wide oaken staircase.
* * *
She absolutely had to tell him. Today. Now. This minute. The early evening light sending redness into his raven hair and the green of the oaks all about them.
I have been married before. My husband died in a brothel because he could no longer abide the pretence of me in his marriage bed. It was not a successful union and by the end of it we hated each other.
That was what she should have said. Out loud. With conviction. Let Daniel run before the knots tied them irrevocably together and the blame game began. But she stayed silent as she watched him rein in his steed and move beside her. The time to confess everything about her tawdry past was not quite right and she wanted just for this moment to enjoy his company. Next time. She would definitely tell him of her unfortunate mistake next time they met.
‘I did not think you were coming,’ he remarked.
‘Papa passed a fidgety night and I have spent the day reading to him as it makes him relax. I was not certain you would wait.’
‘Then we both have much to learn about the other, Miss Cameron, for I have the patience of a saint.’
He didn’t look like anything celestial with his wild black hair caught in an untidy queue and his snowy cravat highlighting the darkness of his skin. Nay, today atop the power of his steed he looked like a soldier who might rule the world and use it in whatever way he wished.
The wickedness of his smile and the dancing pale green in his eyes took her form in, a scorching languid perusal that made her glance away. If she had been braver, she might have laughed into the sudden breeze and used his words as a challenge. She might have even thrown back her own. But the days of her certainty had long gone and the battered ends of the mouse-brown wig flew against her face, making her eyes water.
This is me now, this person, small and damaged and scared. A man like this is not to be played with, not to be taken lightly. The weight of the Cameron fortune was heavy on her shoulders and her father’s sickness heavier again as she stayed silent.
‘Our marriage notice will be in the paper tomorrow morning. I just thought to warn you of it.’
‘Warn me?’ She could not quite understand his meaning.
‘Society has the habit of being ingratiatingly interested in those who gain a title.’
‘Unexpectedly, you mean?’
‘A new countess is everybody’s business, Miss Cameron. It is the way of the world.’
His focus suddenly centred on a small group of mounted women on the path, the stillness in him magnified as he muttered something under his breath.
‘It is probably prudent to say nothing of our upcoming nuptials at this stage.’ He stopped his horse and waited and she did the same. ‘The ton is a small group, but their propensity to gossip is enormous and one wrong word can set them into a frenzy.’
* * *
Lady Charlotte Mackay and Lady Astoria Jordan were exactly the pair Daniel had no inclination to meet. Dressed in the finest of riding attire, they looked the picture of well-heeled perfection as they slowed down to chat. Amethyst, on the other hand, seemed to have drawn into herself, lips pursed and eyes dull. The light on her hair did nothing to help her appearance either. For the first time since he had met her he wondered if she wore a wig, ill fashioned and dreary. The thought was surprising.
Charlotte’s beauty, on the other hand, seemed to radiate around her, the soft blond of her coiffure under the riding cap catching the light and falling in an unbroken line to her ample bosom. A tinkling laugh completed the picture.
‘Daniel. I knew it was you.’ His name curled from her tongue as an invitation, the intimacy that they had once shared drawn into the words. Her glance took in the woman he was with and his bride-to-be stilled perceptibly.
‘Lady Charlotte Mackay, this is Miss Amethyst Cameron.’
‘Amethyst. An unusual name, I think.’ A frown marred the space between Charlotte’s sky-blue eyes as she tried to place the family. ‘Are you of the Camerons from Fife in Scotland or those closer?’
‘Neither, Lady Mackay.’ Amethyst’s answer was quietly given and then she smiled, deep dimples evident in each cheek and a knowing humour across her face.
Strength and honour had its own allure, Daniel thought, watching her deflect the other’s interest with such acumen. Out here in the open with the promise of a ride before them and a beautiful summer’s evening foretelling a hopeful outlook, Charlotte looked overdressed and overdone. However, as if realising that she would have little more in the way of conversation from Amethyst, she turned her attention towards him.
‘I will be here tomorrow at the same time. Perhaps we might enjoy a ride alone.’ Her hand closed over Daniel’s sleeve and in her inimitable style she leaned across to him, the riding habit she wore cut as low as it could be. ‘For old times’ sake. For the world that was before it all turned different. For us,’ she whispered closely, the breath of her words across his face daring more.
Once he might have smiled back his assent and followed her to the ends of the earth. But that was then and this was now. Amethyst Cameron had looked away, her eyes on the trees far in the distance as the horse below her shuffled.
Tipping his hat to both ladies he disengaged Charlotte’s grasp and made his steed walk on. When they were out of earshot he tried to explain.
‘Lady Mackay is lonely and—’
Amethyst interrupted him. ‘I don’t require an explanation, my lord. I won’t be that sort of wife.’
He laughed, but the sound was not humorous. ‘Then what sort of wife will you be, Miss Cameron?
She did not answer, but the red flush of anger on her face was telling and what had been a comfortable and easy meeting was suddenly difficult. But he needed to explain to her honestly so that she did not imagine he would be a philandering husband.
‘We were lovers for three-and-a-half years between the stints of my army duty.’ Now she looked around at him. ‘I was twenty-seven when I met Charlotte and thirty when she ran off and married Lord Spenser Mackay. He was an extremely wealthy Scottish landowner, you understand, and I was a second son and a soldier.’
‘So she broke your heart?’
His laughter this time was much more genuine. ‘At the time perhaps I thought that she had.’
‘But now...?’
‘Now with the wisdom of distance there is the greatest relief in the realisation that we would never have suited.’
‘I got the impression that she thinks exactly the opposite.’
‘Then she is wrong.’ The distance had returned to his voice. ‘Do you have a ball dress?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘There is a ball on Saturday night which will be well attended. I hope you might accompany me to it?’
‘Would your family
