An American in Scotland

by Karen Ranney

  A good thing she was a widow, otherwise her reputation might be tarnished by accompanying him without a chaperone or at least a maid in attendance. A strange thing to concentrate on appearances now, when they might die at any moment. Propriety was a habit and no doubt an integral part of his character. Although, ever since Rose came into his life, he’d been thinking less about propriety and more thoughts that had no business being paired with a respectable widow.

  What a pity he hadn’t taken advantage of the moment in the garden when she’d been reading Burns. He could have gently put the book aside, leaned over and kissed her.

  Perhaps she’d not been weeping about poetry as much as grieving for her dead husband. What would that make him, an opportunistic satyr?

  The ship rolled again as if it had fallen into a trench and righted itself. At least he had a strong stomach. That was one good thing to concentrate on, as well as the timing of their dinner. The kitchen fires would have been extinguished with the storm. Why, though, hadn’t he thought to bring a bottle of whiskey? Hadn’t there been a crate in the provisions they’d arranged?

  If they survived until tomorrow, he’d be sure and ask Captain McDougal.

  Chapter 11

  The swinging lantern was abruptly extinguished, leaving her in the darkness with only the flashes of lightning to illuminate the room.

  The storm was growing. God stretched out His hand and jagged streaks of fire flowed from His fingers, causing the waves to rise. Thunder growled like Cerberus, the dog of the underworld.

  She wrapped her arms around herself as the ship rocked from side to side. They were going to capsize. Even from here she could hear the Raven’s massive engines whine with the strain.

  Dear God, she didn’t want to die. Not this way with the ocean swallowing her screams.

  She stood, grabbed her wrapper and made her way to the door, holding onto the end of the bed in order to keep her balance. Cowardly or not, she needed the reassurance of another person. If nothing else, Duncan would tell her that her fears were unjustified, that the Raven could withstand this monster storm and emerge unscathed.

  She tapped on the door but doubted Duncan could hear her over the roar of the wind, as if God blew his breath in spite and incited the waves to rise even higher.

  Pushing open the door, she stood there for a moment, until the rocking of the ship catapulted her into the parlor. Thankfully, Duncan was still dressed and awake.

  He sat in the chair facing the door to the stateroom, his hands clenched on its arms, his face tense. She knew, in that instant, that he was as afraid as she.

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

  “I haven’t much experience of being on the ocean in bad weather, but I would have to say that this is no ordinary storm.”

  “That isn’t the least reassuring,” she said, holding onto the back of the settee in order to make her way to him.

  At least the furniture was bolted down. Otherwise it would have slid from wall to wall. The lantern at his side swung wildly on its hook, but at least it still illuminated the room in a golden glow.

  “I’m all out of reassurances at the moment,” he said. “However, I can muster up a few lies if that’s what you prefer.”

  Even though lies might have been preferable to a horrible truth, she shook her head. Better to know what was ahead than to pretend it didn’t exist.

  A sudden surge sent her careening close to him. Duncan kept her from sliding farther by reaching out and grabbing her. A moment later she was on his lap, her arms around his neck.

  She was only in her nightgown and wrapper. If nothing else, she should get dressed. Or perhaps it didn’t matter. Would their bodies ever be discovered or would they sink to the bottom of the sea?

  Burying her head against his shoulder helped ease the fear a little. Smelling his bay rum and the sandalwood that seemed to scent his clothes didn’t take her mind from the fact they were in terrible danger, but at least she wasn’t alone.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said, her lips so close to his neck that every word was like a kiss.

  “I concur with that sentiment,” he said.

  Was he always so proper and restrained? She was ready to cry, but his behavior was that of a man only mildly inconvenienced by the weather.

  She was trembling while he was warm, solid, and there.

  “Tell me about your worst fear,” she said. “Something you’ve never told anyone else.”

  He reared back and looked into her face.

  “My worst fear?”

  She nodded. “I’m afraid of the cold house,” she said. “It’s where Bruce locked me up.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, frowning. “He locked you up?”

  Another blast of lightning illuminated the porthole in a blinding white light. She closed her eyes.

  “No, you first. Something you’re truly afraid of.”

  “That I’ll fail,” he said. “That I won’t be able to save the mill.”

  She shook her head. “No. Not that. Every business owner is afraid of failure. Something personal.”

  “Like being afraid of spiders, that sort of thing?”

  She opened her eyes. “Are you afraid of spiders?”

  “No.”

  She grabbed his shoulders when the ship pitched to one side. Screaming might help. At least it would defuse her terror a little. Because she was with him, she kept silent, but she held onto him a little tighter.

  “The mill closing down is the one thing I’m afraid of,” he said. “Although if this continues much longer, being at sea during a storm might replace it. Now tell me what the hell a cold house is.”

  “It’s where we keep cream and butter. It’s lined with straw so it stays cool in the summer, or as cool as anything can be in the South Carolina heat.”

  He didn’t say anything, but she could hear his curiosity in the silence. How much to tell him? It seemed foolish to hide the truth when she might be dying in this storm, and from the sudden frightening pitch of the ship that might be sooner than she expected.

