“Do I know this man?”
“He has moved in circles entirely removed from your own. Mostly in Scotland.”
“Ah, I see.” Her one visit to Scotland had been some years since. “Why do you think this friend has changed?”
His ragged breath seared her heart. Pippa reached for him, but he held up his arms, warning her off.
“Tell me about him,” she said gently.
“He is a man adrift,” Calum said. “Are you cold?”
“Not really,” she lied.
Calum removed his coat and slipped it around her shoulders.
“Now you are cold,” she told him, but she breathed in his marvelous masculine scent and held the garment close.
“I shall like that coat the better for knowing it has kept you warm.”
Tears sprang into her eyes and she blinked them away. His simple words could reduce her to trembling vulnerability.
And she adored that vulnerability—with him. “Your friend?” she prompted, praying he would not hear the depth of emotion he aroused in her.
Bowing his head again, he rested his fists on narrow hips. “He doesn’t know what he should do next in his life. He has encountered such tragedy. Such wasteful, useless tragedy.”
His full-sleeved white shirt billowed. Moonlight shone through the fine fabric, casting his powerful body in dark silhouette.
She wanted to put her hands inside his shirt and feel his warm flesh.
An evil, carnal creature.
Beyond help.
Pippa averted her eyes. “What was…If you would like to tell me. What was this tragedy?”
“He has confronted the fact,” Calum said, his voice so low she had to strain to hear it, “that he lost something very dear before he ever had it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How could you? He has discovered that his parents died before he could meet them.”
“Oh.” Pippa stepped involuntarily toward Calum and this time he didn’t retreat. She slipped her arms around his waist and looked up at him. “How could such a terrible thing be?”
“There was a mistake. He was lost to his parents, and when he returned they were no longer there.”
“Poor man.”
“Poor man, indeed. Poor, confused man. He feels a great sense of loss, as if he is grieving, yet he had never expected to grieve.”
“This is so sad. We must help him.”
He looked at her then. “We?” He brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek and tilted his head sideways to study her.
Pippa swallowed hard. “I am not a stranger to adversity. At Dowanhill, I was the one our people came to with their problems.”
“And you dispensed a little food and instructions for exercising greater thrift in future, no doubt.”
She should be angry, but she couldn’t be. “You are suffering for your friend,” she said. “That suffering is making you unkind. I am a good listener, Calum. Sometimes people most need to be listened to.”
“You are wise beyond your age and sex,” he said. “My friend is lost, Pippa. He is a man who has never really known himself. A man always playing roles and trying to be what he thought he was supposed to be without ever finding true comfort.”
A coldness stole about Pippa’s heart and she felt again the welling of tears.
Calum tucked back curls that had fallen forward from her chignon. “I have upset you,” he said gently. “I did not intend to do so. I would never willingly do so.”
“I think this friend of yours knows my heart,” she said in a voice that shook.
He appeared bemused. “How so?”
“Like your friend, I have never been entirely certain of my place. Or rather, I have known what I yearned for, but at the same time I have understood that it could never be.”
“It is not at all the same thing,” he told her curtly.
Pippa stiffened and tried to blink back the tears.
“Damn!” He swept an arm around her waist and drove the fingers of his other hand into the hair at her temple. “I have made you cry. I never want to cause you pain, sweet one.”
She shook her head, laughing through the tears that were overflowing despite her best efforts to stem them.
“Yes, I have hurt you when you sought to understand…You wanted to find a way to comfort my friend.”
“I would very much like to comfort him.”
“Would you?”
She would like to help this friend because she wanted to help Calum.
She would like at this very moment to be kissed by Calum.
“I would help him,” she said, her lashes flickering downward. “Tell me how I can do that.”
“He is very close to me. My happiness invariably makes him a great deal happier.”
“It does?”
“Most certainly.”
“And you are not happy?”
“I think I could be. And you could help me in this.”
“Tell me how.”
The scent of sweet Williams reached her on a breeze. Water from the fountain scattered upon marble, like crystal chips on ice-coated glass. From below the cliffs came the sound of waves shushing over rock and sand.
“How can I help you, Calum?”
His lips were parted when they descended to hers. Firm and commanding, his mouth slanted over hers. Pliant, clever, practiced, his lips and tongue sought and found, delved and tasted and stole what they sought. And Pippa began to crumple in his arms. Her legs wobbled and Calum brought her firmly against his body.
He was hard and honed and warm and strong.
And he was pulsing and pushing and huge and hot where That leaped at her belly through his breeches and through the gown that was too insubstantial to disguise the length and thickness of him.
“Yes,” she said on a sigh. “Yes, that is exactly it.”
“What is it?” he asked. His hands sought and covered her breasts beneath his coat. With his palms he made circles over her nipples and she began to melt. “Tell me, Pippa.”
She must not tell him. Inexperienced she might be. A fool she most definitely was not.
“Tell me.”
He eased her bodice the tiniest bit and cool air stroked her bared nipples.
“Tell me.”
Gently, with fingers and thumbs, he tugged her nipples. Pippa’s knees became nonexistent.
