by Lisa Torquay
With this woman on simple mounds of hay, he felt as if he lay in the most lavish bed of the most lavish palace of the most far-fetched folk tale ever told. He wanted nothing else. Except the woman, that is.
The one who would be gone in mere hours.
The one from whom he tried to stay away.
And could not. Would not.
The same who had just spoiled him for others.
Bluidy hell!
Legs tangled with his, in complete abandon, she moved to peck his shoulder. He turned to her. “How are you faring?” he asked.
“Perfectly alright,” she answered as she burrowed further against him.
“Some women experience pain in the first time,” he informed her.
“Perhaps the fact I ride a lot has helped.” It might be the exact truth.
The memory of her tightness, and the way her channel gripped him not once, but twice, got him nearly ready for more.
The impossible lass made nothing easier when her ripe lips closed around one of his nipples. “Lass—” he groaned.
Delicate, wicked fingers found him already hardening under the end of the tartan he had pulled over them. She lifted her head to him. “Do you think we could have another go?”
A hundred would be more like it, he thought.
“Come ride me, Sassenach,” he invited, fully aroused now. “I could think of nothing else after that day with Fiadhaich.” And he pulled her to him.
As he showed her how to do it, she adjusted her balance and pushed him to the edge in the process. “You’re so delicious,” she moaned, moving over his flesh. “I can feel you everywhere.” Her spine arched with her delectation.
She was going to drive him to madness yet again. “Same here,” he growled, palming her bouncing breasts and letting her undo him at her will.
Their moans and groans dotted the night as they dispensed with words. They fell asleep entangled and cocooned in his tartan.
Morning light filtered through the wood planks when Fingal opened his eyes, still lying on the hay, covered by the wool.
Alone.
The lass had left.
Debranua’s hooves pounded on the park’s wet ground in loud thumps one early morning three weeks later. Jumping over fallen branches, splashing through potholes, they cut the cool wind and made the earth rattle in their wake. Catriona gave free rein to the mare in the hopes of shaking her brain from the memories, the melancholy. From the longing that twisted her insides night and day. The misty early morning offered her an empty Hyde Park, through which she rode at her will.
The trip back to London had followed the usual routine of daylight travel and nights at inns. Bumping and jolting in the carriage made her choose to ride part of the way. Her fingers on the reins had ached to turn the mare and gallop back across the border at breakneck speed.
That morning after…the most memorable night of her life, she had not deemed herself capable of waking Fingal to bid him good-bye. Had she done it, she would not have found the courage to do at least this right thing and return. With a last look at his form sleeping sated on the hay, she had carefully untangled her body from his, thrown her cloak over her shoulder and rushed to her chambers to dress and leave.
One of the stable hands had readied Debranua for her before she went to meet Flora and Peter at the inn where she had kept her carriage, her trunk already carried there the evening before.
Back in this foggy, crowded, and noisy city, she’d had a peaceful townhouse to herself for barely a day before her mother and Anna arrived from the country. Their father had gone directly to Scotland. With her mother and sister around, the dragging social events recommenced.
There were times Catriona sat through a tea party, a garden party, a dinner party, whatever, and burst into the utter need to scream! Or the need to run somewhere quiet and green, shed those restraining, horrible clothes, bathe in cool waters.
Something!
Something that would rip out these confusing feelings. Even better, something that would fulfil her, soothe her. Appease the tempest quaking inside her. Something that—
Or someone.
Not anyone. Him
At this point, she would make a feeble attempt not to remember, but the memories flooded in, anyway. And soothed her, yes. But also made the longing, the need, so intense it chafed, corroded, threatened to weaken her good intensions. It all ran so deep, she could not even bring herself to cry. Not even this relief was available.
“Catriona,” Anna greeted her as she returned from the park and entered the morning room, empty except for both sisters.
“Good morning,” she said, flushed from the ride, before taking her seat.
Head lowered, she did not look at her sister. Had not been able to meet her best friend’s eyes since they had gathered again in London.
“I am worried about you,” the younger woman started, a puzzled frown on her face.
At that, Catriona snapped her attention to her. “How so?”
“I don’t know…you are different, somehow,” she said tentatively.
Their mother had also been eyeing her elder daughter quizzically for three weeks. “There’s nothing to worry about, Anne.” Catriona tried to imprint a casual tone to her voice, but did not succeed much. The pressure inside was becoming too unbearable.
“Then why are you so quiet…so distant, distracted?” Clearly, she missed her elder sister’s companionship and warmth.
“It’s nothing.” The lie too clear for effect.
Catriona would have to carry the burden of her mistakes alone. She would not allow anyone to suffer for them. Her choices led to this, and she must take the consequences on her own.
“It’s not nothing and you know it!” the girl said with exasperation.
At least, said consequences would not get more serious than they already were. Her menses came during the trip back though she and Fingal had followed nature’s designs to a T.
“It’s just—” Catriona halted, took a sip of tea to moisten her dry throat, “just that I miss Scotland. No more than that.” A half-truth must be better than a lie.
