But there was no quiet happiness among these people. No reaching for a friend and finding one, warm and comforting, at the end of your hand.
“We should leave then,” Ainsley said.
“Why?” Cameron demanded. “Are ye tired of it already?”
“No, but you are.”
Cameron scowled at Ainsley’s all-knowing gray eyes. Did she have to understand everything about him? “Who the hell told you that?”
“No one had to tell me,” Ainsley said. “You’re not comfortable with this life, and you know it. When you’re out riding horses or even watching them, as we did at the horse fair the other day, you’re far more sweet-tempered and companionable. Too many nights under the gas lamps and you start growling.”
Cameron made a rumbling noise in response, and Ainsley smiled. “Exactly like that. Don’t stay here for me, Cam. Go where your heart is, and I’ll follow.”
Cameron looked out the window again, studying the Parisian rooftops. Daniel waited on the sofa, as tense as his father.
It had been bad of Daniel to run away from school, but Cameron secretly agreed with his reasons why. Cameron had sent Daniel to Cambridge because all the Mackenzies had gone there, and he’d had a place secured there when he was born.
Truth to tell, Cameron hadn’t minded Daniel underfoot on this trip. He’d enjoyed watching him and Ainsley laugh uproariously over whatever they found funny that day, the two of them trying every pasty in Paris or dragging Cameron to obscure parts of the city just to see what was there. Cameron knew he should be more strict about Daniel and Cambridge. A lad needed to go to university, and Cameron should be a parent in control of his son’s life. But he didn’t have the heart. If Daniel were truly unhappy, they’d think of something else.
Cameron looked back at the two of them waiting side by side on the sofa for his answer, his wife and his son watching him with the same intensity.
“Monte Carlo,” he said.
Ainsley blinked. “Your heart is in Monte Carlo?”
Cameron didn’t smile. “I’m tired of self-satisfied Parisians and artists full of their own genius. I put up with that enough with Mac. At Monte Carlo, you’ll meet a much more interesting mix of people.”“I will?”
Cameron turned to them, fixing them both with his topaz gaze. “You’ll like it, Ainsley. Not one person there has pure motives in mind. A picklock might find such corruption entertaining.”
“That does sound more interesting than self-satisfied artists full of their own genius.”
“And the sunrise over the sea from the top of the city is beautiful.” That was true. Cameron wanted to show the view to Ainsley, to see her delight when she beheld it. He remembered Ian watching Beth watch the fireworks, finding more joy in her than the show of light. Cameron understood now.
Ainsley winked at Daniel and stretched her feet in her new patent-leather boots. “I have only one question about this oh-so-exciting Monte Carlo,” she said.
Cameron’s gaze fixed on her ankle boots, primly buttoned against silk stockings. He imagined himself unfastening each button, licking the ankle that came into view, running his tongue all the way up to the back of her knee. Ainsley and her buttons.
“What question is that?” He managed to say.
She gave him a smile and Daniel a wink. “In Monte Carlo, do they have cake?”
They did have cake, and also the casino of which her moral majesty, Queen Victoria, vastly disapproved. When they reached their hotel in Monaco, Cameron asked Ainsley to wear the dark red velvet he’d picked out for her in Edinburgh, and he took her straight to the casino.
Ainsley found herself in a long, elegant, cupolaed building filled with glittering people. The foyer rose to a gigantic rectangular stained-glass window with classical-looking paintings and statues all around it. The game rooms opened from this rotunda, and Cameron strolled into them with ease.
He was greeted by name by the croupiers and smiled at by the butterflies—beautiful women hired by the casino to entice gamers to tables. More than one interested gaze of that crowd fixed on Ainsley, society there also having learned of Cameron Mackenzie’s astonishingly sudden marriage.
But Ainsley realized quickly that Cameron didn’t like Monte Carlo any more than he had Paris. He could talk and laugh with his friends, drink whiskey and smoke cheroots as he played cards, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Ainsley grew to know the true Cameron better as the days slipped by—the mildest winter Ainsley, used to Scottish cold, had ever spent. She found that she could talk easily with Cameron about many things—news of the world, sports, games, their opinions on Scotland’s history and relations with England, books, music, drama, art. Cameron was well read and well traveled, joking that he’d absorbed some knowledge at Cambridge, though it must have been in his sleep. He’d spent his waking hours drinking, gaming, racing horses, and chasing women.
He was quite open about his debauched life, rumbling that Ainsley deserved to know everything, and besides, he despised hypocrites. But even with this openness, Cameron hid some part of himself from her, never letting Ainsley so much as glimpse it. The feeling of being shut out was a lonely one, even if Cameron would make crazed love to her every night.
Most evenings the three of them dined out or went to the theatre or opera together, and there was no more talk of packing Daniel off again to Cambridge. Cameron, Ainsley saw, though he didn’t much know what to do with the lad, liked having him around. During the day, they visited museums and the gardens, or simply traversed the steep streets of Monaco. They walked from the harbor to the top of the hills so often that Ainsley declared it must be the healthiest winter she’d ever passed.