The Runaway McBride (17 page)

The drawing room was more to her taste. The pictures on the walls were all of gardens, and the mantelpiece displayed silver-framed photographs, portraits of, she presumed, Mrs. Leyland’s nearest and dearest. It was a comfortable room.

When they were settled, she surreptitiously studied each person in turn. Harriet had inveigled Roderick into a game of cards. The transformation in the young man was startling. His smiles and laughter were unaffected. It was obvious that his little sister adored him and just as obvious that she was in awe of James. Faith wondered about the others. Roderick was the rebel, challenging his older brother at every turn. Mr. Burnett and his wife seemed . . . on edge.

Mr. Burnett was explaining what had brought them all up to town. “Margaret’s cousin is to be married in Henley on Saturday next.”

Faith looked at James. That was the day the Egyptology Society was to meet to hear a lecture by Professor Marsh.

Mr. Burnett went on, “Your aunt is meeting us there, and after the wedding, we’ll come back to Berkeley Square together. Meanwhile, we are enjoying a little holiday in town. I’m sure I wrote to you, James, the times and the dates, that sort of thing.”

“You probably did.” James shrugged. “Was I supposed to reply? It’s not as though I know Margaret’s cousin. I won’t be going to the wedding.”

Faith was shocked at this show of indifference, but only Margaret looked embarrassed. Faith did her bit to keep the conversation going, but when the topics of the cousin’s wedding, the house and its contents, and the weather were exhausted, a long, awkward silence fell. It was a relief when the tea and sandwiches arrived.

“Roast beef,” enthused Faith, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “Now that’s what I call a sandwich.”

That small compliment brought a brilliant smile to Margaret’s face. She pressed another sandwich on Faith, who consumed it with relish. She couldn’t remember how much she’d eaten on the train, but her stomach was telling her that she was still hungry.

Conversation flagged momentarily, but when James’s father posed a question that seemed totally unrelated to anything that had gone before, Faith almost choked on a mouthful of roast beef.

“So,” he said, “when and where is the wedding to take place? ”

“I don’t remember mentioning a wedding,” James replied. His tone of voice implied that he considered the subject closed.

Harriet was too young and too innocent to absorb these grown-up subtleties. Her ears pricked up. “Can I be a bridesmaid, James? ” Then she looked as though she might dash for the door.

“It’s ‘may I,’ not ‘can I,’ ” her mother corrected. Her glance darted uneasily in James’s direction.

James looked at his half sister, and his expression softened. “At my wedding,” he said, “you will certainly be a bridesmaid.”

Faith didn’t like the sound of this, and she decided to nip it in the bud. Shooting James an arch look, she said, “James, you didn’t tell me you were to be married. Who is the lucky girl? ”

When everyone laughed, everyone but James, she realized they thought she was joking, and that she and James really were engaged.

Worse was to follow. Harriet clapped her hands and smiled brilliantly. “A bridesmaid at last! That will put Charlotte’s light down to a peep,” she cried. “She has been a bridesmaid twice already.”

“My dear,” remonstrated her mother, “it’s the bride’s privilege to chose her attendants. No. I won’t have you harass Miss McBride. When James and Faith are ready, they will tell us when they are to be married.”

The look Faith shot James this time spoke volumes.
Put a stop to this,
it screamed.

His reply was a helpless shrug.

It was a relief when the butler returned, or so Faith thought, until she saw the tray with the bottle of champagne and four crystal glasses on it. As the butler dispensed the champagne, Mr. Burnett got to his feet.

“Well, well,” he said, “it seems I got ahead of myself. Still, there’s plenty more where this came from.” He raised his glass, indicating that he was referring to the champagne. “Meanwhile, if I can’t toast the happy couple, I give you Drumore.”

They all stood, raised their glasses, and chorused, “Drumore.”

When they were seated again, Mr. Burnett went on, “I presume, James, that when you do marry, you’ll take up residence in Drumore, as is proper for my heir? ”

There was a fraught moment of silence. Faith could sense the undercurrents that flowed between father and son. So, evidently, did everyone else. It was as though they’d all stopped breathing.