He bent his head and, with the greatest of care, sucked a nipple into his mouth.
“Don’t…stop,” she gasped. “I wanted to tell you not…to…stop. And I want to…I want to…touch you.”
She heard the plop as he pulled with his lips and let go before moving to her other breast. Working with the tip of his tongue, he paused just long enough to say, “You are touching me,” before he continued to roll her nipple back and forth and to swirl his tongue around it in a manner that blotted all conscious thought from Pippa.
“I should like to do whatever you would like me to do,” she told Calum, clinging to him by handfuls of his hair.
“Whatever?”
“I am in your hands.”
“And in my mouth,” he murmured, pulling hard enough to make her cry out with exquisite ecstasy. “I want you for my own, Pippa, and I intend to have you.”
“We can be together like this for a long time, I think.” She fumbled with his stock. “You are undoubtedly right. No one-will come looking for us.”
“That will not be enough.”
“No.”
“You agree?”
“Yes. Only I don’t know what I’m agreeing to.”
“You’re agreeing to swim naked with me. And sleep naked with me. And share everything there is to share between a man and a woman.”
“I should like that awfully much.”
Fastening his mouth to her breast again, he pressed a massive thigh between her legs and braced his foot on something Pippa couldn’t see.
“Oh,” was all she could say. The rest of her wits were required for her to clin
g to his shoulders.
She heard a tearing sound and realized her bodice had given way. “Oh, Calum, my dress.”
“Forget the dress.” He hadn’t finished talking before he held her to him with one arm and lifted her skirts up around her waist with his other hand. “I want to give you pleasure, Pippa. You are a passionate man’s dream and I want to be the passionate man you need. Give yourself up to me.”
Rocking her, he caused her to ride his thigh as if she were astride a bareback stallion.
“Calum—”
“Hush.” His big hands covered her breasts and his fingers beneath her arms anchored her.
Helpless in the grip of sensations that ripped from her slick center to parts deep within her for which she knew no name, Pippa filled her hands with Calum’s shirt and let her head fall back.
“So beautiful,” he said. “My God, I will have you, Pippa. I will make you mine, and no other man will ever be able to satisfy you but me.”
“I am not supposed to fe—el this.” Throbbing, pulsing waves of fire began to break. “It can only be because you are not my hu—usband.”
He kissed her throat and manipulated his fingers between her legs.
“Oh, Ca-lum.” She could not bear it. And she could not bear it to be over. “Please.”
When she felt his finger press inside her, she tried, without success, to stiffen. “We must not do this,” she told him.
His finger was inside her and his thumb stroked back and forth over the small bud of flesh that felt swollen and slippery. He stroked her inside and he stroked her outside and the fiery waves crashed.
Pippa jerked; she bowed forward and found something with her teeth, something that gave just a little but afforded a means to stop her from falling through space and time forever.
Waves of fire became rings of fire, spreading outward as if her body were molten liquid heat into which Calum had thrust a silver arrow fresh from the smith’s oven.
Pippa could not guess how much time had passed with the fading ripples before Calum caught her up into his arms and held her so fiercely it hurt. She didn’t care.
Then she realized it had been his shoulder into which she had sunk her teeth, and she cried out, “I have wounded you”
“You have branded my shoulder,” he said. “I’ll wear your brand with pride, my sweet.”
“I do not understand myself,” she said when she could speak again.
Calum nuzzled her cheek and kissed her closed eyes. “I know you don’t. You amaze me. You are a treasure. My treasure. When I think I might never have found you, I am sick to my soul.”
She was weak. And her gown was in tatters. And there were many things to be said. Many things to be dealt with. She had been incapable of stopping what had just happened, but she knew it should not have happened.
“It must not happen again,” she said, knowing that she wanted, more than anything else, for it to happen again.
“You’ll not be hurt, Pippa. That I promise you.”
“Neither will you,” she told him. “This thing that happens between us is entirely my fault.”
She heard him draw in a breath and hold it.
“Yes, Calum. You are disturbed now that you consider the truth. I have tempted you into this behavior. I followed you because I cannot stay away from you. I am beyond help in this unless you go away where I cannot find you.”
“You tell me to go with your lips. Your heart tells me otherwise.”
“You are dangerous—the devil—tempting me, charming me, until I do not know myself. If I do not find a way to keep you from me, you are doomed…and I am doomed.”
“You really think Franchot would—”
“He would kill you, and if he spared my life, I would soon wish he had not done so.”
“Oh, my dear. I shall never let anything happen to you. Such a thing is unthinkable. I have known other women. You must know that without my telling you. But none could ever compare with you. You do things no fine brandy could do. You are golden sunrise and crimson sunset. You are ice patterns on winter windowpanes and sun scintillating through summer leaves. You enchant me.”
Tears again. “You take my breath away, Calum.”
“You have entirely stolen mine.”
“Please put me down.”
“I don’t ever want to put you down.”
“Put me down now. Please, Calum.”
Carefully, sliding her down his length, he did as she asked.
