another part of him begged to differ. Most insistently.

“Yer pardon, milord,” the maid said, dropping a hasty curtsey. “I’ll be on me way.”

“No need.” Alexander waved her back. It was safer to have the girl there as a buffer. Formality was preferable to honesty at this point. “My wife is clearly in need of your services. Carry on.”

Lucinda shot him a questioning look, then raised her arms to allow the girl to slip a fresh chemise over her head.

“’Tis the day before Christmas,” Lucinda said cautiously, as if she too were treading lightly around their frail marriage. She disappeared completely behind the screen and Alex’s imagination rose up to taunt him with images of her rolling her stockings up her shapely legs and tying neat bows behind her knees. “I expect me sisters and I will take to the woods to gather boughs and mistletoe and such for the beautifying of the hall. Will ye be taking part in finding the Yule log before the Hanging o’ the Greens?”

“No. I intend to leave before those festivities get underway.”

Lucinda’s head shot up at that. She peered over the screen at him, a burning question in her eyes. “Leave us, if ye please, Brigid.”

As if the lady’s maid sensed an approaching storm, she skittered out without a word, taking Lucinda’s clothing from the previous night with her.

“So, ye dinna intend to honor yer vows,” Lucinda said, her voice deadly calm.

“I misspoke. I should have said
we
will be leaving. I intend to take you with me.” He might be a cad, but he’d never embarrass Lucinda by abandoning her after one night. Since Alex figured he’d be stuck in Scotland at least until the king came and went next August, there’d be time enough for her to realize that they weren’t suited—would never be suited—and she’d give him the annulment he needed without a qualm.

Her chin lifted and her eyes glinted coldly. “Then ye intend to stick to all the points outlined in the contract, my bride-price, the support of my father’s invention, the herds and grazing rights, all of it, and not a farthing less?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll honor it all.” She was turning into quite the mercenary little wench.

Then her chin quivered a bit. “Ye just dinna intend to honor me.”

Alexander was doing her more honor than she knew. This was about more than securing his freedom. He was giving her a chance to get away from him as well. He might not run to madness, but he still wasn’t meant to be a husband. Not with his father’s blood coursing through his veins.

“Be ready to leave within the hour.”

 

 

Lucinda barely had time to pack a fourth of her belongings. Her sisters dragged themselves from bed and tried to help, but only succeeded in slowing her progress with unwanted questions and advice.

“Go wake Aunt Hester for me, so I can say good-bye,” she’d finally pleaded in hopes that she’d have a moment alone to explain matters to Brodie. She’d heard once that ghosts didn’t take kindly to crossing water. When Alexander told her that a goodly portion of their journey would be by ferry barge, she knew she’d have to persuade Brodie to remain with her sisters till he could return to the MacOwen farm with them. Sometime—it didn’t matter when since Brodie had all the time in the world—she and Alexander would have to visit her family and she could be reunited with Brodie then.

She still expected him to pitch a fit over their separation.

As soon as Aileen and Mary left, bickering loudly over who would have the dubious honor of pulling back the bed curtains and rousting their aunt from sleep, Lucinda called Brodie’s name softly.

He didn’t answer.

She knew he enjoyed exploring out-of-the-way places within the safety of Dalkeith’s stout walls, but his hearing was so preternaturally keen, he’d hear her whether he were floating near the rafters in the garret or skimming the dank stone of the deepest crypt. In all the years she’d known him, he’d never refused to show himself when she called, no matter how peeved he might have been with her.

Now he was simply . . . gone.

Lucinda sank onto the foot of her bed and let the gathering tears fall. She wasn’t usually such a watering pot, but she had good reason now. Her husband didn’t want to take her to wife. Alexander was pulling her from the bosom of her family on the day before Christmas and she’d lost her best friend in the world.

She’d have given anything to hear Brodie’s scratchy brogue telling her
“Ye dinna have to cry so, lassie,”
just as he had when she was a little girl and he first found her shut up in the cellar. But when she held her breath, listening intently for him, there was only the soft sibilance of air currents flowing from one room to the next and the crackle of the fire in the grate.

Then there came a scuffle from the skittering kid soles of her sisters’ slippers and the heavy clunk of her aunt’s ponderous steps in the adjoining room. Lucinda wiped her eyes and forced an over-bright smile. No need to trouble her family with her woes.

There wasn’t time to find Dougal in order to bid him good-bye. Alexander was in such a hurry to be gone, Lucinda wondered that he waited for her.

The carriage ride with her new husband back to Edinburgh was a study in awkward silence, so she feigned intense interest in the landscape scrolling past the isinglass windows. Thick hoarfrost coated every blade of grass, turning meadows into fields of short white daggers jutting upward. Trees scraped the sky with their icy fingers. The scenery matched the cold bleakness of Lucinda’s new marriage.

Finally, she could bear the quiet no longer.

“I see ye’ve given up on riding Badgemagus,” she said since Alexander had left him at Dalkeith.

“No, I haven’t.” He still didn’t look at her, staring instead out the window with as much interest in the countryside as Lucinda had pretended to. “I arranged for your brother to bring him to Bonniebroch after Christmas. The horse will do better on the ferry with blinders and a knowledgeable groom to tend him along the way.”

Lucinda sniffed. It was all well and good to care for one’s animals, but she’d do better if
her
groom gave as much thought to tending to her needs as he did to his horse.

“I wonder if you might like to have some of your family close by.” Alexander’s gaze darted to her and then away to the window again. “Once your brother comes to Bonniebroch, perhaps he might want to stay on in some capacity. If you would like his company, of course.”

Something fluttered in her chest. It was kindly meant of him. Getting Dougal away from Dalkeith where King George would be lodging next summer was an answer to prayer. Lucinda hoped never to see that dirk dance again.

“I would like that.” It wasn’t the loving conversation every girl hopes to have with her bridegroom the day after their wedding, but at least they were talking. “When Dougal comes, I’ll see can I talk him into staying. He’s a dab hand with horses and though he’s no’ the inventor me father is, he’s Erskine MacOwen’s son when it comes to building or repairing things. I’m sure ye’ll find a use for him on yer estate.”

“Our estate, as per the marriage contract,” he corrected. “You’re Lady Bonniebroch now.”

“We couldn’t hire your brother as a servant. That wouldn’t be seemly,” Alex said. “But perhaps he could help me with getting to know the tenants. Would he fancy being overseer?”

“Lording it over the crofters attached to the estate and collecting rents, aye, that’s just the sort of thing Dougal would fancy.” Her brother always liked being in charge. The cellar incident rose in her mind and she added, “Ye’ll have to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesna get too heavy-handed though.”