Pippa hid a smile. “Very handsome.” She had dared to hope that Justine might take more than a polite interest in Struan.
“I wonder how his wife died.”
These were the questions Pippa had expected and dreaded. “He did not say,” she told Justine, grateful it was the truth.
Justine looked thoughtful. “From the sound of those two dear children, she must have been beneath his station, yet I’ll be bound he would never say as much.”
“I could not say.”
“Ella and Max do not mention her.”
“No.”
“I do believe he is trying very hard to be both father and mother to them. Not an easy task.”
“No,” Pippa agreed. “Not at all an easy task.”
“Do you like the viscount?”
“I like him very much.”
Justine rested an arm beneath the open window and raised her face to sniff summer scents. “I have always counted honesty and courage the most important of all virtues.”
Pippa stared hard at the tulip tree’s trembling leaves. “Have you?”
“Oh, yes. The viscount is obviously most honest in confronting the world and he has the courage to do what honesty tells him is right. Many men would have parceled their motherless offspring off with relatives or left them in the hands of paid servants. Instead, his true heart accepts that he and only he can give his children the guidance they need.
“I have guessed that possibly the viscount had not spent much time with them before they were left without their mother. When he realized how sadly neglected they were—in their education, that is—he remonstrated with himself and determined to make amends. A most unusual man. Most unusual.”
“Indeed,” Pippa said, trying not to squirm in her discomfort.
Justine squinted into the sun and smiled. “I saw Max this morning. He was following Mr. Innes around the grounds.” She laughed aloud. “I declare, the boy was trying to match his very steps to the man’s. Yes, Mr. Innes has a great admirer. I pray he does not come to rue the fact.”
“Calum will be careful of the child’s heart,” Pippa said and marveled at her own careless tongue.
“Most probably,” Justine said, evidently unaware of the longing that had been in Pippa’s voice when she spoke of Calum.
“How old do you suppose the viscount is, Pippa?”
This was another expected question. “I am not certain. Probably about your age.”
“I think I am older,” said Justine. “Imagine, I am thirty-four and have never even had a beau. The viscount is probably several years younger and has been married, widowed and left with two children. How different lives can be, one from another.”
“Yes.” It was a start. There was the matter of how Justine would feel toward the viscount when she discovered the lie about the children, but at least she was beginning to consider the question of herself in relation to a man. Pippa dared not push for more than that as yet.
“I have no doubt Viscount Hunsingore will find himself a pretty young thing who will accept responsibility for Ella and Max and make him a fine wife,” Justine went on with no apparent trace of envy. “I certainly hope it happens soon. He is obviously somewhat overwhelmed by his task as a parent and he speaks of needing to deal with his affairs in Dorset.”
“Really?” Pippa studied Justine’s face and decided that there were definitely no traces of longing there. Apparently it would be necessary to look farther for a husband for Justine. Pippa was determined to make that search just as soon as an opportunity presented itself—say at the festivities for her own nuptials.
She tried not to shudder.
“Thank you for inviting me, my lady,” Calum said to Lady Justine, walking between her and Pippa along stone-floored, oak-paneled corridors in the west wing, which was farthest from the sea.
“I’m delighted for an excuse to visit with old friends I’ve known all my life,” Lady Justine said. “I come here alone frequently, but I often wish I could share what I know of my family with others.”
Calum made a polite sound and looked at Pippa.
Pippa looked ahead.
“I’m certain Lady Justine will agree with me that you are a vision in red and gold, Pippa,” he said.
Still she did not look at him.
“Isn’t she?” Lady Justine said. “Do encourage her to be more daring in her choice of wardrobe, Mr. Innes. I fear she is overly concerned with taste at the expense of style.”
“Justine!” Pippa’s eyes blazed. “You know those dreadful dresses are not—” She closed her mouth with a snap and marched on, causing Lady Justine and Calum to walk faster.
“Forgive me,” Lady Justine said, and Calum wondered what Pippa would think if she could see her future sister-in-law’s wicked smile. “Of course those dreadful dresses are not any fault of yours. But I think the time has come for you to exert yourself. After all, soon you are destined to be the lady of this household. Surely you will not allow an irritable old despot of a woman to intimidate you then?”
Such spirit his sister had. Calum had to work hard not to laugh.
Pippa didn’t respond. She moved rapidly ahead of them.
The way led along what felt like miles of corridors, down several flights of stairs, through a chamber open at either end and lined with leather-bound books, down deeper yet to a gallery packed with relics of ancient armor and, finally, to a sharp right turn where an ascent began.
On the fourth upward flight, Calum put an arm beneath Lady Justine’s elbow. She gave him a small, grateful smile and leaned on him. “The leg does tire, I’m afraid,” she said. “But it is good not to favor it too much. Of that I’m convinced.”
Pippa, whom Calum had thought entirely closed off in her own cross world, stopped instantly and returned to hold Justine’s other elbow.
He smiled at Pippa and saw her swallow before she smiled back.
