Читать книгу Sinful Scottish Laird - Julia London - Страница 9
ОглавлениеMORE THAN TWO hours after the Scotsman and his group had left them deserted on the road, the wheel repaired as best it could be, Daisy and her party began the arduous progress east once more.
As they bumped along, her heart still fluttered a little. She couldn’t rid herself of the image of that man. She listened idly to Belinda, who hugged the small window, peering out at the landscape, remarking on the vast emptiness and dangers lurking, but Daisy thought of him.
“I’d not be the least surprised were we attacked by those wild men,” Belinda said, shuddering.
“They didn’t seem so very wild in the end, did they?” Daisy asked. She thought of the warnings her friends had given her before she’d departed for Scotland. She’d invited several ladies over for tea. “What trouble you’ll find there, what with all the traitors among them,” Lady Dinsmore had cried. “You can’t go! I’ve heard they slaughter the English.”
“They’re savages,” Lady Whitcomb had added gravely. “They have been unnaturally influenced by the Stuarts and are quite impossibly untrustworthy! You won’t be safe for a moment among them—everyone knows the greatest prize is an Englishwoman.”
Daisy didn’t share their pessimistic view. She’d been married to a man who was himself a Scot by blood, and he had never given her any reason to believe she should fear them. Then again, she’d never seen a Scot like the one she’d encountered today.
Neither had Belinda apparently, for her head snapped around, her brows almost to her hairline. “I thank the good Lord we escaped unharmed!”
Ellis lifted his head and looked at his mother, an expression of worry on his face. Daisy smiled reassuringly and hugged him to her side. “We are safe, darling.”
She’d often privately wondered if she’d done something while she carried the boy to produce such a fretful, fearful child. What else could explain it? He was nine years old and had never wanted for anything, had no outward ailments to speak of, and yet he was so timid. Their London physician had warned Daisy a few years ago that her son suffered from a weak constitution. “No doubt he shall be sickly all his life,” he’d said as he’d closed his bag.
That news was not what Daisy had expected, and she’d looked at him with confusion. “Sickly? What do you mean?”
“Just that.” The physician had no regard for her, much less Ellis, who was old enough to understand what he’d said.
“Do you mean he will have a chronic ague?” Daisy had asked, for certainly that particular winter, it had seemed her son was perpetually ill. And then she’d led the physician from Ellis’s bedside and whispered, “Or something worse?”
The physician had shrugged and said absently, “One never knows how these things will manifest themselves.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but that is why I sent for you,” she’d said impatiently. “So that you might explain to me what his illness is and how it may manifest itself.”
“Lady Chatwick.” The physician had sighed, as if she was testing his patience, then had said quite loudly, “You will not understand the nuances of the boy’s medical constitution. You must trust me when I tell you that he will never be a robust lad.”
Ellis had burst into tears as one might expect having just heard such a callous delivery about the state of one’s health. Daisy had known then that the physician meant only to collect his fee and didn’t care a whit for her son. “Then we have a problem, sir, for I don’t trust you at all,” she’d said, then called for the butler to dispatch the good doctor.
When she’d complained of his demeanor later that evening, her husband had chastised her for being disrespectful to the doctor.
Nevertheless, Daisy refused to believe the man’s prediction of Ellis’s future. Frankly, her son’s health was the second reason Daisy had undertaken what had become an increasingly dangerous journey north.
Robert was the first reason. If Robert had only reached her in time, this travel might well have been avoided.
She mindlessly touched his letter, kept safe in the pocket of her gown. I will come with great haste as soon as my commission has ended, he’d written her.
But not soon enough, as it turned out.
“If they don’t find us now, they’ll surely find us at this lodge,” Belinda warned, settling back against the squabs, still intent on worrying them all.
“We are perfectly safe,” Daisy said, and tried to convey a warning to her cousin with her expression, which, naturally, Belinda did not notice. Daisy smiled and squeezed Ellis’s knee. “Pay Cousin Belinda no mind, darling. It’s been a trying day for us all.”
“I am not unreasonable in my concern,” Belinda said. “We were all of us frightened by those dangerous men.”
“Need I remind you that those dangerous men offered to repair our wheel?” Daisy asked, then impulsively covered Ellis’s ears with her hands and leaned forward, whispering, “Forget that now, darling. Did you not see the gentleman? He was so...alluring.”
