The Duke's Perfect Wife
When he could see again, he took in Mac sitting at a table with Eileen, Isabella next to him, Robert in a baby chair. Eleanor crammed in beside them at the table, while the nanny, Miss Westlock, supervised from a bench on the other side of the room. Aimee sat on a window seat with Lord Ramsay, the earl showing Aimee fossils he’d brought with him from Scotland.
Hart dragged his gaze again from the smear of cream on Eleanor’s lips and addressed Mac. “I’m leaving for Berkshire this morning. I have errands to run along the way, so I’ll take the coach. The rest of you will travel down by train tomorrow afternoon.”
“Coach?” Mac said. He licked clotted cream from his thumb and shook his head at his daughter. “Eileen, please don’t put butter in your brother’s hair.” He looked back at Hart. “Hadn’t you better come with us?”
“I told you, I have errands…”
Eleanor glared at him. “Hart, we know.” She lifted a copy of a gossipy newspaper from the chair beside her and held it up to him.
Duke of Kilmorgan narrowly escapes with his life! Shots fired outside Parliament. Have the Fenians found a new target?
“How the devil did that rag get into the house?” Hart growled. “Mac?”
Mac looked innocent, but Eleanor’s face was bright with rage. “You lied to me when I asked how you hurt yourself. You said it wasn’t important. How could you? You were nearly killed.”
Hart touched his face where the cuts were fading. “It isn’t important. The man was a terrible shot, and I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t tell you because I don’t want the lot of you fussing.”
“Fussing? Hart, this is dangerous. This is something you tell your family. And your friends.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t want any of you with me!” Hart’s voice rang as he lost hold of his patience. “If the man is such a bad shot, I don’t want my family and friends to become accidental victims when he misses me. Eleanor, you and your father will travel with Isabella and Mac, and I will go with my bodyguards and Wilfred. Wilfred used to be in the army. He knows how to duck.”
Eleanor’s stare turned icy. “Do not try to make a joke of this. I suppose you did not even talk to the police.”
“I did, as a matter of fact. I asked Inspector Fellows to look into it, because if anyone can scare up a culprit, it is our favorite Scotland Yard detective. But he doesn’t have much to go on, only a few chipped bricks. And the man might not have been shooting at me in particular, but at anyone coming out of the building.”
Lord Ramsay broke in. “You must understand that the thought of you traveling alone makes us uneasy, don’t you, Mackenzie? You in a coach? On an empty road between Reading and Hungerford?”
“I will not be alone. I hire former pugilists as footmen for their large bodies and quick reflexes.”
“Which did not help you the night you were shot,” Eleanor pointed out.
“Because that night I was not paying attention.” He’d been thinking about Eleanor in a corset, her hair up, high-heeled ankle boots on her feet. “Now I’ve been warned,” he said.
“Hardly reassuring.” Eleanor’s eyes still held anger. “But I suppose we’ll never talk you out of it. You will send a telegram the moment you arrive, won’t you?”
“El,” Hart said.
“No, never mind. Ainsley will do it. Please make certain you inform Cameron of the problem. Or Cameron might take umbrage, and he’s larger than you.”
Hart didn’t bother to keep the irritation from his voice. “Leave it, Eleanor. I will see you in Berkshire.”
She scowled at him, but Hart only saw her in his heady vision of the corset and boots, made more erotic by a liberal addition of clotted cream. He turned away and made himself walk out the door.
Eleanor had always loved Waterbury Grange, Cameron’s Berkshire estate, though she’d not visited it in ages. Cameron, second-oldest brother of the Mackenzie family, had purchased it shortly after his first wife had died, saying he wanted somewhere far from the place in which he’d spent his unhappy marriage.
Green fields stretched to wooded hills, and the Kennet and Avon Canal drifted lazily along the edge of the property. Spring meant lambs staggering after mothers across the field, and foals keeping close to the mares that wandered the pastures.
Mackenzie family tradition brought them to Waterbury every March. There the brothers, and now their wives and children, would watch Cameron train his racers while they withdrew from the eyes of the world. Here was their chance to be a private family for a short time before Cameron took his three-year-olds to Newmarket.
The house was old, a shapeless pile of golden brick, but from what Ainsley said in her letters, she’d been busily redecorating the inside. Eleanor looked forward to seeing her progress.
But when Eleanor, her father, Isabella, Mac, the exuberant children, their robust nanny, and old Ben climbed down from the carriages that brought them from the train, it was for Hart to meet them at the front door of Waterbury Grange and tell them that Ian had gone missing.
Chapter 12
“You know Ian does this all the time,” Beth said. She looked worriedly at Hart, and Eleanor sensed that Beth’s anxiousness was more for Hart than for her absent husband.
Beth stood in the breezy front hall with a child on each arm—son Jamie and tiny daughter Belle. The Mackenzie dogs, all five of them, wandered among the new arrivals, tails waving.