Chapter Nineteen
Angela MacHugh was attending the Sassenach ball at the ancient Highland MacCullough Castle…
as was her sister Mary. They were both on the arms of handsome Highland rangers, and looking like women in the first bloom of love were supposed to.
They didn’t look at all like MacHughs who detested everything about the English.
Lisle stood in complete shock as she saw them, and knew Monteith would feel it. He wasn’t letting her far from his side, and the fact that she’d stopped, her eyes had widened, and she’d sucked in air so rapidly she was in danger of coming right up out of her bodice were very good clues for him.
“Something bother you, my dear?” he asked, bending his head to do so.
The endearment started her heart pumping again, which was a good thing.
The proof in front of her eyes that she’d failed as a stepmother, and that she’d failed in such a momentous way, had been enough to give any mother heart failure.
It was making her own chest feel too tight to contain what she hoped wasn’t anguish, but knew was.
“It’s my daughter,” she replied, tipping her head a bit while she said it, and nearly grazing the lips he had at her ear.
Langston’s eyebrows rose and he pulled her more securely against him. Not that he’d let her get more than an arm’s length away, but pressing himself against her entire side was not only against logic, but probably against several social codes as well.
“Where?” he asked finally, scanning the crowd.
“In the pink. With the white lace.”
“The bit of fluff with blond hair and no brows?”
“Nae. That’s her sister.”
“Is na’ she also your daughter, then?”
Lisle narrowed her lids and fluttered her lashes up at him. “Aye,” she replied evenly. “That she is.”
“There is na’ much family resemblance.”
“I think they look like each other. Everyone else does, too.”
“I mean…to their mother.”
Lisle thinned her lips this time. “You are na’ amusing, my lord.”
“Oh dear. I’ve regressed,” he replied.
“What?”
“From Langston. I really wish you’d refer to me by my given name. Especially in public like this. I am trying to pretend we’re wed.”
“We are wed.” Lisle rotated the ring on the finger of her left hand, and couldn’t resist glancing down at it. It just looked so right, on the hand resting on his arm. She knew he saw her.
“Oh. Then, I’m trying to pretend we’re wed, and we want to be.”
“Langston Leed Monteith,” she said in a low, and what she hoped was a threatening-sounding, tone.
“Very good. You got all of it that time. It’s just as you said. You are a very good pupil. You do learn fast.”
He was smiling down at her and making every decent thought fly out, to be replaced by several indecent ones. It was as if he knew it, too. Lisle had to drop her gaze and that had her looking right into Angela’s stiff face. She’d lost her escort, if that was what the young soldier was.
“Good eve, Angela,” Lisle said.
Angela didn’t so much as nod. She did look straight at her and then move her gaze beyond her, to something at her back. It was insulting and it was meant to be insulting. Lisle colored, despite herself.
“I hope you’re well?” Lisle tried again.
“As well as gold can get one,” Angela said finally.
Lisle stepped forward to say, “You should na’ be here.”
“I deserve a future, doona’ I?” Angela asked.
“You deserve a good Highland man.”
“There are only Highland traitors left, dearest Lady Monteith.”
Lisle’s teeth set. “I doona’ wish an Englishman for a stepson, Angela.”
“And I doona’ wish an English-loving traitor for a—oh. He’s naught to me, is he?” She smiled brightly, turned, and moved away before anyone could reply.
Lisle was sucking in breath and letting it out as rapidly as possible. It was to dim the shock into a manageable emotion.
“Shocking. Absolutely shocking,” Langston said at her side.
“What?” Lisle’s voice showed how surprising that description was, coming from him.
“This filial respect thing. You doona’ appear to have much. I suppose I should have warned you.”
“About what?” she asked.
“I’m na’ particularly well thought of in these parts. These Highlanders are stubborn, self-righteous, and judgmental. You ken?”
“I already knew all that,” she replied.
“And if they’ve taken my gold, they really detest me. It ups the amount of evil attributed to me, if you will. It’s almost like they feel I forced them to take it, and self-hate is such a destructive emotion.”
“Self-hate?”
“Aye, and if someone has to be hated, and it’s not going to be the individual taking the gold, then it’s got to be the one making them take the gold. It’s going to be me. Dreadfully obvious.”
“You understand all this, and you still make them take it?”
“Social change requires gold, sweet. Always did.”
Sweet. It was a different endearment, and the ease with which it had rolled off his tongue made it even more effective. Lisle had to swallow around a dry mouth she hadn’t had a moment earlier. She only hoped he didn’t know the reason.
