Questions for a Highlander

by Angeline Fortin

  “Now, sleep, young miss!” she commanded sternly, though her voice was tight with feeling.

  “Yes, Mama.” The child immediately rolled to her side, cuddling the doll under her chin.

  With a nod to the nursemaid, Kitty withdrew to the parlor then to stare out the little window, as Jack offered her daughter sweet dreams before closing the door behind him.

  Jack noted the stiff posture of Kitty’s shoulders as she looked out at the passing ocean. The lights of the ship bounced off the wake, creating a twinkling display. He was certain he knew her thoughts. He had overstepped his bounds with her daughter. How could he explain to her that he enjoyed the impish child and her unbound enthusiastic affection? Kitty and Hannah had given him a glimpse of something he had not been a part of since Abby’s mother, his stepmother, had died. She would think him a sentimental fool if he confessed to such claptrap!

  With a sigh, he moved to the door, ready to leave this haven that tempted him with thoughts he shouldn’t have. With women who were not his to hold forever. But as he turned to reach for the knob, a pair of soft, feminine arms slid around his chest as Kitty embraced him. Turning in surprise, he allowed himself to be pushed back against the door, his arms encircling her as hers slid up and around his neck.

  Without a word, she pressed her lips to his, parting them with a sigh. Any coherent thought fled Jack’s mind when Kitty pressed her lush body against the length of his. His lips claimed hers roughly as his strong arms embraced her like steel bands. Turning his head, he devoured her lips again, his tongue gaining entrance to spar with hers. He rotated, pushing her back against the door, his hands coming up to her cheeks, then her neck, before urgently running down her arms, pulling the cap sleeves down as they went.

  As he nipped at her shoulders, then neck, licking and sucking a hot path to just behind her ear, Kitty clung to Jack’s shoulders, reveling in his power and strength. Her head tilted of its own will to allow him better access to her neck. His breath panted against her flesh, creating an answering urgency in her as she caught his earlobe lightly between her teeth.

  Jack groaned, and returned his lips to hers in a kiss that burned through them both. His groin throbbed painfully, insisting on release, on an end to the frustration. He caught her breasts in his hands as hers slid aggressively inside his dinner coat and pushed it from his shoulders. Through the thin cotton of his shirt, her hands were hot, as they kneaded his chest and shoulders before moving to the buttons on his waistcoat and shirtfront. When her hand met his bare chest and moved across his ribcage, Jack’s lust rocketed beyond any he had ever imagined.

  The feel of his flaming skin thrilled Kitty as she caressed his chest and abdomen inside his open shirt. She wanted that naked flesh pressed against her own. As if hearing her plea, Jack loosened her bodice and pushed it down, allowing her to feel only briefly the delicious friction of his chest against hers before he ducked his head, capturing one nipple between his lips.

  She clasped his head against her, thankful as he gathered up her skirts with his hands. She was able to wrap a leg around him, to feel that hard length of him pressed against her. When his hand came up to cup her bottom, Kitty raised her other leg as well, wrapping them both around his hips as he supported her weight.

  His lips followed a path back up to her lips as he carried her through the connecting door into her bedroom, kicking it shut as he passed. Holding her body flush against his, he lowered them down to the bed and pressed her down as she gloried in his weight, his engulfing power. His lips took hers fiercely again, dragging them both farther into the turbulent passion that enveloped them. She tilted her hips up as he ground himself against her.

  When Kitty gasped audibly, he only chuckled low in his throat.

  “Shh, my love.”

  In the next minute, he froze, pulling himself up on his forearms to stare down at her. Sweat beaded his forehead; he was as breathless as she.

  “Jack?” she moaned, still lost amidst the strength of their hunger. Unconsciously, she arched against him, wrenching a low groan from him. “Jack, what’s wrong?”

  Jack rested his forehead against hers with a painful, depreciating chuckle. “You don’t want this, Kitty,” he whispered.

  “Yes, I do,” she returned, sliding her arms around his chest and urging him to return to her as she caught his lips once more with her own.

