The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae (39 page)

Mirabelle's face was a study in stunned confusion. “
What
?”

“Oh, I realize you might not see it that way, and I do apologize if you find the suggestion offensive—he is your son, after all—but I just wanted to thank you for being so kind this morning in drawing my attention to what I should have guessed—that my family will conceal my disappearance and so avoid any public scandal—and so giving me real hope that this ordeal will soon be over, and I'll be back home with my parents and all will soon be well.” With a small nod, she sat back and folded her hands in her lap.

Mirabelle regarded her much as she might a dog with two heads. After a moment, she asked, “Why . . . ? No. What do you see happening now?”

Precisely the question Angelica had been angling for. She frowned slightly. “Well, as you won't give your son this goblet, and I gather that has to happen in the next few days, then once that deadline passes, he won't be able to stop himself being ruined, so I won't be of any further use to him—not that I understand why I was in the first place—but he'll let me go, and once I reach Inverness I'll send for help. Then someone from the family will come and fetch me and take me home to Somerset. The family will have put it about that I've been staying with friends somewhere, so there won't be any scandal to come out of this at all—and if anyone tries to claim there was . . . well, what evidence would they have that would stand against my family's word?

“And once I'm back at home, all will go on as usual.” She smiled, transparently savoring the prospect. “I'm only twenty-one, after all—the baby of the family—so next Season, I'll go up to town and attend all the usual balls and parties with my mother, and find an eligible parti.” She sighed happily. “Because of you, ma'am, and your brave stand against your son, nothing in my life will truly change. Despite this horrible adventure, I'll still be able to marry a duke, and Mama will be so relieved. I'm very close to her, you know.”

Mirabelle's eyes had narrowed to shards; her mouth was pinched. “You're saying that, as things stand, your mother, and you, will more or less be unaffected?”

“Oh, no—Mama must be in a
terrible
state, shocked and so concerned because I've disappeared, but once I get back, hale and whole, all will be well again.”

“I find it hard to believe, miss, that being kidnapped will visit no lasting damage on you or your mother.”

Angelica shrugged, her certainty blatant. “It's just the way the ton is, you see. A kidnapping is ruination only if it becomes widely known, and even then, it's only ruination by implication.”

“Implication?” Mirabelle stared. “What does that mean?”

“Well, because of the assumption that . . .” She broke off, fidgeted, then blurted out, “Not to put too fine a point on it, that a kidnapped lady no longer possesses her virtue. For a ton young lady, losing one's virtue is what true ruination is, because it will prevent us marrying well, thus truly ruining our lives, our dreams, and dashing all expectations.” She didn't dare cross her fingers but willed Mirabelle to follow the trail . . .

After a full minute of staring at her, Mirabelle said, “Are you telling me that if you lost your virtue—by which I assume you mean you were no longer a virgin—then you would truly be ruined, and that that would be true
regardless
of whether your kidnapping ever becomes widely known?”

“Well . . .” Drawing back into her crushed violet persona, she let her voice waver. “If I lost my virtue and was no longer a virgin, that's not something even my family could fix. If I was”—she gulped—“ravished, that would mean irretrievable ruin for me, and Mama would be
devastated
. . .”

Letting fear trickle back into her posture, her eyes, she drew in a sharp breath, then nervously shook her head. “But that won't happen. Your son . . . well, if he hasn't yet, then he won't, will he? Besides, although he's been frightful and frightening, he hasn't actually hurt me . . . well, not more than a bruise or two. And I gather he prides himself on his honor—the family motto and all that—so despite appearances, I really don't think that's likely. He might have kidnapped me, but he won't stoop to
that
.” She drew a tremulous breath. “So I don't think I need to worry about that. I just need to wait until the deadline for you giving him the goblet passes, and then this will all be over and he'll let me go and I can go home and forget this ever happened.”

