What Happens in Scotland (14 page)

Chapter 15

T
HE LAW OFFICES
of James MacKenzie, Esquire, were located on a nearly deserted street on the north side of Moraig, an easy walk from the bustle and noise of the swelling Main Street crowd. The practice was housed in a wood-plank building flanked on one side by a saddlery and on the other by a tailor’s shop. All three businesses were closed up tight.

Georgette knew this because she watched, aghast, as Elsie rattled the knob of each one and boomed out a hearty hullo.

“A ladies’ maid does not say ‘hullo’ like a newspaper crier,” Georgette told her. She covered her eyes with one bare hand, letting the skin of her fingers absorb some portion of the intense afternoon sun. In retrospect, the loss of her bonnet now seemed a poor idea.

“Well, what should I say instead?” Elsie asked.

“You should say ‘good afternoon’ or ‘excuse me.’ ” Georgette dropped her hand and fixed the maid with a stern gaze. Elsie’s nose looked perfectly fine, shaded as it was by the generous brim of Georgette’s old bonnet. “You need to try a little harder if you want to do this.”

Elsie wrinkled her perfectly pale nose, and probably would have stuck out her tongue if she had been a decade younger. “Being a ladies’ maid isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be.”

“It’s a paid position. It’s not supposed to be fun.”

“Well, working behind the Gander was fun,” Elsie pouted. “A little hullo usually did the trick, especially if I swung my hips and followed it with a wink, like this.” She closed one eye dramatically. “I suppose a ladies’ maid doesn’t wink either.”

Georgette shook her head. “Particularly not at the man of the house.” She swallowed the amusement the image built. It was impossible to stay irritated with someone as exuberant as Elsie, no matter that her manners were better suited to a barmaid than a trusted domestic servant.

“Well, if the lady of the house winked a bit more, the man of the house probably wouldn’t be chasing the maid’s skirts,” Elsie pointed out, her voice far more innocent than her words.

The maid’s logic was irrefutable. Georgette had never once winked at her former husband, and he had definitely chased a maid or two. Perhaps if things didn’t work out as a ladies’ maid, Elsie had a career in philosophy ahead of her.

“You try it,” Elsie urged. She winked again. “It isn’t hard.”

Georgette pursed her lips. Almost of its own volition, one eye fluttered closed. “Like this?”

“Aye, that’s a start,” Elsie said, craning her neck. “If you’re looking to scare him off.”

“Then I’d best stop, before Mr. MacKenzie shows up.” Georgette chuckled, and opened her eye. The man was still nowhere in sight. In point of fact,
no one
was in sight. There was an odd feeling of isolation to the otherwise mercantile street, as if it had been stripped of inhabitants and left to decay.

“Where is everyone?” Georgette asked as Elsie rattled the locked door of MacKenzie’s office again. “Does no one
work
in Moraig?” She knew she sounded frustrated, but she felt so close to finding him. The shock of finding his practice locked up as tight as a bank vault was unexpected.

Elsie peeked into one window. “Actually, Mr. MacKenzie is known for working
too
hard,” she said. “He only comes into the Gander a few times a week, usually for a meal rather than a pint, and more often than not he has a stack of papers with him.”

Georgette tucked that bit of information away in the back of her mind. So the man she had married didn’t spend his every free moment carousing at the Gander. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

“I can’t see a thing,” Elsie muttered, her face pressed full-on up against the glass.

“Come away from there,” Georgette chided. “It’s not polite to peer into windows.”

Elsie turned back with a thoughtful expression on her face. “I suppose you’re going to tell me a ladies’ maid doesn’t do that either. Well, you know what I think? It’s not polite to chase after a man, but I can respect you for doing it. I thought you wanted to find him. Polite isn’t going to get you there.”

