The Seduction of Elliot McBride (Mackenzies Series) (16 page)

“Aye.” Hamish seemed unworried.

“And what did you do with it?”

“Took it around to the footbridge path, to the hill above my great-aunt’s cottage. Ye go around from the castle and cut left before the road reaches the river…” He pointed with his muscular arm down the passage in the general direction of Mrs. Rossmoran’s cottage.

He was describing the path Elliot and Juliana had taken to walk back home yesterday afternoon. “You were taking
the food to Mrs. Rossmoran? You ought to have asked me—I would have had a basket made up.”

Hamish looked baffled again. “It wasn’t for me great-auntie. I left it on the path, like he told me to.”

“Like who told you to?”

“Himself.”

Juliana stared. “Let me make sure I understand you, Hamish.
Mr. McBride
told you to take this food out to the path and leave it there? What for?”

Hamish gave her a shrug that said the ways of lairds were unfathomable to him. “Don’t know. Me grandmum used to leave bowls of milk out for the wee folk. So they wouldn’t steal nothing else if ye did, ye understand. The bowls were always empty in the morning.”

“No doubt,” Juliana said. “But a platter of ham and a pile of buttered Indian bread are a bit different from bowls of milk.”

“Aye.” Hamish’s brows drew down again. “But I didn’t ask. The laird’s business is none of mine.”

“Never mind, Hamish,” Juliana said. “I will take care of it. But if Mr. McBride asks you to leave food out for the wee folk again, do come and tell me.”

“He asked me not to, m’lady. Wouldn’t have now, except ye pried it out of me.”

“Nevertheless, you will.”

Hamish met her gaze, weighing obedience to the laird against obedience to the lady. He heaved a sigh. “Yes, m’lady.”

“Good. Thank you, Hamish.”

Hamish’s grin widened. He touched his forehead in a rough salute, turned, and galloped on toward the kitchen.

Juliana tamped down her misgivings and went in search of Elliot.

Uncle McGregor had all but dragged Elliot into the old billiards room at the end of the wing of the ground floor. Several
billiards tables reposed here, only one of which was uncovered. The others were cloaked in huge dust sheets with accompanying layers of dust.

“While your wife is busy worrying about the ballroom and the reception rooms, let’s not forget the refuge for the husbands, eh?” McGregor said. “When she has her grand fête, the put-upon clansmen will need a place to retreat.”

Elliot opened cupboards in search of the cue sticks. He knew from the tedious balls he’d attended with his regiment that most husbands had no interest in gatherings that the ladies so loved, let alone any interest in dancing with their own wives. The gentlemen sought escape in cards and billiards, as McGregor said.

Poor bastards. The last thing Elliot wanted was escape from Juliana. He’d dance with her as much as she wanted. He felt whole and strong in her arms—why would he bypass any chance to have that? When he’d seen her in the passage earlier, he hadn’t been able to resist stopping to steal a kiss. Why say an inane
Good afternoon. How are you?
when a heady kiss was so much more satisfying? The fact that Elliot
could
kiss Juliana any time he wished was a thing worth celebrating.

“Many’s the night I whiled away the time in here, with my university mates,” McGregor was saying, a wistful note in his voice. “I hated McPherson then, wouldn’t let him in the door. Funny, he’s the only one left now. Only one who stood by me when my lady passed on and the money ran out…”

Elliot found a wooden box of billiard balls along with the cues and carried them to the table. “My old mates are either dead or have buried themselves in the regiment, never to emerge.”

“Aye.” McGregor shook his head while he took balls from the box and rolled them onto the table. “When we’re young, we think it will last forever.”

Elliot wasn’t ready to become moody and nostalgic yet.
He wanted many more years with Juliana before it was time to reminisce in the billiards room with the next generation.

Juliana walking in, her eyes bright, her cheek smudged with dust, was one of those things he planned to reminisce about.

“Mr. McBride,” she said. “May I speak to you?”

