Chapter 16
Ye should have told her ahead of their arrival.
Jeremy had no doubt that Anna intended to berate him for Beatrice and Sophie ‘invading’ her home, too. He had noticed the familiar glint of anger in her eyes before she scooped up poor Sprightly and took him to the barn, but at least she had been polite to the newcomers.
He could not have borne it if Sophie’s first experience of Stonebridge was a dowager duchess on the warpath, making her unwelcome. Although it would have been entirely his fault if Anna had approached with fury instead of a polite greeting.
He really should have told her they were coming.
“Now, where is it?” he muttered as he wandered the lower floor of the west wing.
Anna’s study was around here somewhere, but he could not quite recall the room. The longer it took him to find it, the worse the onslaught would be; he was already at least ten minutes late.
“He is doing this on purpose,” he heard her mutter from two doors down, his pace quickening. “Keeping me waiting. Well, I shall show–”
He reached the door just in time, pushing it open with a smirking interjection. “Show me what, Duchess?”
Anna whirled around with a face like thunder, her clenched fists seemingly causing full-body tension that tightened her muscles all the way up her arms, hunched her shoulders slightly, and made the veins on her neck stand out.
Strangely, seeing those light blue branches beneath the translucent pale of her skin reignited that strange urge to bite. Maybe, somewhere in his family line, there had been a vampire or two.
The thought almost made him chuckle, but he held it back. Anna would not appreciate a laugh right now, not when she was staring at him as if she wanted to behead him. Scratch out his eyes, at least.
“Have you been lurking out there, all this time, just waiting for the most annoying moment to burst in?” she snapped, her face tinged with pink. Not the hue of embarrassment or bashfulness, but the somewhat exerted flush of someone who had either been sprinting or was preparing for a fight.
Jeremy guessed it was the latter.
“I could not remember which one was yer study,” he replied, shrugging as he closed the door behind him.
No one else needed to hear whatever she had to say to him.
“You knew very well which one was my study,” she shot back. “I know you have been wandering my halls, taking inventory of every room. But I suppose I should not expect you to tell the truth when lies trip so easily from your tongue.”
He sauntered across to a side table adorned with two decanters: one containing a deep red liquid, and the other full of a rich, enticing amber. He picked up each one in turn, removing the crystal stopper to smell them: port and brandy, respectively.
“Might I know what lie I am being accused of?” he asked as he settled on the brandy and poured out a small measure. “Drink?”
“Drink?” she parroted, her hazel eyes so wide he could almost see the little skulls of his death warrant dancing in her pupils. “No, I do not want a drink, and I did not give you permission to sample a measure of my brandy!”
He knocked back the measly mouthful. “Me sincerest apologies.” He paused. “But are ye sure ye will not have one? Ye might not be so tense if ye had a wee dram.”
He knew he should not antagonize her, but if the rest of this meeting was going to be a dressing down for a crime he had no knowledge of, then he figured he might as well make it interesting.
Not to mention, her anger had a peculiar effect on him, stirring him into a frenzy and stoking desires that would lead to a much pleasanter outcome.
If he could not calm her ire with words, he would redirect it into more passionate pursuits, soothing her through actions instead. First, he just needed to make her angry enough to draw her closer, wild enough that when he kissed her, she would kiss him back twice as hard.
“I ought to knock you out with the whole bloody decanter!” she seethed, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts that did nothing to temper his desire.
“Language, lass,” he scolded mildly, as he poured out two small measures and held one out to her.
“I do not have the language for the things I wish to call you right now, you… you… philandering beast!”
Instead of approaching him, Anna turned and marched over to the French doors, as if she knew she might get in trouble if she stepped into his proximity. He should have guessed she would be a step ahead of his… particular way of mediating, given how their last two arguments had played out.
But her words brought a frown to his brow, one that a mouthful of brandy could not soften. “I will tolerate ‘beast,’ lass, considering I have not shaved since I arrived here, but philanderer? Nay, I will not accept that.”
“You must have thought yourself very clever, using my inexperience with men against me,” she continued, regardless, her eyes shining fever-bright.
“Did you think you could trick me into your bed before your wife arrived, so that I would leave this place from the shame of it? Or did you think you could have me as a… lover, so you might have your cake and eat it too? A wife and a mistress, under the same roof?”
