Possession of a Highlander Page 15

  The too sweet fragrance of roses lingered in the hall and alerted Colin that Marie was in his solar. Sinister shadows of night hid the tapestries and decorative wall hangings. It was so damn late, even the rush nips had burned out.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face and yawned. Brianna still slept in their bed, unaware of his departure. The solar door was slightly ajar, a soft light beckoning him in the darkness. He pushed into the room and found Marie standing by his desk, her blue silk back facing him. “You’re late.” She spoke without turning.

  Colin closed the door behind him. “Brianna saw ye at the market today.”

  Marie glanced over her shoulder with a smirk. “I’m sure that went well for you.”

  He pressed his ear to the door and listened for a moment to ensure he had not been followed. Silence.

  He turned the key, locking them in before approaching the desk. Several letters spread across the glossy surface.

  “I hope it went better than I think it did,” he said.

  Her small hand settled on a piece of parchment. “I’ve been working while I waited for you to arrive.” She glanced up at him. “My contacts in France have found information on this Marquis de Condorcet, but I’m afraid the information is quite dated. He moved to Italy over ten years ago, and if anyone has heard from him, they are not speaking.”

  Colin gave an irritated sigh. “I told ye to let that go, Marie. We dinna need the man, just what is in the letters.”

  “If the marquis is still alive, it seems knowing his whereabouts could prove beneficial for your wife.” She arched her eyebrow. “Lindsay grows suspicious. I’m not sure how much longer I can sneak away.”

  Her brilliant blue gaze caught his eye, unguarded, the way it always was when they were alone. He studied her heart-shaped face and upturned nose. His chest squeezed with a familiar ache. She still looked a great deal like the hopeless child he had met so many years ago.

  “Ye need to leave Lindsay to my men if ye believe yerself to be in danger,” he said.

  A coy smile flitted across her lips. “Are you worried about me?”

  He frowned. “Ye know I am. I dinna want to see ye hurt.”

  She patted his hand with the pads of her fingertips, an act that would be condescending with anyone other than Marie. “I’m safe for now, but I don’t know how often I can make excuses to leave from his manor to my rented room in the middle of the night. The guard waited longer than usual before leaving this time.”

  Colin studied Marie’s face, searching for something she might not be saying. “This will be the last time we meet then. I believe I have enough of our previous work to piece together the last of the letters. I’ll send ye the French words through one of my men and ye can translate it, aye?”

  She cast him a dubious look. “With your spelling?” Her chest swelled with a dramatic sigh. “It will have to do. I cannot resign myself from Lindsay’s confidence. Not now.”

  “Why? What have ye heard?” He leaned close enough to see the layer of powder she’d brushed across her smooth cheeks.

  “Lindsay’s men are certain they found someone they can get to talk. I don’t know who it is yet,” Marie whispered.

  Colin balled his hand in a fist and squeezed it to keep from slamming the table. He pressed a tight knuckle to his lips.

  “How the hell can they even make a crime that doesna exist?” Another breath hissed between his teeth. “And who the hell is talking?”

  “Je ne sais pas.” Her lower lip thrust out in a sympathetic pout. “But I will find out.”

  • • •

  Sunrise broke through the dusk and poured into the darkened solar, announcing a completed night where Colin had not slept. A feat more easily handled when he was younger.

  Exhaustion numbed his mind and left his movements automatic and thoughtless.

  Marie sat slumped in the great chair, her lips soundlessly reading through their decoded parchments.

  “These are all more of the same as we’ve read before.” She flipped through the pages. The rustle of the aged parchment was loud in the otherwise silent room. “The marquis begs her to leave her husband and return to France where he will care for her. He is so persistent.” Her smile turned wistful. “So eloquent. Any other woman would not be able to resist such a beautifully composed offer. Especially when proposed as many times.”

  She hugged the pages to her chest and her eyes swept closed. “He loved her.”

  “But she did not love him,” Colin surmised.

