The Ravishing One (3 page)

“Ah!” Gregory exhaled. “She’s here to replace Mrs. Osborne as housekeeper! Good. There now, Kay. You have your answer. Please don’t speak anymore. At all.”

“Would you play a game with me after breakfast, Mama?” Cora suddenly asked with suspicious ingenuousness.

Fia set down her fork and looked desperately at Gregory. “The girl called me ‘mama’ again!” she whispered urgently. “Why does she
do
that? I have asked
her at least half a dozen times not to call me that, yet she continues to do so!”

Gregory shrugged. “She’s teasing you.”

Fia went utterly still. Her mouth parted, closed, and parted again.
“Teasing me?”

No one had ever teased Fia. No one had come closer than offering a rude double entendre. This was different. The feelings flooding her were indescribable. She sat back in her seat.

No, things had not gone according to plan, but perhaps she could adapt.

Chapter 1

BRAMBLE HOUSE
THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS
AUTUMN, 1765

Y
our father is here,” Gunna whispered. She stood in the doorway, looking over her shoulder as if she expected Satan to be behind her. Nothing scared Gunna. At least, Kay MacFarlane thought interestedly, nothing until now.

And Fia, who usually seemed as composed as one of his tutor’s mathematical theorems, flinched. “My father?”

“Aye.” Gunna bit on the tattered scrap of her lower lip. “I could say yer gone.”

Fia’s black skirts rustled as she stood up. “No. I’m only surprised he’s waited this long. The lawyers were here four months ago. Kay and Cora, please stay here with Gunna.”

She disappeared into the interior of the house.
Gunna hesitated, fixing both children with a stern glare. Cora hastily closed her open mouth and went back to her needlework.

“You two’d best wait here if ye want to go to bed with blameless bums tonight,” Gunna warned, and hastened after Fia.

“The kitchen,” Cora said, popping to her feet.

“Don’t be such a child, Cora,” Kay chided her. “You can’t mean to eavesdrop. It’s so juvenile. Besides, ’tis nearly dinner. There’ll be so many pots and pans banging around we won’t be able to hear anything anyway.”

Cora gave him a sour look and disappeared. Kay waited a few minutes and then rose. It wouldn’t be right to set Cora a bad example, but he would be a poor excuse for a stepson if he didn’t bother to find out what had upset Fia enough to make her flinch.

He headed down the hall for the servants’ staircase, on his way nabbing a glass goblet from the sideboard in the dining room. The chance reminder of their father caused him a moment of melancholy.

Father had died five months ago. Dead of one too many treacle puddings, or so they said, and was it a wonder? Last time Father had been to Bramble House he’d looked like a prize bull but without any of the bullish parts and naught left but fat and bluster.

The thought saddened Kay, for he remembered Father as stout and solid a man as Bramble House was a manor. He pushed his sadness away. Something important was happening. Though in all the years she’d
lived here Fia had never spoken about Lord Carr, Father had more than made up for that oversight.

On his rare visits home he’d been full of tales of his bosom companion, Ronald Merrick, Lord Carr. Fia hadn’t liked that much. Her skin would tauten up and her eyes would grow flat with every mention of Lord Carr’s name. Not that Father had noticed—but then, he hadn’t been a very “noticing” sort.

Upstairs, Kay dropped to his knees and upended the goblet on the bare floorboards. It took him a few tries, but finally he found the best vantage for listening. Fia’s voice, low and throaty as a spring warbler’s, vibrated through the glass.

“—surprised you didn’t have him done away with at once.”

“And play right into your hand, m’dear? I should hope I have more restraint than that. Why, if I had, you’d have inherited a rich estate. You’d have been completely independent. Oh yes, Fia. I knew your plan from the moment I heard you’d ‘eloped.’ ”

“You’re forgetting his children.” Fia’s voice was a bit breathless. “His heirs.”

The man laughed. “You know as well as I that had MacFarlane died when you’d first wed you would have had the management of his estate until the boy came of age. Still, from what I hear you didn’t know about them, did you?

“How that
must
have pricked! I truly do wish I’d been a fly on the wall at that particular meeting.”

There was a pause and Kay heard footsteps, measured and heavy. Lord Carr. When next he spoke it
was directly beneath him but in a voice so low Kay only caught phrases.

