Page 4 of The Passionate One (McClairen’s Isle #1)

“I don’t have a guardian,” Rhiannon said and then, with her usual candor, amended, “I mean, not an official one. At least, none that I know of …”

She trailed off, visited by an imprecise memory. She was maybe eight years old, standing on the street of a strange city, squinting up at a door frame filled with beckoning light. The old woman who’d brought her had cold, gnarled fingers. They twisted round Rhiannon’s wrist like ropy grape vines. A strangely accented voice spoke from within the warm, yellow light. “You want another Merrick, witch. Not Lord Carr.”

She was to have lived with an Englishman. He was supposed to have been her guardian. She remembered the old lady saying so. She’d forgotten. But there’d been so much about those days and all the days preceding them that she’d forgotten. Flight and cold, fear and confusion, the days—weeks?—had bled into one long, seemingly endless nightmare from which she’d only awakened upon arrival in Fair Badden. Even when she tried to recall, it was insubstantial, flickers of sensation and images, more emotions than actual memories.

Rhiannon stared at the man arrayed in damaged elegance. Surely he was too young— “Are you Lord Carr?”

Once more the gorgeous smile lit his dark visage. “No. Lord Carr is my father. And you’re perfectly correct if you’re thinking him a negligent sort of guardian. He is.”

She was unable to read the flavor of that amused estimation. His manner, his address, were nothing like those of Fair Badden’s young men. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, and I thought I had,” he murmured, one brow climbing. And then, “I think Carr would like you to believe that he has simply misplaced you these past years.”

“Did he?”

Ash Merrick’s enigmatic smile spread. “I doubt my father has ever misplaced so much as a toothpick.”

Each of his answers only provoked more questions, and each statement this Ash Merrick made only increased her discomfort. She once more felt she was standing at the door leading into that forbidden, enticing house. She was afraid to step over the threshold. It would cost her a price she could not name and was uncertain she could afford. And yet it beckoned.

“What is it you want, sir?”

“I? Nothing. I’m merely here to escort you to Wanton’s Blush because he wants you, Rhiannon Russell.”

“Why?” The sleek cat had tired of watching, he was playing with the mouse now.

“Your aunt was cousin to his wife,” he said.

“We’re cousins?” she asked. Impossible to believe that this black glossy creature and she were related.

“Oh, no. No. My mother had the distinction of being the first Lady Carr. Your mother was related to his second wife … or was it the third? Carr has an unhappy habit of losing wives to early graves.”

“I see.” But she didn’t. With his explanation the exhaustion had returned to his dark, mobile face, touching her tender heart. “You’ve traveled a great distance, sir. Would you like something to drink? To eat?”

He looked up abruptly at the offer, his brows knit with surprise. “No,” he said. “Thank you. We’ve business to conduct, you and I. Perhaps later.”

“I don’t understand,” Rhiannon said. “Why now, after all these years has your father sent you to find me?”

“Unreasonable chit,” Ash Merrick chided comfortably. “You are not supposed to ask questions. You are to fall into paroxysms of joy that Carr has deigned to offer you his protection … such as it is.”

She studied him in consternation but forbore comment.

“What?” he queried when she did not reply. “No paroxysms? He’ll be disappointed. But to answer your question, Miss Russell, Carr sends you the message that now that he has found you, he is willing— nota bene, my dear, he did not go so far as to declare his eagerness, merely his willingness —to accept his responsibility for you.”

Her frown was severe, her concentration fierce. He spoke obliquely and his manner was mocking but impersonal, as though the jest he saw was more at his expense than hers.

“And what do you say, Mr. Merrick?” she asked carefully.

“Miss Russell, a lady never puts a gentleman in the onerous position of making a judgment,” he said. There was kindness—or perhaps pity—underscoring the ironical tone. “Particularly about his sire’s motives. I never make judgments, Miss Russell, ergo I never misjudge. If I were following my own inclination, I would never have come here. I am only my father’s agent. I do not question his edicts. I follow them.”

His voice had grown terse. It was as if he’d decided to dislike her before they’d ever met. She could think of no reason he should do so—unless he resented his father’s interest in her. Perhaps he was profligate and his purse light, she thought, eyeing his shabby raiment, and feared his father would be overly generous with his newly discovered ward.

