Chapter 6
The new gown refused to breathe. It cinched her ribs, lifted her bosom, caged her shoulders beneath a filigree of pearls that clicked softly whenever she turned her head.
Alistair had ordered it from a modiste of high repute.
The color, smoke-blue silk with a whisper of silver, was said to flatter a country complexion.
“It will correct,” the woman had assured, “what the country air has browned.”
Isla had smiled with all her teeth and said nothing. Correct. The word sat like a pin under the skin. Ravenscroft House blazed for dinner. Lamps glowed from every sconce. Candles climbed the mirrored walls. The entry hall rang with names and laughter.
Alistair handed their card to a footman and surveyed the stair with satisfaction. He had chosen a coat with new satin facings and a waistcoat fine enough to make him look solvent.
“Hold your head up,” he said softly, not unkindly. “You look very well.”
“I look like I cannot exhale,” Isla murmured.
“Pain is the cost of fashion,” he returned from behind a public smile.
He gave her an encouraging glance that turned at once into calculation as a pair of gentlemen approached.
He was introduced, they were important, and she watched her brother’s face assume the companionable gravity of a man reacquainting himself with hope.
New friends, new favor, he took to it with the thirst of a man who had been lost in the desert.
To Isla, the dress was fast becoming an unwelcome microcosm of her life.
It constrained her by forcing her into the shape society demanded and to the movements they demanded.
She could not run or mount a horse in this ridiculous outfit.
She could barely sit. What she could do was stand with perfect posture, to be admired by every man present, if he so chose.
Like a trophy to be won. Except I have already been claimed. So, I am more like a portrait to be pinned to the wall and stared at.
They were swept forward into color and sound.
Beyond the ballroom, a crimson drawing room opened like a jewel box.
The ton had gathered there, expecting the room to lend them some of its grandeur.
Everywhere tongues moved and Isla felt their attention.
It made her shoulder blades itch. Made her want to look over her shoulder constantly.
A footman presented champagne. She dared not drink; the bodice allowed no place for breath, let alone bubbles. She nodded, smiled, nodded, endured. Alistair had already found a knot of allies, talking earnestly and with many sharp, decisive hand gestures.
He is in his element. He barely even sounds like a Scotsman. He fits in perfectly. I wish I did, it would make this evening so much easier.
Where was Edward?
Not near the mantel, where a cluster of gentlemen discussed a bill in the Lords.
Not beside the musicians, where ladies preened and the younger set laughed too loudly.
Not by the threshold, where his rank might have stood comfortably and received the room.
She felt him absent like a lack of warmth. Irrational.
He is not mine to find. I should not feel the void in a room from which he is absent. I am not a slave to a broad pair of shoulders and a handsome face.
After ten minutes that felt like hours, she made for the terrace.
Cool air settled on her like a blessing.
The garden below glowed with discreet lanterns.
Rosemary and night-stock carried their quiet scent.
She leaned against the stone balustrade and let the silk constriction loosen its fist fraction by fraction.
Distant wheels moved on Grosvenor Square, somewhere a dog barked twice and fell still.
Two women’s voices murmured from nearby.
“… pity, really. He was promised her since … oh, since they were children, it feels like.”
“Promised! You’re romantic, Anne. It was never formal. Only understood.”
“And now—”A rustle of silk—“that Highland girl. Carried through a ballroom in his arms like some …”
Isla came to attention, hands on the stone balustrade at the edge of the terrace. She looked in the direction of the voices.
“Do be charitable. One ought to be kind to savages. I believe they have a breed of cattle up there with just that shade of hair.”
Laughter. Isla saw the speakers. They stood before a statue which guarded the steps leading down to the lawn. It shielded Isla from their sight unless she stepped back towards the house. Which she now did.
“Which Highland girl?” she asked lightly. “There are so many of us.”
They stilled. “Lady Isla,” one said, composed in an instant. “How you startled us.”
“Forgive me. Were you speaking of me perchance?”
More laughter, a little brittle now. The other lady drew herself up. “We merely spoke of Lady Charlotte Pembroke’s very natural claim upon His Grace. They are old friends.”
