The Many Sins of Lord Cameron

Chapter 21

She hadn’t asked him that in a while. Cameron was already hard and hot for her again, but something dark twisted inside him, tendrils wrapping him so tightly he couldn’t breathe.

Ainsley’s eyes held longing, but Cameron was already moving from the bed, shaking his head.

“Eleanor Ramsay explained to me what your wife did to you,” Ainsley said behind him. “I understand why you don’t let yourself sleep in the same room with a woman.”

Cameron turned around. Ainsley was sitting up, the sheet pulled to her chin, watching him.

“With anyone,” Cameron said. “And Eleanor didn’t tell you all of it.”

No one knew but Cam. Cameron hadn’t been able to confess every truth, even to Hart, and he didn’t want to tell beautiful, unmarred Ainsley that his wife had not only beaten him with that poker, but on two occasions had tried to rape him with it.

He remembered the incidents with clarity, even though so much time had passed. The wash of pain that had jerked him out of deep slumber, Elizabeth’s laughter, more pain, blood, his own screams. He’d flung Elizabeth away, and still she’d laughed.

He’d started allowing himself to sleep only when he was alone, behind a locked door. But damned if Elizabeth hadn’t tricked a servant into letting her into Cameron’s chamber late one night so she could go at Cameron again. The only thing that had worked after that was posting a guard, both on his own door and Elizabeth’s. She’d railed about that too.

The darkness cleared a little to let him see Ainsley’s gray eyes, shining in the equally gray dawn.

“It’s not just what she did to me,” Cameron said with difficulty. “It’s what I might do to you. If you woke me suddenly, I might strike out and hurt you.”

He could tell she didn’t understand. Cameron went back to the bed and leaned down to her, resting his fists on the mattress.

“Daniel woke me up once, when he was about ten years old,” he said. “I threw him across the room. My own son. I could have killed him.”

The horror of that moment had never gone away. Daniel had lain still on the floor, unconscious, while Cameron had rushed to him, lifted his limp body in his arms. Resilient, Daniel hadn’t been badly hurt, thank God. Daniel had later said, cheerfully, that it had been his own fault. He’d forgotten that his dad was a little crazy.

Daniel taking the blame for the incident had kicked Cameron in the gut. Then Angelo had tried to blame himself for not realizing that Daniel had crept upstairs to his father’s bedroom. Cameron had wanted to shout at both of them, and ended up moving to a hotel, no longer trusting himself around those he cared about.

“Was Daniel all right?” Ainsley asked.

“Aye, but that’s not the point, is it?” Cameron’s fists tightened. “He was only a little boy. I could have hurt him. Do ye think I want to wake up and see I’ve done the same to you?”

Ainsley stared up at him, eyes unreadable. Cameron would never understand her. Just when he thought he knew Ainsley, the lively young woman who picked locks and ran about Paris in pursuit of cake, she decided to bring him off him in public, then tried to pry out the secrets of his soul.

“Perhaps if you grew used to it,” she began.

“Damn it, have ye heard nothing? There’s something wrong with me, understand? I can’t even think about settling down to sleep with you without the world going black. That’s why I wake up tossing people about. The blackness doesn’t let me go until it’s too late.”

Ainsley listened in silence. She was supposed to be afraid of him, of the terrifying, raging thing inside him. Some women enjoyed being afraid of Cameron, liking the danger, but they didn’t truly understand what Cameron was capable of. Cameron had never let them know.

He swung away and snatched up his clothes.

“I positively hate this woman,” Ainsley said behind him. “Your wife, I mean.”

Cameron gave a bitter laugh as he pulled on his trousers. “I’m glad you do. She wrecked me. She wanted her revenge, and now she has it.”

“Cam . . .”

Cameron shook his head. “No more talking. Go to sleep.”

He turned his back on the beautiful woman he’d do anything in the world for, shrugged on his shirt, and banged out.

Behind him, Ainsley hugged her knees, wiping tears on the sheet. “I do hope it is hot where you are, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish,” she whispered. “Very, very hot.”

Ainsley walked into Cameron’s bedroom the next evening while his Parisian valet readied him for another night of restaurants and cabarets. Cam glanced at the afternoon dress Ainsley still wore and frowned.

“Aren’t you coming out with me?”

“I’ll get dressed in a moment. Felipe, will you leave us?”

The valet didn’t even look to Cameron for confirmation. The servants, both Scottish and French, now obeyed Ainsley without question. Felipe simply left the room.

Cameron finished closing the collar stud Felipe had been setting in place. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“How do you even know what I intend to say?”

He gave her an impatient look before he turned back to the mirror to slide his cravat around his neck. “Because you’re a ferret and can’t leave well enough alone.”

Ainsley went to him, took the cravat ends from his hands, and started to tie the knot for him.

“I came to tell you about my brother.”

Cameron tilted his head back so she could work. “Which brother? There are as many confounded McBrides as there are Mackenzies.”

“There are only four. Patrick, Sinclair, Elliot, and Steven. I want to tell you more about Elliot.”

“Which one is he, the barrister?”

Cameron knew full well which of her brothers was which, because Ainsley had talked quite a lot about each of them. Her brothers were a safe topic of conversation, plus she was proud of their accomplishments. Ainsley was willing to wager that Hart too had told Cameron about her brothers, likely with dossiers on each one. Cameron was trying to be difficult.

“Elliot went to India with the army,” she said. “When he left the army, he stayed in India to start a business helping other colonials settle. Once when he was traveling in the northern region in the course of this business, he was captured. He was kept imprisoned for so long there that we were certain he was dead. But at last he managed to escape and make his way home.”

