When a Scot Loves a Lady (12 page)

“Is your horse all right?” she managed beneath his dark regard.

“Aye, lass. Ma thanks.” His expression remained pleasant as he broadened his attention again to include them all. He was a casual flirt. One might believe he had not in fact kissed her thoroughly on a stair the night before. But she knew his reputation, and he had no doubt kissed her because he imagined he knew hers. “Leddies, ye dae us all a fine service far the holidays.”

“There'll be no goose,” Mrs. Milch muttered.

“Who needs goose when fine ladies are about such noble work?” Mr. Cox announced at the earl's shoulder, casting a pleased glance about the chamber.

“There is nothing noble in baking bread, Mr. Cox,” Emily stated. “The poor labor at such work and they are barely compensated for it.”

“I have labored my whole life, Lady Marie Antoine,” he said brightly, moving to Emily's side. “Yet I have never had the pleasure of baking bread with a lady. I beg to assist.”

“Have you baked bread at all, sir?” She seemed truly curious.

“Why, no.” He laughed.

“Then you'd best put on an apron as well.” Mrs. Milch shook her head sorrowfully.

“You must remove your coat first,” Emily instructed.

“Certainly not in the presence of ladies.” Mr. Cox cast Kitty a playful grin and tied the cloth around his elegant coattails. “My lord, will you join me with our fair companions in this charming domestic task?”

Lord Blackwood shifted his booted feet at the threshold.

“A'll best be leaving that tae those mair fitted.” He bowed, cast Kitty the swiftest and most enigmatic glance, and disappeared.

Kitty pulled in steadying breaths, every iota of her tingling nerves drawn to follow him.

“Mr. Cox,” she spoke to fix her feet in place, “is Mr. Yale still in the stable?” She couldn't care less. She only wanted to know where the earl was going now. It was impossible. Grown women did not feel this way. But perhaps this was her punishment for the dishonest program she had pursued for so many years, no matter that the man she had helped bring to justice was in fact very bad.

“He has gone to the pub with the carpenter who helped us patch up that roof. Nasty business. Nearly caught Blackwood on the shoulder.”

“He only said his horse was in the way of it,” Emily said.

“He was grooming it.” Mr. Cox set his fingertips to the dough. “Odd for a gentleman of his distinction to care for his own cattle, I say. But the nobility will have its eccentrics,” he added with a confiding smile.

Emily pointed at the round of dough. “You must put the heels of your hands into it, Mr. Cox. Like that.”

Kitty's heart pattered. She wiped her palms on a cloth.

“Will you excuse me?” she muttered. Mrs. Milch was sufficient chaperone for Emily, a chaperone like the one Kitty ought to have had in the stairwell the night before. Emily dug into the dough anew and Mr. Cox studied her actions. Mrs. Milch did not look away from the pot of sealant. Kitty fled.

She must escape the inn, if only for a few moments. She needed cold air in her lungs to clear her clouded head. It was vastly unwise to fixate on the Earl of Blackwood, his breathtaking jaw, his skillful caress.

In the parlor Ned stood with one of the dogs. The boy's head came up and something gold glimmered in his palm.

He grinned. “Sky's fair clear today, milady.”

She could barely think to put together words. “It seems so.” She went toward him. Distraction of this sort was exactly what she required.

The dog snuffled his hand.

“Are you feeding treats to the animals, Ned?” She tried to smile, but her lips felt wobbly like the rest of her.

“No, ma'am. It's only a trinket I found a fortnight since on the road down a'ways at Shrewsbury.” His brows perched high under jutting hair. He turned his hand upward. A painted cameo covered his palm, a portrait set in a gold frame of a young woman with gold ringlets and a pleasingly dimpled cheek.

“How pretty she is, and how sad her beau must be to have lost it.” Kitty smiled, nerves jittering recklessly. Distraction, it seemed, was not helping matters.

