Spine poker-straight, gaze fixed forward, her bound hands resting in her lap, she waited for him to undo the gag still firmly over her lips.
Standing between her and the fireplace, he looked down at her. Finally, she glanced up at him, eyes narrowing in clear warning.
Impassive as ever, he studied her face, then said, “This house is very large and sits in its own grounds. If you scream, other than me and my staff, no one will hear. But, I repeat, I have no intention of harming you, not in any way. I’ve brought you here because I need to talk with you. Privately, and at length. I need to explain to you what’s going on.” He held her gaze. “And why I need your help.”
That last phrase altered everything. It shifted power from him to her, in six words transforming him from kidnapper to supplicant. She searched his eyes, confirming that he’d uttered the words deliberately, that he wasn’t the sort of man who didn’t understand the consequences of such a statement. Curiosity welled anew, along with impulses significantly more commanding. He was waiting for some sign; eyes locked with his, she inclined her head, signaling her willingness to listen.
He reached for the knot in the silk handkerchief. A moment later, he peeled the fabric from her face. She went to speak, and discovered her lips and mouth were bone-dry.
“Wait.” Stuffing the handkerchief into his pocket, he unpicked the knot in the shawl about her hands, then leaving her to free them, he crossed to a cabinet along the wall, a feminine version of a tantalus. He poured a glass of water and brought it to her. “Here.”
Laying the shawl over the chair’s arm, she took the glass in both hands, raised it . . . and stopped. She considered the liquid inside the cut crystal, then looked up at him.
His lips thinned again. He took back the glass, drained half in one gulp, then held it out to her. “Satisfied?”
His tone made her lips want to twitch, but she kept them straight and with a regally gracious inclination of her head, accepted the glass, sipped, and nearly sighed.
“My feet.” She held them out. They were still bound.
He crouched beside her to work at the knot.
She hadn’t intended “my feet” to be her first words, but having him remove the restraint gave her an extra minute to marshal her thoughts. If he needed her help . . . she couldn’t imagine how, but if that was what this kidnapping was about, then perhaps he wasn’t so far from her hero-ideal as she’d thought.
Courtesy of her struggles, the knot in the kerchief had tightened; while he concentrated on loosening it, she studied his face, closer and better lit than before.
What she was looking at was a mask, a rigid, uniformly uninformative shield. Whoever Debenham was, he kept his emotions, his self, locked away, completely concealed behind that distractingly attractive screen.
The binding about her ankles fell away. He fluidly rose.
“Thank you.” She clung to the graciously civil, sensing it pricked him; she was a long way from forgiving him for treating her as he had.
Glass in one hand, she settled into the comfort of well-padded luxury.
He considered her for a moment, then, crossing to the other armchair, he sat, effortlessly achieving an ineffably graceful, elegantly masculine pose.
She sipped again and stared at him over the rim of her glass. She’d grown up surrounded by large, graceful, physically powerful men, yet Debenham put all those others to shame; he was undeniably the most gorgeous male she’d ever seen. It wasn’t just his face—so harshly handsome and framed by that black mane that suggested barely restrained wildness—nor was it merely the coldly sculpted planes of his cheeks or his fascinating eyes and lips that riveted her. It was all that he was—all the above coupled with a body that was perfectly proportioned, his long legs those of a man who rode frequently, his shoulders almost impossibly broad, yet all of a piece with the width of his chest and the heavy muscles of his upper arms. His hands were large, blunt fingered, and strong, yet she knew he was capable of using them gently; she got the impression he was a man very aware of his strength, and used to being careful with it.
If she’d thought to physically design her hero, she wouldn’t have done as well. He sat in the armchair, his gaze on her face, his expression impossible to read—a dark Adonis with changeable eyes, and he was hers.
And she might as well start as she meant to go on. Her eyes on his, she demanded, “Who, exactly, are you?”
A frown passed behind his eyes, but he answered. “Dominic Lachlan Guisachan, eighth Earl of Glencrae.” Her eyes widened. He searched her face. “Do you recognize the title?”