  Gathering all his inner strength and resolve, Jack levered himself up and sat up on the edge of the bed, cradling his head in his hands as he fought a battle with his own will. He was hard, ready, and wanted nothing more than to plunge himself into depths he knew would be hot and welcoming. Just the thought made his body shudder with want and lust.

  He could take her now. He knew it. She lay still against the bed with her bodice open, her skirts raised. One knee bent up in open invitation. Kitty’s eyes were eager, ravenous even. His body begged him to just roll back into her embrace and take what he wanted so badly.

  Pulling at all his resolve, he stood and fastened his buttons with shaking hands, refusing to look back down at her until she pulled down her skirts and adjusted her bodice. “What’s wrong, Jack?” Her voice trembled. “Don’t you want to…?”

  Jack could not stop the painful moan that escaped him. “Good God, Kitty! I do want you, can’t you tell?” He grabbed her hand and pressed it to his throbbing groin, even as the contact forced an animalistic growl from him.

  He released her hand, but she lingered, caressing his length with some fascination.

  “Stop,” he heard himself beg.

  “Why? Why, Jack?” she whispered, her voice dark with desire.

  “Because this is not what you want, Kitty.” He held up a hand when she started to speak. “I know you say you do, but I know once you regain your senses, you will remember what you have said before. You wanted to wait.”

  “I…”

  “I have seen this coming for days. I should never have let it go this far.” He buttoned his waistcoat and gave it a tug at the bottom. Kitty tucked her legs under her skirts and blushed with embarrassment as Jack sat again next to her and reached out to caress her cheek. “Don’t shy away, my love. It is only because I don’t wish to face your regrets in the morning that I have the strength to stop myself from taking you.”

  His possessive tone deepened Kitty’s blush. Taking her. Little did he know how much she truly wanted to be taken. She longed to become one with him. She supposed she should be thankful he maintained his control, but a tiny part of her wished he would set aside his integrity! What a shameful woman she had become!

  “We will arrive in New York tomorrow afternoon,” he reminded. “The next few days will be busy ones. Soon you will have a chance to speak with your father’s lawyer about the divorce proceedings. I will focus on that, my love, because when it is done, I will be able to finish what I started, and I will finish it, I promise you.”

  He lifted her chin until her eyes met his. “I want to finish it, Kitty. More than you can imagine. I want you,” he bent forward and kissed her tenderly, “madly, wonderfully, painfully.” He punctuated each quality with a light kiss, eliciting a breathy huff of amusement with the last.

  Jack rested his forehead against hers as they both regained steadier ground. Kitty savored the soft stroking of his thumb against her cheek. “Thank you, Jack,” she whispered.

  Jack sucked in a laugh. “God, Kitty! Don’t thank me! If you knew half the thoughts in my mind…!” He kissed her once again, wistfully. “Good night, my love.”

  “Good night.” When the door closed softly behind him, Kitty collapsed back on the bed, wishing Jack’s iron self-control to the devil and calling herself ten times a fool for it. He was right. He had done as she asked. She couldn’t be angry at him. But disappointed, yes, as she faced another sleepless night.

  Chapter 24

  What in me is dark

  Illumine,

  what is low raise and support…

  - John Milton

  The law
offices of Jensen and Schuler

  Manhattan, New York

  June 1892

  Kitty sat in Lelan Preston’s lawyer’s office with Jack at her side. The earl had become her rock since they arrived and the realities of life had once again set in. Her safe harbor, where all the pain and emotion of the outside world might be tucked away. His hand in hers kept the sting of it all from wounding her. She would never be able to express her gratitude for what he had done for her, as the world of her childhood collapsed with each ritual.

  The previous morning they attended their father’s funeral at St Patrick’s Cathedral, their family church on Fifth Avenue. Eve and Kitty had grown up in that old church, taking their communion there for the first time. Eve’s first wedding had even been there. The building’s familiar architecture and detailed stained glass windows brought her comfort during the difficult day, as had Jack’s presence by her side. A full mass was said in her father’s honor, followed by a blessing over his grave in the churchyard. That public ceremony had been conducted weeks after his actual burial since he’d had to be buried shortly after his death, given the summer heat.

