The Husband Hunt

by Jillian Hunter

Knight adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves. "Well enough for our first lesson." He glanced at Catriona, giving her a playful wink. "She'll probably be ready for her come-out sometime in the next century."

  Aunt Marigold rose from her chair to offer her analysis of the situation. "That wasn't half bad for a beginner, Catriona. You have a natural grace that will improve with practice. But you, Knight, well, you were as stiff as a pikestaff, and all that stopping and starting. What is the matter with you?"

  He smiled politely. "Nothing that five bottles of brandy won't help. Good night, ladies. Wendell, it's your turn to torture Catriona. Keep a firm grip on your heart."

  He strolled out on the assembly, wondering suddenly if there were something to the rumors of Scottish witchcraft. Never in his life had he enjoyed being with a woman as he had the one he teased so unmercifully to hide the deeper emotions that she stirred in him.

  He heard footsteps running down the hall behind him. He paused at the door to his study, fully expecting his sister to demand an explanation for his abrupt departure.

  But it was Catriona, shamelessly barefooted, bearing down on him with a look of determination on her face that warned him he was in for another dose of trouble. Suddenly, it was obvious to him that this sensual young woman was not going to need his help finding a husband. Watching her now, her graceful stride, the pale rose gown twining around her lithe legs, he felt a desire for her that was almost self-destructive considering the peculiar aspects of their association.

  She was turning his life upside down. How could he explain it? He had enjoyed their encounter in the ballroom. He wanted to learn more about her, layer by layer. Her easy smile, her womanly body, and the outrageous things she said brought out the very best, and worst, in him.

  He was the man she had come to for protection. Even before they'd met, something had drawn her here. Yes, he teased her for her beliefs in the supernatural, but even he could not help wondering what power had brought them together. She had needed him, and he needed . . . nothing.

  He stared down at her, striving to look unaffected when it was all he could do not to drag her into the study and lock the door behind them. He tortured himself by remembering how her mouth had tasted, by wondering how she would feel beneath him, what sounds she would make when he drove inside her. How his life would change if he claimed all that innocent fire for himself.

  "Knight," she said, a little out of breath from trying to catch him before he disappeared. "Wait. I want a word with you."

  He drummed his tapered fingers against the door. She ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip, and he felt another bolt of heat destroy his control. "What do you want?" he asked, not doing a thing to put her at ease. "I am not teaching you the pianoforte or spinet—"

  "I want to accept the terms of your truce." She gazed up at him with an adorable determination he could not resist. "Please."

  Damn her. Just when he was ready to find any excuse to break this absurd attraction. "Oh, fine."

  "I will keep your secret. I won't tell anyone about Arabella."

  He leaned one shoulder against the door, perversely wanting to punish her for a sin she had no idea she had ever committed. Was it her fault he looked at her and lost his ability to think?

  "Perhaps I don't care anymore," he said, frowning at the ceiling. "Perhaps I'm feeling in the mood for a duel. It's been a long time since I shot anyone. Tell the world about me and Arabella if you like." He paused. "Don't forget the part about her lonely breasts."

  She frowned. What a difficult man. "I am trying to make amends, my lord."

  His gaze traveled over her with an interest that roused her self-defensive impulses, as well as a few rather indecent ones along the way. "Are you?" he asked quietly.

  She took a slight step back. "I ought to go back to the ballroom. I left rather abruptly."

  He studied her and realized that she had no idea of her own appeal, of how difficult he found it to battle the selfish desire that she aroused in him. His voice was deliberately detached. "A truce under one condition."

  She arched a brow. She knew she should not ask. "Which would be?"

  "I told you." He pushed away from the door with elegant animal grace. "Tell me a secret."

  She hesitated, her eyes locked with his. He did not know what he expected her to say. He had no clue how many skeletons lurked in her past, if any, or what he would do with such information. But he wanted to understand her.

