Page 20 of The Passionate One (McClairen’s Isle #1)

They left the horses with a liveried servant and climbed the front stairs through the carved panels into a great hall ablaze with light and mirrors and gilt.

Beneath the beatific gaze of the plaster angels high overhead mingled dozens of people. They nibbled cakes and licked gloved fingers, spilt iced punch on Persian carpets, and laughed and posed and sweated in their rich gowns and piled wigs.

Ash led Rhiannon through the little queues of revelers and knots of gamers. Few noted their progress. Most had gone days without sleep, sun, or fresh food. They were swollen on wine and excitement, dull and fog-witted, groping through the mire of senseless spectacles and animal pleasures his father designed to keep them entertained … to keep them careless with their money. For, when all was said and done, Wanton’s Blush was simply the most dissolute, the most licentious, the most sumptuous gaming hell in all the British Isles.

In a few minutes they had broken free of the crush in the main hall and stood in a narrow corridor behind the curved staircase. A laughing woman burst out of a nearby door, her gown slipping from one shoulder, a trio of flushed and hound-eyed men tumbling in pursuit. Ash snatched Rhiannon up and out of their way.

His arms tightened convulsively. The salty, musty scent of travel filled his nostrils. The feel of her body stoked the appetite he’d held in check into a veritable blaze. He looked down. She’d averted her face.

Temper surged through him. What did he care? He thought fiercely. He did not need her scorn to tell him who he was.

“Fa! Carr never said we were to have a masque tonight!”

Ash looked up. A pink-ribboned, satin-clad creature in a lavender wig leaned against the door frame.

“But ’struth, must be so for here’s Little Red Ridy Hood herself!” The man’s plucked and pencilled brows rose in twin semicircles above shallow, lashless eyes.

Smoothly, Ash lowered Rhiannon to the ground. She did not step back. Of course not. She’d never give him the satisfaction of showing fear. Neither did she say a word or rebuke him in any way. She did not need to. Her silence was eloquent enough. She expected he’d stolen her from Watt to satisfy his carnal appetite.

The lavender-headed fop’s gaze drifted from his interested inspection of Rhiannon to Ash, sizing up the filth of travel, the five-day growth of beard, and the tangled tail of black hair.

“And this is either the woodsman or the wolf. I say, fellow, which are you supposed to be?”

“Pray commence trembling, Hurley, that’s Merrick you’re twitting.” A gorgeous young girl appeared beside the plump, pink Hurley. Her young, pure face was absolutely smooth and her poise was unassailable. The gray of her elaborately powdered wig contrasted jarringly with her obvious youth, somehow making a mockery of both.

“Merrick?” the perplexed Hurley asked.

“My brother,” the girl replied.

“Fia,” Ash said, inclining his head. She was fifteen—or was it sixteen?—and having known so little of her mother, was utterly her father’s creature. Ash trusted her less than anyone else, perhaps because in spite of himself he felt the bonds of blood between them, urging something different.

“Merrick? Carr’s son?” Hurley stuttered.

“One of them,” Ash allowed coolly.

“The ruthless one,” Fia said with a small, practiced smile. She moved her salved lips close to one of Hurley’s pink ears. Ash could practically see it quiver. “The dangerous one,” she whispered loudly. “The passionate one.”

Hurley’s expression of perplexity gave way to a licentiousness. He reached out to tickle Fia beneath her chin. Calmly Fia slashed her fan across his knuckles. He snatched back his hand, staring at her in wounded wonder.

“Be gone, Lord Hurley. Before Merrick decides to misinterpret your attentions to his little sister.” Her face was as smooth as a porcelain doll’s and yet a little sneer curled around her words.

The white powder covering Hurley’s face could not hide his flush, and with a mumbled adieu, he escaped. Fia ignored his departure.

Beside Ash Rhiannon stirred.

“What is this you’ve brought, brother?” Fia murmured. “Something for Carr? A new toy?”

