Archie Carrington was the sort of fellow who was always delighted to find himself with an armful of lass—in fact, it was his favorite state of being. Dairymaids, housemaids and countesses alike—Archie opened his arms to them, one and all.
The present armful came out of nowhere—nowhere being the new Lord Advocate’s mist-shrouded stableyard up Kirk Brae Head—falling into his arms with all the force of a banner headline.
“Whoa there, lass.” He held fast to keep them both from falling to the icy cobbles—if not to also keep his sole pair of satin evening breeches from being ruined by the slick stable mud. He had taken pains with his appearance that evening, scrubbing himself diligently so as not to smell like printing ink, but he would certainly not be readmitted to Sir Richard Conway’s elegant drawing room if he looked—let alone smelled—like he’d rolled in horse shite.
“You whoa there.” The armful’s voice was low and pleasing, despite being full of breathless objection. “You’re the one who ran into me.”
“So I did!” And he was not sorry—not with her supple form beneath his hands.
She pushed out of his arms, putting one hand to her chest and the other against the rough stable wall for balance, as if their brief contact had knocked the wind out of her. Or perhaps he just had that effect on women—his smile had been known to make barmaids weak at the knees.
Archie put that smile to work on this lass, who was also clearly a maid of some sort—serviceably dressed in a nondescript, dark, hooded cloak over an equally nondescript gown and splattered apron. But he was no snob. “My apology, lass. Quite right—my fault entirely.”
With the exception of her ginger hair, keeking out from the edge of the hood, everything about her was nondescript. Which was perfect for Archie’s needs—he had wandered out into the stableyard looking for one of the new Lord Advocate’s servants to chat up. Or, if worse came to worse, bribe. A groom or a footman had been his original intention, but a maid from Sir Richard Conway’s house might serve better—footmen and groomsmen were dressed in livery to catch the eye, but a maidservant was dressed and trained to be invisible.
He had tried getting his questions about the new Lord Advocate’s sudden assignment to Edinburgh answered in the more usual, straightforward way—but his straightforward questions had not been answered. Evasion seemed to be the name of the game. Well, two could play at that—Archie had made his reputation as a man who found out uncomfortable truths.
“I hope I didn’t frighten ye, lass.” Archie made his voice warm and his accent more broadly Scots in an effort to set her at ease.
“No,” she said, contradicting herself by sidling further away and casting a wary glance toward the house and the kitchen stair. “I’m not afraid.”
Not of him anyway.
But no, not nay—she wasn’t Scots, then. Likely an English servant brought north with Lord Conway’s household when they had relocated to Edinburgh—from London, presumably, though no one seemed to know exactly. Which was better yet—a lass far from home, away from familiar friends and family would be easier to sweet-talk out of a little harmless information.
All he had to do was turn her up sweet.
“You’re English then, lass?” He broadened his smile to show her he took no offense. “Welcome to Scotland.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was low and calm, but her wariness remained—she took another hesitant, almost lurching step nearer the stair. “I didn’t realize there was a welcome committee.”
“Oh, aye.” Archie laughed at her wry humor. “Are ye all to rights then, lass? That was a devilish bit of a bump ye took.” He put out his hand to aid her, but she drew back. “Lass, I mean ye no harm. I imagine it’s got to be hard, aye, coming all the way up to Auld Reeky not knowing a soul. Devilish lonely I was, when I first went down to London.” He cocked his head to one side, all inviting innocence, and gave her his sunniest, most maid-pleasing smile. “I’m Archie.”
Her lips curved into the barest trace of a smile, as if against her will. Or her better judgment. “You would be.”
Archie was amused, but also buffeted back a wee bit by the sharp nick of sarcasm in her tone. But now that he took a second look, she had a governess-y air about her he hadn’t noticed at first—a probing, acute gaze, as if, in her spare glance at him, she had already seen through to his flaws.
He fell back upon his strength—charm. “Governess then, are ye? Just rid of the bumptious bairns for the evening and catching a wee moment to yourself?”
She raised her eyebrow, leveling that acute gaze at him. “What sort of a governess would I be if I felt my bairns were bumptious?”
