But as quickly as the uncertainty flashed in his mind, it was extinguished by the grim fear he saw on her face. Either she was the most accomplished actress to ever grace Moraig’s dusty streets, or this man made her uneasy. There was no time to juggle doubt. He must rely on his instincts, muddled as they were.
And his instincts told him she was in danger.
He took up her hand and addressed Georgette’s cousin as he would a courtroom adversary, all bristling threat and bald facts. “If I ever hear you speak to my wife that way again, Mr. Burton, you will find yourself in the infirmary with more than a bandaged hand for your trouble.”
A bark of incredulous laughter escaped the man. “I’ve heard about you, MacKenzie. The whole town talks about you, behind your back. You are nothing but a wastrel second son, a disgrace to your father.”
James lost control of his feet then. He leaped forward, his body vibrating with suppressed violence. Georgette’s hand jerked in his, a warning not to hurt her cousin. That she thought him capable of it was telling. He was capable of it, had proved it in his past. He drew a deep breath and fought for the presence of mind to remain civil. He wanted to kill the man, of course. But he did not want Georgette to see that side of him.
His hesitance seemed to embolden Burton. The man tugged at his waistcoat, like a great, preening fowl who had escaped the butcher’s knife. “Perhaps I no longer want her as a wife. Perhaps there’s a better way.” His eyes narrowed. “Seems like the two of you may not be in agreement on this little matter of whether or not you are married. When I tell your family what you’ve done, they’ll pay to keep this quiet.”
The threat snapped the last of James’s restraint. He jerked away from Georgette’s grip and rounded on the man. Burton showed some meager slice of intelligence then, taking two steps back in rapid succession, his feet scraping on dirt and stone.
Faster than a rabbit, and before James could even lift a fist, the man was gone, dashing off into the Bealltainn crowd.
And James was left with his fists curled and a lifetime of frustration held barely in check.
GEORGETTE COULD SCARCELY believe the man who had just confronted them was the same man who had invited her here on holiday.
It was as if he had become someone else entirely.
“Pray do not listen to my cousin,” she told James wearily. “He . . . he wanted to marry me, and I told him I would not. It has made him come unhinged, I think.”
“Unhinged. That is one way to describe it.”
Georgette winced. Because of her, James had just been threatened. How had she thought Randolph was someone she could trust, someone who was looking out for her best interests? The isolation of the estate he had chosen for his summer residency seemed more ominous now. Had he plotted this, even as she had mourned the death of her first husband?
“Last night, you mentioned someone was trying to force you to marry against your will.” He regarded her as he might a courtroom dilemma, hard eyes and flexing fingers. “Is it safe to presume that person is your cousin, or must we sniff out the handful of other fiancés you have lurking about?”
She gave him a sharp glance. “Randolph Burton is not, and has never been my fiancé. I believe he meant to force the issue last night. I must have escaped, somehow.”
His expression softened. “I suppose that fits. You were frightened of someone last night. Do you have any idea why he would try to do such a thing?”
Georgette shook her head. No matter how she tried, she could not conjure that piece of the puzzle. Randolph’s motives escaped her. She could guess at a financial cause, perhaps. He did not strike her as harboring a mad passion for her, not when he spoke to her so.
“He has threatened to go to my family,” James said, his voice hard.
“We must explain our circumstances to them. There will be no need for—”
“ ’Tis not so simple, Georgette.” His words were issued quietly, but they fell with barbed points. “My father will believe him over me.”
She sucked in a breath. That anyone would believe a ranting near-lunatic like Randolph over someone as steady as this man before her seemed the height of absurdity. She reached out a hand and placed it on his arm. It felt like the trunk of a tree beneath her fingers, rough bark and solid strength. He had been about to tear her cousin’s limbs apart. A glad little hitch settled in her chest. In her entire life, she had never been treated as if she was someone worth fighting for.
This man did. And she did not even belong to him. Or at least, she would not for long.
“Randolph is nothing but a poor scholar, bent on securing his future through theft or force,” she told him. “Surely your family will see that and turn him away from an audience.”
“I doubt Mr. Burton will present anything close to such an incoherent argument when he speaks with my father,” James responded. “You said he was a scholar. Of which sort?”
“Botany. Plants and such. I should have known he wasn’t stable from the moment I arrived.” She could pinch herself now, for being so naïve and staying there without a female escort. “He walks about brandishing his pruning shears as if they were a weapon, muttering Latin names to himself.”
James released a long, drawn-out breath. “That is the very sort of thing that may gain your cousin an audience.” He looked away from her, toward the bonfire. “Instability, after all, is the mark of an excellent scholar.”
Georgette followed his gaze. She could see the glow of the town fire as it gained strength, a block or so away. A shower of sparks rose toward the evening sun like a phoenix, and she waited for him to be ready, to explain the jumble of confused thoughts in her head.
“My father was once a scholar, of early Roman culture.” James shifted beside her, one foot to another. “He studied at Edinburgh as a young man, and we lived near Moraig, excavating Caledonian artifacts for the British Museum.”
