A Question for Harry Read online

  “Lady Fiona?”

  Fiona looked up at Lord Temple again. “My apologies, Lord Temple, I’m afraid you have taken me quite off guard. But, to answer your question, yes, I think I would enjoy a ride.” Now that the worst had happened and she had managed to come upon him, the last thing she needed was to let Aylesbury think she was pining for him or without options. “Carriage or horse?”

  “How about bicycle?”

  Fiona laughed at the thought. “I fear I cannot imagine you riding a bicycle, Lord Temple. It doesn’t suit a military man, does it?”

  A pink gown swished by the corner of her eye and Fiona caught sight of Aylesbury close by. “Is it true, Miss Langston? Have you heard from her?” he was asking his partner. “Do you know where she is?”

  She? Fiona couldn’t help but wonder and cursed her own curiosity. No! There was nothing – nothing! – about the Marquis of Aylesbury that should interest her any longer. She had put him behind her. She was ready to move on to a brighter future … one where what Aylesbury did and whom he did them with should not interest her.

  “Ah but I am no longer in the military,” Temple was saying.

  “Very well,” she said, though her voice was distracted and lacking the enthusiasm it had carried before. “Bicycles it is then, though sadly I don’t have one.”

  “I shall have a pair brought around for us,” Temple said. “Shall we say tomorrow then?”

  All of a sudden, a burly uniformed man with an impressive silver walrus mustache pushed through the crush of dancers, ignoring protests along the way. He caught Aylesbury’s partner by the arm and pulled them to a halt. Shoving the girl behind him, the older man puffed up like an outraged rooster. “I thought I told you to leave my daughter be, Aylesbury.”

  Aylesbury said something more in a low tone to which the old man bellowed out. “I told you before, my daughter doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “Lady Fiona?”

  Fiona cast a preoccupied glance at Temple. “I’m sorry. Yes, tomorrow will be fine.”

  Aylesbury’s voice rose then. “I just want to know where she is!” He grabbed the woman’s arm again. “I just want to know she is well, Miss Langston,” he was saying. “Surely you can understand that? I love her.”

  Fiona felt the blood drain from her face at his words. He loved her? Who was she?

  “I said bugger off, Aylesbury!”

  Temple frowned at the disturbance. “That’s hardly language to be used when ladies are present.”

  “I don’t know!” Miss Langston cried out.

  “You’re lying, Miss Langston.” Despite herself, Fiona couldn’t help but agree with Aylesbury’s accusation. Whoever Aylesbury was looking for, Miss Langston clearly knew something about it.

  “Now see here!” Miss Langston’s father blustered again at Aylesbury accusation, slapping a meaty palm against Aylesbury’s chest and shoving him away.

  Having been around physical confrontations between grown men for most of her life, Fiona would have expected any man to fall back or at least stumble under the force of the heavier man but to her surprise, Aylesbury held steady. And instead of retreating, stepped up again until he was face to face with the other man, his fists curling into the older man’s lapels.

  “I will have the truth from your daughter, Langston.”

  “Fiona.” Temple eased her away but Fiona couldn’t move. Nor did anyone else on the dance floor as they watched the potential drama unfold, unable to look away from any scandalous moment that could serve to invigorate what might be a stale evening for some.

  “Unhand me!” Langston commanded hoarsely and put both hands to Aylesbury’s chest, pushing him again. This time, Aylesbury did stumble a step backwards giving Langston room enough to charge Aylesbury like an enraged bull.

  All around them, ladies gasped and squealed, stepping back in horror. One tripped over another and fell to the floor amidst calls of surprise and puddles of lace and taffeta. “I say!” Temple called out, stepping into the fray to separate the two combatants. “Enough of this!”

  He grabbed the arm of the older man and held him back, motioning for the other male bystanders to assist him.

  “What is going on here?” their hostess, Lady Onslow, cried out as she rushed through the crowd. “Fisticuffs? My lords! How could you?”

