Highland Rebel Page 11

  “You can’t always have what you want, Caro. I’m not a boy, and I’m not in the mood to play with you. I’d rather play at cards.”

  “Come now, Jamie,” she purred, leaning into him. “My husband is called away to Holland for several months at least. I’m to be left all alone!”

  “How fortunate for you both,” he drawled, returning his attention to his hand.

  She narrowed her eyes and glared, snapping her fan shut and shaking it like a furious little bee before taking a breath and calming herself. “Jamie, you’re incorrigible!… Jamie!” She tapped his shoulder with her fan, forcing him to attend her.

  He sighed and pushed his cards away. “What, Caroline? Have I not made myself clear?”

  “Lady Caroline, and your pretended lack of interest doesn’t fool me at all. I’ve seen you watching and you must know I watch you. They say you find yourself without adequate funds.” Her fingers brushed against his shoulder, feathering the hair beneath his ear.

  “What else do they say?” he asked dryly.

  “They say you’re more than adequate in other ways, a fact I can attest to. We both have needs, and happily, they seem to coincide. Why don’t we offer one another comfort, my dear? I sense we might be very good friends. You might visit me while my husband is away. You might even send your creditors my way should we become… close friends.”

  “Am I to be your whore now, Caroline? How much am I worth?” he asked pleasantly.

  “My husband gives me a generous allowance. You need friends, Jamie. I can be a very good friend… or a very bad enemy.”

  He knew it to be true. It was said she’d made arrangements to have her servants slit the nose of a pretty young actress who’d dared to mock her in a recent play, and her latest lover had been set upon by thugs and nearly beaten to death just hours after leaving the theatre with a new conquest in tow. “I’ve seen you with your lovers, Caro. You require them to worship at your feet. That’s never been my inclination,” he said mildly.

  “That’s why you find yourself in your current circumstances, Jamie, forced to gamble and cheat to earn your bread.” She drew her fingers across his cheek and reached under the table, squeezing him firmly through his breeches.

  He caught her hand in a vice-like grip. “I prefer to choose my whores, Caro, not have them choose me. And I do not cheat. If you were a man, I’d have to call you out for that.”

  “Bastard!” She slapped him hard, the sharp crack causing heads to rise and necks to crane.

  “You are making a spectacle of us, Caroline,” Jamie said tiredly.

  “Let them watch, you ingrate! You’re nothing here. Nothing and no one! People talk about you. They pity you. They say the king is done with you and you’ve nothing of your own. I could help you return to favor and to court, and I can also complete your ruin!”

  “Have at it, madam,” he said with a shrug. “Though I daresay it’s easy enough done that it should hardly be crowed about as an accomplishment. Now if you’ll excuse me, this night has grown unbearably tedious. I believe I’ll impose upon my lord Buckingham’s hospitality and retire.” He shoved his cards away and rose from the table.

  Unaccustomed to defeat, Lady Ware rose with him, changing her tactics with the speed and assurance of a top-notch general. “Jamie, don’t be like that,” she pleaded, her voice husky and contrite.

  “Return to your husband, madam. He’s watching us from across the room. Perhaps he can find some use for you. I assure you I have none.” His voice was loud and clear and carried to all corners of the room.

  Lady Caroline gasped, outraged. “You dare to refuse me?” she hissed. “You think yourself better than me? You, who were scorned by your own father and now by the king? You’re nothing but a penniless rogue. I’ll arrange it so you’ll not be received anywhere! You won’t even be able to play cards. And when you’ve lost what little you have left and come prettily begging my forgiveness, I will spit in your face!”

  “Pray wait until then and avoid doing so now, madam,” Jamie said with a grimace of distaste as he wiped her spittle from his cheek.

  “Careful man, watch your back and guard your vitals. ‘Hell hath no fury,’” a drunken Buckingham chortled, enjoying the entertainment and looking around for a servant. “Where is the wine? Bring us more wine!”

  Caro was a vindictive bitch. It was a mistake to have made her an enemy, but one it was too late and too onerous to rectify. His luck having deserted him, Jamie retreated to one of Buckingham’s numerous guest chambers, throwing himself down and falling instantly asleep.