  They stood with their mother by the newly built mausoleum in the churchyard, erected according to instructions he had laid out with his executer in previous years. It was a modest crypt given the Preston wealth, but representative of their father and his heritage.

  A lone piper played Amazing Grace so mournfully it echoed in the foggy morning air. Echoed through Kitty, and she suspected Eve as well, as they laid their father to rest.

  The reception at their mother’s Fifth Avenue home following the service had been a crush of well-wishers. Her father had been a powerful man in New York for three decades, with his fingers in nearly every industry’s pot. The rooms were full of business associates, bankers and investors, as well as the cream of the Knickerbocker set. There were Astors, Ogilvies, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts aplenty in attendance.

  Kitty and Eve stood by their mother’s side to greet them all, but with every lull her mother pestered her with questions about Jack. She asked who he was. A friend of Francis MacKintosh’s, Eve had explained, trying to leave it at that, but Margaret Preston had a watchful eye and clearly she could see Jack paid more attention to her daughter than his friend. Kitty could see the wheels spinning in her mother’s head. It had taken every evasive tactic she could think of to avoid the direct line of questioning she knew was hovering just over the horizon.

  Today they had come to the law offices of Mr. Jensen to listen to the reading of her father’s will. An official stamp punctuating the life of her father more completely than any other of the other rituals could. Jack squeezed her hand as he felt the tremor shake her and she sent him what might have been the hundredth grateful smile given in the past two days.

  Eve sat with Francis, clutching his hand much as Kitty clung to Jack’s. Their mother sat between them, weeping copiously, alternately leaning against first Eve then Kitty. This morning her mother had been full of questions regarding what she considered as Kitty’s questionable decision to divorce Freddie. The entire thing was a social disaster, Maggie Preston told her. She had been prostrate with grief and humiliation when she had heard the news, of course. It wasn’t the first time Kitty had been subjected to her tirade, but this morning her mother had been less heated on the subject and added sly glances at Haddington, hinting, not so subtly, that a good marriage might be the only solution to the scandal. Kitty only rolled her eyes, glad that Jack had not overheard that conversation and was thankful when her mother moved on to expounding Eve’s good fortunes.

  Now, as the lawyer shuffled papers on the desk, a commotion rang out in the reception area beyond the office doors. “I have every right to be here!” came an insistent voice that was very familiar to Kitty. She cringed and turned to face the door just as her husband forced his way in.

  “Katherine!” he called, “tell them to let me in!”

  No! Go away! she wanted to scream in alarm. Kitty could barely resist the urge to cower against Jack as he stood to create a physical barrier between Kitty and her husband. He crossed his muscular arms over his thick chest, legs spread as if to buffer her from an oncoming storm. That storm was Frederick Hayes.

  “Perhaps it would be best,” Eve whispered softly, leaning over their mother to address Kitty, “to just allow him to stay and get it over with.” Kitty nodded tightly, unable to vocalize her fears, knowing Eve was probably correct. Francis indicated to the secretary to allow Hayes’ entrance.

  Hayes crossed quickly around Jack to Kitty and tried to take her hands, but Kitty kept them tightly folded in front of her and backed a step away from him. Her posture bespoke wariness and dread loudly to every occupant in the room less the one it was intended for. Her voice was, thankfully, cool when it emerged. “Mr. Hayes, what brings you here today?”

  “I knew you would be here. That you would not miss this. I haven’t seen you in almost two months, my dear!” he complained, his voice an odd combination of annoyance and desperation as he again reached for her. “Where have you been?”

  “I don’t think this is the time for these questions.” Jack stepped forward, inserting himself protectively again in front of Kitty. The emotion pouring off Kitty was palpable to him, though her husband was too much a fool to see it himself. She would not have to face him while he was here to protect her.

