This Perfect Kiss (9 page)

She stepped backward to negotiate her path around him. But he moved nearer to her, blocking her withdrawal, touching her slightly, as if she was made from the most fragile glass. She reached for the railing and found his hand on her waist balancing her instead.

Their gazes tangled, locked and turned hot. Her lungs felt restrained by her bodice. She forgot where they were, forgot that they were in plain sight of his crew. Neither of them moved as his gaze lowered to her mouth and the whole world faded to the storm in his eyes and to the one possibility that he would kiss her, the way he had so many years ago when he had not known who she was.

Swallowing was hard. The frigid cold had finally found its way beneath her cloak and settled against her flesh. “If Lieutenant Ross told you to whom I was wed, you understand why I was reluctant to share. There are probably some in England who would gladly make a criminal of his wife. As the Etherton family's bastard daughter, I already have a controversial pedigree without adding this notch.” Her chin lifted. “Not that I am ashamed.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he looked out across the water before she could read his thoughts. “How long were you married?”

She swallowed with sudden difficulty. “Daniel and I were t-together for less than a year,” she said, turning her head. “He was a g-good and d-decent man. He didn't deserve what happened to him. I had a fever a week prior . . . typhoid and dysentery ran rampant in the hospitals and among the troops. I became ill and he had stayed with me.”

“That is why I never saw you at the hospital in Yorktown those last few weeks.”

She nodded. “Daniel came home because of m-me and became ill himself. If he had not been so weak . . . ”

His expression told her nothing, while hers must have surely revealed everything. He pulled the hood back over her head. “Look at you. You should not be on this deck as ill-dressed as you are.”

The wind pushed strands of her hair into her face. She didn't bother to repair them as she looked down to adjust the cloak around her and once again inhaled the faint scent of expensive French perfume.

“I am f-fine. I want to be here when we see the cliffs.”

“Then turn around,” he said, handing her the telescope.

She did as he told her, her gaze fervently glimpsing the magnificent windswept cliffs in the far distance. She raised the gold telescope to her eye and looked at a world encapsulated in ice, as if frozen in time, and naked fields made barren by winter's frigid kiss. The shoreline was as familiar as the back of her hand. She had forgotten nothing.

“We will be anchoring outside Blackthorn Cove near nightfall. At this pace, we should be on shore by nightfall.”

She watched as he was called back to the wheelhouse.

Her pulse racing, she swung back around and raised the perspective glass back to her eye. She smiled pure joy.

Home.

For the first time since she'd left Virginia, she finally believed this was real. She could not see Seastone Cottage yet, but knowing it was out there, so close, quickened the blood in her veins and made her nearly dizzy with happiness.

Wrapping a palm around the gold coin warm against her breast, Christel shut her eyes.

It no longer mattered that she had traveled five thousand miles only to end up pleading for Lord Carrick's charity. Or that she was not the girl he remembered her to be.

When Christel had first received the coin a year and a half ago, Saundra's letter had merely read,
“Come home now. Please. I am in desperate need of a friend. S.”
It was all the letter had said. The coin had been inside to pay her expenses home. But she had not gone back to Scotland, and then it had been too late. She had worn the coin around her neck, always hidden, but knowing it was there against her heart. Her link to home.

Daniel was gone. Her uncle was now dead. His death last year had severed her last reason to remain. She'd forced her grief into expectation—grief that there was no family left alive in Virginia to mourn her, expectation that she was returning to the place of her birth with a clean slate to begin her life afresh.

Someone
had wanted her home in Scotland. Enough to send Saundra's letter three months after her death.

Wanted her despite what had happened in the past, despite who her mother had been, despite the pain Christel had caused her family.

If she believed in guardian angels, she would think it was Saundra watching over her, Saundra's arms she felt around her. Saundra, bringing her home for a reason.

Chapter 5

A
s Camden stood in front of the tall frost-covered window of his private dressing room, tying his cravat, he felt that same familiar edge he'd always felt when he was home. In the far distance, he could see the
Anna.
Too large to come into the shallower waters nearer shore except during higher tides, she was still anchored outside the half-moon bay and would remain there until morning, when Bentwell would do a final assessment of the damage she had incurred during the rough weather.

He had come ashore in a longboat earlier in the evening without the pomp and circumstance that usually occasioned his arrival. He had been welcomed only by a small party of retainers who had been alerted by those in the new watchtower. He had promptly learned that his errant younger brother was visiting with friends in the country.

After first seeing to the welfare of his daughter and Mrs. Gables and arranging rooms for Christel to stay the night, he had come to his own chambers to make himself presentable to his grandmother. Now, he looked out over the distant scenic cove.

Behind him, his solicitor sat on a chair in front of the hearth. The older man was a faithful, stalwart figure. His reflection became Camden's focus in the window. Wearing a full-skirted orange coat with matching waistcoat and breeches, he was hard to miss in a room painted green and purple.

His grandmother had always been an artist at heart, though she would never admit to something so common. Her love for all the colors of the rainbow was quite evident in this wing of the house, from the green walls to the purple upholstered chairs to the emerald velvet hangings on his bed. She had shared these rooms with his grandfather when he had been alive, an uncommon achievement for a wedded couple—to actually share in love both physical and emotional.

