“What are you grinning at?” Struan asked suddenly, loudly.
William was instantly sober. “Me, my lord? Grinning? Never. I expect I was just thinking about ’ow ’appy the marquess was when ’e found out you lied—I mean, pretended about being a priest. I reckon as ’ow ’e and ’er ladyship will be beside ’emselves with joy when they meets their new nephew and niece for the first time.”
The woman who confronted Struan made him entirely forget his reason for being in a marvelous Gothic drawing room at Franchot Castle.
“Lord Hunsingore?” she said, her voice the kind that broke a little, as if with secret laughter. “I understand you and Mr. Innes are to be our guests here.”
Struan stared at her.
“We had not expected you so soon. In fact, had we waited to leave London until the appointed day, you would have arrived here before any of us.”
“We would?”
“Oh, yes,” she said seriously, averting her eyes each time she met his, as if she were afraid direct contact might wound her. “As it is, my brother and the rest of his party will not arrive for several days.”
“I see.” He saw a tall, slender, straight-backed woman with thick dark hair shot through with red lights. She was no longer a girl, but she was lovely in a refined manner, with dark eyes, arched brows, a straight nose and a mouth that was beautifully cut—a mouth cut, in fact, like a more restrained version of the one belonging to Struan’s very best friend.
Good God, Calum could very well be right. He could be related to this woman.
“Where is Mr. Innes?”
Where he had no right to be, meddling wretch that he was. “The long journey made him restless.” The villain had ducked out in Struan’s hour of most desperate need. “Mr. Innes is a man who delights in a great deal of exercise. He is walking about. Admiring this marvelous castle, no doubt. But I’m certain he will join us soon.” Without uttering a word, Calum had left the coach at the top of the final rise to Franchot Castle and had disappeared into a nearby thicket. At this moment, William was in charge of the surprise Struan had no choice but to visit upon Lady Justine.
“The dowager duchess will not be able to greet you, I fear,” Lady Justine said, coloring slightly. “She, er, feels somewhat indisposed and may decide not to leave her rooms for some time.”
“Yes,” Struan said, intending to convey understanding but fearing Lady Justine would hear what he truly thought, which was that the Dowager Duchess of Franchot had little interest in minor nobles and their untitled friends. “Even less in inconvenient offspring,” he muttered.
“I beg your pardon?”
Struan blinked and centered his gaze on Lady Justine’s striking face. “Less inconvenience,” he said, casting about for either help or an escape. “Less inconvenience might offer the lady some…spring…to her being, that is.”
“Inconvenience?”
“We…that is to say, I fear I may present you with a dilemma for which you cannot possibly be prepared.”
“How could you, my lord?”
As if to answer her question, the door was opened by a footman, accompanied by Ella and Max.
“These two young people said they wished to be with Viscount Hunsingore,” the footman announced, clearly disapproving. “They were most insistent that he would want them with him because of their previous experiences while residing with a Mrs.—”
“Thank you,” Struan interrupted quickly. “Thank you very much. Come in, you two.” He tried, probably without success, to sound and appear jovial and delighted at the sight of the pair. Whatever happened, he must make some sort of excuse—other than the unthinkable one Lady Philipa had proposed—find a distant place in this castle in which to hide his two charges and place them elsewhere as quickly, and quietly, as possible.
Ella, her exotically angular face set in as demure a mold as such a face could accomplish, approached Struan across the expanse of silken green carpet. A girlish, pale pink pelisse over a muslin gown of a like shade did not at all suit her, Struan decided, but it was a definite improvement over the transparent red creation in which he’d first seen her.
When she stood before him, her head tilted, he saw anxiety in her great dark eyes. She looked over her shoulder and beckoned for Max to join her. He came, head hanging in a manner so uncharacteristic that Struan was filled with alarm.
“Mr. Innes told us to come in ’ere,” Ella said in her clear voice. “ ’E said you’d want us to meet a lady.”