“Old friends,” Isla repeated, “how very strong those can be. One wonders that they have not already become new relations.”
“Circumstance,” said the first lady. “Timing. Fate.”
“And a set of shoulders, perhaps,” Isla said, too pleasantly. “One cannot argue with a man who chooses to carry what lies inconveniently at his feet.”
They tittered and exchanged a glance that conceded no point to her beyond quickness.
Then, seeing that she was not obliging them with tears or temper, they drifted away in pursuit of kinder prey.
Isla took their place before the statue as it screened her from the house, giving a respite from further conversation. A soft throat cleared to her left.
“I did not enjoy that either.”
Isla turned. The speaker had thoughtful eyes, a mouth with a wry slant and hair pinned too practically to be fashionable. Her gown was respectable and two seasons behind. She seemed to wear it with indifference.
“Forgive me,” the woman said, and bobbed. “Lady Victoria Melrose.”
A pause. “My mother insists on the Lady. I would not, but she is a formidable woman, and the battle cost more than the title.”
Isla smiled despite herself. “Isla Drummond.”
“I know. We are cousins of a kind. I believe my father’s family, the Melrose’s, are distantly related to the Drummonds. Though I have never set foot in Scotland yet.”
“Well, I would be happy to show you,” Isla said, taking to Victoria’s plain directness.
The young woman held a book casually in one hand, her place kept by a finger.
“You read?” Isla asked.
“I do. I can be trusted to dance also, but not to like it as much as people prefer.”
“I too can be trusted to dance but prefer to ride,” Isla said.
Victoria tipped her head toward the house. “They do not mean half what they say.”
“They mean all of it,” Isla said lightly. “They simply like themselves better when they say it prettily. I would much prefer ugly words expressed directly than pretty ones delivering an ugly meaning like a knife between the ribs.”
“A knife …? What a brutal metaphor.”
It was said with such laughing candor that Isla grinned and received a reciprocal smile from Victoria. Her dress chose that moment to remind her how uncomfortable it was. Isla winced.
“Does it pinch?”
“The gown? It bites.”
“To use an equine metaphor, you wear it like a thoroughbred runs. With apparent effortless grace that conceals a great deal of effort,”
If only. Other women make their ridiculous gowns seem to float. I have no such illusions. Tae the devil with fashion!
“Do you like London?” Victoria asked.
“I like walking,” Isla said, “and the sound of my own mind. London interferes with both.”
“We shall be friends,” Victoria announced.
Isla laughed. “You announce it?”
“I have learned one thing about the ton. If you declare a thing first and without embarrassment, they have less fun denying it.”
So something good has come out of this arrangement. A new friend.
Isla cynically told herself that the friendship was the only good thing to arise from her situation. But thoughts of Edward surfaced which could not be denied. He was her chain, her manacles, but he was intriguing.
He is handsome and that is different. I am not a foolish lass to lose her heid to a beautiful face. Even if it does look like it was crafted by a Renaissance master.
The notion of Edward as the product of a master sculptor seeking masculine perfection made her blush.
She did not want to be reduced to a blushing fool by him, whether he was present or not.
She told herself that this marriage curtailed her freedom as effectively as any judge passing sentence on a convict.
The terrace door opened. Three matrons moved into view, converging like frigates.
One was richly jet and sleek, the other a mass of ruffles and opinion.
At their center, the Dowager Duchess of Ravenscroft.
She carried the air of a woman who had sat too long at the head of too many tables and come to believe the furniture formed itself at her will.
Her gaze caught Isla and stopped as if at a stain.
“Victoria,” the Dowager said without warmth, “do not keep the air when the company wants it.”
“I shall bottle some and bring it in,” Victoria returned pleasantly.
“And you.” The Dowager Duchess looked Isla over as one might a parcel that had arrived from the wrong shop. “It is charitable of Ravenscroft to invite you, charity begins at home. However, I believe Edinburgh would have served you better.”
Isla felt heat rise, swift and uncontainable. “Edinburgh has the advantage of sense.”
“Whereas London suffers from Scots.” The Dowager’s smile did not reach her eyes. “We are to be family, Lady Isla. We must learn to speak plainly. You will discover that English manners are a mercy in the face of barbarous habits. Be grateful for the mercy.”
