Seductive as Flame (7 page)

She licked her bottom lip. “Did I get it all?”

You’ll get it all on Monday.
“Almost,” he said, and reaching across the small table, he slid the pad of his index finger over her full bottom lip and scooped up the remnant of cream. “There, that’s better.” His deep voice resonated with a subtle authority, as if he had the right to monitor her appearance. Sitting back in his chair, he slipped his fingertip into his mouth, held her gaze, and gently sucked.

“Oh God.” A spiking rush of flame-hot desire shook her to the core, and too late she realized she’d softly moaned the words.

“Careful, darling,” Alec whispered, and quickly leaning forward, he took the spoon from her trembling hand. “Relax.” A soft breath of warning.

Shakily inhaling, she tried to ignore the frenzied carnal urgency electrifying her senses, confounding her good judgment. There were countless people in the kitchen as well as a young boy in close proximity. This was hardly the time to succumb to overwrought passion.

He gently touched her fingertips. “Would you like something more? A cup of tea perhaps?”

“Thank you, no,” Zelda replied, marveling at his self-discipline, trying to govern her voice to an equal mildness. “Everything was delicious.” There, that was a suitably decorous tone. “Not that I needed any of it, but who could resist. And I don’t mean
that
, so kindly stop smiling.”

“I’m just smiling in general,” he said, looking amused. “I like the cozy kitchen, the company, the lack of an audience, the domesticity. It’s all very nice. Don’t you agree?”

“I do. It’s charming—a comfortable interlude in a busy day.” It helped her composure that he spoke so casually, lounged in his chair so casually, dealt with women in his life so casually; a warning there. “And thank you as well for the opportunity to meet your son.” Her gaze fell on Chris’s bent head as he was busily counting his cards. “It reminds me of—” Unexpectedly, tears welled in her eyes. “Forgive me.” She sucked in a quick breath and blinked away the wetness, blaming her restive nerves for her vulnerability. “It’s just a bit of nostalgia,” she said, able to speak with a degree of tranquility once again. “I’d forgotten what a pleasure it is to be with a youngster. I do so enjoy children.”

“I could give you one,” he said, a teasing note in his voice.

She smiled faintly. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

In that small, hushed moment, with the cooks cooking and the heat and smells of the kitchen wafting around them, with busy servants everywhere and the small boy between them counting his cards, an impromptu exchange of two short audacious phrases cataclysmically altered their well-defined lives.

It was as if a key turned in a lock and suddenly a door opened and they stood on the threshold of a bright new world of staggering possibility.

Then, taking a small breath to rid herself of irrational hope, Zelda calmly said, “Nice but impractical, my dear Dalgliesh.”

“But not impossible.” He was a man of great wealth and with it great power, and suddenly, without reason, he wanted this. He sat very still, his large hands resting lightly on the table, and then he slowly turned them over palms up in silent offering. “You decide,” he said, this man who’d never thought about a child of his own before, nor asked a woman for anything. “Just think about it,” he whispered, rash and reckless, ignoring the world, the entire universe.

“Papa, Papa, look! I have the right number! I won again!”

A small, sticky hand holding a fan of cards was shoved in Dalgliesh’s face, reality intruded, and with it the clashing discord of his life.

“If you men will excuse me,” Zelda lightly said, refusing to let her voice quiver, refusing to break down over something so foolish. “I remembered a matter I must see to.” She abruptly came to her feet, escape utterly essential before she lost control.

“Can’t it wait?” Chris exclaimed. “Tell her, Papa, tell her it can wait!”

“Miss MacKenzie has family here, Chris. She can’t spend all afternoon playing with us.” He’d been saved from the very edge of the precipice.

“Why not? Can’t they take care of themselves?”

“I’d love to stay, Chris,” Zelda said. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

Chris’s lower lip projected in a pout. “For certain?”