Georgette shrugged off the maid’s far too perceptive observation. Instead, she sat down on a nearby wooden bench and fanned herself with her hand, determined to wait for him and answer the questions burning in her mind. It was just her luck to have married a fledgling, work-bound solicitor. Not a common sort of man, but not a peer of the realm either. The thought did not bother her nearly as much as it would have a month ago. And perhaps his legal skills would come in handy when she pressed for an annulment.

Unless he used them against her.

“Why aren’t we hunting him down?” Elsie asked, plopping down beside her with a breathy sigh.

“Because we’re out of leads.” Georgette met Elsie’s perplexed hazel gaze. “Logic argues that if we just wait here, we’ll come across him soon enough.”

“I don’t know, miss.” Elsie looked up at the still-bright sun skeptically. “It’s already afternoon, and the Bealltainn celebration starts tonight.”

“So?” Georgette knew she sounded snappish, but she was tired. And hot. And becoming increasingly frustrated over how
hard
it was to find one missing husband.

“So, the celebration will last till tomorrow night,” Elsie said, a peevish note creeping into her tone. “Why do you think all the businesses are closed up, and so many people are in the center of town? MacKenzie may not come here till Monday.”

Georgette’s earlier hope of a quick, easy solution splintered at Elsie’s matter-of-fact explanation. “I . . . I don’t have until Monday.”

“And I don’t have all day. There’s dancing tonight.” Elsie offered Georgette an unapologetic smile. “I never miss dancing.”

“Damn,” Georgette muttered, low on her breath. The uncharacteristic act of cursing brought a warmth to her cheeks, but she had to admit it felt good to voice a strong opinion. She fit her lips around one of Elsie’s favorite expressions. “Bloody hell.” The mere utterance of the forbidden phrase sent her heart pounding.

“Indeed,” Elsie agreed, nodding her head in approval. “That’s the spirit, miss. Tell it like it is.”

Georgette searched for a new expression and came up blank. Clearly, her new vocabulary needed some work. She threw her hands up. “Well, that’s it. We’re out of options.”

The maid stared at the locked office door. “You know, if we’re in that much of a hurry, we’d have a better chance of finding him if we went to his house.”

“Do you know where he lives?” Georgette sat up straighter. She did not want to imagine how Elsie might have come by such knowledge. She did
not
care about MacKenzie’s past associations, did not care if he was the biggest rake north of Hadrian’s Wall. It was a topic she was determined to steer clear of.

“No.” The maid shook her head, bringing a pinch of relief to Georgette’s tight lungs. “But I bet there’s something in that office, some bit of paper or other thing that might give us a clue.” The maid stood up and began to examine the lock on the door with undisguised interest. “I think I could get us in.”

Georgette’s stomach twisted its objection. Dear God, Elsie couldn’t be serious. What she was suggesting was wrong.
Illegal.
But Elsie was already sliding a hairpin from beneath her borrowed gray bonnet. It was as plain as the freckles on the maid’s face that she was going to pick the lock.

Georgette stood up, intending to push her away from the sordid task. “Stop that,” she hissed, darting a glance to either side. “That’s breaking and entering. And he’s a
solicitor
.”

“Not breaking,” Elsie scoffed, straightening from her examination of the lock mechanism. “Just entering.” She handed Georgette the hairpin. “It’s a skill every ladies’ maid should teach their mistress. You know you want to find him, miss. This is your chance.”

“I don’t know . . .” Georgette swallowed, her throat a tight mess of unspoken objections. The hairpin felt as heavy as a pistol in her hands, cocked and ready to use.

Elsie snorted. “Where is the fearless lady that waltzed into the Blue Gander last night? If you need to find him, you need to be brave enough to take a chance.”

Georgette was frozen with indecision. On the one hand, the woman she was supposed to be would never do something like this.

On the other hand, she was halfway to proving she was someone else.

She
wanted
to be that brave. The new Georgette was not quite sure who she was. But she wanted to get a sense of the man she had married, and she found she might be willing to break the law to do it. She leaned over and pensively slid the pin into the lock, her breath a block of ice inside her. Lo and behold, lightning did not streak from the sky and strike her dead. She twisted the pin gently, and to her surprise, the earth did not crack open and swallow her up.

