She had to force herself to stay seated, not to jump up and flee from the hall. Running would do her no good at all, not from a McKerrigan. A man like him would remember the humiliation of a broken betrothal if not her wanton behavior in the garden.
He would find her, and she would have to face him. She just hadn’t expected it to be quite so soon.
“Send him in,” Queen Mary said.
The doors at the end of the hall swung open, and Helen remembered the night of the ill-fated betrothal banquet when she had stepped into a crowded chamber much like this one and all eyes were on her. Now she sat with the crowd, amid all the other black-clad ladies-in-waiting, no one looking at her, yet she felt just as nervous. Her hands were shaking and she twisted her fingers together.
A group of men appeared, all tall and hard-faced, but Helen could see only the figure who led them. James McKerrigan—the man she had almost married. The man who had kissed her, touched her, as no one else ever had.
He was as gloriously handsome as he had been then, with the same cropped dark hair and elegant features. Yet his face seemed darker, thinner, harder, his jaw set. His green eyes were cold as they swept over the gathering, arrogant as if he was above them all.
His hand rested lightly on the plain hilt of a sword, his fingers curled as they once had in Helen’s hair. Like everyone else, he wore black, leather and velvet that set off that hard coldness about him. A swath of the purple-and-gold McKerrigan plaid swept over his shoulder, held with a jeweled pin.
A vast silence fell over the crowd, as if these hardened, cynical courtiers were awed by the warrior who had come among them. In that hush, the soles of his tall black boots rang out on the polished wood floor.
As he strode closer and closer, Helen trembled harder. She bit down again on her cheek to keep from crying out. He was just as she remembered in her dreams.
“Mon Dieu,” one of the four Maries whispered. “What a god. No one told me this was waiting for us in Scotland or I would have returned much sooner.”
Helen had the sudden shocking compulsion to spin around and slap her. James McKerrigan was not just any woman’s to ogle!
But then—of course he was. He didn’t belong to Helen any more than she belonged to him, and she was fortunate for that. She had had a lucky escape, or at least so she tried to tell herself over the years.
She held her breath as he drew near, hoping he wouldn’t see her. Or hoping he would? She didn’t even know. But that intense emerald gaze didn’t even brush over her as he went on one knee before the queen.
Even in such a pose he looked fierce and strong. The black fabric of his doublet pulled taut over his shoulders and Helen remembered how they felt under her hands, so hard and powerful. Strong enough to hold her safe above the whole world.
But she had rejected his strength. And a man like that did not forgive such things.
“Lord McKerrigan,” Queen Mary said, in her softly accented English. “We welcome you to our Court.”
She held out her hand and he rose to bow over it. Queen Mary had an appreciation for male beauty, as did her ladies, and her gaze flickered over him as she smiled. The queen also had a powerful effect on men, charming them with no effort at all on her part. Would James prove no less immune than any other male?
But his smile for the queen was cool and polite, distant. “My clan is proud to welcome you back to your homeland, Your Grace,” he answered. His voice, like his body, was just as Helen remembered. Low, rough and rich as it poured over a woman’s senses.
“I am so happy to be back,” the queen said. “I have missed my people, my home.”
As James presented his men to Queen Mary, Helen tried to shrink into her seat, to become invisible. This was almost over. Soon he would be gone, and she could go back to trying to forget.
“We understand you have a petition to present to us, Lord McKerrigan,” the queen said as the formal proceedings at last wound to a halt. “We will be happy to hear you tomorrow.”
James inclined his dark head. “I thank you, Your Grace.”
“And now I believe it is time to retire,” Queen Mary said with a gracious smile over the gathering. “Our first night on Scottish soil. I am sure it will be a peaceful one.”
Helen wasn’t sure of that at all, especially when James McKerrigan turned and his stare fell directly onto her. That look, so blazing and predatory, told her he had known she was there all the time. Had been focused on her, even as he paid court to the queen.
