by Hope Tarr
But if she and Jack were to come together, there would be passion the likes of which she’d always dreamt of, longed for. He might not compliment or court her with flowery phrases as a Parisian gentleman would, but he wanted her even as she wanted him. She could see it in his eyes, the way those amber embers followed her about a room when he fancied she didn’t notice. Should they continue to deny themselves simply because he was her gaoler and she his prisoner? Or, for that matter, because together they had no future?
Life was dangerous. Life was short. Had she not changed clothes with Evette back in Paris to slip undetected from her house, she might even now be moldering in an unmarked grave. So far in her short stay in Scotland, she’d been attacked once and very nearly condemned to die. Was it so very wrong then to reach for a little happiness, to take one small sip from passion’s cup before resigning herself to whatever else fate hurled her way?
She didn’t think so, but then again she didn’t greatly care if it was wrong. Jack, however, was cut from very different cloth. He was moral. He was good. And beyond that, he possessed a conscience the size of the Palace of Versailles.
He cannot hold out against me forever, she told herself, taking heart from the thought that moral and good and honorable though he was, he was still human—still a man.
And woman of the world that she was, surely she could find some way to surmount his gentlemanly scruples. With luck, that night’s celebration, a cèilidh they called it, would provide her with a perfect opportunity to do so. Aside from the present service—and one couldn’t very well undertake a seduction in a church, although planning one, well, that was another matter—it would be her and Jack’s first social outing together.
Claudia was always at her best at a party.
Excepting the ill and infirm, the entire village turned out for the wedding feast, which began late in the morning and promised to last well beyond midnight. The ale and mead and whiskey flowed and the groaning board was covered with platter upon platter of hearty Scottish fare. At nine o’clock that evening, when most revelers declared their bellies to be on the verge of bursting, the trestle tables and benches were cleared and pushed against the walls to make room for the dancing.
Jack stood at the far end of the room, nursing a tankard of ale and following the dancers with his eyes, one lively, lavender-skirted lassie in particular. Face flushed and hair flying, Claudia had taken to the ancient Celtic reels as though she’d been born to them. One or two missteps were all it took before she was executing the complicated sequences in perfect time with the music.
Born with two left feet, Jack couldn’t help but admire her seemingly effortless grace and boundless enthusiasm as well as envy the continuous stream of surefooted, eager males who materialized to partner her. Lost to his brooding, he scarcely registered that the music had paused until, as if conjured by his wishful thoughts, Claudia stood before him.
Beaming, she caught at his hands. “Dance with me, Jack.”
Slightly panicked, he shook his head. “I dinna dance.”
Perfect ebony half-moon brows arched in a show of disbelief. “But how can this be? You are Scottish, are you not?”
“Only half,” he answered without thinking.
Giddy laughter greeted that statement. She gave his hand another reckless tug. “Then let the Scottish half come out to dance with me.”
Icy fear crawled down his spine, childhood chants of idjut, gomeral and worse names echoing in his mind. He backed up a step and jerked free. “You’ll no be laughing when I come down on your wee foot and make you a cripple.”
She started to remonstrate with him when Luicas poked his tousled head between them. Bright-eyed and rosy cheeked, he turned to Claudia. “Are ye promised for this dance, Mistress Claudia?”
Claudia darted a glance to Jack. He thought he saw disappointment flicker in her gaze but, before he could be certain, she lifted her chin and answered, “It seems that I am not, monsieur.”
Taking the hand she offered, Luicas looked so flushed with triumph that Jack tensed his grip on his tankard until the curved handle threatened to snap. “Then ye are now.” In the midst of leading her away, he must have felt Jack’s gaze boring into him for he turned back to ask, “That is if ye dinna mind, Master Jack?”
Jack did mind—he minded terribly—but what choice had he other than to say, “Go on wi’ you, then.”
