Kitabı oku: «Unlaced By The Highland Duke»

Chapter One
London—1815

‘Lady Theale is here, Your Grace.’

Benneit didn’t know what was worse—those words or the explosion of light that struck him as Angus hauled back the curtains. He groaned on both counts.

‘Aye,’ Angus replied and positioned himself at the bottom of the bed. With his scarred face he looked like one of the gargoyles carved on to the embattlements at Lochmore Castle come to perch by Benneit’s bed to remind him of his duty. Benneit shoved his head into his pillow.

‘What the devil does she want?’

‘Jamie.’

Benneit tossed the covers aside and scraped himself off the bed.

‘Over my dead, drawn, quartered and pickled body.’

Angus grunted. ‘Aye, lad. Shall I shave you?’

It was more a suggestion than a question and, instinctively, Benneit dragged his hand over his jaw, wincing at the rasp.

‘No. She shall have to accept me in all my glory. What time is it?’

‘It is gone nine in the morning.’

‘Nine? Nine? I’ve barely slept three hours. What the devil is wrong with that woman?’

Angus’s scarred face twisted into a momentary and awful grin.

‘You can sleep when you’re dead, Your Grace.’

It was Benneit’s turn to grunt as he dragged off his nightshirt and went to the basin. There was a brutality to Angus sometimes and whether he meant to allude to Bella or not, it struck up her image, interred in the Lochmore family crypt. Eventually Benneit would be there, too. A fate worse than death... He breathed in to calm the reflexive queasiness at the thought, reminding himself that when that day came he would at least know nothing of it.

‘Send Jamie to her until I’m ready—if he’s awake. After half an hour of his undiluted company she might think twice about this campaign to take him to Uxmore.’

‘He’s down there now, lad.’

Benneit wiped the water from his face and glanced at Angus, meeting the twinkle in the giant’s blue eyes.

‘Great minds thing alike, eh, Angus?’

‘When they think at all, Your Grace.’

Benneit sighed and returned to the freezing water.

* * *

‘Good morning, Lady Theale.’

‘You need a shave, Lochmore.’

Benneit stopped, gathered himself and the comment hovering at the tip of his tongue, and proceeded.

‘Had I been given more warning of your arrival I would have obliged.’

‘Had you been given more warning of our arrival you would have been halfway to the border by now.’

Benneit advanced on the elderly lady seated in his favourite armchair, plucked her weathered hand from where it rested on her cane and raised it to his lips.

‘No, only as far as Potter’s Bar. Not even for you would I set off before dawn.’

She sniggered and gave his face a small slap before he straightened.

He turned to search the room for his son and stopped. The word ‘our’ hadn’t registered at first, but now it did. Jamie was seated on the sofa, his stockinged feet drawn up under him, and on the other side of his favourite book of maps was a woman.

‘Papa, she’s helped me find Muck!’ Jamie announced, bouncing a little on his knees.

‘Did she? That is indeed impressive. But can she help you find Foula? Good morning, Mrs Langdale.’

‘Your Grace.’

Her voice was deep, but as bland as her grey wool dress—flat and without inflection. During Bella’s Season six years ago Mrs Langdale, then Miss Watkins, wore Bella’s cast-offs and, being shorter and less endowed, she always looked like a scrawny hen rolled in a bed of shredded peacock feathers—those ostentatious clothes coupled with her unremarkable looks had not been a good combination. She was unremarkable except for her deep grey eyes that Bella had laughingly called the ‘orbs of truth’.

‘No one can lie to Joane if she puts her mind to their speaking the truth. She only has to look at you and before you realise it, the words are out there. Papa said she would have been useful to Wellington during the war.’

He remembered Bella’s assessment of her poor cousin because it struck him as very apt and one of Bella’s rare flashes of insight.

‘And how is Mr Langdale?’ he asked politely.

‘He isn’t,’ she replied.

‘Died two years ago,’ Lady Theale hissed. ‘Really, Lochmore!’

He felt his face heat with unaccustomed embarrassment and he bowed.

‘I am sorry for your loss.’

Mrs Langdale nodded without a word and the sting of heat on his cheeks spread. It was absurd that without any visible effort this mousy woman made him feel ten years younger in the worst possible way. He turned to Jamie.

‘Feet off the sofa, Jamie.’

Jamie blinked at him and smiled, as if well aware this sudden interdiction was merely for his great-aunt’s sake.

He stuck his feet out.

‘But I took off my shoes!’

