How to Seduce a Scot

by Christy English

  “How lovely,” Catherine said. “Whose house is this?”

  “For this night, it’s ours,” Alex answered.

  “You can procure a house and a priest and a vicar, all at a moment’s notice?”

  “Give me a day, and I’ll furnish you with a new gown and a coach and four as well.”

  Catherine laughed, as she knew he had meant her to, and then lost her breath as he swung her down from Zeus’s back. He drew her close, so that she slid down the length of his hard body. He kept her against him, so that her toes barely touched the ground. He did not kiss her, but leaned close, taking in her scent from her hair, along her temple, down to her throat.

  “You still smell of jasmine,” he said. “I would never know that you were with that Englishman.”

  “I wasn’t with him,” she corrected. “I was riding in a carriage with him.”

  “On your way to marry him, if I recall.”

  Catherine frowned at him and watched as he relented in front of her.

  “I am sorry, angel. I promise you, I will not bring him up again.”

  “It is a new day,” she said. “We are married now.”

  His smile shifted, and his eyes took on a light of reverence, the same light they had held in the stone chapel as they spoke their vows. “It is a new world,” he answered.

  He kissed her, and his lips tasted of sunlight and coffee. She drank him in, grateful to God that she was in his arms, that she would be in his arms for the rest of her life. She shifted against him, her body growing hungry as it had the night before. She wondered how soon they might go to bed and whether decent married people ever made love in the sunshine of a borrowed garden.

  She knew the answer to that, but a girl could dream.

  Her dreams were shattered by the rumble of her stomach.

  Alex pulled back from kissing her and looked down at her, one eyebrow raised. “When was the last time you ate, angel?”

  “I drank that cider you gave me last night,” she said. “I didn’t each much dinner before the fire. I was too worried about you, and what I was going to do.”

  “Well,” he said. “Let’s see if Father Patrick has stocked the larder.”

  She did not let him go when he made a move to leave her. She clung to him like a limpet, pressing herself hard against the burgeoning manhood she could feel rising against her stomach.

  “Alex,” she said, remembering the night before with sudden vivid clarity, the way his lips had felt on her, the way his body had felt inside her. The memories came back to her like a flash tide, leaving her gasping. “I don’t want food. I want you.”

  He kissed her hard, wrapping his arms around her and enfolding her in an embrace that felt unbreakable. She shivered with joy and need together, wriggling against him in a futile effort to get closer. He groaned and kissed her again before he came up for air.

  “Mrs. Waters, I will feed you before I have you again.”

  “Why?” she asked plaintively, her stomach rumbling a second time.

  “My first duty is to see you cared for, and that’s what I’ll do.”

  She smiled up at him through her lashes, the way she’d seen her mother smile at her father, long ago. He seemed to falter for an instant, but then he laughed. “You won’t get around me on this with your feminine wiles, you little minx.”

  But his hand lingered on her derriere in a manner that said he longed for her body as much as she longed for his. She took that as her due, and strolled off ahead of him to investigate the house where they would spend their wedding night.

  The house was small, but clean. The parlor stood open to the garden in the back of the house, and the kitchen was well stocked. She did not go upstairs, but began to rummage in the pantry, finding a nice wheel of Cambray cheese and a bottle of red wine from France. A fresh loaf of bread was swathed in towels, and no mice had eaten at it yet, so she declared it sound.

  There was even a crock of butter tucked between cool stones by the pantry door, so she thanked her stars and got to work slicing and buttering. Alex came in with a jar of butter pickles, which he had found who knew where. He saw her preparing their meal, crossed the small room, and took her bread knife from her.

  “My love, I said I would feed you.”

  “And so you have. Look at all this bounty.” Catherine beamed up at him, and relinquished the knife to his grasp.

  “Since our meeting in the coach, you must understand why I want the knife in my own hand.”

  She laughed out loud at that. She had never thought to have such a joy-filled wedding night. She said another prayer of thanksgiving even as she baited him. “I did not know it was you, Alex. Mary Elizabeth warned me of highway robbers, and I was prepared.”

  “You threw at the wrong door, Catherine.”

  “That was only my first try.”

  It was his turn to laugh as he sliced delicate hunks of cheese and arrayed them with pickles on a plate. He set the thick slices of fresh bread in a basket on the table and started buttering the ones she’d missed.

  “I will prepare your meal this night, wife. You’ve had enough excitement for one day. Take your ease there, and let your husband work for you.”

  Catherine laughed, for she did not have to be told twice. “I think I can stand a bit more excitement, Alex.”

  He quirked a brow at her, and the heat in his eyes made her want to push the food out of the way and crawl across the table to him. As it was, he came around to her side and sat with her on the simple wooden bench. He sat close and offered her a bite of white bread with sweet butter on it, which he fed to her from his own hand.

  “This is crude fare, wife, but I will make it up to you. I’ll do better tomorrow.”

  “It’s a feast fit for a queen,” Catherine answered him. “And I would not wish myself anywhere but here.”

