When a Scot Loves a Lady fc-1
Page 26
She could not rest, not anticipating the morning’s assignation and what it could mean to her mother and to Leam. He would spend the night making a pretense of drinking and playing cards somewhere with Mr. Yale for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. Then in the morning he would go to the rendezvous place to await Lord Chamberlayne.
Stomach tight, she descended to the basement and set a pot of water on the kitchen stove. Better to await her mother’s return alone and confront her with the truth without fear of being overheard by curious ears. For she must tell her tonight.
The knocker clanking on the front door made her jump. She set down the teapot and went to the stair, nerves on end. The footman appeared.
“I said you might turn in, John,” she murmured as he moved toward the front door.
“Yes, mum.” He wore a nightshirt, and a wig dropped over both his hair and nightcap. He threw back the bolts and opened the door. A boy stood on the stoop.
“From milady,” he piped cheerily, as though it were broad daylight. John took the missive, dropped a coin into his palm, and bolted the door once more.
“Milady, can I be making you a cuppa?”
“No, thank you.” She unfolded the missive. “I can do so my—” A knock sounded on the tradesman’s door at the rear of the house. Kitty and the footman looked at each other, then she shrugged. He passed her on the stairs and moved along the basement corridor lit only by a single candle in a sconce. Peering into the gloom, she read the note. Her shoulders fell.
Apparently her mother would not be returning tonight. Mere weeks from her confinement, Serena felt unwell again; the dowager would stay at the other house.
Kitty could not bear it, this waiting for everything. She felt as though she had already waited a lifetime.
She put her hand to her face, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again Leam stood in the doorway, the sparkling dark of the rain-speckled night casting him in silhouette.
“Milady?” John asked, presumably surprised to find an earl standing in her basement corridor in the middle of the night. Perhaps not quite as surprised as Kitty; John hadn’t any notion why the earl should not be there, after all—except for the most obvious reasons.
“Please close the door, John. Then you may go to bed.”
Momentarily they were once again alone at opposite ends of an empty corridor. This time the light was barely sufficient for her to see his handsome face, to discern the glimmer in his eyes, and to imprint the image of him upon her memory before she had to make him go.
“This is not a good idea,” she said. “Someone might have seen you come. Everything could be ruined.”
“True. But it might well have been ruined if I hadn’t come. I couldn’t think straight. Nearly ran my horse into a lamppost. Not the best state in which to work.”
“You are not—you are not drunk, are you?”
“Not in the usual manner. Now come here. Or would you be wishing me to come over there?”
She caught her breath. “We could meet halfway?”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
The floor was crossed. She was in his arms. He clamped her tight to his chest. She pressed her face to his lapel, her body to his, spreading her hands on his back and sinking her fingers in.
“Why are you here?” she whispered.
“I came to deliver your birthday gift.”
She turned her head up. He loosened her, and when she looked into his eyes, what she saw there pressed her breath into submission—need, and vulnerability so raw it hollowed her within.
She tried to smile. “Then what was the beautiful music I received only yesterday, if not for my birthday?”
His hand came up around the side of her face, the pad of his thumb passing roughly across her cheek into her hair. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I am the most suitable person for the job. Really, I could not be more suitable.” She ran her palm across his smooth jaw, loving the feeling of him. She could touch him forever. “You shaved before coming here.”
“A gentleman canna pay a call on a leddy an he’s shaggy as a barbarian.”
“Leam—”
“Kitty, I did not come here to talk.”
Her throat closed. Still she managed to croak, “Leam, I live with my mother.”
“She has gone to your brother’s house for the night. Your sister-in-law is feeling unwell.”
“How do you know that? Mr. Grimm?”
“Little is sacred to the below-stairs set when gossip and guineas are involved.”
“Oh, my. I shall have to tell Alex to turn them all off—”
“Actually, I heard it at the ball.” The corner of his mouth quirked up.
She laughed.
