Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction (Mackenzies & McBrides #9)(77)
Celia curled her fingers into the lapels of his coat, drinking in the kiss, memorizing the feel of him against her. If he was caught— It didn’t bear thinking about. Celia’s heart beat faster as she released him. “Godspeed,” she whispered.
Alec kissed her one more time and then, hand in hand, they descended the stairs.
“Oh, I quite agree,” Alec said to Edward and a London fop who’d been at Lady Flora’s salon. “Suppression is the only thing to do. In Ireland as well. The natives there can be quite unruly at very just laws passed to keep the peace. They need to understand those laws are for their own good.”
He sniffed, drew a large handkerchief from his sleeve, and touched it to his nose.
Edward frowned at him in disapproval, but whether at his words or the fluttering handkerchief, Alec had no idea.
“Indeed,” the fop said. He spoke with a nasally lisp. “If the Irish or Scots stir up trouble, they will be crushed underfoot. They must be. If God had not intended us to be their masters, we would not be.”
Ah, yes. The “what is must be right” sentiment. Alec had the feeling that if this young man woke up every morning in a black stone house with a leaky roof and nothing to eat all day but nettles, he might begin to question the rightness of the world.
Alec suppressed his derision and laughed inanely. Edward frowned more, as though having second thoughts about the suitability of Mr. Finn as a husband for his sister.
Alec finished the conversation by drifting away, saying something about finding his dear wife. He scanned the room for her as though out of his depth without her.
Not difficult to feign—he didn’t like Celia being too far from him. Alec strolled through the crowds, nodding and smiling, his wig askew, his handkerchief pressed often to his face. The duke’s cronies eyed him sharply, but he watched the impression that Mr. Finn was an affable fool take hold. Alec knew that an impression, once embedded, was hard to shake off, which suited his purpose. The London ton would look upon him with arrogance, feel superior, and dismiss him.
Lady Flora arrived—late—surrounded by Mrs. Reynolds and an entourage of ladies who styled themselves, along with Flora and the duchess, as the leaders of society. The attention they drew allowed Alec to slip from the ballroom to a side corridor, where all was in shadow.
Celia watched him go. Alec caught her glance across the room, but she, bless her, made no obvious sign she’d seen him. They shared a brief look.
Alec knew, in that moment, with perfect certainty, that he loved her. Had for some time, since she’d caught the fire in his eyes in her drawing, when he’d seen the fire in her. Her clear thinking, her straight-faced jokes, her shrewd observation, and her gentle caring had wrapped around his whole being, had become part of him.
He’d finish this mission without being caught, because he would do whatever he must to return to her, his beautiful wife, the joy he’d found when he’d expected only sorrow.
I love you, my Celia, he whispered in his heart, then he made himself turn and go.
He’d explored the entire house in the days before the ball. This hall led past the room where pastries and drink were kept ready to replenish the tables in the supper room and thence to a staircase leading all the way to the cellars.
Alec headed down the stairs, which ended in a stone-clad passage connecting the servants’ hall with the kitchen. A door halfway down this passage opened outside to stone steps going upward to a gate in a high hedge that led to the garden. Thus, guests at a garden party could have food and drink brought to them seemingly out of nowhere.
The main part of the garden lay beyond this hedge, screened from the working side of the house. Tonight, the ball’s guests ambled along paths around pattering fountains, their way lit by colorful paper lanterns. Already ladies and gentlemen were seeking the darker reaches of the lanes for a stolen kiss, a tryst, or other secret meetings that might involve coupling or politics—the Duchess of Crenshaw’s gatherings engendered both, according to Celia.
He skirted the edge of the garden, keeping to the shadow of the hedge. At the garden’s far side was a wood, one that reached Lord Chesfield’s lands, beyond which was the old house they’d passed the week before.
Alec had left a bundle at the end of the garden when he’d rambled over the estate like an excited pleb. Here he stripped out of his garish jacket and waistcoat and donned a dark, close-fitting coat, sliding his ostentatious breeches off to reveal a skintight pair of dark leather ones beneath them. He tugged off the wig, which would be a white smudge in the darkness, and made sure his hair was bound tightly out of his way. His shoes he replaced with a stout pair of boots.
Alec straightened up when he finished dressing and hiding his ballroom garb, turned around— —and came face to face with an Englishman who recognized him at once, no question.
He was the Earl of Wilfort, Malcolm’s father-in-law, who’d lived with the Mackenzies for months before his rescue by the British soldiers who’d burned Kilmorgan Castle.
Wilfort knew Alec, no disguise would aid him, and it was too late to hide.
“Alec Mackenzie?” Wilfort asked in a ringing voice. “What the devil?”
Celia turned her back on Alec slipping out the door and continued speaking brightly to her girlhood friends. The pain in her heart on seeing him go was greater than she’d expected. She’d thought herself sanguine with the plan, but now her mouth was dry, her throat tight, and she found it difficult to draw a natural breath.