What Happens in Scotland (11 page)

“If you were so enamored of her, you should have told her,” James pointed out. “But then again, why would you? Fighting for what you want has never been your strong suit.”

The sharp intake of breath Cameron took as he bolted the door on the horse he had just unsaddled spoke volumes. “She didn’t want me,” he ground out. “The lady had eyes only for you.”

The confirmation that the woman in question had selected James last night over the other pickings in the room should have made him all the more suspicious that it had been an orchestrated event, carefully calculated to relieve him of a heavy purse. Instead, it heightened the unexpected possessiveness James felt toward her. “That couldn’t have been easy for you, given that every woman in a room is usually fawning over you.”

Cameron’s eyes probed at him, hawklike over the straight arrow of his nose. “Aye, I admit it doesn’t make sense. So it doesn’t matter how pretty she was. She is clearly addled in the brain.”

James reacted poorly to the suggestion that the woman in his mind’s eye was something less than fully right in the head. His body’s objection was visceral, a quickening of his blood, a tightening of his fists. The woman he was beginning to remember had not been addled. She had been quick-witted, full of humor and life. Every man in the pub had wanted her, including David Cameron.

“Of course,” Cameron went on, as if he hadn’t just slandered her, “if you don’t want her, I might be persuaded to give it another go. A lady of that quality doesn’t surface in Moraig every day.”

A sharp curl of jealousy centered in James’s stomach. “It matters not whether you want her. You should have more of a care with whom you associate. The woman is no lady.”

Cameron’s incredulous laugh echoed off the stable rafters, sending horses rustling in hidden stalls. “Are you forgetting I spoke with her first? You may not remember much about her, but
I
do. She claimed a distant kinship to the Bonhams, and said she was the widow of the late Viscount Benjamin Thorold. I’m not in the market for a wife, but if I were, it would be a better match than I could make with any of the country misses around here.”

The suggestion that Cameron knew the woman better than James grated like steel wool on soap. He had spent the night with her, while Cameron had done no more than moon over her. And yet, the man spoke with the calm assurance of someone who knew such things.

Someone who
remembered
.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” James muttered. He, of all people, knew that pedigree did not make the gentleman. It stood to reason it did not make a lady either.

Cameron sobered and looked at James with a speculative gleam in his eye. “Are you saying you don’t believe she’s a real lady?

“I’m saying she’s a bloody thief. Took my money purse and the fifty pounds I had inside. And if she had any notion of your worth over mine, I suspect it would be
you
in this situation this morning, missing your horse and lacking your life’s savings.”

That, finally, seemed to shut David Cameron’s mouth. James had expected laughter at the confession, but instead the man stood a long, silent minute. Beside them, William shuffled in the straw, breaking the tension as cleanly as a knife through butter.

Cameron ran a hand through his tousled hair. It was a gesture James knew well, a look he had seen over the judicial bench and actually respected.

David Cameron had just shrugged off the insolent air he usually wore and put on his magistrate’s hat. “I suppose that explains why you are here,” he said speculatively. “What do you need from me?”

What
did
James need? He needed to find the woman who had stripped away the town’s respect he had been working so hard to earn. And, God help him, he wanted to punish her for leaving him this morning as much as for stealing his purse.

He had been chasing nothing but the shadow of the mystery woman’s skirts across Moraig. But now that he had a name, he was chasing a person, not just a memory. He would catch her, eventually, and when he did he intended to be armed to the teeth.

“A summons should do nicely.” James was more sure of this next step than any he had entertained so far.

“MacKenzie,” Cameron said, shaking his head. “Are you sure you want to do that? You don’t know with certainty she took your purse.”

“Hence the summons.” James crossed his arms and tried to look like the imperious solicitor he was supposed to be. “She is lucky I don’t charge her with theft outright.”

“You don’t
need
to charge her with anything,” Cameron countered. “Your father is one of the wealthiest men in the county. Why in the devil are you doing this, and all for a piddling fifty pounds?”

James grimaced. Accepting William’s charity today had been damning enough; his pride would never withstand such a blow as to admit a weakness to his father. Fifty pounds might not seem like a lot of money to David Cameron, but it was everything James had in the world.

