How to Marry a Highlander (11 page)

Twining her hands into his waistcoat, she let him bear her back against the hothouse wall, and at that moment was introduced to that particular hardness the likes of which Annie had been telling her about for years—a
masculine
hardness that told a woman a man was fully prepared for the marriage act.

But they were not married and were unlikely to become married. He was kissing her because she had invited him to do so with a wager, the terms of which were truly impossible to fulfill even given her early serendipitous success. And although he wanted her to go away and had in fact told her so in no uncertain terms, she was kissing him back and allowing him to press her thighs apart with his knee and massage her behind with his strong fingers until she was mad for some uncertain satisfaction. When his hands urged her hips against his she arced to him. For a fleeting instant she knew a frisson of gratification, an instant that made her seek it again. It felt
so good
. Far too good. Better than her wildest imaginings.

“
Oh
.”

The rumble in his chest echoed her gasp. He kissed her neck, his mouth hot on her tender skin, and the humid air of summer bursting with life and sex surrounded her and filled her head and body with yearning. Six years of need, a young womanhood of frustrated passion desperate to find a mate, seemed to burst from her and fed itself into her clutching hands and her gasps of pleasure.

He held her against him and spoke at her throat. “Why did ye chuise me, Teresa?”

“Why did I—
Oh
.” She nestled her hips into his kneading hands.

“I’ve nothing.” He nipped at her lower lip and a tingling rush filled her belly. “No money.” His hands bracketed her hips, his fingertips caressing, pleasing. “A crumbling castle. A brood o’ wimmenfolk I canna even clothe properly. A benighted title no proud man would wish to claim.” His voice was heavy with bewilderment and need. “Why me?”

She ran her palms along his arms, solid and bunched with tension, and groaned from the echoing tension deep in her. “I don’t know.”

His hands stilled. “Ye
dinna ken
?”

“I dinna ken!” She opened her eyes. “It was a fantasy, a dream, a make-believe story like the stories I always tell. But this time I told it to myself.” The words stumbled from her tongue. “I saw you that night at the ball, and you were so far beyond my reach, and I invented it but I never expected it to come true. I don’t really know how I actually went through with it, came to London and went to your flat and proposed to you. Propositioned you. It was a dream. An impossible dream. It still feels like a dream, for I cannot have possibly traveled so far from being the exceedingly proper wife of the local vicar to kissing an earl with a dark and violent past in a hothouse. It is unthinkable.”

“’Tis anly a dream, yet ye’ve gone an done this to me?” His eyes seemed to plead and accuse at once. But he had done it all to her, taken her in his arms and touched her and made her need not some ephemeral taste of spring, but
him
. She wanted to be the spring ewe to his ram. She wanted to be the nectar in the bud to his hummingbird’s probe. She wanted him to make her a woman in this hothouse. Now. Before it was too late and she had to box up her mating metaphors as well as her dreams and store them all away at the back of a closet forever.

His arms fell away from her and he stepped back. “The exceedingly proper wife o’ the local vicar?” he said in a thick voice.

“Not yet. And
his
idea. And my parents’. Decidedly not mine.” She shivered in revulsion.

“Ye’d be a poor match for a beadle.”

“If by beadle you mean a vicar, I consider that a compliment.” She lifted her hands to her flaming cheeks. “Now what?”

“Nou, Miss Teresa Finch-Freeworth,” he said in his beautiful rolling brogue, a muscle contracting in his jaw. “Ye leave.”

Of course. He had paid on the wager. He owed her nothing more.

She moved around him toward the door, but he grasped her hand and stayed her.

“Ye’ve got me so I dinna ken what’s up or down.”

“Then the sentiment is mutual.”

She disengaged from his grasp and left the hothouse. As she walked rapidly along the path toward the picnic blankets, willing away the heat in her cheeks and the quivering in her blood and the sudden acute disappointment of having gotten what she wanted but not at all what she began to realize she needed, she noticed a small carriage alongside the others.

She recognized it, as well as the soberly clad gentleman disembarking from it. Like the devil, the Reverend Elijah Waldon had arrived at the ideal moment to cause the most damage.

H
er vicar was a starched, priggish pole of a Sassenach, and Duncan took a quick disliking to any parents who would seek to ally their vibrant, passionate daughter with such a man.