  He woke to the sound of a piercing scream.

  “Assault! Assault! I’ve been assaulted!”

  Lady Caroline was lying in bed beside him, her nightgown torn, her hair a mess, one breast artfully exposed. She took a moment and took a breath and eyed him with a malicious sneer, before wailing again.

  “Oh good Christ!” Jamie swore.

  The door burst open as Lady Caroline’s porcine husband, jowls quivering in fury, rushed to the rescue surrounded by a bemused Buckingham and a motley assortment of lords and ladies.

  “Rogue! Beast! Swine! How dare you assault my wife! I demand satisfaction, sir!”

  “From me, sir? That’s never been one of my vices. Surely you should ask it of your wife, or perhaps my lord Buckingham might assist you.”

  “Here now, Sinclair! I’ll manage my own assignations if you please,” Buckingham protested with a grin.

  “How dare you, Sirrah!” Lord Ware blustered, shaking with what might have been anger or fear. “I’ve issued you a challenge! Are you a coward as well as a rapist?”

  Jamie was sorely tempted to kill the man, if not for gross stupidity, then to put him out of his misery. It was pathetic. He was more afraid of losing face and being laughed at than certain death. Jamie had often ref lected that Charles’s and James’s edicts against dueling had no effect for precisely that reason. If the British nobility were frightened of death, they wouldn’t duel. What terrified them was being humiliated. Rather than threaten the tower, exile, or execution for dueling, the king would do better to threaten a day in the stocks. The indignity of being put on such shameful display would deal a deathblow to the practice of dueling overnight.

  In any case, he had little taste for murder. He leaned on his elbow and turned to Lady Ware, who trembled and sobbed beside him. “Madam, you aren’t worth dueling over, let alone killing a man. I beg you be gone. I’m fatigued and your wailing is disturbing my rest.”

  There were gasps and titters from the crowd gathered at the door.

  “You’re a coward, sir. A base, ignoble worm.” Unable to believe his luck, Lord Ware was not averse to milking it for all it was worth. “You’ll go down on your knees and apologize, and then I’ll have you horsewhipped, and only then will we call the matter quit.”

  “You’re testing my patience. I will kill you should you insist upon it. Leave my room now. Before I change my mind.” Jamie leapt from the bed stark naked, causing a shriek from Lady Ware and a moan and several worried steps backward from her husband. Jamie grabbed a now truly frightened Lady Caroline by her shift and hauled her to her feet, then pushed her to the door. “Get… out!” He slammed the door in their faces, barred it with a chair, and climbed back into bed, wondering how he’d made such a mess of things. Desertion, disloyalty, now cowardice and rape—in the past year he’d been publicly accused of everything but cheating at cards.

  ***

  Over the next several days, the story spread through London of Lord Carlyle’s brazen attack upon a sleeping Lady Ware, and his cowardly retreat when challenged by her husband. It was met for the most part by amused disbelief. Tales of the lady’s voracious appetite and her avid pursuit of the handsome but impoverished earl cast doubt on the first accusation, while Jamie’s notoriety as a duelist and Lord Ware’s reputation for bluster over action put the lie to the second, particularly as my lord Buckingham continued to welcome the earl into his home. But the lady was
angry and vindictive, and the whispers wouldn’t stop.

  “I don’t understand you at all, milord,” a worried Sullivan pressed Jamie. “You have such skill with women. Why would you choose to make an enemy of this one? She can only make trouble you surely don’t need. Why not go to her with presents and honeyed words? Apologize. Do you wish her to ruin what’s left of your reputation? It might not be too late to salvage the thing.”

  “Will you act as my pimp, then? Shall I send you to her to beg her forgiveness and arrange an assignation?”

  Sullivan blinked and blushed scarlet. “I… Is that what she wants, milord? Are you certain?”

  “I forget you’re an innocent lamb far from home. I’m quite certain—though now she’ll expect me to grovel as well. You’ll forgive me, I pray, if I chose disgrace and genteel poverty over Lady Ware’s jeweled leash.”

  “Of course, milord. No! I meant to say, I’m sure things will improve.”

