Grace Burrowes - [MacGregor 02]

by Once Upon a Tartan

  Even for him, that was brusque.

  “Ian worked you over properly, didn’t he? And Augusta abetted him, smiling and nodding all the while.”

  “Ian—Lord Balfour—reminded me I have a conscience, and the realization is not at all convenient, even when softened by marvelously smooth whisky.”

  She didn’t think he’d intended to be that honest, but she seized the opening before her courage deserted her. “Please call me Hester. We are practically family, and our paths are likely to cross on occasion if you remain interested in Fiona’s well-being.”

  “Very well. May I escort you to the house, Hester?”

  He was truly rattled. Whatever Ian had said or implied or otherwise insinuated, Spathfoy was wrestling with it.

  “Will you kiss me, my lord?”

  “For God’s sake, no, I will not kiss you.” He didn’t get off the bench though. Didn’t shift the slightest bit away from her.

  “It’s just that I don’t particularly like you,” Hester said, “so I think it’s safe to try out your paces, so to speak. You’ve already had your tongue in my mouth, after all, and your bare hands on my person.”

  “We’re back to your equestrian analogies?”

  Still he didn’t leave. Didn’t get to his feet or cross his arms or otherwise reject her proposition.

  “There is something amiss with me,” Hester said, speaking slowly. “You say you are restive if too much in the company of others. I comprehend this, though I would not have even a few months ago. It’s why I left London, why I so very thoroughly enjoyed a good gallop yesterday. Fiona says I’m out of sorts, and Ian and Augusta look at me like I’m a powder keg whose fuse they must not inadvertently light. Sometimes, I can’t get my breath, and I feel like I am a powder keg.”

  She fell silent, because the more words she let spin forth, the faster they wanted to come—and to him, of all people.

  “You feel as if a fuse has been lit,” Spathfoy said slowly—reluctantly? “You feel as if you’re watching it burn down, and there’s nothing you can do to stop the impending mayhem.”

  She nodded, because speech abruptly seemed a chancy thing. Her heart began to thump palpably, and she had to part her lips to draw breath.

  “Any further kissing between us is ill-advised in the extreme.” He stood and marched half a dozen steps in the direction of the house. Hester knew the urge to scream, to drag him back to her side by the hair, to rage and cry out and destroy the entire peace of the night around her.

  Then he turned and stalked toward the bench. He kept coming, until to her shock, he knelt over her, one knee by each hip, so the great bulk of him was straddling her lap. “Very ill-advised.”

  He framed her face in his hands and paused, his mouth just a whisper from hers. “You will regret this, Hester. I will regret this.”

  His mouth descended onto hers firmly, nothing tentative or reluctant about it, and inside Hester, something eased. All the tension and frustrations she’d been corralling behind her manners and her benighted self-restraint found an outlet, a way to express themselves. She didn’t think about Jasper Merriman or bruises, or her idiot mother, or her silently worried family.

  With just his mouth on hers, Spathfoy obliterated all thought and all memory from Hester’s awareness, leaving her to feast her senses on him alone.

  He was warm all around her, and clean and yet male too, in the scents of horse and night and well-oiled leather clinging to his clothing. When Hester opened her mouth beneath his, his arms came around her, and hers lashed around him. She held him desperately tight, letting herself cling and need for just a few moments.

  His tongue was a marvel, tasting first the corners of her mouth, then tracing her lips, then retreating to invite her into similar boldness. She accepted the invitation, went plundering into the hot, wet reaches of his mouth, sent her fingers into his hair, arched her body up into his.

  “For God’s sake, woman.”

  He hung over her, panting, while Hester pressed her face to his chest and resented his clothing. She could feel his erect male flesh, could feel curiosity in her vitals where distaste ought to be, and she rejoiced that it should be so.

  “Do you want me to swive you right here on this bloody damned bench?” He climbed off her and turned his back, likely to arrange himself in his clothing. Then he faced her, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. “I assume you comprehend the term?”

