How odd that they should be talking of another woman here. A place where they’d confessed how they felt about each other.
Together, they’d learned the art of love. He’d been a natural student, with inventive ideas, some of which she’d never suggested to Bruce. She and Gordon had learned to kiss here, from tender pecks to open mouth explorations of tongue and lips. She’d let him touch her breasts as they’d sat on the cot. She could still remember the shock of awareness she felt when his hand first touched her body, each finger tender and exploring.
More than once, she’d been certain she was with child, but thanks to Mag’s instructions she’d been safe. More than once, she’d told herself that being with Gordon was foolish, but loving him had been so natural, so normal, so much a part of her life, she couldn’t cease.
He stepped forward now, touching her cheek with just the tip of his finger, sliding down to measure the angle of her jaw and hesitating at her chin, a soft and delicate touch she felt to her toes. He leaned closer until his breath bathed the skin he’d just touched. So softly that she might have imagined it, he pressed his lips against her temple. A ghostly kiss, an echo of those they’d once shared.
“Are you jealous, Shona?”
She stepped back, intent on putting distance between them.
“Of course not,” she said, unwilling to admit it. “She’s to be married, however. You should know that.”
His smile didn’t alter, but something in his eyes did, a look that shifted to cool. He was Gordon but he wasn’t. The boy he’d been was there, but in a lesser degree than the man he’d become. This man was more dispassionate, less apt to allow emotion to show. Here was the commander of men, capable of looking out over a battlefield, seeing death and destruction, and remaining calm in the face of it.
“Are you hiding out here?” he asked, moving away from her, toward the cottage.
“No, why should I be?” She flattened her palms against her skirts. This morning she’d dispensed with her hoops for two petticoats, but now she wished she’d worn them. Female armor.
“Has everyone forgiven you?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Welcomed you back into the bosom of the family?”
“They aren’t my family,” she said. “Well, Fergus is, of course, and perhaps Helen, but not the Americans.”
His lips quirked again.
“You didn’t answer the question. Are you hiding here until people forget?”
He’d always been direct. They’d talked about everything, every subject except two: his father and his future. He’d known, even as a child, that his future had been mapped out for him. First, military school, and then, the army.
Only once had they discussed it.
“What would you have me do, Shona?” he’d asked. “Immigrate to America? Turn my back on my country?”
“Do you really want to go?”
He hadn’t answered her, and she’d realized, later, what a foolish question that had been. He was, like the men of her family, ordained by destiny to fulfill a certain role. He was General MacDermond’s son, and expected to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“I feel about ten years old around her,” she said now, her sharp tone at odds with the rueful nature of her comment.
“Miriam?”
“She doesn’t say anything good about Gairloch,” she said, hearing the words and wishing they didn’t sound like whining. She wouldn’t tell him what Miriam had said about her.
His smile was wide, revealing white, even teeth. The expression stopped her heart. Dear God, he was so handsome.
“So you thought to demonstrate a few of Gairloch’s finer qualities.”
“You believe in the ghosts,” she said.
He shook his head. “I believe that you believe,” he countered. “That’s been enough for me.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked away, opening the door and entering the cottage.
She followed him to the door but wasn’t foolish enough to go inside. If it was just as it had been, she’d feel a surge of memory. If it wasn’t, she’d regret the change.
Memories could wound. She knew that well enough.
Had he been miserable when she’d left? Had he longed for her as she’d longed for him? Even in her marriage bed, she’d shut her eyes and tried to recall Gordon. Bruce had been a kind and loving man, but he wasn’t young. Nor did he have Gordon’s physical perfection.
But the worst part of their marriage, and it would have surprised Bruce had she ever the courage to mention it, was that her husband wasn’t curious enough. He never wanted to know if what he did pleased her. He merely assumed he had. He never once asked her where she wanted to be kissed, or if she was ready for his loving. In the end, it didn’t matter, because he rarely visited her bed. In the last three years of their five-year marriage, Bruce had been too ill to contemplate performing as a husband.