  But they didn’t, they only got worse. Charges of cowardice and assault leveled by a woman known for accommodating everyone from the linkboy to the royal brothers, while highly titillating gossip, was not enough to bar a fellow from the homes of those unsavory sorts who enjoyed gaming, drinking, and other forms of vice, so Lady Ware spread the rumor that Jamie Sinclair, Lord Carlyle and Earl of Carrick, cheated at cards.

  The stories circulated slowly, rumor and innuendo piled upon truth and half-truth. “Did you hear? His father disowned him and left him no funds. He’s desperate for money, and in disgrace with the king… he’s a cheat… a cheat.” There were many who attested that he won far more often than an honest man should, and some who claimed Lady Ware had caught him at it herself. It was why he’d attacked her, coming to her room to threaten and intimidate. It was simply too much to ignore.

  It didn’t take long. Within a week he was refused entry almost everywhere. Those who’d made arrangements to breed with his stud sent word they’d changed their minds. He was no longer welcome at the card tables of even the meanest homes or establishments. Unable to play, except with those who were as skilled and ruthless as he was, he sold paintings and furniture, draperies, tapestries, and silverware, trying to stave off selling his broodmares and stallion. Only those who circled the fringes—the disgraced, the unscrupulous, the untrustworthy, and, of course, Buckingham and his coterie of malcontents and rascals—had any welcome for him at all.

  Jamie eyed Buckingham now. Aging, ill, and waning in inf luence, he was still charismatic, sitting at the table telling another ribald story. He’d brought a handsome new pet Jamie didn’t recognize, as well as Sidney, Lauderdale, Sir Albert Scopes, and Musgrave, who’d been in perpetual disgrace since reputedly seducing James’s second daughter Anne. Several buxom actresses and an orange girl from the king’s theatre, all in various states of disarray, had joined them as well. Jamie had one ensconced on his lap, eating grapes and rubbing against him like a cat. Booted feet upon the table, he tried to peer over her mountainous breasts to see his cards, assessing his opponents at the same time.

  Pragmatic men whose main loyalties were to themselves and increasing their estates, they’d backed the wrong play, and like Jamie, were in disgrace and generally considered dangerous to know. When King James had come to the throne, they’d scrambled to retain their inf luence. Hoping to prevent a Catholic renaissance that would have threatened their power and resulted in the kind of absolute monarchy the English had come to abhor, they’d backed Monmouth. Not to the extent of being caught naked with their arses and tarses waving in the wind when the stripling would-be king had been tried and executed as a rebel, but enough to be tainted and tarnished, and pushed, at least for now, to the farthest edges of society and the court.

  Suspect himself, Jamie knew it did him little good to associate with them, but damned if he wasn’t already tarred with that brush, and a fellow had to have someone to play cards with. He found it deliciously ironic that men he’d spied upon for Charles were now his only friends. He put down his cards and reached for some grapes, inadvertently dropping one down his half-naked thespian’s wide-open bodice. “Your pardon, my dear,” he whispered in her ear. “Shall I fetch it for you?”

  She giggled and nodded, purring as his deft fingers began tugging at her ribbons and loosing her stays.

  “Why have you yet to desert me, George?” he asked Buckingham curiously as he went about his task. “Such touching constancy is most unlike you.”

  “Birds of a feather, my dear. I’m a cheat too, don’t you know, and you’re one of the few amusements I have left.” His sally was greeted by a roar of laughter. “Besides, there’s no better time to play cards with a man than when his luck has deserted him. You need to marry, Jamie. A rich country bride. A little money will sort you out. I have a distant cousin of some sort. Not terribly well bred, a bit of the merchant in her, but beggars can’t be choosers. She’s bad tempered, pox-marked, and ugly as sin, but she’s rich as Croesus and she’d consider herself lucky to have you.”

  “I thank you, George, but as I’ve told you several times, I’m already shackled.”

  “So you jumped the broomstick with some ignorant Scots savage. You’re not the first randy fellow to be trapped in such a coil. Damned foolish of you not to have taken care of it straightaway, though. Still, it’s not too late. Pay her off, make her disappear, arrange an accident, get on with it. If she can’t be found, who’s to say she’s not dead? Bribe a witness or two and declare yourself a widower. There are ways around these things, my boy, and I promise you, my sweet but ugly cousin and her noisome kin will be glad enough to call her countess they’ll not be asking any questions.”

