Chapter Nine #2
She was not afraid of him. She was afraid of something else.
Something had happened to her in the past, something so shocking, so terrible, that she could not escape the memory of it.
He had seen that fear before in the eyes of men who had been in battle, who had witnessed terrible things and could never forget them.
He released his breath on a long sigh. He needed time, time to uncover Lucy’s fears and time to woo her with gentleness. It was the only way forward. Unfortunately with Wilfred Cardross intent on claiming his estates, time was the one commodity he did not have.
* * *
“HE SOUNDS PRETTY damned perfect to me,” Mairi said.
“He’s handsome, rich, interesting and attractive.
” She ticked off Robert Methven’s attributes on her fingers.
“He’s clever. Oh, and according to you, he knows how to kiss.
You don’t have anyone to compare him with, but you’re fairly certain he’s very good at it. ”
“You’re so superficial,” Lucy said crossly.
She was beginning to wish she had not confided in her sister.
Mairi simply did not understand her. Only a year separated them, but they had never been very close.
She could not talk to Mairi about Alice’s death; could not tell her the shock and the horror of it.
Mairi’s grieving was for the sister she had loved and lost. Lucy’s was for a beloved twin who had died tragically in her arms, a sister she felt she had failed.
The gulf of shame and regret separated her from Mairi and seemed to push them further apart rather than bring them together.
Lucy still had nightmares, and memories so vivid they transported her back to that shuttered room and Alice’s cold hand in hers.
She heard the thin wail of the baby. She was haunted.
She did not understand why she felt so, but there was an empty space where Alice had been, a void that sometimes left Lucy so grief-stricken and guilty she could barely breathe.
“I always was superficial, darling,” Mairi was saying cheerfully, placing her delicate crystal wineglass on the table.
“It’s my defining characteristic.” She shrugged her shoulders beneath the fine silk of her gown.
“Well, don’t expect me to marry Lord Methven just to save his inheritance.
Tempting as he is—and trust me, he is a very tempting man—I like being a widow. There are lots of benefits.”
“I don’t want you to marry him,” Lucy said, even more crossly. “And anyway, you can’t. You are ineligible.”
And I know he is a tempting man.
She shivered a little, wondering if she would always feel this jumble of emotion when she thought of Robert Methven. He could awaken her desires at a touch, but he could not eradicate her fear and her grief and her guilt.
“No.” The look Mairi gave her was shrewd. “You refused him, but you don’t want anyone else to have him. You’re like a dog in a manger.”
Lucy turned her face away. “You don’t understand,” she said. There was an ache in her chest. She wanted to cry because it was true; her heart did ache whenever she thought of Robert Methven marrying someone else.
“I never did understand,” Mairi said. She yawned.
“You’ve rejected every eligible peer in the country because you think they don’t measure up to Duncan MacGillivray.
” She fixed her sister with her wide blue eyes.
“You need help, Lucy. MacGillivray was all very well, but he was scarcely a perfect ideal. He was just a man, and a dull old one at that.”
Lucy dug her nails into the palms of her hands.
She remembered Lady Kenton saying much the same thing.
She remembered Robert Methven’s brusque dismissal of the idea that there could be a man who was her perfect match.
She felt battered and upset. There had been something so appealing, so safe, about Lord MacGillivray. That was all she wanted, to feel safe.
“Take Robert Methven instead,” Mairi was saying. “At least he would make love to you nicely.”
Lucy shuddered. That was certainly true.
She thought of Methven reciting her poetry to her before dinner, his trace of a rough Scots brogue plucking at her nerves.
That quiet voice with its undertone of velvet had abraded her senses.
She thought of his kisses. She had been completely undone by the power of his touch.
It had felt gentle, so very different from how she thought of him.
He was ruthless, a hard man, yet his kiss had been very tender.
Suddenly she felt hot all over again. The warmth rippled over her skin, flooding her with sensation so that she tingled.
She had never felt like this before, never felt such a conflict between her mind and her senses.
She shivered convulsively in the warm night air.
Mairi had not noticed. She was yawning ostentatiously and checking the little porcelain clock on the mantel. “It’s late,” she said.
Lucy slid off the bed. “Are you expecting company?” she asked, a little tartly. Mairi could not have made it plainer that she wanted to hurry her sister from her room.
For a moment Mairi looked taken aback, but then she smiled easily. “Not tonight. Lady Durness has taken both those luscious artist’s models to her chamber. She is said to be insatiable. She would have preferred Methven, but he is only interested in you.”
“Both of them,” Lucy said, blushing at the thought and the memory of such drawings in her grandfather’s folio. “Gracious.”
Mairi was laughing at her, her blue eyes gently mocking. Lucy felt thoroughly naive. “I am astonished she has not fallen pregnant with a brood of miscellaneous children by now,” she said.
“There are ways to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Mairi said vaguely. “Devices, potions...ways to make sure you are safe.” She looked at Lucy. “Things no respectable virgin heiress should know.”
“Things no respectable widow should discuss either,” Lucy said.
She met no one as she hurried back along Durness’s long corridors.
Torches hung in the wall sconces, but their light could not penetrate the shadows that wreathed the high walls.
She hesitated before she pushed open the door of her chamber.
It was not that she imagined that Robert Methven would still be there—she was sure he was long gone to the Durness Inn—but the memory of him was potent enough to make her stop and catch her breath.
The room was warm, lit by fire and candlelight. Sheena was dozing in the little armchair before the fire. Lucy’s nightgown was stretched out to warm over the iron fireguard. She let out a breath, feeling safe again for the first time that night. Perhaps she would be able to sleep after all.
But she did not know what she would say to Robert Methven in the morning.
After Sheena had helped her out of her gown and had retired to the adjoining room, Lucy walked over to the polished wooden chest of drawers, splashing some water from the jug into the bowl and washing her face.
It cooled her skin, but the feverish hum in her blood still made rest an impossibility.
She tried to summon up the memory of Duncan MacGillivray with his gentle kindness and his old-fashioned courtesy.
He had demanded nothing from her but intellectual companionship.
She had liked that. It had made her feel secure.
Yet Lord MacGillivray’s image seemed fainter now, fragile, as though he were a wraith fading before her eyes. She could no longer visualize their time of pleasant scholarly camaraderie. Instead it was Robert Methven’s face she saw before her eyes, strong, harsh and determined.
She slid into bed and blew out the candle.
The unexpected heat of the day had faded completely now and it was raining, hard drops beating on the roof of the castle, the water gurgling in the gutter and spattering on the terrace below.
She had her window open, and the sound filled her ears.
It was soothing, washing away her troubles and lulling her to sleep at last. The castle was quiet with all the guests asleep.
It creaked a little as it settled its bones for the night.
Lucy was sound asleep when something disturbed her, dragging her back from the darkness of sleep without dreams. She opened her eyes.
The room was shadowed. She could see nothing.
Her mind was still struggling with the dregs of sleep, but her ears caught again the scrape of footsteps, the creak of a floorboard.
Then the darkness shifted and something—someone—moved beside the bed.
She shot upright and drew breath to scream, but she was too late.
She was wrapped in suffocating folds of material, blinded, choked and unable to breathe.
She fought the heat and the dark, thrashing out at whoever was near her, but her hands were caught and pinioned and her struggles rendered useless.
She heard a man swear under his breath and aimed a kick at whatever part of him she could make contact with.
He swore again and picked her up. She was feeling light-headed now.
There was no air to breathe. The thick smothering darkness grew.
She held on to consciousness by a thread.
Then something hit her, hard, on the back of the head, and the last of the light went out.