The Husband Hunt Read online

  "Where did you live before you came here?" he asked, pausing to take a chair. His voice might be casual, but he'd laid the question like a steel trap.

  Thomas moved up behind her. "With the current Earl of Roxshire, my lord."

  "And before that?"

  Thomas looked away. "She stayed with her mother's people until the young earl took her into his care."

  "Has the young lady suddenly lost her voice?" Knight asked coolly.

  "She has not," Catriona said.

  "Then please answer my questions."

  "I just did," she said.

  Olivia frowned in disapproval, leaning back comfortably against Wendell's outstretched arm. "Can your interrogation not wait until tomorrow, Knight? Howard has just brought in refreshments."

  He glanced at Catriona, his gaze hooded. "If you prefer."

  Olivia motioned her to the sofa. "Here. Sit between Wendell and me. We promise not to subject you to any more questions tonight. Come, let us just enjoy your company. Have a little brandy if you like. How happy we are to meet you."

  Cat felt Lord Rutleigh examine her as she obeyed, wedging herself between Lady Deering and the duke, whose aquiline features reminded her of a fairy-tale prince. Och, she must look like a lump of coal amid a pair of diamonds, dirty and drab. She frowned at her scuffed shoes, her big toe practically poking through the worn leather. She'd best not take that brandy. She needed her wits about her to fend off the viscount's interrogation.

  Wendell cleared his throat. "I'm not going to bite, you know."

  "What?"

  He leaned closer to her. "You're as stiff as a statue, my dear. I said that I am not going to bite you."

  She looked at Knight, isolated from the others in a huge wingback chair in the corner. "What about him?" she whispered.

  "Knight?" Wendell's blue eyes softened. "I cannot say what he will do. He's not quite the same these days, but in all honesty, I can say that I've never seen him bite anyone."

  "Would you two kindly stop whispering?" Knight asked dryly. "It gives the impression that one is being talked about."

  His sister gave him an admonishing smile. "People do have other matters to discuss besides you."

  "No one discusses me much anymore," he said, breaking into a grin. "I have risen above gossip."

  "Only because you've never been caught at your misdeeds yet," Wendell said. "Your time will come, I predict. Some journalist will unearth a juicy scandal from your past."

  Knight lounged back in the chair, reminding Catriona of a feudal lord with his chiseled face half-shadowed in firelight. "There are only three people who know me well enough to relate the details of my past misadventures. Lionel is one, and he is gone, enjoying a divine adventure of his own, I hope. Olivia is another, but she is the soul of discretion." He paused. "That leaves you, Wendell. Are you threatening to tell?"

  The duke laughed. "I would in a minute if it didn't mean implicating myself. There's a certain vicar in Dartmoor who is still out for our blood."

  "Lucky for you both that you were wearing masks," Olivia said with an affectionate laugh.

  "Only over our faces," Wendell said, sharing another grin with Knight. "The other less identifiable parts were left exposed."

  "Oh, Wendell, stop it," Olivia said, hitting his hand. "You'll give her a horrible impression of us."

  Catriona felt the tension begin to seep from her coiled nerves at their easy camaraderie. How different this was from her world, from her earliest years of distraught parents with sick children crowding into her mother's cottage for an herbal cure, her life with Uncle Diarmid and his unruly Border raiders, then her most recent years with James, in the castle watching him destroy all he held dear. Aye, she could sense the caring beneath their banter and wished to be part of it. But her tongue was tied in knots. What did she know of witty conversation, she who had never been properly courted by a man? She whose only genuine skill would mark her as an outcast in their glittering society where an ill-chosen remark could ruin a young woman's chance for acceptance?

  She looked up in chagrin as she realized that Lord Rutleigh had just spoken to her and was awaiting a reply. He studied her in amusement, his gray eyes mirroring the flames. "I don't suppose you have any secrets, Catriona?" he said, one dark eyebrow lifting in mock suspense.

  "Probably none as interesting as yours," she said.

