Colin chewed this over. He simply didn’t know what to think. She looked like a lady, and Brass had said that Lady Joan Sherbrooke was a cute little chit, adored by her brothers, perhaps a bit out of the ordinary from some stories he’d heard, but he’d never noticed anything pert about her himself. He’d then lowered his voice, whispering that she knew too much about things in books, at least he’d heard that from some matrons who were gossiping about her, their tones utterly disapproving, and she was indeed tall. But then again, she’d been waiting on the front steps of the town house for him to arrive, certainly not what the young lady of the house would do, would she? Wouldn’t an English young lady be waiting in the drawing room, a cup of tea in her hand? Brass had also insisted that Joan Sherbrooke’s hair was a plain regular brown, nothing out of the ordinary, but it wasn’t. In the early sunlight it was at least a dozen colors, from the palest blond to a dark ash.
Oh, to hell with it. He didn’t understand, and he wasn’t at all certain he believed her. More likely, she was looking for a protector. Perhaps she was the lady’s maid to this Lady Joan Sherbrooke, or a cousin. He should just tell her that he had no money and all she could expect from him would be a fun roll in the hay, no more, no less.
“I have taken you by surprise,” Sinjun said, watching the myriad expressions flit over his face. On the heels of her calmly reasoned understatement, she said in a rush, “You’re the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life, but it’s not that, not really. I wanted you to know that it wasn’t only your face that drew me to you, it was . . . well, just . . . oh goodness, I don’t know.”
“Me, beautiful?” Colin could only stare at her. “A man isn’t beautiful, that is nonsense. Please, just tell me what you want and I shall do my best to see that you get it. I can’t be your protector, I’m sorry. Even if I were the randiest goat in all of London, it would do me no good. I have no money.”
“I don’t want a protector, if by that you mean you would take me on as a mistress.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, fascinated now. “That is what I meant.”
“I can’t be a mistress. Even if I wanted to be, it wouldn’t help you. Surely my brother wouldn’t release my dowry if you didn’t wed me. I suspect he wouldn’t be pleased if I did become your mistress. He is very old-fashioned about some things.”
“Then why are you doing this? Pray, tell me. Did one of my benighted friends put you up to this? Are you the mistress of Lord Brassley? Or Henry Tompkins? Or Lord Clinton?”
“Oh no, no one put me up to anything.”
“Not everyone likes the fact that I’m a Scot. Even though I went to school with a good many of the men here in London, they think it just fine to drink with me and sport with me, but not for me to wed their sisters.”
“I think you could be a Moroccan and I would still feel as I do.”
He could but stare at her. The soft blue feather of her riding hat—a ridiculously small confection of nonsense—curled about her face, framing it charmingly. Her riding habit, a darker blue, darker than her eyes, he saw, fit her to perfection, and it wasn’t flirtatious, that habit, no, it was stylish and showed off her high breasts and narrow waist and . . . He cursed, fluently and low.
“You sound just like my brothers, but usually they’re laughing before they get to the end of their curses.”
He started to say something but realized that she was staring at his mouth. No, she couldn’t be a lady. She was a damned jest, paid for by one of his friends. “Enough!” he bellowed. “This is all an act, it has to be. You can’t want to marry me, just like that, and proceed to announce it in the most brazen way imaginable!” He turned suddenly in his saddle and jerked her against him. He pulled her out of her sidesaddle and over his thighs. He held her still until both horses quieted, not that he had to do anything, because she didn’t fight him, not at all. She immediately pressed her breasts against him. No, she couldn’t be a lady, no way in hell.
He forced her against his left arm and lifted her chin with his gloved fingertips. He kissed her hard, his tongue probing against her closed lips. He raised his head, anger in his voice. “Damn you, open your mouth like you’re supposed to.”
“All right,” she said, and opened her mouth.