The idea explained Ash Merrick’s subtle antagonism and melted her earlier resentment. She could put him at ease. She didn’t want his father’s protection or his guardianship or his generosity. Nor did she need them.

“What did you do to your face?”

His question caught her off guard. He’d come closer while she’d been lost in thought. He grasped her chin, tilting her face into the shafts of late afternoon sunlight.

“My face?” Was he, too, going to scrub her cheek clean? She went still, embarrassed and unnerved and not at all certain it wouldn’t be a touch thrilling to have this exotic, masculine creature offer so intimate a ministration.

At the wayward thought, heat climbed to her cheeks. “Forgive me, sir. We just finished hunting and I didn’t have an oppor—”

“You received this wound hunting?” he asked incredulously, lifting his other hand and lightly tracing her cheek.

Warm little tendrils of sensation danced beneath his touch. His fingertips were rough, the knuckles large, and his wrists braceleted with old scars. No gentleman had hands like that. Not even a London gentleman. Particularly a London gentleman. Who was Ash Merrick?

Her gaze roved over his face as he frowned at the mark on her cheek. The lashes framing his dark eyes were as black as his hair, thick and spiky and long as a lassie’s, and that was the only soft or feminine thing about him. This close, even his fashionably pale London skin seemed nothing more than a comely happenstance. The single purpose of that fine flesh was to shed water, avert wind, not to attract. Though it did that, too.

“Did you?” He released his clasp of her chin.

Ah, yes. He’d asked about her wound.

“No,” she answered, no longer concerned with the words they spoke but rather with some other interplay occurring between them, some communication happening just beyond the scope of her mind to facilitate.

“Then how did this happen? One would imagine such a prize would awake the instinct to protect.”

She did not understand. Her skin was unmarked by pox and not too browned by the sun, but no one had ever deemed it a prize. He looked into her eyes and his facile smile wavered and disappeared.

For the first time since she’d entered the library, Ash Merrick did not seem completely master of the situation. He drew away from her, looking puzzled, like the lad who has unlocked a secret drawer and found something he’d not anticipated and wasn’t sure he liked.

“You were about to say?” His voice was smooth enough.

“Footpad,” she answered faintly. “We were coming home from the neighbor’s when we were accosted by a villain. He shot his pistols at our carriage as our driver whipped up the team. One of his bullets grazed me. As you can see, we escaped.”

“Highwaymen? Here?” His tone was incredulous.

“Rare enough,” she admitted. “But it happens.”

He’d turned away from her and was rubbing his thumb along his dark, stubbled jawline.

“It looks worse than it ever felt,” she offered, obliged by his obvious concern. His eyes slew back toward her, a flicker of astonishment in their dark depths.

“Ah … good.”

“I’m afraid it will leave a scar, however,” she added apologetically.

His expression grew bewildered. “Scar?”

“Yes.”

“Nonsense. One won’t even notice it,” he dismissed the mark roughly.

It was gracious of him to reassure her—if that’s what those grudging words had been an attempt at—but she really wasn’t sensitive about her looks.

She knew her assets well enough and a two-inch line traversing her cheek hadn’t devalued their worth. Phillip certainly didn’t seem to find her any less attractive … Phillip.

With a start she realized they had not yet finished discussing the reason for Ash Merrick’s presence here.

“I appreciate your kindness, Mr. Merrick,” she said, moving away from the magnetism surrounding him and taking a chair, “but you needn’t worry about me. I am perfectly fine. I’ve been fine for over ten years and while I am …” she searched for some gentle way to reveal to him that his long journey had been unnecessary “… I am very warmed by your father’s offer, I must refuse it. And your escort to his home.”

“Offer?”

“Yes,” she nodded, “of his guardianship. You see, I already have a wonderful family who have seen that all my needs have not only been met but are surpassed.”

“I don’t think you should view this as an offer, Miss Russell.”

“No?”

“My father is determined you’ll come live with him.”

He simply didn’t understand. His expression was cold, aloof, giving her a glimpse of the hard implacable will driving him. With a frisson of trepidation, she tried another smile. He couldn’t very well kidnap her from her home.

