Torridon, however, did not notice. Or at least, she thought he didn’t. He gazed out of the window at the Black Fort, from which only a couple of months ago, a French prisoner had escaped. She wanted to mention it to him, a safe yet intriguing topic of conversation that, according to Serena, involved one of Tamar’s sisters. But his stare was fixed on the window and the hunch of his shoulder seemed somehow repelling. He was deep in thought, and in truth, so was she. And so, she let the moment pass and the carriage trundled on. They would be back at the castle soon, probably just as dusk fell.
Abruptly, Torridon reached up and rapped on the roof and the coach slowed to a halt. Torridon took the sleeping baby from Frances, placing him instead in Lawson’s delighted arms.
“I feel the need to stretch my legs, so her ladyship and I shall walk the rest of the way. If you’re at the castle before us, Mark will see you to the servants’ hall and make sure you’re looked after until we arrive.” He opened the door and alighted, then let down the steps and peremptorily held out his hand to Frances.
She stared at him, bewildered and ready to refuse as much from perversity as from fear of hearing what he wanted to say in private. But she had never been a coward.
“Thank you, Lawson,” she said, and stepped down onto the side of the road.
Mark, who clearly thought them mad for giving up the comfort of the carriage at this stage, merely saluted them with his whip and drove on.
Torridon offered her his arm and led her off the road completely. “We can go across country from here, can we not?”
“Yes. It’s quicker. We’ll probably arrive at the same time as the carriage going via the road. But we’ll need a lantern if we don’t hurry.”
There was a little-used track through the woods that Frances found easily enough. Only then did she ask, “Do you really need to stretch your legs, or have you something private to say?”
“I thought you had something to discuss,” Torridon replied. “We agreed we should have no more secrets—they only lead to misunderstandings. So, ask me what you want to know.”
Is Ariadne your mistress? Was she ever your mistress? She tightened her grip on his sleeve, appalled by the impossibility of asking such questions. They went against her own pride as much as against her training as a lady never to “notice” her husband’s straying, or even to acknowledge the existence of such women.
“You are silent,” he said quietly. “And yet I know there is something bothering you.”
“I’m not sure I want to know the answer,” she confessed. “In time, I could live happily in ignorance.”
He smiled, and her heart leapt at the tenderness in his eyes. “No, you couldn’t, Frances. It isn’t in your nature.”
She bit her lower lip, working around the subject. Perhaps she would not need to ask. “Did you know Ariadne before you met me?”
He considered. “No, I believe I encountered you both for the first time when I came to London the season before last.”
That didn’t help her. In fact, it made things worse, for she could have forgiven any intimacy before he had met her, put any silence on the subject down to his desire not to hurt her rather to deception. Alan was not a deceitful man. If she knew anything about him, it was that.
“Did you… like her?” Frances managed.
“No,” he said flatly. “At first, I barely noticed her, and once I did, my dislike only grew with acquaintance. I made little secret of the fact I did not care for your friendship with her.”
She gazed into the trees. The silence seemed to shroud her like some heavy garment, weighing her down. Even the birds had stopped singing.
Torridon swore below his breath and stopped, swinging her round to face him and seizing her by both shoulders. “Let me make it easy for you. I was not used to London manners. I didn’t even realize she was pursuing me until after you and I were engaged. Then, after some ball or other, when I was walking home, she stopped her carriage and invited me to her home.”
Frances closed her eyes. It doesn’t matter. It is past. It doesn’t matter. In time, it would not hurt.
“Marshall was away somewhere,” Torridon continued relentlessly, “although no one had yet called him dead. I declined and walked on.”
Her eyes flew open of their own accord, staring into his.
His lips quirked. “That is the extent of any intimacy between us. If you sense some… feeling from her toward me, it is not returned, nor ever was. I expect it is largely pique because I am the only man ever to resist her. And for me, it was easy, because my heart, my head, my life was full only of you. Frances—”
With a sob, she hurled herself against him and reached for his mouth.
His kiss was hard, almost savage, and she flung her arms up around his neck in abandon. Every fiber of her being responded to his passion as he crushed her to him and plundered her open, willing mouth. Slowly, gradually, the kiss gentled, yet became more blatantly sensual, arousing. His hardness pressed against her, thrilling her.
He groaned into her mouth. “My sweet, my love,” he whispered. “You will undo me…”
A gurgle of excited laughter rose to her lips. “Here?”
He laughed softly and kissed her again. His arms, his whole body shook as he fought to control his passion and won. His hold loosened enough to let her breathe easily. “I have waited so long for this,” he whispered against her lips. “So long… when I finally get you home, all to myself, there will be no more waiting. Ever.”
Her heart thundered in her ears. It was all she could hear, apart from her own panting breath and his.
“Why wait?” she whispered. “There is no one here nor likely to be at this time. We are alone and it is not cold.” She closed her mouth over his again. He kissed her back as though he couldn’t help it, but slowly, gently, however reluctantly, he was putting her from him, pushing her away. Again.
