The Many Sins of Lord Cameron

Chapter 6

“So he gave you the letter, did he?” Phyllida Chase faced Ainsley under the flare of distant fireworks. Ainsley had met her, as arranged, by the fountain in the center of the garden. The guests were still clumped on the west side to watch pyrotechnics that blasted over the meadow beyond.

“Lord Cameron returned it to me, yes,” Ainsley said. “You so obviously passed it to him while you knew I was looking. Why?”

Phyllida’s eyes glittered. “Because, I wanted you to know that I could hand the letters to anyone I pleased whenever I pleased if you took too long with the money. I never expected that you’d try to conduct your own bargain with him. You are to deal with me, my dear. No one else.”

“You are the thief, Mrs. Chase,” Ainsley said coolly. “I’ll deal with whoever is necessary. I’ve brought you the money, now I take the letters, as agreed.”

“You should not have tried to go behind my back, Mrs. Douglas. Because you did, the rest of the letters will cost you much more than the original price. One thousand guineas.”

Ainsley stared. “One thousand? We agreed on five hundred. It was difficult enough to persuade her to give me that much.”

“She shouldn’t have written such letters then. One thousand by the end of the week, or I sell them to a newspaper.”

Ainsley thumped her fists to her skirts. “I can’t possibly come up with a thousand guineas. Not in four days.”

“You’d better start sending telegrams then. She can afford it, for all her fussing, and it’s her own fault she was so indiscreet. One week.”

Ainsley wanted to scream. “Why on earth are you doing this? You were a lady of the bedchamber, someone she trusted. Why did you turn on her?”

“I turn on her?” Phyllida’s eyes blazed, and for the first time, Ainsley saw an emotion in Phyllida Chase other than cold calculation. “Go and ask her why she turned on me. All I wanted was a little happiness. I deserved a little happiness. She snatched it all away from me, and for that I will never forgive her. Never.”

The fury in Phyllida’s voice was genuine, anger and despair that ate deeply. Phyllida had already been gone from the queen’s service before Ainsley came into it three years ago, but she’d never learned why Phyllida had been dismissed. She’d heard whispers about Mrs. Chase—such as her notorious pursuit of younger men—but the queen had always been tight-lipped about Phyllida and forbidden gossip.

“I don’t have a thousand guineas,” Ainsley said. “I have five hundred. You would at least have that.”

“The original price is a thing of the past. Consider the second five hundred the cost of me keeping quiet about how you seduced the paper from Lord Cameron.”

Ainsley’s face heated. “I didn’t seduce it from him.”

Phyllida gave her a hard smile. “My dear Mrs. Douglas, Lord Cameron is not only a man and a spoiled aristocrat, he’s a Mackenzie. He’d not simply hand you back the letter without exacting a price for it. It scarcely matters if you haven’t yet given that price to him. You will.”

Ainsley blessed the darkness, because she knew she must be blushing all the way down to her toes. She remembered the heat of Cameron’s mouth pressing the key into hers, the equal heat of his mouth on her breasts in the woods.

Before you leave at the end of the week, we will finish it, he’d told her. Depend on that.

“I haven’t gone to his bed,” Ainsley said. “Nor will I.”

“Naïve darling, Lord Cameron doesn’t take his women in a bed. Anywhere else in the room, yes—or in the carriage, the summerhouse, or on the front lawn. Never in a bed. Quite known for it, is our Lord Cameron.”

Ainsley thoughts flashed to Cameron’s hard body pressing her into his mattress, his large hand on her wrist. He’d been ready, she’d felt through his kilt, not seeming to mind at all that they were on a bed.

But he’d released her. He could have taken what he wanted right then, could have coerced Ainsley into giving in to him. But he hadn’t.

“I won’t,” Ainsley said.

Phyllida gave her a pitying look. “The unworldly Mrs. Douglas. You are no match for Lord Cameron Mackenzie. He’ll have what he wants from you very quickly, and you’ll go to him. Cameron sees, he wants, he takes, and he is done.”

