What Happens in Scotland (10 page)

That made Georgette blink. She had no comprehension of what made the servant’s color run so high, or caused her to use the word “enjoy” and “men” in the same breath. Coupling was a quick, fumbling act, performed as nothing more than a conjugal duty. To be sure, she had dreamed of more. It seemed there should be more to it. It seemed there should be more to
her
.

She felt again that quickened step to her blood, the awareness of self that had so surprised her this morning when she had faced the audacity of Mr. MacKenzie’s bare chest. Perhaps there
was
more to her.

Pity she couldn’t explore it further.

The kitten stirred against the fabric of her walking dress, mewing its irritation at waking to find a wool-clad human holding it instead of its mother. Georgette tucked the kitten up against her chin as she sorted out what to do next. It occurred to her she might need to change up her priorities. The little thing’s life would be in jeopardy if she didn’t provide for it soon. She scanned the street for a tea shop or café where they might request a bit of warmed milk. “We should probably try to find this kitten something to eat,” she told Elsie.

“I wouldn’t mind a spot of food myself.” Elsie patted her hip suggestively. “Need to keep my figure up in case this ladies’ maid position doesn’t suit. But I thought you wanted to find MacKenzie right quick.”

“I do.” Georgette took a deep breath. The need to locate her mysterious Scotsman had thickened into something indistinct, complicated by the surprising turn in the conversation with Elsie. It seemed she was dealing with more than a rogue in her bed—the man she sought had layers she had not anticipated.

She wanted to find him with new urgency now, and not only to demand an annulment. She wanted to soften her memory of the man as a rakehell with the heroic image Elsie had painted of him. She wanted to offer an apology for her unladylike behavior this morning, courtesy of the chamber pot. And even if it was inappropriate, even if it was
dangerous
, she wanted to experience that awful stirring in her stomach at the sight of him, just once more before returning to a staid life in London.

“And as soon as we eat,” Georgette said, her heart already tripping in anticipation, “you must show me exactly where Mr. MacKenzie’s office is.”

Chapter 10

D
AVID
C
AMERON WAS
as hard at work as James had ever seen him.

Which was to say Moraig’s magistrate was bent over a manger in his father’s stables, arse to the rafters, surrounded by a puddle of skirts and enjoying his afternoon a little too much.

For a moment—a disturbing, anger-driven sliver of time—jealousy roared through James’s limbs. He imagined he would find both his horse and his pretend wife here, used to ill-form by his former friend. It would not be the first time Cameron had taken something from James, only to discard it when he grew bored.

He almost hauled the man upright and called him out. But then James caught sight of falling-down brown hair and a white servant’s cap, and realized the woman in question was not the blond-haired thief who now occupied a place front and center in his memory.

The anger leached away, leaving him drained and shaking. Dear God, if the thought of finding the woman he sought under this man threatened to send him into a flying fit of rage, it was no wonder he had acted so impulsively last night.

But of course, this was not just any man. This was David Cameron. And the insult would have been too great to ignore.

The smell of straw and leather hammered his senses as he considered what do to with the indelicate situation he and William had just blundered their way into. The black mare pulled hard against the reins, as if instructing him to walk away. Beside him, William shuffled his own impatience. “Should we do something?” his brother asked, his voice a low whisper. “Save her, perhaps?”

A woman’s gasp of pleasure reached James’s ears. “No. I don’t think she objects.” He took a step backward, intending to withdraw to the brighter sunshine outside and wait for the pair to be finished. Even though they hadn’t been friends for years, James recalled the man’s proclivities from their days at Cambridge.

This was Cameron. Surely it wouldn’t take very long.

“Well,
I
object.” The grim line of William’s jaw conveyed his censure as clearly as his words. “He’s tupping the wench in broad daylight. It doesn’t matter if she is willing. Any woman worth the trouble of wooing is worth a proper bed. The baron would have his head.”

At the mention of Cameron’s father, James paused, one foot in retreat. That, at least, was something he knew and remembered all too well. Living in your father’s house carried a price. Made you constantly question what you were doing, how you conducted yourself, whom you spent time with. Whom you loved.

It was part of the reason James had left Moraig for Glasgow eleven years ago, burying himself in an apprenticeship with a tyrant of a solicitor. If nothing else, it was a choice he had made for himself. Cameron had escaped Moraig a few months before James, using his father’s money to purchase a commission in the army. But Cameron had discarded more than the dust of Moraig when he left, and therein laid the rub.

They had both returned to Moraig in the past year, each by his own circuitous path, each for his own reasons. James was the prodigal second son, determined to shrug off his past and change the prevailing opinion of the townsfolk through hard work and self-reliance. Cameron was playing at the heroic second son, with a chest full of damned medals he apparently used to get servants to lift their skirts.

