A flicker of annoyance crossed Methven's face at the interruption. Lucy recognized Lord Prestonpans, one of Lachlan's ne'er-do-well friends. Prestonpans looked more than a little the worse for wear; his color was high, his fair hair rumpled and a distinct smell of alcohol hung about his person. He leaned confidingly toward Lucy, and she drew back sharply, trying to edge away.

"Been looking for you the entire evening, ma'am," he said. "Need your help. Need you to write one of your letters for me."

Lucy went very still. She could feel Robert Methven's gaze riveted on her face in polite and amused inquiry.

"One of your letters?" he repeated gently.

Disaster. Lucy felt cold all over. How could she silence Prestonpans or steer him away from danger? How could she keep Methven from overhearing? She could feel cool sweat prickling her back, could feel her whole reputation unraveling.

"Of course, my lord," she said quickly, taking Lord Prestonpans's arm to draw him away. "A letter to the Lord Advocate? I would be delighted to help. Come and see me next week in Edinburgh."

She smiled at him and started to walk away, hoping that Prestonpans would take the hint, but he did not. Instead he followed, nipping at her heels like a terrier. Lucy sped up, heading for the ballroom door. Prestonpans galloped after her, raising his voice with disastrous clarity.

"Not one of your legal letters," Prestonpans bellowed. He was trying to keep up with her, slipping slightly on the highly polished floor. "One of y'r other sorts of letters. Your brother told me you write special letters, emotic-" he slurred "-erotic ones-"

"You must excuse me, my lord." Lucy spoke quickly and loudly, trying to drown him out, desperately hoping that Robert Methven had not heard his last words, despite the fact that they had echoed to the rafters. "My chaperone will be wondering where I am-"

"I'll call on you!" Prestonpans said, waving gaily as he staggered away toward the refreshment room. "I'll pay good money!"

There was a long silence. Lucy was aware of nothing but the thunder of her heartbeat in her ears and the tightening of her nerves as Robert Methven walked slowly toward her. He let the silence between them spin out. And then: "Erotic letters?" he queried in the same deceptively gentle tone.

"You misheard," Lucy said desperately. "Lord Prestonpans said exotic letters. Unusual letters, written in..."

"Green ink?" Methven suggested. "That would be exotic."

Green ink. Lucy remembered recommending to Lachlan that he copy out the letters to Dulcibella in green ink to make them look more romantic.

"Or perhaps," Methven continued, "Lord Prestonpans meant letters written in exotic language? Poetic letters, love letters..." His expression was impassive as he waited politely for the next lie she would spin. Through the half-open door of the ballroom, Lucy could see another set of Scottish country dances forming. The orchestra was tuning up. People brushed past them to take their places on the floor. It felt like another world and one she would not be rejoining anytime soon, especially not since Robert Methven had put out a hand and taken her arm, not too tightly but certainly in a grip she could not have broken without making a scene.

"I think it's about time you and I had a proper talk," Methven said.

"We cannot talk here," Lucy said. She pinned a special smile on her face to ward off the curious looks of passing guests. Beneath the pretense her heart was hammering. There was only one thing worse than Robert Methven knowing of her letter-writing skills and that was everyone knowing. She would be utterly ruined, perfect Lady Lucy MacMorlan who was not so perfect after all.

"Then we'll go somewhere else," Methven said. "At your convenience," he added, and it was not an invitation but a command.

Lucy's throat felt dry. "It would be most improper to be alone with you-" she started to say, but his laughter cut her off.

"You write erotic love poetry, Lady Lucy, and yet you think it would be inappropriate to be alone with me? You have a strange sense of what constitutes proper behavior."

He was steering Lucy toward one of the doors leading from the great hall. Lucy tried to resist, but her slippers slid across the polished wood as though it were ice. She tried to dig her heels in, but there was nothing to dig them into.

"I could carry you," Methven said, on an undertone, "if you prefer." There was a dark, wicked thread of amusement in his voice now.

"No," Lucy said. She grabbed some shreds of composure. She must not let him see how nervous she was. "Thank you," she said, "but I have always considered carrying to be overrated."

