Philips blanched at the look on his face and retreated at once. Harry sighed, knowing that his man was discreet and well paid and, as such, did not need to fear for his very life from his suddenly pillaging employer.
Mary Elizabeth spoke at last, blithely unaware of the struggle Harry was having with his baser self. She did not look at him at all, but dusted off a fine mahogany clock that rested on the mantelpiece—yet another gift from the doomed King of France.
“Harry, your man there is afraid of women, it seems. I chased him out of here about half an hour ago. You might want to see to him.”
Harry almost laughed out loud. He would send for a special license first thing in the morning. The Bishop of York was reticent with them, but he understood that the Bishop of London gave them out like candy.
He adjusted his falls and strode across the room, staying as far away from Mary Elizabeth and her sweet curves as he could. The peach silk that encased those curves would be so easily dispatched, and would be so warm under his hands as he peeled it off of her. He could almost feel that softness beneath his palms, and then the softness of her skin beneath that.
He had touched her too much already for his own peace of mind. He knew what her curves looked like when bared to his gaze. He knew the sounds she made when she came apart beneath his mouth. He had watched her two nights before, as she almost wept with pleasure on his favorite sofa—pleasure that he had given her. He knew from her tiny gasps and the way that she had clutched him that she had never felt such pleasure before.
He had been the first, the only man to give her such bliss, and he knew that he would make it his life’s mission to be the only man to ever give her such pleasure for the rest of her life. The thought made him smile, so Philips looked less frightened when he looked in on him. Philips was arranging the hairbrushes on his dressing table and flicking away bits of nonexistent dust.
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Philips began. His man was well trained, and fell silent as soon as Harry raised one hand.
“There is nothing to forgive, Philips. You are understandably chagrined to find a lady in my chambers. I admit that such an arrangement is a bit unusual, but my fiancée is a bit unusual, being from the far North region of the Scottish Highlands.”
The ramrod shoulders beneath Philips black coat relaxed a fraction. “Of course, sir.”
“Miss Waters is here to have a look through my telescope. She will be leaving within a quarter of an hour.”
“Very good, sir.”
Philips did not blink an eye at that blatant lie, and Harry remembered why he paid him as well as he did. But this was not some widow come for a bit of evening frolic. This was his future wife.
“Our engagement is of a peculiar kind, Philips. The rest of the company, including her mother and mine, are not even aware that it has been contracted. To be completely frank, the young lady herself does not yet know.”
That last bit broke once more through Philips icy reserve. “Indeed, my lord? The lady does not know that she is to be the next Duchess of Northumberland?”
“She is a bit stubborn. As I mentioned, she is a Highlander.”
Philips had nothing to say to this, as the idea of a woman refusing his duke had simply never occurred to him.
“She will give her consent,” Harry said. “She just does not know it yet.”
“Scots are an odd lot, if I may say so, sir.”
Harry smiled. “That they are.”
“Will there be anything else tonight, sir?”
“No, Philips. You may go to bed. I will see you in the morning. And, Philips?”
“Yes, sir?”
“As always, I count on your discretion.”
“It is my honor, Your Grace, to serve both you and our future duchess.”
Philips bowed formally and, with that, vanished into the dressing room and out of the suite through the servant’s door. Harry waited a moment, then carefully locked the door behind him.
He would do his level best to get Mary Elizabeth out of his rooms as soon as he might, as soon as he could bear to, but he did not want anyone else discovering them in the meantime. He girded his loins, so to speak, rearranging his falls once more, before stepping into the room where he had left the object of all his desires.
* * *
Mary Elizabeth wondered what was taking her man so long. She was not going to accept him that night, but he was hers and always would be, at least in her heart.
For the first time in her life, she felt nervous when in the same room with a man. Even with Harry a room away, conferring with his manservant, she was fit to jump at every sound she heard. It seemed there was a bit of energy surging along just beneath her skin. She would have said it felt like little jolts of gentle lightning, but she had never been struck and, God willing, never would be. The feeling made her skittish as a long-tailed cat in a room filled with booted feet, and she had to work to stay still. She dusted one clean clock on the mantel and then began to circle the room, keeping her eyes averted from the door Harry had disappeared through and the bedroom beyond.
She wanted this man. God knows she did. She had a bit of knowledge from the farm of what desire entailed, at least among the animals. She had gotten more than a glimpse of what might be between a man and a woman in Harry’s arms in his library. But she found that she did not want to leave him without making him hers completely.
She wanted to make love to Harry Percy.
The very idea made her a wanton, and no doubt a fool, since she had not agreed to wear his ring for the rest of her life and still would not, at least not that night, even if he was amendable to her plans. She was a wanton for certain, for she did not care.
Making Harry her own would serve another purpose: no other man—no fool from London, no Lowlander in Edinburgh—would want her after that. Her mother would leave her in peace.
She knew her da would not be best pleased if she ever was forced to reveal the fact that she was ruined for good and all. He would rail and rant a bit, but she was his only girl and the apple of his eye. He was a man who loved women, was her da, even when that woman was a fool.
