When a Scot Loves a Lady (41 page)

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Authors: Katharine Ashe

BOOK: When a Scot Loves a Lady
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“You are being very odd.” Her heart raced, and now the words she ached to declare came to her tongue swiftly and strongly. “Yes,” she whispered instead, because
this
abandonment was new and it deserved what he asked of her, though she would have it all said now; she did not want to wait another moment for it to begin. “Yes.”

Hoofbeats sounded on the turf close by. Kitty tore her gaze away and Lord Gray dismounted. As he came forward she felt Leam at her shoulder, his strength and thorough mastery of her heart. Happiness buoyed her curtsy.

“Lady Katherine.” The viscount bowed. He turned to Leam. “Yale met me at the Club this morning. He already told me all.”

“I asked him to do so.”

Kitty darted a glance at Leam. His jaw was taut but his eyes still sparkled.

“I asked you here for another reason,” he said. “I require you now to apologize to Lady Katherine for burdening her with your previous demands, and to assure her that you will not in the future make similar demands.”

Lord Gray's gaze flickered aside. “You have the dogs with you, I see, yet dressed as you are.”

“Indeed.”

“So you are finished finally, then?”

Leam nodded.

The viscount seemed to draw a slow breath. He turned to her. “My lady, on behalf of the king and country I serve, I render thanks to you and assure you we will not be seeking your assistance again. It seems we may have been mistaken in information we had of Lord Chamberlayne. We will, of course, continue to pursue the rebels, including his son, but Lord Chamberlayne will not bear any measure of guilt.”

“Now the apology,” Leam ground out.

Lord Gray bowed deeply. “I sincerely beg your pardon, ma'am.”

“Accepted, my lord.”

“Prettily done, Gray.” Leam's voice was dry. “Now go to the devil.”

The viscount grinned, then nodded. “In the matter of Cox, you will still want Grimm about, I presume.”

“For now.”

Kitty looked between them. “Mr. Cox, from Shropshire?”

Leam's brow creased.

“I can see my presence has become
de trop
.” Lord Gray bowed again. “My lady. Blackwood.” He went to his horse, mounted, and spurred away.

She turned to Leam. “What haven't you told me? Is Mr. Cox involved in all of this too?”

He moved close to her. “Not Gray's project.” Again his gaze seemed thoroughly hers, his eyes scanning her face. “As soon as I know more, I will tell you all. But now you must go home so that I can call on you properly.”

She could sink into that gaze and never leave it. “But I don't know why—”

“Kitty.” He smiled. “Not here, where I cannot—” His eyes flickered up. A carriage approached. He stared over her shoulder and his gaze lost its intoxicating intensity, growing momentarily fixed, then … haunted.

She pivoted around.

Descending to the path from an elegant black carriage with the assistance of a footman, a lady lifted her face to them. She wore a glimmering white carriage gown, with frothy silk of pale blue gathered about her shoulders, gloves the color of the winter sky, and a tiny parasol on her arm trimmed in lace. A wide-brimmed hat of eyelet dipped over her brow, tilting jauntily to one side, revealing a fringe of blond ringlets and bow-shaped, petal-pink lips.

Leam's cheeks were gray, his face stark.

“Leam, who is she?” But in the pit of her stomach, and in her heedless heart, Kitty knew. She had never truly deserved happiness.

It was an angel, of course, come to steal heaven away now that she stood upon its threshold.

Chapter 24

“W
ho is she?” Kitty repeated, in a whisper now. “She—she is my—” Leam struggled for air, sanity. It could not be. He dragged his gaze away from the ghostly vision to the serene elegance of the woman beside him.

But Kitty's beautiful eyes were fraught. “Your?”

The words rose upon a choke. “My
wife
.”

“Did she perhaps have a twin?”

Kitty's mouth tilted up, quivering, and Leam's entire body went numb. She was perfect and he wanted to grab her and crush her to him and never release her. But Cornelia walked toward him, ticking her parasol lightly from side to side in the crook of her elbow. No twin, even identical, could reproduce those twinkling blue eyes, that delicate smile that always seemed a bit uncertain and had never failed to tie him in knots, the dimples in her rounded cheeks, and her dainty stride. Nearly six years older, she was none the worse for it, still stunningly pretty, and moving directly toward him.

He stared.

She halted two yards away, hat brim shading her face from the sun. Her lips curved into a tremulous smile.

“Good day, my lord husband.” Her voice was the same, light and demure and like a nightmare. She curtsied, dipping her gold head gracefully.

Kitty pivoted and moved straight for her carriage.

Pulling his gaze from Cornelia, Leam went after her. She tried to avoid his touch, but he made her take his hand to assist her into the carriage. She was shaking, or he. She would not meet his gaze. Shock dizzied him.

“Kitty, say something.” His voice was a rasp.

She laced her fingers tightly together in her lap. “Felicitations, my lord.”


What?

He had to move aside for her maid to climb in. Shoulders back and chin high, Kitty directed her attention forward.

“Move on,” she said to the coachman, the fellow snapped the traces, and Leam stepped back as the carriage jolted into motion.

