Almost Heaven (33 page)

“The dog.”

“But you said you intended to stay here for at least a half year to get things in order.”

“Take her with you,” Ian had clipped out.

In that moment Duncan had understood what Ian was doing, and he’d feared it. “Ian, for the love of God, that dog worships you. Besides, she’ll be company for you up here.”

“Give her to the MacMurtys in Calgorin,” Ian snapped, and Duncan had reluctantly taken the unwilling dog with him. It had, in fact, taken a rope about the Labrador’s neck to make her leave him.

The following week the intrepid Shadow had found her way across the county and reappeared at the cottage.

Duncan had been there and had felt a lump of emotion in his throat when Ian resolutely refused to acknowledge the bewildered dog’s presence. The next day Ian himself had taken her back to Calgorin with Duncan. After Ian dined with the family, Shadow waited while Ian mounted his horse in the front yard, but when she’d started to follow him Ian had turned and harshly commanded her to stay.

Shadow had stayed because Shadow had never disobeyed a command of Ian’s.

Duncan had remained for several hours, and when he left, Shadow was still sitting in the yard, her eyes riveted on the bend in the road, her head tipped to the side, waiting, as if she refused to believe Ian actually meant to leave her there.

But Ian had never returned for her. It was the first time that Duncan had realized Ian’s mind was so powerful that it could completely override all his emotions when he wished. With calm logic Ian had irrevocably decided to separate himself from anything whose loss could cause him further anguish. Pictures of his parents and his sister had been carefully packed away, along with their belongings, into trunks, until all that remained of them was the cottage. And his memories.

Shortly after their death a letter from Ian’s grandfather, the Duke of Stanhope, had arrived. Two decades after disowning his son for marrying Ian’s mother, the Duke had written to him asking to make amends; his letter arrived three days after the fire. Ian had read it and thrown it away, as he had done with the dozens of letters that followed it during the last eleven years, all addressed to him. When wronged Ian was as unyielding, as unforgiving as the jagged hills and harsh moors that had spawned him.

He was also the most stubborn human being Duncan had ever known. As a boy Ian’s calm confidence, his brilliant mind, and his intractability had all combined to give his parents pause. As Ian’s father had once jokingly remarked of their gifted son, “Ian
permits
us to raise him because he loves us, not because he thinks we’re smarter than he is. He already knows we aren’t, but he doesn’t want to wound our sensibilities by saying so.”

Given all that, and considering Ian’s ability to coldly turn away from anyone who had wronged him, Duncan had little hope of softening Ian’s attitude toward his grandfather now – not when he couldn’t appeal to either Ian’s intellect or his affection in the matter. Not when the Duke of Stanhope meant far less to Ian than his Labrador had.

Lost in his own reflections, Duncan stared moodily into the fire, while across from him Ian laid aside his papers and watched him in speculative silence. Finally he said, “Since my cooking was no worse than usual, I assume there’s another reason for that ferocious scowl of yours.”

Duncan nodded, and with a considerable amount of foreboding he stood up and walked over to the fire, mentally phrasing his opening arguments. “Ian, your grandfather has written to me,” the vicar began, watching Ian’s pleasant smile vanish and his face harden into chiseled stone. “He has asked me to intercede on his behalf and to urge you to reconsider meeting with him.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Ian said, his voice steely.

“He’s your family,” Duncan tried again.

“My entire family is sitting in this room,” Ian bit out. “I acknowledge no other.”

“You’re his only living heir,” Duncan persisted doggedly.

“That’s his problem, not mine.”

“He’s dying, Ian.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I do believe him. Furthermore, if your mother were alive, she would beg you to reconcile with him. It crushed her all her life that he disowned your father for marrying her. I shouldn’t have to remind you that your mother was my only sister. I loved her, and if I can forgive the man for the hurt he dealt her by his actions. I don’t see why you can’t.”

“You’re in the business of forgiveness,” Ian drawled with scathing sarcasm. “I’m not. I believe in an eye for an eye.”

