When a Scot Loves a Lady fc-1

by Katharine Ashe

  But by God she was flawless. He spread his hand around her porcelain cheek and jaw and with his thumb and forefinger urged her lips wider. She responded like clay to a master’s touch, and he delved deep within. He stroked, encompassed in wet heat, and a gentle moan escaped the back of her throat.

  Her hands clutched his shirt.

  He kissed her, drawing her lower lip between his teeth and caressing it with his tongue, then thrusting soft and deep again, and his palm slipped down the silken column of her neck, seeking, his blood running fast and hot. He had to touch her. Just once. Feel the beauty of her breasts wrapped in fine, snug wool he’d been struggling not to stare at for a day that seemed like an eternity. This was a mistake. He should peel her off him and tell her in no uncertain terms that they must not do this again.

  He could not. But perhaps if he went too far, she would.

  He covered her breast with his hand. She sucked in breath, stiffening. Then she sank into his touch, filling his palm with voluptuous beauty and his head with blaring trumpets warning that this was a grave error in judgment and he should run while he could.

  “Lass—” She attached her mouth to his, a sweet perfection of eager feminine heat. With his hand he gently urged her face away while his other fully cupped her sublime womanly body, her exquisite breast. By God, he simply could not take his hand off her.

  Her lashes lifted, sooty layers of demure temptation revealing sky-gray pools swimming with need. Lips ripe and glittering parted, her breaths staggered. Leam swallowed with difficulty, his throat constricted, and gazed into heaven and hell at once. He knew that place of matched ecstasy and misery well. Too well in his memory, as though it were yesterday.

  She reached up, spread her hand over his, and, securing his hold on her breast, moaned softly as her lashes dipped.

  To the devil with memories.

  He pressed her to the wall amid cloaks and coats and kissed her hard. Harder until memory fled with her submission to everything—to his hands on her breasts, his tongue along the sweet curve of her throat and in her mouth, his knee pushing hers apart. If Kitty Savege wanted him, who was the fool Scot to deny such a woman?

  Chapter 8

  Kitty wanted to crawl up him, to climb right inside him. By the way he was kissing her it seemed as though he wanted that too. His hands, large and strong, scooped up her back, his fingertips pressing in, shaping around her shoulder blades to hold her high and tight to his chest. But she wanted them back on her breasts. It made her weak to be held so, weak with an aching so intense she could barely breathe.

  She could not seem to control herself. Control had been her weapon, her costume, her masquerade for years. Now his touch was dissolving her into sheer helplessness. His mouth, his hands—she could not get enough. The more he kissed her, touched her so intimately, the more she ached for him.

  It began to alarm her.

  She gripped her hands in his hair and tore her lips from beneath his.

  “I—”

  “Goddamn, wumman. Dae ye wish tae strip ma skull?” But his deep voice laughed and his gaze covered her face, a look of ravenous wonder upon it. He was beyond handsome, the hollow plane of cheek and the dark eyes that seemed to hold unspoken words.

  “Not your skull.”

  Good heavens, she’d said it aloud.

  He breathed hard, his hands trapping her to his chest, forcing her to feel him so completely with every bit of her body, most especially and thrillingly that part of him against her belly. His mouth hovered above hers, a temptation to do wicked deeds now and thoroughly. She had never felt this way, so desperate and so needy. Never.

  He bent and captured her lips somewhat roughly and she clung to him. His kissed the corners of her mouth, then her jaw.

  She struggled for speech, her voice barely audible. “This is happening too fast.”

  “Aye.”

  He did not ask her what she meant. He knew. She knew. She stretched her neck to give him leave to continue touching her for as long as he wished. Forever, please dear God . She was trembling and aching and she craved him.

  Perhaps if she argued, he would end it as he had the night before, despite her repeated advances.

  Her body did not know her mind, but her words might still be of some use.

  “This is because you held me yesterday morning on the stoop after I slipped. You should not have.”

  His mouth was open and hungry on her throat, casting perfect shivers into her breasts and lower.

  “It wadna cut ony ice.”

