Sarah Gabriel - Keeping Kate

by Keeping Kate (lit)

  "No, you are the only man who ever—" She stopped. "The only man who ever apologized, and the only man who could have ... done his will with me."

  He opened his eyes to stare at her, dumbstruck.

  "Good night, sir." She stretched out, moved around, sighed. Every time she shifted, Alec felt more than the poor mattress sagging. He felt his own fierce response, a longing that would soon turn to flame if she did not quiet down and go to sleep.

  "I need a pillow, too," she said.

  He opened an eye. "Were you demanding as a child, too, or is it a recent habit?"

  "Only since I met you," she answered, and caught the pillow Alec tossed at her.

  Chapter 15

  A

  s moonlight filtered through the window, Kate knew she must try to leave, though an inner voice urged her to stay. Soon it would be dawn and too late to slip away without being seen.

  She glanced at Alec, who reclined asleep beside her, his profile clean and handsome. The sight of him, the warmth of his body beside her, sent a subtle quiver through her. But she could not be here when he woke. Her body contracted with dread at the thought of fur­ther confinement in Edinburgh, or anywhere.

  Outside, she knew that the military road that ran past the changehouse also cut through lands near Glen Carran. She could not openly follow Wade's route that

  way, but she could make her way over the hills to home and kin from here.

  All she had to do was get the key and slip out quickly.

  Alec's hand lay warm and heavy upon her own, their wrists shackled together. His occasional soft snore told her that he was truly asleep. Remembering that he had dropped the key into his sporran, she edged closer, covering the chains with the bedclothes to smother their sound.

  Shifting even closer, so that she could feel his warmth, feel his breath dancing upon her cheek and stirring her hair, she stretched out her fingers toward the sporran.

  His bearded chin brushed over her forehead, and she closed her eyes, involuntarily sighing. She could not think about how it would feel if he wrapped his arm around her now. She could only allow herself to think about that key and the temptation of freedom.

  He stirred, moved a little, and as the mattress shifted, Kate rolled a bit closer to him, her face just a breath from his own. She grew still and waited until he settled. Then she traced her fingers over his waistcoat and kilt toward the sporran at his waist. Finding the buckle and leather strap, she slowly worked the clasp to open the pouch.

  Of stiff leather and hide, the Highland purse rested just below his belt, shielding an essential part of his body beneath his plaid. As her fingers dipped inside, she felt him stir, boldly and certainly, on the underside of the sporran.

  She caught her breath. The key lay near her finger­tips, stretched inside the pouch. She could feel him rouse again just under her hand, only leather and wool between them. Suddenly a wild need over­whelmed her, and she nearly moaned aloud, wanting to be in his arms, to feel his kiss again, to explore him and love him as he had begun to do for her not so long ago. Her body aroused easily at the very thought, the slightest touch, still throbbing inwardly after that ear­lier encounter.

  This was no time to indulge fantasies and feeling, though suddenly she ached for him. When he moved, sighed out, Kate grew still, her hand inside the pouch.

  His free hand came up and found her shoulder, rested there for a moment. Then he traced his fingers upward to sift through her hair, raising such shivers in her that she closed her eyes. His thumb grazed along her cheek, and he breathed out again.

  And then he stretched forward and touched his mouth to her cheek, his lips tracing until they found hers and settled there.

  She melted, turned liquid under his touch, moaned softly. Uncertain if he was awake or asleep, she hardly cared—

  "What the devil," he whispered, his mouth against hers, "are you doing with your hand in my sporran?"

  She caught her breath, and he caught her wrist, and she felt the pressure of her hand, and the pouch, against him, where the bulge rounded, hard, insistent, glorious, and mysterious all at once. He groaned, a lit-

  tie grind of sound, his hand still cupping her cheek, and he nibbled his lips over her own, then drew back.

  "Take your hand out, darling," he whispered. "And leave the damned key."

  "Damn it," she swore under her breath, and thought he laughed as he kissed her, taking her breath away. At the same moment, he tugged at her wrist.