  “Why would your husband punish you?”

  Here she was, again, trapped in a lie. It hardly seemed proper to continue that lie at this moment, when she might be so close to heavenly judgment, so she told as much of the truth as she could.

  “Bruce put me in the cold house to teach me a lesson.” There, not a lie. In fact, those were Bruce’s own words.

  “Why?”

  “I disobeyed.”

  “You disobeyed? What did you do?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to go near the slave cabins, but I did.”

  She looked away, mesmerized by the swinging of the lantern and the strange shadows it was casting on the walls. One looked like a dragon, then nothing more than an oval, before shifting into a shape resembling another fierce creature, one created by nightmares.

  “I was supposed to ignore what I saw. It was the way of the South. It was what happened at Glengarden. I didn’t understand. But how could I? Above all, I was never to lift a hand to help a slave.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What didn’t I do?” The list of her infractions was long and varied.

  She remembered sitting in the dark, thinking about those insects that must share the space along with all matter of snakes and rodents. Sitting on the dirt floor, she was a good eight feet deeper than Glengarden’s foundation. Even deeper than a grave.

  At least nothing scurried in the darkness. Once, something had hissed at her and she’d stood, spun in a circle, arms flailing to keep the monster at bay. She hadn’t heard the sound again. Nor had she ever told anyone how terrified she’d been.

  A lesson Bruce had taught her: any weakness she showed was used as a weapon against her.

  The first time he locked her in the cold house, she’d been too stunned
to cry out until she heard the click of the lock. She’d spent a long time banging against the door and screaming for Bruce to release her, only to learn later that no one had heard her.

  “Have you learned your lesson?” he asked when he’d finally opened the door hours later. She’d climbed up the four steps, blinking in the glare of the lantern Claire held in one hand. Her sister had just stared at her wordlessly, tears puddling in her eyes.

  She’d done nothing more onerous than treating one of the slave girls for the whip marks on her back, yet Claire behaved as if her behavior had been traitorous.

  It wasn’t the last time Bruce had chosen that kind of punishment. Her greatest sin, in his eyes, was talking to the slaves or going to the slave cabins.

  She hadn’t given up, despite how many times he put her in the cold house. Even though Claire begged her to respect and obey Bruce, to be a good and dutiful sister, she couldn’t find it in herself to ignore what she saw each day. She was stunned to realize that her sister had acquired blinders of a convenient sort.

  She had no difficulty rebelling. She had always been a dutiful daughter where her father was concerned. After his death, she had occasionally challenged her brother, Robert. Then, after he’d gone off to war, Montgomery. She and Jeremy, however, had almost never disagreed, since they seemed to have the same nature. Only once had she argued with him, and that’s when he followed his two older brothers to war, leaving her alone and faced with the most terrible decision of her life: where to live.

  She’d made a terrible mistake choosing to live with Claire. She’d known that the day she arrived.

  “And he punished you?” Duncan asked now.

  She nodded. “To remind me who was in charge at Glengarden.” Bruce’s words again.

  “I’m glad the bastard’s dead,” he said.

  Tonight might be when she met her Maker. God surely wouldn’t approve of her falsehoods. She’d told lies for the right reasons, but that didn’t make them the truth.

  The lantern was suddenly extinguished, the smell of oil overlaying that of the stew they’d had for dinner.

  She hugged him tighter, her cheek against his. He was warm, his cheek bristly yet oddly comforting. She wouldn’t have to die alone. They would, at least, be together.

  She’d made so many mistakes in her life and had no chance to repair them. There wasn’t any time now to make up for irritations and annoyances that had once seemed so important. Easy is the descent into hell, for it is paved with good intentions. She really didn’t need to remember Milton right now.

  Tell him. The voice wasn’t simply that of her conscience, but had the force of celestial fervor.

  Both of Duncan’s hands were on her back, one stroking up and down in a rhythmic, soothing gesture, the other held firmly at her waist to keep her anchored there. If it were an ordinary moment, she would have been embarrassed to be straddling him, her knees on the outside of his legs, her arms wrapped around his neck. This wasn’t an ordinary moment, but one of perfect clarity.

  With her breasts pressed against his chest, she could feel him breathe. Their hearts beat in furious time, as if they raced together in fear. Her nose brushed against his ear, nudged his earlobe. Her cheek was welded to his, the heat of their conjoined skins warm and comforting in the increasingly fearsome night.

  The darkness only heightened the senses. She could smell his bay rum, stronger around his neck, less so at his temple. His hair was silky beneath her fingers, his shirt finished with starch, the skin below the open collar soft, pebbling when she stroked it.

  When the thunder cracked at the same time the bony fingers of lightning scratched the sky, they reacted as one. His hand pressed more firmly against her back as her breath exhaled against his neck. Her lips brushed his skin; his embrace tightened.

  “Tell me about the mill,” she said, her voice faint and thin.

  “I’d rather hear about Glengarden. A pretty name for what must have been hell.”

  She pressed a kiss to his neck in gratitude. No one else had ever realized that’s exactly what it had been. Two years of it, the last year only made partially bearable by Bruce’s absence.

