Courting an Angel Read online

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes. Blythe?”

  “You’re a man,” the ten-year-old observed. “Do you have wicked intentions too?”

  Henry and Rob burst out laughing while the countess covered her smile with one hand. The earl cast them a quelling look, which only served to make Rob giggle even more.

  “Daughters, if a man tries to kiss you,” Richard asked, “what are you going to say to him?”

  “Yuch-yuch-yuch,” the five little girls chorused.

  The earl cast the three watching adults a look of triumph and then asked his daughters, “If a man does kiss you, what are you going to do?”

  “Slap his face,” they shouted.

  “Daddy, Uncle Odo told us —” Blythe began.

  “— to kick the gent’s balls,” Bliss finished.

  “What balls?” Aurora asked.

  “Never mind,” the earl answered.

  “Daughters, if you plan to celebrate tonight,” Lady Keely spoke up, “you must nap this afternoon. Mrs. Ashemole is waiting inside for you.”

  The earl knelt in front of his three-year-old twins and put an arm around each. “Give Daddy a kiss good-bye,” he said.

  “Yuch-yuch-yuch,” Summer and Autumn shouted.

  Lady Keely, Rob, and Henry burst out laughing. Even the earl smiled.

  Henry turned to Rob and asked, “Would you care to ride with me this afternoon?”

  “There’s nothin’ I’d love more,” she answered, “but Isabelle will be here soon. Ye know she’s comin’ for an extended visit.”

  “Then I’ll wait with you at the quay,” Henry said.

  Hand in hand, the two walked in the direction of the quay. The earl and the countess stared after them for a moment.

  Richard and Keely exchanged concerned glances. The earl raised his brows at his wife in a silent question. She shrugged in answer and smiled.

  “Henry fancies himself in love with her,” Lady Keely said. “Rob will have him if her parents can manage to win her an annulment.”

  “Does your brother know about her previous marriage?” Richard asked.

  Keely shook her head. “’Tisn’t my place to tell him, and I doubt Rob has shared it. She’s hoping for good news from Scotland.”

  Both the earl and his lady watched the retreating couple. Appearing very much in love, Henry and Rob strolled across the lawns to the quay. At one point, the marquess tried to kiss her, but she managed to elude his lips and giggled at her victory.

  “Send Henry to court for a few weeks,” Keely suggested, looping her arm through her husband’s. “By the time he returns, we shall have heard if an annulment is possible.”

  “You’re very wise, dearest,” Richard said, escorting her to the house.

  “You once told me I had no common sense,” she reminded him.

  Richard smiled. “True, but you proved me wrong when you married me.”

  Meanwhile, Rob sat beside Henry on a stone bench near the quay. Her right hand clasped his, and her left hand hid inside her pocket. When she peeked at the handsome marquess and found him watching her, Rob blushed and smiled.

  “I saved ye from one of my uncle’s tongue-lashin’s,” she teased him. “Why do ye persist in tellin’ his daughters vulgar jokes? They canna even understand them.”

  “’Tis precisely the reason,” Henry told her. “For the past ten years, Richard has been obsessed with guarding his daughters’ maidenheads. I love sending him into a high dudgeon.”

  “’Tis cruel of ye to do so,” Rob said.

  Henry chuckled. “Before he married my sister, your uncle was the wildest and most successful rake at the Tudor court.”

  “Uncle Richard?” Rob couldn’t credit that. “He seems so proper.”

  “My sister tamed him.”

  “How did she manage that?”

  “By kissing him whenever he wished,” Henry lied. “You should strive to emulate her behavior. Besides, you wound me whenever you turn your lips away from mine.”

  “Disappointment is a part of life, my lord,” Rob said, flicking a sidelong glance at him. “Ye’ll survive.”

  “Won’t you feel guilty if I expire before your eyes?” he asked with a wicked grin.

  “Yer incorrigible,” she replied, laughing. “I willna kiss ye until my previous betrothal is annulled. Remember, my lord, those who wait long at the ferry are bound to get across sometime.”

  Henry slipped his arm around her shoulder and drew her close, so close his well-muscled thigh teased her skirt. When she looked up at him, he gazed deeply and longingly into the fathomless pools of her emerald eyes and whispered in a seductively husky voice, “Darling, you do remind me of a thunderstorm at a picnic.”

