“There’s always more,” Adam growled, his voice dropping low, his nostrils flaring as he advanced upon Niall.
Never one to back down, Niall squared his shoulders and stared him down, refusing to be cowed.
“She almost killed herself because of him, Niall. He hasn’t paid nearly enough for my peace of mind.”
“Then yer desire to stay in London has nothing to do with her?”
Adam scoffed. “Don’t be daft. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I want Daphne in my bed, and she will be. When I am finished with Bertram, we will all leave for Dunnottar together—Daphne included.”
The shock of his words struck Niall like a knee to the groin. He grappled with them for a moment, staring at the open door in disbelief, the soft, lilting notes of the harp steadily flowing out toward them.
“Ye cannae mean to—”
“I do,” Adam snapped. “And I do not have to explain myself to you, or anyone else. Do not forget your place, Niall.”
One hand balled into a fist, the other moving so fast, he could hardly think before he realized he’d taken Adam’s coat into his fist, drawing the other man forward until they were nearly nose to nose.
“My place … how could I ever forget it, when you, and my da, and your da never let me! After all I’ve done for ye and yer family, after all the times I had yer back, never judging ye for the depths ye had to sink to in order to avenge the girl we both love, ye can stand here and talk to me like I’m no more than a servant! My fucking place? I’m not the one who forgot their place, ye bloody fool. You are. If ye willnae go back, then at least let me take her and Serena. They need to go home.”
Jerking out of his hold, Adam panted like an enraged bull, his face flushing and a thick vein in his forehead pulsating with barely contained rage. Niall could imagine he made just as frightening a sight, his own skin flushed hot, his palms itching as he longed to strike something, someone. It was rare for him to speak to Adam out of turn. The man was his friend, but also his master. His loyalty to the Callahans was as unwavering as his da’s had been. However, it was because they had been friends so long that Niall knew he could step outside the bounds of his station and tell Adam the things he needed to hear without being thrown out on his arse.
“We leave when I say we leave,” Adam declared. “I do not know what’s gotten into you, but if you don’t sort yourself out, I’ll do it for you.”
Niall flexed his fingers, his knuckles cracking as he fantasized about hitting Adam. He could practically feel the crash of knuckles against jawbone. He wanted it. A fight would help him expel some of the pent-up emotion that had filled him to overflowing. He was confused, he was angry, and, it seemed, he was grieving. He had not stopped grieving Olivia from the moment she’d left him for her Season.
But, a row would solve nothing, and Olivia would only grow more cross with him if he bruised his knuckles against Adam’s face.
“I’m not the only one who needs sortin’ out,” he muttered. “I’ll go ensure yer horses have been properly tended to … Master.”
Brushing past Adam, he strode toward the front of the house, the harp music fading away behind him. Time spent with the horses should have been his first recourse. It never failed that a few hours riding or grooming his favorite beasts proved enough to soothe him and bring balance to his turbulent thoughts. He had mulled over many a problem while brushing a coat or changing a set of shoes. It would be no different now, he supposed, as he trotted down the front steps and rushed off toward the mews.
By the time he returned to Olivia, he would be in a better frame of mind. She would forgive him for being an ass earlier … she always forgave him, especially now that so much had occurred to rip them apart. After all the things they had suffered before she was brought back to him, he would be damned if anything else tore her away from him ever again.
1814
Five Years earlier…
Niall clung to the slender, nude body cradled in the shelter of his larger, equally naked one. With a sleepy sigh, he nuzzled Olivia’s unbound hair, the dark strands spread out over his sheets, a few stray tendrils tangling with the stubble along his jaw. She’d come to him after everyone else within Dunvar House had gone to bed, throwing herself into his arms with a desperate moan and fire sparking in her eyes.
Since the night of her coming out, they’d been together this way as often as they’d been able, stealing kisses and petting one another in dark corners, in stable stalls, and yes, even returning to that magical place beside the pond where he had kissed her for the first time. While he’d remained true to his word and refrained from sinking his cock into her virgin passage, he had tutored her in just about every other form of pleasure he could think of. He’d kissed every bare inch of her skin, marveling at the way a single touch could make her skin break out in gooseflesh, memorizing the hills and valleys of her womanly body. She delighted him, even though she often complained that she had no bosom and was shaped like a boy.
There was nothing boyish about her, as his cock could attest at just the sight of her. The breasts she so hated were one of his favorite parts of her, the ripe, plump nipples like little cherries he loved to take into his mouth. And her sweet quim … he tasted that often, too, teasing her toward climax with his lips and tongue. He tried not to think overmuch of the man who would take her away while he did what he could with her, battling the urge to do the one thing he could not.