“His ward,” Ash returned shortly. Rhiannon’s head remained bowed, her eyes downcast, her shoulders slumped. She looked as if she’d been beaten which, Ash decided, was probably just what she wanted to look like.

Fia, a little smile chasing cross her features, dipped her head and peeked up.

“He has a ward now, does he?” she said in a voice as gentle and dangerous as the sound of a snake slithering over a dry lawn. Calmly Ash stepped between them. Fia glanced at him in surprise. “Who’d have thought?”

“I would,” a deep masculine voice with a distinct Scottish burr announced.

At the sound, Ash turned. Approaching him was a tall, broad-shouldered man. The chandelier light polished his dark mahogany head to a metallic sheen.

“Donne,” Ash greeted him. He was surprised to see him here, at Wanton’s Blush. Carr usually picked his guests carefully and while Donne was certainly rich enough to be admitted, he did not display the proper susceptibility to drinking, gambling, or wenching.

A smile carved deep dimples in each of Donne’s lean cheeks, mirroring the cleft in his chin. There was a watchfulness about the long, narrow eyes currently fixed on Fia. She’d straightened abruptly at his appearance but now stood regarding the Scot with the calm imperturbability she’d owned since childhood.

Rhiannon, like some damn silent statue, remained motionless at Ash’s side. He needed to get her upstairs before Carr discovered them. He was tired and edgy, in no condition to deal with his father. Still, if Donne was here, perhaps he’d come with some interesting information.

“What the devil are you doing here, Donne?”

Donne shrugged. “I came along as part of a set. Hurley’s house party, you know. I simply could not refuse the opportunity to game a bit and, of course, such charming company.”

At his last words he bowed in Fia’s direction, and though the movement was easy and elegant, a quality of practiced boredom robbed it of politeness and made it instead an actor’s gesture, cruelly meaningless.

If possible, Fia’s young, unnaturally beautiful face grew smoother; her large eyes went dark as obsidian in a black rill’s bed.

Donne turned to Rhiannon, bowing again, and this time the movement was respectful, the gesture an acknowledgement rather than a caricature.

“Since Ash refuses to be civil, pray allow me to satisfy the amenities myself. Thomas Donne at your service, miss.”

She lifted her face, her gaze latching on to Donne’s handsome, lean visage, drawing Ash’s cold consideration. She was pitifully easy to read.

In Thomas Donne’s braw Scottish face she looked for a champion.

A sliver of pity touched Ash. Donne was the last man who would come to her aid. He knew little about Donne; he’d never asked, but what he did know was simple. Donne had been abroad and, in some mysterious place, had won, earned, or stolen a monstrously big fortune which he kept monstrously big by the simple expedience of not giving it away to any fool that came begging.

This apparently hadn’t set well with his Highland cousins for, according to Donne, they’d long since blotted his name from the family Bible, an act that had in no way discomforted Donne. Instead, self-avowed coward and sybarite that he was, Donne simply eschewed the clan that had exiled him.

It would be a waste of time to seek an ally in Donne. Ash forced his gaze from Rhiannon. She would be living at Wanton’s Blush. She’d learn soon enough that there would be no champions. Every person here had been handpicked because they possessed just exactly those characteristics that champions lacked: greed, self-interest, cowardice, insolence, and vanity.

His own sister was a prime example.

“I think Merrick has brought us a mute,” Fia said. “Did you have to take her tongue to keep her from denouncing you, brother?”

This brought a swift glare from Rhiannon.

“I assure you, she is quite capable of denouncing me. Make your curtsey, Miss Russell,” Ash said. “One of your Scottish baronets has introduced himself to you.”

He may as well have spoken to stone, her disdain and self-containment were so complete and so completely excluded him. Excluded them all. But then, he’d stolen her from her home and family under the most feeble of pretexts. He’d taken from her her good name and her maidenhead.