  “It’s very large,” she said. “The house itself is only part of the plantation.”

  The ship lurched, the engines’ scream that of a wounded animal crying out in its death throes.

  Duncan tensed, and she, who had reached the limits of her terror, simply squeezed her eyes shut and began to pray.

  “What’s the house like?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about Glengarden,” she said. “I don’t want the last thing I say to be about that awful place.”

  “Then choose some subject.”

  She reared back, wishing the darkness was not so absolute. Placing her hands on his cheeks, she leaned in and kissed him.

  For a moment he didn’t move, and then his mouth opened beneath hers. He slanted his head, deepened the kiss, and banished the storm.

  If they were to die, let it be like this, with Duncan giving her the first kiss she’d ever received. Let him show her how a man kissed, how he could coax her mouth open and her tongue to touch his and then retreat. Let him heat her body from the inside out, cause stars to dance beneath her eyelids and her breath to halt not because of fear but delight.

  At least her last act would be inspired by passion, not fear. Joy her final emotion.

  He was kissing her chin, her cheeks, the place below her ear that had never been touched by another human being, let alone a man with bristly cheeks who murmured her name as if it were a benediction.

  Finally, his lips returned to hers and she learned so much in the minutes that passed. How to touch the corner of his mouth with her tongue. How to sigh into his mouth or smile when his skin grew warmer beneath her hands.

  He cupped her breast and she gasped in surprise. When he would have moved his hand, she reached down and pressed hers against it. No one had ever touched her before. No one had ever stroked her breast with fingers that felt magical or thumbed her nipple.

  She wished she had buttons on her nightgown so she could unfasten them. She wanted his hands on her bare skin.

  Adrift in his kisses, she threaded her fingers through his hair and gave herself up to pleasure. She lost all track of time, all notion of where she was or even who she was. Her name wasn’t important, her past was irrelevant. All that she knew was that she never wanted to move.

  Duncan murmured against her lips. “Rose.”

  Gently, he placed his hands on her shoulders. A moment later he was pushing her away.

  She blinked at him, coming back to herself. She was Rose O’Sullivan, a woman who’d deceived and lied to this man who’d introduced her to passion. Slowly, she pulled her wrapper into place, conscious of two things: the ship had stopped rocking so fiercely and Duncan MacIain would never again be a stranger.

  “The storm has eased,” he said.

  How long had they been kissing?

  She could hear shouts from the deck. They’d survived. They’d come through the storm.

  Rising from his lap, she went to stand behind the settee. Thank heavens it was dark in here. She couldn’t see his expression and he couldn’t see her blush. She was shocked, bemused, and didn’t know whether to apologize or act as if nothing monumental had just happened.

  He’d kissed her. She’d kissed him, enthusiastically, passionately. He’d kissed her for minutes, maybe longer. She’d lost track of everything but him. He’d touched her breast, the feel of his palm against her nightgown one she wouldn’t soon forget.

  She should say something, explain herself, but all she could do was turn and make her way to the cabin door, closing it firmly against temptation.

  HE’D KISSED her.

  Worse, he’d wanted to do much more. He’d wanted to strip her of that soft wrapper and night
gown and see her naked. If he couldn’t light that damn lantern, he would experience her in the darkness. His hands would stroke over her skin, feeling every indentation and plump curve. His lips would follow his fingers until he learned her as well as he knew himself.

  Not only had he treated her with disrespect, he hadn’t been in control of his own faculties. His emotions had been those of a youth, delighted, ecstatic, and overjoyed, discovering that everything he had imagined about a woman was doubly so. For a few moments he’d been thinking that they could use the floor as a mattress if they couldn’t make it to the stateroom. He had been more than willing to tumble Rose to the deck and take her right then and there. The storm would hide her screams of pleasure and his shouts of triumph.

  What the hell had happened to him?

  Ever since she’d come to Glasgow, he’d been on the verge of losing himself. He wasn’t even sure who he was anymore. The man he had always known himself to be, focused, determined, on a set path, had disappeared. He wasn’t as interested in the MacIain Mill as he was Rose MacIain. He wanted to know everything about her. Not only her body, but her mind. What was she thinking? What did she feel?

  Had she been as enthralled with their kisses as he had been? He hadn’t cared about the damn storm as long as she was in his arms.

  He had to stay away from her.

  He’d be friendly, but no more than that. Above all, he wouldn’t let himself be alone with her.

  There, that ought to solve his problem.

  Chapter 12

  She couldn’t face him. She couldn’t see the look in his eyes. She wasn’t sure what she would see there, either confusion or contempt. She was supposed to be a widow yet she had acted the part of harlot. An eager one, at that.

  Her first kiss had been more astounding than anything she had expected. Her body had been on fire. Her mind had been numbed by pleasure. Her lips had known exactly what to do. How had her tongue learned all of those talented things?

  She wanted to inhale his breath again. She wanted to feel the warmth of his cheek against hers. She wanted to breathe against his ear, know the contour of it. And his neck—­she’d kissed him there repeatedly.