Mr. McBride.
So formal. Elliot thought about the billiards table behind him, pictured seating Juliana on its edge, her skirts up around her thighs. She could call him
Mr. McBride
all she liked while she smiled at him with desire in her eyes.

McGregor chuckled. “I told you, I swear by the conservatory. Nooks and crannies and comfortable benches.”

Juliana sent him a surprised look. “The conservatory will not be ready for anyone for a time. I have sent away for many new hothouse plants. I assure you, it will be a fine place by the time of the midsummer fête.”

McGregor kept on grinning. “I love a practical woman.” He rolled the last balls onto the table and started out of the room. “You have your chat. Don’t tear the cloth on the billiards table. It’s the one thing I’ve kept intact.”

He went off and shut the door behind him, his chuckles following him.

Juliana’s rust and brown dress set off her red hair and blue eyes, even if the gown was buttoned to her chin. Juliana, who followed all the rules, would change into her evening dress for dinner, perhaps the off-the-shoulder shimmering blue one. Elliot could eat his dinner while imagining pouring another dollop of fine whiskey across her breasts.

Elliot couldn’t stop himself going to her, meeting her halfway into the room, couldn’t help brushing back a tendril of hair that had come loose. The kiss he’d claimed in the passage had fired his blood, and he’d not yet cooled.

“Elliot, did you hear me?”

“No. What did you say, love?”

“I said that Hamish has told me an extraordinary thing. He says you had him take a platter of ham out to the woods and leave it there. Along with some naan.”

“Aye.” Elliot nodded as he brushed back another tendril of her hair. “Good. I’m glad he remembered.”

“But whatever for? Do not tell me you’ve put it by in case you grow hungry during your next tramp through the woods.”

She looked so indignant that Elliot had to smile. “It’s not for me.”

“Who then? And anyway, animals will get it if you had Hamish leave it beside the path.”

“He bagged it and strung it up in a tree. That is, that’s what I told him to do.”

Juliana’s stare tried to penetrate his fog, to find its way to the real Elliot. He knew she wanted that, but the real Elliot had been lost a long time ago.

“Please tell me what for. A tramp?”

“For Archibald Stacy,” Elliot said. No use in lying or telling Juliana pretty stories. “He’s come for me.”

Chapter 16

Juliana stared at him, worry in her pretty eyes. She was trying to decide whether to believe him. Didn’t matter—Stacy was there, whether Juliana believed Elliot or not.

“Mr. Stacy is dead,” she said. “You told me so. Mrs. Dalrymple told me so.”

“I said that I assumed him dead because he’d vanished from his home, and Mahindar heard a story that he’d died in Lahore. Obviously the story was wrong.”

“What about Mrs. Dalrymple? She is adamant that you murdered him.”

“Mrs. Dalrymple knows damn all,” Elliot growled.

Elliot watched Juliana try to catch her spinning emotions and make her practical nature deal with this new development. This made her the opposite of Elliot, who’d given in to letting his emotions do whatever the hell they wanted. Trying to suppress them only made him crazier.

Juliana didn’t like her emotions slipping out at all, he’d
seen. She wanted order, not chaos. Elliot would have to show her one day that a little chaos wasn’t so bad a thing.

“Well,” Juliana said. “If Mr. Stacy is alive and has come to Scotland, then we must show him to Mrs. Dalrymple so she will stop putting about the preposterous story that you killed him.”

“It might not be that simple.”

“Why not? Presumably Mr. Stacy is hungry, or you’d not have left him the food. We’ll invite him to the house for a meal.”

She didn’t believe him, or at least didn’t believe in the danger. “Stacy has come to kill me. To hunt me. He hasn’t shown his face to me yet, but I know it’s him.”

“But if you have not seen him, how can you be certain?”

Elliot turned away. He ended up at the billiards table where he rolled a white ball across with his hand, unerringly striking a red. “Difficult to explain, love. Stacy and I were trackers and sharpshooters in the army. Every tracker has a style, and I recognize his. I taught him most of what he knows.”