  Rob giggled. “You resemble a waistie wanis.”

  Henry cocked an ebony brow at her. “What’s that?”

  “A spoiled child.”

  “Sorry, darling. Let’s kiss and make up.”

  “Yer forgiven and may kiss my hand.” Rob offered him her right hand to kiss in a courtly manner.

  “Uncle Henry!”

  Both Rob and Henry looked over their shoulders. Blythe hurried across the lawns toward them.

  “Uncle Henry,” Blythe called. “Daddy wants to see you. Now.”

  Henry waved at his niece and then turned back to Rob. “Darling, I fear you only delayed your uncle’s tongue-lashing. Will you accompany me to the house?”

  Rob glanced toward the Thames River and shook her head. In the distance, a barge had just rounded the bend. “Isabelle is almost here.”

  “I’ll return in a few minutes,” Henry said, rising from the bench. “Be warned, my bonny lassie. I plan to steal one of your kisses at the Samhuinn celebration tonight.”

  “Ye can always try,” she countered with a flirtatious smile.

  Rob watched Henry and Blythe walk back to Devereux House. With his ebony hair and sky-blue eyes, the Marquess of Ludlow was every maiden’s dream man. Rob sighed. She loved him, but why couldn’t he understand that she wasn’t going to allow him liberties with her person until her annulment was finalized?

  Because he doesn’t know I’m already married, Rob answered her own question. Guilty remorse coiled itself around her heart. Though she wasn’t deceitful by nature, Rob couldn’t chance losing Henry’s tender regard by telling him the truth of the matter.

  Gordon Campbell will welcome the opportunity to dissolve our marriage, Rob told herself. If he even remembers he has a wife. The Marquess of Inverary had never sent her any trinket or letter. When he left Dunridge Castle after their wedding, the man seemed to have fallen off the edge of the world.

  Banishing the painful memory, Rob smiled inwardly. She had achieved her goal in life. Like her mother before her, she was a real English lady. Having found happiness in England, she vowed never to return to the Highlands.

  Rob pulled her left hand out other pocket and stared at the birthmark shaped like the devil’s flower. She ran a finger across it. The mark felt no different from the skin on her right hand, yet it had brought her a lifetime of trouble. Amazing, how an innocuous-looking stain could create so much heartache.

  “Rob?”

  Rob focused on the voice, then leaped off the bench and cried, “Isabelle!”

  The boatman helped the blonde disembark, and the two petite women flew into each other’s arms. Materializing from nowhere, the earl’s footmen carried the young woman’s bags to the house.

  “I missed you,” Rob exclaimed.

  “I missed you more,” Isabelle Debrett said with a smile.

  “’Tis warm today. Let’s sit in the garden and chat,” Rob suggested, sticking her left hand into her pocket. “Or would ye prefer to rest awhile?”

  “I’m too excited to rest,” Isabelle admitted. Then ordered, “Get that hand out of your pocket.”

  “But —”

  “Do as I say.”

  When Rob reluctantly did as she was told, Isabelle took her blemished hand in hers. Together, they walked
to one of the stone benches.

  Uncomfortable with the other girl touching her marked hand, Rob sat stiffly beside her on the bench. She itched to yank her hand back and hide it in her pocket, but would never chance offending the other girl.

  Without warning, Isabelle reached out with one finger and traced the six-petaled flower stain. “Delicately distinctive,” she murmured, then looked up and smiled.

  Horrified by the gesture and surprised by the words, Rob turned a stricken expression upon the other girl. Didn’t she recognize the mark of the devil? What would she do if Isabelle suddenly made the sign of the cross to ward the evil eye off? How could she bear losing her only friend?

  “I’m so glad we’re friends,” Isabelle said.

  Tears welled up in Rob’s eyes. “I — I never had a friend before I met ye,” she confessed.

  “That makes us even,” the other girl admitted. “You’re the only real friend I ever had.”

  “Ye’ve two sisters.”

  “Stepsisters,” Isabelle qualified. “They never considered me their real sister.”

  “’Tis pure jealousy,” Rob replied, indignant for her friend’s sake. “Yer so bonny, and whenever Lobelia and Rue go out and aboot, their ugly faces scare wee bairns.”