  Catherine had hoped to explore the upstairs with him, but after they had wrapped up the remains of their meal, Alex led her outside to take in the last of the sunset, and a stroll down to the river. It was not yet late, and she was not even slightly tired. Her body hummed with energy at his nearness until the very waiting seemed to soothe her senses as well as enflame them. Alex was in a talking mood, telling her of his home in Glenderrin. She liked to hear him talk, so they walked down by the river and looked at the irises that bloomed in beds of green close by the willow trees.

  “The Thames is beautiful here,” Catherine said, her hand clasped firm in his great one.

  He quirked a brow at her, and she caught the light of humor in his eyes. “I like it a sight better than at Richmond.”

  “Did I thank you for saving Margaret?” she asked. “Let me thank you now.”

  She rose on the tips of her toes, and he leaned down to meet her. She kissed his lips, exploring the contours and the taste of him, the taste of bread and butter and spiced pickles with cheese. And the scent of him—his favorite soap and his musky smell of man and horse. She lost the thread of her intent, which was only to tease him, and lost herself along with it. She found herself in his arms on the damp ground, his hands beneath her skirt and her hair falling from its pins behind her.

  “I love you, Catherine. I will not have you for the first time as my wife in the damp grass of a borrowed lawn.”

  “Will we do this on our own lawn then one day?” she asked him coyly.

  He laughed, as she had meant him to. “It’s too cold to take our ease by the burn near Castle Glenderrin. But if we are in Devon in summer, I will consider it. Have they a river there?”

  “Yes, the river Culm. I will show it to you, if you promise to teach me how to fish in your burn.”

  He pressed his lips to her temple. “You need not learn to fish for me, angel. I love you as you are.”

  “I’ll try it once. Mary Elizabeth sets her heart by it,” Catherine answered, snuggling close agains
t him, taking deep draughts of his scent as if she might never have him by her again. But she would have him by her every day of her life. She had the ring and the paperwork to prove it.

  They did not spend much more time talking about fishing or family. He helped her up from the grass, and she noticed in the failing light that her borrowed pink gown now had grass stains on it. She laughed a little. “I’ll have to buy Mary Elizabeth a new dress.”

  “We can buy her a dozen.”

  Alex did not linger, but took her hand and led her back to the house as dusk was rising from the riverbank, making all the world turn as indigo as the sky where the first stars of the night had already come out.

  Forty-one

  Alex led her by the hand all the way up the stairs. He stopped in the kitchen and poured a glass of red wine. She did not protest that he poured only one, for she had already had one glass, and it had made her feel light-headed. Wicked French wine was known to do that.

  He brought her into a little room that was almost completely filled with a great four-poster bed. The bed curtains were drawn back, as were the lace curtains on the windows, so that as Catherine stood there in the light of one glowing lamp, she could see the moon rising over the river below. She did not think she had ever seen anything so beautiful.

  Alex brought her fingers to his lips, and kissed them. “Wife, I think I need to see you naked now. Is that shocking?”

  Giddy laughter bubbled up inside her and spilled out, as champagne overflowed a fluted glass. She leaned up and kissed his lips, a brief, glancing butterfly of a kiss. She stepped back deftly out of his reach before he could draw her close and under him.

  “Very shocking, husband. And I have a shocking confession to make as well.”

  “What confession might that be, wife?”

  Alex’s voice was even, but she could see the banked heat rising in his eyes. She shivered as she stood under his gaze and started undressing, freeing her breasts from the modest gown Mary Elizabeth had lent her. His eyes glazed over as her breasts peeked out at him, their nipples hard, from beneath the filmy lawn of her shift. Her skirt fell next, and she felt the first hint of delicious power.

  She stepped out of her gown, where it lay on the floor at her feet, and stood before him in only her shift and stays. The stays fell away next beneath her hands, and he moved toward her, forgetting her confession, the light in his eyes brighter, and full of desire. She took one more step back, and eluded him.

  “My confession, husband, is that I like those black gloves you always wear. You were wearing them the night I first met you, if I recall.”

  “My gloves?” Alex’s eyes clouded over for a moment in confusion. “I’m happy you like them, wife, but what has that to do with us, here and now, on our wedding night?”

  “I want you to wear them,” she said. “I want to feel those gloves against my naked flesh, with nothing else between you and me but that black leather.”

  He swallowed hard, and closed his eyes as if to ward off her words. But when he turned and left her without another word, she knew he was not repulsed. She listened as he stumbled in the dark downstairs, looking for those gloves.

  “You left them on the kitchen table,” she called to him down the narrow staircase. “Between the crock of butter and the bread knife.”

  She listened for a moment longer as he found them in the half dark below. “Don’t take off another stitch of clothes,” he called up the stairs. “Not until I get there.”

  “I make no promises,” she said, though she did not move to take off any more of her under things. As she listened, she could hear Alex moving stealthily along the hall downstairs, and his boots as they sounded on the wooden staircase.

  He burst into the room, only to find her where she was, without her having moved a muscle. This show of obedience seemed to please him, in spite of his breathlessness from rummaging downstairs. He had his leather gloves clutched in one fist, and the sight of them made her lose her breath.