Patrick Channing was the quiet spine between James’s and David’s more raucous pages. With his history of friendship with both James and David, Patrick had unwittingly disturbed the rigid peace that had just started to spring roots in Moraig.

Not that Cameron couldn’t do a perfectly good job of disrupting that peace himself.

James lifted a finger to his lips and shook his head, motioning to William to back up. He pulled on the reins, trying to turn the horse around, but the mare chose that moment to nicker to some unseen inhabitant of the cavernous barn. A shrill neigh answered her back. The horse’s ears swiveled forward, and she began to dance at the edge of her lead, scattering sawdust and shaking the boards beneath her feet.

With his injured head and still-throbbing shin, it was all James could do just to hang on to the horse. Stealth, at this point in the game, was out of the question.

The woman beneath David Cameron gave a squeak of surprise. James saw her shove at Cameron’s broad chest. “Please, Mr. Cameron. I . . . I need to get back to the house.”

The girl was definitely a servant, to show such deference, even in the middle of a torrid embrace. Probably his mother’s parlor maid and forbidden fruit, if the girl’s pale cheeks and worry-filled eyes were any indication.

Cameron twisted his head from his awkward position on the straw-filled manger. The man’s dark blond curls stuck out in disarray, a testament to the maid’s busy fingers. His lazy eyes fixed on James as the girl gained her feet and struggled with the buttons of her bodice. “Do not worry your pretty head over it, Meg.”

Cameron might as well have taken a hand to her, for the look on the girl’s face. She stilled. “My . . . my name is Maggie.”

Cameron at least had the good sense to look chagrined. “Er . . . Maggie. Yes, well, he won’t tell. He’s good that way, always has been. Lips sewn tight as stitching. Isn’t that right, MacKenzie?”

James curled his fingers into a fist and considered how best to respond. “Aye,” he finally said, struggling to ignore the hidden meaning in Cameron’s taunts. “I won’t tell.”

The maid patted a shaking hand over her hair, tucking errant wisps back under her cap. “I . . . I am sorry,” she whispered. “I should not have done this.”

“No,” James agreed. “You shouldn’t have. But the fault is not only yours.
He
should know better.”

His taunt earned a glower from the blond giant who was gaining his feet. “Why don’t you head back to the house, Maggie.” Cameron’s voice was a low rumble—a warning to James, not the girl.

Not that the poor chit could tell the difference.

With one last confused look at the man she had just been kissing, the maid lifted her skirts and darted away toward the big stone manor up on the hill. Her feet fairly flew over the manicured lawn, and David Cameron watched her go a long, studied moment. “Satisfied, MacKenzie?”

“More so than you, by the looks of things.” James eyed his former friend in distaste. Cameron was covered in hay, and without his coat and hat he resembled little more than a common groom. James had never understood why, but women were as drawn to the man’s looks as to his promised wealth. It had always been that way, even when they had been friends an age ago. It was as if women couldn’t see past the man’s handsome face and his father’s heavy purse to see the person beneath.

It had sometimes made James want to bust Cameron’s nose, just to lessen the golden, shining perfection of him.

Funny how time had not lessened the desire.

“Still up to your same tricks, I see.” James patted the black mare’s neck in lieu of using his hands for a more satisfying purpose.

“And you still have frightful taste in horseflesh,” came Cameron’s bold taunt as he worked the buttons of his trousers to respectability. “What in the devil are you doing with the beast I sold to the butcher yesterday?”

James’s mind cartwheeled in response to the question he had not anticipated. Damn David Cameron, would
nothing
go right today? If the horse he had just dragged through the streets of Moraig had recently been sold to the butcher, James was unlikely to find his stallion grazing contentedly in Cameron’s back paddock.

And that meant Caesar, who was descended from a sire who had won the Grand National and was arguably the finest mount in Inverness-shire, might be in danger of the fate intended for the black mare.

Panic skidded against the walls of his chest, but James forced himself to stay calm. “The mare deserves a chance to heal.” He cursed this ill-fated quest that seemed to take on a new degree of urgency with each bloody clue he uncovered. “Channing says she might still be useful as a broodmare, and she’s got fine conformation. It’s just like you to presume something is lost without taking the time to make a meager effort, or measure its real worth.”

“And you were always too quick to pick up my pieces,” the man snapped, snatching up the reins to his horse.

James did not immediately relinquish his hold on the mare. His gaze arrowed in on the flush that now darkened Cameron’s face, but he gave the bulk of his attention to the line of questioning simmering in his head. “I’ll offer you a trade: the mare for some answers.” He eased his hand away from the reins. “I’d like a word with you about last night, and the woman I was with at the Blue Gander.”

