How to Seduce a Scot (13 page)

“It would be my pleasure, my lord. I am quite taken with chocolate in all of its forms.”

“I will wait for you here then.”

Mr. Waters must have heard enough, for he stood, taking her arm, and drawing her to her feet as well. He bowed stiffly from the neck to Lord Farleigh, who offered him a similar bow. For a moment, she feared his lordship would not stand to see them go and offer insult both to her and to her companion, but he bowed to her as he gained his feet, focusing his sole attention on her.

“I do hope you enjoy your dance, in spite of your partner.”

Catherine did not know how to politely reply to that, but as Mr. Waters practically dragged her onto the dance floor, she found that she did not have to speak.

“God's teeth, but that man is an ass.” Alex thought he spoke under his breath low enough for his angel not to hear him, but from the glare she tossed his way, she had clearly heard every word.

“Language, Mr. Waters. If you please.”

Alex forced himself to smile. He would be charming and reclaim Catherine's full attention, pale fops be damned. “I beg your pardon, Catherine. I am not fond of the shift in your taste in men.”

“I am here with you, am I not? And do not call me Catherine.”

His smile was genuine then as he looked down at her sweet lips pursed in displeasure. If he could get her alone for the space of five minutes, he could have her smiling again. Well, perhaps not smiling, but definitely sighing and clinging to him.

The fantasy was broken as they were separated by the motion of the dance. He turned his smile on the lady to his right as he drew her through the steps and helped her back to her original partner. He saw Catherine looking at the other man, some boy Mary Elizabeth had danced with earlier, with undisguised pleasure. The boy looked as if he had been poleaxed. Another conquest for her then. At least he would not have to fight that one off. The boy would run if he only raised an eyebrow at him.

It seemed Lord Farleigh of Who-Knows-Where would not be as accommodating.

But Alex had his hands on his angel again, and this time, he would not let her go. Instead of taking her back into the dining room when the dance ended, he drew her behind a potted palm, which Lady Jersey had kindly set up to block various drafts and to give lovers a place to converse in semi-privacy. Of course, Catherine was not his lover. Yet.

He did not know where that dastardly thought had come from, save perhaps from the rose scent of her hair. He took in the faint shape of her body beneath the modest gown she no doubt had sewn herself, and he wanted her more than he had wanted any woman, experienced courtesan, widow, or bored wife. Pearls gleamed in the soft curls of her hair, and one pearl nestled, not between her breasts, but in the hollow of her throat. If she were his, he would buy her a longer chain and leave the pearl to dangle between her glorious breasts while he ravished her from above. The very thought made him lose his breath.

“I must return to Lord Farleigh,” she said. She tried to get around him and leave him flat, but he blocked her with his body.

She drew back from him, her gloved hands coming up to touch his shoulders for the briefest moment, as soft as a butterfly's wings. She did not put her hands behind her back in an effort not to touch him, but left them at her sides. He felt like a villain, and could almost hear his father's sharp bark in his ear, ordering him to stand down. He ignored the teachings of his youth, and his own sense of fair play, and he stepped closer to her, pressing her back against the plaster wall behind her.

“We did not finish our discussion from this morning.”

“Indeed we did.” Her breath was coming short, as his was. It took all of Alex's willpower not to stare down at her breasts as they rose, almost touching his chest. The two of them were hidden from the room for now, but they could not stay hidden for long. Still, the scent of her lingered like an aphrodisiac. He did not know how he was going to let her go.

“If we were in the Highlands,” he said, “I would simply carry you out of here.”

Her green eyes were bright with desire, though she no doubt did not understand what that was, nor what to do with it. He would give his soul, and all his tomorrows, to be the one to teach her.

“We do not condone kidnapping in London.”

“More's the pity.”

He stepped back then, and gave her room to breathe. He offered her his arm. “I will escort you back to your Englishman.”

She looked shocked, and more than a little disappointed. “You will?”

He did not reveal his pleasure, but kept his face guarded and neutral. Still, within his breast, his soul was singing. She would be his, come hell or high water.

“It is where you wish to go, is it not?”

She sounded less certain, but she answered at once. “Yes.”

“Then that is where I will take you. But I will apologize to you properly. I feel it is only fair to warn you.”

She smiled a little at him as he led her back into the ballroom. No one had noticed their disappearance save Lady Jersey, who would say nothing to besmirch a young girl's reputation. For all her faults, his old lover was fair, and often kind.

Before he could return Catherine to the English fop she seemed to fancy, Mrs. Angel descended on them like a whirling dervish.

“Margaret has taken ill!” Mrs. Angel said without preamble. Catherine turned pale at hearing this, and Alex placed a hand over hers to shore her up. She did not seem to notice it, but she leaned on him.