She affected the introductions with grace. Only a hint of dismay in her lily pad eyes conveyed her displeasure over welcoming Waldon to her party. Duncan shook the man’s hand and found his grip surprisingly firm.

“How fortunate you gentlemen are,” Waldon said expansively, “to enjoy the company of so many lovely ladies.” He chuckled as though he’d uttered a witticism.

“Will ye join us for refreshments, Reverend?” Elspeth said.

“I should like that, my lady.” With amiable, self-satisfied smiles he arranged himself stiffly on the blanket. Duncan moved to Finch-Freeworth standing apart.

“Yer sister says yer parents intend her match wi’ Waldon,” he said easily, as though the notion of it didn’t clamp his stomach in a vise.

Finch-Freeworth nodded. “Is it any wonder she felt she had to do this”—he gestured to the picnic—“to escape that fate?”

Clearly her brother didn’t know the entire truth of it. She was not only escaping her fate. She was trying to build a dream.

He’d done the same. Seven years ago, after he returned from the East, he’d found and killed the man that had led his sister, Miranda, to her death. Then he went to work for Myles. Every guinea he’d earned for the odd strongman jobs he’d performed had gone home to his lands. He’d made Myles pay him well and he’d sent thousands of pounds to Scotland. But putting the estate back on its feet was only part of his plan. He dreamed that someday when he died, Sorcha would inherit the estate that she so ably managed despite limitations.

That his stubborn half-sister refused to marry and produce an heir was the only weakness in that plan. If Elspeth were to inherit, it would be the end of their lands. Elspeth was as starched and prim as Waldon, and she’d give away the land management to a useless fool like their father had, and the family would be ruined once and for all.

They were nearly ruined already.

His brow loosened. All but Moira. She would live in comfort. And Lily and Abigail were finding happiness too, all because of a fiery-haired, moss-eyed whirlwind of a lady who, it seemed, was as nonplused about this all as he was.

“I saw you walk away with my sister,” Finch-Freeworth said. His brow was low. “I didn’t stop you because I know you’ve spent little time in each other’s company. I think if she intends to marry you she should know who she’s marrying before it’s too late. But when I saw her return I regretted that I hadn’t gone after you. Are you dealing with her honorably, my lord?”

“If I told ye I weren’t, what would ye do?”

“I would call you out and shoot you in the heart.”

“That’d put period to her plan, nou, wouldn’t it?”

Finch-Freeworth’s throat worked. “I care for her, Eads. She may be a curiosity to you, but she’s one of the best friends of my life and here in London she’s under my protection. With a word I can send her home.”

“An wi’ a word, sir,” Duncan said quietly, “I can do the same.”

Finch-Freeworth’s gaze darted to Una. He swung it back. “Are you threatening me, my lord?”

“Wi’ what would I threaten ye, then? The dueling pistol ye’ve already got pointed at ma heart?”

“With . . .” He seemed to struggle. He set his jaw. “I will not trade my sister’s virtue for my happiness.”

“No one’s said ye must.”

Finch-Freeworth’s eyes were like his sister’s at times, swiftly assessing, but considerably more reserved. While her emotions were on her face for Duncan to read like a book, her brother’s were hidden. He’d seen the brutality of war; perhaps suffering had made him wary. Now he didn’t want to believe what he was hearing.

But Duncan had noticed Una’s happiness lately. He’d listened to her speak of this man with warmth and yet a guarded uncertainty that told him she was unwilling to give her heart away fully unless assured that her affections were returned. He could tell Finch-Freeworth now that the field was clear; the prize was won and he would hand it over when asked.

He didn’t. A man must come to his epiphanies in his own time.

Teresa cast him a glance, saw him watching her, and smiled as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

On the other hand, a man might be dragged to his epiphany against his will.

L
aughing from yet another of Mr. Smythe’s thin flatteries, the moment Effie climbed from the carriage her giggling halted and her face grew weary.

“Ye dinna actually like Mr. Smythe, do ye?” Lily asked her as they ascended the hotel steps. Apparently she and Effie had burned the candle wax all night planning the wedding feast, but the betrothed twin did not seem any the worse for the lack of sleep.

Effie, on the other hand, was clearly miserable despite the day’s flirtations.

“Ach,” she grumbled. “Least he’s no such a sissypot as Mr. Waldon.”