Her lungs began to thaw. Being brave, apparently, was not so different from the usual way of things.

Emboldened, she turned herself over to the task in earnest. “Keep an eye out,” she whispered to Elsie, who leaned in to watch.

“There’s no one here, miss. Now, turn it to the left and lift up a little. Hold it, then jiggle it, just so.”

“Elsie,” Georgette admonished. “Let me do it.”

“I
am
letting you do it,” the maid retorted. “If I had been doing it we’d be in already.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Georgette muttered. She stilled, hopeful as she felt the hairpin catch on something and hold fast. But the lock didn’t turn, and the pin no longer jiggled. She tugged, but it didn’t budge.

Georgette looked up at Elsie. “It is stuck.” She pulled against it again, but it remained lodged in some unseen crevice.

Elsie stooped to pick something off the ground. When the maid stood back up, Georgette’s eyes widened, her fingers frozen on the cool metal hairpin still held tight by the lock mechanism. Elsie offered her a cheeky grin and then without further ceremony tossed the rock through the window.

It made a sharp, splintering sound, followed by bits of glass raining down like an afterthought.

“
Now
it’s breaking,” Elsie said happily.

Impossibly, the door swung inward. “And now you have some explaining to do,” came the deep baritone voice that haunted Georgette’s mind.

Chapter 16

G
EORGETTE STRAIGHTENED TO
the sight of the man who owned the window they had just smashed. Her heart slapped against her ribs. Dear God, it scarcely seemed possible.

He had been inside the entire time.

Elsie, the heartless wretch, stood off to the side, wringing her hands. As if she was not to blame. As if she was as appalled by her mistress’s behavior as he was. Georgette made a mental to note to inform the girl that a ladies’ maid
always
took the blame for her mistress in questionable legal matters.

James MacKenzie took a step toward her, and her next ill-advised thought was one of worry. Well, that wasn’t quite true. First there was the raw, shimmering awareness of him. This morning when she had first seen him, he had been abed. Her memory of him was of a man waking with a rakish grin, teasing her back to some forgotten, forbidden pleasure.

This afternoon he was all too awake, and his eyes conveyed nothing of pleasure.

He was impossibly tall. His uncovered head skimmed the painted sign over his doorway, and his tousled brown hair stood at odd angles, as if his hand had raked through it only seconds before. His beard, so wild and incompatible with the boyish charm he had shown this morning, now seemed a perfect accompaniment to his hard eyes. Her stomach turned over once in acknowledgment of how utterly, inappropriately handsome he was.

Worry, then, was her second ill-advised thought.

She eyed the disheveled, bloody man glowering down at her. She had been so focused on finding him and exorcising him from her life that she had forgotten about the chamber pot. He was still every bit as handsome as he had been this morning. But new to the image was the row of ragged stitches that marched across his scalp and the blood-soaked jacket on his broad shoulders.

“Oh,” she breathed. “I am so, so sorry. I have hurt you.”

“Indeed.” His eyes, so green they glittered like ice on new grass, narrowed.

Georgette took a deep breath. He was a difficult man to read, his expression stern and unrevealing. Was he glad to see her? Angry? Indifferent?

There was no point denying it. That last bit would sting, no matter that she knew she did not deserve his interest.

According to Elsie, who was still standing white-faced beside her, Georgette had led him on a merry chase last night.
She
was to blame for the outcome, and so she never should have struck him. And while she could not quite imagine staying and crawling back into bed beside this man, as he had asked her to this morning, she should have at least waited until he dressed and talked to him about what had happened.

Instead, she had given in to fear.

“I am happy to see you,” she whispered, glancing up at him through her lashes. She knew it was probably too late for such a soft sentiment, no matter that it was the truth. She
was
happy to see him. She only wished he looked a bit more . . . inviting.