“Just do it,” he growled. “And be sure to make it out to Lady Georgette Thorold.”

Chapter 11

N
O SOONER HAD
Georgette mentioned the need to feed the kitten than her own hapless stomach grumbled as loud as the Bealltainn hammers working steadily up and down Main Street.

She wasn’t just hungry, Georgette realized. She was ravenous. She literally could not remember the last thing she had eaten. And while perhaps not as tragic as forgetting whom she had married, it demanded equal attention.

Her gaze settled on a bright red awning a half a block away, and she pointed toward it with her free hand. “Shall we try over there?” The tea shop that had caught her eye was busy, with a dozen or so patrons sitting outside at wrought-iron tables. It looked like an utterly pleasant place for a luncheon, particularly after the disgrace of their ride into town.

The maid, however, did not seem as impressed as Georgette’s rumbling stomach.

“Oh no, miss. I can’t eat there.” Elsie shook her head. “We should try the back kitchen at the Gander. They know me well enough, and I’m sure they could make us up something quick.”

Georgette’s face burned hot at the thought of sitting down to a meal in the same establishment where she had achieved infamy the night before. “Definitely not the Gander. What is wrong with the tea shop?”

Elsie rubbed a hand over her faded cotton skirt. “I can’t afford to eat there.”

“You are not expected to pay for your own meals, Elsie.”

The maid’s thin shoulders refused to relax. “I would rather just wait outside.”

Georgette reminded herself to go slowly. After all, the girl was just learning her duties. “If you are to excel at this new role, you must act the part. A ladies’ maid is expected to accompany her mistress into shops.” Why was Elsie making this so difficult? Georgette was leaving for London as soon as her circumstances allowed, and the maid needed to learn these skills quickly in order to find another position.

Elsie lifted her chin. Sunshine glinted off her auburn hair as clearly as the stubbornness glinting in her eyes. “People here know me, and they will judge you for it. You are a lady, miss. I am not fit company to sit at a table with you.”

“That didn’t bother you two hours ago when you were soaking in my tub,” Georgette pointed out. Exasperation edged into the hunger, making her cross. “I thought you were looking to improve your situation.”

“I was!” Elsie exclaimed. “I mean, I am. But I didn’t think this through.” She looked up at the sun and shaded her eyes. “I don’t have a hat,” she grumbled. “How can I be someone better if I don’t even have a hat?”

That was when Georgette realized the maid’s problem was more complicated than a lack of funds, or want of a smart new bonnet. Sympathy struck with the efficiency of the hammers ringing in her ears. She knew what it was like to be measured by strangers’ eyes and come up short. The London Season, with its glittering balls and women so impossibly beautiful it made her eyes ache, had been a snake’s nest of just such self-doubt. In some ways, the stranglehold of mourning, with its rigid requirements for clothing and comportment, had been a relief.

It was easier to be a widow. One dressed in black and stayed indoors.

“We don’t need a hat to sit down for tea,” Georgette assured her, aiming for urgency over honesty. It was an outdoor café, and ladies did not walk about bareheaded out of doors. Why, in London, the lowest of scullery maids would not dare such a thing! But she was hungry, and each moment’s delay served as a reminder that she didn’t know when she had least eaten.

“It’s not just the hat,” Elsie protested. “You’re dressed like a proper lady. You are wearing gloves, and know which fork to use. I don’t know
any
of that.”

Georgette looked down at her gloved hands, one clutching the kitten, the other spread against her gray woolen frock. Her former husband had not deserved a year of mourning, much less the two Georgette had dutifully delivered. And yet here she was, dressed in gray, the brim of her bonnet the perfect length to hide her face, not a frill or flounce anywhere in sight. Though it had felt comfortable when she put it on, the outfit now seemed wholly inappropriate.

“We can order finger sandwiches,” she told Elsie, as much to convince herself as the maid. “I’ll forgo a fork on your behalf.”

“You don’t understand.” Elsie threw up her hands in exasperation. “You could shove a bloody finger sandwich in your mouth sideways and you’d still be a lady. And I could learn to use a fork proper-like and still always be thought of as the girl from the Gander. And I don’t mind that, truly I don’t. But I don’t want folks to think ill of you because of me.”

