First Time with a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  Or for yours. The horses clopped crisply down the Royal Mile and turned into a neighborhood considerably less cheerful than the one they had left. “At some point, we need to hammer out the events of the last twelve hours, do we not?”

  “Aye, we do,” she said, lips tight as she kept her attention fixed on the road.

  “That is, unless you’re dragging your feet to keep me here longer? In that case—”

  “Eleven o’clock,” she said, “you’re in bed, not alone, drinking Kerr whiskey, counting the shillings that come with your partnership. You have not offered your bedmate whiskey. How do I know this? She is not here. Why have you not? Because you’re cheap? Because you’re selfish? Let’s call it a misunderstanding and let it pass.”

  “Did you even consider the fact she might not drink whiskey?”

  “Doesn’t she?”

  He thought of the woman’s slow descent to the floor of the elevator and hesitated.

  Serafina rolled her eyes. “Eleven o’clock. I am drunk and, unfortunately, getting drunker. You arrive. I am hard asleep. What happened?”

  “Whoa. Why do you presume you’re asleep?”

  “Because I canna remember a thing after closing my eyes.”

  “You cannot remember anything after drinking your third glass of whiskey. That, my friend, is entirely different.”

  Her lips, full and round, compressed into a pink line.

  “And in any case,” he went on, “you do remember something because you said I was surprised when you told me it was 1706.”

  “‘Surprised’ was not the word I used. You—”

  “There’s no need to lower ourselves to character attacks,” he said. “Suffice it to say, I was surprised and you remembered that fact.”

  “Just as you remembered the men from the docks.”

  “I think we need to be honest here. We need a complete list. Some of the things we did may be of a somewhat personal nature,” he said, thinking of her hair splayed across that pillow, “but in the interest of expediency, we need to simply say them and be done with it.”

  “I agree.”

  “Good. So, on three, okay. One. Two. Three…”

  Neither said a word.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. I took you to bed. There. Was that so hard? I dropped you on the bed and your curls scattered over the pillow. I remember it clearly.”

  Her cheeks blossomed red. “Mr. Innes, I am not familiar with the mores of your time, but here, in Scotland, we dinna make reference to the things that transpire behind the doors of one’s bedchamber. ’Tis both churlish and indecent. Such a statement would get you barred from the homes of upstanding people, and if I were to be named…” She shook her head, overcome, and returned her gaze to the street.

  Gerard was stunned. “I would never knowingly… I mean, things are different in my time, I guess. I’m sorry.”

  She accepted his apology with a rigid nod. “What,” she asked, fiddling with a fingernail, “happened after that?”

  Did she want to know? He wished he could remember more of the details. Had he loosened her gown, kissed the beating hollow of her throat? Had the rest of her smelled as intoxicating as the whiffs he’d gotten earlier? Had her belly been soft and round, the sign of fecundity and abundance, or hard and unforgiving, like so many of the women he knew. Had she come to him tentatively? Or given herself with unfettered desire. God, had she been a virgin?

  He sat straighter, internally speechless. Women in the eighteenth century could hardly enjoy the sexual freedom they did in his time. Wasn’t it likely—or almost certain—that last night had been her first experience? He hadn’t bedded a virgin since his teens—if you could call that awkward mix of pin the tail on the donkey and carnal sack racing bedding. He was so used to being on equal footing, experience-wise, with the women he saw—or even at a disadvantage—that the idea of being confronted with a virgin was a bit like being confronted with a pterodactyl or woolly mammoth—and only slightly less alarming. But what must it have been like from her point of view? He felt like a heel.

  “I don’t know what your particular situation was,” he said, uncomfortable, “but if I… I mean, if it turned out that this was a new experience for you, I just want to say that I hope it was—”

  “Oh, good Lord, Mr. Innes. I’m not…well, what you’re thinking. Nor,” she added with more bite, “did we make love.”

  “Far be it from me to contradict a lady, but given that we have been tasked with describing with precision the events of the last few hours, I think we need to accept what happened.”

  She leaned back and crossed her arms. “Describe again what you saw, please.”

  “The pillow was white. You fell upon it with a certain eager bounce.” He adjusted his cuffs, admiring the sound of the copy as it flowed from his tongue. “And your hair fell free—of pins or your hands or mine, I don’t know—but the curls flung themselves in every direction. And you giggled. Your cheeks were flush. There was an air of decidedness between us—”

  “Good God. Is this what you write? In the advertisements?”

  “No. But it is well written, isn’t it? And, more important, it’s what happened.”

  She sighed. “Go on. You and I and our ‘air of decidedness.’ Go on, go on.”

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s it? Pillow, curls, cheeks?”

  “Yes.”

  She let out a long sigh of relief. “An air of decidedness is not a deed done.”

  “We were undressed…”

  “That, as someone once told me, is entirely different. First, I wore a shirt. Second, for all we know, you…took a bath after I fell asleep.”

  “In a room with no bathroom? Serafina, be reasonable. I am hardly going to put you on the bed and not follow through. I mean”—he shrugged, helpless—“it’s me we’re talking about.”

