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.”
Ainsley thought about the Cameron she knew—single- minded, stubborn, knowing what he wanted and letting nothing stand in his way. He could laugh, but there was always a bitter tinge to his laughter. Cameron had a reputation for taking up with women here, there, and everywhere, and he’d never fixed on one woman after his wife’s death.
Ainsley had assumed he played the rakehell from boredom, but Eleanor’s explanation told her a different tale. After a wife so awful to him, who’d destroyed whatever trust he had, Cameron would not have rushed eagerly back to the altar. This was Cameron’s view of women then: Grasping and selfish like Phyllida Chase, or cruel and tormenting like Lady Elizabeth Cavendish.
“Poor Cameron,” Ainsley said.
Eleanor smiled as she lifted her teacup. “Do be careful, Ainsley. They entice you, these Mackenzies, first with their wickedness and then with all that is heartbreaking.”
“Why did Cameron not divorce her?” Ainsley asked. “He surely had grounds. Or at least tuck her into a remote house somewhere, away from him and Daniel?”
“Precisely because of Daniel.” Eleanor refilled their cups then dropped five lumps of sugar into her freshened tea. “Elizabeth became with child very soon after they married, which infuriated her. She never wanted to be a mother. She would fly into rages, threaten to harm herself or to try to rid herself of the baby. Cameron didn’t want to let her out of his sight—he was protecting Daniel from her even then. Elizabeth tried to tell Cameron—repeatedly—that Daniel wasn’t his son, claiming any number of men to be his father. The trouble was, you see, any one of them could have been. Elizabeth was most generous with her body.”
Ainsley remembered the look on Cameron’s face when he’d found the letter from his wife’s lover in the hidden drawer. The anger, the disgust, the old pain that hadn’t quite dispersed. He’d kissed Ainsley right after that with a desperation, a need to forget.
“I think I rather hate her,” Ainsley said.
“I’m not much fond of her myself,” Eleanor said decidedly. “Cameron has a big heart, and it didn’t deserve to be broken by someone like Elizabeth.” She looked thoughtful. “Though I’ve come to believe that her need to rush about with other men was a kind of illness. Father read a piece from a scientific journal to me that explained that some people become obsessed with coupling just as others have a mania for gambling or alcohol. They can’t stop themselves. They must lie with someone and experience that . . . ecstasy, let’s call it, or they go a little mad. Father and I decided that perhaps Elizabeth must have been one of those people.”