Sweet Home Highland Christmas (The Pennington Family)

by May McGoldrick

  Pulling her nightgown over her head, Freya hurried to the door leading to the sitting room. She opened it and saw them.

  Ella, wrapped in a blanket, was already cuddled beside the captain on a settle. She stood still, leaning against the doorway, incapable of intruding on an experience that she knew was a first. Gregory was the only man outside of the family that she’d ever seen Ella warm up to. The child was listening with rapt attention as he related a story of a land of animals and a greedy tortoise. The melodic rise and fall of his voice, the way he made her sigh one moment and gasp the next, was entrancing to witness.

  Then he saw Freya and the intensity of his lingering gaze set her body on fire. Her hair was a tangle of wild curls, still dripping from the tub. Her nightgown molded provocatively to her wet skin. It didn’t matter. She stood still, unable to hear the words, feeling naked before him. She couldn’t move. It was as if a chain were being forged between them, each link glowing red with heat she’d never experienced.

  When the story was done and Ella stood up, Freya silently backed into the room and pulled a shawl around her. A moment later, her niece skipped in through the door with a happy smile. With a cheerful “good night,” the cherub jumped into the bed.

  As her eyes began to droop, Ella again murmured a few words about the benefits of choosing the captain as a husband over Colonel Richard. Freya wasn’t the only one enthralled with Gregory Pennington, but she couldn’t bring herself to remind the child that she had no choice.

  When Ella dropped off to sleep, Freya’s gaze moved to the door that stood slightly ajar. She wondered if Gregory was still out there. Gathering the shawl around her, she tiptoed over, intending to close it. At the last moment, she couldn’t help but look. He was standing by the window, and his gaze immediately lifted to hers.

  His feet were bare. His shirt, hanging loose over his trousers, was only buttoned halfway. Freya never imagined she could find the state of a man’s undress so exciting.

  She supposed she owed him a word of thanks for making certain Ella didn’t get into any mischief by escaping their bedchamber. Well, that was the fib Freya told herself as she padded into the sitting room, closing the door softly behind her.

  Before she could say a word, Gregory strode across the room. His hand reached for hers and whatever she was going to say was lost forever. He never paused as their fingers entwined and he pulled her toward his bedchamber.

  It was madness, but she didn’t want it to stop.

  He drew her through the door, leaving it slightly open and backing her against the wall.

  “I want to kiss you,” he whispered, his smoldering eyes meeting hers. “Tell me you don’t want the same thing and . . . and I’ll behave as I know I should.”

  Desire ripped through her, an intense primitive force that left her trembling. A throb low in her belly started to spread. “I’ve never been kissed.”

  He caressed the side of her face, his thumb brushing the sensitive skin of her bottom lip. She was aware that her breaths were shallow and quick.

  “Let me be your first.” He came closer, his body was a whisper away from hers.

  She should stop this, step away from him. She’d never been with any man, but she wasn’t insensible to his meaning. Freya knew he was implying more. She tried desperately to think, but it was as if she’d fallen under a spell. All she could do was nod.

  His lips touched hers, and all her worries disappeared in a whirlwind of awareness. He was gentle, patient, his firm lips softly playing with hers as if she were ripe fruit that he feared he might bruise. His fingers slid under the blanket of her hair and he caressed the sensitive skin of her neck. She melted into his touch and heard a soft cry of need spring from her lips.

  Gregory deepened the kiss, his tongue teasing the seam of her lips. The throb in her belly became an ache, spreading through her limbs and to her breasts. Her lips parted under his, inviting him in, wanting, needing more of him. She heard his satisfied groan as his tongue slipped into her mouth.

  The jolt of passion rushing through her buried the rest of her fears. In the next moment, Freya was kissing him back. Her hands stole around his neck, her tongue mimicking the dance she’d just learned.

  Whatever shred of control he was hanging onto suddenly disappeared. His fingers curled into her hair and he pulled her head back, his mouth taking, drinking in what she was willingly offering him.

