Questions for a Highlander

by Angeline Fortin

  “Aye, my love,” he groaned.

  Tension was already building between Kitty’s thighs as his arm came around her waist to pull her back against him. Even through her bulky clothing, she could feel the hard length of him nudging against her bottom and she pressed back against him, reveling in the moan that escaped him. He squatted, quickly gathering her black skirts in his hands and bunching them up at her hips as he ground against her again, with only the thin barrier of her drawers and his breeches to block the heat.

  “I want to take you, my love,” he growled in her ear. “I want to possess you and feel you throbbing around me. I want to feel you explode around me. Say, yes.”

  Kitty could feel that throbbing begin as his words brought a piercing ache to her core. She wanted him as well. Wanted to feel him inside of her. She gripped the back of the chair in front of her and wordlessly arched her bottom towards him. “Oh, yes,” she sighed, as he pulled the drawstring at her waist and pushed her drawers down.

  When his scalding hand made contact with her bottom, Kitty could not stop the cry that escaped her lips before she bit down on them. His skillful fingers slid along the curve of her buttocks until they slid between her legs, teasing the swollen nub of her desire before slipping inside of her. He pushed her legs farther apart and thrust his finger deeply. “My God, Kitty,” he groaned, his voice trembling. “You’re so hot. So wet.” He pushed another finger along with the first as Kitty leaned over the chair, panting. His other hand came around and parted her from the front, rubbing between the damp lips even as his fingers thrust once more from behind.

  Her flesh quivered around his digits and Kitty could feel the ache build and contract around him, knowing he could feel it to. “Aye, my love,” he encouraged, as he pumped his fingers into her and his other hand teased her bud.

  “Jack,” her voice was ethereal, wavering from far away. “Please.”

  “Tell me, my love.”

  “I want you…come with me…” she gasped.

  Jack growled in her ear as she felt him reach between their bodies and release himself from his breeches. His left arm came around her waist as his right hand slid up the back of her thigh, raising it, bending it up and away, as he entered her from behind. He bent at the knees and thrust the length of himself up and into her as she gasped. “Lean forward, my love,” he urged, grunting when she leaned against the chair.

  Grasping her hips, he pushed into her again, keeping her one leg in his hand, keeping her spread for him as he set up a rhythm that had her squirming back against him. He slapped her bottom lightly. “Hold still.”

  Kitty moaned against her arms as Jack pumped into her again and again, reaching deeper into her core until she thought he might tear her apart. Still he teased her with the climax, allowing her to have it within her reach before changing the cadence and dangling it before her once more. She tightened around him each time he withdrew until she could feel him shaking with desire as well. His pace quickened until he was pounding into her desperately. His fingers dug into her hips as he tried to pull her closer and closer. Stars burst behind Kitty’s eyes as she exploded around him, contracting with heavenly bliss even as he thrust into her one last time with a guttural cry that echoed her own scream of release.

  “Oh, Jack, I–” Kitty bit off the sentiment she so wanted to confess.

  He stayed in her as the throbbing continued, then abated. His hand caressed her bottom once more, before he pulled off her with a hiss.

  Kitty lay limply against the chair as he drew up her drawers and tied them around her waist before dropping her skirts back to the floor. She closed her eyes, fighting the urge to turn into his arms, kiss him tenderly and pour out her love for him. She wanted to tell him how wonderful he was. What he made her feel. How she would do anything to have him in her arms for the rest of her life.

  Unable to do any of those things, she only raised herself up, hands still gripping the back of the chair. Opening her eyes, she found the view from the window still before her, but the sky more brilliant, the sun’s reflection on the water more blinding. She longed for him to wrap his arms around her once more, to whisper words of love in her ear as sweet and extraordinary as that which she saw before her.

  “Kitty?” His brogue held a question she could not answer. If she were to turn to him now, he would know instantly what was in her mind and heart. And he would run from her as fast as he might. “What is it, my love?”

