The Devil Wears Tartan by Karen Ranney

ordered existence meant someone was going to die, or the Chinese had developed some new type of torture. Nothing new was ever good.
    Somehow he’d carried that suspicion back to Ambrose, living in that fashion for the last year.
    Davina was new. His marriage was new. So far, he wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about either. He had a suspicion, however, that nothing in his well-ordered world was going to remain the same.
    Davina McLaren Ross. Davina. He repeated her name several times in the silence of the room, and each time it sounded as if a bit of magic had rubbed off on him.
    Davina.
    Here was a woman who was not overawed either byhis consequence or by his past accomplishments. She hummed with intensity, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks pink with passion.
    She’d actually raised her voice to him. Were you displeased with me last night? On the contrary, he’d been amazed. Enchanted.
    How odd to be so fixated on one’s wife. Wife , a word he tested several times, speaking it aloud in the silence of his office. She was nothing like he’d expected. But then his life was filled lately with unexpected events, not the least of which was his own madness.
    He could still see her standing in the courtyard, a tension in her stance, a fiery sort of energy that was too much like fear. She’d determinedly forced her chin up and stared at him directly, very concisely telling him that she wanted him to be a husband in all ways.
    He’d sent his solicitor for a kitten and the man had brought him back a tiger. His amusement was short-lived. Kitten or tiger, it mattered not. Davina McLaren Ross was an impediment to his life. She was going to be a distraction, he could tell. Hell, the night before had proven that only too well.
    It was one thing to keep her distant with an air of indifference. What did he do about his own interest?
    Of all the scenarios he could have envisioned about his marriage, Davina McLaren fit none of them. Their relationship was no more than that of two cordial strangers—or two strangers who’d been forced together. Yet the meeting earlier had proved to be uncomfortable, and unforgettable. The night before had proven even more difficult to forget.
    Why the hell had he let her walk away?
    Once he’d been facile in group situations, capable of speaking on a vast array of topics to myriad groups of people. He could converse in six languages, could swear in ten, and had been fluent in the easy quip, the impersonal banality.
    For years he’d believed less in constancy than in variety. He couldn’t even count the women he’d bedded, and if forced to pick each one of them out of a group, he couldn’t swear he could do so.
    Life had been an unending round of pleasures: the best food, the best wine, and the loveliest women. He’d been awarded success for simply being himself; charming, urbane, and filled to the brim with tact. He was handsome, titled, wealthy, well-educated, and had impeccable antecedents.
    China, however, had put an end both to his social life and to his indiscriminate hedonism. Pride dictated that his nights be spent alone. Celibacy was easier than worrying whether the hallucinations would visit him and how quickly tales of his madness or his addiction to opium would spread.
    Even in his marriage he had to be vigilant.
    Still, he’d wanted to kiss her this morning, and thread his fingers through her hair, loosen her very proper plaits to see if she smiled at his daring. He wanted to kiss her throat to see if her pulse beat as strong as his.
    Instead he’d sent her away. Prudent Marshall. Wise Marshall. Mad Marshall. He stared down at the desktop, seeing not the blotter, but her face.
    I wouldn’t be displeased to do it again.
    Resolutely he pushed Davina from his mind and returned to his task. Several moments later Marshall stood, stretching. This office looked out on Aidan’s Needle, so close that he could open the window, reach out, and touch the tip of the obelisk. He remembered the