Highlander Undone Page 14

She felt young and girlish and beyond dazzling herself as she succumbed to temptation, impulsively sketching a pirouette in the center of the sidewalk before catching the morose eye of a portly street sweeper.

  “Here now, young lady! Goin’ ta fall, you carry on like that. It be slippery out,” he cautioned.

  She crossed the street and flipped him a shilling. “For your care,” she said gaily. He snatched it from the air and pocketed it deftly, tipping his hat before turning away, mumbling something about the “daft aristos.”

  She was laughing as she turned the corner leading to the park and she saw them waiting for her in front of the Fleece Hotel: Ted, Gerald, Lady Merritt, and . . . Jack.

  And as oft happens when you see someone from a distance that you are used to seeing close by, she realized he was not nearly as thin as she’d supposed, or as languid. Her pace slowed, perplexed but not worried. His golden beauty seemed a shock after nearly four days without seeing him.

  She appreciated anew the elegant lines of his brow, how mobile his long mouth was, how clear the brilliance of his eyes, and how aggressive the broad-bridged slope of his nose. And his form! He looked altogether unlike the quaking young man who’d straggled onto Lady Merritt’s terrace two months before. Lithe, tensile. His back was straight, his shoulders suspiciously broad. She smiled at the vanity that prompted Jack to have his jacket shoulders padded. And there was an attitude of intense self-possession, almost boldness in the way he held himself, in the flash of his strong, white teeth.

  London had changed Jack.

  Her heart trip-hammered, matching the pace her feet set as she started forward. The possibilities that Ted had seeded in her mind, having taken root, were flowering.

  Why don’t you find out if Jack is attracted to you? Ted had suggested. She’d wanted to know more. God knows, she longed to discover if Jack found her as appealing as she found him.

  “Ah, Addie!” Gerald hailed her. Alerted to her approach, the rest of the company turned to welcome her. Except for Jack, who had found something interesting to peer at in the restaurant’s window. He was squinting through an eyeglass, yet another new affectation, his attention apparently riveted.

  Lady Merritt graciously offered her cheek and Addie pressed her own against it. Ted took hold of her hand and drew her near him, next to Jack. And finally, with what seemed like reluctance, Jack dropped the eyeglass and offered her a quick, absent greeting before moving past her.

  Her pleasure faded. It was almost as though he didn’t want to talk to her, to look at her. His eyes once again passed over her face and went on to study something on the other side of the street.

  She forced herself not to react to imagined slights. What had she expected him to do? Drop to his knees at her feet?

  Chiding herself for acting so childishly, she forced her worry away and allowed her brother to usher her into the hotel. The others followed close behind, exclaiming delightedly over the opulence of the front lobby.

  Begging their pardon, Ted left them clustered near the door and went to arrange seating at the hotel’s popular French-styled restaurant. Gerald gallantly disentangled Lady Merritt from her enormous cloak while Jack stared at a painting on the wall.

  “I say, Jack, do the gentleman bit, what?” Gerald prompted from behind Lady Merritt’s broad form, pointing at Addie.

  With a jerk, Jack came forward, a tight smile on his lips. “Mrs. Hoodless, may I offer my assistance?”

  “Of course you can, Jack,” Lady Merritt snapped irritably. “What ever has come over you?”

  “Mrs. Hoodless?” Jack asked tonelessly.

  Numbly, Addie presented him her back. Standing as woodenly correct and silent as Wheatcroft, he took her coat from her shoulders. His formality made her clumsy and she needed two attempts before she managed to shrug free of the garment. Her cheeks were afire by the time she’d managed to disinter herself.

  She wheeled around and found herself looking directly into Jack’s eyes. They were at once vivid and blank, shuttered and intent. It was like looking at the surface of a vast, intractable ocean, knowing that currents churned away far beneath the smooth surface.

  He swallowed and hauled his gaze above her head. For just an instant it seemed as though his fingers tightened on her shoulders, and then he had snatched her coat free and flung it to an eager attendant.

  “Jack?”

  He pretended he didn’t hear the question in her voice. He smiled at her or, rather, smiled at a space somewhere above her.

