The Devil Wears Tartan Read online

  “Not any wife. Not one who’s been ignored. Or dictated to. Or given no hope that this marriage will ever be anything ordinary. Not any wife.”

  When he would have dropped his hand, she held firm, and finally looked directly into his eyes. “I’ve been told, on more than one occasion, that I am intensely stubborn. I’ve been likened to the most recalcitrant ox. I can only caution you, Marshall, that I’ve not given up on this marriage. I believe, unlike you, that we could suit.”

  She traced her fingers up his uninjured arm, and he reached down and captured her hand with his own, brought it to his mouth and slowly kissed each finger. The center of her palm was a target for a kiss, her wrist a spot where he held his lips immobile, measuring her pulse.

  “Thank you for your company,” he said, stepping back.

  She looked as if she’d like to say something, but didn’t. Instead she turned and walked toward the door.

  At the threshold, she turned. The tenderness of her smile was something that he’d implant in his memory.

  “Will you come to me tonight, Marshall?”

  He shook his head. The demons were too close, the episode yesterday too raw to trust himself.

  She nodded, just once, as if she’d expected his answer.

  And then she was gone, and he had only his regret for company.

  Chapter 15

  Davina returned to the Egypt House the next day, only to find herself alone. Marshall had simply disappeared, not to be seen anywhere at Ambrose.

  That night, when she took dinner in the family dining room, she expected him to appear. By the end of her meal, even the stony-faced footmen were beginning to look at her with pity in their eyes. Or perhaps she simply imagined it, just as she imagined that Marshall might join her.

  The Devil of Ambrose. Dear God, what if it were true? What if his delusions were only growing stronger, and he was genuinely afraid that he might hurt her?

  Nonsense.

  The man who’d touched her with gentleness, who’d laughed at her comments, who’d smiled so tenderly at her could not be a monster.

  After dinner, she dressed in a silk peignoir he’d not seen, this one a pale green the shade of a newly unfurled leaf.

  If he would not come to her, then she’d go to him.

  The double doors of the earl’s suite faced her at the end of the corridor like a broad and daunting wall. She would not allow herself to think of the other times she’d made this same journey and the disastrous results. But her legs were trembling, and she could barely take a deep breath.

  She was halfway down the hall when the doors opened. Her heart leaped, but then a second later she realized it wasn’t Marshall coming to her, but Mrs. Murray.

  The woman turned and glanced at her, the look held for too long to be respectful. Her lips quirked in a strange, almost triumphant smile, and then she made a show of adjusting her bodice. As if she’d been manhandled, as if someone had placed his hands on her breasts. Or as if she’d recently dressed in a hurry.

  She bobbed a shallow curtsy, and then turned and walked down the other corridor so that the two women were not forced to pass each other.

  Davina placed her hand on the silk wallpaper, feeling the texture abrade her fingertips. The temperature in the corridor dropped; the silence in the great house was otherworldly.

  She carefully turned and walked back to her own suite, opening the door with measured care, closing it just as slowly and silently. The click of the lock was absurdly loud. So, too, the sound of her slippers on the wooden floor.

  Davina removed the peignoir and laid it on the end of the bed, arranging the folds very carefully so that it wouldn’t be wrinkled by morning. She mounted the steps and slid beneath the sheets, propping the pillows behind her back.

  The Egyptians used stones for pillows. She, at least, had feathers.

  What would an Egyptian woman do under such circumstances? She hadn’t any idea. Would she weep? Or curse her husband? Or send an assassin to kill the servant?

  How strange to realize that she was possessed of a bloodthirsty nature. She’d been annoyed before, and even irritated—at herself, her aunt, her acquaintances, life, and certainly at Marshall. Yet she’d never quite been as angry as she was right at the moment. Her fists clenched against the sheets. Her blood felt as if it colored every inch of her skin a bright Chinese red. She could feel the furious beating of her heart, so loud that her chest felt as if it vibrated. Her breath was shallow, as if her stays were too tight. But since she was wearing none, it wasn’t fashion causing her rage, but her husband.