  She gripped his neck, struggling to drag him closer, desperate for more of this touching, kissing, total insanity. “What does that mean?”

  “A near well kissed ye than.”

  “Yesterday morning? But—” He cut off her words with his mouth. They could not be closer, her body flattened between his and the wall, her fingers in his thick, silky hair. He caressed her everywhere, as though he must touch every part of her. Her gown rose to her neck, practical for winter travel and wretchedly impractical for being embraced by a man in this manner. But no man had ever before kissed her like this and she hadn’t known she would encounter Leam Blackwood in a Shropshire inn during a snowstorm, thus she had planned her wardrobe poorly.

  “You near well kissed me,” she repeated upon a sigh.

  “A near well called oot that blast cur Poole three years aby for treating ye like a doxy.” His voice came thickly against her neck, his hands on her breasts.

  Kitty choked. “Oh, my God.” She groaned, feeling him with her hands, the tight peaks of her breasts he caressed, her thighs around his. She did not believe it. “Don’t say it. It is not true.”

  “Ye ken ’tis true.”

  “No,” she whispered, because it could not be true. Such things did not happen. She had imagined it.

  He had. Men and women did not speak to each other without words. Not such momentous things.

  Certainly not a man and a woman so unalike in all matters of import. Except this. This was madness and every part of her wanted him to keep touching her and making her need with glorious abandon.

  He cinched his hands beneath her arms and pressed the hard muscle of his thigh upward between her legs. She moaned softly, delirium skimming through her body.

  He spoke above her lips. “Ye shoudna been wi’ him.”

  “I should not have.” But to find sufficient evidence to damn Lambert, she had remained in his company. Until that night when this man had silently given her courage to break free. The night he remembered as she did?

  Her throat thickened. “With whom should I have been instead?”

  His big hands slipped down her waist to surround her hips, and he shifted her fully onto his thigh.

  “Dear heaven.” She scrabbled for air, sensation sweet and forbidden drawing tightly through her.

  Her skirts tangled about his legs, her fingers gripping his shoulders as he pleasured her so easily. He smoothed a palm upward to cup her breast. With thumb and fingers he teased the taut peak through layers of clothing, his breathing unsteady. Kitty wanted his hands beneath the fabric. She rocked against him, the ache building in her unendurable, and she had never felt so close to ecstasy. She had never felt like this at all, so encouraged, so touched.

  A footfall sounded nearby. Somehow in the haze of pleasure she heard it. So too did the earl, apparently. He released her and without a moment’s pause grabbed a cloak, then grasped her shoulder and pivoted her to face the door. She nearly toppled over. The cloak came over her back, his hands steadying around her arms, and he spoke quick and quiet at her ear.

  “Begging yer pardon, lass. A’ve nae answer for ye.”

  “My lord,” the innkeeper said jovially behind her. “And my lady too. Stepping out for a breath of air? It’s a fine day after such a storm.”

  Kitty felt as though she’d been dashed with ice water. She fumbled with the clasp.

  “Yes, Mr. Milch. But I don’t suppose I shall get very far, shall I?” Just as with the
Earl of Blackwood. Her cheeks burned.

  “Watch your step, ma’am. And thanks to you, my lord, for repairing the boards on that roof. Sorry I was that you nearly saw much worse there.”

  “’Twas but a wee fix.” He had moved away. Kitty was afraid to look. She hated being afraid, and she hated this lack of control. Most of all she hated not understanding what was happening to her.

  Good Lord, she had embraced him quite scandalously in full view of anyone who might walk by. She wasn’t thinking.

  She never did not think. More importantly, if she had kissed him in a more private location he might still be kissing her now.

  She yanked her hood up to hide her face, swung around, and brushed past the innkeeper and the earl. She could not return to the kitchen. Perhaps the outdoors would offer her sanity she could not find within.

  Leam pulled his coat off the hook and shoved his arms into it. With a quick nod to the innkeeper he pushed through the rear door. He would slog through the snow to the pub, find Yale, and dig a path all the way to Liverpool if need be.