“Oh, sister mine!” Anna stood up from her place and came to hug Catriona, intending to offer solace.
The tender gesture did what no wild ride had accomplished so far—it brought tears to her eyes. The dam cracked, and it all poured out of her emotionally exhausted self. Anna murmured words of support as the crisis drew its course.
For the first time in weeks, she was able to look her sister in the eye. “Anne, you’re such a precious friend,” she said.
The blonde girl smiled. “Let’s do something amusing today,” she proposed. “I got an idea!” She brightened instantly, in her light-hearted way. “Let’s do a puppet theatre. What do you think? Mama could take part, too.”
Puppet theatres were fun with Anna and would serve to take her mind from the last weeks’ events. “A delightful suggestion, I’d say.”
After finishing their breakfast, they headed to the library to prepare their entertainment.
“This isn’t how you do it, Dave,” Fingal irritably scolded as he had been doing to each and every stable hand for more or less three weeks.
“You shovel the dirt like this.” He showed him with a furious, barely contained energy. They were in one of the stables, a rain that would not relent flogging the roof.
It had started the day after the…the…she left and had not lifted since. It was as if the damned woman took the sun with her. Which she very well might have because everything seemed to have become dull, colourless. Soulless.
From the moment his eye opened in the stable that morning to register her absence, something snapped in him. No matter what he did, his damned mood would not mend. He tried everything. Ride Fiadhaich full speed, tick. Cold dips in that full-of-memories loch, tick. Work like a war prisoner, tick.
Thinking of it, he should not have returned to the loch, another thing in a long list for which she spoiled him. The stockyard, tick.
The damned adjoining shed, tick. Wine, tick, because she had splashed him with it.
Every single cursed thing.
The lad stood with him, seeming at a loss what to do. “You go help Craig. I’ll finish here,” he said because he needed to be alone. Again.
“Aye, my laird,” the boy assented and left with a too-relieved expression.
Fingal worked on this and the other stable chores like the hounds of hell chased after him. He worked until he had no choice but to return to his manor where the endless string of memories would haunt him throughout the night.
Rain-soaked, cold, and glowering, he strode to the study in search of the warm—and fleeting—solace whisky would offer. Bursting through the door, he aimed at the sideboard, pouring a more than generous dose.
“They say you’ve been intractable these days,” Drostan said from behind him.
Fingal swivelled abruptly to find his eldest brother sitting on an armchair by the fire.
He downed the quintessential drink in one gulp before answering. “This rain is causing many delays.”
“Is it?” the laird asked doubtfully. “It will be a few weeks before we must bring the livestock back inside their barns.” As they were wont to do in autumn.
Fingal produced no answer to that since his brother had the right of it. He grunted agreement and returned to the sideboard.
“You need not marry the McTavish lass if you have…misgivings.” The laird went right to the jugular.
Damn him! Fingal swore. He was too perceptive. “I have no misgivings,” Fingal answered harshly. That is, unless you counted his raging body craving something it should not as a misgiving.
“I wish you to be as happy as I am,” Drostan said.
And as their sister, Aileen, was, he did not say, but it hung in the air between them.
Another dose of whisky poured into his system. “Father arranged your marriage, too.”
“And Freya and I found our way,” the laird admitted.
It had been a long way, Fingal remembered.
“I’ll also find mine,” he asserted without an ounce of certainty.
“That lass, Emily—”
“Brings no alliance with her,” he interrupted his brother because the very name pronounced in his presence caused an earthquake in his guts.
Who the hell was he kidding? In that blasted stable, clan relations had not come to his mind once. He could not even remember his own name, let alone this. That he put this as an obstacle attested to his reluctance in accepting how deep the lass branded his guts, which scared the living daylights out of him.
“It doesn’t matter. We have enough alliances.” Drostan stood up and came to take the third glass Fingal had poured from him.
His empty hand raked his hair in an agitated gesture as he gave his back to his brother and looked through the window to the never-ending rain.
A few seconds later, the glass thudded on the sideboard beside him, drained, and the study door clicked shut. Drostan understood Fingal needed solitude.
CHAPTER TEN
Why anyone liked this dusty, smelly city, Fingal could not understand, he mused as he reined his horse into the park one morning.
After Drostan’s visit, Fingal had contemplated long and hard on what his brother said. He decided he needed closure. He needed to come face-to-face with Emily again, see for himself whether they had nothing else to say to each other. The woman had disappeared as if there was nothing left behind worth retrieving. Her determination to follow through with her plans seemed intriguing, to say the least. When he declared he could not offer marriage, she answered that neither could she. Did it mean an intended awaited here in London? The possibility cut through him like non-matured whisky, burning everything on its way. The Sassenach gave herself to him; how on Earth would she marry someone else? Did it mean nothing to her? Not likely, he decided. She melted into him in the same way he did into her. It left too many unanswered questions for his taste.
So, in a matter of hours after his talk with Drostan, he packed a carriage, saddled his thoroughbred and headed south without hesitation. He had not the slightest idea of where he would find the lass since she had given just a postal box number as a return address. Her name should be enough, however.