  “I comprehend the term better than you imagine, my lord. And what would you say if I replied in the affirmative?”

  She’d shocked herself with her own question, but she’d shocked him as well. His posture shifted with it, as if she’d smacked him physically.

  “I would say, madam, that you are overwrought for reasons I cannot fathom, and I would offer once again to escort you inside the damned house, where I would leave you in blasted peace and hope you might offer me the same ruddy courtesy while I try to forget this whole misguided encounter.”

  He resumed his seat on the bench when Hester had expected him to stomp off into the darkness. They sat there in silence until Hester realized she’d synchronized her breathing with his.

  “Ian upset you.”

  He leaned back and ranged his arm along the bench behind her. “It might delight you to know, Miss Daniels, that you have upset me. You are family to the lord and lady of this home, family to the child who is my niece. You are young and innocent, despite what you think of a few wicked kisses, and it has never been an ambition of mine to despoil innocents.”

  “Now you’re scolding me? I asked you to kiss me, I did not toss you bodily onto your lordly back and force my wiles upon you. I can’t help that I like kissing you.”

  “You sound damned unhappy about it yourself. God knows a taste for you—for your kisses—doesn’t make my life any easier.”

  Now he was disgruntled, or likely amused. The worst of his ill feeling was passing, perhaps as his arousal faded. He wasn’t going to kiss her again, and to Hester, this seemed like a great, miserable unfairness on top of many other injustices.

  “I know about that word you used.”

  “Swive—a lovely, old Anglo-Saxon monosyllable never to be uttered in the presence of women or children. My apologies for an egregious breach of propriety.”

  She closed her eyes, because she was going to confide in this large, unhappy, often rude English lord. “I know about it.”

  “You’ve said as much. Congratulations on the depth of your naughty vocabulary, Miss Daniels. Please do not share this dubious accomplishment with my niece.”

  “My name is Hester, and I don’t mean merely the word. I know about it.”

  A few beats of quiet went by, while off in the distance the fox started up lamenting his solitude. This time, Hester found the tortured sound appropriate to the discussion.

  Spathfoy turned his head to regard her in the moonlight. “Are you telling me you have been relieved of your chastity?”

  His voice was arctic, the verbal embodiment of barely contained affront. Hester hunched forward, gripping the edge of the bench with both hands.

  She nodded.

  He muttered something under his breath that sounded Gaelic. “Merriman?”

  She nodded again, but inside her, something was coiling up more tightly than ever.

  “Does your family know?”

  Hester shook her head.

  And then very gently, so gently she barely recognized it as the voice of the Earl of Spathfoy, “Hester, are you carrying the man’s child?”

  ***

  The quiet wraith beside Tye shook her head again.

  “I am not w… with child. It’s not that I wanted to be, but still…”

  He understood, probably better than Hester did herself, what she was trying to say. Children were the great consolation offered to women for every trial in life. Tye’s m
other had explained this to him, and further explained that the fact that children were among those trials was of no moment.

  “Come here.” He settled an arm around her shoulders and brought her close to his side. “You should tell your family, Hester.”

  “Can’t.”

  Perhaps she meant she couldn’t tell her brother because he was off gallivanting around the Continent with his new wife. Perhaps she meant something more complicated.

  No matter. Tye traced the slender bones of her shoulder with his hand, hurting for her. Oh, he could catch a train south, hunt up Merriman, and mete out some rough justice, but this woman would still be hiding up here in rural Scotland, upset and unhappy when she should have been planning her wedding and picking out names for her firstborn.

  “Did he hurt you?” The question was not prompted by conscience, but by something more problematic.

  The daft woman tried to shift away. He gently prevented it.

  “Not the way you mean.” She sounded tired now, and for the first time in Tye’s experience, defeated. To hear it made him furious, though he had wisdom enough to keep his anger to himself. “He confused me.”