He covered her mouth with his, and his arms pulled her off her feet. Barely breaching the seam of her lips, he kissed her, satisfying and stoking her hunger for him at once. He tilted her face up and kissed her jaw, his fingertips straying along her throat and neck as he returned to her mouth. Ever so gently the tip of his tongue brushed along the edge of her parted lips. She sighed, clutching his coat in tight fingers. He broke away to draw off his greatcoat, then surrounded her face with his hands and kissed her anew.
“I cannot get enough of your mouth.” He stroked her lower lip with his thumb, making her tremble, and followed it with his mouth. His hands, large and strong, surrounded her shoulders and she felt held, treasured.
She wound her arms about his neck, and with his hands he pressed her body to his, from belly to thighs. At the inn he had held her like this, like he must touch all of her at once. Now his tongue swept her lips and she allowed him inside, and sighed at the delectable intimacy. Urgency gathered in her.
When his hands slid from her shoulders to her waist, then around the sides of her breasts she welcomed it.
“It seems I cannot get enough of every part of you,” he uttered against her mouth, the jagged unevenness of his breathing echoing hers. “The contour of your cheek. The curve of your throat. You are perfection, Kitty Savege.” His thumbs stroked across her bodice, and her knees weakened. “Did you sing? Tell me you did.”
She clutched his shoulders, aching for his caresses.
“I did. Terribly.” She pressed her hips to his. A rumbling pleasure sounded in his chest and he swept his hands to her behind, pulling her against him. There was no mistaking his need, and she could not breathe for wanting him inside her. But he would not give her that again. He had said so at Willows Hall.
“I need you now, Kitty.” He gathered her skirts. “Now.”
Chill air swirled about her calves. He was undressing her in the corridor. He wanted her. She tugged at his coat, pushing it over his shoulders. “The servants,” she barely managed.
He tore off his coat and lifted her entirely off the floor, sweeping her into his arms, and went through the nearest open door.
“The kitchen? Leam.”
He set her on the counter, closed and bolted the door, and went directly to the scullery closet. She watched, bemused, quivering in anticipation. Behind her hung rows of copper pots gleaming immaculately in the red glow of the hearth’s remaining embers.
“No maid on a mat within.” He came from the closet and moved to her. “I am glad to see you are compassionate employers.”
“Yes, she has a bed in the upper st—” He seized her mouth with his and dragged her against him. She sank her fingers into his hair as he pushed her skirts to her hips and her knees apart. His hand around her thigh was deliciously hot, his other unfastening his trousers as he kissed her again.
“Leam?” Her voice trembled.
His palm surrounded her nape, holding her close, then smoothed down her back swiftly to her behind, pulling her closer, forcing her legs open.
“You mayn’t say no.” It was a growl. His cock pressed against her aching flesh, hot and rigid, and she was dizzy with it.
She shook her head. “No.”
His brow compressed, his eyes sque
ezed shut. “Kitty”—in agony.
“I mean I will not say no! I could not. You— Ohh, Leam.”
He pulled her onto him, guiding her until he was inside her fully, hot and thick, as she had dreamed. His hands grasped her hips beneath her skirts, and his breathing against her brow was taut like his every muscle, it seemed.
“Dear God.” He barely whispered it.
She grabbed his shoulders, quivering, momentary satisfaction growing swiftly to aching need. She shifted on him.
“No.” His grip tightened, holding her still. “Don’t move.”
“But—”
“Be still.”
She obeyed. But her whole body thrummed. After a moment he smoothed his palm to her breasts that pressed tight against her bodice with her quick breaths. Gently he eased her back, and she leaned onto her palms. His thumb stole beneath the fabric and stroked her tight nipple.
“Oh.” She felt it everywhere. She throbbed for him. This time he did not bid her remain still when she moved her hips against his, drunk on the friction inside her and wanting more. He let her swivel on him, to feel him fully and remember how he had taken her before and need that now. Then he grasped her hips and thrust into her. Then again so hard her elbow jarred against the cabinet.
