The Many Sins of Lord Cameron

Ainsley noticed the change in Ian from her visits in previous years. He moved more confidently now, his quick agitation replaced with a calm watchfulness. Whenever he held his tiny son, his stillness became even more pronounced. Quietude, that’s what it was, the sort of peace that came from deep, unshakable happiness.

“Not on the scavenger hunt?” Ainsley asked Ian as she lined up her cue to the white ball.

Ian poured himself whiskey and leaned against the billiards table. “No.”

“He means he’d win it too quickly,” Daniel said. “Same reason he don’t like to play cards.”

“I remember every card on the table,” Ian said.

Ainsley imagined the other players wouldn’t much like this. “Sporting of you to stay away then.”

Ian looked uninterested in being sporting, and Ainsley understood in a flash that he stayed away from card games because they weren’t a challenge to him. He had a mind so quick that it solved problems before others were aware there was a problem.

Cameron was a bit like that with his horses, Ainsley mused, knowing when one would founder before it happened, and exactly why. She’d watched him stop a training session and lead a horse away, with his grooms protesting that nothing was wrong, only to have the horse doctor confirm that Cameron had been correct.

As Ainsley lined up her cue, Ian tapped the table two inches to his right. “Aim here. The red ball will fall into that pocket and the white will return there.” He pointed.

“Aw, Uncle Ian, no fair helping.”

Ian sent Daniel the barest hint of smile. “You should always help the ladies, Danny.”

Ainsley knew enough about the mathematics of billiards to know that Ian had given her good advice. She shot. Her white ball struck the red, sending it exactly where Ian pointed. It caromed off the wall and into the pocket, the white ball gently rolling back toward Ainsley’s cue.

Daniel grinned. “You’re good for a lady, I’ll give you that.”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve rousted my brothers on many occasions,” Ainsley said. “They regretted teaching me all these games after they started losing money to me.”

Daniel chuckled. “Good for you. What else do you know how to do?”

Ainsley lined up another shot. “Shoot a pistol—and hit the target, mind you. Play cards, and not womanly games like whist. I mean poker.”

“Aye, I’d love to see that. There are some games going in the drawing room even now.”

Ainsley shook her head. Ian, more interested in the billiards than the conversation, again tapped the table where Ainsley should aim.

“I don’t wish to embarrass Isabella by draining her guests dry,” Ainsley said with good humor.

She’d thought of joining a card game to try to win the money to pay off Phyllida, but while her brothers Elliot and Steven had taught Ainsley to be a good player, there was still the risk that other players might be better. Many of Hart’s guests were hardened gamblers, and one needed a large amount of money to even enter the games. Thousands of pounds moved around those tables in the drawing of a breath. She couldn’t risk it.

Ainsley tapped her ball. That ball struck the second, which bounced against the cushion where Ian’s hand had rested and rolled into a pocket with a definite thud.

Daniel whistled. “I wish you would play for money, Mrs. Douglas. The two of us, we could win a great deal together.”

“Certainly, Daniel. We’ll get a wagon and travel about, waving a banner that says ‘Champion Exhibition Billiards by a Lady and a Lad. Be Amazed! Test Their Skill and Try Your Luck.’ ”

“A gypsy wagon,” Daniel said. “We’ll have Angelo do acrobatics and Dad show off his trained horses. And you can shoot at targets. People will come from miles to see us.”

Ainsley laughed, and Ian completely ignored them. When Ainsley finally missed her shot, Daniel took the balls from the pockets and lined them up for himself. Ian abandoned the table and came to stand in front of Ainsley.

The golden gaze that roved her face before settling on her left cheekbone was as intense as any of the Mackenzies’, even if Ian didn’t look directly into her eyes.

Ian had spent his childhood in a madhouse, and while Ainsley knew that Ian never had been truly insane, he wasn’t an ordinary man either. He had intelligence that came out of him in amazing bursts, and Ainsley always had the feeling that his enigmatic exterior hid a man who understood everyone’s secrets, perhaps better than they did themselves.

“Cameron’s wife hated him,” Ian said without preliminary. “She did everything she could to hurt him. It made him a hard and unhappy man.”

Ainsley caught her breath. “How very awful of her.”

“Aye,” Daniel said cheerfully from the billiards table. “Me mum was a right bitch. And a whore.”

Ainsley’s correct response would be to admonish Daniel for speaking so harshly of his mother, especially when she was deceased. Good heavens, Daniel, that cannot be true. But from what Ainsley had heard about Lady Elizabeth, Daniel likely spoke the unvarnished truth.

“I never knew her,” Daniel said. “But people tell me about her. I used to punch the fellows at school for saying that my mother had bedded every aristocrat in Europe, but it was mostly true, so I stopped.”

The matter-of-fact tone in Daniel’s voice made Ainsley’s heart ache. Lady Elizabeth’s reputation had been bad, but to hear the facts of it so baldly from her son’s lips was heartbreaking.