‘Very proper,’ Mrs Langdale said.

‘It won’t do,’ Lady Theale announced.

Benneit turned back to her. And so it began again. Since Bella’s death two years earlier, the Uxmores had made several valiant attempts to convince him Jamie would be better off in the care of their large and rambling family rather than alone with Benneit in Scotland, and every time Benneit sent them scurrying. Since his father’s death a year ago, their insistence lessened as they respected the period of mourning, but clearly they were only marshalling their troops. And their field marshal was Lady Theale, Lord Uxmore’s sister and the matriarch of that ambitious clan.

‘It is very kind of you to come all the way to town to see Jamie, Lady Theale, but we are departing for Lochmore tomorrow. There are matters I must attend to there and we cannot stay.’

‘Really? Is the entertainment in town running thin?’

‘Not at all, but it has been sufficient for my needs at the moment. Until next time.’

Lady Theale bared her teeth. ‘Joane, I would like a private word with Lochmore. Take Jamie into the adjoining room.’

Mrs Langdale stood.

‘Where is the wall map you mentioned, Jamie?’ she asked and Jamie hopped down.

‘It is enormous. But not as big as at home. Grandmama painted it for Papa when he was littler than me. And there are darts!’

‘Darts! Then I must definitely see it. Come.’

‘In his stockings, Lochmore!’ Lady Theale snapped as the door closed behind them.

‘What do you want, Abigail?’

‘You know what I want, Benneit. I want Bella’s boy to grow up like the son of a Duke he is and not like a wild animal.’

Her voice faltered a little at his look.

‘At the very least he should have female guidance.’

‘He has his nursemaid.’

‘Nursemaid! She must be seventy if she’s a day. That boy needs someone young and with the energy to see him through the next couple of years until he is sent to school. Or better yet, send him to school at St Stephen’s as you were and, as it is a mere ten miles from Uxmore, we will be at hand to visit when necessary. It is still an excellent institution and will prepare him well for his role. Your father and mother approved of it, so I see no reason to cavil at their choice. I am sure had Bella lived she would have advised you the same. She always meant to maintain close ties with the family, as you are well aware. This would fulfil all their wishes.’

Benneit turned away, locking his jaw against the fury her words evoked. Better yet... What the devil did she know about sending a child hundreds of miles away from everything he cared for simply so he could become her idea of a proper Duke?

‘My father and mother did not send me to St Stephens at five years old to prepare me for my role, but to get me out from underfoot so they could concentrate on making each other miserable without any assistance on my part. As far as I am concerned, the same does not apply to Jamie. He will learn to be Duke of Lochmore by understanding Lochmore down to its last acre and tenant, not by being caned by a brutish headmaster and bullied by upper-form boys.’

Lady Theale inspected the head of her cane and sighed.

‘Your mother was one of my closest friends, Benneit, and since it was through me that she met your father, I confess to a sense of responsibility. I am the first to admit that, though she was a brilliant woman, she had a volatile temper and was not...warm. Unfortunately your father was much the same which made for a tumultuous union. However, despite their failings, they cared deeply for each other and cared for you as well, though I dare say they were not adept at showing it.’

‘I am not asking for sympathy, Abigail. For the very last time, I will not, ever, cede Jamie to be taken to Bella’s family. He is my son, my family, and I am his. No one will ever love him as I do. Do you understand what that means?’

‘It may surprise you, but I do. You always were the closest to him. Made Bella jealous, the two of you, even as young as he was. Said you loved him more than you did her and that, believe me, was a cardinal sin to someone like Bella. But that is not the point. I admit when she died I thought it would be best to have the boy with us. A babe is not an easy endeavour for a man alone and in that great big draughty monster of a castle... Well, it stood to reason. But I’ve come to see that however surly you may be, it is not too much to his detriment to be raised by you. Therefore I have decided to leave him with you.’

‘Generous!’

‘On one condition...’

‘There are no conditions, Abigail. You have no authority to impose conditions and neither does Lord Uxmore. I want Jamie to know and love Bella’s family and they are more than welcome to visit us in Lochmore or in London, but that is as far as your power extends. I am tired of this brangling.’

‘You look tired of more than brangling, Benneit. Do you still miss her so that you can find no better way to pass your time than hiding up in the freezing hills or burning the candle at both ends here in town?’

‘I am perfectly well and so is Jamie. And, aside from his dislike of carriages, he comes to no harm being in town with me. If I bring a female to Lochmore, whether it be as mother or companion, I will be the one to choose.’

