“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
MACBETH, MACBETH ACT I, SCENE VII
Persephone paced from her bed to her door and back again. The heavy lilac curtains in her bed chamber stood closed, but she stayed clear of them anyway. No sense in tempting fate if someone happened to be lurking outside, waiting with a rifle in hand for a likely silhouette. Good Lord, had it truly come to that?
Returning to her door, she faced the bed. Her portmanteau sat there, open, waiting to be filled. That was what she should be doing. A few gowns, a few wigs, some shoes, a shawl, and all the money she had to hand. Everything else she needed, she could send for when she found somewhere safe, or she could simply purchase anew. Yes, that would be wiser.
Still, though, she hesitated. Gregory would likely come with her if she asked; he had only his brother nearby. Flora wouldn’t leave London, not with her daughter Beth still employed at the Saint Genesius and her grandbabies living in Charing Cross. And the theater—they could move Jenny over to play Lady Macbeth, but Charlie already had leaflets printed and advertisements paid for. She had a contract through next Season, and breaking it would break her heart.
Even with all that, it wasn’t those things that had her portmanteau still empty. For that, she could blame a mountain of a Highlander with deep green eyes, a hearty laugh, and a face over which even Michelangelo would weep with envy. For heaven’s sake, she’d only known Coll MacTaggert a few days. To pin any hopes and dreams on him at all was the height of foolishness. To think of trusting him … It had to be desperation.
A trio of knocks at the front door thudded so hard they rattled the windows upstairs. Persephone jumped, her hand going to her heart as the muscle nearly leaped out of her chest. It had to be Coll. But if it wasn’t …
Taking a quick breath, she ran to her nightstand, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out the small, cloth-wrapped bundle she kept there: a small flintlock pistol, more suited for hiding in a man’s coat as protection against highwaymen than for stopping a killer, but she freed the Queen Anne pistol, cocked it, and aimed it at her door anyway.
The latch rattled, swiftly followed by a hard thump. “Persephone,” Coll called in his low brogue. “It’s me, lass.”
“Oh, thank heavens.” Lowering the pistol, she ran forward and unlocked her door.
Coll stood there, dressed in a fine black coat, a very fashionable cravat, blue trousers stuffed into Hessian boots, and a black waistcoat embroidered with purple thistles. Barely taking the time to note how odd it was to see him not in a kilt, she wrapped her arms around his solid chest and tucked her face into his shoulder.
“Thank you for coming,” she whispered, trying to stop the sudden tears from filling her eyes.
“Of course, I came,” he returned, pulling the pistol from her fingers and pocketing it. “Gavin said yer coach rolled over. Are ye injured?”
She shook her head, digging her hands tighter into his coat. “Just bruises and scrapes.”
“Have ye eaten?”
Persephone lifted her head to look up at his face. “Food?”
“I dunnae know about ye, lass, but I’ve been dancing and leaping about all evening. I could eat an entire heifer.”
Gasping, she pushed away from him. “The Runescroft ball! I forgot it was tonight. Oh, you shouldn’t have left for me.” Helping him find a wife at the ball had very nearly been her entire side of their bargain. And now he’d left it midway through to come see to her. “Coll, you have to go back.”
He shook his head. “I’ll do nae such thing. Ye—Flora, is it? Find us someaught to eat, will ye?”
Flora squeaked in annoyance from the hallway behind him. “I do not take orders from you.”
“Please, Flora,” Persephone seconded. “We should all eat something. You and Gregory, as well.”
“Very well, Miss Persie. But you shouldn’t be in there alone with a man. I could—”
With a low snort, Coll stepped forward and closed the door on the maid’s complaint. “Ye should keep that lass about. She looks after ye,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her.
She kissed him back, twining her hands into the lapels of his black coat. Her worries and fears faded into mist when he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. No one could possibly be foolish enough to attempt harming her while Coll MacTaggert was by her side.
That, though, was a path to more trouble. Firstly, he couldn’t be by her side at every moment. Secondly, he had his own worries without shouldering hers as well. Persephone frowned. She wanted to confide in him. Doing so, though, would only mean more hurt when he walked away.