Belinda blinked. “The Scotsman? Alluring? Daisy!” She gasped, clearly appalled. “What is the matter with you? Scotsmen are not alluring. They are traitors to the Crown!”
Were she not so exhausted, Daisy would have argued that Belinda was not acquainted with any Scotsmen, and, therefore, couldn’t know if they were all or any of them Jacobites. Instead she was disappointed that Belinda had not noticed the man’s allure. She could not share in the observation of how a man with his extraordinary presence could be found on an abandoned road in what seemed the most remote region of the earth. With a sigh, she let go of Ellis’s ears and turned her gaze to the grimy window as Belinda began to speculate if they would be forced to camp on the road tonight.
He’d been so utterly unexpected. Daisy flushed again, thinking about the Scotsman. Oh, but she was a hopeless cause. Quite possibly even mad! She shuddered to think how foolishly beguiled she’d been, particularly in the face of what could have been terrible danger. She’d long been an admirer of healthy men, but this...this bordered on lunacy.
And yet...she hoped she might see him again one day. She would very much like to make him smile, to see the light she was certain could be coaxed from those blue eyes under the right circumstances. She quivered a little, imagining just how she might.
Oh yes, she was mad—completely and utterly mad.
This tendency to fantasy was something that had been slowly building in Daisy since her husband’s death more than two years ago. She’d since dabbled liberally in the art of flirtation in salons across Mayfair, had imagined any number of handsome gentlemen in varying degrees of compromise, so much so that now that tendency often felt impossible to control. The truth was that Daisy very much missed a man’s touch.
Her husband, Clive, had been robust when her marriage was arranged, but he’d contracted a wasting illness soon after Ellis’s birth. In the last years of his life, he’d suffered gravely, too sick to be a father, too sick to care for her as a husband ought. Now, at nine and twenty, Daisy felt desire flowing in the vast physical wasteland of her life like a river that had overrun its banks.
Her steady stream of suitors since Clive’s death were the raging storm waters that fed that river.
But the Scotsman was not a suitor, and she thought of him in an entirely different light. She closed her eyes and imagined being kidnapped by him, carried off on the back of his horse, tossed onto a bed high in some rustic castle. She imagined his large hands on her body. She imagined resisting him at first, then succumbing to his expert touch. She imagined feeling his body, hot and thick inside her, and those blue eyes boring into her as she found her release.
Daisy shifted uncomfortably.
“Are you all right?” Belinda asked.
Poof. In an instant, the image of him disappeared. “Pardon?” Daisy’s cheeks warmed as she shifted again. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“Is it your stays?” Belinda asked sympathetically. “Stays can be quite dangerous, you know,” she said, launching into conjecture about the dangers of corsets.
Daisy sank into the squabs and resolved not to think of the stranger again. She would think of London, of all the reasons she’d been so determined to leave.
Ah yes, that stream of suitors.
Her husband’s will had made London unbearable for her. It was no secret to the gentlemen bachelors about town that Lord Chatwick’s widow must remarry within three years of his death or risk forfeiting her son’s inheritance.
Clive had explained this to Daisy from his deathbed. “You must understand, darling. I should not like to see you refuse to marry again and deplete Ellis’s inheritance to live as you like. You will rely on Bishop Craig to help you find a suitable match. He will see to it that the man you agree to marry will ensure Ellis’s education in the finest institutions and will possess the proper connections for Ellis when he reaches his majority.”
Daisy had been horrified by his unexpected edict. She could scarcely embrace her husband’s looming death, much less the plans he’d made for her for after he’d gone. “I can look after him, Clive,” she’d said. “I am his mother—of course I will.”
Her husband had lost a moment in a fit of coughing, then patted her hand. “You will do as I decide, Daisy. I trust you to understand.”
But she didn’t understand. She would never understand.
Daisy and Clive’s match had been made on the basis of compatible fortunes and family interests. He was fifteen years her senior, and Daisy had been his second wife, his first having been lost in childbirth along with the child. It was the sort of match she’d been brought up to expect, and she’d been somewhat prepared for it. Duty first, wasn’t that what had been drummed into her?
But something miraculous had happened in that first year—she’d discovered affection for Clive. She’d been a steadfast and true companion, and she’d given him a son. She’d remained at his bedside when other women might have sought diversion elsewhere, and she’d held his hand when he felt searing pain rack his body. She’d been the wife she had promised him she would be.
And for her devotion, in the last weeks of his life, he’d made his final wishes known to her. Plans he’d already made. None of them included any regard for her.
