Jennifer Ashley - The Seduction of Elliot McBride

McGregor chuckled. “I told you, I swear by the conservatory. Nooks and crannies and comfortable benches.”

Juliana sent him a surprised look. “The conservatory will not be ready for anyone for a time. I have sent away for many new hothouse plants. I assure you, it will be a fine place by the time of the midsummer fête.”

McGregor kept on grinning. “I love a practical woman.” He rolled the last balls onto the table and started out of the room. “You have your chat. Don’t tear the cloth on the billiards table. It’s the one thing I’ve kept intact.”

He went off and shut the door behind him, his chuckles following him.

Juliana’s rust and brown dress set off her red hair and blue eyes, even if the gown was buttoned to her chin. Juliana, who followed all the rules, would change into her evening dress for dinner, perhaps the off-the-shoulder shimmering blue one. Elliot could eat his dinner while imagining pouring another dollop of fine whiskey across her breasts.

Elliot couldn’t stop himself going to her, meeting her halfway into the room, couldn’t help brushing back a tendril of hair that had come loose. The kiss he’d claimed in the passage had fired his blood, and he’d not yet cooled.

“Elliot, did you hear me?”

“No. What did you say, love?”

“I said that Hamish has told me an extraordinary thing. He says you had him take a platter of ham out to the woods and leave it there. Along with some naan.”

“Aye.” Elliot nodded as he brushed back another tendril of her hair. “Good. I’m glad he remembered.”

“But whatever for? Do not tell me you’ve put it by in case you grow hungry during your next tramp through the woods.”

She looked so indignant that Elliot had to smile. “It’s not for me.”

“Who then? And anyway, animals will get it if you had Hamish leave it beside the path.”

“He bagged it and strung it up in a tree. That is, that’s what I told him to do.”

Juliana’s stare tried to penetrate his fog, to find its way to the real Elliot. He knew she wanted that, but the real Elliot had been lost a long time ago.

“Please tell me what for. A tramp?”

“For Archibald Stacy,” Elliot said. No use in lying or telling Juliana pretty stories. “He’s come for me.”

Juliana stared at him, worry in her pretty eyes. She was trying to decide whether to believe him. Didn’t matter—Stacy was there, whether Juliana believed Elliot or not.

“Mr. Stacy is dead,” she said. “You told me so. Mrs. Dalrymple told me so.”

“I said that I assumed him dead because he’d vanished from his home, and Mahindar heard a story that he’d died in Lahore. Obviously the story was wrong.”

“What about Mrs. Dalrymple? She is adamant that you murdered him.”

“Mrs. Dalrymple knows damn all,” Elliot growled.

Elliot watched Juliana try to catch her spinning emotions and make her practical nature deal with this new development. This made her the opposite of Elliot, who’d given in to letting his emotions do whatever the hell they wanted. Trying to suppress them only made him crazier.

Juliana didn’t like her emotions slipping out at all, he’d seen. She wanted order, not chaos. Elliot would have to show her one day that a little chaos wasn’t so bad a thing.

“Well,” Juliana said. “If Mr. Stacy is alive and has come to Scotland, then we must show him to Mrs. Dalrymple so she will stop putting about the preposterous story that you killed him.”

“It might not be that simple.”

“Why not? Presumably Mr. Stacy is hungry, or you’d not have left him the food. We’ll invite him to the house for a meal.”

She didn’t believe him, or at least didn’t believe in the danger. “Stacy has come to kill me. To hunt me. He hasn’t shown his face to me yet, but I know it’s him.”

“But if you have not seen him, how can you be certain?”

Elliot turned away. He ended up at the billiards table where he rolled a white ball across with his hand, unerringly striking a red. “Difficult to explain, love. Stacy and I were trackers and sharpshooters in the army. Every tracker has a style, and I recognize his. I taught him most of what he knows.”

“Do you mean like a hunter can tell what animal is in the brush from its spoor?”

He smiled at the billiards table. “Yes, but I’d rather not have to check his spoor.”

“Elliot.” Juliana came up behind him, her skirt rustling like soft leaves. “Are you certain?”

“Very certain, my love.” Elliot turned and rested his hands on her corseted waist. “I wish I weren’t.”

“Well, if you are right that he is here, at least it means you didn’t kill him.”

“Yet. I might have to.”

“No, you must call the constable and the magistrate. If you believe Mr. Stacy has come to harm you, he must be rounded up and arrested at once.”

“No,” Elliot said sternly. “The constable is a lad no older than Hamish, and Stacy would make short work of him. If I start a manhunt, Stacy will either slip the net or hurt those who get in his way. I don’t want anyone here in danger because of him. Let me do this my way.”

“By leaving him food?”

Elliot knew he had to be patient with her. Juliana didn’t understand, and he couldn’t force her to understand. “You will have to trust me.” He moved his hands under the swell of her breasts. “I’ll let him harm no one. I know what he’ll do, and I know how to coax him out.”

Juliana wet her lips. Elliot knew the thoughts she struggled through. He’d seen it in the eyes of everyone he’d spoken to since he’d escaped from his prison, including Mahindar. The painful doubt, the question—was Elliot truly mad?

Elliot was mad; he knew that. Else he’d not have the dreams, the flashbacks, the certain panic that he was still trapped inside the cell, even after all this time. He couldn’t explain that the thing he dreaded most was to wake up one morning and discover that this—what he had now—was the dream.

He was mad, yes. But not about this.

“Elliot?” Juliana’s voice held a note of uncertainty. Elliot realized he’d gone stone still, staring past her at nothing.

He said, “McGregor and I today found all the entrances to the house from the tunnels below and stopped them up.” In some cases, timber had sufficed, in others, he’d had the men screw down iron plates.

“Stacy will not get into the house,” he continued. “Whatever he and I have to settle, we’ll do out there. But you need to stay indoors, and not go out, not without me.”