Susan Johnson (14 page)

M
RS. BEATTIE ENTERED THE KITCHEN AT KILMARNOCK
House without difficulty; a servant, particularly an old woman, was above suspicion. And after taking Geillis aside, she quietly said, “I need to talk to the countess. Don’t look at me like that. We both know she doesn’t care for Argyll’s company, and he’s on his way back here. I have a message for her from my young master.”

Geillis nodded; last night’s activities were common knowledge to everyone in the house. Motioning Mrs. Beattie to follow, she took her upstairs to Roxane’s bedroom. “She’s resting, she is, with a headache from all the pressures, ye ken, and she dinna’ want to be disturbed.”

“I’ll speak to her for a second only. My master wants to know she’s still in good health.”

A minute later, Mrs. Beattie scurried down the stairs in as near to a run as a plump, sixty-year-old woman could manage. Five minutes later she met Holmes out of sight of the guards and hissed, “She’s gone.”

“Where?” Holmes gripped her shoulders as though she’d stolen her herself.

“Just gone. No one knows.”

“Does Argyll have her?”

She threw her hands up and shook her head. “She told no one her plans, not even her maid, who’s crying rivers for being left behind after serving the countess since childhood.”

“It could be Argyll, then. Go home. I’ll tell the master.”

Q
UEENSBERRY WENT TO ARGYLL’S OFFICE AT HOLYROOD
Palace with guards of his own this time, a dozen Douglas men to give credence to his anger. But Argyll had fought foreign armies for a decade; he wasn’t easily intimidated by marching feet.

Queensberry barged into the anteroom of Argyll’s headquarters, and stormed through to the office, his face red with fury. “I’ll take this to the queen, to the House of Lords, damn you!” he shouted, waving the paper delivered to his apartments by Argyll’s man. “If you think you can take these lands away from me for some cunt you crave, you’re mistaken!”

Argyll’s subordinates registered various stages of shock and consternation at Queensberry’s intrusion and outburst, but Argyll didn’t move from his lounging pose. “But I already have taken them from you,” he casually noted. “You see the seal of England is displayed at the bottom of the document. My authority is supreme here in Scotland, while yours … is not,” he succinctly pointed out. “And kindly remember, too, why you’re in Scotland, James, in the event you’ve forgotten. You’re here on my sufferance.” His voice was low, temperate, like a parent indulging a tantrumish
child. “So go to the queen if you wish, kiss her fat ass for all I care. But she prefers my ass-kissing at the moment, which is why I am in charge here in Scotland, and you are merely a necessary political tool.”

“Ill see that you pay dearly for this,” Queensberry blustered, Argyll’s words too chillingly accurate for comfort. “I have friends in London, too.”

“But not many.”

“Enough,” James Douglas ground out. “Enough that you need me to get this treaty through Parliament. Have you thought of that in your hot rut for the countess?”

“You need me more than I need you, James. In fact, your nephew, Mar, would be more than happy to usurp your role in serving me,” he said, lifting a letter opener from the desk and jabbing it at Queensberry. “As I see it, you’re not in a strong position right now. So kindly see that the Carre properties are immediately emptied of your staff. I’ve already sent clerks and troops to them to protect their inventories, so don’t think of cleaning them out. The countess is particularly interested in Goldiehouse, I hear. You will not be allowed on that property at all. Good night, James. I’m rather in a hurry,” he said, standing up, his height dwarfing Queensberry.

“You might have won this engagement, Argyll, but not the campaign, believe me,” Queensberry said through clenched teeth, having to look up at Argyll. “You’ll be hearing from me, so don’t let the countess get her hopes up.”

The young general sighed. “Please, at least don’t bother me before tomorrow afternoon. I have
plans, and I’ve left orders not to be disturbed. You understand.”

“How do you find time for work, Argyll, with your unbridled taste for cunt?” Queensberry snapped.

John Campbell stared at Queensberry for a moment, as if questioning his sanity. “I find it intensely invigorating, if you must know—as you find the Machiavellian jobbery that rules your life. But then You’re getting a little old for cunt, aren’t you, James? A shame. The rewards are so much more gratifying than fucking someone out of their money.” He turned away and spoke quietly to his ADC, as though Queensberry no longer existed, and then walked from the room.