  She did not relinquish control to him, as she had the night before. She was enjoying herself far too much for that.

  Her voice sounded rough in her own ears, deeper than it ever was, and slightly more musical, if the music were played by a bassoon. “Husband,” she said, “I fear you are wearing far too many clothes.”

  He tossed the gloves down on the bed. “Indeed, wife.” He started to strip, but she stopped him as he tossed his waistcoat aside. She moved close to him, and slipped her hand over his broad chest, taking pleasure in the heat and the muscled firmness of it beneath her hand, the thin lawn of his shirt the only thing between them. She had been so overwhelmed the night before that she had not thought to touch him. But she was a married woman now, and less overwhelmed—so far, at least. She reached down and drew his shirt from his breeches.

  “Alex, let me help.”

  She slid her hands beneath his shirt, drawing it up to his shoulders. She was too short to pull it over his head, so he did that bit for her, tossing the shirt away onto the borrowed floor.

  His hair curled in tight furls that surrounded his nipples. His chest hair was as dark as the hair on his head, but curly and springy. She moved close and rubbed first her hand over it, then her cheek. He moaned when she leaned up and suckled him, his flat, taut nipple rising a little to meet her questing tongue.

  “Catherine,” he murmured, his usually precise English crumbling into the lovely brogue she had heard in his voice when he’d taken her to bed the night before. That was true music in her ears, for she knew that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

  She did not take pity on him, but ran her hand down his flat abdomen to his breeches, where she began to work at the placket. The first two buttons came undone easily, but his manhood was swelling beneath her hand and she could not get the other two buttons free. She simply began to move her hand over him with the wool of his breeches between them. He stopped her then, cupping her hand in his great one and drawing it up to his mouth, where he planted a kiss in her palm that made her shiver.

  “Catherine,” he said, “I’ll finish stripping for you now.”

  She smiled at him, pleased that he was so amenable to her suggestion, but when she saw the hot light of desire in his eyes, she shivered. His tongue flicked out and caressed her palm. She remembered what his tongue had done to her body the night before, when he had kissed her between her thighs, and she wondered if he would do that to her again. She had asked for the gloves. Maybe she could ask for that, too.

  She felt daring and brave as she stood in front of him in her thin, almost transparent chemise. She also felt completely protected and cherished. She had found a safe harbor in the world for the first time since her father had died, perhaps for the first time ever, and she was giddy with the joyous feeling of freedom it gave her. She might do anything, and Alex would love and care for her anyway.

  It was a heady thought.

  His breeches hit the wooden floor then, and his smallclothes followed, along with his boots and stockings. Catherine found herself staring at his manhood, something that looked altogether too large to fit into her tiny sheath. Perhaps it shrank inside her. Or perhaps her sheath was larger than she thought.

  She pondered this question, running her fingers gently over the head of him. He groaned out loud as her fingertips fondled him, and she stopped moving, checking his eyes. His face was a mask of what looked like pain.

  “Does it hurt you when I do that?” she asked, worried for the first time that night.

  “No.” His voice sounded a bit like broken glass being driven over by a slow coach. He swallowed hard, and she touched him again, making him moan. “It is overwhelming pleasure, angel, that threatens to undo me.”

  She took her hand away, and smiled up at him. “We can’t have that,” she said. She turned to find his gloves where they rested on the bed. She looked at him coyly over her shoulder as she ben
t down to pick them up. She felt the short hem of her chemise rise across her derriere and felt as well as saw his eyes follow the curve of her behind. She even wiggled it a little, to tempt him, and he laughed.

  “Minx, you are going to kill me. Can I touch you now?”

  “Not just yet,” she said. As soon as he touched her, she would lose all reason. She was enjoying the game they played, though she saw from the growing heat in his eyes and the way his hands had started to shake that she did not have much time left. The thought made her shiver almost as much as the sight of his beautiful naked body.

  “You look like a statue from one of my father’s books,” she said, admiring him even as she slipped the gloves over his hands. “Not the Roman ones but the Greeks.”

  “I don’t have much truck with the Greeks, angel.”

  He smiled to himself, as at a jest, as he helped her in her progress. Alex flexed his fingers into the taut gloves, drawing them on for her with a manly, practiced grace that made her tongue suddenly cling to the roof of her mouth. She watched his one gloved hand for a long moment, her mind distracted, along with her body. A great well of heat and want was rising inside her, and she had no idea what to do with it.

  Thankfully, he did.

  He took the second glove from her nerveless fingers and drew it on, never once taking his eyes from hers. The power inherent in his form, the latent potency of his gaze, made her forget language altogether. She simply stood and watched him, his beauty all but overwhelming her. And then he smiled his wry smile, and he was Alex again.

  “I’m the only one naked, my beloved. I don’t think that’s at all fair. Do you?”

  She still could not speak, so she shook her head. He stepped close to her then, so close that his body was like a raging furnace that she wanted to press herself against, a heat she wanted to warm herself on for the rest of her life.