Scotsmen Prefer Blondes (8 page)

“Madeleine wanted to marry Ferguson, if I recall,” Prudence said, dropping pins one by one into a little ceramic dish on top of her dressing table. “From what I saw in the library, you and Carnach will rub along together quite tolerably. ‘Rub’ being the appropriate word, of course.”

For a moment, when Prudence grinned at her own jest, it was just as it always was between them. But then Prudence remembered what Amelia had done, and the smile disappeared.

Amelia twisted her fingers. Her cracking knuckles were like icicles breaking off in the silence. “I didn’t go to the library to kiss him, you know. I planned to throw the two of you together so you might discover some sort of attraction.”

Her friend ignored the excuse. The last pins came away, and Prudence’s hair fell to her back. It was waist length and wavy, and the firelight added a golden edge that no one in society ever saw when it was contained by caps and chignons. Prudence shook it free, then savagely started brushing.

Amelia winced as Prudence tore at one of the tangles. “Shouldn’t you wait for the maid?”

“I’m quite accustomed to brushing my own hair. The maid has enough work as it is,” Prudence said. Each stroke crackled with static. “Without Carnach to rescue us, I may become a lady’s maid myself.”

“Surely it won’t come to that.”

“No. I would try for a governess position first.”

She set down the brush and bowed her head for a moment. The curtain of hair obscured Amelia’s view, but she heard the distinct sound of a sniffle. Amelia reached for Prudence’s shoulder, tentatively, but Prudence shrugged the hand away.

“Why did you do it, Amelia?” Prudence asked, finally turning to face her. “I thought you didn’t even like the man.”

Amelia paused. The words that always came so easily for her were frozen someplace, blocked and inaccessible. How could she explain an attraction she couldn’t understand and didn’t want?

Finally, she leaned against Prudence’s bed. She stared down at the slippers that had ruined her. If only she’d worn them in the library, she might have been able to sway Alex. “I don’t like him. And I didn’t want to kiss him. Whatever came over us in the library was madness, nothing more. It was like...like lightning, and I was the only tree on the plain. It struck me hard, and I couldn’t move away from it in time.”

“You never use hackneyed phrases like that — you must be overset,” Prudence observed. Then her eyes narrowed. “Is that why you wanted to turn me against him today? So you could have him for yourself?”

“No!” Amelia exclaimed. “No. You know I don’t want to marry.”

Prudence examined her face. “I know. But you’re not as immune to men as you pretend to be. And when this one came along, offering kisses, you didn’t think a thing of hurting me.”

Amelia cringed. “That’s not true. I tried to stop him.”

“That’s not what it looked like when I arrived. How far would you have gone with him?”

“It was just a kiss! Nothing more happened — nothing more will happen, if Alex comes to his senses.”

Prudence pulled her hair tight against her scalp with both hands. In her grief and anger, she looked like a Fury ready to render judgment. “It’s not just a kiss with you, Amelia. After all the years you’ve kept yourself guarded, a kiss means you truly feel something for him.”

Amelia shook her head, denying. “It could have happened to you instead, if you had been there instead of me. I thought if you met him tonight...”

“What, that lightning would strike me instead?” Prudence asked. “Lightning will never strike me again. I’m more likely to marry mad King George than I am to feel that attraction for someone else.”

Amelia squinted at Prudence. She had dropped her hair, but somewhere under it, there was a secretive look in her eyes that Amelia had never seen before. “‘Again?’ When did it strike you before?”

Prudence shook her head and pointed to the door. “Go, Amelia. I need to decide what I can tell Mother about my failure to make this match, and I cannot think when I want to slap you.”

“I am sorry, Prudence. I will find a way to make this up to you.”

“How? By hiring me as your governess?” Her laugh was bitter, so bitter that Amelia could taste it on her tongue. “I’ll thank you for not trying to help me ever again.”

She turned away and started slamming the drawers of her chifferobe open and shut, as though looking for answers. Amelia wanted to say something, anything, but what good would it do? Either Prudence needed more time for forgiveness — or forgiveness would never happen.

So she left, closing the door softly behind her before seeking out her own room next door. Through the wall, she heard Prudence’s angry rummaging stop. Prudence would be beyond her incandescent rage by morning. But the next phase, the cold, unforgiving phase, might never end.

