toward the entrance of the inn’s public room. Bright red poppies graced the window boxes, and tables and chairs had been arranged outside, yet there was no one enjoying the sun.
“I’ve a girl for you if you haven’t one, although I can’t vouch for her skills. She seems to do well enough to my eyes, but my guest, Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe, claims she is wretched, and yet Chasity looks rather pretty to these old eyes.”
Guests! Catriona should have known—Uncle Knox constantly surrounded himself with a retinue of friends and acquaintances, gathered from far-flung corners and questionable establishments. Catriona felt suddenly self-conscious as he bustled her along. She could smell herself, felt wretched in her traveling clothes and wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a wee bit of brandy.
“Between you and me, love, the Wilke-Smythes are a bit demanding,” Uncle Knox said in a low voice. “And a bit too far on the side of the Whigs, if you take my meaning.” He waggled his brows at her.
She did not take his meaning.
“But you will find great company in them, I am certain of it, and if not, there is Countess Orlov and her cousin, Vasily Orlov. Now, there is a colorful pair if ever there was.” He leaned his head to hers and whispered, very dramatically, “Russians.”
“I beg your pardon, Uncle. You didna mention you were already entertaining guests in your reply to my request to join you.”
“Why, I’ve hardly any!” he declared. “And besides, I should have an entire assembly under my roof and turn them all away if it meant I might spend a summer with my much beloved niece.”
“No’ a summer, Uncle. A fortnight—”
“Here we are!” he declared, ignoring her, and with one arm around her, he used the other as a sort of battering ram and shoved open the door of the inn, then loudly proclaimed, “She’s here!”
The small group of people gathered at a table in the center of the room looked at her. Those were her uncle’s guests, she gathered, as the only other people in the inn were two men standing at the counter in the back with tankards before them.
Uncle Knox dragged Catriona forward to the table and introduced her to his company: Mr. and Mrs. Wilke-Smythe and their daughter, Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe. Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe resembled her mother so much that the pair looked a wee bit like twins in their powdered hair and matching coats. The former, at first glance, seemed scarcely old enough to be out.
She then met Countess Orlov, an elegant woman with a discerning gaze, and her cousin, the handsome, yet foppish, Mr. Vasily Orlov. “You must call me Vasily,” he said, his name rolling off his tongue as he bowed over her hand.
Next was Mrs. Marianne Templeton, whom Catriona knew as the widowed sister of Uncle Knox’s neighbor in England. Her mother had mentioned her once, had said she was quite eager to make Uncle Knox her next husband. She looked a wee bit older than Uncle Knox and examined Catriona from the top of her head to the tips of her boots. And last, an elderly gentleman with thick, wiry brows. Lord Furness, an old friend, her uncle said, scarcely glanced at her.
Uncle Knox sat her between Lord Furness and Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe and ordered tots of whisky for them all. “In honor of my niece. The Scots are fond of whisky, is that not so, Cat?”
“Ah...many are, aye,” she agreed.
“When in Scotland, lads, we drink as the Scotch do,” Uncle Knox said, and held his tot aloft. “To Scotland!”
“To Scotland!” his guests echoed.
Catriona tolerated whisky well enough, but she was so parched today that she downed the tot and set the small glass firmly on the table. That was when she noticed everyone was staring at her. “It was just a wee tot,” she said a bit defensively. She was still bruised from the apparent censure she’d received from her family on that rain-soaked afternoon at Kishorn.
“Another!” shouted Uncle Knox. “Another round for us all!”
The whisky had the effect of making the group a bit merrier. They began to laugh and talk over one another, correcting each other’s accounting of what had happened the night before, which, from the sound of it, had been a game of Whist gone horribly wrong. Catriona listened, and she smiled and nodded where she thought she ought, but she felt nothing but fatigue weighing her down. She leaned far back in her chair so that Lord Furness could speak over her to Miss Wilke-Smythe. The inn was beginning to fill, and she prayed that meant Uncle Knox would soon see them to Dungotty, the estate he’d allegedly purchased for a song. Unfortunately, he showed no sign of leaving, ordering kidney pies for all, and moving them from whisky to ale when Mrs. Templeton began to laugh a little too loudly.
Another hour passed. Catriona felt herself sliding down her wooden seat and glanced at the watch pinned to her gown to gauge the time. When she wearily lifted her gaze, her eyes landed on the back of a man. He was quite tall. He was wearing a cloak that, from even a bit of distance, she could see was made of the finest wool. His snowy-white collar covered the back of his neck, and his hair, as black as his cloak, was bobbed into a queue with a single green ribbon. She had not seen him come in. He had taken a seat near the window, quite alone, and sat with one leg crossed over the other, one arm slung across the back of an empty chair, and gazed through the windowpanes at the goings-on in the street.
Catriona was suddenly nudged with an elbow. “I can’t believe he’s come in,” whispered Miss Wilke-Smythe.
“Pardon?”
The young woman nodded in the direction of the tall man with the green ribbon. “That is the Duke of Montrose,” she whispered excitedly. “Look, there’s the coach from Blackthorn,” she said, nodding toward the window.
Catriona looked at the man’s back again.
“You’ve no doubt heard of him, haven’t you?” asked Miss Wilke-Smythe.
Catriona shook her head. “Should I have?”
“Yes!” Miss Wilke-Smythe said in a near squeal. She clamped her hand down on Catriona’s arm and squeezed with alarming strength. “He’s quite notorious,” she said, her brown eyes glittering.
He didn’t seem so notorious to Catriona. “Why is that, then?”
Miss Wilke-Smythe leaned even closer, so that Catriona could feel her breath on her neck, and whispered, “They say he murdered his wife.”
“What?” Catriona blinked. She turned her head to look at the young woman. “You jest,” she accused her.
“Not in the least! Everyone says so—they say she simply disappeared. One night, she hosted a table set with so much china and silver that armed guards stood before the mansion. And the next day, she vanished, just like that,” she said with a snap of her gloved fingers. “One moment she was here, and the next, vanished. No one has seen her since.”
Catriona looked at the broad back of the man at the window. “That’s impossible.”
“You must hear it from Lord Norwood!” Miss Wilke-Smythe said, referring to Uncle Knox, who happened to be the Earl of Norwood. “He relayed it all to me.”
“All right, then, that’s enough of this,” her uncle suddenly said, and stood up, swaying
