In sharing Violet’s history, Jo had explained that she’d arrived at Baronsford destitute and with child. Sadly, she lost her babe and nearly died herself. As in a storybook romance, however, Violet and Truscott fell in love and married. Since then, countless desperate and homeless young ones had been blessed with the love she would have given to her own child.
“I’ll arrange it with Lady Jo,” Violet said when Grace asked about the families staying at the tower house now. “We’ll bring you down and introduce you. The circumstances of each mother are different. Some arrived still expecting. Others had a child in their arms. We’ve even taken in young runaways. In just a few cases, we’ve cared for young ones while the mother sought to establish a stable living before coming back for them. It’s a lively place, to be sure.”
“How do they hear about you?” Grace asked, as dinner was served.
“As you can imagine, we can’t very well advertise,” Jo replied. “Every parish in the country would be sending us their girls. The deluge would be overwhelming.”
“How do they find you?”
“Many of those we’ve helped so far have come through . . .” Jo paused and her gaze moved to her brother who was holding a quiet conversation with Truscott at the end of the table. She lowered her voice. “Often, these young women have run afoul of the law in some way. And a certain lord justice saw a better future for them here than in the Bridewell or the parish poorhouse.”
Grace’s eyes drifted to Hugh. She thought about the positions he’d taken in his court and the effort he was making on behalf of a deaf-mute Irish woman now. His compassion stirred a love deep within her. In every nation, more men like him were needed. It was beginning to frighten her how much she had come to care for him. His mind, his generosity, his courage all moved her.
Her gaze lingered on the long fingers holding a glass of wine. And his body stirred her, as well, but in a far different way.
Violet was telling Jo about a letter she received just that day from a mother who’d left them for a job last autumn. Grace forced her attention back to this end of the table.
This was a dangerous game she was allowing her heart to play.
Bits and pieces of the men’s conversation reached her. An inn on the Jedburgh road. The deserted woodcutter’s cottage on the lane near the attack.
“No question, they were lying in wait there,” Truscott said.
She knew they were talking about the men who’d attacked her and Darby.
“And I’ve no doubt they were from Jedburgh,” he added.
“Jedburgh?” Jo asked, picking up the last of the conversation. She turned to Grace. “Did you know that pugilism is a favored sport of miners? Jedburgh has a limestone mine and a whinstone quarry that is particularly famous for having the most vicious fighters in Scotland.”
“I wasn’t aware,” Grace replied.
“Pugilism also happens to be a favorite hobby of a certain honorable judge,” Jo continued, “who will remain nameless, but is sitting at this very table. In fact, that judge has been known to participate in bouts with those same miners.”
“With notable success, I might add,” Truscott threw in proudly.
Grace looked at Hugh. Now she knew the cause of the scars on his face. It was so much like him to pursue the sport among the working men of Scotland, rather than in private clubs.
“No longer a favorite hobby,” he corrected, looking at no one but Grace. “That pastime has dropped quite far down on the list.”
His gaze never wavered from her face, only slipping to her lips. For a few heartbeats, the conversation came to an abrupt halt. Five of them were sitting at the dinner table, but it may as well have been just Hugh and Grace in that room. Feeling a blush rising to the roots of her hair, Grace tried to divert attention away from herself.
She turned to Mr. Truscott. “Did I hear you correctly? You’ve identified the attackers.”
“Not quite. But we know where they might have come from,” he told her. “Tomorrow I’ll take a few men from Baronsford and the bailiff from Melrose Village. We’ll go down to Jedburgh. We should know more once we get there.”
Grace had never been to any kind of mine, but she’d read about them. Rough men who worked under hard and dangerous conditions, and for very little pay. It was easy to imagine such men might be persuaded to commit a crime if it meant putting that miserable life behind.
The faces of those men remained in her mind. Despite the shock of the attack and the mist, Grace was certain she would recognize them.
“I’d like to ride to Jedburgh with you tomorrow,” she told him. “You have no way of identifying these men. But I can, and I’d like to be of help.”
Jo almost choked on her wine. Hugh’s scowl grew so dark that Grace knew exactly how Mrs. Douglas must have felt earlier today.
“I fear each of these three is about to suffer a stroke, my young friend.” Violet smiled and took Grace’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “The mines and quarries around Jedburgh are not the most suitable places for young ladies.”
Grace didn’t know if she should be pleased by their protectiveness or insulted because they thought her too soft. The battlefields she’d been to would surely make these mines pale by comparison. She’d witnessed more death and destruction than most men.
What she offered was not unreasonable. She was not riding into the belly of the beast alone and unprotected. Grace wondered if her entire time at Baronsford would be overshadowed by memories of what Amelia had done. But she was not Hugh’s former wife. They were different women.
Anger bubbled beneath the surface of her skin and threatened to burst through at any moment.
“Truscott and the bailiff are planning to bring back any men who were absent from the mines over the past few days,” Hugh said, directing his attention only to Grace. His look was serious, but his quiet voice held no hint of scolding.
Grace decided she’d not been very successful in hiding her irritation. “You don’t intend to drag working men from their employment based on a vague suspicion, do you?”
