Cameron crossed his booted feet. “I’ve changed my mind. I want my answer now.”

“Does that mean you’ve come here to carry me off? They do have guards and things.”

“No, damn you. I came here to persuade you.”

“You are an arrogant man, Cameron Mackenzie.”

Cameron thrust the flask back into his pocket. “I’m a damned impatient man. I don’t understand why the devil you insisted on rushing back here to be the queen’s best servant.”

Ainsley spread her hands. “I need the money. I’m not a rich woman, and my brother can’t be expected to keep me forever.”

“I told you, I’ll give you all the money you need.” Cameron flicked his gaze up and down her frock. “I hate you in black. Why do you keep wearing it?”

“It is what I wear when I’m working for the queen,” Ainsley said. “And I wear it because John Douglas was a kind, caring man, and he deserves not to be forgotten.”

“Kind and caring. The opposite of Cameron Mackenzie.”

Something in his eyes stemmed her anger. “You can be kind and caring. I’ve seen you.”

“Why did you marry John Douglas in the first place? No one seems to understand why, not your closest friends, not even Isabella.”

Ainsley did not want to talk about John with Cameron. “You were enticing her to gossip and speculation, were you?”

“I have to, mouse, because you won’t answer a straight question. But tell me this.” Cameron held her gaze with his. “Were you carrying his child?”

Chapter 17

Ainsley’s breath went away again. “What?”

“I saw the marks on your abdomen, Ainsley. I understand what they mean. You had a baby.”

No one knew. Only Patrick and Rona, and John. Even Ainsley’s three other brothers, nowhere near Rome at the time of Ainsley’s hasty marriage, hadn’t known the full story.

Ainsley rose from her chair, walked across the room, and closed and locked the door. Cameron watched her, not moving, as she returned to her seat.

“The child lived for a day,” she said in a quiet voice. “But she wasn’t John’s.”

Cameron sat perfectly still. “Whose, then?”

“I met a young man in Rome. I fell in love with him and allowed him to seduce me. I thought he’d rejoice that I was having his child and marry me.” She wondered that she’d ever been so naïve. “That’s when he told me he was already married, and even had two children of his own.”

Cameron stared at her while red fury rose inside him.

Ainsley—beautiful, fiery, innocent Ainsley—used and discarded by a gigolo. “Who was he?” he asked.

Ainsley glanced up at him, cheeks red. “It was a long time ago, and I’m certain he gave me a false name. I was so very young and stupid, and I believed every word he told me.”

“Damn it, Ainsley . . .”

Cameron wanted to rage. He wanted to race to the Continent, find the blackguard and throttle him. The selfish fool had ruined Ainsley’s life before she’d even tasted the world.

“This is why you married an old man and buried yourself,” he said.

Her smile was sad, full of regret. “Patrick and Rona had taken me to Rome to expand my mind with art and music. Training me to be the wife of a cultured man. And then . . .”

The look on Patrick’s face when Ainsley had told him . . . she cringed from the memory even now. But Patrick, her good brother, had put aside his disappointment and taken care of her.

Ainsley remembered her nights of weeping, from shame, over betrayal of her young, fragile love, plus the knowledge that her brother was pairing her with a man nearly three times her age to save her reputation.

Patrick was kind, but he was firm, and he knew, very realistically, what the world was like. Rona, though sympathetic, had stood solidly with Patrick. Ainsley must marry John Douglas, and marry him quickly. And she must show the world that she was happy with her choice.

John Douglas had come to the house Patrick had rented in Rome, a tall man whose fair hair had gone to gray, his blue eyes warm but worried. Ainsley had met him before but not paid much attention to him, as he’d been, to her, merely an acquaintance of Patrick’s. Now he was there to be her husband.

John had been patience itself, and when Patrick and Rona had left them alone, John Douglas had taken her hand and gone down on one knee. His grasp had been warm, steady, even comforting.

I know I’m not what you want, he’d said. A young lady wants a dashing young husband, doesn’t she? And I know what this is all about. But I promise you, Ainsley, I will look after you. I’ll do my utmost. I can’t promise to make you happy, because no one can promise that, can they? But I’ll try. Will you let me?

He’d been so kind, so aware that barely eighteen-year- old Ainsley would rather be dragged behind a cart than marry an old man, that Ainsley had burst into tears. She’d ended up sitting on the sofa with him, being held and soothed. She’d clung to him and realized that, as bizarre a match as this was, he was a man, a good man, not a villain.

She did feel safe from the world with John Douglas—Patrick had made a wise choice. Ainsley had told John that of course she’d be happy to marry him, and vowed then to be as good to him as she could. Poor man, not his fault.

John had wiped away Ainsley’s tears, pulled a silver necklace from his pocket—his mother’s, he’d said—and clasped it around her neck. It rested there even now, under her high-collared black frock.