  "Leave her alone," Olivia said lightly. "She looks exhausted, and we are rude to keep her up after what must have been a harrowing journey. Come on, Catriona. I shall tuck you into bed myself."

  "Come to think of it, I am dead tired. You are very kind, Lady Deering." She rose, eager to escape the perceptive curiosity burning in the viscount's eyes.

  "Isn't she?" he murmured, his fingers steepled beneath his strongly molded chin. "Yes, rest, cousin. In the morning, we shall discuss what to do with you."

  There was a moment of silence. Then Olivia, who until then had given Cat the impression that she was the epitome of a subservient English lady, turned on her brother like a tigress protecting her cub. "The matter has already been decided, Knight. There is nothing to discuss."

  ******************

  Olivia whisked her upstairs with an astonishing air of determination for one so frail, the deerhound watching from the hall. "We must do something about your wardrobe, Catriona. Oh, I'm sure that heavy plaid is perfectly acceptable in the drawing rooms of a Border estate, but your figure is far too lovely to hide beneath that dull, shapeless wool."

  "Not to offend your judgment," Catriona said, "but there isn't much of anything to hide. Uncle Diarmid said I'm as flat as a griddle cake, with the exception of two currants for a chest. So it isn't the wool that's shapeless. It's me."

  Olivia turned outside the bedchamber door and stared at her, her mouth falling open. "This is going to take more work than I thought."

  "What is—oh, is this where I'm to sleep?"

  She was about to explore the small, darkened chamber when Olivia herded her through another door into a larger room where a coal fire had just been lit. Warm shadows danced on the wallpaper. "That was the antechamber where your maid will sleep."

  "My what?"

  "Your maid. When we employ one." An experienced woman with a background in current etiquette and fashion, Olivia thought grimly. She was going to have her hands full if Catriona was ever to be ready for a proper season. That the young woman might not care to embark on the social seas did not even occur to her.

  "This is your room, Catriona."

  "It's perfectly lovely."

  Olivia smiled. "It needs a good airing out, I expect."

  The room was furnished with a delicate French escritoire, a four-poster rosewood bed, an armoire, and a marble-topped washstand. The chambermaid had already brought up Catriona's small trunk and laid her nightdress on the bed. The air smelled faintly of must and the faded lavender buds that scented the mattress, freshly turned and beaten.

  Olivia fingered Cat's threadbare flannel night rail in distaste. "Do you actually wear this?"

  Catriona pulled off her buckled shoes and sank backward onto the bed. "Aye. Every night. It keeps the bad dreams away."

  "Does it? Well, has it ever been washed?"

  "Of course," Catriona said, deeply offended.

  "Perhaps we could find a replacement for it. Something prettier to suit you."

  "It's embarrassing to admit this, but the fact is, I'm prone to nightmares. Angus and Dugall used to swear up and down that my screaming in the night made their blood run cold. That's vervain sewn in the hem, by the way, not dirt."

  Olivia took a deep breath. "Angus and this Dugall—they slept with you?"

  "Aye. Well, being the only female, I was given the loft. The sounds carried, you ken. The farmhouse was barely bigger than this room, and we all coveted the fire on a winter night."

  Olivia felt suddenly faint at the enormity of the task she was about to undertake. "This Angus and Dugall— they were children, then?" she asked hopefully.


  Catriona snorted. "Only in terms of mental ability." She sat up, frowning at the look of horror on her champion's face. "I didn't sleep with the bastards. My uncle did possess some sense of morality." Though not much, Cat reflected fondly.

  "Well, thank God for that." Olivia sat down on the edge of the bed, her brow furrowed in a frown. "How many men shared your home, dear, if I may ask?"

  "Ten when I lived with Uncle Diarmid. Twelve or so in James's castle. Retainers, most of those. A damned useless lot, as far as I'm concerned."

  Olivia blinked, obviously unable to visualize anyone of the weaker sex living in the midst of this manly congregation. "And your mother did not object?"

  "She was dead by then, but when she was alive, no male ever crossed her doorstep except for the fathers bringing in their sick children. My mother never let another man touch her after she bore me."

