One Little Sin by Liz Carlyle Page B

there had been houseguests and dinner parties. Until Achanalt put a stop to it, her mother had possessed a coterie of admirers, for she loved to make her husband jealous. But when Esmée finally began to press for more, her mother’s bottom lip would always come out.
    “Wait,” she would say. “Wait until Aunt Rowena returns from abroad. Then you shall have a proper season, my love, I promise you.”
    I promise you.
    But after burying three husbands too young, her mother had developed an entrenched fear of being alone. Esmée realized now she’d been the only constant in her mother’s life. Achanalt, whom her mother had married when Esmée was sixteen, had quickly become dour and withdrawn. Within two years of the happy nuptials, the word divorce was already rumbling round the old castle.
    “Aye, like a tomcat after his own tail, he was,” she’d once heard their head gardener cackle. “The auld de’il didna know what to do w’ her once he had hold of her, and ’twas not near sae much fun as the chase.” Which more or less summed up the whole of Lord and Lady Achanalt’s romance.
    Well, the “auld de’il” had never borne Esmée’s presence with much grace. She had been strangely, perhaps foolishly, relieved when he’d put them out. Panic was a luxury she could ill afford, given the responsibility Achanalt had suddenly thrust upon her. Certainly she could not panic now. She simply would not allow herself to be unsettled by Alasdair MacLachlan, no matter how charismatic or handsome he was. And that thought reminded her that she was dawdling. Quickly, Esmée repinned her hair, and hastened down the stairs.
    She found MacLachlan in his study as expected. He had changed into a dark green coat over a waistcoat of straw-colored silk and snug brown trousers. His starched cravat was elegantly tied beneath his square, freshly shaved chin. Indeed, he looked breathtakingly handsome, and his ability to do so after a night of debauchery somehow annoyed her. He ought, at the very least, to have the decency to look a little green about the gills.
    Surprisingly, MacLachlan sat not by the coffee tray, but at his desk, his posture no longer loose and languid. Instead, he sat bolt upright, like a bird dog on point, fervent and focused. If he were suffering any ill effects from his night on the town with Mrs. Crosby, one certainly could not now discern it.
    Upon coming farther into the room, she realized he was not working. Instead, he was intent on some sort of card game, his heavy gold hair falling forward, obscuring his eyes. Suddenly, with a muttered curse, he swept up the cards, then shuffled them deftly through his fingers in one seamless motion. He shuffled again, his every aspect focused on the cards, as if they were an extension of hands, which were long-fingered and elegant. And surprisingly quick.
    She approached the desk, sensing the very moment when he recognized her presence. At once, he set the pack away and looked at her, something in his gaze shifting. It was as if she’d awakened him from a dream. He stood, and in an instant, the lazy, somnolent look returned to his eyes.
    “Good morning, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “Do sit down.”
    She moved to the seat he had indicated, a delicately inlaid Sheraton chair opposite the tea table. This room was beautifully decorated in shades of pale blue and cream. The blue silk wall coverings were accented by floor-to-ceiling pier glasses between the windows, and the creamy carpet felt thick beneath her feet. A footman carried in a small coffee tray and set it on the far end of the tea table. MacLachlan asked her to pour. The coffee was very strong, and rich, reminding her, strangely, of black velvet.
    “Wellings tells me you took the child out for a stroll yesterday,” he said. “I hope you both enjoyed it?”
    For some reason, she did not wish to tell him about her visit to her aunt Rowena’s. Perhaps because it made her look desperate and a little foolish.