Nicola Cornick - [Scottish Brides 01]

by The Ladyand the Laird

  CHAPTER NINE

  ROBERT HAD ACHED to kiss Lucy from the moment he had ended the massage and she had opened her eyes, so cloudy blue with sensual pleasure, and looked at him with such innocent lust and confusion. He had been waiting for this and he had thought the moment would never come and now it had. He would have to be damned careful not to waste it because if he could not persuade Lucy MacMorlan to wed him after this, then there was no hope for him.

  Her eyes were closed now, her eyelashes a thick black crescent against the perfect curve of her cheek. He touched his lips to hers again, keeping the kiss gentle, keeping ruthless rein on his desires, because he could tell that this was still new to her, a revelation, and he wanted to show her just how perfect it could be. When he had kissed her in the library at Brodrie Castle, he had wondered if she had ever kissed anyone but him. Her hesitation and inexperience suggested she had not. Her betrothal had evidently been completely passionless and she had had no idea of sensuality.

  At Brodrie he had give her a taste of passion. Now it was time to awaken it properly, awaken her. His body, already hard, tightened further at the thought, but he ignored the demand of his senses and concentrated on Lucy.

  His lips moved over hers with soft persuasion, nudging hers apart so that their breath mingled. Hesitantly she followed his lead, opening to him. His tongue slid across her full lower lip and touched hers and she sighed with pleasure.

  “Perhaps I can persuade you,” he murmured. “We need not be at odds.”

  She opened her eyes. They were the color of the Scottish summer sky and midnight, a deep blue, slumberous and soft. She looked dazed, lost in an unfamiliar world. Robert felt so sharp a pull of desire that he almost groaned aloud. Yet it was not merely lust. That was too inadequate a word for what he felt for Lucy. It did not begin to describe his emotions, nor the expression he saw in Lucy’s eyes. Her lips parted. He succumbed completely to temptation and kissed her a third time, this time long and deep.

  She gasped with shock at the intimacy of it. Yet already she was opening to him, offering her mouth to him, her tongue entangling with his, her body softening against his with instinctive surrender. It was all he could do not to wrench her up into his arms and carry her over to the chaise longue and strip her of the neat debutante’s gown to expose her once again to his sight and his touch. Instead he pressed his open mouth to the sensitive hollow beneath her ear. He felt her body shudder. She was so responsive. And she had no idea of the passion locked up inside her. Or perhaps she was beginning to suspect it.

  He had no intention of seducing her. To ravish her now, when so much lay unresolved between them, would be a true scoundrel’s trick. But he wanted to show her how well suited they were physically. That might persuade her to change her mind about accepting his hand in marriage. He could show her pleasure, unlock her feelings.

  Oh yes, and he would enjoy it too. He was not so much of a hypocrite as to pretend this was all for Lucy’s benefit.

  He dropped his lips to the lacy edging of her bodice. The lace was soft and fine, but her skin was softer. She made a sound in her throat, a sound that called to everything primitive and possessive in him. He raised a hand to skim the underside of her breast. She shivered deliciously, stretching up to meet him, seeking the press of his body. She was all artless desire and willing sweetness, far more than he could ever have imagined. He circled her breast, his thumb brushing her nipple through the thin muslin of the gown, feeling it tighten at each repeated caress. He could sense the tension coiling in her until she made a keening sound, and he kissed her again, harder this time, demanding. She met the demand, tasting him eagerly now, pulling his head down to hers, her tongue tangling with his.

  It was too much, too dangerous, without her consent to marriage. Another kiss and he would rip the gown from her shoulders so that he could replace his hands with his mouth at her breasts.

  He wrenched himself away from her. Both of them were panting. Her lips were stung deep red from his kisses, shiny, parted. Her nipples jutted beneath the filmy gown. She looked tumbled and wanton and Robert’s body hardened to near-intolerable arousal.

  “Are you sure I would not make a good husband?” he asked. It had all felt pretty damned perfect to him.

  Lucy’s eyes were huge and shadowed. She looked bewildered, shock shimmering in her eyes. She took a deep, shaky breath, one hand pressed to her chest as though to steady herself.