He reached out a lazy hand. For a moment, she thought he might take her arm, or smooth back the lock of hair that had come free from her pins and was waving like a flag of truce about her right cheek. “I wish I could say the same thing about you,” he said.

Instead of touching her, he reached down. “In fact,” he said, yanking the stuck hairpin out of the lock and holding it up in front of her face, “the only thing that will give me greater pleasure than never seeing you again is seeing you brought to justice.”

And that was when Georgette realized this meeting was not going to go at all as she had imagined.

J
AMES HAD WONDERED
what it would feel like when he found her. All day long, through the frustration of each dead-end clue, through the pain of his mounting list of injuries, through the unexpected disappointment of William’s desertion, he had wondered. Now he knew.

He felt numb.

The woman he had been searching for down every dirty alley between here and Main Street was finally in front of him, guilt etched on her face. Her auburn-haired companion hovered nearby—Miss Dalrymple, unless his eyes were playing tricks on him.

Pity. He had thought the prostitute–turned–tavern–wench who normally poured his glass at the Blue Gander had more sensible associations.

“You may leave us now, Miss Dalrymple,” he growled. “This is not your concern.”

“But . . . I am her ladies’ maid, sir,” the auburn-haired girl stammered.

“How fortuitous,” James replied, not even missing a beat. “She is no lady, and therefore has no need of a maid.”

When the girl did no more than shift wordlessly from foot to foot, he added, a bit more kindly, “When have you ever known me to hurt someone, or be deliberately cruel? I promise you, your mistress will not be harmed. Go on and leave us.”

Still, she hesitated.

“
Now!
” James barked it out as he would a courtroom objection.

Miss Dalrymple showed a sudden spark of obedience he would have never thought possible. She lifted her skirts and ran down the road at a pace that would have put Caesar to shame, had his mount been anywhere close.

Unfortunately, his mount
wasn’t
close. There was only the blond-haired woman standing before him. They were alone.

And he had never been more aware of another living thing.

His quarry stared at him with wide eyes, so brilliantly gray they made the waters of Loch Moraig seem colorless in comparison. She looked nothing like a lady, with her hair coming down and her head bare to the afternoon sun. He took a step toward her and she took a complementary step back, as if they were birds engaged in a ridiculous courtship ritual. Only he didn’t want to court her.

He wanted to throttle her.

He forced himself to stand still. Though her feet stopped moving, the rest of her did not. Her hands fluttered about like moths trapped in a glass jar, and her gaze darted from side to side. It occurred to him she might have an accomplice, someone lurking nearby with another large rock, this time aimed at his head instead of his window.

He turned a half step so he could see his target and the street. “Looking for someone?” he asked.

“Truth be told, I’ve been looking for
you
.” She gifted him with a smile so bright it stung his eyes, though her voice shook around the edges.

James didn’t believe that for a second, not even as he registered the cultured vowel sounds that suggested she probably
was
well-bred. “I did not fall off the cart yesterday,” he told her, enjoying the way his sarcasm made her wince. “You’ll have to try better than that.”

Her eyes widened. “It’s true!” she protested. “That is why I am here.” She worried her lower lip with her teeth, a gesture that tempted him to taste it, even though he knew she could bite.

Anger thumped in his chest. “You were breaking
into
my offices,” he pointed out, “not waiting for me on the bench outside.”

“I . . . I thought I might find something inside that would lead me to you.”

James wound up his disbelief and let it fly like an arrow from a bow. “Were you looking for more money? Something of additional value? Because I assure you, if you think I am wealthy, you are more stupid than you look.”

She answered with a squeak.
A squeak.
The woman he remembered from last night would have had a witty comeback, would have taken his verbal bet and raised him fourfold. This woman squeaked like a mouse. Not quite the brilliant conversationalist of his dreams.

“There seems to be a mistake,” she finally said, her hands spreading before her. “I am not what you think.”