At the sight of her open mouth, Colin couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “Bloody hell, you look like you’re about to sing an opera like that vile soprano from Milan. Oh, damnation!” He set her again onto Fanny’s back. Fanny, displeased, pranced to the side, but Sinjun, even a Sinjun who was nearly incoherent with pleasure and excitement and amusement, managed to bring her easily under control.
“All right. I will accept that you are a lady. I will . . . no, I cannot accept that you saw me at the Portmaines’ ball and decided you wanted to marry me.”
“Well, I wasn’t precisely certain I wanted to marry you then, at that moment, just that I thought I could look at you for the rest of my life.”
He was disarmed immediately. “Before I see you again—if I see you again—I would that you cloak yourself in a bit of guile. Not a tremendous amount, mind you, but enough so that you don’t leave me slack-jawed, with nothing to say when you announce something utterly outrageous.”
“I’ll try,” Sinjun said. She looked away from him for a moment, across the wide expanse of thick green grass, to the riding trails that intersected the park. “Do you think perhaps I could be maybe pretty enough for you? Oh, I know all the other about toothsomeness was just a jest. I wouldn’t want you to be ashamed of me, to be embarrassed if I did become your wife.”
She met his eyes as she spoke. He just shook his head. “Stop it, do you hear me? For God’s sake, you’re quite lovely, as you must certainly know.”
“People will tell any number of lies, offer more Spanish coin than would fill a cask if they believed one an heiress. I’m not stupid.”
He dismounted his stallion, hooked the reins about his hand, and strode to beneath a full-leafed oak tree. “Come here. We must talk before I willingly incarcerate myself in Bedlam.”
Ah, to stand close to him, Sinjun thought, as she obeyed him with alacrity.
She looked up at that cleft in his chin, and without thought, she raised her hand, stripped off the glove, and her fingertip traced the cleft. He stood completely motionless.
“I will make you an excellent wife. Do you promise you don’t have a troll’s character?”
“I like animals and I don’t shoot them for sport. I have five cats, excellent ratters, all of them, and at night they have the hearth all to themselves. If ever it is really cold in the dead of winter, they sleep with me, but not often, because I tend to thrash about and crush them. If you mean, would I beat you, the answer is no.”
“You’re obviously very strong. I’m pleased you don’t hurt those who are weaker. Do you also care about people? Are you kind? Do you feel responsible for those people who are your dependents?”
He couldn’t look away from her. It was very distressing, but he said, “Yes, I suppose so.”
He thought of his huge castle, only half of it really a castle, and that one not medieval by any means but built by a Kinross earl in the late seventeenth century. He loved the castle with its towers and its crenellated battlements and its parapets and deep embrasures. Ah, but it was so drafty in some parts, so dilapidated, that one could catch an inflammation of the lung just standing in one spot for ten minutes. So much had to be done to bring the entire castle back up to snuff. And all the outbuildings and the stables, the crofts and the drainage system. And the depleted herds of sheep and cattle, and his crofters, so many of them, poor and dispirited because they had nothing, not even enough seeds to plant for crops to feed themselves, and the bloody future was so grim and hopeless if he didn’t do something . . . .
He looked away from her, toward the line of immense town houses that lined the far side of Hyde Park. “My inheritance was sorely depleted by my father and polished off by my brother, the sixth earl, before he died. I need a lot
of money or my family will be reduced to genteel poverty, and many of my dependents will be forced to emigrate, that or starve. I live in a huge old castle set at the eastern side of Loch Leven, beautiful really, not far to the northwest of Edinburgh, on the Fife Peninsula. But still, you would see it as a savage land, despite all its arable land and gentle rolling hills. You’re English and you’d see only the barren heights and crevices, and savage, rocky crags and hidden glens with torrents of rushing water bursting through them, water so cold your lips turn blue just to drink it. It’s usually not all that cold in the winter months, but the days are short and the winds occasionally heavy. In the spring the heather covers the hills with purple, and the rhododendron spreads over every crofter’s hut and even climbs the walls of my drafty castle, in all shades of pink and red and magenta.”