We will finish it.

Ainsley’s heart beat faster. “You seem very sanguine for the woman who is his lover.”

“I went into my affair with Lord Cameron with my eyes wide open. He has the reputation for being a most pleasurable lover, and that is what I sought, to relieve my ennui at this dreadfully dull gathering. Hart Mackenzie used to hold exotic orgies that were all the rage, but now he invites stodgy people to do stodgy things for a stodgy week in the freezing Scottish countryside. Cameron is as bored as I am, but now that he’s seen your pretty eyes, I’m certain he’s finished with me. No matter, because I am finished with him.”

Ainsley listened with growing warmth, realizing that she’d stumbled into a world she’d only glimpsed—husbands and wives seeking other partners for the novelty of it, lovers casually discarded for other lovers. In Ainsley’s world, a young miss could be ruined in the blink of an eye; in Phyllida’s, vows meant nothing, and pleasure was all.

Ainsley thought about Lord Cameron, with his fierce eyes and the passion that simmered below his surface. He tempered that passion into gentleness when he handled his horses or the frail Mrs. Yardley, protecting them at the same time he took care of them. That gentleness gave Ainsley the conviction that, even in his world of mistresses and secret lovers, Cameron Mackenzie deserved better than Phyllida Chase.

“I can give you the five hundred guineas,” Ainsley said firmly.

Phyllida flicked her fingers. “I want a thousand. She can afford it.”

Yes, but the small queen had very strong ideas on where money should be spent and how much at a time. She’d found it insulting that she’d have to pay at all.

But even the queen realized that the letters could seriously damage her reputation if it got out that she’d written such sentimentalities to Mr. Brown, never mind she’d never actually sent them to him. People were not happy with Victoria’s reclusive life as it was, and there might be cries for her abdication if they thought she stayed home only to play with her Scottish equerry.

Phyllida had set out to punish the queen, and punish her she would. So the queen had sent Ainsley—the lady she ordered to do covert jobs that might involve something sordid such as picking locks and searching bedrooms—to deal with Phyllida. To retrieve the letters without parting with a penny if Ainsley could help it.

“You are optimistic if you think she’ll give you a thousand,” Ainsley said.

Firework after firework went off over the fields, filling the sky with light. Under their light, Phyllida smiled.

“One thousand is what I want,” she said. “Raise it somehow by the end of the week, and you may have the letters back. If not . . .”

She made an empty gesture, then turned and strode down the gravel path without looking back.

“Bloody woman,” Ainsley growled.

A cold nose thrust itself into her palm, and she looked down to see McNab, a Mackenzie dog, staring up at her with sympathetic eyes. Five dogs surrounded the Mackenzies at all times. Two of them—the hound Ruby and the terrier called Fergus—belonged to Ian and Beth and lived with them when they retreated to their own house not far from here. Ben and Achilles remained at the main house, but McNab, a springer spaniel, was more or less Daniel and Cameron’s.

Ainsley sighed as she leaned to pet McNab. “How peaceful it must be to be a dog. You don’t have to worry about intrigue or letters or blackmail.”

McNab’s tail smacked her legs with happy blows. The tail drove harder as McNab turned to greet the large man who’d followed him out of the darkness.

“So, Phyllida is blackmailing you,” Cameron said.

Ainsley rapidly went through the conversation in her head, relaxing slightly when she realized that neither she nor Mrs. Chase had ever mentioned the queen by name.

“I’m afraid so.”

Cameron patted McNab’s head when the dog thrust it under Cameron’s hand. “Phyllida can be the devil. Do you want me to shake your letters out of her?”

Ainsley’s eyes widened in alarm. “Please don’t. If you frighten her, she might run to a newspaper as she threatened.”

McNab circled close behind Ainsley, which made her step forward into Cameron’s heat. Cameron didn’t move. McNab sat down against Ainsley, happy they were all together in a small circle of space.

