The Scottish Duke Page 14

  He disliked the twinge he felt at the paucity of Lorna’s belongings and found himself changing the subject yet again.

  “Do you have a favorite city in Scotland?”

  “I like Edinburgh,” she said. “And Inverness, although it’s completely different. Every city has a flavor to it, don’t you think?”

  “Have you ever been to Paris?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve never been outside Scotland.”

  “Cities in other countries have a certain flavor, too. I think it’s more pronounced in France. London seems to be the capital of the world. It’s frenetic with its activity, but it can drain you after a while. Paris has a certain calmness to it. Maybe it’s because I don’t speak French well and if you don’t understand the language you’re on an island.”

  “I don’t speak French, either.”

  “Well that’s a blessing,” he said. “I needn’t try to impress you with how fluent I am.” He glanced at her, smiling. “I’m not.”

  “Oh, but I bet you know all of the best words in French. Men normally do, don’t they?”

  One of his eyebrows rose. “And from whom have you gleaned this knowledge of masculine traits?”

  “The footmen,” she said, smiling. “I believe it was Peter, as a matter of fact, who told me that they exchanged the best words in about five or six different languages, the better to impress their lady loves.”

  “I think it was for another purpose entirely,” he said. “There’s a certain latitude of swearing in polite company when no one knows what you’re saying.”

  “Have you ever done that?”

  “I think I’ve done everything impolite, rude, foolish, and borderline stupid when I was a young man. I was aided in my debauchery by my uncle. My mother called it my yearning-to-be-free phase. I called it my growing-up phase. Either one is correct.”

  They didn’t speak for a few moments as he carefully withdrew bunches of herbs from the bottom of the trunk.

  “I didn’t realize you could dry so many different types of herbs,” he said.

  She had wrapped them in burlap, and once she peeled back the fabric, he could see that they were additionally covered in newspaper.

  “Some of them can only be used after they’ve been dried,” she said. “Others are more efficacious when they’re fresh.”

  “How did you learn about working with herbs? Was it something your father always did?”

  She shook her head. “Originally, he concentrated on wildflowers. His first book was on them.” She recited the title and he made a mental note to procure it for his library.

  “My mother fell ill,” she said. “She was in a great deal of pain toward the end. Father was furious with the doctor because he couldn’t help her. The only thing was laudanum, and that kept my mother asleep except for nightmares when she’d wake screaming. Father sought out treatments everywhere and met a woman who gave him a tea that helped with the pain. After Mother died, he began his research into herbs and herbal remedies.”

  “And took you with him?”

  She nodded. “Sometimes, we would spend months at one location. But more often it was only weeks. My father had been a professor and believed that education was the greatest gift he could give to me, but that it wasn’t always found in books.”

  Perhaps that’s why she was who she was, a woman with many layers of complexity. Just when he thought he was able to put her in a certain category, she said something that made him realize she wouldn’t fit there at all.

  “It was the best kind of education,” she said. “He spoke with people all over Scotland: elderly men and women, young girls who’d learned everything at their grandmother’s knee. He found old books and writings. Once he even copied some pictures in a cave.

  “He was fond of saying that he’d not devised any of the cures himself. He had simply collected them from the people of Scotland.”

  “Not unlike how I collect fingerprints,” he said.

  “You took my fingerprints once,” she said, staring down at her hands.

  “I did?”

  She nodded. “Mrs. McDermott rounded us up one morning and gave us instructions. We were to go to your office. We weren’t to speak or ask questions, and if you addressed us, we were to be polite and respectful. Either you or your assistant put soot on our fingers and then made us press them against a card.”

  He didn’t remember. Oh, he remembered the parade of maids, all right, but not her. Why not? Had he been blind that day?

  “Did I speak to you?”

  She smiled in response. “You held my hand gently and told me I had interesting fingers.”

  How many times had he made that particular remark? A hundred? Five hundred? Women who were uncomfortable in his presence seemed reassured by it.

  “What else did I say?” he asked, wishing he’d at least been original.

  “You repeated my name as you wrote it on the card.”

  If he’d followed his usual routine, he would have retrieved the jar of finely sieved soot, a clean card, and a feather brush he’d had made for him in Austria. Dipping the brush into the jar, he would sprinkle soot on the relevant finger, blow off the excess, and place the person’s finger against the card. As he’d gotten better at the process, he’d rarely had to repeat it. His earlier cards were not so pristine, however, and showed his inexperience.

  “But why fingerprints? Why do they interest you? I would think that Blackhall takes all of your time.”

  “Two reasons,” he said. “The first is that I can hire people with more practical experience than I have. My solicitor, for example, is from a firm that’s handled the family business for decades. The steward hires people to maintain the property. The housekeeper and majordomo handle the day-to-day affairs of Blackhall. My interference only compounds any problems that might exist.”

  She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t, as many women he knew, eager to fill the air with words. But her silence sometimes felt like a measurement, almost as if she were gauging his words for hidden truths or falsities.