  “You’ve gone mad, Aylesbury!” the older man spat, struggling against Temple’s hold. “I hope you never see her again.”

  Aylesbury leapt forward, rage evident in his every movement but whatever attack he had in mind was cut short by the intervention of two other bystanders. He fought their hold only briefly before raising his hands in surrender. “This is not over, Langston.”

  “The hell it isn’t!”

  Lady Onslow ran to his side, tugging on his arm. “My lord, are you quite all right?”

  He nodded shortly. “My apologies, Lady Onslow.”

  With a stiff bow, he turned and marched off the dance floor, the crowd that had been gathering around the spectacle parting like the Red Sea before him. He glanced at Fiona as he passed, his eyes filled not with the rage she expected but with sorrow and turbulence.

  With a nod, he continued on his way, a scandalized murmur rising in his wake.

  However she had dreaded, anticipated, and pictured meeting him again, Fiona had never imagined him like that. “That was Lord Aylesbury, wasn’t it, Lady Fiona? Do you know him well?” Temple asked, returning to her side.

  Fiona put a hand to her wildly beating heart and let loose a shaky breath as she shook her head.

  No, that violent, brooding man was not the Harry Brudenall she knew at all.

  Chapter Four

  From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh – Jan 1893

  He’s back! I could scarcely believe it when I went down to dinner tonight! I thought to never meet him again after his oh-so brief visit to Edinburgh last summer. But I could not forget him in the interim … what lass could? He is yet the same as before: jovial, dashing, and gay.

  It is mesmerizing to know a man so ever buoyant. Abby labels him blithe, which is true enough, though she calls him such in so teasing a manner and he accepts it with patent pride that makes me feel as if I am missing some jest. Still, his humor is far more attractive than any other attribute I have known in a gentleman.

  That I am now certain he has been focusing his expert flirtation in my direction is also in his favor …

  The Glenrothes Townhouse

  117 Eaton Square

  Belgravia, London, England

  Late that night

  Fiona flipped through the pages of her diary, looking back over the entries surrounding the time when she had originally met Harry Brudenall, the Marquis of Aylesbury, almost three years before and again when he had returned to Edinburgh the following winter.

  Every page told the embarrassing truth of it. She had been head over heels from the moment she had met him.

  Her gushing prose went on for pages about how her heart had skipped giddily at his presence, galloped at his slightest acknowledgement of her presence and sprinted madly at his smile over the short time she had known him.

  Then it seemed her heart had not beaten at all in the last two years. That is until she had seen him again tonight. Now it was careening wildly, alive once more.

  Having just seen his face again.

  But it wasn’t the face Fiona remembered. Not the one that continued to linger with unwelcome redundancy in her dreams.

  There had never been another man that she’d met whom she had considered as affable as the marquis. Throughout the entirety of their acquaintance, humor had constantly lit Aylesbury’s features, his blue eyes had creased at the corners in a perpetual smile and always danced with mischievous light. Tonight those eyes had been flat with sorrow, a furrow embedded between his brows.

  What had happened in the two years since they last met?

  Who was the “she” he was looking for?

  A wife? A lover?

&nb
sp; The woman he loved.

  Fiona’s heart twisted painfully at the thought. A wounded heart, regrettably filled with feeling once again. Not with the hint of excitement that had sent her blood racing before. Not with the first blush of attraction. Not even with the pinch of unrequited love but with the sting of heartbreak she had ruthlessly buried years before.

  She didn’t want to be alone with it any longer. Donovan, Lord Ramsay might not make her blood sing, her heart skip, or her senses soar but he … he …

  Fiona’s thoughts stumbled to a halt as no acceptable ‘buts’ rushed to her mental rescue. It did not matter. Ramsay had asked and Fiona was ready to marry, to have a family even without that elusive something that seemed so readily obtainable to her brothers.

  She didn’t need someone like Harrison Brudenall. Indeed, after what happened between them, she hadn’t intended to acknowledge him if and when they ever met again.

