The Mammoth Book of Scottish Romance

by Trisha Telep

Ah. There it was. “You’re right.” She placed a chunk of cheese and a knife beside the bread on the table and put on a pot of tea. “Where do you want to begin?”

  He cut off a chunk of cheese and broke it in half.

  She accepted the half he held out to her. As she took it, she knew, wherever life took her, she’d never be more “home” or more complete than at this moment, with him. “Your choice.”

  “Why is Nick back from America at the same time you’ve come home?”

  “Coincidence?”

  “I won’t have him under my roof again.” Gabe stood. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t necessary, but you broke me, Jace.”

  She watched him climb the stairs, tired and beaten.

  Aye, she broke him. She knew it when she did. Otherwise, she would have snuffed the dignity and self-respect he craved, before he got it.

  Besides, after losing him, then losing her daughter – damn it, she’d been broken, too. In her room, the connecting door might have been painted with the word “temptation”.

  Telling him the truth played on her mind, but why? To prove herself a liar? So he’d confess and lose his flock’s respect?

  If he believed her, he’d know he was the only man she loved, but nothing mattered now, except Bridget.

  Jacey placed her hand against the connecting door. He’d paced for some time, but all seemed quiet now. She turned the knob.

  A lamp beside his bed bathed the room in a soft glow. Gabriel sat up, naked to his waist, baring a solid wall of flesh and muscle. Aye, she’d once run her fingers through the mat of dark silk, but she hadn’t seen it.

  He looked so anguished, Jacey turned to go.

  “Jace.” A plea she couldn’t deny. Then she was in his arms, in his bed, and he was ravishing her mouth.

  Her clothes fell away under his seeking hands.

  Not yet, her rational mind warned, not with things unsaid. But her body carried a demand of its own, and Jacey couldn’t speak or think; she could only feel.

  The hair on his chest abraded and caressed, as did his day’s growth of beard against her face and breasts, inciting new heat to build on the rest. He kissed and suckled, ravenous, greedy and ready, fulfilling four years of lonely dreams.

  Fifteen

  He knew his strength lay in denying passion, but Jacey filled his senses, her taste, her scent, her feel. She arched against him, whispered his name. Hearing it on her lips made him hard. Jacey, softer than silk, warmer than sunshine, his other half.

  He cupped her bottom, and gazed into passion-bright eyes. She was his, only his … and Nicholas Daventry’s.

  Like a winter flood, the thought washed over him. He groaned and fell against his pillows.

  Jacey whimpered, bereft, and he pulled her tight against him, to console them both. If he didn’t get hold of himself, he’d weep with her.

  “Passion,” he said, voice rusty, “almost killed me the last time, Jace.” He held her away from him, to see her face and for needed distance. “After you left – once I wanted to live again – I learned to control it.”

  “No, Gabe. Not that.”

  “When I thought the babe was mine – hell, getting you and a child was like a reward. Who cared if I lost my living, I would have you. But when you said it wasn’t mine …” He cleared his throat. “Learning to control my passion was difficult. Until today, I thought I succeeded. I hate its wild unpredictability. Yet when you’re around, my passion has power. You have power.”

  “Gabriel, you act as if it was all your fault. There were two of us in Lockhart Keep. I experienced a love bright and beautiful, as might have happened tonight.”

  He laughed, bitterly. “You might not frighten easily, Jace, but it frightened your sister.”

  “Clara?”

  “I frightened her so much, she wept on our wedding night.”

  “Clara was afraid of everything.”

  “Don’t talk ill of the dead. She loved you. When she was sick, she—”

  Jacey stilled. “Clara did what?”

  “She said she’d never forgive me if I didn’t fetch you after she was gone.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “One year. I had three months to go. I was counting days, but I didn’t know if I would.” He stroked her cheek. He’d never felt like this about Clara. “We’ll never know. You came to me.”

  “I came for Bridget, to take her away and raise her myself.”

  He sat up, his back straight, hair in disarray. “I wouldn’t let you.”

  “You’re her stepfather, Gabriel, no relation at all.”

