How to Marry a Highlander (falcon club )

by Katharine Ashe

  The parlor door opened. “Miss, a gentleman is here calling on you,” the footman said with a twisted brow. “Should I turn him away?”

  “A gentleman? At this hour?”

  “Says he’s a lord, miss.”

  She ran to the window and peeked through the draperies. Her heart did a miserable little thud.

  “He should not come inside,” she said because she knew it to be true but also because she could not bear to face what was about to come. “I will go to the door. You can go ahead to bed now. I’ll bolt it after he leaves.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  The Earl of Eads looked as handsome in the candlelight slicing through the cracked open door as he did beneath the brilliant illumination of a ballroom chandelier.

  “You needn’t say a thing,” she said with heavy resignation. “I already know.”

  “Invite me in, woman,” he only said.

  “I really shouldn’t.”

  “Ye will, nivertheless.”

  Her throat was thick as she drew the door open. She clasped her hands before her, the pale pink lace reticule that matched her gown still dangling from her wrist, albeit limply; it had soaked up Effie’s punch.

  “All right,” she said dully. She’d never imagined defeat would come so early and in quite this manner. “Say what you have come to say.” She wanted to shout, “No!” She had feared this moment—the moment when he would tell her that the game had been amusing but now he was putting a halt to it.

  “I came to tell ye why I was late to the ball,” he said.

  She blinked. “You did?”

  He glanced toward the open parlor door. “What’re ye doing awake?”

  “I was . . . That is, I was . . .”

  “Writing a story?”

  Her heart tripped. “What?”

  “I read yer story th’ither day while ye were upstairs.” He stood solid and powerful and entirely unapologetic before her.

  Heat suffused her cheeks. “You should not have.”

  “It was a fine piece.”

  “You liked it?”

  “Aye. Verra much. Ye’ve got a talent, lass.”

  She could not withhold her smile. “Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it. So glad that I won’t even chastise you for calling me lass.”

  His beautiful blue eyes glimmered with candlelight. “I beg yer pardon.”

  “You are forgiven. Again.” She felt wonderfully warm and much too happy and he was far too handsome and she was thoroughly infatuated.

  “Mr. Abel Brown paid a call on me this eve.”

  “What?” She clutched her reticule between her fingers. “That is—who?”

  “The proprietor o’ Brown & Cheaver Booksellers.”

  “The bookseller?”

  Lord Eads took a step toward her. “Seems he wishes to court Abigail.”

  “He does?” She was short of breath.

  He halted so that mere inches separated them. “He said he niver imagined I’d allou such a thing, but he begged for her hand.”

  “Did—” Her heart was performing complicated pirouettes. “Did you give it?”

  “Aye, I gave it. Who woulda thought Abby’d be the first?” Affection played across his face. He truly cared for his sisters’ happiness.

  “Do you consider a bookseller a suitable match for your sister?”

  “He’s a guid man wi’ a steady income and a fine shop. If she’s got no trouble wi’ it, I dinna.”

  “You must be thrilled,” she babbled because his eyes had taken on a gleam of pure intentionality and now that the moment she’d been dreaming of for eighteen months was finally happening she had no idea what to do. “I must congratulate you on this happy news, my lord.”

  “’Tis I that should congratulate ye.”

  “Oh, no. I really didn’t have anything to do with it.” What was she saying?

  “They’d already met be—” He slipped his hand into her hair.

  “Oh!” she sighed. His touch didn’t feel like she had dreamed it. It felt infinitely better, strong and warm and confident, and as he bent his head she got dizzy on his scent of exotic spices. Her eyelids fluttered down. “I have never kissed a man who was wearing a skirt before,” she whispered.

  “’Tis no a skirt.”

  “Be that as it may . . .”

  “But ye have kissed a man?” he said over her lips.

  “Once.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  He was laughing at her again, even at this moment. Or rather, with her.

  She liked it. It made her heart feel light and deliciously free.

  “Muddy boots and a coat that smelled of shotgun smoke.”

  “Bounder.”

  “Definitely a bounder. He cornered me in the gunroom after he returned from shooting with my brothers. I thought I would give it a try, to see what all the fuss was about, you know,” she said airily.