  Marie’s eyes flew open. “You are such a man. So Scottish.” Her paper-stuffed hands fell to her sides. “She kept the letters, didn’t she? Despite the danger in doing so, she kept the letters and she replied.” Her finger tapped the stiff page. “Every one of these save the first is in reply to one she sent him.”

  A creak of someone’s foot upon the stairs below interrupted them. Jonathan, no doubt. It was time for him to show.

  “Anything that could prove Brianna’s legitimacy?” Colin asked quickly.

  If Brianna knew Marie had been told of her illegitimacy, she would be furious. Unfortunately, Marie was the only person who could help him discover for certain. Proof would do nothing to secure the property to Brianna, but he knew such knowledge would set her mind at peace.

  Marie tucked her lip into her mouth and shook her head. Fatigue lined her eyes. He had kept her here too long. She was exhausted.

  He rested a hand on her elbow. “Thank ye for doing this and for seeking answers from Lindsay.”

  Her gaze trailed to his hand and her cheeks colored. “You know I would do anything for you,” she said, her voice low and throaty. Her eyes met his, almost pleading. “Anything.”

  He drew his hand back lest the action be construed as something other than friendship. “Then stay safe,” he instructed.

  A single rap upon the door indicated Jonathan’s arrival to take Marie home.

  Colin swallowed his concern and let her walk away. She was determined, overeager to please.

  Hopefully she would trust her instinct and flee if she sensed danger.

  “I’ll contact you,” she said.

  Of that Colin had little doubt.

  • • •

  Anxiety danced a frantic tattoo in Brianna’s chest. The late morning buzz and bustle of the market hummed behind her. She tugged the hood of her cloak more securely over her face. A respectable woman did not stand before the door of rented rooms as she did now.

  Whether real or imagined, she felt the weight of eyes boring into her. She clenched her hands in front of her in an effort to keep herself from picking at her cuticles. Magda always fussed when she did that.

  Still the door did not open. Her courage faltered.

  She tugged at her hood again, pulling at fabric that could give no more, and turned to leave. The low squeak of an old key grating against an old lock stilled her movement, and the door cracked open to reveal the Venus from the day before.

  Brianna’s confidence slithered into a ball of self-consciousness. The Frenchwoman’s face was alabaster white and her hair gleamed like spun gold. The brilliant blue shift she wore made her eyes look like a cloudless sky.

  She stared at Brianna with candid curiosity. “Lady MacKinnon, you took longer to approach me than most wives.”

  A gentle French purr laced the English words into a blend of husky seduction.

  “You expected me sooner?” Brianna asked.

  Full, red lips curled up in a humorless smile. “All the wives seek me out eventually.”

  Something burned in Brianna’s chest, despite all her mental preparations. She glanced around them and switched to French to prevent eavesdropping. “I think you’ll find I’m approaching you for a different reason.”

  Marie’s head tilted, and she replied in her native tongue. “Your French is perfect.”

  “I would be disappointed otherwise, considering the length of time I studied,” Brianna said. A final scan of the empty walkway confirmed no one list
ened. “May I come in?”

  “If you wish.” Marie stepped back and pulled her door open in invitation. The scent of fine perfume wafted from the woman’s private room and curled around Brianna with an enticement she knew most men would not resist.

  She crossed the threshold in her curiosity and idly wondered if she would smell thus upon her exit. Her stomach knotted. Would Colin recognize the scent?

  Marie’s rented room was small, but richly decorated in swaths of red, orange, and dark blue velvets that mirrored the sensuality of its tenant.

  Gauzy crimson curtains lined the windows and blotted the brilliant summer sun to a red glow of ambient light.

  “I know you are Marie D’Aubigne.” Brianna slipped the mud-spattered pattens from her shoes and placed them on a straw mat beside Marie’s. “But that is all I know.”

  The woman walked around Brianna and settled back against an arrangement of garnet and gold silk pillows. Her eyes trailed over Brianna with slow purpose.