“Sh! Dinna say such a thing.” Lily darted a grin at Teresa.

“Teresa daena like that prosy old bore any more than I do. She likes Duncan. But if she marries him she’ll probably start chastising me just like he does.” She looked back at Teresa. “So I hope ye daena because I like ye just fine nou.”

Lily laughed and squeezed her twin’s hand. “Oh, Effie, I do luve ye. I wish ye could be as happy as I am.”

Effie’s face took on a private, fighting look. Lily released her and hurried toward the stairs to the kitchen.

Teresa went to Effie. “Perhaps it is time to try something new.” When her misery and desperation had threatened to overcome her, it was what she’d done after all. The earl was right: She would not win the wager, but there was happiness to be had in her new friends’ joy.

Effie screwed up her delicate nose.

Teresa led her toward the parlor. The elderly woman in black sat at the window as always. Teresa whispered, “Sometimes leaving one’s own cares behind and focusing on another’s can ease the unhappiness of both.”

“I’m no unhappy,” Effie said truculently, but she wandered into the parlor and plopped down on the piano bench. She pursed her lips then set her fingers to the ivories and tapped out a tune. It was one of her favorites, sprightly yet with an air of melancholy that made Teresa imagine Highland skies stripped with grey clouds. Effie hadn’t a truly fine voice, but it was clean and sweet enough to please. When she finished, she rested her fingertips on the keys and turned to look at the old woman.

Two identical streaks of tears ran down the lady’s withered cheeks. Effie’s eyes went round. She went and stood awkwardly by the woman.

“Ma’am?” She fidgeted with her skirts. “I wonder if I may offer ye . . . tea?”

“Dear girl.” The woman’s voice was papery from disuse. “My Joseph liked me to play that song to him when he was a boy.”

Effie grabbed a chair and sat on the edge of it. “What does he like to listen to nou, I wonder?”

“He wrote to me of hearing the waltz in a Vienna ballroom. He said it was magnificent.”

“Weel, that must’ve been something, to be sure. I envy him. I’ve no gone anywhere, an soon I’ll be back home without having seen any place but Lunnontown. But, oh, hou I’d like to travel the world!” She sighed.

“My Joseph is an officer in the Royal Navy.”

“Is he yer son?”

“Grandson.” Another tear chased the silvery track. “He is a fine boy. The only family I have left.”

Effie chuckled. “I usually think I’ve far too much family.” Tentatively she reached forward and gave the woman’s hand a gentle pat. “Does he write to ye aften, then?”

“Every week.” The skin on her aged brow was like tissue. Now it crinkled. “But I haven’t heard from him in over a month. He wrote that he would come home on furlough and that I was to meet him here in London, for his time in England would be brief. I fear something dreadful has happened to him.”

Effie waved a hand in the air. “Ye mustn’t think like that. There’s a guid explanation for it. Mebbe his horse threw a shoe, or the carriage wheel broke, or he left his luggage behind an went back for it.”

“Or the tide was low in port and all the ships I could have embarked upon were grounded for weeks.”

Teresa started. Beside her at the door stood a slim, broad-shouldered young gentleman in a crisp blue and white uniform, a plumed hat cocked beneath his arm.

“Joseph!” The old woman rose and teetered. Effie leaped up and grasped her arm to steady her.

“Grandmama.” He came forward with a warm smile for his grandmother and Effie. The woman grabbed his arms and clung. “How good it is to see you again, my dearest,” he said, lifting her gnarled fingers to his lips. “And how fetching you are in this frock.” His eyes twinkled. “You haven’t aged a day since we were together last Christmas.” He turned his attention on Effie. “And who is this lovely lady who has so kindly kept you company in my absence?”

Effie stammered and blinked pretty eyes and said nothing. The naval lieutenant smiled and made her laugh and regarded her with warm appreciation.

Later Effie told Teresa that her heart was so full at that moment that she could not even remember her name. And by the time her sisters entered the parlor an hour later for tea, she could not in fact remember that she had ever known the world without Lieutenant Joseph P. Caruthers in it.

C
alling upon her the morning after the picnic, Mr. Waldon informed Teresa that she must cut her new friends and return to Harrows Court Crossing or risk unpardonable social censure for allying herself with a family of besmirched reputation.