The Lady Most Willing

Chapter 7

By the time Bret reached the drawing room, Miss Chisholm and Lady Cecily were nowhere to be found. “Your friends seem to have deserted us,” he said to Catriona as he set her down upon an ancient chaise longue.

“Perhaps we were meant to follow them to Fiona’s room?”

“Oh, but I could not venture into a lady’s chamber,” Bret said, placing one hand over his heart for emphasis.

Catriona gave a look that was dubious in the extreme.

“And at any rate,” he added, “I don’t know where her room is.”

Catriona cocked her head, then said, “Do you know, neither do I.”

He grinned at that. “We seem to be stuck here, then.”

“On our own,” she said, a small smile touching her lips.

“You’re not concerned for your reputation?”

She tilted her head toward the door. “The door is open.”

“Pity, that,” Bret murmured. He perched on the table directly across from her, testing it first before settling his entire weight; like everything in Finovair, it was chipped and rickety.

“Your Grace!”

“I think you should call me by my given name, don’t you?”

“Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “And at any rate, I don’t know what it is.”

“John,” he said, and he tried to remember the last time anyone had called him such. His mother did, but only occasionally. His friends all called him Bret. He thought of himself as Bret. But as he looked at Catriona Burns, who had already shifted herself to a sitting position on the chaise, he wondered what it would be like to have someone in his life who would call him John.

“I heard Lord Oakley call you Bret,” Catriona said.

“Many people do,” he said with a small shrug. He looked down, finding it suddenly awkward to meet her gaze. The conversation had made him wistful, almost self-conscious—a sensation to which he had never been accustomed.

But this feeling that seemed to wash over him whenever he was with Catriona—it was growing, changing. He’d thought it lust, then desire, and then something that was far, far sweeter. But now, swirling amid all this was an unfamiliar longing. For her, certainly for her, but also for something else. For a feeling, for an existence.

For someone to know him, completely.

And the strangest part was, he wasn’t scared.

“I couldn’t possibly call you Bret in front of the others,” Catriona said, pulling his attention back to her face.

“No,” he agreed softly. It would be improper in the extreme, not that anything in the past day had been proper, normal, or customary.

“And I should not call you Bret when we are alone,” she added, but there was the tiniest question in her voice.

He brought her hand to his lips. “I would not want that.”

Her eyes widened with surprise, and—dare he hope it?—disappointment. “You wouldn’t?”

“John,” he said, with quiet determination. “You must call me John.”

“But nobody else does,” she whispered.

He gazed at her over her hand, thinking he could stare at her forever. “I know,” he said, and at that moment something within him shifted. He knew—and by all that was holy, he hoped she knew, too—that their lives would never be the same.

Catriona stopped at her small garret before making her way to Fiona’s bedchamber for tea. She needed a moment. She needed a thousand moments.

She needed to breathe.

She needed to think.

She needed to find a way to face her friends and speak like a normal human being.

Because she did not feel like a normal human being, and she very much feared that Fiona and Lady Cecily would take one look at her and know that she’d been kissing the Duke of Bretton in the sitting room with the door open, and before he’d finally pulled away, his hands had been on her skin, and she’d liked it.

Good God above, she’d liked it.

If he hadn’t stopped, she didn’t know if she could have done so. But he had lifted his lips from hers, cradled her face in his hands, and looked into her eyes with such tenderness. And then he’d whispered, “Say my name.”

“John.” She’d barely been able to make a sound, but he was staring at her lips; surely he’d seen his name upon them.

He’d taken her hand, helped her to her feet, and said something about her joining the other ladies before they became concerned. Then he bowed and headed to the nearest exit.

“You’re going outside?” she asked. “It’s freezing out there.”

“I know,” he replied, his voice a little strange. He bowed, then said, “Until supper.”

And so Catriona made her own way through Finovair’s twisty halls, gathering her thoughts, tidying her appearance in her room, and then finally locating Fiona’s sparse bedchamber.

Tea had already arrived, and Fiona and Lady Cecily were deep in conversation. Fiona was expertly pulling a seam out of an ancient blue gown. Lady Cecily was sucking on her finger.

“I’ve stabbed myself,” Cecily said.

Fiona shook her head. “I told you to let me do it.”

“I know,” Cecily replied. “I just didn’t want to feel so useless.”

