Daniel whistled. “I wish you would play for money, Mrs. Douglas. The two of us, we could win a great deal together.”

“Certainly, Daniel. We’ll get a wagon and travel about, waving a banner that says ‘Champion Exhibition Billiards by a Lady and a Lad. Be Amazed! Test Their Skill and Try Your Luck.’ ”

“A gypsy wagon,” Daniel said. “We’ll have Angelo do acrobatics and Dad show off his trained horses. And you can shoot at targets. People will come from miles to see us.”

Ainsley laughed, and Ian completely ignored them. When Ainsley finally missed her shot, Daniel took the balls from the pockets and lined them up for himself. Ian abandoned the table and came to stand in front of Ainsley.

The golden gaze that roved her face before settling on her left cheekbone was as intense as any of the Mackenzies’, even if Ian didn’t look directly into her eyes.

Ian had spent his childhood in a madhouse, and while Ainsley knew that Ian never had been truly insane, he wasn’t an ordinary man either. He had intelligence that came out of him in amazing bursts, and Ainsley always had the feeling that his enigmatic exterior hid a man who understood everyone’s secrets, perhaps better than they did themselves.

“Cameron’s wife hated him,” Ian said without preliminary. “She did everything she could to hurt him. It made him a hard and unhappy man.”

Ainsley caught her breath. “How very awful of her.”

“Aye,” Daniel said cheerfully from the billiards table. “Me mum was a right bitch. And a whore.”

Ainsley’s correct response would be to admonish Daniel for speaking so harshly of his mother, especially when she was deceased. Good heavens, Daniel, that cannot be true. But from what Ainsley had heard about Lady Elizabeth, Daniel likely spoke the unvarnished truth.

“I never knew her,” Daniel said. “But people tell me about her. I used to punch the fellows at school for saying that my mother had bedded every aristocrat in Europe, but it was mostly true, so I stopped.”

The matter-of-fact tone in Daniel’s voice made Ainsley’s heart ache. Lady Elizabeth’s reputation had been bad, but to hear the facts of it so baldly from her son’s lips was heartbreaking.

“Daniel, I’m sorry.”

Daniel shrugged. “Mum hated Dad for not wanting her to go tarting about after they were married. She thought she could carry on as before, you see, but with all Dad’s money behind her. Plus she had the prospect that she might become a duchess if Hart pegged it. In retaliation for Dad not letting her run wild, she tried to convince him that I wasn’t his son, but as ye can see, I’m very much a Mackenzie.” Daniel was, with that sharp Mackenzie stare. No denying it.

“How could she?” Ainsley asked indignantly. That a mother could use her child as a pawn in a game with her husband made Ainsley sick. Stupid Elizabeth—she’d had Cam’s wicked smile, the warmth in his dark gold eyes, his kisses of fire all to herself, and she hadn’t treasured them.

“Like I say, she was a right bitch.”

Ainsley didn’t question how Daniel knew this about his mother. He’d have been told—by the servants, his schoolmates, well-meaning friends, not-so-well-meaning acquaintances. She imagined the anguish of the little boy learning that the mother he didn’t remember hadn’t been the angelic being a mother was suppose to be. Ainsley had very few memories of her own mother, and she could imagine how she’d feel if she were told repeatedly what a horrible person she’d been.

“I’d like to give Lady Elizabeth a good talking-to,” Ainsley said. A good tongue-lashing was more like it.

Daniel laughed. “So would Aunt Isabella and Aunt Beth. And my uncles. But Dad never let anyone go up against her. Well, no one but him.”

Ian broke in. “I never knew her. I was in the asylum when she was married to Cameron. But I heard what she did to him.”

Ian, not a man who showed emotion except in his love for Beth, held a spark of rage in his eyes for his brother.

“Daniel.” Cameron’s voice rumbled from the other side of the room. “Out.”

Daniel looked up at his father without surprise. “I was just telling Mrs. Douglas things she needed to know.”

Cameron gestured at the door he’d just opened. “Out.”

Daniel heaved an aggrieved sigh, shoved the cues back into the rack, and shuffled out of the room. Ian followed him without a word, closing the door and leaving Ainsley and Cameron alone.


Chapter 11


Cameron looked at Ainsley, her color high, her eyes sparkling with righteous anger, and he wanted her. He’d take her on the billiards table, on the chair near it, or the settee, he didn’t much care. He wanted to kiss the lips parted in indignation, run kisses down the chest that rose with agitated breath. Cam wanted to bury himself inside the woman who’s said with such outrage, I’d like to give her a good talking-to.

