The Pretender (4 page)

In the back of her head, a tiny voice whispered,
Well, after all, he did say it was potent. . . .

Blackguard.

Elizabeth blinked back her watering eyes, swallowed against the scorching in her throat, put on a pleasant face, and even managed to pull a smile.

The Scotsman only grinned the wider, damn him. “Are you ready for your other dram now, my lady?”

“Oh, indeed, sir.” Elizabeth wasn’t about to concede to the smug Scotsman.

There came no cataclysm with the second dram. In fact, Elizabeth no longer felt or tasted much of anything at all. Her insides had taken on a comfortable warmth, as if the fire from the hearth had alighted in her belly, so much so that she loosened the fichu from around her neck and tossed it heedlessly upon the table. Her cheeks
felt marvelously hot. Her head felt as if it had ascended to the clouds.

It wasn’t until after the third dram, however, that the room began to spin.

Some time later, after a sparse few bites of stew and another dram or two of the drink, Isabella’s usually soft voice suddenly hissed and echoed to Elizabeth’s drumming ears.

“Bess, I think I should like to retire . . .
now.
”

“Be my guest.” Elizabeth hiccuped. She blinked, wondering when Isabella had managed to acquire a twin.

“Don’t you think you should retire, too, Elizabeth? Remember Lord Purf—” She stopped herself, then said, “We’ve a long ride north tomorrow, and it would be best to get an early start.”

Elizabeth grimaced at the reminder of where her father was sending her.
Lord Purfoyle.
It was like a sudden dousing in ice water, that name. “Pah! All the more reason I shouldn’t retire all night. Will you deny me this last little bit of freedom, Bella? After all, it was you who didn’t tell me the truth of our little journey to the north until it was too late . . .”

The sisters exchanged a private look and then Elizabeth waved her hand as if shooing away a nonexistent fly. “Go off with you, Isabella Anne Drayton. Mr. MacKinnon and I will finish off our last drams of
uisge-beatha.
Then I promise you I’ll hie right off to bed like the dutiful little—”

Thankfully, Douglas saw it coming. He caught her before her head hit the table.

“Oh, my God!” Isabella cried. “Is she d-dead?”

“Nae, lass, but she’ll likely wish she was when she awakes on the morrow.”

Douglas had no other choice but to pick her up. He couldn’t believe what she’d drunk. Stubborn little idiot.

“Why isn’t she moving, then?”

“She’s sleeping is all, miss. And will likely have no memory of any of this in the morn. Just lead the way, and I’ll help you get her to her room so she can sleep the drink off.”

Thankfully, their table was near the stairs leading up to the inn’s bedchambers. While most everyone else’s attention was taken up elsewhere in the taproom, Douglas quickly lugged Elizabeth up the narrow flight of stairs, pitying her the headache she was certain to wake to even as he thought it would serve her right. After all, he had tried to warn her.

She mumbled something when he laid her upon the bed, something that sounded like “smug Scot,” then flopped onto her back with her arms flung outward. In moments, she was softly snoring.

“She’ll be fine come the morn,” Douglas said to a clearly distressed Isabella, who was wringing her hands beside him. “You’d best leave her till then.”

The lady nodded. “Thank you, Mr. MacKinnon. It looks as if we owe you another debt of gratitude. It seems you’ve come to our rescue not once, but twice today.”

Douglas smiled at her, genuinely sorry for the distress her sister was causing her, then bowed his head before leaving the room. Rather than retire to his own bed, he decided to return to the taproom first to settle his bill with Turnbull. If there were patrols in the area, as the
innkeeper had said, it would be best for him to be off before the dawn.

He met with the innkeeper, then exchanged a quarter hour’s conversation with a couple of the other patrons before heading for his room. He was on the second stair when he spotted the small lady’s shoe lying abandoned where it must have fallen from her foot when he’d carried her upstairs. The same dark wine color as her gown, the glass beads sewn upon it glimmered in the low light from the fire. It was a pretty thing with a high heel and pointed toes—brazen, just like its mistress.

Douglas stopped outside the closed door to her chamber and knocked softly. There came no answer. He was just about to leave the shoe sitting on the floor outside the door when he heard a muffled voice beckoning from inside.