“Ill? Margaret? She was fine when we left.”

“A sudden fever. Mrs. Beam sent word.”

“Then we must go at once.”

Before Catherine could head for the door, Mrs. Angel held up one hand. “No, no my dear. There is no need for your evening to be cut short. I will leave you in the capable care of the Waters family. Mr. Pridemore will see me home.”

“But what about our carriage?” his angel asked.

Her mother pursed her lips as if in thought, and Alex started to see which way the wind was blowing. “That is a conundrum. Hmmm… I wish we had a fine, capable man here to advise us.”

Catherine frowned at her mother's obvious bid for sympathy, but before she could speak, Alex did—to test the prevailing winds and to confirm his suspicions.

“If it would be convenient, Mrs. Middlebrook, it would be my honor to see Catherine cared for and to convey your carriage home.”

Catherine opened her mouth, doubtless to protest, but before she could, Mrs. Angel smiled as if he had solved all the world's ills and thrown a barley cake into the bargain.

“Mr. Waters, that would be perfect. We would be ever so grateful if you might assist the family in this way.”

Alex bowed and Catherine's eyes narrowed as she took in her mother and him both. But before she could cry foul—as indeed, foul it was—Lord Namby-Pamby stepped into the group. “May I be of any assistance, Mrs. Middlebrook?”

“Oh, my lord, you are too kind.” Mrs. Angel fell short of fawning over the fop, but only just. Clearly she was hedging her bets where her daughter's suitors were concerned. “If you would assist me in finding Mr. Pridemore… I fear I have lost him in all this crush. This to-do has overtaxed my nerves.”

“Of course, Mrs. Middlebrook.” Lord Namby cast his eyes toward Catherine, who smiled at him valiantly. “You will be all right?” he asked her, as if she stood not in a London ballroom but on a frozen tundra with none to aid her. Alex ground his teeth.

“The Waters family is kind enough to see me home. They are great friends of my mother and sister.”

“Friends of the family, you say?” Lord Pamby eyed Alex with a jaundiced eye.

“Practically cousins,” Catherine said. Alex heard the desperate tone in her voice, and spoke to smooth it over.

“My brother, sister, and I will see to Miss Middlebrook, if you would be so good as to assist her mother.”

Alex hoped that the fop had not heard of the carriage that needed tending. If he knew of Alex's intentions to take her home in a closed carriage, alone, he would not move from her side. Alex was banking on the fact that Lord Namby did not suspect, just as Catherine did not.

A man's intentions were his own business, after all.

Lord Pamby must have seen the nervousness reflected in Catherine's eyes, for he bowed to her. “I will call on you tomorrow, Miss Middlebrook. Please give my regards to your other two Scottish cousins as they see you safe home.”

“Thank you, my lord. I will.”

The fop's gaze lingered on her as if she belonged to him already, as if Alex and her mother did not stand just by. He seemed to want to say something else, but could not in company. Alex did not like the look of that, nor the look his angel gave the fop in return, as if he were a friend she leaned on, a man she could look to in times of trouble.

He wanted to be that man, damn it. He wanted her to look at him that way.

He heard his brother Ian's voice in his head:
Then stop acting like a horse's ass, and behave like a gentleman.

Mrs. Middlebrook led Lord Namby away then, still giving a good impression of worry over her youngest daughter. As soon as they were lost in the crowd, Alex looked over the ballroom until he found Robbie leaning against a pillar, looking as if he wished for death.

He caught his brother's eye, and gave their signal from childhood that meant,
Run. The English Watch is nigh.

Of course, they were not raising Cain in Edinburgh but were in London, surrounded by nothing but English, but the signal still served. Robbie moved fast, wresting Mary Elizabeth away from whatever young suitor she was talking to, and then moving for the door. Alex did not wait but drew Catherine out with him.

He managed to slip by Lady Jersey while she was chatting with another very young man. Perhaps someone she was nicely acquainted with, as she and Alex once had been, for in that moment, she seemed to have eyes for no one but him. Thank God for small blessings.

“Do you think she is very ill?” Catherine asked him as they waited for her carriage to be brought around.

Alex had almost forgotten her sister altogether. Surely her mother could have come up with a different ruse, though he could not argue with the results.

“I am sure you will find her almost completely recovered by the time you are home,” was all he said.

He saw Robbie bring Mary Elizabeth into the grand entrance hall, but he did not wait any longer than that. If he let the girls speak to each other, Mary Elizabeth would shout the house down and everyone within a mile would know that he was bringing Catherine Middlebrook home. Alone. Not the done thing.

Though of course, that wasn't going to stop him from doing it.

