Lost in Your Arms (25 page)

“No!” Enid leaped to her feet, and in a low, intense voice, said, “I won’t wait here for them to kill you. We’re going to flush them out.”

“Good idea, Mrs. MacLean,” Harry drawled sarcastically. “Any idea how?”

Lifting her chin, she smiled coldly. “We’re going to hold MacLean’s funeral.”

MacLean stared at her.

Harry stared at her.

She stared back at them, chin tilted, mouth compressed.

Harry slapped his knee and crowed. “Blast me, Mrs. MacLean, that’s brilliant!”

“Brilliant,” MacLean said quietly. “Or at least—half brilliant.”

Now Harry and Enid stared at him.

“On the day of the funeral—”

“Day after tomorrow,” Harry declared. When MacLean
and Enid turned on him, he shrugged. “Why wait?”

MacLean inclined his head. “Why, indeed? On the day of the funeral, you’ll declare that I begged to be buried with my sporran. You’ll explain that everything valuable to me resided therein. Of course, since my sporran was in the explosion, the leather clasp was fried shut . . .”

Eyes alight, Harry said, “You’ll wear it in the coffin, and when our villain tries to take it off of you—”

“No. This is foolish. This is dangerous.” Enid leaned toward MacLean. “I want the villain to think you’re dead so he’ll leave you alone. If you’re already dead, no one will try and shoot you.”

MacLean leaned toward Enid. “Lass, you’re assuming the villain is an Englishman, someone who’ll go away and never return. But it could be a Scotsman, and anyway, that’s not the way these people work. They buy people. They hire people. They watch, and they wait. The only way I can be free of this threat is to reveal the villain and give his superiors reason to believe I know their names—and that I have passed those names on to others.”

Their heads were almost touching; they spoke in furious, hushed voices.

“You’ll be lying in a coffin and vulnerable to attack,” she said.

“No one’s going to attack a dead man, but the spy will steal from a corpse if he thinks he can keep that list of agents out of English hands.”

“But you won’t really have the list. They’ll send someone else after you.”

“Perhaps, but we’ll have captured the one agent, and perhaps to save his life we can convince him to confess.” MacLean gazed into Enid’s drawn, anxious face. “You know I’m right. You know this is what I have to do.”

Enid looked at him, then slowly drew back. “I know. You’re right. Do what you have to do.” Under her breath, she added, “And I’ll do what I have to do.”

Chapter 25

“Poor Lady Bess.” With a pathos that broke Enid’s heart, Graeme MacQuarrie wiped a tear off his cheek with his sleeve. “I’ve ne’er seen a woman so distraught. She won’t leave the MacLean’s side, won’t let any of us take the death watch.”

“Aye.” Jimmy MacGillivray stood and stared up the stairs. “Poor lady. To lose her daughter in such a manner, and when she finds her son again, to ha’e him die—” His voice cracked.

What a long, dreadful day it had been! Enid could scarcely bear to watch the men as they tried to deal with their grief. And the women, with their eternal weeping—they were driving her crazy. She wanted to shout, to tell the wretched women and grieving men that MacLean was fine. He had merely spent the day hiding in his bedchamber. On the morrow he would climb, under his own power, into his coffin and lie in wait for the traitor to reveal himself. But to tell the
truth would ruin her entire splendid plan—and it was splendid.

Although she despised MacLean’s part of the plan. He dismissed the danger; she knew very well that a man who impersonated a corpse could be murdered before he opened his eyes.

“Last night when he complained o’ a pain in his gut an’ sought his bed early, I suspected trooble. That lad is ne’er ill.” Donaldina had helped Lady Bess hide the truth from the others. Now she played the drama for all it was worth. “An’ this morning, when Lady Bess went up t’ check on him, her scream fair chilled my blood.”

“Th’ poor dear master. I’ll ne’er forget th’ sight o’ him on that bed, all cold an’ white.” The serving girl dropped her head into her hands and wept.

He was white because Lady Bess had applied a careful coat of powder on his cheeks. The cosmetics wouldn’t have stood up to a vigorous scrutiny, but Lady Bess had proved her worth as an actress. As Enid had gone to the bedside, Lady Bess had flung herself about in a frenzy of grief and commanded the center of attention.

The people who had crowded into MacLean’s bedchamber had held their breath as they’d awaited Enid’s confirmation. She had looked at his still face, and her gut had drawn up tight with panic. She had had to touch the warmth of his cheek to confirm for herself that he did indeed still breathe. Only then had she been able to play her part, turn to the crowd and nod solemnly to confirm the sad news. Her gesture had brought forth such a flood of lamentations she’d wished she had never suggested a funeral.