  "All right." She took a breath, wondering why she always felt so gauche in his presence. "But you must promise not to laugh."

  "I shall not laugh. Go on."

  "It is . . ." She would have taken another step away, but he drew her back against the door so that they stood in the shadows, faces almost touching, the heat of their bodies charging the air. A man and a woman on the verge of a moment that might alter them forever.

  He was anything but the detached gentleman he appeared to be. The delicate scent of her soap teased his senses, stirred a longing in the depths of his heart. The brush of her soft breasts against his shirtfront made his teeth ache. He flexed his fingers, aching to touch her everywhere, to peel that gown from her body and make her moan in pleasure.

  "Shadows are made for sharing secrets," he said, tilting her face to his with his knuckle. "Well?"

  "It is . . . that I find you exceedingly handsome," she said in a hesitant voice. "I am drawn to you."

  His eyes widened. No, not at all the sort of secret he'd expected, but she had stunned him just the same. "Are you?" he whispered, smiling in delight.

  His smile undid her composure. She felt utterly miserable and mortified that she had admitted such a thing. Of course, a decent young lady would never confess her innermost feelings to a man. A decent lady would certainly not feel this wicked tingling in her blood. "On second thought—"

  His kiss destroyed whatever dignity she'd hoped to salvage. She felt his arm slide around her waist like an anchor as the muscles supporting her legs seemed to dissolve. His mouth captured hers so gently at first that she did not understand her danger. But as she twined her arms instinctively around his neck, he kissed her with an urgency that swept her into a shadow world of sensual languor. His tongue dueled with hers as he backed her into the door, and she was his, riveted with need. Just like that. She could barely recall what they had been discussing, but in the back of her mind, she remembered Arabella's confession, that when he kissed a woman, she would do anything he asked. And when he brushed his lower lip across her mouth, she almost fell to her knees. The assault on her senses was too much, the pleasure he offered too enticing.

  His face, as he broke the kiss, brought her hurtling back to earth. Surely he would torment her endlessly now. "On second thought—" she began again, a shiver of delayed reaction making its way down her spine.

  "Your secret is quite safe with me," he said quietly. "Sealed with a kiss, in fact." There it was, that infuriating glint in his eye again. "And," he added in a whisper, "it was not even interrupted by an acorn attack."

  She whirled around, her cheeks stained pink, stopped once to say something, then turned again and hurried down the hall. If she had paused to glance back a second time, she would not have found him laughing at her at all. She would not even have recognized him as the man who teased her without mercy. No, she would have taken one look at the intense longing on his face, and she would have realized that he had just staked his claim.

  She was different from any woman he'd ever met. He understood this more clearly by the hour, and by the hour he lost a little ground in his fight against his attraction to her. Where could it lead? He dared not speculate. She was a talisman who had slipped into his heart as if to counteract the spell of cynicism that had taken hold. She was white light to the darkness that had fallen over his house. In a brief time, she had brought laughter back into his life, and hope.

  He waited until she had vanished from sight before he turned and noticed the morning post sitting on the hall stand. With all the
fuss over finding Catriona, and the ballroom, he had forgotten to read it.

  He recognized Simmons's precise handwriting in the candlelight and broke open the seal, waiting for his heart to resume a normal rhythm before he read:

  My lord, before I even reached Scotland, I came across some information about your houseguest that may concern you. Due to its confidential nature, I shall return to deliver it in person before proceeding further. You were correct in your suspicion that the young woman is not what she seems.

  Yours obediently,

  Simmons

  Chapter 10

  The owls returned to Rutleigh Hall that same night, a chain of predators that hooted across the woods until the entire household was thoroughly unsettled.

  Aunt Marigold got out of bed and summoned Ames to her room, stating, "Someone is going to die, that's what the owls are saying, and since you and I are the eldest people in the house, it must be one of us. I shall pray for our souls."

  He plumped the pillows behind her head. "I shall make you some calming camomile tea, ma'am."