Subsiding onto the bench to watch them take their place in the queue along with the other dancing couples, he felt a terrible, irrational jealousy take root. Wee Luicas had only begun shaving the spring last but seeing his hand resting on Claudia’s waist made Jack itch to wipe the grin from that fatuous, freckled face—with his fist.
“Och, but dancing’s thirsty work.” Milread flopped down on the bench beside him and reached across for his tankard. “No all that different from shaggin’ but then ye dinna do that either.” She hid her smirk in the tankard’s broad rim.
“Dinna be shy,” he said with deliberate sarcasm. “Help yourself.”
She set the tankard down and swiped a hand across her mouth. “My, my, but yer a testy one. If ye dinna mind my askin’, what bug is it that crawled up yer arse?”
“Dinna mind me,” he muttered, feeling at odds with the world. He glanced over at her, and it struck him that something was different. “Your hair. You’ve done something to it.” By way of offering an olive branch and because it was true, he added, “It’s verra becoming.”
Smiling, she patted the crown of flaxen curls piled atop her head, a pale blue ribbon cunningly interwoven among them, and a few wisps left loose to soften her square-shaped face. “Claudia let me have one o’ her ribbons and then showed me how to fix it. She’s a way with hair.”
And people, Jack thought, marveling anew at how she’d managed to charm the breeches off not only Luicas but every male in the room as well as win over most of the women. Even Peadair and Pol, curmudgeons both, were beaming at her besottedly from their seats by the settle.
Milread reclaimed his attention by laying a sound punch on his arm. “Go on and dance wi’ the lass, ye great gomeral.”
Realizing he’d just been caught slack-jawed and staring, he said, “You ken I canna dance.”
She started up from the bench. “Maybe it’s time ye learned. Past time, if you ask me. But since ye’ll do as ye please tae spite my wise words, I’d as soon go and see if Alistair needs another keg from the cellar as bide ’ere and watch ye mope.”
“I am not moping,” he called out to her retreating back but seeing the crowd closing in he felt the oddest urge to lay his head in his hands.
His friend was right, of course. He was moping, and he was as sick of doing so as he was of his own company. He waited until the reel drew to its final figure, then stood and started working his way toward the floor. Not to claim Claudia for the next dance—he wasn’t that brave—but mayhap he might offer her a glass of cool ale or invite her to go for a walk with him? He kent how she hated the cold but thinking on her lovely flushed face and the damp hair clinging to her temples, he told himself that perhaps a moonlit stroll in the fresh, clean air might find favor with her.
But as Jack drew up on the floor, his heart stalled along with the music. A quick scan of the dispersing couples confirmed his worst fear. Claudia was missing.
Claudia’s life in Paris had lacked for meaning but never for amusements. More than once she had strolled along the garden paths of Versailles, drunk from champagne fountains, and nibbled on the choicest of delicacies. And yet never before had she enjoyed an evening more than she did that night.
But when she missed yet another turn and in so doing trod on poor Luicas’s toes, she allowed that perhaps she’d enjoyed herself a bit too heartily. Shouting to be heard above the music and laughter and stomping feet, she made her excuses to the boy, firmly refusing his repeated offers to escort her back to Jack.
Stepping off the dance floor, she made her way through the crowd toward the bench where she’d last se
en him. Along the way she found her progress frequently stalled by men and women stopping her to offer a sip from their mugs or to coax her back onto the floor. Head spinning, she smiled and kept on. The realization that her head continued to whirl even now that she’d stopped dancing in circles confirmed that the drink she’d imbibed between dances had begun to creep up on her. Warmed by the villagers’ overtures of friendship as well as the exercise, she’d drunk from each offered mug. And then of course she’d been fortifying herself for what she hoped would happen once she and Jack returned to his cottage. Dutch courage, she thought it was called, though the cool ale had tasted most refreshing.
She’d been drunk only once before—a surfeit of champagne to deaden the pain of a particularly humiliating encounter with Phillippe. Even after emptying her stomach’s contents into the chamber pot, she’d been wretchedly ill all the next day, a violent headache strumming her skull and her throat scraped raw from vomiting. It was not an experience she would care to relive, certainly not on such an important night.
