The Last Debutante (19 page)

Jamie wished he understood precisely what had happened to his uncle. “I donna know,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “It began a few years ago and has grown worse.” He touched a few keys, playing a song from a distant memory of his childhood when he’d been forced by his mother to engage in music lessons.
“It will make you a proper gentleman, Jamie,”
she had said.

Daria smiled with delight. “You play!”

“I do no’,” he said with an easy smile. “I remember a few things from my music lessons, but I donna play. You, on the other hand, play very well, lass. Thank you for indulging us, aye?”

“Should I take from that you were suitably entertained?”
she asked, and playfully nudged him with her shoulder as she began to play lightly, her fingers scarcely touching the keys at all.

“Aye, that I was.” He’d been entertained in a way he could not describe. He was softening, he knew it. He did not care to be soft; scarcely anything annoyed him more than giving in to a woman’s smile. “When I was a boy,” he said, turning his attention away from the curve of her neck, “Hamish was considered the family historian. He would regale the entire clan with tales of heroic Campbell ancestors.” He smiled at the memory. “He would act out the more gruesome parts of our history with long swords and descriptions of bloody body parts for the boys, myself included. Now, he canna recall his full name most days.”

Daria nodded and played another couple bars. “May I ask you something? Why is Geordie so angry? He may have told me his grievances against me, but alas, his spelling is so very atrocious, I can’t understand it.”

Jamie couldn’t help but laugh. “Aye, in English as well as Gaelic. My brother was never one for the classroom. He wanted to be a soldier, a slayer of man and beast. He is a smart man, a good man, aye? Yet I never knew how poor his writing was until he became mute.”

“Until?” Her hands paused gracefully on the keys. “He’s not always been mute?”

Jamie shook his head. “It’s a recent injury. In the course of a meal that was intended to bring the Brodies and the Campbells together, no’ drive them apart as they’ve been for two hundred years, Geordie acted rashly. He called another man out,” he said to Daria’s questioning look. “In the Highlands, there’s no’ much that can stop two men who
want a go at each other, aye? And, as these things generally go when two clans are involved, there is no’ much that will stop brothers and cousins and sons and fathers and uncles from joining the fray.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding.

“And,” Jamie added with a sigh, “as these things go for brash, hotheaded young men, Geordie was so badly wounded in the melee that he was made mute.”

“How tragic!”

“Aye. Whether or not his voice will return remains to be seen,” he said. “But at present, a man who once made better use of his tongue than his hands is now reduced to a slate and a wee bit of chalk. That’s what angers him.”

She gazed thoughtfully at the keys, playing lightly once more.

If only she knew the whole story of that supper, that infamous, meticulously planned supper, which had been intended to put to bed some of the more egregious complaints the Brodies and Campbells had harbored against each other the last two centuries. Jamie’s first thought—when Cormag Brodie had said whatever it was he’d said (his words lost along with the pig that had been roasted for the occasion), and Geordie had flipped the table, sending crystal, china, wine, and pig flying—was that he was right to have wanted a much smaller affair. His second thought—as Cormag had lunged, his hands grasping for Geordie’s throat—was that perhaps it would be best if the Brodies and the Campbells never dined together.

The melee had spilled into the old bailey, with Campbells swinging fists at Brodies, and Brodies swinging
swords at Campbells. It had ended when Cormag swung his claymore wide, striking Geordie in the neck. If Geordie had not been so agile, he might be headless now. If Cormag had been a little less meaty, he might have lost his life as well, but the knife Geordie managed to stab into his leg had not penetrated so deeply as to drain his life’s blood.

As three men struggled to drag Cormag away, Isabella had said, “I canna enter into a permanent union with a man whose brother would wish my brother dead. I’m sorry, Jamie.” She’d followed her kinsmen out, daintily holding up the hem of her gold gown so as not to drag it in the blood and muck.

It had been a moment when Jamie could not think of what to say. He was the sort who needed time to think, to mull, when presented with a weighty matter such as the end of an engagement and the crash of dreams for a happy union and a family. He was the sort to choose his words carefully . . . so he hadn’t spoken at all.