“Which woman?” Cameron asked, brushing off the bits of hay clinging to his shirt before settling a hand on the mare’s nose. “The tavern wench, Elsie Dalrymple?” He grinned through his anger, displaying the straight, white teeth of a predator. “Or the lovely Mrs. MacKenzie?”

William stiffened beside him. Though his big brother’s constant shadow was something James had cursed more than once since waking, a wave of gratitude rolled through him knowing William was here, now, ready to stand by him if need be. He stayed his brother’s forward momentum with a wave of his hand. He didn’t need his honor defended. He needed answers.

And ruining Cameron’s long, straight nose would not get him there.

“Do you know her given name?” James asked.

Cameron’s eyes narrowed, squinting through a shaft of sunlight that found its way through the open stable doors. “I can’t think why you would even have need to ask that.” He started to turn away with the mare in hand, then halted, his brow pulled down in thought. “Unless you are having trouble remembering. Didn’t think you were that drunk, MacKenzie, although Lord knows
I
saw the deep end of a bottle last night.” Cameron’s smile broadened, all teeth and no laughter. “What an interesting twist that would be to all of this.”

James ignored the man’s taunts. “Was it a real ceremony?”

“Well, that depends. She was a real enough woman, and you said real enough words.”

“Just answer the bloody question,” James growled. “Before I give in to the urge to take myself up to the house and ask how your little afternoon diversion is faring.” He paused, and then leaned in. “And the first person I will ask will be your father.”

Cameron laughed then, his big body shaking with it. “Threatening me won’t help matters, and well you know it. But no, to answer the question, it was not a real ceremony. ’Twas nothing but the fun of the moment. You and your bride signed no register, exchanged no ring. I may not like you, but even I would not sink so low as to marry a man without his consent.”

“You know as well as I do that Scots law does not require such things,” James pointed out. “It requires only a witness, followed by consummation or cohabitation and repute.”

Cameron’s face darkened at the challenge. “And I already told you, I cannot be considered your bloody witness. I knew the thing was nothing but a farce. You’ve nothing to worry about, MacKenzie.”

Relief darted through James. His profession relied as much on reading people as on uncovering the facts of a case. His instincts told him David Cameron was telling the truth. But having the truth was not the same as having a full explanation. “Why did you even play at marrying us then, if you hate me so much?”

“I did not do it for you.” Cameron’s smile faltered, showing the cracks beneath. “I did it for her.”

There were only two women James recalled being at the Gander last night. His blood started to thump in his ears. “You did it for Elsie Dalrymple?”

“I did it for Georgette.”

“Georgette?” James felt like the most stupid man alive, but he could do no more than echo the name pricking his ears.

“Lady Thorold,” Cameron clarified. “Still can’t believe a lady of that quality would be interested in you when she could have had me, but there’s no accounting for taste.”

James’s world tilted off-kilter, moving in a long, slow slide that started in his chest and ended somewhere on the straw-strewn stable floor. Georgette Thorold. It matched the initials he had seen on the busk, suggesting she had at least told the truth about her name. He had something to call her now, vowels and consonants to accompany the lively picture he carried in his mind.

And apparently, so did David Cameron.

“She told you she was a lady?” James tried to summon a laugh, only there wasn’t much funny in how this was all unfolding. Ladies guarded their reputations. They did not swill ale from stranger’s cups. They did not sit in men’s laps and laugh with wide-open mouths.

And they did not engage in mock wedding ceremonies with men they had known all of an hour.

“A lady far too good for the likes of you,” Cameron all but snarled, pulling the mare then into an empty stall and going to work on the girth.

William leaned over the wall of the adjacent stall, the deep bass of his voice making the black mare dance in agitation. “Are you saying a Cameron is better than a MacKenzie? Because being indiscriminate with your prick doesn’t make you the better man, and I’ve a fist I’m willing to sacrifice to prove it.”

“It would take the both of you.” Cameron pulled the saddle from the mare’s back and dumped it in an unceremonious heap on the stall floor. “I can hold my own against any MacKenzie.”

James positioned himself in front of William. No sense letting his brother hit Cameron before he got the answers he needed. “What would a lady be doing unchaperoned in the public room of the Blue Gander?”

“Who the hell knows?” Cameron slipped the bridle from the horse’s ears, taking care to hold the bit as he extracted it from the mare’s mouth. “But she was quality, all right, from the tip of her pert little nose to the trim ankle she flashed everyone as she climbed up on the table. Perhaps she was looking for companionship. Perhaps she came to the Gander looking for a little sport, and decided to slum it with you.”

Cameron licked his lips as he came out of the stall, as if regretting not having been able to taste the woman they were discussing. He slung the bridle over the stall door. “She’s not the kind of lady you tell no, MacKenzie. When she asked me to perform a sham wedding, I was happy to oblige. And if I had been lucky enough to have her fasten those pretty gray eyes on me, I would damned sure remember every blessed second.”