  “What a fetching piece of millinery,” he drawled. “Where ever did you find something so utterly . . . original? Who’d have thought to perch that bird thingy amongst those, oh, my dear, those aren’t oranges?”

  The others, who’d started moving toward the restaurant entrance, paused. Lady Merritt, who’d commandeered Gerald’s escort, muttered something under her breath.

  Addie waited. Jack hadn’t offered his arm. He was too busy staring at her hat, studying it with as critical an air as if he were examining one of Ted’s paintings.

  “Are they oranges or are they tangerines?” he asked seriously, his eyes never leaving the top of her head.

  “I don’t know,” Addie said faintly, feeling embarrassed and confused. It was as though he purposefully sought to make fools of them both, an amusing spectacle for passersby. Certainly one or two of the hotel’s guests had paused within hearing distance and were trying hard to appear not to be listening. The faint derisive smiles they didn’t bother to hide gave them away.

  “What say you, Gerry?” Jack called preemptively. “Tangerines or oranges or some other citrus fruit?”

  Gerald, taking the request for his attention as seriously as if Jack had asked him to judge an atelier show, gently pulled free of Lady Merritt’s grip and lumbered over. He lifted an eyeglass and intently studied her hat.

  Ted beckoned them from the doorway of the restaurant. Lady Merritt stood, abandoned by her escort, open-mouthed and befuddled.

  “What are you going on about, Jack?” she asked in exasperation. “Leave Addie’s headgear alone.”

  “Tangerine, I should say,” Gerald declared. “Too much red to be an orange. Unless one were talking about those Tahitian oranges. You know the ones. Like that Gauguin fellow painted.”

  Some woman behind Addie tittered. Addie’s ears burned.

  “Ah, yes,” said Jack. “I believe you are correct. I am more relieved than I can say. Oranges in November. Too, too jeune fille.” He gave a moue of distaste. “I commend you on your taste, Addie. Tangerines are much the better choice for November chapeaus.”

  And now, now, with heat unaccountably stinging the backs of her eyes, now, while the sun outside slid like a dirty pickpocket behind a dingy gray cloud, now, having traded the bracing wind for air heavy with the smell of mutton, now he looked at her.

  “Why, Addie,” he said softly, that hateful smile still playing on his lips. “There’s no need to look so stricken, m’dear. You have been exonerated of any crimes of fashion. ‘Crimes of fashion,’ not ‘passion,’ do ya see? Jolly clever of me, what?”

  A muffled giggle drifted from behind them.

  “I am ecstatic,” she said with forced lightness. “I lay awake last night, fretting over whether or not my hat would meet with your approval.”

  “Did you, indeed?” He cocked his brow and his eyes, beautiful eyes, skittered over her face like pebbles thrown on an icy pond. “Well, there really is no need for you to spend any wakeful hours on so trivial a thing—”

  “Trivial?” Gerald asked. “I say, I don’t think we can call—”

  “From now on,” Jack continued in that false, bright voice, his words running over Gerald’s as though he were afraid if they went unspoken they might lodge in his throat. “From now on, I insist you send your hats over to my rooms for prior approval. I shall try them on myself before returning them to you.”

  His teeth bared in semblance of a smile. “That will solve all your problems, but should Wheatcroft c
atch me, it may well be the beginning of mine! But for you, Madame, anything.”

  The others laughed. Even Ted snorted with amusement at Jack’s idiocy. Anger replaced her hurt.

  “How munificent of you!”

  “Not at all. Can’t have a lovely lady like yourself losing sleep. Scant slumber might not affect those silly young debs but mature ladies need to protect those rejuvenating hours.”

  Her chin jerked up. Gerald’s mild gaze finally sharpened with the impression that something was wrong. Stunned and hurt, Addie brushed by Jack, moving too quickly, hoping her tears would not cause her to careen into something.

  She swept past Ted, blindly following the hovering maitre d’, who dashed ahead to pull out a chair at a large round table near the front window. She did not wait for assistance, taking her seat as the others hustled forward in varying states of bewilderment.

  Lady Merritt took the seat opposite her, Gerald on her side. Ted sat to Addie’s left across from Gerald. There was only one vacant chair left: the one directly on her right hand.

