From the first, Samuel had been Rhona’s savior. In fact, the nauseating truth was that Rhona’s husband had done a much better job of protecting her than her young lover ever had.
“We had a run of good years, successful in business and happy at home. Samuel loved Patrick and was a wonderful father to him.”
“You can see that when you meet Patrick,” Malcolm said.
“Yes, you can,” Rhona said in that soft tone that always made Malcolm’s bones melt.
He’d spent an eon living with no touch of affection to soften his isolation. He was magnanimous enough to be thankful that love had surrounded both his darling and his son. He wouldn’t wish the hell of his last years on his worst enemy. And Rhona was far from that.
She went on. “Samuel was fifty when we married.” That wry humor reappeared. “Onstage, he always played my father. When his health failed, I stopped acting, so I could nurse him. Luckily, we’d made good money while we worked together.”
“A dozen years of full houses as Londoners flocked to see the superb Mrs. Ashley.”
“Our company was the fashion.” She paused. “Samuel died five years ago. I could have gone back to my career, I suppose. Everything was in place for me to take over the company. While Samuel was sick, the actors toured under a manager. But losing Samuel took away my enthusiasm for acting, and I didn’t want Patrick to grow up in London. Nobody knew I was a good Scots lass. But I knew, and I wanted to come home.”
“So you bought a farm and settled near Loch Lomond. Did you never think of coming back to Dun Carron?”
She shook her head and a faint bitterness darkened her face. “Dun Carron holds too many painful memories. Even if your father would let me settle there. As far as I knew, he was still alive and in charge. And how could I take Patrick to a place where everyone would recognize him as Malcolm Innes’s child? Better my son and I retired to a place where we could make a new start. Me as a respectable widow with no connection to old scandal or to the notorious stage.”
“I don’t care what the world says about you.” He never had. Now even less than ever. “I take my hat off to you. Your courage makes me want to cheer.”
She eyed him as if suspecting some trick, but his admiration was sincere. “I did what I had to.”
His hand sliced the air, dismissing her self-effacing response. “You did more than that. You created something magnificent out of pain and failure. My father had it so wrong when he said I was too good for you. You’re too good for me. You always were.”
“Malcolm, I…” She looked stricken, although he hadn’t meant to upset her.
He spoke before she could argue with him. “It’s been a night of overwhelming revelations.” He dared to tell her what he intended, although he knew he risked ruining their uncertain truce. “Don’t make any decisions now. Sleep on it. But I’d like to court you, Rhona. I always wanted you to be the lady of Dun Carron.”
Her expression turned stormy, and her hands bunched on the table. “What if I don’t want to be courted?”
He stared at her steadily, seeing so much that had changed from the girl he’d loved and so much that stayed the same. “Are you saying you feel nothing for me?”
Rhona waved a despairing hand and stood to clear away the plates and glasses. She looked spent, not just physically but spiritually. He felt much the same. Too many impossible dreams had come true tonight. The way his life had changed in the space of mere hours left him reeling.
“I don’t know what I feel.”
That wasn’t true. The sexual awareness vibrating between them was almost visible. But he didn’t push for confessions. Tomorrow they’d talk again. More, he’d have a chance to spend time with Patrick, God willing.
And it was Christmas. If ever there was a time for wishes to be granted, it was Christmas. The signs were good. For the first time in eighteen years, Malcolm was spending the holy festival with people he loved.
Chapter 7
Malcolm lay awake in the comfortable room that Rhona had shown him into. A fire blazed in the hearth, and he stretched out under a pile of eiderdowns in a big oak bed.
The snowstorm seemed to have blown itself out. The house around him was silent, and he was drained, not just from the last few days, but from years of bracing to discover the worst.
Whatever happened next, his obsessive searching had reached a happier outcome than he’d ever dared imagine. Even if Rhona decided she couldn’t bear to see him again and Patrick evinced no interest in his long-lost father, the world was a brighter place now that Malcolm knew that both Patrick and Rhona remained in it.
Yet still he couldn’t sleep. His head was buzzing with Rhona’s astonishing story. How marvelous she was. If only he could tell his stiff-necked father just what a treasure he’d scorned all those years ago. She was a queen and a goddess, unlike anyone else.
He’d cherished the memory of the young Rhona, but already the woman she’d become, so much more complex and fascinating, encroached on that image. His faithful soul was doubly pledged to her. Even with Rhona doing her best to maintain the distance between them, he’d tasted something like happiness in her kitchen tonight. The nearest he’d come to happiness since she’d left him.
He’d found Rhona. He’d found Patrick. Surely heaven wouldn’t be vicious enough to snatch away this second chance at fulfillment.
Except his trust in heaven’s benevolence had come to a violent end when he was eighteen. He couldn’t accept that now he’d found his beloved and his child, they wouldn’t disappear again. How unbearable to think Rhona might send him back into the cold. In these last years, he’d barely held onto a scrap of humanity. What little remained of the man he’d once been would evaporate if there was to be nothing more between him and Rhona than one short evening of prickly conversation.
She’d answered his curiosity about where she’d been all this time. But his needs stretched far beyond mere curiosity. None of which he could satisfy after midnight in this house where she’d offered him such grudging shelter.