He set her untouched glass of brandy down and took a step toward her. “What are ye talking—”
She did not let him finish. “Come a step closer, and I shall start throwing things!” she warned, reaching for a rather hefty-looking inkwell on her desk.
“You kissed me when you were already married, when you were already a father! You kissed me, knowing that your family would be coming here imminently!”
“Anna, what–”
“What is worse, you have made a wretch out of me, because… I kissed you under that tree in Lord Belford’s gardens, when I knew you might have a wife and children,” she rasped, her free hand clawing at her chest as if she could not breathe.
“You seduced me, you tempted me, you kissed me, and I could not resist, and then… There they were, your family, arriving at my home to make it theirs, and now I wish the ground would open and swallow me whole!”
Jeremy’s mind grew hazy, fogged with confusion. It could not be the brandy, not so soon and not after just a couple of tiny measures.
What on earth was she talking about? What wife? What child? As for the seducing and the tempting… he could not much argue against that part, but there was another sentence that pulsated in his head, more insistent than the rest. ‘Using my inexperience with men against me.’
She had told him in the Belford gardens that her husband had died on their wedding night, but he had assumed the man died after claiming certain privileges.
Because of certain privileges, in truth.
With the knowledge that the previous duke had died of a weak heart, he had put two and two together, thinking he had made four. It seemed he had not.
He never lay with her.
He had thought she was fearful of such things because of a terrible first experience with a husband she had not wanted, who had not cared much at all about her introduction to pleasure. He had not thought she had no experience at all.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” she snapped. “I have not said anything untrue.”
“What did ye mean by inexperience? Did yer husband die before ye could consummate?” he asked, unable to continue with the conversation until he had scratched that mental itch.
“Yes, thank the heavens!” she blurted out, the pink of her cheeks darkening a shade, her feverish eyes burning even brighter.
“My goodness… You really are a beast. That is what you reply to? That is what you concentrate on? Not the fact that you betrayed your wife with me, and turned me into your fellow traitor against my will?” She faltered. “Mostly against my will.”
Jeremy leaned back against the liquor table, his mouth curving into a smile he could not help. “Calm yerself, lass. Come and have this brandy and calm yerself over here with me.”
“I shall not go near you,” she retorted. “And I certainly shall not calm myself when you have done this to me. If I had known that you had a wife when you first intruded, I would never have permitted myself to be alone with you.”
“Then ye have nay reason not to come over here and permit yerself to be alone with me,” he replied, offering out the brandy to her again. “She’s not me wife, lass. And the wee one isn’t me daughter.”
Anna froze, her lips parted, her eyes wide and unblinking, as if time had stopped and only Jeremy remained unaffected.
“But she is… Mrs. Bolt,” she managed to whisper, still unmoving.
“I don’t know why she introduced herself like that,” he said. “She’s Lady McIver. Was Lady McIver. Might be that she doesn’t want to call herself that anymore, since her home and her husband are gone.”
Anna staggered back as if she had been released from some invisible snare, her hips bumping into the edge of her writing desk. “She is…”
“Me sister-in-law. Me brother’s wife,” Jeremy replied.
“Douglas made a hefty fortune in imports, bought the castle and title for himself and his family. He could have done well in English society, Edinburgh even, but he wanted his bairns to have the raising that we had, out in the wilds of Scotland, in a castle, in a place where community means something. We were welcomed. All gone now, of course.”
His throat thickened with the weight of too many memories as he spoke, and he sipped from the glass meant for Anna to try and wash it all down. He did not know why he was telling her more than he needed to.
Because they are here, and I can’t escape it.
“Sophie is me niece,” he added. “There will never be any more bairns. Not of his, anyway.”
He did not want to look at Anna, did not want to see the pity he might find there, but his gaze refused to wander. Her expression softened, and her hands gently gripped the edge of the desk, her head slowly shaking as her brow furrowed.
“I... I am so sorry, Jeremy,” she said, in a voice so filled with regret that he could not stand it.
It was the first time she had used his name, but he did not want to hear it like this, tarnished with sympathy.
He wanted it whispered against his skin, gasped in a moment of pleasure, screamed from the tangled coverlets of her bed, breathed out as her ecstasy ebbed.
Better yet, that she would be so overcome that she could not say his name at all.
But not this.