Georgette stifled the urge to smile. The girl was worried about
her
reputation? It was a little late for that, and not because of anything Elsie had done.

“Being a lady is not the wondrous state of being you seem to consider it,” she told the maid, her heart thumping its agreement as she realized it was true. “You think people don’t talk and whisper, just because I am a lady? Let me tell you, they whisper
more
. And I think you should stop using that title to describe me, given the way I behaved last night. I’m no different than you. No better, no worse.”

This was no kind sentiment, intended to soothe Elsie’s fears. When she had taken the girl on, Georgette had thought this arrangement would provide a chance for Elsie to better her lot in life, and to learn something about being a ladies’ maid.

It was uncomfortable to realize she seemed farther along in learning something about herself.

Was
she still a lady? And did she really care if she wasn’t?

Georgette stood in the bright Highland sunshine and thought about Elsie’s words and the absent Mr. MacKenzie.
He
had not cared last night whether she acted with decorum. He had apparently liked her well enough to wed her, despite the fact that Elsie’s recounting of events suggested she had acted more the tavern wench than the lady.

She wished she could remember how she had felt in his arms, remembered what it was like, for once in her life, to be wanted by a man who made no demands on her to say something different, or wear something different, or
be
someone different. She wished she could recall what it felt like to fall asleep next to him, satisfied and happy and dreaming of tomorrow.

But the memory remained as elusive as the man.

And so Georgette settled for the next best rebellion. She reached up with her free hand and untied the ribbons to the plain gray bonnet she had donned this morning. She slid the somber bit of fabric from her head and dropped it to the dusty street. Her scalp tingled in exhilaration, the strip of skin revealed by her severe part reveling in the sunlight.

“Now I don’t have a hat either.” She offered the maid a conspiratorial smile. “I don’t think anyone will care if we dine together in disarray. And if they do,
I
don’t care. Shall we try it?”

Elsie stooped and snatched up the bonnet, dusting it off. “You shouldn’t do that, miss,” she admonished. “People will think I don’t take proper care of you, and then how will I find a new position?” A smile touched her lips. “And your nose will turn pink in this terrible sun. You wouldn’t want the other ladies to talk.”

Georgette laughed and stretched her face skyward. She had the palest sort of English coloring, with hair closer to the color of bleached linen than spun gold. Men did not tend to write sonnets about ghostlike countenances, and she had always considered herself somewhat ugly for it. But something told her that James MacKenzie, with his unfashionable beard and his hard, sculpted muscles, did not care a farthing whether her skin was tanned or not.

“I don’t care much for deadly dull bonnets,” Georgette admitted, realizing that a month ago something so incongruous would have never been permitted to fall from her lips. She caught Elsie’s eye. “Or people who judge you for what you are wearing or the company you keep.”

The maid’s eyes grew round. Not that Georgette blamed her. These were thoughts she was supposed to keep bottled away like last year’s preserves, alongside her opinions about brandy and husbands.

And then a smile edged out from Elsie’s earlier frown. She settled the discarded bonnet over her own head, tying the ribbons with firm, deft fingers. “Well, bully for you, miss.” She lifted an auburn brow. “But
I’m
not going to let you toss away a perfectly good hat like yesterday’s rubbish,” she said before marching toward the tea shop.

Surprise caught Georgette’s mouth open. She watched, incredulous, as the newly bonneted maid approached a table and sat down with a smirk.

Georgette walked slowly toward the table where Elsie was already pretending to read an upside-down menu. No matter her assurances to the maid they would be welcomed here, her walking dress was smudged with earth from the floor of the potato cart, and her uncovered hair had already started to loosen from its chignon. She had on gloves, at least, which assured she was partway to respectability.

But even as she embraced that comforting thought, the kitten squirmed in her hand. An unmistakable warmth seeped through the kidskin. Dimly, Georgette registered what had just occurred. The creature had relieved itself.

On her.

