Cameron agreed. The beast inside him wanted to rush to Balmoral and damn anyone who got in his way. “I know.”
“This is your fault,” Daniel snarled. “She’s gone, we’ll never see her again, and it’s all your fault.”
“Daniel—”
Daniel whirled and fled the room, McNab trotting worriedly after him.
Hell and damnation. Cameron sank to the bed, the strength going out of him. He hadn’t slept all night, and his head pounded with whiskey, exertion, and memories of Ainsley.
On the train, after the St. Leger. I will give you my answer.
Cameron could barely breathe.
He wouldn’t let her go. Mackenzie men were good at getting exactly what they wanted, and Cameron would have Ainsley. He’d not let her go again, not for the Queen of England or any other reason on God’s earth.
The declaration didn’t return color to his world, but he clung to it as he stripped off his soiled clothes and bellowed to the footmen to fetch Angelo.
Queen Victoria opened the keepsake box Ainsley had brought to her and slid the bundle of letters inside it. She locked the box with a little key on a ribbon and tucked the key back into her pocket.
“You have done well, my dear,” the queen said, her quiet smile satisfied.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but shouldn’t you burn them?” The lock on the keepsake box was flimsy, and Phyllida’s toady had found no difficulty stealing the letters from it the first time.
“Nonsense. It scarcely matters now. Mrs. Chase is long gone.”
Yes, but there might be others just as intent on embarrassing you, Ainsley argued silently.
However, the queen was right that Phyllida Chase would no longer be a threat. As soon as Ainsley had alighted from the train that evening, the maid who’d come to fetch her had told Ainsley the delightful rumor that Mrs. Chase had fled to the Continent with a young Italian tenor.
The rumor was confirmed at Balmoral by a colleague of Mr. Chase. Phyllida had written a letter to her husband, baldly stating that she’d left him and outlining why. Mr. Chase was outraged, ready to sue her, and he fully blamed the Duke of Kilmorgan for hosting licentious house parties. Ainsley wondered how Hart Mackenzie had reacted to that.
Victoria went on. “I heard that you returned my five hundred guineas to my secretary.”
“Yes, I was able to retrieve the letters and not spend your money, ma’am.”
“Very clever of you.” The queen patted her cheek. “So frugal, so very Scots. You’ve always been resourceful, my dear, as was your mother, God rest her soul.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
It alarmed Ainsley how easily she slid back into the role of the queen’s trusted servant. Ainsley wore mourning black again, but she couldn’t help but touch the onyx buttons of her bodice and imagine the wicked smile Cam would give her as he asked how many she’d let him undo.
Ainsley thought of the note she’d left him, poor recompense for all his help. But when Ainsley had telegraphed the queen that she’d successfully retrieved the letters, she’d received an almost instant reply that she should return to Balmoral at once.
Cameron had been on a horse in the fields with Angelo and his trainers, and Ainsley knew she wouldn’t have time to wait for him to finish so that she could say good-bye. When the queen said at once, she meant it.
Besides, Cameron might have demanded an answer then and there, and Ainsley’s mind whirled with the question. He wanted her to flee to the Continent with him, as Phyllida had done with her tenor, and Ainsley hadn’t the faintest idea what to tell him.
If she did go with Cameron, how on earth would she explain it to Patrick and Rona? As she’d tried to tell Cameron, she didn’t so much worry about scandal but who she would hurt by it. If I were alone in the world, I’d tell scandal to go hang and do as I pleased.
But Cameron was tempting Ainsley. It wasn’t simply lust for the bedchamber that made her long for him—there was his smile, the warmth in his eyes, the way he worried over Jasmine, the way he’d helped lame Mrs. Yardley so very gently across the croquet green. Ainsley wanted all of Cameron, the whole man.
“I’m thinking of going to Paris, ma’am,” Ainsley said.
The queen blinked. “Next summer, with your family? Of course, you must. Paris is lovely in the summer.”
“No, I mean in a few weeks.”
“Nonsense, my dear, you can’t possibly. We have the ghillies ball at the end of the month and so much to do after that, and then Christmas.”
