by Julia Quinn
She sighed again, louder, and lifted her spoon. If there was one thing she hated, it was situations about which she could do nothing.
"Are you going to eat that pudding, or is this some sort of experiment in the science of spoon-balancing?"
Margaret blinked her way out of her daze, but before she could reply, George McCallum appeared at their table.
"We'll be needing to clean up for the night," he said. "I don't mean to toss you out, but my wife is insisting." He grinned at Angus. "You know how it is."
Angus motioned to Margaret. "She hasn't finished her cranachan."
"Take the bowl up to your room. Pity to waste the food."
Angus nodded and stood. "Good idea. Are you ready, my sweet?"
Margaret's spoon slipped out of her hand, landing in her bowl of cranachan with a dull splat. Had he just called her his sweet? "I… I… I…"
"She loves me so much," Angus said to George, "sometimes she loses her power of speech."
While Margaret was gaping at him, he lifted his powerful shoulders in a huge, satisfied shrug, and said, "What can I say? I overwhelm her."
George chuckled while Margaret sputtered. "You'd best watch your back," the innkeeper advised Angus, "or you'll be finding yourself washing your hair with my wife's best cranachan."
"A fine idea," Margaret bit out.
Angus laughed as he stood and held out his hand to her. Somehow he'd known that the best way to distract her from her sorrows was to raise her hackles with another joke about her being his devoted wife. If he'd mentioned the baby, she would probably forget her brother altogether.
He started to open his mouth, then caught sight of the furious gleam in her eyes and thought the better of it. A man had to think of his own safety, after all, and Margaret looked ready to do some serious physical harm-or at least fling a bowl of cranachan at him.
Still, he'd gladly take the pudding shot if it meant she could stop thinking about her brother, even for a few moments. "Come along, darling," he said smoothly, "we need to let this good man close up for the night."
Margaret nodded and stood, her lips still clamped tightly together. Angus had a feeling she didn't trust herself to speak.
"Don't forget your cranachan," he said, motioning to the bowl on the table while he picked up his own.
"You might be wanting to carry hers, too," George chortled. "I dinna trust that look in her eye."
Angus took his advice and scooped up the other bowl. "An excellent idea, my good man. My wife will have to walk without the benefit of my arm, but I think she'll manage, don't you?"
"Och, yes. That one doesn't need a man to tell her where to go." George elbowed Margaret in the arm and smiled con-spiratorially. "But it's nice nonetheless, eh?"
Angus nudged Margaret out of the room before she killed the innkeeper.
"Why must you persist in teasing me like that?" she growled.
Angus turned the comer and waited for her to start up the stairs before following. "It took your mind off your brother, didn't it?"
"I…" Her lips parted in stunned amazement, and she stared at him as if she'd never before seen another human being. "Yes, it did."
He smiled and handed her one of the bowls of pudding while he fished in his pocket for the key to their room. "Surprised?"
"That you would do such a thing for me?" She shook her head. "No."
Angus turned slowly around, the key still sitting in the lock. "I meant, were you surprised you'd forgotten about your brother, but I think I like your answer better."
Margaret smiled wistfully and touched her hand to his arm. "You're a good man, Sir Angus Greene. Insufferable at times…" She almost grinned at his mock scowl. "Well, insufferable most of the time, if one wants to put a fine point on it, but still a good man."
He pushed the door open, then set his bowl of cranachan on a table inside the room. "Should I not have mentioned your brother just now? Perhaps I should have left you spitting mad and ready to slit my throat?"
"No." She let out a long, tired exhale and sat on the bed, another lock of her long brown hair spilling from her coiffure onto her shoulder. Angus watched her with an aching heart. She looked so small and defenseless, and so damned melancholy. He couldn't bear it.
"Margaret," he said, sitting beside her, "you have done your best to raise your brother for what, how many years?"
"Seven."
"Now it's time to let him grow up and make his own decisions, right or wrong."
