The Many Sins of Lord Cameron by Jennifer Ashley
Ainsley looked at her in alarm. “Isabella, I can’t. I’m still in mourning. Or half mourning, at least.”
“And it’s high time you left it off. I know the queen swoons when you wear anything lighter than dark gray, but you’ll need smarter frocks for when you visit me in London—for the opera, and balls, and my soirees. I intend to show you off, my dear, and I have excellent taste in clothes.”
“Her ladyship does have an eye,” the dressmaker, Madame Claire, said.
Isabella waved away the compliment. “Living with an artist has taught me things. I will concede mauve or violet for you, Ainsley, but never lavender.” She shuddered and reached for a swath of burgundy moiré. “Trim this with black piping and you’ll have a lovely tea gown. But for your new ball dress, you will have this glorious sky blue. With your eyes and coloring, you can make this fabric sing. What do you think, Beth?”
Beth, who’d grown up poorer than poor and hadn’t had a pretty dress in her life until she’d turned twenty-eight, nodded but with caution. “It is beautiful, Isabella.”
“Then we shall take it. Now, where did the book get to?” Isabella dug around for the fashion book that she’d buried under fabric. “I know I saw some silver tissue, Madame Claire. I want that for Ainsley’s ball dress as well.”
While Isabella and Madame Claire searched for the book and the tissue, Ainsley whispered to Beth, “Does she know that I can’t afford this? One gown, maybe, but certainly not a new ball gown. I bought the gray only last week.”
“You’ve been seen in it once,” Beth whispered back, her lips twitching. “That’s what Isabella will say.”
“But I can’t pay for all this.” Isabella, the indulged daughter of an earl and now the wife of wealthy Mac Mackenzie, might not understand that most people couldn’t buy a new wardrobe on a whim.
“Darlings, are you being sordid and discussing money?” Isabella sat back down and spread the fashion book across her lap. “This is my gift to you, Ainsley. I’ve been dying to get you out of those dull gowns for ages. Don’t spoil it for me.”
“Isabella, I can’t let you . . .”
“Yes, you can. Now, stop protesting so we can get down to business.” She smoothed out a page. “I like this design—we’ll have the tissue gathered over the underskirt in the front, with a big rosette off center on the hip. Then the blue and silver stripe for the overskirt over the bustle, which will also make up the back of the bodice, with a slice of the blue silk in front.”
Madame Claire and her assistants bustled off to bring more fabrics, while Ainsley undressed for her fitting. Morag, one of Isabella’s maids, followed Ainsley behind a curtain and helped pull off her gray gown. The fabric now seemed drab and dull compared to the brilliant colors on the floor.
“And the electric blue taffeta for a morning dress,” Isabella went on. “That will be splendid.”
Ainsley put her head out between the curtains. “Why so much blue?”
“Because you’re fair-haired, and it looks well on you. Besides, Cameron is particularly fond of blue.”
Ainsley froze, hands clutching the drapes. Behind her Morag made a noise of impatience as she tried to reach buttons. “What has Lord Cameron’s preference for blue to do with me?”
Isabella gave her a pitying look. “Really, Ainsley, do you think anything can go on in the Mackenzie household without Beth or me knowing? Cameron was seen kissing you in the stable yard and in his private study, all dutifully reported to me by Daniel.”
“Your brother-in-law hasn’t spoken to me in two days,” Ainsley said. “He is very angry at me because I almost lost him a horse.”
“He hasn’t spoken to anyone, because he’s been too busy working with said horse,” Isabella returned. “All the more reason we finish you well. He’ll come ’round, and when Cam sees you shining like a butterfly, he won’t be able to resist you.”
“Butterflies don’t shine,” Ainsley said. “And please do not tell me that, when you parade me past Cameron in my brand- new blue clothing, he will fall to his knees and propose.”
Isabella shrugged. “Anything is possible.”
Ainsley jerked the curtain closed. “Isabella, I love you like a sister, but I refuse to continue with this absurd conversation.”