Pippa surveyed the wreckage of her gown and set to work pulling and patching and smoothing. “Hopeless,” she said. “I must find a way inside without being seen.”
“We cannot act too quickly,” Calum said. “There are others to be considered now.”
“I will make certain we see as little as possible of each other,” she told him. It was the only answer.
“You will make certain of no such thing.”
“I most certainly shall.”
“This is no longer in your hands. It never was.”
Pippa’s face shot up. “No, it was never in my hands. Neither was it in yours.”
In the darkness, his smile was harshly determined. “It may not have been in my hands once. It certainly is now.”
She had done this. She had created a ghastly disaster.
A crashing sounded from somewhere above them.
Pippa stood still, holding Calum’s coat around her. “What is that?”
He raised his chin and listened.
“They’re coming!” a young voice shouted. “They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re ’ere!”
Calum made a growling noise and muttered, “Little ruffian.”
“Max?” Pippa frowned. “That’s the boy, isn’t it?”
Calum had no opportunity to respond before the thin little boy with red hair leaped down the steps leading to the pool area. “I’m the advance party,” he shrieked, flinging his arms in circles. “Come to warn you of an attack.”
“Max,” Calum said—rather reasonably, Pippa thought. “Kindly return to the castle and your bed at once.”
Pippa turned her back on the boy and hoped he would not see the condition of her clothing and report, possibly in screeching tones, that she appeared to be wandering the grounds almost naked.
“I’m returnin’,” Max yelled. “Got to go to ground. Saw you and the lady leave and thought you might want to arm yourselves. It’s terrible. Terrible, I tells you.”
“Max—”
“They’re after me ears,” the boy shouted. “And me nose and me tongue.”
Pippa flinched and shivered at the same time. “Ask him what he’s talking about, Calum.”
“A lord ’as arrived,” Max announced firmly. “A lord with an angry face and a loud voice and flashing eyes that cut right through you. Me bones bleed, I tells you.”
“Oh, no,” Pippa whispered. “Oh, bother.”
“Bother seems a trifle mild for the occasion,” Calum remarked. “I think we’d best get you to your rooms.”
“Good idea, sir,” Max said, jumping up and down. “Then you’d best make haste to the battle. That other lord—I mean Papa—Papa is sitting on the angry lord’s chest.”
Pippa looked anxiously at Calum. He pulled her against him and started hurrying uphill.
“That’s it,” Max yelled. “Go and rescue the angry lord from me papa. Or don’t rescue him. Don’t make much difference now.”
Calum halted so abruptly, Pippa clung to him to stop herself from falling.
“Why wouldn’t it make a difference?” Calum asked.
“Oh, well”— Max capered around them —“Lady Justine was screaming and the visc—Papa—got furious and killed the angry lord. ’E asked me t’sit on the corpse while ’e went out and killed all the others what come. The army.”
“Calum,” Pippa said, horrified, “Etienne has somehow discovered my…He has discovered what’s happened and he’s come with an army.”
“An army. An army,” Max chanted, le
aping and whirling. “An army come and we killed ’em all.”
“Oh, my God,” Calum said. He lifted Pippa into his arms and ran uphill with her all the way back to the castle.
Charmed Sixteen
Psst!” Calum bent over, one index finger to his lips, and crept toward a flunky stationed outside the salon where he would have expected to find Lady Justine and Struan enjoying a companionable after-dinner conversation.
The flunky, his face almost as pale as his powdered wig, ducked his head and peered suspiciously at Calum.
Calum crooked his finger and uttered another loud “Psst!”
Copying Calum’s crouch, the man came toward him on the balls of his shiny-slippered feet. His little calf muscles popped out like partridge eggs inside his white silk stockings. “Sir?” he whispered, his exaggerated steps creating a picture reminiscent of an albino cockerel scratching in a farmyard.
“Good man for staying at your post,” Calum said into the man’s ear when he drew close enough. “Not a sound, now. I’ve got to get in there without being seen.”
The man reared up somewhat and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He nodded, but Calum saw no comprehension in his bright brown eyes.
“Carnage, I understand,” Calum said.
The man brought his face very close to Calum’s and said, “You’ll be all right, sir. Happens to all gentlemen now and again.”
“Not to me,” Calum informed him. “And I’m not going to stand by and allow it to happen here without putting up a fight.”
“You do that, sir,” the man said, walking a circle around Calum. “It’ll make you feel a lot better just knowing you’ve—er—dealt with it, so to speak.”
The instant the man finished speaking, he backed away for several yards, then turned and broke into an ungainly, flapping run.
“Bloody amazing,” Calum said aloud. “This whole place is bloody amazing.” And he loved it. He loved every turret and tower, every worn stone staircase and passageway and every nook and cranny filled with the unseen, unremembered memories of centuries of Franchots before him. For an instant he closed his eyes. What would Pippa say if she knew his “friend” was none other than himself?
He stood tall, flattened his back to the wall and edged closer to the nearest of the salon’s closed doors.
Fascination -and- Charmed Page 57
