by Allie Mackay
Hardwick frowned.
She handed the taller of the two lads her box of broken china. “Robbie, if you’ll pass this around so everyone can select a special piece and you, Roddie” – she gave the other youth a tray piled high with the tools she called mosaic nippers – “if you’ll hand out these as well, we can get started.”
As if on cue, Honoria and Behag Finney the cook stepped out of the shadows on the far side of the vaulted chamber. Coming forward, they held small tables he’d heard referred to as folding work trays clutched beneath their arms.
Nodding to them, his lady quickly returned her attention to the audience. She held up her own nipper and an uneven piece of porcelain.
“Most of the broken china pieces I use for my Vintage Chic collections are cut into squares, ovals, hearts, and rectangles.” She set down the bit of porcelain and her nipper. “Even so, some of my most prized offerings have been made from irregular shapes. I’d suggest holding your piece in your hand while closing your eyes and then letting the china tell you in its own way how best to cut it.”
Almost everyone except Colonel Darling nodded appreciatively.
Aussie Elizabeth rolled her eyes.
At the back of the room, Birdie MacGhee was clearly using her wifely influence to keep Mac from slapping his thigh and hooting loudly.
Hardwick, too, could have easily guffawed.
He’d lived too long and too hard to waste time listening to cracked and broken bits of porcelain.
He did look on as, contrary to his word, Colonel Darling fished not one but two pieces from the proffered box. Choosing first a small bit of what Cilla termed chintz, a delicate-looking floral pattern in yellows, pinks, and greens; his second choice proved equally fine, this piece boasting hand-painted deep purple flowers and green leaves.
The colonel’s puffed chest and the telling glances he bestowed on both Violet and Flora left little doubt as to whom he had in mind as recipients for his labors.
As if pretending not to notice – or, at the least, to have forgotten his avowals not to get actively involved in jewelry making – Cilla continued on. She moved about the rows of class attendees, the slight jigging of her breasts and the tempting sway of her hips making it difficult for Hardwick to think of much else.
Until she stopped beside wee Violet Manyweathers’s folding work tray. The old woman’s hands shook, making it difficult for her to cut her square of deep red Fiestaware into the oval shape she wished for a pendant.
Again and again, Cilla encouraged her, finally leaning down to cover the woman’s trembling fingers with her own strong ones so that, together, they managed to clip and cut the square into Violet’s oval.
Hardwick moved closer, watching silently and not even realizing he’d drawn so near to them until a loud yelp shattered the spell.
Eyeing him accusingly, Dunroamin’s little mascot dachshund, Leo, peered up at him from where he’d been curled at Violet’s feet.
“Sorry, laddie.” Hardwick reached down to pat the dog’s head.
But much as he regretted stepping on Leo’s tail, his mind was elsewhere.
Instead of Dunroamin’s well-lit vaulted undercroft, he saw Seagrave’s great hall. Rather than Cilla and Violet Manyweathers, his long-ago intended and his mother loomed before him. Recalled from the hazy mists of time, the two souls from his past filled his vision, one much-loved and cherished, the other inspiring only distaste.
As if it were only yesterday, he looked on as the beautiful Lady Dolina appeared behind his mother’s chair and then leaned down to snatch the spoon from his mother’s bent and trembling fingers.
“She should be locked in a tower! Kept away from the hall, where a nurse can hand feed and coddle her.” Lady Dolina slapped the spoon onto the high table, well out of his aging mother’s reach. “It offends my eyes to watch her food dribble down her chin.”
“And you offend me.” Hardwick took the beauty by the elbow, pulling her from the dais and, ultimately, out of his hall.
It was the last he’d seen of her, not that he’d minded.
What he did mind was her intrusion now.
She’d robbed him of the pleasure of watching Cilla bend down to help Violet Manyweathers cut her square of red dinnerware. Prepared as he was – he’d pulled his tartan binding especially tight – he’d been enjoying how her well-rounded buttocks bobbed with her every move.
He didn’t need to examine the tightness in his chest.