What was certain was that she’d indeed like to play with his father until the end of time. What was less certain was whether the profligate Earl of Dalgliesh, who amused himself with a great many women, would agree. “Why don’t I try. How would that be?”

“She must try, mustn’t she, Papa! Tell her, tell her!”

“If you’d like, Chris, we could go riding tomorrow without the hunters. Perhaps Miss MacKenzie would agree to join us?” Alec said, as if he’d not just stepped back from the brink, as if he wasn’t completely crazed. “She’s a very good rider. She could teach you a thing or two about jumping. And we could all have lunch somewhere.”

Chris’s eyes swung up to Zelda. “Please, please come! I want to learn how to jump. I’ll be ever so good, I promise!”

“We’d both like you to come,” Alec said, a wicked gleam in his eyes as he uttered the word
come
. “Say you will.” He could no more relinquish her company than he could stop breathing—or fucking—which saner thought mitigated his disquiet. “Why don’t we say eight. Is that too early for you, Miss Mackenzie?” He’d have her all day.

How could she refuse when she was being offered unalloyed bliss? “I’d love to,” she said, relegating reason and logic to the black void, her happiness tied to this man who’d been a stranger mere hours ago.

“Well, then, that’s settled,” he blandly said. “We’ll meet you at the stables at eight. We could walk you upstairs if you like.”

“No, no, please don’t—that is . . . I’m quite capable of finding my way. Don’t get up!” she cried as Dalgliesh made to rise. He’d proclaim their friendship before everyone, damn his recklessness.

“It’s easy to find your way, Papa,” Chris artlessly said, immune to the emotional tumult. “The stairs go right up into the dining room. Come, Papa, show me how to count the picture cards.”

“I’ll leave you to count cards, Dalgliesh. Until tomorrow.”

“I’ll see you at dinner.” It was an ultimatum no matter how softly spoken.

Both alarmed and filled with joy, she nodded. “Until dinner then.”

CHAPTER 5

P
LEADING FATIGUE, ZELDA avoided teatime. The hunters hadn’t returned yet, so the company would be largely female. She wasn’t quite up to displaying the necessary indifference to Dalgliesh’s wife. Which in itself was disturbing. How should it matter? It wasn’t as though the marriage was a love match and she was trespassing on hallowed ground. Although she
had
crossed an unprecedented boundary by replying so impulsively to Dalgliesh’s unbelievable offer.

When she shouldn’t have.

Currently removed from temptation, however, logic more readily held sway, and the impossible and impractical were more easily jettisoned. Zelda took the time before dinner to put aside foolish things; she revived her more discerning sensibilities, reclaimed her equilibrium, and primarily reminded herself that she mustn’t make too much of Dalgliesh’s attentions. He was notable for amusing himself in lady’s boudoirs; this was no more than another flirtation for him. And as everyone knew, country house parties were notorious for amorous games.

Not that she was necessarily averse to the game, nor had she entirely eschewed such playful sport in the past. On occasion she’d enjoyed the company of some lovely man for one of those lovely long weekends. Other times she’d preferred her own company. She wasn’t a slave to temptation.

Or hadn’t been.

Dalgliesh was different.

Bewilderingly so.

But a good talking to, a short nap, a leisurely bath, a gossipy maid who helped her dress and put up her hair went far to temper her mad, heady feelings and return her to a more sober reality. She’d simply accept Dalgliesh’s company for a brief dalliance, thoroughly enjoy herself on Monday, and bid him adieu with the casualness she was sure he’d prefer. A man of his sexual repute only played at love, his shocking offer in the kitchen notwithstanding. She was sure he was as relieved as she that Chris had interrupted that astonishing exchange.

 

O
N THE CONTRARY . . .

Try as he might, Dalgliesh hadn’t been able to dislodge the startling concept from his mind despite deliberately staying with Chris in the nursery until it was almost too late to dress for dinner. In an effort to avoid facing the disturbing Miss MacKenzie, he’d ignored the first bell signaling that it was time to dress; he’d also ignored the second bell indicating drinks were being served. But once Chris had finished his nursery supper and was assembling an intricate puzzle, Creiggy gave Alec a searching look across the small table. “No dinner for you tonight?” she murmured.