Her mind scrambled back and forth over various possibilities. She had to get away. Perhaps she could tell him she needed to visit the ladies' withdrawing room and then climb out of the window and take a carriage back to the inn....

"Don't even think about running away again," Methven said, making her jump by the accuracy with which he had read her mind. He sounded grim. "We can run around the battlements as much as you please, but in the end the outcome will be the same."

Damn. There really was no escape. She was going to have to confront him, try to explain about the letters and beg for his silence. Lucy was frankly terrified at the thought. Robert Methven did not strike her as the understanding type.

"Take my arm if you do not wish to make a scene," Methven said. "We can talk in the library. Lord Brodrie never goes there. I don't believe he has opened a book in his life."

Lucy hesitated, her hand hovering an inch above his sleeve. She did not want to touch him at all. It felt as though it would be dangerous to do so, but at the same time she was annoyed with herself for being so aware of him. Her face burning, she rested her hand very lightly on his proffered arm, too lightly to feel the muscle beneath his jacket. She maintained sufficient distance from him that their bodies did not touch at all. There was no brushing of her skirts against his leg or her hair against his shoulder. Yet despite her perfect regard for physical distance, it was as though there were a current running between them, deep and dark and turbulent. She wanted to ignore it, but she could not. She could not ignore him.

He ushered her into the library. Evidently he knew his way around Brodrie Castle, no doubt from the time of his courtship of Dulcibella-a courtship she had so skillfully sabotaged.

Lucy's heart sank lower than her silk slippers. No, he was not going to be sympathetic. It did not take any great intellectual deduction to work that out. She had helped to ruin his betrothal and with it whatever plans he had had to secure his inheritance. He would not be in a forgiving mood.

Methven closed the door behind them. It shut with the softest of clicks, cutting off the distant sounds of the ball, the voices and the music, and cocooning them in a sudden silence that made Lucy's awareness of him all the more acute. He moved closer to her; she could hear his breath above the hiss and spit of the fire in the grate. She could catch the faint scent of his cologne above the pine from the logs that smoldered in the hearth.

"It was you who wrote the letters your brother used to seduce Miss Brodrie away from me," Methven said. Then, when Lucy did not answer: "Well?"

The sharpness of his tone made Lucy jump.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was not aware that it was a question." She paused, took a deep breath. "Yes," she said. "I did write them. I wrote Lachlan's letters."

CHAPTER FOUR.

LUCY SAW SATISFACTION ease into Methven's eyes at her admission of guilt. Her heart was beating hard and fast now. She wondered if she looked as scared as she felt. She would be the talk of Edinburgh for months. Lucy's stomach clenched. She hated the thought of being a byword for scandal.

But he would not betray her. Surely he would not. No gentleman would betray a lady's trust.

"Do you know what you have done?" Methven asked. His gaze was fixed on her and she could feel the anger in him, held under the tightest control but nevertheless a hot thread beneath his words. "Do you understand the consequences of your actions, Lady Lucy?" The contempt in his blue eyes was blistering. "You have destroyed my betrothal."

"Well," Lucy corrected, "that is not strictly accurate. Dulcibella destroyed your betrothal in running off with Lachlan. I did not make her elope. It was her choice. Perhaps," she added, "she did not want to wed you."

Methven looked supremely unimpressed by her logic. He brought his hand down so hard on the flat top of the mantel that Lucy flinched.

"Will you accept no responsibility?" he demanded. "Do you consider yourself blameless?"

"I wrote the letters," Lucy said steadily. "I do take responsibility for that." She was aware that her words were hardly conciliatory, that she was hardly going in the right direction to appease him. When she had set out to justify herself, she had not intended to provoke him, but there was something about Robert Methven that got under her skin.

"Why?" He growled the word at her, his eyes impossibly blue, impossibly angry. "Why did you do it?"

"I did it because Lachlan paid me," Lucy said defiantly.

She saw Methven's eyes widen in surprise.

"So you did it for the money?" he said, and the contempt in his tone was like a whip.

"You make me sound like a courtesan," Lucy complained. "It wasn't like that."