Catherine slipped into her family's carriage quickly, before anyone could notice that her mother was not there. Mr. Waters slid in beside her, and the conveyance rolled off into the night.

So she found herself alone, with a man, in the dark, in a closed carriage. The wheels turned quite slowly, as their conveyance had not joined traffic that was passing by. Catherine wondered if she should simply slide out of the door and make her own way home. As scandalous as the thought was, she was not certain she could trust herself to stay. The heady scent of Alexander Waters's skin was almost overwhelming.

Before she could talk herself into leaping to safety for her virtue's sake, Alex's hot-honey voice reached out and surrounded her. “Come here, Catherine.”

“No,” she said automatically.

“I have not apologized to your properly for my earlier behavior. Come here.”

“No, thank you,” she answered primly. “You might apologize to me while I am sitting just here.”

He laughed, and the low sound seemed to travel all across her nerves, down her spine, and into her belly, where it rested, heating her body as if stoking a furnace. She swallowed hard, and found her mouth still dry.

He did not speak again but moved over to her side of the carriage, blocking her in with his body so that she was trapped between him and the door. She knew she should ask him to move back. If she pressed the issue, she was certain that he would obey her. But the heat of his body was like Mary Elizabeth's magic elixir. It seemed to rob her of her good judgment and her better reasoning. It left her instead with a hunger for something like chocolate cake.

She had missed dessert altogether. Perhaps what Alexander Waters offered her now was something altogether sweeter.

He kissed her then, and she let him. He did not ask permission, but leaned close, plundering her lips like the ravaging, pillaging Northman that he was. She did not push him away, as she knew very well she should. Instead, with the last bit of reason left to her, she took off her cotton gloves and threaded her hands into his long, dark hair.

He did not hesitate, but seemed to take her fingertips massaging his scalp for surrender.

His mouth opened over hers, and his tongue slipped past her defenses, not that she had many left to spare. She leaned against him, and felt the delicious pressure of his chest against her breasts, the heat of his breath on her skin as he pulled back a little, only to trail his lips down her temple, to her cheek, to her throat. He stopped at the top of her bodice, and she pressed against him harder, willing him to touch her beneath it.

She did not consider what a shocking thing such an idea was. She was in a carriage in the dark of night, abandoned to bliss. She would sort out all concerns for the rest later. Tomorrow. Tomorrow seemed soon enough. For now, she would feast.

Except that she could not, for Alex took his delectable lips away from her altogether.

“I thought you were apologizing,” she said.

His voice was harsh with his lost breath. He clutched her close, his hands hard on her arm and on her waist. His black leather gloves clenched her gown just above her hip, and the fine silk would be terribly wrinkled. Not that she cared.

“I was apologizing,” he said, sounding like someone else altogether. “I am apologizing.”

Catherine felt his weakness as he leaned against her. It seemed he was fighting himself. No doubt he wanted to kiss her again, as much as she wished him to, if not more. For the first time in her life, she felt a heady sense of power. She was not the only one brought low by her obsession with him. It seemed that her hulking Highlander was just as obsessed with her.

“Then why do you stop?”

“I am reminding myself that I am a gentleman.”

Catherine opened her mouth to argue with him, but save for kissing her twice, he had behaved like a gentleman in all their dealings. He had always been kind, always proper, except for occasionally teasing her. What on earth were they doing together in a closed carriage in the dead of night if he was going to invoke honor in the dark?

She found herself disgruntled. It was an inconvenient time for a surge of conscience. Though as she sat there, she felt her own scruples rising up to taunt her. Her grandmother had not raised her to behave in such a manner.

She sighed and, at last, pushed Alexander Waters away.

“You are right, of course. You cannot kiss me, and I cannot let you. It is unseemly, and beneath both of us.”

He smiled a little, and did not let her go far. His arms were still around her, though now she had more room to breathe.

“I do not agree.”

She opened her mouth to protest, and he kissed her quickly, as if to stifle all argument. She knew she should be angry, but her thoughts were addled by the taste of him lingering on her lips.

He continued as if she had not tried to speak. “Our kisses are a beautiful thing, filled with magic.”

She almost spoke again, but he kissed her swiftly, and all she could think of was how happy she was that he was touching her.

Once he had regained her silence, he went on. “You are a lovely girl, and untutored in the ways of the world, as all girls should be, so you must trust me when I tell you—kisses like ours are gifts from the gods, gifts to be savored.”

“I have no truck with
the gods
as you put it, or any other pagan nonsense,” she said. Her voice was not as stern as she meant it to be. In her own ears, she sounded a bit breathless. She was surprised he had let her speak at all. She'd expected him to kiss her again, but this time, he did not.

