Highlander Undone (5 page)

Addie colored, not the fresh pink stain of a flustered belle, but a wave of deep rose flooding her gold-glazed cheeks. “Lady Merritt overstates my influence. But whatever aid I might render, I shall gladly extend.”

It would be completely unscrupulous to allow her to do so. His plan had been to fade into the background of her brother’s studio, to be an innocuous and unremarked presence there, not to be the recipient of her championship or inveigle himself into her life and use it to spy on her brother’s clients. The very idea was offensive. And impossible to refuse.

It was a better opportunity to uncover clues as to the traitor’s identity than he’d anticipated. She was bound to converse with the officers having their portraits painted. He could become part of those conversations. Steer them.

Men had died. He owed them his every effort, no matter if it cost him his honor, his soul, his heart.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hoodless.”

P
lease, won’t you be seated, Mr. Cameron?” Addie asked, trying to comfort the obviously uncomfortable gentleman. Though there had been occasional flashes of wit from him, he was clearly not accustomed to putting himself forward amongst strangers. She read the tension underlying his urbane demeanor in the paling of his face, the trembling of his hand.

Lady Merritt and Wheatcroft had left them alone on the terrace as Lady Merritt went off to attend some domestic matter.

In reply, Jack—as Addie found herself thinking of him—relaxed his grip on the back of the chair. His gaze skittered nervously over her, but he smiled politely enough before dropping heavily into the settee across from her, his long legs sprawled, reminding her of Ted, who adopted just such an insouciant attitude when most uneasy.

“I’m certain Lady Merritt will rejoin us soon.”

Jack merely nodded and she subsided into silence, content to study him as he, in turn, stared out the window. A soft smile of pleasure suddenly curved his firm mouth.

“Do you enjoy horticulture, Mr. Cameron?” she asked, eager for a topic of conversation that would put him at ease.

“Yes,” he said, turning toward her. “My mother was an avid, if frustrated, gardener. As all gardeners in the Highlands are,” he added wryly.

“Your mother?”

“She died when I was a lad.”

“I’m sorry.”

His smile was gentle with memory. “I have inherited her appreciation for gardens if not her determination to wrest one from Highland rock.”

“Determination is perhaps overrated,” Addie said softly, her thoughts spiraling uncontrollably toward Charles’s grim resolve to bend everything and everyone to his will. “Those gardeners who accept nature rather than confine her to a plan often produce more interesting results than their more restrictive counterparts.”

She looked up and found herself being watched. His gaze was compelling, direct, and something more intense. She had the sudden feeling that he knew exactly what she meant, that he’d somehow divined the history behind her simple opinion and that it angered him. It was unnerving.

It was also unsettling. Addie had too much experience with anger. Involuntarily, she shrank back in her seat. Immediately, the brilliance bled from Jack’s blue gaze, leaving it once more placid.

“I am in agreement with you, ma’am,” he said in his charmingly accented voice. “Unfortunately, my opinion is not based on any aesthetic considerations.”

“On what do you form your opinion, then?” Addie asked curiously.

“Pure, unmitigated sloth. Grappling with vines and topiaries and hedges is such a Herculean endeavor.” He fanned himself theatrically with that riotously colored kerchief. “Much better to let nature run amok and then accept praise for one’s
avant-garde
approach.”

She laughed at his folly and won a spontaneous grin from him. He looked so harmless lounging there, his hand flapping the puff of silk, his eyelids drooping, that Addie began to doubt whether she had, indeed, seen fire in his gaze.

Jack tucked the silk back into the breast pocket of his atrociously ill-fitting jacket. Poor lamb, thought Addie, having pretensions toward fashionable elegance without the wherewithal to pursue it. He was absolutely gorgeous—there was simply no other word for him. But his clothing . . . ! Once more he seemed to read her mind, for he gave her a wry, self-deprecating smile.

Impulsively, Addie rose and went to join him on the settee. “You must beware, you know.”

“Beware?”