“Reckon.” Ned tucked the cameo in his pocket, tugged his cap, and went with the dog out into the yard, where the earl had presumably gone returning to the stable. She could go out there and…
No
.

She would brave the icy rear stoop where she might press her fiery cheeks into a handful of snow to calm her heated nerves. Then perhaps she could throw herself into the snow entirely to cool the rest of her. She hurried toward the rear foyer for her pattens and cloak.

Lord Blackwood stood in the nook behind the stair, shoulders against the wall, one large hand covering his face. He dropped his arm, met her gaze, and a hard breath left him.

“My lord, what are you doing here?” An atrociously inelegant greeting. Now she had lost all propriety
and
civility. Falling, it seemed, would not be pretty.

“Catching ma breath, A think.”

Low light slanted into the foyer; she could not clearly make out his expression. But she could sense him well enough. His entire person seemed to breathe of the outdoors, of rugged, untamed northern wilderness, which was profoundly silly since his estate was quite close to Edinburgh and anyway he mostly lived in London.

She stepped toward him; indeed, she could not prevent herself from doing so. He seemed to flatten his shoulders to the wall.

“It must have been dreadfully unpleasant work.” She had nothing to say to him really. “Terribly cold. Did you go up on that roof?”

“Aye.” His jaw looked tight. Kitty imagined tasting it. She should have done so last night. Foolish oversight. Her breaths shortened.

“I understand that you were in the stable when the accident occurred.”

“Aye.”

“You were tending to your horse?” How could she get closer without appearing ridiculously obvious? Her very skin tingled to touch his.

He nodded. “The lot of 'em.”

“You were feeding the carriage horses as well? And the gentlemen's mounts too, I daresay.” She could not do it subtly. But subtlety was often overrated. “Mightn't you have left that to Ned, rather?” She took another step forward, tilting her head back to look into his face, perfection of masculine form and shape.

“Aye.” He was not smiling.

“But you did not.”

“Nae.” Beneath hooded lids, he was staring at her mouth again. Kitty could not halt herself; her hand moved seemingly of its own accord to his chest, as though she were allowed to do such a thing, as though ladies touched gentlemen in rear foyers beneath staircases every other day.

It felt right to do so. Frighteningly right.

As the night before when she had been about to kiss him, he remained perfectly still. She spread her fingers and sank her palm against his ribs. His heartbeat thumped quick and hard. A coil of anticipation shimmied up from her core to her very fingertips. She released a little breath.

“You are a man of few words, aren't you?” Her voice was crackly.

“Aye.” His was deeper than she had heard it yet. His breaths were uneven beneath her hand.

“I—” She whispered over the lump of constricted anticipation in her throat. “I—I—”

“Ye whit, lass?” He barely spoke aloud.

She shifted her hand, sliding her fingertips beneath his waistcoat. With a sharp exhalation he grasped her shoulders and pulled her to him.

Kitty sighed. She'd wondered whether her drunken imagination invented the sensations she'd felt pressed to the firm wall of his body. Now she was sober and heady with them. She could barely form the words she'd been thinking since he had released her on the stair ten hours earlier.

“I—I wish to ask you a question.”

She was slender and delicate in his hands, all curved lusciousness against his chest. Leam hadn't held a woman in too long, except the night before, when he'd held this woman far too long for his own good. Her eyes were feverishly bright now, spots of crimson high on her cheeks, so far from the pristinely elegant Londonite she was to society. In this inn, over the course of mere hours, she was coming apart, piece by piece, before his eyes.
In his hands
. The exquisite shell was breaking into tiny shards.

By God, he wanted no part of it.

Release her
.

He bent his head. Her fragrance tangled in his senses. “Whit's that, lass?”

Release her, fool
.

“Will you kiss me again?” She hadn't even the presence of mind to look into his eyes. “I want you … to.” Her hot gaze upon his mouth nearly unmanned him. Nearly.