  “What did ye discover?” He was drawing this out, to torture her or because he didn’t wish to do it. But he had come in the middle of the night to pay his debt on the wager. Perhaps he was as eager as she.

  “Discover?” she breathed.

  “Aboot the fuss?”

  “That it was overrated.”

  His thumb stroked the tender ridge of her cheek. “Then he wasna doing it right.”

  “Are you going to prove that now?”

  “Aye.”

  Her lips were sweet. Sweeter than he’d imagined. Sweeter than any woman’s lips he’d ever tasted. He caught her soft sigh in his mouth and stroked his thumb across her buttercream cheek dusted with pale cinnamon freckles. He tasted her again, this time longer, deeper, and her lips were soft responding, then eager.

  His cock stirred.

  He broke the contact. “Ye’ve anly been kissed once afore? By the bounder?”

  “Yes.” Her breaths were quick against his lips. “Only that once.”

  “Ye’ve got a knack for it.”

  “I’ve thought about it quite a lot,” she said shakily. “Was that all I get? That one?”

  “That wasna quite one, nou was it?”

  She shook her head.

  He took her lips again, this time more fully, and she responded more fully.

  He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and urged her lips apart.

  She opened to him upon an intoxicating sigh. He traced the edge of her satiny lower lip with the tip of his tongue and she gasped then sought him with her tongue. Her soft, pink, wet, agile tongue that lately he’d been imagining doing things no lady’s tongue should ever do—things to him. Her tongue that tasted like sugared lemons and tangled with his, eagerly drawing him inside her, urging him deeper with each kiss.

  He should halt this. He should have already halted this. He shouldn’t have come. He shouldn’t be in this house in the middle of the night with this woman’s mouth beneath his. But she’d sparkled in that ballroom like sunshine, and he’d wanted to take her into his arms and give her that dance.

  When his sisters embarrassed themselves she hadn’t blinked a lash but saw to the fiasco calmly and serenely.

  Now she was eager in his hands, seeking his caresses with her mouth, and hot inside. Good lord, she was feverishly hot. She’d be hot everywhere inside, and damp, and virginally tight. She was going to make some lucky man a fine wife indeed. Some very lucky man.

  Her hand slipped across his chest and pressed against his heart.

  Duncan choked and set her away from him.

  “Payment delivered,” he said gruffly.

  She blinked dazed eyes. Her soft pink lips were moist and so lush it hurt to look at them. It hurt to look at her. It hurt to know how it felt to have her hand on his chest.

  She nodded. She didn’t offer him a saucy quip or glimmering grin, and that was the worst of all.

  “Guid nicht.” He reached for the door, swung it open, and escaped into the darkness to which he was well accustomed.

  7

  Teresa went to the hotel
after breakfast. She found Elspeth poking out a tune on the pianoforte in the parlor, Moira embroidering, Abigail in her corner reading, and the elderly woman in black staring silently out the window.

  Abigail lifted her head. “Duncan’s gone to the shop wi’ Una.”

  “Where are Lily and Effie?”

  Elspeth plunked a minor chord. “Ma most foolish an heedless sister is suffering the consequences o’ her indulgence.”

  “Effie’s got a megrim,” Abigail explained.

  “I shouldn’t wonder at it.” Teresa went to her. “May I offer you congratulations?”

  Abigail’s cheeks grew ruddy. “Mr. Brown’s engaged to take me walking in the park this afternoon. Duncan told me what he intends to ask me.”

  She squeezed Abigail’s hand. “I am so happy for you.”

  “At least Abigail has a sense o’ propriety,” Elspeth said sourly.

  “Oh, Speth, don’t go naggin’ this early in the morn,” Effie said from the doorway with a hangdog face. “I canna bear it.” She turned a wary look on Teresa.

  Teresa went to her. “A cup of coffee, a small beer, a glass of water, and sleep sleep sleep.”

  Effie’s red eyes widened.

  “Without delay,” Teresa said. “But first tell me where to find your twin.”

  “She’s hiding,” Effie said with less defiance.

  “Where?”

  “In the kitchen. ’Tis where she always hides.”

