“Silas is courting a girl, his letter says,” her father had said. “Paxton’s daughter is a beauty by all accounts.”
Imogen had felt her lungs burn. Was Silas keeping in touch with her father after all he’d done? What kind of lies had he been feeding him about leaving Edinburgh? And who was Paxton’s girl? Her stomach had dropped at her mother’s words.
“Isn’t she rather young?” her mother had asked.
“She’s not quite of age, but I expect he plans for an extended betrothal. He’s not a complete scapegrace, my dear. Silas has made quite a name for himself in London. It’s a pity we lost him here, but I suppose caring for an ailing aunt was reason enough to leave.”
Imogen had wanted to scream the truth to the rafters, that they didn’t know the monster they called son and friend, but she’d done nothing. Said nothing. The lying bounder had no ailing aunt. He’d been run out of Scotland by McClintock’s men.
But the thought of another young woman being in Silas’s power had struck a chord of fear into her heart. A man like Silas wouldn’t wait. She’d even thought of writing to the young lady, but she hadn’t. The risk of exposure with her own parents had been too great.
The guilt consumed Imogen even now. She hadn’t said or done anything, and instead she’d scoured the newssheets for announcements of Silas’s betrothal. What had come next had shocked her to the core. It hadn’t been a betrothal announcement for Lady Beatrice, but an obituary. The girl had drowned in the Thames. Though nothing untoward had been said about the manner of the girl’s death, Imogen had suspected the worst. If Lady Beatrice had somehow discovered his true character, marriage to a man like Silas would have been a fate worse than death. In the girl’s place, she might have done the same.
And now, the fact that he claimed to want her back sickened her. She needed to get Silas out of her life, once and for all.
As Hilda was putting the finishing touches on her ensemble and hair, a knock came at the door.
“Lady Imogen,” a maid said. “Lady Kincaid is waiting in the morning salon.”
“Thank you.”
The next few hours passed in a blur as she accompanied her mother and Hilda to a dozen shops on Bond Street, letting the mindless activity soothe her churning brain. She nodded to questions, willing to let her mother make the decisions on color, style, cut, and fabric. The wedding was most likely not going to happen anyway, and if it did, Imogen wouldn’t care either way what she was wearing or how many layers of lace and tulle the dress had. Or whether she needed a dozen more day dresses and twice as many evening gowns. If Lady Kincaid noticed her preoccupation and monosyllabic answers, she did not comment on them.
When they finally stopped to have a lavender ice at Gunter’s Tea Shop, Imogen was grateful for the chance to sit in peace and quiet.
“Are you well, darling?” Lady Kincaid asked.
Imogen forced a smile to her face. “Yes, Mama.”
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed your distraction all afternoon.” She spooned up some of her ice. “I assume you were thinking of your fiancé.”
She could see the worry on her mother’s face. The woman knew her too well, after all, and Imogen didn’t want to lie. She cleared her throat. “I’d rather not pretend when it’s just the two of us. Surely you can see that Dunrannoch and I are not at all suited. I know Papa is delighted with the match, but tell me the truth. What do you think?”
“Most aristocratic marriages are made between strangers, dear.”
“Yours and Papa’s wasn’t. You fell in love. Don’t you think I deserve that as well? To marry a husband who loves me?”
Her mother eyed her shrewdly, one elegant eyebrow arching, and Imogen quailed beneath it. Perhaps she’d laid it on a little too thickly. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been up front with how she felt about love and marriage over the years, and her mother wasn’t stupid or forgetful.
“I thought you didn’t believe in love?”
Imogen opened her mouth and closed it. “I don’t, but I’d like to at least be friends with the man I’m supposed to marry. Have you seen that Highlander? He couldn’t be friends with a goat!”
“You’re exaggerating, Imogen.”
“I am not. He’s a boor.” She jammed her spoon into her flute of creamy ice with violence.
A sudden smile spread over her mother’s face, making Imogen’s eyes narrow. “You mean that boor?”
