Daniel threw down the newspaper and sprang to his feet. “I’ll walk with ye.”

Ainsley looked back as she left the room behind Daniel. Cameron remained by the fireplace, stance rigid, his shirt open to reveal his brown throat. For the first time, Ainsley saw something naked in his eyes, not anger or frustration or old pain, but a longing so intense it stabbed at her from across the room.

Then Daniel slammed the door, and Ainsley’s view of him was lost.

“I’d better do up your back.”

“Pardon?” Ainsley stopped at the top of the stairs as Daniel jumped two steps past her. The dogs slithered by and ran all the way down the staircase, then hurried up again to see what was keeping the human beings.

“If someone sees ye like that, they’ll talk,” Daniel said. “Especially when ye disappeared so sudden.”

She’d forgotten about the undone clasps under her shawl, but Daniel had a point. Running about with a bodice undone would make even the dullest person realize what she’d been up to.

Smothering a sigh, Ainsley lowered her shawl and turned her back. Daniel, at her head height when he stood two stairs down, quickly hooked the clasps together. His skill told her that he, at sixteen, already had experience doing up women’s dresses. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, she supposed.

“How did you know I was in your father’s study?” Ainsley asked Daniel when he finished.

“I saw you go inside the house with him. I always keep an eye on my Dad. Don’t worry, I made sure no one else noticed.”

When she turned around, Daniel was studying her with his Mackenzie eyes, darker than his father’s, his face sharp and fine boned rather than hard. Daniel could look at a person with remarkable percipience, seeing through every layer they tried to put in his way. While Ian Mackenzie didn’t like to meet a person’s gaze directly, Daniel Mackenzie bored into their eyes to the point of rudeness.

“Do you like my dad?” Daniel asked it without rancor. He simply wanted to know.

“I barely know your dad.”

“You were about to let him have his way with ye. I hope you like him a little.”

Ainsley flushed. “Well, if you put it like that.”

“I do put it like that. I like you, ye see, and I know Dad does too. But I don’t want him toying with you and then turning his back on ye a month later, with a pretty gift for compensation. I told him tonight that I was interested in you meself, and you should have seen him come over growling, telling me to stay away.” Daniel grinned. “I only told him that to see if he fancied you enough. I guess he does.”

“You shouldn’t have said it at all, Danny,” she said. “He probably believed you.”

“Naw, Dad don’t take much heed of what I say.” Daniel folded his arms. “But I don’t want him leading you down the garden path, so to speak.”

Ainsley adjusted her shawl. “Well, you have nothing to worry about on that account, my boy. I’m not naïve, nor am I the sort of woman your father prefers.”

“No, but I’m thinking you’re the sort of woman he needs.” Ainsley slowly let out her breath. Her body still sang from Cameron’s touch, and she found it difficult to focus on his son’s practical words.

“Put that out of your head,” she said. “At the end of the house party, it’s back to Balmoral and the queen for me. I’ll not likely cross paths with your father for a long time.”

And won’t that be a shame?

Daniel didn’t hide the disappointment in his eyes. “Mrs. Douglas, ye have to try.”

“No, I don’t. I need to get into my ball gown and go play hostess with your aunts.” But wouldn’t it be grand to be a glittering lady in bright silks, with diamonds on her bosom, dancing waltz after waltz in a sumptuous ballroom? Her partner would be Cameron, a big man who moved with grace.

Daniel stopped arguing, but his glower spoke volumes. He finally turned and led the way down the stairs, dogs scampering with him. He moved so fast that by the time Ainsley caught up to him at the bottom of the staircase, she was running.

Whiskey didn’t calm him. Cameron tried to make himself feel better by using his foot to scatter the stacks of papers Ainsley had made, and then kicking them. Neither helped much.

He stormed back into his bedroom, did up his shirt, and pulled on another coat, not bothering with the cravat. He could never tie the bloody things decently. That’s what women and valets were for.

He drank as he dressed, but half the decanter of whiskey couldn’t erase the taste of Ainsley from his mouth. If Daniel hadn’t come charging in, Cameron would be inside her by now, finally learning what she’d feel like around him.

He wasn’t sure what to make of Daniel’s interruption. His look at his father had been one of annoyance, not jealous rage. Daniel’s story about wanting Ainsley for a mistress seemed to have faded to smoke, the boy using it as a ploy of some sort.

