What Happens in Scotland (7 page)

Chapter 7

“M
AC
K
ENZIE.”
G
EORGETTE FIT
the name around her lips. It triggered no memory, no hint of recognition, but it
did
incite a spark of warmth, fluttering in her abdomen. She found herself insanely curious about Mr. MacKenzie, now that she had a knowledgeable, breathing body to press for details. She wondered what kind of man he was. Kind or hard? Generous or tight-fisted?

Faithful or indiscreet?

The thought flew unbidden from the depths of her subconscious. She shook her head, sending water rippling against the sides of the bath. She had been only twenty-two years old when she had married the first time, and had not thought to ask such an indelicate question then. Her husband had turned out to be of the faithless variety. But it did not matter if this James MacKenzie was a man who honored his vows or was the biggest philanderer in Moraig.

It was not a question she needed to ask of a man she planned to leave.

“Do you know anything of what I did last night?” Georgette asked, pushing her curiosity about the bearded Scotsman to a quieter place.

“Oh, aye, miss.” Elsie picked up a washcloth with her free hand, the kitten still balanced precariously in the other. She reached over the edge of the bath. “You hired yourself a maid.”

Georgette snatched the cloth from her. “I can take care of this part myself.” The promise of learning more about what might have happened last night warred with her prudish aversions. She pointed to an upholstered chair that until recently had been occupied by Elsie’s towel, scarcely able to believe she was not only going to invite the maid to stay and provide an audience, but insist upon it. “Sit, please. And tell me what else I may have done.”

Elsie perched on the chair and arranged her skirts. She placed the kitten in her lap and wrinkled her nose, seemed to focus a second on averting another sneeze. When the moment passed, the maid laughed. “Can’t remember, eh? I’m not surprised, to tell you the truth. You came banging into the rear entrance of the Blue Gander last night, close to eight o’clock.” She leaned forward. “Looked three sheets to the wind, if you ken what I mean, and I thought to myself as I was cleaning up the tankards, she looks like a handful of fun.”

Georgette looked up from where she was lathering the cake of soap between her hands. Surely she could not have heard that right. “You thought I looked
fun
?”

Elsie nodded. “Ladies, you see, hardly ever come in the back door of the Gander. That’s an exit usually reserved for patrons looking for a quick poke in the alley.”

“A poke?” Georgette asked in mortification.

Elsie’s cheeks colored prettily. “Sorry, miss. I forget sometimes you are a lady.”

Georgette’s own face heated as she went to work cleaning one filthy foot. Apparently, so did she. While she scrubbed, she thought. She was still unable to piece together how she had come to be at the Gander when she was supposed to have been at the church with Randolph. “Was I alone?” she asked

“Oh no, you weren’t alone.”

Georgette forced her horrified eyes to meet Elsie’s. Had Randolph
taken
her to the Blue Gander? “I wasn’t?”

“Not for long, anyway. The entire table was mighty interested in the pretty young lady who had dropped in their laps.” The maid wrinkled her nose against another sneeze before adding, “I believe you may have
sat
in one or two of their laps. And you talked to me, of course. Never did see a lady who wanted to talk to the serving girl, but you were quite interested in a heartfelt chat. By the time MacKenzie came in, the whole place was roaring with laughter and I was your new maid.”

Georgette squeezed her eyes shut. It was mortifying to learn these details from the bemused servant. It was every bit as bad as she had feared. She tried to move her hands, to get on with her bath, but was riveted in a watery prison, listening to every last hardscrabble detail of her night gone wrong.

“Of course, once you clapped eyes on MacKenzie, it was obvious to all of us you were bound for the altar. Why, from the time you sat in his lap until the time he hoisted you onto a table and presented you to the entire room as the future Mrs. MacKenzie, couldn’t have been more than an hour or two.”

“I was on the table?” Georgette asked, sinking lower into the water. Who
was
this wild, uninhibited creature Elsie remembered with such glee? She gave her feet a hard scrub, wondering if she could rub hard enough to strip the stain of last night’s antics as cleanly from her soul as it apparently was from her memory. “You said future wife.” Georgette hung a moment on that bit of the conversation, hoping she had heard the maid correctly. “So we weren’t married after all?”