Imogen turned and bit her lip. What atrocious timing! The man striding toward their table and making ladies’ heads turn in his wake was so far from a boor that it was ludicrous. Tall, polished, and impeccably dressed in a charcoal coat, embroidered waistcoat, trousers, and shiny Hessians, the man exuded ducal poise. Everyone else thought so, too, from the dazed and covetous looks on their faces. Every female instinct in her wanted to stake her claim, but Imogen sat still until he came to a stop at their table.
“Lady Kincaid, I’m so sorry I wasnae here to welcome ye earlier to Dunrannoch House. I had some urgent business to attend to.” Gray-blue eyes fastened on Imogen next, the heat in them making her body react abominably. “My lady, dunnae ye look lovely.”
“Thank you. Er, we’ve been shopping.” Good God, could she be any more inane? “For wedding things.” She wanted to slide beneath the table.
A smirk played about his lips. “I have a surprise outing planned.”
Imogen blinked. “A surprise?”
“Yes, for both of ye.”
Lady Kincaid shook her head, ignoring Imogen’s daggered glare. “Not for me. I’m exhausted after my journey and wish to rest. You two young people run along and have fun.”
“I’m tired as well,” Imogen said weakly.
“Nonsense,” her traitorous mother insisted. “You’ve been sitting around all afternoon and bored to tears with all of this. Go, have fun.”
After their bill had been settled and her mother sent home in the carriage, Imogen joined Ronan in his waiting coach. She tried to forget when they’d been in there last, her scandalous position on his lap with her dress pulled down to her waist, but it was a wasted effort. Especially because the way Ronan was looking at her made it clear that he hadn’t forgotten. Heat scorched her cheeks.
“Where are we going?” she asked brusquely to cover it up.
“I told ye. It’s a surprise.”
She scowled. “I don’t like surprises.”
“Ye dunnae like feeling out of control,” he shot back.
That, too.
Imogen chose not to respond. Settling herself back against the squabs, she resolved to be silent. To her shock, he did as well, and after a while she relaxed, letting her gaze wander the changing landscape beyond the windows. Buildings gave way to countryside as they left the city, and though she was curious, she refused to ask. They came upon the start of a huge meadow, and the coach finally rolled to a stop. When she descended, a large, basket-like contraption lay a distance away with a huge pool of what look like multicolored silk lying beside it along with a handful of men standing about.
“Surprise!” Ronan said, taking her arm and steering her toward it. “It’s a hot air balloon.”
“We are not going up in that thing.”
The daft man laughed at her. “Why no’? I thought ye werenae afraid of anything?”
“Not when it involves me dying a horrible and painful death.”
“I willnae let anything happen to ye, Imogen.”
Something in his voice tugged at her, but when she looked up at him, his attention was on the balloon that was slowly being inflated. Imogen followed his stare, her heart racing with no small amount of fear, exhilaration, and anticipation.
Ronan stared down at her, a hint of challenge in those brilliant eyes. “It’s up to ye. I promise ye will love it.”
Why not go?
With some trepidation, she nodded. When the balloon was ready, she put her trembling palm into Ronan’s much larger one, and he lifted her into the giant receptacle. A man stood at its cente
r and nodded to her. He was working the contraption that fed fire into the balloon. The heat from the flame blew into her face and hair, and she nearly screamed as the basket went aloft. Ronan’s strong arms wrapped around her, and she shamelessly took comfort from them.
“If we die, we die together, right?” she mumbled after a few minutes of utter queasiness.
“Be brave, Imogen,” he told her with a smile. “Have a look.”
She did and lost her breath in awe at the spread-out countryside below her: wide meadows and trees, tiny little rows of houses on their farms, the gray city they’d come from looming in the distance. Though a number of long ropes tethered them to the ground, they still floated at a considerable height.
“God, it’s beautiful!” She couldn’t help it; she broke into laughter. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”
“Aye.” But Ronan wasn’t looking at the scenery—he was looking at her. Imogen felt queasy, and it wasn’t just because of the elevation or the movement of the basket on the wind. The look in his eyes made her downright jittery. “I’ve been thinking about something.”
