Fascination -and- Charmed (7 page)

“But once my duties are discharged, there will be no impediment to my seeking a husband of my choice, d’you see. Then it will be no different than a man of means seeking the wife of his choice ... As men always have ... I’ll have the means myself ... d’you see ...?

“Men have always done it, haven’t they? Wealthy men?” Surely any reasonable man would understand. “Are you married?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think that if you were rich, you could easily find a wife who would please you?”

“It appears less and less likely.”

There was an altogether confusing inflection in his voice. And why was he watching her so strangely? “Anyway, Mr. Innes said I would be very well compensated for my efforts.”

His eyes narrowed even more. “A bargain. Your young life for an old man’s pleasure?”

Grace felt fuddled, and yes, more than a little unnerved. “Mr. Innes’s offer was sincerely made. He made it clear that all that is required of me is to care for the poor old man in his final days and to take care of his remaining earthly desires.”

He coughed and averted his face. “Mr. Innes explained all this to you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And he said you would soon be free.”

She frowned. “That is what I’m sure he implied.”

“You would not have considered coming here to marry a man who was not on his deathbed?”

“Oh, no!” Why would he ask such a question? “I’m sure that if he were young, he would not have been at all what I wanted in
that
kind of husband.”

“What, I wonder, would your kind of husband be?” The comment was evenly enough made, and Grace did not anticipate his next move. He reached out and caught an untidily trailing tendril of her hair between finger and thumb and tugged lightly. “No doubt you would want a man who told you often that you have the most glorious mass of pale blond hair he has ever seen.”

The careful pull on her hair spun a thread of intimacy between them. “The matter of a suitable husband will not be at all difficult,” she said.

He increased the pressure on her scalp, pulling her closer until she stood almost toe to toe with him, looking up. “Perhaps there is already a fortunate man waiting for you somewhere?”

“Absolutely not!” Grace tried to ease her hair from his fingers.

“So adamant.” Abandoning the tugging, he concentrated instead on smoothing her cheek with the back of a finger. With his thumb, he stroked her bottom lip. “I have no doubt that you would make a passionate wife for a young and virile man.”

Tingling warmth spread in Grace’s belly—and lower. “This seems an inappropriate conversation,” she told him, and heard the breathlessness in her voice. “I should return to my chamber.”

“Which chamber is that?”

“One with a silly name. The
Delilah
room, of all things.”

His hand fell to her shoulder like a stone, and his fingers closed on her neck. “Who put you there?” he asked sharply.

“Mr. McWallop,” she said, aware of the pressure of long, strong fingers at her throat. “Apparently there was none other anywhere near readiness. It is all purple and rather vulgar, but quite comfortable. This castle needs cleaning,” she finished uncertainly.

“You shall have a different room soon enough.” A white line formed around his compressed mouth.
“
No one
is supposed to enter that chamber. I ordered it locked.”

She did not imagine his anger. “I expect they forgot. In the morning I’ll mention your concerns to—”

“You will mention my concerns to no one. Not a soul. Do I make myself clear?”

Grace opened her mouth, but no sound came.

“You will not tell a soul that you came here tonight. Or that you saw me. Is that also clear?”

She nodded.

“Now you will leave.” He did not remove his hand from her neck. “But you will return tomorrow night at precisely the same time.”

“Could ... could I not come during the day?”

“You are never again to enter this room without my permission.”

“Perhaps the marquess would like me to look after it for him.”

“He would not.”

“But it would ease a burden for you, and—”

“It is unseemly for a female—particularly one in such a peculiar circumstance—to argue on such a matter.”

Grace found a little courage. “I think you would do well to remember who you’re speaking to. I am shortly to be your master’s wife, and as such, you will be
mine
to command.” She did not sound particularly courageous.

His touch gentled and slipped to her bare shoulder. He rubbed the sensitive skin there with his palm. “I will be
yours
to command?” A fresh smile made of his face a dark and devilish mask. “Tell me, Miss Wren, how will you know when you meet the man you wish to marry ... after the marquess’s death, of course?”