She did not make it easy for him to exercise self-control, the lusty little thing. The maidenly, demure Olivia melted away when she was with him, and she transformed into a siren, capable of robbing him of all his good sense with just a touch of her hand or press of her lips. She’d learned his body the way he had learned hers, putting those dainty hands upon him and finding all the places that made his blood surge toward his groin. She loved to rake her fingernails through the dark hair on his body, tickling his chest and abdomen, teasing his flat nipples until they pebbled and shrank. She kissed him all over, worshiping him with her lips as if he were some kind of god and not merely the Stablemaster who plundered her body in the hayloft. And, her mouth. It proved far more capable of debauchery than he’d thought. It had not taken her long to grow used to taking his cock to the back of her throat, sucking him better than any maid or whore ever had.
She pleasured him often that way, but knew how to use her hands, as well. Other times, he would lie between her legs and fit his cock against the inner folds of her cunt, rubbing himself against her until she spent, writhing and moaning beneath him. Her body was so responsive that his attentions never failed to draw her wetness, until she’d coated him in it, her slippery flesh tormenting him with a hint of what being inside her must feel like. He was never certain if it were simply the idea of it or the friction and pressure that would send him over the edge, groaning and shaking as he spilled his mettle over her belly.
There were always quiet moments after, tenderness following the desperation of their passion. She would drape her little body on top of his and fit her head beneath his chin. While toying with the springy curls blanketing his chest, she would draw him into a game they’d played together often since their first night in this very hayloft. She referred to it as ‘the game of what-ifs’.
“What if, instead of going to London, I stayed at Dunvar with you and Adam?” she would whisper in the dark.
“Adam willnae be here for long,” he’d remind her, absently stroking his fingers down her naked back. “He’s talked of the Grand Tour so often, I think it willnae be long before he’s taken himself off to the Continent.”
“Just you, then. Come on, Niall. Don’t be stubborn. Play the game with me.”
He hated the game as much as he loved it. Because it made him feel things like hope, even when he knew there could be none. Nevertheless, he always played along when she asked.
“What if ye told yer da ye dinnae want to wed any of those stuffy lairds?”
“What if I told him I would much rather ma
rry you?”
That would make him smile, and he would almost always kiss her—on the forehead, her cheek, her lips.
“What if he says no, and I’m forced to run off with ye? We’d be in Gretna Green by sunrise.”
She would giggle and do something affectionate, like nuzzle his nose with hers, or smooth her fingertips over the curve of one of his eyebrows.
“What if we wed over the blacksmith’s anvil, then ran away together … some place far, far away, where my stepfather would never find us? What if we started anew, just the two of us … Mr. and Lady Gibbs.”
The ‘Lady Gibbs’ bit would always cause a tight fist of grief to well up in his throat, because they both knew she could never be that. But he would choke that lump down and try not to think on it overmuch. This was a game, after all, a silly little bit of fantasy … and in this fantasy, he could have everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d ever been denied.
Laying his hand upon her belly, he would smile. “What if we had a bairn? A wee little bairn with yer eyes and hair and … well, yer everything because ye’re so bonny, God would be a fool to have them come out lookin’ like me. And with my luck, a lad with my face would be born with the scars to boot. ”
She would lay her hand over his and laugh, and say something about how handsome he was, so of course they should have sons who looked just like him, reminding him that his scars meant nothing to her.
Tonight, however, had been different. Tonight, instead of laughing over their little game, Olivia had wept in his arms.
“I do not want to leave, Niall,” she whispered against his shoulder, her tears wetting his skin. “It is almost time for me to go, and I … I do not want the Season in London, or courtship with strangers and marriage to a man I hardly know. I want you. I want our game to be real.”
“Ye know we cannae, Livvie,” he admonished.
“We can, and we should. Gretna Green is less than a day’s ride away. Here in Scotland, I do not need Papa’s permission to marry.”
“Ye dinnae know what ye’re saying,” he protested. “It sounds romantic, but once we’re married, we’d have to run. Ye couldnae be a lady anymore, not unless ye want word gettin’ back to yer da. I have some of my wages tucked away, but it isnae much. I could work to provide for ye, and I would … but it could never be the grand life ye’ve always had. The kind of life ye deserve.”
“A life in which I am coddled and sheltered and spoiled, but never know passion? A life in which one man may own my body by law, while you are in possession of my heart and soul? Is that the sort of life you think I deserve?”
“Livvie—”
“Stop talking to me as if I’m some addle-brained little girl! I know what I want … have known it all this time. I am weary of stolen moments and intimacies that cease before we can make love the way we truly want. I am tired of having to hide the way I feel when there is nothing shameful about it. What does it matter that you are a servant and I am a lady? All we want is to be together.”
Sitting up on his little bed, he took her face in his hands, staring deep into her eyes and trying to will her to cease talking madness. If she kept it up, he would follow her over the edge of sanity. He would allow himself to believe that they could truly marry and run off together and find some way to be happy.
“You might never see Adam again. Do you understand that? The scandal we’d cause would force him to disown us.”
“He would never—”
“And that would make it all the worse, because our deed would hang over his head,” he interjected, his voice taking on a desperate edge. “For all the things he’s done for me, all the love he’s ever shown me, treatin’ me as his brother, I couldnae do that to him.”
“He would want us to be happy!”
