A Highland Duchess Read online

  As a woman, she was to be meek and mild mannered. She was to defer to a man at all times, taking a man’s judgment over her own, a man’s reasoning over her own, a man’s opinion over her own. At no time was she to consider herself a man’s equal. After all, was not man created first, and woman second, from man’s rib?

  If, for some reason, she was to lose all her wits and forget those lifelong lessons, then a woman’s husband was to show her where she’d erred.

  Her mother had instilled those lessons in her from the time she was a child. An elderly aunt of her father’s had added her chastisement as well, rapping Emma’s knuckles with the crook of her cane when she wasn’t quick enough to obey.

  For all that, she still had fond memories of Aunt Ethel, a widow for so many years she claimed not to be able to recall her husband at all.

  Would she be the same? In a matter of years would someone ask her about the Duke of Herridge only for her to be confused? Would she search her memory and be unable to remember the husband she’d so hated and feared for four years?

  No, memories of Anthony were forever lodged in her mind, burned into her brain by shock and horror.

  The laughter was closer, and she halted behind one of the columns. From here she could see down into the courtyard, that lovely space where she’d breakfasted with Ian only this morning. Light shone behind several windows lining the courtyard, and shadows flitted against the draperies.

  Her heart beat rapidly, her hands grew damp, and her feet felt encased in blocks of ice. For endless moments she stood watching and waiting, a prayer trapped in her mind. How foolish she was—God had not helped her at Chavensworth.

  Perhaps she thought that if she watched the door to the courtyard, it would remain shut. The men would stay inside with their party guests. She wrapped her arms around her waist, unable to push back the fear.

  The stairs were barely illuminated by a lamp in the corridor below her. She clung to the banister with a hand while she gripped her skirts with the other and took one step at a time.

  At the bottom of the steps she moved across the gravel, the stones biting into her bare feet, stopping at a spot close to where she’d breakfasted that morning.

  The door opened.

  She stepped back, behind a tall bush. A stream of men left the room. All of them were dressed in evening wear, and most of them appeared to be smoking a cigar. The smell of tobacco, a not unpleasant scent, wafted through the air.

  Ian emerged finally, dressed in a similar fashion as the others. He was handsome enough in his everyday clothes, and even more so in black and white. But some people had considered Anthony a handsome man as well. They hadn’t looked into his eyes and seen his withered soul.

  Ian was intent upon shaking the hands of the men clustered around him.

  “No, Sir Eustace, I will be unable to attend,” he was saying.

  “A pity. You have a first-rate scientific mind.”

  “Coming from you, Sir Eustace, I consider that a great compliment. Thank you.”

  “Keep up the good work, my dear boy. I think you’re on to something.”

  One by one the men walked to a door on the other side of the courtyard, once more entering the house. Ian and another man followed them, Ian’s hand on the man’s shoulder.

  There were no women in sight. No cancan dancers or scantily clad women of society.

  Several maids and two footmen entered the room the men had vacated, evidently gathering up the dishes and straightening the chamber. She heard them laughing, the kind of camaraderie that went on in well-run households.

  “If I’d known you were so curious,” Ian said from behind her, “I would have invited you to dinner.”

  Chapter 8

  She turned to see Ian standing in the shadows.

  He took a few steps toward her, slowly, as if not wishing to startle her.

  Her heartbeat was so rapid she was faint with it.

  “If you had attended, I’m afraid someone would have recognized you,” he continued. “Not to mention the fact that you would probably have been exceptionally bored.”

  “Was it an exceptionally boring dinner?” she asked, feeling absurdly close to tears. Relief because he wasn’t like Anthony?

  He moved out of the shadows and to her side. “Parts of it were,” he said. “But I’ve learned to take the bad with the good. Some speeches were quite illuminating. My guests are members of the Royal Society, very learned men, all in all. True, some are boors, but you find that in any group.”

  “I’ve no affinity for science.”

  “Do you know that for certain?” he asked. “Or are you only saying that because you’ve not been exposed to much of it?”

  “I’m not even entirely certain I know what science is,” she said. Why was she always so lamentably honest with him?

  “I shall have to show you one day,” he said. “Perhaps after all of this, we’ll have the opportunity.”

  “A friendship between an abductor and his prisoner.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, smiling.

  “Brigand and scientist. What else do you do?”

  “A great many things,” he said.

  “Do I have your word that I will be safe here, Ian?” she suddenly asked. She hadn’t meant to ask the question but she was still conscious of the fear she’d felt earlier.

  Was she always going to be just a little afraid?

  He frowned at her, then just as suddenly his frown eased and a look came over his face that she couldn’t decipher.

  “I give you my solemn word, Emma, that you are safe here.”

  He didn’t speak or ask the reason for her question. She was more than a little embarrassed for having spied on him, as well as insisting upon his reassurance now. A man’s word was worthless if he had no honor. People in Anthony’s circle were cleaved in two: a private persona and a public one. No one was truly honorable in either guise.

