What Happens in Scotland (20 page)

“Who is Cameron?” she asked, confused.

“David Cameron. The magistrate. Or at least he is the magistrate now. Then he was my friend.”

Anger rushed in. For James, for the nameless, faceless girl. “But . . . why did he not step up? Why did he let you do such a thing?”

“His father had bought him a commission in the army, and he’d been sent down to Brighton for training. She took her own life, before any sense came of it all. Before Cameron could be notified, before I could even tell my own family what I had done, or tried to do. I learned later the rector had stormed into my father’s study demanding money to take her away and pretend it had never happened. My father paid him off, without even speaking to me first.” His voice hitched around this last bit of it. “And . . . she took her own life because she thought I held no more worth for her than that.”

Georgette sat, stunned to silence as she realized James blamed himself for the girl’s death. She watched his fists clench and then unfurl, slowly, as if invisible fingers were straightening them. But apparently, he was not yet through.

“So I confronted her father, after the funeral. Broke his jaw. Damned near broke his neck.” He swallowed. “My father bailed me out, this time from the gaol. He paid the rector’s medical expenses and no small amount of restitution. And never, not once, did he ask for my side of the story. It is one of the reasons I left to study law. I had been tried and convicted in the eyes of my father and the town, without ever setting foot in a proper courtroom.”

“But why would the town think badly of you?” Georgette asked, heartsick to hear his halting explanation. “You were trying to help her.”

“It was mostly because I let my fists get away from me. I hit the
rector
, Georgette, a man they feared and respected. But he is no man of God, at least not a God I would wish to know. I could see why his daughter might have taken her own life, rather than live, pregnant and unwed, in the shadow of a tyrant like that.”

The pain in his voice came nigh onto splintering her. She wanted to soothe it, erase the mistakes of his past that sounded as if they might not have been mistakes at all.

She recalled Elsie’s words. “Sometimes,” she told him, “a body needs to use their fists. That sounds like one of those times to me.”

“I am not convinced there is ever a right time,” he muttered, looking at his feet.

Georgette pressed her lips tightly together. It was not her place to criticize, but she could not be silent on this. “If someone had fought for me like that,” she told him, “or had
ever
loved me enough to make the sacrifice you offered this girl, you can rest assured I would never do something so selfish as end my life, or take that of my unborn child’s.”

His head jerked up, widened eyes meeting her own. She had shocked him.
Good.
She would shock him yet again.

She stepped closer, rose to the tips of her toes. Looped her hands around his neck and pulled him down to meet her lips. She closed her eyes and kissed him, no matter that she had just told him she would not, no matter that they were on a public street, with the smell of wood smoke and the sounds of Bealltainn swirling around them.

He groaned into her mouth and wrapped his arms around her in an exhilarating show of strength. Their first kiss, or at least the first she could remember, had been negotiated around an afternoon of flirtatious banter that had her blood humming. But
this
kiss, this was something different.

He had just stripped his conscience bare and laid his troubles at her feet. He was vulnerable, achingly so.

And she wanted to dive in and not come up for air.

He accepted her invitation—nay, her demand—and stroked the inside of her mouth in a rhythm that was pure promise. His beard scraped against her cheeks, a rough, happy hurt that made her wonder what his face would feel like rubbed on other, more susceptible parts of her body. She clung to him, wanting more of this kiss, wanting more of
him
. With his deft, knowing mouth, he broke apart the resistance she held inside her, piece by piece. He left her wondering why she had never considered that a marriage could be more than the sum of her past experiences.

He pulled back first, breathing hard, his eyes painfully unreadable. Did he find her bold? Or merely imprudent, after her earlier refusal of just such a gesture?

Someone catcalled to them, “Kiss her again, MacKenzie!” A series of hollered agreements and whistles followed.

Georgette looked around in a daze, realized that the Bealltainn crowd had broken away from the bonfire and spread further through town. Around them were other couples, many embracing. Her heart fell two feet. It was still bright daylight, and someone had seen them, recognized them. Why had she not been more circumspect?

His knowing voice tickled her ear. “Relax those stern shoulders,” he whispered. “Kissing is a bit of the Bealltainn tradition. If we do not call further attention to ourselves, no one will think anything of it.”

Heart still pounding, she glanced toward his horse, waiting placidly beside them. The animal appeared far less fazed by the Bealltainn madness than she. It was only six o’clock or so, and the celebration promised to go long into the night.

Something James had told her earlier came back then. The town closed to all but foot traffic after the bonfire started. That meant Randolph would have to walk some ways to reach the old gray mare he had ridden into town. And that meant they had a window of opportunity here.

