Chapter 14
The night was crisp, cool, and oddly clear, as if the thunderstorm earlier had washed the air. The damp grass glittered in the moonlight, raindrops sparkling like stars.
Montgomery slowly took the path through the trees.
He felt a twinge in his right knee brought about by the dampness of the night. The accident resulting in his injury had been a foolish one. He’d landed on the roof of a church, but at least he hadn’t tumbled to the ground.
By such small things were his life measured.
If he’d read between the lines of Caroline’s letters, he would have found a way to go home. Caroline would have lived, and he’d be at Gleneagle.
If a trunk hadn’t been delivered to his house, he would never have gone to the Society of the Mercaii. Veronica MacLeod would have been ruined. She might have ended up on the streets, a gentlewoman spurned by her family.
Instead, she was his wife.
If he hadn’t read one particular article in the newspaper, he would never have begun a correspondence that led to his avocation, and in a way, his survival.
Shielded by the overgrown oaks and aspens of Doncaster Hall, he stood and listened to the droplets of rain falling from the leaves. A discordant melody having no rhyme, meter, or pattern. A reminder, perhaps, that he’d lost his own patterns in the last five years.
Once, the seasons had measured his life: planting, harvesting, drying tobacco being the framework for everything else. Now, he didn’t have that. Gleneagle and Virginia society had provided structure. Both had been a testing place for his manners, his charm, and his abilities.
Few of the great families were left; the stunning beauties were pale, wan, and ravaged by war, and wealth had disappeared. Any opportunities had bled into the earth along with the lifeblood of most of Virginia’s proud young men.
Here he was, though, a lord in a country he’d never considered home, heir to an estate and a fortune that made Gleneagle’s once not-inconsiderable affluence look paltry in comparison. He was steward of an empire requiring his participation and interest.
How was he going to be what Edmund decreed he should be, what Veronica no doubt deserved? How was he going to manage to be a proper Lord Fairfax, a decent, caring husband?
His nightly walks were commonplace to him now. In London, he’d almost welcomed the danger of them, even being so incautious as to head toward the center of the city, daring someone to accost him. No one had, and he’d been curiously disappointed.
He took the path down the hill to a shallow brook, tinted silver by a looming moon.
He climbed to the top of a nearby hill, surveyed his gray-white kingdom, and felt loneliness pull at him as if it was a carrion bird pecking at his innards.
At times, he wanted simply to dissolve into nothingness, or grip something tight and hold on to it in desperation.
Would the wagons arrive tomorrow? He’d already spotted an outbuilding he could convert to a work space.
The structure had once been used to make whiskey, he’d been told, and was unsuitable to house animals.
All he wanted was a tall, steep-roofed structure, with space enough to work on his navigational designs.
The building, still referred to as the distillery, would fit his needs perfectly.
He kept walking. The night air was cool, but not so much he was uncomfortable. In the last five years, he’d endured worse conditions.
Montgomery, are you well?
“Caroline,” he said softly, and she appeared in the night like a creature crafted of moonbeams.
He knew she wasn’t real. None of the ghosts who visited him from time to time were real. Nor were they frightening. They didn’t come to castigate him or offer blame. They came to ease his heart, to numb the pain because he missed them so desperately he’d created them to make life bearable.
Walking through the Scots night, he acquainted himself and his ghosts with the terrain, the feel of the curving earth beneath his feet. He headed toward an outcropping of stone, only gray shapes layered over black, and listened to the sound of the river.
“It’s not the James,” he said. His ghosts didn’t answer.
You’re a lord, Alisdair said, a note of amusement in his voice.
“You would have been,” he answered. “If you hadn’t died.” Silence greeted that announcement.
He felt, rather than heard, Caroline’s disappointment. She never understood that brothers had a duty to aggravate one another.
Your wife knows you’re in pain, Caroline said.
He turned toward a lighter patch of tumbled rock. If Caroline were there, she’d be standing in the most prominent place. She liked the attention, always had a bit of drama about her. Was that why he’d ignored her? Because he’d no patience with histrionics?
You should tell her about us, Montgomery, she said.