  “The priest who married me might.”

  “Bah! He might also eat a piece of bad fish and die. Outside of the palace, being a Catholic’s not good for one’s health. It’s not left you in the pink, now has it? Come and visit me at my country estate. At least take a look at the girl.”

  “You truly are a cold-blooded creature, aren’t you, George?”

  “As I said, Sinclair, birds of a feather.”

  Jamie shrugged, disinterestedly retrieving the grape, sliding it slowly up the girl’s midriff and popping it into her mouth, looking up quizzically as Sullivan stepped determinedly into the room.

  “Yes, Sullivan? What is it? Spit it out.” The man was clearly agitated about something.

  “It seems… ah… er… there’s a lady… here to see you, milord.”

  “Eh? What lady? Blast it, man! Tell her to decamp! Tell her I’m not at home. Better yet, tell her I’m busy with liquor, strumpets, and cards, and have no wish to be disturbed.”

  “Odds fish, Sinclair! Surely you’re not so badly burnt you’ve forgotten a pretty bird can be entertaining. You there, fellow! Bring her in.”

  Sullivan regarded Buckingham with distaste and turned to Jamie.

  “Don’t turn your back on me, man! Your servants are impertinent, Sinclair!”

  “Aye George, I’ve often remarked on it, but I don’t pay them well enough to object. You heard me, Sullivan. Send the jade on her way.”

  “I do not feel that would be appropriate, milord, as the lady appears to be your—”

  The door swung open and a tall, handsome, tawny-haired Amazon, richly gowned and jeweled, stepped into the room.

  “Good evening, English.”

  “Good Lord! Speak of the devil! I seem to have conjured the girl herself! Good evening, Catherine. Gentlemen… please… allow me to introduce my wife.”

  Twelve

  Coming to London was not a decision Catherine had taken lightly. She’d enjoyed her status as a married woman without the encumbrance of a husband underfoot. For the first time in her life, she’d been truly free, with no one to answer to but herself. Unfortunately, it seemed she’d ridden her phantom husband as far as she could, for when spring and then summer passed without any word of him, the talk had begun. Why steal a wealthy bride and not lay claim to her? It’s a strange kind of marriage, with no witness,
no bairn on the way, and no sign of a groom. No husband at all is what she wanted, and no husband at all is what she got. The talk kept growing, and it wasn’t only Donald and the old women. Even Jerrod and Rory, her most dependable allies, began to look at her askance, and when Jerrod came to confront her, she knew her time had run out.

  “It’s unnatural, Cat, for a marriage to be thus, where the bride disnae know the groom’s name, his whereabouts, or if he be dead or alive,” he told her. “You’re nae with child, girl. We should apply to Rome for an annulment. You’ve more than sufficient cause to end this marriage. Under the circumstances, and with sufficient gold, we should be able to get you free of it.”

  “And why should I want to do that, Uncle Jerrod?” she’d replied. “So you lot can arrange another one? I don’t want to be free of it. I like the one I’ve got. Things suit me fine as they are and he’s all the husband I need.”

  “You’re not some village lass, Cat. You can bring advantage to your clan. Land, allies, men, gold—things that will make us stronger and our position more secure.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like Donald.”

  “Well, he has a point, doesn’t he? If you were a lad you’d be expected to make a useful marriage as well. Tell me true, lass. They’re beginning to talk. They’re saying there never was an Englishman, and there never was a marriage.”

  “Do you think I was lying about it, Uncle?”

  “I don’t know, girl. I do think you’re putting your own interests over your duty to your clan.”

  “And what about their duty to me?” she’d demanded, her voice quivering with resentment. “My father’s will named me laird here, not Donald or Alistair. He expected my husband to be chief, but they tried to steal my inheritance and send me from my lands and home to marry a brutish boor, and for what? Gold? A few more men? A better trade route and a little less trouble on the Irish Sea? Or perhaps to fuel war with our neighbors? Back to feuding with the Murrays, is it? Am I to allow myself to be sacrificed to fund adventures my father would not have approved?”