A madman he might be, but he would almost swear that tears had sprung into her eyes.
Lady Philipa Chauncey was a woman under siege and he played a part in the dilemma she faced, yet he could not withdraw, not now—not ever.
“I’m not a cripple,” Lady Justine said lightly. “But thank you both for helping me.”
“Helping you brings us pleasure, doesn’t it, Pippa?”
She held her bottom lip in her teeth, and now there was no mistaking the tears. They hovered against her lower lashes and shimmered in her eyes. “You bring everyone pleasure, Justine,” she said softly.
“Thank you. And here we are.”
A short hall and three final steps brought them to the castle long-room. From where Calum stood, he could see the portraits that studded the walls.
Rush matting divided the considerable length of glowing wooden floors, worn to a silken finish by the feet of generations of Franchots, their friends and guests.
“I confess that my leg complains of my disregard,” Lady Justine remarked wryly. “Pippa, be a dear and start Mr. Innes with whatever pleases you. I think I’ll sit with Great-great-grandpapa Franchot until I am rested.”
Without awaiting a response, Lady Justine turned from them and went to sit on a bench in a nearby alcove.
Calum gestured for Pippa to lead him.
She raised her elaborately coiffed head a fraction, seemed about to say something, then walked determinedly ahead of Calum instead.
Graceful, Calum thought, enjoying a leisurely opportunity to observe the way she swayed when she moved.
Sensually graceful. Last night, when he’d longed to go to her and, for once, had forced good sense to keep him in his bed, he had known sexual frustration of the kind that had not plagued him so strong since his adolescent years.
Lying in that wretched, hot, tangled bed, he’d visualized the woman before him now, visualized her naked and beckoning. She’d beckoned and he’d come, and she’d run from him, her hips flaring invitingly below a tiny waist, her breasts rising and falling as she turned to laugh back at him. And her bl
ack hair had flown free, lifted on a warm wind, the same warm wind that caressed and excited his own aroused body.
Now Pippa’s slippered feet thudded on coarse matting. They thudded with her determination not to enter into any intimacy with him in this lofty room filled with the faces of men and women who were his ancestors. His ancestors, not those of that prancing, debauched creature set upon getting his marriage “over and done with at once.”
Calum set his teeth and found that, despite his curiosity about the painted faces, he could not concentrate on even one of them unless he did so with Pippa at his side.
She reached the far end of the gallery, where a single window stretched from floor to lofty, stone-arched ceiling. Facing him, she placed her fists upon her hips and tapped a toe.
“Anger becomes you,” he told her, approaching and walking a slow circle around her. “Aye, it becomes you very well.”
“You have toyed with me enough, Calum Innes.”
He held a forefinger aloft. “No, no, no, lady. I have not toyed with you nearly enough. In fact, I have barely begun to toy with you. Look at me.”
He stood before her, his booted feet planted apart, his own fists on his hips—and raised his chin. “Look well. And tell me what you see.”
She found great interest in the painted panels of the vaulted ceiling.
“Well,” Calum said, “until you are ready with your report, I shall give you mine. You are exquisite in that…that whatever red it is, and gold. You are a jewel. But you are a jewel in wrappings I should take great pleasure in removing.”
She gasped, but quickly pressed her lips together and continued her study of the ceiling.
“Obviously this is not an appropriate time to completely unwrap you, but might I at least take your breasts from their safe hiding place for a little while?”
“Don’t!” Her face turned the marvelous pink he’d come to find delightful and she glared at him. “Think of Justine.” “Justine will not come too soon.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.” He took a step toward her. “The little gold buttons on your bodice are so clever. I could undo them with ease and hold your breasts in my hands—”
“Stop!”
“Hold them in my hands and test their tips with my tongue, and kiss them, and—”
“If you do not stop this, I shall leave at once.”
“And make a terrible scene that would need explanation?”
“Why do you torment me?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why do you persist in…In whatever this is when you know it can only bring disaster?”
Calum no longer felt any humor in the situation. “I persist because I must,” he told her. “I asked you to tell me what you see when you look at me.”
“A man.”
“Brilliant. What manner of man?”
“An impudent…a man skilled in the torture of a young woman who…who…”
“A young woman who?” He found his heart had begun to beat faster. “What is it that you are, Pippa? When you’re with me?”
She clasped her hands together and brought them to her brow. “I am beset.” Her voice broke. “When I am with you I am beset. I am confused. I am undone by my own wrong longing. I—am—desperate.”
For once, words deserted him.
Pippa slowly opened her hands and drew her fingers down her face. “This is no game to me, Calum. There is so much I do not understand, yet I want to.”
“You told me,” he reminded her, “that when you were with me, you were driven to touch me. You told me you were afraid that you might not be able to do other than touch me intimately. I was flattered, but I thought you dramatic and I did not really think you sincere.”
“I was sincere.”
If he touched her, they would both be lost. “It is not possible for me to go away from you, Pippa.”