Cameron’s voice softened. “I remember. I’m sorry. What about him?”

“Elliot stayed with Patrick a while to convalesce, and he seemed to mend, but I could tell that there was something very wrong. Elliot made too light of his broken bones and the torture he’d suffered, almost joking about the whole thing.”

“I understand why,” Cameron said. “He didn’t want to think too much about it. Or talk about it.”

Ainsley gave Cameron’s knot one last tug. “I realize that. What he went through must have been horrible. One night, when I looked in on him, I found him huddled on the bed, shaking and unable to speak. When I went to see what was the matter, Elliot wouldn’t respond to me, wouldn’t even look at me. I was about to run for Rona and Patrick when he came to himself. He told me he was all right and begged me to say nothing.”

“It had happened to him before, then.”

Ainsley nodded. “He told me that sometimes, out of nowhere, even when he sat quietly in Rona’s front parlor, the world would . . . go away. He’d feel himself floating, and then he’d be back in the tiny hole where his captors had kept him. They sometimes didn’t feed him or even look in on him for weeks. Logically, Elliot knew that he was safe and whole and in Patrick’s house in Scotland, but his mind made him relive the entire horror of what had happened. He said he worried that the visions made him a coward, but that can’t be true—Elliot is one of the bravest men I know. He even went back to India—he’s still there—because he feared he’d be cowering in Patrick’s guest room for the rest of his life if he didn’t.”

Cameron looked down at her with an unreadable expression. He was delectable in kilt, shirt, and waistcoat, in undress only his valet or wife was allowed to see. “You are telling me this story because you think I feel about Elizabeth the same way your brother felt about being imprisoned and tortured.”

“Well, not quite, but it must be a similar thing.”

Cameron turned away from her. “Which I asked not to talk about, I remember.”

“I think we should talk about it. It’s our marriage, Cam. It’s our life.”

Still he wouldn’t look at her. “I told you, I don’t want rows with you. We rub along, or we don’t.”

“Then we ignore the fact that my own husband refuses to sleep in a bed with me?”

Cam dragged a hand through his hair. “Plenty of married people don’t share a bed. God knows my mother and father never did. They had separate rooms, separate spaces. It’s not unusual.”

“It is in my family. Patrick and Rona sleep together every night, and my parents did too.”

“I’m glad you had such an idyllic upbringing.”

“I even shared a bed with John.”

Cameron’s eyes flashed as he swung around again. “And I don’t want to hear you talk about you and John Douglas.”

“But we must talk about you.”

“Why?” His big hands clenched. “Why must we, Ainsley? Have you come into my life to fix every little problem? I don’t want a be-damned nanny, I want a lover.”

“So do I.”

“For God’s sake, Ainsley, what do you want me to say? That Elizabeth was insane? You’ve heard the stories. Eleanor must have given you an earful—Hart spilled all the family secrets to her. Eleanor ran far away from us, wise woman.”

“She told me that Lady Elizabeth hurt you.”

“Aye, she did.” Cameron ripped the button from his cuff and yanked the sleeve up his arm. “You were interested in these? All right, then, I’ll tell you. Elizabeth was in my bedroom, smoking a cheroot. Her lovers liked her to smoke them, so she did it to remind me that she didn’t belong entirely to me. Daniel was there, and she thought it would be interesting to see what kind of scars the ends left on a baby’s flesh.”

Ainsley’s mouth dropped open. Eleanor hadn’t mentioned that. She thought of the precious body she’d cradled to her bosom for one day, and rage that knew no end filled her. “How could she?”

“I grabbed for Danny, and while I was wrestling my own son away from her, she jabbed me with the damn cigar. She said she’d leave Daniel alone if I allowed her make a pattern on my arm, so I let her. She enjoyed it. Then I carried Daniel back to his nursery and stayed with him, in case she decided to come up there and try something more awful. Elizabeth hated Daniel, because she knew he was mine. I started making arrangements that very day to send her away, but before I had the chance . . .” He made an empty gesture as he wound down.

Ainsley pressed her arms to her chest, trying to stem her shivers. “Cam, I am so sorry.”

“It hurts, Ainsley. I loathed her, and still it hurts.” He dragged his sleeve back down and flipped the ruined cuff closed. “That’s why I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ainsley picked up the button he’d ripped off and rummaged silently through the dressing table for a needle and thread. Miraculously, he held still while she put the button back into place and started sewing, though she had difficulty seeing the needle through her tears. The cuff closed, hiding the round scars again.

“Cam,” she said softly. A tear fell to his wrist.

Cameron’s broad fingers tilted her face up. There was fire in his eyes, and anger, and pain. “Let me be, Ainsley. Don’t try to remake me in one night. I told you, I’m a wreck of a man.”

A man I’m in love with. Ainsley kissed his palm.

Cameron stared down at her a moment, thumb stroking the curls at the nape of her neck. Then he cupped her head in his hand and swiftly kissed her.

The kiss held passion, hunger, need. He dragged her up to him, the kiss turning deep. They’d not be going out that night.

Cameron didn’t speak of the matter again, but Ainsley refused to forget it. Cameron had said he didn’t like rows, and Ainsley didn’t either, but she also didn’t wish to pretend away the problem.

Meanwhile, during the whirl of life in Paris, Daniel was packed off to Cambridge to begin the Michaelmas term. Daniel wasn’t happy about leaving, but he kissed Ainsley good-bye, shook his father’s hand, and grudgingly boarded the train.

Ainsley’s heart ached to see him go, and she noticed that Cameron was more gruff and scowling as well. He missed his son, the son he’d endured torture to protect.

But a mere two weeks later, Daniel was back.