“I can solve your problem,” Cameron said. “You know I’ll give you the thousand for the asking.”

He’d not simply hand you back the letter without exacting a price for it.

“I can raise the money,” Ainsley said. “It will be difficult, but I can do it.”

Across the garden, under the light of the Chinese lanterns, Phyllida stepped next to her husband and tucked her hand under his arm.

“She’s is a hard woman,” Cameron said.

“She’s a bloody thorn in my side.”

Cameron’s chuckle grated like broken gravel. “If you think a thousand guineas will make Phyllida go away, it won’t. She’ll hold something back or find some other way to come at you again. Blackmailers are never satisfied.” His laughter faded into bitterness.

“Aren’t they? How do you know?”

His words were empty, hollow. “When you’re the brother of a duke and your wife died in mysterious circumstances, sharks come out of the woodwork.”

“That’s a mixed metaphor.”

“Bugger metaphors. They’re human sharks and they come out of the shadows when you least expect them.”

“I’m sorry,” Ainsley said.

She sounded sorry. Damn her, why did she have to look at him like that?

Gray eyes shining in the darkness, the frank stare, the lacy shawl sliding from her shoulders as she reached down to pet his dog. Once again, Ainsley was making Cameron’s world come alive, filling it with color instead of the deadly gray of his usual existence.

“All the world speculates on whether I killed my wife,” he said. “Including you.”

The flash of guilt in her eyes told him he was right. But why wouldn’t Ainsley speculate on it? No one knew for certain what had happened in that room, only Cameron. Daniel had been a baby, and except for him, Cameron and Elizabeth had been alone.

Cameron thought of the inquest, everyone watching him as he gave evidence in a dead voice, everyone believing he’d killed Elizabeth. The eyes of the villagers, the journalists, Elizabeth’s family, her lovers, his own father, the jury, the coroner—hard and cold, waiting for him to confess.

Only Hart had believed him, and Hart had perjured himself, telling the coroner that he’d seen Elizabeth drive the knife into her own throat as he’d broken open the door. Cameron had been across the room, holding Daniel, trying to still the lad’s terrified screams. Hart had related the story, using the right mix of Mackenzie charm and horrified sympathy for his brother.

What Hart said had been true, but he hadn’t seen it. Elizabeth had already been dead before Hart made it into the room. Hart had lied to save Cameron, and Cameron would be forever grateful. Hence, Cameron endured Hart’s house parties and entertained Hart’s guests by letting them watch him train his racers.

Ainsley’s fingers landed on his arm, pulling him back from darkness. Her cool voice flowed over him, along with her scent—vanilla and cinnamon, that was Ainsley.

“People do speak of it, I can’t deny that,” she was saying. “But I don’t think it’s true.”

“How the devil can you know?” Cameron heard the growl in his voice but couldn’t stop it.

“I’m good at reading people, is all.”

“That only means you’re too damn trusting.”

“It means it’s my opinion, whether you like it or not. So cease trying to insult me, or bully me, or whatever it is you’re doing.”

She was waking him from his half-numb state again, sharpening the world around him. “But you’re a liar and a thief, Mrs. Douglas,” he said, lightening his tone. “A confidence trickster. How can I take you at your word?”

Her hand remained on his arm, and Cameron liked that she didn’t pull away. “You’ve met me under unfortunate circumstances. I am usually most reliable.”

Cameron wanted to laugh. “You pick locks like a professional thief, search rooms, deal with blackmailers, and then ask me to believe in you.”

Ainsley shot him an exasperated look. “I will remind you that I haven’t seen you in the best of circumstances either, my lord. The last time we spoke, you unbuttoned my frock.”

Yes, he remembered. Each button revealing more of her, the warmth of her skin, the brush of breath on his fingers. Cameron reached for her again, seeking that heat once more.

He touched her collarbone, cold even through the leather of his gloves. “Balls, woman, you’re freezing.”

