The Scottish Companion Page 23

  She’d known passion with the Earl of Straithern, a blinding, yearning need far in excess of anything she’d ever felt for Robert.

  “Do you regret it?” he asked again.

  She shook her head. “Regret is foolish, isn’t it? We cannot undo what we did.”

  His expression changed, became sterner, as if he were angry but attempting to hide his feelings.

  “Did you care for me? When I was ill?”

  “Lorenzo was with you the entire night.”

  She looked down at the comb in her hand.

  “Do you disapprove?”

  She glanced up at him. There was no doubt of his annoyance now.

  “Was there no one else in attendance?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t Dr. Fenton treat me?”

  “Because I don’t exactly trust Dr. Fenton,” Grant said.

  She stared at him. “You cannot be serious.”

  “My brothers were poisoned, Gillian. How do I know that Dr. Fenton did not orchestrate their deaths somehow?”

  “Anyone could have tampered with your meal,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  “But why? Why does someone want you dead?”

  “If I knew that, I’d know the identity of the person doing this,” he said. “Who do you want as chaperone, and I will summon her. But do not, I beg you, ask for Arabella.”

  “I would not,” she admitted. “Even though being in attendance at a bedside makes her very happy.” A moment later, she apologized. “Forgive me; I should not have said what I did. She excels at treating the ill, and gains great pleasure from it. She should be commended, not castigated.”

  “Whom do you think would suit me, Gillian?”

  They regarded each other for a moment.

  “You do not think Arabella will suit. Whom should I choose?”

  Perhaps it was because she felt so weak, or because she still hurt so abominably, but the answer came without restraint. “Someone warm, someone who is given to demonstrations of affection. Someone to offset your occasional coldness. Someone who would make you laugh. Someone who would make you see the absurdity of things. Someone who would dare you to be more human.”

  She had angered him, she could tell. There was a tightness to his smile now, and his chin looked as if it had been formed of granite. His gaze did not veer from her, his eyes seeming to bore right through the sheet.

  “You did ask,” she said. “It is no good giving me that very aristocratic look of yours. I am not afraid of you, Grant.”

  He startled her by smiling. “Do I have an aristocratic look?” he asked. “If so, I was unaware. Most of the time, I am simply involved in my own thoughts. Not how my face might appear to others.”

  “Oh, you’re very handsome, but very distant. Stern and stiff as if you were very, very conscious of who you are, or want to remind other people of it.”

  “Do I have any other flaws you’d like to correct, Miss Cameron?”

  She’d offended him or angered him. Either way, it was better than him remaining at her bedside, solicitous.

  She shook her head just once, and suddenly he was gone. He simply closed the door behind him with a smart click of the latch. She was alone, staring at the closed door and wishing she could call him back.

  He was not cold, damn it. Nor was he so involved in being an earl that he forgot he was a man. He was perfectly capable of humor, of feeling emotions.

  Why did she think he was distant? He’d never acted that way around her. But he should be, perhaps, if for no other reason than kindness. It was all too evident that someone wanted him dead. Why should he encourage her to feel anything for him when he might die before his time?

  Did he want her to mourn him, and what an unprincipled, sorry excuse for a bastard was he to even ask that question? Hell no, he didn’t want her to mourn him—he didn’t want to die! A long and happy life was suddenly a prize held just beyond his grasp, and it angered him that he wasn’t entirely certain he could reach it.

  He walked into his laboratory to find Lorenzo there, sprawled in the chair.

  “Have I done something to deserve that scowl, my friend? Did Miss Cameron complain of my treatment? Is that why you have such a fierce look on your face?”

  “I am annoyed on general principles, Lorenzo.”

  “The lovely Miss Gillian, perhaps? Is she the cause of your annoyance?”

  Lorenzo was his greatest friend, but there were some things Grant didn’t share with even him, especially how he felt about Gillian. “Women are not worth the effort it takes to endure their presence,” was the only thing he said.

  “On the contrary, my friend. Women are the only thing worth the effort it takes. If you have not discovered that for yourself, then I’d truly pity you. Earl or not, you are a poor man indeed.”

  “Why the hell does everybody keep reminding me of my title?”

  “Because you keep reminding everyone of it as well. The very way you carry yourself, your speech, and your very glances. I think you have become more the earl since you have returned to Scotland than you ever were in Italy.”

  “I have responsibilities, Lorenzo. Especially now.”

  “I understand your grief, my friend. It is not an easy thing to lose those you love. But you will not honor their lives or console yourself over their deaths if you make yourself miserable. They would not what you to simply cease feeling.”

  The very last thing he wanted to discuss was his emotions. They swirled around him as it was, threatening to drown out his intellect. “Are the kitchens salvageable?” he asked.

  “Indeed, they are. Whoever built this Pleasure Palace of yours was not frugal. Your new cook’s eyes lit up upon seeing the space where she would have to work. Myself, I think she would be just as happy never leaving this place.”

  “And the testers?”

  “A very odd task you’ve given me, my friend. I cannot wait to tell Elise what duties I was given to perform: the catching of mice.”

  “Better a mouse should sacrifice his life than a human being,” Grant said.

