What in the hell am I goin’ tae dae when this woman leaves?
They writhed and squirmed in each other’s arms until, quite without meaning to, they fetched up on the gravely shore of the little bank that edged the pool.
Jeames grunted with surprise as his bare buttocks touched the stony bottom, though he was privately glad, as this meant that he had an extra hand with which to explore Beatrice’s body.
“Ach, nay, I’ve run aground,” he muttered between kisses.
They kissed slowly in the shallows, neither of them paying any heed to the chill of the water. Their fingers slid over each other’s wet skin, raising goose bumps where they passed. Jeames could feel Beatrice’s nipples, hard as a couple of precious stones, digging into his chest. Despite the coldness of the water, he felt his own body responding.
It was with a firm and confident hand that Beatrice reached down and took ahold of his manhood, began to stroke and squeeze. Jeames moaned into her cheek.
Mirroring Beatrice’s movements and following her lead, Jeames reached southwards. He ran his hand lightly down the smooth, hard plane of her belly, tracing the lines of her stomach with his fingers until they reached the patch of short hair, and then further.
Beatrice arched her back under his clumsy touches, spurring Jeames on to explore those secret parts of her. As he became more confident, his other hand came up to tease her breasts, and he was delighted when she bit him hard on the earlobe and growled into his neck.
The two of them were breathing hard now, Jeames realizing that his teeth were bared in a smile of pure pleasure. Their hands seemed to have minds of their own. Jeames’s experiences, when it came to the intimacies shared between man and woman, were fairly limited but this did not seem to matter.
The two of them writhed against one another, their bodies moving sinuously against each other in the crystal waters; slippery, soft and yet hard. Then, as if on cue, they both stopped their squirming and gazed into each other’s face.
“This,” Jeames said, without conscious thought at forming the words. “Is a perfect moment.”
Beatrice did not answer but draped herself across him with careless abandon.
Like a woman that does nay expect tae see a certain man again.
The horrible, distracting thought insinuated itself into his mind and, once it was there, it was impossible to get rid of.
They lay together in the shallows, wet and panting. It was clear to both of them what was to happen next. Beatrice’s legs straddled his waist, and he could feel the heat of her, hovering just above his own eager manhood.
Every instinct, every particle of Jeames’s body, wanted to pull Beatrice down onto him, to immerse himself in her. The light filtering down from above shone off the equestrienne’s bronzed skin. Her brown hair hung in wet strands across her face and shoulders. He could feel the firm curve of her buttocks under his hands.
Jeames looked into Beatrice’s eyes. He saw a fierce desire burning in them but, along with that desire there was a sadness too; a hollowness that she could not hide.
“I will nae dae this,” Jeames said, and was surprised to hear the words come out of his mouth.
Beatrice’s head moved away from his.
“I mean, it’s nae that I daenae want tae,” Jeames said quickly. “It is just that…Beatrice, I think it’s clearly nay secret that I think the world o’ ye. I ken why ye feel ye must go. I ken why ye feel that stayin’ would be a torture fer ye.”
Jeames wiped the hair out his eyes.
Am I makin’ the biggest mistake? Will this be a decision that I rue till the end of me days?
Jeames cupped her cheek in her hands and willed his memory to capture every detail of the Englishwoman’s face.
“Aye, I ken all that, but that does nae mean that I want it tae end like this. Doin’ this thing out o’ desperation at the fact that neither if us think they’ll see the other again.”
Beatrice nodded. She touched Jeames’s hand where it held her face. She sniffed and lay her head upon his muscular chest. The hand that lay upon his chest balled into a tight fist.
Jeames kissed the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her wet hair and closing his eyes. The woman was shaking slightly. Jeames held her tightly to him, letting her think that he thought she was just cold.
However, the knowledge that she was weeping made his heart ache as it had never done before.
* * *
They got back from their swimming expedition almost exactly at the height of noon. Even though Beatrice imagined it had not exactly panned out the way that Jeames had hoped–she doubted that a single second of it after they had entered the water had been how the gentlemanly Scot had planned it–she had still enjoyed herself.
When Jeames had halted the passionate scene, Beatrice had been so overcome by the chivalry of the gesture and the realization how much he really cared for her that she had sobbed quietly into his chest. It brought home to her, even more than previously, how wrong what she and Ballantine proposed to do was. She felt awful that she could see no way out of betraying either Jeames or William in some way.
At least he did not know I was crying. I would spare him the knowledge of how my soul aches to stay, how much I care for him in turn. If he knew that, then what happens next would feel like even more of a betrayal.