“No.” She frowned. “Should I?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I just wondered if you did.”
“And Debenham?”
“One of my lesser titles.”
She frowned more definitely. “Why be the viscount rather than the earl?”
“Because the earl is from the highlands, while the viscount is not.” He paused, then went on, “I’d assumed I’d have to slink around the ton’s fringes to track you, but when I reappeared in London a week ago, I discovered the ton still thinks I’m Debenham. My late father withdrew from London forty years ago. The ton has forgotten him, and the title, too. His death passed largely unnoticed down here. During the years I spent in London, I was Debenham, an English title with an estate outside Peterborough. I’d seen no reason to advertise either my Scottish background or that I was heir to an earldom—I had trouble enough beating off the matchmakers as it was. Presumably because of all the above, my succession to the earldom hasn’t registered, so as Debenham I can circulate in society, and as long as I avoid the other Scottish peers—Perth, Dumfries, all those who would recognize me as Glencrae—no one will think to connect me with the attempts to kidnap your sisters.”
She stared at him. “Just to be clear—you are the laird? The Scottish nobleman behind these tiresome kidnappings?”
“For my sins, yes.”
He didn’t look happy about it, yet in openly approaching her, he’d taken what seemed to her an inordinate risk. “Avoiding all Scottish peers . . . what if one of them had glimpsed you and mentioned it, and it got back to my family, as such things are wont to do? A Scottish peer of your size, coloring, and age—that’s exactly what my family have been combing the ranks for.”
“Luckily for me, the majority of Scottish peers prefer Edinburgh society. If they do circulate here, it’s generally not in the same circles as the Cynsters. On top of that, most Scottish peers will by now have retired to their estates for the summer hunting. All of which left me reasonably safe hunting you here.”
“What about Breckenridge, and Eliza and Jeremy, too? All three saw you, albeit at a distance.”
“As newly affianced couples, your sister Heather and Breckenridge, and Eliza and Jeremy Carling, are not presently gracing the ballrooms. Hoping to avoid them while tracking you was an acceptable risk.”
“But everyone in the family has heard descriptions . . .” She broke off.
“Precisely. Being tall, heavily built, and black-haired isn’t enough to raise suspicions, not when I speak without a Scottish accent and am widely known as an English viscount.”
“And the cane.” She glanced at his left leg. “Is your injury real, or a convenient fabrication to aid your disguise?”
He didn’t actually sigh, but she got that impression. “Nothing I’ve told you this evening has been anything other than the literal truth. My original injury was serious and long-lasting—I used a cane through all my earlier years in London. I haven’t used it for the last four years, but I recently jarred my knee, so I’ve had to resort to the cane again, at least while in society. So it’s true that I don’t waltz. But, fortuitously, having the cane only strengthened everyone’s view that I was Debenham come back.” He paused, then said, “Not even you suspected. When did you realize?”
“When I hear
d your coachman’s accent.” She considered him, then said, “I have one, highly pertinent, question. Why aren’t you dead?”
He regarded her, then frowned. “Why would anyone imagine I’d died?”
“Possibly because you fell off a very high cliff when you rescued Eliza and Jeremy from Scrope.”
His frown evaporated. “I fell onto a ledge about twenty feet down. Scrope missed it. He fell to his death, not me.” Apparently instinctively, his hand stroked down his left thigh. He noticed and stilled the hand. “It was the fall that jarred my old injury.” The black slashes of his brows drew down again. “But when only one body was found at the base of the cliff—”
“The bodies—body, apparently—was retrieved by drovers, and those tracking them haven’t caught up with them yet. So no one connected with the family knows that there was only one body, not two.”
“So your family thinks I’m dead.” He refocused on her face. “And that’s why there wasn’t any guard watching over you.”
“Dead men pose no danger. Of course, my disappearance will throw the family into an uproar again.” She sipped, then added, “And eventually the drovers will be found, and the family will realize you’re still very much among the living.”
“And then they’ll want my head.”