James seemed amused and answered easily. “Father, we have been down this road before. Drumore is not an asset as you seem to think. It’s a liability. I can’t afford to keep it up.”

Mr. Burnett’s face was suffused with color, and his voice sounded loud and harsh. “The castle has been in our family for generations. Drumore’s history is Scotland’s history. We have to keep it up.”

To Faith, he said, “What say you, Miss McBride? Should we donate Drumore to the nation, as James advises, or should we preserve it for future generations of Burnetts? ”

She caught James’s eye. He was looking vastly amused at her predicament, and that made her paste a brilliant smile on her face. To Mr. Burnett, she said, “Where there is a will, there is a way; that’s what my father used to say.”

Mr. Burnett beamed at her. “You’ll do Drumore proud,” he said.

That sinking feeling in the pit of Faith’s stomach began to coil into a tight knot. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She would never have inflicted herself on James’s family if she’d thought for one moment that they’d get the wrong idea about James and her.

What was wrong with James? He should put a stop to it. He sat there, sphinxlike, as though impervious to what was going on around him. Was he arrogant, or was he simply insensitive to other people’s feelings? Cool, distant, detached. It made her want to give him a good shaking.

 

 

The bedchamber that was assigned to Faith was at the back
of the house so that, as Margaret pointed out, the comings and goings of carriages in the square would not disturb her sleep. It was a pleasant room done in shades of green and cream and smelling faintly of beeswax polish.

Relieved of James’s presence, Margaret became a different person, less tense, more natural. She seemed to know just what was needed, and without fuss produced nightclothes for Faith and promised that her own things would be clean and ready for her to wear in the morning or, if she preferred, she could borrow one of Margaret’s gowns.

After bidding Faith good night, she crossed to the door, hesitated a moment, then said shyly, “I’m so glad you and James have made up your differences, Faith. You’re just the kind of girl he needs. Sweet dreams.”

Faith had the eerie feeling that another nail had been hammered into her coffin.

In a flurry of activity, she bustled about, seeing to her ablutions, ringing for the maid to take her garments away after she had changed into her borrowed nightclothes—a high-necked, long-sleeved flannel nightgown and woolen dressing robe—then she undid the strings of the parcel, removed Madeline’s diary, and settled herself on a chair flanking the empty grate.

As she tried to decode the first page of the diary, her feelings of ill-usage drained away. All her thoughts were focused on the diary, and she wished that James would come to her so that she could talk things over with him.

She did not have long to wait. The soft tap on her door and the whispered, “Faith? ” brought her head up.

“The door is open,” she said softly.

James entered, still dressed in his outdoor things, and crossing to her, pulled a straight-backed chair close to hers so that they could both examine the diary.

“Sorry for the delay,” he said. “I phoned a friend in Brighton who agreed to visit Lily and have your box returned by the next train.”

“She’ll think I’m staying on at Lady Cowdray’s.”

“Does it matter? You can write to her and tell her there has been a change of plan. But keep it simple. Don’t go into detail. Now, what have you found out? ”

She wasn’t sure that it was wise to stay with his family, but she couldn’t muster the energy to argue the point. It was the diary she wanted to talk about.

“What I’ve found out,” she said, “is that this is going to be harder than I thought. The trouble is, I’m out of practice. There’s something else. Look here.” She turned to the last two pages of the diary.

James knit his brows in concentration. “Numbers?” he said.

“I don’t know what to make of it.”

He stared at the numbers and traced them with his index finger. “It must be a code, too. These numbers must represent words.”

“I wonder why she changed to another code? ” She studied the numbers for a moment. “It’s going to take me forever to break it.”

He spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s these last two pages our villain is after.” He paused then went on, “Yes, that would explain why Madeline changed the code. There must be something here that someone is willing to go to any lengths to suppress.” He frowned as he thought things through. “But who was it meant for? Who would know how to break this code? ”

“I might manage it if I had enough time.”