“That is simple,” she said, defiantly shrugging free and slipping past him. “I shall
feel
it, sir, as I feel anything that matters to me.”

“And how will this momentous event feel?”

Grace backed away toward the door. “It will feel full of love. I will feel the man’s love for me with my heart and soul.”

“And you will never doubt that his love is for you rather than for the enormous wealth you plan to command?”

“No doubt at all!” she told him triumphantly. “Because he will not know I have money until
after
he has declared his love. And
I
will love him.”

“This love is essential?”

“It is everything.”

“A pretty notion.” He put his hands on his hips beneath his coat. “But at least we know there is no misunderstanding in what you intend to do at Kirkcaldy. You intend to
use
the marquess, just as he intends to use you. And that is quite fair, do you not agree?”

Every word he spoke felt like a trap, although she could not guess why that should be so. “I agree.”

“And what if the marquess
lingers
on somewhat longer than you anticipate?”

She chewed the inside of her cheek. “Then I shall simply have to make the best of it.”

“Perhaps you could consider turning to another who is, as you have already suggested, very like you. Time might pass quite pleasantly in the company of one with whom you share so much.”

He was offering her companionship.
Friendship!

Grace brightened. “You really are very perceptive and forward-thinking for a man.” Her more favorable impressions of him had been correct. “Of course. That is a perfectly wonderful idea. I accept and I intend to enjoy every moment of our time together. Thank you.”

“You seem certain there will be no problem with such an arrangement.”

“None at all, thanks to you. You are by way of making me an offer of ...
friendship,
are you not?”

His brows raised. “It would seem that I am.”

“I scarcely comprehend such immediate good fortune, but I feel that you and I will be a great comfort to one another.” Reaching the open door, she paused. “Until tomorrow night, then, when I may surprise you with my ingenuity.”

“What man would not look forward to such an occasion?”

“Only one with water in his veins and no passion in his soul. Clearly you suffer no such affliction. Tomorrow I will show you that within this simple body of mine lies an innovative imagination. I will show you things you have never experienced before. And I hope you may offer of yourself with equal disregard for what our dull, tiresome society regards as acceptable.”

He mumbled something she could not hear.

“What did you say?”

“I said, Godspeed you back to your chamber ... And Godspeed the hours until tomorrow night.”

“A mighty, monstrous excess.”

Kirkcaldy.

So had Arran’s father described the place—and his father before him.

Arran planted his feet, pushed the brim of his shapeless woolen hat up from his eyes, and squinted against the late afternoon wind. The turrets and towers of the fortress that had been his family’s home for three centuries scarred a gray sky like dark, mocking fingers.

Mighty, yes. Marvelous—yes. Monstrous? Perhaps. And only excessive in its insolent beauty.

He loved Kirkcaldy.

In the early hours of the morning, the hours after his encounter with Miss Grace Wren, Arran had felt, almost as never before, the weight of his responsibility for his home and his people. As he should have known would be the case, a day spent as most of his days were, on the land—with those people—had renewed his determination to remain accountable for both.

The day had also fueled a bone-deep weariness. Even a strong man grew tired of standing alone. Arran smiled bitterly. Did the longing for love—whatever that might be—ever completely die? The answer was of no moment. For the Marquess of Stonehaven, there would be no trusted lover. Experience had taught him not to expect to share his life with a woman who would want him if he were not a nobleman with vast wealth.

“Och, there ye are,” Robert Mercer said, arriving at Arran’s side and clapping him between the shoulder blades. “I didna see ye go. Will ye no take a bannock fresh from the hearth with us, Niall?” Tenant son of tenant forefathers, with a history as long as Arran’s on this land, Robert never failed to ask the man he trusted, but did not know, to break bread with his young family.

Arran ducked his head and wiped a heavily gloved hand over his grimy face. “My thanks, Robert, but I’ll away home.” The manner of speech slipped to his tongue as easily as the rough peasant clothes fitted his big body—as easily as he became “Niall” to pass among the souls who found their living on his estates.

He loved these people. They were simple and warm and generous—and their future was his trust as surely as had they been his children. The lords of Stonehaven had all had their faults, but they had never skirted responsibility for their tenants.