“Can your horse run any better than it walks?” she asked, hope elbowing its way through the embarrassment that still constricted her chest in the aftermath of their kiss.

James’s brows pulled down in confusion. “Why?”

“We have a chance to warn your father about my cousin’s threats,” she told him. “Randolph will need to negotiate the crowd to find his horse, and you already have yours.”

He tensed. “I’ve not spoken to my father in eleven years,” he told her. “He’ll not be open to hearing from me now.”

Georgette stepped toward the horse, more sure than ever of this course. “Eleven years ago, your father acted without all the information he needed to make a proper decision. Would you force him to do so again?” She turned away from him and moved into place, lifting her hands onto the saddle. “Give me a leg up,” she commanded.

“You would come with me?” He sounded incredulous.

Georgette rolled her eyes skyward. For a Cambridge-educated solicitor, he could be incredibly dense. “I’m not staying here alone, navigating my way through Bealltainn. I want to help you. And perhaps your father will be more apt to listen if I can explain my history with Randolph, and how this all came to pass.”

She held her breath, facing the saddle, waiting to see what he would do. His hands skimmed her ankle, the grip tighter as he came to some sort of decision. She felt the sheer strength of him as he boosted her high into the air. She landed awkwardly, but quickly scooted forward, making a space for him to swing up behind her. She looked down at him, waiting for him to follow.

He looked perplexed. Had no one ever helped the man before? “And I
want
to come with you,” she told him. “There is that.”

His face settled into grim acceptance. He put his foot in the stirrup and swung up behind her and then he was there, a solid wall of warmth pressed against her back. She closed her eyes and bit her tongue to keep from saying the rest.
Though God knows I may regret it tomorrow.

Chapter 22

A
HALF HOUR OF
balancing Georgette on his lap convinced James he was bound for hell.

Or, indeed, that he had already arrived.

He had set Caesar to a canter as soon as they broke free from Moraig’s busy streets, the need to reach his family before Burton a shrill demand. While the gait was faster and more comfortable than the horse’s body-jarring trot, it had the misfortune of rocking her against him in a very vulnerable place. He had no doubt she could feel every inch of his interest, pressing through her skirts. To become aroused on the back of a horse—particularly one who was being pushed at such a mad pace—was no easy process.

Apparently, it was a skill he could master.

By the time he reined in the exhausted, froth-flecked stallion in front of Kilmartie Castle, his member was hard with want and his knees were weak with longing.

He dismounted and took a necessary second to adjust the front of his coat over the evidence of his frustrating trip. Distance from this woman could only help matters. But when he lifted Georgette down, he could not prevent his eyes from settling on the stockings that spilled from beneath her rucked-up skirts, nor hurry his fingers that wanted to linger at her waist. He had held this woman in his arms last night. After such a ride, and such a day, he wanted only to do it again. The kiss she had offered outside the blacksmith’s shop, for no apparent reason other than comfort, had proven the most emotionally jarring experience of his life.

Then again, he was on the cusp of facing his father, after eleven years of sullen silence. “Emotionally jarring” was about to be redefined.

He dropped his hands and forced himself to step away from her. A groom emerged from whatever mysterious place grooms lurked when they did not have a horse in hand, and James handed the sweat-soaked stallion over to him. “Walk him for at least ten minutes, please. He’s carried two riders from town and is winded.”

The groom nodded. “Of course, sir.”

“But do not unsaddle him,” James warned. “We won’t be staying long.”

The groom set off with Caesar, and he watched them go with no small amount of misgiving. No doubt the animal would emerge from the Kilmartie stables better groomed and better mannered than going in. His father would demand nothing less.

James lifted his eyes toward the stone turrets lining each wing of the manor. “Kilmartie Castle,” he told Georgette, splaying a reluctant hand in the direction of the front door. The place had been built four centuries ago, but new wings had been added in the last fifty years, giving the place an undecided appearance, as if it could not quite determine what it wanted to be. The house, if you could even call a draughty old castle that, sat on a high bluff overlooking the loch, a rough stone sentinel that shouted out for attention.

James had ignored it successfully for over a decade.

His chest contracted painfully. He was about to march inside now and demand an audience with the very man who had driven him away. He consulted his pocket watch, stalling the inevitable.

There was no chance Burton could have beaten them here, not with Caesar’s ground-eating stride. “Seven o’clock,” he told her. “At this hour, my family is probably dressing for dinner.”

“But we are not staying?” Her voice sounded childishly hopeful.