  “’Tis unkind of you to say that,” Isabelle said with a mischievous grin. “Lobelia and Rue are merely a tad plain.”

  “Belle, how can ye sit there and defend them?” Rob asked. “They force ye to attend them as if yer their personal servant. Unpaid servant, I might add. Yer stepmother’s no better.”

  Isabelle shrugged. “Delphinia, Lobelia, and Rue are the only family I have now that Papa is gone.”

  “What aboot yer cousin Roger?”

  “I meant immediate family. Besides, accumulating a mountain of gold keeps Roger too busy to bother with me.” Isabelle spied the handsome man advancing on them and whispered, “Here comes the Marquess of Ludlow.”

  Rob yanked her hand out of her friend’s and slipped it into her pocket. Masking her abrupt gesture, she said, “I feel a bit chilled. Do ye?”

  Isabelle shook her head and cast her friend a curious look. She flicked a glance at the marquess and then the pocket where her friend’s blemished hand was hidden.

  “Lady Isabelle, welcome to Devereux House.” Henry greeted the blonde with an easy smile. Before she could reply, he dismissed her presence just as easily. Turning to Rob, Henry said, “Your uncle needs me to go to court. I won’t be here for tonight’s celebration. How about an early Samhuinn kiss, sweetheart?”

  Rob blushed, embarrassed that he would speak so boldly in front of her guest. “I’ll consider givin’ ye a welcome-home kiss when ye return,” she said, refusing him.

  Henry lifted her right hand to his lips, gazed deeply into her eyes, and said, “Darling, you’re making me daft.”

  Isabelle burst out laughing.

  Rob giggled and then parried, “My lord, ye already were daft when I met ye.”

  As she watched the marquess walk toward the quay, a vague sense of relief surged through Rob. She loved him with all of her heart, but needed a bit of breathing space. Rob wanted to savor each moment with the only friend she’d ever had, and Henry’s departure would give her that opportunity.

  “Ludlow seems smitten,” Isabelle remarked.

  “So he says,” Rob replied, her gaze still fixed on the retreating marquess. “I willna kiss him until I’m free.”

  “Do you think Campbell will agree to that?” Isabelle asked.

  “I dinna know.” Rob slipped her left hand out of her pocket, removed the scrolled band of gold that she now wore on her smallest finger, and stared at it.

  Lifting the wedding ring from her hand, Isabelle admired it and then said, “There’s something written inside.”

  “‘Ye and No Other,’” Rob supplied.

  “How romantic,” Isabelle gushed, momentarily forgetting her friend’s preference for Henry Talbot. “The Marquess of Inverary must love you. What did he say when he gave you the ring?”

  “Somethin’ aboot bein’ his lady and how he’d always remain true to me,” Rob answered, hoping her friend proved wrong about the marquess’s feelings. “What a crock of dung that was.”

  “Campbell adores you,” the other girl disagreed. “No man would say such things to a lady unless he meant them.”

  Rob gave her an affectionate smile. “Isabelle, ye always see the good in people. Campbell never even wrote me a letter during all those years.”

  “Perhaps he’s been busy.”

  “For ten years?” Rob countered, cocking an ebony brow at her.

  “’Tis possible,” Isabelle said with a nod, then sighed dreamily. “‘Ye and No Other.’ Aye, the Marquess of Inverary loves you madly. I warrant ’tis the very reason he’s kept himself away. Campbell refused to tempt himself while you were growing into womanhood. Imagine, Rob. All those long, long years Gordon Campbell remained faithful to you . . .”

  * * *

  Holyroodhouse Palace, Edinburgh

  “Come back to bed and warm me,” the Countess of Galbraith purred throatily.

  Twenty-five-year-old Gordon Campbell ignored the blatantly sensual invitation. Dressed only in black breeches and boots, he stared out the bedchamber window that overlooked Holyrood Park.

  That first morning of November had dawned depressingly gray and frosted. October’s crowning glory of gold, orange, and red leaves lay scattered across the brown lawns. Bare branches etched stark silhouettes against a bleak sky.

  Gordon studied the fallen leaves and the barren branches. “No wind” registered in his mind. The overcast day appeared ideal for his golf game with King James. Losing to the king without seeming to do so was much easier on a windless day.

