Lying naked on top of the linens, his head propped up on a stack of pillows, Payton reached for one breast and fingered the nipple absently.
“If ye’ll pardon me saying, milord, you donna seem yerself today,” Finella observed as she moved to fetch her other stocking.
It was true. He hadn’t been himself in more than a fortnight, since the ball. Worse, he’d never, not in his thirty-two years on this earth, not once thought of sex as tedious. He leaned over the bed, picked up his trousers, and fished a five-pound banknote from his pocket and wordlessly handed it to Finella.
Her eyes grew round; she eagerly took it. “Ye’re right generous, milord.”
“And ye are patient,” he said wearily.
“I had a patron much like yerself once,” she said as she stuck the banknote in the top of her stockings and picked up her chemise. “A fancy lord, he was. Never gave me more than a few shillings,” she said as she wiggled into her chemise and picked up her dress. “But one day, nigh on Easter, he came to the inn and stayed all night, he did.”
She paused, pulled her gown over her head, then whirled around, and sat on the edge of the bed so that he might button her. “Aye, and?” Payton asked lazily as he buttoned her gown.
“The very next morn, he gave me three full pounds!” she exclaimed.
“Ye did something quite memorable, I’d wager.”
“Oh no,” she said, standing once Payton had finished buttoning her. “’Twas naugh’ but the usual bit of ruttin’. Yet he gave me the three pounds for it all the same, and I never saw him again.” With that, she stuffed the banknote Payton had given her into her bosom. “Will I no’ see ye again, milord?”
“Aye, of course ye will.”
She frowned a little and shook her head. “I donna think I will. Pity, that—I rather like what we do.”
“Donna be silly, Finella,” he said dismissively. “A man must have his physical pleasure or he shall fall ill.”
“Perhaps,” she said thoughtfully. “And perhaps ye will find yer physical pleasure with another, aye?” She winked at him. “I best be about me work, milord,” she said, and opened the door. With a small smile over her shoulder, she slipped out.
Payton frowned. Finella was mistaken—he’d be back. He’d never been able to abstain for very long and where else might he go? He might have had a rough go of it lately, but he’d be his usual randy self before long.
He was certain of it.
So certain, in fact, that he had another dram of whiskey to numb his mind and his heart before he headed back to Eilean Ros.
The sun was sinking behind Ben Cluaran when Payton and Murdoch arrived home. The house was dark, save the flicker of candles in two rooms on the ground floor.
Young Willie met him on the drive, but Payton sent the boy off to have his supper and stabled Murdoch himself. He then walked up the long drive of his house, staring at the dozens of darkened thick-paned windows that were eerily like his mood. They were like windows into his life, he mused—black and empty, devoid of light.
He silently cursed himself again for his singular, crushing weakness—his inability to remove Mared Lockhart from his mind, to keep from brooding about her and the emptiness within him. He’d thought of little else but her since the night she told him she’d never love him. He was a man obsessed with his failure to win her heart and the inexplicable feelings for her that ran as deep as Loch Ard. Aye, and here he was again, a bloody fool, wondering about her, wondering what she’d done today, her first day as a servant. Did she dine with the others? Had she sulked in her rooms all afternoon?
His obsession was particularly maddening because he was not a foolish man—he knew that one person’s desire could not change the desire of another. That was the way of love—sometimes, two hearts beat as one. And sometimes, one heart beat for two.
It annoyed him enormously that while he was intelligent enough to understand that, he could not, no matter how hard he’d tried, rid himself of that useless, but tenacious little glimmer of hope. He hated that wee bit of hope. Abhorred it, loathed it. He wished for all the world that he could smash it to tiny pieces and never hope again.
In the foyer, he put his hat and gloves aside and reached for the three posts in the silver tray Beckwith had left for him. He felt a grumble of hunger in his belly, and put the three letters in his coat pocket and strode down the corridor to the dining room.