  He rounded on her. “I swear, Jace, if I were her real father, I’d disappear with her so you’d never find her.”

  Jace tugged the sheet around her unable to hide her panic. “You’re a good and decent man, Gabriel. You’ll do what’s best for her, as will I. We simply have to figure out which of us is best.”

  “She’s mine. I know what’s best for her,” he shouted.

  “You don’t. She plays you like one of Suttie’s puppets, like I used to do, which makes you sick with worry. She couldn’t control losing her mother, so she tries to … buttonhole you. Losing her mother must have given her the sense she couldn’t keep anyone where she wanted them. When I was a child, I counted on two people. One of them was you at my heels, or wherever I wanted you.

  “Bridget is holding you by an invisible tether – call it love – pulling you this way and that. Just watch her. You can practically see her consider in which direction she’ll tug. You’ve had her two years, but you haven’t figured her out yet.”

  “Don’t pretend to know my daughter.” Gabriel donned his dressing gown, tying it with a vicious yank.

  He looked at her and his ire vanished on the instant. “Jace, I cannot stay angry with you in my bed, a sheet between my mouth and your body, your hair a veil I want wrapped around me.”

  Sixteen

  Jacey responded physically to his words. Aware of her power, she raised her hands above her head to stretch like a cat. “I like your passion.” She didn’t want him to deny passion.

  He waivered in his resolve. “My passion becomes wild, almost savage, but only with you.”

  “You said you were passionate with Clara.” Not for the first time, jealousy of her sister beat in her breast.

  Gabriel went to gaze out on the night. “I wanted with Clara what I’d had with you. It was impossible; she wasn’t you. It never happened again.”

  Jacey sat straighter. “So you’ll never be with a woman, again, never share your body?” With me, she wanted to add.

  She held the sheet around her and went to the connecting door.

  “Jace, who else did you count on as a child, besides me?”

  She looked straight at him. “Nick,” she said pointedly. “To get me out of trouble.” But Gabriel didn’t get it.

  She’d destroyed their love. In her own bed, she wept. Telling him Nick got her out of trouble was as close as she dared get to telling Gabe the truth.

  Her decision to lie about her child’s father hardened him, not his passion, and she felt powerless against fixing it. She saved him when he didn’t want saving. If he knew, she felt he would never forgive her. The rift between them couldn’t be repaired.

  An hour before Sunday service, Jacey took Bridget to visit her baby’s grave. “Baby Girl Lockhart,’’ the stone said, the date of birth and death the same. They left bouquets of heather and thistle.

  Bridget traced the chiselled numbers with her fingers. “I know these numbers. Mama wrote them in her special book.”

  She hugged Bridget and swallowed. “It was nice of your Mama to record it. My Mama didn’t.”

  In the front pew, Mac leaned towards her. “Pray hard, young lady,” she whispered. “I found your missing slipper.”

  Jacey frowned. “So?”

  “Found it changing his bed.” She pointed to Gabriel at the pulpit.

  His sermon, eloquent and magnetic, like him, bore a lesson. He even looked
devilishly handsome in a cassock.

  She loved him as much as ever, adored him, wanted a future with him, please God. She’d confess, if only he’d forgive

  On the kirk steps, Prout pushed Olivia at him. “I told Livvy I’d pay for the new kirk as soon as the vicarage is cleaned out so Liv can decorate. After all, everything’s set, except for the ring on her finger.”

  Jacey gasped and Mac hurried Bridget away.

  “Given the company you keep,” Prout warned, “donations may dry up.”

  Gabe frowned. “My Lady, may I remind you that charity is a virtue.”

  Prout gave her a highbrow snub. “I don’t know why you persist in keeping such company, when you insisted, for decency’s sake, that she leave in the first place.”

  Jace walked

  “Jacey, Jace,” Gabriel called, right behind her.

  She ran from her port in a storm, because he her sent her away.

  The gypsy wagon sat near the stables, horses hitched, Suttie beside them. “Suttie, please take me away.”

  “Ah, Jace.” Suttie lifted her chin. “If you went, what would we tell the wee one with her nose pressed to the window?”