  “What is it you wish to discuss?” Marie asked after her thorough inspection. She did not appear intimidated by what she saw.

  Brianna lifted her head, refusing to cower before her rival. “I came to seek your…talents.”

  Marie stretched out on the cushions and draped her arm across the voluptuous swell of her hip. The sleeve of her thin satin dress shifted and exposed a milky white shoulder. “If you wish to use my…talents,” she said the word as Brianna had, but slightly mockingly, “…toward your husband, you are wasting your time. He has made it clear he is not interested.” Her gaze cut into Brianna. “I confess I do not understand. I have lured men from women far more beautiful than you.”

  Brianna ignored the insult. “I do not seek your company for my husband, but for myself.”

  “Oh?” The corner of her lips quirked up in an amused smile. “You are full of surprises, aren’t you?” Her stare slid down Brianna’s body once more, this time with renewed interest.

  “You mistake me still.” Brianna took a step closer. “I’ve seen you from a distance, and somehow you call attention with the sway of your hips, the lift of your chin. You are the kind of woman who can get what she wants with just a glance. Up close, you are exquisite and move with grace—”

  “Are you certain I mistake your intent?” Marie asked. The pad of her middle finger swept back and forth across her lower lip.

  “I am a student,” Brianna declared. “I study many subjects, and when I do not understand something, I do my best to learn more. You possess knowledge I am lacking.” She tore her stare from the path of Marie’s finger. “Teach me to behave like you. Teach me to wield my body.”

  “You are a nobleman’s daughter recently plucked,” Marie scoffed. “You are far too prudent to appreciate what I would say.”

  Brianna narrowed her eyes at the woman, refusing to accept her mirth. “You underestimate me.” Coins clinked within the heavy velvet purse Brianna set upon the table. “I am willing to pay handsomely for your instruction and believe you will find me an apt pupil. If I am too resistant, you may the keep the purse and ask me to leave.”

  Marie rose with the sleek grace of a feline and hefted the purse into her hands. “When would you like to begin?”

  There was a palpable shift in power, and Brianna intended to use it to her advantage. “As soon as you’ve told me what business you have with my husband, and what the two of you have been doing in the middle of the night.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Marie set the purse on the table and made her way to the pillow-strewn settee once more. She motioned to the plush chair at her side. “Please have a seat.”

  With trembling legs and a straight back, Brianna complied with Marie’s request and settled back against the overstuffed cushions.

  Marie’s gaze followed Brianna, her expression shrewd. “You have a natural grace that will aid you in what I teach.” One long leg slid onto the settee, revealing a slender ankle and part of her calf. “But that is not what you want to hear right now.” She rested an elbow on her knee and leaned her chin on her the back of her hand. “What is Colin to me?”

  Colin.

  She referred to his given name, her tone intimate. Too intimate.

  Brianna pressed her knees against one another to keep from squirming. The glint in the Frenchwoman’s eye confirmed she did nothing by accident, and she was enjoying every second of her teasing.

  “He’s a protector,” she said finally. “A benefactor.”

  A benefactor?

  Brianna’s heart crumpled with a force she wished she could ignore. Men paid for the living expenses of women like Marie for one reason.

  “Not in the way you think.” Marie smiled and her sharp white teeth glinted in the softly lit room. “You needn’t worry, little scholar. We were never lovers.”

  The clopping of a horse sounded outside. She glanced out the window beside her, her gaze following something Brianna could not see. “I was a girl of twelve when I first met Colin. He was hardly more than a boy himself at that time, an adolescent who thought himself a man. Given his height, I mistook him for such.”

  Her finger traced an invisible circle across the top of her thigh. “When I first saw him, he wore a green velvet doublet and a costly sword at his side. He had money and I—” Her focus turned toward Brianna. “I was a prostitute.”

  Brianna pressed her thumbnail into her finger to keep from gasping. Not that she was surprised Marie had been a prostitute. But at such a young age—it was deplorable.

