Thomas’s goals then had been to first befriend and then destroy Carr’s son Ash, on his way to doing the same to Carr. He’d nearly achieved his goal—and found that the role of Judas had damaged him more than Ash. Soon after Thomas had left England.
“Who’s this? Donne, isn’t it?” Tunbridge’s eyes narrowed. “Chased out of the Highlands when you refused to fight for your Bonny Prince, wasn’t it?”
Thomas continued to smile. He’d put the story out himself, as part of his masquerade.
“I will have my apology, Lord Tunbridge!” Pip declared in mounting indignation.
Drat the boy. Tunbridge would have forgotten him if he’d remained mum.
“Eh?” Tunbridge half turned his head, his eyes flickering uncomfortably over Thomas’s gently smiling face and hard, toned body. “What? An apology? But of course. Sorry. No offense meant …”
Pip scowled. “Well, I most assuredly took—”
“None was taken,” Thomas interjected. He gripped Pip’s arm in an iron clasp that belied the casual gesture. “I daresay we all mumble things we regret. Don’t we, Robbie?”
Robbie’s compressed mouth relaxed. “Quite right. Men are always making asses of themselves over women who won’t spare them a glance.”
The barb missed its mark, however, for Tunbridge had backed away from the group, eager to be off. Probably scuttling off to inform Carr of something or other. Tunbridge had ever been Carr’s creature.
Pip tried to pull away and follow but Thomas refused to release him and the other gentlemen, unwilling to allow the boy to throw his life away so effortlessly, immediately interposed themselves between Pip and the departing Tunbridge.
“ ’Sblood,” Robbie said, clapping Pip on the back, “if I were to account for every thoughtless remark I’d made, I’d be filling ledger books for months!”
Johnston had an even better notion of how to distract the ruffled youngster. “Will you look at that? More lads have entered Compton’s box. Begad! They’d best watch out lest the damned thing break free of the wall and crash down on the cits!”
Thomas followed Johnston’s amazed gaze. His eyes narrowed on the gilt box. “Hand me your binoculars, Robbie,” he murmured, scowling.
He took the ivory set and raised them to his eyes. As though guided by fate, he found himself looking directly into her eyes.
Fia Merrick’s eyes.
He could not be mistaken. She’d flitted like a beauteous wraith at the edges of his imagination for years, a phenomenon he’d never allowed himself to examine too closely. But now … His breath caught in his throat.
She was, had always been, the most ravishing creature he’d ever seen. She was even more ravishing now.
The passage of six years had only refined her luminous, otherworldly beauty. High, exotic cheekbones, pure expanse of smooth forehead, the jut and delicate angularity of her jaw, time had only sculpted them more resolutely.
The creamy white skin clung with more conviction to the bones beneath. Her eyes, always crystalline, looked bluer and harder than gemstones. Her mouth was both fuller and softer. Against all of fashion’s dictates she wore her unpowdered hair down and loose, black cascading ringlets of it, its darkness devoured by the black, daringly low-cut bodice.
“Fia,” Thomas murmured.
“You know her?”
“Fia Merrick?” Thomas lowered the binoculars. Pip didn’t stand a chance if the likes of her had beguiled him. “Aye.”
“Not Merrick any longer, old son,” Johnston said. “ ’Tis MacFarlane.”
So she’d wed. Not surprising. Carr had been grooming her since infancy to adorn some power broker’s arm. Though the name MacFarlane was not familiar.
“Which one is her husband?” Thomas could not think why he asked the question—except he wanted to know what the man looked like who could afford Fia Merrick.
“None of them,” Robbie answered. “Ah! I forget you’ve been gone a year. You see, Lady Fia ain’t got a husband. That is to say she had one, but she’s hasn’t anymore. He died.… Seems to me ’twas over a year ago. But then, if it had been that long, she’d have abandoned mourning, wouldn’t she?”
“Why should she?” Johnston asked softly, eyes on Fia. “When she wears black better than night itself?”
Robbie chuckled. “Did you hear that, Donne? Lord spare us if Johnston ain’t come all over poetical!”
But Thomas was not attending. Carr had had a nasty habit of losing spouses. Did Fia too? “Her husband is dead, you say?”
“Yes,” Robbie answered, his smile fading. “Didn’t know him meself. Older fellow. Stolid Scottish merchant. Caused quite a stir when Lady Fia ran off with him.”
“She eloped with him?” It made little sense. Why would Fia have eloped with a Scottish nobody?
“A short month after her arrival,” Johnston said, “and I know for a fact that she’d received three offers before MacFarlane took off with her.”
“He was a wealthy man?” Thomas asked sardonically.
“Exceptionally wealthy.”
Pip swung about. He’d apparently been listening after all. “There is only one reason a lady of Lady Fia’s quality would elope. Obviously she was in love.”
“Obviously.” Johnston’s head bobbed in innocent agreement.
“Without a doubt,” Robbie concurred.
Pip nodded gruffly and went back to studying Fia.
“How did Carr take the news of his daughter’s elopement?” Thomas asked.
“Carr?” Robbie’s nostrils flared delicately, as though scenting tainted meat. “Can’t recall. Though later MacFarlane and he became boon companions. The two were inseparable.”
“Lady Fia must have been relieved there was such accord between her father and her husband,” Thomas said.
“One couldn’t say,” Johnston said. “Lady Fia never came to town. Quite withdrew from society once she’d wed. Spent five years marooned at MacFarlane’s country house. Lord, she must have hated it for—” Johnston leaned forward, glanced circumspectly at Pip’s back, and whispered, “—to be perfectly blunt, she came back into society months before her mourning period was officially over.”
“Who can blame her?” Pip cast about angrily.
Johnston sighed, looking upward as though to ask heaven how the lad’s hearing could be so keen.
“A beautiful young woman like that?” Pip continued. “Kept in some heathenish backwoods when she should be celebrated, admired, and revered? Why, ’twas abominable of MacFarlane to keep her there!”
“Precisely!” Robbie agreed.
“My thoughts exactly,” Johnston nodded vigorously.
Thomas did not want to ask but the suspicion forming in his mind would not let him remain silent. “Was she able to comfort MacFarlane in his final hours?”
“That’s the tragedy of it!” Pip flung out his hand. “He was in town and she was in the lowlands.”
She hadn’t killed him.
“That’s right,” Johnston agreed. “MacFarlane was here, with that … with Carr. The man ought to be brought up on charges of murder.”