Archie couldn’t help but laugh. Oh, but how he liked the clever ones. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
Her smile grew enough to warm the corners of her hazel eyes. “Such favors.”
Clever and wry. Delightful.
He took a casual step closer, to get an even better look at the lass, but a noise from the bottom of the kitchen stair—the door slamming open—diverted both their attentions.
A cultured voiced floated up to them. “Maisie?”
Maisie—now that name was Scots, even if her accent wasn’t. “I won’t keep ye from yer mistress, lass,” he whispered, letting his brogue fully loose on her, along with another sure-to-please smile. “But if ye e’er find yerself lonely, in need of a friend, I live over Cowgate way. Ask anyone there and they’ll tell ye where Archie lives. Mayhap I could meet ye for a walk on yer halfday, or for an amble along the gardens of the old loch?”
“Such favor.”
Her wryly self-possessed voice didn’t give anything away, but Archie had softened harder hearts. “Or you could send a message to the Review—that’s an important literary and political quarterly, by the way—by way of one of the crossing sweeps. No one need know.”
“No one?”
“Well, just ye” He gave her a wink. “And me.”
“Ah.” Her smile was rife with irony. “Intrigue along with favor.”
“Maisie?” The voice called again, astonished and insistent.
Archie peered through the raw mist to find the owner of the imperious summons was the Lord Advocate’s daughter, Miss Flora Conway, a strikingly attractive, golden haired, young lady who was being newly acclaimed as Edinburgh’s version of a diamond of the first water, even if her father was a politician of the second. As beautiful as she was gracious, Flora Conway was another lass Archie ought to try to turn up sweet.
But Miss Conway’s gaze was all for her servant. “Maisie, I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” she scolded her charge. “What in heaven’s hour are you doing out here in all this freezing damp?”
“I needed some quiet,” the governess returned in that same low, calm tone, as if she were impervious to the disgruntled lady’s summons.
“Out here? What you need is to attend the soirée. Do come. It’s only just started.” The beautiful daughter of the house glanced down. “Oh heavens, Maisie! Your hems are at least four inches deep in this awful slushy mud—I’ll never get used to this coal soot! But—” She gasped in horror at the mud streaking up the side of her charge’s skirts. “Whatever happened? Are you all to rights?
“I’m fine,” this Maisie countered in a decidedly non-deferential, but still patient tone. “It’s just an old smock. Pray don’t take on.”
“My fault, I’m afraid.” Archie stepped into the small circle of lamplight and turned the full force of his charm on the mistress. “Miss Conway, pray forgive me for losing my way and discommoding your Maisie. She was only trying to direct me back inside.”
“My Lord Carrington!”
Clearly, his reputation preceded him—though he had been at some pains to reform it. The pretty young Englishwomen’s glance filled with fresh anxiety—and just enough outrage to be amusing—darting from him to her charge. “What on Earth are you doing out here with my sister?”
Surprise was like a well-aimed boot to his backside. “Your sister?”
He had no intelligence of more than one Conway sister, but perhaps he had partaken too freely of Lord Conway’s copious liquor instead of listening carefully. He would change that. “Pray forgive me, Miss Flora.”
But what was any sister, or daughter of the Lord Advocate, doing in a stableyard in the gathering dusk, dressed like a tatty governess?
How curious. And how intriguing.
It only remained to discover if it might be useful.
He gifted his slyest smile yet to this enigmatic Maisie. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Conway.” He sent her a surreptitious wink as he swept her a gallant bow. “Archie Carrington, at your service.”
~
He would be an Archie. So very Scots, the way he rolled the name off the clever tip of his tongue. And her sister Flora’s outrage was as amusing as it was predictable—though younger than Maisie by some ten years, there was nothing like a rogue to set Flora’s protective instincts on guard.
And this Archie Carrington, though a lord, was certainly a rogue. He could be nothing but, coming out of the mist to catch her, all swirling, madder black velvet coattails and unruly raven dark hair. Satan in a crimson waistcoat—he all but exhaled brimstone.
