The Taming of Malcolm Grant

by Paula Quinn

“Do you think I’d cause disaster?”

  “Aye, Emma. And restoration. ’Tis what I feel ye’er doin’ to me.”

  What was he saying? She wasn’t sure, but she liked how he sounded saying it. She wanted to touch him so bad her hands burned in her lap. “What is it you mean?”

  He thought about it for a moment, remaining quiet, and then he sighed, bending to her ear. “I dinna’ know the right words to tell of it, Emma. So I’m taking ye to a place that will help ye understand.”

  “How will it help me?” she asked softly. Part of her wanted to run for her life before another moment passed and she could no longer deny her heart. The rest of her wanted to believe that she’d won the heart of the infamous rogue.

  “Come.”

  He slowed his horse and Emma could hear Gascon barking at a screeching bird overhead. The sound of rolling waves was closer and the different scents of sand, salt, and fish assailed her senses. She felt Malcolm separate from her and his horse but instead of helping her out of the saddle right away, he pulled off her boots, and her stockings next.

  She already felt exhilarated, away from the brothel and Harry’s doting attention, away from the smell of medicine and sickness, and the fear of losing one of her patients.

  She wiggled her bare toes and tossed back her head with laughter when he fit his hands around her waist and lowered her feet to the sand.

  “Can we go in the water?” She knew she was asking much, but she’d never been to the coast for adventure or rest. She wanted to do all so that she could have something wonderful to remember it in the days ahead.

  He hadn’t answered her. “Malcolm?” Only then did she feel his full attention on her, searing through her flesh, her bones, until he arrived in her heart.

  He took her in his arms and held her tight against him. His breath was warm, sweeping over her, caressing her. His voice seared her nerve endings and set her on fire.

  “D’ye know how fine ye are to me, Emma?”

  She shook her head and suddenly the sea and everything of concern was forgotten. Her? Fine? Even Clementine had told her that she was plain. Nothing fancy. Did he mean it?

  “Ye’re more bonny than any lass I’ve ever laid m’ poor eyes on. I canna’ breathe when ye smile.”

  She reached up and coiled her arms around his neck. Was it true then? Did he love her? Did the man who hadn’t given his heart to anyone lose it to her? The thought of it made her want more of him, all of him.

  “And I cannot think straight when your lips are so close.”

  He dragged her deeper, closer, pressed her against him while he bent to kiss her.

  His mouth covered hers like fire, consuming her from the inside out, laying claim to her heart. His tongue, a flame scalding the inside of her mouth with languorous delight until she wanted him to eat her alive. What was he doing to her? What had he done? She felt wild and wanton and dangerous, and it still wasn’t enough.

  She felt him begin to withdraw, but she pulled him back, not understanding the power she possessed.

  She groaned like a beast she didn’t recognize, then gripped handfuls of his shirt when he cupped her buttocks in his large hands and dragged her hips over his. She felt him through his breeches, growing hard for her. If they didn’t stop soon, it would be too late. Oh, but he was delectable. She didn’t want to stop. She wanted to… to rub herself over him until he had to have her and took her right there where they stood. She wanted to tear her way out of her dress and offer him to take his fill of her breasts. Her heart banged with primitive desires she had no idea how to stop. She wanted him to take her. She was a virgin, but her body ached for his. She wanted to strip him and then herself, and then she wanted to climb up on him and nestle him between her legs.

  She gasped and quaked in his embrace.

  No. She wasn’t like the other girls at the brothel. She wanted a man who loved her. Only her. And she wasn’t sure Malcolm loved her. Cailean said he might be falling in love. Emma hoped he was. Oh, how she hoped. She certainly was falling in love with him.

  She severed their kiss slowly, reluctantly, short of breath. He didn’t force her back. “You didn’t answer my question,” she accused with a teasing smile replacing her dreamy one. “Can I go in the water?”

  “If ye like,” he answered easily, and took her hand.

  It was a simple gesture, nothing extravagant like kissing the curls out of her hair. His hand around hers meant nothing, and yet, it was so strangely comforting and intimate, Emma found her breath short once again and her blood scalding her veins.

