Page 11 of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris
Luz ran a hand over the embroidery along the edge of her bodice and smiled. This interlude was likely her last time to indulge and misbehave before she bid goodbye to her carefree past and settled in for a life of endless responsibilities. If she was destined for spinsterhood, she would only arrive there after this brief detour. And when images of a certain handsome face with a lazy smile and intoxicating honey-colored eyes began parading in her mind, she brushed them aside. She had bigger game to hunt.
Luz stood and picked up her beaded reticule, signaling to the others it was time to press onward. Le Bureau awaited.
“Paris, beware! This pride is on the prowl.”
Four
“A wedding gift,” Evan’s cousin Murdoch noted apprehensively for the third time in as many minutes.
“Yes,” Evan answered as he ran his hands over his face. They were in a carriage on their way to meet Raghav at Le Bureau. After Apollo’s revelations, he was indeed in need of a distraction. Once again, his mind—as it had all day—drifted back to the rum heiress, and he wondered how she had fared at the reception tonight.
“And you’re sure this proof you obtained is legitimate?” Murdoch’s aggrieved tone pulled Evan from his recollection of the beauty.
“I’m sure,” he said, in an attempt to smooth the scowl on the other man’s face. “The documents are legitimate.” Apollo’s men had been able to obtain the name of the attorney who had drawn up the will. Funny thing about that attorney. When Apollo’s men had tracked him down, they’d discovered he’d been killed on his way home from his London office only six months after Evan’s own mother’s death. Evan couldn’t help but wonder if the duke had that man’s blood on his hands too.
“It’s all in the papers she left. Grandfather left the Braeburn to her in trust, and its management only passed to my father because he claimed there was no will.”
Murdoch made a noncommittal sound as he digested the information. He understood where his cousin’s frustration was coming from. This was the first time in their entire lives that Evan had kept a secret from him. Not since the moment they’d met at ten years old when Murdoch’s father—Evan’s uncle—had returned from Jamaica with a wife and three children. Catriona Sinclair, despite her husband’s disapproval, had made sure Evan and his siblings grew close with their cousins, and Evan and Murdoch had embraced each other with the unbounded enthusiasm that only two rambunctious boys can have. Since then, Murdoch had been Evan’s confidant for everything. It was not easy keeping Apollo’s existence from his cousin, but this was something Evan had to do alone. Murdoch would likely disagree and say this was just Evan’s need to martyr himself for the sins of his father. Perhaps in part it was, but he would not let this touch anyone he loved.
“Mother always thought there was something odd about that.” There was no love lost between Murdoch’s mother, Odessa, and the duke. She’d despised the way he’d treated Catriona.
“She also left me one of Grandmother’s rings,” Evan told Murdoch, who grunted as if he’d punched him in the stomach. Their grandmother, who’d had humble beginnings, was not the distant, cold matriarch that was so common in the Scottish peerage. She’d doted onallher grandchildren with equal fervor. She’d been the one to encourage Evan to take part in the whisky business when he’d expressed curiosity on a long-ago visit to the Braeburn.
Evan’s mother had been loving too, but her health, especially her nerves, was fragile, and his father exploited that. Hers was a blind love. In her eyes her husband could do no wrong, and the Duke of Annan abused that devotion in every manner he could, until he had no use for his wife. Then he’d forsaken her to a fate Evan wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy... No, that wasn’t true. What he wished on his father was far worse than that.
Evan’s musings were interrupted when their carriage came to a stop in front of Le Bureau. Murdoch sent him a questioning look as they reached the bloodred doors.
“Your father is not going to take this lightly. He does not like to lose.”
Evan only nodded as they waited for one of the two large men standing on either side of the doors to allow them in. The duke did not like to lose, but the plans Apollo and Evan had would not exactly offer him many choices.
“Why not wait? Once you become duke it will all go to you.”
Evan scoffed at that. “Come on, cousin. That could take twenty years.” And there was also the minor detail of Evan no longer being the heir apparent. “I can’t run that risk. The distillery is the only holding of my father’s that not mired in debt. It’s only a matter of time before he sells it. And you know it’s about far more than that. My father stole this from me.”
Murdoch grimaced before clapping Evan’s shoulder. “Sounds like we’re in the market for a bride, then,” Murdoch announced as they entered the expansive front room of Le Bureau. That was his cousin’s way: he would never lie to Evan or spare him a harsh truth, but at the end of the day, he would be at his side.
“Am I supposed to find a wife here?” Evan stood next to Murdoch, scanning the room with the practiced ease of those who had learned to hunt together. A brothel was probably not the maiden market his mother had envisioned when she planned for his wedding gift. But there was very little left of Catriona’s dreams for her children, Evan thought bitterly.
“At least you can count on the negotiation process being transparent.”
Evan laughed at that, though the mention of a woman with canny negotiation skills brought Luz Alana Heith-Benzan back to mind. He could not deny the prospect of a wedding night with herwasextremely tempting. Though, he could not imagine she’d be amenable to being his—or any man’s—temporary bride.
And itwouldbe temporary. Evan’s life could not accommodate a real marriage—not that any of the women of his class would want to be cleaved to him once he lost his title and became Edinburgh’s biggest scandal in a decade. No, what he wanted was to be left in peace to make his whisky. Once things with Apollo were finalized, the only plan Evan had was to spend his days at the Braeburn and hopefully make right some of his father’s wrongs.
“Mm.” Evan snapped his head up at the sound of appreciation coming from his cousin; given where they were, it could only mean one thing. “If the offerings tonight are all as enticing as the jewel currently talking to Raghav, we may be en route to Gretna Green at first light.”
The room was large and very crowded, and it took Evan a few seconds to see who his cousin was referring to. Once he recovered from the shock of finding Luz Alana at a brothel at least one hour past midnight, his eyes drank her in.
She was dressed in silver and deep blue tonight, her skin glowing against the satiny fabric of her bodice. Her hair, which he’d seen up earlier today, cascaded around her shoulders in dark brown ringlets. She and Raghav were roughly the same height and she had her head very close to his in order to hear what he was saying. Whatever it was must have been amusing, because her face split open in a delighted smile, and suddenly the idea of being tied to a woman didn’t seem quite so confining.
Finding her here was not something he would’ve anticipated, and yet there she was.And why was she here?
“Did you listen to a single word I said, Evan?” Murdoch’s aggravated tone directed his attention back to his cousin and away from the vision in blue and silver stealing his focus.
“I know her,” he rasped. His throat felt rusty, and there were strange things happening inside him. Like the impulse to go place himself between her head and Raghav’s. Pluck the man right off the ground and put some distance between him and the heiress. Ten or fifteen feet would do.
“You stopped talking,” Murdoch murmured. Right, he’d been in the middle of a sentence. Perhaps Apollo’s news had worn on his nerves more than he thought.