Cameron slid off his coat and pulled it around her shoulders before she could protest, and then he held the lapels, not wanting to let go. Sweet Mrs. Douglas, looking into his face and saying she believed in him. No one else did. Only because of Hart had the verdict of the inquest been suicide. Cameron exonerated. The case finished.

Officially. Public opinion said otherwise, but only in whispers, because Hart wouldn’t tolerate slander. Women in the demimonde and wives and widows wanting excitement sought Cameron because of the danger he represented, while respectable young ladies were swept out of his way. Cameron didn’t care. He’d never sought to marry again—once was enough of that—but he doubted that anyone would have him even if he asked.

Now Ainsley Douglas looked at him with her clear gray eyes and told him she believed his innocence. No proof needed.

He wanted to taste the mouth that said such things. He wanted to pull her to him, feel her body under his, peel back her clothes and kiss every inch of her. Ainsley wore her hair in a tight coil tonight—he imagined loosening it, letting her hair flow over his body like warm silk.

McNab’s tail lashed Cameron’s legs, and Ainsley laughed and bent to pet the dog’s head. “Lord Cameron, I need to ask you a favor.”

Didn’t she know it was dangerous to ask him for favors? Just because Cameron was innocent of murder didn’t mean he was kind.

“What?”

“I searched Mrs. Chase’s rooms, but I never found the letters. I’ve taken the opportunity to look over the rest of the house as well, but I’ve not been able to find them.”

Cameron imagined Ainsley happily picking her way past the locked doors of every room in Hart’s mansion. Assisting Isabella with the party would have given her an excuse to go almost anywhere in the house. Hart Mackenzie, the most careful and controlling man ever born, was no match for Ainsley and her hairpin.

“Of course you searched,” he said. “Are ye certain you were thorough?”

“I am always very thorough, my lord. But there is one place I haven’t looked.” She touched her tongue to her lower lip, to the tiny bruise Cameron had left there. His mark. He who didn’t always like kissing his women couldn’t stop thinking about kissing Ainsley. “The one place she’d be able to stash the lot,” Ainsley said, “where I’d likely not go, would be your chambers.”

His heart missed a beat. “You did some searching in my chambers too, minx. Angelo told me someone had pawed through the wardrobe.”

“But I wasn’t able to finish.”

No, Cam and Phyllida had come blundering in, Cameron seeking refuge from his ennui in mindless coupling.

Ainsley went on. “Would Mrs. Chase have had the chance to hide the rest somewhere in your rooms?”

Phyllida had latched on to Cameron the moment she’d arrived at the house party, and Cameron hadn’t discouraged her. “Aye, she’d have had chance. But not, I’m thinking, the chance to retrieve them.” He’d not invited Phyllida back to his chambers after last night, and she’d understood what his cool indifference meant.

“Excellent. Perhaps I could go in and look for them while you’re training tomorrow? Would you be able to keep the servants away?”

The thought of her bustling around his rooms made him sweat. “Why wait for the morning? If you want to find the letters so much, go on up and have at it.”

Ainsley’s eyes widened. “What, now?”

“Why the hell not? The guests are riveted to Hart’s pyrotechnics, and the house is empty. I’ll show you the most likely places to look.”

Ainsley pursed her lips, the soft pucker making him want to pull her close and finish what he’d started with her in the woods. He’d had to make himself walk away then or risk the count or Isabella or someone turning up looking for her, to find her in a most compromising position. No one at the croquet match seemed to have noticed her gone too long with the notorious Lord Cameron, though, probably thinking that Cameron wouldn’t have anything to do with the nobody friend of his sister-in-law. Few of them noticed Ainsley at all, the blind fools. She kept to the shadows, certainly, but Cameron could see her there in all her blazing glory.

Ainsley finally let out a long sigh and nodded. “Very well, let us search. It’s too blasted cold out here anyway.” She turned without another word and headed for the house, his coat billowing behind her.