  Olivia was quiet for a moment as if she guessed that there were a few pertinent details missing from this explanation, but she could not figure what they might be. Or perhaps she did not want to know. "When did you meet Lionel, dear?"

  Cat leaned back against the fluffy, down-filled pillows; both of them were relieved at the change in subject. "Four years ago, I think. At my brother's castle, the very month I had moved in."

  "Would this brother be James?" Olivia asked, her frown deepening. James was the only name she could retrieve from her memory of Lionel's conversation about his Scottish relatives, and she wasn't sure, but it did seem as if there had been a vaguely negative connotation to the name.

  "He's the fourth earl now," Cat confided. She struggled modestly beneath the coverlet to change into her nightclothes. "He went off to war about a month or two before Lionel did." She paused, tossing her smock expertly onto the chair. "I'm that sorry he's gone."

  Olivia forced a smile and pretended not to notice the undergarment sailing through the air. "But James returned."

  "Aye, but he wished that he hadn't. The girl he planned to marry died of fever while he was off fighting for the Sassenachs."

  "That is sad." Olivia's face reflected compassion; loss was something she understood too well these days.

  "Worse even," Cat said, "was that she died giving birth to the baby he'd put inside her before he left."

  Olivia could not speak for a moment. There seemed to be little of life that Lionel's lovely cousin had not witnessed. "What happened to the child?"

  "Her parents whisked her away to parts unknown to raise. James searched for months but came back with a broken heart and no daughter to love."

  Olivia released a sigh, staring across the room at the fire. "I can imagine. I learned that I was carrying Lionel's baby right after he left, too, but I miscarried in the third month. I am still bereft."

  "But you can have other children. In time, I mean."

  "Not Lionel's," Olivia said, lowering her gaze. "Oh, goodness, I don't want to start crying now."

  "At least you've withstood your grief better than my brother. He's dead drunk all day long, and he berates everyone in sight. He's losing all his lands, too, from gambling and foolish investments."

  Olivia compressed her lips. Catriona had definitely been exposed to the darker elements of life. "Then someone needs to take him in hand."

  "Aye," Cat said in a heavy voice. "I've tried. Tis part of the reason I'm here, to help raise funds to pay off his mortgages before he squanders everything. A horrible man is hoping to buy up the land for bleach fields, and so many people would be put out of their homes if James weakens." What she needed, Catriona had decided, was a rich husband of her own choosing to take affairs in hand.

  Olivia had only a vague notion of what Catriona was talking about; she had been so immersed in her own sorrows in recent years that she had lost touch with the rest of the family. "I expect Knight would be able to offer you better advice than I can on the matter, but it does seem a rather ambitious goal for someone in your position to accomplish."

  Catriona gave her a level look. "There's little help to be expected from that quarter, then. Your brother did not like me."

  "Knight doesn't much like anyone these days," Olivia murmured, "sometimes not even himself."

  "And why not?"

  "Because—" Olivia started to laugh. "It's none of your business, you sly boots."

  "Am I not family?"

  "Of course you are. But it's well past midnight, and you look exhausted. We have endless days ahead to talk."

  She rose briskly and arranged the green silk coverlet over her charge like the loving mother she ached in her heart to be. The young Scotswoman was a far cry from Lionel's child. In fact, she wasn't a child at all, she was as cynical as she was sweet, and she didn't remind Olivia even remotely of her late husband except for those remarkable eyes, and what else was it? Lionel had possessed a certain gentleness and excitement for life that Catriona seemed to share. She wasn't a replacement for what Olivia had lost. Nothing could bring back the baby she had yearned to hold or the husband she had hoped to spend an entire life with.

  "But you are here," she said under her breath, "and I will gladly lay claim to any part of Lionel that I am given."

  Catriona half opened her eyes, drifting asleep and wondering what the woman's strange words could mean. "Be careful going down the stairs."

  "What?"

  Cat's eyes flew open in irritation. Thomas had warned her not to reveal her ability to foretell future events, and she was never sure herself when or how it would happen. But just as she'd begun to relax, she had seen an image of Olivia walking down the stairs and starting to fall.