  She sat against the pillows for at least a quarter hour, glaring at the door. At the end of that time, her anger had subsided somewhat, but another emotion was taking precedence—pity. Not for Marshall, and not for that hussy Mrs. Murray, but for herself.

  To distract herself, she leaned across the bed and opened the drawer of the bedside table, and extracted Julianna’s journal. She hadn’t progressed very far since learning of the countess’s disease. Right at this moment, Davina wanted to feel something other than rage or jealousy or self-pity.

  She put the book down on her lap and stared at the door. Jealousy. She’d never been jealous before, but then she’d never had a reason to be jealous. She’d never before felt…what? Love?

  She’d never before understood love, and had never before considered that one day she might feel the emotion. She’d simply thought that people were exaggerating, perhaps for literary license. Or perhaps there were certain beings who possessed the capacity of extreme empathy or who’d lived through their emotions more than their thoughts.

  She could remember holding a book of poetry in her hands and wondering at the sacrifice of lovers, at the anguish they experienced. She remembered thinking that such an emotion must be indeed rare, or perhaps even a little dangerous.

  If this was love, then love made her miserable, vulnerable, and heartsick. Love was not what she’d thought it might be. In fact, if anyone had told her that she’d feel this way, she would have walled herself away from other people, determined never to feel it.

  She’d foolishly thought that love and physical pleasure were the same, and she was beginning to believe that the latter was much easier to obtain than the former. Alisdair had certainly proven that to be correct, but then she hadn’t felt all that much physical pleasure with him.

  Was her life to be forever like that, then? Living in blissful ignorance until a sudden revelation demonstrated how utterly stupid she’d been for the preceding months? Then she’d bask in her newfound wisdom, only to learn how stupid she’d been about something else? Life was, no doubt, going to be a series of shocks.

  But not, surely, as unpleasant as this.

  She could not be in love with her husband. History was repeating itself, was it not? But instead of disappearing to Egypt, her earl was simply disappearing.

  Deliberately, she pushed all thoughts of Marshall from her mind. Instead she opened the book and focused on Julianna.

  Garrow came to Ambrose today. I have not seen him much in the past few months, but I must confess that I was glad to see him today. He is such a fashionable man. My physician could take lessons from him in how to be more sober and less flamboyant in his dress.

  Up until today our meetings have always been cordial, but there has been a degree of distance between us. Upon seeing me, however, he crossed the room and pulled both my hands into his. I was seated by the window on a chaise and clutched the coverlet lest he whisk me upward into a fervent brother-in-law’s embrace, revealing that I was still attired in my bedclothes. Dressing seems such a chore lately, and such an unnecessary bother.

  I moved my legs aside so that he could sit, and when he did so, he asked me what was wrong. I looked fully into his face, meeting his direct gaze with no thoughts of subterfuge. I am dying, I told him, and to my astonishment he only nodded, as if my fate was evident from the sight of my pale face and pinched features.

  A spasm struck me then, inopport
une as such things are, the pain traveling from the core of my belly and outward as if a hand reached inside me and gripped each of my organs in turn. I laid my head back against the chaise and prayed that it would pass. Such pains are commonplace lately.

  Perhaps it is time to send for Marshall in London. If I do, it will be a sign of acceptance, my acknowledgment that these are my last days. Foolish as I am, however, I have not yet sent for my son. Evidently, hope still lingers in my mind.

  Garrow told me that he would fetch me something for pain, and I wanted to ask him if he meant some of his Chinese herbs, but I didn’t speak. At that moment, I was afraid my voice would sound feeble and old. Perhaps nature itself felt robbed of my old age and pinned dotage on me in addition to a cancer.

  Garrow must have noted my feebleness as well, because he halted and looked down at me, and there was pity on his face.