  The cold hit his face like a woman’s slap. The Welshman and the carpenter had made an inelegant trail through the snow. Leam followed, slipping and stumbling and barely noticing his progress.

  She’d said it was happening too fast, and Leam couldn’t agree more. Nothing good could come of putting his hands all over Kitty Savege, only an aching cock and a hard slap when he went too far, which he was bound to do if she kept pressing herself up against him. By God, he wasn’t made of ice, although stone seemed appropriate enough right about now.

  But perhaps she would not slap him. Perhaps she would…

  It didn’t matter what she would do. She was not for him. Not a woman of ice on the surface and fire within. Not any woman who made his heart slam inside his ribs, his mouth go dry, and his head start rhyming couplets.

  Dear God, how much of a fool could one man be?

  He entered the pub, demanded a pint, and drank it in a swallow. Pushing the glass back toward the tavern keep, he gestured with a jerk of his chin for another, and finally looked about.

  Low-ceilinged, with narrow windows and plenty of dark nooks, it was the sort of place well suited to knavery. He might hang his head in shame if he cared any longer about Colin Gray and the damned Club. Everything he’d learned as an agent, every lesson in studying his surroundings swiftly and efficiently, he had forgotten already. Kitty Savege held his entire attention now.

  He pressed his eyes shut and blindly took up the glass again.

  Dear God, he really wanted her. And the more she touched him with eager innocence, the more difficult it became for him to believe she had been Poole’s mistress.

  He scrubbed his hand across his face. He knew better. He knew much better. In London, rumor had raged through the summer and into fall that she had brought criminal evidence against her former lover to the Board of the Admiralty because he had once scorned her. Listening to the gossips and knowing what he’d already known, Leam hadn’t had any reason to disbelieve that rumor.

  Taking a heavy breath, he opened his eyes. Yale lounged in a rickety wooden chair, watching him.

  Leam straightened and the young Welshman stood and sauntered over, set his tankard on a table, and gestured him from the bar.

  “I prefer to stand,” Leam said gruffly.

  “Can you for much longer?”

  “Can you ever?” He pushed away from the bar and took a seat. The table was tacky, the place smelled of stale ale and sawdust, and something nasty crunched beneath his feet.

  “After the scolding you gave me last night, I’ve had but this one glass.”

  “You remember the scolding?”

  “I’ve the jaw to remind me.” He did, a bluish-black mark coloring his chin. He lifted his half-

  empty pint, silver eyes narrowed. “Happy Christmas, old chap.”

  Leam scanned the pub’s patrons, a half-dozen men in caps and rough trousers, farmers and shopkeepers who looked like they’d spent half their lives on these benches.

  “It’s Cox.”

  Yale’s expression did not alter. “Your interested party?”

  “I believe so. And I think he’s behind that faulty stable roof. But I still haven’t the foggiest why, or why he’s made himself plain to us.”

  “P’raps he hoped to hide here and I routed him out. Or perhaps he simply admires your high fashion and is mad with jealousy. Quite a natty fellow, isn’t he?”

  “Goddamn, Wyn.” Leam shoved back his chair and stood.

  “Huffing off again? And so swiftly this time.”

  “I huffed off swiftly last night as well, which you would recall if you hadn’t been immersed in a barrel of whiskey.”

  Yale smiled. “And where is the fair Lady Katherine now?”

  “Far and away from me as she may be, I pray.”

  “I prithee.”

  Leam ground his molars.

  Yale crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, you might as well get it right if you’re going to go off spouting verse.”

  “That was not verse. It was an actual prayer.” He passed his hand across his face again. He still tasted her on his tongue. It was hopeless, the need rising within him as swift and sure as the panic.

  Physical exertion might do it. He would shovel more snow. Perhaps if he exhausted himself he wouldn’t have sufficient energy to lust after her. Or if he continued to lust—a more likely scenario—

  he wouldn’t be able to lift his arms to do anything about it. She was curved and hot and he wanted to tear that damned green gown off her and pin her beneath him, to a mattress, the floor, any surface would do.