Her insides clenched as she thought these things. It felt to her as if her very spirit was being squeezed in a vice constructed of her own guilt and fear and resentment.
They had swum for a little longer, and talked lightly about this and that, before Jeames had said that they should probably be making a move if Beatrice wanted to be back in time to meet William.
And so, here they were, back at MacKenzie Castle, facing their final night under the same roof.
But first, I must see William and receive his instructions…
Beatrice just had time to dry herself properly and change into her other gown before Ables, wheezing slightly on the other side of her bed chamber door, announced that Mr. Ballantine was awaiting her downstairs.
Running her fingers through her still-damp hair, Beatrice took one last look at herself in the expensive looking glass and marched out of the room to face what she had to face.
William was waiting for her in one of the parlors but asked whether she would care to take another turn with him around the excellent grounds, so that they could enjoy them together one last time before they left on the morrow.
More likely so that he does not run the risk of having whatever plan he has devised overheard by inquisitive ears.
Beatrice nodded at this suggestion and the two of them stepped out through the doors that led out from the parlor and out into the neat, well-tended gardens.
“They’re different, have you noticed?” William asked her when they were some way from the castle.
“Hm? What are different?” Beatrice asked. She was struggling to remain cognizant of what was going on around her; her mind was so full of competing plans of how to get out of what William was about to tell her.
“The gardens, my dear, the gardens,” William said, happily. “The gardens in these grand Scottish places–groomed and tended as they are–are not the same as the gardens in English stately homes.”
“No?” Beatrice asked, barely listening.
“No. They may be landscaped to a degree, their flowers and shrubs and hedges might be arranged just so, but there is something untamed about. It’s as if–as if a certain element of wildness remains. One that neither owner nor gardener can or wants to wholly tame.”
Beatrice considered these words as the two of them ambled across a wide lawn.
He speaks as if he has extensive experience with ambling casually through the gardens of the English aristocracy, rather than sneaking through them in the dead of night…
Beatrice knew that, to an outsider, it would look as if they were simply wandering over to a huge, spreading sycamore tree. However, she knew that William had chosen the lawn as the id
eal place to tell her of his plan for it was impossible for a snooping servant to sneak up on someone standing in the middle of a great, green expanse of lawn.
William turned. He surveyed the enormous stone edifice that was Castle MacKenzie. His air was of a man who was quite at home, despite his jacket that, in the plain light of day, looked to coming apart at some of the seams. If someone had cast a spur-of-the-moment glance over the lawn and seen him standing there, they would have thought that he was a proud proprietor taking in the beauty of his family home.
“Yes, yes indeed, it is a lovely spot, and a fine old building,” he said. He took a deep breath of the crisp, clean air and sighed it out contentedly. “No doubt, it is full of many fine, old things too, hm?”
Beatrice looked at the ground. She was repulsed at what she knew she was about to be asked but, for once, that repulsion was tempered by anger.
“Yes,” she said, her voice stiff with displeasure. “They have some fine things in there, William.”
The ringmaster clapped his hands together once. “Excellent, excellent,” he said. Despite their obvious privacy, William looked about them. “Now, I’m going to tell you how I plan on stealing those things, my dear.”
23
William took Beatrice gently by the arm and turned her back towards the spreading sycamore. The tree was a giant; its branches reaching how into the air, its twiggy fingers reaching up to the sky as if it were trying to get hold of the passing clouds.
“So, you mean to go through with this?” Beatrice said. She found that she was speaking through gritted teeth. Her jaw was clenched as she fought to suppress her anger. She felt that, if she let herself slip, there was a very real danger that she would scream her defiance right into William’s face.
“Do I mean to–Of course I mean to do it, Beatrice! What an absurd question. Why do you think that I have allowed you to remain here?”
Allowed me to remain here? Allowed?
“I have had the castle watched ever since Master Abernathy took you home,” William continued, quite unabashed at his admission that he had been spying on her. “I know that you have been well enough to ride for some time now. If I had wanted to, if I had changed my mind about plundering this honeypot, I would have come and taken you away a week ago.”
Beatrice could feel the bubbling resentment inside of her beginning to pick up in tempo.
He speaks as if he owns me. As if I am a possession that he merely has to pick up and put down at will.
“What is it you intend to do?” she asked. She could feel herself trembling.
“Intend? Why, I intend to do what we have been doing up and down and across the breadth of England, my dear,” William said. “Tonight, I intend to rob Castle MacKenzie, just as we have stolen from so many other nobles’ houses, in the places that Ballantine’s Circus has stopped.”
Beatrice turned her face away from him. Why it had suddenly dawned on her now that what they had been doing over the past however many years was wrong, she could not say. But the realization of just how awful it must have been for the victims of their robberies crashed down upon her then like a wave.