  As far as that went, Fiona thought she had done well in maintaining her dignity when coming face to face with him again. She hadn’t fallen at his feet or stared at him with moony-eyed adoration. No vapors or embarrassing, inelegant declarations. If maintaining her composure had prompted a measure of rudeness … It was a price she was willing to pay.

  A ping sounded at her window and then another, drawing Fiona’s attention away from her diary. Frowning, she watched as a pebble arched through the half-open casement and bounced to a halt at the foot of the bed. Bewildered, she went to the window, peering through the glass to look out on the open park bordered on the north and south sides by the townhomes of Eaton Square before she threw the sash up the rest of the way and ducked her head out for a better look only to be bulleted in the forehead by another geologic projectile.

  “Ouch!” she griped, rubbing her forehead. “What the bloody–?”

  “Fiona!” a cheerful voice sounded. Fiona searched and discovered a tall, slender male form outlined in the darkness. “There you are!”

  “Lord Ramsay!” she exclaimed, truly surprised to see her would-be fiancé hovering behind the hedges in front of her brother’s London townhouse after she had departed from him weeks before in Edinburgh. “What are you doing here?”

  At my window? In the middle of the night?

  “I’ve come to see you, my darling!” he called. “Might I come up?”

  Fiona hesitated indecisively, trailing the lace curtains between her fingers. Come up? She dashed a sidelong glance around her room. Gowns and undergarments were strewn about willy-nilly, the counterpane on her bed turned back and rumpled … the hairbrush on her vanity. Come up? To her room? The idea sounded disconcertedly intimate. “Nooo …” she called back slowly, then decided impulsively, “but I will come down.”

  Closing the front door as quietly as she could, Fiona hugged her hastily donned redingote around her and dashed nimbly across the cobbled street and walk and into the grassy green of the Eaton Square Gardens.

  “Lord Ramsay?” Fiona whispered into the night as she looked about for his location. The park was flat and only sparsely dotted with trees, yet she couldn’t readily see him.

  “Lord Ramsay? Where are you?” Fiona cried out shortly when a large hand caught her upper arm and pulled her unceremoniously behind one of the larger oaks.

  Rich male laughter rang out as a strong arm slipped about her waist. “I’ve got you!” Ramsay chuckled and bent his head to nuzzle Fiona’s neck. “Ah, darling, how I’ve missed you! Have you missed me as well?”

  Fiona stiffened. In surprise only, she told herself sternly before turning out of her beau’s embrace. “Of course, but what are you doing here, Lord Ramsay?”

  “That supercilious butler of your brother’s would not allow me entry when I tried to call on you earlier,” he said. “The old codger kept insisting you weren’t at home.”

  “We weren’t at home,” she told him, not that Hobbes would have admitted him in any case.

  Hobbes, who had been Eve’s butler before she married Francis, often refused to admit anyone into their Edinburgh home whom he didn’t approve of. Unfortunately, very few people met his standards, leaving many high-ranking nobles cooling their heels at the door. Since Francis had expressed his dislike of Lord Ramsay, it wasn’t surprising that Hobbes would put him off as well. And Hobbes was far less accommodating than her brother.

  Still that hadn’t been what she meant, so Fiona rephrased her question. “No, not the park. What are you doing here? In London?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to London?” he countered with a petulant pout marring his otherwise handsome features. “I had to find it out from one of your housemaids instead of from your own lips.”

  “I sent you a note,” Fiona protested, only to realize in that moment that if her brothers wanted to separate her from an unwanted suitor that something as simple as a letter was not going to stop him from making it so.

  Rather than give Lord Ramsay a grisly list of the details, Fiona only said then what she had relayed in her apparently confiscated letter. “Francis is insisting that I take in the Season before I settle down so as to assure himself that I am not being rash in accepting your proposal.”

  “Rash?” Ramsay repeated. “Why would he think it rash to accept an honorable offer? It is because he doesn’t like me, isn’t it?”

