The Last Debutante Read online

  “Mamie?” she called softly. Surely she was close by; the scent of freshly baked bread lingered in the air.

  There was a corridor before Daria with two doors on one side and another at the end. She unfastened her cloak and draped it over the back of a chair. Perhaps Mamie was sleeping. She moved quietly, pausing to look inside the first room. There was a feather bed with a satin coverlet, a pair of slippers beside the bed. This would be Mamie’s room, but Mamie was not within.

  Daria walked into the room and glanced around. There was no water in the porcelain basin and the hearth was cold. The wildflowers in the crystal vase on the mantel had wilted and hung like ruined ribbons over the lip of the vase. There was no evidence of servants. Goodness, how did one live without at least one servant to help with things?

  Daria moved on, past another sparsely furnished but tidy little bedroom. When she reached the closed door at the end of the hall, she knocked. Hearing nothing, she cautiously opened the door.

  It was dark within, and the smell fetid. She pushed the door open wider and stepped just over the threshold, giving her sight time to adjust to the dim light. It was quite warm, and she glanced in the direction of another hearth, the fourth in the house, where embers still glowed. In a chair beside it was a heavy quilt of the plaid she’d seen a few men wearing in Nairn. Daria moved deeper into the room—and was brought to an abrupt halt by the sound of someone’s breath. The hair on the back of her neck rose; she whirled about, expecting to find something horrible behind her. What she saw caused her to clamp a hand over her mouth, capturing the shriek just before it left her.

  A man was lying on a bed against the wall. A completely naked man. Bandages were wrapped around his torso and around one thigh, and another one around his head. But he was completely free of any covering. He lay motionless, his eyes closed, his chest slowly rising, then slowly falling.

  Daria’s breath deserted her. She stood rooted to the floor, her gaze locked on him, a tremor of fear building in the pit of her belly. He was . . . a very big man. All of him was big. Daria had seen a little boy without his breeches, but she had never seen a fully grown man in all his splendor. She’d had no idea that boys turned into this.

  Dark hair spilled onto the pillow around his head. His jaw was square, his chest corded with muscle, his shoulders broad, and his arms finely shaped by his strength. He was trim at the waist, and he looked quite . . . firm.

  And then there was the rest of him.

  The rest of him was, in a word, astonishing. Daria madly wished Charity were here to see this with her, to gaze in astonishment with her. To feel the heat of curiosity swirling in her cheeks, too, to feel her pulse begin to quicken—

  “Cé tú féin?”

  Daria gasped. She had been so intent on his body she hadn’t realized he’d awakened; he was staring at her with dark, glassy eyes.

  He spoke again in the foreign language, his voice hoarse as if unused for a time. He pushed himself up on one elbow, grimacing with pain.

  Awareness of him flooded Daria’s cheeks and neck with uncomfortable warmth. She tried to think of what to say, of how to extract herself, but before she could do it, the man glanced down at his body, then at her again. With his gaze locked on hers, he grabbed the end of a linen and slowly pulled it over his body, covering his groin. Only his groin. And then he spoke again, repeating the same strange words.

  It flustered Daria even more. Was she in the wrong cottage? “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I don’t speak your language.” What a ridiculous thing to say, standing in this man’s bedchamber, having a good long look at him while he slept. “I did not mean to . . . to see.” She gestured vaguely at him. “It was an accident. I must have come to the wrong cottage.”

  His gaze remained locked on hers, his expression inscrutable.

  “I came in quite by mistake. Mr. Brodie said her cottage was here, but she’s not about. I . . . I entered without permission, but I had walked quite a long way, and the portmanteau was so heavy.” She was babbling now. He probably didn’t even understand her, but it didn’t stop her from trying to make a right from a very horrible wrong. “Yes, I must have the wrong cottage,” she said apologetically, as if it were perfectly natural to walk into someone’s home and into their bedchamber. She took a step back.

  The man leaned forward a little. She thought he was going to speak. But instead, he fell forward with a grunt, his forehead striking the wooden frame of the bed. Daria cried out in alarm and stood paralyzed, waiting for him to move.

  He did not move.