And he had not forgotten or forgiven. Her father had humiliated his family, she had left him and he did not forget.
“Helen,” one of the Maries hissed and tugged at her hand.
Helen quickly shook away that frozen fascination that had come over her when he looked at her. She took her place in the queen’s train to make her way from the room.
As she passed James, she struggled not to look at him. That tenuous hold on control cracked as she felt the warm brush of his hand on hers, the press of a small folded paper on her palm.
It was a fleeting touch, and he said nothing to her, but she couldn’t breathe.
She almost ran out of the hall behind the queen. Only once they were in the relative quiet of the corridor outside the queen’s chamber did she dare read the note.
It was a bold, black slash across the white parchment. Meet me in the garden by the cupid fountain. Don’t dare to stay away. JM.
Helen peeked cautiously over her shoulder as she crept down the garden path. Only the moon, a hazy pale silver orb, cast light around her, and made the silent, overgrown place full of fearsome shadows.
In France, the gardens were elaborate works of art, filled with sculpted hedges and dancing fountains. She had sometimes slipped out there to kiss a suitor, but that had been fleeting, light fun.
Tonight, she felt as far from “light” as it was possible to be.
Her stomach was twisted in knots and her hands were cold where they clutched her dark cloak. She had changed her mind a dozen times, decided to hide in her chamber and ignore the note, pretend he would go away. Pretend her feelings would go away, all that fear and excitement, that longing and memory.
But she knew, with a deep, dark certainty, that James McKerrigan would never just go away. She had seen that cold fury and hard determination in his eyes when he looked at her. She had to cease being a coward and face him.
Only then could there be a chance to put the past away.
She glanced back over her shoulder. The honey-colored stone bulk of Holyrood, low, squat, with round towers and thick walls, was dark and silent. It felt as if she was the only creature left in the world. She had nowhere else to run.
She turned down another path and saw the cupid fountain in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by marble benches. She quickly turned and looked around, but there was no one else nearby. Finally, she dared to take a breath. Perhaps he had decided a lady he had only kissed once long ago was not worth the trouble.
But the breath strangled in her throat when hard, unyielding hands closed around her waist and dragged her back against a powerful chest. The scent of sea air and leather curled around her senses, and she felt his warm breath on her ear as he drew her closer.
“So you obeyed for once,” he said, and she heard the infuriating hint of laughter in his voice.
Her temper flaring, she twisted against his hands, but he just held her harder.
“I was sure you would make some sort of barbaric scene right in front of the queen if I did not,” she cried. “It’s not some sort of permission for you to maul me.”
He laughed aloud at her heated words, driving her anger higher. Anger—and a terrible, twisting excitement deep inside of her. She struggled, but he held her as easily as a feather.
“You are my betrothed,” he said, and bit lightly at her soft earlobe. When she gasped at the sensation, he traced it with the tip of his tongue. “I have the right to maul you.”
That tongue trailed down the side of her ne
ck, leaving what felt like a ribbon of fire in its wake. One of his hands slid up into her hair and guided her head to the side to leave her open to him. His mouth rested on the soft curve just above her shoulder, hot, and he bit down lightly as if to claim her as his.
No one had ever dared treat her thus, and Helen struggled to hold on to her anger. Anger was safe. Anger was familiar. But the way his hand, his mouth made her feel—it was new and strange, frightening. It was too much like their first meeting, when she found herself in his arms and felt safe for the first time in her life.
As if he sensed her sudden weakness, his other hand went beneath her cloak to wrap just around the underside of her breast. She still wore her Court gown, but even through the stiffly embroidered satin she felt the heat of his touch. He pulled her back ruthlessly until she was pressed right against him.
His fingertips traced the soft swell of her breast pushed high by her fashionable French bodice as his lips moved over the nape of her neck.
“Did you miss me, Helen?” he whispered hoarsely against her skin.