“He would want us to be here with him! His maw died, then yer maw, too. Yer da shows him no love, and all he has is me and you. Do ye think he’ll survive losing ye, too?”
Burying her face in her hands, she released a frustrated sound akin to a growl. “I am sick to death of worrying over what others might think or feel. I love my brother, you know that. But what about us? Are we to be miserable because it will placate others? Will you tell me that you can so easily let me go?”
He claimed her mouth in a swift kiss, his fingers moving back into her hair. “Letting you go will kill me, mo gradh. I dinnae know how I’ll survive it.”
“Then don’t,” she whimpered against his lips. “Don’t let me go, Niall. Run away with me. Perhaps we could make contact with Adam somehow, secretly. He could visit us with no one the wiser. There must be a way. Please, Niall.”
He had never been able to deny her anything. From the time she’d been a girl begging to ride upon his shoulders, to when she’d pleaded to be kissed at the age of fourteen, to the night she’d taken her clothes off for him and offered her body, asking him to show her pleasure and passion.
How, then, was he to deny her this?
“All right,” he relented. “All right, mo gradh. Give me a few days, and I … I will think of a plan. We’ll be gone in a sennight. Can ye wait that long?”
She threw her arms around him and wept against his neck, tears and sobs of joy mingling with her laughter. “Oh, Niall. Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”
She believed it so much that he could not help but believe along with her. They lay there for an hour after that, whispering to one another between kisses, holding each other tight. She fell asleep in his arms, making him think that after a sennight, he might be privileged to hold her while she slept every single night. The wistful fantasy proved so heady, he grew dizzy with it, his head swimming and a grin curving his mouth.
He was not certain how long he had lain there, dozing off while thinking over how he might sneak Olivia off to Gretna Green and where they would go once married. At some point, he must have fallen asleep completely, because when he opened his eyes, it was to find the intimidating figure of the earl standing over them.
He flinched, gasping as if coming up for air after drowning. Despite the jolt of his body caused by shock, Olivia remained asleep, her head heavy against his shoulder.
“M-master,” he croaked, already attempting to untangle himself from the man’s stepdaughter.
“She’s always slept like the dead,” Lord Rowland Callahan muttered, casting an apathetic glance in Olivia’s direction. “Do not wake her. Get dressed, then come down to meet me. We will talk.”
Rowland turned to go back down the way he’d come, his bearing as imposing as ever, even as he climbed down the rough, wooden ladder. His gaze remained fixed upon Niall until he’d disappeared from sight. Only then did Niall feel as if he could move, his heart hammering so fast, he was surprised it did not beat right out of his chest. He gingerly laid Olivia aside, a tight knot of fear growing in the pit of his gut as he watched her turn onto her side with a sigh, her back to him.
What would happen to her now that they’d been found out? The earl was a cold bastard, but as far as Niall knew, he’d never abused Olivia in any way. That did not mean he was incapable of cruelty toward her. And what of him? Would he be sent away, just as his da had been?
He fumbled about in the meager light for his trousers, braces, and shirt, not bothering with a coat or anything else. He knew Lord Callahan well enough to understand he would not wish to be kept waiting. After shoving his feet into his boots, he made his way down the ladder as fast as he could while avoiding making too much noise. The only thing that could make matters worse would be for Olivia to awaken and realize they’d been caught.
Once on the ground, he found himself alone in the stable. His nose led him to the open doors, the scent of tobacco wafting toward him through the night. He found the earl just outside, a wooden pipe clenched between his teeth.
Adam had been made in his image, though one might argue that Rowland’s perpetual scowl and the bitterness hanging over his head like a storm cloud both aged him and robbed him of some of his classical
handsomeness. He looked as if his skin had been pulled too tight over the bones of his face, his eyebrows too sharply curved, his mouth pinched, his cheekbones too prominent. At times, Niall pitied the man who had lost nearly all of his family, including two wives. And yet, he could not fathom how the earl might not find comfort in the children he’d been left with. Could the man not see that Olivia and Adam had lost just as much?
“Master, I—”
“I ought to have known it was you,” Rowland said around the pipe clenched in his teeth. “It became clear to me that Olivia was behaving inappropriately with someone on my staff, but I did not know who. After all the years she spent running about with you and my son, I see now that I should have known all along. How long has it been going on?”
Niall felt as if he might leap out of his own skin, falling apart as his flesh rent away from his bones. His tongue laid heavy and thick in his mouth, his palms sweating and his insides churning. What was he to say? No matter what he told the earl, both he and Olivia would be doomed.
“It is of no consequence,” Rowland continued, without waiting for Niall to answer. “All that matters now is whether you’ve ruined her. I have always liked you, Niall, more than your drunkard of a father, anyway. As much as a man can like his head groom. Tell me you have not ruined my stepdaughter, and we might come to some sort of understanding here.”
The hurricane churning through his body eased just a bit, though he remained wary. He still wasn’t convinced that anything he said might not result in his ultimate destruction.
“N-no, Master,” he managed through his fear-tightened throat. “I knew better than to … I would never …”
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