“How much gold do you have, Langston?”
“None,” came the reply.
“Oh, that’s ridiculous. Everything about you reeks of wealth. Everything.”
He sighed. “Perhaps you should ask the question the proper way, if you wish an answer you’ll like.”
Lisle stuck her bottom teeth forward and looked up at him. She wasn’t willing to flutter one eyelash, let alone two eyes of them. “And what is the proper way to ask that question?” she asked.
“You should ask how much gold we have,” he answered. “Marriage does make it a plural arrangement. What I have is yours, and vice versa. ’Twas what we vowed to…if you listened to that sort of thing.”
“You got the short end,” she replied.
“Oh…I doona’ think so.”
His voice had lowered, as had his head. Lisle was very aware of those eyes, looking deeply into her…and there was a dark brown with a reddish tint along the outsides. She didn’t think he’d actually kiss her in such a public room, but she parted her lips slightly just in case he did.
“In fact, I think I got a treasury beyond price.”
Someone cleared their throat. Since Langston was breathing the words onto her nose and it wasn’t a far span to her lips, Lisle had been absolutely enthralled. He really would kiss her in a public room!
“I’m dreadfully sorry to interrupt you, Lord and Lady Monteith.”
It was a soldier, almost too young to shave. He had Mary on his arm. She was in pink, like her sister, and it had white lace, but there was too much of one or the other to make it visual and elegant-looking.
“Mistress MacHugh wanted a few words, if it’s not a bother.”
“Prepare yourself, love.” Langston put his lips very near her ear to whisper it. The endearment or the whisper was sending shivers rampantly over her shoulders. She sucked in a breath.
“Mary?” she asked.
“You should na’ have let Angela hold the coffers. She hasn’t let anyone have their fair share. We need more. In separate accountings.”
Lisle’s eyebrows lifted. “You should speak with your uncle Angus over such things, Mary.”
“Angus does nothing but drink. Why would I ask him anything?”
Lisle’s heart fell. Her body felt like it might be right behind it. As if he knew, an arm snaked about her back, pulling her even closer to him.
“Have Angus MacHugh report to Monteith Castle on the morrow. Noon. I shall handle it, young woman.”
“Do I have to answer him, Lisle?” Mary asked, making even her escort look uncomfortable.
“If you will na’ get my instructions to him, I’ll send them through your sister,” Langston replied easily. “Or with a payment. That should get a reading.”
Mary turned her back on them. The escort smiled slightly in apology as he escorted her away. Lisle watched them with no emotion whatsoever.
“Your brood appear an ungrateful bunch. I hope the same does na’ happen with ours.”
“We doona’ have a brood, Langston.”
“I know.” He grinned down at her.
“What are you going to have of Angus?” she asked.
“Well…I’ll take him to task first for misusing good whiskey. Then, I’ll probably put him to work fashioning bagpipes. I feel a need for more of them, for sales purposes, you understand. It’s strange, but the one thing we’re denied, the world seems to want to have. Odd, isn’t it?”
Lisle couldn’t contain how it felt. The sides of her lips were splitting with it. “You’re giving him back his self-respect,” she said.
“I’m using his talents for my own ends. I’ll be getting good gold out of the bargain. I’d not do it for any other reason.”
“You canna’ fool me much longer, Langston.”
“Oh dear. You’re looking at me with an expression I’d rather na’ comprehend. You should cease that before someone sees it…like you.”
“Me?”
“Self-hate…remember?”
“You think that I—?” She was choking on the rest of her sentence. She had turned the hate to him. She stumbled, but had the matter under control the moment it happened.
“But, of course. Such a thing is vitally important, at present.”
“You want me to hate you?”
“Does that possibly mean…that you doona?” he asked instead.
The entire roomful of others dropped out of sight, and there was only Langston, looking down at her with those odd-colored eyes, amidst that handsome face, and making a yawning chasm open up everywhere else.
Lisle clung to his arm to keep from stepping over the edge and disappearing.
She didn’t hate him at all. She was terrified of what she did feel.
“Oh dear,” she heard him say again, from what sounded like a long way away. “This may mean what I think it does.”
“And what would that be?” she whispered.
“That I’d best step up everything…this evening. Balls begin to bore me. That’s exactly what it means. Where is that Captain Barton?”
“Captain…Barton?” Lisle’s legs were giving her trouble.
“Bother that. We’ll dance.”