  She leaned forward, her heart pounding. Had he died? A bubble of hysteria rose up; she could feel the scream about to leave her throat when he rolled onto his back with a grunt, his eyes closed, the grimace deeply etched into the skin around his eyes.

  The bed linen, she could scarcely keep from noticing, had slipped from his body again.

  “I’ll show myself out,” she whispered, feeling hot with embarrassment.

  “Halt!”

  The word was spoken soft and low, but Daria would have known Mamie’s voice anywhere. She whirled about—to look straight into the barrel of the large gun her grandmother held.

  Three

  “MAMIE!” DARIA CRIED.

  “Daria?” Mamie lowered the gun, but before Daria could ask when Mamie had taken to carrying firearms, much less housing naked men, Mamie grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the room, then quickly pulled the door to as Daria’s mind raced through all the possible reasons why her grandmother might have a bandaged, naked man in her house.

  “Who—”

  “Come,” Mamie said softly, and with her gun in one hand and Daria’s elbow firmly in the other, she steered her down the hall to the main living area. She let go of Daria’s elbow and put her large gun on the table, whirled around, and stretched her arms wide. “Darling!” she said, her face suddenly a wreath of smiles. “What a beautiful surprise!” She grabbed Daria up and held her tightly to her chest, cooing that it was so good to see her. Daria was surrounded by the familiar scent of lavender, and she pressed her cheek against her grandmother’s soft shoulder.

  “My goodness, how did you come to be here? Are Richard and Beth with you?” Mamie leaned back, holding Daria at arm’s length, smiling as she examined her. “My, but haven’t you become a beautiful young woman! You surely have squads of suitors!”

  “Mamie, why is there—”

  “So you and your parents have come to see me? Oh, how that warms my poor old heart! Sit, sit,” she said, nudging Daria toward the table. “I shall pour you tea. Are my daughter and Richard in Nairn? I should think Richard wouldn’t like the travel up into the hills.” She turned to the shelves, reaching for a small basket.

  Daria remained standing, studying her grandmother. She looked a little rounder than when Daria had last seen her. And a little plain—her clothing was not the fine silks and brocades she’d always preferred. But never mind that. “Mamie,” Daria exclaimed breathlessly, “there is a naked man in that room!”

  With her back to Daria, Mamie nodded. “Yes, I know. That must have come as quite a shock, but you mustn’t fret about him. He’ll be fine. Oh, how you startled me, Daria!” She laughed suddenly as she put a basket of tea tins on the table. “I thought someone had come to rob me! Is Beth coming?”

  “No, it’s only me—Mamma and Pappa are in Hadley Green.” Daria pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Please, Mamie—why is there a naked man in that room?”

  “Hmm?” her grandmother asked, bustling around the hearth as if nothing were wrong. “Oh! I shall tell you, my love, I will. But first I insist on hearing all about you. You cannot imagine how I have missed you! And now to find you in Scotland? It’s as if I were dreaming!” She suddenly paused and pinned Daria with a look. “Your parents are aware you are here, are they not?”

  “Of course! They wanted to come themselves when they received your letter, but I—”

  “You read the letter?” Mamie interrupted quickly.
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  “No,” Daria said, eyeing Mamie curiously. “Mamma told me you needed help, and I wanted to come—”

  “I should hope my daughter has not lost her senses and sent you across the country all alone!”

  Daria’s head was beginning to spin. “No, Mamie. I came with Charity.”

  “Who?”

  Daria shook her head. “Mamie, who is that man?”

  “I will explain it, of course I will, darling. But you’ve come a long way and you should have your tea. I have some freshly baked biscuits—”

  “I don’t want biscuits. You are right that I have come a very long way. I made that journey in the anticipation of a lovely reunion with my grandmother and I imagined something vastly different—a house, a small village. A servant! But I find you in a crofter’s cottage without any help at all, with a wounded, naked man.”

  Mamie clucked her tongue at Daria. “You make it sound nefarious.”

  “Yes,” Daria said, nodding furiously, “it rather seems nefarious to me.”

  Mamie sighed. “All right, then. I will tell you. But I assure you that you and your imagination will be quite disappointed. Sit down, my love.”