“Things go well with ye?” Robert asked. The invitations to share the Mercers’ table were never pressed, although Arran always heard hope in the other man’s voice. “Your place weathered the winter?”

Again Arran glanced toward the castle. “Aye. Well enough. It’s stout.” Robert had no knowledge of where the tall man with long, wild hair spent the hours after he disappeared from the fields and forests of Kirkcaldy, and had long ago ceased to ask. “How are Gael and the little one?” Arran added.

Robert shifted at his side. Yet in his twenties, he was straight-backed and fair with brown eyes that looked at a man direct. “There’ll be another bairn afore long,” he said, flushing slightly. “I’d have wished my Gael stronger first. God forgive me, it’s too soon.”

Arran heard fear and self-recrimination in Robert’s voice—and deep love for his tiny, red-haired wife. “Ye’re but a man,” he said, floundering. He looked at his own scuffed but sturdy boots. “Ye’ve plenty of good food? And your place is sound?”

“Aye, Niall.” There was a hollowness. “Mr. Innes never fails to make certain o’ that. A miracle, he is. We all say as much. He seems t’know our needs almost as soon as we know them oursel’.”

The system worked well, Arran thought with satisfaction. He told Calum what needed to be done, and Calum dispatched what was necessary—to the occasional confusion of the estate’s commissioner. Hector MacFie was a good man, but the fewer who knew of Niall’s existence, the better. “Take heart, Robert,” Arran said. “Take heart.”

“A man ought to be more for the woman who gives him her life,” Robert murmured. “I’d be naught without my Gael.”

“She’ll do well enough,” Arran said, awkwardly settling a hand on the other’s shoulder. “And she’d not do other than carry your bairn within her. Away, home t’her, Robert. Tell her I’ve a small treat I’m planning to bring soon.”

“Ye’re so good. Have ye no—?” Robert closed his mouth, but the unasked questions hung between them. Had Arran no one to love, no one to give meaning to his life? Where did he go when he left this place? Why did he come and go like some great, solid apparition?

Arran only fastened his gaze on his castle, his empty castle, which he must find a way to keep from the evil, grasping hands of his cousin—just as he must ensure that Mortimer Cuthbert never controlled the fate of the tenants of Kirkcaldy.

“I’ll bid ye good day, then, Niall,” Robert said. “Thank ye, friend. I’d have taken two days t’mend that wagon without ye. I’ll tell Gael of your treat. Mayhap it’ll make her smile.”

Robert swung away and loped downhill from the knoll where Arran still stood. He watched until the straight, blond hair and flapping coat sank from view.

A poor man who worked the earth with his hands. A man for whom music was an old harp crudely played beside a smoking peat fire while he and his neighbors sang the simple songs they’d learned at their parents’ knees. That was Robert Mercer. Yet Robert Mercer had no need to search out a strange female to bear his child, a strange female who would take him to her bed for her own selfish ends ... as selfish as those of Arran Rossmara, Marquess of Stonehaven. Robert Mercer’s fragile little wife would bear his children no matter the cost to herself, and would do so in love.

Grace Wren, if she eventually produced an heir to all that Arran saw before him, would not do so willingly.

Anger drove his fists together. Were all so-called gentle-women shallow, ambitious adventuresses?

Grace Wren welcomed the friendship of a man who was neither father nor brother nor any other kind of relation. They both knew what manner of friendship that was to be.

When she discovered who he really was, she would hate him, and so much the better. Her hatred would make it easier for Arran to feel no remorse over his side of a loveless match.

He turned his back on the way Robert had taken and strode toward the hidden mount that would take him to his castle ... and he remembered Isabel, and the black night that made him what he was today.

Wedded to his music.

Bonded to his inheritance.

The keeper of his own heart and soul, and invulnerable to the wiles of any woman.

March winds were wild upon the hills this year. By the time Arran reached his horse—sheltered in dense forest—tree limbs whipped and creaked before a growing storm, and his boots stirred the rising scent of wet and rotting leaves.