  Slipping her fingers out of his sporran, she yet man­aged to trap the key in her fingers, and dropped it somewhere in the nest of bedclothes before he snatched her fingers, curling them in his own. His thumb slid over her palm to make sure her hand was empty. She splayed her fingers for him, and he entwined her hand tightly in his own.

  "Now," he murmured, and his lips slid along her jaw, his breath heated her throat, making her shudder with reluctant delight, "what are we to do with you, Miss Hell?"

  She gasped out, a little burst of protest and surrender all at once, and his mouth took hers again with power­ful insistence this time. This was what she wanted— needed—far more than that key, though why it should be so, she could not have said. She could not think.

  He let go of her hand to take her by the waist, snug­ging her close to him, and she rested her fingers over his plaid again, beside the sporran, where the shifting bulge stirred again. She was excited, curious about the mystery of his body, the beauty of that hidden power. Her heart raced as his kisses continued. Sighing against him, she promised herself a few moments to savor

  this—then she would stop it, as he had stopped it. He only deserved it, she thought.

  But a moment later, she would not stop him, not now, for his hand found her breast just where the bodice and chemise gapped away from her skin. The contact made her gasp, then writhe, for her body responded like a leap of flame. His lips covered hers again, and she tipped her head back and opened her mouth to his, and his tongue flicked gently over hers. She sighed, edged closer still, and dismissed the key, just for now.

  He took her hand, manacled beside his, and squeezed her fingers, interlocked them with his own. With his other hand, he swept down over her skirt and pulled it up slowly, surely.

  He paused. She could break away at any time, she knew, for he made that clear. He would respect her wish and pull away. The decision lay in her hands. And as before, she wanted this fiercely, though she could not name all the reasons—even if she fell for whatever un­spoken magic he held over her, she wanted this with such hunger that she had no other choice but this one.

  Sighing, she shifted, opened her legs a little for him, and felt his fingers graze upward, felt his touch as it found her, as he gently slid a fingertip within at the same moment that he slipped his tongue between her lips. The sensual echo nearly pushed her to madness. She gasped, swayed against him.

  Under her free hand, he took on a turgid, insistent shape, and she pressed closer to him, as much as she could with the heavy bite of the metal between them,

  locking them together. His lips felt like a taste of ec­stasy over hers, his fingers teased just inside of her, coaxing and tender, and she arched as a frisson of sen­sation seared through her. Breathing fast, she slid her hand under his plaid and along his thigh until she found the firm, heated length of him. Sighing out at the beauty and power of it, she closed her fingers about him. He groaned low under his breath, thrust a little against her, the sporran edged out of the way between them. Kissing her, he slid his tongue over her lips, and his fingers touched her exquisitely now, stoking that extraordinary fire within her to a sort of wildness.

  She felt almost drunk somehow with sensation, swept onward, allowing herself to plunge headlong into what was happening as he explored the most inti­mate region of her body, as she did so for him, thrilled by the intimacy of that secrecy, that closeness between them. All else—all but touch, breath, desire, and the moment—ceased to exist.

  Her body quickened as a burge
oning power caught her, held her, rocked her along with him, while her fin­gers eased over him just as he stroked within her. Lost in kisses, in caresses, she was just where she wanted to be, in this wildness with him—only with him, her most secret dream come true.

  He thrust against her at last, sporran and bedclothes and wool between them, frustration woven into pas­sion and urgency, and she held him, felt him holding her, poignant, inexpressible moment of joy, and then she released a sigh just as he did, her head tipped to meet his. and she breathed auicklv with him in silence.

  "My God," he whispered after a moment. "Kate—"

  "Hush," she said. "Hush. All is well," and she kissed him as she spoke. He wrapped his arm around her, pulled her close, the iron manacles pushing against her ribs, and as soon as her heart calmed its beat, she felt herself falling asleep beside him.