  “Gordy, did ye hear me?” twenty-two-year-old Lavinia Kerr asked in a whining voice. “I’m freezin’.”

  Gordon turned around and smiled lazily at the voluptuous redhead snuggled beneath the coverlet on the four-poster, curtained bed. His latest mistress possessed all the qualities he liked best in a woman — stupid, shallow, and married to someone else.

  No commitments was rule number one in Gordon’s personal philosophy. He needed no tender attachments impeding his soaring ambitions and was glad he’d followed his father’s advice by marrying MacArthur’s daughter when he turned fifteen. His marriage to her had saved him from myriad pretty vultures like Lavinia. When doing so suited him, Gordon intended to end his affair with the fiery-haired beauty in his usual way. He’d gift her with an outrageously expensive trinket, give her adorable derriere a final pat, and send her on her way. To her next lover, no doubt.

  “At what are ye starin’?” she asked, a flirtatious smile curving her full lips.

  “I’m admirin’ the most beautiful woman in Edinburgh,” Gordon answered, sauntering across the chamber to sit on the edge of the bed.

  Lavinia sat up and let the coverlet drop to her waist, exposing her breasts. “Ye have a remarkable way with words,” she murmured, gliding the palm of her hand across his bare chest. “Take yer boots and breeches off. I have urgent need of ye.”

  “When ye slipped into my bed this mornin’,” Gordon reminded her, “I told ye I couldna linger. I’m golfin’ with James.”

  “The king willna golf in the rain,” she argued.

  “’Tisna rainin’,” he told her. “Why dinna ye join us?”

  “I hate golfin’.”

  “How unfortunate.” Gordon cast her a long look and added in feigned dismay, “Ye possess the perfect stance for an excellent golf game.”

  “I do?”

  “Aye, widespread legs.”

  “Yer crude,” Lavinia said, lifting her nose into the air. Then, “When are ye goin’ to marry me?”

  Gordon leaned close and nuzzled the side of her neck. With laughter lurking in his voice, he reminded her, “Did ye forget, hinny? Ye’ve already got yerself a husband.”

  “Galbraith is an old man and canna last verra much longer,” La
vinia countered. “Challenge him to a duel and be done with it.”

  “I expected better of ye,” Gordon replied, giving her a reproving look. “Where’s the honor in challengin’ a man too old to defend himself? Dinna forget, lovey, I have a wife.”

  “The MacArthur chit?” Lavinia laughed derisively. “Annul her.”

  Gordon opened his mouth to reply but heard a knock on the door. He flicked a measuring look at Lavinia and hoped this wasn’t one of her tricks intended for Galbraith to find them together in a compromising position. Murdering a man old enough to be his grandfather wasn’t something he’d enjoy. Perhaps he’d better shop for that farewell trinket after his round of golf.

  “Gordy? Are ye in there?” The voice belonged to his friend, Mungo MacKinnon.

  “Here’s yer cousin. Cover yerself,” Gordon said to Lavinia. Then called, “Come in, Mungo.”

  The door swung open, and twenty-six-year-old Mungo MacKinnon walked into the chamber. Standing well under six feet, Mungo was slenderly built and a good six inches shorter than Gordon. He sported a crown of pale blond hair and deep-set blue eyes. Mungo leaned his bag of golf clubs against the wall and then grinned at Lavinia.

  “Cousin, ye look delightfully disheveled,” he teased her. “How’s yer husband?”

  “Verra funny.”

  “Are ye almost ready?” Mungo asked Gordon. “We dare na keep Himself waitin’.”

  Rising from his perch on the edge of the bed, Gordon pulled his white shirt on over his head and then reached for his black leather jerkin. “I was tryin’ to persuade Lavinia to join us,” he said, his gray eyes sparkling with mischief.

  Lavinia tossed the pillow at him, but in the movement, the coverlet dropped to reveal her breasts. She blushed prettily and yanked it up.

  The two men hooted at her embarrassment, but an insistent knocking on the door cut their laughter short. While Mungo hastily pulled the bed draperies shut to hide his cousin, Gordon crossed the chamber and opened the door a crack. A man, dressed in the black and green Campbell plaid, stood there.

  Recognizing the Marquess of Inverary, the Campbell courier offered him a sealed parchment, saying, “From His Grace.”