Truscott looked at Hugh.
“And exactly how many men you intend to bring back?” she asked. “And when can I see them? With Mr. Darby injured, I’m the only person who can positively identify them.”
Words burned on her tongue. She wanted to say more. Her blistering temper. She was about to continue when Hugh cut in.
“We’ll get as clear a description of them as you and Darby can provide. No more than five men will be brought back,” Hugh told her. “And I will personally take you into Melrose when they arrive. You can identify them with the bailiff present.”
“And what if none of them are the assailants?”
“First, I’ll give each of them two days’ wages and a letter to their employers.” He looked into her eyes. “Then you and I will accompany Truscott and the men to Jedburgh the following day. Does that suit you?”
It did, and she smiled in appreciation of his understanding.
Chapter 23
After dinner, as the women left the men and went into the drawing room, Grace made her excuses and headed up to her rooms. It had been an exhausting day and an emotional one. And her mind was finally yielding to the weariness of her body.
The sprained ankle performed far better than she’d expected as she climbed the stairs. The hours of keeping it elevated in Hugh’s study had clearly helped. She hoped by tomorrow she could put aside the cane and end everyone’s worry.
Anna helped her undress and prepare to retire. Before getting into bed, however, Grace went into the sitting room and picked out a novel. Leaving the candles lit beside the bed, she settled in comfortably.
As the maid left, Grace tried to go over in her mind all that had happened today, but she couldn’t focus. Voices drifted in through the open windows. Baronsford hummed with the sounds of early evening, lulling her into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Whether she slept for minutes or hours, she didn’t know. But she
awakened with a start at a soft tap on her bedroom door.
She sat up, disoriented. The candle still burned on the bedside table. Then she remembered. Jo told her she might come up and say good night before she retired herself.
There was the soft tap again.
Grace rolled out of the bed and went to the door, opening it.
Hugh stood in the hall, dressed only in the tight buff trousers he’d been wearing earlier and a white shirt, open at the neck. She had to be dreaming.
“Were you asleep?”
He was real. No one had the right to look this good. A delicious sweetness seeped into her body.
“Yes, I was.” She forced herself to take steady breaths. “Why are you here?”
His hand ever so gently pushed open the door and she moved back, allowing him in. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“Your sister might come up soon.”
“Jo retired hours ago.”
The night air mingled with the scent of whiskey and smoke. His eyes washed over her like moonlight, taking in her face, her lips, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She saw him draw a deep breath as he looked down at her neck to the ties of the thin linen chemise and lower, lingering on her breasts. Her skin warmed to the lick of his gaze. She was bathed and stripped naked, ravaged by his heat.
Desire rippled through her. She wanted the taste of his lips, the pressure of them on her own. She stepped toward him, but he reached out and took her by the shoulders, holding her ever so gently at arm’s length.
“You can’t touch me.” His strong fingers slid down her arms, and he took her hands. “Step back, Grace.”
She took a step or two until she found her back pressed against a wall.
Hugh let go of her hands. His eyes returned to the deep neckline of the chemise.
Grace felt an ache in her breasts as the tips of her nipples hardened against the thin fabric. His eyes continued downward, burning her with the touch of his gaze.
“I want you.” His voice, low and strained, sent tremors through her. The soft light of the candle accentuated the lines of his face. “For hours now, I’ve been pacing my bedroom, imagining what it would be like to come here. Telling myself that I shouldn’t, and yet hoping I’d find you like this.”
The sparks blazed. Unconsciously, her eyes moved to the unmade bed. She wanted him to take her there, teach her what she had never before experienced. She wanted him to make love to her.
He followed her gaze. “Not yet. Not tonight.”
Grace forced herself to think through the fog of desire. “Then what do you want from me?”
He closed the distance between them. “I needed to see you. To touch you.”
Their bodies were separated by a breath. She reached up to put her arms around his neck, but he caught her wrists and pressed them against the wall over her head.
“And I am barely balanced at the edge of a very dangerous place. So you mustn’t tempt me. You mustn’t try to seduce me.”
“You are the tempter,” she said. In her entire life, she’d never imagined herself proficient in the powers of seduction.
He bent his head and kissed her softly. She leaned into him, a soft moan escaping her.
“Keep them there.” He let go of her wrists.
She didn’t know the game he was playing, but she was willing to take the chance. Her hands fisted next to her head as he ran the tips of his fingers over her face, tracing her brows, her cheekbones, the outline of her lips, with gentle, tender touches.
Hugh’s hands went to the ties of her chemise, and Grace felt the breath catch in her throat. There was no escaping this gentle torture with the wall behind her and the man before her.
One by one the laces loosened. She looked down at his hands, dark against the linen and even darker against her skin as he slid the garment past her breasts. Grace shivered as the cool air touched her.
“You are stunning.”
He bent his head and kissed her. A long sensuous, exploring kiss. When he broke it off, Grace was left breathing heavily. His mouth moved from her lips and descended along her throat, over her collarbone, and then to her breasts. Grace closed her eyes and pressed her head back against the wall as his tongue tasted each nipple, his lips and his teeth making her cry out softly from the sweet pleasure streaming through her body.