  She shouldn’t have considered this man who’d invaded her home, who’d abducted her, an honorable man. Yet she believed him, and strangely, trusted in his word.

  “Thank you for the books,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. I’m glad my sister is such a prodigious reader.”

  The silence was oddly intimate, as if each held back thoughts they shouldn’t say.

  “I haven’t heard from your uncle, yet,” he said. “But I’ll send a man to your house tomorrow.”

  She nodded. Uncomfortable with the silence, she spoke again. “Did you give a speech tonight?”

  “I did,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps that’s why parts of the dinner were so boring.”

  “I should like to hear it,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I very much would,” she said. The startled look on his face, coupled with his obvious reluctance, encouraged her to insist. “Truly, I would.”

  “The sun’s light reveals its track when passing through a dark room by the dust floating in the air. The same particles are invisible by candlelight,” he said.

  She glanced at him in confusion, then understood. He was reciting his speech to her.

  “In my research on decomposition by bacteria, I was troubled by the appearance of floating matter, and compelled to remove these atoms and dust. I wanted my experiment to have no taint of these diffuse particles.”

  Two maids walked along the corridor, and he leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. His mouth was only an inch or so from her ear. She could feel his breath on her skin.

  She shivered.

  “I therefore constructed a box to track these atoms before the air which contained them reached my experiment.” His voice was low, the words less important than his delivery of them. He could have recited the Book of Common Prayer and made it sound like a decadent and fo
rbidden volume.

  “The box was lined with a vitreous solution.”

  She heard the sound of laughter, then he moved still closer and she couldn’t pay attention to anything but him.

  “As I had postulated, within a day the air coming into my experiment was devoid of these particles.”

  “It sounds like an enormously interesting speech,” she said when he’d finished. In truth, she’d barely heard a word of it and understood even less.

  The air around them was still, the courtyard silent. Not a leaf stirred. Not a bird sang. The servants were gone, all but two of the lamps extinguished. The two of them stood alone in the garden.

  “I should leave,” she said. Why was it suddenly so difficult to breathe?

  She took a cautionary step to the side, then another, but he only turned to face her, the faint light illuminating the side of his face, the curve of his smile.

  “Have I given you any reason to fear me?” he asked.

  “Besides entering my sitting room? Other than crawling across my roof?”

  He chuckled, holding up his hands as if in surrender. “Other than that,” he said.

  “Other than that. You’ve been a gentleman. A kind and generous host.”

  His smile faded. Had she insulted him?

  “Emma,” he said, then stopped.

  She waited but he didn’t speak further. Instead, his attention was captured by something across the courtyard. A flicker of light? The movement of the branches in the gentle night wind? Or perhaps he just simply wished himself away from her. She took another step to the side, gripping her skirts with both hands.

  If nothing else, she should be mindful of the sheer romance of the night, of the moonlight casting shadows onto the walkway, the scent of roses, the whisper of wind through the branches, and the far off call of a night bird.

  “Your guests will be missing you,” she said a few minutes later, her eyes on the shadowed forms of the bushes and the flowers.

  “I’ve plied them with spirits and tobacco,” he said. “I doubt they will miss me unless either runs out. Scientists are largely a parsimonious lot. They spend most of their money on their experiments. To be treated to a fine dinner, cigars, and brandy is a luxury.”

  “Are you truly a thief?” she asked. “Is that how you’ve managed to acquire money for a fine dinner, cigars, and brandy?”

  He didn’t speak for a moment.

  “Shall we be relentlessly honest with one another, Emma?” he said finally. “Shall I confess to you my identity? If I do so, then I want the truth from you as well.”

  The truth was an ugly thing, and this garden was too lovely to be soiled by it.

  She shook her head.

  “Then can we pretend, for however long we’re destined to be in one another’s company, that we are who we choose to be?”

  “Who would you choose to be, Ian?”

  “A scientist, a man who might be independently wealthy, with myriad responsibilities but a love of learning new things. And you? Who would you be?”

  When she was a child, Cook had prepared pattern biscuits for her on special occasions or when she was ill. She would roll out a certain measure of dough, and using a wooden die, press a design into the soft dough. The biscuits were spicy, sweet, and uniform, each like the other.

  During her marriage to Anthony, Emma had wanted to be like a pattern biscuit. She hadn’t wanted to be singled out, made special or unique. She simply wanted to exist, anonymous and unseen.

  Here and now, she was being given a chance to be anyone she wanted to be.

  She could be the woman she’d been for the last four years, silent, reserved, pretending to be untouched by Anthony’s depravities. Or she could be the Emma she’d never been, the woman grown from her girlhood, someone capable of kindness, generosity, compassion. A woman with excitement about life, enthusiasm about each coming day.

  The Duchess of Herridge whispered to her to remember who she was. But Emma spoke. “Emma,” she said. “I’ll simply be Emma.”