Malcolm punched his pillow and shifted yet again on the soft featherbed. He told himself he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since his darling had been ripped away from him, so what did it matter if he missed out on yet another? But on those frustrating, miserable nights, his love hadn’t been sleeping a few doors along the corridor.
A good portion of his restlessness stemmed from frustrated desire. Over the years, it was inevitable that the Rhona in his mind had lost some of her physical reality. But tonight, seeing her in the flesh – and what glorious flesh it was – reminded him how a glance from those green eyes had once made him as randy as a young bull.
He was no longer a young bull, but, by God, his body didn’t seem to recognize that reality. His body knew that paradise lay closer than it had in half a lifetime, and it was afire to bridge the distance.
Shifting onto his side, he wondered what time Rhona and Patrick got up in the morning. Malcolm might starve to touch her when he was with her, but that was still easier than being locked away without her.
Go to sleep, Malcolm. You can’t go blundering around the house, hunting for her. You don’t even know which room is hers. Not to mention that you want to convince her you’re good husband material. Forcing your way into her room and begging her to take you into her bed won’t make the best impression.
He closed his eyes on another sigh and tried to find a comfortable place in the bed. Although his restiveness had nothing to do with the bed and everything to do with the sexual excitement fizzing in his blood.
When the door opened, he wondered if he had in fact fallen asleep and was caught up in a dream. The flicker of a candle revealed Rhona in a white flannel nightdress, with the plaid shawl flung around her shoulders. Her rich red hair was confined in a single plait that trailed across the lush curve of her bosom.
His pulse racing with wicked anticipation, Malcolm pushed up in the bed. “Rhona?” Then common sense asserted itself. “Is something wrong
?”
She shook her head and stepped into the room, shutting the substantial oak door behind her. Malcolm’s heart crashed against his ribs and stole his breath. He’d been alone with her for most of the evening, but there was something particularly evocative about her entering his bedchamber.
“I don’t want Patrick to know I’m here,” she whispered.
“Do you want to talk some more?” He kept his voice to a murmur.
Her gesture expressed an uncharacteristic helplessness. “No.”
He frowned as he worked through the implications of that. “Have you come to throw me out into the snow, now the storm has passed?”
While Malcolm and Rhona hadn’t ended as friends exactly, she’d seemed to accept his presence in the house. But he couldn’t forget the hatred in her eyes when he’d first arrived. Perhaps now she’d had time to reflect on his plan to court her, she’d decided she was better off banishing him from her presence.
She looked shocked. “Of course not.”
Malcolm supposed that was something. He sucked in a relieved breath and recalled that he was naked. When her gaze fastened with unmistakable interest on his bare chest, the candlelight wavered, revealing the tremble of her hand.
Now, that was interesting. Very interesting indeed. “Then what are you doing here?”
She set the candle on top of the chest of drawers, and it was her turn to suck in a deep breath. “Actually I don’t know. It’s not for—”
“Bed sport?”
She avoided his eyes, and he wondered if she was blushing. The light wasn’t bright enough to tell. Young Rhona had gone red as a rowanberry. Tenderness pierced his heart at the thought of this sophisticated woman blushing like the innocent lass she’d once been.
“No.” She paused. “Not with Patrick in the house.”
Malcolm’s heart took off on another of those dizzying leaps. That sounded even more promising. Did that mean that if Patrick wasn’t in the house, she might consent to take him into her body?
She made another of those helpless gestures. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Neither could I.”
“It’s mad, but it felt wrong that you were so far away.”
“It does.”
“So I wondered if I can lie down beside you.” She paused. “Just lie down.”
He summoned a smile, although turbulent emotion churned in his gut. This was the first time she’d admitted that she recognized the bond linking them. “I understand.”
She gave a huff of wry laughter. “I wish to heaven I did.”
“Should I put on some clothes?” He pushed the bedcovers lower. “I’m not wearing anything.”
He bit back a groan as her eyes traced a searing path down his body, revealed now to the base of his belly. As she completed that leisurely inspection, she could have no idea how hunger sharpened her features.
His cock stirred, and he hoped to hell she didn’t guess his disquiet. After all these years without her, if she lay beside him, even without the possibility of congress, it would feel like a gift. He didn’t want his powerful masculine urges to frighten her away.
She blinked and glanced away, as if she realized how her avid curiosity betrayed her. “Perhaps…perhaps that might be a good idea.”
When she turned her back, a sardonic laugh escaped him. “You have seen me naked before.”
“That was another lifetime,” she said, and the sadness in her voice quietened his burgeoning excitement.
“Aye, it was.” He rolled out of bed and with shaking hands tugged on his breeches. “You’re safe to look now.”
She turned to watch him slide back into bed. He held his hand out. “Come here, Rhona.”
After she bent to blow out the candle, the fire provided enough light for him to watch as she unwrapped the shawl from around her and let it fall to the floor. The unselfconscious grace of the movement made the breath catch in his tight throat.
Gingerly, she slipped into the bed and lay flat as he pulled the covers over her. “May I hold you in my arms?”