“At the very least. However, they still don’t know who you are.” She let a moment pass, then, trapping his gaze, arched her brows. “So why am I here?” She spread her hands, indicating their surroundings, including him. “You said you would explain.”
His eyes fixed on hers. She got the impression he was ordering his thoughts. After a moment, he said, “I could explain the whole, but that will take hours, and for our purposes tonight, all you need to accept—”
“No.”
He blinked. “What?”
“No.” Jaw firming, she held his gaze. “No, I am not going to let you give me half an explanation. Or even less!” She flung out an arm. “You’ve just kidnapped me from a soiree in order to speak with me, ‘privately and at length.’ I suggest you get to it, and don’t think to skimp.”
His face locked. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought faint color touched his cheeks.
Meeting his gaze, maintaining her own in the face of the not-so-subtle aura of power—old, aristocratic power—emanating from him, she was reminded yet again that he was a man of her class, one who ruled, whose ancestors always had.
“For a twenty-one-year-old chit, you’re a bossy little thing.”
She smiled, falsely sweet. “Indeed. And I believe you said you needed my help.”
Silence ensued. She knew he could move with startling speed, as he had on Lady Cavendish’s terrace, but in common with other large, strong, and very intelligent men she knew, he also had the ability to remain totally still, and often did.
It was a ploy, but not one that would work with her. She now knew what he was, appreciated what he was capable of, but she wasn’t about to be intimidated. Ensconced in the armchair, she held his gaze and boldly broke the silence. “I would suggest, my lord earl, that this interview will go very much better if you start at the beginning.”
After a very long moment, he drew a deep breath. “The beginning? In that case . . . what do you know of your mother’s life in the months before she wed?”
She blinked. “Your story starts there?”
Temper severely reined, Dominic Guisachan, eighth Earl of Glencrae, nodded. He hadn’t been looking forward to this interview, and given his captive was proving very different from the spoiled, pampered, ton princess he’d expected, he was anticipating enjoying the experience less with every minute. Spoiled and pampered Angelica Cynster might be, but she was also sharp-tongued, quick-witted, more observant and insightful than was comfortable, and he was starting to suspect she had a spine of honed steel. She’d told him no. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had . . . other than his mother.
When she stared at him uncomprehendingly and made no reply, he gritted his teeth and rephrased his question. “What do you know of the circumstances of your parents’ wedding?”
A line appeared between the perfect arcs of her brows. “They eloped and married at Gretna Green.” She blinked. “Is that why you had Heather taken there?”
“Yes, and no.” He waved the point aside. “That’s much later. I thought you wanted the beginning?”
“Yes, well.” She waved imperiously back at him. “Get on with it, or we’ll be here all night.”
They’d likely be there all night anyway . . . “Do you know why your parents eloped?”
“Yes. Mama’s parents had organized a marriage to some nobleman—some old earl—but Mama had fallen in love with Papa. Her parents, however, preferred an earl over a duke’s fourth son and were pressing Mama to accept the earl, so she and Papa eloped and married over the anvil at Gretna Green.”
“Do you know the name of the earl your mother refused to wed?”
The line between her brows reappeared. She studied his face. “You’re going to tell me he was the Earl of Glencrae. Your father?”
He nodded.
“And . . . ?”
Her impatience touched a nerve. “As I believe I mentioned, I hadn’t expected to kidnap you tonight, so I haven’t prepared any neat dissertation.” When she made no reply, just met his gaze steadily, he swallowed his temper and began. “Mortimer Guisachan, seventh Earl of Glencrae, was in his early forties when he met Celia Hammond, a young English beauty. Barely nineteen, she captivated him, almost certainly unwittingly. Mortimer doted on her. He wanted nothing more than to have Celia for his wife. He approached her parents, who were entirely agreeable, and all was progressing—or so Mortimer thought—toward the altar. Being a strictly conventional man, Mortimer hadn’t spoken to Celia directly, leaving it to her parents to inform her of her good fortune, as was common in those times. A week later, Mortimer received word from the Hammonds that Celia had eloped with Lord Martin Cynster and had married St. Ives’s fourth son at Gretna Green.”
