When a Scot Loves a Lady

“I don’t guess that’s true. But Aunt Isobel says gentlemen often tell tales to encourage others to do as they wish. But I don’t mind it. You can come along even if you tell the truth.” The grin got full rein.

He started up the stairs. Throat tight, Leam followed.

Three weeks after returning home, he finally entered Cornelia’s chambers to sort through her belongings. No dust clung to surfaces in her bedchamber or dressing room. No spirit-fearing Scottish maidservant would willingly clean a dead woman’s effects for five and a half years, but his housekeeper, Mrs. Phillips, was made of stern stuff.

The place still reflected Cornelia’s flirtatious femininity, all peach and rose to complement her ivory and golden charms. On her dressing table sat three perfume bottles on a silver tray and a set of silver-backed comb and brush. He touched his fingertips to the brush handle not an inch from where a single shining strand of guinea hair clung to the bristles.

He drew in a breath. For years his heart had no longer raced when he thought of her, only beat dully for what he had done to her. What he had driven her to.

He moved into the dressing chamber. Her garments still hung upon pegs. She’d always dressed in the first stare of fashion, the pale colors and current styles suiting her delicately rounded figure. She was only eighteen when they met, the plumpness of youth dimpling her elbows and cheeks.

At that assembly rooms ball admirers had surrounded her. New to Edinburgh, her perfect English face was animated with giddiness. But after he found an acquaintance to introduce them, all her rosy-

lipped smiles were for him. Or so he believed. During the following fortnight he courted her unceasingly. She accepted his suit swiftly, he’d thought, because she was as smitten as he.

Now Leam could admit there had been a great deal of pride laced through his fury. During those three weeks in which the banns were read before the wedding, when either Cornelia or James could have halted it, they let him make a tragic fool of himself instead.

A heavy cedar chest dominated the small chamber. It seemed as good a place as any to begin. He opened the latch and drew forth the contents. They were the stuff of a young lady’s life—lacy kerchiefs, ribbons, a dried posy, even a note he had written to her that first week full of poetic declarations of love.

Astoundingly, he cared nothing for it. No pain of betrayal or dashed hopes stirred in him as he sorted his wife’s belongings, not even a twinge of resentment. Perhaps he had forgiven her finally. She had been nothing more than an impetuous, selfish girl, not unlike the impetuous, selfish young man she had married to save herself from ruination.

Yet in the end he had brought her to true ruin. He had sent her to her death just as he sent his brother. That pain would live with him like a knife wedged between his ribs forever.

“So you are finally doing it.”

Isobel stood in the open doorway. Her once-lovely visage was dour now, a sharp contrast to the feminine charm of Cornelia’s chambers.

“It’s about time.” She gestured to the open trunk.

He nodded. “Perhaps it is.”

She stood in silence, staring at him.

“Would you like to assist?” he finally said.

“With that brainless ninny’s things? Don’t insult me.”

“If you are not interested in this project, why are you here?”

She moved forward and extended a slim black volume.

“I found this when I packed away James’s belongings after the funeral.”

Leam didn’t take it. “What is it?”

“He gave it to you for Christmas when you were both at university.”

“Why haven’t you shown it to me before this?”

“Because you were never in permanent residence until now. And this should remain here. Where he is.” She shook the book at him. “Take it.”

He stood and accepted the volume.

“I don’t suppose you even care to have it,” she said tightly, “but it belongs to you and I am no thief.”

Without looking up he said, “I loved him too, Isa.”

“Then why did you kill him?”

His head came up, his heart thumping hard. She had never said it aloud. In all these years, she had never actually accused him. But they’d both known why she withdrew her affection. After the funeral, he told her about the duel. He’d had to admit it aloud or the secret would have eaten him from within.

As it had anyway.

“I—” He struggled for the words buried in his heart. “I never imagined they would go through with it, Isobel. You must know I didn’t. I did not wish him dead. I never did. Never.”

“Arranging a duel for him was a poor way of assuring that, wasn’t it?”

“They were best friends.”

“You were his brother!”

“I was—” a cuckolded husband. But not truly, because Cornelia and James had been together before the wedding. Not after. James had insisted. Even Cornelia admitted that, miserable in her unrequited love and weak after the birth of their son. Nearly out of her mind, she had confessed everything, to using Leam because she had no recourse in her condition but to marry swiftly. And because married to him in particular she still might be near James. James would not have her, though she had begged, repeating over and over again her heartbreak over his brother’s rejection.

So Leam had left her, banishing her to Alvamoor where he vowed never again to live while she still drew breath. Then he had gone to town to find his brother.

But Isobel, not quite out of the schoolroom yet at the time, did not know these things. As everyone else, her memory of James Blackwood was of a laughing, roguish fellow, a sporting, teasing man of open desires and simple amusements. That image must remain. No one would ever know the truth. For James’s sake, and for his son’s, Leam would never reveal it.

Except one man knew. Felix Vaucoeur. The man who killed him.

“I was angry with him,” he said quietly. “I wished to frighten him. Only that, Isa. And it was a mistake we must now live with.”

“You are a cruel, unfeeling man, Leam.”

Dear God, he wished he were. He had wished that for five years, to no avail. He still felt far too keenly, far too deeply when his heart was engaged.

He held her gaze, the cold within expanding once more to envelop him like a mantle. He welcomed it.

“You have no idea of the person I am.”

“I never wish to.” She pivoted and disappeared into the corridor on eerily silent feet, like the ghost she worshipped.

He looked down at the volume and his heedless heart stilled. Carefully he smoothed his fingertips across the leather cover, afraid to open it.

His brother had indeed given it to him while they were both down from Cambridge for the holiday.

James had come home weeks before him, dodging his masters before they released him, because he was James Blackwood and he could. Champion cricket player, bruising rider, star sculler, and all-

around handsome devil, by the beginning of his second year he had charmed the dean’s wives, their daughters, even the deans themselves. He hadn’t cared a thing about books, only sport and parties, and he made no secret of it.

No one had chastised him. Everyone loved him. Unfailingly generous and always laughing with good nature at something—whether a bawdy comedy or his elder brother’s bookishness—no one had ever blamed him, even for the young ladies’ tears that fell on his behalf. His heart was on full view for anybody to see, as it had always been. If a girl believed such a charming, pleasure-seeking rascal loved only her, then she was too silly for her own good.

But that fall, not even two months back at school, James had escaped to Alvamoor. When Leam finally arrived home at the term’s break, the youth he met there was nothing like the care-for-nothing young rogue everyone else knew. During Michaelmas term James had met another student, the young French comte, Felix