Elsie inclined her head. “Not then. But the magistrate took care of that, right enough. The man stood up and offered to make it official. Whole bloody place served as your witnesses.” She offered Georgette a delighted smile. “Don’t often get to attend a wedding at the Gander. Why, you even let us tar and feather your feet. Fetched the feathers myself, I did, a whole pile of them from the kitchen.”

Georgette blinked, piecing together forgotten bits of her morning. That explained the mess of feathers she had stumbled over in the room this morning, and the black, sticky mess that she could not quite get off the soles of her feet.

It did not, however, explain what had been tripping around her head when she had made the crucial, ill-formed decision to marry Mr. MacKenzie. The description painted by the maid was of a fun, confident woman. The kind of woman who did not care what Society thought, or what bed her husband had stumbled from. The kind of woman Georgette had long wished she could be, but had never been.

What about the events of last night—and this man, in particular—had brought that woman out in her?

“What kind of man is Mr. MacKenzie?” she found herself asking, though she had promised herself she wouldn’t.

Elsie wiggled in her seat. “Oh, he’s a right fine one. Handsome devil, and with a wicked tongue. Has those green eyes that don’t precisely undress a woman, but make you want to right enough.” She sighed. “Shame you can’t remember. That recollection’s sure to be one worth storing away for a cold winter’s night.”

Georgette realized then the maid had misunderstood her. She didn’t want a physical description of the man. She had enough of that from her morning’s experience. She knew the man was sinfully attractive, had felt that quickening response in her own body as those green eyes had swept her appreciatively. She did not need to hear from Elsie the man had a way of making women act like love-struck adolescents.

No, she wanted to know what made James MacKenzie’s heart race and his palms sweat, not the color of his eyes.

“Was he also, how did you say it, three sheets to the wind?” Georgette pressed. If they had both been incapacitated, perhaps that would play better into her plan to demand an annulment.

“Well,” Elsie mused, “MacKenzie looked none too fresh himself, but he’s a strapping big man, so of course he holds his liquor better than most.”

“A big man,” Georgette mouthed, wondering just how big a man he was. It had been difficult to tell when he had been lying in bed. His shirttails had reached her calves this morning, true enough. An unbidden thought rose, refused to be pushed back into shadows.
Was he big in other places too?
She squeezed her hands to fists in the water, imagined touching him intimately last night. The dissipating heat from the bathwater ill-compared with the warmth that suffused her body from the inside out.

“It sounds as if I quite enjoyed myself.” She swallowed, forcing herself to rinse the soap from her limbs. The lemon verbena scent tickled her nostrils, but she ignored it for more important things. Like trying not to think about what manner of intimacy she might have engaged in last night.

And like resisting the urge to find the man and make a proper memory.

Elsie laughed again. “Oh, aye. You had a right fine time. Of course, that was before the fight. You dinna enjoy that awful much.”

“I got into a fight?”

“No, MacKenzie did. Over you.”

“Over
me
?” Incredulous, Georgette dropped the cloth. She was not a woman men fought over.

“Well, to be fair, half the blighters in the place wanted to kiss the new Mrs. MacKenzie. And your husband has a reputation for not wanting to share. Once he took care of that nonsense and knocked them all over the place, he gave you a great bloody kiss, swept you in his arms, and the pair of you stumbled out the door.”

“The rear door?” Georgette whispered in mortification. Surely she wouldn’t have. Surely she had been more circumspect. Then again, according to Elsie, she had gotten married on a table in a public barroom. A tup up against the wall in the alley behind the Gander was not the physical impossibility it should be.

Elsie stood up and placed the kitten on the seat of the chair, then held the towel out for her mistress. Georgette dutifully rose and let the maid wrap it around her. “You left through the front door, miss,” Elsie soothed, as if she could sense her distress. “And that was the last I saw of you.”

Georgette fell silent as Elsie set about dressing her, lost in her thoughts. She suffered through the maid’s inexperienced fumbling over the snarled nest of her hair. Stepped into a clean gray merino walking dress, although without benefit of the corset she had so thoughtlessly left behind at the Blue Gander. And through it all, she tried to sort out how she would find James MacKenzie and undo this thing.

