Imposter Bride (22 page)

His frank reply caught Lady Auliffe completely by
surprise. She stared at him, and then her fan came out, fluttering
furiously. “Young man, really!” she gasped.

He didn’t seem embarrassed. “I thank you for the
invitation for this evening,” he began, “but I see that I should
not have come.”

“Ian!” Sophie protested, furious with him now that
he intended to take his leave before she could say anything more to
him. Didn’t he care? Didn’t he want to know what was troubling her?
And why was he treating her as a child, as if she had little
command of herself?

He threw a hard glance at her and then addressed the
older woman. “And I promise that I shall not further endanger
Katherine’s reputation.”

“I knew there was something going on between you two
the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“I would not dream of ruining Katherine’s chances of
a good marriage. Please accept my deepest apology.”

Lady Auliffe snapped shut her fan and regarded him
frostily. “Accepted.”

“Thank you.” He gave a curt bow. Then he turned to
Sophie.

“Your servant,” he said, bowing again and avoiding
her glance. She wanted to grab him, shake him, and tell him that he
was making the biggest mistake of his life. But she could do
nothing but watch him stride away toward the din and light of the
ballroom.

Sophie sank against the balustrade, her heart
breaking, her shoulders slumping with disappointment and
frustration.

“You can’t love him.” Lady Auliffe watched him go.
“You simply cannot.”

“Didn’t you make a love match?” Sophie retorted,
trying not to cry.

“Yes, but after I wed a fortune first.”

“I don’t care about money!”

“Then you are a fool.” Her grandmother finally
looked at her, and Sophie could tell that she was not as angry as
she had seemed at first. “At least Ramsay has the sense to bow
out.”

“I don’t care about sense!”

“You care nothing for anything, is that it?”

“Not anymore.” Sophie didn’t care how petulant she
sounded. Her heart was aching. Ian Ramsay had just abandoned her to
the wolves. Obviously, her blossoming love meant nothing to him. He
thought of her as a girl, not a woman. He’d made that plain
enough.

Lady Auliffe swept forward and put her arm around
Sophie’s shoulders. “My dear, you have much to learn about the way
the world works.” She hugged her gently. “And you will thank your
Mr. Ramsay one day for looking out for you.”

“He’s heartless.”

“As he told you, he’s a realist.”

Sophie sighed. Had Lady Auliffe heard everything?
Seen everything?

“But you must never see him again. Do you
understand?”

“Yes.” She slowly straightened and clenched her jaw.
“I understand.”

That night Sophie couldn’t sleep. All she could
think about was the kiss she and Ramsay had shared on the veranda,
the way he had looked at her, talked to her. She couldn’t let the
man she loved walk out of her life, not without telling him the
truth. It wasn’t right that he should turn away from the love that
had assuredly sprung up between them. Something must be holding him
back, something from his mysterious past, and she had a right to
know what it was. She was not a child. She was a woman. And she
would fight for the love she felt for this man.

That night, lying abed in the opulent chamber whose
vastness only served to intensify her loneliness, Sophie decided
she would go to Ramsay’s townhouse tomorrow and tell him outright
that she loved him, no matter how improper it was. She would
confess to her real identity, no matter what consequences she must
face. Ian was more important to her than any amount of sheen on her
reputation, more important than her escape from London. Even if he
turned his back on her, it would be better than living this life of
pretense where no one knew her for her real self. All this lying
was eating her up inside. She had to take the risk.

At the sound of the familiar curt rap at his office
door, Ramsay looked up to find Puckett unusually flustered.

“Yes, Puckett?”

“You have a visitor,” he said, looking to the side
as if that was hint enough to take the mystery out of his odd
behavior.

“Well?” Ramsay waved him away, still busy with his
accounts. “Show him in.”

“It’s a lady, sir.”

Lady? Ramsay rose out of habit, wondering if Sophie
had decided to challenge his hard won personal policy of silence.
It would be like her to try to cajole him out of his decision, but
he would remain firm, no matter what she did in an attempt to
change his mind. He was surprised and somewhat disappointed when
Lady Auliffe swept into the room.