“—enough faith in your imagination—”

“—sure you’d married with a plan already—”

“—dispose of the little—”

Then Fia’s voice, cold and flavorless as ice. “Why did you come? You’d already sent your lawyers.”

“I know the lawyers already told you,” Carr purred, “but I could not deny myself the pleasure of repeating it to your face.”

Fia’s response was mostly lost but ended in the words “—how much?”

“Why, everything, my dear.
Everything.”

There was a long pause, then Fia murmured something indistinguishable.

“I should think you would be happy I did,” Carr responded. “MacFarlane was certainly delighted to have me vouch for him. And carry him. And accept his notes. And his collateral. I believe,” a pause, “I believe he saw it as evidence of our friendship.”

“You befriended him for one reason.” Fia’s voice was clear this time. “To avenge yourself on me.”

“You are wrong. Well,
mostly
wrong. Oh, Fia, we are so alike, you and I. I wouldn’t expend my energy on simple vengeance for anyone but you, dear daughter. Is that not proof of my paternal regard?”

Fia did not reply. The silence beneath Kay swelled, bloated on the black stew of emotions he sensed in the room below. He did not fully understand what was being said, but instinctively recognized it as vile. He’d begun to rise to his feet when he heard Fia again.

“What exactly do you want?”

“Nothing much. Simply for you to fulfill that role I assigned you on your birth, that role that you should have fulfilled five years ago but which you circumvented by running off with your Scottish groom. The role you were bred to perform.”

Something fell on the floor below.

“What’s this? Emotions, Fia? Oh, my dear, you
have
grown soft here in your little country estate. It’s quite quaint, isn’t it? All greeny and flattish. Not to my taste, but I see you’ve grown fond of it. And you can keep it, too. If you follow my wishes.”

She said something. Her words were muffled.

“Well,” Carr replied, “first off, you must come with me to London.”

Chapter 2

T
he aria came to an end. The stout Italian bowed in acknowledgment of the applause and the impresario joined him to announce an intermission. Immediately a din of conversation filled the air as gentlemen and ladies jostled their way toward the lobby.

Captain Thomas Donne remained where he sat. Beside him his companions, Edward “Robbie” Robinson and Francis Johnston, lounged indolently while young Pip Leighton stood up and looked around eagerly.

Thomas had met Pip and his sister, Sarah, at an assembly to which his friend and shipping partner, James Barton, had brought him. Normally Thomas would have eschewed such affairs, but as his ship would take weeks to repair, he owned free time to spare. For a few days thereafter he had enjoyed Miss
Leighton’s company, until it became apparent that she sought more than a casual friendship.

He could never offer his name to any English lady. Not because he did not want to—indeed, he wanted very much to have the sort of relationship James had enjoyed with his sweet Amelia before the influenza had taken her last year. No, he could not give his name because he no longer had one to give.

He was a convicted felon, deported as a Jacobite traitor and returned here under a false name. No one knew his true identity was Thomas Fitzgerald McClairen. Not even James Barton.

It had grieved Thomas to hurt Sarah, but at least he still held the good opinion of her brother, Pip. He was glad. He liked the young man.

“Her Christian name means ‘dark promise,’ ” Pip suddenly crooned.

He smiled at the boy’s impassioned tone. Apparently Pip had a new infatuation, some woman named Mac Farlane. The smile softened the hard lines of Thomas’s dark, lean countenance and burnished the adamantine gray of his eyes to a warmer hue. If his stillborn brother had lived, he might have been much like Pip, not only in age but in coloring, having a shade of hair similar to Thomas’s own mahogany.

If
things had been different. If war and strife and Ronald Merrick, Earl of Carr, had not happened.

The thought of Carr frosted Thomas’s smile.

“I’ll be damned. There’s the Black Diamond now,” Francis Johnston breathed. “And as severe a beauty I never hope to see again.”

“Is she here? Where?” Pip’s head swung around.

“Up there, lad,” Robbie remarked. “Watching from Compton’s box. Or rather, being watched.”

“Oh!” Johnston chuckled. “Imagine the consternation amongst the other fair ladies. They don’t stand a chance by way of comparison.”

“The Black Diamond?” Thomas asked, without looking about. Society was filled with high-class courtesans with interesting sobriquets. Unfortunately that was usually the most interesting thing about them.