Lady Justine had not moved since the children had entered the room. Now she came toward Struan and he vaguely noted that she limped quite markedly.
“Lady Justine, er—” Struan looked into the woman’s warm brown eyes.
“Girvin,” she said, giving what must be her family name. He would have Calum’s interfering hide for this. “These young people are—”
“There you are!” Calum’s voice, booming through the room, emptied Struan’s brain of any coherent thought. “Meant to come in with these two rascals. Had the good fortune to run into Lady Philipa.”
Struan scowled.
Calum smiled and walked over to ruffle Max’s hair. Amazingly, the boy grinned with pleasure.
“Have you explained our small contretemps to Lady Justine?” Calum asked.
“Well, I—”
“I thought not,” Calum said with a resigned expression. “Never mind. Struan is a shy fellow, Lady Justine. The children and I will deal with the matter at hand, won’t we, children?”
“Oh, yes,” Ella said and smiled sweetly from Struan to Lady Justine and back again. “Mr. Innes is right. I can feel it. The lady won’t think nothing of finding a place for two children what ’ave learned to manage with very little. Am I right, lady?”
“My lady,” Struan murmured with quiet desperation.
“My lady,” Ella said obligingly.
“But of course,” Lady Justine said, smiling for all the world as if there were nothing she relished more than the intrusion of two uncultured, unexpected guests.
“There,” Ella said triumphantly, and threaded an arm through one of Struan’s. She gazed up at him adoringly. “I told you everythin’ would be perfect soon as we got ’ere, Papa.”
Charmed Fifteen
Franchot Castle was beautiful. Fearsome in its massive grandeur—particularly as evening slid into night—yet definitely beautiful. Pippa left the cover of a vast stone urn overflowing with ivy and fragrant sweet Williams and slipped along the terrace to which she’d secretly followed Calum Innes.
He’d spoken very little at dinner and excused himself immediately afterward. Pippa had wanted to follow him at once. Decorum and good sense had forced her to wait a few minutes, and when she had finally made fatigue a reason to leave, she’d feared there would be no hope of finding out where Calum had gone—if he’d gone anywhere other than to his rooms.
Miraculously, the moment she’d quit the dining room for the adjoining elegant blue-and-gold salon, Calum had been standing in one of the doorways to the echoing stone passageway beyond.
If he’d seen her, he had given no sign. Instead, he had chosen that instant to turn and walk away, and Pippa had sped across the salon, annoyed at the rustle of her gray gros des Indes gown. She need not have worried. Calum’s progress from the castle had held single-minded purpose, and he certainly had not appeared to hear the faint sound she’d been helpless to mask.
Now he moved into the clear moonlight that bathed a wide flight of steps leading from this terrace to the one below. He strode swiftly, silently, downward—and continued descending past the second and third terraces to heavily shadowed lawns dotted with topiary and hemmed in by high, meticulously clipped privet hedges.
She should go back and make her way to her rooms before she would be missed.
Pippa clamped a hand over her heart and felt its wild beating.
Going back was out of the question. All her life she had pursued what interested her most with steadfast determination.
Pippa checked her step, startled by the clearly recalled admonition of Binns, the woman who had been Pippa’s indifferent nanny until she’d left, when Pippa was twelve, to take up a post where children know how children are supposed to behave and won’t keep a body forever in fear of a terrible misfortune befalling them in their wild doings.
Binns might have been right. Perhaps Pippa was wild, but she could not change her nature.
If she delayed, even for a few moments, he would disappear. Swiftly, she gained the lawn and flew to the cover of a bush carefully shaped into a large and perfect cone.
Calum was now strolling at a leisurely pace, meandering among bushes molded by the castle’s legion of gardeners into bears and birds and all manner of fanciful shapes.