  More shoveling it must be.

  Yale hummed something under his breath, clicking a blunt fingernail against his glass.

  “Blackwood, old man.”

  “What?” he snapped.

  “The tavern keep says there’s a very pretty farm girl who works the place every few nights.” He sounded far too casual. “He assures me she is expected this afternoon, despite the snow. Quite punctual when fine gentlemen pass through town, don’t you know.” Now he grinned.

  “Wyn.”

  “Leam?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’ll save you a seat.”

  Leam set his palms down and leaned into the table. “What do you know of Lambert Poole?”

  “Only common knowledge, that in July he was stripped of his estates and exiled for supplying arms to insurgents and attempting to bribe Admiralty officials into treason.” Yale met his gaze squarely. “And that three years ago you looked into him rather assiduously.”

  Leam drew back slowly. What he did not know about his closest companion of the past five years occasionally astounded him.

  “If your interest in Poole now concerns Katherine Savege, Leam, it’s your own business, of course.

  But if you think it has got something to do with Cox you will tell me, won’t you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because you’ve quit the Club.” His eyes looked flinty in the dim light. “But the mantle is difficult to cast off, is it not?”

  “For some, no doubt.” Leam gestured toward him.

  The Welshman laughed, loosening the tension corded between them. “Well, I haven’t anything better to be doing, after all.” He leaned back in his chair, abruptly a study of elegant ease.

  Leam had no further use for the spy. He left the pub. The dogs bounded to him across the thick expanse of white street, young Ned in their wake. He wasn’t more than three or four years older than Jamie, but the lad with his toothy smile looked nothing like the sober-mouthed child Leam would meet at Alvamoor if he ever left this village.

  “I run them to the butcher’s, gov’nor. Got us a nice young goose for Christmas Eve dinner.” He lifted a wrapped parcel, his reddened cheeks shining with pride. Leam hadn’t any idea if Jamie ever smiled like that when he wasn’t around. Leam’s youngest sister, Fiona, said he was a happy boy. Leam had never
wanted to hear. He’d never wanted to remember. But now he was going home for good and he would be obliged to remember every hour of every day.

  At this moment he was trapped. Not only in a snowbound village. Trapped between the life he cared nothing about and the life he had avoided for half a decade, the place where his wife’s and his brother’s bodies rested not six feet from each other in a massive marble mausoleum.

  He did not wish to ponder it deeply. Never again deep ponderings, he had vowed. It would be easier to let himself think ceaselessly about Kitty Savege, to caress and seduce her—or perhaps more accurately to allow her to seduce him as she seemed intent upon doing—and spend his holiday in a limbo of hedonistic captivity.

  “Ned, I’ve two questions for you.”

  “Yessir, gov’nor.” He fluffed the shaggy fur atop Hermes’s head, and the big dog leaned into him, setting the boy to teetering on the icy path.

  “What can you play on that fiddle of yours?”

  “Anything you like, milord.” He smiled wide.

  “Good. My second question: Is there a man in this town who might know something about smithing gold or silver?” He had returned the cashmere muffler and coins to Cox earlier in the day, watching his reaction. Cox had thanked him affably but said nothing of the broken gold chain still in Leam’s pocket. It could prove useful to know what might have hung on such a chain, information Cox clearly did not wish to share.

  “Sure is, gov’nor. Old Freddie Jones. Used to be a watch-maker in Shrewsbury till he lost three fingers to an angry cow.” His grin never wavered. Leam could not help returning it.

  “Can you take me to him?”

  “Yessir. Now?”

  Anything to avoid a beautiful woman with amorous intent. At least until he cooled off a bit.

  “Now is perfect.”

  They set off along the street through drifts up to the boy’s thighs, Ned chattering the entire way about his master and mistress, Lady Emily’s coachman and the carpenter who had both helped mend the roof, Freddie Jones, and any number of other villagers. Leam listened carefully, for the moment content to be doing what he’d done for five years. And if his boots were ruined because of his need to prepare himself for his next encounter with Kitty Savege, that would be what he best deserved.