But what had the man been doing in the stableyard instead of hob-nobbing with the good and great of Edinburgh within the drawing room, seeing and being seen, drinking her father’s freely flowing liquor? Because clearly, Lord Carrington was a man who intended to be seen. The cut of his form-fitting coat alone was far too French to be the product of fusty old Edinburgh, though his strong grip, where it had braced up her arm, had been far more like a farrier than a fop.
She gave him another covert assessment. Now that he was gazing in predictable stupefaction at her beautiful young sister, Maisie was at leisure to admire the form beneath the tails of that madder black coat and satin breeches. If the well-shaped calves beneath his stockings were any indication of the rest of his physique, he was truly a fine specimen of a man.
A vision of him, nude, stripped of his civilizing clothes and bare as God made him, standing in the flat northern sunlight of her attic studio, swept into her mind like a hot, exotic wind, blowing away the dust and cobwebs.
But before her face could color even the slightest tint of rose madder, Maisie dismissed the idea. It could never be. But what might she do if taking a life study were not forbidden to women, even accomplished portraitists like her. Especially lady portraitists.
And especially like her.
As a result of her collision with Lord Carrington, the ache in her hip was acute. She had to take the hand her sister offered in place of Carrington’s—a loss, to be sure.
“Heavens, Maisie, you look done in.” Flora reverted to her mother-hen mode, taking Maisie’s arm to navigate the slippery, steep kitchen stair. “You’re all tumbled up. You’ll have to change and let Raines—Raines?” Her sister called down to the Scots maid who appeared at the bottom of the stair. “Help my sister into a fresh gown before you conduct her to the drawing room, if you please.”
“Aye, miss,” Cora Raines agreed stoically.
“And see if you can do something about her hair and—” Flora made an encompassing gesture. “—and everything else for that matter.”
As if at nearly thirty years of age, Maisie would agree to any part of being mutton dressed and trotted out as lamb. And besides, any attempt to turn her into appropriately dressed mutton would take far too long at this hour.
She firmed her resolve. “Flora, you don’t need me.”
“Of course we do,” Flora insisted. “This is Papa’s first soirée in Edinburgh, and he requests your company.”
Maisie only just refrained from making a decidedly rude noise. “Papa would never request such a thing.” Sir Richard generally preferred that his lame eldest daughter assume a retired life that did not require making a display of said lameness in his drawing room.
“You can’t always hide, Maisie—it’s not right. Come,” her younger sister coaxed. “It will be right as rain. I promise.”
“And when was the Scottish rain ever right?” In Maisie’s limited month of experience with Edinburgh’s dismal weather, all the cold, raw rain ever guaranteed was a persistent ache in her leg.
But as she had no want to argue with her sister in front of either Raines or the keen green gaze of this Lord Carrington fellow—who was still eyeing her with entirely unfathomable intent—she settled on the non-confrontational. “I’ll go up.”
Anything to keep Flora from questioning why Maisie had been out in the first place—bribing beggars to sit for her.
And so, to go up, Maisie went down, though she was acutely conscious of her slow, inelegant movement down the kitchen stairway—the easiest, narrowest, least formal entrance in and out of the house, only a half story down, instead of the wide, icy, stone terrace stairs up. But she needn’t have wasted her worry—the big, bonny devil of a Scotsman had already turned the bright lantern of his smile upon her sister, a perfect girl who lit up a room with her incandescent beauty, her lively conversation and her brilliant blue eyes.
Maisie was the dark horse, the lame spinster sister with nothing to recommend her but her talent for paints. And thank goodness for that talent—as her father had often said, a spinster must have a profession.
“Your pardon, Miss Flora.” Carrington's dark baritone was low and soothing, and interestingly free of that Scots burr he had so recently wielded like a blunt weapon upon Maisie. “I hope I didn’t discommode either you or your sister.”
“Not at all,” Flora answered in a reserved, but softened tone—clearly some of her starch was softening under the persistent press of Lord Carrington’s charm. “It’s only that it’s such an important evening, you see.”
“I do see,” he agreed amiably. “That’s why I’ve come, myself.”