He watched her go, the woman he had come to love more than life, unable to turn toward the woman who, almost six years earlier, had changed that life forever. She and James and he together, a wicked, sorry tangle.

He swung around and strode to Cornelia. She backed up a step.

“Leam?” Her blue eyes darted over his face. “You—you are still very handsome. Are these your dogs? Who was that lady and why did she cut me?”


Cut
you?” He shook his head. “I.” He nearly gagged on his voice. “Thought.” He pressed out the words. “You.” But they would not come easily. “
Dead
.” He could not breathe. His world had turned upside down. “I
buried
you.”

“But I am here. You can see that.” Her pink lips trembled like her tiny hands around her parasol stem. “Leam, you are frightening me.”

“Who is that woman lying in the tomb at Alvamoor? Did you kill someone and falsify your death?”

“No!
You
killed someone! James!” Tears sprang to her eyes. She whirled about and hurried toward her carriage. He pursued. The footman handed her up. An elderly lady dressed in black glared at him from within.

“Go, go, Frank,” Cornelia called out, waving at the coachman. “Go quickly! I knew I should not do this.”

Leam went to the lead horse and grabbed its bridle. The coachman darted looks between them.

“Do not move this carriage, man, or I will take that whip and use it on you.”

“He would not, Frank. He is not that sort. Go.”

“You haven't known me for five years, Cornelia. You have no idea of what I am now capable.”

“Yes, milord.” The coachman tugged his cap.

“Leam, you are causing a scene.” Cornelia's hunted gaze darted about. Another carriage and a pair of riders had halted, the gentlemen and ladies watching without any show of discretion.

“Inform me of your direction in London, then, and I will join you there momentarily for private conversation.” He could not believe his own words. His heart beat so swiftly he could not think.

“Twenty-five Portman Street, number four.”

“You will meet me there in half an hour or I will hunt you down this time until I find you, Cornelia.”

“Yes. I promise.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Now go, Frank.”

Leam released the horse and let the carriage pass him by. He watched blankly as Hermes ran after it for a dozen yards, then in playful bounds returned to his side. He stared at the water in the Serpentine, coolly gray beneath the pale blue sky. Then he went to his horse, gave a coin to the lad who held it, and set off toward his past.

T
he apartment address Cornelia had given him was modest in appearance, but suitably proper. Leam made a quick perusal of the neat garments of the manservant who admitted him, and the well-appointed parlor into which he was taken to await his wife.

She did not make him wait long. Entering, she glanced at him, then went to the sideboard and poured a glass of sherry. With trembling hands she drank it all.

“Taken to the bottle in your absence?” He studied her. Without gloves, shawl, and hat, she looked much like the girl he had first met, but for the preylike hesitation in her blue eyes now.

“No. It is for my nerves.” She turned to him, pressing her hands into the sideboard behind her. “You are overset.”

“Come now. You would not have appeared to me like a ghost if you had not wished to make a dramatic effect.”

She threw herself toward the window, clutching the draperies and averting her face.

“I didn't know how to— I thought of all the ways I might …” She peeked over her shoulder, her golden lashes fluttering. “I was so anxious to see you, I did not know how to do it.”

“Where have you been, Cornelia?” He spoke evenly, an odd calm settling over him.

“Here and there.”

“Where in particular?”

“It does not matter anymore, does it? I am here now.”

“It matters quite a great deal to me.
Where?

She turned halfway to him, still gripping the curtains and her gaze darted to the bottle on the sideboard. “Italy.”

“Don't lie to me. You haven't any reason to now.”

She whirled about. “I
was
in Italy. For nearly three years.”

“And before that?”

“America. I hated it. I was glad to leave.”

“Who,” he said, “is keeping you?”

Her eyes went wide as saucers. “Keeping me?”

“Your lover, Cornelia. Your protector. Tell me his name.”

“Why?” she shot out. “So that you can—” She clamped her rosebud lips shut. “I haven't a lover.”

“Then who”—he gestured about him—“is maintaining you here? I do not recall my solicitor requesting that funds be sent to my dead wife lately.”

“Don't tease, Leam.” Her brow crinkled. “I never wished everybody to believe me dead. I swear I did not.”


Who
, Cornelia?”

“My parents!” She crumpled onto a chair, casting her face into her hands. “I ran away and they helped me flee.”

Leam swallowed back the cold in his throat.

“Your parents attended your funeral. Do your sisters and brothers also know you are still alive?”

She lifted eyes and cheeks glistening prettily with tears. “No. Only Mama and Papa. They were as frightened of what you might do to me as I.”

“They knew about your affair with my brother, then.”

Her lips trembled. She nodded. “What will you do now, Leam?”

His hands fisted, nails biting into his palms.

“For more than five years, Cornelia, you allowed me to believe you killed yourself. That I drove you to it.” He could no longer bear to look at her. He crossed to the sideboard and poured a brandy. Then when he had swallowed that, another.

“Taken to drinking in my absence, husband?”

The back of his neck prickled. The voice was petulant and harder than he had ever heard it. She was no longer a girl even if she looked like one.

“Who is in the Blackwood mausoleum, Cornelia?” He spoke with his back to her.

A moment's hesitation. “I don't know.”

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