  “I dinna doubt you intended to bed me. ’Tis very clear your relationships with women are tryingly single-minded. However, all you’ve described so far is placing me there. There are many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.”

  “Oh, there was a lip—two of them, in fact. But I can assure you there was no slip. I am congenitally incapable of not…er”—he caught the warning in her eyes—“closing the deal.”

  She made a noise of disgust. “The truth of the matter is,” she said, “we know very little. And what we know may be misleading. The bounce of curls on a pillow doesna mean ye bedded me. The caress of fingers across gray wool doesn’t mean I—” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

  His gaze bounced from the plaid covering his legs to her face.

  The slim fingers parted. “’Twas very fine wool,” she said. “My compliments to your tailor.”

  The carriage filled quickly with an intriguing sense of possibility. The random bumping of the road had deposited his leg beside hers, and the electric charge that leaped between them raised the hair on his flesh.

  The carriage shifted, and his knee lurched between hers. The fabric of her dress caressed his calf. In his head, he raised the silk and inserted himself between those thighs. He could hear her quickening breaths and feel the jut of her breasts as he took her—quickly, expertly, thoroughly.

  “I think,” he said, “we need to test our memories.”

  “Test them?”

  He saw a spark of something in her half-lidded eyes—or did he? She hadn’t moved her knee and it was clearly touching his. The air of the eighteenth century seemed to unlock a dangerous disregard for propriety, as if being at all times several steps closer to death also put one several steps closer to living.

  “Yes,” he said. “One of the memories, surely, if repeated, will unlock more.”

  “There is no pillow or bed,” she said, and this time he was certain there was something in her voice.

  He wished he’d remained in the gra
y wool she’d liked so much. He would gladly have her hands on him again, fumbling with his button, unzipping his fly.

  He leaned forward, rustling her gown, and met her eyes. Heart thumping, he waited. She bent forward too, as if by the pull of a magnet. Her breath tickled his chin and that inebriating rosemary filled his head. Her right hand lay across her lap, and he took it in his, a diagonal brace, in case her courage was slipping. Her hand was warm, and he could feel the racing beat of her pulse. Curiosity shone in her eyes.

  He grazed her cheek with his, stubble brushing her flesh, before stopping at her ear. “Take off your gown.”

  She inhaled sharply. He found the delicate bumps of her spine, certain he’d felt their outline before.

  “We’ve done this,” he whispered into the intoxicating mass of curls. “Do you feel it?”

  “Aye.”

  “Take it off.”

  “Mr. Innes.”

  “Off.”

  “Without a kiss?”

  He kissed the lobe of her ear. She arched her neck, and he kissed her there too.

  “Before we stop?” she said, amused. “We’ve no more than a moment or two.”

  “Perhaps a shout of a revised destination then? How far is Edinburgh Castle?”

  “Now? Ten minutes.” Her thumb pressed the base of his.

  “London, then.”

  The vibrations of her throaty laugh passed under his lips, and he brought his mouth to hers. There was something in her kiss that stirred him as no other—self-possession and strength, sadness and determination. And desire—smoldering and controlled.

  “You are a blackguard, sir.”

  “And you are intoxicating.”

  “But I shan’t undress.”

  “No?” He wasn’t surprised. And it made him want her all the more. “Ah, well, a man can only try. But you won’t deny me completely. I can hear it in your breath. Loosen a curl.”

  “’Tis not a thing a lady does for a gentleman.”

  “You kissed me.”

  “A kiss.” She shrugged her shoulders in a way that flamed his desire. “Even a lady might spare a kiss. But a curl suggests something more prurient.”

  “I know. Loosen one. For me. I want to twist it around my finger.”

  She let go of him, and he wondered if he’d gone too far.

  Eyes bright, she lifted her hand to the back of her head. A single curl fell. He reached for it, belly hot, and pulled the silky end all the way down to the hollow of her throat, then lower, until it reached no farther. She inhaled, and he let it go. With a bounce, it returned to the base of her neck. She lowered her hands and the entire mass of orange and gold fell. He caught it in his hands, delighting in the silken weight, and spread it on the back of the seat. Then he brought her mouth to his.

  When the dizzying fire receded, the vision was there—the pillow’s white linen, the bed, the joy on her face, and the slow sowing of pleasure.

  He gasped, the sense of her hips under him as clear in his head as the scent of her was now.

  He looked in her eyes, which sparked a bright cerulean blue. She laid a hand on his cheek as the carriage came to a stop, and the tip of her fine, pink tongue found the hole in his chin and pressed itself inside. A second later, the door opened, and she hopped down the stairs, waving off the driver’s offer of a hand.

  She walked away, arms up, repinning her hair into a roll.

  “Sir?”

  The driver was staring, and Gerard realized he’d been sitting there half a minute, jaw hanging open. He shrugged off his daze and lumbered out of the carriage. He’d seen amusement, pleasure, and even hunger in those eyes, all of which had moved him. But the one thing he hadn’t observed was the slightest suggestion that the vision that had returned to him had also come to her.

  Nine

  Serafina upbraided herself silently, biting her tongue to quiet the tingle.

  Another man in another carriage? You are as predictable as you are incautious.