  Hayes looked him up and down, and then to Francis, and back. “Just who are you?”

  “Haddington,” Jack drawled uninformatively, and indicated his friend, “Glenrothes. And you are?” Jack’s slow scrutiny from head to toe ended in a derisive smirk that said Hayes had clearly been found wanting.

  Hayes stiffened in offense at the examination. “Mr. Haddington, I…”

  “No, my good man, not Mr.,” Jack corrected, projecting an aristocratic hauteur Kitty had never seen from him.

  “Not Mr.? I don’t understand.” Freddie’s bluster was momentarily overridden by confusion. “Then what?”

  “Haddington, as in Earl of,” Jack corrected in such a way that Kitty was almost compelled to smile.

  Hayes sneered. “You’re that Scottish earl Evelyn married so scandalously.”

  MacKintosh snorted. “No, that would be me.”

  Hayes looked back and forth between the two Scotsmen, who dwarfed him with their height and brawny builds. That he was somewhat intimidated was obvious to everyone, but being as brash as he always had been, Freddie drew himself up like the cock of the walk. “Then who the hell are you?”

  “He is my friend, Freddie,” Kitty told him, clutching Jack’s arm and shaking her head slightly in response to his enquiring look. “This is not the time for confrontation. I am here to hear my father’s will and nothing else. Freddie, if you want to stay, please take a seat and allow Mr. Jensen to proceed or I will have the gentlemen escort you out.”

  Taken aback by her commanding tone, Hayes tried again to take her arm but Haddington blocked his access. “Sir…”

  Francis cleared his throat meaningfully.

  “My lord,” Hayes corrected sarcastically.

  “Please allow me access to my wife.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Hayes’ eyes rounded in disbelief.

  “No,” Jack repeated softly. He turned and courteously seated Kitty back in her chair before resuming his seat next to her. Hayes clenched his fists, ready to argue.

  “Frederick Hayes,” her mother snapped imperiously and glared at him levelly, pointing to a chair at the back of the room, “take a seat over there this instant and behave yourself, or you may be certain I will have words with your mother!”

  Hayes hovered uncertainly while Haddington added a little shooing motion with his hand that, though clearly displeased, Hayes followed. He took a seat near the door, scowling mightily. Kitty, despite the quiver of fear that had chased through her since Freddie walked in, was hard pressed to suppress a smile.

  “Thank you, Mother,” Kitty whispered.
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  “Clearly there is more going on than you let on, young lady, on two very different topics,” Mrs. Preston whispered back. “I will be demanding answers.”

  Kitty shared a look with Eve and whispered back, “Do not fret, Mother, I will explain later.”

  Her mother shrugged, and motioned to the lawyer. “Please, Mr. Jensen, let us begin.”

  “Very well.” The lawyer shook out the sheath of papers before him with a crisp snap, adjusted his spectacles and cleared his throat. “The final will and testament of Lelan Gerald Preston.” He began to read:

  “I, Lelan Gerald Preston, being of sound body and mind, do, on this fifth day of February in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-one, make this, my last will and testament…”

  The will was over a year old, Kitty realized numbly as Jensen read on. How things had changed in that short amount of time! Listening with half an ear as the will was read – first bequests her father made to various employees of long standing, and then charitable bequests – she digested the contents absently, not focusing on the specifics but rather the whole. He had always been such a generous man! The pain of loss flooded her once more. Never again would they dance, play or even argue. Her grief was overwhelming, pulling her back in…

  “To my alma mater, the University at Princeton, I bequeath the sum of one million dollars, for the establishment of a school of business; to St. Patrick’s church, I bequeath the amount of five hundred thousand dollars; to the…”

  And on it went. Jack looked over Kitty’s head at Francis, exchanging a dazed look at the sums of money so casually mentioned in the lawyer’s professional monotone. Any person in their acquaintance would consider any single amount a fortune. Any of those amounts would spare Jack the misery of the past year and suddenly he understood Kitty’s almost smug assuredness when she said she could give him the money without feeling the pinch to her bank account.