  This man’s body called to her. It was a mystery to be explored. She took her hands from around his neck and trailed her fingers over the linen of his shirt until they found their way inside. The hot skin scorched her. She felt the steely ridge of powerful shoulders and caressed the dusting of hair on his chest.

  “You’re driving me mad, Freya,” he whispered against her lips before his hands slid down along her spine and cupped her bottom. He pressed her against his hardness and pushed a thigh between her legs until she gasped.

  She was trapped, but there was nowhere else she wanted to be. The feel of her body against his was a miracle.

  His lips left her mouth and moved over her face, dropping to her jaw. When they sank to the sensitive skin of her throat, she pressed her back more fully against the wall, willingly offering him her body. All of her.

  Every nerve in her body cried for more when his fingers stroked her hard nipple through the nightgown and then tested the heavy fullness of her breast in his hand.

  The pressure in her belly continued to build. She couldn’t think or focus. She was robbed of breath, but still she wanted more.

  Bringing his mouth back to her lips, he whispered, “Ride me.”

  His voice was ragged, his breath as short as hers. She didn’t know what he meant and then he pressed his leg against her sex. Her thighs clenched around his muscles as she felt a wetness in her very center. Giving in to some primal instinct, she began to rock against him and he ran his fingers along the neckline of the nightgown, pushing it off her shoulders. She slipped her arms out and it dropped to her waist as his mouth closed around a nipple.

  She cried out softly, her fingers delving into his hair, her hands caressing his cheek while he suckled her. She wanted him never to stop. Stormy pressures were building within her. Seeing the dark planes of his face against her pale skin as his mouth moved to bring her pleasure was the most erotic thing she could ever have imagined possible.

  She was barely aware of the moment when her world shifted. Wrapped around him, she came apart, burying her cries of release against his chest.

  * * *

  This was a first for him.

  Holding Freya, wrapped around her body as she’d wrapped herself around his heart, Penn felt the pounding in his chest begin to diminish. Never in his life had he felt more protective of a woman than he felt about her right now. Never before had he actually wondered if this woman was the one with whom he was intended to spend his life.

  She lifted her head off his shoulder and straightened her nightgown, covering herself. He backed away and picked up the shawl from the floor. Even in the fading light of the fire, he saw the blush spreading across the fair skin of her chest and throat and cheeks. She avoided looking into his eyes.

  “I . . . I am . . . I shouldn’t have . . .” Her words trailed off.

  He gently lifted her chin, meeting her dark gaze. “You and I have been circling each other from the moment we took to the road. Seeing you come out of that room, I forgot about right and wrong. I wanted you.”

  He brushed his lips against hers and was relieved to have her kiss him back, even though she withdrew again too quickly.

  “I am the caretaker of a child,” she said, flattening her palm against his chest as he moved to kiss her once more. “It would ruin everything for me and for Ella . . . Here . . . being discovered.”

  She was right. He was glad one of them had enough sense to stop and think. Ella could be wandering in here at any moment. Shona and her husband were also close by. How difficult would it be for Freya if she were discovered in his bedroo
m?

  With a feathery touch, she caressed his jaw and pressed a quick kiss to his chin before gathering the shawl tightly around herself and slipping out of his bedroom. A moment later, he heard the door to her room open and close.

  Standing in his own doorway, Penn paused and recalled the vision of Freya standing outside of her bedchamber, watching them. Her light-brown hair, darkened with water from the bath, cascaded in waves of curls to her waist. Her eyes were wide and shining in the firelight. Her long white nightgown clung to her body, the wet cloth hugging her breasts and hips provocatively. How he’d ever continued with that story was a mystery, for looking at her there, he’d been a lost man.

  The child had returned to Freya in their room after he was done with the fable, but he couldn’t retire. Waiting in the sitting room, pacing from window to fireplace and back again, he’d brooded over the changes that had taken hold of him. He’d needed to touch her. Kiss her. Make her understand the effect she had on him. Sleep had been the furthest thing from his mind. But when she’d emerged once again and then had come willingly into his bedroom, he’d been able to only give her a glimpse of what could be between them.