Perhaps if she could take in some fresh air, disaster might yet be averted. Or better yet, could she find Jack and ask him to take her home early? Would it constitute a breach of etiquette to leave now, she wondered even as she held onto the edge of a table and rose up on her toes to scan the crowd.
How tall these Scots were, how solidly built and yet none were so tall or so beautifully proportioned as was Jack. Cursing her own lack of inches, she was just about to strike out for a better perch when she caught sight of Jack on the edge of the dance floor, his solemn-eyed gaze unmistakably fixed on the pretty, sloe-eyed brunette she’d seen that morning flirting with Callum. Now the girl seemed to have eyes only for Jack and, judging from his rapt, earnest, almost stark expression, he must be bedazzled indeed.
Gaze narrowed, Claudia assessed her competition. The child couldn’t be more than seventeen and so blooming and fresh as to make Claudia suddenly feel like a crone—and a jealous crone at that. All at once, the whine of the fiddle and the soulful chords of the clarsach, or Scots harp, threatened to rend her heavy heart; the pounding of the drum called a bodhran fired through her throbbing head like a cannon boom. The air lay too thick and heavy for breathing; pipe smoke clogged her lungs and the greasy smell of cooked meat made her stomach roil.
A blessed blast of cold prompted her to tear her tortured gaze away from Jack and the girl to the door. She’d been cold for weeks and yet the air cutting in from the cocked door suddenly seemed blissfully inviting. A breath of fresh air was all she required. When she returned, her stomach and head would have settled, as would her heart.
I will be back before he even realizes that I have gone, she promised herself, and turned to direct her unsteady steps toward the door.
Seated at the head of the bridal table, hands joined, the parents of the bride surveyed the dance floor with satisfied smiles.
“Och, but she’s a bonny lass, is she no?” Dorcas said around a happy sigh.
Gaze alighting on his daughter and new son-in-law leading off the other couples in the next reel, Duncan gave his wife’s hand a firm squeeze. “But of course she is, and how could she help but be when she’s the verra image of her maither?”
Dorcas turned to him and swatted at his arm although she was pleased, he could tell. “I wasna speakin’ of our Mairi, though o’ course she’s beautiful, for she’s her faither’s bonny blue eyes, does she no? But nay, I was speakin’ of the French lassie.” She shifted her gaze to scan the benches, chiefly occupied by those too weary, too drunk or too old to join the dancing. “Matters between her and Jack look to be progressing apace.”
“Wheesht, woman, the drink must have addled your wits, for he’s at one end of the room and her at the other and so they’ve been for most o’ the evening.”
Dorcas lanced him a smug smile. Men, what dear wee fools they were when it came to matters of the heart. “But ’tis my verra point, husband. His eyes havna left her so much as once since the dancing began. Why ye’ve only tae mark how brooding and miserable he looks tae ken he’s half in love wi’ the lass a’ready.”
“No so brooding as that one.” Duncan jerked his chin to where Callum stood sulking in his solitary corner, a mug of ale in one hand and a dram of whiskey in the other.
For the first time that day Dorcas’s smile fell. “Aye, there’s another whose eyes havna left the lass all the day, but it isna love that causes them tae burn so bright, I fear.”
Grim-faced, Duncan nodded. “Aye, he’s a troublemaker, a drunkard and a brute like his da. He’s sure tae come tae a bad end and soon. I only hope he doesna take Jack down with him.”
Dorcas reached for her cup of mulled wine to knock off the sudden chill at her back. “Aye, there’ll be a reckoning between those two ere long, I can feel it. And the French lassie, poor wee innocent though she is, I fear she’ll be at the heart of it.”