“No.” His stomach objected to the refusal. He had not eaten all day, and that bodily need now nosed its way in front of his other competing demands.

He usually took his evening meal at the Gander by six o’ clock, and more often than not was fast asleep by nightfall, which came close to nine at this time of year. Through most of his childhood, his days had followed a similar pattern. But when his father had become the earl, boisterous family meals around a scarred kitchen table had disappeared. James and William had been expected to present themselves for dinner at eight o’clock sharp, properly scrubbed and dressed, manners displayed like the museum specimens his father no longer collected.

His collar tightened at the memory of cold soup and stilted conversation. No matter how hungry he was, he could not imagine staying long enough to endure such a spectacle.

Georgette seemed not to notice his unease. She had turned to stare at the vista that spread out in front of the manor. “It’s like looking on someone’s dream,” she said, her voice hushed.

“Whether a pleasant interlude or a nightmare depends on a person’s perspective,” he replied.

She offered him a curious look. “ ’Tis a house and a view fit for royalty.”

He answered with a tilt of his head. The damned vista took his own breath away, seeing it for the first time in eleven years. He could scarcely imagine what a stranger felt.

Presumably the place had once offered an excellent outlook of the loch in order to warn of approaching danger, but now it offered simply a view to end all views. Beyond the loch, where the cool mountain water met the warmer brackish tide, the ocean sparkled in the promise of the coming sunset, still an hour or two away. On a warm evening, like today, the air carried the sting of salt off the distant waves. On the west side of the estate, just visible on the horizon, were high cliffs where James had spent one pleasant summer learning to balance himself on the edge, toes gripping the crumbling rock, and then hurl himself away to plunge into the surf.

When he shifted his gaze back to Georgette, he realized she now stood watching him instead of the view, her lips pursed in studied silence. Perhaps she had not imagined he came from castle stock. He looked nothing like a gentleman, after all. He had no idea of this woman’s circumstances, where or how she lived. She was the widow of a viscount, but peers came in all shapes and sizes and bank accounts. Did this castle, with its ostentatious view, seem to her the worst kind of excess, as it once had to him?

He had hated it when his family had first come here, and had refused to answer when the servants had addressed him as Lord James. He had been eighteen years old, chafing under his father’s stern new rules. Nothing seemed to fit. He had been raised to go barefoot in the summer, only to awaken one morning to find himself stuffed into tailor-made boots. That had been a dark time, and he had welcomed being shipped off to Cambridge, partly as a way to rebel, and partly as a way to escape.

“I suppose we need to go in,” he mused, lost in the swirl of memories.

She nodded and gathered her skirts. When he still hesitated, she cocked her head. “Is something the matter, James?” Her face colored. “Or would you prefer me to call you Mr. MacKenzie when we seek our audience with your family? It would be more in keeping with our plans, I suppose.”

He let out a breath. She could not know how she looked at this moment, hair escaping, dirt from the blacksmith’s shop smudged high on one cheek. Her dress bore ill traces of having galloped four miles on a sweating horse. But none of that mattered, because she was here with him, prepared to face down his demons in her quest to make this right.

“James,” he told her. “I want you to call me James. I see no reason to pretend we have no association, no feeling of affection in the process.”

Her eyes widened at his ill-considered confession. It was the truth, even if it was an incredible thing to admit after knowing her for less than a full day. His heart lightened a little. No matter what waited beyond that door, no matter the tomblike, echoing silence he knew would envelop them upon stepping into the earl’s domain, she had come with him.

Had insisted upon it.

“Thank you,” he told her. “For coming.” The words were simple enough, but they conveyed what he felt, to the letter.

She smiled at him, a windswept vision. “You may thank me after we speak with your family. And rest assured, I shall require more than words.” She reached out her hand and took his up. A jolt of awareness surged through him at the uninitiated contact. “Shall we?”

He braced himself. Strode up the stairs.

Knocked on the door and tumbled into madness.

The foyer into which the doorman admitted them rang with shrieked laughter and pounding feet. Overhead, high on a banister James had never once had the pleasure of sliding down, a child in some sort of red uniform leaned over, brandishing a wooden rifle. “Death to Napoleon!” the boy shouted.

A blur of white muslin and bare feet flashed by, no doubt the escaping “general” dodging enemy fire. The child squealed, the sound ringing with laughter. James felt the noise every bit as sharply as if he had a taken a bullet to his chest.

Christ above, whose house had he stumbled into?

“James!” A feminine voice burst from the right hallway, and then collided into him in a tangle of arms and skirts and rosewater essence.