“What about?” she whispered.
That stare of his pierced her, making the breath whoosh from her lungs and her legs feel as insubstantial as twigs. Whatever he was about to say couldn’t be good. And why had he brought her here, hundreds of feet above the ground, to tell her? Did he mean to cry off? Was he finally going to say that he couldn’t go through with the betrothal? The thought didn’t bring with it the relief or happiness she’d expected. Instead, she felt oddly…despondent.
Imogen swallowed hard. “What is it, Ronan?”
“I think we should elope.”
Chapter Fifteen
A shot of fire released from the burner, the contraption set in the center of the wicker basket. The loud noise ate up Imogen’s reply, but Ronan could still read her lips perfectly.
“You think we should what?”
He’d expected—and counted on—nothing short of absolute shock, and Imogen delivered.
It was a gamble. A serious one. But the answer to his problems had struck with all the subtlety of a war horn the night they’d returned from Lady Reid’s disastrous gathering. If he could make Imogen believe that he had changed his mind, if he convinced her that he wanted this marriage and no longer wished to end the betrothal, it would give her little choice but to retreat. Or submit. Ronan didn’t believe she would accept him, though.
But there had been something more than just rational thought behind her withdrawal from his lap the other evening in the carriage and from the kiss that had set both of them on fire. No, what Ronan had seen on Imogen’s expression had been well-masked fear. He knew the look, mostly from his time training men at Maclaren. Often, the ones who were the most frightened were also the ones who maintained cool and distant exteriors. As if nothing could touch them.
Imogen had retreated from their intimate, nearly out-of-control coupling in his carriage with an easy shrug of her shoulders because of something deeper than prudent, judicious reasoning.
She was afraid—of what, he couldn’t determine. Maybe it was the increasingly undeniable passion she felt for him. Maybe she was afraid of intimacy itself. She had, after all, spent her adult life alone, refusing suitors left and right. Surely not all of them had been awful. Or it could be a fear of men in general. Silas Calder and Imogen’s reaction to the man came to mind.
After learning what he had from Riverley about Calder being a fortune hunter and the Paxton girl he’d dallied with, Ronan had developed a suspicion. One that he couldn’t confirm without asking Imogen about it. Now was not the time, however. He had a plan for this afternoon, and bringing up Calder wasn’t part of it.
The balloon had started to lower toward the rolling field below, but the burst of hot air had sent it higher into the atmosphere. Imogen stumbled a little toward the high lip of the basket. Ronan caught her elbow.
“Marry me, Imogen. For real, with no more games.”
The words were surprisingly easy to get out. He’d considered what he’d say scores of times over the last day, but he’d wondered if his mouth would seal over and refuse to open when it came time. Hell, he’d been going after his goal to make Imogen cry off all wrong, and the tryst in the carriage had proven it. If he kept pushing, kept trying to get closer, he was willing to wager that she would keep retreating.
The lips he’d ravished in the carriage—and at the opera and at Haven—gaped. He wanted to take her fuller bottom lip and tuck it between his teeth. He could have. The pilot, currently working the burner’s valve, was graciously giving them his back. But Ronan had carefully planned this outing, and he would stick to the script, so to speak.
“I…are you actually proposing to me? You do realize, my dear addled Duke, that we are already engaged and have been for some weeks.”
He used his hand on her arm to pull himself closer. Close enough to smell her honeyed skin. “Aye. I am. No’ as part of some agreement made by our families.”
“We both know this isn’t what either of us wants.”
“Perhaps no’ at first,” he said, his fingers drifting to her wrist and delving under the kid glove she wore. She jumped at the sweep of his fingertips against her soft, warm skin. “But the more I’m with ye, Imogen, the more I see something we both do want.”
Two vertical lines pressed into the skin between her brows. She shook her head. “There is nothing we both want other than freedom from this betrothal, without any repercussions, financial or otherwise.”