"You yourself said no boy of eighteen knows his own mind."
Angus swallowed a groan. There was nothing more detestable than being haunted by one's own words. "I shouldn't want to see him marry at such an age. Good God, if he made a bad choice he'd have to live with it-her!-for rest of his life."
"And if he made a bad choice by entering the military, how long a life will he have to regret it?" Margaret raised her face to his, and her eyes looked unbearably huge in her face. "He could die, Angus. I don't care what people say, there is always a war. Somewhere, some stupid man will feel the need to fight with some other stupid man, and they're going to send my brother to settle it."
"Margaret, any one of us could die tomorrow. I could walk out of this inn and be trampled by a mad cow. You could walk out of this inn and be struck by lightning. We can't live our lives in fear of that moment."
"Yes, but we can try to minimize our risks."
Angus lifted his hand to rake it through his crisp hair; it was an action he often repeated when he was tired or exasperated. But somehow his hand moved slightly to the left, and he felt himself touch Margaret's hair instead. It was fine, and straight, and silky smooth, and there seemed to be a lot more of it than he'd originally thought. It slid from its pins and cascaded over his hand, between his fingers.
And as he savored the feel of it, neither of them breathed.
Their eyes locked, green against the darkest, hottest black. Not a word was spoken, but as Angus leaned forward, slowly closing the distance between them, they both knew what was going to happen.
He was going to kiss her.
And she wasn't going to stop him.
Five
His lips brushed against hers slowly, in the barest of touches. If he'd crushed her against him or ground his mouth onto hers, she might have pulled away, but this feather-light caress captured her soul.
Her skin prickled with awareness, and she suddenly felt… different, as if this body she'd possessed for twenty-four years were no longer her own. Her skin felt too tight, and her heart felt too hungry, and her hands… oh, how her hands ached for the touch of his skin.
He'd be warm, she knew, and sculpted. His were not the muscles of a sedentary man. He could crush her with one blow of his fist… and somehow that knowledge was thrilling… probably because he was holding her now with such gentle reverence.
She pulled away for a moment, so that she could see his eyes. They burned with a need that was unfamiliar, and yet she knew exactly what he wanted.
"Angus," she whispered, lifting her hand to rub the rough skin of his cheek. His dark beard was coming in, thick and coarse and entirely unlike her brother's whiskers on the few occasions she'd seen him unshaven.
He covered her hand with his, then turned his face into her palm, pressing a kiss against her skin. She watched his eyes over the tips of her fingers. They never left hers, and they were asking a silent question, and waiting for her answer.
"How did this happen?" she whispered. "I've never… I never even wanted-"
"But you do now," he whispered. "You want me now."
She nodded, shocked by her admission, yet unable to lie to him. There was something about the way he was looking at her, the way his eyes swept over her as if he could see all the way to the very center of her heart. The moment was ter-rifyingly perfect, and she knew that lies had no place between them. Not in that room, not on that night.
She moistened her lips. "I can't…"
Angus touched his finger to her mouth. "Can'
t you?"
That brought forth a wobbly smile. His teasing tone melted her resistance, and she felt herself swaying toward him, leaning into his strength. More than anything, she wanted to throw aside all of her principles, every last ideal and moral to which she'd held true. She could forget who she was, and what she'd always held dear, and lie with this man. She could stop being Margaret Pennypacker, sister and guardian of Edward and Alicia Pennypacker, daughter of the departed Edmund and Katherine Pennypacker. She could stop being the woman who brought food to the poor, attended church every Sunday, and planted her garden every spring in neat and tidy rows.
She could stop being all of that, and finally be a woman.
It was so tempting.
Angus smoothed one of his callused fingers across her furrowed brow. "You look so serious," he murmured, leaning forward to brush his lips to her forehead. "I want to kiss away these lines, brush away these worries."
"Angus," she said quickly, letting her words tumble out before she lost her ability to reason, "there are things I can't do. Things I want to do, or I think I want to do. I'm not sure, because I've never done, but I can't- Why are you smiling?"
