The Lady Most Willing Read online

  The blowing snow was like a slap to her face, like a scream turned into material fact. Walking away from the warmth of the kitchen and into the howling wind felt like a punishment, but she didn’t mind.

  She couldn’t bear to sleep in the room with her sister that night. Nor to be down the corridor from a man who actually thought—howsoever briefly—that she was worth making his countess. Who had kissed her like . . . like that. And then regarded her with no expression at all in his eyes, as if she were no more than a strange, distasteful woman, who happened to be seated beside him at supper.

  She bent her head down and kept her hand tight on the cord. Luckily, the wind was scouring the courtyard and driving the snow around the other side, so drifts of snow hadn’t been able to settle the way they would when the wind died down. A wooden wall loomed out of the moving wall of snow before her so suddenly that she bumped into the door.

  A second later she was tumbling into the warm, dim stable. “Who’s there?” came a cracked voice. And then, “Ye’re a woman!”

  She nodded, throwing back the hood on her cape and shaking herself to remove some of the snow. “Mr. Garvie said you could return to the castle for the night if you wished. I shall remain just long enough to look for my reticule in the carriage, and then I’ll follow you.”

  “I ain’t leaving any woman alone with my horses,” the old man cried.

  “Away wit’ ye!” she barked, her voice emerging in a perfect Scottish burr.

  She reached out and took the lantern from his hand. “Get off with ye, then,” she commanded, with a jerk of her head.

  “What are ye doing here?” he demanded. “This ain’t no place for ladies. You won’t have a bit of yer reputation left.”

  That did it. “I’m not a lady,” she shrieked. “I’m Fiona Chisholm.” She saw his eyes widen and felt a primitive surge of pleasure at the fact that he recognized her by name. “I’ve got no reputation, and I’ll do whatever in the bloody hell I choose to do. I might stay here all night. You have got no say in it!”

  “Ye’re off yer onion,” the man grumbled, moving backward. “There’s no call to scream at me like a banshee. Ye be careful with that lamp, you hear? I don’t want to find my stable on fire.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  The moment the door closed behind him, Fiona heaved a sob. But she refused to let herself be dragged into that morass of self-pity. Never again. Instead, she walked down the center aisle of the tiny stable.

  The four horses that had drawn the Duke of Bretton’s carriage put their heads over their stalls’ doors and nickered at her when she began offering apples. They were beautiful, with soft noses and shining eyes.

  After the four of them came a pretty mare, and finally a gelding who took his apple carefully from her flattened hand, his lips curling as if with disdain.

  “They should call you Byron,” she told him, stroking the star on his forehead. His black ears flicked back and forth, and then, as if in sympathy, he rested his chin on her shoulder. His apple-breath was sweet.

  “You just want another apple,” Fiona said, choking back tears. She gave him one and realized she’d come to the end of the horse stalls.

  The Duke of Bretton’s carriage had been pulled in through wide doors at the opposite end of the stable. It was so large that the shining black end of the vehicle loomed in the dusky light. She walked around, opened the door, and listlessly held up the lamp, but no reticule was visible.

  Another row of stalls, mostly empty, lay opposite those she had just visited. The last, back where she had started, contained an ancient pony. The pony lumbered to her feet as Fiona approached, her belly almost as round as she was long.

  A tear slid down Fiona’s cheek, because the self-pity she had sworn not to allow herself wasn’t easily vanquished. She would never have a child, and so never have a pony . . . Still, she made herself stop after one quivering sob. She slipped into the stall with the pony, who ate an apple and promptly lay down in the straw once again.

  She hung the lantern safely from a hook on the wall, and then removed her cloak and dropped it in the straw. Finally she sat down and, leaning against the pony’s fat tummy, pulled the cork from her bottle of wine.

  The wine was rich and fruity, like the earth in the springtime, if dirt was good to eat. She took another swig. It was peppery too, like . . . like pepper. She peered at the label. It was quite dim in the stable even with the lantern, but she could make out that the wine had come from Italy.