Isabella laughed, but Ainsley thought her optimistic. Cameron had made it very clear that marriage was not a state he’d willingly enter again. Besides, a man like Cameron would not drop to one knee and propose in a conventional way. John Douglas had done that, so sweet of him, because his knees had been quite rheumatic. No, Cameron Mackenzie, on the small chance that he should propose to a woman, would take said lady rowing on a lake, or riding in the hills. He’d swing her down off her horse, cup her face in his hands, and kiss her—a long, thorough, burning kiss—and then he’d say in his gravelly voice, “Marry me, Ainsley.”
Ainsley would have to nod her answer, unable to speak. Then he’d kiss her more deeply while the horses wandered away. They’d consummate the engagement there in the grass—which would be miraculously neither muddy nor boggy.
“If it is so absurd,” Isabella said as Ainsley stepped out from behind the curtains in her combinations, ready to be measured, “why did Cameron follow you to Edinburgh, today?”
Ainsley suddenly found it hard to breathe. “Of course he didn’t. Isabella, don’t invent things.”
“I wouldn’t.” Isabella stood up and held the beautiful blue velvet to Ainsley’s face. “I saw him plain as day, boarding our train and looking furtive as the devil. He certainly didn’t want to be seen. Yes, this blue I think. Madame Claire, where is that silver?”
Not many streets away, Cameron scowled at Lord Pierson, Night-Blooming Jasmine’s owner. Pierson’s elegant drawing room was filled with cigar smoke and Scottish memorabilia. Claymores hung on the walls on top of swaths of plaid, a collection of sporrans lay in a glass-fronted cabinet, and knives Pierson swore had been collected from Culloden field rested inside a glass-topped table.
Pierson was Cameron’s least favorite kind of Englishman—one who pretended to have a passion for all things Scottish but in reality despised the Scottish people. The junk in this room had been sold to him by crafty dealers who capitalized on Pierson’s need to embrace the romance that he thought embodied the Highlands. Pierson always spoke to Cameron with a sneer in his voice, his absolute belief in his superiority obvious.
“I expect you to turn out a winner, not put me off with excuses,” Pierson said. He poured Scots whiskey—from a cheap distillery, not the Mackenzies’—into glasses and handed one to Cameron. “I need her to fetch me top price at auction.”
At auction. Give me strength. “I haven’t had enough time with her,” Cameron said. “She’s too nervous to run well. Leave her with me another year, and she’ll take the four- year-old races by storm. She’ll finish Ascot like a queen.”
“No, damnation, I need her to win at Doncaster so I can sell her when the season ends. I thought you were supposed to be the best trainer in Britain, Mackenzie.”
“And when the best trainer tells ye not to run the horse, ye ought to listen to him.”
Pierson’s lips pinched. “I can always pull her from your stables.”
“Good luck finding another trainer this late. You won’t and you know it.”
Damn the man. If not for Jasmine’s sake, Cameron would walk away from the idiot, have nothing to do with him. But Pierson would ruin Jasmine, and Cameron didn’t have the heart to let him.
Jasmine had been fine after her wild run. Though Angelo had said nothing, Cameron knew the man felt a world of shame for letting Jasmine out like that. The only explanation for Angelo’s lapse was that Ainsley had bewitched him. Why not? She’d bewitched everyone else in the household.
“Let me buy Jasmine from you, as I proposed before,” Cameron said. “I’ll give her whatever you’d fetch at auction for her if she were a winner. She’s a fine bit of horseflesh. Make a nice addition to my stock.”
Pierso
“My main training stables are in Berkshire. I could do magnificent things with her there.”
“Then why aren’t you there with her now?” Pierson demanded.
Cameron tilted his whiskey glass. The whiskey was awful, and he’d taken only the smallest of sips. “An obligation to my brother.”
“What about your obligation to me and my horse? She races at Doncaster, or I pull her from you and spread the word of your incompetence. Is that clear? Now, I have other appointments. Good day to you, Mackenzie.”
Cameron resisted punching the man in the mouth, set down his glass, and turned to take his greatcoat from the servant who brought it. If he struck Pierson and relieved his temper, Jasmine would suffer, and Cameron couldn’t let that happen.