“Oh, God. Again.” She heard the words in her throat, on her lips, dropped back her head and let him take her. Begged him to do it again and again. His fingers dug into her flesh, tilting her hips. She whimpered her need.
She barely felt her shoulder nudge the pot, then strike it. It dislodged from its hook and crashed to the counter, then the floor, with two mighty clangs.
She gasped. He pulled her up and covered her mouth with his again, dragging her to him harder.
She reached back, seeking a purchase, the pleasure inside her aching for completion. Her hand met porcelain, a soup tureen. Leam jerked her hips forward, driving sensation through her. She moaned and grabbed the cupboard. The tureen teetered, smashed to the ground. He did not ease, his thrusts fast. With one hand she grasped his shoulder, the other reaching out, meeting metal as her climax rose swiftly, a spinning spiral of pleasure. She clutched, he drove high into her, her back arched.
“Oh, God! ”
She swept her arm round his shoulders, knocking copper against copper. He reached for the wall, pressing his palm into it and hitching up her knee. Pots cascaded.
“Kitty.” With deep, powerful thrusts he forced them together. She threw back her head and gasped, crying out sounds until he gripped her tight and suddenly stilled. He filled her. She felt it, and she wanted to weep and laugh at once, breathless and shuddering in his embrace.
She gulped in air, their chests moving hard against each other, his arms around her tight, bodies thoroughly joined. He rested his mouth on her brow. He kissed there, then her temple, beside her eye, the bridge of her nose.
A light flickered at the edge of the broad windows at the street level. Then it bobbed, moving quickly to set the kitchen aglow.
“Good heavens.” Her eyes popped wide. “Can it be the Watch?”
He pulled away and they dragged their clothing in order. Trousers fastened, he tugged her skirts around her legs and lifted her off the counter and put her before him through the door just in time for the full lantern light to shine through onto the pots and broken dishes strewn over the floor.
Leam pulled the door shut and Kitty looked around to meet the wide-eyed stares of the footman, the housekeeper, and her mother’s prim French chef. John was blushing, the chef glowering. The housekeeper’s brows were high, her lips twitching.
Mrs. Hopkins curtsied. “Is everything all right, milady?”
Kitty smoothed her hair. “Of course. I—Oh, good heavens.” She rolled her eyes and against her back felt Leam’s chuckle. “Mrs. Hopkins, Monsieur Claude, I regret tha—” The doorknocker echoed in the foyer on the floor above.
For a moment, no one moved. One hand on her waist, Leam turned the knob on the kitchen door and cracked it open. Light from the front stoop shone clear as day through the kitchen windows.
“The Watch, I’m afraid,” he murmured, a smile in his voice. She wanted to turn around, take his face into her hands, and kiss him with everything in her.
The doorbell rang like Easter church bells in a full peal. Then a second time.
“What on earth?” she whispered.
“He’ll wake the whole neighborhood,” the housekeeper warned, glancing back and forth between Kitty and Leam.
“Someone must go,” Kitty said. “John.”
He bit his lip and headed for the stair. Leam followed to the landing and halted in the shadow. In the pregnant silence they all heard the bolts thrown. Then muffled voices.
Monsieur Claude stepped forward and set his nose in the air. “Madame, may I?” He gestured with a nod to the kitchen.
Kitty moved aside. Gingerly, the cook pressed the panel open and peeked within. He gasped, palm flat on his chest, and his eyes fell back in his head.
“Sacre bleu.” With a pointed glare, he passed her by into the chamber.
Laughter welled sweetly in her, then tumbled forth. Leam’s dark eyes sparkled.
John appeared on the landing. “He wants to see the gen’leman of the house.”
“Hm.” Kitty went up the steps. Leam’s smile was nothing less than perfect. She felt too full, her nerves singing. He grasped her arm, the gentlest touch, and held her back.
“Allow me.” He studied John. “May I borrow your cap and dressing gown?”
The footman promptly removed his night gear and handed them to the nobleman. Leam disappeared up the stairs.