Ainsley bit the inside of her mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”
To the queen, nothing was more interesting or important than royal entertainments, and Ainsley knew that Victoria would not want Ainsley to leave her side. Victoria smiled at Ainsley now.
“Play for me, dear,” the queen said. “You soothe me.”
She had her hands around her box, the queen’s plump face serene now that she’s regained the evidence of her secret love. Ainsley hid a sigh, went to the piano, and started to play.
Two days later, Ainsley walked into a long drawing room and found Lord Cameron Mackenzie standing in it, his back to her while he warmed his hands at the fireplace.
Before she could choose between running away and facing him squarely, Cameron turned around. His sharp gaze moved up and down her, and he didn’t disguise the fact that he was angry. Very angry.
“I left you a note,” Ainsley said faintly.
“Damn your note. Shut the door.”
Ainsley walked across the room to him without obeying about the door. “What are you doing here?”
And why did he look so wonderful in his worn riding kilt and muddy boots?
“I came to visit my mistress.”
Ainsley stopped. “Oh.”
“I meant you, Ainsley.”
Ainsley’s breath came pouring back. “I’m not your mistress.”
“My lover, then.” Cameron sat on a sofa without inviting her to sit first, removed a flask from his coat pocket, and took a long sip.
Ainsley seated herself on a nearby chair. “You make us sound like characters in a farce. I’ll wager you didn’t tell her majesty that you were here to visit your mistress.”
Cameron shrugged and took another sip. “She asked for my advice on a horse, and I decided to give it to her in person.”
“Very clever.”
“The queen likes to talk about horses.”
Ainsley nodded. “She does. I told you I’d give you my decision after the St. Leger. I need time to think.”
Cameron crossed his booted feet. “I’ve changed my mind. I want my answer now.”
“Does that mean you’ve come here to carry me off? They do have guards and things.”
“No, damn you. I came here to persuade you.”
“You are an arrogant man, Cameron Mackenzie.”
Cameron thrust the flask back into his pocket. “I’m a damned impatient man. I don’t understand why the devil you insisted on rushing back here to be the queen’s best servant.”
Ainsley spread her hands. “I need the money. I’m not a rich woman, and my brother can’t be expected to keep me forever.”
“I told you, I’ll give you all the money you need.” Cameron flicked his gaze up and down her frock. “I hate you in black. Why do you keep wearing it?”
“It is what I wear when I’m working for the queen,” Ainsley said. “And I wear it because John Douglas was a kind, caring man, and he deserves not to be forgotten.”
“Kind and caring. The opposite of Cameron Mackenzie.”
Something in his eyes stemmed her anger. “You can be kind and caring. I’ve seen you.”
“Why did you marry John Douglas in the first place? No one seems to understand why, not your closest friends, not even Isabella.”
Ainsley did not want to talk about John with Cameron. “You were enticing her to gossip and speculation, were you?”
“I have to, mouse, because you won’t answer a straight questi
on. But tell me this.” Cameron held her gaze with his. “Were you carrying his child?”
Chapter 17
Ainsley’s breath went away again. “What?”
“I saw the marks on your abdomen, Ainsley. I understand what they mean. You had a baby.”
No one knew. Only Patrick and Rona, and John. Even Ainsley’s three other brothers, nowhere near Rome at the time of Ainsley’s hasty marriage, hadn’t known the full story.
Ainsley rose from her chair, walked across the room, and closed and locked the door. Cameron watched her, not moving, as she returned to her seat.
“The child lived for a day,” she said in a quiet voice. “But she wasn’t John’s.”
Cameron sat perfectly still. “Whose, then?”
“I met a young man in Rome. I fell in love with him and allowed him to seduce me. I thought he’d rejoice that I was having his child and marry me.” She wondered that she’d ever been so naïve. “That’s when he told me he was already married, and even had two children of his own.”
Cameron stared at her while red fury rose inside him.
Ainsley—beautiful, fiery, innocent Ainsley—used and discarded by a gigolo. “Who was he?” he asked.