  "Ames," she said in distress, "are you not at all concerned over our imminent demise?"

  He glanced toward the window. "Actually, madam, my dear Welsh grandmother believed that a hooting owl meant a woman was going to lose her chastity. It did not portend a death."

  "Truly, Ames?"

  "She was a veritable fount of wisdom, madam."

  She settled back against the pillows. "How interesting. Did you know that I am a maiden myself?"

  'Then we must guard your virtue." He smiled at her as he went to the door. "I assume it will be safe at least until I fetch that tea."

  ******************

  The owls had not awakened her. Catriona hadn't been able to sleep a wink, anyway, not with her whole body feeling as if she'd been struck by lightning. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Knight's angular face looming over hers. She had been electrified by that last kiss, and she scolded herself for feeling so hopeful about it when it was obvious that any entanglement with a man like him could only bring heartbreak. But, oh, how wonderful he was. What a beautiful devil.

  And it did seem rather ungrateful of her, so disloyal to Olivia, to be falling in love with her rogue of an older brother without first seeking her advice on the matter.

  She pulled the pillow over her head as the hooting grew louder, amplified until it seemed to throb against the walls of her room.

  "Just go away," she whisper. "Leave me—"

  She sat up abruptly and stared at the window. What if the birds had not come as a warning? What if it were not her brother James or her suitor who had followed her here? All of a sudden, it occurred to her that the owls might have been sent to find her, not to warn her, their unholy calls summoning their master in the dark. And there was only one person in her world who possessed such power over birds and beasts: Murdo Grant, her estranged uncle on her mother's magical side of the family, the brother who had fought bitterly with Mama over her foolish loyalty to the man she loved until her last breath.

  Uncle Murdo, the crafty old wizard who lived in the Border hills with his young apprentice, Lamont, a scrawny orphan boy who had troubled Catriona's earliest years with his tricks and malicious mischief. Hadn't Lamont trained a raven when he was eleven, teaching it to recite crude verses outside Catriona's window? Murdo used birds as magical messengers. Lamont used them to play pranks.

  She slid to the floor and hunted under the bed for the bag she'd hidden. She couldn't imagine what Murdo would want from her, unless it was the Earth stone he'd stolen from her mother, which Cat's mother had stolen back to pass down to her daughter.

  The red-veined stone was believed to be one of four that had belonged to the infamous Scottish magician Michael Scot. Catriona was not convinced that the stone possessed any healing properties, but she was starting to believe that whatever power it owned might be drawing Murdo to her like a magnet.

  And where Murdo went, or so Mama had claimed, unhappiness was sure to follow.

  She dug the plaid-wrapped bundle out of her portmanteau, said a quick prayer, and threw her old plaid on over her nightrail. The stone had suddenly taken on an evil aspect that she felt obligated to remove from the house.

  His lordship had no idea what sort of secrets lurked in her past, but with any luck, she'd be burying one while he was still in bed before it could bring him misfortune. After tonight, she had decided that her feelings for him had changed, or perhaps what she felt had just come into focus. She was not going to let any harm come near his house.

  ******************

  Did she actually think that she could go for a walk at this hour? Knight leaned across the desk where he had been sitting in a semi-trance for the past two hours, thinking about how to handle the situation with Lionel's desirable cousin. Mulling over that mysterious note from Simmons and wondering why it didn't matter more. He hadn't bothered going to bed. No, he had been hoping to get drunk in the library, thereby bypassing the need to come to any decision, when the army of night birds descended on the woods.

  If it hadn't been for the damned orchestra of owls, he probably would have been pleasantly foxed by now, but as bad luck would have it, he was completely awake. And he looked out the window just in time to see the cloaked figure edging across the lawn into the woods. He leaned forward, bringing his feet to the floor.

  She was carrying her bag.

  The owls were going wild, hooting more loudly to proclaim her presence in their territory.