“You are going to be used quite ruthlessly.”

“I am?”

Addie nodded sagely. “You, I suspect, are to be the opening salvo in a campaign that has been forming for over a decade.”

“Indeed?”

Addie frowned at yet another
cursory
reply. The man’s verbal abilities seemed to have been cut off the moment she’d moved to sit beside him—Addie’s eyes widened. Why, she flustered him!

As far as Addie could remember she had never flustered anyone in her entire adult life. It was a heady sensation, somehow empowering, and deep within her an impish remnant of the young vixen she’d once been urged her to test her newly suspected power. She forced the mischievous impulse away.

Instead, she laid a reassuring hand on Jack’s sleeve. The muscles
beneath the cloth, surprisingly hard and unyielding, flinched beneath
her fingertips. He shifted uncomfortably on the seat, crossing his legs
and rearranging the hem of his long velvet jacket over his lap.

“You were saying, Mrs. Hoodless?”

“Ah, yes. The War. Lord and Lady Merritt have had an ongoing battle for years, their son Evan being the contested ground, if you’ll excuse my use of the military metaphor.”

“Not at all. My family has military connections going back for generations. My father was an officer.”

She frowned. More and more she found things they had in common. She could just about guess how a family of bloodletters would respond to finding an artist in their ranks. Particularly an artist without a mother to shield him.

“But please continue, Mrs. Hoodless,” he said. “I’m all atwitter to discover how such a poor specimen as myself might be used as artillery in a domestic war. Does Lady Merritt mean to hurl me from her townhouse roof upon her unsuspecting spouse?”

He blinked so innocently that once more Addie laughed. “No. I fear your part is much more enigmatic. You are to be sprung on the unsuspecting Cuthbert the first time he opens his mouth to pontificate on ‘pursuits fitting a real man.’ You are not at all what he has assumed—unless you toss cabers and dispatch wolves with your bare hands. Lord Merritt has depicted you as a tree-hurling, hairy-legged behemoth—”

Abruptly, her hands flew to cover her face, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Legged? Had she actually said “leg” to a complete stranger? Good Lord! He must think her a veritable romp.

She peeped at Jack from between her fingers. He was smiling, pleasure lighting his elegant features. He was made for smiles, the tiny lines radiating in a sunburst of amusement from the corners of his brilliant eyes, twin dimples scoring his lean cheeks.

Without a trace of self-consciousness, he leaned forward and gently dragged her hand down. His touch was oddly galvanizing, awakening a firestorm of conflicting sensations: fear, longing,
curiosity
. “I won’t tell.”

“Tell what?” Addie asked, pulling her hands from his. His eyes narrowed in perplexity as her fingers fluttered nervously in her lap. She couldn’t help it.

“I’ve heard the word before,” he stage-whispered, ignoring her discomfiture. “At least twice.”

He was teasing her, she realized. No one ever teased her anymore—except for Ted who, as her brother, saw it as more or less his obligation. The impulse to respond in kind would not be gainsaid.

“
‘Heard’ the word, indeed.” She sniffed haughtily. “I suppose you account yourself very raffish because of it.”

He nodded complacently.

“But have you actually ever said it?”

He leaned forward. On any other man his expression would be wolfish. But she considered his leer far too self-conscious to be taken seriously. “Leg.”

She recoiled in mock indignation.

He leaned closer still. “Leg.”

She feigned a gasp but her attention was elsewhere. This close, she could see the soft thicket of his lashes, the smooth, clean texture of his skin, and was teased by a wild impulse to touch him. Madness.

“Leg!” he pronounced with delicious deliberation.

She fanned her face frantically with her hand. “Desist, sir, I beg you! I cannot withstand such an assault on my sensibilities. You artists are a reprobate lot!”

The wicked grin froze on his handsome face. He scowled as though considering some momentous decision and, lifting his head, took a deep breath.

“I am not an artist,” he said. His tone made his words a confession. He held her gaze with a deep, level one of his own.

“I know,” she said.