Born of an entirely different emotion; one Bran would surely call love, neither his lustful urgings nor the swellings of his heart mattered at the moment.
His mother and Lady Dolina were gone.
And they’d taken Cilla and Violet with them.
Hardwick frowned, blinking.
He knuckled his eyes, but nothing changed. The vaulted undercroft was empty. Only the vacated seats and his lady’s worktable remained.
Furious that he’d spent much more time than he’d thought peering into his own past, he took a piece of brilliant blue Fiestaware from the box of broken china. He turned the shard over in his hand, his heart thumping harder the longer he peered at it.
It was the same blue as Cilla’s eyes.
“Where were you?”
He whirled around at her voice. The shard of blue flew from his fingers. “I … hell and botheration, I-” He reached down, swiping the little piece of dinnerware off the undercroft’s stone-flagged floor.
“Well?” She stepped out of the shadows, the neat stacks of folding work trays lined against the wall behind her indicating what she’d been doing.
“I was thinking.” He set the shard on the table. “Thinking of you, and so deeply that I didn’t realize you’d ended your-”
“I didn’t mean now.” Her gaze flickered to the chair where the trollop had sat. “I meant all this week?”
“I was patrolling your uncle’s peat fields. I thought you knew.” It was the best answer he could give her, unwilling as he was to reveal that he’d spent the time drilling himself on the moors.
Using every passing moment to dwell on his desire for her in order to test the strength of his tartan binding, only returning once he’d assured himself he could pleasure her without suffering his own arousal.
He looked at her now, not missing the bright color staining her cheeks. Nor did he fail to note that she was avoiding his eyes. When she once more flashed a glance at the other woman’s seat, he knew why.
“By Odin!” Disbelief swept him. “Dinnae tell me you think I was with thon lassie?”
Her eyes flashed. “She was really interested in you.”
“She could have thrown off her clothes and pranced about naked for all I care.” Picking up the blue shard again, he wrapped his fingers around it, squeezing hard. “I would still no’ have seen her. No’ in the way you mean.”
***
Cilla bit her lip, wanting to believe him. But just that moment her waistband was biting viciously into her recently acquired belly roll.
She flipped back her hair, met his gaze full on. “She has a flat stomach.”
The words sounded petty even to her.
Unable to retract them, she started to frown when – to her amazement – Hardwick jammed his fists on his hips and, throwing back his head, began to laugh.
His dark eyes alight, he grinned. “I can see you’ve ne’er known a Highlander if you think we lust after stick women!”
Cilla tried to appear unaffected. “I’m sure I don’t know what a Highlander lusts after.”
“Then, my sweet” – he stepped closer, his thumb rubbing slow circles over the piece of blue Fiestaware in his hand – “perhaps it is time you learned.”
She glanced aside, painfully aware of the bright overhead lights shining down on them. They’d highlight the puffiness beneath her eyes and her mussed hair. Having attempted to look calm, cool, and collected, she’d adopted Aunt Birdie’s signature french twist.
Only on her, it hadn’t worked.
Her hair wasn’t long enough, and the pins had slipped. The elegant do was now nearly undone.
“My ex was of Highland stock.” It was a poor excuse, but bought her time. “At least he claimed-”
“Sweeting, if he’d been a true Highlander, you would have known it.” His voice deepened, his burr flowing through her like sun-warmed honey. “As a good friend of mine is wont to say, ‘There are men and there are Highlanders. Woe be to anyone fool enough not to know the difference.’”
“I can tell the difference.” She looked back at him, her heart clutching. “It’s a big one.”
“Aye, so I’ve been told.” He flashed a wolfish smile.
Cilla’s eyes widened.
He laughed.
Heat consumed her, his nearness and the look on his face exciting her even more than the ghostly magic of his hot stares and roving fingers. Her pulse quickened and her mouth went dry. She was falling under his spell, losing herself more with each passing moment. Her entire body thrummed with wanting him.
Her heart…
“Tell me again how you can seem so real,” she blurted, nerves making her grasp for a safer subject.