  “I do not want my husband to kiss me like that,” she said. Her voice was soft. “I do not want my husband to kiss me with passion and heat and—” She waved her hands about in jerky little gestures. “With desire.”

  “You don’t want your husband to desire you?” Robert said. There were enough marriages that were colder than the Scottish snows; a dose of lust made an arranged match a great deal more tolerable.

  Lucy shook her head in a brief, emphatic gesture. She was regaining her composure, drawing it about her like a protective cloak. High color still burned in her cheeks, but she had recovered a measure of self-control. Robert could feel the distance between them stretch, feel her slipping away from him.

  “If I ever wed, it would be a match of intellects, not passions, my lord,” she said.

  “Why?” Robert said. He took a step closer to her again, but she moved back, tacitly forbidding him to kiss her again.

  “It’s what I want,” she whispered.

  Robert took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the long pier glass on the wall. She still looked deliciously tousled, like a fallen angel, dazed and thoroughly kissed, his for the taking. He lowered his head and ran his tongue along the hollow of her collarbone and felt her shiver in response. It was as easy as that to shatter her serenity and awake the passion in her again. Her composure was wafer thin.

  He slid her sleeve down over the curve of her shoulder. The skin there was almost translucently pale, scattered with freckles. He bit down gently on the point of her shoulder and heard her gasp.

  “Look at us,” he said, raising his head. “Do you deny you want this?”

  Their eyes met in the glass. Hers were full of confusion and something else. Fear. It was a fear so harsh and stark that it struck Robert like a punch in the gut. His hands fell to his side and he straightened.

  “Lucy?” he said.

  “I don’t want to feel passion,” she whispered. “Never.”

  Before he could say anything else, she turned from him and ran. The tap of her footsteps increased in pace as she reached the door. It closed behind her with a sharp snap, leaving him alone in the sudden quiet.

  His instinctive reaction was to go straight after her and demand an explanation. He was halfway to the door when he stopped. She had run from him because she did not want to speak to him. He had to give her time or very likely he would get nowhere at all.

  He flung himself down on the silver chaise where Lucy had lain earlier. The faint bluebell scent of her perfume drifted from the cushions. It sent a tight, instinctive spike of desire through him as he remembered her pale nakedness against the velvet, so he got up again and stalked across to the table, lighting the candle that stood there. The room flooded with golden light. It sparkled from the long mirror, and suddenly Robert could see again Lucy’s reflection and the terror in her eyes.

  He had frightened her. He felt shocked, horrified, a complete blackguard.

  And yet...

  And yet the quick heat of her response to him spoke of a desire as strong as his own. For a while she had lost herself in his touch and in his arms. Which made no sense if she was afraid of him.

  With an oath he splashed a generous measure of wine into the dusty glass on the side table and drank it down like medicine, then threw his long length down in the fireside chair. The grate was cold and empty and smelled of old ashes. He wondered where Lucy had run. No doubt that fierce little maid would be back soon to berate him for his appalling behavior in frightening her mistress. She could not make him feel more of a scoundrel than he alrea
dy did.

  He wondered if it had been the taste of passion that had frightened Lucy, the fact that he had shown her how it might be between them. She had had no experience of desire until he had kissed her. She had read about it and written about it, but she had never known it. Then, without warning, lust and wanting had become a reality and had overwhelmed all her ideas of perfect gentlemen and platonic matches.

  He wondered about MacGillivray too. It seemed that Lucy, fresh from the schoolroom, had idealized the man, so much older than she. He had been a mentor, a father figure, rather than a lover. He had perhaps made her feel safe. And now she had discovered for the first time that physical love was not safe or gentle or scholarly and she was afraid.

  It was plausible. Yet for some reason the doubt still hovered in his mind. The depth of terror in Lucy’s eyes argued something else. It reflected pain and intolerable memories. He recognized it because he carried with him his own share of unbearable guilt and grief.