  As she upended the bottle again, it came to her: she needn’t stay in Scotland with a father who didn’t care very much for her, and a sister who cared not at all. She had money. No—she had a fortune. She could leave Scotland.

  She slowly put down the bottle, the happiness caused by this epiphany exploding in her heart. She would go to Italy and travel to the vineyards. She would buy a little house in the countryside . . . or in Venice . . . or Rome. She needn’t even stay in Italy; she would travel wherever she wished. She need never see an English earl again in her life.

  Idea after idea came to her: she would like to see the Parthenon, and a camel, though she had the vague sense they weren’t to be found together. A camel had come through the village in a fair when she was a child. She had never forgotten his long, curled eyelashes, and the way he chewed, thoughtfully, as if he were solving the world’s problems and just not bothering to share the solutions.

  Lying there, drinking as she considered the adventures she would have, she began to feel chilled. A bit of a search turned up some horse blankets, and she made a nest with these. Then she curled up and pulled her cloak over herself, fur side down, and resumed her reverie. Only when the bottle was nearly half gone did she come to another epiphany.

  She could take a lover. An Italian lover. A man with loopy black curls and golden skin, as far from a pallid, blond earl as could be imagined. “I don’t have any reputation anyway,” she told the pony. “Everybody thinks I did all . . . all that with Dugald. I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do as I wish. Maybe I’ll have a child after all.”

  The pony twitched her ears encouragingly.

  “I will have a child,” Fiona decided, taking another drink. “I’ll tell people I’m a widow. I have more than enough money for the two of us. Who needs Scotland anyway? My father won’t even notice I’m gone.”

  Her tiresome conscience had just reminded her that her father likely would notice if his elder daughter never returned, when she became aware of a banging noise coming from the wall next to her stall.

  “What’s that?” she asked the pony, who didn’t seem to have an answer. Fiona balled up her fist and thumped back on the wall.

  No one answered. “I won’t ever think about him,” Fiona told the pony. “Never, ever, ever.” She looked at her bottle. It was dangerously close to half empty. Tomorrow she’d probably have a “head,” as her father called it.

  Never mind; it would pass. Tomorrow she would be planning her trip. There were likely travel guides in Taran’s library. She’d be halfway to Italy before anyone noticed she was gone.

  “An’ I’ll never even think of him,” she said, hiccupping as she put the bottle down.

  There was a crash as the stable door flew open and bounced off the wall.

  “Lords a mercy,” Fiona murmured, huddling deeper into her furry nest. She had just begun to feel sleepy.

  Then the door slammed shut, and footsteps stamped down the corridor to the accompaniment of someone cursing a blue streak. An Englishman, she thought, not caring much. Probably the duke’s coachman, coming to check on his horses.

  “Fiona!” Her name emerged from the Englishman’s lips in a dark growl that had her eyes springing open.

  It wasn’t the coachman.

  “What in the bloody hell are you doing here?”

  “We say bloudy ’ell in Scotland,” Fiona told him, pulling her fur a little higher around her shoulders. “When in Scotland, do as the Scots.” And, because she really did
n’t want to see those blue eyes ever again, she closed her own.

  Chapter 16

  Byron could not believe what he was seeing. After Fiona’s hell-born sister had blurted out where she had gone, he had risked his life making his way to the stable, stumbling around the side of the castle in the storm, sick with fear that he was about to walk over Fiona’s fallen body . . . only to find her tucked down in a stall nestled against a fat old pony, the two of them peacefully asleep.

  He pulled off his gloves with a muttered curse. Thank God the stable was so small, and preserved heat so well. His fingers burned with the cold, and his toes felt as if they might fall off. He took another irritable look at the sleeping girl at his feet.

  Her hair had fallen out of its bun. Tousled strands of it curled around her face and unfurled over the pony’s rough winter coat.