“Because I will it so and” – he paused, his voice turning earnest – “because I’ve had seven hundred years’ practice.”
Unable to argue, Cilla glanced to wear Leo slept curled beneath the worktable. “And him?” She waited until he, too, looked down at the little dog. “Why isn’t he afraid of you? I’ve always heard dogs ran from ghosts?”
He stepped closer, touched his hand to her cheek. “Do you always believe what you hear, Cilla-lass?”
“I-”
“Dogs are no different than people.” His smile returned, his eyes warming. “In spirit or in life, they are the same souls. Dinnae tell me you’ve ne’er noticed that dogs can tell when someone likes them or no’.”
He cast another glance at Leo. “They also ken a good soul from a bad one. That knowledge doesnae change just because the soul they see might be others.”
“Others as in a ghost?”
He nodded.
Under the table, Leo stretched and started snoring.
Hardwick smoothed a strand of hair off her face, the look in his eyes warming her to the roots of her own soul. Never had a man touched her so deeply both inside and out. She couldn’t imagine what would happen when he really touched her, something she knew was going to happen very soon.
She moistened her lips. “Are you trying to tell me you’re a good man?”
“Nae.” He shook his head slowly. “I mean to show you how good you are.”
She blinked. “Me?”
He leaned in to nuzzle her neck, letting his lips brush across her skin. “You and no other,” he declared, nipping her ear.
“You sound like you mean that.” Cilla’s heart began a slow, hard thumping.
“Because I do.” He lifted the shard of blue Fiestaware he still held and appeared to examine it. “Did you know, for starters, that your eyes are the same brilliant blue as this? Or” – he put down the bit of dinnerware and picked up a cream china piece with a delicate gold-edge – “that your hair glistens with the same golden sheen as the rim of this porcelain?”
He looked at her for a long moment, his gaze burning her soul. “A man could lose himself in such eyes as yours.” He put down the fragile bit of gold-rimmed china and reached for her hair, twining a lock through his fingers. “In my day, kings would have gone to their knees for a maid with such silken tresses of gold. This day, this e’en, I am telling you that I have dreamt of touching your hair.”
He let the strands spill across his hand. “I have dreamt of much, lass.”
She bit her lip, unable to speak.
His words were melting her.
As for his eyes, it almost hurt to look into them, so intense was his stare. No man had ever looked at her with such naked hunger.
“You have a silvered tongue.” She stumbled over her own, the wild hammering of her heart making it impossible to think. “No one ever said-”
“More’s the pity.” He turned back to the table, taking a sliver cut from Violet’s red dinnerware. “And more is my pleasure in showing you. Behold the rich color of your lips,” he added, holding the tiny shard to the light before returning it to the table. “Sweet lips that beg kissing.”
The world tilted. “A Highlander’s kiss?”
His smile went devilish. “My kiss.”
Before she could blink, he pulled her into his arms and slanted his mouth over hers in a hot, demanding kiss. Her blood sizzled and the room spun. A whirlwind of desire whipped through her and she clung to him, pressing close as he deepened the kiss and they lost themselves in a swirl of lips, tongue, and soft, heated breath.
“O-o-oh,” she gasped, pulling in air even as he claimed another bold, soul-slaking kiss.
He wrapped his arms around her, dragging her even closer. He let his hands glide low until he splayed his fingers across her hips, holding her tight against him as he kissed her again and again.
“Now, my love,” – he pulled back to look at her – “now, you’ve almost been kissed by a Highlander.”
She blinked. “Almost?”
“Aye, just.” He slid a hand into her hair, plucking out the remaining pins and tossing them onto the floor. “There’s another kind of kiss we specialize in, see you.”
Cilla almost choked. “What do you mean?”
“We are earthy men.” He smiled. “Surely you can guess?”
He lowered his gaze, and she knew indeed.
“Oh, no…” Embarrassment scalded her cheeks. “You can’t mean-”
“Och, but I do.” He reached for her blouse, already unbuttoning. “I aye keep my word, Cilla-lass. I’m about to show you how good you are. Some might say how delectable.”