“How long has my brother been gone?” Camden asked his solicitor, holding his arms back as his valet slid on him an informal black coat.

“A week, my lord. He does not stay away long. A month at most.”

“He left while Grandmother remained ill?”

“She forbade anyone telling him the severity of her illness. But you are here now. Already there is color back in her cheeks.”

Dismissing his valet, Camden poured himself a glass of port and finished dressing at the window as the solicitor caught him up on the news and business of the day. Camden gave the requisite nod and occasional grunts, signaling that he was listening.

The tall gilded clock at the end of the corridor bonged ten times, dutifully reminding him of the hour, just as it had for all Blackthorn's occupants the last fifty years.

That his grandmother's illness had been a ruse to force him home still niggled at the back of his thoughts. But as he sipped his port, his mind remained wholly on Christel. Their conversation earlier that day still troubled him. It was not only that she had not told him she had been married; she had also betrayed herself to him with the onerous truth about the men who had murdered her husband, thus putting the burden of deciding what to do with such knowledge on
his
shoulders.

What bothered him most was that he recognized a part of something he once was that still lived in Christel: her idealistic belief in honor, her courage and her copious conviction that a single person has the power to right the wrongs of the world.

Her bravery in the face of adversity had unexpectedly affected Camden in a way he had not felt in years. He had not believed in anything for so long, and suddenly he found himself a taunting parody of his own importance.

Uncomfortably aware of the direction of his thoughts, he tossed back the glass of port, turning away from the window as he realized the solicitor was still speaking to him about Blackthorn's finances and the difficult times that had fallen on many.

“War has left many farmers unable to sell their crops,” his solicitor said, “and the soil in some fields has not produced in years. Smuggling has become more prevalent, my lord.”

“What has the provost been doing about the problem?”

“The prison is overfull. Transports are high. Perhaps if the people had another way to earn a decent—”

“Do not attempt to frame this issue in a charitable or moral light,” Camden said, adjusting his sleeves. “I have no sympathy for a man who thieves for profit on the backs of others who work hard for their own bread. 'Tis not food these people steal.” And what was Leighton's excuse? “Get a message to my brother that I have returned.”

“Aye, my lord.”

“And Smythe,” Camden said as the man began gathering up his papers. “You did the right thing bringing me home.”

Camden strode out of his chambers into the corridor, then through the portrait gallery. Passing generations of aristocratic Carrick royalty and decorated naval mariners, he looked up at none of them.

The processional route to his grandmother's quarters took him down the marble staircase to the apartments on the second floor, the click of his heels indicative of his want to get this meeting over with. This part of the house had been built around the central turret that formed Blackthorn Castle. Persian carpets in the corridor muffled his steps. Most were well worn, some threadbare, but they had been acquired by his grandfather on his travels and his grandmother had refused to part with them, moving them instead to a lesser-used part of the house.

As he approached, the door to the dowager's bedchamber opened and the physician appeared. He shut the door and turned. He had a crop of red hair and looked to be in his twenties—too young to know anything about medicine. Camden had thought that when the man had also tended to Saundra.

Seeing Camden, he snapped to attention and hurried to meet him. “I have just been sent to fetch ye, my lord.” He cleared his throat on a cough. “Not that I would presume to
deliver
ye anywhere. What I mean—”

“The dowager is strong-willed and, as such, easily riled to temper. Consider me fetched and delivered, Doctor . . . ?”

The young physician shifted the black leather surgeon's satchel he carried in his hand. “White. Doctor Stephen White,” he said, following Camden to open the door. “I joined your staff six months ago, but I have lived here my entire life. No' here, per se at Blackthorn, but at Rosecliffe. Lady Harriet was my sponsor at University in Edinburgh. I have heard that her granddaughter, that Miss Douglas has returned.”

“She has.”

White's face reddened as he straightened. He looked uneasily at the door. “Despite what the dowager may try to tell ye to the contrary, she has been quite ill, my lord. I believe her prognosis to be a favorable one. She will most probably outlive us all.”

Camden nodded, dismissing him, frowning slightly as he watched the younger man leave the corridor.

After a moment's hesitation, he entered the room. In the spacious bedchambers, firelight danced in the hearth, banishing the chill that had followed him into the room. Propped against a pile of cream satin pillows, his grandmother awaited him as one who held court. She wore a white mobcap over silver streaked hair, neatly combed and plaited.

At sixty-nine, she was still a handsome woman, still in possession of her steadfast faculties and the kind of self-assurance that came naturally to those born and reared in privilege. His grandmother had lived her life by the mores of social convention. Even ill, she would never have considered receiving an audience without appearing her best.

She raised a lorgnette to one eye. “Do not look at me as if I am at death's door, young man! I have had enough of that these past weeks.”

He greeted the dowager countess, a smile on his lips as he kissed the hand she held regally out to him. He possessed the greatest affection for his curmudgeonly grandmother, who had raised him after his gentle mother had died six months after giving birth to Leighton. An heir and a spare. His father had been satisfied with his mother's duty to the world and had promptly returned to the sea, leaving Camden and Leighton either in his grandmother's capable hands or within the walls of the various fine schools all British lads of aristocratic descent attended.