  Daria didn’t move.

  Mamie grabbed her hand and dragged her to the kitchen table. “Sit,” she said again. She reached around to a smaller table to fetch a plate of biscuits and placed them before Daria.

  “Well?” Daria asked, folding her arms over her middle and ignoring the biscuits.

  Mamie took the apron from its hook and draped it around her belly. “I found him.”

  Daria snorted.

  “Well, I did. In the woods.” Mamie turned away, tied the apron at her back, and leaned over the hearth to check the kettle. “He’d been shot.”

  “Shot.” Daria frowned. “By whom? Why?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea! Robbers, perhaps? But I couldn’t very well leave him there to die, could I? So I brought him here.”

  Mamie’s explanation didn’t ring true, perhaps because she offered it with her back turned. Or because now, as she turned, her smile seemed a little too wide, a little too . . . fixed.

  “You brought him here,” Daria repeated, her gaze narrowing.

  “I did.”

  “By yourself?”

  “No! No, no, of course not. Ah . . . one of the Brodie men helped me. The Brodies are thick as midges in summer; one can scarcely walk without tripping over them.” She busied herself with the tea tins, examining them all as if she’d never seen them until now.

  “And then . . .”

  “And then?” Mamie asked absently.

  “And then you sent for a doctor to tend to him,” Daria suggested, trying to move the story along.

  “A doctor? No.”

  “No?”

  “Daria, this is not England. It would take far too long for a doctor to arrive and the poor man might have died. I sought the counsel of a healer and mended him myself.”

  Daria stared hard at her grandmother. How could Mamie possibly know how to mend a man who had been shot?

  Mamie turned away, back to the hearth. “Splendid—the water was still warm and boiled quickly.” She removed it from the fire.

  “I am fairly certain,” Daria said evenly, “that when a man has been shot with lead, it is prudent to have the lead removed.”

  “Yes, that is true. So I did,” Mamie said, as if it were a matter of course to remove lead from a human body. “Don’t look so alarmed, sweetling. One learns quite a lot when living in Scotland. Handy things they don’t teach you in England.” She chuckled as she made tea.

  Daria’s stomach began to roil with nerves and not a little bit of horror. “I am aghast, Mamie. You seem to be the same person who was my grandmother. But my grandmother, who left England seven years ago, was a lady. She had never, to my knowledge, carried a gun or dug lead out of human flesh, much less the flesh of a strange man.”

  Mamie shrugged. “I suppose people change.”

  Daria leaned forward, peering into her grandmother’s face. “Mamie? Are you all right?”

  Mamie laughed. “I am perfectly fine! There is nothing to warrant such a look of concern, my love. When the gentleman is better—and he will be, as soon as the fever breaks—we might ask him a bit more about himself and send for his family.” She waved her hand. “Let him sleep. I want to know about you.”

  Daria could scarcely think how to proceed when a low, rumbling groan from the back room caused both women to still. Daria looked over her shoulder, then at her grandmother.

  Mamie smiled thinly. “Poor thing is in need of some medicine. I’ll be but a moment.” She stood up and hurried to the shelf on the wall. She reached high on her tiptoes and stretched her arm up, feeling about the shelf and then pulling down a brown vial. She glanced at Daria from the corner of her eye. “It’s just a bit of laudanum. Do stay seated,” she said, and disappeared down the hallway. Her hair, Daria noticed, was coming undone from her uncharacteristically haphazard bun.

  She heard Mamie open the door, heard her say, “There now, just a bit of this will aid you.”

  “No,” the man said in English, his voice deep and as rough as tree bark.

  “I am only trying to help you.”

  Daria stood up. She moved hesitantly down the hall, but as she reached the door, Mamie appeared. “Daria, I asked you to stay seated,” she said coolly as she pulled the door shut behind her. “You must leave him be. He will not heal if he does not rest.” She moved past Daria.

  Daria stared at the closed door for a long moment, debating. She would get to the truth of what had happened here. She only had to determine how to do it.

  She turned around and walked back into the main living area. Mamie was up on her toes, putting the brown vial away.

  “Do you not think that man requires medical attention?”