He had not called her back.

The end of his engagement to the fair Isabella had been a blow to Jamie’s heart, and, admittedly, his ego. He’d been quite fond of her, and supposed he still was. She was pretty, with wide green eyes and copper hair. But he was a laird, and women did not cry off from engagements to lairds.

“It must have been horrid for everyone involved,” Daria said, as if he’d just told her the story aloud.

“Aye. In more ways than I could ever explain.”

“Well,” she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye, “I am a good listener.”

He laughed. “I’ve said enough, aye? It was a night for
the ages, one that shall go down in the annals of family history; a night in which Geordie lost his voice and I lost my fiancée.”

“Your fiancée! How did you
lose
her?”

“In the usual way,” he said, smiling a little. “She cried off, since her brother had just been stabbed by my brother.”

Daria’s eyes widened with surprise and fixed on him, as if she expected him to tell her that he was jesting. Her gaze did not waver, and neither did his. Jamie noticed—and not for the first time, no—that she had long, darkly golden lashes and brown eyes flecked with tiny bits of blue and gray, rimmed with black. Eyes that could live forever in a man’s memory.

“You must not tell me any more,” she said, her gaze dropping to his mouth. “Or I shall feel quite sad for you and be resolved to help you. I think there can be nothing as dangerous as resolving to help one’s captor.”

“
Diah,
I could no’ bear your help, I am certain of it.”

“
You,
sir? I think you could bear nearly anything.”

A soft smile played on her lips. He wondered if she was flirting with him now, hoping that he would agree to take her to Edinburgh or give her grandmother undeserved leeway. Daria Babcock might believe she knew the ways of men . . . but Jamie Campbell knew women.

He leaned closer. “And what of you,
leannan
? How is it that a woman as lovely as you has descended from a woman who is as mad as a hen?”

She closed her eyes and bent her head closer to him. “You’ve quite clearly become very fond of my Mamie.”

He couldn’t help himself; he grazed her temple with his lips. “I assure you, I have no’.”

Her smile deepened; small dimples creased her smooth cheeks. “But are you not the least bit curious to see how she fares?” she asked, and tilted her head to one side as Jamie moved his mouth to her jawline.

“No,” he said, dipping to her neck.

“But we had an agreement,” she murmured.

“We have only one agreement,
leannan
. One thousand pounds in exchange for you.” He couldn’t seem to stop himself from cupping her face, his fingers splayed against her head. He tilted her head back and moved to kiss her, but Daria quickly inserted her fingers between them, pressing against his mouth.

“You promised me I would see her. Duff said he sent a messenger with the letter I wrote her and she wasn’t there. I’m worried, and you promised.”

Damnation.
She had him. She’d seduced him with her smile and her beauty and her unfailingly spirited nature, and even worse, she knew that she had. Jamie could see it in the dance of her eyes, the curve of the smile on her lips. “You want my promise, lass? You have it,” he said, and grabbed her hand, pulling it away at the same moment he pressed his mouth to hers, claiming it, drawing her lower lip in between his teeth.

She was lush, her lips, her body, all of her. He anchored one arm around her and pulled her closer. This woman was irresistible, with her smile and her glittering eyes, and Jamie kissed her with a surrender that surprised him.

Her mouth, as soft and succulent as he’d remembered from that hazy dream in her grandmother’s cottage, was warm, and
Diah,
moving erotically against his mouth. The kiss was molten; it had the potential to melt him into nothing.

It wasn’t enough—he needed more. He suddenly twisted her about and draped her over his lap, her face between his hands. She gave a small cry into his mouth when he did it, but then she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding herself tightly to him.

He tasted her as if she were some English delicacy, and imagined tasting the more intimate folds of her body. He sank deeper into the sea of longing, riding the wave of pleasure. He cupped her breast, filling his hand and then sliding it down to the hem of her gown, finding her bare leg.

She tried to speak, but he would not allow it. She arched her back, pressing into him, and bent her knee. Something fell off the pianoforte with a crash. He hoped it wasn’t a candle, hoped Dundavie didn’t burn around him, but in that moment, he hardly cared if it did. He was too bewitched, too engrossed in the feel of her in his arms.