  She inhaled a deep breath, hoping to cleanse kissing him and other things from her thoughts. But when the fresh, raw air filled her lungs, she felt more alive than ever before. The urge to abandon all to him tempted her to madness.

  Thank goodness there were other wonderful things to occupy her attention.

  She loved how the sand felt between her toes, yielding and warm. But soon, it changed, becoming wetter and harder under her feet.

  He led her to the shoreline, where the waves washed the hard sand away and almost made her lose her balance. She wasn’t prepared for the icy water cascading over her ankles and squealed, then laughed, jumping in place to avoid it.

  The sound of a faraway horn coming in on the tide stopped her. She tilted her head to listen and imagine who was on that boat and where they were heading. Gascon’s barking drew her to her left. She smiled, hearing the excitement in his bark.

  “Is he running?”

  “Aye,” Malcolm told her softly.

  “Are there trees?”

  “Nae, lass. There’s nothin’ but sand and sea.”

  “I want to run too.” She returned her attention to directly in front of her and breathed deeply, closing her eyes. “But not yet.”

  He was silent for a while, letting her take in what was around her.

  “What d’ye think of it, Emma?” he asked, closer to her than he was before.

  “’Tis powerful, able to kill a thousand men in a single instant. ’Tis breathtakingly vast and all perfectly balanced. I feel quite small standing before it.” She’d wanted to see the ocean again. She thought once she went blind, she never would. But today, she could almost see it. “Describe it to me.”

  He did, giving her clear images of dazzling light dappling the surface of what looked to be endless water. Instead of overtaking them in a flood, waves rolled forward with impotent savagery and licked at their feet. The vast sky, a cool color blue, was filled with large scavenger birds that teased her dog, soaring in close enough to end up in a set of fangs, but escaping just in time.

  “Ye crossed the water before, aye, lass?”

  “Oui, to and from France.”

  He asked her about her childhood, giving her memories, both good and bad, the weight they deserved. When she finished telling him, she felt weightless and picked up her skirts to follow the sound of her barking dog.

  “Can I run?” she called to Malcolm over her shoulder.

  “Aye, lass, ye can run.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I’m finding it difficult to subdue the urge I have to stand up and slash my dagger across your throat.” Oliver Winther, Baron of Newcastle, met his commander’s gaze steadily, studying him. “I don’t do it because your wife would look to me to help raise your brats. I show you mercy for your Hebburn blunder because you are not entirely to blame for being a whimpering idiot, what with Janice as your wife.”

  John Burroughs’s jaw twitched and grew taut. Oliver wanted to demand that his commander challenge him on it. When no challenge came, he sighed and looked around the hall. Thankfully, half the candles had burned down during supper, bathing the hall in a dim, golden light. With the curtains drawn, no outside light could get through, saving his sensitive eyes from the pain of the bright world. One physician from London, and one seer all the way from his father’s homeland of Norway, and neither could help Oliver. They told him what he already knew.

  “My lord has my
gratitude,” John said, bowing his head like a supplicant servant instead of the leader of Oliver’s army.

  “What are you kissing his arse for now, Burroughs?” Garbed in black and the quick, slight twist of his grin, Sebastian Winther, youngest of the Winthers, dead and alive, slipped into the chair beside John’s.

  Oliver had rested his eyes this morn and could see Sebastian clearly. He watched him the way a bird of prey might size up a mouse—but with more amusement. Everyone surrendered to Oliver’s power. No one resisted him, save his brother. Sebastian was no mouse.

  “Sebastian,” Oliver said in a low, sinuous voice that sought the shadows once expelled, “why weren’t you a part of the endeavor to bring me Harry Grey’s sister?”

  “Because you needed me to quell the uprisings against you in Westerhope.”

  Oliver eyed him and held up his hand for a refill on his drink at the same time. “Mmm, I remember now. How did it go?”

  If kitchen gossip was to be believed, different fathers may have sired them, but Sebastian’s eyes were the same as Oliver’s. Deadly. The brothers were like twin falcons, one dark and the other light.

  “There are no more uprisings, Oliver. That’s how it went.”