“It is a figure of speech. Trust me when I tell you that things between a woman and a man are rarely as they are between us.”

“I do not want to hear of your other conquests. I am not, nor will I ever be, one of them.” Catherine should have felt affronted that he mentioned other women only seconds after kissing her senseless, but his arms were still about her in the most delicious, warm way, and the sway of the carriage brought their bodies together in glancing blows. If only their journey to her home might last forever.

In that moment, the carriage stopped, and she sighed. It seemed her stolen moment was already over.

“You are not a conquest,” Alexander said, still holding her close in the dark, though Jim the footman was bound to come and open the carriage door at any moment. “You are unique in all the world. You must always remember that.”

“
Unique
sounds like another word for strange,” she said.

“Please believe me when I tell you it is not.”

He moved away from her, and she felt suddenly bereft, as if someone had come upon her in her warm bed in winter and ripped her down quilt away. Jim did open the door then, and Alexander climbed out ahead of her to help her down.

She did not speak as he escorted her into her house, his hand solicitously at her elbow. He kept a decorous distance between them. No one looking at them could have believed that only minutes before, she had been in his arms—save for his hair, which had fallen from its ribbon when she'd tugged on it. His long, dark hair now fell around his shoulders in a curtain of black. She knew that his hair was actually dark brown, but in the light of the candle in the hallway, it looked like a pirate's locks falling around his face.

Jim was used to visits from Mr. Waters by this time, for he closed the front door behind them and left them alone. She needed to remind him to stay present until dismissed, but then Alex's lips were on hers again, and she could think of nothing, not even of how to breathe.

“Have I apologized enough?” he asked.

She smiled up at him, sliding her fingers through the dark mass of his hair. “You might apologize one more time, I think. I am not certain I am completely mollified as of yet.”

He smiled back, and a delicious joy curled in her belly, as if their kissing was a game, a game that would never hurt her, a game both he and she might win. He pressed his lips to her one last time, and this time his mouth opened over hers, and she responded, letting him plunder her like a conqueror. She shivered against him, but before she could press herself too close and feel the bliss of his body tight against hers, he pulled away.

“I am a gentleman, and you are a lady, and you are going upstairs to bed.”

She wondered why he repeated the obvious. “Yes,” she said. “All true. I am not sure why you state it.”

“Trust me again when I tell you that to say the words out loud in this moment is necessary.”

“You should leave me alone,” Catherine said. “You have said you will not marry, and I must marry by summer. We are at odds, Mr. Waters, in everything but this.” She pressed against him once, and he caught his breath. She thought for a moment that he might drag her hard against him, but she stepped back before he could.

For the second time that day, his black-gloved hands reached for her, but closed on nothing but air.

“I must see you again,” he said.

She swallowed hard, the taste of him still sweet in her mouth. She straightened her shoulders, and told herself to stand firm—both for him, and for herself. “No doubt you will. But this sort of nonsense must cease as of this moment.”

“So you keep saying, Miss Middlebrook. And yet, when I touch you, your body tells another tale.”

She was shocked that he was so indelicate as to mention her body. Even so, his words brought a shiver along her spine. She wondered at herself, that it was a shiver of pleasure.

“That may be, Mr. Waters, but I stand firm. I am for marriage, and you are not, and there is an end on it.”

“Let me woo you.”

“To what end?”

“Let us discover that when we come to it.”

She scoffed, and opened the door for him. “Good night, Mr. Waters.”

“Please, Catherine. At least make this concession. Don't decide on the Englishman until you have spoken again with me.”

“I think it best if we forget about each other altogether. You must leave me be, Mr. Waters. We must both get on with our lives.”

Though her heart twisted in her chest at her own words, she felt grown-up and sensible saying them. They were what her grandmother would counsel her to say, if she had been there.

Her heart rose in joy at his answer.

“I will do anything for you, Catherine, but not that.”

“Would you indeed?”

“Yes.”

The next words were out of her mouth before she thought. “Then discover for me who Mr. Pridemore is and what he wants with my mother.”

“You would have me spy for you?”

“Yes.”

They faced each other in the dark hallway, and for a moment she thought he might reach for her again. She tensed, though she was not sure if she would flee his arms or run to them. But she did not have the choice, for instead of touching her, he bowed low, his hair falling across his face, so that he had to toss it back over one shoulder as he stood again.

“So be it, Miss Middlebrook. I will do as you ask. But do not marry that Englishman. Not yet.”

“He has not yet asked,” she said.

Alex kissed her, swift and sure, his mouth like a memory of the pleasure she had found with him in her mother's coach. Then he was gone, off into the London night. She stood staring after him like a fool, until she recalled her good sense long enough to shut the door behind him.