  She was not afraid of him. She was afraid of something else. Something had happened to her in the past, something so shocking, so terrible, that she could not escape the memory of it. He had seen that fear before in the eyes of men who had been in battle, who had witnessed terrible things and could never forget them.

  He released his breath on a long sigh. He needed time, time to uncover Lucy’s fears and time to woo her with gentleness. It was the only way forward. Unfortunately with Wilfred Cardross intent on claiming his estates, time was the one commodity he did not have.

  * * *

  “HE SOUNDS PRETTY damned perfect to me,” Mairi said. “He’s handsome, rich, interesting and attractive.” She ticked off Robert Methven’s attributes on her fingers. “He’s clever. Oh, and according to you, he knows how to kiss. You don’t have anyone to compare him with, but you’re fairly certain he’s very good at it.”

  “You’re so superficial,” Lucy said crossly. She was beginning to wish she had not confided in her sister. Mairi simply did not understand her. Only a year separated them, but they had never been very close. She could not talk to Mairi about Alice’s death; could not tell her the shock and the horror of it. Mairi’s grieving was for the sister she had loved and lost. Lucy’s was for a beloved twin who had died tragically in her arms, a sister she felt she had failed. The gulf of shame and regret separated her from Mairi and seemed to push them further apart rather than bring them together.

  Lucy still had nightmares, and memories so vivid they transported her back to that shuttered room and Alice’s cold hand in hers. She heard the thin wail of the baby. She was haunted. She did not understand why she felt so, but there was an empty space where Alice had been, a void that sometimes left Lucy so grief-stricken and guilty she could barely breathe.

  “I always was superficial, darling,” Mairi was saying cheerfully, placing her delicate crystal wineglass on the table. “It’s my defining characteristic.” She shrugged her shoulders beneath the fine silk of her gown. “Well, don’t expect me to marry Lord Methven just to save his inheritance. Tempting as he is—and trust me, he is a very tempting man—I like being a widow. There are lots of benefits.”

  “I don’t want you to marry him,” Lucy said, even more crossly. “And anyway, you can’t. You are ineligible.”

  And I know he is a tempting man.

  She shivered a little, wondering if she would always feel this jumble of emotion when she thought of Robert Methven. He could awaken her desires at a touch, but he could not eradicate her fear and her grief and her guilt.

  “No.” The look Mairi gave her was shrewd. “You refused him, but you don’t want anyone else to have him. You’re like a dog in a manger.”

  Lucy turned her face away. “You don’t understand,” she said. There was an ache in her chest. She wanted to cry because it was true; her heart did ache whenever she thought of Robert Methven marrying someone else.

  “I never did understand,” Mairi said. She yawned. “You’ve rejected every eligible peer in the country because you think they don’t measure up to Duncan MacGillivray.” She fixed her sister with her wide blue eyes. “You need help, Lucy. MacGillivray was all very well, but he was scarcely a perfect ideal. He was just a man, and a dull old one at that.”

  Lucy dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She remembered Lady Kenton saying much the same thing. She remembered Robert Methven’s brusque dismissal of the idea that there could be a man who was her perfect match. She felt battered and upset. There had been something so appealing, so safe, about Lord MacGillivray. That was all she wanted, to feel safe.

  “Take Robert Methven instead,” Mairi was saying. “At least he would make love to you nicely.”

  Lucy shuddered. That was certainly true. She thought of Methven reciting her poetry to her before dinner, his trace of a rough Scots brogue plucking at her nerves. That quiet voice with its undertone of velvet had abraded her senses. She thought of his kisses. She had been completely undone by the power of his touch. It had felt gentle, so very different from how she thought of him. He was ruthless, a hard man, yet his kiss had been very tender. Suddenly she felt hot all over again. The warmth rippled over her skin, flooding her with sensation so that she tingled.

  She had never felt like this before, never felt such a conflict between her mind and her senses.

  She shivered convulsively in the warm night air.

  Mairi had not noticed. She was yawning ostentatiously and checking the little porcelain clock on the mantel. “It’s late,” she said.

  Lucy slid off the bed. “Are you expecting company?” she asked, a little tartly. Mairi could not have made it plainer that she wanted to hurry her sister from her room.