  Her head actually began to nod of its own accord before Fiona stifled the urge and instead replied mildly. “He doesn’t know you, my lord. Perhaps it is a good thing that you’re here. If you stay as well, you can get to know him, and indeed all my brothers. Then perhaps they will see reason.”

  “You’re the only reasonable one out of the lot,” Ramsay replied, making a claim that no other ever had made regarding her standing in the MacKintosh family. A claim that only substantiated her brother’s assertion that her decision to wed had been an injudicious one. Donovan Ramsay, apparently, truly did not know her at all.

  “Having the opportunity to become better acquainted with them before we wed should not be so frowned upon, my lord,” she told him. “It will give us a chance to know each other better as well. Then by the time the Season is done, my brothers will see just how set I am on accepting your suit. Aye, this is just the thing really.”

  “Or perhaps a better demonstration of your resolve would be to simply run away with me now,” he countered. “How many opportunities like this might present themselves? Here we are alone, unchaperoned in the dead of night. No one is about to stop us. What say you, darling? Shall we?”

  “Run away?” Fiona echoed, stunned. “You mean elope?” She could not help that the word emerged with conspicuous distaste. She might be reckless, liberal, and fairly indecorous at times, but she wasn’t one to disgrace her family by eloping and birthing scandalous blather about what impetus she might have to embark on such an appalling flight. The MacKintoshs had been generating fodder for the gossip mills for years, and while they might tend to wed with unseemly haste in general, it was a ritual completed with the knowledge and support of the family at large and always validated by true, if somewhat irrepressible, love.

  Ramsay, however, did not seem to notice her aversion to the idea, but instead forged ahead enthusiastically, “Yes, darling! Let us run away and be wed straight away. Once it is done, your family will come around. They will see us together and so in love that they will see that they were wrong to try to separate us.”

  “They are not trying to separate us,” Fiona lied blithely. No, they were insisting on it. “As I said, they are merely requesting upon a period of reflection. When they see that we are indeed steadfast in our determination to wed, they will come around.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “But they will,” she said with unwavering conviction. “They always have. I cannot see a single reason that they would truly deny me in the end. I just need to play along with this. When they see that there is not another whom I wish to wed, they will accept you.”

  But for the first time, doubt reared its ugly head and a fro
wn creased her brow. Despite the unprecedented denial of her wishes, it had taken only a matter of hours afterward for her temper to cool and to see Francis’ “compromise” for what it really was. A test. A test of her resolve. She might be compelled to play along, but in the end, she would still have what she wanted.

  A life of her own. A husband. Ramsay.

  Fiona flicked a glance up and down Lord Ramsay’s lanky height. He was everything she had been looking for in a husband, but was he unique? Wouldn’t another do just as well? Lord Temple, perhaps?

  Shaking her head, she pushed the traitorous thought away. No, she had chosen Ramsay for precisely the person he was and everything he would be in a husband.

  To think otherwise would be to admit she had been impulsive.

  Fiona sighed.

  “Is there another?”

  “Hmm? What?” Fiona asked in confusion.

  “You said that your family would see that there isn’t another you wish to wed,” Ramsay said. “Are you encouraging other gentlemen? Allowing them court you?”

  There was something chilling in his tone, something that hinted at possessiveness that set Fiona’s teeth on edge. “It is not yet your business what I encourage or allow, Donovan Ramsay,” Fiona scolded, beginning as she meant to go on. “But I will say this, I am allowing my brother his wishes in this matter to prove to him that I know my own mind. You are my choice. If you wish to remain so, I suggest that you, too, allow him this time to be as assured as I.”

  “Then you will not elope with me?”

  “No, Lord Ramsay, I am not prepared to so blatantly disregard my family nor will I run away like some shameless hussy,” Fiona told him firmly. “What I am prepared to do is wait them out.”

  Ramsay tensed as if preparing for battle before visibly relaxing. “Then I suppose I have no choice but to wait with you.”