He opened the door, shielding Ainsley from the footman’s view, then closed it, and was gone, leaving Ainsley alone with her tears.
At five minutes before nine the next morning, Ainsley was back in the drawing room, alone. She was still alone at five minutes past, still alone at half past. The clock on the mantel ticked ponderously, heavy chimes marking the quarter hours.
Cameron didn’t come.
When the clock reached five minutes before the next hour, a maid entered. She approached Ainsley, curtseyed, held out a folded piece of paper, and said, “For you, ma’am.”
Without betraying any interest in the note, the clock, or Ainsley, the maid curtseyed again and glided out of the room.
Ainsley unfolded the thick paper to find a few words written in a bold hand.
Daniel never stays where I tell him to stay. I’m off to Glasgow to extract him from a scrape. You win, mouse. On the train from Doncaster, after the last St. Leger race. The conductor will know how to find me. À bientôt.
Ainsley folded the creamy paper, pressed her lips to it, and tucked it into her bosom.
When she retreated to her room that night, once the queen had dismissed her for the evening, Ainsley sat down and wrote a long letter. She posted it off to Lady Eleanor Ramsay in the morning, directing it to Eleanor’s father’s tumbledown house near Aberdeen. Ainsley enclosed enough money for a railway ticket from Aberdeen to Edinburgh and told Eleanor quite sternly that she was to use it.
Ainsley Douglas and Lady Eleanor Ramsay faced each other over a corner table in the tea shop at the main station in Edinburgh a few days later, the shop a bit empty this early. A train stood ready outside, its steam hissing, the black bulk of its engine like a mighty ship.
Ainsley had not seen Eleanor in a while, though the two wrote regularly. Their mothers had been close friends, both at one time waiting on the queen. The queen had wanted Eleanor, higher born than Ainsley, to enter her household as well, but Lord Ramsay had tearfully begged for his daughter to stay home, and Eleanor couldn’t refuse him. Eleanor’s father was by no means feeble, but Ainsley agreed that the man would be entirely lost without Eleanor. That fact might explain why Eleanor had entertained no more offers of marriage after she’d famously jilted Hart Mackenzie, Duke of Kilmorgan, years before.
Eleanor had never revealed the reason she’d broken her engagement with Hart, though Ainsley, knowing Hart Mackenzie even the little she did, had some inkling. Hart had been enraged at the jilting and had a little while later married an English marquis’s daughter. The wispy Sarah Graham had died trying to bringing Hart’s son into the world, the child dying as well. Hart never spoke of Sarah, nor had he ever made any indication he would pursue marriage again. Eleanor had remained quietly at home and that had been that.
“Thank you for making the journey, El,” Ainsley said warmly.
Eleanor heaped sugar into her tea, stirred, then put her spoon backward into her mouth and licked it clean.
“Not at all, my dearest Ainsley. A summons to Edinburgh to stuff myself with cakes is quite the most exciting thing that’s happened in a twelvemonth. The entire household walked me to the station—cook, maid, the gardener. Even dear father left his books to escort us, though he had to stop along the way and collect every botanical specimen he saw. They put me on the train and waved me off, all cheering like mad and fluttering handkerchiefs. I felt like a princess.”
Eleanor paused to sip her tea, and Ainsley laughed, feeling better already.
In the last ten years, Eleanor’s father, Earl Ramsay, whose finances had always been shaky, had slowly slipped into poverty. Lord Ramsay wrote books on science and philosophy, and Eleanor assisted him. But though the books were highly praised by scholars, they brought in no money.
None of this had changed Eleanor’s frank disposition or her sense of humor. Her hair was gold with a touch of red, elegant under her out-of-date hat, and her eyes were delphinium blue. She regarded Ainsley with keen intelligence while she piled cake on her plate with a long-fingered hand.
“Now, then,” Eleanor said. “Your letter said that you wanted my advice about one of the maddening Mackenzie males. But Ainsley, dearest, you neglected to tell me which Mackenzie. Never say it’s Daniel.” She spoke lightly, but her eyes tightened.
Ainsley felt sudden remorse. “Oh, Eleanor, I’m so sorry. I assumed you’d naturally conclude who I meant. I’d never be so callous as to ask you for advice about Hart.”
Eleanor let out her breath. “Well, that is a relief. I was preparing myself to be generous and tell you that I wished you every happiness, but truly, Ainsley, I think I’d rather have clawed your eyes out.”
“I am sorry, El,” Ainsley said. “I should have made myself clear. I didn’t realize you still cared for him.”
“You never forget the love of your life, Ainsley Douglas, no matter what he did to anger you, and no matter how much time has passed.” Eleanor took another sip of tea, making her voice light. “Especially not when he’s paraded through every newspaper and magazine you set eyes on. But we are not here to talk about me; you invited me all this way to talk about you. The remaining unmatched Mackenzie male is Cameron, so I conclude that it is he. Now, tell me everything.”
Ainsley did, leaning forward and relating the entire tale in a low voice. Eleanor listened while she ate seedcake, avidly interested. Ainsley ended with Cameron’s sudden visit to Balmoral, and her promise to give him her answer after the races at Doncaster.
She finished, and Eleanor sipped tea in thoughtful silence. Ainsley picked up her now-cold tea and drank, not noticing its chill.
Finally, Eleanor set down her cup and fixed Ainsley with a sharp look. “The fact that we are discussing Cameron’s proposition at all means that you didn’t simply slap him in high dudgeon and storm away. So, my dear, the question is, have you asked me here to persuade you into it or out of it?”
“I don’t know.” Ainsley pressed her hands to her face. “Eleanor, I can’t possibly go off with him, but oh, if I don’t . . . He’ll move on to the next woman in the wings, won’t he? I’m under no illusion that he wants to marry me. He said once that he even hated the sound of the word marriage . I understand, I suppose. I didn’t know his wife, but she sounds ghastly.”
“She was more than ghastly, my dear,” Eleanor said around her next sip of tea. “Lady Elizabeth used to beat him.”
Chapter 18
Ainsley’s mouth dropped open. “She beat him?”
“With a poker mostly.” Eleanor’s voice was quiet but held vast rage. “Cameron is a large and strong man, of course, so he’d stop her, but usually he’d take the brunt on himself because he was keeping her away from Daniel. Or, Elizabeth would wait until Cameron was drunk and asleep, and then she’d go at him. She slipped him laudanum once or twice, Hart told me. Cameron had to begin ensuring he didn’t fall asleep anywhere near her.”
Which explained why Phyllida Chase had said that Cameron never took a woman to his bed. He had her everywhere else, yes, but not in a bed. That must have been a habit he’d cultivated, to avoid the chance that the woman he fell asleep with would wake him with a poker across his back. The scars on his thighs suddenly took on new and horrible meaning.
Ainsley realized she was clenching the handle of her teacup too tightly for fragile porcelain. She set it down. “Dear heavens.”
Eleanor shook her head. “Elizabeth was a cruel and crazed woman, and she resented Cameron for trapping her in marriage. She was a few years older than Cameron, and according to Hart, Cam fell wildly in love with her. I imagine that Cameron being the son of one of the richest men in England, standing to inherit the title if anything happened to Hart, was too tempting for Elizabeth to resist. Her parents did nothing to warn Cameron about her, being happy to be rid of the girl. Elizabeth had thought she’d simply do what she pleased, you see, after she married, with whatever man she pleased, and she did at first. When Cameron insisted that Elizabeth be faithful to him, she grew uncontrollable. It was an unfortunate match from the beginning.”