When a Scot Loves a Lady

On a neat block he gave his horse into the keeping of a boy. For a moment he stared at the narrow town house before him, nothing of particular note about its plain brown facade and black iron rail. Its resident might not even be at home now. The knocker, however, was up; the man was at least in town.

Leam was as impetuous as ever. His presence here proved it. His brief call on Kitty the day before proved it even more surely. She wanted him and he needed to be with her. If that meant tackling his demons, he would do so.

First he must find David Cox. In the sennight Leam had been back in town, Cox had not contacted him. Leam and his solicitor had both visited Lloyd’s, looking for information on the insurance agent, but none knew anything of him after his departure for America five years earlier.

He would not be defeated. He did not pause to regret his haste in paying this particular call. But his gut was tight as he went to the door and knocked. A servant answered, narrow-faced and pale. He assessed Leam’s bedraggled appearance before lifting his brows.

“May I help you, monsieur?”

Leam handed him a calling card. “Fesh me yer master.”

The manservant’s nostrils flared. He nodded, ushered him into the foyer, and took his coat and hat.

“Swith awa, man.” Leam gestured impatiently. “A dinna hae aw day.” He could gladly wait forever to have this conversation, but the time had come, and he had purpose now he’d never had before.

“Je vous en prie, my lord,” the manservant said with stiff disapproval. “If you will wait in the parlor.”

Leam went into the chamber and to the window, and stared into the gray day at the neat row of elegant buildings across the street. By God, he wanted out of town houses. Out of London. Out of England. She would never have him anyway. Not for long, at least. For all the passion and warmth beneath her society hauteur, she had been made for this world. The world he had lied to for years.

A footstep at the threshold turned his head. Nearly as tall as Leam, with a slash of straight black hair falling across his brow, penetrating green eyes, and a Gallic elegance to his clothing and air, Felix Vaucoeur was a handsome man.

“I saw your card,” he said without any trace of accent, his English as fluid as Leam’s when he wished it, “but did not quite believe it.”

“Your manservant is an impertinent snob, Vaucoeur. Do you pay him to frighten away callers?”

The comte moved to the sideboard and took up a carafe of dark liquid.

“Rather late to be paying me a call finally, Blackwood.” He poured out two glasses, then turned and came across the chamber. He handed one to Leam and met his gaze. “And hypocritical.”

Leam studied the man who had killed his brother. In nearly six years their paths had not crossed.

To protect both Leam and James from scandal, their uncle, the Duke of Read, had seen to it that Vaucoeur received a pardon, and the duel was put about as a hunting accident. Vaucoeur had gone into the countryside to avoid gossip, where he remained until the war ended and he returned for a time to his estate on the Continent. But the English half of Vaucoeur’s blood had always been stronger, despite his French title.

Leam set his glass on a table. “You haven’t any idea why I am here.”

“Ah.” The comte turned and went back to the sideboard.

“I need your help.”

Vaucoeur paused in lifting the carafe.

“I am looking for a man who claims to have served with you and my brother on the Peninsula,” Leam said. “David Cox. Fair, good-looking. Says he is in insurance now. Do you remember such a fellow?”

“Why not inquire at the War Office?”

“I’ve more interest in him than his address.”

Vaucoeur’s eyes narrowed. “What business is that of mine?”

“I don’t know that it’s any. Cox has been following me, and he has threatened those close to me. I must make certain it hasn’t anything to do with my brother before I pursue other avenues.”

“You imagine I might have had something to do with him, this tradesman who claims to have known James. A good-looking fellow, one of our regiment mates.” Vaucoeur set down his glass with a quiet click. “What?”

“What do you mean?”

“What business might I have had with this Mr. Cox that could have involved your brother?”

For a long stretch of silence they stared at each other.

“Why did you allow me to goad you into it?” Leam finally uttered. “Even so, I exaggerate. I barely had to nudge you to challenge him.”

Vaucoeur spoke slowly. “He violated my sister.”

“He violated a great many men’s sisters,” Leam replied. “But he was in love with you.”

“That was his misfortune.” The reply came too swiftly, too smoothly, practiced, as though he had been waiting to say the words for almost six years.

It did not suit Leam. Not after so long.

“What happened on the Peninsula, Felix? Two young men thrown together at war, sharing the same battlefield and tent, like Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion marching across the desert against a heathen enemy. Which one were you? Young King Philip, the tease? The opportunist.” His mouth tasted metallic. “To my brother’s anguished Richard.”

“Get out, Blackwood.” The words were like ice, but something in his eyes arrested Leam, something keen and deeply scarred even after years. Vaucoeur had not yet made peace with his part in James’s death.

“You did care for him. Didn’t you?” It had never before occurred to Leam. Not in such a manner.

“Of course I did. He was my best friend.”

“But not your lover.”

“Never.” His gaze bored into Leam’s. “I am, you see, quite exclusively fond of women.”

Finally Leam understood his brother’s torment, and perhaps this man’s pain and regret as well.

Vaucoeur had never been what James both wanted him to be and feared. For years anger had burned in Leam for how his brother had lied in not telling him about Cornelia’s baby. James might have married her; men like him married women they did not want frequently enough. But the desperation that had driven James to bed every female he could had made actual marriage to a woman impossible. His brother had wanted someone he could not have and it had driven him to the edge of insanity. The Blackwood passion had not been reserved to Leam alone.

“Am I to understand then,” he said, “that you have nothing to help me in the matter of David Cox?”

The comte turned away, replacing the stopper on the brandy. “I don’t remember him.”

Leam nodded and went toward the door, an odd emptiness in his chest.

“He hated himself.” Vaucoeur’s voice came behind him, steady and certain.

“Yes,” Leam said quietly. “And he suffered for who he was,” in a way Leam had never in his life suffered. While James despised his own nature, Leam hadn’t given a damn what his fellow classmates thought of him. Quietly he studied and wrote and took the teasing along with his high marks and masters’ praise. But he hadn’t cared about any of it, only the poetry, the expression of true emotion he’d believed in so deeply at the time.

But for too long he had watched his brother suffer and felt it in his own heart. After a time, he wanted to suffer as well, to finally share some of that pain. Cornelia Cobb had offered him the perfect opportunity.

Her youthful levity had attracted him. But not for its own sake, he understood now. Falling for her had finally made him feel like he was betraying his nature. Fool that he was, he had reveled in knowing she was not suitable for him with her gay, light smiles and superficial flirtations. After all those years watching his brother and hurting for him, Leam had welcomed the suffering too.

He had not paused a moment to consider what would actually happen if she accepted him.

“You did not kill him.” Vaucoeur’s voice was hard. “I would like to believe that even I did not. He wanted to die and he used us because he hadn’t the courage to pull the trigger himself.”

Leam looked into the man’s glittering eyes and saw a coldness there he never wished to live again, a cold that Kitty’s wide gaze and eager touch had begun to thaw within him.

He bowed. “Vaucoeur.”

The comte nodded. “My lord.”