Amelia’s eyes burned. She hitched herself up onto her bed, lay down, and stared at the ceiling. She didn’t want to wake her maid, not after Prudence’s declaration, but she needed Watkins to help her out of her gown. The endless row of buttons down the back wasn’t designed to be undone alone.

It didn’t matter. She was unlikely to sleep. She needed time to think, before sunrise, before facing Prudence, or her brother, or Malcolm, again.

Malcolm
. Why didn’t she think of him as Carnach, or the earl, or “that dreadful man”? Something had happened between them that changed her. She stubbornly clung to calling it lightning even though Prudence had mocked her use of the phrase.

The ceiling above her bed was too dark to see. The curtains were closed against the moon and the wind, and the only light came from the embers of the banked fire opposite the bed. In the dark, alone, Amelia still couldn’t admit to herself what she knew to be true.

Malcolm’s touch enthralled her. His kiss left her weak-kneed and even weaker willed. But she wouldn’t examine why she felt that way, after a decade of closing herself off from the attentions of men. It was safer to say it was a brief flare of insanity and leave it at that.

She sat up to pull off her slippers, then slid off the high bed just long enough to remove the pins from her hair and turn the covers back. She no longer wanted to think. She wanted to sleep, to pretend that she would wake up in the morning and Malcolm —
Carnach
— wouldn’t be signing the settlements that would make her his.

Her dress would be hopelessly crushed, and she didn’t relish the notion of sleeping in her stays, but it was better than feigning serenity with her maid. Amelia crawled back into bed. If she didn’t wake up from this nightmare, she would need a plan.

As she curled on her side, she smiled grimly. Her mind already raced with alternatives. She excelled at plans. Her plan to put Prudence and Malcolm together had failed.

But Amelia Staunton never failed twice.

*    *    *

Drawing up the settlements was easy. Laughably easy, really. A solicitor would finish the formalities, but the negotiations were more civil than anything said in the library the previous night.

Malcolm hadn’t felt civil when his hands were running over Amelia’s body, or when his mouth devoured hers. And he certainly hadn’t felt civil when they were interrupted — or when that kiss turned into a proposal she seemed determined to evade.

But daylight required civility, and smearing a patina of respectability over the sordid reality of their engagement. Malcolm still didn’t feel civil, but he could fake it.

Salford sat on the other side of Malcolm’s desk, making notes in a ledger. If Malcolm achieved the political clout he wanted, he would need to accustom himself to odd backroom negotiations, the kind done with no witnesses and an undercurrent of threats.

There was nothing seedy about the Earl of Salford, though. He was reputedly a shrewd negotiator in the antiquities world. Malcolm suspected there were few people who ever claimed an advantage over him. He wasn’t the type to suffer fools or fall victim to a scam. So when Salford named a figure for Amelia’s dowry that would have set the fortune hunters salivating, Malcolm raised an eyebrow.

“That is more generous than I expected, under the circumstances,” Malcolm said.

Salford leaned back in his chair, utterly comfortable in Malcolm’s study despite the subject matter. “I want to see her settled happily.”

“She wasn’t happy last night.”

“Then you must convince her to be,” Salford said. “Give her time to become accustomed to a new routine, and Amelia can be comfortable anywhere.”

“Comfortable” didn’t mean “happy,” but Malcolm didn’t point that out. “What were you hinting at about Amelia’s past last night?”

Salford didn’t tense a single muscle, but his dark eyes sharpened. “Nothing. I was angry and spoke out of turn.”

“I can’t have a wife who will embarrass me,” Malcolm warned.

“She won’t. Nothing she’s done has been reproached. It’s the suitors around her who have been problematic. Really, I should thank you for taking her off the marriage mart so that I no longer have to entertain offers for her hand.”

Malcolm steepled his fingers under his chin. “That isn’t quite as safe as I would like.”

“Take her or leave her,” Salford said, his voice turning to ice. “But if you leave her, I’ll ruin you more comprehensively than any rumor could.”

Malcolm didn’t respond well to threats. He felt his blood rise, like a fox backed into a corner, and his muscles prepared to attack. But his battle-mad ancestry was more of a hindrance than a gift in modern politics. He gritted his teeth and willed himself to take a breath.