This could not be happening. She could do without a hat or fork, and manage a half hour’s conversation with a prostitute-turned-abigail, but she could
not
sit down for tea with a urine-soaked glove.

Only she could. And unbelievably, she did.

Elsie exploded in laughter when she saw what had happened, and then waved her hands in refusal when Georgette tried to get her to hold the moist animal. Smiling herself, Georgette placed the kitten on the table, stripped off the soiled glove, and then picked the animal up again in her bare, cupped hand. The touch of soft fur on skin was startling. It felt small and wet in her hand, but it felt alive.

And she realized that she did, as well. Elsie’s pealing amusement, the resolve to not care whether she was properly attired, the good smells coming from the shop’s open door, all coalesced into a single, unexpected thought: she was enjoying herself. More than she had in months, perhaps more than she had in years.

They placed their order, and the tearoom attendant immediately brought warmed milk in a china cup. At first, the kitten seemed capable of little more than nosing at the spoon. Georgette grew worried that perhaps she had waited too long, that the kitten would be too weak to survive. She dipped the edge of her handkerchief into the cup and tried offering it the soaked bit of cloth, finally placing the edge directly in its mouth.

The kitten made a small, contented sound and began sucking at the cloth, protesting with claws and mews when Georgette pulled the handkerchief back to remoisten it with milk.

“You look like you were born to do that,” Elsie said, awe warming her voice. “I’ve never seen a lady do anything like that before.”

The continued insistence she was a lady made Georgette’s chest flutter in discomfort. “Haven’t we already discussed this? A lady is permitted to love babies and animals as much as the next person.”

“If that were true, there would not be such a fearsome demand for wet nurses.” Elsie cocked her head, a puzzled slant to her brow. “You were married before.”

“Yes.” Georgette concentrated on the little mouth working at the edge of her handkerchief. She could see it coming, and yet could not steer clear.

“Were there no children?”

The familiar pang of disappointment had not lessened in the two years since the unfolding of her own personal tragedy. Georgette made no move to explain, settling instead for a swift shake of her head. It was too painful, still too fresh, to explain that she had lost a baby, the one thing in which she had placed her hopes, two months after her husband’s fatal, drunken tumble down a flight of stairs. If she tried, she would have to skim over the shock of the bloodied sheets and the weeks of depression that followed. And if she skimmed, Elsie would not understand.

It was better to simply shake her head. She
wished
she could have a child.

But not enough to risk another husband.

The kitten stopped nursing the cloth and gradually fell asleep in her cupped palm, sated by the bit of milk. Georgette called for soap and water to wash her soiled hand, and then sat there, enjoying the living, breathing feel of the sleeping animal in her lap, but the feeling was arrested as she caught sight of someone she recognized.

Unfortunately, it was not her big-boned Scotsman. Neither was it her cousin Randolph. Instead, she saw the man her cousin had pointed out on the street that morning as Reverend Ramsey. Georgette tried to ignore the prickling awareness that ran the length of her spine as he stared at their table. She accepted her plate of salmon and watercress sandwiches from the attendant, even though her first instinct was to gather her things and leave.

But then a shadow fell across their table, and the man became impossible to avoid.

“Good afternoon, Lady Thorold,” he said.

She put on a smile, noticing from the corner of her eye how the man’s approach caused Elsie to slide down in her chair. “Reverend Ramsey.” She offered him her still-gloved hand. “We have not been properly introduced, but my cousin has mentioned you. It appears he has spoken to you about me, as well.”

The gentleman took her hand, as propriety dictated, but there was nothing of warmth in the gesture. Reverend Ramsey’s starched white collar was an obscene contrast to his dark disapproval. “Does Mr. Burton know the company you keep?” he asked as he released her hand.

Georgette curved her fingers into a fist. An admirable conversationalist, the rector was not. Her mind raced along every available path and arrived at one sure conclusion: he must be referring to the situation last night. It was not a surprise, really. To hear Elsie tell the tale, half the town had been in attendance at the Blue Gander last night and served as witnesses. It was sure rumors were flying through Moraig faster than the afternoon coach.

But then the man’s eyes pulled to Elsie. The maid stared back, one auburn brow cocked belligerently.