To Tame a Wild Heart Page 4

  The older woman shrugged. “I’m sorry, lass. I’ll miss yer company sorely.”

  2

  C olin Murray, Earl of Cawdor, settled himself on the bench of his navy blue phaeton and studied the woman next to him. Lady Helmsgate was the perfect lover for him — a bored society beauty who’d married a much older man and sought a younger lover to slake her desires. He hadn’t yet buried himself in the softness between her thighs, but he knew that moment wasn’t far away.

  She cast a negligent gaze at the ruins he’d directed his phaeton through, her lips opened in a seductive pout that Colin found very effective. A white bombazine gown trimmed with swans down along the bodice, cuffs, and hemline made her look very young, but Cawdor knew she’d reached her birthday of five and twenty; he’d attended the ceremony himself.

  “Do you see those fallen stones, Amelia?” he asked, pointing toward an old fort that had crumbled eons ago. Waning sunlight painted it with a peach glow, while wild tulips along its base swayed in the light spring breeze. “Long ago, they held garrisons of Roman soldiers.”

  A tremor in her answer betrayed her excitement. She buried her hands deeper into her white fox muff, the one he’d bought her for her birthday. “ ’Tis an exceedingly remote site.”

  “Do you wish me to turn around and return to London?”

  “No, not yet. Cawdor, do you have another for me?” she asked softly, her gaze slipping to his coat pocket.

  “Another what?”

  “Another poem to match the one you gave me last night.”

  Reluctantly he dug around in his coat pocket, looking for the small piece of parchment. “I hope you find my poor effort acceptable. Most of my morning was lost to its creation, I’m embarrassed to admit.”

  She held out her hand, the gesture oddly reminding him of a wife demanding her husband’s gambling winnings. Cursing Lord Byron for starting this poetry craze with his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, he drew the parchment from his pocket and placed it in her palm.

  Eyes narrowed, she read aloud the lines he’d cooked up:

  Love is a draught of pleasure,

  Love is a taste of pain,

  A shining light, sparkling bright,

  Or sometimes a dark and bitter rain.

  “Very nice, Cawdor,” she purred, even as he shuddered at the inanity of his own verse.

  He prayed that his cronies at White’s never caught wind of his poetry writing. “Remember, Amelia, these poems are for you and you alone. Don’t share them with anyone.”

  “I’ll keep them with the other two you’ve written me.”

  “Two?”

  “Don’t you remember, the night we were introduced, you gave me my first poem?”

  Colin grunted, mercifully having forgotten that piece of frivolity he’d written, one praising her beauty or some such nonsense. The damnable thing of it was, he had actually enjoyed writing the poem, even if he hadn’t an ounce of talent for it. Rarely had he faced a more formidable challenge than deciding on lines which would best press his advantage while making the words rhyme.

  She tucked her newest poem into her muff, then placed a warm little palm against his sleeve. “You must write me another.”

  Colin covered it with his own. “Come with me to Lady Delham’s soiree tonight. You know of Lady Delham, no?”

  “I’ve heard she’s a bit . . . fast.”

  “Fast, but well respected even by Lady Cowper and her fellow dragons. There, we can relax, and enjoy ourselves as we could never do at Almack’s.”

  Her blue eyes darkened and her lips opened a little more. With a jolt of pleasure, he realized he could have her here and now, if he so desired. But he didn’t want her now. He preferred to sip rather than gulp, to savor the moment when he had poised himself above her sprawled body, her legs open to accept him.

  She rubbed her cheek against the fox muff. “Would you please show me more of the ruins, Cawdor?”

  “If you wish.” He directed his matched bays toward a more secluded area of the ruins, where a grove of birch trees provided shade and intimacy.

  At some point over the last ten years, Colin had become a man of charm, taste, and impeccable manners in a society where manners and civilized living were all. At the same time, he was a dedicated hedonist and gambler whose dalliances were the stuff of legend. Style, sensuality, and intellect were the words he lived by. Considering the stalk, rather than the kill, the true hunting pleasure, he attracted women into his bed and men to his side as a candle gathered moths.