He could imagine Ainsley, with her frank eyes and bold stare, telling Lady Elizabeth Cavendish exactly what she thought of her. Elizabeth, the rich, spoiled daughter of an aristocrat, as wild and bright as a tropical bird, wouldn’t have stood a chance against Ainsley. Ainsley was more like a sparrow—a matter-of-fact woman, more interested in the practical matter at hand than displaying her plumage.

No, not a sparrow. That was too plain for someone like Ainsley. Ainsley was deeply beautiful, with beauty that shone from the depths of her. Cameron wanted to learn that loveliness, every single inch of it.

“I know such things are none of my business,” Ainsley was saying, her voice like fine wine to his senses. “I should have stopped Daniel when he began, but I admit to a morbid curiosity about your late wife. If any of what Daniel said is true, I am sorry.”

She was sorry, that was the thing. Other women might pretend that Daniel must be making things up, or be disgusted—at Elizabeth, at Cameron, at Daniel for telling the tale. But not Ainsley. She saw the truth for what it was.

There were reasons Cameron hadn’t divorced Elizabeth, all of which had to do with Daniel. He’d realized early on that Elizabeth couldn’t be trusted not to try to rid herself of her baby, and so Cameron kept her close, much to her fury. Elizabeth had claimed repeatedly that the child wasn’t Cameron’s, and Cameron knew there was a risk that she told the truth. Elizabeth had had a string of lovers, some regular, some brief encounters. But Cam had been willing to risk it. Elizabeth had been wrong—Daniel was a Mackenzie all right.

Cameron knew now that he should have sent Elizabeth away as soon as she’d given birth to Daniel, but he’d been young and sentimental. He’d truly believed that once Elizabeth had a son to care for, she would change. But she hadn’t; she’d only sunk into a strange melancholy, her rages growing worse, and she’d started trying to hurt Daniel.

Cameron had the strangest feeling that Ainsley, if he explained all this to her, would understand.

“I’m not here to talk about my wife,” he said.

Ainsley’s eyes were filled with anger for him. “Very well, what did you come here to talk about?”

Cameron touched the top button of her dull gray afternoon dress and forced his voice to soften. “I came to ask how many buttons you’ll undo for me today.”

Ainsley’s sharp intake of breath pressed her bosom against the very buttons Cameron wanted to undo. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes starry, Ainsley at her most beautiful.

“I thought you’d forgotten about that game,” she said.

“I never forget games. Or what’s owed me.”

He stepped closer still, inhaling her sweet scent. Current fashion dictated that women’s skirts were worn tight against thighs and legs, and Cameron took full advantage, standing right against her. When she opened her bodice, he’d be able to peer into her soft cleavage.

He again touched the top button, which was a little bar of onyx. “How many buttons, Mrs. Douglas?”

“It was ten last time. This time, I think, I should only go a half dozen.”

Cameron frowned. “Why?”

“Because we’re indoors with people barging about the house looking for odds and ends. Billiard balls were on a few lists for the scavenger hunt.”

“Twenty,” Cameron said firmly.

Ainsley choked. “Twenty?”

“Twenty buttons will put me here.” He ran his finger down her bodice almost to her waist.

Cameron felt her heart pounding behind the stiffness of her corset. “Not fair,” she said. “These buttons are more widely spaced than the last set.”

“I’m not interested in what your dressmaker designed. I’m interested in how many I can open.”

“Very well, twelve. My final offer.”

“Not final at all.”

The billiards table stopped Ainsley from stepping back. All Cameron had to do was lift her, and he’d have her lying flat upon it. They’d tear the cloth and exasperate Hart’s housekeeper, but replacing the damn thing would be worth having Ainsley.

“I will concede fourteen,” she said.

“Twenty.”

“Lord Cameron, if someone bursts in here, I will never have time to do up twenty buttons.”

“Then we’ll lock the door.”

Ainsley’s eyes widened. “Good lord, no. I’d have a devil of a time explaining why I was behind a locked door with the notorious Lord Cameron Mackenzie. Leave the door unlocked, and they’ll think we were scavenging.”

Cameron smiled, putting as much sin into it as he knew how. “I’m getting impatient, Mrs. Douglas. Twenty buttons.”

“Fifteen.”

Cameron let his smile turn triumphant. “Done.”

She flushed. “Oh, very well. Fifteen. But let us be quick.”

“Turn around.”