  "Don't go back downstairs yet, Lady Deering. You'll fall if you do."

  Olivia's disbelieving look turned to one of delight. "Oh, my heavens. Do you have the Sight—that is what you call it in Scotland, isn't it?" She stepped closer to the bed, regarding Catriona in wonder. "I remember reading something about it in a book, but Lionel never mentioned that it ran in the family, although he always knew when it was going to rain. Do you have visions?"

  Catriona sighed and contemplated an evasive answer. Fatigue had made her careless, and now she had ruined her chances for making a decent impression by revealing her fatal flaw. Thomas was right. She had a mouth as big as a gully, and hadn't it gotten her into trouble in boarding school when she had predicted the headmistress would die, and the poor women had expired exactly one week later while reading Hamlet to the class?

  That unsettling vision had labeled her a social pariah among the few girls who had been willing to overlook Cat's unstable upbringing and inferior wardrobe to befriend her. Troublemaker, they called her. The Border girl with the witchy eyes and queer power. Years later, she was still the same, an outcast but only older.

  "It was nothing, Lady Deering. I talk in my sleep. Always have."

  Olivia looked unconvinced. "Then go back to sleep, and do stop calling me Lady Deering. I'm Olivia now, and we are family. We are also delighted that you have come to stay."

  Except for him, Catriona thought. It would be a battle to win his lordship over to her side.

  "I suppose I should see that your man is made comfortable for the night," Olivia murmured as she finally moved toward the door. "Sweet dreams, cousin. You are in loving hands. Your hardships are over for the time being."

  Catriona made an unintelligible reply that was meant to express both doubt and gratitude. She knew she should tell the woman that Thomas wouldn't remain in this house for even one night, and she should probably sneak downstairs and attempt to talk him into staying before he got himself killed on her behalf by her brother. But her legs wouldn't obey her order to move, and a great weight of darkness pressed down upon her, the welcome oblivion obscuring even the shadow of the tall man who was standing outside her room when his sister opened the door.

  ******************

  "Knight, you startled me half to death," Olivia whispered, ushering him back into the hall. "What on earth are you doing skulking about like that? What do you want?"

/>   "What do you mean, what do I want?" he asked, catching a glimpse of the woman curled up in bed before the door closed. "I intend to ask our uninvited houseguest a few more questions, if you don't mind."

  "I do mind. She's asleep, and no wonder. Imagine making that journey with only an old man to protect you."

  "She seemed to protect herself well enough with that pistol," he pointed out.

  They turned to the stairs together, Olivia descending first. "Do you blame her? Oh, Knight, I should never have forgiven myself if we had shot Lionel's cousin."

  "I'd have a hard time forgiving her if she had shot one of us."

  "Yes, but—oooh—"

  She seemed to struggle for balance before sliding down three steps and landing in an inelegant heap in the hall below. "Good heavens, Olivia," he said in alarm, hurrying down to help her. "What happened— why are you grinning like that?" He knelt beside her, his hand arrested in mid-air.

  Olivia was shaking her head, not making the least effort to rise from the floor. "It's true, don't you see?"

  He gave her a blank look. "Don't I see what?"

  "She has the Sight, it really is true. Lionel might even have mentioned it before. Perhaps fortune telling runs in the family, on the Celtic side, of course."

  "What does that drivel have to do with you almost breaking your ankle?"

  "Cat, Lionel's cousin, warned me only three minutes ago that I would fall down the stairs."

  He looked up over his shoulder at the staircase. "Well, what have we here?" He reached back for the battered portmanteau that had caused Olivia's fall. "No wonder she predicted you would have an accident. The little baggage left her baggage right where you were bound to fall over it."

  Olivia frowned at him. "She did not leave it there. One of the footmen did because she had nothing with her when we went upstairs. She has the Sight, I tell you, and now that I think of it, Lionel did have uncanny intuition for a man. He always knew where I had left my sewing scissors."