  At two and thirty years, he had acquired the notorious status of rakehell. Colin took pride in his achievement and had every intention of continuing to pursue a lifestyle of refined carnality, for which he displayed an unquestionable talent. And yet, he had to admit that lately, his lifestyle had seemed a touch colorless to him. Nothing he did, no new adventure helped. Was this what people meant when they said they had grown old? If so, then God help him, he’d be using a cane and hobbling around by the time he reached forty.

  He maneuvered the carriage around a stone cairn. The birch trees beside them shivered in the breeze, making a rustling sound, and far in the distance, a cow bellowed. They were quite alone. And Lady Helmsgate, her lips parted and her blue eyes very wide, kept playing with her muff in a way that was making him rock hard.

  Without warning, the sound of distant hoofbeats intruded on their têtê-à-têtê. Colin narrowed his eyes.

  The hoofbeats grew louder. Someone was heading straight for the ruins. He muttered an oath. Christ, what luck. He’d brought her here specifically because no one ever came to these old stone forts. Lord Helmsgate wouldn’t appreciate gossip that turned him into a cuckold. Discretion, after all, was the key to any affair.

  Lady Helmsgate groaned. “Make him go away.”

  “Put your bonnet back on, and draw the brim low. Keep your head lowered as well,” he counseled. “I’ll start back toward the inn, so that we may collect your maid. Don’t worry, Amelia. We won’t be discovered.”

  “Cawdor —” she whispered, an edge to her voice.

  “Shh.” He pressed a finger against her lips and muttered another oath. He’d told no one but Higgins, his valet, of his intended location. Perhaps some farmer was passing by . . .

  The figure rode into sight. Dressed in somber black, the man’s eyebrows were drawn together in an expression of anxiety. As soon as Colin recognized his identity, he relaxed, though he couldn’t quite suppress a spurt of annoyance.

  “It’s only my valet, Higgins,” he told her. “We can rely completely on his discretion.”

  Her mouth turned downward. “I hope so.”

  The valet wasted no time in riding up to Colin. His gaze averted from Lady Helmsgate, he slipped a hand into his jacket and drew out a letter. “My lord, my apologies for interrupting your jaunt, but this letter arrived from the Duke of Argyll an hour ago.”

  At the word duke, Colin stilled. “The Duke of Argyll, you say?”

  “Indeed, my lord.”

  Frowning, Colin accepted the letter from his valet. The duke was his mentor, his confessor, and a stand-in father after his parents had left him with the duke and moved to the Continent. Those ten years he’d spent at Inveraray Castle with the duke were his brief and only connection with practicality and self-sacrifice; the rest of his life he’d spent in a more civilized manner.

  And if Colin had learned one thing during his long association with His Grace, it was that he almost never wrote letters. The duke complained that anything written down might eventually return to haunt the writer. Indeed, the last time Colin had received a formal missive from the duke, his entire life had turned upside down.

  He handed the reins to his valet and jumped down from the phaeton. Then, leaving Higgins in charge, he walked a few paces away from Lady Helmsgate, opened the letter and began to read:

  My dear Colin,

  I have very good news for you. Do you recall the emerald ring you found in Edinburgh, the one belonging at one time to
my wife? Phineas Graham, my man of business, has discreetly investigated its origins on a farm in the Highlands, near Dunrobin Castle. He discovered a gem much more precious than any emerald ring. It seems my daughter survived the carriage accident after all!

  I have met the young lady, and she is returning to Inveraray with me within the next few days. ’Tis my wish that you also travel to Inveraray, immediately. I will need your assistance in polishing her into the lady she was born to be.

  While you may announce Sarah’s recovery, please remain quiet regarding the details of her past, until I have decided how best to present them. As you are family, I know I can count on your discretion.

  Your good cousin,

  Edward, Duke of Argyll

  Colin nearly allowed the letter to drop from his nerveless fingers. The duke’s daughter, found at last? Impossible! The child had died almost seventeen years ago.

  A frown twisted his mouth. He folded the letter and slipped it into a pocket in his coat.