“Dunnae lie to yerself. Ye feel this as keenly as I.”
In Edinburgh, when they’d first met, Ronan had played the act of perverse, uncouth Highlander and had reveled in Imogen’s horror. However, now that she knew he wasn’t at all what he’d pretended to be, she didn’t seem to know how to react to his advances. These were not put on. There was something between them. He let her see it all now, plain on his face, and, as he’d calculated, he felt her pulling away.
“I don’t feel anything, and neither do you,” she replied with a complete lack of conviction.
Ronan smirked. “Ye’ve felt what I want a few times now, lass. And whether ye want to admit it or no’, I’ve felt the evidence on ye as well.”
The memory of his hand under her skirt and between her thighs at the opera, her warm, wet clasp as he pushed inside her, stroking her to a shattering release, made his groin grow tight. He didn’t have to put on the strained voice when he spoke next.
“I ken what desire looks like. What it feels like. Ye want me as much as I want ye.”
Imogen’s eyes flared, and she turned away, facing the long drop to the earth below. She sucked in a breath, as if remembering where they were, and whipped back around. Ronan kept his place, his arms reaching to brace her against the wall of the basket.
“Think of the benefits, Imogen. If we were to leave off with these games and marry, we’d never have to stop. We’d never have to hold back from the things we want most.”
“The things I want most involve my life in Edinburgh. They involve Haven.”
“They include me as well. Say it. Admit it. Ye’re too stubborn of a woman to lie to either of us.”
The balloon’s silk caught an updraft of wind, and though the basket, large enough for at least a dozen more passengers, was on four long leading ropes staked to the ground below, they were all tossed to the side. Imogen yelped as Ronan set his feet apart and took her by the shoulders, steadying her. She shook his hands off.
“Fine. If you want me to admit it, then I will. I do…” Her eyes drifted past his shoulder to the balloon pilot, and she lowered her voice. “I want you. Physically. That is all. But I’m not going to marry you just so we can…we can…”
He leaned closer to her ear. “Fuck.”
Imogen didn’t shove him. She didn’t stomp his foot or slap him or call him a degenerate. She simply stared into his eyes, her own bright and questioning. For a moment, he worried if she had somehow stumbled
onto his tactic. He’d already played the coarse ruffian, though, and she was too smart to think he’d fall back on it now.
Then again, he wasn’t really playing.
He didn’t want to marry. He was simply laying out the advantages if they chose to.
“You want to marry me so we can sleep together without any qualms?” she asked. “A marriage based on sex?”
He put his hands into his pockets and shrugged, allowing a little smirk to play at the corner of his mouth. “Marriages have been based on less exciting things in the past.”
A wash of color stung her cheeks as she set her jaw and well and truly glared. “I am not a harlot,” she whispered through gritted teeth.
“I wasnae calling ye one,” he replied, guilt lancing his stomach. “Ye’re no’ a harlot for wanting a man in yer bed, Imogen.”
“You assume too much. Just because I responded to your advances—”
“Responded? To my advances?” Ronan checked his voice and shadowed Imogen as she walked away, toward the corner of the basket. She crossed her arms and peered out over the city’s horizon beyond the trees. “Ye practically planted yerself in my arms at the opera, if I recall.”
Her shoulders tightened, and Ronan cursed himself. He wasn’t supposed to be antagonizing her. Fighting only seemed to put them on the same playing field, each of them battling for the upper hand. He needed Imogen to believe he truly wanted to marry her, and with any hope, she’d do as he suspected: run.
“Ye responded to me because ye feel the same need that I do. Ye light my blood on fire, Imogen.” He stood at her back, bent forward so his lips were at her ear. “When ye’re angry, when ye’re laughing, when ye’re just standing there, looking so damned beautiful.”
Ronan’s chest felt tight, his pulse hard in his throat. These words…where were they coming from? He hadn’t planned any of them. But they felt right. And better still, they weren’t lies. He didn’t want to lie to her.
What a Scot Wants (Tartans and Titans) Page 17