But how else to draw out the villain who skulked and hunted? If they didn’t discover his identity, she would never get to go home. If they didn’t find the assassin, MacLean would never be safe. She wanted to leave. More, she didn’t want to have to worry about MacLean. In fact, she never wanted to think of him again.

“In Suffolk, when he was so ill he thought he would die, he requested that he be buried in full Scottish costume.” Harry projected his voice to reach the edges of the crowd. “Even though his memory was gone, he asked that he wear his sporran, his most precious possession.”

The Scottish men and women nodded solemnly.

“ ‘Twas his father’s,” Rab Hardie said. “Made from a badger the old MacLean killed wi’ his own hands. Kiernan MacLean took it wi’ him always.”

“I never heard him say anything about his sporran,” Mr. Kinman protested.

Poor Mr. Kinman. He was bewildered and apparently grieved, but Harry said the fewer people who knew, the better, and MacLean agreed.

Graeme took it upon himself to explain. “A Scotsman’s sporran is one of his most important possessions. There he keeps a lock of his mother’s hair or a letter from his dearest love.”

Enid looked sidelong at Harry and found him doing the same to her. All unknowing, the Scotsmen were doing their part to deceive and direct the traitor.

Enid nudged them on. “Did he keep his secrets there?”

Donaldina proclaimed, “Th’ MacLean had nae secrets. Nae secrets at all.”

“But whatever the MacLean prized he kept in his sporran,” Graeme said.

“I wish I had my poor Stephen’s sporran. I wish he could have been buried on MacLean land. If only I could have had a funeral for Stephen.” When the sound of crying had reached her bedchamber, Lady Catriona had drifted down and hung about the great hall like a ghost seeking solace in misery. “If only I had anything to remember him by. The grief is tearing me apart.” She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

“I’ll go to MacLean in the morning and shave his poor, shattered face.” Jackson held himself erect, but he trembled as if he were only a moment away from weeping. “He was a good master. It’s the least I can do for him.”

Enid struggled against her dismay. If Jackson got close to MacLean, he would know the truth, and Jackson was one of the highly suspect Englishmen.

Then Lady Bess spoke from the top of the stairs. “No. I could never bear to have someone else care for him in this, his last moments in Castle MacLean. I have shaved him already. He’s ready. All except for his sporran. Tonight I’ll lock myself into my chamber with it and cry over that last keepsake I have of my son and my husband. Tomorrow I will place it on Kiernan’s poor, dead body so he can be buried with it.”

The fresh outbreak of crying found Enid gulping back her own tears. For some reason, this sorrow was infectious. Although she knew MacLean remained hearty and well above stairs, still the thoughts drifted through her mind. What if she knew he were gone from this earth? How could she bear the thought that that
man, the one she had dragged back from the brink of death, was no longer smiling, boisterous, witty, sarcastic, arrogant? What would she do if she could never see him again?

Lady Bess drifted to Enid’s side. “I have a request.”

Determined to play the part, Enid dashed a tear away from the corner of her eye—playacting, only—and patted Lady Bess’s fingers. “Anything, my lady.”

“I want you to take the role of chief mourner.”

Enid almost choked. “Ch . . . chief mourner? But, my lady, I’m not MacLean’s . . . anything.”

“You love him. It’s obvious for all to see. You cared for him all those months. You fled with him across Scotland to bring him home. You deserve the honor.”

“I’m not . . . I can’t . . .” Enid darted a panicked glance about.

The Scottish folk nodded, and a few smiles broke through the tears.

Mr. Kinman and Jackson stood with hands folded and eyes cast down, but they, too, nodded.

Only Lady Catriona drew herself up to her full, outraged height. “Bess, that is a disgraceful suggestion. Enid is Stephen’s widow, and she hasn’t had the decency to don mourning for him. Now you want her to take your place at your son’s funeral? Do you cherish no proper feeling at all?”

Lady Bess charged into the fray. “If Enid had realized a man like Kiernan lived anywhere in the world, she would have searched until she found him. She settled for Stephen, and now she deserves to take her place as Kiernan’s wife of the heart.”

Enid tried to intervene. “Please, ladies . . .”

With a huff of fury, Lady Catriona spat, “This Enid creature could never have done better than my Stephen. She didn’t deserve my Stephen.”

Enid had thought the long, dreary day could scarcely get worse, but abruptly, it had. Once again, Lady Catriona had sunk her claws into Enid, and scratched at Lady Bess. “Lady Bess, I would be honored to be the chief mourner at MacLean’s funeral. Thank you for asking me.” With a toss of her head, Enid started up the stairs.

After all, it wouldn’t harm her to pretend to cry for MacLean. She knew he wasn’t really dead. On the morrow, if all went well, she would be on the train back to London and nothing could ever make her return to Scotland. Nothing. Not ever.

