Enraptured (Mockingbird Square 2)

“He’s dying.”

“Oh Rory . . .”

She tried to see his face but h

e held her close, his voice vibrating in his chest, his breath warm against her temple. “There has only been the two of us for so long. I feel like I should have done more.”

“What more?” she whispered. “With my fortune you can rebuild Invermar. Isn’t that what he wants?”

He sighed. “The sword,” he said. “If we could have found the sword.”

She held him close, comforting him in the only way she could, but Olivia was awake long after Rory had fallen into fitful sleep. An idea was formulating in her brain, a bit like the whiskey in the still. As she listened to her husband’s soft snores, the idea crystallised. She turned it around and upside down, and she asked herself if it was the right thing to do.

By the time dawn was breaking she had made her decision.

Summer 1816, Mockingbird Square, Mayfair

Margaret Willoughby waited while William the Pug inspected a bush. The gardens in Mockingbird Square were still lovely, if suffering slightly from the warm summer, but now Simon Linholm had gone off to his home in Somerset, and taken Miss Beales with him, Margaret was feeling lonely.

Her cousin Olivia was far away, and she wondered how she was managing. Olivia was never an intrepid sort of girl, she had never had to be, and Margaret worried about her. She could imagine the sort of deprivations she was undergoing at Rory’s castle, and she was rather surprised that her cousin had not already returned home.

Of course Rory and Olivia loved each other, and that made the difference.

The town house had been left in Margaret’s care, but with only herself and the dog, there was little for the servants to do. Margaret had read a great many books from the lending library and had attended the theatre several times with Lady Richmond.

Lady Richmond was very beautiful. She had been married to one of the Duke of Wellington’s officers, a hero of Waterloo, and was only just out of full mourning. The lilacs and purples suited her, gave her beauty a hint of poignancy. There had been gossip about her, and some of it hinted that she was not at all respectable. Margaret remembered Olivia telling her a story about Lady Richmond and a gentleman in the same regiment as her husband, but it was probably nothing more than gossip. Besides, Margaret was lonely and that brought with it a certain recklessness. She went to the theatre anyway and enjoyed it immensely.

William trotted a few more yards and then stopped again. Margaret waited. It was when she glanced up that she happened to see the Earl of Monkstead approaching.

She hoped he was on his way somewhere else and would smile and nod, and then pass on by. Or perhaps she would smile and walk on as if she hadn’t given him a thought these past weeks.

Not that those thoughts had been romantically inclined. If she did allow the earl into her head it was because he irritated her, and his interference in Olivia and Rory’s marriage still rankled. She had heard since that he had also meddled in the affairs of Simon Linholm’s elder brother, Ash. It was too much, and someone really should tell him to stop it.

The earl didn’t smile and nod. He didn’t pass her by. He came right up to her and bowed, standing directly in front of her, so that she couldn’t pretend he had been intending to do anything but waylay her.

“Taking the air, Miss Willoughby,” he said, his dark eyes sliding over her features as if, she decided, he was ticking each of them off on a list.

She wondered what he expected from her and was determined to disappoint. “William insists,” she said lightly.

He smiled. “Mrs Maclean and her husband are still in Scotland?”

“Yes.” And, before he could ask, “I haven’t heard how they do.”

“I imagine they do very well,” he said, with a lift of his eyebrows. “And my niece and Simon Linholm have gone to Crevitch. I think there will a wedding soon.”

“No thanks to you,” she said, before she could stop herself.

She expected anger, or condescension. Instead he laughed. “Come, Miss Willoughby, what’s wrong with helping a romance along? Sometimes it only needs a nudge.”

“I wouldn’t call what you do a ‘nudge’,” she retorted.

He leaned closer and said in a confidential voice, “I wondered, Miss Willoughby, if you had noticed the pickle Lady Richmond has got herself in.”

She stared at him in dismay. “Oh no you don’t. You’re not interfering in Lady Richmond’s life.”

He was closer, so close that if she reached out she could rest her hand on his chest. Did he have a heart in there? He seemed totally impervious to the damage he was doing.

“Come, come, do you really believe these people can sort out their lives for themselves? They need a helping hand, Miss Willoughby, and if I don’t supply it then who will?”