“He’s dying, I tell you.”

“And I tell you” – Ian enunciated each word with biting clarity – “I do not give a damn!”

“If you won’t consider accepting the title for yourself, do it for your father. It was
his
by right, just as it is your future son’s birthright. This is your last opportunity to relent, Ian. Your grandfather allowed me a fortnight to sway you before he named another heir. Your arrival here was delayed for a full fortnight. It may be too late already –”

“It was too late eleven years ago,” Ian replied with glacial calm, and then, while the vicar watched, Ian’s expression underwent an abrupt and startling transformation. The rigidity left his jaw, and he began sliding papers back into their case. That finished, he glanced at Duncan and said with quiet amusement, “Your glass is empty, Vicar. Would you like another?”

Duncan sighed and shook his head. It was over, exactly as Duncan had anticipated and feared. Ian had mentally slammed the door on his grandfather, and nothing would ever change his mind. When he turned calm and pleasant like this, Duncan knew from experience, Ian was irrevocably beyond reach. Since he’d already ruined his first night with his nephew, Duncan decided there was nothing to be lost by broaching another sensitive subject that was bothering him. “Ian, about Elizabeth Cameron. Her duenna said some things –”

That alarmingly pleasant yet distant smile returned to Ian’s face. “I’ll spare you further conversation, Duncan. It’s over,”

“The discussion or –”

“
All
of it.”

“It didn’t look over to me,” Duncan snapped, nudged to the edge by Ian’s infuriating calm. “That scene I witnessed –”

“You witnessed the end.”

He said that, Duncan noted, with the same deadly finality, the same amused calm with which he’d spoken of his grandfather. It was as if he’d resolved matters to his complete satisfaction in his own mind, and nothing and no one could ever invade the place where he put them to rest. Based on Ian’s last reaction to the matter of Elizabeth Cameron, she was now relegated to the same category as the Duke of Stanhope. Frustrated, Duncan jerked the bottle of brandy off the table at Ian’s elbow and splashed some into his glass, “There’s something I’ve never told you,” he said angrily.

“And that is?” Ian inquired.

“I
hate
it when you turn all pleasant and amused. I’d rather see you furious! At least then I know I still have a chance of reaching you.”

To Duncan’s boundless annoyance, Ian merely picked up his book and started reading again.

CHAPTER 15

“Ian, would you go out to the barn and see what’s keeping Elizabeth?” the vicar asked as he expertly turned a piece of bacon frying in the skillet. “I sent her out there fifteen minutes ago to bring in some eggs.”

Ian dumped an armload of wood beside the fireplace, dusted off his hands, and went searching for his house guest. The sight and sounds that greeted him when he reached the door of the barn halted him in his tracks. With her hands plunked upon her hips Elizabeth was glowering at the roosting hens, who were flapping and cackling furiously at her. “It’s not my fault!” she was exclaiming. “I don’t even
like
eggs. In fact, I don’t even like the
smell
of chickens.” As she spoke she started stealthily forward on tiptoe, her voice pleading and apologetic. “Now, if you’ll just let me have four, I won’t even eat any. Look,” she added, reaching forward toward the flapping hen, “I won’t disturb you for more than just one moment. I’ll just slide my hand right in there – ouch!” she cried as the hen pecked furiously at her wrist.

Elizabeth jerked her hand free, then swung around in mortification at Ian’s mocking voice: “You don’t really need her permission, you know,” he said, walking forward. “Just show her who’s master by walking right up there like this . . .”

And without further ado he stole two eggs from beneath the hen, who did not so much as
try
to attack him; then he did the same thing beneath two more hens. “Haven’t you ever been in a henhouse before?” Ian asked, noting with detached impartiality that Elizabeth Cameron looked adorable with her hair mussed and her face flushed with ire.

“No,” she said shortly. “I haven’t. Chickens stink.”