“What an ungodly amount of stairs!” she
exclaimed.

“Madam, had I known—”

“Tish!” She waved the air with a gloved hand. “‘Twas
good exercise.”

Ramsay strode forward to help her to a chair, amazed
that a woman, whom he guessed must be in her seventies, had climbed
the three flights of stairs and still had breath enough to
speak.

“You are remarkable, your ladyship,” he said.

“Thank you.” She sank into a chair near his desk
while he walked to the fire, giving himself a few moments to review
the possibilities for this unusual visit. Either the woman was here
to bribe him to stay away from her granddaughter, or she had come
to threaten to run him out of town if he showed himself to
Katherine again. Either possibility enraged him, mostly because he
had been in a turmoil ever since he’d left Sophie the night before,
and was angry at the entire world, but especially at himself.

He could still see Sophie’s crestfallen face, could
still feel the sharp pang of self-loathing for selfishly accepting
her kisses and her regard, and then turning his back on her—and
more than that, for being guilty of wickedly manipulating her
future. Far too soon would come the day he must renounce her to the
world, to bring her down in everyone’s eyes in order to ruin the
English family that had destroyed his own. More and more he turned
his thoughts from that day, a moment he once had savored and
dreamed of, a fantasy of triumph that had kept him going for twenty
years.

He was a bastard. A confused and bitter bastard.
Seeing Sophie float down those stairs the night before, startlingly
beautiful in the apricot-colored satin and cloud of lace, he’d
realized he’d been the biggest fool in the world to let her go, to
give her over to the English society he despised and to which she
belonged no more than he did.

He would make no promises to stay away, not to
snobby Lady Auliffe or to anyone else for that matter. The only
promise he would make would be to himself: to forget what was
better left behind him and press onward. He couldn’t have Sophie
Vernet and Highclyffe at the same time. The two were inextricably
exclusive. Damnably coupled. And so he would give her up and all
thoughts of her as well.

When Ramsay judged himself capable of decent
interaction with another human being, he turned from the fire. “To
what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“To curiosity,” she replied bluntly.

“In regard to what?”

“You. And what my granddaughter finds so
irresistible about you.”

“She’s young and impressionable.”

“She is smart and discerning. I rather doubt she
would place her affections on someone undeserving.” Lady Auliffe
steadily regarded him. “Which makes me even more curious about
you.”

“Is that why you invited me to the ball?”

“Partly. And to see if you would come.”

“You can’t be pleased that I accepted.” He watched
her, unsure of her motivation. “Not after last night.”

“Not entirely. It gave me a chance to see you in
action.”

“I had no idea I was so fascinating.” He crossed his
arms and leaned against the edge of his desk, highly suspicious of
the direction of the conversation, but not about to change the
subject until he knew the woman’s frame of mind.

“Oh you are fascinating. And such a mystery.” She
snapped open her fan. “I daresay, Captain Ramsay, that no one in
London knows much about you.”

“I prefer it that way.”

“Obviously you do. But I wonder, why the clouded
past?”

“Clouded past?”

“Oh yes. I’ve looked into your affairs, does that
shock you?

“Not at all.” Ramsay kept his voice level, when all
the while he felt like leaping up and throttling the woman. Yet he
had expected to be grilled, especially after having kept Sophie at
his house for so many days. Any concerned guardian would have done
a certain amount of investigation into the character of Miss Hinds’
host.

“However, there wasn’t much to find out. Only that
you’ve been a very busy young man.”

“‘
Tis no shame to do a day’s work
in the colonies.”

“And now you’re the owner of one of the most
exclusive gambling houses in London. A feat to be sure at the age
of thirty and no family money.”

“Again. Hard work.”

“Financed by a fortune gained in the shipping
business. Your own, in Boston?”

“Ship masts and tar, madam.”

“And what a surprise.” She raised a brow. “To learn
that one could make a fortune in such things!”

“Until all ships are ironclads, madam, my business
shall turn a handsome profit.”

“And before that, when still barely weaned, a
distinguished military career in Canada and the colonies—however
misplaced your loyalties.”