  Now, more than ever, he wanted to make love to her. The intensity of his own desire was terrifying. Never before had he felt such hunger for a woman. He turned and looked back at his bed. He wouldn’t lure her into it. She had too much at stake. He wouldn’t take advantage of her, not while in his own mind he was still trying to decide if she and Ella could be his future.

  There was no question that any man who married Freya would find he’d won a prize to be cherished. But that meant settling down. Committing himself. Giving up his plans of moving to Boston and building the cities of that new nation.

  Was he ready to rethink his entire future?

  He had a great deal he needed to consider before they reached Baronsford.

  Chapter Seven

  Though the hour was not late, the moon had already risen high in the starry sky by the time they reached Aberdeen and the home of Captain John Simpson and his very pregnant wife, Myrna.

  When their carriage rolled to a stop outside the front door, the gray stone house seemed to Freya to sparkle in the moonlight, and every window was ablaze with a warm welcoming light. Her first impressions had not been wrong, either, for the delighted couple could not have been more hospitable in greeting and ushering them into their home.

  Myrna, already exuding a maternal air as she moved gracefully through the rooms, was especially excited to spend time with Ella, who was also quite interested in their hostess. Together, the two played games and chatted while Freya settled in and prepared for dinner.

  After the unexpected events in Gregory’s bedchamber last night, she had felt awkwardly transparent in the carriage today and was relieved to have Ella’s attention focused on someone else. As they’d ridden along past forests and farms, she could not look at Gregory and not recall the feel of his mouth on her lips and throat and breasts. Every time a rut or turn in the road caused their legs to touch, she again felt the pressure of those thighs that had made her fly apart with pleasure. She traveled the entire day in a perpetual state of excitement, and she felt as if Ella was far too aware of her agitation.

  Passion. How was it that she’d reached her age and never known the overwhelming response it wrought in a person’s body and mind? What Gregory made her feel last night had irrevocably changed her, and she’d experienced it without him ever taking her to his bed. He had satisfied needs in her that she barely knew existed. But what about his needs?

  As they all sat together at dinner, Freya felt his gaze continue to come back to her, but she avoided looking at him. The infatuation she’d developed for Captain Pennington only added to her sense of awkwardness. In spite of her overwhelming feelings, she was fascinated to hear the story that John Simpson shared with them after Ella, allowed to dine with the adults at Myrna’s insistence, asked about the man’s limp.

  “I don’t mind talking about it at all,” he said to the little girl. “I came away from battle with this limp, but if it weren’t for this man’s courage, I’d have certainly lost my life.”

  From the moment Captain Simpson raised his glass to Gregory, Ella wasn’t the only one who was impatient to hear the story. Freya found herself hanging on his every word.

  “It all happened at a place called Benavente in Spain,” he told them. “We were both attached to Lord Paget’s forces at the time, though we scarcely knew each other then. The army was moving west, trying to reach the sea. It was nine years ago this month, and the wintry weather was hard upon us. The ground was half frozen, and a river we’d just crossed was swollen from the recent rains. We engineers demolished the bridge, but the French cavalry crossed the river anyway. Perhaps eight hundred of them.”

  He paused and had a sip of his wine. Everyone at the table was focused on him, with the exception of Gregory, who was staring into his glass.

  “The bullets were flying and the sabers were flashing in air,” he continued, telling his story directly to Ella. “I took a bullet in this leg and went down in the middle of the battle. I thought I was finished, for the hooves of horses pounded about my head. Suddenly, I felt myself hoisted up from the ground and thrown over the shoulder of your gallant captain.”

  Simpson again raised his glass to Gregory.