Methven smiled suddenly. Lucy noticed the way the smile ran a crease down one of his lean, tanned cheeks and deepened the lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes. She felt a sudden sweet, sliding feeling in her stomach and trembled a little. "In your own way you are for sale," he pointed out gently. "I beg your pardon, but I think it is exactly like that."

Lucy said nothing. She certainly was not going to tell a man so cynical that the money from the letters had gone to charity. That would come too close, expose too much of what really mattered to her. She could not discuss it, not even to exonerate herself. She never spoke of Alice. It was too painful. Besides, Robert Methven would only laugh at her. And probably disbelieve her.

"I have no money," she said. "I need to earn it."

"You are an heiress," Methven said.

"The definition of an heiress," Lucy said, "is someone who will inherit money, not someone who currently possesses it. An heiress could be penniless."

"A nice justification," Methven conceded, "but still no excuse." He ran a hand through his hair. "I thought you might claim to have helped him because you believe in love."

A chill settled in Lucy's blood. "I have no time for love," she said.

His eyes searched her face. "Then we have something in common." A bitter smile twisted the corner of his mouth. "I loved what Miss Brodrie would have brought me, though." He sighed, straightened. "Did you know that your cousin Wilfred Cardross and I are involved in a legal battle?" His tone was conversational, but the look in his eyes was very acute and suddenly Lucy had the feeling that the answer to this mattered far more than anything that had gone before.

"Yes," she said truthfully, and saw the scorn and dislike sweep back into his eyes.

"So you did it to help your cousin too," Methven said. "You wanted to help him cheat me of my patrimony." He turned away from her. The line of his shoulders and back, his entire stance, was rigid with repressed fury, yet Lucy sensed something else in him: a frustration, a powerful protective spirit that was somehow thwarted as though there was something he longed for yet could not gain. She felt it so instinctively that she reached out a hand to touch him, then realized what she was doing and let her hand fall.

"You mistake me," she said, and her voice was a little husky. "I did nothing to help my cousin Wilfred. I would not give him the time of day, let alone my assistance. If what I have done in any way was to his benefit, then I am sorry."

Methven turned sharply and caught her by the shoulders, his touch burning her through the evening gown. "Is that true?" he demanded. There was a blaze of heat in his eyes that made her shiver. He felt it and released her, his hands falling away.

"You were dancing with him earlier," he said, and his tone was cool now, as though that flash of heat had never been.

"Not for pleasure," Lucy said. "I cannot bear him. Ever since we were children-" She stopped. Childhood reminiscences were probably out of place here.

Methven's gaze searched her face as probing as a physical touch. "So you really do not know," he said. His voice was flat. "You have done Cardross the greatest service imaginable in breaking my betrothal and you did not know."

Apprehension slid down Lucy's spine. "I don't understand," she whispered.

Methven did not answer immediately. Instead he walked over to the table and poured two glasses of wine from the decanter. He passed her a glass; their fingers brushed, distracting Lucy momentarily. She realized that he was gesturing her to sit. She took a battered-looking velvet armchair. Methven sat opposite, resting his elbows on his knees, leaning forward, his glass cradled in his hands.

"Wilfred Cardross and I are involved in a dispute over clan lands," he said. "It goes back centuries to the time of King James the Fourth." He lifted his gaze to hers. "You know that the Methvens and the Cardrosses have always been enemies?"

"And the MacMorlans," Lucy said. "We talked about this eight years ago, you and I."

A smile slid briefly into Robert Methven's eyes like sunlight on water. "So we did," he said softly.

Lucy suddenly felt very hot. She broke the contact between them looking down, smoothing her skirts.

"Cardross holds to the old enmities," Robert Methven said. "He and I-" He shrugged. "Suffice it to say, he has been waiting for an opportunity to claim back the lands he believes to be his. When my grandfather died I was in Canada and so was slow to return and claim my inheritance. That gave him the chance he needed."

"I don't quite see how I am involved in this-" Lucy started to say, but Methven cut in, his incisive tone reminding her that his patience with her was wafer thin.

"You will," he said. "Under the terms of the original treaty, the Methvens were given lands carved out from the earldom of Cardross. Those lands constitute half my estate."

