Page 68 of To Wed an Heiress
Mercy nodded. “I am now,” she said and told Ruthie what her grandmother decided.
Ruthie’s face paled. “She has a soul as black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat.”
She hadn’t heard that saying before. No doubt it was something Scottish. She really should have chastised Ruthie for the comment, but she didn’t do that, especially since she secretly agreed.
“What are you going to do?” Ruthie asked.
“I don’t know.”
Regrettably, that was the truth. Not one avenue of escape occurred to her.
“I’ll tell them, Miss Mercy,” Ruthie said. “But I’d get in bed if I were you. They’re bound to check on you.”
She nodded, but she honestly didn’t care if they entered her room and saw that she was fine.
What more could her relatives do to her?
“Shall I bring you a tray?”
“No, I’m not hungry,” she said. She glanced at Ruthie. “I’m fine, really. Thank you, though.”
“I’d have someone bring it up, Miss Mercy,” Ruthie said with a mulish twist to her lips. “I wouldn’t try to carry it with only one arm.”
“I know that, and it’s not why I turned it down. My stomach is so upset I don’t think I could eat anything right now.”
When Ruthie was finally convinced that she would be fine—at least for tonight—and left, Mercy replaced the chair beneath the door handle. As a deterrent, it wasn’t much, especially if Gregory or one of her relatives was determined to enter.
Her thoughts were turbulent, forcing her up from the chair to pace around the bed and back again. The longer she walked, the more horrible her situation appeared.
There was no way out. There was nothing she could do.
Her mother was wrong. It wasn’t nerves that were making her feel this way. It was revulsion. Marriage to Gregory loomed in front of her like a nightmare. She didn’t want him to touch her. She didn’t even like when he insisted she put her hand on his arm. She didn’t think he was charming and gracious and deferential like everyone else thought. Gregory showed one face to her parents and another to her.
Before today she’d never been afraid of Gregory but maybe her fear had been there all along, lurking under the surface. She’d never felt comfortable with him. Not like you should be with the man you were supposed to marry. She avoided moments alone with Gregory, claiming a shyness she didn’t feel.
Not once had she ever behaved with him like she had with Lennox. But, then, she trusted Lennox and that was not an emotion she felt around Gregory.
She went to the armoire, knelt, and retrieved the valise she’d kept at her side ever since New York. She opened it, staring at the mounds of greenbacks inside. She’d broached the subject of taking the money once more with her grandmother, but Ailsa had been adamant about not needing a Yankee man’s charity.
Perhaps God had answered her prayers after all.
There were only two people in the entire house who could help her. Mrs. West and Ruthie. She didn’t want to involve either one of them in her plan. Mrs. West was staff and could be dismissed. Ruthie’s punishment would probably be banishment from Macrory House.
No, she would do this on her own.
The night was a blustery one, filled with thunder as if God were lecturing the Highlands. Rain lashed the windows of the tower as if it wanted in.
Lennox normally liked to sleep during this kind of weather. He always felt grateful for the shelter, thinking that there had been plenty of people over the years who’d had to endure the Highland storms in barely habitable conditions.
His ancestors, for one, stalwart men and women who’d claimed this spot of land for their own, building the castle brick by brick with the help of clan members and family.
The fact that he couldn’t sleep was an irritant, but his insomnia was brought about by the ache in his shoulders and the pain in his arm. He’d brought a bottle of whiskey up to his tower room in anticipation of this moment. Now he poured himself a half glass, sat back against the headboard, and contemplated the lightning show through the windows.
The storm sounded like it was chewing up the sky.
Had the thunder awakened Mercy? Was she, even now, like him, watching nature’s display of might and feeling grateful that she was not out in it?
Or was she in her fiancé’s arms?