When she lifted her hands to shove against his chest, he let her go, and she crossed the room to the bed again. “Thank you for coming,” she said, utilizing her years of acting experience to keep her voice low and even. “As you can see, though, I’m relatively unhurt.”
His gaze moved from her to the portmanteau on the bed and back to her again. “Ye going somewhere, Persephone?”
“I’m considering it,” she admitted, though she wasn’t about to confess that she’d been halfway to France in her mind. “A few days in the country while I sort some things out in my head.”
“And ye reckon a few days away will see ye safe again? That whoever’s trying to harm ye will forget and flit off to go murder someone else in yer stead?”
Of course he wouldn’t believe that she meant to take a holiday. Persephone drew in a breath. “Very well, perhaps I won’t return. Evidently my critics have spoken, and I’m no longer London’s darling. Cornwall has a well-respected acting troupe. Th—”
“Ye ken who’s after ye, dunnae?” he broke in, closing the distance between them. “Why’d ye let me go threaten Claremont if ye knew it wasnae him?”
“I thought it was him,” she retorted. Or at least, she’d hoped it was him. The alternative … A chill went down her spine. The alternative now seemed to be the most likely explanation. She didn’t want to consider it—didn’t even want to think about it. At the back of her mind, though, the truth kept pushing at her thoughts; her preferences didn’t matter. What mattered was whether she meant to run or stay. And if she stayed, she would need help. That, though, meant relying on someone else—relying on Coll MacTaggert. The man who’d only just been dancing with a field of prospective brides.
Her breath caught. “You should go,” she made herself say. “As I said, I’m not injured, and you have other concerns.”
His jaw clenched. Beneath his breath, he muttered something that sounded like “stubborn,” then turned on his heel and dropped into the reading chair by the small hearth. “I dunnae like wee spaces,” he said abruptly, the very image of a proper gentleman in everything but his size and accent and unruly hair.
“I—what does that have to do with anything?”
“When I was but a bairn, my brother Aden and I played hide-and-seek. I closed myself in a wardrobe, and it locked. I was in there in the dark for what felt like days before someone found me. Since then, wee places and I dunnae deal well together.” He blew out his breath. “I dunnae drink, either. I say things I shouldnae, and I break things, and I hit people.” Coll shrugged his broad shoulders. “I do the same thing when I’m sober, but at least then I know what I’m about and I remember it after.”
“It’s admirable to see a man who will admit to his flaws,” she said slowly, “but forgive me if I’ve missed whatever point you’re attempting to make.” If he was one of those men whose own dilemmas were required to be more significant than whatever anyone else faced, then he’d answered several of her unspoken questions. She could not confide anything to him.
“Aye. I’m nae saying it well. My point, lass, is that I can avoid wee spaces, and I can avoid drink. How do ye mean to avoid someone who’s trying to kill ye? If ye make one mistake … Well, ye cannae. So, for God’s sake, let me help ye.”
“Why?” she burst out. “Why on earth do you want to spend your time helping me? You’ve wasted weeks and weeks here in London, intentionally making a muck of things, and now you have less than a month to find a bride. And you need to find a wife, because otherwise you will lose the funding to your family’s estate. So give me a reason why you would risk all that for an actress. And it had best be a very good reason, because believe me, I’ve heard them all. Twice.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “How many lasses do ye reckon I’ve chatted with since I arrived here?” he finally asked.
“Dozens, I would imagine.”
“Aye. Hundreds, maybe. Some of them are bold, ready to lift their skirts to gain a title. Others are deeply offended by me being Scottish. Another handful are actually scared of me, though more than that feign it because they think it’s amusing to pretend the big Highlands brute might squash ’em or someaught.” He shook his shaggy head. “I like to argue with my fists, but I do have some wits about me. Enough to ken that nae a one of them would do me for a wife. But then I met ye, Persephone.”