Drawing welling nervousness about her, she shifted on the chair, then hesitantly rose. “Thank you, ma'am, for your indulgence. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your support through this frightening time.” She bobbed a curtsy, then glanced at Brenda, standing, guardlike, by the door. She hung her head. “I'd better get back to my room.”

From beneath her lashes, she watched Mirabelle's expression grow inward-looking, more intense, the lines in her face more harshly etched; the countess's attention was no longer on her.

After a fraught second, Mirabelle brusquely waved. “Yes. Go. Get out of my sight.”

Silently exhaling, Angelica left the room.

A
ngelica next saw Mirabelle at dinner, when the countess entered the great hall and stepped onto the dais on which the high table stood. Her expression was fixed, her blue eyes staring, but not, it seemed, at anything; she was not just absorbed but obsessed by her thoughts.

Sinking into her chair on Dominic's right, Mirabelle acknowledged neither him nor anyone else. The meal began, and she ate what was put before her, but her attention remained elsewhere.

Several minutes after the main course had been served, Dominic turned his head and arched a brow at Angelica. An accident on one of the farms had taken him out of the castle shortly after she'd gone into his mother's sitting room; he'd only just got back in time for the meal, so hadn't had a chance to learn what had transpired during their afternoon's talk.

The change in Mirabelle set alarm bells ringing.

Although he looked at Angelica for several minutes—more than long enough for her to feel his gaze—she made no move to meet it, which escalated his wariness dramatically.

At the end of the meal, Mirabelle abruptly stood. She looked at him, then at Angelica. A heartbeat passed, then, frowning, Mirabelle turned and walked from the room.

Dominic watched her go, saw Elspeth scramble to follow her to the drawing room. When, distantly, he heard the drawing room door shut, he turned to Angelica. “What was that about?”

She glanced at him, then pushed back her chair, rose, and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Go and put the boys to bed. I'll tell you all after that. I'll be in the store room reading—come and fetch me.”

Reaching up, he closed a hand over hers. “And what if Mirabelle wants to speak with me?”

She grimaced. “Avoid her. You'll need to hear my explanation first.”

Turning, he met her gaze. “So I supposed.”

Her green-gold gaze didn't waver.

Releasing her, he rose. He glanced to where Mulley was waiting to escort her to the store room. “I won't be long.”

He waited until she'd left, then headed for the boys' room.

S
itting on the narrow trestle bed in the store room, a two-armed candelabra on a box beside her, Angelica was deep in Scottish history when the door to the secret staircase clicked, then swung open.

Looking up and seeing Dominic ducking under the lintel, she smiled, shut the book, and set it aside. Rising, she picked up the candelabra and trod the path through the boxes to where he'd halted just inside the room.

He arched a brow as she neared. “Here or upstairs?”

“Upstairs.” She handed him the candelabra so she could better manage her skirts. “I think—hope—that she's going to want to speak with you, either tonight or more likely tomorrow morning.”

“About what?” Turning, Dominic followed her up the stairs; shutting the door behind him, he held the candelabra high enough to light her way.

“Let me explain what she and I discussed, and all will be clear.” Emerging into his bedroom, she crossed to the bed, turned, and sat. He'd passed through the room on the way to fetch her; the curtains facing Mirabelle's tower were drawn tight, and the candles on the side tables beside the bed and on the tallboy across the room were already lit. She watched while he closed the stair door. He paused, looking at her, then crossed to set the candelabra on the writing desk before prowling to a halt beside her.

He looked down at her; she looked up at him.

Then he turned and sat beside her. “Tell me.”

She did, simply, concisely, and clearly. He heard her out in increasingly ominous silence; unperturbed, she concluded with, “I laid the situation out for her—if she holds off giving you the goblet, then she loses all chance of any effective revenge against Mama, and she also forgoes her best revenge on you. Oh, she may ruin you and the clan, cause financial devastation and hardship to all and hurt you through that, but that was never her real goal—that was merely a sword to hold over you to get you to enact her revenge. Her real goal, her most longed-for and true revenge, has always been directed against your father, via Mama, as he's dead, and against you for holding to your honor and your loyalty to him. For choosing him over her—you can be absolutely certain that's how she sees it.”