  Kitty shook her head sharply in denial. His endearment was generic to him, she chastised herself. He had used it from the moment they met. It meant nothing. Remember, she told herself, what is explosive and life changing to you is just a moment worth some note to him. She resolved to have words with him again about the perimeters of their affair, to remind him of the terms, but not now. Not when she was feeling so vulnerable.

  He stayed there for several moments more but Kitty refused to turn and have him run away from the look in her eyes. “Will you not speak to me? Tell me what has upset you so?”

  He waited. “Kitty?”

  After a long moment, Jack left the room with a sigh.

  Chapter 30

  “Well, girls, I don’t plan on living here, but I would like to think I am welcome to come here when I want to!” Maggie Preston complained to her girls.

  “Of course you’re always welcome here, Mother,” Eve sighed, pinching her nose in frustration, and pushed back from the big desk in her father’s study. The women were gathered around it, going over how their properties and new responsibilities would be taken care of. “But Kitty has a valid point in suggesting perhaps we should engage an estate manager to handle the day to day business of Kilberry since none of us will be living here full time.”

  “Where do you plan on going, Katherine?” her mother asked.

  She didn’t really know, if Kitty were to be honest with herself. There was her room upstairs, not the suite she had shared with Freddie, but the rooms she was in now. She might live here at Kilberry permanently, but Newport was all but deserted in the winter months, making living here year round a lonely prospect. Her home of the past six years had been in Boston, a place she had never enjoyed living. Even if she had, she would never put herself in the position of living near Freddie again. While a part of her longed to return to Scotland with Eve so she might be near her sister, Abby and Moira, Kitty couldn’t imagine living a life within Jack’s reach but always lingering just outside his life. He was a life-long friend of her brother-in-law, making avoidance improbable. It would be unbearable to watch him take a wife one day.

  “Perhaps I’ll travel for a bit, Mother. See the world, as it were. One might think you’d be happy to see your scandalous, divorcée daughter gone from New York for a while so I don’t embarrass you.” The words came out harshly and she cringed with instant regret.

  “Kat!”

  “Katherine!”

  Kitty rubbed her temples. “I’m sorry, Mother. Truly, I am. And truthfully, I have no idea what I might do or where I might go. I simply hadn’t really thought about it. I’ll have to find a house for myself and Hannah somewhere.”

  “You can stay with me until you do,” Maggie offered, sensing the feelings of loss and displacement her daughter was facing. “I would enjoy having Hannah underfoot, and you as well, despite what you think.”

  “Mama,” Kitty’s heart squeezed. “What would I do without you?”

  “Well, if you’d take my advice, you’d snatch up your earl and make me a truly happy woman!” her mother teased.

  “Mother!”

  “Mama! I hope you don’t plan on saying anything of the kind to Lord Haddington,” Kitty cried. “It’s humiliating to think he’s suffering silently in dread, afraid to even face you lest you bully him into marriage.”

  “Perhaps he needs a touch of bullying.”

  “Mother, please!” Kitty begged. “If Jack ever manages to reach the point of a marriage proposal, I’d like it to be because of me and not because my mother nagge
d him into it!”

  “Really Katherine,” her mother sniffed. “I hardly think–”

  Sung Li cleared his throat from the doorway. “Pardon me, missy, I don’t mean to interrupt, but two rather questionable persons are at the door to see you.”

  Eve and Kitty exchanged puzzled glances. “Questionable?” Maggie queried. “What would a person of questionable appearance being doing at the door, asking for my daughter?”

  “I don’t know, missy-ma’am, but they asked for Mrs. Hayes by name.”

  “Did they provide their names?” Eve asked.

  “They would not say, lady,” Sung Li informed them, “but they say only Lord Haddington sent them.”

  Kitty again shrugged under Eve’s questioning eyes. “I suppose you should show them in, Sung Li.”

  “Missy, I don’t believe…” the majordomo swallowed his protest. “Right away, missy.”