  Where would she go in the middle of the night? Had his kiss frightened her away? She had kissed him back, hadn't she? A stirring of doubt darkened his mood. The odd thing was, he knew exactly how she felt. It was a terrifying experience to feel your heart being stolen when you least expected it. At his age, you would think he'd have become immune, and yet, as he had noted earlier, she was different from the other young ladies he had kissed into a swoon. He couldn't expect her to take to the couch with her hand lifted to her brow.

  Still, he couldn't believe that she would leave like this after they had made such a to-do about their truce. But then, perhaps he had underestimated his effect on her. Perhaps that kiss in the doorway had undermined her composure as deeply as it had his.

  He sprang out of his chair, his eyes dark with determination. He was sorry if he had driven her away, but at the same time, she had to understand that he expected her to follow certain rules of civilized behavior. Even if his own conduct to this point had been anything but.

  ******************

  Catriona buried the stone with her bare hands under a blasted oak in the event that she might need to find it again. The fluttering of the owls above rattled her nerves. So did the stone; it seemed to pulse and glow in the earth. She couldn't understand why her mother had treasured such an odd thing, anyway, because now that she looked at it closely, the stone seemed to resemble a human heart.

  Her own heart nearly burst with terror when she heard footsteps behind her and the crash of bushes being broken as a man burst into the clearing. For a frightening instant, she thought that Murdo had found her. But the intruder was bigger and much better-looking than her elderly uncle. Every particle of her being tingled in response to his presence, his long, muscular legs planted apart, the lines of his face taut with emotion.

  "What the hell do you think you are doing?" he shouted at her.

  The owls grew ominously silent.

  She rose to face him. He was fascinating and truly terrible in his outburst. And handsome, even with his thick black hair disheveled and his shirt not tucked into his trousers. She couldn't imagine what she had done to make him so angry, though. They had just made a truce a few short hours ago. Hadn't he kissed her and left her drifting on a cloud of bliss and tender dreams?

  She frowned at him. Her cloud was rapidly deflating, sending her crashing back down to earth.

  "How could you do this to me?" he roared.

  She shivered beneath her cloak and searched her memory.
Did mental problems run in Lionel's family? But then, he wasn't actually related to Lionel except by Olivia's marriage. Heaven only knew what brain aberrations had affected his lordship's bloodlines.

  "Don't you care at all what Olivia would think?" he yelled at her.

  "About what?" she said in consternation, ducking behind a tree.

  He strode toward her. "How do you think she would feel if she found you gone without a word in the morning?"

  "I had every intention of returning to the house, my lord."

  "Did you?" He looked down at her closely for the longest time, then let loose a strain of the foulest curses she had ever heard. "You're wearing a night rail. A night rail, for God's sake. What is the meaning of this?"

  "I do have my cloak on over it," she said in annoyance. And she certainly hadn't expected to meet anyone else there at that time of night.

  He snorted insultingly. "How far did you think you could run in a nightgown? Ha."

  "I wasn't running anywhere, you big idiot."

  He waggled his finger under her nose. "I saw you from the window. You were running with"—he glanced around and saw her bag beneath the oak— "with that. You would have broken Olivia's heart without a thought."

  She set her jaw. "I was definitely not running away. I was running an errand." She sniffed delicately and then made a face. "Oh, brandy. I should have known."

  He walked her backward, almost to the blasted oak where she had hidden the stone. She didn't want to step on the burial spot; to do so seemed a sacrilege.

  "What sort of errand?" he asked in an intimidating voice.

  She cast an uneasy glance around the clearing. She was a step from where the stone lay, but she couldn't decide which was the greater threat, a stone with supernatural powers or this man who had seemingly lost his mind.

  She decided to take her chances on the Earth stone. She stepped back to where she had buried it.

  Instantly, the woods burst into sound. Owls were hooting, fluttering across the treetops, and a small animal came scurrying out of the underbrush. A sharp pain shot through the soles of her feet into her spine.