Nearly…

Entirely.

His hand slid over her shoulder, up the silken curve of her throat to cup her head.

“Dae ye nou?” His voice was husky. No surprise there. After that kiss last night he'd stood outside in the snow for an hour to relieve the tension in his body. It had not sufficed. Now she pressed herself up against him and as a woman of experience she must know perfectly well how he wanted considerably more than her kiss.

She nodded, her breasts rising heavily against his chest. “Quite dreadfully a lot.”

There was still time to release her.

She did not look like a woman of experience. She looked like a girl, trembling and wide-eyed and not truly knowing what she asked. For years now Leam believed such a face of innocent desire could not be real. He had discovered at great cost to himself and a man he loved dearly that it was not real.

It seemed real upon this woman. She lifted her storm-cloud gaze to his and he got caught in its brilliant candor. He lowered his head, her mouth beckoning, full and shapely and all feminine beauty. The scents of wood smoke and cherries breathed through her parted lips, straight to his foolish poet's head and rigid man's groin. God, but she was perfection—as perfect as in the stairwell when it had taken every ounce of his considerable self-control to put her off—as perfect as that night three years ago when he first heard her speak, silken-smooth and quick-witted, and saw the cur's possessive hand at her elbow, Poole's proprietary eye.

“Just do it.” Her voice was a mere utterance. “Just kiss me again. Please. Once.”

A beautiful woman, begging for his kiss.

He brushed her soft lips. She sighed into him. He slipped his thumb along the delicate curve of her jaw.

Her hand shot up, gripped his neck, and pulled him against her.

He wrapped his arms around her and dragged her to him, as she wanted, as he had wanted since she'd walked into this damned inn. She kissed like a courtesan and a virgin at once, openmouthed and seeking, hungry yet oddly hesitant, and with little finesse. He had done this to her—robbed the exquisite of decorum. He was staggered by it, and by her lovely hands moving all over him, first his neck and shoulders, then his arms, chest, and beneath his coat. He sought the inside of her hot mouth with his tongue, tasting, sampling the softness he wanted to dive into. So soft, so hot. Dear God, she couldn't know what this did to a man.

He slipped the tip of his tongue into her, aroused beyond endurance, struggling to hold back. He could make her want what he wanted. But she was not for him, not this beauty whose rain-cool surface masked heated thundercloud eyes. Not that cyclone of confusion and mixed messages. Not for Leam ever again.

But by God she was flawless. He spread his hand around her porcelain cheek and jaw and with his thumb and forefinger urged her lips wider. She responded like clay to a master's touch, and he delved deep within. He stroked, encompassed in wet heat, and a gentle moan escaped the back of her throat. Her hands clutched his shirt.

He kissed her, drawing her lower lip between his teeth and caressing it with his tongue, then thrusting soft and deep again, and his palm slipped down the silken column of her neck, seeking, his blood running fast and hot. He had to touch her. Just once. Feel the beauty of her breasts wrapped in fine, snug wool he'd been struggling not to stare at for a day that seemed like an eternity. This was a mistake. He should peel her off him and tell her in no uncertain terms that they must not do this again.

He could not. But perhaps if he went too far, she would.

He covered her breast with his hand. She sucked in breath, stiffening. Then she sank into his touch, filling his palm with voluptuous beauty and his head with blaring trumpets warning that this was a grave error in judgment and he should run while he could.

“Lass—”

She attached her mouth to his, a sweet perfection of eager feminine heat. With his hand he gently urged her face away while his other fully cupped her sublime womanly body, her exquisite breast. By God, he simply could not take his hand off her.

Her lashes lifted, sooty layers of demure temptation revealing sky-gray pools swimming with need. Lips ripe and glittering parted, her breaths staggered. Leam swallowed with difficulty, his throat constricted, and gazed into heaven and hell at once. He knew that place of matched ecstasy and misery well. Too well in his memory, as though it were yesterday.