  Oliver should have known. He’d sent Sebastian to Westerhope to quiet the people, in whatever ways he saw fit. He knew Sebastian. He’d seen his eyes, as black and cold as coal while he’d ended lives. Instead of apologizing, Oliver turned his attention to… “Burroughs the dolt allowed a blind girl to singlehandedly take down three of my men.” He stopped and closed his eyes and his fists. He clenched his jaw to keep from shouting for John’s head!

  “A blind girl, Sebastian,” he emphasized. “And the most mortifying part isn’t that she’s blind, but that the entire kidnapping was arranged. Nothing should have gone wrong. Burroughs lost her. Just as he lost our brother Andrew at that cursed brothel in Hebburn, the bodies of the two Highlanders who’d patronized there and killed Andrew, and two of his own teeth! Tell us again, John, how you managed to kill two men who, according to you, killed eight of my men that night.”

  John said nothing. Oliver wished he wasn’t his commander so he could kill him.

  “I told you,” Sebastian said. “I’ll get the names of the murderers when you let me go to Hebburn.” The edge of Sebastian’s mouth slanted curiously. “But why were you kidnapping the girl?”

  “Because she’s Grey’s sister,” Oliver indulged him. “She’s the only way he’ll talk and tell us the truth about the Highlanders. Also, if I’m to believe John again, she escaped two men without lifting a weapon against them. I find that quite curious.”

  That was all his brother needed to know. He didn’t have to tell him that he wanted her because he wanted to learn how she lives being unable to see. He wanted… no, he needed to learn how to defend himself if he lost his vision.

  Sebastian turned to John for clarification. “What happened?”

  “She drugged us,” John told him.

  “There was no one else there with her?”

  “Not when I was awake.”

  Sebastian showed his dissatisfaction by turning away and not sparing John another glance while he spoke. “Where are the other two?” He asked Oliver, his feathers unruffled.

  “Answer him, John!” Oliver roared, and slammed his fist down on the table.

  “We haven’t found Rubert yet.”

  “But I would think,” Oliver drawled, “that if he were alive, he’d have returned by now.”

  “Unless shame stops him,” Sebastian interjected. “If he is alive, then she was most likely alone and is a clever one.”

  “We found Reggie’s body and his head a short distance away,” John told him while Oliver glowered at him to tell the rest.

  “Well then,” said Sebastian, “that proves she wasn’t alone. It’s not easy to remove a head. It takes great strength.”

  “You let a girl poison you, John.”

  “She’s an odd one,” Burroughs defended. “It’s like she can see without her eyes.”

  Yes, Oliver had been told of her.

  “It could have happened to anyone, Oliver.”

  “Don’t defend him, Sebastian,” Oliver warned, cursing mercy under his breath. He decided to have a little fun with his brother. Better that than send him and John to the gallows. He saw one of his servants and snatched her wrist.

  Sebastian glared at him when he pulled her into his lap. Oliver smiled behind her neck. What if he put a choice before Sebastian? Damn, but he was a master fighter and a ruthless warrior. Oliver didn’t want him to have a weakness, even if it was the opposite sex.

  When Sebastian turned away, Oliver wanted to cry foul. Instead, he hunched over the girl and bit her throat. When she struggled a little to be free of him, he closed his hands over her breasts and squeezed.

  “Oliver, is that necessary?”

  The fish was caught. Now to reel him in. Pale green eyes, large and menacing, glanced at Sebastian from around her neck.

  Oliver laved his tongue over where he’d bitten her. “Yes, Sebastian, it is necessary when it comes to keeping my hands from John’s neck. Sinking my cock into a woman will soothe me.” He pushed the girl to her feet and held her still in front of him with one hand while he unfastened his breeches with the other.

  “Which will it be, Sebastian, John’s life or this wench’s honor?” He smiled, then bent her over the table and pulled her skirts slowly up her thighs.

  Sebastian watched, deadly silent as Oliver prepared to have his way with her here in the Great Hall.

  Which would he choose?

  The table separating them and hosting the handmaiden flew across the hall, providing the answer. Oliver stood in his place, in front of his chair, holding the wench. He released her and sent her off running away.