At last, without putting more than a few additional yards between himself and Pippa, he halted at a spot where a white marble statue guarded an exit from the garden. He stood there, apparently gazing at the moon’s glittering stripe upon a night-black sea. He rested a booted foot on the statue’s elevated base and placed a forearm on his thigh.
Pippa hovered between high, almost overwhelming excitement and some abjectly unhappy realization that seemed poised to grab and swallow her.
Calum was the excitement.
The horrible certainty that every moment spent in his company—even when he did know of her presence—brought her closer to never seeing him again was the unhappy realization.
She stayed in the blackness created by a hedge. From there she could see his profile clearly where it caught the silver of moonlight. He seemed transfixed by what he saw, or perhaps by what he thought about whilst he stared into the darkness.
A soul who enjoyed solitude.
Like her, Calum thirsted for quiet moments alone with his imaginings. Pippa was certain he did.
She swallowed and felt pain in her throat. Soon she would be a married woman, and the demands of that state would doubtless keep her from dwelling on those simple pleasures that had, since childhood, brought her so much joy.
Married. Married to Etienne Loring Girvin, Duke of Franchot, the autocratic, indifferent man to whom she must submit in all things. Pippa recalled the foul smell of stale drink upon his breath when he’d tried to kiss her. Shuddering, she involuntarily wiped at her mouth.
Within her sight stood a man quite different from the one to whom she must, in the dowager’s words, “relinquish herself entirely,” and for whom she must “put aside the nonsense of maidenly dreams and maidenly modesty for the purpose of accommodating his needs.” The dowager had, with her eyes averted from Pippa’s, added that there would be much that caused Pippa discomfort—even pain on occasion—but no sign of disgust must ever be visible to the man who would then be her lord.
For a woman to find any pleasure in the marriage bed was unthinkable. Women of refinement and good breeding must be passive and gladly accept inevitable unpleasantness. In the unlikely event that such a woman might find any enjoyment in the marriage act, then she must, at all costs, never tell this sin to her husband. An immediate confession to her minister, followed by firm resolve never to err again, would be her only salvation.
When the time had come for her to join the Franchots in London, Pippa had tried to talk to her father, to tell him she wished she might be released from this marriage. Her pleas for him to give Franchot a guarantee of perpetual free passage across Chauncey land had resulted in a sharp reprimand for her foolishness. A man did not simply give away part of one of his estates. Papa had not seemed to notice the depth of her agitation and had left for the Continent on business for the King, saying that he would endeavor to be present for her wedding.
Her wedding.
Weddings, so she’d thought when she’d been a foolish little girl, were beginnings. When she’d become older, sixteen or seventeen, she’d started trying to remember what Etienne—whom she’d seen only once or twice when she was very young—looked like. And she’d tried to spin a magical story around her marriage to him, making of it a fairy tale like those she’d read of knights and ladies, when the knight came for his lady and carried her off on his horse and they were both so very happy as they galloped off into their future.
The first instruction Pippa had received from her “knight” was that he’d prefer that she call him Franchot—so much more suitable, he’d said—rather than Etienne.
And Franchot did not particularly care to ride. He’d told her as much when she’d unwisely tried to engage him in conversation and had mentioned her own fondness for horses.
Franchot did not like horses or riding, but biting the ear of a female far too insubstantial to defend herself made him laugh. Forcing his hand inside her gown and…She closed her eyes, trying to push away the memory but failing. He had taken her breast into his hot hand and squeezed until tears sprang into her eyes. That had made him laugh a great deal. And he’d swayed against her and said, “Nothing more than a little apple here. What a disappointment. Much prefer large fruit meself. But no doubt I shall enjoy taking many bites from this little apple—until you have discharged your duty to me.”
She knew what he meant. More or less. Without absolute understanding of exactly how it should be accomplished, Pippa was certain Franchot referred to the bringing forth of his heirs.