“I’ve heard of you,” Flora informed him. “You’re the newspaper man.” Flora delivered this bit of news as if she had only just happened upon the information and not spent the past month—their first month of residence in Scotland—memorizing the names of Edinburgh's great and good and influential, while Maisie had been far more interested in the low and forgotten.
Young Lord Archie Carrington, Flora had learned, was the third, but most brilliant son of the Marquess of Aiken, a wealthy and influential landowner on the west coast of Scotland who occupied his seat in Lords for the seeming sole purpose of digging a thorn into the side of the previous Prime Minister, Mr. Pitt. Papa had made a sound of derision when Flora had mentioned both the son and his father, but he was clearly canny enough to add the son—who was not only a newspaper man, but the youngest-ever editor of the Edinburgh Review, which the young man had revived from obscurity to become a highly acclaimed quarterly publication full of politics, literature and satire—to the invitation list.
And Flora was more than canny enough to take advantage of the acquaintance. “You’re very kind to help my sister, but we can’t have either of you getting wet out in all this dirty weather. Let me show you back in,” she was saying as she took the arm young Lord Carrington dutifully offered and began to lead him away, earning Maisie a much-needed reprieve—her sister would soon forget Maisie with such a distraction on her arm.
But Flora was not so docile. “Don’t think I’m forgetting you, Maisie,” she called over her shoulder. “Twenty minutes, or I’ll come looking.”
“Witch,” Maisie muttered.
“Termagant,” Flora countered amiably before she returned her regard to the influential young lord. “But don’t let us give you a bad impression of the Conways, my lord. It’s just that my sister is shy of people, you see, and needs to be encouraged.”
Shy, Flora called her. Uneasy would have been closer to the truth. Unwilling to do what was expected. Uninterested in making nice.
But young Lord Carrington hadn’t seemed interested in making nice—his interests were clearly in making something altogether more mischievous.
“She’s an artist you see,” Flora was explaining. “She’s achieved some renown as a ladies’ portraitist.”
Some renown was a bit of a stretch. Maisie had indeed had some success painting portraits of Flora’s small circle of society friends in the neighborhood of Richmond, outside of London, where they had lived—she had even had the honor of painting the illustrious Duchess of Northumberland at her beautiful home just down the river at Syon Park. But before Maisie could truly take advantage of her growing reputation, their father had unexpectedly relocated the family from Richmond to Edinburgh, where Papa was to take up a post as the new Lord Advocate.
Renown would have to wait.
But Flora was clearly not so patient as Maisie. “Have you ever had your portrait made, Lord Carrington?”
“Ah, no,” the young man said, sounding wary of the trap Flora was setting. “No time for such a thing, really. I’m a working man, not the heir, you see?”
“Tut,” Flora said, and Maisie could imagine the gently rebuking tap of her fan against Lord Carrington’s arm. “Your brother, Viscount Lanark, may have his virtues, but he is not the youngest-ever editor of the most influential political quarterly in Scotland, my lord.”
“Miss Flora, you flatter me.” The roll and sway of his brogue came rollicking back.
“Of course I do, my lord,” Flora laughed. “For I want something of you.”
“And would it surprise you, lass, that I want something from you, too?”
Maisie suppressed both her laugh and her sigh. Archie Carrington would certainly have his work cut out for him if he thought thick lashings of his Scot’s charm would work their wiles on Flora. Although her young sister was exactly as she appeared to be—perfectly and completely lovely with her spun gold hair and delicate features—she had cut her teeth on London’s bachelors. Viscounts and rogues alike had fallen to their metaphorical knees before Flora’s radiant youth, beauty and cunning—the clever girl had not been born yesterday.
Nor had any of the Conways. They were, none of them, soft touches.
So Maisie, at nearly thirty years of age and firmly on the shelf, was happy to let Flora lead the man away. It gave her time to ponder out just what Lord Archibald Carrington, youngest-ever editor of the most influential political quarterly in Scotland, had been doing, skulking about the inky dark of her father’s stableyard.
Perhaps she would get changed after all.