“ ’Tis a name one of the club lads conferred upon her. ’Tis said she’s as rare and hard and black-hearted a beauty as that fabled gem,” Johnston said.

“She’s absolutely riveting. But
why
is she so riveting?” Robinson mused. “She doesn’t utilize any of the usual tricks. No fans, no sidelong glances or teasing pouts … I’ll be damned if I can see how she does it.”

“And never will, Robinson,” a wit behind them drawled. “See how she does it, that is. Not even if your older brothers were all to up and die. No mere viscount for that lady. You’d need a coronet at least to discover just how she
does
it.”

The double entendre gave rise to rough, if embarrassed, laughter and cool disdain. Except from Pip. The lad’s downy cheeks burned brilliant red.

“Lord Tunbridge!” he exclaimed, glaring behind them. “I demand an apology on behalf of the lady.”

Dear God
, Thomas closed his eyes in exasperation,
spare me indignant youth
. Of all the men the boy could have chosen to take issue with over some light-skirt, Pip had to pick a renowned swordsman. True, Tunbridge’s
skill might have been hampered as a result of having his hand—and the card he’d been trying to palm—impaled against a tavern table some years back. Had not Tunbridge fenced with either hand.

Tunbridge laughed. “Tell me, gentlemen, am I mistaken or has this pup just challenged me?”

Calmly, Thomas turned around. The years had not been good to Tunbridge. Once thin, he was now near skeletal, the cheekbones jutting painfully in his face, his eyes sunken into sulfur-colored flesh.

“Ah,” Thomas said, smiling lazily. “If it isn’t Tunbridge, by Jove. Tunbridge, do beg pardon of the lad so we might enjoy more songs. ’Tis too early in the eve to contemplate a duel.” Neither his drawl nor his insouciance was as smooth as they’d once been but Tunbridge did not seem to notice.

“I’d take it as a personal favor,” Thomas added.

A flicker of startled recognition awoke in Tunbridge’s sunken eyes. When Thomas had first returned to England seven years ago, he’d fashioned himself the persona of a dissolute, expatriate Scot. Tunbridge had been a central figure amongst the gaming hells, pleasure houses, and taverns he’d frequented.

Thomas’s goals then had been to first befriend and then destroy Carr’s son Ash, on his way to doing the same to Carr. He’d nearly achieved his goal—and found that the role of Judas had damaged him more than Ash. Soon after Thomas had left England.

“Who’s this? Donne, isn’t it?” Tunbridge’s eyes narrowed. “Chased out of the Highlands when you refused to fight for your Bonny Prince, wasn’t it?”

Thomas continued to smile. He’d put the story out himself, as part of his masquerade.

“I will have my apology, Lord Tunbridge!” Pip declared in mounting indignation.

Drat the boy
. Tunbridge would have forgotten him if he’d remained mum.

“Eh?” Tunbridge half turned his head, his eyes flickering uncomfortably over Thomas’s gently smiling face and hard, toned body. “What? An apology? But of course. Sorry. No offense meant …”

Pip scowled. “Well, I most assuredly took—”

“None was taken,” Thomas interjected. He gripped Pip’s arm in an iron clasp that belied the casual gesture. “I daresay we all mumble things we regret.
Don’t we, Robbie?”

Robbie’s compressed mouth relaxed. “Quite right. Men are always making asses of themselves over women who won’t spare them a glance.”

The barb missed its mark, however, for Tunbridge had backed away from the group, eager to be off. Probably scuttling off to inform Carr of something or other. Tunbridge had ever been Carr’s creature.

Pip tried to pull away and follow but Thomas refused to release him and the other gentlemen, unwilling to allow the boy to throw his life away so effortlessly, immediately interposed themselves between Pip and the departing Tunbridge.

“ ’Sblood,” Robbie said, clapping Pip on the back, “if I were to account for every thoughtless remark I’d made, I’d be filling ledger books for months!”

Johnston had an even better notion of how to distract the ruffled youngster. “Will you look at that? More lads have entered Compton’s box. Begad! They’d best watch out lest the damned thing break free of the wall and crash down on the cits!”

Thomas followed Johnston’s amazed gaze. His eyes narrowed on the gilt box. “Hand me your binoculars, Robbie,” he murmured, scowling.

He took the ivory set and raised them to his eyes. As though guided by fate, he found himself looking directly into her eyes.

Fia Merrick’s eyes.