Daria pressed against him, her hands sweeping around his neck, her breasts pressed to his chest. She thrust her fingers into his hair, skirted the top of his ear, then found his shoulders, felt the tension in his muscles. Jamie’s body hardened with anticipation. He was only moments from lifting her skirts, from sliding his hand between her legs . . . but his damnably practical head overruled his groin. He did not need this English rose to complicate his life any more than she had already.

She dropped her hand; it hit an ivory key and the sound roused him completely from his lust. With a strength he would have sworn he did not possess, he lifted his mouth from hers. He kissed the bridge of her nose, then pressed
his forehead to hers, cupping her head in his hands, calming his ragged breath.

When he felt his senses return to him, he gazed at her.

She gave him a self-conscious smile that put dimples just below the roses in her cheeks. “When shall we go to Mamie’s?”

Jamie sighed. “Incorrigible, you are. When I am assured I can ride, then, aye?”

Her smile broadened; her eyes twinkled with delight. “Aye,” she mimicked.

She sat up and tucked a thick strand of hair that had fallen from her coif into the chignon at her nape.

“Good night, then,” Jamie said, turning away from her and her captivating smile. “Off to bed with you.”
Go out of my sight,
leannan
, so that I will not be tempted.

Still smiling, she rose gracefully from the bench. Her fingers trailed across his back and shoulders as she passed him.

He did not watch her leave, but waited until he heard the door shut and then lowered his brow to the top of the pianoforte, his eyes closed, his jaw clenched against a burgeoning physical desire.

N
OTHING IN
D
ARIA’S
previous experience matched a man like Jamie Campbell.
Nothing
.

She’d never felt anything as fervently as she’d felt his kiss, had never felt such a burning, untenable desire to press her flesh to a man’s flesh—but Lord help her, she’d felt it in every bit of her skin . . . all in the space of a single kiss.

A delicious little shiver shimmied down her spine as she recalled the way he’d kissed her. Like a man who would possess a woman completely, who would lay her down and take her with a lover’s determination.

She lay on the bed in the dark cloak of night, her fingers tracing down her abdomen and back up, over and over again. She stared at the crack in the drapery, the soft glow of moonlight spilling into her room, and imagined him, big and bold above her, his hair framing his face, his body, his muscles—all of him sliding into her, filling her.

Lord
. She rolled onto her side and buried her face in the pillow. What was this she was feeling?
Lust
for her captor? She was mad, quite mad, to think in such a way! She was not naïve. Jamie Campbell would use her ill and then happily collect his one thousand pounds. But then, had she not used him? Had she not allowed that splendid, truly spectacular kiss so that she might get what
she
wanted?

Daria opened her eyes. There it was. They would each use the other to gain what they wanted. That was the way things were done—in an English ballroom or an old Scottish castle.

How very cynical you’ve become,
she chastised herself.
Now you will invent an entirely new societal rule to excuse being moved by a brazen, unrefined Scottish laird?

She was far too reckless! What of the damage to her marriage potential? She was being held for ransom, for God’s sake—that alone would ruin her chances for a match with a good title. If rumors that she had done something inappropriate with the laird were to reach England, it would destroy any hope of gaining a husband with even the lowest of titles.

It would prevent her from ever getting married at all. Would she risk everything for physical pleasure?

She couldn’t bear to become a spinster, spending all her days in her parents’ house. Oh, she was playing with fire! She’d walked into the open flame with the ridiculous belief that she’d not be burned. But she had, and it had seeped into her blood and spread indescribable torment through her.

With a sigh, Daria rolled onto her back and stared blankly up at the canopy. She had very few options, really.
She needed Jamie Campbell to protect her grandmother. Yet she needed to keep him at arm’s length for the sake of her reputation. She must tread carefully, avoiding him where she could, ignoring the way he made her skin tingle and the way her heart beat faster when he was near.
Yes,
Daria told herself as she closed her eyes,
that’s what you must do.