  Humiliation burned her cheeks as Jack hesitated a moment before taking it. She kept her gaze outside the window. Her hands lay clutched on her lap.

  Jack sank down silently, his wit apparently spent.

  A full ten minutes passed, the polite drone and flow of conversation eddying around and about her. She didn’t say a word, remembering one of the lessons Charles had taught her: you can’t bait someone who doesn’t speak.

  But slowly she became aware that if she was quiet, Jack was more so. His attention, true, seemed to follow with almost unnatural avidity the conversation going on at the table. His gaze leapt to and from the faces of those who spoke, like a drowning man leaps at any rope tossed his way. His laughter was a shade too prompt to be spontaneous. The characteristic trembling of his left hand, clenched about the stem of the crystal goblet, translated itself into minute shivers over the liquid surface of water . . .

  Something was not right.

  This was not Jack. In fact, there was nothing about this brittle, feverish-eyed man next to her that was familiar, that felt . . . honest. There was some reason for his facile unkindness. She was sure of it.

  And with each observation of Jack’s discomfiture, the certainty that should she open her mouth she would be belittled did not seem so dread. Each barb he’d uttered, she realized with sudden inspiration, had hurt Jack as much as it hurt her. Even now he looked ill, strained.

  The idea bewildered her. Try as she might she could think of no reason why Jack hurt them both with his behavior.

  “I have heard that the new play at the Lyceum is wonderful,” she said, testing her idea. Watching him carefully, she continued. “I should so like to see it.”

  Jack opened his mouth. He took a deep breath, like an athlete might before endeavoring a particularly strenuous feat. His mouth clamped shut. The muscles balled at the corner of his jaw.

  “I haven’t been to a play in a long time.” She knew she was opening herself up for more of the mockery he’d practiced on her earlier but she was as curious now as she had been hurt then.

  Jack’s lips flattened a second before relaxing. He shook his head, so slightly she was certain she was the only one who noticed. In negation or ruefulness, she could not tell.

  “Then see it you shall, Addie,” Ted said.

  “Capital notion,” Gerald said. “Why don’t we make a party of it?”

  “I don’t know,” injected Lady Merritt. “Is it an artistically edifying play or one of those light, satirical pieces of nastiness that are currently all the rage?”

  “Well, I’d rather see wit than this Ibsen fellow’s stark realist pretensions,” Jack put in.

  “Really, Jack?” Addie said sweetly. “I would never have expected you to object to pretensions.”

  He met her gaze, a small self-deprecating curl to his lip. “As you say, Madame.”

  The rest of the diners tittered.

  “She has you there, Jack,” Gerald said.

  “In all ways,” Jack murmured suavely. He sniffed as if suddenly recalling himself and brushed at a few tiny bread crumbs adhering to his jacket’s plum-colored plush. “I like my pretensions to be pretty. Why seek the bald face of reality? The hag is all too available as it is.”

  Gerald laughed appreciatively as Jack patted his mouth with the napkin. “Besides,” he continued, “lately I find myself as interested in the process of genius as in the end product. Which leads me to a matter I have been wanting to broach, Ted.”

  Ted turned a slightly suspicious eye on Jack. “Yes?”

  “Yes. I am not at all sure I haven’t misspent my talent.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Indeed. I do. Say that I am unsure, that is. A dratted spot, to find oneself waffling at this point in one’s life.”

  “I can imagine,” Ted murmured. “I always thought you a trifle old to be an apprentice.”

  “Oh, I’m well beyond the apprentice stage.” He looked at the others. “I suppose I should just ignore these sudden misgivings and return to my little Scottish workshop. But the thing is, don’t you know, I would always wonder if I’d made a mistake. In giving the world an adept craftsman, have I robbed the world of an artistic genius?”

  Ted choked and Lady Merritt, who’d been nodding approvingly, thumped him sharply on the back.

  “Excuse me,” Ted sputtered. “Water went down the wrong way.”

  “Of course,” Jack said kindly. “Anyhow, Ted old man, the thing is, would you object to me hanging about your garret in a more concerted fashion, takin’ notes, lookin’ over the terrain, witnessing firsthand the dos and don’ts of the trade?”

  “‘Dos and don’ts of the trade’?” Addie echoed, nonplussed.