“I should think,” Catriona opined as she took a seat next to Fiona on the bed, “that given all we’ve been through, we’re entitled to feel anything we please.”

The two ladies turned to her with identical expressions. Expressions which, Catriona was alarmed to realize, she did not know how to interpret. Finally, after she could no longer stand it, she turned to Fiona (since she could hardly be so rude to an earl’s daughter she’d met only the day before) and said, “What?”

“You’ve fallen in love with the Duke of Bretton,” Fiona said.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Catriona tried to scoff. But her voice did not come out as briskly as she would have liked.

Fiona stared at her from behind her vexing little spectacles, lifting her auburn brows as if to say—

Well, Catriona didn’t know what she might be saying, or rather, implying, since it wasn’t as if Fiona could speak with her eyebrows. Still and all, Catriona knew she had to nip this in the bud, so she said, very firmly, “You can’t fall in love with someone on so short an acquaintance.” It was what she believed. It was what she’d always believed.

“Actually,” Lady Cecily said softly, “I think you can.”

That got the other ladies’ attention, so much so that Lady Cecily blushed and explained, “My parents have a love match. It has made me a romantic, I suppose.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Catriona, grateful for a change of subject, voiced the obvious question. “What do you suppose they are all thinking?”

“Our parents?” Fiona asked.

Catriona nodded.

“They’ll be angry, of course,” Fiona said slowly, “but once they realize it’s only Taran who has taken us, they won’t worry for our lives. Or our virtue,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“They won’t?” Lady Cecily asked.

“No,” Catriona agreed. “Taran may leave our reputations in tatters, but we will be returned every bit as alive and virginal as when we were taken.”

And then, with an aching gasp, she realized what she’d said. But if Fiona took offense, she did not show it. In fact, Fiona’s voice was completely unaffected as she explained, “It is well known that while Taran’s sense of honor is unique, it does exist. He would never allow us to be harmed in any way.”

Catriona wanted to say that she had never believed the gossip about Fiona, but she could hardly bring up the subject in front of Lady Cecily. Now she felt a little knot of shame in the pit of her stomach. Why hadn’t she gone out of her way to offer Fiona her support? It was true that their paths hadn’t often crossed; Catriona had always been much more likely to come across Marilla at local gatherings.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to have a dress altered for you before supper this evening,” Fiona said to Lady Cecily, expertly steering the conversation back to mundane waters. She frowned down at the ice blue brocade in her hands. “I promised Marilla I’d finish this one first. Then I’ll do yours.”

“Surely Marilla can wait,” Catriona said. “Didn’t you already see to that red dress she was wearing today?”

Fiona snorted. “If I had seen to that red dress, you can be sure I’d have yanked the bodice up a few inches.”

“But what about you?” Lady Cecily asked. “I insist that you see to your own gown before mine.”

“Nonsense,” Fiona replied. “I can—”

“I will not take no for an answer,” Lady Cecily said forcefully, “and even if you alter a frock for me, I won’t wear it until yours is done.”

Fiona looked up at her and blinked behind her spectacles. “That is very generous of you,” she finally said.

Lady Cecily shrugged, as if walking around in ill-fitting gowns was nothing to the daughter of an earl. “There is nothing to be gained by complaining about our situation,” she said.

“Try telling that to my sister,” Fiona muttered.

Catriona and Lady Cecily looked at her with identical expressions of sympathy.

Fiona just rolled her eyes and went back to her sewing. A few moments later, Lady Cecily turned to Catriona and asked, “Have Mr. Ferguson’s nephews visited Finovair before?”

Catriona shook her head. “First of all, no one calls him Mr. Ferguson. It’s always Taran. I don’t know why; it’s not as if we’re so shockingly familiar with anyone else. And secondly, I’m not sure.” She glanced over at Fiona. “We were talking about that earlier. Certainly, I’ve never met them.”

“Nor I,” Fiona agreed.

“Do you know them?” Catriona asked Cecily. “I would think you would have been much more likely to cross their paths in London.”

“I know of them, of course,” Lady Cecily said, “and I’ve been introduced to Lord Oakley. But not the Comte de Rocheforte.”

“Why not?” Fiona asked.

Lady Cecily appeared to hesitate, and a faint blush stole across her cheeks. “I suppose our paths did not cross.”

That was a clanker if ever Catriona had heard one. But she certainly wasn’t going to say anything about it.

