The Lady and the Laird. Nicola Cornick
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it had all gone horribly wrong. The first Lucy had heard of the scandal was at a meeting of the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society. Everyone was talking about a mysterious letter writer who helped the young bucks of Edinburgh seduce the women of their acquaintance. Lachlan was apparently locked in a torrid affair with an opera dancer while his friends were likewise setting the town alight with their licentious behavior. One had impregnated and abandoned an innkeeper’s daughter and another had eloped with the wife of the governor of Edinburgh Castle. In all cases the ladies had been wooed into bed with false promises and erotic prose.
Lucy had felt horribly guilty and dreadfully naive that she had not questioned Lachlan’s motives before she had written the letters, nor had she foreseen what the outcome of them might be. Her need for the money had blinded her and she had thought of nothing but that. She could only hope that no one discovered that she had been the letter writer, because if they did, she would be ruined. She had promised herself that there would be no more provocative poetry. It was not the sort of behavior that a well-bred heiress should indulge in, and in the future she would have to make her money from other sources.
Lachlan was watching her. There was a decidedly calculating expression in his hazel eyes. It made Lucy suspicious.
“Anyway,” Lachlan said, smiling winningly, “let’s forget all about that and talk about me.” He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it. It made him look charmingly rakish. Lucy thought it a pity that none of her friends were there to be impressed. They all thought Lachlan was delightful, despite the fact that the words selfish and lightweight could have been invented to describe him.
“I’ve fallen in love,” Lachlan said, with the air of someone making a grand announcement.
“Again!” Lucy said. “Who is the fortunate lady this time?”
“It is Dulcibella Brodrie,” Lachlan said. “I love her and she loves me and we want to marry.”
Lucy paused. Miss Dulcibella Brodrie would not have been her first choice as a sister-in-law. Dulcibella was beautiful, but she was also utterly helpless in a completely irritating manner. No doubt that was what had attracted Lachlan to her, but since he was fairly helpless himself, the combination of the two of them would be a recipe for disaster.
“Dulcibella is...very sweet natured,” Lucy said carefully. She prided herself on being polite and she was glad she could find something positive to say. Dulcibella might be a little spoiled and self-centered, and she was drawn to a mirror as a bee was drawn to clover, but she did have her good qualities if one looked hard enough.
Lachlan’s open face suddenly looked as tragic as a rejected spaniel’s. “She’s not free, though,” he said. “She is already contracted to marry Robert Methven. The settlements are all drawn up.”
Robert Methven.
The papers slipped from Lucy’s hand again. She made a grab for them, then straightened up slowly. “Are you sure?” she said. She could feel an unnerving flutter in the pit of her stomach. Her fingers trembled. Her cheeks felt hot. She smoothed the paper automatically.
Fortunately for her, Lachlan was the most unobservant of men and was far too concerned with his own feelings to notice hers. “Of course I’m sure,” he said. “It’s a disaster, Lucy. I love Dulcibella. I was going to make her an offer myself. I just hadn’t got around to it, and now Methven has got in first.”
“Lord Brodrie probably wants more for his only child than a younger son,” Lucy said. She kept her gaze averted from Lachlan’s while she steadied herself, while she drew breath.
“But I’m the younger son of a duke!” Lachlan protested.
“And Lord Methven is a marquis,” Lucy said. “He is a better catch.” Her voice was quite steady now even if her pulse still tripped and her body felt heated and disturbed.
Robert Methven was getting married.
She felt light-headed and shocked, and she had no notion why. It was not as though she knew Lord Methven well. Shortly after the night eight years ago when they had met on the terrace at Forres, he had suffered a terrible rift with his family and had left Scotland. He had gone to Canada and was rumored to have made a fortune trading in timber. It had been shortly before Alice had died and Lucy had not paid much attention. She remembered very little from that time other than the smothering sense of grief and the empty ache of loss.
Then Robert Methven’s grandfather had died and he had inherited the title and returned to Scotland. Lucy had seen him a few times recently at the winter assemblies in Edinburgh, but the easy companionship she had found with him that night at Forres had vanished. They had exchanged no more than a few words on the most trivial of topics.
Lucy found Robert Methven physically intimidating, as well. The men in her family were all tall and lean, but Lord Methven was powerfully built as well as tall. His body was hard-muscled, the line of his jaw was hard and the expression in his sapphire-blue eyes was hard. He was overwhelmingly male. That masculinity was so blatant that it was like a slap in the face. Lucy had known nothing like it.
He had changed in other ways too. He was somber and the light had gone from his eyes. All the power and authority Lucy had sensed in him that night was still there, but it felt stronger and darker. Tragedy had a way of draining the light from people. Lucy knew that. She wondered what had happened to Methven to change him.
They had nothing in common now. And yet...Lucy’s fingers clenched. She felt the smooth paper crumple beneath her touch. There was something about Robert Methven. Her awareness of him was acute and uncomfortable. She did not want to think about it because doing so made her feel hot and breathless and prickly all over. It was odd, very odd.
She sat down at her desk, smoothing her papers with fingers that were shaking a little. She was aware of an unfamiliar emotion, a curious sensation in the pit of her stomach, a sensation that felt like jealousy.
I am not jealous, Lucy thought crossly. I cannot be jealous. I am never jealous of anything or anybody. Jealousy is neither appropriate nor ladylike.
But she was. She was jealous of Dulcibella.
Lucy pressed her fingers to her temples. It made no sense. She could not be jealous of Dulcibella. Dulcibella had nothing she wanted. Lucy did not want to marry, and even if she did, Lord Methven in no way constituted her idea of a perfect husband. He was too intimidating and far too much of a man. He was just too much of everything.
“What am I to do, Lucy?” Lachlan asked, reclaiming her attention, holding up both his hands in a gesture of appeal. “Dulcibella would not dare go against her father’s wishes. She is far too delicate to oppose him.”
Delicate was not the word that Lucy would have chosen. Dulcibella was feeble. She had no steel in her backbone. In fact, Lucy had sometimes wondered if Dulcibella had a backbone at all.
“There’s nothing you can do,” she said briskly. “I am sorry, Lachlan.” But you will be in love with another lady in the blink of an eye.
“I need you to write one of your letters,” Lachlan said, sitting forward, suddenly urgent. “I need you to help me persuade her. Please, Lucy.”
“Oh no,” Lucy said. “No and no and no again. Have you been listening to a word I said, Lachlan?”
“I’m sorry about last time.” Lachlan did at least have the grace to look a little shamefaced.
“I don’t expect you are,” Lucy said.
Lachlan shrugged, admitting the lie. “All right. But my intentions are honorable this time, Lucy. I love Dulcibella and I know you would want us to be happy. I want to marry her, Lucy. Please...” He let his words trail away as though he were brokenhearted. Most artistic, Lucy thought.
“No,” she said again. “Apart from anything else, I hardly think that Dulcibella would be persuaded by that sort of letter. She is a very sheltered lady.”
“Well,” Lachlan said, grinning, “you may need to tone it down just a little.”