He chuckled. “That’s it, then. They sense how you feel about them – animals do, you know.”

Elizabeth slid him a swift, searching glance while an uneasy, inexplicable feeling of change hit her. He was smiling at her, even joking, but his eyes were blank. In the times they’d been together she’d seen passion in those golden eyes, and anger, and even coldness. But she’d never seen
nothing.

She wasn’t at all certain anymore how she wanted him to feel, but she was quite certain she didn’t like being looked at like an amusing stranger.

“Thank heaven!” said the vicar when they walked into the house. “Unless you like your bacon burned, you’d better sit down at the table while I fix these.”

“Elizabeth and I
prefer
burned bacon,” Ian said drolly. Elizabeth returned his lazy smile, but her unease was growing.

“Do you perchance play cards?” the vicar asked her when breakfast was nearly over.

“I’m familiar with some card games,” she replied.

“In that case, when Miss Throckmorton-Jones and Jake return, perhaps we could get up a game of whist one evening. Ian,” he added, “would you join us?”

Ian glanced around from pouring coffee at the stove and said with a mocking smile, “Not a chance.” Transferring his gaze to Elizabeth, he explained, “Duncan cheats.”

The absurd notion of a vicar cheating at cards wrung a musical laugh from Elizabeth. “I’m sure he doesn’t do anything of the sort.”

“Ian is quite right, my dear,” the vicar admitted, grinning sheepishly. “However, I never cheat when I’m playing against another person. I cheat when I play against the deck – you know, Napoleon at St. Helena.”

“Oh, that,” Elizabeth said, laughing up at Ian as he walked past her carrying his mug. “So do I.”

“But you do play whist?”

She nodded. “Aaron taught me to play when I was twelve, but he still trounces me regularly.”

“Aaron?” the vicar asked, smiling at her.

“Our coachman,” Elizabeth explained, always happy to speak of her “family” at Havenhurst. “I’m better at chess, however, which Bentner taught me to play.”

“And he is?”

“Our butler.”

“I see,” said the vicar, and something made him persevere. “Dominoes, by any chance?”

“That was Mrs. Bodley’s specialty,” Elizabeth told him with a smile. “Our housekeeper. We’ve played many times, but she takes it very seriously and has strategy. I can’t seem to get much enthusiasm over flat pieces of ivory with dots on them. Chess pieces, you know, are more interesting. They invite serious play.”

Ian finally added to the conversation. Sending his uncle an amused look, he explained, “Lady Cameron is a very wealthy young woman, Duncan, in case you haven’t guessed.” His tone implied that she was actually an overindulged, spoiled brat whose every wish had been fulfilled by an army of servants.

Elizabeth stiffened, not certain whether the insult she’d sensed had been intentional or even real, and the vicar looked steadily at Ian as if he disapproved of the tone of the comment, if not its content.

Ian returned his gaze dispassionately, but inwardly he was startled by his verbal thrust and genuinely annoyed with himself for making it. Last night he’d decided to no longer feel anything whatsoever for Elizabeth, and that decision was final. Therefore, it followed that it could make no difference to him that she was a pampered, shallow little aristocrat. Yet he’d deliberately baited her just now, when she’d done nothing whatsoever to deserve it other than sitting across the table looking almost outrageously alluring, with her hair tied at the nape with a bright yellow bow that matched her gown. So irritated with himself was he that Ian realized he’d lost the thread of their conversation.

“What sorts of games did you play with your brothers and sisters?” Duncan was asking her.

“I had only one brother, and he was away at school or off in London most of the time.”

“I imagine there were other children in the neighborhood however,” the vicar suggested kindly.

She shook her head, sipping her tea. “There were only a few cottagers, and none of them had children my age. Havenhurst was never properly irrigated, you see. My father didn’t think it was worth the expense, so most of our cottagers moved to more fertile ground.”

“Then who were your companions?”

“The servants mostly,” Elizabeth said. “We had grand times, however.”