An awkward silence ensued.

Queensberry’s face was so mottled he looked ready to burst, and Argyll’s staff wondered if he was going to have an apoplexy right before their eyes. But the duke, despite this current loss to his political and personal fortunes, was still a man of considerable power. So they cautiously refrained from further aggravating him and waited for him to leave.

Which he did after another uncomfortable moment, turning on his heal and stamping out of the room like an angry child.

“Argyll
does
like cunt overmuch,” the commissioner’s ADC murmured into the silence.

“Which may have its advantages on occasion. He charmed the queen.” The clerk who spoke had been with Argyll in London during his negotiations for Commissioner.

“Which is more than Queensberry can do,” an adjunct noted. “She hates his very guts.”

“Although Argyll’s charm hasn’t worked with the countess, I hear,” a young captain said.

“With her house surrounded, I don’t expect she can long defend herself against Big Red John.”

“The Carre laddie’s going to be furious,” a lieutenant cheekily declared with a grin.

“He had his turn. Argyll’s in line tonight,” the ADC quipped.

“I’d like my turn with her, damned if I wouldn’t,” the captain said with a low whistle.

“And what would your wife say to that?” one of the men inquired with a wicked smirk.

“What wife?”

W
ATCH ARGYLL, WATCH THE HOUSE, WATCH THE
countess’s servants—where they go, who they talk with,” Robbie quietly said, giving instructions to the men he was adding to those on surveillance. “I want to know where the countess is as soon as possible.” He paced as he talked, his long strides crossing and re-crossing the great hall of the house on the outskirts of the city where the Carre troops were assembling. The men had been coming in all day in response to their summons, the number rising near eighty now, the full complement expected within two days.

“As soon as Argyll leaves headquarters I want a report.”

“Mrs. Beattie’s gone back into Kilmarnock House,” Holmes said, coming in from outside.

“Then we sit here and wait,” Robbie gruffly said, his sword hand lightly tapping the hilt of his weapon.

“We should know something soon. Argyll’s scheduled to come back within the hour, the footman at Kilmarnock House said.”

Roxane’s conversation with Argyll in the dining room hadn’t been private. Servants listened; it was a fact of life.

A
T THAT MOMENT, ARGYLL WAS STRIDING DOWN
the Canongate, two footmen in his wake, one bearing his gifts, the second his portmanteau, three lawyers behind them, followed by two clerks. He was inattentive to his entourage, his thoughts consumed with anticipation of the coming night. He intended to take up residence in Roxane’s home—actually, in the comfort of her boudoir—as often as his schedule permitted. He was looking forward to the months in Edinburgh with the most pleasant expectations.

He felt overcome with an odd enchantment or bewitchment, as though he were in the grip of some rapturous spell. And now he understood why men wrote sonnets—it was for women like Roxane Forrestor, he thought. She had the luxurious sensuality of a royal courtesan—pampered, indulged, more beautiful than God should allow, intriguing, as if lying in her arms would offer one the most ravishing glimpse of paradise.

The Royalist poets understood that; cunt had a special, captivating appeal when a woman enticed one’s senses. And seduction took on a titillating allure, in contrast to just fucking, the young general reflected.

Strange, different.

Fascinating.

Like entering a foreign land.

He was smiling when he took the entrance steps in a bound and knocked a quick rap on the door.

The footman greeted him blankly; the majordomo behind him wore a look equally void of expression.

“The countess, if you please,” Argyll crisply said. “Tell her I’ve returned.”

“She’s not here, Your Grace,” the majordomo pronounced.

“What?” the general exclaimed, his voice sharp as a knife blade. Infuriated, he moved forward as though he were about to attack the two servants. “Where the hell is she?”

“She’s disappeared, my lord.” The majordomo held his ground, his dignity intact, unlike that of the footman, who had slipped behind the door.

“Disappeared with my
men
surrounding the house? Impossible!” he barked. “Have the house searched,” he rapped out. “Immediately.” Turning back, he pushed through the cluster of men behind him, leaped down the stairs, and shouted for his troops.