There was a hollow feeling in Lucy's stomach now. "I can see why Wilfred might not like that," she said.

Methven's smile held no warmth. "Indeed. The agreement was originally reached because the Methven clan had bested Cardross men in battle. King James the Fourth imposed the ruling on both sides back in the fifteenth century, but it still stands today."

The fire roared and cracked as a sudden gust of wind curled down the chimney.

"The only proviso," Methven said softly, holding Lucy's eyes, "was that if any future marquis took more than twelve months to claim his inheritance, he would have to fulfill certain criteria or forfeit his lands. I took thirteen months."

"Why did it take you so long to return?" Lucy asked. "Why were you, the Methven heir, in Canada at all?"

She saw something flicker in his eyes, something of pain and dark, long-held secrets.

"That does not concern you," he said, and the words were like a door slamming shut in her face. "I was late claiming my lands and title and so Cardross had his chance to invoke the old treaty. Under its terms I am required to wed within a year and produce an heir within two." He paused for a heartbeat. "Now you will see what you have done in disposing of my bride."

Lucy did. She had destroyed everything he had worked to safeguard. She had put the safety of his lands and his clan at risk. For a moment the disastrous consequences of her meddling made her feel quite faint.

"I did not know.... Surely you can find another bride..." she stammered, then fell silent beneath the searing contempt in his gaze.

"That is the delightful twist," Methven said politely. "King James, in his desire to force sworn enemies to bed down together, made it a requirement that I wed a descendent of the earls of Cardross."

"Oh." Lucy frantically tried to remember Wilfred's family tree. He had no sisters-and would no doubt have forbidden them to marry Robert Methven if he had. Dulcibella had been a distant cousin. So was she, of course, but on the female side. There was no one else she could recall. Wilfred was almost devoid of relatives. Which was bad news for Lord Methven.

"I am sorry," she said. She knew the words were inadequate. She had felt guilty enough before, but now that the full extent of the damage was revealed she felt quite wretched.

"You may imagine," Methven said cuttingly, "how your regret moves me." He got up abruptly and placed his untouched glass of claret on the table.

"There is no need to be so sarcastic," Lucy protested. She could feel the guilty color stinging her cheeks. "I truly am sorry. I did not know-"

"Ignorance is no excuse," Methven said roughly. "It is not as though your letters on behalf of your brother are unprecedented."

Apprehension breathed gooseflesh along Lucy's skin. Wrapped up in the tale of the Methven inheritance, stifled by guilt, she had forgotten for a moment that Lord Prestonpans had dropped her well and truly in trouble with his ill-considered ramblings earlier.

"You do not deny it," Methven said after a moment. "So it must be true. You wrote the erotic letters that scandalized society last year."

He strode across to the fireplace and laid one arm along the mantel. Every action spoke of latent power and authority. Lucy felt completely intimidated and was equally determined not to show the fact. She stood up, because being seated when he was standing made her feel at an acute disadvantage.

Her palms were damp. She rubbed them on her skirts. "I did not realize how Lachlan's friends would use those letters," she said. "I had no notion."

"Ignorance is an excuse you have already tried this evening," Methven said pleasantly. "It wears thin. Your gullibility has been fairly extensive, hasn't it, Lady Lucy? How did you expect people would use erotic letters?"

Lucy's face was burning. "I agree that my naivete has been extensive," she said, between shut teeth.

Methven stepped away from the fireplace and came toward her. He took her gently by the upper arms, turning her so the candlelight fell on her face. He did not let her go; his hands were warm on her bare skin above the edge of her gloves, and his gaze on her face made her feel mercilessly exposed.

"Are you a virgin?" he asked.

"My lord!" Lucy was genuinely shocked. She could feel even hotter color stinging her cheeks now.

"It's a fair question," Methven said, "under the circumstances." He looked unmoved by her outrage, amused even. "The erotic letters hint at an experience far greater than that of the average debutante. Not-" he appraised her thoughtfully "-that you are average, precisely. Far from it."

"My experience or lack thereof is no business of yours, my lord," Lucy said. "That is a scandalous question. No gentleman would ask it."