Heat flooded her face. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she snapped, holding her palm out in his direction. Good heavens. He had no idea. None. “Perhaps you fell for Rosalind, or for Juliet, or perhaps you like the idea of my fame. But you are not—”
“I’m nae proposing, woman,” he interrupted, scowling. “I’m telling ye that I like ye. That I enjoy spending time with ye, and it would pain me nae to have ye in my life. And that whether or nae ye and my own mother agree that I cannae marry ye, mayhap I’m willing to push her as far as she’ll go to release me from that agreement so I dunnae have to find someone else.”
That was … nothing she’d expected. “You would forego marriage to spend your time with an actress?”
“Aye. I reckon I would.”
“What about children? Heirs?”
“I’ve two brothers and a sister. Any of them, or their bairns, would do for the next Lord Aldriss after me.”
“And what about Aldriss Park? It’s very far from here, and here is where the Saint Genesius is.”
“Ye dunnae put on plays while the aristocracy’s nae in Town, do ye? Then ye dunnae need to be in London all year ’round. But that’s a different conversation, one we can have after I know nae a soul’s after ye.”
“I’m not your responsibility, damn it all.” She clapped her hands together. “Is it that we were … together? That you’ve been celibate since you got here and finally found a woman who’ll sleep with you?” Striding over, she patted the bed. “Then come along, Coll. Let’s be together again, and then you can go find your bride.”
“I’d nae found a woman here I cared to be with, until I met ye. I’ll admit that. And I’ve damned well nae met another lass here who’ll stand toe-to-toe with me and argue. I need an argument now and then, or I tend to stomp all over people.”
Persephone put her hands over her ears. “I am not listening to this any longer. Stop saying nice things.”
“I will, if ye’ll tell me what’s truly afoot here. Because I have noticed a few things about ye, lass. Ye’ve an education, for one thing. A good one. Even better than mine, I’d guess. And ye ken what’s proper for a lady, even if ye choose nae to follow the rules yerself. Ye know how to run a household, and how to manage servants. Ye’re kinder to them than most blue-blooded folk would be, but ye know that, too.” He narrowed his eyes a little, giving her an assessing look. “In fact, I’m going so far as to say that ye’re a lady. A true lady.”
She opened and closed her mouth again as the walls came closing in around her, the sensation making her feel light-headed. Swiftly, she forced a laugh. “Or it could be that I’m an actress, you clod. A good one. Good enough to fool you into thinking I’m something more than I am.”
“A clod, am I?” he said softly, rising to his feet with a surprising grace. “And ye’re fooling me, are ye?”
“That is what I said. How in the world do you think I get men to pay for my pretty things? By saying what they want to hear. I had you figured out the moment I set eyes on you.”
Her door opened and Gregory started in with a tray of sandwiches. His gaze never leaving hers, Coll stepped aside, took the tray out of her footman’s hands, shoved the man gently backward, and shut the door again. This time, he locked it. “Did ye now?” he returned, as if they’d never been interrupted.
“Is that your strategy? To ask if I said what I just said and did what I clearly did?” Good God, he was stubborn. If she’d spoken that way to Claremont or any of her three previous so-called protectors, they would have walked out in tears by now. Or one of them would have hit her, though she had no worry at all that Coll would do any such thing. He was far more a gentleman than anyone else she’d ever met carrying that title.
Coll took a sandwich off the platter and held the silver tray out to her. “Nae,” he said, taking a huge bite. “My strategy is to wait until ye’ve finished yelling at me and then ask ye again what I might do to help ye. I’m here, and I’m willing. Ye just need to trust me a little.”
“Well, that’s a stupid strategy.” Harrumphing, she grabbed a sandwich and plunked herself down on the bed to eat it.
“So is thinking ye can pack a bag and run.”
“Ha. It worked before.”
“Until now, I reckon.” Finishing off one sandwich, he picked up a second one. “Ye did run, then. From what, Persephone? What would send ye away from one life to start another one?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him. The names would likely mean nothing to a man who’d never set foot in London until this Season. To have someone else who knew, someone who might actually help her—but then she’d done just fine on her own for the past eight years. Until now, of course.