  Moments later, two rough and, yes, very questionable looking characters came in to the room. They were dressed fashionably enough, yet the clothes fit all wrong and were definitely not their own. Their demeanors were shifty, their eyes dodging from side to side.

  “Can I help you, sirs?” Eve asked, rising. Kitty and their mother joined her.

  “You Miz Hayes?” the smaller, wiry fellow asked.

  Eve kept her eyes focused on the men steadily, not betraying anything at this point. Something was definitely afoot. “Why do you want to know?”

  He didn’t answer, but his eyes darted some confusion between her and Kitty. Since they were so similar, their confusion was understandable. The other burly, silent partner nudged him and nodded to Kitty, whispering in the other’s ear.

  “So yer the one, eh?” The first man pulled a pistol from beneath his coat and advanced on Kitty. “If ye’ll just come wi’ me, lady.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” their mother wanted to know, as the women backed away as a group from the menacing pair.

  “Just come with me, ma’am,” he said again to Kitty, waving with the pistol at her mother and Eve while his larger cohort approached.

  “I will not,” Kitty replied as she continued to back away from him, knowing Jack had nothing to do with this.

  A meaty hand grabbed her upper arm. “No!” Eve and Maggie grabbed her from the rear to pull her away, only to be warded off by the evil looking pistol the big man produced.

  “Come quiet like, or Meany here will be forced to hurt your friends,” the one who held her told her roughly. Seeing her hesitation, he nodded and the one he called Meany grabbed Maggie roughly, holding the pistol to her temple.

  “No!” Kitty cried out at the sight of her mother in danger. She couldn’t let anything happen to Eve or her mother. Clearly, this evil pair would show no mercy or reluctance to harm a woman. “If I go with you, do you promise not to hurt them? Will you leave them be?”

  “’Course, ma’am. Ain’t got no quarrel wi’ ’em.”

  “No!” Eve ran to Kitty, gripping her hands. “You can’t do this! You can’t simply leave with them!”

  Kitty squeezed Eve’s hands tightly, then released her, before glancing at her mother who was agog with shock and fear. The wiry fellow let go of her and pointed his pistol between them as he backed away. “I must. I’ll be all right. Won’t I?”

  Her would-be captor grinned cockily. “Surely, we won’t be hurtin’ ye. Not unless ye gi’ us reason ta.”

  “Well, then, I will give you no reason to. Let’s get along then, shall we?” With that, the two grabbed her and pulled her out of the manor, past the startled servants and into a waiting carriage.

  “Sung Li,” Eve screamed the moment the door closed.

  The old man appeared promptly, looking somewhat harassed. “Send for the earl!” she cried.

  “Which one…?”

  “Both of them. Now!”

  Chapter 31

  Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

  - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Kitty struggled to consciousness against the throbbing pain in her head. The blow the nasty one absurdly called Meany had delivered with the butt of his pistol after she tried to jump out of the carriage was pounding terribly. Trying to gain a sitting position, she realized she was bound hand and foot and gagged as well. As her head swam dizzily, Kitty attempted to adjust her eyes to the darkness. She wasn’t in the carriage any longer, but rather in what smelled like a barn. Given the pile of hay she was lying in, perhaps a loft, but the darkness prevented her from seeing anything else. Using her bound hands, she tried to grope around her, hoping to find a pitchfork or anything else she might use for defense. Nothing.

  She had no idea what was going on or why the pair of villains kidnapped her from her home. And now, she had no idea where she was. In retrospect, it might have been better to have sat meekly in the carriage and been aware of her surroundings than to have acted so rashly in her need to escape the carriage and lose consciousness in the process.

  Sitting back in the hay trying desperately to think, she was startled when a door opened below, casting a dim light that allowed her to see just enough to confirm her suspicions before it closed again.

  She waited in the darkness, wondering what was going on.

  Moments later, the door was opened wide and a blinding light filled the room. Blinking rapidly against the sudden brightness, Kitty gasped in recognition at the man who appeared over the edge of the loft as he climbed the ladder. His face a collage of purple and yellow bruises, two scabbed cuts on his cheekbone.