The servant—who was English, Cameron noted—led Cameron to the door and opened it for him. Cameron clapped on his hat and stepped out into the rain.
He strode down the street, misty rain obscuring sky, buildings, and people, relieving his anger by walking fast and hard.
Bloody arrogant bastard. In usual circumstances, such a man wouldn’t get under his skin, but Cam liked Jasmine and wanted her. He thought about enticing Pierson into playing cards with him and winning Jasmine, but Pierson wasn’t a gambler. He didn’t even bet on the horses.
Cameron could calm Jasmine down to run her at Doncaster, but not to win. If he pushed her too hard, he risked her health. Jasmine might win but drop dead at the finish line—or, if Pierson had his way, the moment the buyer walked off with her. That was the way Pierson did things.
Damned bloody English Philistine.
Cam’s thoughts cut off abruptly when he saw the woman dressed in gray, with hair the color of sunshine, dart out from a jeweler’s shop. Ainsley slipped a little pouch into her pocket, glanced surreptitiously about, opened her umbrella, and hurried away down the misty street.
Chapter 10
Ainsley felt the presence of Cameron even before his large gloved hand closed around her umbrella handle.
Did he tip his hat, give her a polite hello, offer to escort her down the street? No, he regarded her with angry eyes from a granite face and wouldn’t let go of the blasted umbrella.
“I told you I’d give you the money for the letters,” he said.
Ainsley gave him a cool nod. “Good afternoon to you too, Lord Cameron. I know you did.”
“So why were you in a damned jeweler’s? You don’t have the money to shop. You were trying to sell jewelry to pay Phyllida, weren’t you?”
And didn’t he look enraged about it? High-handed, arrogant Scotsman. “I wasn’t trying to sell the jewels, I was having them valued. For collateral.”
“Collateral? What collateral?”
Ainsley again tried to take back the umbrella and was surprised when he let it go. “For the loan you offered me. I give you collateral, and then when my friend sends me the money, you return the jewels to me.”
Cameron’s eyes became topaz-colored slits. “I never said it was a loan. I’ll pay Phyllida, and that’s the end of it. Your ‘collateral,’ if you insist on it, is to have a conversation with me that’s not about the damned letters. I’m sick to death of them.”
“I can’t take a gift of money from you and remain a lady,” Ainsley said. “Unless it’s a loan, a business transaction, and then only because I’m a friend of the family. Of Isabella.”
“You make it too complicated. No one has to know that I gave you the money.”
“Mrs. Chase will know, or she’ll guess. And you can be certain she would tell everybody.”
Ainsley turned away and resumed walking.
Cameron had to stride quickly to catch up. Hell, if anyone had told him that one day he’d be racing through the streets of Edinburgh, chasing a lady determined to shut him out with her umbrella, he’d have laughed uproariously. Cameron Mackenzie didn’t chase women, those with umbrellas or otherwise.
“The jeweler said my mother’s earrings and brooch were enough to cover the five hundred,” Ainsley said. “Which is lucky.”
Cameron decided not to tell her that Phyllida now wanted fifteen hundred. He didn’t need Ainsley sending home for the family silver.
“They were your mother’s?”
“Yes. The only thing I have from her, really. I’ve always regretted that I never knew her.”
The sadness in her voice tugged at him. Cameron’s own mother had been a terrified creature admonished to stay away from her own sons. She’d died right after Cam had turned eighteen, while he was away at university, from a fall, he’d been told.
Hart had related the truth to Cameron later, that their father had killed her, shaking her so hard when he fought with her that he broke her neck. Hart had deduced this over time—the only witness had been Ian, and their father had locked ten- year-old Ian into an asylum even before the funeral, in case the very truthful Ian blurted out what really had happened.
Cameron had nothing of his mother’s, his father having rid the house of everything belonging to her after her death. The way Ainsley mentioned her regret in not meeting her mother did something to his heart.
Ainsley cut off the discussion by opening the door of another establishment, where a well-dressed shop assistant smiled up at them. Ainsley looked at Cameron in surprise when he followed her in.
“This is a dressmaker’s,” she said.
“I know what it is. I take it you’re here for a wardrobe, not baked bread. And put down that umbrella before you spear someone with it.”
