“Jack,” she whispered.
He reached for her the same moment she leapt into his arms. He enveloped her in his arms and kissed her deeply, kissed her like a man who had thirsted for love and had faced his own mortality and who would never let her go, not ever.
She returned his kiss just as passionately. He felt as hard and strong and secure as he ever had. He pushed her up against the door, and lifted his head. “By the bye, you could no’ be more beautiful, but today you take my breath away.”
“Say it again,” she sighed longingly as his gaze began to drift down her body. “Say you love me, Jack.”
“Please, leannan…donna make me say how much I love you, for you will faint with astonishment,” he said as his hands followed his gaze, painting a path down her body, sending delicious shivers through her. “You remained here. You waited for me,” he said, as if he could not quite believe it.
“I would have waited through eternity,” she said, and clasped his head in her hands, made him look at her. “I love you, Jack, with all my heart. I will never love another.” She moved her hands to his chest.
Her warmth radiated through his skin like sunshine, and as he gathered her in his arms, he felt himself rising up, hard and eager to make love to her.
“Allow me this truth, Lizzie,” he said, sobering. “I’ve never been in love in my sorry life until now. I donna want to be the sort of man my father was, but there are times that I fear it—”
She stopped him put her hand across his mouth. “Fiona told me. But you…you are far superior to him in every way. Jack, you were willing to sacrifice your life for who you love. You are your own man—you are no’ him. On that, I would stake my own life.”
No one had ever said words like that to Jack, and it made him feel as tall as a mountain. “Diah, I love you, lass!” he said, and put his mouth to her neck at the same moment he picked her up. He carried her across the room and put her down on the settee, determined to show her just how much he loved her then and there. He went down on knee beside the settee, his hands already working at the fastenings of her gown. The need to be with her, to hold her, was suddenly overwhelming. “Alainne,” he said, using the Gaelic word for beautiful. “You can no’ know just how beautiful you are to me.”
“Show me,” she said, and sat up, drawing her legs under her so that she was on her knees. She took his head in her hands once more, and said, “Please, Jack. Please, I beg of you, show me how much you adore me.”
He grinned. “Are you begging me?”
“I am begging you,” she whispered, and kissed his temple, then his cheek.
“Well, then, as you’ve asked me in such a pleasing manner,” he said, lifting her breast from the bodice of her gown, “I am very happy to oblige.” He took her into his mouth as Lizzie bent over him with a giggle.
Jack showed Lizzie that afternoon that he’d never desired anyone or anything so completely in his life. He’d found the purest form of love in the most unlikely place, and Jack realized, as he and Lizzie reached new heights of ecstasy, that he had, at long last, come home.
Epilogue
There were many in Glenalmond who predicted Carson Beal would not go willingly to the authorities when it was discovered he was poaching slate from the Thorntree mine. It was Newton who discovered it and it was Newton who convinced Carson that he should surrender.
Newton was a loyal man, but his loyalties had shifted to his wife, Charlotte, and the baby she carried in her belly.
In an ironic twist of fate, the Beal clan voted Newton laird and put Carson on the wee bit of arable land Newton had farmed for several years.
Neither Charlotte nor Newton cared for Castle Beal, however, and they gave it to the clan. Tours of the castle brought some much-needed revenue to the clan’s coffers. Lizzie gave Thorntree to Charlotte and Newton free and clear after she and Jack married. She and Jack took up residence in the abandoned Lambourne Castle, much to the delight of a small clan of Haines people, whom Jack had never really known, but among whom he found his society, and he ruled over it with the same joie de vivre he’d had in London.
He kept in touch with his old friends, and occasionally one would come to Scotland to call. The summer past, Lindsey had come for a fortnight with his wife, Evelyn, and their wee daughter.
Jack was happy to present his young son to the Lindseys. He and Lizzie had named him James, in honor of Newton, who, they discovered, had a given name after all.
At Lambourne, Lizzie was determined to erase Jack’s painful childhood memories from that forbidding old castle, and with Jack’s blessing she enlisted Fiona’s help to refurbish all the rooms. That meant Fiona and Duncan Buchanan were around quite a lot, and Jack, in turn, grudgingly came to admire Buchanan, his old nemesis. The two of them liked to hunt together, although neither would admit the other was much of a hunter.