  “Your loyalty is misplaced, little brother.”

  “Don’t make me choose, Olie,” Sebastian said, sheathing his sword. “I won’t stand around while you push your weight around.”

  Oliver waved away his brother’s concerns and warnings and shouted for a new table. He also ordered John to get the hell out of his sight. When they were alone he motioned for Sebastian to return to his seat.

  “I won’t continue to let you demean my authority in front of others.” Oliver’s voice dripped with acid, but his smile remained intact. “Even if your defiance is feigned, you sometimes go too far.”

  Sebastian tunneled his fingers through his mane, pushing it away from his face. But it only fell over his eyes again when he let it go. Eclipsed behind strands of obsidian hair, Oliver could see the arch of Sebastian’s raven brow. But he couldn’t tell if it rose with jest or menace.

  “My defiance isn’t feigned.”

  Unlike his brother, Oliver didn’t hide behind a stoic frown. He sat back in his chair and tossed his ankles on the table and his chuckle across Sebastian’s ears. “That’s why I’m sending you away. I thought a pair of weeks away killing in Westerhope would have been enough to quell this unwarranted anger you feel toward me. You need more fighting to divert all the gloominess that surrounds you before you force me to kill you.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Where you’ve wanted to go from the beginning.”

  Hope fanned an ember glow in Sebastian’s gaze. “Hebburn.”

  Oliver nodded, his smile fading. “Instead of sending the army, I showed them mercy by sending only for the red-haired girl whose fault it is that our brother is dead. I was refused her.” He lowered his ankles from the table and sat up. “Refused!” he repeated, then smiled. “Thankfully for everyone in the place, I was promised someone so much better.”

  “I thought this was about finding who Andrew’s killers are… or were. Not about kidnapping blind women.”

  Oliver tossed his brother a murderous smirk, which Sebastian ignored. “She was promised to be delivered to my hands.”

  “By who?” Sebastian asked, boldly provoking Oliver.

  “You don’t n
eed to know anything else. Just bring her to me. If you don’t do it, I’ll go to Hebburn myself and slaughter everyone in that accursed brothel. I should have done it as soon as word came about Andrew.”

  “And the names of our brother’s killers?”

  Oliver glanced around the hall and beckoned another servant to him. “Do what you must,” he said, waiting for her. “Bring the names back to me and we’ll ride together to the Highlands and kill their families.”

  Oliver watched his brother leave. He should have sent him to Hebburn right from the beginning. He’d have answers and possibly a new blind handmaiden by now.

  Speaking of handmaidens, he stood up and took the hand of the girl coming to him and led her to his room.

  Sebastian sat up in his bed long into the night, an array of nautical maps strewn across his lap. He studied them by the light of two candles until the wicks burned down. Pity, he didn’t have to cross the sea to get to Hebburn. Or Westerhope. Oliver was wrong. He didn’t need more fighting to escape the gloom. He needed a ship. First he needed to learn how to sail, but he could do it. He would do it. Someday. Tomorrow, he had to avenge Andrew.

  He’d insisted on going to Fortune’s Smile the day they found out about Andrew, but his brother had refused. When Sebastian had asked him why he couldn’t go, Oliver admitted that it was a feeling in his belly. Something telling him that his youngest brother wouldn’t return to him.

  Sebastian laughed it off. He didn’t give a damn about superstitions. But he also didn’t want to push Oliver too far. He wasn’t afraid of anything his brother would do to him. But when Oliver’s mood went foul, everyone around him suffered. The baron enjoyed killing, and Sebastian didn’t doubt that he’d reign down terror on the people of Fortune’s Smile.

  Someday he’d get his ship and sail away from Newcastle and everywhere Oliver ruled, but first, he had to find out who killed his brother.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Emma knew night had fallen by the different sounds and scents in the air, like the sweet fragrance of partly closed honeysuckle blossoms and the sweetly seductive scent of jasmine carried on the night breeze. The hoot of an owl, the scurry of a mouse, and the squeak of bats and their small flapping wings overhead all told her when it was.