Ainsley glanced up at him, cheeks red. “It was a long time ago, and I’m certain he gave me a false name. I was so very young and stupid, and I believed every word he told me.”
“Damn it, Ainsley . . .”
Cameron wanted to rage. He wanted to race to the Continent, find the blackguard and throttle him. The selfish fool had ruined Ainsley’s life before she’d even tasted the world.
“This is why you married an old man and buried yourself,” he said.
Her smile was sad, full of regret. “Patrick and Rona had taken me to Rome to expand my mind with art and music. Training me to be the wife of a cultured man. And then . . .”
The look on Patrick’s face when Ainsley had told him . . . she cringed from the memory even now. But Patrick, her good brother, had put aside his disappointment and taken care of her.
Ainsley remembered her nights of weeping, from shame, over betrayal of her young, fragile love, plus the knowledge that her brother was pairing her with a man nearly three times her age to save her reputation.
Patrick was kind, but he was firm, and he knew, very realistically, what the world was like. Rona, though sympathetic, had stood solidly with Patrick. Ainsley must marry John Douglas, and marry him quickly. And she must show the world that she was happy with her choice.
John Douglas had come to the house Patrick had rented in Rome, a tall man whose fair hair had gone to gray, his blue eyes warm but worried. Ainsley had met him before but not paid much attention to him, as he’d been, to her, merely an acquaintance of Patrick’s. Now he was there to be her husband.
John had been patience itself, and when Patrick and Rona had left them alone, John Douglas had taken her hand and gone down on one knee. His grasp had been warm, steady, even comforting.
I know I’m not what you want, he’d said. A young lady wants a dashing young husband, doesn’t she? And I know what this is all about. But I promise you, Ainsley, I will look after you. I’ll do my utmost. I can’t promise to make you happy, because no one can promise that, can they? But I’ll try. Will you let me?
He’d been so kind, so aware that barely eighteen-year- old Ainsley would rather be dragged behind a cart than marry an old man, that Ainsley had burst into tears. She’d ended up sitting on the sofa with him, being held and soothed. She’d clung to him and realized that, as bizarre a match as this was, he was a man, a good man, not a villain.
She did feel safe from the world with John Douglas—Patrick had made a wise choice. Ainsley had told John that of course she’d be happy to marry him, and vowed then to be as good to him as she could. Poor man, not his fault.
John had wiped away Ainsley’s tears, pulled a silver necklace from his pocket—his mother’s, he’d said—and clasped it around her neck. It rested there even now, under her high-collared black frock.
John had taken Ainsley’s hand and led her to Patrick and Rona, who were trying not to hover in the next room. Thus, Ainsley McBride had been engaged and, the next week, married.
“John Douglas must have been a hell of a man,” Cameron said softly.
Ainsley looked up at him, eyes blurred with tears. “He was.” John had accepted a pregnant young woman as his wife, agreed to treat another man’s child as his, and not say a word. “He knew he’d not likely have the chance to marry and be a father on his own, so Patrick’s favor was welcome. He told me.”
Cameron’s face was so still that Ainsley couldn’t read it. What was he thinking? Contempt at her weakness? At John’s? Understanding for what she’d done? He sat forward on the sofa, his hands clasped loosely in front of him, his dark gold eyes fixed on her.
“This is why you put me off that night, six years ago,” he said. “You didn’t want to betray him.”
Ainsley shook her head. “John didn’t deserve it. As much as I wanted to stay with you, he didn’t deserve the betrayal.”
“I admired you for that, you know. Until I learned that you were a picklock, and a thief.” He gave her a hint of smile.
“I admitted to stealing the necklace, for a misguided reason. I thought you a blackmailer.”
“So we were at cross-purposes.”
“It was difficult to push you away. Believe me, Cameron, when I tell you how difficult it was.”
Cameron’s voice hardened. “I hope he appreciated it. What I sacrificed that night.”
“He never knew, of course. He must have wondered, though, whether I ever betrayed him. I didn’t.”
“No, you were most devoted and grateful.”
“Don’t sound so patronizing. I was grateful. John took me on out of kindness.”