  He promised that what he would bring me would ease my pain, and coward that I was, I did not demur. I do not like the pain. It has not become a friend.

  He returned to the room in a matter of moments, calling for the maid and a glass of wine. Despite my protests that wine did nothing for my pain, only gives me a raging headache, he mixed several powders in the glass and handed it to me. Wine aids in digestion, he told me, and also masks the taste of the herbs. It will work quickly, he assured me, and I took the glass from him, drank it, and found that it was only a matter of moments before I felt some relief.

  There was one effect from the herbs he mentioned, but only after I had downed the glass, my stomach protesting at the sourness of the wine. I may have bad dreams, but that can be controlled by the amount of my medication. I didn’t tell him that my dreams were troubling now. A lifetime of regret does not make for easy sleep.

  The pain was gone in a matter of moments. The blessed man was right. From that moment on, I have been kept quite comfortable.

  Even so, I have sent for Marshall.

  Davina put the journal aside and slipped from the bed, walking to the balcony outside her bedchamber.

  The air was warm, pressing on her skin. The moon hung like a pearl disk in the sky, faintly illuminating a landscape littered with differing shapes of black and emerald green. The courtyard was transformed into a light gray rectangle, and far away the obelisk became an accusing finger.

  She missed her father. She missed her aunt. She missed life as she’d known it, regular and familiar and kind.

  She felt off-center, out of place. She needed someone to embrace her, or she needed to be around familiar surroundings. She wanted to see the chamber that had always been hers, or walk into her father’s study and smell the scent of his pipe still lingering in the air.

  There was no one at Ambrose that she knew, except Nora, and she didn’t know the girl well. There was nothing around her that was familiar or easy. Even her position as bride-turned-wife felt unknown and strange.

  She felt adrift.

  And in love.

  Dear God, should it truly hurt this much?

  “Is there nothing I can do for you, Your Lordship?”

  Marshall glanced at his valet. “Nothing, Jacobs. Go ahead and retire for the night.”

  “If you’re certain, Your Lordship.”

  Marshall didn’t bother to answer. Every night it was the same, with Jacobs solicitous to the point of being intrusive.

  “If you’d like, Your Lordship, I could remain with you. Perhaps the dreams wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “I don’t need a chaperone, Jacobs.”

  “No, Your Lordship.” Jacobs puttered around, rearranging Marshall’s shoes, pulling out the top drawer to inspect it.

  “What is it, Jacobs?” he asked when the man made no move to leave.

  “Does Daniel ever visit you?”

  Marshall turned his head and stared at the statue of Seti I perched on one of the bookcases in his study. On countless nights before this one, Seti had actually spoken to him. Tonight, however, the long-dead pharaoh was silent.

  “Daniel?” He shook his head. Jacobs’s grandson had been his boyhood friend, and had enthusiastically been part of the last expedition to China.

  “Get to bed, Jacobs. We’ll talk of ghosts another time.”

  Mrs. Murray had dutifully replenished his wine, and he took a sip of it as Jacobs left the room.

  He glanced over his shoulder and the moon was there, framed in the window, a sentinel to his night.

  Lawrence walked out of the wall and saluted him with two smiles, the one that stretched across his mouth, and the one that slit his throat from ear to ear. With a jaunty wave of his hand, he traveled across the room and disappeared into the far wall. Lawrence had been his second-in-command, and one of the first to be killed by the Chinese.

  At least he’d died humanely, or as humanely as possible. His death was quick, which was more than Marshall could say for the other men in his command. He fully expected to see every one of them tonight, just as he did every night when the visions came.

  Could a man get tired of madness? One day, perhaps, he would. One day the prospect of being himself, of being the man he’d once been, would be so far away that he couldn’t reach it, like a distant shore seen only on a clear day. He was floating in an ocean, and one day he would simply get tired of swimming. He’d let himself sink into the water and drown in insanity.