"Was I?"
He knew he was, the bounder.
He shrugged helplessly. "It's only that I've never seen anyone quite so becomingly befuddled as you, Margaret Pennypacker."
She opened her mouth to protest, since she wasn't sure if his words were complimentary, but he placed his finger over her lips.
"Ah, ah, ah," he said. "Hush now, and listen to me. I'm going to kiss you, and that's all."
Her heart soared and fell in a single moment. "Just a kiss?"
"Between us, it will never be just a kiss."
His words sent a shiver through her veins, and she lifted her head, offering her lips to him.
Angus drew in a hoarse breath, staring at her mouth as if it held all the temptations of hell-and all the bliss of heaven. He kissed her again, but this time he held nothing back. His lips took hers in a hungry, possessive dance of desire and need.
She gasped, and he savored her breath, inhaling its warm, sweet essence, as if that might somehow enable her to touch him from the inside out.
He knew he ought to go slowly with her, and much as his body was crying with need, he knew that he would end this night unfulfilled, but he could not deny himself the pleasure of feeling her small body beneath his, and so he lowered her down onto the bed, never once taking his mouth off hers.
If he was just going to kiss her, if that was all he could do, then he was damned if this kiss didn't last the whole night through.
"Oh, Margaret," he moaned, letting his hands roam down the side of her, past her waist, over her hip, until he cupped the smoothly rounded curve of her buttocks. "My sweet Mar-"
He broke off and lifted his head, flashing her a boyishly lopsided grin. "Can I call you Meggie? Margaret's a bloody mouthful."
She stared up at him, breathing hard, unable to speak.
"Margaret," he continued, trailing his fingers along the edge of her cheek, "is just the sort of woman a man wants by his side. But Meggie… now, that's a woman a man wants underneath."
It took her an eighth of a second to say, "You can call me Meggie."
His lips found her ear, as his arms snaked around her. "Welcome to my embrace, Meggie."
She sighed, and the movement sank her deeper into the mattress, and she gave herself up to the moment, to the flickering candle and the sweet scent of the cranachan, and to the strong and powerful man who was covering her body with his.
His lips moved to her neck, whispering along the lines that led down to the crook of her shoulder. He kissed the skin there, so pale against the black wool of his coat. He didn't know how he'd ever wear that garment again, now that it had spent an entire evening brushing against her bare skin. It would smell like her for days, and then, after the scent drifted away, the memory of this moment would still be enough to set his body on fire.
His nimble fingers undid just enough buttons to reveal the barest hint of her cleavage. It was nothing more than a shadow, really, a vague darkening that hinted at the wonders below, but even that was enough to send fire through his veins, tightening a body that he had thought couldn't possibly get any harder.
Two more buttons found their way free, and Angus trailed his mouth down along each new inch of bared skin, whispering the whole time, "It's still a kiss. Just a kiss."
"Just a kiss," Margaret echoed, her voice strange and breathy.
"Just a kiss," he agreed, slipping yet another button through its loophole so that he could fully kiss the deep hollow between her breasts. "I'm still kissing you."
"Yes," she moaned. "Oh, yes. Keep kissing me."
He spread open his coat, baring her small, yet gently rounded breasts. He sucked in his breath. "Good Christ, Meggie, this coat never looked half so good on me."
Margaret stiffened slightly under the intense heat of his gaze. He was staring at her as if she were some strange and wondrous creature, as if she possessed something he'd never seen before. If he touched her, caressed her, or even kissed her, she could melt right back into his embrace and lose herself in the passion of the moment. But with him just staring at her-she was made uncomfortably aware that she was doing something she'd never even dreamed of doing.
She'd known this man only a few short hours, and yet-
Her breath catching, she reached up to cover herself. "What have I done?" she whispered.
