A Highland Duchess Page 27

He stepped back.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m just reciting my notes.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can focus on something other than you,” he said.

  He’d done that once before, at Chavensworth. He was still breathing with some difficulty, his cheeks bronzed, the glitter of his eyes attesting to how swift and powerful passion rose between them.

  The amusement she felt was laced with sadness. How wonderful he was, this earl with the scientific mind. How fascinating. How intriguing.

  “When will Bryce be well enough to travel?” he asked.

  “He needs to see a physician,” she said. “He’s still very weak.”

  “I’ll arrange it. When he is well enough to travel, where will you go?”

  “Back to London, no doubt.”

  “To your uncle’s? Is that safe? Especially in light of what we suspect?”

  “We don’t have proof, however. Nor has Bryce been forthcoming with any answers.”

  “Have you asked him?” Ian said, evidently surprised.

  She nodded. “He simply closes his eyes and refuses to speak with me.”

  “I don’t want you going back to London, Emma.”

  She smiled. “That’s not your decision, Ian. The house is mine,” she said. “Or Bryce’s, now. It will be safe enough.”

  “As your money is Bryce’s. With any luck, he won’t gamble it away.”

  “My uncle is a gambler,” she said. “At least I have some familiarity with the vice. Anthony was always complaining about how much my uncle lost. He periodically threatened to refuse to give him any more funds.”

  She wrapped her arms around her waist.

  “That’s what they were arguing about,” she said, the words coming back to her. Do you think I’m going to just sit back and wait until you do to me what you did to the Duke of Herridge?

  Emma turned, staring at Ian, and repeated the words to him. “At the time, I thought they were talking about money. But if they weren’t . . . ” Her words faded away.

  “Then it’s something worse,” he said.

  Chapter 31

  “We need to talk with Bryce,” Ian said.

  She glanced at the mantel clock. “Tonight?” she asked, surprised.

  “Tonight,” he said.

  They descended the stairs together in silence.

  Bryce was sleeping when they entered the sickroom. Ian went to the corner, spoke to Glenna, and a moment later she gathered up her knitting, stuffed it in a cloth bag, and left the room without a word spoken.

  Emma moved a ladder-back chair closer to the bed and sat, trying to pretend a composure she didn’t feel.

  How very odd that she sat at her husband’s bedside with the man she loved in the same room, and felt no hypocrisy. She, who had lived with an understanding of society’s duplicity, had no shame about her own.

  Why was that?

  Because she knew that, despite her wishes and her wants, she would not act on her feelings. Instead, she would be the very best wife to Bryce that she could be. Not because she loved him or even thought that she might come to love him, but because loving someone else had changed her.

  She pitied Bryce because, while he acted as if he wanted none of the softer emotions, he was human, and people deserved to be loved. She pitied him, also, because someone wanted him to die.

  Ian stood on the other side of the bed. He reached out one hand and placed it on Bryce’s shoulder. A moment later he shook his cousin gently.

  “Bryce,” he said. “You need to wake up.”

  Bryce’s lashes fluttered and he blinked a few times before groggily waking. A smile curved his lips when he saw Ian.

  “Cousin,” he said, his words a little slurred. “It’s about time you came to see me. Where’s the vaunted McNair hospitality?”

  “I’ve been to see you many times, Bryce,” Ian said.

  Bryce’s expression slid from forced amiability to something darker, a dislike he didn’t bother to conceal.

  “I’m so sorry to have put you to any trouble.” He glanced over at Emma. “I see you’ve met my bride. Did she tell you she was an heiress?”

  Ian folded his arms and looked down at his cousin.

  Emma suspected that if Ian said something protective, they might not learn anything from Bryce. Let her husband say what he wanted about her. It simply didn’t matter. She shook her head, a signal to Ian. He frowned at her but remained silent.

  She placed her hand on her husband’s arm.

  “Bryce, you need to tell us who you think could have poisoned you,” she said.

  Ian leaned down and braced himself with one hand above Bryce’s pillow.

  “You mentioned a carriage trying to run you down in London,” he said. “Was that before or after you told the Earl of Falmouth that you knew he’d murdered the Duke of Herridge?”

  She stared at Ian, shocked. But she was not the only person startled by Ian’s question. Bryce was looking at Ian in surprise.

  “You’re very clever, cousin,” he said.

  “Before or after?”

  “After.”

  Emma stared at Bryce, hearing that one word and understanding the import of it.

  Ian straightened, glanced over at Emma, his expression barely restrained. “Perhaps it would be better if you left the room, Emma.”

  “So that you can shout at each other? I’m not leaving.”

  Bryce glanced over at her, his mouth twisting in a grimace. “Your uncle is wrong, you know. He told me that you were a compliant sort. You haven’t been, since the day we married.”

  “Nor do I intend to be, for the extent of our marriage,” she said, quite amiably. “However long my uncle allows you to live, that is.”

  Bryce frowned.

  Ian folded his arms again, stared down at his cousin. “I agree with Emma. Sooner or later, her uncle is going to succeed in killing you.”