  In the hotel’s expansive kitchen scents of roasting meat, simmering delicacies, and baking cake mingled with the clatter of plates and cups as the scullery maids cleaned up from breakfast. Steam rose over copper pots on the fires.

  Tucked in a corner by the pantry the youngest Eads lady was carefully measuring cups of flour into a sifter, cranking the flour into a bowl then pouring it back into the bin. Then she began the process all over again. Her hair was tucked beneath a kerchief and her cheeks were smudged with flour powder. Her eyes were lackluster.

  “Oh, guidday, Teresa,” she said dully.

  “It appears that you are busy with some industry. May I help?”

  “Oh, ye needn’t fret that I’ll make trouble here. I’ve niver spilt a grain o’ flour or nutmeg in ma life.”

  “Really? How wonderful. I am terribly clumsy in the kitchen.” Not a complete fabrication.

  “Sacre bleu!”

  In the doorway stood a compact man with black eyes, a neat moustache, and a fastidious pinstriped coat. “What are these womens in my kitchen?” he exclaimed with a Gallic gesture of contempt.

  “Oh!” Lily dropped the measuring cup into the bowl. “Oh,” she said more miserably. “I beg yer pardon, sir.” Her pretty eyes sought Teresa’s for a brief, anguished moment. Then she hurried past the Frenchman and out.

  He stared after her.

  Teresa went to him. “How to you do, monsieur. I am Miss Finch-Freeworth, a friend of several of the guests in this hotel.”

  “Marcel Le Coq, a votre service, mademoiselle.” He bowed and glanced out the door again.

  “What a well-appointed kitchen you have. I have heard raptures about your dinners.”

  “Mais, bien sur,” he dismissed the compliment and sniffed the air. “But what is this? I did not give permission for the cakes to be baked today.

  Agathe? Agathe!”

  A kitchen maid snapped to attention. “Monsieur, it was the other lady.

  She’d done it when I was serving breakfast to the guests upstairs and I thought as since they were so pretty I’d let them have their time in the oven.”

  Monsieur Le Coq narrowed his eyes and stalked to the oven. With exaggerated disdain he wrenched open the door, grabbed up a cloth, and pulled forth the tray of cakes. He dropped it onto the counter. With the tip of his forefinger and thumb he plucked up one, brought it to his nose to sniff, and nibbled it.

  His face relaxed. “C’est bon.” He took another bite. “C’est magnifique.” He cut Teresa a suspicious glance. She shrugged.

  He ignored her after that and she went to find Lily. But the downcast girl had escaped to the park with Sorcha.

  Finding Moira still in the parlor, Teresa settled into a cozy chat from which she emerged confident that of all the beaux with whom the beauty had danced the previous night she preferred the Philadelphian. Modest and reticent, she said nothing to reveal this, but Teresa discerned in her smile a special glow when she spoke of Mr. Baker-Frye. She applauded herself for a deed well done.

  Teresa ferried her new friends from London drawing room to drawing room, using her every connection (including silly Aunt Hortensia) to put them in the way of gentlemen and mothers of eligible bachelors. Occasionally gratifying but more often dispiriting, these adventures were followed by visits to the bookshop and the confectioner’s for ices to cheer everybody up.

  “Ye canna blame yerself, Teresa,” Una said. “’Tis the way o’ the world. No gentleman wants a leddy without a fine marriage portion lest she be a beauty.”

  “I beg to disagree, my lady,” Tobias said. “Some gentlemen value a fine temperament and intelligence in a bride over other considerations.”

  “Gentlemen like you, Toby,” Teresa said. “Won’t you invite some of your new friends from the War Office to join us on our next outing?”

  “Perhaps we should ask Lady Una if she would like that,” he said.

  “I should, thank ye.” She smiled.

  Optimistic plans aside, Teresa’s distress over her failure to find suitable husbands for the earl’s sisters grew daily. Surprisingly, she found some relief from that distress in the regular company of the earl himself. He escorted them to take in the sculptures at the museum and on another day to the Tower of London. He hired a box at the theater, and a drive or ride with him and one or two of his sisters in the park during the quiet morning hours became habitual.