One of the benefits of very little supervision, since Binns left, had been Pippa’s freedom to explore the library at Dowanhill. In that library were some unusual texts—hidden where they were probably never supposed to be found—that spoke of how a man, when he wished a woman to produce his heirs, must be tireless in the planting of his seed. Unselfishly taking that seed into herself—as often as might be needed—and nurturing it until it brought forth the essential fruit was the wife’s duty.
The equation between Franchot’s taking bites out of her breasts and the planting of his seed for her to nurture was not at all clear. However, there had been a certain small volume, written in a language Pippa had never seen before and containing sketches of male and female parts, that had given her a fair idea—fantastic as it seemed—of where the seed came from. It came from That—the part she had felt against her when Calum Innes had held her close—and although she was certain she must be unnatural, she would very much like to see exactly what That looked like—other than in a picture.
There had been several sketches that had sent Pippa scrambling to replace the volume. She’d tried, unsuccessfully, to close what she’d seen from her mind. Could it be that a woman must swallow a man’s seed to produce his heirs? Oh, dear, she did hope not. The thought of having to…with Franchot? Oh, surely not.
Calum had kissed her so very gently at first. And then his kisses had done wonderful things to her, made her feel—yes, charmed, as spun about by a charm as if he’d been her knight bearing her away on his horse, she was certain. He’d told her he knew the feelings he caused in her and that those should be the feelings that came to her with her husband.
And he had touched her. He’d touched her in places and in ways she was certain were most unsuitable.
But she did not care.
And he’d kissed her in places where she was certain he should not have kissed her.
And she did not care.
Then he had caused that burning, heaving, flaring sensation that turned her legs weak and made her body throb and suggested, outrageously, that there was much more she wanted to experience with him.
She did not care.
If he wanted to and there was an appropriate opportunity, she would choose to experience it all again.
An evil, carnal creature. She knew herself to be just such a one because the dowager had assured her, most seriously, that only evil, carnal women experienced any pleasure when touched by a man. Of course, she’d been referring to a woman’s husband, so perhaps if the man in question was not the woman’s husband…
Despite the absolute knowledge that she was as wild as Binns had suggested, Pippa hu
gged herself and reveled in the memory of Calum’s touches.
She wanted to feel his arms around her again, and his mouth on hers—and his mouth on her neck and her shoulders and her breasts. Oh, she was beyond help. She wanted to feel his mouth on every part of her and to taste every part of him.
Something was very definitely wrong with her.
She leaned a little farther from the shadows to see him more clearly.
Calum appeared transfixed by whatever he was thinking.
There had been times, many of them, when Pippa had been glad of her solitary life at Dowanhill. As her father had always mentioned, not with approval, Pippa was a person who seemed to require inordinate amounts of time in which to do nothing but think.
But then there had been times, just as many, when she ached for another with whom to share all the wonderful things that kept her so absorbed. For as long as she could remember, Pippa had been certain that somewhere there was a person—only one, of course—who would find equal pleasure in observing a small animal that thought itself unobserved; in sitting, with his eyes closed, listening to rain upon the roof and the windows; or in watching the wind send ripples across a lake.
What bliss it would be to sit, with her eyes closed, listening to rain on a roof with Calum and to be certain they could stay forever if they chose.
On the previous day, with the unwitting help of one of the friends Nelly Bumstead had quickly made among the castle staff, Pippa had relocated the small, abandoned hunting cabin in the hills just beyond the Franchot estate—on Cloudsmoor land. When Calum and Viscount Hunsingore had put in their amazing appearance this afternoon, she’d been returning from making the cabin into her own special nest.
Pippa could scarcely wait to return there. Rain would undoubtedly make a marvelous noise on the slightly buckled slate roof. Yes, the cabin would be lovely with Calum in it…
And then there were children.
Surely there was, somewhere, a person who would feel about children as she did. They were the embodiment of all she loved: free, unpredictable, sometimes wildly loving, sometimes sad, sometimes naughty—but usually naughty only because they needed to be shown how important they were.
Fascination -and- Charmed Page 55