  “There were a number of men in your employ who would have volunteered for the position of taster. For all your disposition, Grant, you inspire great loyalty.”

  “Is there something about me that brings out comments on my disposition? Is there something special about this particular day?”

  “I take it, then, Miss Cameron has remarked upon it?” Lorenzo asked.

  “She has.”

  “Such remarks are not to your liking?”

  “Why do you look so decidedly amused, Lorenzo? As if she has done something deserving of commendation?”

  “I think she is not so afraid of you. Even in Italy, there were a great many women who might have been attracted to you, my friend, had it not been for your frowns.”

  “I have not had much to smile about of late, Lorenzo.”

  “Perhaps you’ve forgotten how. Perhaps Miss Cameron will remind you. I was against this idea of yours, in the beginning,” Lorenzo confessed. “But the more I give it time, the more I think it would be a very good thing for both of you.”

  Grant turned and regarded his friend.

  “What idea is that?”

  “Keeping her here, with you,” Lorenzo said.

  “It’s for her own protection.”

  Lorenzo smiled and stood.

  “This is not about Miss Cameron. Nor is it about us being here together. It’s about something more important, Lorenzo. Our very lives.”

  “Life itself is unexpected, Grant,” Lorenzo countered. “We never know if the next day will come. Ah, but if you can enjoy the night before, who cares?”

  “I don’t have your taste for hedonism, Lorenzo.”

  “Pity. If you did, I believe that your life would be a great deal more enjoyable, my friend. Perhaps you should be cautious, Grant, but enjoy the circumstances as well.”

  Lorenzo smiled as Michael entered the room, brushing past the young man
on his way out the door. “I shall do what I can to keep the wolves from your door, Grant. In the meantime, I suggest you take advantage of this opportunity. Have a little enjoyment. Enjoy the circumstances.”

  Grant waited until he heard the sound of his footsteps on the marble floor. He knew the building so well, he could tell when Lorenzo had approached the rotunda and was nearly out the door.

  Only then did he turn to Michael. “Have you obtained all the items on my list?”

  Michael bowed slightly. “Yes, Your Lordship, I have. Everything is in the wagon outside.”

  “See that it’s unloaded,” Grant said. “And have one of the maids ready the room across from the rotunda. I’ll be sleeping there.”

  Michael bowed once more and left the room without further need for instructions.

  Enjoy the circumstances? Was Lorenzo daft? Gillian was dependent upon him, to guard not only her reputation, but her life.

  There was nothing to enjoy about the circumstances. Nothing at all. She could have died. The world would have been a much less pleasant place, a thought he’d never gotten around to telling her. Nor had he ever told her how much he enjoyed their conversations. He’d become accustomed to her presence at Rosemoor, finding that she enlivened his home somehow. She’d been here only a month, and she’d changed his life.

  He often strode through the grove where she liked to walk in the morning, and he’d stand beneath one venerable oak and put his palm on the trunk as he’d seen her do once or twice. As if she was communing with the tree or feeling the beat of life beneath her hand.

  He found himself standing on the veranda outside the ballroom, surveying all of Rosemoor and wondering what she saw when she looked at the view he’d always taken for granted.

  He discovered that he had perfect recall when it came to what she said, and could play snippets of conversation over and over again in his mind. Nor had he ever before been able to remember the tone of a woman’s voice.

  Enjoy the circumstances? He would be the worst idiot in the world to even give credence to that idea.

  He was never going to forget how she looked sitting there pale and wan against the pillows. Her appearance seemed to bring out a protective nature he’d never known he possessed until today. He wanted to lay her gently down on the bed, cover her with the sheet and blanket and ensure himself she was warm. He wanted to take the comb from her hand so that she couldn’t point it at him imperiously, and then play lady’s maid. He’d finish combing her hair, smoothing it away from her face.

  He could stare at her face for hours, measure the purity of it, the exact width between her eyes and the color of them, a dark blue so deep in color they appeared almost black sometimes. He wanted to trace a line from the lobe of her ear to the tip of her nose, and then draw in the outline of her smiling lips.

  He wasn’t besotted. He was simply insane. Or wild with lust.

  He worked in his laboratory for a few hours, annoyed that, for the first time, he was conscious of the passing of time. He wanted to check on Gillian, yet he stopped himself, holding out that task as if it were a reward for his dedication. A few more notes, a few components of the experiment, and he would allow himself to visit her.

  They shared a meal, although not in the same room. He’d taken the dinner trays from Cook and fed them to cages of mice, watching them carefully for any signs of illness. When a half hour passed and they didn’t appear affected, he called Michael and had him deliver the tray to Gillian.

  “Ask her if she requires anything,” he instructed Michael.

  “I shall, Your Lordship,” Michael said.

  “Be sure to tell her that if she needs anything at all, we can provide it.”

  Michael bowed.

  Before Michael left the room, Grant called him back. “Tell her I’m sorry for the coldness of the meal, but that it was unavoidable.”

  “Yes, Your Lordship.”

  He ate his own dinner at the table in his laboratory. The pleasure of food had been stripped from him, to be replaced with caution.

  A quarter hour later, Michael knocked on the laboratory door.