“I hate to disappoint the gentleman,” she said, “but as I’ve tried to explain, there’s no need for him to assume his guardianship of me. Indeed, I would much oppose it. Mistress Fraiser, with whom I’ve lived these many years, is but recently a widow and I could not repay her loving care by abandoning her now.”

“I assure you, my father will provide any accoutrements of wealth and privilege you should require,” Ash Merrick said, his gaze on the ring adorning her hand.

“My affection for Mistress Fraiser is honest, sir,” she snapped with uncharacteristic ire, stung by his inference that she wanted to stay here simply to keep herself well clothed. “My support of her is heartfelt. And I would not have you suggest otherwise!”

She took a deep breath, unnerved as much because he’d provoked her so easily as by his offensive suggestion.

“Perhaps Mistress Fraiser can ill afford the luxury of your heartfelt support,” he suggested, looking pointedly at her pearl ring.

The notion of Edith Fraiser selling off the family silver to buy her a second-rate piece of frippery restored Rhiannon’s usual good humor. This time her laugh was warm and spontaneous. “This ring and a piece of amber are all I have from my mother, sir, and its value is almost solely sentimental. I pray you only look about you. I assure you I am not causing Mistress Fraiser any financial hardship.”

He made a cursory inspection of the room, tallying the fine furnishings, the ornate plaster mantel—Mistress Fraiser’s pride and joy—the satin covered settees and silver mirror.

Then his gaze returned, once more, to her.

It flowed down her body and slowly, incrementally, roved back up her person, settling on the brocaded lapels of her hunting jacket. Her pulse quickened beneath that lazy regard, and her hand instinctively fluttered to her throat.

His gaze drifted up to meet hers, the dark centers of his eyes glowing like a hot cauldron of pitch.

“As good as anything you’ll see in London, I’ll wager,” she said inanely, fingering the silk embroidered plaquets.

“Indeed.” His voice was deep, heavy and smooth.

“It’s French.”

His mouth quirked. “I thought Scottish.”

Her laughter was nervous. “Oh, no. You’ll not find many Scottish fingers working over a piece like this.”

“It would seem to require a more sophisticated hand,” he agreed suavely.

“Yes.” She nodded, knowing full well he was twitting her but unsure how. She smiled uncertainly. His lids narrowed, the thicket of lash hiding the brilliance of his eyes.

He hadn’t looked the least reproachful when she’d snapped at him a moment before. There was not one person in Fair Badden who would not have looked shocked at having heard the sharp edge of Rhiannon Russell’s tongue. There was not one person in Fair Badden who had ever heard it. She’d always been mindful of her debt of gratitude, careful never to give offense.

“I agree, Miss Russell, you’ve been well tended.”

“Yes,” she said. In a few minutes he would walk out of this room and ride away back to London. She didn’t want him to go. Not yet.

“But being well tended isn’t the only issue,” he went on. “However tardy in his assumption of the role, my father is your legal guardian. He wants you at Wanton’s Blush.”

Wanton’s Blush? She remembered that name. Her aunt had lived there. She froze. “In the Highlands?”

“Yes. Last time I was there, I believe it was in the Highlands. On McClairen’s Isle.”

The place name ambushed her from out of the past. Her heart leapt to her throat. Fear confounded her ability to breathe and she stared at him, stricken. He didn’t even realize he was uttering what to her was a threat.

“And that,” he stated, “is where you’ll go and where you’ll stay, until you marry or die or my father tires of this unprecedented whim to foster you.”

“Marry?” Relief rushed over her. She would be able to thwart Lord Carr’s demand. And if the smallest bit of regret tempered her relief, well, she’d already admitted to herself that Ash Merrick was fascinating. “Then we’ve no problem.”

“Did we have a problem? I hadn’t realized.” He held out his hand, inviting her solution to the problem they didn’t have.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I mean no, sir. We don’t. Because, you see, in three weeks I’m to wed Phillip Watt.”

Ash Merrick’s hand froze in the act of reaching for her. Seconds clicked by as unreadable emotions flickered in rapid succession over his handsome, weary face. Then he threw back his head and laughed.