  A little while later, she awoke, and knew he was sound asleep again, his breath deep and slow. She re­membered, then, that the little key was caught some­where in the bedclothes between them. Groping about, she found it.

  Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, she picked up the key and inserted it into the lock on her wrist, quietly turning it.

  She had no choice. Truly she did not, for she was like a bird, and the cage had just opened.

  Kate winced at the creaks in the old wooden floor as she tiptoed through the empty, darkened public room. If the dragoons discovered her leaving, things would go worse than if she had stayed with Fraser. But she moved toward the front door, which was tucked in the entrance alcove.

  The door was locked. She was not surprised, but it would not be simple to open. No key was tucked any­where nearby, either beside or above the door. Standing on tiptoe, she stretched her fingers high to check. She leaned her head against the door in frustration and re­called that the innkeeper carried a large ring of keys at his belt. It must be there, and so she had no chance of obtainine it.

  Dim light and cool air leaked through a tiny window beside the door. Breath frosting, Kate peered at the lock, bending close to examine it.

  She was familiar with this sort of lock, just as she had recognized the lock in the prison. All she needed to free it was a narrow, straight tool and a little time. Glancing about, she walked into the main room with its tables and benches, and saw a nest of spoons and two-tined forks sitting in a box on a cabinet. Snatching a fork in triumph, she raced back to the door.

  Jiggling the hasp of the lock, listening to the mecha­nism inside, she finessed the tines of the fork into the keyhole. Angling carefully, she glanced into the empty room. Listening not only for the barrel of the lock to fall, she was also on alert for any footsteps from above, where her Highland officer slept with one hand shack­led to an empty manacle.

  As a girl she had often watched Duncrieff's black­smith at work making locks, bolts, farming tools, and kitchen implements. Fascinated by the puzzles the iron pieces presented as the smith fitted them intricately to­gether, Kate had watched and learned. While the fire blazed at the forge, and the smith and his apprentice had worked, she had helped with some tasks, while she and her brother had played endlessly with the bits and pieces, her mind sparking with curiosity at the patterns and details.

  But her stern, if good-intentioned, father had ordered Kate out of the smithy, and her sister Sophie out of the ornamental gardens where she happily mucked. Chief of his clan, he reearded both activities as unsuitable to

  his fairy-blessed daughters, who must marry not only well, but for love, the time was right.

  But the proper time never came, for her father had been arrested for rebellious activities with MacPherson of Kinnoull and a Cameron chieftain. He had been for­tunate, being only exiled to France while his friend MacPherson had been executed, and the Cameron laird imprisoned. After years in France and Flanders, where Kate spent time being educated in a convent, which sat very ill with her, she had finally returned to Scotland with her brother Robert, after their father's death in ex­ile. Her sister Sophie, adapting well to convent life, had remained in Bruges, and their mother had remarried in France.

  Sophie had returned several months ago, but even as the three siblings reunited, and Sophie found true love and married the son of the executed Lord Kinnoull, Kate knew that life at Duncrieff would never be the same.

  She felt again a powerful yearning to be home. She twisted the fork fervently in the lock, desperate to be on her way back to Duncrieff. She could not bear con­finement, and she could not bear being away from her family at Duncrieff.

  Then she heard the satisfying click as the inner ratchets turned and released. Catching the hasp, she set the bent fork on a table, opened the door, and slipped outside.

  The night air was fresh and cold as she lifted her face to the stars. She had snatched her plaid up when she left the room, and she wrapped that around her, grate­ful for its warmth as well as the dark cover it provided

  her as she crossed the inn yard quickly and quietly, skirt whipping out in the breeze. She found the pale strip of stone road that ribboned past the inn yard and over the hills, and crossed that, too, heading for the moorland and west to the wilder hills to which she be­longed.

  After more than a week in prison, the sweet draft of pure Highland air revived and cleansed her. Its essence was power, clarity, magic. She ran over the moorland until she left the stone road far behind, until she was breathless and felt part of the earth again, part of the air.