  He squatted down and put a hand on her cheek. The skin burned hot under his fingers, and her eyes flew open on a little shriek. “Take your hand off me!”

  “You’re warm. And,” he said, catching sight of a bottle of wine, “you’re drunk.”

  “I am not drunk,” she told him, tilting her little nose in the air. “Though I may as well point out, since you do not know me, it could be that I am an invet— an inveterate inebriate.” She said the last two words carefully.

  He bent down and pulled off his boots, which were covered with snow. That strange joy that Fiona Chisholm seemed to inspire in him was spreading through him again like liquid gold. Like the kind of dizzy, silly joy he distantly remembered experiencing as a child.

  “What are you doing here?” Her eyes were suspicious.

  “I came to rescue you.”

  “What?”

  “I thought I would find you dead in the snow,” he said conversationally, knocking snow from his hat before hanging it on a hook. “I think it was a near go myself, in truth. I kept losing the castle as I was trying to get around to the stable. I was completely blinded by the snow. Needless to say, we don’t have storms like this in London.”

  She sat up, a molting fur cape slipping from her shoulder. “Didn’t you follow the rope from the kitchen door?”

  “The kitchen?” He shook his head. “I knew nothing about that, so I went out the front door. Your sister said you went to the stable; I looked out the window and thought it was a damned foolish and dangerous thing to do. So I followed the castle around to the stable, but I kept losing touch of the walls. Blasted amount of snow out there.”

  “You could have died!” Her voice cut straight through the muffled sound of the wind howling outside.

  “Would you have cared?”

  She lay back down. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  But Byron heard her voice wobble. “I couldn’t stay away,” he said, staring down at her. “I know your reputation is . . . whatever it is—”

  “Stupid Englishman,” she said, opening her eyes again. “I know you heard what Marilla said. Every word of it is true.”

  He took off his greatcoat and shook the snow off in the corridor before he came back into the stall. “Your fiancé, Dugald, had the brains of a gnat, if he thought ivy would bear the weight of a grown man. You’re better off without him.”

  “I won’t be your mistress just because everyone thinks that of me!” she said, her voice very sharp, wrapping her arms tight around herself. “Believe me, I’ve had plenty of offers, especially in the first year after Dugald’s death.”

  Byron froze as a hot wave of anger rushed to his head. “They talked of climbing up to your window, I suppose?”

  “I’ve heard all the sallies you can think of involving ivy,” she said, obviously trying for a careless tone but not succeeding. But her voice strengthened. “I’m a ruined woman. But that doesn’t mean that you can simply take advantage of me.”

  Byron managed to shove all his rage back into a little box, with the silent promise that he would wring the names of every one of those damned Scotsmen out of her.

  He came down on his heels in order to be at Fiona’s level. The old pony raised her head sleepily, and he scratched her between the ears. “I told myself to go to my room, and then I tried to find you anyway. I wandered around and talked to Lady Cecily for a time.”

  “She’s very nice. You should marry her.” She said it flatly.

  “I don’t want to,” Byron said, as flatly as she.

  “You can’t have everything you want in life,” she said, looking at him with an expression of mingled rage and pain. “Haven’t you learned anything, Byron? Not even that?”

  “There have been many things I’ve wanted.” He gently stroked the pony’s ears so she twitched in her sleep. “I wanted my father to care for me. I wanted my mother to come home. I wanted to be less alone.”

  Fiona pointed to a bottle of wine. “Have a drink.”

  “I wanted a wife who would never play me false, or break my heart, the way my father’s heart was broken.”

  “I never considered it before, but I’m finding wine is quite good at soothing a broken heart,” Fiona offered.

  “Is your heart broken?” His whole body froze, waiting for her answer. He didn’t know what he was doing, what he was saying. But he was caught up in madness.

  “What did you talk to Lady Cecily about?” Fiona said, ignoring his question, her eyes sliding away from his.