He was forced to at least answer, if not make a decision. “What do you think?” he said like he might have twenty years ago.

“You must make up your own mind,” she answered like she would have then.

“That’s the problem.”

“She seems very nice,” his old nanny blandly said. “I like that MacKenzie hair. It’s magnificent—like a blaze of glory.”

“As if I care about that,” he muttered.

“She won your race. Is she really that good?”

He smiled. “She’s good, but not that good.”

“I thought so. That horse of yours likes to win.”

“Zeus can afford to be polite on occasion.”

“When you’re being polite.”

“I had reason to be,” he gently said.

“Speaking of those reasons, are you worried about—” She rolled her eyes.

He didn’t have to ask whom the eye roll denoted. “It could be a problem.”

“It never has been before.”

“I never gave a damn before.”

She hid her shock. “I see,” she calmly said.

“Which is why I can’t decide if I want to go down to dinner.”

She looked at him for a contemplative moment. “I didn’t raise a coward, my boy.”

“It’s not me. I’m not sure I care to hurt her.”

“Maybe you won’t.”

“Of course I will. I have nothing to offer a woman.”

Mercy me, there is a God.
But Mrs. Creighton only said, “Your mother isn’t as fragile as you think.”

“What if you’re wrong? Then what?” This wasn’t a new discussion.

“Very well. But I don’t think Miss MacKenzie is breakable. She looks like a strong woman to me. She’s Scots for one thing.”

Dalgliesh chuckled. “The woman of Achruach, you mean.” It was Creiggy’s favorite story.

“ ‘The day I cannot keep my countenance and hold men in their place and work my will on them, that is a day you will never see,’” Creiggy softly quoted, a half smile on her lined face. “Now go and see if your MacKenzie lass can put you in your place.” She glanced at Chris. “I’ll have him ready at eight tomorrow morning. Go.”

S
TERN TALKING TO or not, Zelda had been equally reluctant to face Dalgliesh, and she came down late for the drinks hour. Alec must have changed his mind, she decided; he wasn’t in the drawing room. Standing in the doorway, she saw her father near the fireplace in the midst of his cronies. She was still debating whether to walk in and if so what to drink, when Oz Lennox, splendidly handsome in evening rig, walked up, smiled, and asked, “Whiskey or champagne?”

“It depends what kind of whiskey,” she replied with an answering smile.

“Follow me, my dear, and I’ll dazzle you with the array.” He offered her his arm. “Come, she won’t bite.”

“How perceptive.”

“I had a lot of practice before my marriage. I know who bites and who doesn’t—figuratively speaking, of course,” he added with a grin. Taking her hand, he placed it on his arm. “Come, this’ll be easy. And after a drink or two, I guarantee you, nothing much matters.”

She glanced at him, amused. “More of your practice?”

He laughed. “An ongoing process in my case. But I have a darling wife who allows me to be troublesome at times. As I do her,” he said with a quirked smile. “I’ll introduce you later. She’s still with the children in the nursery.”

“How many children do you have?”

“Two—both the most beautiful children on the face of the earth, of course. Ah, here we are.” A servant stood behind a drinks table. “I’d suggest the whiskey from Locaber; it’s clear as glass, smooth and strong, and full of wonder.”

After collecting their drinks, they moved to a quiet corner, drank the fine whiskey, and talked about the hunt, the weather, Fitz’s hounds.

Oz was facing the door, so he saw Dalgliesh walk into the drawing room looking like he’d just come out of his bath. He was slicking his wet hair back behind his ears with a quick brushing gesture as he scanned the room. It was clear that he’d seen them, but he didn’t come over; instead, the earl grabbed a glass of whiskey from a servant passing by with a tray of drinks and kept his distance.