  Tye waited. Hester Daniels was intelligent and articulate. She’d sort through what she wanted him to know, and he’d sit on this bench until his backside fell asleep while she did.

  “Jasper could be so sure of himself, so convincing. He said I’d inflamed his passions, that I wanted what he was doing, and it was my duty, and everybody anticipated their vows. He was very confident of what he said.”

  Bastard. “You began to doubt yourself.”

  “I didn’t begin to doubt myself. I lost track entirely of what I knew to be true. I’ve never inflamed a man’s passions in my life, you see. I’m the girl none of the fellows needs to take seriously. I’m cute. Adorable, a whacking good sport, or I was.”

  At Balfour House, he’d seen a picture of the woman she described. She had the same gorgeous hair and the same wide, pretty eyes as Hester, but that woman had an innocent gaze and a laughing smile. Even sitting still for the interminable length of time necessary to form a photographic image, she’d projected high spirits and joie de vivre.

  That woman had not known bitter self-doubt, and Tye doubted he would have found her half so intriguing as he did the bewildered, passionate creature sitting beside him in the moonlight.

  And now was not the time to tell her she was still adorable. “I suppose a cute, adorable, adoring fiancée allows her prospective husband any liberties he demands. Was that Merriman’s reasoning?”

  She was silent so long worry started to flap around inside Tye’s head, creating all manner of awful scenarios.

  “Jasper isn’t built on quite as grand a scale as you, my lord, but he’s a good deal stronger than I suspected.”

  “The bastard forced you?” Though it made no difference whether the coercion was physical, or physical and emotional, or solely emotional. Hester’s choices had been taken from her, and with them, any confidence she might have had in her right to decide.

  “He says I forced him. I drove him to unbridled lust.”

  She ought to have snorted with disgust to relay such tripe; she ought to have laughed with incredulity that a grown man could posit such nonsense in the Queen’s English.

  But she still doubted. Tye heard it in her voice, felt it in her tense posture. Because of the violation of her person and her will by a man who ought to have died to keep her safe, Hester Daniels still doubted herself.

  “I’ll kill him for you, if that will help. I’ll castrate him first, with a dull, rusty knife. I’m Quinworth’s son. I won’t be held accountable. You know what it means to castrate a man?”

  Beneath his arm, her shoulders lifted and dropped, as if she’d found what was very nearly a sincere offer amusing. “A rusty knife, my lord?”

  “A dull, rusty knife. A dull, dirty rusty knife left to lie about on the floor of a stable for a few days first.”

  Against him, she eased at his exaggeration. “I lie awake at night, dwelling on such thoughts. I want to maim him, socially if not physically. I want to see him humiliated.”

  “So you jilted him. Good for you.”

  She scuffed her foot across the grass beneath them. “Jilting him wasn’t enough. I’m doomed to spinsterhood while he’s free to charm his way under some other young lady’s skirts and frog-march her up the church aisle as a result.”

  The lady lifted her face to the stars and sighed, not necessarily a sigh of defeat, but maybe of soul weariness. The conversation had been extraordinary in Tye’s experience, not one they could have undertaken in daylight. In the morning, he would resent these confidences from her because they made what he must do to appease his father all the more difficult.

  It wasn’t morning yet. The moon was rising full over the eastern horizon, and Hester Daniels was becoming a warm, comfortable weight against his side. He didn’t think before he acted, he merely indulged in a selfish impulse and scooped her onto his lap.

  She fit there nicely, a soft, tired, inconveniently delectable, fragrant bundle of woman to whom life had not been very kind. He knew how that felt, knew what it was like to see options disappearing with nothing to take their places.

  He desired her. More than he wanted to be her willing and enthusiastic sexual hobbyhorse, however, he wanted her laughter and confidence restored to her. “Go to sleep, Hester.”