He sat back in his chair. “What do you know about codes? ”

She straightened. “More than most. My father and I used to make up games with codes. It was his hobby. He told me that the War Office once offered him a job as a code breaker.”

He blinked. “That’s where my cousin Alex works. Maybe he can break this code or find someone to do it for us. I’ll take the diary to him and—”

She snapped the diary closed and held it to her bosom. “Oh, no, you won’t! I’m not letting this diary out of my sight. If your cousin can help, well and good, but he’ll come to me and do it.”

When he looked at her thoughtfully, she went on, “Try to understand, this is all I have left of my mother, and I’m not parting with it. I want to know what she was like, what she thought and felt. I don’t want anyone else to dip into her private thoughts. It would be like eavesdropping. She was my mother,” she finished feebly. “I want to know.”

“Are you up to it? Families can sometimes turn out to be a colossal disappointment.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Are you talking about your own family, James? ”

“My family?” His brows lifted ironically. “I gave you a chance to get away from them. It was you who chose to stay.”

“Because,” she said, “it would have hurt Margaret’s feelings. But that was before I came to see that they have the wrong idea about us, and you’re not doing or saying anything to put them right.”

He shrugged in that careless way she was coming to hate. “I don’t know what more I can say to them. We both tried. You’ve seen what they’re like. They get an idea in their heads, and it becomes fixed.”

Her voice was becoming louder. “Well, unfix it. Speak to them. Do something.”

“What difference does it make? We know we’re not engaged. Let them think what they like.”

She was appalled. “What is the matter with you? You’ve been like a block of granite since we arrived. Don’t you have feelings? Don’t you care about their feelings? ”

He spoke to her the way he’d spoken to his brother. “Don’t make judgments, Faith. You don’t know what I feel for my family or what they feel for me.”

“Well, I’m not stupid,” she flared. “You have a house in town, don’t you? Why did they come here when they could have stayed with you? ”

“They’ve been coming to Aunt Mariah’s long before I bought my house in St. James, and my place is barely furnished. They wouldn’t be comfortable there.”

She was shaking her head.

“What? ” he asked.

“You never mentioned your family to me; oh, I don’t mean recently, I mean when we were engaged. We were going to be married, but you didn’t tell me you had a brother and sister.”

“Possibly because Roderick and Harriet were almost strangers to me. I was away at school when Roderick was born, then he was away at school when I left university.”

He suddenly got up, put his chair back where he’d found it, and came to stand over her. “Don’t get too fond of them, Faith,” he said. “Remember, this is a temporary arrangement only.”

“A temporary arrangement?” The inference that she might want to make it permanent, that she had hopes of snaring him as a husband, honed her temper to a razor-sharp edge. “You don’t think I shall stay here? It would be too embarrassing. No. Tomorrow I shall take the train to Brighton as I always intended.”

He sounded bored. “Fine. Leave the diary with me, and I’ll arrange to have it decoded.”

“Not on your life!” Still clutching the diary, she got to her feet so that he wouldn’t be towering over her. “This diary belongs to me, and nothing will make me part with it.”

He closed the gap between them till they were nose to nose and toe to toe. “Now, you listen to me, Faith McBride. I didn’t risk life and limb so that you could walk off with the prize. I’m entitled to know why someone shot at me. I want to find those villains, and the diary is my best chance of doing it. So what’s it to be, Faith? Will you stay with the diary or will you go off on your own to Brighton? ”

She was tempted to walk out the door, but his reference to the villains set her mind off on another track. She had a vision of the man with the cultured voice chasing her through the streets of Brighton. If she met him face-to-face, she wouldn’t know who he was. All she’d seen was a figure shrouded in mist.

She swallowed her pride. “I’ll stay, but only until I have decoded the diary.”

“Fine,” he said, as though whether she stayed made no difference to him.

At the door, he turned. “I would kiss you good night, but you don’t know when to stop, Miss McBride.”

“What? ”

The door closed before she could lambaste him with a few well-chosen words.