Fiona, however, must not have shared her reticence, because she murmured, “He strikes me as a bit of a rake.”

“Yes,” Lady Cecily admitted. “I imagine that’s why our paths did not cross.”

“It seems to me that he ought not to be a rake,” Catriona said.

Lady Cecily turned to face her with wide, interested eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Just that his is such a ready smile. I haven’t shared more than two words with him, but he strikes me as being altogether too nice to be a rake.”

“He is very handsome, of course,” Fiona observed.

“Well, perhaps,” Catriona murmured.

Fiona grinned. “You’re just saying that because you have fallen in love with the duke.”

“I haven’t!” Catriona insisted.

Fiona replied with an arch look, then said, “You may thank me later for securing you time alone in the drawing room.”

Lady Cecily pressed her lips together—presumably so as not to laugh—then said, “I have been introduced to the Duke of Bretton.”

“Really?” Fiona asked with great interest, saving Catriona the trouble of pretending that she wasn’t dying for more information.

“Oh yes. Not that I would pretend any great friendship, but our fathers were at Cambridge together. The duke generally pencils his name on my dance card whenever our paths cross at a ball.”

Catriona wondered what it would be like to dance in John’s arms, to feel his hand pressing gently at the small of her back. He would hold her close, maybe even a little too close for propriety, and she would feel the heat of him rippling through the air until it landed on her like a kiss.

She felt herself growing warm, which was ludicrous. It was the dead of winter, barely a week before Christmas, and she was trapped in Taran Ferguson’s underheated, crumbledown castle. She should be freezing. But apparently, the mere thought of the Duke of Bretton sent her into an overheated tizzy.

“Would you like some tea?” Fiona asked.

“Yes!” Catriona responded, with perhaps more eagerness than the question called for.

“It only just arrived before you got here,” Fiona told her, “but it wasn’t hot even then.”

“It’s quite all right,” Catriona said quickly, thinking she could almost do with an iced lemonade right now, she felt so flushed. She set to work preparing her cup, moving slowly and methodically, needing the time to compose herself.

“Do either of you know what our plans for supper are?” Lady Cecily asked.

“Mrs. McVittie’s already laid the table,” Catriona said. She’d seen it after she’d left the duke—John, she reminded herself—in the sitting room. She’d been discombobulated, but not so much that she hadn’t stopped to inspect the seating arrangements. Taran had been at the head, with Marilla on his right, followed by Mr. Rocheforte, Fiona, the duke, Lady Cecily, Lord Oakley, Catriona, and then back to Taran.

Catriona had switched with Lady Cecily, certain no one (except possibly Taran) would be the wiser.

“Please tell me I’m not seated next to Taran,” Fiona said.

“Marilla has that honor,” Catriona replied. She gave a sympathetic look to Lady Cecily (but not so sympathetic that she regretted having switched their spots). “And you, I’m afraid.”

“That’s all right, I suppose.” Lady Cecily took a sip of her tea. “Did you by any chance see who was on my other side?”

“I think it was Lord Oakley, but I’m not entirely positive,” Catriona fibbed. There was no need for anyone to know she’d memorized the seating arrangements.

“Oh.” Lady Cecily brought her cup to her lips again. “How perfectly pleasant.”

The conversation stalled at that, and then, after Fiona had put her attention back to her needlework, Lady Cecily blurted, “Are either of you chilled? I’m chilled.”

“The tea isn’t very hot,” Catriona said, since the sudden statement seemed to call for some sort of reply.

“And the fire’s gone quite low,” Lady Cecily added. “Perhaps I should find someone to tend to it.”

“Well, I can do that,” Catriona said, coming to her feet. It didn’t matter how gently bred a woman was. In the Highlands, everyone needed to know how to tend a fire.

“But I think I need a blanket,” Lady Cecily said. “This . . . I mean, it’s not even really a shawl . . .” She fussed with the piece of fabric draped over her shoulders and made for the door. “Perhaps if I lie down.”

“That was very odd,” Fiona said, once Lady Cecily had hurried out the door.

Not so odd, Catriona thought fifteen minutes later. It just so happened she had to walk through the dining room to get back to her own bedchamber. When she inspected the place settings, she saw that someone had been busy with the name cards. Lady Cecily and Marilla had exchanged positions.

Catriona shrugged. As long as she remained next to the duke, she didn’t care where anyone else was sitting.