She did not think of the shame of being ruined, or at least, she tried not to. She told herself that she would stay in the Highlands, far from anyone, and live free. If she did not choose to marry Harry in the end, or if he chose not to have her for a wife, then she would make her own way on her father’s lands for the rest of her life. She had enough kith and kin to see to herself, whatever her own mother might say.
Mary Elizabeth felt a bit wrong in using Harry in such a way, but she loved him, and knew that she would always love him if she lived to be a hundred, whether they ever married or not. And there was something about the predator in his eyes that night that made her flush and feel the edges of her stomach tremble. She would give her left arm to have him touch her only once, but she need make no such sacrifice, for he was here, in the room with her.
Harry had come back from seeing to his man. His valet must have vanished out a back door, for he did not emerge. Harry did not speak, nor did he come to her as she hoped he might, but crossed the room to the door and locked it, leaving the key. When he turned back to her, his blue eyes were not the color of a sunny sky, but a darker blue. Mary Elizabeth shivered as his gaze moved over her gown, as if he was figuring the quickest way to take if off her.
“So you want to see the telescope?” Harry asked.
Even his voice sounded different—darker—there alone in his rooms, with his bed only a few steps away behind an open door. Mary Elizabeth straightened her back and forced herself to look away from the fine lines of his shoulders beneath his tight coat, and met his eyes.
“Aye,” she said. “I’m in the mood for a bit of stargazing.”
She could feel her bravado crack a little as Harry stalked across the room to her, moving slow, giving her every chance to
skitter away like the rabbit she felt. She stood her ground and waited. He stopped close to her, close enough that the buttons of his waistcoat brushed the bodice of her gown. The little peach rosettes that Lady Prudence had thought so fine in Madame Celeste’s dress shop followed the edge of her scalloped neckline, and one of them got caught on Harry’s ivory button. She leaned closer, raising her hand between them to wrest herself free, while Harry laughed.
A little of the tension between them dissipated, but only a very little. He was watching her as a cat might watch a tempting bird that had come to roost a bit too close. She wondered what a woman had to do to make a man kiss her.
She supposed that she should just kiss him, but for some reason, she wanted to see if he would do it. She wanted him, and she knew that he wanted her, but for some perverse female reason beyond her own understanding, she also wanted him to make the first move. So she bided her time.
Harry did not kiss her. He did not draw her into his arms or touch her in any way. Instead, he took two steps back and gestured to an open window. “The telescope and the night sky awaits. After you, my lady.”
For one daft moment, Mary Elizabeth thought that he meant for her to leap before him out of a window to the ground three stories below, but when she crossed the room, she found that the window was not a window, but a door leading onto a small balcony that had a view of all the estate, all the way down to the sea.
“How beautiful,” she said. She was not one much given to flowery talk, but the night was too lovely not to remark on.
“The most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Harry said agreeably.
Mary Elizabeth felt his arm brush her own, and she shivered and looked up to find him staring not out to the ocean beyond, but down at her own upturned face.
He leaned down then, and kissed her once, very gently, and she thought, At last. But when he pulled away almost immediately, she frowned like thunder.
“Harry, what in God’s name are you playing at?”
Twenty-five
If Harry had not been fighting every urge in his body, every fiber of his being, to stop himself from picking his girl up and carrying her inside, he might have laughed. For Mary Elizabeth stood close, smelling delightfully of some spicy, unknown flower, dressed in peach silk, which was quickly becoming his favorite gown on her, and waiting for him to kiss her. She might even be waiting for him to make love to her as he had done down in the library not two nights before.
She looked so annoyed, so beautiful, and so delightfully his, that instead of picking her up as he wanted to, Harry spoke. “Marry me, Mary. Don’t make me wait.”
She sighed then, her annoyance replaced by a flash of guilt. “Harry, I cannot. Not yet. I am very sorry.”
“You love me,” he said.
“I do.”
“Then you’ll marry me.”
“I might.”
Hope filled him, followed by joy. Then she spoke again.
“I’m just not certain yet, Harry. I need more time.”
He drew her close, his telescope forgotten. The hulk of wood and metal stood beside them, a tool that had opened another world for him when he first received it from his mother at the age of eighteen. And now, he could not care less about it, or about much else, save for Mary Elizabeth’s answer. He had clearly lost his mind.
He supposed he would have to learn to live without one.
“What if I seduce you into saying yes?”
Mary Elizabeth pulled away far enough to smile at him. “You threatened to do that before. Do you think you might try?”
“I won’t try. I’ll succeed.”
He heard the arrogance in his own voice and her laughter that came after it. He could not remember any other woman who had dared to laugh in his face, nor man either, save for Clive once or twice. He would have to follow her about like a pup until she agreed to marry him for that reason alone. He needed a woman who could make him laugh at himself.