  Peter appeared next. Peter was, without a doubt, one of the ugliest men Marshall had ever met, and the marks on his face from his torture had not made him prettier. If anything, the welts and burns called into relief Peter’s crooked nose and the angular nature of his features.

  Peter was always an affable ghost, hardly ever condemning Marshall for his survival. The rest were not quite so generous. They reminded him, by their appearance, by their jeering smiles, how much guilt he bore for their deaths. If he was fortunate on this night, their wounds would not seep blood, leaving a trail across the floor. Their heads would remain intact, and attached to their necks.

  If he were not so fortunate, they would begin to speak, gibberish at first. Then he’d be able to make out one word and then two, and then whole sentences of condemnation.

  He raised his glass, downing the rest of his wine. He should change to whiskey, perhaps. The wine might not work and sleep would not come at all tonight.

  Peter spoke to him, but Marshall only closed his eyes. He knew there was no one really there. If he did feel something brushing against his cheek, that, too, was only part of the hallucinations.

  He heard sounds that should not be here in the close confines of his study. A waterfall, a rushing river, or was that the sound of his own heartbeat and the blood coursing through his body?

  Dear God, but he wanted escape from this, and yet he knew deliverance wouldn’t come. Not tonight, if at all.

  “Your Lordship,” came the voice.

  Marshall smiled, knowing that the sound was only in his mind.

  “They’re coming for us.”

  He leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes.

  “They’ll be here in a minute, sir. What do we do?”

  They would come, in his memory or his mind. Two men at first, and then two more. Sometimes they’d kill one of the English sailors in front of him. Sometimes they’d take him away, to a room down the hall, close enough that Marshall and the other men could hear him scream for days or for however long the poor man lasted.

  “Don’t show your fear, men,” he said now. He took another sip of wine, knowing that his advice was idiotic, misplaced, and ineffective. What did they have left other than their courage and their pride?

  “Don’t show your fear,” he whispered, and toasted the dead men who’d depended on him, whom he’d failed, and whose lifeless bodies visited him every night.

  Chapter 16

  The grass was a deep emerald green; the sky was a brilliant blue. The birds were chatty this morning, the sound of their chirps and squawks accompaniments to Davina’s journey to the Egypt House.

  Th
e ornamental hedges had been sculpted into a twisting maze that both delighted and astounded her. The trees of Ambrose’s forest were old, their trunks scarred and massive. New leaves clung to their branches, providing a large and expansive canopy.

  There was something about the day that reminded Davina of her childhood, carefree days of walking hand-in-hand through the streets of Edinburgh with her father as he explained the history evident on each corner. Sometimes the child she’d been had wanted to be one of those faraway people, come to Edinburgh to visit the court. She’d wanted to be an exciting person instead of simply reading about intrigue.

  A few bees passed her, and Davina wondered if she was about to be strung. But two darted in front of her and then simply went on their way, off to visit a few of the flowers.

  The gardens were glorious. The engorged leaves and fragile, starlike white flowers of the crassula lived in perfect harmony with bright yellow primroses and clusters of dark purple bluebells drooping low on their curved stems. Wood sorrel, their petals open to the sun, proudly revealed their lilac striations. Next to them was the queen of the garden, the pink and white blooming phlox, planted in a magnificent border.

  The Countess of Lorne had often written of her garden, and it was evident that she’d spent many hours in contemplation of what she would leave as a legacy.

  The countess served as a lesson of sorts. Davina had no intention of living the kind of life Julianna Ross had lived. There was something so tragic about her unrequited love for her own husband, a love that Aidan never noticed.

  What about her own marriage? There was nothing successful about her own union; witness the smirk she’d received from Mrs. Murray the night before outside Marshall’s room.

  She wasn’t going to accept that kind of behavior from Marshall.

  The warm breeze brushed against her cheek. Winter was her favorite season, and it was probably because ever since she was a child she’d been fascinated by the legend of the Calleach Bhuer, the hag who symbolized winter and was capable of changing from flesh to stone.