  The tightness around Marie’s eyes softened, as did her stare, and Brianna realized her lack of response passed some sort of an unspoken test.

  “I waited until he was alone,” Marie continued. “The way most men prefer to be approached.” The mask she wore faltered, and for a flash of a moment, her crystal blue gaze reflected a startling vulnerability. “He smiled down at me, and at first I thought he would agree to my proposition. Then he asked my age.”

  The veil slid over her emotions once more. “I lied and he knew it.” Marie’s smooth mask did not crack again. “Rather than shun me, he paid for an apartment. He made sure I had food to eat, fine clothes to wear. He paid for an education I would never have received.” She broke eye contact to study the lazy movement of her finger across her leg. “And he expected nothing of me in return except that I pay attention to my tutors. Even when I was old enough to repay him with what I’d tried to sell him so long ago.”

  Her finger stilled. “But you are only a year or two older than I, yet he still sees me as a child.” She drew her palm across the curve of her exposed calf. “I’m a woman in my own right, one who has taken lovers of her own choosing, one experienced in the art of pleasure and desire, but it will never matter to him. He will never want me as I want him.” Her averted gaze did not hide the chill of her stare. “He will never want me as he wants you.”

  The squeeze of Brianna’s chest seemed to lessen, and the breath flowed into her lungs with more ease. For all of her incredible beauty, Colin did not lust after Marie.

  Brianna eyed her self-professed adversary with suspicion. “You confess you desire my husband, yet you agree to help me. Why?” She glanced around the sumptuous room. “I don’t think you need the coin.”

  Marie flicked a golden tassel dangling from the corner of a pillow. “A woman always needs coin. Besides,” she said, her gaze sliding across Brianna’s face and down her stiff body. “I think teaching you will prove fun.”

  Brianna’s cheeks scalded with the force of her blush, and a prickle of unease wobbled her hold on the power she thought she held. Power she would see reclaimed.

  “If you are not my husband’s lover, what is it you do at night that keeps him from my bed?”

  Marie’s fingertips hovered over her lips like a child was wont to do when she’d been naughty. “Oh, I should not tell you that.” Her eyes danced.

  “I think you want to tell me.”

  “Perhaps you are right.” Her chin tilted in a
coquettish fashion that showed the sharp line of her jaw. “Your husband found some old letters to your mother. Colin preferred them to be translated without your knowledge, and I have other matters that require me during the earlier parts of the day.”

  “Letters?” Brianna asked. “What kind of letters?”

  Something creased Marie’s brows. “Letters to your mother from a French marquis.”

  The pungent aroma of perfume pulsed in Brianna’s head and made the room blur. She knew what those letters meant. And so did Colin.

  She focused on maintaining a steady voice. “How has it taken over two weeks?”

  “They were all written in code.” Marie examined her fingernails with a slight frown. “We didn’t finish yet, so I can’t tell you much about them.”

  Letters from a French marquis written in code.

  “You want those letters, don’t you?” Marie asked.

  Brianna looked toward her once more, but did not bother to reply. The Frenchwoman already knew the answer.

  Marie leaned forward on the settee so the tops of her breasts squeezed over her gown. “Now, let’s teach you how to get what you want.”

  • • •

  Colin stalked away from his desk where Alec stood, his muscles burning. The solar walls closed in around him and darkness chased away the dying light. The hour was late and Brianna was missing.

  He jerked his head up at Alec, his face tense.

  “When did she say she was meeting with the cook?” Colin asked.

  “This morning, yet the servants say the cook went to market at midday.” His dark brows drew together.

  “And ye just tell me this now?” His fist connected with the solid wood desk. “Did ye no think that was important to tell me when ye found out?”

  Alec’s lips tightened, the way they did when he felt strongly about something. The way they did when he was about to fight. “I dinna see anything out of the ordinary. I dinna know she would be gone the entire day. We have too few guards to worry themselves about what every person at Edzell does or doesna do.”