“Take me, Hugh,” she said. “Make love to me.”
Smoothly, he slipped her chemise down until it pooled at her feet. Sweeping her into his arms, he then carried her to the bed. A thrill raced through her as they sank into linen sheets.
Hugh’s lips kissed her mouth and again trailed down her neck to her breasts. Grace held her breath as his fingers slowly moved caressingly along the inside of her leg. His hand reached the junction of her thighs, and she gasped as his fingers slipped into her sex.
His head lifted, his eyes searching hers. Grace didn’t want to discuss that this was her first time.
“I want you,” she whispered, holding his face, raising herself and brushing her lips against his. “Don’t stop.”
His mouth was greedy when it claimed hers, but his hand was gentle as he slipped in and resumed the erotic play.
Her sex was slick, and his fingers found every point of pleasure, playing her body like a musical instrument as they stroked her flesh. Grace found herself growing short of breath. Her body began to hum with sensations so new.
Grace had never known such sweet torment. She was possessed by him. She gave herself up to the pure pleasure of his hands and his mouth. Her body whirled in a timeless, frenzied state of passion and desire. Her hips moved, rising off the bed, begging him for more pressure, wanting him deeper.
Suddenly, she felt her body carried up as if on a cloud as a summer storm exploded within her. Somewhere in a more conscious world, she heard a woman’s joyful voice crying out. She couldn’t breathe, and yet she fought fiercely to hold him close to her. And then, she was simply sailing through a crystalline sky.
Hugh held her as she descended, kissing her softly. The sensations in her body continued to recede in blissful waves. She lay naked in the sheets, her hair spread around her, looking up into gray eyes that never left her face. He was still dressed as he’d arrived, but she felt the hardness of his manhood pressing against her. She saw the smile etched on his lips.
“You look as if you’ve won a competition,” she whispered.
“I have. I won you.”
The flutter in her heart was loud enough that he had to hear it. She touched his chest. Lifting herself, she pressed her lips to his throat. “I want to do to you what you just did to me.”
A great sigh of satisfaction rose from his chest.
“Not yet. Not tonight,” he said, kissing her deeply before rolling away from her. “We cannot continue this until we’ve had a serious conversation about our future.”
She didn’t want to think of tomorrow.
He sat on the edge of the bed. His gaze washed over her. She didn’t try to cover herself when he ran the tip of his finger from the hollow of her throat and down between her breasts.
“And even after, you can only touch me when I can taste you here . . .” His finger meandered slowly across her belly. “And here . . .” She was no longer breathing as his finger continued downward and slipped once again into her sex. “And here. We’ll make love after I feast on you here.”
She burned as the vision flooded her mind. Her bones had dissolved into liquid, her flesh tingled. Hugh pulled away and drew the sheets up to her chin before kissing her lips.
“We have much to discuss, but not here in the dark when my sister might awaken at any moment. We’ll talk, but for now, go back to sleep.”
Grace, feeling shaken to her very core, watched him as he crossed the room and went out.
* * *
In the early afternoon, the doctor brought Darby back out to Baronsford. To Jo’s chagrin, the blacksmith insisted on being taken to his own cottage to recuperate, rath
er than at the main house. But if the man thought he could just rest quietly there and not impose, he was mistaken. No one had any intention of allowing that, least of all Jo. She drew up a schedule and soon lines of servants were carrying him meals and seeing to his every need. Jo and Grace agreed that they’d look in on him at least twice each day. Dr. Namby, not to be left out, offered to come back Monday morning to change the dressing on the knife wound.
Hugh heard about all of this when he came back from the lake, where construction was beginning on the dam.
“You’re a hero, Darby,” Hugh told him, visiting the cottage of the injured man. Grace and Jo were already there. “There will be no escaping these attentions.”
His sister was fussing in another room at the far end of the cottage.
As he sat on a stool by the blacksmith’s bed, he watched Grace moving the contents of a basket onto a shelf. The housekeeper told him that the doctor had pronounced the ankle “just a sprain,” and even now Grace was walking about the cottage without the use of the cane.
She glanced at him but looked quickly away. Her greeting when Hugh arrived had been shy, and she’d been avoiding eye contact with him.
Hugh had thought of Grace at least a thousand times over the course of the morning. When he returned, his clerks told him that she’d been working her way through the case books, and she’d kept them busy recording the information she was finding. The lucky bastards, he thought.
“I’m near fit as a fiddle, m’lord,” Darby told him. “And I know you’re eager to get that balloon aloft before your family arrives. Expect me at the carriage barn on Monday. I think we can finish rigging the lines as you wanted them.”
“Two days of recovery might be somewhat ambitious,” Hugh replied, shaking his head in disagreement. “I don’t want you thinking of work right now, be it smithing or ballooning. You need to mend.”
“Beg pardon, m’lord,” Darby said in a voice intended only for Hugh. “You must save me from all this mollycoddling. That blade of his did little damage, as the doctor will tell you himself. You’re a fighting man. You know. I’m not comfortable lying here while the ladies bother themselves looking after me.”
Romancing the Scot (The Pennington Family) Page 19