“Do you mean like a hunter can tell what animal is in the brush from its spoor?”

He smiled at the billiards table. “Yes, but I’d rather not have to check his spoor.”

“Elliot.” Juliana came up behind him, her skirt rustling like soft leaves. “Are you certain?”

“Very certain, my love.” Elliot turned and rested his hands on her corseted waist. “I wish I weren’t.”

“Well, if you are right that he is here, at least it means you didn’t kill him.”

“Yet. I might have to.”

“No, you must call the constable and the magistrate. If you believe Mr. Stacy has come to harm you, he must be rounded up and arrested at once.”

“No,” Elliot said sternly. “The constable is a lad no
older than Hamish, and Stacy would make short work of him. If I start a manhunt, Stacy will either slip the net or hurt those who get in his way. I don’t want anyone here in danger because of him. Let me do this my way.”

“By leaving him food?”

Elliot knew he had to be patient with her. Juliana didn’t understand, and he couldn’t force her to understand. “You will have to trust me.” He moved his hands under the swell of her breasts. “I’ll let him harm no one. I know what he’ll do, and I know how to coax him out.”

Juliana wet her lips. Elliot knew the thoughts she struggled through. He’d seen it in the eyes of everyone he’d spoken to since he’d escaped from his prison, including Mahindar. The painful doubt, the question—was Elliot truly mad?

Elliot
was
mad; he knew that. Else he’d not have the dreams, the flashbacks, the certain panic that he was still trapped inside the cell, even after all this time. He couldn’t explain that the thing he dreaded most was to wake up one morning and discover that
this
—what he had now—was the dream.

He was mad, yes. But not about this.

“Elliot?” Juliana’s voice held a note of uncertainty. Elliot realized he’d gone stone still, staring past her at nothing.

He said, “McGregor and I today found all the entrances to the house from the tunnels below and stopped them up.” In some cases, timber had sufficed, in others, he’d had the men screw down iron plates.

“Stacy will not get into the house,” he continued. “Whatever he and I have to settle, we’ll do out there. But you need to stay indoors, and not go out, not without me.”

Her eyes widened. “My dear Elliot, I cannot remain confined to the house. I have too much to do. I will have to go into the village for things for the fête, or perhaps to Aberdeen.”

Elliot shook his head. “Until this is resolved, send Hamish with instructions, or one of the other men.”

“And when might everything be resolved?”

“I can’t know. However long it takes me to find Stacy and face him.”

Again Juliana gave him her assessing stare, trying to cover emotion and uncertainties with practicality. “In that case, please tell him to resolve this before my fête and ball. I’ll not have him ruining my debut event at Castle McGregor.”

Elliot touched his fingers to her chin and pressed a swift kiss to her lips. “I’ll be sure to tell him.”

Juliana softened her impatient look into a smile then made to turn and leave the room. Elliot stopped her with a firm hand on her arm.

“Do not go out exploring yourself, Juliana.”

From the flash of guilt in her eyes, Elliot knew Juliana had been intending to do exactly that. He briefly wondered why the marriage ceremony bothered to contain the wife’s promise to obey her husband—he hadn’t met a woman yet who followed it.

“Pretend to believe me and stay safely indoors,” he said. He’d already told Mahindar to keep a close watch on Priti, and not to let her venture out the back door alone.

Juliana studied him, her blue eyes drawing him in, then finally said, “Very well.”

Of course, her ready capitulation, made in that soft voice, aroused his suspicions. “I mean it, lass. Whether you believe I’m insane or not, I want you safe.”

Juliana’s chin came up. “You asked me to believe you. Now I ask you to believe
me
. To err on the side of caution is not a bad thing. I wouldn’t wander about the land alone, in any case. What if I fell into a bog?”