  He never felt that way with anyone and it both intrigued and irritated him. He found himself wanting her praise, not her condemnation. That, too, was unusual. He’d never deliberately sought anyone’s approval.

  “The second reason is that I need something that’s mine. I love my home but it’s more a responsibility than a possession. It doesn’t actually belong to me. I’m only the steward for Blackhall. I hold it in trust for future generations. I’ve been taught that from the moment I knew I was going to inherit all of this.”

  “But why fingerprints?” She studied her own fingertips again.

  He wondered if he should continue and tell her the truth of why he studied fingerprints. If he did so, it would be the first time he ever shared the knowledge with anyone else. Would she ridicule him for it, or would she understand? He’d only know after he told her the story.

  “As to why,” he said, “it all started with a broken jar. One day, not long after my father died, I found my mother crying. She was holding pieces of this broken jar that he’d given her. I’d always thought it was ugly. It was blue and white with holes in it.”

  “A potpourri jar,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “It had been a gift from my father and she was brokenhearted to find the pieces in the rubbish. No one came forward to admit that they’d broken it. I examined the pieces and noticed that while the outside of the jar was heavily glazed, the inside wasn’t. There in the middle of one of the shards was a fingerprint.”

  “Your first fingerprint,” she said.

  He nodded. “I wouldn’t have noticed, except that whoever picked up the pieces had something on their hands. Then I realized that it was the potpourri from the jar. Something cinnamon I think. I don’t remember. But it made a perfect impression of the fingerprint.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I began with my own fingerprints,” he said. “Once I realized they were different, I started makin
g impressions of other people’s fingerprints, comparing them to the original.”

  “Do you still have the shard?”

  He glanced at her. “I do,” he said, smiling.

  “You figured out who did it, haven’t you?”

  He nodded. “I matched the print a long time ago. I even confronted the perpetrator, who didn’t remember breaking the jar. When he did, he apologized to my mother.”

  “It was your uncle,” she said.

  He nodded again.

  “Why is it important to take people’s prints?” she asked. “Are there that many broken jars at Blackhall?”

  “There are other thefts,” he said. “Other crimes. What about if one man kills another?”

  “Could you really find a murderer?”

  “If the cataloging system is good enough,” he said. “That’s what I’m working on now. I’ve listed people by location and occupation for future reference. I want to come up with a way to categorize their prints, too.”

  She smiled in approval, or at least that’s what it felt like to him.

  “Are they truly all different?”

  He nodded. “Not only among people,” he said, reaching out for her hand. “But even on your own hand. That’s why we take prints of all ten fingers.”

  Spreading out her fingers, he tapped the forefinger. “This one is different from your thumb, for example.”

  “Truly?”

  Her eyes widened and a smile curved her lips. He suddenly wanted to thank her for that, for not being bored, and for allowing him to explain. If she were indulging in pretense, she did it well enough that he was fooled. Or maybe he wanted to be.

  In a very real sense, despite the number of people at Blackhall, he was isolated. He’d created a moat around himself and he was beginning to be aware of it. When he was younger, he had counted quite a few men as friends. As time went on, however, he found he had less and less in common with them. He didn’t particularly care for horse racing, gambling, or the company of women who were bored in their marriage and wanted a liaison. He was interested in more than what he saw or experienced, ideas that frankly bored others when he expounded on them. Consequently, his friends had dropped away or become acquaintances only.

  He’d admired those men he met at the Scottish Society meetings. They’d seen him as more than his title. Nor were they a bunch of fawning sycophants. Instead, they challenged his ideas and made him work for recognition. Perhaps that’s why he felt their rebuff of him so keenly.

  What had she said? Something about not knowing him. He didn’t know her, either, except physically. He knew that she had a mole near her shoulder blade, that when he kissed the side of her breast near her underarm, she was ticklish. He knew, in a way that surprised him to realize it, more about her reactions to passion than he had his own wife. His couplings with Ruth had been done in polite silence, with deference to her innocence and genteel nature.

  She’d obviously not retained any innocence or gentility.

  Lorna had kissed him without reservation, had been as carnal as he. Even as a virgin she’d been open and willing and passionate and courageous in revealing everything she felt.

  She’d sketched him. He recognized his own eyes, his face turned away, his profile, and his frown. In one caricatured sketch, she had drawn him with a crown on his head and an ermine robe. Had he acted regal in some way, enough that she saw him as a king?

  Perhaps he didn’t know her, but he wanted to. The interest was a dangerous sign. He’d find himself confiding even more in her. Beyond that, he might tell her about his days, share his thoughts with her.

  She already occupied too much of his thoughts.

  If he wasn’t careful, she would come to mean too much. She would become important to him. That shouldn’t happen.

  He’d avoided personal entanglements for years, enough that his mother had lectured him about his duty to the dukedom. Lorna was an entanglement he’d brought on himself, and if he didn’t keep her at arm’s length she might prove to be a complication.