“Mother,” he choked out, bowled over by the cacophony. He loosened his grip on Georgette’s hand and dazedly kissed mother’s cheek. “Who . . .
what
are all these children?”

“Your cousin sent his children for the summer, and we are glad for the company. Of course, if you would call on us here once in a while, instead of leaving the visiting to fall squarely on my shoulders, you would have known that.” His mother gave him the merest hint of a reproachful smile, then drew a sharp breath as her gaze moved upward. “Oh, Jamie,” she breathed. “What on earth has happened to you? Do I need to fetch a doctor?”

He shook his head. “Patrick Channing has seen to my head, and the other is little more than a scratch. It looks much worse than it is.” He swallowed his reluctance as if it was a spoonful of horrid boiled pudding. “Is Father about? I . . . I need to speak with him. Immediately.”

“He’s probably napping. The children wore him out. They insisted on going fishing this morning. I’ll go find him.”

James’s mouth dropped open. The image of his father, fishing with children, was so incongruous with the image he held like a miniature portrait in his mind that he could not quite bring himself to speak.

“Shall I fetch William too?” His mother’s voice wriggled through his thoughts.

“Er . . . no.” James hesitated. “Not yet.” He owed his brother an apology, true enough. But first he needed to sort things out with his father.

His mother’s hands fluttered nervously and finally settled at her side. “It is good to see you here.” She smiled at him, her cheeks coloring with emotion. “Your father will be so pleased.”

The little general darted by again. James could see now the boy was about five or six years old, and moreover, that he was a MacKenzie, with green eyes of a color to rival his own. The redcoat on the banister was harder to see, but showed every promise of growing into his uniform, with time and good meals. That the house he remembered as quieter than hell itself could ring with such sounds of family seemed impossible, and yet, even as he grappled for logic, the boy let out a war whoop and slid down to land in a puddle at his feet.

“You can wait in his study, it you would like.” His mother stepped over the boy, who lay groaning in glee on the floor, a hand clasped to his pretend injury. She motioned for James to follow. “And I’ll see if I can’t find an old coat of William’s to replace that torn, bloodied one.”

That shook him from his reverie. “I don’t want a coat.” His voice turned out gruffer than he intended. He didn’t want anything from this house, or this family, but his quarrel was not with his mother. He softened his tone. “I am fine, Mother. Truly.”

He stepped forward, meaning to make his way to his father’s study, but pulled up short as his movement took him from the woman standing patiently behind him. His mother’s eyes settled with surprise on Georgette. She waited, no doubt for some hint of the manners she had once drilled into his eighteen-year-old head. He drew a breath. He had forgotten to introduce his  . . . Well, what was she? Georgette wasn’t his wife, or anything easily explained. He settled for the obvious.

“Mother, I would like to introduce you to Lady Georgette Thorold. From London, and presently staying in Moraig.” He glanced at the woman who had pushed him here, the woman who made his blood jump to attention even now, with circumstances as they were. “Lady Thorold, this is my mother, the Lady Kilmartie.”

Georgette gave his mother a nod, and her lips curved upward. The sight bounced around in his chest. He glanced to his mother and realized her lips had settled into a matching smile.

A
delighted
smile.

His mother nudged aside his surprised silence and stepped around him, holding her hands out to Georgette. “Welcome. I cannot tell you how happy I am to meet you.”

S
HE HAD NOT
expected children.

Everywhere she looked, they were skittering about, shouting, knocking into things. The two little ruffians bore a strong familial resemblance to the man before her, leaving no doubt of their distant heritage. Georgette had never seen eyes that color outside of Scotland.

But more than that, it occurred to her they looked as James must once have, with picked-at scabs along their arms from old mosquito bites and noticeable gaps in their bright, eager smiles. This was what she was poised to give up if she pursued the dissolution of this marriage. Children of her own, children that looked like this. She was not so naïve as to imagine she would be brave enough to make a match with someone else.

Her heart settled sideways and refused to be righted.

She wasn’t convinced she
could
have children, or that she deserved them. Two years of marriage had produced only the one hopeful seed. The loss of it sat knifelike in her memory. She had loved the promise that unborn child had brought to her life, even if it originally had been conceived through nothing more than jaw-gritting duty. She had felt all the more guilty when she had proven too insufficient a wife and widow to merely hold on to it.

Georgette turned her head about, looking for James. She found only Lady Kilmartie, watching her with a bemused expression. “He’s gone into the earl’s study,” his mother said. “A man’s domain. I don’t recommend the experience.”

Georgette read between the unspoken lines.
He does not want you there
.