  “Ted knows what I want, don’t you, old fellow?”

  “Yes. I suspect I do. All right, Jack,” he said. “Spend as much time ‘hanging about’ the studio as you’d like. I’ll put you to work as repayment for my instruction and I promise, I’ll put your talents to good use.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said. “I shall contrive not to get in the way when you have your sittings.”

  “Can’t be done,” Ted said. “When Miss Drouhin sits, the world sits at her feet.”

  “Oh, surely not the world,” Lady Merritt snorted.

  “A good third of it, I should say,” Ted avowed. “What with all of them standing moony-eyed about my studio, I swear I haven’t any idea how England manages to win any of these foreign skirmishes that the newspapers report.” Ted’s bland gaze slid to Jack. “What say you, Jack? Can England maintain her presence in the Sudan, what with the bulk of her troops parked in my apartments?”

  Jack returned Ted’s gaze. Addie had the distinct impression that a small skirmish of an entirely different sort was going on.

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Of course, he can’t say,” a mocking voice boomed from behind Addie.

  Paul Sherville. She would know his voice anywhere. She felt him close in to stand directly behind her and knew how a rabbit must feel when the shadow of the hawk overtakes it.

  “Couldn’t help but attend. I have exceptional hearing. This artist fellow—excuse me, I’ve quite forgotten your name?”

  “Cameron, John Cameron,” Jack said without standing.

  “Ah, yes. Cameron. That’s right. Well, a fellow who’s spent his adulthood whittling, or splattering, or scribbling is hardly in a position to judge Her Majesty’s readiness to meet a foreign insurrection, is he?”

  “I should hope not, Major,” Lady Merritt said, clearly put out by Sherville’s rudeness. “An artist’s milieu is beauty. A soldier’s milieu is . . . is . . .”

  “Lice?” Ted asked innocently.

  “Khaki?” Gerald suggested.

  A chirrup of laughter escaped Addie. She buried her mouth in her napkin.

  “Very droll,” Sherville said. “Just see how the young—” He paused and when he spoke again, his voice had sharpened. �
�Ah, Mrs. Hoodless. I didn’t recognize you out of black. Has it been so long since Charles left us?”

  She felt herself grow cold.

  “And for us to meet again so soon,” he went on. “How delightful! Only more delightful is the knowledge that now that your mourning is officially over we shall doubtless meet again, and again . . . and again. I do so look forward to renewing our acquaintance.”

  She couldn’t look at him. She felt exposed, vulnerable. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes.

  “Nothing could make me forgo that pleasure,” he was saying, “not even—”

  “Death?” Jack asked.

  Her eyes shot open. Every person at the table was staring in astonishment at Jack. Calmly, he refolded his napkin and placed it aside.

  “Excuse me?” Paul Sherville asked, his expression apoplectic.

  “I said ‘death,’” Jack repeated calmly. “You know . . . ‘the soldier’s milieu.’ Wouldn’t it be death? Been sitting here, trying to guess the answer. Thought I’d done rather a nice job of it, too. Must say, no one seems appreciative.”

  Everyone relaxed. Behind her she felt Paul Sherville step away from her chair. “Yes. Quite so. Death,” he said. “I won’t keep you any longer. Delighted, as usual, Lady Merritt, Mrs. Hoodless, gentlemen . . . Cameron.”

  She heard the hushed click of his boot heels on the parquet flooring fade away. She glanced at Jack.

  He wasn’t looking at her but he seemed to feel her scrutiny. He smiled, sadly. “I couldn’t let him. Forgive me.”

  She could barely hear his words. For the rest of the meal she wondered what he needed forgiveness for . . . and from whom.

  Paul Sherville strode past the footman into his newly purchased townhouse and snatched up the riding crop he’d left lying on the hall table. He thumped it against his thigh as he stalked to the library, barking out orders for scotch to be brought immediately.

  Captain John Frances Cameron.

  He’d thought there was something familiar about the whipcord lean figure when they’d been introduced in that artist’s lair. But before he could pursue the sense of recognition, he’d allowed himself to be distracted by the man’s offensive overtures. He saw now that it had all been a clever diversion, a ruse to keep him from looking too closely at him. And it had worked.