“Is your father unstable?” Georgette asked in confusion.
He offered her a sad smile. “No, my father was not an excellent scholar. Merely a middling one, but it made him happy, and it provided for our family. The title was not supposed to fall to him, it came only through a quirk of fate. Happened when I was eighteen or so. The moment he became earl, my father’s expectations for me changed, and I have given him nothing but disappointment.” He shook his head. “He has paid to silence my naysayers on more than one occasion. He will presume this is yet another thing he must fix.”
Georgette stewed over that a moment. She recalled the past tragedy Elsie had hinted at this afternoon. “Was this . . . is this about the rector’s daughter?”
His face twisted in surprise. “How do you know about that?” His hand lifted. “Never mind. The people in this town have a fearsome memory.”
She slid her hand down his newly tensed arm, realizing she had fallen into James’s own pattern of touching. It seemed natural, somehow. “Elsie mentioned something about it, that you claimed her child was yours.”
He laughed, the sound humorless. “I told her father it was mine, at any rate. She was terrified of the man, and all too willing to let me shoulder the blame. I was twenty-one, fresh out of Cambridge. I was head over heels for her, thinking I had a chance to win her heart by proving myself dependable. Most likely the child was Cameron’s.”
“Who is Cameron?” she asked, confused.
“David Cameron. The magistrate. Or at least he is the magistrate now. Then he was my friend.”
Anger rushed in. For James, for the nameless, faceless girl. “But . . . why did he not step up? Why did he let you do such a thing?”
“His father had bought him a commission in the army, and he’d been sent down to Brighton for training. She took her own life, before any sense came of it all. Before Cameron could be notified, before I could even tell my own family what I had done, or tried to do. I learned later the rector had stormed into my fa
ther’s study demanding money to take her away and pretend it had never happened. My father paid him off, without even speaking to me first.” His voice hitched around this last bit of it. “And . . . she took her own life because she thought I held no more worth for her than that.”
Georgette sat, stunned to silence as she realized James blamed himself for the girl’s death. She watched his fists clench and then unfurl, slowly, as if invisible fingers were straightening them. But apparently, he was not yet through.
“So I confronted her father, after the funeral. Broke his jaw. Damned near broke his neck.” He swallowed. “My father bailed me out, this time from the gaol. He paid the rector’s medical expenses and no small amount of restitution. And never, not once, did he ask for my side of the story. It is one of the reasons I left to study law. I had been tried and convicted in the eyes of my father and the town, without ever setting foot in a proper courtroom.”
“But why would the town think badly of you?” Georgette asked, heartsick to hear his halting explanation. “You were trying to help her.”
“It was mostly because I let my fists get away from me. I hit the rector, Georgette, a man they feared and respected. But he is no man of God, at least not a God I would wish to know. I could see why his daughter might have taken her own life, rather than live, pregnant and unwed, in the shadow of a tyrant like that.”
The pain in his voice came nigh onto splintering her. She wanted to soothe it, erase the mistakes of his past that sounded as if they might not have been mistakes at all.
She recalled Elsie’s words. “Sometimes,” she told him, “a body needs to use their fists. That sounds like one of those times to me.”
“I am not convinced there is ever a right time,” he muttered, looking at his feet.
Georgette pressed her lips tightly together. It was not her place to criticize, but she could not be silent on this. “If someone had fought for me like that,” she told him, “or had ever loved me enough to make the sacrifice you offered this girl, you can rest assured I would never do something so selfish as end my life, or take that of my unborn child’s.”
His head jerked up, widened eyes meeting her own. She had shocked him. Good. She would shock him yet again.
She stepped closer, rose to the tips of her toes. Looped her hands around his neck and pulled him down to meet her lips. She closed her eyes and kissed him, no matter that she had just told him she would not, no matter that they were on a public street, with the smell of wood smoke and the sounds of Bealltainn swirling around them.
He groaned into her mouth and wrapped his arms around her in an exhilarating show of strength. Their first kiss, or at least the first she could remember, had been negotiated around an afternoon of flirtatious banter that had her blood humming. But this kiss, this was something different.
He had just stripped his conscience bare and laid his troubles at her feet. He was vulnerable, achingly so.
And she wanted to dive in and not come up for air.
He accepted her invitation—nay, her demand—and stroked the inside of her mouth in a rhythm that was pure promise. His beard scraped against her cheeks, a rough, happy hurt that made her wonder what his face would feel like rubbed on other, more susceptible parts of her body. She clung to him, wanting more of this kiss, wanting more of him. With his deft, knowing mouth, he broke apart the resistance she held inside her, piece by piece. He left her wondering why she had never considered that a marriage could be more than the sum of her past experiences.
He pulled back first, breathing hard, his eyes painfully unreadable. Did he find her bold? Or merely imprudent, after her earlier refusal of just such a gesture?
Someone catcalled to them, “Kiss her again, MacKenzie!” A series of hollered agreements and whistles followed.
