She did not wait for him to move, but pressed herself up against him, her lips brushing along his own, warm and full and remembered. The same smell of gardenias and the same feel of softness.
Shaking his head, he placed both hands on her shoulders and moved her away. Carefully. The clock in the corner boomed out the hour of three and apart from the sound of its heavy ticking there was silence in the room.
‘You won’t allow me in because of your brother? Nigel was a...dalliance. I knew as soon as we had slept together it was a mistake.’
He tried to smother the anger that he could feel building. ‘If it was not Nigel, then it would have been someone else, Charlotte, and by then I did not care enough anyway.’
‘You are refusing me?’
‘I am.’
‘But I love you, Daniel. I have always loved you.’ She was crying now, the tears running down her cheeks. ‘You were distant at the end of...us. If you had been more attentive, none of this would ever have happened. But we can change it and with only a little effort we could again be—’
‘Stop. The time for regrets is past and you have duties now to Spenser Mackay’s family and to your own.’
Rather than placating her, this line of argument made her wail louder. ‘Then both of us have lost and all for nothing, and you will regret this, I know that you will.’
Gathering up her reticule, she opened the door, his man coming forward immediately to show her out. When she was gone Daniel crossed to his desk and sat down. The letter he had received at his lawyer’s today rustled and he brought the sheet from his pocket. Amethyst’s demands juxtaposed against those of Charlotte’s made him feel his life was taking a less-than-salutary course.
Lucien’s voice in the corridor had him flicking the missive into a drawer as he waited for his friend to come into the room.
‘Tell me that was not Lady Charlotte Mackay in the carriage I just saw pulling away, Daniel, for I thought that affair was long since over.’ As he dropped into the leather chair nearest the desk he reached out for the decanter, upturning a clean glass and pouring a generous libation.
‘It isn’t what you think. We are friends.’ As he said it he wondered if Charlotte and he were even that.
‘She’s poison, damn it. She betrayed you with Nigel and she could so easily do so again.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you?’
‘Lady Mackay will be returning to Scotland to live. She just came to say goodbye.’
‘She still loves you. You can see it in her eyes. My guess is that she came to beg forgiveness as she tried to inveigle her way back into your bed with money and sex. The cloak she wore was a surprise though, buttoned as it was to the neck. Not her usual style.’
Daniel finished his drink before he spoke. ‘Let it go, Luce. There is no purpose in flogging the past.’
‘Maybe not, but your present difficulties can be laid squarely at the feet of Lady Mackay and rumour has it that Goldsmith is calling in his loan. Can you pay him?’
Daniel shook his head, helping himself to more of the same smooth wine. ‘There are others as well. Nigel was busier than I had thought.’
‘Pity Amethyst Cameron turned out to be such a duplicitous liar. I liked her before that. Francis told me to tell you that you should follow him to America. By his accounts there is a fortune to be made there.’
‘I don’t have enough time left to find it.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Is finally terrified. In the past few days and for the first time ever she is cursing Nigel to a most uncomfortable afterlife.’
‘At least she is recognising he is the architect of much of the Montcliffe misfortune. I could sell Cosgrove Hall. It is mine outright to do as I want with and it should fetch something even in its dilapidated state. At least the land around is arable.’
Daniel smiled. ‘I thank you for that, Luce, but it would hardly cover the first loan that was presented.’
‘Marry a girl whose family is flush, then, a young debutante who’d fall in love with you in a second. That would do the trick.’
‘I think any chaperone would be hurrying such prospects away from me. There is a big difference in thinking a family on the verge of ruin and the knowing of it. Besides, I am too jaded to be tiptoeing around such innocence.’
And he was, Daniel thought in surprise. Even the idea of such a bride made him feel...nervous. He was thirty-four next birthday and he felt older than that again. He didn’t want a woman he could hardly speak to or one who would be running home to her mother every time the going got tough. Which it would. His leg was aching tonight and he knew very soon he’d need to get a surgeon to look at it properly.
‘Did you find out anything more of Gerald Whitely then? You mentioned that you were looking into it the last time we met.’
Daniel nodded. ‘He died in the bed of a prostitute, it seems. Two shots to the head and no one ever held accountable. His crooked schemes of business were apparently funded by the Camerons’ money.’
Lucien swore. One of the riper expressions remembered from army life.
‘My thoughts exactly.’
‘I can’t see Miss Cameron being enamoured with someone of that ilk even after all that has happened and I am sure she could not have condoned his scandalous get-rich deals, either. As an impartial viewer I would also like to say that for the first time in a long while you seemed happy when you were with her.’
The words rang in Daniel’s head like a death knell as he struggled to change the subject to something lighter. He hadn’t been happy in so long, that was the problem. He couldn’t remember a time when he had truly laughed or enjoyed something just for the fun of it.
A band of yellow roses in golden curls came to mind, and lips that turned up at each end even when she did not smile. After Nigel and Charlotte, honesty was the yardstick he had measured people by and Amethyst Cameron had failed that test miserably in the end.
If the Camerons sent back an agreement to his terms, would he still go through with it, knowing all that he did? Was Montcliffe Manor worth such a sacrifice?
Charlotte’s presence today had unsettled him, but so had his mother’s constant tears. The carrot of building up his own breeding stable also sat at the back of his mind. With luck and good management he could begin to prosper and in a couple of years he might be able to pay back much of the debt. Amethyst had come to him stipulating her own terms, after all, so she would not be clinging on to something unsustainable either.
A marriage of convenience and with many of the terms in his favour? He could build up his breeding stock and begin again. A new life with the freedom of money and time. But even that prospect failed to allow him any renewed hopefulness and his shattered right thigh hurt like hell.
She would be married in an hour. Again. In a house she had no notion of and in a dress hurriedly made, with little interest on her part for the end result.
She looked terrible, that much she could see, her eyes red and swollen and the eczema that had a tendency to appear when she was stressed staining her cheeks and the soft skin beneath her mouth.
A blemished bride.
An unwanted bride.
A second-hand bride.
A bride who would stand at the altar only because of a series of conditions that would allow her husband a separate life apart from hers. Montcliffe