Daisy had felt used and unimportant. As her husband lay dying, she’d realized that she was and always would be nothing more than a conduit to provide a son and then bring that son to his majority. That was her worth to Clive. Her feelings, her wants, were irrelevant to him.
As Daisy had struggled to keep her bitterness from coloring the days and weeks following his death, word of his final wishes began to whisper through the salons of Mayfair. The Chatwick fortune was up for bidding!
In fairness, Daisy had enjoyed the attention at first—it was a welcome change after caring for a sickly husband for so many years. She quickly became one of the most sought-after women in London...but, as it was readily apparent to everyone, not for herself. She was a widow with a fortune and a deadline for remarriage, and that was like raw meat to lions as far as the bachelors of the Quality were concerned. She could hardly keep them from her door.
As time ticked by, and the vultures flocked around her, Daisy began to distrust the intentions of anyone who came calling. She felt suffocated by it all and began to question her own instincts. Bishop Craig made the situation all the more intolerable as he began to negotiate on her behalf—without her knowledge—with men she scarcely knew. Her pleas to him to stop fell on deaf ears. “Your husband put his trust in me, Lady Chatwick. I will not let him down in this.”
There was nothing she could do, and Daisy had all but resigned herself to her fate. But then, five months ago, as if delivered on the wings of angels, came the letter from Robert Spivey. Rob.
Rob was now a captain in the Royal British Navy. She really didn’t know more about him than that, for it had been a little more than eleven years since she’d last seen him. She’d imagined he was married and surely had children of his own. She thought that he’d forgotten her altogether. Eleven years was a lifetime in loves lost, wasn’t it?
Well, she’d not forgotten him. He’d been her first love, her deepest love and her only real love.
Ah, but they’d been so young when they’d met, so hopelessly idealistic. They’d dreamed of a future together—nothing terribly magnificent, mind you, but one that suited two people consumed with each other and with love. A future that had room for only the two of them.
Lord, how naive she’d been then! She used to daydream of how they would live: in a thatched-roof cottage with window boxes filled with flowers. They would have children, too—robust, healthy children—who would run among the fields of heather. She would have a garden, and take great pride in it, entering her flowers and fruits in the village festivals. At night, she and Robert would lie in bed beside each other, listening to the sounds of their children slumbering, their dogs in their corners. And they would make love, sweetly, gently, reverently.
What silly dreams. She’d always known her path, and no amount of wishing could change it. Daisy was the only surviving child of two elderly parents, and she was the shiny bauble they dangled before titled and wealthy men. She’d known since she was a girl that she would be married to a fine family, that her marriage would consolidate fortunes and land and forge important connections. But then she’d met Robert, and she had foolishly believed that if two people truly loved each other, they would find a way to be together.
In the eyes of her parents and society, however, Robert wasn’t good enough for her. He’d even warned her he wasn’t, so much more present in the truth of their affair than she’d been. He knew that because he didn’t have a title, or any wealth to speak of, and was merely the son of a country vicar, her parents would never agree to a marriage. It was true—while she was dreaming of her idyllic life with Robert, her parents were striking the marriage bargain with Clive. Daisy’s fate had been sealed before she even knew what was in the offing.
When she found out, she’d begged Robert to elope with her, but Robert, always the voice of reason, had refused. “I would never dishonor you in that way, Daisy,” he’d said gallantly.
She’d argued with him. “Dishonor me! Take me from here, please! You love me—how can you let me go?”
But let her go he had. “You must accept it,” he’d said.
Wasn’t it funny that those were the exact words Clive would utter to her from his deathbed many years later? You must accept it.
Robert Spivey’s family had managed to arrange a commission in the Royal Navy and he’d left Nottinghamshire without even saying goodbye to her. He had forced her to accept it.
Daisy was older and wiser now, and she was determined that she’d not merely accept these things in her life. She wouldn’t accept that an old bishop would tell her who and when she had to marry. She wouldn’t accept that one of the most important decisions of her life had been tainted with a fortune that followed her everywhere she went.
And then, the letter had come. It is with sadness and grave concern that I have received the news of your husband’s passing, he’d written. Long have I kept you in my heart, Daisy. I will not lose you to another man again...
He’d written that he was sailing soon, but that his commission in the Royal Navy would end this year, and at such time, he hoped she would welcome his call to her in London.