Her body was soft and warm against his, and Harry found himself wanting to forget all that had come before that moment—her run-ins with her mother, her constant refusal of his suit, the fact that she had released his foxes. Harry wished that he might start the day from scratch, and spend it only with her. Or perhaps go back further than that, and stop his mother from inviting all and sundry to his home save for Mary Elizabeth and her kin, that he might woo her with no distractions.
It occurred to him then that he had never really wooed her at all. Perhaps he might try that. Perhaps a little tender loving care might sway her where his kisses and declarations did not.
The wheels of his mind spinning with delight in his newly hatched scheme, Harry left his lady on the balcony. Mary Elizabeth only clung to him for a moment before her arms fell away, and she let him go. He knew that he would spend the rest of that evening making it harder for her to turn from him. As it was, she simply sighed and looked into the garden below, watching the kitchen mouser on her way to visit her friend, the stable tabby.
Harry stepped inside and rang for Philips. His man appeared without delay, still immaculately dressed, in spite of the fact that he had dismissed him for the night.
“Forgive the intrusion on your evening, Philips.”
“No intrusion at all, my lord.”
“I have need of a few items from the kitchen, as well as a bit of discretion.”
Harry was not sure, but he thought he saw his man repress a smile. “It will be a pleasure, sir.”
* * *
Mary Elizabeth could not see a blasted thing through his bloody telescope. When Harry was gone for longer than five minutes, she got tired of watching the antics of her friends the cats down below and started fiddling with the machine that held pride of place on the small balcony.
The walnut casing gleamed in the moonlight, as did the brass fixtures. It was a lovely piece, and looked a good deal like Ian’s spyglass, save that it was large enough to need a stand of its own to bear its weight.
But when she peered into the eyepiece, all she could see was unrelieved black. She was about to climb onto the balcony railing, that she might look into the lens of the telescope, to see perhaps if it had a cap covering its glass, when Harry reappeared, looking like a mouser that had been in the cream.
“You’re up to something,” she said in lieu of haranguing him about the defects of his telescope.
“I am,” he said. “Come inside and see.”
She looked at him suspiciously. She reminded herself of the fact that she had invited herself to his rooms, after all. It was she who wished to make love with him and ruin herself in the eyes of the world for any other man. She told herself not to be missish and squeamish, but to step through the door and see what he was about. But the predatory gleam in his eye, a gleam so unlike Harry, gave her pause.
There was a great deal about this man she simply did not know, things that she had never seen before that night. That gleam was one of them.
Mary Elizabeth squared her shoulders and moved to step into the room beyond him, giving him as wide a berth as she might. The french doors were narrow, for Harry was still standing in them, taking up most of the space. As she passed, Mary Elizabeth took in a deep breath of the scent of his skin and the warmth of his body beneath his evening dress. She had the sudden unaccountable urge to peel those fancy clothes off him, one layer at a time.
Clearly, Harry was not the only predator on that balcony.
She told herself not to be daft, and slipped past him as quick as an eel. He laughed a little under his breath, no doubt at her. She would have taken him to task for it, and had even opened her mouth to do so, when she saw what was arrayed in his sitting room and fell silent.
On his tiny table, drawn close to the fire, was a pile of strawberries covered in chocolate. There was a pot of chocolate, gleaming silver, set over its own warmer, with a pitcher of milk beside it.
There were bits of cheese, all arrayed on a plate in the shape of a fan, and champagne bubbled in two glasses, just poured.
Mary Elizabeth did not know what to say, so she stepped into the room and approached the feast slowly, hoping to think of something.
“You look as if it will bite you, Mary.”
She did not look at him but smiled distractedly over her shoulder for one moment before turning back to the banquet before her. It was as if the fairies had come and left every good thing for her delight there. She did not sit in a chair, but crouched low next to the table that she might take it in better.
“You want a picnic on the carpet, then?” Harry asked. His voice came from very close behind her, for he was no longer standing in the door at all. The apple wood fire gave off a cheerful light and smelled delightful, but for one odd moment, Mary Elizabeth wished it were a peat fire and that they were home, so that she might show some of the delights of Glenderrin to him. She pushed the thought aside as ungrateful and met his gaze at last.
“No,” she answered. “Such fancy food must be eaten on a chair.”
“Or a sofa,” he said, lifting her by the waist and seating her on his lap on the sofa in question. She wondered for a moment if the sofa in his sitting room was as comfortable as the one in his library, but she did not wriggle down to find out. Instead, she leaned against Harry and let the bulk of him surround her in warmth. This is what home would feel like when she got there.
She pushed home out of her mind again and turned her face to Harry’s cravat, drawing in the sandalwood scent of him, sighing.
“I was hoping you might like at least a bite or two of this,” Harry said, sounding a bit peeved. “I am trying to woo you.”
Mary Elizabeth kissed his cheek, her lips lingering on the edge of his cheekbone, where his beard was beginning to grow back. She rubbed her nose along the rasp of it, and then her cheek, sighing again at how delightful he felt against her and how sorry she was to leave him behind, even for a few weeks.
How to Train Your Highlander Page 18