“I am relieved that you are too ornery to allow a small bout with pneumonia to crush your spirit, Grandmamma. Good evening to you as well.”

She snorted as he sat on the edge of the mattress. “Good evening, indeed! You insult me coming to this room looking like a stable lackey. Can you not even dress properly anymore?”

Wearing a white lawn shirt and black buckskin breeches beneath an informal jacket, Camden might have been dressed unfashionably, but she could not accuse him of having forsaken a bath and a shave before requesting an audience with her. “I am not completely remiss.” He opened his arms for her observation. “I bathed in your favorite soap. I smell like a spring garden. Just for you.”

Her blue-veined hands shook slightly as she patted Camden on the forearm. “That is something, at least. I could use a dose of spring. Did you bring back my great-granddaughter?”

“She is in the nursery with Mrs. Gables. You can see her tomorrow after breakfast.”

“I wish to see her now. I have waited too long. I could be dead tomorrow and you will have my disappointment on your conscience.”

He held back a grin. “Nevertheless, you will see her tomorrow. She has had an exhausting week and needs her rest as much as you do.”

“Pah! You have been listening to that young whippersnapper physician Lady Harriet had the audacity to hoist upon me.”

“No doubt you have been belligerent and quarrelsome, with little regard for what advice has been offered you to aid in your recovery. I have been warned not to tax you.”

“To be honest, Camden, I did not think you would come.”

“To be honest, it had crossed my mind that this entire ordeal was a manipulative ruse to get me here.”

She sniffed. “Indeed. If I had known a bout of pneumonia had the power to bring you back, I would have taken to my bed sooner. You have injured me greatly with your suspicions. Why would you think I would lie to you? Such nonsense.”

“Because I brought along a visitor who arrived shortly before I left the London docks. She carried with her a letter of employment written by Saundra after she died. Or at the very least 'twas posted after her death. It bore the Carrick seal.”

“I sent no letter to anyone. Who am I supposed to have hired and for what?”

“Christel Douglas returned to accept a position in this household as governess to Anna.”

His grandmother's hand fluttered over her heart in what appeared to be a real expression of horror. “Oh, my. She has returned? And Harriet does not know, or she would have told me. Someone should prepare her for the shock.”

Suddenly doubting the truth of his assertions, Camden stared without expression into eyes the same color as his own. He disliked uncertainty, especially since he had been so sure his grandmother's machinations had brought back Harriet's granddaughter. After all, his grandmother and Lady Harriet were closer than most sisters with a history between the two that predated even his father's birth.

“Maybe Lady Harriet needed to see her and you necessitated the events along,” he suggested.

“Why would you suspect me of such a thing?” She settled back in the pillows. “That girl's mother ruined Harriet's family.”

Camden silently swore. “Christel is hardly responsible for the sins of her parents.”
Any more than Anna is responsible for the sins of hers
.

His grandmother observed him shrewdly. “Christel is it now? She has just returned, and you are already on a first-name basis.
And
you are
defending
her? Bother. I have not lived my life under a rock, Camden. That girl ruined herself gallivanting about the countryside barefoot and unchaperoned. Anyone who saw Miss Douglas could see that her face lit up whenever you were near. You were the reason Lady Etherton made Harriet send her away.”

Sometimes his grandmother would say something that made a reply impossible. He was not pleased. “What are you talking about?”

His grandmother shut her eyes as if she suffered a headache. “Saundra's mother found out that Miss Douglas attended the masquerade. I do not know how. The particulars hardly matter. The family had already endured enough scandal with Harriet's eldest son, the girl's father. Lady Etherton wanted nothing to come between you and Saundra. But I could have told her you were head over heels for Saundra and that you would not have signed the contracts had you not wanted the marriage.”

Camden rose and walked to the window. She held out her hand to him. “Camden, I want this to be your home again. The land needs tending. Leighton does his best by me and I could not do without him, but Blackthorn Castle belongs to you. If it means you will stay, I will give my blessing for you to wed your mistress for all I care.”

The idea that the family's stoic matriarch would accept his mistress as a properly bred Carrick wife was laughable. “You are baiting me, Grandmamma,” he said softly, catching sight of movement in the shadows on the terrace below, and something inside him loosened. “Do not. I will wed again. But on my own terms and without interference from you this time.”

When Camden had left Blackthorn Castle a year ago, he had thought he'd never return. Now, while a part of him considered the need to deal with his brother, to see to the estate business and welfare of its inhabitants, another bit of unfinished business suddenly appeared in the courtyard. Her profile easily recognizable against the backdrop of a full moon, Christel turned away from the stone wall overlooking the cove and worked her way back to the terrace. Rather furiously, if the stiffness of her gait was any proof to her mood.

Watching her walk up the yard, he smiled to himself. He had set men at all points of the estate to see that she did not disappear in the night—as she had done all those years ago when all that he had found of her after the masquerade had been a golden slipper left behind on the beach. He had looked a week for her before the trail had taken him to Rosecliffe and to Saundra.