  “Cawdor, are you well?” Lady Helmsgate asked, her voice breathless.

  Striving for an indifferent demeanor, Colin nodded.

  “Did something happen to the duke?”

  “No, he’s quite well.” He fixed his gaze on a distant tree, but didn’t really see it. A fog seemed to have invaded his mind, obscuring everything but the words he’d read in that letter:

  It seems my daughter survived the carriage accident after all!

  How in hell, he wondered, could the girl have survived? They’d found the carriage in pieces along the shore, almost a mile away from the place they’d found evidence of its trip over the cliff. Clearly it had tumbled end-over-end down the hill and broken into pieces before being swept out to sea. And when the duchess’s and maid’s bodies had washed ashore, they’d been twisted and bruised nearly beyond recognition. Of the two girl’s bodies, they’d never found anything.

  She hadn’t survived, he thought suddenly.

  The notion had an unpleasant ring to it, a truthfulness that sliced through him like a knife blade. Some greedy-guts was preying on an old man’s grief and loneliness. He could easily imagine the duke grasping at straws, wishing so much to believe that the daughter he still longed and grieved for had survived.

  “Cawdor, you simply must tell me what is wrong,” Lady Helmsgate prodded. “My husband is one of the duke’s oldest and dearest friends. He’ll want to know if anything has happened to the duke.”

  Colin forced himself to focus on his companion. “Nothing is wrong. In fact, everything is very much right. The duke has found his long-lost daughter.”

  “What?” Lady Helmsgate lapsed into a wide-eyed stare.

  “His daughter has been recovered.”

  “Didn’t she die in a carriage accident, many years ago?”

  “We thought so. But we were mistaken. She is alive, and well.”

  “I cannot believe it.”

  Neither can I, Colin almost found himself saying. He managed to choke the words back down as one by one, the implications of the duke’s “find” struck him between the eyes.

  Until now, he’d been the next in line to inherit the Argyll dukedom. Even though he and the duke were only distantly related, through the cousins of second cousins, he nevertheless remained the duke’s closest living relative. He didn’t actually need the dukedom, of course. He’d inherited the earldom of Cawdor and everything else that went along with the title, outside of Cawdor Castle, which his parents had sold.

  But he wanted the dukedom. In particular, he wanted Inveraray Castle, the gem of the Highlands. And if this girl convinced the duke that she was his daughter, she stood to inherit all. It didn’t matter that she was female . . . Scottish law was different from English law. There were no barriers to women inheriting a title, the Countess of Sutherland being the most recent example.

  “What will you do?” Lady Helmsgate asked, interrupting his train of thought yet again.

  Colin suspected she was referring to the fact that the duke’s daughter would usurp his inheritance. “I’ll welcome his daughter back, of course.”

  “Where has she been all of these years?”

  “I have no details.”

  “Oh, you must get them.” Her features sharpened. “What is her name?”

  “Lady Sarah.”

  “Hmm. Lady Sarah.” Lady Helmsgate became quiet again, evidently mulling the situation over.

  Colin took advantage of her distraction and returned to thinking about the implications of Lady Sarah’s recovery. At Inveraray Castle, the Argyll family seat, he’d learned how to appreciate the wild beauty of the moors. When he’d turned sixteen, he’d embarked on an arduous effort to improve the estate’s profitability, under the duke’s approving eye. He’d invested a lot of time in that estate and forged deep ties with the servants and tenants.

  He paused, remembering. Deep ties. Ties that he’d broken some ten years ago, when he’d come to London at the duke’s request, to ‘gain some polish.’ That request had also come in the form of a missive, the duke’s first life-altering letter that had thrown Colin into the vast playground some called society.

  City life, Colin acknowledged, had easily seduced him. Women, games of chance, and the intrigues of the ton . . . he’d found them very amusing, and at some point he’d decided he wasn’t cut out for a bucolic existence. Too soon, Inveraray had become nothing more than a memory.

  He hadn’t understood how much he missed Inveraray Castle until now. Even if he convinced the rich banker who had bought Cawdor Castle to sell it back, Colin knew his family seat could never replace Inveraray.