The fact that she’d been without a man’s touch for five years was the only reason she was remembering what had happened in the cottage now.
“Why did they give you a baronetcy?” she asked.
He turned, his look of surprise making her smile.
“Did no one ever ask you before?”
He shook his head. “It’s a boring reason,” he said. “Not nearly as heroic as showing valor and courage.”
When had he learned that kind of self-deprecating humor?
She didn’t speak, curious as to his answer. Just when she thought he wouldn’t continue, he spoke again.
“I tinkered with artillery,” he said. “I thought it important to increase firing accuracy. Why shoot a musket unless you’re certain of hitting the target? I experimented with various barrel sizes and loading techniques, and passed on what I’d learned to my company.”
She remained silent, suspecting there was more to the story than he was telling. But, then, perhaps he’d acquired modesty over the years as well. No, the boy he’d been would have been just as reticent in bragging about his exploits. In that, he hadn’t changed.
Once, he’d broken his arm, then stubbornly remounted the horse that had thrown him before allowing it to be set. Fergus had told her the story, not Gordon.
“And the army learned what you’d done, of course,” she said.
His smile altered character, became wry. “Of course.”
And his father? Had he been surprised, as well? That question she wouldn’t ask.
“So, you were awarded a baronetcy for your ability to kill.”
His smile dissipated faster than the words did.
When had she learned to be so cruel?
“Perhaps,” he said.
She wanted to call the words back, undo the last moments, ease the look on his face. He wore an expression of nothingness, as if he were only an effigy of himself.
Shame flushed her skin, made her wish, in that second, to be anyone other than who she was.
“Gordon,” she said, stretching out her hand to him.
He turned back and looked at her, his eyes flat and unreadable.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“If it’s what you thought, then you should have,” he said, his voice carefully neutral.
Suddenly, she hated all the pretense she’d built up all these years, all the hardened thoughts laid over the hurt and pain.
This man was a stranger, but he’d once been the boy she’d adored. No, he hadn’t been a boy when she loved him, but a man on the cusp of becoming who he was now. She’d shared her secrets and her body with him, longed for him, and adored him.
Before she could say anything else, however, he walked away, leaving her no choice but to drop her hand.
Chapter 17
T
urning, he walked into the cottage. Seven years ago, they’d congratulated themselves on making this place theirs. Shona had brought flowers from time to time, placing them in an earthen jar, arranging them on the table as if they’d taken up living there.
He’d loved her on that cot, the first time feeling so inept he thought he’d done it all wrong. Her sighs and smile had eased his mind then.
Shona had felt like his mate, his mirror half, her responses the equal of his. He’d never thought she would go away, ever leave him.
He turned to her now. Her face was still stricken.
He wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter; that she didn’t have the power to wound him. The words, however, wouldn’t pass the gate of truth in his mind. She did have the power to hurt him; she always had.
She looked around the interior of the cottage. “We were such fools,” she said.
“We were improvident,” he agreed. “And definitely unwise.”
He wouldn’t have traded those memories for his baronetcy or his wealth, but he was damned if he was going to be dragged around by his cock. Whatever fascination she had for him should remain in the past, as dead as her husband.
But, and this admission troubled him more than a little, there was something about her that made him want to watch her when she wasn’t aware. She had a habit of tapping her fingers against her skirt, just before she said something she considered important. Otherwise, her features were still, arranged in a pleasant fashion, but attempting to reveal nothing of her emotions. Except for one eyebrow, her right, that arched in a way she probably didn’t realize.
He found himself watching for that subtle movement, an indication of her disdain or annoyance.
Her eyebrow arched a great deal in his presence.
Her wardrobe had not improved significantly with her marriage. Today, she was attired in the same dress, black and white, as if to emphasize her mourning. Or was she attempting, in her fashion, to remind him that she’d married and left him?
As if he could ever forget.
Seven years ago, he’d wished she’d been with child. He’d have married her then, before she left him. Or perhaps he himself should have married in the intervening years.