  Charming, he was, but the man made no pretense of wanting more than a quarter hour between your legs. At least Edward had plied her with the words of love.

  Gerard appeared beside her, looking quite stupid with desire. “That was nice.”

  “Foolish as well.”

  Their entry to the small shop ended the debate.

  Undine had explained the tailor handled only the least dangerous communications. Nonetheless, Serafina knew caution would be necessary.

  A slight, aged man sat at long table, unrolling a bolt of fawn-colored fabric for a woman and her husband. He looked at Serafina expectantly.

  “I’ve come for a tippet,” she said, the words Undine had instructed her to use.

  Wordlessly, she slipped the note under a small shelf on the counter, again, as she’d been instructed. The man excused himself from the couple, gathered a frilled satin stole—far too frivolous, Serafina knew, to ever be something Undine would wear—and wrapped it in paper.

  When the parcel was tied, he dug through a stack of receipts, found Undine’s, and handed it to her, folded. The receipt on top read “Edward Turnbull.”

  The man noticed her interest. “Do you know the man?”

  “I do. He’s having a gown made?”

  “’Tis for a woman named Hiscock, I believe.”

  Her cheeks warmed. Elizabeth Hiscock was the daughter of Lord Hiscock. She was neither pretty nor charming, but she was wealthy, which would be of far more interest to Edward.

  “I don’t know her,” Serafina said.

  “They live in Dean Village, I believe.”

  “How nice.”

  “The dress is for Lord Hiscock’s party on Monday.”

  “Ah, of course.” She hoped the tailor exercised more discretion with Undine’s communications. “Thank you.”

  Gerard took her elbow and, with a bow to the tailor, led her from the shop.

  * * *

  Harrow peered around the corner of the shop. “Do ye think that’s them?”

  “Her, aye,” said his colleague, Cambers. “I’d recognize that red hair anywhere—and the pips. Him, I’m not so sure.”

  “You can’t tell if that’s the man?”

  “’Twas dark,” Cambers said, “or didn’t you notice?”

  “We’re paid to be sure.”

  “Och, I dinna hear you proclaiming your certainty. Bill!”

  Bill turned his head, the stream of urine still splashing against the brick wall. “Aye?”

  “Is this the man?”

  Bill managed two more spurts, then jogged to the corner, adjusting his flies. “Perhaps,” he said, unconvinced, peering down the street, “but whoever he is, he bears more than a little resemblance to Mr. Turnbull. Maybe Lord Bridgewater would like a pair of bookends?”

  He laughed, and Harrow elbowed him hard in the wame.

  “What was that for?” Bill demanded, coughing.

  “You’re not to mention his name, idiot. Oh, there they go. Cambers, run after them. Bill and I will follow.”

  “Why am I always the one who has to run?”

  “Would ye rather be the one with my fist in yer face?”

  Cambers heaved a sigh and pelted up the street.

  Ten

  The carriage seemed considerably more confining to Serafina than it had ten minutes earlier. She kept her attention on the world beyond her window.

  “What’s a tippet?” Gerard said, breaking the silence. He gestured to the parcel on her lap.

  “A stole.” When he shook his head, she added, “A shoulder coat.”

  “And Edward Turnbull? Is he someone you know?”

  “He is—was—my fiancé.”

  “Ah.” Gerard dropped his gaze. “Was this a recent turn of events?”

  “It happened six months ago.”
/>
  Gerard’s face softened. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. He’s a blackguard and I was a fool.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say ‘was.’”

  Edward would never again enjoy her attention, but given the way the man sitting across from her was make her blood bubble in her veins, she could offer herself no guarantee that she’d never be foolish again.

  “Edward is the reason I summoned you.”

  “Is he? I’d be happy to break his nose for you.”

  He gave her a crooked smile, and she remembered him inserting himself, fists up, between her and Duncan.

  “I have something better planned,” she said.

  The smile turned full curve.

  “Not that.”

  The man was uncomfortably persuasive. She pulled her attention away from that dimple, which, like the whirlpool it resembled, seemed to want to draw her into its swirling depths.

  “Pity,” he said. “There’s nothing like a little sauce for the goose to really make the gander squawk.”

  “Hm. I’ll take your offer under advisement.”

  “Just sayin’, I’m here if you need me.”

  “What I need involves something rather more important.”

  His expression turned more attentive. “Securing your future. I haven’t forgotten.”

  She bowed. It touched her that he remembered. “My father was a merchant…well, stepfather. He left me a small inheritance. Edward and I… Well, I had something he needed after he exhausted his inheritance and his family’s patience. I was a fool to lend him the money, but you know love. Soon my money was nearly exhausted too. He wanted the last bit I had to invest in some cargo. I refused. He took it anyhow. Now the ship has come in, and I intend to collect whatever is there.”

  “Using me.”

  “Aye.”

  “How?”

  She picked a loose thread from her gown, avoiding his gaze. “You must sign for it as Edward.”

  He leaned against the seat, and she could see the calculation in his eyes regarding risk and reward.

  “Is that why we were at the docks last night?” he asked.

  “Aye.”