He answered with a sweep of his eyes. The girl was the same, and yet she was not. Same unusual hair color, and the same pert nose, albeit pinker than he remembered. She possessed the same too-wide mouth, and he, for his troubles, experienced a familiar swelling of attraction in the vicinity of his cock as he stared at her. One elusive dimple flashed like a lighthouse beacon, calling him home.

But she was different too. She seemed more awkward today. Uncomfortable in her skin. Then again, she had just been caught red-handed, throwing a rock through his window.

Nothing comfortable about that.

“I know your name is Georgette Thorold,” he told her. “And that you claim to be the widow of a viscount.”

He watched her draw an impatient breath, watched as the lovely breasts he remembered far too well strained against their dull gray prison. Standing so close, her lush mouth within easy reach and her citrus-ginger scent wreaking havoc on his senses, was nothing short of torture. As he tried to keep his eyes from wandering too far afield from her face, it occurred to him that, unlike the person he had just been chasing through the seedier parts of Moraig, she was not wearing trousers.

It occurred to him he might like to
see
her in trousers.

James gave his head a violent shake, the predictable pain honing his scattered thoughts back to the task before him. It did not matter if the thought of her curves outlined by men’s clothing struck him as violently as the black mare’s hooves.

Someone had tried to kill him.

And she was the most likely suspect.

“But it matters not what you claim to be,” he told her, his voice hard as steel. “Every word out of your mouth is suspect.”

She grew pale, if such a thing was even possible for someone of her unique coloring. She opened her mouth, closed it again. James watched her soundless lips work in reluctant fascination. “Was there something else you wanted to say?” he taunted. “Another meaningless apology, perhaps?”

Because I won’t believe that one either.

Her hands knotted and unknotted, and then her lips started to work. “It . . . it has come to my attention,” she sputtered, delivering the obviously rehearsed speech with a definite quaver to her voice, “that we . . . I mean,
I
may have engaged in some unfortunate conduct last night. I regret it, truly, and I am sure you will agree that the best thing to do is to pursue an annulment. Miss Dalrymple tells me you have some skill in legal matters, Mr. MacKenzie, so it seems as if it should be a simple—”

“My friends call me James,” he interrupted, taking back the upper hand she was attempting to verbally wrestle from him.

She licked her lips. “James, then . . .”

He raised an imperious brow. “
You
will call me Mr. MacKenzie.”

Her face colored violently, and a flash of something—was it anger?—widened her eyes. “I will call you whatever I please,” she retorted, lifting her chin.

James felt an answering tug in his chest. “You’ll have to do better than the stammering speech you’ve delivered so far,” he told her.

“Rogue,” she spit out, displaying a hint of the flirtatious temper he remembered from the night before. “Scoundrel is a good name, and fitting, don’t you think?” Her gaze swung southward for a scant moment, lingering a hair too long in the vicinity of his abdomen before finding his eyes again. “
Husband
.” She drew a deep breath, as if for courage. “That last one is the most annoying, I will admit.”

James suffocated an irrational urge to acknowledge her spirit with an answering grin. When she finally—
finally
—stood up to him instead of stuttering out an apology, she was glorious. Good God, was it any wonder he had behaved so impulsively last night? He was not tempted just to throw caution to the wind in response to her smile.

He was tempted to wrap caution around a rock and toss it through his other bloody window.

Instead of telling her that, he wrangled his thoughts into a neat, orderly pile, willing himself to remember why he was here, and what she was. “It matters not what you call me,” he said. “It only matters what I call you.”

She looked up at him, her forehead creased in confusion. “And what do you call me?”

In the harsh afternoon light, last evening’s regrettable actions seemed very far away. James stuffed the instinct to soothe her worried brow into his empty coat pocket, the same pocket where his money purse was supposed to be. Did she think she could bat those pale eyelashes at him and turn his insides to jelly, the way she had last night?

He wouldn’t permit it. Not anymore.

“I call you a criminal.” James handed over the summons with a flourish. “Consider yourself served, Lady Thorold.”