He shook himself. He was prosing on like an idiot poet about Scotland and his part of it, as if he were parading his credentials for her inspection, and she was looking up at him, her expression rapt, taking in every word and watching his mouth. It was absurd. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, accept it. He said abruptly, “Listen, it’s true. My lands have the possibility of wealth because of all the arable acres, and I have ideas how to help my crofters improve their lot and thus improve my own in the process. No, we’re not like the Highlands that must even now import sheep to survive. It’s called enclosing, and it’s a pernicious practice, for all the men and women who have lived on their plots of land for generations are being systematically disinherited. They’re leaving Scotland or coming to England to work in the new factories. So I must have money, Joan, and there is no other way for me to save my inheritance except by marrying it.”
“I understand. Come home with me and speak to my brother Douglas. He’s the earl of Northcliffe, you know. We will ask him exactly what my dowry is. It’s bound to be very generous. I heard him saying to my mother once that she should stop her picking at me for being on the shelf. Since I was an heiress, he said, I could marry anyone I wanted, even if I was fifty years old and had no teeth.”
He looked at her helplessly. “Why me?”
“I haven’t the foggiest notion, but there it is.”
“I could stab you in your bed.”
Her eyes darkened and he felt a surge of lust so great it rocked him on his heels.
“I said stab, not tup.”
“What does tup mean?”
“It means . . . oh, damnation, where is that wretched guile I asked you to fetch up? Tup is a crude word, forgive me for saying it.”
“Oh, you mean lovemaking, then.”
“Yes, that is what I mean, only I was referring to it in a more basic way, what it usually is between men and women, not the high-blown romantic nonsense that females must call lovemaking.”
“You are cynical, then. I suppose I can’t expect you to be perfect in every way. My two brothers make love, they don’t tup. Perhaps I can teach you all about it. But first, of course, you will have to show me the way of such things. It wouldn’t do for you to continue to shout with laughter when I open my mouth for you to kiss me.”
Colin turned away from her. He felt marooned on a very insubstantial island, one that kept shifting beneath his boots. He hated losing control. He’d lost control over his inheritance, and that was enough to try any man. He didn’t want to lose control with a woman to boot, but she kept thrusting and parrying, being utterly outrageous and taking it for granted that it was just fine, that it was normal, almost that it was expected. No Scottish girl would ever behave like this supposedly refined English lady. It was absurd. He felt like a damned fool. “I won’t promise you love. I cannot. It will never be. I don’t believe in love, and I have very good reasons. I have years of reasons.”
“That’s what my brother Douglas said about his bride, Alexandra. But he changed, you know. She kept after him until he converted himself, and now I do believe that he would gladly lie down in the middle of a mud puddle and let her tread across him.”
“He’s a bloody fool.”
“Perhaps. But he’s a very happy bloody fool.”
“I won’t speak of this further. You are driving me into the bloody boughs and down again. No, be quiet. I’m taking you home. I must think. And so must you. I’m just a man, do you understand me? Just a man, no more, no less. If I married you, it would be for your groats, not for your lovely eyes or your probably very nice body.”
Sinjun just nodded and asked very quietly, “Do you really think I have a nice body?”
He cursed, gave her a boot up, and climbed back into his own saddle. “No,” he said, feeling more harassed than he’d ever felt in his life. “No, just be quiet.”
Sinjun was in no hurry to return to the Sherbrooke town house, but Colin was. She paid him no heed when they arrived, merely guided Fanny to the stables at the back of the mansion. He was forced to follow.
“Henry, do see to the horses, please. This is his lordship, Lord Ashburnham.”
Henry tugged on the bright red curl that dipped onto his forehead. He looked very interested in him, Colin saw, and wondered at it. Surely this outrageous girl had dozens of men panting around her, if for nothing more than to see what she would say next. Lord, her brother must have to warn every man who came through the front door about her excessive candor.