“It is not possible for you to stay.”
“Because if I do, you will come to me? Is that what terrifies you, that you will come to me and become completely mine?”
Her soft lips worked before she said, “I seem to know a great deal of life, yet I know such a very little. I do not even understand all of what it would mean to come to you completely.”
Calum turned from her. “Why could you not have been that other creature?” he cried before caution could close his lips. A woman such as Anabel Hoarville would have been easily dismissed.
Her hand on his shoulder made him start. “I don’t understand you,” she said. “What other creature? You would have me be someone else?”
Think, he ordered his errant mind. Think before you say even more that should never be spoken. “I mean,” he told her, “that I wish you did not belong to another man.” That, at least, was true. If they’d met under different circumstances, when all that he must do was accomplished, there would be no impediment to their— Was it love?
He truly was losing his mind.
“When I put on this dress, I imagined you seeing me in it. I hoped it would please you.”
Calum closed his eyes. “It pleases me.”
“You please me, Calum.”
“My God, too much restraint is expected of me.”
“If things were other than they are, I would wish to feel your body beneath my hands. Without this fine coat and without the linen I would like to rest my cheek upon before I pushed it from your shoulders.” Her fingers pressed into his muscle.
His thighs flexed. “There cannot be another girl like you,” he told her. “And you cannot understand what you do to me.”
“I understand that I am inept in this matter of telling you how you appear to me. And how you make me feel.”
And what of how you make me feel? He was full and hard and heavy, yet the greatest ache of all curled inward from every part of him. The ache needed salve and she was that salve.
“I should like to lie naked with you beneath soft summer trees and say nothing at all,” she told him. “I should like to listen to the birds and the breeze and to feel warm rain upon my skin whilst I watched it turn your skin to shimmering.”
“Pippa,” he said, pleading for mercy he did not really want.
“I should like to rest my body on yours while you held me. I think that if I could do that, just once, I would truly understand what it means for a man and a woman to be as one.”
Calum prayed. He prayed nonsense, yet there seemed nothing else to do.
“I’m certain I am an evil, carnal creature,” Pippa said softly, touching his neck, running her fingers into his hair. “But even so, I should also like to feel all of That.”
He opened his eyes and said, “Pippa, you and I are meant…” He coughed loudly. “We are meant to greet Justine, who is leaving her great-great grandfather and walking toward us in this gallery.”
Her hand curled into a fist on his back and fell away.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” Justine called, her smile visible even at a distance. “Have you shown Calum everyone, Pippa? No, of course you haven’t, and you don’t really know them very well yet, do you?”
“Not too well,” Pippa said, stepping beside him and pointing to a picture of a strapping, dark-haired man in military dress. “I did remember your uncle Francis. The one who died when the Spanish captured Minorca in ‘82.”
“He would have been your father’s brother?” Calum asked Lady Justine as she drew close. “Or your mother’s?”
“My father’s youngest brother. My mother was an only child. The Franchots have been better known as philosophers and men of letters than as soldiers.”
Calum thought of his own interests and found no fault in Lady Justine’s description. She started away again and he dared to glance at Pippa. When she returned his look, a tendril of hair wafted across her lips and he lifted it free. For a moment they stood, her face raised to his, his fingertips resting on her cheek.
“Come and see Papa,” Justine said. “You will understand what I mean about the Franchot men then.”
“Here he is,” she said, stopping in front of a rather small painting of a man seated at a desk. Depicted in profile, he sat with his right hand spread on his thigh and he stared ahead whilst his quill point rested on a sheet of paper.
For the second time in the same unforgettable morning, Calum felt an overwhelming blow. “You would appear to be right,” he said carefully. “A man of letters.” A man with dark, curling hair tied at his nape. A man with flashes of red in that dark hair and a set to his face that was so familiar to Calum that he felt as if he were looking at a painting of himself.
Lady Justine’s father.
His father.
“And next to Papa is Grandpapa,” Justine said. “They might almost be the same man. Except for the clothes, of course.”
Calum studied the second, much larger portrait and scarcely knew how to contain all that he felt. It was as if the artist for the smaller painting had copied the pose from this second, older work.
“Handsome men,” Pippa said, and her voice sounded as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. “So dark and lean.”
“Mmm.” Lady Justine smiled—a smile more of contentment than of pride. “I wish you could have met them.”
“You look like them,” Pippa said. “The duke must resemble his mother.”
“Not really,” Lady Justine said. “She—Oh, my goodness! Grandmama! She’s here. And she’s using the cane.”
Wondering at the great significance of the cane, Calum stood in a cluster with his companions and observed the slow progress along the rush matting of a diminutive, white-haired woman dressed in black. Her back was rod-straight, but she used a cane and punctuated each step with a hard thwack on the wooden floor beside the matting.
“Oh,” Lady Justine said, as if remembering herself. “Grandmama, let me help you.”
“Stay where you are, gel,” the woman said. “You are the lame one who needs help. I am quite capable of walking alone.”
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