Daisy had been astounded. Heartened. How was it possible that after all these years, her love for Robert could burn so brightly? And yet, she could feel it, along with all the hope gurgling in her. Unfortunately, he did not say when he might come to London. What did this year mean? Tomorrow? In six months’ time? That would be too late for Daisy.
She had to give Robert time to reach her and thereby put an end to the madness around her. And the only way to do that was to escape London for a time.
She had discussed the letter and her predicament with her good friend, Lady Beckinsal, who had urged her to go, to give the poor man time to end his commission and come to London to save her before Bishop Craig forced her into an unhappy marriage. “If he comes so soon as the summer, simply tell your butler to ask if he’d like word sent to you. He will wait for your reply if he still esteems you,” she’d said with great assurance.
A knock on the coach ceiling from above startled Daisy from her rumination; Belinda opened the little hatch to the driver as Daisy sat up, wincing as her stays dug into her ribs once again.
“Milady, Auchenard just ahead,” the driver called down. The coach was slowing, turning right.
Daisy braced her arms against the wall of the coach and peered out the dusty window. It was so filthy she could scarcely see, but she could make out a tower above a high wall. The vegetation next to the road was so overgrown that she couldn’t see much else. There was no livestock, no cattle, no sheep—nothing but untended meadow and forest.
A few moments later, the coach shuddered to a stop. Ellis pushed himself up and crowded in next to Daisy, peering out the window. “Is this it, Mamma?”
“It is.”
The coach door swung open; Ellis kicked the step down and then practically leaped out of the coach with more vigor than Daisy had seen from him in days. She followed her son, shook out her skirts and put her hands to her back as she gazed at the structure before her.
Belinda stumbled out after her, knocking into Daisy and catching herself with one hand on her shoulder. “Oh dear,” she said as she, too, gazed up.
“Oh dear” was the kindest thing that might be said. The old hunting lodge was much larger than what Daisy had expected, really—it looked more like a medieval castle. The stone was dark and weathered, and ivy ran unchecked and wild over half of it. Long tendrils of it danced in the early-evening breeze. There were two towers anchoring the structure on either end. The windows—a few boarded—were dark and looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned in years. There were numerous chimneys, at least two of them crumbling, and there was no smoke rising from any of them. Auchenard seemed completely deserted.
“I thought a caretaker looked after it,” Daisy said, baffled. This had not been cared for in the least—if anything, it had been abandoned.
“Ah, there you are!” The front door, large and wooden and battered by weather, opened, and her late mother’s brother, Uncle Alfonso, strode toward Daisy as the other chaise and the wagons pulled in to the drive. His full head of gray hair was tied in a queue, and his tall, slender frame was clad in a manner she’d never seen—he’d shed his coat, rolled up his sleeves and was wearing a leather apron. “At last! I thought you’d never come!” he sang out, smiling. “Ellis, my boy, come and give your old uncle a hug.”
Mr. Rowley, the longtime Chatwick butler, and a slightly smaller version of Uncle Alfonso, appeared at the door. He was dressed like her uncle, but he was also covered in dust.
He bowed. “Milady.”
Uncle Alfonso and Rowley had come a fortnight ahead of Daisy and the rest to make the lodge inhabitable for them all. By the look of things, that had been a greater task than they’d all assumed.
“How very happy we are to see you both!” Daisy exclaimed. “It’s been such a dreadful journey, I despaired we’d arrive at all.”
“I had begun to worry,” Uncle Alfonso said as he bent to kiss Belinda’s cheek. “You must be exhausted. We’ll feed you well, but first come and stretch your legs and have a look at your Highland hunting lodge,” he said as he tousled Ellis’s hair. “It’s not as bad as it appears on first sight.”
Oh, but it was every inch as bad as it appeared at first sight.
The interior of the lodge was just as deteriorated as the outside. The floors were covered with a thick layer of dust; Alfonso’s and Rowley’s footfalls could be seen quite plainly across the hall. The air stank of stale chimneys and damp peat. The cut stones that formed the walls were so thick that it was quite cold inside. Daisy supposed that the hearths must be lit every day to keep the chill at bay. And it was dark, in part because broken windows had been covered, and in part because there were no candles.
The lodge was archaic. It was nothing like the sun-dappled rooms at Chatwick Hall with their damask draperies and Aubusson carpets, marble floors and French furnishings. It was nothing like the bright and open townhome in Mayfair.