  She thought of Alec Fraser, imagined him waking to find her gone. Though she should have felt only happy about her escape, she could not shake a sense of long­ing and even loss. For years, she had believed that she would never find a man to love her, whom she could love—perhaps she was losing her only chance by run­ning away.

  Yet he liked his orders and rules too well, she re­minded herself, and the whole thing was best forgotten entirely.

  She ran westward toward Glen Carran, miles away over the hills, but within reach. By evening, perhaps to­morrow morning, she knew she would be home.

  Chapter 16

  S

  tanding in the inn yard in the darkness, Alec swore under his breath. Without a horse, he had little chance of catching a Highland girl running over terrain that was no doubt familiar to her. Even with a horse, he would find it slow going in the rugged and rocky hills if Kate had indeed gone that way.

  And he did not know which blasted direction she had taken. Swearing again, he turned to glance from one direction to another as the cool night wind ruffled his hair and lifted his jacket. He saw no one out in the moors and hills beyond the road anywhere he looked. She was gone—but where?

  The little wildcat had bespelled him in his sleep after all. but he was determined to catch her and determined

  that he would not be fooled again. The fever pitch of passion and release while she lay in his arms had been astonishing in its intimate power, but apparently that had not changed her mind about acquiescing to her custodial officer's wishes.

  Damnation. He spun on his heel and walked toward the stables to rouse the sleeping groom, offering him three times the usual fee if a horse could be saddled quickly. Within minutes, Alec was mounted on a good bay mare. Turning her head, he cantered out of the sta­ble yard.

  Pausing in the middle of the cobbled road, he lis­tened to the wind, to the burble of water, to the sound of night birds. Scanning the hills in the darkness, he did not know which way to go. He closed his eyes and imagined her walking the hills. She was a wild and fey creature who would not keep to the road. She was a Highland girl from a staunch Jacobite clan though he did not yet know which one.

  Ah, he thought. She would go west—even north­west, toward the true Highlands. It was a guess, but likely the best one.

  He turned the horse and headed away from the road. In the matter of Katie Hell, his heart seemed to know readily what his head could not always sort out.

  Before long, a pale and silvery dawn lifted over the shoulders of the hills, and Alec saw the landscape around
him more clearly: turf and rock, water racing through burns, and the vast bulk of the mountains in the distance. He had not ridden very far, perhaps a few

  miles over the moorland, before he saw her climbing the shoulder of a hill.

  In the dawnlight, he saw the bright blur of golden hair and the bell shape of her red skirt. Blasting out a sigh, he cantered the horse toward her.

  Soon he halted at the foot of the hill and tied the reins to a tree, then ran up the slope with long-legged, sure steps.

  Ahead of him, she walked steadily, perhaps tiring on the incline. Riding had conserved his energy, and being a Fraser of the Great Glen, he had spent much of his youth in the Highlands and knew how to pace himself on a hill, just as she did.

  Coming closer, he picked his way over the incline, which was rough with stones and tangles of heather and gorse. Kate glanced back then and saw him. She ran, hair fanning out like sunrise, that red dress like a beacon as she crested the hill. Closing the distance be­hind her, Alec hurried upward, his legs longer and stronger than hers, and soon enough he was very close.

  He reached out and took her by the arm. She jerked around in impatience and temper, and as she stumbled, he went to his knees into the heather with her. Catching her, he rolled with her and made sure she did not take a bruising as she fell. But he made sure she went down and had no chance to get away again.

  She spun in his grip and began to crawl away on hands and knees, but Alec snatched her by the skirt, the ankle, the waist, wherever he could find a hold, and pulled her toward him.

  She writhed and twisted like a water beast, and he fell partly over her to stop her. A pointed elbow to his stomach made him grunt, but he managed to pin her to the ground, on her back in the heather, his knees beside her hips.

  Her eyes were wild, and she bucked under him. That could be delightful, he thought, in other circumstances— but he was not enjoying this at all.