Should he tell her that she’d ruined him for other women? Hardly exactly true, but at this particular moment, it felt genuine.
He turned, staring at the ruined shutter. Suddenly, he pushed it back with both hands as if he couldn’t stand the confines of the cottage anymore. The slap of the wood against the wall sounded as loud as a rifle shot.
The sunny morning had given way to encroaching clouds, the weather as unstable as his mood.
“Are you really going to Gairloch to show off your pretty legs?” she asked.
“Do you think they are? As admirable as my arse?”
She ignored the questions, her frown impressive and intimidating to anyone else.
He walked to where she stood in the doorway of the cottage, reached out and drew her closer. He inhaled slowly, the perfume of her summoning memories.
“You’ll look like a prune-faced old maid if you keep that expression, Shona,” he said, tracing the outline of her lips.
“I can’t be an old maid,” she said, stepping back. “I’ve been married.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. How could he forget?
She looked like she would have spoken, then silenced herself. He watched her do that twice before she looked away.
“You’re always watching me,” she said finally. “As if you expect me to fall on my face. Or stumble. Or make an idiot of myself.” She threw her hands up in the air. “God knows I’ve been doing that often enough, lately. No doubt I’ve given you a great deal of amusement.”
She’d not thank him for his smile, so he kept his face carefully expressionless.
“You think that’s why I watch you?”
She turned her head and looked at him.
“The least you could do is deny it.”
He shrugged. “Why deny it? I do watch you.”
She nodded. “As if I’m a leg of lamb and you’re a hungry wolf.”
“The analogy is not far off the mark, Shona. I am hungry, but not for food.”
“Revenge?”
He laughed. “Revenge? Perhaps.”
Her face was flushed, tendrils of hair sticking to her cheeks. The dress she wore concealed her shape from inquisitive eyes, but he remembered her well enough.
A frown settled on her face, like a thundercloud on a sunny day. Now her eyes flashed at him, daring him in the way she always had.
Shona Imrie, proud and arrogant.
A bolt of lust hit him then, along with a certainty so strong it felt true. It wasn’t anger he felt or betrayal. No, this feeling was need, pure and desperate.
He wanted her. He wanted her with seven years of wanting. He wanted her to sob beneath him, arch under him, admit she needed him more than anyone else. He had loved the girl, but the woman fascinated him.
Perhaps he simply needed female companionship. And her? Did she hunger for a man?
He’d tried to forget what she’d said, but despite his best intentions, his imagination had conjured up more than one scene of her and the Earl of Morton.
He reached out and slowly pulled her toward him. She pursed her lips together again, frowning at him. But he noted that she didn’t jerk her arm away, and his grip wasn’t that tight.
“I’d not thought to see you jealous, Shona Imrie.”
“I’m not,” she said, her face averted. “And it’s no longer Imrie.”
“You’ll always be Shona Imrie to me, dear one.”
She looked at him then, her eyes wide. “Don’t call me that, Gordon. You’ve no right.”
“Who else has a better right? You gave your innocence to me, and your heart, at one time.”
He lowered his mouth to hers. She was, he realized in a flash of wonder and surprise, not pulling away.
The press of his lips against hers seemed to be a portal to a different time, when he was young and unschooled and she’d taught him with her soft gasps and moans of wonder.
He felt something open up inside him and cautioned himself against it. He might lust after Shona Imrie, but he couldn’t love her again. The pain of that first betrayal was still there, for all that it was seven years old.
His hands slipped behind her back, drew her forward until his arms could lock around her.
She made a sound in the back of her throat as she angled her head, and allowed him to deepen the kiss.
He wanted to touch her everywhere, strip her bare in the sunlight, cover her with kisses until she shivered and cried aloud. Even after all these years, he knew the texture of her skin. She’d always sighed when he’d kissed the underside of her breasts, or the curve of her waist. He’d run his fingers over her ankles to her toes, tickling her, giving her laughter in the middle of their loving.