Within minutes, the Campbell swordsmen were swarming over Kilmarnock House, from basement to attic, looking through armoires and under beds, searching linen closets and water closets, flipping draperies aside and tipping over sofas. And so they continued scrutinizing every cubic inch of the large house for nearly an hour before their commander, seated in the drawing room, white-faced with rage, ordered a halt to the search.

Argyll had interviewed the servants while his men had torn the house apart, but without success. A turncoat Scot who thought he ruled Scotland for the queen wasn’t likely to get any information
from the countess’s loyal staff Not even on threat of imprisonment.

The general’s questions secured only blank looks or denial; no one had seen the countess since she’d dined with him.

Even Geillis remained silent; she had no intention of telling the traitor Campbell a word about her mistress, threats or no threats. As if he could force the poor wee babe—Roxane would always be that to her former nursemaid—to sleep with the English queen’s flunky. Not likely while she had breath in her body, she silently vowed, her mouth set in stubborn defiance.

B
UT IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE ARGYLL’S SPIES HAD
extracted the information he needed. Skilled at their craft, they’d talked to the soldiers guarding the house, questioning them on details, ostensibly one soldier to another, gossiping about the events of the night. And they discovered a young lad had walked away with a horse from the stables. In fact, that the boy had strolled by every soldier on guard on the Canongate side of the house.

“When?” Argyll asked, not lounging behind his desk at headquarters this time, but sitting bolt upright, tapping his fingers in a rapid tatoo on the desktop.

“Two hours ago, probably … or close to that.”

“And where did she go from there? I want answers,” John Campbell growled, taking exception to being hoodwinked by a mere woman, stung at having to curtail his lust, his particularly eager lust. Damn her, he’d fuck her senseless when he found her. And find her he
would, if he had to turn every house and crofter’s hut in Scotland inside out.

“Our feeling is that she headed south.”

“Feeling?” he roared. “You’d better have something better than that, or I’ll send you back to London and your dull duty watching Godolphin’s fat mistress,” he spat out. “Now give me specifics. Why the route south?”

“We had two reports of a young lad riding a horse too fine for the likes of him. South of Gilmerton and again at Dalkeith.”

“That’s more like it,” Argyll said with a sharp rap of his fingers and the beginning of a smile. “When did this lad pass through Gilmerton?”

“No more than an hour ago.”

“Find me someone who knows the countess and is willing to tell me why she might be riding south. Her properties are north. Does she have friends in the south? And if so, where?”

“Only her enemies are likely to tell you anything. And they’ll ask for payment.”

“Give it to them, then, dammit. You know how this works.” The concept of enemies had given him an idea. “I’ll meet you back here in a half an hour. Have the troops ready to ride.”

F
ORGIVE ME FOR CALLING SO LATE,
”
ARGYLL SAID
short minutes later, bowing to Catherine Haddock, who was having tea with several ladies in her drawing room. The men from her dinner party were still in the dining room with their port.

“It’s never too late, my dear Commissioner, for a call from you. Do come in,” she replied, beaming smugly at her friends. Had she not lured Argyll here after all, her smile seemed to say.

“If I could have a word with you in private,” he murmured.

Her soft titter brought a knowing smile from her friends, and reminded him why he found it so tedious courting ladies. Well-born females played at flirtation, pretending they didn’t want what you wanted. The posturing always annoyed him. Better the middling-class or servant girls who didn’t hide behind such vanities.

But he cautioned himself to politesse as he followed the flaunting sway of her hips into a small parlor. Turning to him in a swish of aquamarine silk and swinging whalebone petticoats, she purred, “I knew you’d come.”

He gritted his teeth against his first response and said instead, “I’m afraid it’s a matter of business.”

Her pouty look, immediate and artful, wasn’t attractive. Someone should tell her. Nor did pale blondes appeal to him; they always looked breakable and cold. Unlike Roxane, he thought, whose titian hair and warm skin tones glowed with sensuality, while her voluptuous body would welcome a man softly. “I was hoping you might help me,” he went on with a well-bred smile.