  Gabriel grasped her shoulders. “Jace, look at me.”

  She focused on his cassock and wondered what he wore beneath it.

  His sigh, heavy with regret, made her look up. “I wanted you gone, Jace, because of ignorant, callous fools who judge. You lost your child; you didn’t need to be flogged with words.”

  “You wanted me gone, Gabriel Macgregor,” she snapped. “Because you didn’t want anyone to know your truth.”

  Suttie blew them each a kiss. “Take the wagon.”

  Jace heard the lock click open.

  Seventeen

  Panic and Passion seemed to meld inside Gabriel, as if he were fighting for his life. “Jace, please,” he begged. “There’s too much between us to be torn apart by spiteful words.”

  “Your spiteful words, evidently.”

  She fought him, so he swept her up, set her in Suttie’s wagon, and locked the door. Ignoring her threat of castration, he climbed on the box and flicked the reins.

  The window behind him opened before they cleared the drive. “You’ll go to hell for this, vicar.”

  “Without ballocks, I take it.” He laughed, and passed the kirk, and inside, he saw Jace at the side window waving at the slack-jawed Prouts.

  Gabe urged the horses faster while the clouds spilled over.

  The rain sliding down his neck made him reconsider. Turn back? Keep going? In other words: “Give up and die?” or “Fight for his life?”

  He’d never got Jace out of his blood. She lived in every drop that pumped his heart. Forget the past, he needed her as much as his next breath. He loved her more than life, God help him.

  Jacey failed to break the lock. Rain poured from troughs not buckets. The idiot must be soaked.

  For the second time, she threw open the window behind him. “Blast it, Gabriel, stop and get out of the rain.”

  He didn’t turn his head, but … “How can you laugh? So help me, when I get my hands on you, I’m going to beat you.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  She shut the window as hard as she dared.

  Who knew Gabe was so impulsive he’d steal a sinner before his flock?

  Jace stopped. Gabriel Macgregor had never been impulsive in his life, except the day he came home from the seminary.

  She curled up in Suttie’s bed.

  Their favourite haunt, hers and Gabriel’s, had been the ruins of Lockhart Keep, where their daughter was conceived.

  After her mother sent her away, she dreamed he’d come for her, sweep her off her feet and take her home. Could this be the day?

  When pigs flew above the rainclouds.

  Gabe should have known she’d give him up before she caused him to give up his dream to repair his father’s failures and breathe new life into his home and parish.

  Look at him, posture rigid, no hat or coat, defying the elements to get his way. Stubborn. Dear. Travelling a road as turbulent and deep as the man mocking it.

  “Gabriel,” she called, and he looked back, surprised, to see her.

  “Self-punishment won’t help. Take me home.”

  The horses faltered on the flooded road, and when Jacey thought he had them under control, lightning struck nearby.

  They bolted, tearing the reins from Gabe’s hands as they raced towards the trees.

  Gabriel fought to keep his seat and shouted for her to get back.

  She did, and watched him climb over the seat and through the window. He’d barely cleared the window when Jace saw the horses choose opposite sides of an ancient oak.

  The wagon hit, a limb pushing through the window, shattering glass, splintering wood.

  Gabriel swore and landed on top of her.

  Books flew from a railed shelf, hitting him, head and shoulders.

  The wagon teetered once, twice, three shuddering times, then it settled, with a huge creaking groan, nearly upright, impaled by a tree.

  Eighteen

  Gabe’s heart and breathing slowed, and though freezing wet, he appreciated his mattress, and enjoyed it for one delectable beat before raising his aching head and staring into her wide, emerald eyes.

  Shafts of white-hot current shot between them, as if each were the opposite poles of the same lightening bolt.

  She must feel his physical reaction, and given her lowered lids, she answered its call. “You’re … wet,” she said, licking rain from her lips.

  “As are you.” The timbre of his voice surprised him. Afraid to crush her, Gabriel rolled to her side, his erection prodding her thigh as he kissed the rain from her lips.

