Ainsley decided to keep quiet about the fact that Cameron had seduced her long before the ring was on her finger. “Ma’am, Lord Cameron isn’t a stage villain. We had a license. I saw it. And a vicar, and witnesses.”
“Hired actors and a forgery. I have caused letters to be sent to Hart Mackenzie, instructing him to take the legal means to declare the marriage null.”
Ainsley imagined Hart Mackenzie’s reaction on receiving those instructions.
But the queen’s presumption that she could so coolly interfere with Ainsley’s life and that Ainsley would simply obey, made her at last lose her temper.
“How dare you?” she said in a low but fierce voice. Victoria’s eyes widened, but Ainsley plunged on, bravely taking to task the Queen of England and Empress of Britain. “After all I did for you. I risked everything to get those letters back for you, because I respected you and didn’t want to see you embarrassed. Lord Cameron helped—did you know that? He gave me the money for the letters so that you’d not have to pay one farthing.”
“You told him?” The queen’s whisper cut through the room, and ladies on the other side looked up. “Do mean to say, Ainsley Douglas, that Cameron Mackenzie, of all people, knows about my letters?”
“If not for him, you’d have had greatest difficulty getting them back.”
Victoria stared at her in outrage. “You little fool. Lord Cameron will have told the duke, and copies will be circulating even now.”
“Cameron has told no one. I asked him to keep the secret, and he complied.”
“Do not be ridiculous. He is a Mackenzie. He cannot be trusted.”
“He can be perfectly trusted,” Ainsley said. “But if you succeed in breaking up our marriage, do you not think Lord Cameron might retaliate with what he knows?”
Ainsley didn’t truly believe Cameron would take his revenge with petty gossip, but then again, who knew what Cameron might do? She remembered his look when he’d watched her leave Waterbury: raw, empty, angry.
Victoria, on the other hand, did believe it. “That is blackmail.”
“Yes, it is. It seems to be the only thing that anyone understands.”
Ainsley was suddenly tired of this life—the court, the gossip, dealing in secrets and tittle-tattle. She had always been an outsider looking in, the nobody daughter of a nobody gentleman, hired by the queen for the sake of Ainsley’s mother. Ainsley had never been important enough to be bribed for favors or blackmailed into them; she’d only watched others do so to each other. No one had much noticed Ainsley at all.
Now, as wife of one of the notorious and powerful Mackenzies, heir to the dukedom, Ainsley could be used, or she could be dangerous. She preferred to be dangerous.
“Therefore, I believe that I will remain married to Lord Cameron,” Ainsley finished.
The queen glared at her, but Ainsley saw Victoria looking at her in a new way: not as a sycophant who could be sent on delicate errands, but as a woman to be reckoned with.
“Your poor dear husband will roll in his grave,” Victoria said. “Mr. Douglas was a respectable man.”
“My poor dear husband was quite generous, and I believe he’d want to see me happy.” John had been kind to the end, and Ainsley had always been very, very glad that she’d stood by him.
The queen continued to regard her with cold eyes. “I will pretend that I never heard this outburst. The conversation never took place.” She lifted her needlework from her lap. “If you had not been so rude, Ainsley, I would have told you that your brother has arrived. I’d arranged for him to take you home to wait for your annulment, but now, of course, you may do whatever you wish. We are finished. But there is a saying, my dear, that you might well heed, that those who make their beds must lie in them.”
My, they were full of old adages today. But as long as that bed held Cameron Mackenzie, Ainsley would happily lie there.
Ainsley thrust her embroidery into her work basket. “Patrick is here? May I go?”
“Please do. Send Beatrice to me. I do not believe we shall be seeing you again.”
Ainsley rose and curtseyed, relieved rather than dismayed to be dismissed.
On impulse, she leaned down and kissed the queen’s faded cheek. “I hope you’ll learn to be proud of me, one day,” she said. “And I assure you, your secrets are safe with me.”
Victoria blinked in surprise. Ainsley felt the queen’s gaze on her as she made her way across the room and out of it. The click of the door that a footman closed behind her seemed to signal the end of Ainsley’s old life.
Patrick McBride waited in a corridor not far away, looking uncomfortable and a little drab amidst the splendors of Windsor. Ainsley tossed down her sewing basket and ran the length of the hall to him, arms outstretched. Patrick’s smile as he swept her up was worth every one of the queen’s disapproving words.
“I’m so pleased to see you,” Ainsley said, smiling into his dear face. “I need a cohort in crime, Pat, and you, my so-respectable older brother, will be perfect.”
Chapter 27
The Mackenzies started pouring into Waterbury Grange in April, at about the time Ainsley’s letters stopped coming. Cameron would leave for the meets at Newmarket soon, the racing season once more reaching out to embrace him.
Mac and Isabella arrived first with their two children in tow, Mac taking over with his usual ebullience. Fortunately the house was big enough to absorb them all plus give Mac a place to set up his studio.