“You do?”

“Yes.” She nodded then, breaching the distance between them, and gently captured his right hand. She turned it over and, with her forefinger, gently traced the ridges and scars that marred the tensile, sculpted beauty of his fingers and palm. “Paintbrushes don’t leave cuts, and a palette doesn’t raise calluses such as these. You have a workman’s hands, Mr. Cameron.” He stared at their joined hands, his large one quiescent in her much smaller one, but didn’t say a word.

“Mr. Morris has spent years trying to achieve for the craftsman’s work the same degree of esteem garnered by an academy artist’s piece. What do you work in? Stone? Wood?”

She studied the broad slash of a white scar on his hand. A thick coil of her hair, loosened when she had donned the “Liberty” gown, had worked free of the chignon and fell across his hand. Hesitantly, delicately, he rubbed the strands between his fingertips.

She turned her head in order to repeat her question and caught on his face an unguarded expression of hopelessness. Immediately, he let her hair slide free of his fingers, as though worried that he’d overstepped the bounds of propriety.

He had, of course. But his gesture had seemed so guileless she could not have taken offense. His look of concern was all out of proportion to his simple breach of decorum.

“I know this is unconscionably presumptuous of me, but given your awareness of my other all-too-obvious social liabilities,” she said with a small smile, “perhaps you won’t be too shocked at what I am about to say.”

He inclined his head.

“It might appear that my offer of social support was said casually, a whim. I assure you, I do not act on whims anymore.”

She had his attention now. “I feel a certain sympathy toward your untried position—not only amongst the
ton
, but amongst your fellow artisans. I would not be averse to easing your way where I could.”

“You are too kind, ma’am,” he said uncomfortably.

She scowled in frustration. Each year social etiquette grew more punishingly rigid. It was nigh impossible to say what one actually meant anymore, to distinguish courtesy from intent in “polite” conversation.

Addie had had enough of masks. She would say what she meant, society’s rules be damned.

“Let me be frank. I can help you. You look to need friends. Particularly as Mr. Morris might not be in London this Season. It is one of his latest affectations, to disregard society’s calendar. Without his support, you might flounder.”

She felt herself flush beneath his careful scrutiny. For an instant Addie wondered if she might have misjudged the man but then realized that she was prepared to take the chance. And that alone felt good. It had been a long time since Addie had taken any chances . . . let alone a chance on a man.

“We are being frank, Mrs. Hoodless?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What do you get out of this arrangement?”

Well! That was frank, indeed! She started to bite at her nail but, executing her new determination, she forced herself to calmly face him. He looked quite ill at ease . . .

Dear God, did he think she was ensconcing him as her . . . her . . .
cicisbeo
? If she weren’t so adept at control, she would burst into hysterical laughter. At least in this she could ease his mind by telling him the simple truth.

“I will, I hope, gain a friend, Mr. Cameron. It has been years since I was in London for a Season. I confess to being somewhat apprehensive and, worse yet, suspect that my brother’s pleas for my support have less to do with any real need on his part than with his concern for my . . . reclusive state. But were I to feel I could actually help someone, perhaps the discomfort I anticipate might not seem so overwhelming.”

“You want a project? A diversion?” Lord, he was frank!

“Yes. I suppose you might see it like that,” she murmured. Such bluntness made her suggestion sound unpleasant.

He was silent a moment, considering her words. “And what if I should make a poor project?”

“As I am not familiar with your work, I have no expectations. And having no expectations, you cannot disappoint me.” She could not help the bitterness in her tone. But it was a milder bitterness than she was accustomed to feeling.

“I doubt I am worthy of so munificent an offer.” She would have suspected sarcasm, but the words, so oddly emphasized, so overstated, held not the slightest trace of insincerity.

“I will be as direct as you, Mr. Cameron.” She took a deep breath before plunging on. “I believe I may need you, as much as I suspect you may need me.”

“Then Mrs. Hoodless,” he said in an odd voice, “I am yours.”