And if he’d twice now sought to convince her of his honest concern, twice now she’d refused to believe him. So how could he, he asked himself as he gazed at her averted profile, who had so little experience with honesty, fail to accept the verdict of one who understood it so well?

He was done with trying to realign his nature. He was as corrupt as she imagined.

“She won’t speak to you, Donne.”

“Not yet, perhaps,” Donne said thoughtfully. “But, surely, as two Scots in a house full of Englishmen, we’ll find in each other’s company a wee bit of comfort, eh, Miss Russell?” His offer surprised Ash.

Donne’s accent, a thing he slipped on and off as comfortably as a pair of slippers, had grown pronounced. Its music drew another of those grudging glances from Rhiannon and this time the light revealed her complete exhaustion, the pale mouth and ringed eyes. She wove where she stood.

She must be near to collapsing. He needed to get her out of here. Somewhere where she could wash and sleep.

“Not yet?” Donne said and Ash could not remember ever hearing such gentle tones from his mouth. “I can wait.”

“I fear you wait in vain, Lord Donne,” said Fia. “Perhaps the lady is discerning in her choice of companions and simply exhibits her good taste. Would that it extended to the matter of her attire.”

The chance reference to her apparel caused Rhiannon’s hands to flutter hesitantly about her heavy, muddied skirts.

“It looks as though Ash dragged you from a particularly feverish hunt.”

“He did.” These were the first words Rhiannon had spoken. Her glance slew up and speared Fia so that the younger girl, in spite of an upbringing that should have inured her to even the most violent of glares, stepped back.

Fia looked around, disconcerted by such honest animosity. “Let me send one of the servants for your trunks.”

“There are no trunks,” Ash said. “She has nothing.”

“Odder and odder,” said Fia. “Whatever is she here for?”

“That’s easy,” Donne said, without looking at Fia but instead studying Rhiannon. “Carr dotes on you so, Miss Fia, that he’s imported a sister with whom you might trade girlish confidences.”

The thought of Fia, even though still chronologically a girl, as anything in the least childish, was absurd, and well Donne knew it. But Fia refused to be baited. Her cool, silky gaze fastened on the tall baronet. “It’s only fair,” she said, “seeing how he’s misplaced one sibling, that he replace it with another.”

The reminder of Raine’s whereabouts struck Ash painfully. With an effort, he kept his expression neutral, wondering whether Fia had chosen her words to hurt him, or rebuke Donne. It was impossible to tell with Fia. She kept her own counsel so completely.

“Still, new sister or not, Carr dislikes ugliness. He’ll be horrified if he sees her like this,” Fia said. “She looks to be near enough my size that she might borrow a dress. If she’s to meet Carr, she’ll need all the confidence she can find—or borrow.”

Ash hadn’t thought of that. Fia was right. Appearances were of the utmost importance to Carr. Gaining his approbation might prove prudent. The question was what Fia hoped to achieve by offering her aid.

Her face was as serene as a Madonna’s, her eyes wells of unfathomable darkness. After an instant consideration Ash decided it didn’t matter what she wanted.

This was Wanton’s Blush. Subterfuge and treachery were the games of his childhood, and they were compulsory. There were only two rules here: Play at one level deeper than your opponent and never forget that everyone is your opponent.

He nodded. “Give her over to Gunna,” he said, naming the white-haired woman who had been Fia’s nanny since toddlerhood and the only bit of warmth any of them had encountered at Wanton’s Blush since their mother’s death.

“Yes.”

“There’s no need to rush an audience,” he added casually. “She can see Carr tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Fia agreed once more. She moved to Rhiannon’s side and linked her arm through hers, calmly ignoring Rhiannon’s attempt to pull free. “Please come with me. I’ll order a bath and we’ll find you some clothes. Something to make you feel invincible,” she said, drawing Rhiannon away.

“You won’t run away will you?” Ash heard Fia ask as they left.

“No,” Rhiannon replied without a single backward glance. “I’ve nowhere to go.”