She took a deep breath. “It was a man, if you must know. One I didn’t wish to marry.”
Setting aside the tray, he and his third sandwich sat down on the bed beside her. “If there was ever a tale with which I could sympathize, it’s that one.”
“No doubt. He was far older than I was, but exceedingly well-connected. He was also … cruel. Not directly, but all of his little suggestions for my behavior gave me a very good idea that married life with him would be far worse than the engagement.” She shuddered. “‘My dear, surely you can make a cup of tea as well as did my first wife. Do try again,’” she imitated. “Or ‘you do know that I prefer you not wear green,’ or ‘that sound you make when you’re eating, is that meant to be charming?’”
“Sounds like a man I’d like to meet,” Coll said darkly.
“No, you wouldn’t. When my family wouldn’t listen to me, even after I begged them not to make me marry him and told them he only wanted the family fortune because he’d said as much to my face, I … left.”
“Is it him trying to harm ye, then?”
She shook her head. “I doubt it. He married some other heiress six months later. Someone even younger than I was.”
The fingers of his free hand closed over hers—not tightly, but enough to make her feel safe. Protected. And wanted. “Ye nae went home after that, though. Why?”
“Because I wasn’t going to give my family another chance to auction me off,” she said, the anger and disgust of it all still choking her a little. “And because I’d found something I enjoyed, that I could never do as—as I was.”
His third sandwich finished, he reached over to brush hair off her cheek. “Ye made yer way in the world alone, and now ye’re the toast of London. That’s damned admirable.”
She’d never thought to have that description attached to her. “Thank you for saying so,” she returned, leaning into his hand. The warm presence of him was simply intoxicating. And it wasn’t just because he made her feel safe.
It had never been that, she realized.
“Will ye tell me yer true name, lass?” he whispered.
Persephone twisted on the bed to face him, bringing up her hands to cup his lean face. “I don’t want to talk anymore.” Leaning up, she kissed him, feeling the immediate response of his mouth against hers, the heat of him against her chest, the strength of the arms that swept around her.
“If ye’re trying to distract me, ye’re doing a damned fine job of it,” Coll murmured against her mouth, nibbling her bottom lip with his teeth.
“Shh,” she breathed, kissing him again.
If this was merely a distraction, it was meant for her, rather than him. Thinking about the mess her life had been—all the things that had nearly been forced on her because her family sought more power and influence—made her sad and angry all over again. And the idea that one of them had found her and decided the most expedient way to be certain she didn’t inherit anything was to murder her. In a sense, it didn’t even surprise her.
Hades appeared from beneath the bed to begin grazing on the tray of sandwiches Coll had set aside as Coll untied his cravat and tossed it to the floor. “I dunnae care what name ye go by, lass,” he said, untying the ribbon beneath her breasts, and then shedding his coat and waistcoat. “Juliet, Persephone, Mabel, or Sally. It’s the woman beneath the pretending that I like, and that’s the woman I want.”
That was perhaps the nicest thing any man had ever said to her. And she believed it, because he’d said it before, when he hadn’t known her to be anything more than a common-born actress. Persephone pulled the shirt from his trousers to run her palms up his hard, muscular chest. If she did have to flee to Spain or Prussia, she at least wanted one night spent in his arms, one night of feeling wanted and desirable for who she truly was, one night of feeling safe and protected from whatever lay beyond her front door and was trying to kill her.
Coll gathered her gown up in his big hands and pulled it over her head. Her shift followed, and then his mouth was on her breasts and she couldn’t breathe. She groaned, tangling her fingers in his hair as he nipped and licked. No, he wasn’t her first, but back then she’d felt like losing her virginity was simply inevitable, and so she’d chosen the least offensive man in her circle to relieve her of it.
Lord Albert Pruitz, her first “protector,” had had the imagination and wit of a potato, but he’d been handsome and gentle, thank goodness. Afterward, she’d decided that sex was definitely not at all what Shakespeare and most other people made it out to be, and the two gentlemen since then had done nothing to alter her opinion—until she’d flung caution to the wind in the park with Lord Glendarril the other day, and realized that not only was Lord Albert not the expert he’d claimed to be, but that she was supposed to climax, as well.