“I—I don’t even know you,” she managed to choke out. Buy aye—she had missed him. Too much.
“I have to disagree. We know each other quite well.” He pushed back the side of her cloak to flatten his palm on her breast, his fingers deftly dipping beneath her neckline to brush against her nipple.
“I thought of you, of this, so often when you were gone,” he said. When she tried to elbow him in the stomach, his fingertips closed on that throbbing nipple, this close to pinching, and she froze. “Did you think of me in your lonely bed?”
“Certainly not,” she gasped as he rubbed harder against her.
He laughed. “Or maybe your bed was not so very lonely. They say the French Court is very licentious. Were you seduced by them, Helen?”
Helen remembered the sophisticated Frenchmen who flirted with her, chased her, kissed her. They would have gone further if she let them, but they were easy to put off. None of them ever made her feel the way James McKerrigan did now, as if she would burst into flames or soar into the sky. Had she been missing this all these years? Could he have always made her feel like this, as if this was where she belonged?
Suddenly his laughter was gone. His hand closed over her breast. “Did they, Helen?”
She bit her lip, not answering. He spun her around to face him, and a ray of silvery moonlight fell over his face. His jaw was set in a hard line, a muscle flexing there, and his green eyes looked almost black.
“You belong to me,” he said. “No matter what happened there, from now on you belong to me.”
Helen opened her mouth to argue, but he silenced her with a kiss. This was not in the least like the practiced, seductive kisses of the Frenchmen. This was hard and hot, elemental, a force of nature as inescapable as any storm. His hands speared into her hair, scattering the pins over the ground, and he held her still for his mouth. Not that she could have escaped no matter what she did. Not that she wanted to escape.
His tongue slid between hers as she gasped, and he tasted her deeply, thrusting in and out, tangling with her own tongue. He was all around her, surrounding her, his taste and scent, the force of his raw passion.
He tilted her head so he could go even deeper, and Helen moaned at the overwhelming need of it all. That small sound seemed to rouse him even more, and one hand came down to push her cloak from her shoulders. The night air rushed over her skin, but she only felt it for an instant before his heat covered her.
Without breaking the force of their kiss, he lowered her to the ground, to her cloak spread over the grass. Helen hardly realized what was happening, she was so lost in the whirlwind that was James, the maelstrom of feelings his hands and mouth unleashed in her.
He stretched her out on the ground and drew her heavy skirts up along her legs. His fingers touched the curve of her ankle just above her shoe and his palm flattened to slide up her calf. Her skin beneath the thin silk stocking trembled. His fingers slid around her knee and drew her leg up and out at an angle, caressing the soft spot just at that curve.
Helen sobbed against his mouth, longing for something so deep, so primitive, she couldn’t fathom it. His body came down against hers between her legs, a delicious weight.
She arched up against him, and felt the hardness between her legs, barely confined in his breeches. She instinctively rubbed against it, and he groaned.
She reached to put her arms around him, but he seized both her wrists in one hand and held them above her head. She moaned in protest, but he wouldn’t let her go. His other hand continued its slide up her leg, a slow caress along her thigh.
He caressed the bare skin above the top of her stocking, tracing a light, teasing stroke higher and higher. Closer to the aching core of her, so close his fingertips fluttered over the damp curls there before teasingly sliding away.
His mouth moved away from hers to explore the angle of her jaw, that soft, sensitive spot below her ear. She cried out as he caught her earlobe in his teeth, his tongue circling her pearl earring before he slid his open, hot mouth over her throat. He kissed the hollow at its base, licking at the pulse that beat there so frantically before he rested his forehead on her shoulder.
She felt the brush of his breath over her sensitized skin, while his other hand slid back down her leg and stilled on her bent knee.
“You’re even more beautiful than I remembered,” he said roughly. “I thought of you so often…”
Helen panted, her heart racing. Confusion swept over her, and a terrible mortification. What was she doing? Spread out on the ground like a cheap wanton beneath James McKerrigan! The burning heat of lust turned icy, and she pushed at his shoulder with her body. He refused to release her hands or move even an inch.
