A Scandalous Winter Wedding

In accordance with the letter from The Procurer, which had arrived yesterday, Cameron had reserved a suite of rooms in the name of Mrs Collins. He had instructed the Head Porter to inform him when this lady, whom he was to claim as an old acquaintance, arrived, and to issue her with an invitation to take tea with him.

His own suite overlooked the front of the hotel. Unable to concentrate on the stack of business letters which had been forwarded from his Glasgow office, Cameron had spent the last two hours gazing out of the window, monitoring every arrival.

He had no idea what to expect of Mrs Collins, though he had formed a picture in his head of a smart, middle-aged woman with faded hair, a high brow, intelligent eyes. The relic of a man of the church, perhaps, who had worked in London’s slums, or with London’s fallen women, and was therefore no stranger to the city’s seamy underbelly, but who had also solicited London’s society for alms. At ease with the full gamut of society, Mrs Collins would be tough but compassionate, not easily shocked. The type of woman who could be trusted with confidences and who would not judge. Since her husband had died, she would have been continuing with his good works, saving lost souls, but she’d be finding her widowed state confining, he reckoned, and since she’d always had a penchant for charades, which they’d played in the vicarage every Christmas, the need to assume various disguises would appeal to her.

Cameron nodded with satisfaction. An unusual combination of skills, no doubt about it, which made it all the more surprising that The Procurer had found someone to suit his requirements so quickly.

He leant his head against the glass of the tall window, impatient for her to arrive. The ancient female dressed in a sickly shade of green matching the parrot she carried in a cage, whom he had watched half an hour ago emerge from a post-chaise, could not be her. Nor could this fashionable young lady arriving with her maid, one of those ridiculous little dogs that looked like a powder puff clutched in her arms. A hackney cab pulled up next, and a slim female figure emerged, dressed in a white gown with a red spencer. She had her back to him as she waited for her luggage to be removed, yet he had the impression of elegance, could see from the respect she commanded from the driver and from the porter rushing to meet her, the assurance with which she walked, that she was a woman of consequence.

Intriguing, but clearly not his Mrs Collins.

Cameron turned his back on the window, inspecting his pocket watch, debating with himself on whether to order a pot of coffee. A rap on the door made him throw it open impatiently, thinking it was the arrival of yet more business papers.

‘I’ve been sent to tell you that your acquaintance has arrived,’ the messenger boy said. ‘She’s happy to hear that you are staying in the hotel, she says, and she would be delighted to join you for tea.’

‘Are you sure? When did she get here?’

But the boy shook his head. ‘Nobody tells me nuffin’, save me message. Head Porter says to expect her with the tea directly,’ he said. ‘If there’s nuffin’ else…?’ He waited expectantly.

Cameron sighed and handed over a shilling. He must have missed Mrs Collins’s arrival. Or perhaps there was a side entrance.

A few minutes later there was another soft tap on the door. He opened the door to be confronted with the elegant woman who had emerged from the hackney cab.

His jaw dropped, his stomach flipped, for he recognised her immediately.

‘Kirstin.’

He blinked, but she was still there, not a ghost from his past but a real woman, flesh and blood and even more beautiful than he remembered.

‘Kirstin,’ Cameron repeated, his shock apparent in his voice. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I wondered if you’d recognise me after all this time. May I come in?’

Her tone was cool. She was not at all surprised to see him. As she stepped past him into the room, and a servant appeared behind her with a tea tray, he realised that she must be the woman sent to him by The Procurer. Stunned, Cameron watched in silence as the tea tray was set down, reaching automatically into his pocket to tip the servant as Kirstin busied herself, warming the pot and setting out the cups. He tried to reconcile the dazzling vision before him with Mrs Collins, but the vicar’s wife of his imagination had already vanished, never to be seen again.

Still quite dazed, he sat down opposite her. She had opened the tea caddy, was taking a delicate sniff of the leaves, her finely arched brows rising in what seemed to be surprised approval. Her face, framed by her bonnet, was breathtaking in its flawlessness. Alabaster skin. Blue-black hair. Heavy-lidded eyes that were a smoky, blue-grey. A generous mouth with a full bottom lip, the colour of almost ripe raspberries.

Yet, he remembered, it had not been the perfection of her face which had drawn him to her all those years ago, it had been the intelligence slumbering beneath those heavy lids, the ironic twist to her smile when their eyes met in that crowded carriage, and that air she still exuded, of aloofness, almost haughtiness, that was both intimidating and alluring. He had suspected fire lay beneath that cool exterior, and he hadn’t been disappointed.

A vision of that extraordinary night over six years ago flooded his mind. There had been other women since, though none of late, and never another night like that one. He had come to think of it as a half-remembered dream, a fantasy, the product of extreme circumstances that he would never experience again.

He wasn’t at all sure what he thought of Kirstin walking so calmly back into his life, especially when he was in the midst of a crisis. Were they to pretend that they had no history? It had been such a fleeting moment in time, with no bearing on the years after, save for the unsettling, incomparable memory. Cameron supposed that it ought to be possible to pretend it had not happened, but as he looked at her, appalled to discover the stirrings of desire that the memories evoked, he knew he was deluding himself.