Going to her room, she shut the door behind her and leaned on it. She looked about her. The chamber looked much as it had the first day; too large, too grand, too royal. If she didn’t get back to her lot as a nurse-companion soon, she would come to think she had the right to live in such splendor.

Nightfall was close, and one of the maids had put aside her grief long enough to light all the candles within. But women like Enid didn’t have servants. What frightened Enid most was the knowledge—oh, she was almost sure of it—that if she wished, she could have MacLean as a husband. Some eternally wistful part of her wanted him to hold her and say words like “Forever,” as he had in the Scottish mountains. How was it he had laid claim to her?

The blood in your veins, the marrow in your bones. I’m inside you, supporting you, keeping you alive. I am a part of you. You are a part of me. We are forever.

Turning to face the door, she stroked the smooth wood. At that moment, he had meant every word, and she had thrilled to hear him.

Only two doors down the corridor was MacLean’s bedchamber. In the weeks she had lived here, she had taken care never to discover its location. But this morning, she had had to troop along with the whole household to view his unmoving body, and now she knew where he slept—or, tonight, where he paced.

Without being told, she knew the inactivity grated on his nerves. She could imagine how much he wanted a report on the state of the household. She did not doubt that the tendrils of his will curled like smoke along the corridor and through her door, commanding her to come to him.

He wanted her to come to him. He demanded she come to him.

Leaning against the door, she rubbed her forehead against the cool wood.

Not to question her about the day, or who had behaved suspiciously, but because he would take her to his bed and punish her for all the nights she had withheld herself from him—as she continued to do.

Whirling away from the door, she removed her black dress and donned one of her plainest white cotton nightgowns, buttoned down the front and ornamented only by tiny, vertical pin stitching at the bosom.

If she went to him tonight, she knew one night’s compliance wouldn’t satisfy him. He would expect more. He would view her appearance as capitulation, and he would think he had her to command for all of his days. She had to resist . . . even though resistance brought her suffering.

Blowing out the candles, she separated the heavy curtains and looked out across the moonlit landscape. Her bedchamber faced the sea. Below her the castle wall plunged straight down to the cliffs, and the waves thundered at their base, clawing at the rocks. The wild, glorious view suited the MacLean and his clan of madmen and eccentrics. Pressing her cheek to the glass, she absorbed the smooth comfort.

She wanted to go to MacLean’s bed. She craved the pleasure he brought her. Her womb ached and pulsed with need. She hungered after his body with an insatiable passion that could never be fulfilled.

Below her, the sea rose and fell in a primitive rhythm, each movement an enticement. From across the corridor, MacLean called to her, his desire a warm and misty command.

She was leaving tomorrow. No matter what happened, she was leaving tomorrow. What harm . . . ?

But no. She needed to get back to England. If she stayed, she would lose everything: dignity, honor and self-esteem.

Compared to desire, of what value was dignity? Honor . . . she’d lost honor already when she’d knowingly cavorted with a man not her husband. And self-esteem . . . as Lady Halifax had pointed out, Enid had survived and prospered where others would have surrendered to despair. If Enid chose to spend the night with MacLean, she would still hold herself in high regard.

She let the curtains fall and drifted toward the door.

She was a fool.

She would never have this chance again.

She could have a child.

She turned back into the room.

But she had just finished her menses not two days ago. She couldn’t get pregnant.

Her wrap was a rich splash of burgundy brocade cast across the chair. Picking it up, she slipped her arms into the sleeves.

She was going to him.

Her bare feet made no sound as she hurried through the dim, empty corridor toward her goal. The door should have been locked to protect the very alive MacLean from discovery, but the knob turned easily.

He was expecting her.

Pushing the door open with a gentle hand, she slipped inside and shut them in.

Stretched out on the massive bed, his arms behind his head, MacLean watched her, face clear of powder, from the only pool of light within the room. The royal blue drapes were drawn across the windows, shutting out the night. The oak paneling muffled any sound from the other chambers. The wide spread of rich blue and rose carpet lent the room a preternatural silence, and in that silence Enid heard her own hurried breath.

The candlelight should have softened his mien, but in fact he looked as stern and rugged as the cliffs outside her window. The crisp white sheets beneath him hugged his long form. He wore only a kilt, and above his chest rose in gleaming ripples of muscle well-dusted with curling auburn hair. The candles cast shadows across his scarred, tanned features. His green eyes glowed, with the golden streaks that did, indeed, look like lightning bolts.

He had been waiting for her, and her resistance had frustrated and enraged him. “Lock the door,” he said.

He reclined with the taut intensity of a great tawny cat, waiting to pounce on its prey. Behind her back, she fumbled with the key.