“And you’re more barbaric,” she said coldly, straining up even harder to dislodge him. “Assaulting one of the queen’s ladies in her own garden…”
Even as she said the words she was ashamed. It was not an assault, though she wished it had been. She had been an all-too-willing participant in whatever that madness was between them. She had wanted it. This was where she was meant to be.
But the words had escaped. James rose up above her, his eyes burning into her.
“Assault? Maul?” he said, his voice fearsomely soft. “I think you don’t know the meanings of those words, Lady Helen. Perhaps you need a lesson in them.”
“N-Nay,” she stammered, suddenly nervous.
In one smooth motion, he turned her over onto her stomach and drew her hands down to the small of her back, her palms pressed together. She felt something wrap around her wrists, finely woven wool like that of his plaid. It was soft enough, but she couldn’t move.
She opened her mouth to protest, but another cloth slid over her mouth and tied behind her head. Yet another covered her eyes, plunging her into darkness.
Panicked now, Helen arched her body up even as she knew there was no escape.
His hard arm slid around her waist and pulled her up against him. “You’re mine now, Helen Frasier,” he whispered against her ear. “And it’s far past time you remembered that.”
Chapter Four
James sat next to the low bed, watching Helen as she slept in the linen sheets and fur-lined blankets. He leaned forward as he braced his fists on his knees and listened to the soft sound of her breath.
He had loosened the laces of her tight bodice so she wouldn’t be strangled, and the soft, white mounds of her breasts rose lightly with every breath. He remembered how they felt under his hands, the tender flesh, the hard pebbled tips of her pink nipples. Her back arching as if to offer them to him…
““Diabhal,” he cursed, and shifted to adjust the sudden pressure of his erection in his breeches. One look at her, and raw lust burned through him.
He hadn’t expected that, the loss of control, the primitive urge to make her his and let the whole world know it. It had been a cold plan to avenge the wrong done to his family by hers, to claim the Fra
sier wench at last. He had thought of her so often in the years since they met, too often for such a brief encounter. But having her in his arms, having the promise of her in his life only to have it snatched away had affected him more than he wanted to admit.
And Helen was so much more beautiful than he remembered, so much more than his lustful memories of that long-ago kiss. When he first glimpsed her there in the hall at Holyrood he was struck by her elegance, her cool self-possession. By the need to take all that fashionable polish and make her burn as he did, make her open to him and admit she was his. As he was hers, from the first time he looked at her.
Then in the garden, when he kissed her, that vulnerability flashed in her eyes and she reached out to him in need. A need she seemed determined to deny.
So he had captured her and hauled her here, just like one of his primitive Highland ancestors, to try and reach down into her soul again, make her open to him. If he could only hide his own soul from her at the same time. He had been longing for her for so long.
Helen sighed and shifted in her sleep, and James leaned closer to study her face in the candlelight. He saw that while she was indeed as lovely as three years ago, with her milky skin and those wild auburn curls, she was different, as well. She was thinner, hollows beneath her high cheekbones, faint violet shadows under her eyes. She looked as if her glittering Court life was burning her up.
At his home she would be the one served, the one cherished and cosseted. The one he…
Nay. James sat back in his chair, away from her and the tempting reach of her warmth, her perfume. He didn’t adore her. She was to be his wife, as she should have been three years ago. His woman. He could not be hers. No matter how he had felt since the first moment he saw her in that maze.
His heart hardened, and he crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her sleep. By the time morning came she would be his—in all ways. As she should have been all along.
The dream swirled away from Helen even as she struggled to reach out and grab it. The swirling waves of warm sunlight, bright blue sky, and laughter, a soft touch. It filled her with a terrible longing, a need that grabbed hold of her and wouldn’t let her go.
Unlacing the Lady in Waiting Page 3