‘Cream or lemon?’ Kirstin asked.

‘Lemon,’ he answered, though he habitually drank his tea black and well stewed, a legacy of his early days on-board ship.

He held out his hand for the saucer, but instead she placed it on the table in front of him, drawing an invisible line between them and bringing him to his senses. Whether they acknowledged their history or not, it had no bearing on the reason she was here now.

‘Are you really the woman chosen for me by this infamous Procurer? Do you know what it is I need from you? What has she told you of me? The matter—’

‘Is one of life and death, you believe,’ Kirstin answered gravely. ‘To answer your questions in order. Yes, I am here at the behest of The Procurer. She has outlined your situation, though I will need to hear the details from you. I know nothing of your circumstances, save what you have told her.’

‘She has told me nothing at all of you. Is Collins your married name?’

‘My name is what it has always been. Kirstin Blair.’

‘You’re not married?’ Cameron asked. It was hardly relevant, yet when she shook her head he was unaccountably pleased as well as surprised. Because it would be impossible for them to proceed if there was a husband in the background, or worse in the foreground, he told himself. ‘I’m not married either,’ he said.

She nodded casually at that. Because she already knew from The Procurer? Or because she had deduced as much from his appearance? Or because she was indifferent? This last option, Cameron discovered, was the least palatable.

He began to be irked by her impassive exterior. ‘You do remember me, I take it?’ he demanded. ‘That night…’

The faintest tinge of colour stole over her cheeks. She did not flinch, but he saw the movement at her throat as she swallowed. ‘This is hardly the time to reminisce.’

Their gazes snagged. He could have sworn, in that moment, that she felt it, the almost physical pull of attraction, that strange empathy that they had both succumbed to that night. Then Kirstin broke the spell.

‘It was more than six years ago,’ she said pointedly.

‘I am perfectly aware of how many years have elapsed,’ Cameron snapped.

He had never disclosed his reasons for having made that journey to anyone. He had been interested only in trying to forget all that he had left behind during the trip south, and he had succeeded too, temporarily losing himself and his pain in Kirstin. He’d thought the mental scar healed.

It had been, until Louise Ferguson had written to him as a last resort, begging for his help in the name of the very ties she’d so vehemently denied before. Compassion for her plight diluted his mixture of anger and disappointment that she should turn to him only in extremis. He was long past imagining they could be anything to each other, but it forced him to acknowledge that he had, albeit unwittingly, been the root cause of her past unhappiness. There was a debt to be paid.

Doing what she asked would salve his conscience and allow him to put the matter to bed once and for all. He wouldn’t get another opportunity, and he needed Kirstin to help him, so he couldn’t afford to allow their brief encounter to get in the way. It was the future which mattered.

Cameron swallowed his tea. It was cold, and far too floral for his taste. He made a mental note to stick to coffee, and set the cup down with a clatter.

‘I recall, now, that your Procurer’s terms specify that there should be no questions asked, either you of me, or me of you. It’s a sensible rule and allows us to concentrate on the matter that brought us both here,’ he said, deliberately brusque as he leaned back in his seat, crossing his ankles. ‘However, I am paying a small fortune for your assistance. I think that gives me the right to ask what it is about yourself that makes The Procurer so certain you will suit my extremely demanding, if not unique, set of requirements.’

* * *

Kirstin poured herself a second cup of tea, deliberately avoiding Cameron’s gaze. It was more taxing than it ought to be to maintain her poise, but she was determined he would not see how much this face-to-face encounter was affecting her. Those eyes of his, such a deep, dark brown. She could feel them on her now, sense his rising impatience. An understandable emotion, in the circumstances. Extremely understandable, she thought guiltily.

Determined to keep her mind focused on the matter at hand, she peeled off her gloves and untied her bonnet. Cameron had every reason to question her suitability. Her first task was to reassure him—which fortunately she could easily do, by telling him the truth.

‘I have worked closely with The Procurer for many years. I know her and her business intimately,’ she said. ‘She requires the utmost discretion from her employees, and has never had the slightest cause to question mine. As her trusted assistant, I have access to her extensive network of contacts. I am required to mix with a most—eclectic, I think would be the best description—range of characters, in a number of guises. I have the facility to win over the most unlikely people, from all walks of life, and extract confidences from them. You could call it the quality of a chameleon.’

She permitted herself a thin smile.

‘Whatever you wish to call it, the net result is that I am expert at finding people who do not wish to be found. I am also, as you requested, a woman of good standing, and so able to enquire after the whereabouts of a young and innocent girl without it being assumed my purpose is nefarious—something you could not do. Though I must ask you, Mr Dunbar, if you have considered the possibility that she has already encountered another with just such nefarious intent?’

Across from her, Cameron was frowning deeply. ‘I have not said as much to the young lady’s mother, but it seems to me, unfortunately, a possibility which must be investigated.’

‘I am relieved to hear that you have not discounted this.’

‘I’m more or less a stranger to London, but I’m a man of the world.’