Chapter Ten
Unfortunately Neilli, the brown-haired lass who’d thrown herself in Jack’s path to claim him for the next dance and another of his Campbell cousins twice removed, couldn’t recall exactly when she’d seen Claudia and Luicas step off the floor. Somewhere between the Highland Fling and the Sir Roger de Coverly, she thought, but couldna be certain. The one piece of luck was that Luicas had not disappeared along with Claudia—had he, Jack would have happily strangled him without benefit of rope—but instead had sought out his master in the crowd. Between the two of them they made a thorough search of the taproom, then the remainder of the inn, but in the end their quest only confirmed what Jack felt already in his gut: Claudia was nowhere within.
As he bounded down the inn stairs from his fruitless search of the upper floor, Duncan’s admonition of what Claudia could expect should she be caught attempting to escape—hangit from the neck ’til dead—came back to him in a quick, frozen flash. The very thought of her lovely, lithe body swinging from the hemp sent ice water shooting through his veins.
He had to save her, whether from Callum or from the gallows or from herself hardly mattered. Dead was dead and though he didna think Callum would go so far as to kill her in cold blood, knowing his half-brother as he did, if he got to her first Jack doubted she would very much care to live afterward.
He ran rough hands through his hair, dug his fingers into his pounding temples. Think, Jack, think.
To escape, Claudia would need a horse and a fast one and he doubted she’d spare the time to unhitch Beelzebub from the cart. As most of the other guests had come on foot from the kirk, that meant she would have to go into the stable where the coach horses were kept—and the scene of her disastrous first attempted theft. If she were caught thieving this time nothing Jack could say, be it fact or falsehood, would save her.
After giving orders to Luicas to keep a discreet watch within, he lit a candle from the rush lights on the hallway table and struck outside to search. The air was frosty cold, the sky above a milky swirl pregnant with impending snow. Before him, his exhaled breaths crystallized in little clouds of steam as he hurried down the paving stone path that snaked away from the inn proper to the outbuildings that lay just beyond.
He was halfway to the stable when the moon slid free from a bank of clouds, illuminating a slender silhouette on the part of the path that turned off not to the stable but to the byre across the yard from the kitchen.
Cupping his hands about his mouth to funnel the sound, he called, “Claudia. Claudia!”
The figure whipped about, hair catching on a gust of wind. “Jack,” she called back and a slender thread of white—a hand and arm—waved in the air.
Encouraged that she didn’t run from him, that she actually seemed to be hailing him, he nonetheless sprinted toward her, the motion and wind sending his candle’s flame streaking like a shooting star.
“Claudia.” Reaching her, he held the candle out to his side with one hand and hauled her against his chest with the other.
To make certain she was real, not an invention of moonlight and his o
wn desperate thoughts, he pressed her close, slipping a hard hand down the elegant arc of her spine to the small of her back. But the heart beating against his chest felt real enough as did the silky, wind-whipped hair crowning the head tucked beneath his chin.
Breathing hard, looking out across the dark patch of deserted yard, he said as much to himself as to her, “You’re a witch, Claudia Valemont, sure as you’re a woman. I dinna ken what devil it is that could have possessed you to, to—”
“But Jack,” she cut in, her voice a muffled blur against his coat front, “I only thought to take a walk.”
Take a walk? A walk! As excuses went it was shallow as a puddle. He would be daft to believe her and yet somehow he did. Even so, the urge to shake her was enormous, summoning the willpower to resist it nothing less than a monumental feat. To put himself out of temptation’s path, he released her and stepped back.
His gaze slipped over her much as his hand had done, checking for damage, checking to make certain she was real. At some point during the dancing she must have lost or removed her lace fichu for it was missing now. Rising from the scooped neckline, the high slopes of her breasts shone like alabaster in the moonlight. Holding himself back from trailing a finger down that enticing cleft was even harder than not shaking her. And then there was the matter of her nipples, standing out firm and full as small berries beneath the tabby silk of her bodice as if begging to be noticed.
In the midst of his lusting, it struck him that, along with her gown’s collar, she was missing her cloak. Practicality took precedence over desire and anger, at least for the present. He shoved the candleholder into her hands and started on the pewter buttons of his coat.