  Mamie whirled around to face Daria, her mouth in a grim line. “Daria, my love, as I said, when he is recovered, we might learn more from him. In the meantime, I need to make a poultice to draw the infection out of his wounds, and I will need you to help me gather some devil’s bit.” She picked up a basket and thrust it at Daria.

  Daria stared at the basket. “I don’t know what that is!”

  “You will learn,” Mamie said firmly. She marched to the door and flung it open, almost tripping over the dog that had followed Daria here. “You wretched dog!” she said sternly. “Off with you! Come along, Daria! Don’t mind the dog—he roams the hills rather freely. Now, tell me all your news,” she said, reaching for Daria’s hand. “I want to hear everything. About my daughter, about Hadley Green, and of course I want to know which handsome young gentlemen have caught your eye.”

  She would speak of suitors now? Before Mamie could shut the door, Daria glanced back at the end of the corridor. Foreboding sank into her bones.

  Four

  IN WHAT WAS optimistically called the throne room at Dundavie, there was a chair in which the Campbell lairds had sat for hundreds of years to receive members of the clan. The seat’s leather was cracked now, and the paint peeling from the arms. Duff had long wanted to replace the leather and paint the wood, but Jamie wouldn’t allow it. That chair was as familiar to him as the back of his hand. He knew every sag, every lump, every crack.

  He was tracing a tear in the leather next to his knee with his thumb while Gwain Campbell expounded vociferously upon his latest complaint. Gwain had thatches of unruly red hair on his chin, which were almost indistinguishable from his ruddy cheeks. He was a man who was rarely satisfied, and when he was, it was not without qualification. He’d had a prosperous year, for example, but not without working himself to the bloody bone. His infant son, born one month before he should have been, had survived and was now thriving with a great personal sacrifice of sleep on Gwain’s part.

  His complaint this day was something about sheep, but his gravelly voice was only a distant noise to Jamie, whose attention had wandered to the tapestry behind Gwain’s head. It had hung t
here forever, but until now he hadn’t really noticed the pale white unicorn with the flowing mane. Or that it romped in a field of yellow spring flowers. Today, the flowers were moving. They were swaying left and right on a slight breeze that he could feel slip down his body. He could hear the trees rustling overhead, could smell the sweet scent of the flowers.

  Something about those flowers stirred Jamie deep within—they were too close, the color of their petals too deep. He turned his head from the tapestry and a sharp pain shot through him. The crack in the leather seemed to have deepened, growing rough as stone on one side. His head was foggy and it seemed as if everything around him was just beneath the surface of water, shadowy figures. He saw something move above him. A unicorn. No, not a unicorn. A woman. A woman with a long tail of hair that brushed against his cheek. Isabella? Ah, Issy . . . He lifted his hand to her nape, stroked her earlobe with his thumb. She smelled sweet, so sweet. “Leannan,” he whispered.

  Isabella whispered to him, but Jamie couldn’t make out her words. His hand was drifting down, brushing against the swell of her bosom, and he was pleasantly, warmly, reminded of how it was to hold her, to kiss her, to feel her. An overpowering need to fill her now began to pulse in him, and Jamie pulled her down to him, whispering, “Leannan,” before he kissed her.

  The kiss sent a shiver through him. It was so delicate, so reverent. He shaped his lips around hers, and warmth filled him, sliding out to his limbs, swirling around his wounds. The sensation was so light that it seemed almost a dream, as if he were drifting on a cloud. Maybe this was an angel’s kiss for a dying man.

  He felt pressure against his shoulder. She was pushing against him. He felt her knee move against his hand and knock into his side, causing fire to streak down his leg. Jamie groaned and opened his eyes; his gaze was blurred, but he was aware that weak light was filtering in from someplace above him. It slowly began to dawn on him: he was not at Dundavie.

  He was in the Sassenach’s cottage.

  A small hatch of a window above his head was open to allow a soft breeze and what seemed like morning light. His finger was between the bed and a rough stone wall. Jamie slowly turned his head, saw the vase of wildflowers beside him. He blinked, his vision coming into focus. He moved his head again. The pain was bearable; he glanced down the length of his body and his gaze fell on a young woman.