  A footman passed not ten feet from them, and Ian turned his back to the man, effectively shielding her. The tinkle of glasses on a tray echoed loudly for a moment before fading away.

  The air was warm, sultry. The soft breeze of the morning had acquired heat and a delicate and powdery scent from the roses.

  He reached out his hand and touched her wrist.

  “Who is Emma?”

  Dear God what did she tell him? That she wasn’t quite certain herself? One thing she did know—Emma was a girl much more approachable than the woman she’d become.

  He took another step toward her, and she wanted to warn him that he stood much too close for propriety. But she kept her hands in front of her, still linked by his fingers on her wrist, as if he measured the effect of his touch on her.

  Her heart was beating almost as fast as when she’d left the room and crept down the stairs. But this was not fear. Instead, it was something else, another sensation she’d never felt—longing.

  She moved her hand, turning it just slightly so his fingers rested against her palm. Another movement and she would have entwined her fingers with his, until they stood linked by hands and silence.

  Did Ian feel the way she did right at this moment? As if something strange were happening? As if by simply declaring herself to be someone other than the hated Duchess of Herridge, she’d somehow truly freed herself to become that person?

  He took one more step, bending his head down until she could feel the warmth of his breath on her forehead.

  “Who is Emma?” he asked again.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Do you never talk about yourself, Emma?”

  What was there to say? That she’d once been a foolish girl, an improvident one, who’d run through the house with her voice raised in laughter. Years of training had modified her behavior until she was decorous to a fault. She could restrain herself so much that people who’d witnessed her demeanor under intolerable conditions labeled her Ice Queen.

  Except now, here, in this place, in this darkened garden, with this man standing too close, she suspected that the Ice Queen might be melting inside. The woman who was beginning to emerge was not as restrained or as capable of resolve. At least, not around him.

  He was not Anthony—that thought rose above everything.

  Anthony was cruel and vindictive. Ian was solicitous and kind.

  Anthony was old; Ian was strong, vigorous, and young.

  Anthony delighted in the debasement of others. Ian thanked his servants.

  Anthony had made her shudder in revulsion. Ian stole her breath.

  Anthony lived his duchy. No one within his sphere was allowed to forget that he was the Duke of Herridge. Ian cloaked himself in mystery.

  Anthony was incapable of humor unless it was at someone’s expense. Ian laughed at himself.

  Ian was much taller than she. Her chin came barely to his shoulder. She might reach out and kiss his throat if she wished.

  The Ice Queen would never do something like that. The Duchess of Herridge would never kiss a stranger.

  The Emma of her girlhood, the optimistic child with shining eyes and bubbling laughter, had not breathed life, had not emerged for so very long that her sudden reappearance now was startling.

  She should put her hand on his chest and push gently, so he understood he was much too close.

  Then he did something surprising. Ian stepped back and stretched out his hand, simply that. A gesture of conciliation? Friendship? Or something more?

  He beckoned her, welcomed her, urged her without a word spoken.

  She should have excused herself and returned to her chamber, burying herself in the books she’d been given. Instead, she placed her bare hand on his palm, stretching her f
ingers over his hand, feeling the calluses on his fingertips. When he gripped her hand tightly, she didn’t pull free.

  He urged her out of the shadows into the faint illumination from the lamps in the corridor.

  “I should not have brought you here,” he said. “Not to my home. Not to this garden.”

  What did she say to that? Was he warning her? Should she flee now? How strange that she didn’t want to, that her blood felt heated and her cheeks flamed with warmth.

  He glanced downward, stopped, and turned to her.

  “Where are your shoes, Emma?”

  To be confused was one thing. She tucked that emotion away to examine later. To feel embarrassment was another thing entirely.

  She looked down at her bare feet as if surprised to find them suddenly shoeless.

  “My room,” she said. “Your room.”

  He was smiling. “I didn’t notice you were barefoot,” he said.

  The Duchess of Herridge would never have appeared in public in such a shocking lapse of decorum. Emma, however, might well have tossed her shoes away in a show of freedom.

  Perhaps she’d become Emma, just Emma, from the moment she’d been abducted.

  “I’ll see you to your room,” he said.

  Your room. For the first time, she fully realized that she slept in his bed, slept where he had slept, put her head on his pillow.

  He led her to the stairs, as if she were a child and couldn’t find her way, or perhaps they were both children, giving each other comfort in the night.

  No, nothing so innocent. This brigand was temptation himself.

  Chapter 9

  Slowly and together, they mounted the stairs, then wordlessly continued down the corridor, still linked by their joined hands. He saw her to the door, opened it for her, and stood aside.

  This moment felt as if it were a beginning, not unlike a dance when musicians tuned their instruments in the corner of a ballroom. First came the discordant notes, then the sudden rich weeping of a violin, sweeping the dancers onto the floor, shoes sliding across the waxed boards.

  Her heart beat in time as if to make up for the lack of music. Her feet ached to dance across the space between them, demand he hold her in his arms and make proper her wish to be embraced.