Drawing breath, she went on, “So I've left her with the choice of sitting and losing all she really wants, or acting and gaining the revenge she truly wants by insisting you ravish me, thus hurting Mama unbearably, and hurting you beyond recall by forcing you to an act that is the pinnacle of dishonor. She wants to
know
she's succeeded in both, that nothing can lessen, make right, or circumvent the harm she causes Mama through me, and likewise that she's succeeded in irrevocably stripping you of the one thing you hold most dear.”

She glanced at Dominic, not just silent but oh-so-very still, so contained she could feel the control he was exercising, a tangible, physical restraint. Elbows on his thighs, he was looking down at his linked hands. His profile was grim; she couldn't see his eyes. She waited. When he said nothing, she prompted, “So now it's up to her to choose, and I'm fairly certain which path she'll take. We need to decide how to respond when she lays her latest and ultimate demand before you.”

He shifted but instantly stilled, as if the leash he held over that explosively strong side of him had momentarily slipped and he'd seized it again. Tense seconds passed, then he said, “That I don't like any of this goes without saying, but before we address that, did you know it would come to this—staging a rape—when we spoke in Kingussie?”

She shook her head. “No—I wasn't prophetic. I wasn't trying to pave the way for something I foresaw from then. I thought we would succeed long before we were pushed to this. But as my words then bear witness, once I'd thought the situation through I knew you ravishing me would qualify as her ultimate revenge—it gives her everything, you see. Until this morning, however, I hadn't dreamt we'd have to offer her that.”

He remained silent for a full minute, then he unlinked his fingers, reached across, and took one of her hands in one of his. His fingers slid over, then twined with hers, gripped. When he spoke, his voice was low, but steady and even. “I . . . am going to hate every minute of this, but I also accept, as I know you'll tell me, that I—
we
—don't have a choice, and, against that, that it will, after all, be nothing but pretence. That it will simply be the climactic scene of our necessary charade.” He paused, then looked sidelong at her, met her eyes. Stormy eyes, more gray than green, gazed into hers. “Have I missed anything?”

Holding his gaze, she squeezed his fingers. “Only that the reason you will do this is because you will always do whatever God and fate require of you to protect the clan—and that I will be with you, by your side, metaphorically, physically, and in every other way, through each minute.
We
will do this because we must, because clan is too important to let niceties of feeling stand in our way. We'll do it and succeed because together we can, because together we're strong enough to do even that without surrendering an iota of who we truly are, who we've together become.”

Still lost in his eyes, she tightened her grip on his fingers. “Trust me, we'll win.”

He said nothing for a long moment, then the line of his lips eased. “You're wrong, you know. About the one thing I hold most dear. It's not my honor. If it ever came to it, I would unhesitatingly trade my honor and all else for—”

He broke off, head turning to look at the door.

An instant later, a sharp
rap-rap
was followed by, “Dominic—I need to speak with you
urgently
.”

Mirabelle.

He swore—in Gaelic; sliding his fingers from Angelica's, he rose. Softly said, “Wait here. I'm not going to let her in.”

Unsure whether he'd been saved by fate, or cursed by his mother's timing, Dominic crossed the room and opened the door enough to step out onto the landing of the tower's main stair. His mother moved back and he shut the door behind him.

As he'd expected, she was carrying a candlestick, which cast sufficient light for them to see. She was still dressed as she had been at dinner, but her expression had changed to one of intense, almost shocking, avidity, her features invested with so much greedy eagerness he knew she'd come to a decision, one from which she wouldn't be swayed.

“What is it?” His tone was unwontedly harsh, but she didn't seem to register it.

“I'm prepared to let you have the goblet if you do one more thing.”

“What thing?”