  For a moment Mairi looked taken aback, but then she smiled easily. “Not tonight. Lady Durness has taken both those luscious artist’s models to her chamber. She is said to be insatiable. She would have preferred Methven, but he is only interested in you.”

  “Both of them,” Lucy said, blushing at the thought and the memory of such drawings in her grandfather’s folio. “Gracious.”

  Mairi was laughing at her, her blue eyes gently mocking. Lucy felt thoroughly naive. “I am astonished she has not fallen pregnant with a brood of miscellaneous children by now,” she said.

  “There are ways to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Mairi said vaguely. “Devices, potions...ways to make sure you are safe.” She looked at Lucy. “Things no respectable virgin heiress should know.”

  “Things no respectable widow should discuss either,” Lucy said.

  She met no one as she hurried back along Durness’s long corridors. Torches hung in the wall sconces, but their light could not penetrate the shadows that wreathed the high walls. She hesitated before she pushed open the door of her chamber. It was not that she imagined that Robert Methven would still be there—she was sure he was long gone to the Durness Inn—but the memory of him was potent enough to make her stop and catch her breath.

  The room was warm, lit by fire and candlelight. Sheena was dozing in the little armchair before the fire. Lucy’s nightgown was stretched out to warm over the iron fireguard. She let out a breath, feeling safe again for the first time that night. Perhaps she would be able to sleep after all.

  But she did not know what she would say to Robert Methven in the morning.

  After Sheena had helped her out of her gown and had retired to the adjoining room, Lucy walked over to the polished wooden chest of drawers, splashing some water from the jug into the bowl and washing her face. It cooled her skin, but the feverish hum in her blood still made rest an impossibility. She tried to summon up the memory of Duncan MacGillivray with his gentle kindness and his old-fashioned courtesy. He had demanded nothing from her but intellectual companionship. She had liked that. It had made her feel secure.

  Yet Lord MacGillivray’s image seemed fainter now, fragile, as though he were a wraith fading before her eyes. She could no longer visualize their time of pleasant scholarly camaraderie. Instead it was Robert Methven’s f
ace she saw before her eyes, strong, harsh and determined.

  She slid into bed and blew out the candle. The unexpected heat of the day had faded completely now and it was raining, hard drops beating on the roof of the castle, the water gurgling in the gutter and spattering on the terrace below. She had her window open, and the sound filled her ears. It was soothing, washing away her troubles and lulling her to sleep at last. The castle was quiet with all the guests asleep. It creaked a little as it settled its bones for the night.

  Lucy was sound asleep when something disturbed her, dragging her back from the darkness of sleep without dreams. She opened her eyes. The room was shadowed. She could see nothing. Her mind was still struggling with the dregs of sleep, but her ears caught again the scrape of footsteps, the creak of a floorboard. Then the darkness shifted and something—someone—moved beside the bed. She shot upright and drew breath to scream, but she was too late. She was wrapped in suffocating folds of material, blinded, choked and unable to breathe. She fought the heat and the dark, thrashing out at whoever was near her, but her hands were caught and pinioned and her struggles rendered useless. She heard a man swear under his breath and aimed a kick at whatever part of him she could make contact with. He swore again and picked her up. She was feeling light-headed now. There was no air to breathe. The thick smothering darkness grew. She held on to consciousness by a thread. Then something hit her, hard, on the back of the head, and the last of the light went out.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE FIRST THING that Lucy saw when she opened her eyes was a lantern. It was swinging back and forth in the most sickening rhythm and it kept pace with the pounding in her head and the heaving of her stomach. She rolled over and was violently sick. Fortunately someone had had the intelligence to anticipate this, for there was a bowl beside her bed. Lucy felt profoundly grateful and only a little less profoundly ill. She lay back with a groan and closed her eyes and after a moment she felt the cool press of a cloth against the hot skin of her forehead. She had absolutely no curiosity about where she was or what was happening to her. Her entire consciousness was caught up in feeling so very ill. She closed her eyes and let sleep take her.