Ainsley let the assistant take the umbrella, but she quailed as Cameron followed her straight into the back room. Madame Claire gave him a welcoming smile. “Now then, your lordship.”
Isabella waved at him from her comfortable chair. “Oh, Cameron, excellent. Just who we need.”
Cool as he pleased, Cameron rid himself of his greatcoat, seated himself in an armchair, and accepted the glass of port the assistant brought for him.
“You look very comfortable,” Ainsley said.
“I’m a good customer.”
Which meant Cameron sent his mistresses here. Ainsley slapped open one of the fashion books and busied herself looking at the colorful dresses inside, not seeing a line of them.
“We’re fitting out Ainsley,” Isabella said. “I want her to be radiant.”
Ainsley sat still, her throat dry, while Isabella showed Cameron the fabrics that she’d chosen and told him what each were for. Cameron voiced his approval at her choices and seemed to know all about gussets and half sleeves and fichus. Ainsley might not even be in the room.
“I’d like to see her in red,” Cameron said.
“Not with her coloring,” Isabella answered. “Bright red will wash out her skin instead of enhancing it, and her eyes will be lost.”
“Not bright red. Dark. Very dark. And velvet. A cozy winter dress.”
Madame Claire brightened. “His lordship has exquisite taste. I have just the thing.”
Ainsley should shout, protest, tell them to stop. She could only watch, half dazed, as Madame Claire returned with a swath of red velvet so dark its shimmer was black.
Cameron rose, took the velvet from Madame Claire, and approached Ainsley with it. Ainsley jumped to her feet, half afraid he would simply throw the cloth over her head if she remained seated on the stool.
Cameron cradled her face with the folds, the velvet soft as down against Ainsley’s skin. “You see?” Cameron said to Isabella.
“Yes, that’s excellent.” Isabella clasped her hands. “You have a wonderful eye, Cam. She’ll be beautiful in that.”
Ainsley couldn’t speak. Cameron’s hands were firm through the velvet, all his strength from working his horses now softened to caress Ainsley.
She caught sight of Beth watching beyond Cameron. The look in Beth’s blue eyes was knowing, understanding. Beth had been ensnared by a handsome, irresistibl
More rain the next afternoon meant indoor entertainment at Kilmorgan, so Isabella arranged a scavenger hunt. She and Beth and Ainsley drew up the lists of items to obtain and handed them out to the guests. Those who had no interest in the game retired to the card room in the main wing and proceeded to win and lose fortunes.
Daniel scoffed at the rather tame scavenger hunt and enticed Ainsley into the billiards room for a game. Isabella, relieved to have Daniel out from underfoot, released them both.
“Isabella says your brothers taught you to play,” Daniel said to Ainsley. “I don’t quite believe a girl can do it.”
“No? Then prepare to be amazed, my boy.”
Ainsley let Daniel bring out the cues and red and white balls, while she fingered the note in her pocket that Phyllida Chase’s maid had brought her that morning.
Phyllida wanted the money tomorrow night, she said. Rowlindson, Hart’s nearest neighbor, will host a fancy-dress ball on the morrow, Friday evening. Meet me in the conservatory of his home at one o’clock in the morning, and we will make the exchange there. Only you, Mrs. Douglas, not Lord Cameron.
Ainsley had read the note in exasperation. Really, why did the woman have to be so clandestine? All Phyllida had to do was visit Ainsley in her bedchamber, and they’d finish the matter.
But, very well, Ainsley would meet Phyllida at the fancy dress ball. Ainsley hadn’t even been invited to the dratted ball, and Isabella hadn’t mentioned it. But later that morning, Morag had given her a hand-delivered note from Lord Rowlindson’s secretary that included an invitation. Phyllida was certainly thorough. Morag was even now putting together a costume for Ainsley.
As Daniel set up the balls, Ian Mackenzie walked into the room and shut the door behind him. Ian never spoke much to Ainsley, but he’d become comfortable with her during her visits to Isabella, which meant he didn’t avoid her. But he didn’t seek her out either; he simply accepted her presence as he did his family’s.