Georgette looked around in a daze, realized that the Bealltainn crowd had broken away from the bonfire and spread further through town. Around them were other couples, many embracing. Her heart fell two feet. It was still bright daylight, and someone had seen them, recognized them. Why had she not been more circumspect?
His knowing voice tickled her ear. “Relax those stern shoulders,” he whispered. “Kissing is a bit of the Bealltainn tradition. If we do not call further attention to ourselves, no one will think anything of it.”
Heart still pounding, she glanced toward his horse, waiting placidly beside them. The animal appeared far less fazed by the Bealltainn madness than she. It was only six o’clock or so, and the celebration promised to go long into the night.
Something James had told her earlier came back then. The town closed to all but foot traffic after the bonfire started. That meant Randolph would have to walk some ways to reach the old gray mare he had ridden into town. And that meant they had a window of opportunity here.
“Can your horse run any better than it walks?” she asked, hope elbowing its way through the embarrassment that still constricted her chest in the aftermath of their kiss.
James’s brows pulled down in confusion. “Why?”
“We have a chance to warn your father about my cousin’s threats,” she told him. “Randolph will need to negotiate the crowd to find his horse, and you already have yours.”
He tensed. “I’ve not spoken to my father in eleven years,” he told her. “He’ll not be open to hearing from me now.”
Georgette stepped toward the horse, more sure than ever of this course. “Eleven years ago, your father acted without all the information he needed to make a proper decision. Would you force him to do so again?” She turned away from him and moved into place, lifting her hands onto the saddle. “Give me a leg up,” she commanded.
“You would come with me?” He sounded incredulous.
Georgette rolled her eyes skyward. For a Cambridge-educated solicitor, he could be incredibly dense. “I’m not staying here alone, navigating my way through Bealltainn. I want to help you. And perhaps your father will be more apt to listen if I can explain my history with Randolph, and how this all came to pass.”
She held her breath, facing the saddle, waiting to see what he would do. His hands skimmed her ankle, the grip tighter as he came to some sort of decision. She felt the sheer strength of him as he boosted her high into the air. She landed awkwardly, but quickly scooted forward, making a space for him to swing up behind her. She looked down at him, waiting for him to follow.
He looked perplexed. Had no one ever helped the man before? “And I want to come with you,” she told him. “There is that.”
His face settled into grim acceptance. He put his foot in the stirrup and swung up behind her and then he was there, a solid wall of warmth pressed against her back. She closed her eyes and bit her tongue to keep from saying the rest. Though God knows I may regret it tomorrow.
Chapter 22
A HALF HOUR OF balancing Georgette on his lap convinced James he was bound for hell.
Or, indeed, that he had already arrived.
He had set Caesar to a canter as soon as they broke free from Moraig’s busy streets, the need to reach his family before Burton a shrill demand. While the gait was faster and more comfortable than the horse’s body-jarring trot, it had the misfortune of rocking her against him in a very vulnerable place. He had no doubt she could feel every inch of his interest, pressing through her skirts. To become aroused on the back of a horse—particularly one who was being pushed at such a mad pace—was no easy process.
Apparently, it was a skill he could master.
By the time he reined in the exhausted, froth-flecked stallion in front of Kilmartie Castle, his member was hard with want and his knees were weak with longing.
He dismounted and took a necessary second to adjust the front of his coat over the evidence of his frustrating trip. Distance from this woman could only help matters. But when he lifted Georgette down, he could not prevent his eyes from settling on the stockings that spilled from
beneath her rucked-up skirts, nor hurry his fingers that wanted to linger at her waist. He had held this woman in his arms last night. After such a ride, and such a day, he wanted only to do it again. The kiss she had offered outside the blacksmith’s shop, for no apparent reason other than comfort, had proven the most emotionally jarring experience of his life.
Then again, he was on the cusp of facing his father, after eleven years of sullen silence. “Emotionally jarring” was about to be redefined.
He dropped his hands and forced himself to step away from her. A groom emerged from whatever mysterious place grooms lurked when they did not have a horse in hand, and James handed the sweat-soaked stallion over to him. “Walk him for at least ten minutes, please. He’s carried two riders from town and is winded.”
The groom nodded. “Of course, sir.”
“But do not unsaddle him,” James warned. “We won’t be staying long.”
The groom set off with Caesar, and he watched them go with no small amount of misgiving. No doubt the animal would emerge from the Kilmartie stables better groomed and better mannered than going in. His father would demand nothing less.
James lifted his eyes toward the stone turrets lining each wing of the manor. “Kilmartie Castle,” he told Georgette, splaying a reluctant hand in the direction of the front door. The place had been built four centuries ago, but new wings had been added in the last fifty years, giving the place an undecided appearance, as if it could not quite determine what it wanted to be. The house, if you could even call a draughty old castle that, sat on a high bluff overlooking the loch, a rough stone sentinel that shouted out for attention.
James had ignored it successfully for over a decade.
His chest contracted painfully. He was about to march inside now and demand an audience with the very man who had driven him away. He consulted his pocket watch, stalling the inevitable.
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