  She was, however, not once alone in his company and he did not show any desire to see her alone. She longed to renew the embrace he had given her after Lady B’s ball and had every confidence that he wished quite the opposite. He could not have escaped that moment more swiftly, leaving her lips tingling and fantasies flying.

  At the end of the wager’s second sennight, during which the Eads ladies met a total of three new gentlemen—a pair of octogenarians at the museum and Mr. Smythe, Tobias’s new friend from the War Office—she managed to find Diantha at home one afternoon both awake and alert.

  “Please, Di, will you finally tell me about Lord Eads?”

  “He has done crimes,” her friend said firmly.

  “He wouldn’t be the only one in this room,” her husband muttered from behind his news journal. Wyn lowered the paper to cast his wife a slanted look. Diantha rolled her eyes at him.

  “Crimes?” Teresa said. “As in acts that a criminal commits?”

  Diantha nodded ominously.

  Teresa felt shaky. This she had not expected. “When?”

  “Years ago,” Wyn supplied.

  “T, I simply cannot like this program,” Diantha repeated for the hundredth time in the fortnight. “Why can’t you fix your interest on a gentleman with a less dangerous past? There are plenty to be found about town.”

  “Come now, my dear,” her husband said gently. “A man should always be given a second chance, shouldn’t he?”

  They shared a private, expressive look that left Teresa feeling peculiarly achy.

  “Eads is fortunate to have won your admiration, Teresa,” Wyn said. “I only hope he is worthy of it.”

  “Would you like it if we invited him and his sisters to dinner, T?” Diantha said hesitantly.

  Teresa bit her lip. “I thought neither of you liked him.”

  “We should invite them,” Wyn said.

  As Diantha and Wyn’s household was often filled with misfits and orphans anyway, the couple warmly welcomed to dinner Tobias, Abigail’s bookseller, and Mr. Baker-Frye along with the seven Eads ladies. Upon coming face to face, Mr. Yale and Lord Eads moved away from the group, e
ngaged in several minutes of private conversation during which both their jaws seemed very tight. Then Wyn laughed, the earl cracked a slow grin, and after that the party began in earnest.

  Diantha swiftly—sneakily—sat Teresa far away from Lord Eads at the table. Teresa tried not to watch him from a distance and failed. When she was in company with him it was astoundingly difficult not to stare at his lips and relive the effect they’d had upon hers, not to mention the effect they’d had on parts quite a bit deeper inside her. While she was staring, those deep parts would become remarkably hot and agitated, and her cheeks would grow warm. Then she would have to look away from him, which was a shame because she liked looking at him. She liked listening to him. She liked watching his cheek crease when he was amused and his eyes twinkle.

  It was all terribly inconvenient and enormously frustrating.

  After dinner the gentleman remained in the dining room at their port while in the drawing room Moira and Una played a duet on the pianoforte as Diantha poured tea. Teresa was pondering how the evening was decidedly not what her life would be like as the future Mrs. Waldon when the earl came to her side.

  “’Tis the halfway mark,” he said quietly. “Are ye ready to call it quits? Admit ye bit aff more than ye could chew?”

  She peeked at him from the corner of her eye and saw precisely what she wished to chew: his jaw. Then she would nibble his chin. Then she would move to his throat. The notion set off the familiar wild flutterings deep in her belly.

  “No,” she replied. “I have a fortnight yet.” Mr. Baker-Frye had taken tea with Moira, each morning for three days in a row she had encountered him in the park, and he had accepted the invitation to dinner tonight with enthusiasm. It could not be long before an alliance happened there. One accomplished, one in the making, and only five to go. In a fortnight. “I will do it. Mark my words.”

  “’Tis a struggle to mark them when I canna think o’ anything but the pretty lips that’ve spoken them.”

  Her mouth fell open. He made no pretense of looking elsewhere.

  “I canna get yer flavor outta ma head, Miss Teresa Finch-Freeworth.”

  “Then kiss me again,” she whispered. “Right now. There’s an empty parlor just on the other side of that door.”

  “Ye like to drive a man as mad as yerself, dinna ye?” His voice was smiling and ever so slightly husky.