It was not.
Nowhere did he find a finely bred lady under the name of Emily Paddington. After looking for days, he had just found some duke or other who had never heard of her.
Frustrated, he returned each evening to the lodgings he leased not far from Hyde Park with fewer and fewer options.
That morning, after reaching the park, he gave his thoroughbred, Solais Tuath, Northern Lights, freedom to trot at his will. The muddy lanes were still empty, the hour too early for the lazy city dwellers.
Something else nagged at Fingal after that short talk with Drostan. Even willing to do his duty by his clan, would it be fair to marry McTavish’s daughter in the state of mind he found himself in at the moment? He expected he would forget the impossible lass sooner or later. Rather sooner, he wished, though it felt unfeasible. Somehow, he must put her out of his mind like he did with the ones who came before her. But those lasses did not tie him in knots as she did, nor intrigued him as much. He must not allow this to addle his mind, he determined firmly. With this consideration, he made a decision. Since he had travelled all the way to London, he should pay his intended a call and… He did not know what he would say, but meeting her seemed a good start.
From behind him, on the other lane, he registered a bold horseman rushing along in what seemed a full gallop. His head turned to see from afar not a man but an amazon. She was certainly very skilled if she could ride at this speed on a side-saddle. As amazon and horse approached, something familiar hit him. First the mount, then the woman. Nearer still, the dark hair under the hat and her unforgettably beautiful features gave her away.
As soon as she flew past, he turned Solais Tuath, changed wide lanes and galloped after her. She had the advantage but not a large one. He raced hard until his horse’s head reached her mare’s flanks.
“Emily!” She had probably heard the thoroughbred’s hooves but given it no heed. As he called her, she turned her head, saw him, and kneed her mare for more speed.
Damn the woman!
He increased his own speed and managed to keep up with her.
“Stop!” he shouted. “You’ll break your neck.” For her safety, he braked his horse as he saw the end of the lane not far ahead. Otherwise, she would ride faster and risk falling off her mare.
At last, she slowed down, giving him the chance to trot to her.
“What were you thinking?” he scolded, angry that she would risk an accident.
“You scared me with your chase.” she threw at him as their mounts neared.
More furious than Fiadhaich, he jumped from his saddle, strode to her, grabbed her waist, and pulled her down with both hands.
“You’re not supposed to ride at that speed on a side-saddle!” Lacing her with one arm, he clashed their frames in the same way their eyes were doing.
Her breath hitched as her lips parted. Her flush from the ride deepened. “I always gallop,” she informed him, fingers resting on his shirt. He was dressed in his usual tartan, naturally.
The sight of her made him forget even what they were talking about because her eyes widened and he hardened. “You mustn’t.” This aired husky with his eyes on her lush lips.
“What are you doing in London?” Her silky tone did not help one bit.
“I came looking for you,” he drawled.
Her brows pleated at the same second her hands shoved him and distance came between them. “Has anything happened to Fiadhaich? You should have written.”
“The stallion is better than ever,” he devolved.
“Then what’s the matter?” The question could not be more inconvenient if it tried, he did not know the answer.
“I want you to come back with me.” His words surprised even him for they were exa
ctly what he came to tell her, and he did not even realise it.
Confusion and vexation marred her silken cheeks. “I cannot and you know that!”
He paced closer. “I don’t care what we can or cannot do.” The rasp made her eyes flare, not with shock but with…arousal.
“Good for you, because I do.” Her hands came to her waist and her chin lifted in determination.
His boots shortened the distance, and they stood less than two feet from each other. “Marry me.” What the hell was he saying? There was a marriage agreement on his brother’s desk, damnation!
“You must be out of your mind!” she breathed.
That was probably the best explanation for his actions. “I said I don’t care.”
Catriona housed a veritable typhoon inside that thrashed and shook and pulled her in every direction on the compass. The sight of the man destabilised her to the very bones. When he held her, she had the urge to clutch onto him for dear life and never let go. That had been precisely why she fled his arms. And then he asked her to marry him with that blazing fire in his cinnamon glare. How was she supposed to resist? But resist she must.
That man in front of her, so out of his element in this deuced city, magnificent in his clan’s tartan, tall, broad, hard as steel, proved too much for her. The memory of exactly what his hardness had done to her—still did to her in her dreams, daydreams, reveries—would tear her to pieces.
Resist, she must, sadly.
Her nostrils inhaled deeply, gathering enough courage to say what she should. “I had a job to do in your stables. It’s over. We go separate ways.” With maximum effort, she made to leave.
“You enjoyed the job’s…benefits, and will walk away.” Sarcasm dripped from his stance and his statement.
“This is what we agreed.” The attempt to input coldness in her voice proved self-destructive.
“I changed my mind,” the deep voice challenged her.
“Well, I didn’t,” she maintained and headed to Debranua. “Have a good day, sir.” She curtsied, mounted, and rode away.
Blasted man! Blasted man!