“You won’t—”
“No, you have my word.” He struggled to explain something he didn’t fully understand himself. “I want you. You must know that.”
“I supposed.”
“But I want more from you than just a quick tumble.”
“It might be easier if that was all you wanted.” Regret weighted her voice.
Malcolm sighed and shifted onto his side. It was difficult to believe that he was so close to the woman he’d assumed lost to him forever. “How do you like to sleep?”
It seemed absurd that he had to ask, given she’d borne his child and the memory of her had shadowed most of his life.
For years, he hadn’t thought back to those joyous, innocent days when they’d both learned about love’s pleasure. In the midst of his despair, dwelling on what they’d done to each other at Dun Carron had stabbed a knife into his heart. But now he’d finally found her, he could revisit those sweet encounters, without grief and anger poisoning the memory.
That last summer before disaster struck, he’d spent hours lying in the sun with Rhona, learning what she liked and seeking his own delight, too. Hours brilliant with light and love and laughter.
Her mind must be running along similar lines. “We did so much with each other, so many things we shouldn’t, but we never shared a bed, did we?”
“No.” They’d lain together in the lush summer grass of a hidden dell, lost high in the hills encircling the castle. He remembered 1806 as a summer without rain, although because this was Scotland, that couldn’t be true.
“I used to dream of holding you all night. I longed for the day I made you my wife, when I could carry you back to my room at the castle and at last claim you without secrecy.”
A crushing silence descended. She, too, must be counting the many things they’d missed out on. Not least his chance to see his son grow up to become the fine young man he was today.
Malcolm raised a barrier against that thought. It promised to break a heart that had already broken too many times before. Tonight wasn’t the time for bitter regret. Tonight was the time to give thanks that after all his searching, he’d finally found Rhona and Patrick. What happened next was still to be decided, but right now it should be enough that she was here beside him.
“I usually sleep on my side,” she said, after a long, oppressive hiatus, burdened with too many thoughts of what might have been.
“Me, too.”
With a lot of awkward maneuvering, they ended up with Rhona’s back pressed into his chest and her head resting on the arm he curled beneath her. Lying like this, it would be so easy to cup those soft breasts. But he knew better than to tempt fate’s mercy. And Rhona’s forbearance.
He was devilish glad that she’d told him to put some clothes on. His breeches lent him a modicum of modesty. All this wriggling around played merry hell with good intentions.
Malcolm shifted his hips so she didn’t feel his hardness pressing into her luscious rump. Since the day she left, he’d dreamed of having her with him again. He didn’t want to give her any excuse to run back to her room. It might be excruciating to preserve the chaste contact, but it was better than sleeping alone.
Not that he’d been sleeping when she arrived. Not that he expected to sleep now.
“Better?” he asked softly.
“Better.”
He buried his face in her hair, wishing he had the right to undo that luxuriant fall of red. When they’d come together during those sun-kissed afternoons at Dun Carron, her wealth of silky hair had cascaded around their straining bodies.
Malcolm breathed deep, taking in her rich scent. She smelled of herbs and shortbread and essence of Rhona. That elusive scent had haunted him most of his life. He hadn’t expected it to be so familiar, even though her fragrance had twined its way through his lonely dreams.
She remained tense under his touch, although he was careful to keep his hands on her arms. He rubb
ed his face in her hair and dared to kiss her crown before he raised his head. “You’re not comfortable.”
“I’m just a little nervous.”
She didn’t need to tell him. He heard the rapid flutter of her breath and felt the way she trembled in his hold.
“I told you I won’t make any demands on you tonight.”
He chose his words with care. Beyond tonight, he wasn’t promising anything. He needed to express his love physically. Before he went insane with wanting her, he hoped she might come around to the same opinion.
“I know. I believe you.” She shifted, and he bit his lip to hold back a gasp, even as that tentative expression of trust settled in his heart and ignited a warm glow.
Somewhere deep inside, she still knew him, recognized him as her match. He hoped to hell that the recognition wasn’t buried too deep. It would be a sodding tragedy if her desire never saw the light of day. “Thank you.”
She went on in a tentative voice. “But it’s five years since I lay in a man’s arms. Even longer since the man touching me was you.”
He bit back a long sigh of satisfaction. So there had been no other lovers apart from Samuel. Malcolm had no right to gloat on this confession, but he was man enough to like hearing that she’d slept alone since her husband’s death.
“Do you want to go?” By God, it hurt to say those words, but he wanted her to understand that he had no intention of curtailing her freedom, even if she wed him.
Rhona as a girl had been headstrong and willful. From what Malcolm saw, those qualities had only become more pronounced in the woman. He’d always liked her spirit. He liked it even more now, after discovering that her strength of character had helped her survive. A weaker woman would have succumbed to her evil circumstances.
He nearly died of suspense before she answered. “No.”
Malcolm sucked in a relieved breath and decided to shut up before he said something that sent her scurrying.
For a long time, they lay like strangers, but gradually her rigidity eased. She shifted again and stretched her legs out along his. He tightened his grip on her and by accident brushed her breast through the flannel.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Scandal: a Christmas collection of Historical Romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 1) Page 20