Quietly, Douglas turned the knob. “Excuse me, Miss Isabella, but I found—”

“Isabella isn’t here.”

In the light from the sconce in the hallway behind him, Douglas could see Elizabeth sitting on the edge of the bed, clearly fully awake. In fact, her gown was gone, abandoned to a pool of rumpled wine silk on the floor, and her hair was unbound, hanging around her shoulders.

She wore a chemise—and nothing else.

Douglas was stunned, both by the vision of her and by the mere fact that she wasn’t still lying unconscious on the bed. He’d seen fully grown men who wouldn’t have awakened that quickly after the sousing she’d taken, let alone have the faculties to undress without doing themselves a serious harm.

“I . . . Your shoe must have fallen off on your way up the stairs. I was just returning it.”

The lass stared at him in the candlelight. She cocked her head to one side and said, “Indeed? Just like the prince come to find the fair Cinderella?”

She laughed at her jest, a sulky sound. Douglas simply stared at her, trying to ignore the fact that the room had just grown several degrees warmer despite the fact that there was no fire in the hearth to have made it so.

But there was a fire in her eyes as she continued to stare at him, the sort of fire that made his belly instinctively tighten.

He said the only thing that sprang to mind. “In Scotland we call that fairytale
Rashin-Coatie.
”

She said nothing, just continued to stare at him.

Douglas took two steps into the room, placing the shoe upon the foot of the bed. “I’ll just be on my way then. . . .”

“A moment, if you please, Mr. MacKinnon.”

Douglas eyed her, waiting for her to go on.

“I should like to speak with you directly if you don’t mind, about a proposition I should like to make to you.”

Now what was all this about? “A proposition, my lady?”

“Yes, sir. A business proposition. I should like to employ you, Mr. MacKinnon.”

“Employ me?”

“Yes. It would only be for a short while. You see, I should like you to be my betrothed.”

Betrothed?
Of all the things she could have said to him—hundreds, thousands of things, really—this was the very
last
thing Douglas would have ever guessed.
Surely he had heard her wrong. Surely he was dreaming this whole thing. Surely the whisky was making his head think fantastical thoughts.

“I beg your pardon? Did you just say ‘betrothed’?”

“Yes. As I said, it would only be for a short while. You wouldn’t, of course, really, truly marry me, but would just
pretend
that we were to wed. I promise you would be handsomely rewarded for your effort.”

She was speaking of money, he knew, but somehow Douglas found his gaze straying to where the ribbon drawstring of her chemise trailed downward between the curve of her breasts. He pulled his gaze away.

“You’ve had too much to drink, lass. You dinna know what you’re saying.”

“No, sir,” she answered quite seriously. “I know precisely what I am proposing to you.”

“But you dinna even know me. I am a stranger to you. Why in the name of heaven would you want me to do this?”

Elizabeth simply stared at him and the motivation behind her proposal hit him in the next moment like a ton of stone. His clothing, his speech, his grubby appearance . . . what she saw when she looked at him was an uneducated, impoverished, backward Scottish farmer. In other words, she wanted to buy him, to be her diversion for whatever reason for a time, as easily, as thoughtlessly as she would buy a new pair of stockings. She no doubt expected he should be on his knees thanking the heavens for this inimitable bounty. And when she was through with him, when he no longer held any appeal, like those stockings, she would toss him aside just as easily.

Anger, as fierce and sharp as a broadsword, sliced through him. “I dinna think so.”

“
What?
You are refusing me?”

Douglas seriously doubted she had ever been refused anything in her life. Until now. “Yes, I am.”

“I am offering to make you a rich man, Mr. MacKinnon. All you have to do is give the pretense of wanting to wed me. It wouldn’t even be for all that long. All you need to do is come with me to my home and meet my fa—” she corrected, “meet the rest of my family, announce our betrothal, then you may continue on your way to Skye a much richer man.”

So that was it. She wanted him to meet her family. Her father in particular. He recalled the conversation with her sister in the taproom. Something about a Lord Purf-something and their journey north. She must have a wealthy da whom she sought to devastate for wanting her to wed and settle down with a respectable nobleman. So instead she would bring him home the most distasteful example she could find for a husband. A farmer . . . even worse than that, a
Scottish
farmer.