  She made some little sound of contentment. This wasn’t how she’d intended for the evening to go between them, he was sure of that, and it sure as hell didn’t fit with his plans either.

  Still, for her to fall asleep in his arms was good in a way Tye couldn’t put into words. In the moment, holding her soothed and comforted him probably more even than it did her, regardless that this encounter would complicate their breakfast conversation considerably.

  After a time, after even the lonely fox had gone silent, Tye carried Hester into the house and up to her bedroom, laid her on her bed, kissed her forehead, covered her with a soft tartan blanket, and withdrew to his room.

  ***

  “The mail, your ladyship.”

  Deirdre, Marchioness of Quinworth, eyed the pile of correspondence with misgiving but took the salver from the maid and set it well to the side on the breakfast table.

  “Is Quinworth sending you more love letters?”

  Sir Neville Pevensy had waited to ask until the maid had departed. He was a handsome fellow who did not care that he was ten years Deirdre’s junior, any more than she cared that his affections would always be held first and foremost by his business partner, one Earnest Abingdon, Lord Rutherford.

  If Deirdre found it curious that Rutherford had three half-grown children, none of whom resembled their father, well, these things happened in the best of families.

  “Hale is a reliable correspondent.” Deirdre poured them both more tea, being of the belief that at breakfast, at least, one shouldn’t have to guard one’s tongue against gossiping servants.

  Or servants taking her husband’s coin in addition to her own.

  “You are very likely the only woman on earth who even knows the old boy’s given name. Cream, my dear?”

  “Please, and peel me an orange if you wouldn’t mind.”

  He gave her a slow smile, a man who enjoyed a woman comfortable giving orders. “With pleasure. What do you call a reliable correspondent?”

  “You are trying to pry confidences from me.”

  She poured a generous amount of cream into her tea, cream being the best part of the business, then drizzled a skein of honey into her cup as well. Neville watched her do this, and she liked that he watched her.

  And had to wonder if that didn’t make her just the smallest bit pathetic.

  “You’re restless,” Neville said, starting on an orange. “Your salons are part of what makes Edinburgh a summ
er destination, your kitchens are the envy of the North, and you’ve just spent a fortune in Paris on new dresses. And yet, you aren’t entirely enjoying yourself.”

  She wanted to ask him if he treated Rutherford to as careful a study as he made of her, but watched him make short work of the orange instead. A man with competent hands—her husband had competent hands—would always have a certain attractiveness.

  “Quinworth’s communications follow a pattern. He asks politely if I’d be interested in joining him at this or that house party, claiming that for appearances, we ought occasionally to be seen together.”

  The scent of oranges blossomed in the cheery breakfast parlor. “He has a point. Your daughters are not married, and cordially distant doesn’t mean complete strangers.” He passed her a section of orange and appropriated one for himself as well.

  “He has a point? Quinworth always has points and sub-points and supporting arguments for his sub-sub-points. When the girls have serious prospects, then I’ll swoop in and impersonate a mother hen. Do not hog that entire orange, Neville.”

  He passed over three more sections and gave her a sleepy, rascally look that did nothing to assuage the ache Deirdre felt for the company of her daughters—and her only surviving son.

  “So you tell your husband-his-lordship you’ve made other plans and he must endure one house party after another all on his own. You’re a cruel marchioness.”

  “I’m a marchioness whose Papa at least made sure she had her own money.” She paused to butter a scone, wondering if Papa would be pleased to see his little marchioness now. She was estranged from her husband and son, missing her daughters, and growing old in the company of mostly male acquaintances whose friendship did not abate a loneliness that became more bitter with each year.

  “Are you going to stare that butter into submission or put it on your scone, my dear?”

  She slapped a pat of butter onto the scone. “When he’s fed up with offering casual invitations, Hale resorts to seeking my business advice.” She took a bite of scone then passed the rest of it to Neville.

  “I ask for your business advice, and then Earnest becomes fascinated with my ingenuity when I quote you.”