Phyllida had set out to punish the queen, and punish her she would. So the queen had sent Ainsley—the lady she ordered to do covert jobs that might involve something sordid such as picking locks and searching bedrooms—to deal with Phyllida. To retrieve the letters without parting with a penny if Ainsley could help it.
“You are optimistic if you think she’ll give you a thousand,” Ainsley said.
Firework after firework went off over the fields, filling the sky with light. Under their light, Phyllida smiled.
“One thousand is what I want,” she said. “Raise it somehow by the end of the week, and you may have the letters back. If not . . .”
She made an empty gesture, then turned and strode down the gravel path without looking back.
“Bloody woman,” Ainsley growled.
A cold nose thrust itself into her palm, and she looked down to see McNab, a Mackenzie dog, staring up at her with sympathetic eyes. Five dogs surrounded the Mackenzies at all times. Two of them—the hound Ruby and the terrier called Fergus—belonged to Ian and Beth and lived with them when they retreated to their own house not far from here. Ben and Achilles remained at the main house, but McNab, a springer spaniel, was more or less Daniel and Cameron’s.
Ainsley sighed as she leaned to pet McNab. “How peaceful it must be to be a dog. You don’t have to worry about intrigue or letters or blackmail.”
McNab’s tail smacked her legs with happy blows. The tail drove harder as McNab turned to greet the large man who’d followed him out of the darkness.
“So, Phyllida is blackmailing you,” Cameron said.
Ainsley rapidly went through the conversation in her head, relaxing slightly when she realized that neither she nor Mrs. Chase had ever mentioned the queen by name.
“I’m afraid so.”
Cameron patted McNab’s head when the dog thrust it under Cameron’s hand. “Phyllida can be the devil. Do you want me to shake your letters out of her?”
Ainsley’s eyes widened in alarm. “Please don’t. If you frighten her, she might run to a newspaper as she threatened.”
McNab circled close behind Ainsley, which made her step forward into Cameron’s heat. Cameron didn’t move. McNab sat down against Ainsley, happy they were all together in a small circle of space.
“I can solve your problem,” Cameron said. “You know I’ll give you the thousand for the asking.”
He’d not simply hand you back the letter without exacting a price for it.
“I can raise the money,” Ainsley said. “It will be difficult, but I can do it.”Across the garden, under the light of the Chinese lanterns, Phyllida stepped next to her husband and tucked her hand under his arm.
“She’s is a hard woman,” Cameron said.
“She’s a bloody thorn in my side.”
Cameron’s chuckle grated like broken gravel. “If you think a thousand guineas will make Phyllida go away, it won’t. She’ll hold something back or find some other way to come at you again. Blackmailers are never satisfied.” His laughter faded into bitterness.
“Aren’t they? How do you know?”
His words were empty, hollow. “When you’re the brother of a duke and your wife died in mysterious circumstances, sharks come out of the woodwork.”
“That’s a mixed metaphor.”
“Bugger metaphors. They’re human sharks and they come out of the shadows when you least expect them.”
“I’m sorry,” Ainsley said.
She sounded sorry. Damn her, why did she have to look at him like that?
Gray eyes shining in the darkness, the frank stare, the lacy shawl sliding from her shoulders as she reached down to pet his dog. Once again, Ainsley was making Cameron’s world come alive, filling it with color instead of the deadly gray of his usual existence.
“All the world speculates on whether I killed my wife,” he said. “Including you.”
The flash of guilt in her eyes told him he was right. But why wouldn’t Ainsley speculate on it? No one knew for certain what had happened in that room, only Cameron. Daniel had been a baby, and except for him, Cameron and Elizabeth had been alone.
Cameron thought of the inquest, everyone watching him as he gave evidence in a dead voice, everyone believing he’d killed Elizabeth. The eyes of the villagers, the journalists, Elizabeth’s family, her lovers, his own father, the jury, the coroner—hard and cold, waiting for him to confess.
Only Hart had believed him, and Hart had perjured himself, telling the coroner that he’d seen Elizabeth drive the knife into her own throat as he’d broken open the door. Cameron had been across the room, holding Daniel, trying to still the lad’s terrified screams. Hart had related the story, using the right mix of Mackenzie charm and horrified sympathy for his brother.
What Hart said had been true, but he hadn’t seen it. Elizabeth had already been dead before Hart made it into the room. Hart had lied to save Cameron, and Cameron would be forever grateful. Hence, Cameron endured Hart’s house parties and entertained Hart’s guests by letting them watch him train his racers.
Ainsley’s fingers landed on his arm, pulling him back from darkness. Her cool voice flowed over him, along with her scent—vanilla and cinnamon, that was Ainsley.
“People do speak of it, I can’t deny that,” she was saying. “But I don’t think it’s true.”
“How the devil can you know?” Cameron heard the growl in his voice but couldn’t stop it.