Lambourne Castle slowly became a different place than it had been in Jack and Fiona’s youth. It was a happy place now.
That summer, however, Jack and Lizzie had returned to Thorntree, as Charlotte was fearful of facing her first lying-in alone. One lazy Sunday afternoon, they sat on the newly constructed terrace Newton had built. Dougal, who had determined he liked working in the service of the laird of Lambourne, was James’s nurse, and he carried around the wooden rocking pony James liked to ride.
Lizzie poured her husband a tot of whisky and handed it to him as they watched James ride his pony. Jack took the whisky with a frown and ignored his companions on the terrace, looking out over the gardens, which were much cleaner and brighter than he remembered. Mr. Kincade had a helper now, he’d heard. The lad Lachlan from Castle Beal was learning the art of gardening under Mr. Kincade’s tutelage.
“Still cross, are you?” Lizzie asked, putting her hand on Jack’s shoulder and squeezing fondly.
“Donna goad me, leannan,” Jack warned her.
“As petulant as a child,” Charlotte sighed.
“I’m no’,” Jack insisted. “But you must admit that my bows were as good as hers. I can hardly help the wind that kicked up!”
“There was a wee breeze,” Newton said. “No’ enough to put an arrow off course.”
Lizzie laughed roundly. “Admit it! You canna bear being bested by a woman in a game of archery!”
“Or racing,” Dougal helpfully added. “She’s a better horsewoman than you, too, milord.”
“Thank you, Dougal, for pointing that out,” Jack said tersely. “I suppose you all think she is a better fisherman than me, too, aye?”
Charlotte snorted; Dougal exchanged a look with Lizzie, then shrugged noncommittally. “Come then, me fine young lad,” he said to the baby James. “Let us walk among the flowers your Uncle Newton has seen fit to bring back to life.” He picked up James in one beefy arm, and strolled down the stone steps, into the garden.
“Really, Jack, it’s no’ uncommon for a Highlander to be good at such diversions as archery and fishing and riding,” Lizzie said. “We live off the land here, aye?”
“Lizzie, my love, you are no’ helping matters in the least,” he groused.
“Think of it this way,” Charlotte offered. “You are very good at cooking. Mrs. Kincade still speaks of the day her back ailed her and you made the bread as she instructed you.”
Jack shot his sister-in-law a look. “I thought we all agreed that was an emergency. One loaf of bread does no’ make me a cook.”
“Aye, but you clearly have a talent for it.”
“And making fires,” Newton added. “Quite handy when it comes to lighting peat.”
“Is that all?” Jack drawled.
“Embroidery,” Lizzie said.
With a growl, Jack abruptly leapt up and lunged for her, but she jumped out of his reach and picking up her skirts, began to run.
“You best run, Lady Lambourne!” he called after her.
Lizzie loved the sound of Lady Lambourne. She glanced over her shoulder—he was already on her heels. With a squeal, she flew throu
gh the pair of French doors, but Jack caught her by the waist and dragged her up against his chest. “You’ve gone and done it, lass, have you no’? For now I must exact my punishment.”
She laughed and twisted in his arms, tilting her head back to see him. “Punish me, Jack. Make me weep.”
He kissed her hard on the mouth, then lifted his head, brushed the rogue curls from her face. “If only I could make you weep with happiness as I do every day.”
Oh, but Lizzie wept. She wept with angels and her tears were drops of pure joy.
Jack slipped his arm around her waist and glanced over his shoulder. “Come, then, let us find a moment of privacy before Newton determines it is time I light a bit of peat,” he said. “The man goes about as if he is the bloody laird here.”
Lizzie laughed; Jack kissed her, then slipped his arm around her waist and the two of them hurried along to steal another moment of bliss before it came time to do the evening chores.
Table of Contents
Cover
>“You deserve to know what it is like to be wholly seduced,” Jack said roughly.
Praise
ALSO BY JULIA LONDON
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Epilogue
Julia London - [Scandalous 02] Page 32
