A Question Worth Asking

by Angeline Fortin

  “Will you be needing menus this evening, Mr. MacKintosh?”

  “No, thank you.”

  When the maître d’ was gone, James grinned wolfishly at her. “But maybe some dessert later on?”

  Prim smacked James’s arm. “You are terrible. What a thing to say in public.”

  “Nobody can hear us, but I’m not sure what you’re implying.” His eyes twinkled. “You might have had dinner but I haven’t. I’m starving.”

  Regret flooded her. “I apologize. I only dined because...”

  “Go on.”

  “I hadn’t yet decided to come,” she confessed. “Please eat something. I don’t want you to be hungry.”

  James leaned forward, his lips close to her ear. “A bite of food won’t change that, lass.”

  With another roguish grin, he leaned back in his chair as their drinks were delivered. He waited as she lifted hers and took a cautious sip. It was at once bitter and sweet, the sugar softening the blow of the whisky but offset by the tang of lemon. It burned a path from tongue to gut but settled there, spreading a delicious heat.

  “It’s wonderful.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  She sipped her drink, watching the piano player over the rim.

  “Have you ever heard Ragtime before?”

  Prim shook her head. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  The song ended, the singer announcing a short break. Voices and laughter rose around them. Prim peered this way and that, absorbing every detail of the club. She asked him about it, about other clubs like it to fill the intermission. Finally, she asked him the question that’d been plaguing her all week. She certainly couldn’t have asked Leachman when he’d come to call with Declan during his weekly visit the previous night. His awkward apology had been difficult enough though she was gracious, knowing his suit would come to an end.

  “How did you manage to subdue Mr. Leachman the other night? You hardly moved at all but he was clearly in pain.”

  “Mrs. Preston’s daughter, Kitty, has an unusual butler. An old Chinaman,” James explained, sipping his drink. “He worked with my brother Vin after he...well, suffered a prolonged illness to restore his strength and health. He used the ancient martial arts combined with harmony and nature to build strength from without and from within. Unifying life’s energy. I found it fascinating and asked him to teach me as well.”

  “But you didn’t fight him at all.”

  “No, it is for defense in practice,” he said. “Submission without doing harm.”

  “He was in pain,” she pointed out.

  James grinned wickedly. “Aye, he was.”

  With an answering smile, Prim sipped her cocktail with an unladylike smack of her lips. A flush of embarrassment quickly followed.

  James laughed, raising his glass in silent toast.

  With a low chuckle, Prim saluted him as well before taking another sip. “This is really quite good.”

  “Would you like another?” When she nodded, he twitched a finger to summon the waiter and ordered another round for them both.

  * * *

  “Why Mossman Leachman?” he asked, once they were relatively alone again.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m curious, why do your brothers believe you should marry him over any other? Why not someone else?”

  Their new drinks arrived and Prim turned her attention to hers. A few sugar crystals stuck to the rim of the glass and she caught them with her fingertip. Then licked them off. It might not have been anything more than a tipsy gesture as she relaxed from her usual proper behavior, but it skewed James’s train of thought back to those long kisses in the carriage.

  “Fletcher was a junior partner at the First Bank of New York where Declan is on the board,” she began a moment later, dragging his thoughts back to those more proper. “Mr. Leachman also works there and was a friend of my father, who started the bank with Declan many years ago. Shane has taken his place there since he died. They all invested together multiple times. I suppose Shane and Declan felt...feel,” she amended, “their collective familiarity with my husband’s investments puts Mr. Leachman in the perfect position to take over the control of them. He’s convinced my other brothers of the same.”

  “You’re not so sure?”

  “I’m sure Mr. Leachman has some excellent qualities, but to be honest, I find him half an idiot.”

  “Well, it’s the other half that counts, right?”

  Prim chuckled at that. “I suppose so. I’d rather not marry either half, though.”

  James joined her, amused. “No, I suppose that’s understandable.”

  Laying his hand over hers, he stroked his thumb back and forth over the soft skin of her knuckles, wishing now that they were not in such a public place.

  “But that that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t marry at all.”

  * * *

  A rush of longing at his words washed over her followed by a flash of panic. It would never do to give him the impression that her thoughts on the matter had been swayed at all. By him. Because of him. She’d see his back at the door in that moment.

  “I’ve told you before,” she said in a rush. “I’ve no desire to remarry. I want nothing more than my own independence.”

  A salve for him. A reminder for herself.

  “I would not have equality, a voice in marriage.” A mantra. A lifeline against her own heartache. “A husband...any husband will expect submission in all things.”

  “Not in all things.” His eyes darkened a shade, his lips quirking at the corner in a manner that sent all sorts of dark, lusty thoughts through her mind. His finger traced a sensual pattern on the back of her hand.

  The sensation of his calloused thumb stroking her hand was lovely, giving her visions of all the other bits of her he might give the same treatment. Tugging her hand back, Prim frowned into her drink. It must be much stronger than it tasted to be giving her thoughts like that.

  “But there might be one or two areas where you might discover submission to be to your advantage.”

  Those dark thoughts flared into brilliant color. Jamie poised over her, bronzed and brawny. Taking his pleasure of her. Giving it. The near ecstasy his kiss had brought her in the carriage only hinted at what rapture he might lavish upon her.

  Prim took a bigger swallow of her drink, the alcohol radiating heat out from its path, but not so much as the fire he aroused in her. “You enjoy shocking me.”

  “I enjoy making you see the truth,” he countered. “I told you before, a true man doesn’t have to dominate a woman to prove his virility. He can enjoy her. Appreciate. Respect her as an equal...in marriage. And in bed.”

