They were deep, knotted gashes, old wounds that had long since closed. Good heavens, Ainsley hadn’t seen that. She couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped her lips.
Phyllida raised her head. “Darling, did you hear something?”
“No.” Cameron had a deep voice, the one word gravelly.
“I’m certain I heard a noise. Would you be a love and check that window?”
Ainsley froze.
“Damn the window. It’s probably one of the dogs.”
“Darling, please.” Her pouting tone was done to perfection. Cameron growled something, and then Ainsley heard his heavy tread.
Her heart pounded. There were two windows in the bedchamber, one on either side of his bed. The odds were two-to-one that Lord Cameron would go to the other window. Even bet, Ainsley’s youngest brother, Steven, would say. Either Cameron would jerk back the curtain and reveal Ainsley sitting there, or he would not.
Steven didn’t like even bets. Not enough variables to be interesting, he insisted. That was because Steven wasn’t the one huddled on a window seat waiting to be revealed to Lord Cameron and the woman who was blackmailing the Queen of England.
Lord Cameron’s broad brown hands grasped the edges of the drapes in front of Ainsley and parted them a few inches.
Ainsley gazed up at Cameron, meeting his topaz gaze for the first time in six years. He looked at her fully, like a lion on a veldt eyeing a gazelle, and the gazelle in her wanted to run, run, run. The defiant tomboy from Miss Pringle’s Academy, however, now a lofty lady-in-waiting, stared boldly back at him.
Silence stretched. Cameron’s large body blocked her from the room behind him, but he could so easily turn and reveal her. Cameron owed her nothing. He must know good and well that she was hiding in his bedchamber because of another intrigue. He could betray Ainsley, hand her to Phyllida, and think it served her right.
Behind Cameron, Phyllida said, “What is it, darling? I saw you jump.”
“Nothing,” Cameron said. “A mouse.”
“I can’t bear mice. Do kill it, Cam.”
Cameron let his gaze tangle with Ainsley’s while she struggled to breathe in her too-tight lacings.
“I’ll let it live,” he said. “For now.” Cameron jerked the curtains closed, shutting Ainsley back into her glass and velvet tent. “We should go down.”
“Why? We’ve just arrived.”
“I saw too many people coming back into the house, including your husband. We’ll go down separately. I don’t want to embarrass Beth and Isabella.”
“Oh, very well.”
Phyllida didn’t seem much put out, but then, she likely assumed she could hole up with her Mackenzie lord anytime she pleased to enjoy his touch.
For one moment, Ainsley experienced deep, bone- wrenching envy.
The two fell silent, no doubt restoring clothing, and then Phyllida said, “I’ll speak with you later, darling.”
Ainsley heard the door open, more muffled conversation, and then the door closed, and all was silent. She waited a few more heart-pounding minutes to make certain they’d gone, before she flung back the draperies and scrambled down from the window seat.
She was across the room and reaching for the door handle when she heard a throat clear behind her.
Slowly, Ainsley turned around. Lord Cameron Mackenzie stood in the middle of the room in shirtsleeves and kilt, his golden gaze once more pinning her in place. He held up a key in his broad fingers.
“So tell me, Mrs. Douglas,” he said, his gravelly voice flowing over her. “What the devil are you doing in my bedchamber—this time?”
Chapter 2
SIx YEARS AGO
Well, this is damned pleasant.
Six years ago, almost to the day, Cameron Mackenzie had stood in the doorway of this very bedchamber and spied a beautiful stranger in the act of closing the drawer of his bedside table.
The lady had worn blue—a shimmering, deep blue gown that bared her shoulders, cupped her waist, and flared back over a modest bustle. Pink roses drooped through her hair and down the gown’s train. She’d removed her slippers—the better for stealth—revealing slender feet in white silk stockings.
She hadn’t heard him. Cameron leaned on the door frame, enjoying watching her so blithely going through his bedside table.
Drunk and bored, Cameron had left Hart’s interminable house party downstairs, unable to take another minute of it. Now warmth stirred through his ennui. He couldn’t remember who the young woman was—he knew he’d been introduced to her, but Hart’s guests had long since blurred into one dull mass of humanity.
This lady now separated from that mass, becoming more real to him by the second.
Cameron softly crossed the room, the numbness in which he existed when not with his horses or Daniel lifting away. He stepped behind the blue-clad lady and clasped her satiny waist.
It was like catching a kitten in his hands—a startled cry, a rapid heartbeat, breath coming fast. She looked back and up at him and tangled his heart in a pair of wide gray eyes.
“My lord. I was . . . um . . . I was just . . .”
“Looking for something,” he supplied. The roses in her hair were real, the scent of them deepened by her own warmth. A plain silver chain and locket adorned her neck.
“Pencil and paper,” she finished.
She was a bad liar. But she was soft and smelled good, and Cameron was drunk enough not to care that she lied. “So you could write me a letter?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Tell me what this letter would say.”
“I’m not certain.”
Her stammer was endearing. That she wanted a liaison was perfectly obvious. Cameron tightened his hand on her waist and pulled her back ever so gently against him. Her small bustle pressed his groin, the cage keeping him from what he wanted to feel.
When she looked up at him again, something snapped inside him. The scent of her mingling with roses, the feel of her in the curve of his arm, the tickle of her fair hair against his chin awoke emotions he’d thought long dead.
He needed this woman, wanted her. He could drown in her, make her sigh in pleasure, enjoy oblivion with her for a little while.
Cameron touched an openmouthed kiss to her shoulder, tasting her skin. Salt, sweet, a little bit of spice. Not enough—he wanted more.
Cameron didn’t often kiss women on the lips. Kissing led to expectations, to hopes for romance, and Cameron did not want romance with his ladies.
But he wanted to know what she tasted like, this young woman who pretended such innocence. A name swam to him—Mrs. . . . Douglas? Cameron vaguely remembered a husband standing next to her downstairs, a man clearly too old for her. She must have married him for convenience. The man probably hadn’t touched her in years.