Sinjun skipped up the front steps and opened the door. She stood aside to wave him into the entrance hall. It wasn’t the size of the Italian black-and-white marble entrance hall at Northcliffe, but it was of noble proportions nonetheless. White marble with pale blue veins stretched to the pale blue walls, most of them covered with paintings of past Sherbrookes.
Sinjun closed the door and looked around to see if Drinnen, the butler, or any of his minions were anywhere to be seen. There was no one. She turned back to Colin and gave him a brilliant smile and a very conspiratorial one, truth be told. He frowned. She took two steps and stopped, toe to toe with him.
“I’m glad you came in. Now you believe I’m who I said I am. That’s good, though the thought of being your mistress does interest me. The concept, you understand. Should you like to speak to my brother now?”
“I shouldn’t have come in. I’ve thought about it all the way back from the park, and it can’t be happening, not like this. I’m not used to having a girl chase me down like a fox in the hunt, it isn’t natural, it isn’t—”
Sinjun merely smiled up at him, put her arms around his neck, and brought him down to her mouth. “I’ll open my mouth but not so much this time. Is this right?”
It was more than right. Colin stared for a very brief instant at that soft, open mouth and pulled her tightly against him. He forgot that he was in the entrance hall of the Sherbrooke town house. He forgot that there must be servants about, abounding in hidden places. He forgot all about the Sherbrooke ancestors staring down on them.
He kissed her, his tongue lightly tracing over her lips, then slowly going into her mouth. It was wonderful, and he felt her lurch against him and knew that she felt wonder as well. He kissed her more deeply and she responded freely, fully, and he forgot everything. He hadn’t bedded a woman for a month, but he knew even so that this effect she had on him wasn’t usual. His hands swept down her back, touching her, learning the feel of her, and he cupped her buttocks, lifting her tightly against his belly.
She moaned softly into his mouth.
“My God! What the hell is going on here!”
Those words pierced through the fog in Colin’s brain at the same time he was literally dragged away from her, spun around, and struck with blinding ferocity in the jaw. He went down like a stone on the white marble. He grabbed his jaw, shook his head, and stared up at the man who looked ready to kill him.
“Douglas! Don’t you dare. This is Colin Kinross, and we’re going to be married!”
“Like hell you are! Did you see—No, dear God, a man who hasn’t even had the breeding to speak to me, and here he is making love to you in the entrance hall! His hands were on your damned butt
. My God, Sinjun, how could you allow a man to do that? Go upstairs, young lady. Obey me. I will see to this bastard, and then I will see to you.”
Sinjun had never seen her brother so angry, but she really didn’t care if he swung from the chandelier in his rage. She calmly stepped in front of him even as he was ready to advance on Colin again. “Oh, no you don’t, Douglas. Just stop it. Colin can’t hit you back because he’s in your house, and it’s at my invitation. I won’t allow you to hit him again. It wouldn’t be honorable.”
“Like hell!” Douglas shouted.
Sinjun wasn’t aware that Colin was now standing behind her until he said, “He’s right, Joan. I shouldn’t have gotten so carried away, here, in his house. Forgive me. However, my lord, I can’t allow you to hit me again.”
Douglas was beside himself. “You have won yourself a beating for that, you damned bastard.”
He flung Sinjun aside and hurled himself at Colin. The two men grappled, pushing and pulling and grunting, fairly evenly matched. Sinjun heard one groan from a fist to someone’s stomach. It was enough. She heard a cry from Alex, who was now dashing down the stairs. The servants were gathering, wide-eyed, huddled beneath the stairs and in the doorway to the dining room.
“Stop it!”
Sinjun’s voice didn’t result in a truce. If anything, they went at it all the harder. She was furious, at her brother and at Colin. Men! Couldn’t they just talk things out? Why did they have to revert to being little boys? She yelled at Alex, “Just stay there, I’ll handle this. Oh my, yes, and with great pleasure.”
She pulled a long, stout walking stick from the rosewood stand in the corner next to the front door, lifted it, and struck Douglas hard on his shoulder. Then she brought it down equally hard on Colin’s right arm.
The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5 Page 70