  “We talked about the difference between what the world thinks of a person . . . and who that person may truly be.” Byron rather thought that the one sentence—that one thought—had changed the course of his life forever.

  Fiona snorted. “The world thinks Cecily is tremendously nice, if a little boring, and from what I have seen in the last few days, she is.”

  “I don’t think she’s boring.”

  “Wonderful. Marry her. Her reputation is undoubtedly snow white and deserved.”

  “Do you think that I am precisely what the world thinks me to be?”

  She looked at him, and for a moment there was something raw and intense and full of longing in her eyes. Then she blinked. “Likely not,” she said, her voice disinterested.

  She settled back against the pony’s stomach. “I’m leaving the country,” she announced.

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving Scotland. I can’t think why I didn’t have the idea before.”

  “Of course,” he said, calming instantly. “You’re coming to England.” With me, he thought, feeling the truth of it in his bones. “Move a bit, would you? I’m going to put this animal in the stall next door. There’s not room enough for three of us.”

  “No, no, not England,” she said, far too cheerfully, though she did sit up so that he could coax the pony to her feet. “I mean to live in Italy. The vineyards, the sunshine, the ancient Roman ruins . . . It will be wonderful! And when I’ve tired of gondolas, I’ll just move on. I’d like to see a camel. I’d like to ride a camel!”

  “Hell no, you’re not,” Byron growled. He kicked open the door and led the pony through, glancing over his shoulder.

  Fiona reached for the half-full bottle of wine leaning against the wall, but she paused. “Did you just swear at me?”

  “No.” He opened the stall next door; the old pony ambled in and collapsed in the pile of straw.

  He walked back to her, closing the stall door behind him.

  “I’m glad that you didn’t swear at me.” She smiled in a way that showed pretty white teeth. “Because you have nothing to say about what I do with my life.”

  Byron grinned back at her, enjoying the rebellion in her eyes. Not to mention the way her cloak had slid down to her waist so he could see the luscious curve of a shadowed breast.

  “How will you finance these travels?” he asked, sitting down on a pile of straw opposite her.

  Fiona took a swig from the bottle. “Oh, I inherited my mother’s fortune,” she said. “Didn’t I mention that? I reckon I have the edge on Marilla, if you add it all together. I have quite a bit of land.”

  Byron
reached out, took the bottle, and held it up to the oil lamp. “This half must be mine.”

  “Actually, it’s all mine,” Fiona said, a little owlishly. “Though you may have a sip if you like. I’ll have plenty of wine once I move to Italy. Did I tell you that I’m moving to Italy?”

  He just looked at her.

  “I suppose I did,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, since you don’t seem to like that topic of conversation, let’s discuss something else. Why on earth did you try to save my sorry self from gracefully falling asleep in a snowdrift? Didn’t you tell me this very afternoon that a chaste reputation was the greatest possible blessing? I don’t have one, in case you missed the announcement.”

  “I suppose I did say something of that nature.”

  “Dugald’s mother has stopped spitting when she sees me.” She paused. “You know how people say there’s a silver lining to a dark cloud? I hate to say it, but not having that woman as my mother-in-law is something of a blessing.”

  Byron took another gulp of wine, and placed the bottle to the side. Then he reached out, tossed the fur cape to the side, and crawled forward until his hands were on either side of her shoulders.

  She frowned up at him. “You’re not the lord of the manor, you know.” She hiccupped. “The lord of the stable. Don’t think I will kiss you again, because I will not. I’m done with kissing.”

  He gazed down at the rose flush in her cheeks, her liquid, slightly hazy eyes, her plump lips, and felt that surge of gladness again. “You’re done with kissing forever?”

  “Oh no,” she said, her forehead wrinkling in thought. “I’ve decided to make exceptions.”

  “Good,” he said silkily. “You can make one for me.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Only for my Italian lover.”

  The hiss that came from between his teeth wasn’t a noise a civilized man would make. “Dugald wasn’t Italian, was he?”