  “With his own sword swinging, he fought off the enemy as he carried me from the field to safety. Lord knows how far it was, but he never paused for breath before climbing on to a stray warhorse and galloping back into the fray. I earned a limp for my troubles, but I’d have died out there as sure as we’re sitting here. And I have one man to thank for it, and that hero deserves and has my gratitude forever.”

  Their host sat back after finishing the story, and Freya and Ella looked as one to Gregory. He’d never mentioned any account of this bravery in all their talk about his past.

  “Captain Simpson here has been known to embellish details a wee bit,” he said, obviously uncomfortable with the looks of hero-worship on the faces of the women at the table. He glared at his friend. “It’ll be no time before you’re saying that I descended from a cloud and parted the sea to save you.”

  A humble champion, Freya thought.

  Ella knelt up on her seat and opened her arms to Gregory, who was seated beside her. “May I have a hug from a hero?”

  Obviously surprised and moved by her request, he looked at Freya before hugging the child to his chest.

  She brought her napkin to her lips to hide the sudden trembling of her chin. Affection for him permeated her very being. A bond had formed between Ella and the captain, one that she guessed her niece would always remember and look back on fondly.

  Since they were finished with their meal, Freya excused herself and Ella, deciding this was the best time to tuck her niece in bed. Upstairs, as Shona joined them and pulled Ella’s nightgown over the little one’s head, the story they heard downstairs was retold with flourishes to the nursemaid. Settling Ella in the bed, Freya expected to hear more questions about the war, since she’d lost her father in it. And she was surprised to find that the direction of her niece’s curiosity was focused on their hostess.

  “Is Mrs. Simpson going to die after she has her baby?”

  “No. No, sweetheart. Not all mothers die delivering their babies,” Freya assured her, caressing the soft curls as Shona sat in a chair by the fire, working on her sewing.

  “How many of them do die?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, trying to think through what she was about to say, already knowing every answer would only trigger a dozen more questions. “Not too many.”

  “When you marry Captain Pennington and—”

  “I am not marrying Captain Pennington,” she corrected, ignoring the snort coming from the area of the nursemaid.

  “When you marry Captain Pennington,” Ella started again.

  Freya frowned at her niece.

  “Very well,” the child said. “Whe
n you marry Gregory and get big in the belly like Mrs. Simpson, will you promise me not to die?”

  * * *

  Simpson’s cigar had gone out twice since the two men were left alone in the dining room, and Penn saw it was about to go out again. His friend was a man who focused on one thing when he warmed to a subject, and he was particularly enthused about this one.

  “They’ve begun calling Union Street the ‘Granite Mile’ and it’s a thing to behold. Putting in the street took tremendous skill, from an engineering perspective. We needed to level a good portion of St. Catherine’s Hill and then build arches to carry the road over Putachieside. It’s a thing of beauty, I swear to you.”

  John continued to elaborate on what had already been accomplished as well as the plans they had in the works. The changes were extensive, to be sure, but Penn knew the building here was not an isolated phenomenon. Major ports all over Scotland, including those in the Highlands, were undergoing expansion and improvement. Since the end of the French wars, shipbuilding and the fishing industries were becoming increasingly important, spurring the need for more and better harbor facilities, roads, and bridges. Men like Simpson and himself were needed to serve on civic building commissions in every major city. His skills would be in high demand if he were to stay in Scotland.

  As his friend talked, however, Penn’s mind drifted to Freya. The warm expression passing across her beautiful face when Ella called him a hero and hugged him was one that he could easily get used to.

  “I need some information that you might have, John,” he said when his friend had finished opening up most of the Highlands with hypothetical new macadam roads. “Tell me what you know about Colonel Richard Dunbar.”

  “He’s a bad egg, as you know,” Simpson responded, pouring more wine for the two of them. “A relation to your Miss Freya, isn’t he?”

  “A greedy relation. A cousin standing in the wings, waiting for her father to die. Dunbar becomes baron when he does, and inherits a respectable fortune in the process.” Penn made no mention of the fact that Freya intended to marry the scoundrel.