He smiled. “That I see you? That I hear you?” he asked, facing the river, speaking to them in the silence of his mind.
You don’t, you know, she said, softly, so much compassion in her voice his heart felt as if it were being sliced in thin little strips.
“I want to,” he said.
Only the wind answered him, blowing his hair back, catching his coat, and billowing it around his torso. He closed his eyes, feeling the sharp bite of pain, the endlessness of it.
A little while later, he retraced his path back to the house, knowing sleep would come late that night, if at all. He’d become accustomed to his sleeplessness, accepting it as part of the price he paid for survival.
He’d known some poor souls who’d suffered head injuries in the war.
They’d never been the same. Some had stared off into space as if seeing the past or the future.
One or two had simply retreated into himself, arms wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth as if trying to capture the time when he’d been a babe in his mother’s arms.
His war injuries had been slight: a piece of shrapnel lodged in his thigh from cannon misfire, a scar on his right knee from a bad landing. Memories that never left him.
In the next few days, he’d have something on which to concentrate, an occupation bridging his past and present. He needed something familiar, and his airships would provide that.
As he stood staring at the main part of the structure, lights greeted him from the family wing. He knew Veronica was still awake.
A silhouette stood at the window. Could she see him?
If she did, what did she think about the strange American she’d married?
Should he confess to her that he was still angry about their marriage?
That he’d not wanted to be her savior and had become so reluctantly?
What would Veronica say if he told her she annoyed him, confused him, and intrigued him too much for his peace of mind?
He could still feel her on his palms and the tips of his fingers, hear her soft moans, see the shocked awareness in her eyes as her body climaxed.
In her arms, he’d found intense pleasure.
Only a fool would resent that.
A few minutes later, he entered the house, took the stairs two at a time to his bedroom, passed through the lavatory to the sitting room, and opened the connecting door.
Veronica was standing there, still staring out at the night, a look he couldn’t quite decipher on her face.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said, walking toward her.
She turned to face him.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, surprising him. “Have you been walking the grounds?”
He nodded.
She didn’t ask what made him so restless, only reached out her hand to touch his arm. A gentle, wifely touch, one of reassurance and comfort. She’d done the same earlier, when he felt as if he were being pummeled by memory.
As he looked into her eyes, he wondered what, exactly, she felt from him. If he believed in such things.
He reached down and picked up her left hand. The back of her hand was soft, the tips of her fingers rough. Surprised, he examined her palm, and when she curled her fingers rather than allow him to see, he pulled her hand back.
“Why do you have scars on your hand?”
She looked away, and when he tried to uncurl her fingers, she pulled them back, wrapping her arms around her waist.
“Veronica,” he said gently. “It doesn’t matter to me. I merely wanted to know how you hurt yourself.”
She glanced quickly at him, then away, but didn’t answer.
He placed his hands on her arms, rubbed them slowly up and down, then gently pulled her into his embrace. Reluctantly, it seemed, she sighed and laid her head on his shoulder.
Surprisingly, he felt the cold hard center, that had been there since first viewing Doncaster Hall, begin to melt. Maybe this was what he needed, communion with another human being, the ability to touch someone, to feel her warmth.
Her breath tickled his neck, and he smiled. He turned his head a little, and kissed her forehead, the softness of her skin an attraction for his lips. His mouth trailed down her nose, over the edge of her jaw, and up to her temple.
His hands flattened on her back as she wound her arms around his waist, anchoring him there. He closed his eyes, breathing the scent of Veronica: warm woman and roses. Comfort and welcome, soft curves and passion: a lure he didn’t want to ignore.
He released her from his embrace, but only enough to unfasten the buttons at her cuffs.
She didn’t speak, didn’t question his actions.
Slowly, he began to unbutton her bodice.
Her eyes followed his progress, but she remained silent.
He pulled her bodice free of her waistband and began to work on her skirt.
She stood, completely proper, yet about to become unveiled an inch at a time. Her bodice was open, but only a small square of skin was revealed. He bent to kiss that spot above her corset, feeling the increased pulse rate.