  “Miss Cameron would like to convey her thanks to you, Your Lordship. She said the dinner was delicious, and that it didn’t matter that it was cold.”

  “And you? Michael? Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet, Your Lordship, but Cook is holding back something for me.”

  “Take the rest of the evening off, I shall not need you.”

  “Are you certain, Your Lordship?”

  He could count on the fingers of his left hand those things he was certain about, but he didn’t say that to Michael. Instead, he only nodded. Before the young man left the room, however, Grant called after him.

  “Is she well?” He amended that question a moment later. “Is she feeling better than she did this morning?”

  “She looked very well, Your Lordship.”

  It wasn’t the answer he wanted. He wanted Michael to be able to say: Yes, her cheeks are rosy, and she smiled at me, Your Lordship. Her eyes flashed intelligence and temper and impatience. She was quick with her questions and with her praise, and she laughed in delight over some silly remark.

  Michael would say none of those things, even if they’d been true. But he might say, with a young man’s candor: She is a beautiful woman, Your Lordship. She has a certain radiance about her, a certain fluidity to her movements, as if she dances when she walks.

  Michael wouldn’t say that to him because Grant was the Earl of Straithern, and evidently, he was determined to impress that fact upon everyone he met. At least according to his friend and a woman he very much wanted to impress.

  There, the truth of it, the whole unpalatable truth. He wanted to be more than a man in her eyes. He wanted to be greater than he was. More intelligent, more talented, more instructive, more learned, more of a man.

  “Thank you, Michael,” he said, releasing the footman. “That will be all.”

  After Michael left, he extinguished one of the lamps and walked to the window. Unlike a great many of the rooms in the palace, this room had a series of windows. He could see outside, and the world could see in. There was nothing shocking or horrifying to witness. There was nothing in this room that would offend the sensibilities, except for an earl who was on the verge of becoming a fool.

  How odd that he’d never before realized how lonely a life he lived. Even in Italy he was alone, and he’d counted those years as the best of his life. What was it that Lorenzo said? Something about women being afraid of him.

  He’d had a mistress while in Italy, an older woman who was mature enough to know that he could not give her anything permanent. Had he at least given her affection? He’d deeded a house to her and a carriage, and enough money to keep her in comfort for a good number of years. She had been appropriately grateful, but he didn’t think she was grief-stricken when he left for Scotland.

  Until this moment, he’d not given her one thought.

  What sort of man has an intimate relationship with a woman and then banishes her from his thoughts with ease? A man with other things on his mind, perhaps. Or one who never quite lowered the barrier between himself and others.

  He was not cold or distant. He was simply involved in his work, that’s all. He had many friends, many acquaintances.

  Yet he’d arranged to marry a woman he’d never met because he couldn’t be bothered to search out a wife. Or because he’d known the search would require him to feign interest in someone other than himself. He’d be forced to demonstrate emotions he wasn’t at all certain he possessed.

  Dear God, he was cold and distant.

  Until Gillian came to Rosemoor.

  He’d felt desire before, knew passion in its many guises, but he’d never felt it as quickly as he had around Gillian. He wanted to know all the nuances she experienced. Did her blood heat as quickly as his; did her heart race as rapidly? Did she feel as if she were soaring high above the earth when pleasure came to her, and oddly sad
later, when nature forced them to separate? Strange questions he’d never before thought, let alone wanted to share.

  She was grace and beauty, and life. A woman of such disparate temperaments that he was fascinated despite reason or prudence or his own nature.

  Nor did he ever want to share knowledge with anyone the way he did with her. He wanted to tell her of his work today, that he’d put aside the marsh gas and chosen another experiment, that of magnetizing a surface electrically.

  There was no one else he could tell. No one who would care.

  Did she fascinate him simply because he was lonely, and because he hadn’t had a woman in his life for some time? Or was it because he dreaded and regretted the idea of marriage?

  He didn’t know what the answers were, but he did know he was tired of asking himself questions. He just wanted to forget for a while. He wanted to forget who he was and the past that would not let him go and the future that stretched before him like a long and dusty—and lonely—road. He wanted, strangely enough, to be someone entirely different from who he was.

  Enjoy the circumstances? Not damn likely.

  Michael brought her dinner, and although she thought at first that she wouldn’t be able to eat, her appetite returned at the sight of the roast beef. There was crusty bread as well, and something that tasted like pear tart for dessert. The hot chocolate was absolutely delicious, and the bread was flavored with onions. She opened a small porcelain container to find it filled with mustard, a rich, spicy mustard that made the roast beef taste even better, if that was possible.

  Food seemed to have more flavor than it ever had. Could it be because she’d despaired of living to see another day? In her hazy recollection of illness, she remembered being afraid, so desperately afraid that she’d felt cold from the inside out.

  Her dinner done, she lay back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling. There were touches of wealth even here, in a room Grant rarely used. A large decorative plaster rosette was carved in the middle of the ceiling, and in the center of it hung a chain supporting a massive crystal chandelier. A rope mounted on the other side of the room was connected to a pulley, and evidently lowered the chandelier so the candles could be lit and then the whole apparatus hauled back into place.