She gulped.
He folded his arms, looking supremely satisfied. “‘Tis time you were pleasured by a man who lives to please you.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Wait.”
Cilla grabbed Hardwick’s wrists just as he neared the last few buttons of her top. Already her breasts felt tight and heavy, needing his touch. Sensual awareness rippled all through her and she felt a fierce urge for more. Her heart raced madly, yet she bit her lip, holding back. She wanted this, everything, but still...
She glanced at the overhead spotlights, blinking in their harshness. “The light is too much.” It will reveal my flaws.
You might not want me.
“Och, nae, sweeting.” He shook his head, smiling. “There cannae be enough light. I would see you clearly.” His gaze dipped to her half-opened blouse, his eyes glittering darkly. “All of you that I can feast my eyes on.”
“But-”
He pressed two fingers against her lips, silencing her. “But is a word I dinnae acknowledge.”
“It has its purpose.” She aimed another glance at the spotlights.
They really were bright.
She frowned. “The lights bother me.”
His smile faded. “Why do I think you mean that?”
“Because I do.” She glanced aside. “You heard my talk tonight; the part about the glass curio cabinet that fell on me when I was little.”
He was on her in a wink, seizing her chin and turning her to look at him. “Dinnae tell me you’re fashing yourself o’er childhood scars?”
“It isn’t that...” She hedged.
The scars were tiny and barely visible. A magnifying glass would be needed to find them. What she’d meant was how she’d reached for something she’d wanted so badly only to have it come tumbling down on top of her.
Now she wanted Hardwick that desperately.
She was fiercely attracted to him, but her feelings went so much deeper. Sure, her breath hitched every time he looked at her. But his concern for her aunt and uncle, for Dunroamin, swelled her heart. His medieval drive to protect them, spoke to something inside her, even making her throat thicken at times. He was more than good
looking, more than a hot Scottish accent. He could be everything to her; perhaps he already was. She did know that to lose him would fill her with a vast emptiness.
So she didn’t want to risk anything that might send him running from her.
He was masculine perfection, every powerfully honed inch of him. The dark silk of his hair, and his smoldering gaze, his big, strong hands, and his sandalwood scent...
She was made of flaws, and not just physically.
Everything she touched went wrong.
Her past relationships, her business, her most heartfelt hopes and dreams – could this with him, go right?
Weren’t they doomed from the start, meeting centuries apart? However real and solid he was able to manifest. At the end of the day, he was what he was.
She glanced aside, hoped he wouldn’t see her blink back the moisture stinging her eyes. She wasn’t her Aunt Birdie. She didn’t know if she had the nerve, the daring, to jump off a cliff to see if she’d learn to fly.
“You don’t understand,” she tried to explain. “I’m not-”
“You are all that I want. The only thing I desire in this world, or any other.” Stepping closer, he brushed his lips across her brow. “I'll kiss every one of the wee scars until you forget them.”
“The scars don’t bother me.”
He arched a brow. “What then?”
“It’s, well…” I’m sure I’ve fallen in love with you.
“‘Tis nerves, I can see. But you’ve no cause for such worries.” He cupped her chin, tilting her face upward. “Do you no’ ken that I’ve wanted you from the moment I first saw you? That I desired you even then?”
She nodded, remembering the heat in his eyes.
Hadn’t she felt it, too?
“You’re forgetting one thing,” he said, as if he sensed her capitulation. “I’ve already seen you naked.” His voice deepened, the rich, silky-smooth tones spilling into her, making her feel wanted, feminine and desirable. “Unless I’ve lost my skill, you’ve already felt my hands on you.”
She blushed. “I did notice something, during my presentation,” she admitted, stunned she’d told him.
“Seven hundred years of waiting for you, lass.” He lowered his gaze so that, again, she felt what could only be described as his hand between her legs. It was the sensation of his finger gliding along her center, teasing and tantalizing her.