  “Finally awake! I regret my friends were so rough with you,” he commented, sounding very pleased. He moved to her and removed the gag.

  “Freddie, what is the meaning of this?” she sputtered. Kitty eyed her now ex-husband with disregard. What had she ever seen in him? His hair was pale yellow, not at all the rich golden strands that shone in Jack’s dark head. This man was nothing but a washed-out version of the golden boy she once thought him. “Have you gone mad? You just can’t kidnap me like this!”

  “I was most distressed to receive papers yesterday telling me we were divorced, my dear.” He paced before her, ignoring her outburst. “I still don’t understand why you did it. Why? I have loved you so desperately my whole life!”

  “You don’t love, Freddie,” she spat out hatefully. “You obsess. You oppress, but you do not love. That mockery of a marriage was not love!”

  “You just don’t understand!” he yelled at her. “And I don’t understand! How had it all happened so quickly? These things take time. I thought I would have time to win you back.”

  “Win me back?” she muttered in disbelief, trying to work against the knots binding her wrists, feeling desperation creep over her in the face of her former husband’s lunacy. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “I tried these past several days to see you at Kilberry, but Sung Li seems to have taken it into his mind that I am his enemy rather than his employer.” Hayes curled his lip. “He should better remember his place. Indeed, he had a pair of large footmen remove me from the property as if I never lived there.”

  “Good for him!” she straightened with a smile. “He is my servant now, Freddie, not yours, and he works for my best interest.”

  “Living with your husband is in your best interests.”

  “Do you actually believe that?” she asked in gaping disbelief, unable to comprehend he was even able to voice such a thought. “You beat me on a regular basis, Freddie! Do you remember that? How could it possibly be in my best interests to stay in such a hostile environment?”

  Hayes squatted on his haunches in front of her and took her hands in his, ignoring the fact that hers were bound. “My love, you know I am so sorry for those incidents when my rage overtook my actions. It has never been my intention to hurt you. I love you and only want you with me. You are my wife.” He leaned toward her and tried to kiss her but Kitty turned her head away. Freddie’s eyes narrowed and he grasped her chin tightly and pressed a hard kiss to her sti
ff lips.

  Grabbing his hand between hers, Kitty used what limited mobility she had to sharply twist his hand around and back in a move Sung Li taught her recently. Hayes cried out in surprised pain and drew back, nursing the injured wrist. Kitty spat in his face, only to receive a sharp slap to her cheek in return. “I don’t know what it is you think you may have accomplished in leaving me, Katherine, but you are my wife and you will stay with me, do you understand me?”

  “I’m not your wife anymore, Freddie, and you are completely insane if you think I will ever live with you again!” Kitty snarled at him. “I hate you! Understand that!”

  Rising, Hayes backhanded her across the mouth, sending her reeling into the hay behind her. Kitty shot her bound feet outward, wrapping them around his ankle and sweeping him to the side, bringing him down as well. Thank God for Sung Li and his teachings! “Want to beat me some more?” She threw a handful of hay at him from her bound hands and kicked out at him again, screaming as she hadn’t dared for years fearing retribution. She no longer cared. “Give me some bruises to match yours? You just wait ’til Haddington finds you this time! That will be nothing compared to what you’ll get next!” The next blow laid her out flat but Hayes wasn’t done. He leaned over and followed it with another blow, and another that left her lying limply in the hay. Unable to catch her breath, Kitty kicked out, catching him between his legs.

  Hayes doubled over in agony, bringing a grim smile to Kitty’s lips as she dabbed blood from the corner of her mouth. She was in pain but, thanks to Sung Li, at least felt as if she were giving back some of what she’d gotten.

  After several long moments, Hayes straightened. “Perhaps, after a period of reflection, you will see the wisdom of my words, my love.” With that he descended the loft, closing the door and leaving her once again in darkness.