She tore herself free. “What is wrong with me?” she demanded, swiping her hand across her eyes.
“Wrong with you?” he repeated in clear astonishment. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
She drew in a shuddering breath and would have walked on along the path, except he stood in her way, holding her once more by the shoulders, staring down into her face.
“Frances, what is it?” he asked, helplessly.
She closed her eyes, as if that would somehow make things easier to say. “There is passion in you,” she whispered. “I feel it. Deep, intense, urgent, and yet… it is not for me, is it? If you love me, it is not… like that.”
His grip tightened. When she forced her eyes open, he stared down into them as though straight into her soul.
“God help me, I love you every way there is,” he said unsteadily. “But I am a large man with large desires, and I would die rather than hurt a hair on your head.”
She reached up and took his face between her hands, loving the roughness of his jaw, the soft texture of his lips under her thumbs. “I am not porcelain, Alan. I won’t break. Give in. Give in to what you want of me because I want it, too.”
There was a moment when she wondered if she had lost again, and then with a groan, he seized her mouth in his and she gasped with joy at his abandon. She clung to his neck, tugging the soft hair at his nape. “Here?” he whispered between kisses. “Here and now? Truly?”
“Truly,” she said fervently and reached for his mouth again. But he spun her around so fast that she grasped onto a tree trunk for support. Her cloak fell to the ground as his lips seized her nape, kissing and nibbling while his fingers tugged at the laces of her gown and chemise. She gasped as they fell around her feet and his arms closed around her naked body, protecting her from the chilly air, dragging her back against him. His avid hands, his lips, were everywhere, caressing her greedily from breast to thigh, and then inward to the flaring, desperate heat of her lust.
She cried out at his touch, twisting her head to see his stormy face, his clouded eyes burning with passion. She had aroused the devil in hi
m at last, and she was almost frightened. Almost.
He kissed her mouth. “Say you want this,” he said fiercely. “Say you want me.”
“I want you,” she sobbed, and he entered her in one smooth thrust.
From there, it was quick and wild and the most exciting thing she had ever known. There was only his swift, demanding body, his worshiping hands and lips, the scrape of the tree bark against her breasts. Inside and out she rose to crashing, consuming bliss. And more even than that, his glorious, uninhibited shout of completion made her weep with joy. Now, at last, he was hers.
*
As the carriage drew to the top of the drive, the front door of the castle opened and a dignified, middle-aged butler stepped out. Lawson opened the carriage door herself as servants ran to the horses’ heads and a footman let down the steps for her. She stepped out with the baby in her arms, hoping somewhat nervously that Lord and Lady Torridon would not be long.
“Where are they?” the footman demanded urgently. “Where is Lady Frances?”
“She’s walking the rest of the way with her husband,” Lawson replied. “They’ll be here directly. She instructed me to bring his little lordship straight here.”
“It’s true enough,” Mark said. “This here is Lawson, who serves Lady Frances. Take her inside, will you? And maybe best inform her young ladyship…”
But there was no time to pick and choose. The butler was summoning them to the front entrance, and as soon as Lawson stepped over the door, she stopped dead, confronted by a row of strangers. Two formidable middle-aged ladies, a younger one, and a tall, frowning gentleman. The butler and Mrs. Gaskell—the housekeeper whom she had met before while carrying Lady Torridon’s message to the mysterious foreign gentleman—advanced purposefully upon her.
But one of the older matrons thrust herself suddenly forward, all but charging at Lawson. “Give the child to me at once. I am Lady Torridon!”
Lawson, who had instinctively shielded Jamie from the onslaught, reluctantly let the icy lady take him from her.
The Dowager Lady Torridon swung away from her in triumph, Jamie held like a trophy in her arms. “There, my poor child, you are safe now,” she announced. Then adjusting her grip, she pointed with loathing at Lawson. “Hold that woman and send for the magistrate!”
*
They lay on the soft, spongy earth at the foot of the tree. Torridon wrapped her in his arms and her cloak and hugged her close. He still couldn’t quite believe what he had just done to his sweet, delicate wife. But then, he hadn’t so much done it to her as with her. He could doubt neither her full cooperation nor her pleasure. He smiled into her shoulder and kissed it, and she slipped her arms around him, purring like a cat.
“You,” he murmured, “are a very wicked wife.”
“I am an obedient wife,” she said contentedly. “Submitting to my husband’s desires.”
He kissed her. “I think I was afraid that was all you would do, if I was anything other than gentle and…”
“Polite,” she interjected.
“I was never merely polite,” he disputed, kissing the corner of her mouth. “And I always brought you pleasure.”
She slid her hand down his back to his hip, slipping under his shirt and his half-unbuttoned pantaloons. “You did. But I love your spontaneity even more.”
He kissed her for a long time and almost took her again. But the ground was damp and dusk was falling fast. And he would have her again tonight. All night…
His body thrumming with fresh anticipation, he reached for her clothes and dressed her, with many kisses before covering each favorite part of her.
“I’ve torn your gown,” he noticed, fastening it behind her as best he could. “I will have to be your maid for tonight.”