“If you don’t mind me saying so, milady,” the housekeeper whispered, “that one is a right fine gentleman.”
Kitty simply could not reply.
“Weel, whit’re ye caterwalling aboot, man?” His rough accents careened down the stairs, louder than all the pots and pans put together. “Ye’ve gone an woke ma wifie, nou A’ll ne’re hair the end o it, ye glaik. Och! An thar’s the babe ye’ve gone an woke too, crying. Ye canna hair him? Weel dae ye like tae be chynging hippins nou, man? Acause ma wee one’s nurse be abed wi’ the croup, an ma wifie ower-worn tae rise in the mids, an A’ll nae be chyngng the thang masel!”
A mumbling sound filtered down the stairs for at least a minute. Kitty’s ears strained, her nerves a jumble of pleasure and hilarity.
“A dinna ken, lad,” he said in much more reasonable tones. “Mebbe the baudrons.”
Mumble.
“Cats, man. Cats! An ye dinna ken the odd atween a cat an a brigand, ye best be seeking ither wirk.” The door shut with a thud and the bolts slid. A moment later, he appeared on the landing again, dressing gown over his arm, tugging the floppy cap from his head. A smile lurked at one corner of his mouth.
“Apparently the neighbors were concerned over robbers. I do not believe he will be back.” He handed the garments to the footman. “Thank you for the loan.”
“John,” Kitty said, and turned to the housekeeper and cook. “Monsieur Claude, Mrs. Hopkins.
Thank you for your assistance. We will see to the kitchen in the morning. You may return to bed now.”
With a quick curtsy the housekeeper nodded and passed the earl on the landing and went up, the grinning footman following, and the chef at their heels still holding his palm against his head. When their footsteps and murmurs had faded into the upper story, Kitty finally found the courage to look up.
Leaning against the wall, he was smiling ever so beautifully. He had not put his coat back on, and with his arms crossed over his chest she could see his muscles well defined through the damp linen.
“I daresay they will have plenty to tell the others first thing in the morning,” she said somewhat quaveringly. “Or perhaps right away.”
He came down the steps, curved his hand around her face, and tilted her head up. His gaze scanned her features, resting finally on her mouth.
“No. They haven’t enough fodder for gos
sip quite yet. We must give them more.” He bent and nuzzled the corner of her lips, sending tingles of pleasure all the way to her toes. “Where is your bedchamber?”
Kitty trembled. He did not intend to leave.
“I suspect you can guess well enough.” She tilted her face so that he could continue kissing her throat, her hands seeking his hard arms.
“In inquiring, I am trying to be civilized,” he murmured against her skin. “Belatedly, and relatively speaking.”
“But I find I quite like you barbaric. Barbaric in the kitchen just now suited me perfectly well, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed.” He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. His were gloriously dark. “Kitty, I want to stay.”
She drew out of his arms and moved toward the stair. She glanced over her shoulder.
“Second story, first door, overlooking the street. We can watch the chastened Watch from the window.”
Chapter 22
Her thundercloud eyes twinkled as though lined with silvery sun and Leam’s heart beat harder than it ever had. He maintained his voice with the greatest effort.
“I have no intention of watching anything but a beautiful woman in the throes of passion.”
Marvelously, her cheeks glowed.
“Then what, my lord,” she whispered, “are you waiting for?”
She went swiftly up the stairs before him, her hips a sweet enticement draped in the sheerest linen and silk he had shoved aside so he could have her because he could not wait another moment. To slow the heat still pounding in his blood, at her door he slipped his hands around her waist and bent to her ear.
“Kitty.” He passed his cheek along the satin of her hair. “You enchant me.”
Her fingers gripped the doorknob, her other hand stealing along his thigh boldly. She turned about, pressed her sweet curves to him, and drew him down to kiss her. She gave him her lips as she had given him her body below stairs. He wanted all of her, body and soul. Words rose to his tongue and he kissed her so that he would not speak them aloud. He reached behind her and opened the door.