  “You’re very cordial with my wife, Ian. Have you fucked her yet? I’ve been told she’s quite a spirited little mare after she’s been put to the crop.”

  Violence suddenly shimmered in Ian’s eyes.

  Emma stood, stepped around the bed and placed her hand on Ian’s arm. “Please,” she said softly.

  “So you have fucked her,” Bryce said, closing his eyes. “At least one of the McNairs has dipped his wick in the heiress.”

  Emma could feel the tenseness of the muscles beneath her hand. She squeezed Ian’s arm, a wordless plea for his restraint.

  “The Earl of Falmouth will keep trying to kill you,” Ian said, biting out the words. “Although, at this point, I say let him have you.”

  Bryce remained with his eyes closed, long enough for Emma to wonder if he was going to speak at all.

  Was this what her married life was going to be like? Bryce being crude or no more receptive than a block of stone? At least he hadn’t pretended an affection he didn’t feel. Nor would she.

  Bryce opened his eyes, turned his head and smiled. “What do you suggest I do, Ian? Go to the authorities? If I come forward, I also admit to extortion.”

  “Is that why my uncle forced this marriage?” Emma asked, needing verification from him. “Because of what you knew?”

  “You were a payment,” Bryce said. He didn’t look at her, but concentrated on Ian instead. “I would have preferred cash.”

  Before either man could say another word, Emma escaped the sickroom.

  Ian found her in the garden, after going to her room, the drawing room, and a dozen other chambers within Lochlaven. Emma was sitting on one of the stone benches his grandfather had erected in a particularly lovely part of the garden. The herbs and flowers overflowed their borders, so that when someone walked along the pat
h, a scent of spice floated through the air.

  The lights of the laboratory illuminated this part of the garden, cast the plants into shadow, gave midnight the color of silver.

  He walked to where she sat, standing in front of her, remaining there until she looked up at him. Her eyes were surprisingly dry but the stricken look on her face was still in place, as if Bryce’s words had etched that look on her features.

  “I can’t go back in there,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “I can’t go back to that life. It’s diseased and depraved. I can’t be married to him.”

  She stared out toward the lake, now a black mirror for the sliver of moon.

  “I wondered why my uncle was so insistent on my marriage,” she said. “Now I wonder if it wasn’t simply because Bryce knew too much.” She glanced at Ian. “Could it be because he wanted to be able to kill Bryce, and being married to me would keep him within reach?”

  She stood, walked some distance away, her arms wrapped around her waist, then slowly returned.

  “What kind of people do I have in my life?” she asked, a question he took as rhetorical. “What kind of monsters surround me?”

  “Your fair share,” he said.

  He lifted his hand to place it on her shoulder, then withdrew it. She didn’t want comfort. She wanted him to hear her, to see her, to understand her.

  What she didn’t understand was that he already did.

  “Everyone needs someone to love them,” she said. “I had my father, but after my marriage to Anthony, I wondered if he truly loved me as much as he did the idea of having a daughter who was a duchess. My uncle loved my money more than me. I always knew that.” She stared off toward the island. “I was twice the fool, wasn’t I?”

  “To want to be loved? By your uncle? Perhaps.”

  “Now is the time to humor me, McNair,” she said, giving him an annoyed look. “Not the time for blunt honesty.”

  “On the contrary,” he said, “you’d resent me if I treated you like an idiot. As everyone else has.”

  She smiled, a halfhearted expression but a smile nonetheless.

  His Celtic forbearers had granted him a spirit of possessiveness, for the land, for Lochlaven, and for this woman. She was his. She’d always been his. From the first moment he’d seen her, he’d claimed her.

  He’d enjoyed the company of other women, the passion and laughter shared. None of those moments, none of those women, had ever made him tremble. None of them had ever entwined themselves around his heart.

  She was hurting now, and he wanted to ease her, but wouldn’t do so with lies or half-truths.

  “We’re all fools when it comes to love, Emma,” he said gently. “We lose our way, our common sense, our ability to think. We find ourselves studying the moon, and wondering why the thought of sleep is impossible. We all need love, Emma. You’re not a fool to wish for it.”

  “What are we going to do now?” she asked.

  “There is, unfortunately, nothing that can be done,” he said. “Neither you nor your housekeeper reported Anthony’s murder. I doubt, very much, that Bryce is going to willingly admit to the authorities that he’s guilty of extortion. Without his testimony, there’s no proof your uncle is guilty of murder. Nor is there anything we can do to prove who is responsible for Bryce’s poisoning.”

  “Why did he only poison one bottle?” she asked, a question he’d considered as well.

  “Perhaps he didn’t have enough time,” he said. “They were arguing the day you left for Scotland, you said.”

  She nodded.

  “But even that we can’t prove,” he added. “He could easily claim that it was contaminated before he received the shipment.”

  She continued to stare straight ahead. “So there’s nothing we can do?” she asked, her voice hollow.

  “I think Bryce has probably done it. He’s cut your uncle off from any funds, and banished him from your house.”

  “I wish it had been someone from Chavensworth,” she said. “I wish it had been someone who knew me as the Ice Queen and wanted me for himself. That would have been a great deal more tolerable than my own uncle.”