“I’ll like that,” she said huskily.
God, he loved her. All of her, and there were always new facets to discover, like this delicious new sensuality he would be hard-pushed to leave alone. He couldn’t remember ever being so aroused or so sweetly, massively satisfied.
He righted his own clothes and drew them both to their feet, before halfheartedly brushing crushed grass and old leaves from them. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her thoroughly, just because he wanted to. She looked so adorable and wanton.
“You are wonderful,” he whispered. “I will so enjoy bringing you to new pleasures, new heights.”
She smiled as he combed out her hair with his fingers and crouched to retrieve all her fallen pins. She seemed surprised when he re-pinned her hair very neatly.
“You have done this too often before,” she said, with mock severity, taking his hand as they walked back onto the path.
“I’ve been no saint,” he confessed. “I enjoy women. But there was never anyone like you.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment. “Nor you. I was so thrilled—and relieved—when my mother regarded you as a serious and suitable suitor.”
“What would you have done if she hadn’t?”
“I don’t know. Pined, probably, most romantically.”
“Would you have run away with me?”
“If you’d asked.”
He gazed down at her. “Truly? That was my alternative plan.”
She laughed. “Well, it would have been fun, but at least this way, we don’t have to quarrel with our families and be ostracized.”
They walked on in companionable silence, enfolded in the gathering dusk, as if they were the only two people in the world, with only the few creatures scuttling in the undergrowth for company. It was only for a few more minutes, of course, but in those minutes, he didn’t think he had ever been so completely, utterly happy.
As they emerged from the trees, looking across at the castle, he said, “What do you want to do? Where would you like to go when we leave here?”
“Everywhere,” she said promptly. “Anywhere. Wouldn’t it be fun to travel, once this wretched war ends?”
“It’s more or less ended now. We could go for a month in the summer, probably.”
“And I would like to go to Tamar Abbey, maybe in the autumn?”
“Why not, if they’ll have us? And London?”
“If you wish.”
“I do have to spend some time in Torridon.”
She blinked. “Of course you do.” She peered up at him. “You are thinking I am unhappy there,” she said. “But I’m not. I like the country and the people. I was only unhappy without you. And other company,” she admitted, “but chiefly, you.”
His fingers tightened on hers before he drew her hand into his arm in a more decorous pose for approaching the castle. “I’m sorry. I was trying to be a good and considerate husband. And almost ended by not being a husband at all.”
“We have to talk to each other,” she said seriously. “Without pride or fear of any kind.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her face. “I love you,” he said quietly. “More than life itself.”
Even in the dim light that was left, he could see the sparkle of unshed tears brimming in her eyes. For an instant, he was appalled to have made her cry. But she pressed her cheek to his arm.
“I never thought you would say that to me,” she whispered. “And mean it.”
“I could never have said it and not meant it.”
“Neither could I. But then, I have only ever loved you.”
Regardless of any watching eyes, he kissed her. She cooperated so charmingly that he was tempted to walk back into the woods. But they had left Jamie with Lawson, and it was dinner time.
Paton himself opened the front door to them, a warning frown on his face that Torridon could not account for. He cast the butler a quizzical glance. And then, as they walked into the house, the next person he saw was his mother with Jamie in her arms.
Chapter Seventeen
Frances halted in sheer shock. Lady Torridon was the last person in the world she wanted to see. All the joy of her recent encounter with Alan and the new closeness betw
een them was too new and wonderful to be subjected to her domineering mother-in-law quite so soon.
Lady Torridon stood at the foot of the stairs, as though she had witnessed their approach from an upper window and had come down to be the first to greet them. Or at least berate them, for she didn’t look remotely pleased to see them. Her eyes flashed with fury across the entrance hall. Her lips were pinched in disapproval.
“Mother,” Torridon said blankly. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” she snapped.
And as if he felt her anger, Jamie began to cry, and Frances’s paralysis broke. She hurried across the hall, uttering a civil greeting to her mother-in-law, though her attention was all on Jamie.
She reached for him, smiling. “What an ill-mannered, noisy boy you are. What will your grandmother think of you?”
But Lady Torridon spun away, snatching the baby clear of her. “You should be more concerned what I think of you. You stole him away from his home, galivanting God knows where with that woman, and finally abandoned him with some stranger! Well, I have called for the magistrate to deal with her.”
“Called for the…” With an effort, Frances bit back her outrage. “Lawson is not a stranger and is perfectly capable of looking after Jamie for half an hour,” she said, trying to remain calm although her hackles had risen. More than that, an instinctive panic rose fast, along with the need to see to her crying child. “Give him to me, please. He is hungry.”
“I have brought a suitable wet nurse with me to care for such needs,” Lady Torridon said contemptuously. “You will never again have the care of the future Earl of Torridon.”
All Frances’s training as a lady fought with her instincts, which told her to slap the countess and snatch back her son. She would not have such malevolence near him. But neither would she frighten Jamie with such violence or a physical tug of war that could end in hurting him.
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