Elliot suppressed a shudder, not needing that worry to go along with everything else. He didn’t fear so much what
Stacy would do to
him
, but if anything happened to Juliana…

He’d rather go back to his horrible dark cell and the tortures there than let Juliana come to harm.

Elliot stilled at the thought. This was the first time he’d ever considered such a thing. His body and mind had been broken, but he realized on a sudden that his physical pain would be nothing to what could be done to his heart if something happened to Juliana.

He leaned to Juliana and kissed her again, savoring the heat of her against the length of his body. If Elliot lost her, if she were hurt…

He’d die.

Elliot pulled her closer, caressing the tension from the back of her neck as he deepened the kiss.

Never let her go, never lose her.
They hadn’t been able to take her from him. He would let nothing take her now.

Elliot had to make himself release her. He knew Juliana wanted to get back to her organizing. She took refuge in her lists and schedules in the same way he took refuge in whiskey and in her.

Besides, keeping her here and playing out his fantasies
would
involve tearing the cloth on the billiards table, no doubt of that.

Elliot watched her walk away from him after she gave him one last kiss on the cheek, her small bustle swaying as she went. The driving need he felt to protect Juliana at all costs gave him several degrees of strength.

He remained staring for a long time at the door through which she’d strolled, examining this new feeling, watching the fragile spark of hope grow in the darkness like an ember gently blown to life.

Elliot did not come to bed that night. Juliana lay faceup on the mattress alone, contemplating the ceiling beams above
her. She’d looked over swatches a draper from Aberdeen had brought her, trying to decide what to hang on the bed, once she could convince the mice to move out. For now, though, the bedposts were bare, like leafless trees.

The sun set and the moon rose, and still Elliot did not come.

She’d last seen him at supper, which McGregor attended. McGregor had glared suspiciously at the meal Mahindar had brought, declaring that lentils and curried chicken made a man weak. McGregor had repeated that several times as he ate every bite.

Elliot and McGregor had discussed shooting for the entire meal, and afterward, Elliot offered to show McGregor the Winchester rifle he’d ordered from America some years ago. Juliana had left them to their talk while she went on with her lists for the house, the fête, the ball, and the rest of her life.

Now she rested her hands on her chest and thought about what Elliot had told her about Mr. Stacy.

Juliana contemplated two choices. First, to believe that someone, whether it be Mr. Stacy or another, was indeed hiding in the woods east of the house, above the river. Or, second, to believe that Elliot was not quite sane after all.

She’d seen no evidence of the watcher Elliot had described, and he’d made her promise not to go out and look for any. This did not mean, Juliana thought, that she could not send others out to look for evidence for her. But then, if Mr. Stacy was as dangerous as Elliot claimed, she risked sending Hamish or Mahindar into peril.

Juliana had asked Hamish if, when he’d gone down to see his great-aunt after supper, he’d noticed whether anyone had taken the food he’d hung in a tree. Hamish had told her that the bag was still there, swinging heavy, untouched. He’d hung it well out of reach of foxes, he’d explained proudly, just as Mr. McBride had told him to.

So, there it was. Elliot was leaving food in the woods with no sign that anyone was there to take it.

Juliana had no idea exactly what he’d suffered during his capture in the Afghan mountains, or what he suffered now, or to what degree. She
had
seen Elliot sink into a stupor from which he couldn’t be awakened, had twice seen him believe himself back with his captors and try to fight them.

Now Elliot believed a man from his past had returned from the dead to stalk him.

This belief, though, was a little different. Elliot had stood before Juliana, his eyes clear, fully aware he was in the here and now, and told her of his suspicions. He believed the man in the woods was a Scotsman he’d known in India, not one of his tribal captors. Elliot had warned her of the danger to her, and to Hamish and others—he was not focused on the danger to himself.

Juliana sorted her thoughts into neat lists, for and against. On one list, her husband was correct; on the other, he was letting the terror he’d suffered in the past guide his mind.

Tears slid from Juliana’s eyes to the linen pillowcase as she stared up at the ceiling and made her choice.