Hell, Cameron never knew what Daniel really thought or wanted. They never talked—they bantered. Or argued. Daniel wasn’t a bad lad, but his idea of obedience was doing what Cameron wanted only if Daniel had already decided on the same course. If Daniel disagreed with Cameron, he did what he damn well pleased.

Cameron gave up and let him. Cameron’s own father had been the devil himself, controlling his sons so tightly that Cameron was surprised that any of the Mackenzies could still breathe.

The old duke had gone easiest on Cameron, because Cameron had been interested in horses and erotic pictures—As a man should be, their father had said.

The old duke had regularly beaten Ian, saying that Ian was being sullen when he wouldn’t look at anyone. He’d beaten Mac for his love of art, like a bloody unnatural; and Hart every day regardless, to make a man of him. When he’s duke and beset by fools, he’ll be strong.

Cameron had stood by, troubled and angry, unable to stop any of it. Until the day he’d returned from Harrow at the close of a term and realized he’d grown bigger and stronger than his father. He’d entered the house to hear eleven-year-old Mac’s terrified screams and found his father about to break Mac’s fingers. Cameron had wrested his father from Mac and thrown the man against the wall.

After their father had taken himself out of the room, roaring, Mac had looked up from the beautiful pictures he’d drawn, bravely trying to blink back tears. “Damn good toss, Cam,” he’d said, wiping his eyes. “Would ye teach me?”

Cameron had vowed that Daniel would never know fear like that. Daniel might run a bit wild, but that was a small price for Cameron to pay for Daniel’s happiness. Cameron would be damned if he’d become the kind of monster who would think nothing of breaking his own son’s fingers.

He got himself downstairs and to the main wing of the house in time to hear strains of music coming from the ballroom. Scottish music, a reel. Hart Mackenzie always made sure that, along with the popular German waltzes and polkas, his hired musicians played plenty of Scottish dances. No one was allowed to forget that the Mackenzies were Scottish first, the entire branch of their clan nearly wiped out in ’45, except for young Malcolm Mackenzie who survived to marry and rebuild the family. He’d kept the title of duke bestowed on the family in the 1300s but lived in a hovel on the grounds that had once housed Malcolm and his four brothers, all but Malcolm gone under English guns. Hart Mackenzie enjoyed stuffing the Mackenzies’ current prosperity down English throats.

As Cameron strode toward the ballroom, Phyllida Chase glided down the hall from the guest wing, fashionably late as usual. Intent on adjusting her gloves, she didn’t see Cameron until she nearly ran into him.

“Do get out of the way, Cam,” she said in a cool voice.

Cameron didn’t move. “Give Mrs. Douglas back her letters,” he said. “She’s done you no harm.”

Phyllida gave her glove one last tug. “Gracious, are you her champion now?”

“I find all blackmailers disgusting.” Yes, Ainsley had asked Cameron not to interfere, but he refused to stand by while Phyllida plied her extortion. “Give her the damn letters and leave her alone, and I’ll think about not having Hart throw you out.”

“Hart won’t throw me out. He’s trying to cultivate my husband’s support. If you hadn’t been so thickheaded as to give Mrs. Douglas back that page, she’d have been able to come up with the price.”

“Give her the letters, or I will make your life hell.”

Phyllida’s eyes flickered, but damned if she didn’t return a stubborn look. “I doubt you could make it any more hell than it already is, my lord Cam. I’m selling Mrs. Douglas the letters because I need the money. As simple as that.”

“For what, your gambling debts? Your husband is rich. Go to him.”

“It has nothing to do with gambling, and it is my own business.”

Damn the woman. “If I give you the money you need, will you cease troubling Mrs. Douglas?”

Phyllida’s worried look dissolved into a smile. “My, my, you are smitten, aren’t you?”

“How much do you want?”

Phyllida wet her lips. “Fifteen hundred wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Fifteen hundred, and you return the letters and let it go.”

Phyllida made a show of considering, but Cameron could see her salivating at the prospect of fifteen hundred guineas in her hands. “Fair enough.”

“Good. Fetch the letters.”

“My dear Cameron, I don’t have them with me. I’m not that foolish. I’ll have to send for them.”

“No money until I see them.”

Phyllida pouted. “Now, that’s not fair.”

“I’m not interested in fair. I’m interested in you leaving Mrs. Douglas the hell alone.”