‘I would have hoped so, but thus far for the past two years all you have done is indulge yourself with your high flyers. Who is it now? Lady Atkinson? Or was that your last visit to town? And if you must indulge, need you drag the poor boy all that long way? Surely your aunt can see to him at the castle?’

‘Good God, I wouldn’t leave a rabid dog in Morag’s care. Besides, she doesn’t want anything to do with Jamie—she stays in her corner of the castle and only raises her nose sufficiently from her glass of whisky to complain her stock of spirits is running low.’

‘That bad? All the more reason to have a stable female presence—’

‘Lady Theale,’ Benneit interrupted. ‘You are the uncontested general of the Uxmores, but Bella is gone and you have not and never will have any authority over Jamie. If you push me much further on this you will find out precisely what Bella meant when she called me unbearably stubborn.’

Lady Theale surprised him by smiling.

‘I think I have a fair assessment. Bella never did really have your measure, you know. She thought you were what she and everyone saw on the surface—the handsome, charming and wealthy future heir to a dukedom. That is the way with people who are so accustomed to receiving whatever they want from birth.’

He laughed, a little bitterly, and she shook her head.

‘I was referring to Bella, not to you. But whether you wish to hear it or not, I am right about Jamie. Keeping him with no companionship but your own in that great echoing monstrosity of a castle is no more a wise solution than the path your parents chose for you, Benneit.’

He sat, rubbing at his stubble. Lady Theale might be a busybody, but she was not a fool and she genuinely cared for Jamie. He sighed.

‘If it soothes your nerves, I agree he needs female companionship and, more importantly, he needs siblings. Therefore I have decided to wed again.’

‘You have? Who?’

‘This time someone who won’t mind the freezing hills or sacrificing her figure for her offspring.’

Lady Theale sighed.

‘Bella meant to like your castle, boy. But Lochmore is a long way from London.’

‘Precisely.’

‘So. Do you have someone in mind?’

‘It might reassure you that I have Jamie’s welfare so much in mind that I am considering in one fell swoop to find him a mother and repair the rift between the Lochmores and McCrieffs.’

‘And they agree? I understood that there was always bad blood between the families.’

‘That is an understatement. We have a long and inglorious history of real and imagined causes for mutual resentment. Even the fact that my grandfather convinced old King George to grant him a dukedom and compounded that insult by keeping the clan name as title was another stick in that fire. I think the balance was partially redressed once my father’s rejection of a McCrieff bride was met with their rejection of my Aunt Morag as a suitable bride for Lord Aberwyld. But unlike his forebearers, McCrieff realises the contention between us affects the sheep and kelp trades in the area and, being substantially poorer, he can afford that far less than Lochmore. It is also interfering with other plans of mine and I cannot allow that, so now my father is dead I am testing the waters.’

‘One doesn’t test the waters with a man like McCrieff. If this is the case, no doubt he has already engaged lawyers to draw up the settlement papers.’

Benneit shrugged. It was close enough to the truth.

‘So I see this trip is in the nature of a last escape, Lochmore. Still, even if you’ve marked your bride, it will take time, this wooing and wedding business. Why not allow Joane to go with Jamie until you make other arrangements, either for Jamie or for yourself. If at any time you find her presence de trop, send her back to me.’

‘You talk about her as if she was a book or a piece of furniture. Take her up to the Highlands, send her down when you are through with her.’

‘Well, it will do her good, too. My niece Celia has become a tad too dependent on Joane. The poor girl barely had time to mourn.’

‘What happened to him? To Langdale?’

‘He broke his neck in a fall from a horse. Most unfortunate. Died in debt and the house and everything was entailed. She has a competence, but no more.’

‘Langdale fell from a horse? I thought the man was born on one.’

‘We are at our most arrogant where we are most comfortable. I dare say he appreciated finding his end in such a manner since he cared more for his horses than anything else, possibly even more than for poor Joane. In a year or so I shall find her another husband, but for the moment it could suit both our purposes for her to see to Jamie until you wed again. She is very good with children.’

‘I don’t care if she is the St Francis of children, I... Oh, never mind. But this is the very last time you interfere with me or with Jamie. Am I clear?’

‘I could hardly misunderstand. Really, Benneit, you used to be so much more polished—these years in the freezing north have stripped you of your charming veneer. Go fetch Joane and your little boy. And do have him put on his shoes. A future Duke running about barefoot is most improper.’