Ravencroft shifted more to his right, leaning farther into the window to catch a better view. “Ye can never tell these days,” he stated blithely. “The Anstruther fortune may not be as vast as our own estates, but it is significant. I imagine many impoverished noble families might come up to scratch. The world is changing. More and more land-owning peers are forced to swallow their pride in favor of a much-needed dowry. The little sister of a countess might look better to us blue bloods than shipping an heiress from America.”
Though his face tightened in a grimace, Cole ceded the point. “I suppose, but … a nurse? It’s just so bloody obvious. The man was still mad for his saint of a dead wife. I can only imagine that lust or lunacy could have driven Anstruther to marry again, and if that was the case, couldn’t the man have found a decent-looking debutante who’d know what to do with his legacy?”
“Who would settle for decent-looking, when a man could have a ripe beauty like that making his last few months on this earth merry?” The laird chuckled. “I love my wife’s mind, her wit, and her soul, but they’re not what I’m appreciating when she’s trouncing about with no blouse on.” He gestured to the shamelessly garbed woman, who now held a paintbrush in her teeth as she used a cloth to correct some mistake on the canvas.
Cole supposed some men would find her beautiful. Indeed, they might see the way the sun had moved the shadow of an elm to dapple her bare shoulder in dancing silhouettes and appreciate the honeyed hue of her smooth flesh. Or they’d find the arch of her darker russet brow charming as it accentuated the depths of her concentration. Perhaps the bow of her full lips would be considered excruciatingly sensual to some as she nibbled on the tip of her paintbrush whilst inspecting her work.
But not him. He preferred midnight curls to straight, fair locks, and porcelain skin, not freckles and honey. Slim, shy wraiths enticed him. Not the hearty type that romped out of doors practically in the altogether.
If she was beautiful, it was like a viper was beautiful. Best to be appreciated from afar, and given a very wide berth.
“Perhaps ye shouldna be so hard on the old man’s memory,” Ravencroft admonished lightly. “I’ve noted this sort of thing too many times in my life as an officer to discount it. Nurses and soldiers, ye ken? There’s something about the gentle healing touch of a pretty, kindhearted woman that a man who’s been kissed by death canna seem to resist. It evokes a powerful emotion … obsessive even.” Flicking Cole a meaningful glance, he dared, “Besides, nursing is a great deal more respectable profession than whoring, wouldna ye agree?”
Cole’s returning glare was full of warning, though he had no retort when presented with his own hypocrisy.
“Doona mistake my point for censure or judgment.” Ravencroft put up his hands as though to ward against attack. Even so, his features remained as good-natured as the savage-looking Scot could attain. “I’ve fallen prey to the curse, myself. I’ve married a woman who’d been in an asylum, after all. Disgraced, besmirched, and dishonored, she still makes an excellent marchioness.”
“Yes, well. She’d have to possess a certifiable measure of insanity to consider marrying the Demon Highlander,” Cole retorted, with no real heat in his scorn.
Trenwyth actively hated the contented warmth in Ravencroft’s wry laugh. “Then I am to assume your recent marriage is a happy one?” he asked.
“Happy doesna seem an apt enough word,” the marquess answered rather enigmatically. “Last year was … eventful. I lost a brother and gained a wife.”
Cole crossed his arms, tucking his metal hand against his opposite bicep. They’d never spoken of it. Of the dreadful time that Laird Mackenzie had brought Major Hamish Mackenzie to the Home Office and thrown him upon the mercy of the crown. Hamish had been a monster by that time. A monster. A murderer.
A traitor.
To his crown and to Cole.
They’d charged him for innumerable war crimes, treason, and hanged him shortly before Christmas. Cole and Liam had been allowed to attend, even though the crown had outlawed public executions in 1866.
Ravencroft and Trenwyth had always respected each other. The lieutenant colonel, almost a decade Cole’s senior, had been his commanding officer for a time, until Cole had taken a commission with the Special Operations Corps. Ravencroft earned his moniker, the Demon Highlander, on the open battlefield, where he dominated with the savage brutality of his Jacobite ancestors.
Cole never earned a moniker, for his brutal deeds rarely left witnesses.
On paper at the Home Office, his work was filed under diplomacy. In the field, it was no less than espionage, intelligence, and, in most cases, assassination.
It was the elder Mackenzie bastard, Hamish, who’d followed Cole into the Special Operations Corps. And then he’d betrayed him to the Turks in order to save his own skin.
Ravencroft hadn’t known he’d been rescuing his own brother’s victim when he’d been sent in to retrieve Cole from the Ottomans. The marquess had accompanied the American consul, the British ambassador, and the Irish-American reporter Januarius MacGahan to Bulgaria under the guise of intelligence gathering, as the Ottomans denied the Bulgarian uprising ever occurred. They’d scoured towns of once seven thousand souls with only two of their thousand left remaining. They’d searched heaps of bodies rotting in the streets with no one left to clear them. Rummaged through the decaying skulls of maidens and the babies skewered by bayonets. Fifty-eight massacred villages. Five desecrated monasteries. Thirty thousand corpses were combed through while the dogs feasted.