Victoria’s hand brushed Isla’s sleeve, a warning or a plea. Isla tasted blood where she had bitten the inside of her cheek.
“I will be grateful,” she said evenly, “for truth when it arrives.”
The dinner bell rang, timely as a savior.
The matrons swept away with their circling weather of opinions.
Isla and Victoria followed from a safe distance.
In the dining room, Isla found herself placed on the Dowager’s left.
Edward sat opposite. He wore black that made his eyes look darker.
When he raised his glass and the candle struck his strong but well-formed hands, something low and disloyal moved through her.
Weesht! Do not be a silly girl. He is merely a man.
Lady Charlotte Pembroke was there as well, Isla overheard her being addressed by name.
She was pale and elegant, a swan composed precisely to be admired.
She did not look once in Isla’s direction.
Edward, however did. As the dinner progressed, Isla found herself stealing glances at the man who was to be her husband.
Her eyes lingered traitorously on a noble profile when he turned to address someone next to him.
Sometimes, she looked and his eyes stared back.
She counted the seconds between looks, forcing herself to look away.
But her eyes always found him again. And those moments when she caught him looking at her sent a jolt through her as though she had been struck by lightning.
Isla attacked each course, forcing her attention on the food to distract from her …
distraction. It did no good. Always she eventually sought the thrill of his eyes.
After dinner the company divided as custom demanded. The ladies dispersed to a music room that showed off harps and poor playing. The gentlemen took brandy and cigars. Isla tolerated the knives of the ladies' company for as long as she could.
When it became intolerable she quietly slipped away, through a door and into a corridor beyond. The first corridor gave into a second, the second into a third. Ravenscroft had grown in odd centuries and wore its additions like secret pockets.
She had intended a breath of air and a square of quiet.
Instead the passages turned right, then left, then sloped slightly downward, growing narrower until the carpet gave way to polished boards and the wallpaper to painted paneling.
She should have turned back. Pride and curiosity argued, pride lost.
There was a faint draught, an old house’s sigh.
The paneling opened on a short, dim hall.
A door at the end stood not quite closed, a spill of warmer light across the floor.
Voices? None. She lifted her hand, meaning to knock and ask a footman to return her to civilization.
She heard the soft scrape of a boot. Isla froze.
The door eased wider under the lightest touch. The room beyond was masculine and ordered. There was a low fire in a paneled hearth, a shelf of books and a long table where charts or bills might be laid flat. On the far side, an inner door stood open, the bedchamber beyond, shielded by a screen.
Edward stood with his back partially turned, unbuttoning his waistcoat.
His coat lay already across a chair, his cravat, loosened, hung in two careless tails.
He reached to the screen and pulled a robe forward, then lifted his hands to his neck.
The linen came away, smooth in his fingers.
He drew the shirt over his head, and the movement bared him to the waist.
The word that rose in Isla’s mind was not one she had learned in a drawing room.
Muscle mapped his shoulders without boast. His back was a geography of labor and old adventures.
A white line cut across one shoulder blade, narrow and long.
There was a small puckered mark at his ribs and another slashing line across the small of his back.
He stood for a heartbeat, head bowed, palms braced on the dressing table.
Isla watched the muscles of his back and shoulders flex and relax.
His shoulders seemed to drop an inch and he lifted his head, tossing back the mane of hair that Isla had not realized she found so damnably attractive.
Until this moment. It added to the image of him as a savage.
A corsair rather than a respectable officer of His Majesties navy.
I should not be looking. I am not the kind to peep at keyholes. I should slip away quietly and pretend I was never here. Why are my feet not moving!
The sight of him swept over her like surf on a cold day. It was bracing. It was also far beyond the bonds of propriety, beyond even what Isla would consider reasonable. Her hand, treacherous, tightened on the edge of the door. It creaked. He turned.
For a stretched second neither of them spoke. He did not snatch at the robe and he did not feign ignorance of what was plainly before him. His gaze moved from her face to her hand to the ridiculous shimmer of her bodice and back again. His eyes were not cold. They were very, very awake.