Angelica’s eyes had widened. He paused, but she waved for him to continue.
“You need to comprehend that Mortimer was not a passionate man. I didn’t say he loved Celia. His was an avuncular, even patriarchal regard. Consequently, understanding that she loved Martin Cynster, and seeing the couple together on their return to the capital, Mortimer accepted that Celia was truly happy and withdrew—not just from her life, but from the ton, and from London. He closed up his house”—this house—“and retired to his castle in Scotland.”
“In the highlands?”
He nodded. “Courtesy of Mortimer’s father’s long reign, the estate was prosperous, the clan faring well. Mortimer went home and left Celia and Martin to their lives. However, his fixation with Celia didn’t wane. He discovered he couldn’t live without knowing how she was, what she was doing, and isolated in the Scottish highlands by his own choice, he turned to living vicariously through her. He inveigled old friends to write to him of her exploits, and within a few years he had paid observers among the ton who regularly—at least every week—sent letters north, telling Mortimer of every little detail of Celia’s life. Celia’s, and eventually her children’s, because Mortimer’s obsession extended to them.”
This time when he paused, she simply waited, eyes glued to his face, for him to resume the tale. “But Mortimer was head of the clan and needed to marry and get himself an heir. His younger brother had never been groomed to be the laird, the earl, so Mortimer accepted the duty, took himself to Edinburgh one Season, and found a wife. Mirabelle Pevensey was from a lowland family, of excellent birth but limited fortune, spoiled beyond all reason, and widely lauded for her startling beauty. Although much older, Mortimer was yet a handsome man. His obsession with his lost love was common knowledge in Edinburgh at the time, but Mirabelle viewed that as a challenge, one that, once successfully overcome, would gain her a c
ertain social accolade. She determined to conquer Mortimer, to wean him from his fixation with a distant English lady and make him her devoted slave. She set out to secure his love and every last iota of his attention for her own, and with her undeniable beauty, she was confident of success. She married him and happily went with him into the highlands, fully expecting to have him wrapped around her little finger if not within the month, then certainly within the year.
“Instead, she discovered she couldn’t compete with Celia, and even less with Celia’s children.” He held Angelica’s gaze. “Mortimer knew every minute detail of your brothers’ lives—he knew their grades at Eton, what sports they favored, what their interests were as they matured. He knew every ailment they ever contracted. He forgot Mirabelle’s birthday if she didn’t remind him of it, but he never forgot Celia’s, or Rupert’s, or Alasdair’s. Assuming it was the children Mortimer most fixated on—for how could he remain devoted to Celia when she, Mirabelle, was so much more striking and there in the flesh—Mirabelle decided to do her duty, and so she bore Mortimer a son.”
Angelica regarded him steadily. “You.”
He nodded. “Me. But sadly for Mirabelle, although Mortimer was a kind and affectionate father and paid as much attention to me as I wished, my advent did nothing to alter his obsession with Celia and her brood.” He glanced down at one hand, fingers spread on his thigh. “I gather my birth was difficult. Consequently, in producing me Mirabelle felt she’d paid her dues, not just to my father but to the clan, as well. She waited for what she considered her just reward, but it didn’t eventuate. I can only guess, but I believe she thought that if she simply waited, then as I grew, Mortimer’s affection for me would continue to grow, and ultimately would shift to include her, too.
“So she found patience, and waited. Although Mortimer had no interest in rejoining society—Celia and her family were all the society he needed—he had from the first been happy to allow Mirabelle to use the house in Edinburgh and join society there. She never did, which puzzled everyone, until much later when, as a young man, I moved among Edinburgh society and discovered that she’d been corresponding with her bosom-bows from soon after her marriage, telling them she’d broken Mortimer from his obsession with Celia, and that he now doted on her. Her letters had painted her life as she’d wanted and wished it to be, not as it was. Consequently, even though she was free to visit Edinburgh, she couldn’t, not without Mortimer fawning at her feet. So she was stuck in the highlands, waiting, still waiting, and growing increasingly bitter.