“You want to undo it?” Elsie’s voice rang uncomfortably close to her ear. Georgette winced. She had not realized she had voiced that last part aloud.

“I . . . I was not thinking clearly last night.” Georgette fought the urge to wring her hands against Elsie’s incredulous stare. “I don’t
want
to be married,” she added. It was not just an afterthought.

It was the entire thought.

“But, miss . . .” Elsie’s eyes grew wider. “
Everyone
wants to be married to MacKenzie. He’s . . . he’s . . .”

“Not for me,” Georgette said firmly. The issue of the man’s right to control her finances aside, she didn’t know what kind of man Mr. MacKenzie was. Elsie’s innocent words might have been meant to titillate, but they spoke all too eloquently of the man’s randy nature and his reputation about town as a ladies’ man. No matter how the man made her feel when he looked at her, she did not want to suffer through another marriage to a man who cared not where he trimmed his wick.

And then there was the little matter of Randolph, rushing about town, out for vengeance, and no doubt imagining himself the great hero. Why, he would probably challenge MacKenzie to a duel without a moment’s thought as to the consequences.

And that was why she needed to get back to Moraig as soon as possible.

Elsie knelt to lace up her mistress’s heeled boots. “Well, it’s a fine muddle you’ve gotten yourself into. Tied up to the most eligible man in town and desperate to see it undone.” She blew an errant wisp of auburn hair out of her face. “I suppose you, being a lady, think you’re too good for the likes of him.”

Georgette stared at her new maid in surprise. Aside from those first shocked moments upon waking this morning, the difference in stations between herself and the Scotsman had not even crossed her mind. “That really isn’t it at all,” she protested. “I am scarcely out of mourning, and finally in control of my life.” She drew in a breath. “I don’t want to toss that away on a careless, drunken mistake!”

Elsie looked up at her. Sympathy skirted her gaze. “I reckon I can understand that, miss. There’s no sense getting worked up.” She patted Georgette’s ankle awkwardly. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to get to Moraig then. Do you have a more sensible pair of shoes?”

Georgette stilled. Why was the maid concerned about her shoes? “How did you get here, Elsie?”

“Came on a boat from Ireland,” Elsie said, rocking back on her heels and wiping an uncouth arm across her brow. “Nigh on five years ago.” She ran a critical eye over the front of Georgette’s demure, high-necked bodice. “You mentioned you were out of mourning. If you’re going to meet with Mr. MacKenzie, I would recommend something a bit brighter.”

Georgette prayed for patience. “I do not have anything brighter. I am newly out of half mourning. And I mean here. How did you get
here
, from Moraig. On a horse?” she added hopefully.

“Oh no, I walked, miss. ’Tis only four miles.”

Four miles. It was an impossible distance.

The maid’s question about shoes made more sense now. Georgette had never walked four miles in her pampered adult life, and she owned not a single pair of shoes suitable for the purpose. Though it felt good to have on somewhat sensible shoes after a night apparently spent tripping about town in drunken slippers, the heeled boots Elsie had just laced were not precisely made for walking. They were of fine kid leather and embossed with tiny, trailing vines, and boasted a two-inch heel that threatened the safety of ankles everywhere. They had cost Georgette a month’s pin money at a shop on Regent Street, and were intended to carry their mistress from London town house to coach to shopping and back again.

On a rocky trail, they would fall apart halfway through the journey.

That Elsie could walk such a distance and think nothing of it told Georgette she herself was ill-equipped for life in general, and life in Scotland in particular. Inadequacy pushed at her from all sides. What sort of a woman did that make her?

And what sort of a woman did she want to be?

As they made their way out of the room and down the dark, portrait-laden stairwell, Elsie asked, “If you aren’t in mourning, why are you dressing as if you still are?”

Georgette chewed on that a moment. She couldn’t answer, because there was no good answer. She should have put away her gray and lavender gowns a month ago, preparing to step out in the midst of a gay London Season. And instead, she had fled. To Scotland. Ostensibly to live a little, but how could she explain she had not yet even elected to live through her choice of wardrobe?