Angus leaned down and kissed her forehead. "No regrets, my sweet Meggie. Whatever you feel, don't let regret be a part of it."
Meggie . Meggie didn't adhere to the strictures of society simply because that was the way she was raised. Meggie sought her own fortune and her own pleasure.
Margaret's lips hinted at a smile as she let her hands fall away. Meggie might not lie with a man before marriage, but she would certainly allow herself this moment of passion.
"You're so beautiful," Angus growled, and the last syllable was lost as his mouth closed around the peak of her breast. He made love to her with his lips, worshipping her in every way a man could show his devotion.
And then, just as Margaret felt her last shreds of resistance slipping away, he took a shuddering, deep breath and, with obvious reluctance, closed the folds of his coat around her.
He held the lapels together for a full minute, breathing hard as his eyes fixed on some blank spot on the wall. His face looked almost haggard, and to Margaret's untrained eye, he looked almost as if he were in pain.
"Angus?" she asked hesitantly. She wasn't certain what she was supposed to ask him, so she settled for just his name.
"In a minute." His voice was a touch harsh, but somehow Margaret knew that he bore her no anger. She held silent, waiting until he turned his head back toward her and said, "I need to leave the room."
Her lips parted in surprise. "You do?"
He nodded curtly and tore himself away from her, crossing the distance to the door in two long strokes. He grabbed the doorknob, and Margaret saw the muscles in his forearm flex, but before he pulled the door open, he turned around, his lips starting to form words…… that quickly died on his lips.
Margaret followed his gaze back to herself… Good God above, the coat had fallen open when he'd let go of it. She snatched the lapels together, thankful that the dim candlelight hid her mortified blush.
"Lock the door behind me," he instructed.
"Yes, of course," she said, rising to her feet. "Here, you do it, and then take the key." She fumbled toward the table with her left hand, clutching the coat together with her right.
He shook his head. "Keep it."
She took a few steps toward him. "Keep the- Are you mad? How will you get back in?"
"I won't. That's the point."
Margaret's mouth opened and closed a few times before she managed to say, "Where will you sleep?"
He leaned toward her, his nearness heating the air. "I won't sleep. That's the problem."
"Oh. I…" She wasn't such an innocent that she didn't recognize what he was talking about, but she certainly wasn't experienced enough to know how to respond. "I-"
"Has it started to rain again?" he asked curtly.
Margaret blinked at the rapid change of subject. She cocked her head, listening for the gentle patter of rain against the roof. "I… yes, I believe it has."
"Good. It had better be cold."
And with that, he stalked out of the room.
After a second of paralyzing surprise, Margaret ran to the door and poked her head into the hall, just in time to see Angus's large form disappear around the corner. She hung onto the doorframe for a full ten seconds, half in and half out of the room, not precisely certain why she felt so completely stunned. Was it the fact that he'd left so abruptly? Or that she'd allowed him liberties she'd never dreamed of allowing any man who wasn't her husband?
If truth had to be told, she'd never even dreamed that such liberties existed.
Or maybe, she thought wildly, maybe what really stunned her was that she'd lain on the bed, looking up at him as he'd stormed across the room, and he'd been so completely… well, delicious to watch that she hadn't even realized that the coat had fallen open and her breasts were peeking out for all the world to see.
Or at least for Angus to see, and the way he looked at her…
Margaret gave herself a little shake and shut the door. After a moment's pause, she locked it as well. Not that she worried about Angus. He might be in a bear of a mood, but he'd never lift a finger against her, and, more importantly, he'd never take advantage of her.
She didn't know how she knew this. She just did.
But one never knew what manner of cutthroats and idiots one might find in a country inn, especially in Gretna Green, which she imagined saw more than its fair share of idiots, what with everyone eloping here all the time.
Margaret sighed and tapped her foot. What to do, what to do. Her stomach let out a loud and vigorous rumble, and it was then that she remembered the cranachan sitting on the table.
Why not? It smelled delicious.
She sat down and ate.