Douglas didn’t even know the man, but already he pitied him.

“Surely there must be some nice, young, Sassenach laddie you can find to play your game, lass. I’m not the man for the job. Good luck to you.”

Douglas started to leave.

“Mr. MacKinnon, please . . .” Her voice grew softer. “Don’t go. Wait a moment. There is something else you can have, too, if you’ll agree to my request.”

Surely she didn’t mean . . .

She left the bed and crossed the room like a brisk
wind, placing herself between him and the door. The light from the hall behind her set her hair aglow, made the sparse bit of chemise she wore seem all the more insignificant. Without the heels of her shoes, she stood only to his chin. It made her seem fragile to him somehow, more vulnerable. That same herbal scent he’d spent an hour swimming in inside the coach drifted across his face, spiced by the slight scent of the whisky she’d drunk. For a moment, neither of them moved, or spoke a word. Her lips had parted. It would be so easy to kiss her, he thought. All he had to do was close his eyes and . . .

And then she shoved her hand forward between them and opened her fist, revealing a rather large jeweled ring.

“This heirloom came to my family a gift from Queen Elizabeth herself. As you can see, it is engraved with her initial, and it opens to reveal a cameo portrait of her father, King Henry, and her mother, Anne Boleyn. It has been in my family for generations and was given to me when I was born. It is the most precious thing in the world to me. As to its monetary worth, it is priceless. And it will be yours. If you will agree to my proposition.”

Douglas felt his body tense, growing as rigid as a pikestaff. Struggling to hold his anger in check, he thought of how many times, a lifetime really, he had stood back watching as his family, his clan, and his country yielded to the desires of the English. His father, and his grandfather before him, had lost everything they’d had fighting for the rights of his countrymen. He himself had spent nearly the whole of his life paying court to the English king from Hanover in an effort to secure the lands his family had held since nearly the
beginning of time, lands the Crown had confiscated after the last rebellion in 1719, when his father had come out to fight for the Old Pretender, James. All his life Douglas had been fighting, fighting to preserve the ancient pride and distinction that stretched all the way back to the first MacKinnon, Fingon, great-grandson of the great Scottish king Kenneth MacAlpine. And now this spoiled Sassenach lassie stood before him smelling like a summer’s breeze and tossing her fiery hair, thinking she could buy his honor for the price of some family bauble?

“My answer is the same, miss.
No.
Now take yourself off to bed, afore you get yourself into more trouble than you can possibly manage.”

Douglas watched the expression on her face grow dim, shadowed, as she realized she could not sway him. Without a word, she walked around him and returned to the bed, sliding atop the mattress to retreat beneath the bedcovers. Douglas turned to leave, wishing he’d never stopped to help the coach earlier that day. He’d only thought to offer his assistance, but this was going quite a step further than he’d ever intended.

He was nearly out the door when her voice, suddenly, unexpectedly quiet, beckoned him back.

“Please, don’t go.”

Douglas stopped at the door even as he told himself to continue through and keep walking until the image of her eyes, her mouth, the sound of her voice, vanished from his memory.

Reluctantly, however, he turned. “What is it now, lass?”

“It is . . . very dark in this room.” Her voice had
softened to a trembling whisper. “Please stay. For a little while. I . . . don’t much like . . . the dark.”

“I can fetch Miss Isabella for you, if you—”

“No!” She shook her head. “No, please do not. She would think I am being childish.”

The way she spoke, the way she looked at him in that sparse flicker of light coming in from the corridor stirred something deep inside Douglas he’d never felt before. He knew pride when he saw it, and he also knew fear. She didn’t want her younger sister to see that she was frightened of the dark. Even admitting it to him was a trial for her. This wasn’t a lady who easily admitted to weakness. He had realized this when she’d so recklessly drunk, and continued to drink, the whisky earlier that evening, even though he knew she had probably never before tasted anything stronger than a watered-down claret.

Her eyes pleaded with him in the near darkness not to leave her alone. Though his every sense told him he should go, Douglas found himself turning, crossing the room to sit on the edge of the bed beside her.