“My loyalties do not necessarily lie parallel to
yours,” he replied. “I’m an American.”

“Are you?”

Her question sent a chill down his spine. How much
did she really know?

“As to that,” she continued at his silence, “your
childhood history was wholly unremarked.”

“As most childhoods are,” he retorted brusquely,
enraged by her nosing into his past. “What do you care for
mine?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Puckett step
forward.

“May I get you a refreshment, Lady Auliffe?”

Ramsay was thankful for the interruption, timed he
knew, to give him a chance to recover his composure. He jerked
himself away from his desk.

“She will have a claret,” Ramsay stated, recalling
the drink Lady Auliffe had favored at his town house.

“How observant of you,” she purred.

“And you, sir?”

“A strong coffee.” He set his jaw. “Thank you, Mr.
Puckett.”

They both watched his assistant bustle out of the
office, and then Lady Auliffe sat back in her chair. “Perhaps you
are aware of my upcountry residence?” she asked, pulling off her
gloves. Did she intend to stay much longer? Good Lord, he hoped
not.

“No, ma’am.”

“‘
Tis near the Firth of Clyde. Near
Loch Lemond.”

“Lake Lemond?” he put in, pretending he was
unfamiliar with the area.

“Yes. Wild country, which I have come to love
dearly.”

“I’ve heard about Scotland. I hope to travel there
someday soon.”

“Yes.” She gave him a measured glance. “When I
married a second time back in the forties, to Lord Auliffe, he took
me to Loch Lemond for our honeymoon. I’d never been there
before.”

“I assume you had a pleasant holiday.” He tried not
to sound impatient.

“Unfortunately, it was bad timing on his part.”

Ramsay felt his heart sinking, and he had a mind to
tell her that he was much too busy with business to hear the
ramblings of an old woman, but he held his tongue, out of respect
for her, and out of sheer morbid curiosity. “And why was that?” he
croaked.

“There was an uprising. Just across the lake, at a
place called Highclyffe. It was a Scottish stronghold, I was told,
and it fell to the English just as we arrived.”

“You were endangered?”

“No, but we saw the lord of that place hung by the
neck. An Alec MacMarrie. A travesty. A horrible travesty.”

Ramsay felt the blood rushing from his head, felt
his chest pressing in on him. What was this lady’s intention? To
see him collapse at her feet? To make him admit that he’d seen
everything she had witnessed and more? To make him cry out that she
was right, he wasn’t an American by birth, that he was going to
dupe her and ruin every Englishman he could get his hands on? He
tried to think of something to say, something to stop her,
something to show that he cared nothing for her story. But he
couldn’t utter a sound.

“MacMarrie was tall, raven-haired, proud.” She
glanced at the fire as if seeing him in her mind’s eye. “The most
handsome man I’d ever laid eyes upon.” She glanced back to him.
“You are so like him, ‘tis uncanny.”

“‘
Twas long ago.” Ramsay swallowed.
“Your memory is likely skewed.”

She studied him, as if gauging his reaction to her
comparison. “I’ve heard the Scots are a passionate race.”

“Have you?”

“And that we English are cold and unfeeling. Would
you agree, Mr. Ramsay?”

“I don’t make such sweeping generalizations,
ma’am.”

“Do you not?” She smiled, but the expression held
more sadness than amusement. “Then you are not like the rest of
us.”

He looked down, shamed once more by her words. He
was more guilty than most for doing just that, lumping all
Englishmen together, and damning them for the slaughter in his
homeland. Was that the moral of her story? Or had she come to tell
him of his father, to compare that lord’s looks to his own.

“Perhaps that is the quality Katherine admires in
you,” she ventured. “Your far-reaching sensitivities.”

“I rather doubt it.”

The door opened and Puckett bustled in with a tray.
Ramsay had never been more relieved in his life to see the small
wiry man. Lady Auliffe’s words had been far too close for comfort.
“Your claret has arrived,” he said.

Lady Auliffe accepted the drink offered to her by
Puckett and then waited until he reluctantly left the room.