  A salty kiss. Tears, not rain.

  He sat up. “Are you hurt?” He ran his hands over her, feeling for breaks.

  Jacey shot to her feet with no escape. The entire wagon would fit in the vicarage entry, but it was homey, warm and dry, unlike them, except where the impaling branch dripped rain.

  She stood as far from him as she could.

  Only one thing to do. He peeled away his cold, soaking vestments.

  “What are you doing? You’re a vicar for God’s sake.”

  “But a man for my own sake, the way you first knew me.”

  “A boy. I knew you as a boy first.”

  “An urchin, you mean. I despised that boy.”

  “Because he wasn’t perfect, but humanity is allowed.”

  “Right.” He unbuttoned his shirt.

  She backed into the branch and it sprinkled them with rain. “Look what you’ve brought us to,” she snapped. “You can’t make me believe you cast me out other than to save your sorry self from being exposed as having been … ensnared … in my wanton web. You—”

  “Jace, you’re babbling.”

  “I wanted you gone for your own good! Prout would have had you stoned in all but fact if you stayed.”

  “Don’t be disrespectful of your mother-in-law.” Jace lit a candle against the drear.

  “There’ll be a frost fair in hell before I marry the harpy’s whelp.” Gabriel discarded his wet shirt. “We both know I’m as human, and a damned sight more imperfect than you. Nobody’s humanity calls to mine more than yours, Jacey Lockhart, soon to be Macgregor, after this day’s work.”

  “Nothing happened to—”

  “That won’t matter.” He unbuttoned his trousers.

  She found no place to run, so he advanced, giving her less. “If we removed your crinolines, we’d have more room.”

  She thought about that, exhilarated as Gabriel knelt and lifted the hem of her gown. He undid the tapes at her waist, his arms warm and soaking through at her belly. Her crinoline fell over his head.

  Jacey pulled it up, allowing him to continue, her face warm.

  He looked at her, eyes dancing, hair askew, and her heart fluttered while her underskirts fell, forming smaller and smaller circles.

  Gabriel s
troked the front of her cotton drawers, rushing warmth to her core, rested his cheek there before he turned, opened his mouth against her, and whispered her name like a prayer.

  She gasped, combed her hands through his hair, and held him there.

  He slid his cool hands along the backs of her thighs, up beneath her drawers, to cup her bare bottom, then he splayed them to stroke and tease where she ached for him.

  Jacey released a shuddering sigh, and Gabriel stood and opened his mouth over hers. Ravenous, he swallowed her sighs, and became as much a part of her as the night she conceived their child.

  He lightly stroked her as he undid the buttons at her bodice, freed her arms from her sleeves, and she had no strength to resist.

  “That’s my sweet Jace,” he whispered as he slid her dress down, palms skimming skin, until he cleared her hips and that garment joined the rest.

  He took her hand and she stepped over her clothes, to face her lover. Her camisole came up and over her head.

  In corset, chemisette and stockings, Jacey wished they were silk and lace, not serviceable cotton, yet Gabriel regarded her with hunger.

  She’d dreamed of this for years, because she loved this dignified, handsome, stubborn, broody man more than her life.

  She wouldn’t change this time together, despite the inevitable pain.

  Nineteen

  Gabriel unlaced her corset and slipped his hands inside from the back to cup her breasts.

  Jacey leaned against him as he rubbed her nipples, whispered his adoration, his breath and lips warm along her neck and shoulders.

  Potent points of pleasure coursed through her. Her happiness soared, her womanhood flowered.

  Gabe did away with the corset, and lifted a breast to suckle through her chemisette while he reacquainted himself with the heat of her beneath her drawers. Then, they, too, were gone, and Jacey stood naked before the man she loved.

  She disposed of his trousers in a thrumming beat and found a new item of male attire. Underbreeches. She circled him, to get a good look.

  Sliding her hand across the front, loving her ability to make his eager member pulsate, she found a slit in the garment, enough to accommodate her hand.

  He gasped when she found him, rigid and thick, then she did away with the underbreeches and cupped his ballocks while she worked him.