Cameron gave her a withering look. “Ainsley, trust me, it wasn’t only kindness.”
“He was especially kind when my daughter . . .” Tears rushed at her. So long ago, and still the loss cut her deeply.
“I’m sorry, Ainsley.” Cameron’s voice gentled. “I truly am sorry.”
“I named her Gavina.” She raised her head, but she couldn’t see him through her tears. “Do you know what it was like when I was grieving, and all those around me told me her death was for the best? They thought they were making me feel better—I’d never have to answer awkward questions about why my daughter had black curls while John and I were both so very fair . . .” Her voice broke.
Cameron was standing above her, lifting her, holding her close. Ainsley leaned into his broad chest and let the tears come.
Gavina had been so beautiful, so perfectly formed. Had fit in Ainsley’s arms with the knowledge that she belonged there. She’d lived one day, one wonderful day, and then she’d weakened and gone. Her small body now lay in the Scottish churchyard near Ainsley’s mother and father.
His hands were warm, comforting, Cameron so tall and strong. The man who could make Ainsley’s body sing in passion now knew how to hold and comfort her, to let her know that he understood her grief.
She could remain here for the rest of her life, in this room, in his arms, and be perfectly happy.
The door handle rattled, then came a knock, followed by the hollow voice of a footmen. “My lord? Her Majesty is ready for you now.”
“Damn and blast,” Cameron whispered.
Ainsley wanted to say the same. She peeled herself away from Cameron, wiping her eyes.
“Meet me here in the morning,” Cameron said rapidly. “At nine o’clock. Can you do that? Without a bloody argument?”
Where he’d want to continue prying into her life, demanding to know why she’d not simply fly off with him. But he deserved to know. Ainsley nodded.
Cameron leaned down, gave her one hard kiss, and headed for the door where the footman was still knocking. “Yes, yes, I’m coming.”
He opened the door, shielding Ainsley from the footman’s view, then closed it, and was gone,
leaving Ainsley alone with her tears.
At five minutes before nine the next morning, Ainsley was back in the drawing room, alone. She was still alone at five minutes past, still alone at half past. The clock on the mantel ticked ponderously, heavy chimes marking the quarter hours.
Cameron didn’t come.
When the clock reached five minutes before the next hour, a maid entered. She approached Ainsley, curtseyed, held out a folded piece of paper, and said, “For you, ma’am.”
Without betraying any interest in the note, the clock, or Ainsley, the maid curtseyed again and glided out of the room.
Ainsley unfolded the thick paper to find a few words written in a bold hand.
Daniel never stays where I tell him to stay. I’m off to Glasgow to extract him from a scrape. You win, mouse. On the train from Doncaster, after the last St. Leger race. The conductor will know how to find me. À bientôt.
Ainsley folded the creamy paper, pressed her lips to it, and tucked it into her bosom.
When she retreated to her room that night, once the queen had dismissed her for the evening, Ainsley sat down and wrote a long letter. She posted it off to Lady Eleanor Ramsay in the morning, directing it to Eleanor’s father’s tumbledown house near Aberdeen. Ainsley enclosed enough money for a railway ticket from Aberdeen to Edinburgh and told Eleanor quite sternly that she was to use it.
Ainsley Douglas and Lady Eleanor Ramsay faced each other over a corner table in the tea shop at the main station in Edinburgh a few days later, the shop a bit empty this early. A train stood ready outside, its steam hissing, the black bulk of its engine like a mighty ship.
Ainsley had not seen Eleanor in a while, though the two wrote regularly. Their mothers had been close friends, both at one time waiting on the queen. The queen had wanted Eleanor, higher born than Ainsley, to enter her household as well, but Lord Ramsay had tearfully begged for his daughter to stay home, and Eleanor couldn’t refuse him. Eleanor’s father was by no means feeble, but Ainsley agreed that the man would be entirely lost without Eleanor. That fact might explain why Eleanor had entertained no more offers of marriage after she’d famously jilted Hart Mackenzie, Duke of Kilmorgan, years before.