And yet, in spite of its decaying appearance, Daisy could see the rustic charm...but it would take the work of an army to dig it out.
When they had completed the tour, Uncle Alfonso led them to what he said was the great room. The ceilings, held up by thick beams, soared high overhead. He pushed aside some heavy velvet drapes, kicking up a cloud of dust that set them all to sneezing. When Daisy opened her eyes, she was greeted with an unexpectedly beautiful view of a lake at the bottom of a gentle green slope. Mist curled up from its surface in the day’s gloaming, and the hills beyond created a backdrop of dark green, gold and purple. She smiled with delight.
“All that you see belongs to you, darling,” her uncle said.
“Really? All of it?”
“All of it,” he confirmed. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“There is so much work to be done,” Belinda said, folding her arms. “I don’t know where you think you’ll find the labor for it.”
“If we can’t find the labor, we will do it ourselves,” Daisy said and turned to her uncle. “Was there not a caretaker after all?”
“Oh, there was a caretaker, all right,” he said. “But I rather think he was far more concerned with his next drink than with Auchenard. You’d do as well to leave the place to sit empty than to have it cared for by the likes of this fellow.”
Daisy sighed wearily. She hated dealing with servants who did not want to work for their wages. “What do you think of our hunting lodge, darling?” she asked her son.
Ellis frowned thoughtfully. Always so serious!
“There is a room at the top of the tower that is ideal for stargazing,” Uncle Alfonso offered.
Ellis blinked. “Can you see all of them? Can you see Orion from there?”
“Orion,” Uncle Alfonso repeated curiously.
“The ship’s captain taught Ellis a thing or two about navigation during our voyage,” Daisy explained.
“Yes, I’m sure you can see it,” Uncle Alfonso assured him.
“Perhaps Ellis and Belinda would like to find their rooms,” Daisy suggested to Rowley. “Belinda, will you please settle Ellis? Uncle and I have some things we must discuss.”
“Let me first have a word with Sir Nevis,” her uncle said, following Belinda and Ellis from the room.
Daisy stood a moment, listening to the sound of her uncle’s boots echoing down the stone hallway. When she was certain she was alone, she fell onto a settee that was still covered with a dust cloth and propped her feet on a chair. She was bone weary and wanted nothing more than to sleep in a decent bed. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift to the lake, and the hills beyond...and to the startlingly blue eyes of a Scotsman. She imagined him once again with his hands on her—this time, in that decent bed—his touch reverent, his gaze soft.
How long she was in that state, she didn’t know, but she was awakened by the sound of chuckling.
Daisy opened one eye. Her uncle was standing before her, his arms folded over his apron, smiling with amusement at her lack of decorum.
“Do you blame me?” she asked, forcing herself up with a push. “It’s been a wretched journey.”
“Yes, I suppose it has.” He walked to the sideboard and poured two glasses of wine. He returned and handed her one.
Daisy yawned, then sipped the wine. She wrinkled her nose.
Uncle Alfonso shrugged. “It was all that could be found in the fishing village.”
“This place is a shambles, Uncle,” she said morosely. “Belinda is right—it will require so much work! How will we ever put it to rights?”
Uncle Alfonso rubbed his eyes a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. He wandered with his wine to the windows and gazed out at the sun sinking behind the hills.
Daisy pushed herself to her feet and joined him there. “Can we find workers?”
“A few, I should think,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll have Sir Nevis scout about on the morrow. But it will require our concerted effort, darling.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “By that, I mean all of us.”
She smiled lopsidedly. “Are you suggesting that I indulge in labor?” she asked with mock astonishment.
“We’ll need all hands.”
Daisy kissed her uncle’s cheek, then stepped away and began to release her hair from its pins. “Belinda won’t stand for it, you know. But frankly I’d like nothing better. I’m weary of sitting about all day with nothing to occupy me but gossip and needlework.” She would not let on that she was cowed by the state of the lodge; she would keep the fears gurgling in her belly to herself.
“Shall I send for Mr. MacNally, the supposed caretaker?” he asked.
She needed to address the issue of the caretaker, quite obviously, but at the moment, all Daisy cared about was that she was exhausted, and she needed a bath, and she was desperate to free herself from these stays. “On the morrow,” she said, and mustered a smile.
She was not going to think about the shambles that surrounded her just for now. Instead she’d let thoughts of the Scotsman occupy her thoughts and would try not to look too closely at the disrepair and the foreign surroundings.