  Colin fought an urge to rub his face with both hands. The jumble of emotion inside him had transformed to something approaching weariness, tinged with a strange sort of confusion. For the first time, he realized he’d lost something, but he didn’t have the damnedest notion what that something was.

  Completely unsettled, he nevertheless came to one indisputable resolution. Yes, he would obey the duke’s summons and return to Inveraray. When the duke arrived with his “long-lost daughter,” he would polish her. But he’d also do his damnedest to confirm the chit’s story, and God help her if she was anything but the duke’s daughter.

  “Cawdor?” Lady Helmsgate’s voice had taken on a nagging quality.

  Colin took a deep breath, turned, and took the reins from the valet. “Find Mr. Cooper for me, Higgins,” he murmured, low enough so that Lady Helmsgate couldn’t overhear. “He’s that Bow Street runner everyone has been talking about: the finest bloodhound in England, or something similar.”

  “I know of him, my lord.”

  “See if he is free to take on an assignment for me. Tell him I’ll pay well, and ask him to come to Inveraray Castle in Scotland to meet me.”

  The valet nodded, then asked, “Shall I prepare your trunks?”

  “Yes. We leave in the morning.”

  His countenance betraying not the slightest hint of curiosity, the valet offered him a bow before remounting his horse and riding off in the general direction of London.

  “Where is your servant going, Cawdor?” Lady Helmsgate eyed Colin closely.

  “To pack my trunks. I’m leaving for Inveraray.”

  “Why? To see the duke’s daughter?”

  Lips set, Colin climbed onto the bench. He set off at a quick pace. “Of course. I must go and introduce myself.”

  “Is this girl unmarried?”

  “I am assuming so.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Will you still collect me tonight for Lady Delham’s soiree?”

  “No.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I’m leaving for the Highlands tonight.”

  A hard gleam entered her eyes. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you, Cawdor. You can’t leave me now.”

  Taken aback, he stared at her. He knew she was no innocent. She’d proven herself quite adept at getting her way. But the harsh light in her eyes hinted at something dark in her personality, something he hadn�
��t even suspected. “It’s beyond my control.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Do these poems you’ve written me mean nothing?”

  “Amelia, you must try to understand. Duty ranks higher than pleasure, and a duke ranks higher than an earl. I would prefer not to leave you, but I must.”

  “You’re making me very unhappy.”

  “I’m heartily sorry for it.”

  “You’ve used me, and now you are trying to discard me.”

  Dislike for Lady Helmsgate stirred within him. Thinking that the duke’s request might have saved him from a difficult involvement, he retreated behind formality. “Lady Helmsgate, if I’ve abused your feelings in any way, I apologize. But you must agree, our flirtation has been very circumspect. While our passions might have tempted us to more, common sense has prevailed to date.”

  “We aren’t finished yet, Cawdor,” she replied, her tone strangely determined.

  “You’ve many swains draping themselves across your doorway. Will not one of them do?”

  “No.”

  Eager to be done with the conversation, he offered her a small bone, one that he had no intention of ever retrieving from her, but might be enough to soothe her pride. “I don’t expect to be gone long. I’ll send a note when I return.”

  She rubbed her nose into her muff. “I’ll be waiting.”

  This time, her gesture hadn’t the slightest effect on him. Thankfully, the rest of the carriage ride passed in silence.

  3

  T he journey to Inveraray Castle took Sarah from the eastern Highlands, where boulders and wind and heather held sway, to the harbor-rich west coast of Scotland, where the air possessed the sting of salt and the hills and forests formed a rolling green blanket. She, the duke, and Phineas had been traveling for three days now and were due to reach Inveraray before dusk.

  As she sat upon the driver’s bench and watched new scenery unfold with every mile, she could think only of the life she’d left behind, a comfortable life of independence, filled with the satisfaction of helping those she loved most: animals. Only her fine sense of honor kept her at the duke’s side. She had owed the Murphy family for saving her life and raising her, but now that debt had been transferred to the duke.