“Damned trousers,” Coll growled, standing up to kick off his boots and unbutton the offending article of clothing.
“They’re not so bad,” she countered, knocking his hands away to finish opening the trio of buttons. That done, she dipped her hand in to curl it around his engorged member. “I like to think of them like opening a gift at Christmastime.”
“Well, this gift is definitely happy to see ye,” he said, taking her upturned face in his hands and kissing her with a thoroughness that left her panting.
Persephone put her hands around the waist of his trousers and drew them down past his hips and knees until he stepped out of them and joined her again on the bed. Mouths fused, tongues tangling, they stretched out with her beneath him.
“Ye’ve such soft skin,” he murmured, trailing his fingers down her breastbone, along her stomach, and around her hip to cup her bottom. His mouth followed the trail but continued straight south. When he parted her legs and dipped lower to taste her, she clenched her fingers into the sheets and moaned.
As she threw back her head, her back arching, she realized she still wore her stupid, prim black wig. Trying to keep her fingers steady as he licked and teased at her, she unpinned it and threw it aside. Now they were both truly naked, and she was as close to being herself as she could ever be. And it—he—felt glorious.
When one of his long fingers slipped inside her, curling as his free hand lightly pinched one breast, she came in a delighted spasm of breathless, shivery wonder. Even if there had been nothing else between them, nothing else that drew her to him, Coll MacTaggert would have the very fondest of places in her heart.
As her muscles relaxed, Coll made his leisurely way back up her body, a man enjoying a sensual, erotic holiday, investigating her most sensitive places. Persephone grinned; she couldn’t help herself.
“That’s the smile of a satisfied woman, I reckon,” he noted with a breath-stealing grin of his own. Another thing at which Lord Albert Pruitz had failed: showing her that sex could be … fun. A delight.
“So I am,” she sighed, stretching her arms out on either side of her. “And yet I am not.”
“Good. Because I’m nae finished yet.”
“Yes, I have noticed that. Do come closer, Coll.”
Pulling her legs around his hips, his hands on either side of her shoulders, he pushed forward, entering her. The warm, filling sensation, paired with the weight of him on her hips, sent heated shivers from her spine down to where they were joined. “How’s that, lass?”
“Oh, much … Yes, much better.”
He rocked into her again, holding himself deep inside her. “I like yer hair,” he murmured, shifting his weight onto one arm and pulling out a hair pin with his other. Slowly he withdrew, then entered her again, freeing more of her hair until he could draw his fingers through the honey-colored mass. “Aye, that is much better.”
“Coll,” she gasped, shivering in delighted goosebumps.
Her hair a wild mane around her head, she slid her hands over his shoulders and pulled him closer. With a deep kiss he pushed inside her again, taking up a hard, fast rhythm, burying himself in her over and over, pausing only to kiss her open-mouthed or to suck on her breasts. The muscles of her abdomen and thighs tightened again, drawing her closer around him. The low, panting moans coming from her chest in time with his thrusts hardly sounded like her, but she didn’t think she could have stopped making them even if she’d tried. This felt … glorious.
Abruptly, she came again.
With a low growl, Coll joined her, burying his seed deep inside her, his gaze holding hers, both of them breathing hard, sweat slicking their skin. She watched him come, the carnal satisfaction on his face. This man. She still didn’t quite know what to make of him, what motivated him. Duty, yes, and honor—even before he’d figured out that she wasn’t precisely who she claimed, he’d promised to protect her. He’d saved her life at least once, had left a grand ball and his best chance to find a wife to be certain she wasn’t injured. No, she didn’t quite know how to classify him, but she did know one thing. She trusted him.
Persephone drew her fingers through his damp, disheveled mahogany hair, pulling his face down for another slow, sensual kiss. “Temperance Hartwood,” she murmured, the words sounding familiar yet foreign on her lips. “That’s my name. Lady Temperance Hartwood.”