When he spoke, his voice was deceptively calm. “If the lady will have me, I will gladly do my duty. But I won’t force her. And if you would, you’re not the man I’ve heard of.”

It was dangerously close to a mortal insult. The answering tic in Salford’s jaw said the man took it as such. “You don’t want to make an enemy of me. But let me assure you that I have Amelia’s interests at heart, perhaps more than she does.”

“Amelia seems the type to make up her own mind.”

Salford’s laugh was genuine. “That she is. She also won’t change it. A bit of advice, Carnach — convince her that she loves you, and she’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. If you fail, neither of you will have a moment’s peace until one of you is dead.”

Malcolm knew how to seduce a woman. Love was another matter. He’d sought to arrange a marriage based on the bloodless mutual respect that would serve his political interests, not the passion that would distract him. “You’ve set a Herculean task, Salford.”

“No worse than the Augean stables,” he replied, referencing the myth he no doubt knew by heart. Salford paused, staring at Malcolm as though he, like Prudence, cared about hearts and minds instead of ancient artifacts and cold stones. “Mind you, I’ve not forgiven you for this, and I shan’t forget it. But Amelia can be stubborn. If you make every effort with her and she still rebuffs you, I won’t force the issue. The ton may ruin you for jilting her, but I won’t.”

Malcolm narrowed his eyes. “What changed your mind?”

Salford shrugged and began gathering his documents. “You haven’t pled your case. I would have shot you if you’d tried to weasel out of this.” He rolled a sheaf of papers and slid them into his document case, looking utterly serious. But when he looked up, Malcolm was surprised to see him grin. “Amelia will either plead with me until I give in, or she’ll find another way to extricate herself. She will not go gently into the marriage you both deserve. If she succeeds, I can’t punish you for it if you tried your best to fulfill your obligation.”

“I thank you for the warning,” Malcolm said drily.

Salford rose. “She is attracted to you, from what I could see, even if she denies it. For my part, I believe she’ll be happy married to you — happier than she ever would have been living in my house for the rest of her days. I trust her dowry is enough inducement for you, if you can find a way to manage her where I have not.”

Malcolm inclined his head, noncommittal. Salford took his leave with a jaunty wave. The man had the air of one relieved of a great burden, like Atlas suddenly freed of the world. The kiss in the library could have been swept under the rug if Salford hadn’t pressed the issue.

It seemed a bit too convenient now, if Salford’s mood could be believed. Malcolm thought Amelia was lovely, but Salford was glad to hand over responsibility for her and Ferguson had warned him against her. What was the truth about her personality?

After Salford left, Malcolm sat behind his desk again. He’d come to love the study in the year since his father’s death. It still felt wrong, sitting behind this desk. Most days it felt like his, but occasionally he would find a bit of old sealing wax or a scrap of paper covered in his father’s handwriting, and the grief would suddenly cut as fresh as it had the day they’d lowered his coffin into the ground.

It had all been too quick — the cold that suddenly turned to pneumonia, the moment his breath stopped, the flicker of pain on the doctor’s face before he reached down and closed those sightless eyes.

The speed with which everyone started calling Malcolm laird.

Malcolm picked up the stone paperweight on his desk, worn smooth by generations of earls who had toyed with it. Legend said the first laird had pocketed it when they dug the foundations for the keep, and it stayed on the desk as a talisman. When Malcolm held it, he felt the weight of the clan and the granite strength of his obligation to them.

His father had kept them intact by isolating them. But the factories in the south and the plantations abroad would someday destroy them. They’d survived Flodden Field, Dunbar, even Culloden, but they wouldn’t survive the changing economic landscape unless he saved them. The march of progress could not be stalled, not by guns and not by his father’s brand of benevolent
laissez faire
. Malcolm would take up the cause where his father hadn’t — he would not be the earl who saw their clan destroyed.

Could he save them with Amelia at his side? He didn’t deny that she tempted him. She had a beautiful body and a quick wit, a combination he couldn’t refuse. But if her brother was so eager to be rid of her, could Malcolm manage her well enough to meet his needs? He couldn’t sacrifice his clan for her, no matter how lovely she was.