  He didn’t want her that close. Emotions lurked just beyond the horizon, emotions he didn’t want to have, feelings that would be difficult.

  No, she mustn’t be allowed to get that close. He would be pleasant, but nothing more. He’d allow himself a cursory interest in her, but that was all. He would be a polite stranger and only that.

  “Why?” he asked, turning the tables on her. When she glanced at him, he continued. “I can understand how you would draw your father’s herbs, but how did you go from that to making teas and balms and lotions?”

  “At first it was a way of testing the recipes he’d been given. Then I realized it was something I enjoyed, something of my own,” she added, using his own words. “I modified some recipes because the herbs weren’t available year round, or they were too hard to find.”

  She fell silent for a moment, and when she spoke, she once again surprised him.

  “Thank you for giving me a home here,” she said. She fiddled with the fabric of her skirt before glancing up. “Thank you for allowing me the freedom to say what I feel.”

  “I apologize for not seeing you,” he said. “I tried to find you. I just didn’t think that you would be at Blackhall.”

  She looked taken aback. Did she think that he never regretted what he said or did?

  “Your apology is accepted, Your Grace,” she said, giving him a bright smile.

  He sat and watched her for a moment, unwillingly captivated. He’d never considered the matter, but perhaps a woman with child was naturally beautiful. He didn’t know. All he knew for certain was that Lorna was. The sun bathed her face, giving her a radiance. Her brown eyes sparkled at him as her lips curved into an enchanting smile.

  “No,” he said. “Alex.”

  Her eyes widened. She didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “I believe we’ve gone past the need for formalities, don’t you?”

  To her credit, she didn’t glance away. She never had, being one of the few people he’d met who didn’t wilt in the face of his determination.

  He had to remember to keep her at arm’s length.

  “Or Kinross, if you prefer.”

  “Alex,” she said.

  He nodded, feeling a need to acknowledge her capitulation.

  “Lorna.”

  It wasn’t the first time he felt as if they were attuned to each other, but it was the first time that he also felt the moment was dangerous, one that he recognized.

  He should leave now, before he became even further ensnared. Now, before he wanted to stay, engage her in conversation, ask about her thoughts. Too late, that moment had passed a while ago. But it wasn’t too late to leave to protect himself.

  “I’ve picked out a name for the baby,” she said, startling him.

  “Have you?”

  His voice was carefully neutral, not revealing how he felt about her announcement.

  “Robert,” she said.

  “What if it’s a girl?”

  “It isn’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just am,” she said.

  “Robert isn’t a Russell name.”

  “He won’t be a Russell,” she said softly. “He’ll be a Gordon.” When he didn’t speak, she added, “It’s my father’s name.”

  He nodded, wondering why what she’d said had so shocked him. He’d known his child was going to be a bastard. What he hadn’t realized was how much the idea revolted him.

  When he finally left Lorna, he felt a reluctance to do so. That, too, was a warning, one he’d be a fool to ignore.

  Once back at Blackhall, Alex headed to his office, where he dismissed Jason for the day. When the door closed behind his assistant, he went to the long row of card files containing the hundreds of fingerprints they’d taken. It was an easy enough task to locate those for the servants at Blackhall.

  The card was in his handwriting, but he couldn’t remember the occasion or even the day. Lorna must
have sat in front of him, but he’d been interested in her fingers, not her appearance. Still, he’d written that her hair was ginger, but he hadn’t indicated that there were red and gold highlights in it.

  He’d noted that she had brown eyes, but he hadn’t said that they were filled with intelligence, that she sometimes held a spear in those eyes, and that she was not the least bit cowed by him. Had they talked? Or had he been curt with her, as he’d been told he was by others in similar situations?

  He’d only indicated that she was on the staff at Blackhall, one of the upper maids. Not that one night she’d masquerade as someone else and he’d be completely convinced she was enchanting and fascinating, only to realize that she’d vanished.

  He’d written nothing about her ability to scorn him with a glance.

  He hadn’t the Sight. How could he have known that one day he would stand here, clutching her card and wondering about her?

  She was talented, something he hadn’t expected. She was also occasionally defiant, another character trait he hadn’t anticipated.

  He knew that she wasn’t going to change the name of her child. He could offer her any number of inducements, promise her anything, but he knew he’d come up against the wall of her determination.

  The idea of his child being named Gordon was irritating. No, perhaps more than that. His son shouldn’t be named anything but Russell. He would be a Russell. He should carry the name.

  Did Lorna’s thoughts ever return to that night? How many times had he wondered where she was? She’d simply disappeared, a storm sprite who’d vanished as ably as a drunken thought.

  Not anymore. He knew exactly where she was and what a danger she posed for him.

  Chapter 17

  The duchess came often to visit her and was turning out to be a fascinating woman, quite different from anyone Lorna knew. In her own way the Dowager Duchess of Kinross was an iconoclast, not unlike her father.

  Yesterday, she’d arrived attired in a dark blue dress not unlike the servants’ uniforms. In her arms were a selection of garments.