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Royal gave her a coaxing smile. “Perhaps you could tell Lady Margaret or Lady Ainsley that Royal Kendrick has ridden up from Castle Kinglas. I apologize for appearing so abruptly, but my brother, the Earl of Arnprior, asked me to convey his greetings.”
As might be expected, invoking Nick’s title tipped the scales in his favor.
“Betty, take Mr. Kendrick straight up to the front parlor,” said the cook. “Then see if Lady Margaret is available.”
“Aye, Mum.”
“Take himstraightto the parlor,” the cook reiterated.
Betty rolled her eyes, but nodded.
Royal followed her through a swinging door, then up shallow steps and into a narrow corridor running toward the front of the house. They emerged into the entrance hall, a handsome, somber space with stone floors and paneled walls covered with large, ornately framed portraits of presumably Lady Margaret’s ancestors. He could swear they were eyeballing him with the same suspicious regard he’d encountered from the servants.
None of it made any sense.
Betty opened a door off the hall. “Please wait in here, sir.”
He limped past her into the room. “Thank you. And if Lady Ain—”
“I think Lady Margaret is takin’ a nap,” the girl interrupted. “I’ll pop up and check.”
“Could you please tell her I’d like to see her as soon as possible?” he asked, grasping the fraying ends of his temper.
“If she’s awake, I’ll do just that.” She flashed him a cheeky grin before smartly shutting the door.
Royal muttered a few curses to relieve his spleen, then made his way to a red velvet chaise by the fireplace. If only he’d thought to ask Betty to fetch some tea—or, better yet, whisky, since the long day had taken a toll.
Easing down onto the settee, he looked around the spacious and well-appointed drawing room. With expensive, rather old-fashioned furnishings, good carpets, and splendid silk drapes swagged back with extravagant gold cords, it was obviously for formal use. Still, despite its splendor, there was an air of rather sad, faded gentility. A thin layer of dust coated the furniture and no fire was laid in the grate, suggesting little use.
After ten minutes, his leg stopped aching quite so fiercely, so he got up to inspect the fine landscape over the fireplace and the excellent collection of Meissen porcelain in a pair of glass-fronted cabinets. That took up perhaps ten minutes, after which he returned to the settee. After an equal amount of time, all spent straining his ears to detect any signs of life in the hall, he decided enough was enough.
Mentally cursing eccentric old ladies and young stubborn ones, he stalked out to the entrance hall. Only the dust motes were stirring, dancing in the bolts of sunlight coming in the narrow windows set high in the wall. Two corridors led off from the central space, one back to the kitchen and the other likely to more drawing rooms and the dining room.
That meant he should head for the spiral staircase at the back of the hall and the family rooms on the upper floors. He just hoped he didn’t have to search the entire bloody house to find Ainsley. God knows what he might stumble into. A mad monk locked in the cellars wouldn’t surprise him in the least.
When he reached the top of the stairs, a long hall ran straight to the back of the house. As he followed it, a thick carpet runner muffled his footsteps. Royal could usually move as quietly as any man raised to hunt and track in the Highlands, but his limp was more pronounced after the long ride. Bad enough to be skulking about like a common criminal, worse to sound like a peg-legged pirate while doing so.
The first door he came to was open, so he stuck his head in.
And almost fell flat on his face.
Sitting on a chaise by the bay window, her slippered feet resting on a stack of pillows and a book propped up on her belly, was an exceedingly pregnant Lady Ainsley Matthews.
* * *
Ainsley grimaced at another sharp twinge in the vicinity of her tailbone. The pains in her lower back had been worse the last few days. It was certainly discouraging, since both the midwifeandthe doctor claimed she had at least another three weeks before the little acrobat in her tummy was ready to make an appearance. Spending that much time in monumental discomfort was a daunting prospect, especially because it also meant another month of ceaseless worry. Her brain—like her body—felt sluggish and thick, refusing to do what she needed it to do.
Come up with an answer to her growing—literally—dilemma.
She sighed and rubbed her enormous stomach both to comfort herself and the baby, who was often kicking like a stubborn donkey. Sometimes she thought the poor mite could even be rebelling at its fate—a monster for a father, and a mother foolish enough to let such a man into her life in the first place.
Ainsley knew that if she didn’t exercise a great deal of brains and caution, she and her child would find themselves forever yoked to a man who didn’t possess a shred of decency or compassion in his cold, black heart.
She needed a solution, and she needed it fast.
At least she had Aunt Margaret in her corner. No one else could have protected her as fiercely as the elderly woman who had taken her in without hesitation, throwing herself wholeheartedly into the ruse. So far, they’d pulled it off, too. But for the doctor and the midwife, no one outside this household knew Ainsley was pregnant. Certainly, her own family had never guessed, still thinking she’d come north into unwilling exile.
While therehadbeen a potentially permanent solution to her problem, the handsome and immensely irritating Scotsman who’d unknowingly thrown her a lifeline deserved better than the horrific scandal Ainsley would drag in her wake. Royal Kendrick had been through enough without her further torching his life like a Guy Fawkes effigy.