  “Yours is not the first family to be marked by greed,” he said.

  “But why did he do it?”

  “You touched upon the reason yourself, I suspect. Evidently, your uncle and Anthony had some disagreements about money in the past. Perhaps Anthony gave him an ultimatum.”

  He hesitated before he asked the question, knowing that it would only cause her more pain.

  “Why do you dislike wine, Emma?”

  “It makes me sick,” she said, turning to look at him.

  “Has it always made you sick?”

  The realization of what he was asking came swiftly. Abruptly, she sat on the bench.

  “Oh, dear God,” she said softly. “Ian, you don’t think . . . But of course you do. What else could you think?”

  She pressed her hands over her face, then dropped them and studied the gravel path.

  “No,” she said slowly. “It hasn’t always made me sick. Not until the last year.” She glanced up at him. “Was the wine meant for me?”

  “I doubt it. He would need to rid himself of Bryce, first. But I suspect you were next on his list if you returned home a widow.”

  She wrapped her arms around her waist.

  “What do we do now?”

  He took a deep breath. Somehow, the words would have to be said. Somehow, he would have to find a way to believe them.

  “You and Bryce will go on with your lives, somewhere away from your uncle. You and I will have to find a way to deal with the feelings between us.”

  “Why does that sound so difficult?” she asked, standing.

  “Because it will be.”

  “Ian,” she began, reaching up with one hand as if to place her palm against his cheek.

  He stepped back before she touched him. For a moment they just stared at each other. Darkness added a regality to her features. The silence of the garden rendered the moment almost poignant.

  She nodded, understanding. She dropped her hand and straightened, growing taller in those moments. Growing older, in a way, or perhaps it was simply that she became distant. The proper former Duchess of Herridge, the Ice Queen, his cousin’s wife.

  His love.

  Chapter 32

  The drawing room was strangely masculine, almost Georgian in its purity. The furniture was French but sparse. Only a settee, sideboard, two chairs, and a small table between them occupied the whole of it. No pianoforte sat against the wall, no curio cabinet filled with collections of objects stood in the corner. The walls, a pale French blue, were offset with panels of white, and cornices of carved thistles, like the ones she’d seen in a London garden.

  Emma sat on the settee, turning to face the windows. The sky was gray-white; raindrops trickled down the glass. Fog erased the landscape, muted the sounds of the lake lapping at the apron of beach, and seemed to slow life itself. Wind, carrying a hint of autumn in its gusts, whined around the corners of Lochlaven, seeped in through the window pane, whispering her name. Emma, come and walk with me. Let me billow your skirts, allow me to banish the cobwebs of your memories, and render you fresh and new.

  She almost succumbed.

  Had it not been for the advancing wall of cold gray fog, she might have ventured outside while Bryce slept. As it was, she’d escaped to this room, needing some change of scenery.

  She brushed the hair from her cheek with the back of her hand, wishing she might find a way to escape. Above all, she wanted to lose herself, become someone else for as long as she was able. Let her be a wraith, a ghost of the fog. Let her feel something other than this horrible emptiness that laced every hour and every minute of her day.

  Tomorro
w, she would leave Lochlaven.

  Bryce was still weak, physically. His will, however, outpaced his body. He was determined to leave Lochlaven and Ian’s hospitality with all possible speed.

  Dr. Carrick had returned from Inverness three days ago. His demeanor, however, was not the same as it had been. Gone was the ready smile, and his eyes bore a troubled look. Emma couldn’t help but wonder if he blamed her for his daughter’s broken engagement. She didn’t know what to say to him, so they avoided each other for the most part. When he came to examine Bryce, she would slip out of the room, although she had conferred with him about the mystery of Bryce’s weakness.

  “It is, no doubt, an effect of the arsenic,” he said.

  “Will he always have it?”

  He looked as if he didn’t want to answer her, but he finally did. “I don’t know, Mrs. McNair. He ingested a great amount of the poison. He’s fortunate to still be breathing. A little weakness is small enough price to pay.”

  Except that it wasn’t a “little weakness.” Bryce needed help to sit, and although he’d gradually gotten back enough strength in his hand to hold a cup, someone still had to feed him.

  Serving as Bryce’s nurse would keep her mind occupied, especially after tomorrow when they left Lochlaven.

  She turned back from the window, knowing that her respite was drawing to a close. She would need to return to the sickroom, to Bryce’s side.

  Tears were too close to the surface of late but they wouldn’t serve her now. Instead, she needed to show the same determination and stoic resistance she’d demonstrated during her marriage to Anthony.

  Once, she’d thought about love in a theoretical way, almost as if it were an emotion she could harness, or an aged cask she could tap at will. She knew now that loving someone changed you from the inside out, made you more receptive to joy, made you think of others before yourself, opened your heart to kindness and laughter.

  Love was simply there, like the moon and the stars.

  When the heart was opened to love, life changed. Even if it wasn’t right or proper or accepted by the world, once love came into a life, nothing was the same. Even if she could never touch him again, could not ever welcome him to her bed and to her body once more, she would love Ian McNair with her whole heart for her whole life.