I’m disgusting. I cannot believe that I have been a part of this. Just because something terrible has become normal to me, does not mean that it is right.
“Please, William,” she said, her anger briefly replaced with despair. “I beg you. Do not do this. For me.”
William looked at her with a look of incredulous bemusement adorning his imperiously handsome face. “Don’t do it? For you?” he said.
Beatrice nodded, fighting the tears that were threatening to come.
“But don’t you see, my dear? I do this for you. You and all the rest of the men, women, and children in my charge. We must earn our bread some way and, regrettably, patrons are willing to spend less and less to watch us perform. We must supplement our income somehow.”
Beatrice shook her head. “You won’t be able to do this, William. There are too many men, too many guards. This is too ambitious, even for a man like you.”
William chuckled and patted her affectionately on the arm. Though she owed much to this man, like many, many years of safety under the canvas roof of the circus tent for one, Beatrice shuddered at his callous touch.
“Ah, my dear, you really have taken quite a shine to the excellent Master Abernathy, haven’t you?”
Beatrice could feel herself coloring. It would not take a man with William’s powers of observation to see the truth in his words.
“I don’t–that’s not the point,” she stuttered, going even redder.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure, Beatrice,” William said. His condescending manner grated on her nerves like a knife across the strings of a lute.
“You understand my meaning, William,” Beatrice said, doggedly, trying to ignore the small, supercilious smile that had fixed itself across the tall man’s face. “You run a much higher risk of being caught–of getting everyone caught–if you do this.”
William wagged his finger at her and beamed. “Ah, I know that it is tempting to think that, my dear,” he said. “But you are allowing your fondness for your host to cloud your judgment.”
William reached down and picked up one of the uniquely recognizable sycamore seeds and twirled it in his fingers.
“You and I have taken part in more of these clandestine nocturnal excursions than I’m sure either one of us can remember. We both know that, the bigger and more imposing a residence is, the more holes there are in which to slip in and out of.”
He’s right. Curse him, but he is right on that score.
“What of the guards?” Beatrice asked. The anger that had flared in her continued to carry her and buoy her up, like a boat being swept down a river. “What of the people? What of the servants, William? There are plenty of them, I can attest to that.”
“Yes, you do raise some excellent points, my dear,” William said, some of the excitement fading out of his intelligent jade eyes. “There though, I think that my information is somewhat more recent than yours.”
Beatrice frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, tonight will be the last night that the circus performs for the people in the town of Aberdale and the surrounding countryside. In recognition of this, I had some of our young ladies–your friend Fritha and her band of contortionists–plant an idea into the heads of some of the young men of the town.”
Vaguely, Beatrice recalled a conversation that she overheard between two of the maids that morning. She had paid it no heed then, but it came to her now.
They had been talking about getting out of the castle and sneaking to town for something…seeing whether someone could pick them up some food at the party…?
“What idea?” Beatrice asked.
“That it might be rather nice for the town and, of course, their wonderful and caring Laird, to celebrate with a feast to see us on our way. Well, I imagine it will be a feast for the Laird and those members of the town that he deems himself not too high above to break bread with, and more of a night of revels for the rest of the town.”
Beatrice narrowed her hazel eyes and regarded the ringleader. “But, why? As a distraction? The Laird will not leave his castle empty, William.”
William’s green eyes lit up again with renewed enthusiasm. “No, I don’t suppose he would.”
William tossed the sycamore seed into the air and it spiraled and twirled away in that wonderful way that they do, back down to earth.
“Then what is the point of it all?” Beatrice asked.
“A revel would not be a revel without the Laird laying on beer for the town and the performers. I shall have one of our lot slip a little herbal something into the barrels of beer designated for the castle this evening.”
“Herbal something?” Beatrice asked, her mouth going dry.
“Oh, my dear, don’t look at me like that!” William said, in an offended tone. He began once more walking across the lawn, heading towards a stretch of fencing, on the oth
er side of which were some sheep that Jeames had told Beatrice were of the Scottish Blackface variety.
“You mean to poison them,” Beatrice said, her voice deadly quiet.
“Poison? What? No!” William hissed in a hushed whisper. “No, nothing of that sort. A simple sleeping draft was more along the lines of what I was planning on.”
Beatrice covered her face briefly with her hands, as if by doing that she might block out the craziness that had descended upon her.
Not so much descended. It is probably more accurate to say that, for a little while, I left the madness that was my life.
Awakening His Highland Soul (Steamy Scottish Historical Romance) Page 22