  More images that had little in common with her experience in darkened rooms, with tentatively raised nightgowns, and laying on her back flooded her mind. Jamie in all his glory, bathed in light. Above her. Beneath her.

  He might not be trying to shock her, but he was. Just as she was shocking herself.

  Taking another sip of her drink, Prim’s mind buzzed, whether it was due to the libation or her own scandalous thoughts, she wasn’t sure.

  In either case, a nightclub was hardly the place to be having such thoughts. Or such a discussion where anyone might overhear them. So, when the piano player came back on stage, she gave him her full attention hoping to banish the lascivious imaginings.

  Chapter 22

  I don’t know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.

  ~ Edith Wharton

  Knowing that he’d pushed her again as hard as he might, James let the subject drop as the pianist began a jaunty tune that brought a round of applause from the audience. He was joined by a fiddler and a trumpet player.

  James listened to the band with half an ear, but his eyes were all for Prim as she watched the energetic band with wonder on her face. Delight tugged at his lips as he watched Prim absorb the experience. The elation on her face was a far cry from th
e prudish expressions he’d long associated with her.

  Soon her toe was tapping along, her hands clapping to the beat. He wondered how often she’d read of new things but never experienced them.

  More than that, he had to wonder how long it’d been since she was truly happy.

  He’d done that.

  Or perhaps it was the alcohol, he reconsidered, as she sipped on her second sour.

  Another lively tune started and several couples moved on to the dance floor.

  “Would you like to dance?” he asked.

  Prim shook her head. “I wouldn’t even begin to know how.”

  He toyed with the idea of offering to teach her, or simply towing her onto the floor. He opted for neither, letting her enjoy it and perhaps leave learning for another time.

  Lifting a finger, he ordered another round of cocktails for them. He swallowed his down when it arrived, but Prim just set hers aside. She perched on the edge of her seat, observing the spirited dance with interest.

  The upbeat song ended and after the applause subsided, the violinist stepped to the front of the stage and began playing more mournfully. A vocalist came on stage as well, adding the words to the song James recognized as Charles K. Harris’s After the Ball.

  The song was the story of a man who’d witnessed a kiss between a woman he loved and his brother. He’d assumed she had taken his brother as her lover and rejected her without ever seeing her again or asking her about the incident.

  He’d lived out his days in misery rather than with the woman he loved.

  Again, James was bothered by the kiss he’d witnessed. He didn’t want to hear that she had another lover, but was he going to let the unknown eat at him?

  The song ended and melded into another, slower rhythm.

  “Come, I think you’ve seen enough to take on a dance. Let’s give it a try.”

  “I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Lass, we’re going to have to remove those words from your vocabulary.”

  James didn’t give her the option of refusing, but tugged her onto her feet and into his arms. He led her in a sedate one-step variation as she clung to his shoulder and beamed up at him.

  “Who was he?” he asked.

  “Who?”

  “The blond gentleman I saw you kiss at the Gould soiree.”

  Prim frowned, offended. “Why, I would never!”

  “You were in one of the alcoves at the end of the ballroom,” he said. “Almost out of sight, but I saw you clearly. You were certainly happy to see him.”

  “Oh, that...” She giggled and stumbled a bit. “That was just my brother Dennis. I told you he’d been abroad. I was happy to see him.”

  James bit back his surprise...and relief. That was where doing naught but wondering had gotten him. Not a lover at all.

  “Did you think...?” She gaped at him, slack in the jaw. “You did! Is that why you pursued me? Did you think I had taken a paramour?”

  “I have not pursued you, lass, but merely offered my assistance as requested.”

  Prim nodded gravely. “That’s right. Why pursue me when you’ve so many other lovely ladies to chase?”

  “There are none I’d rather chase but you,” he whispered in her ear, the flirtatious rejoinder holding more truth than he’d imagined. “You are worthy of dozens of suitors. None of them would be worthy of you.”

  She glowed with pleasure, her hand sliding up his shoulder. Her gloved finger trailed down the side of his neck, both tickling and tantalizing.

  She must be foxed to do so, he thought.

  “Do you tease me, Mrs. Eames?” James slipped his hand farther around her tiny waist and pulled her closer.

  Her lips twitched. “Won’t you call me Prim?” she asked again. “I don’t want you calling me by another man’s name.”

  No, he didn’t either. And more and more, he longed to call her something else altogether. Mrs. MacKintosh. Wife.

  Lover.

  Savior.

  His breath arrested beneath a crushing weight against his chest. Longing. Hope.

  “I told ye, lass. Prim simply doesn’t fit ye in my mind any longer,” he choked out, trying to sound flippant. “I could call you Primrose, I suppose. Or Rose.”

  “Or lass.” She sighed, resting her cheek against his chest. “Just lass.”

  “Lass,” he whispered into her hair, his lips grazing her cheek. “I’ve the urge to ask you to come home with me tonight.”

  “If you asked, I’d probably say yes,” she baited flirtatiously, surprising him.

  From any other widow, James would have taken the offer without questioning the motivation behind it. Coming from Prim, it had him questioning her motives and her lucidity. It was too impetus a move for Prim, too impulsive. What he knew of her told him she was neither.

  “Are you turning the tables on me, lass? Trying to shock me?”

  “Is it working?”

  James nodded. “Aye, it is.”

  Prim laughed, a husky breathless chuckle. “Are you going to ask me?”

  “Nay, lass.”

  “Because, as you told me before, if I want something I must take it myself?”

  The image of Prim taking what she wanted of him boiled James’s blood. “You must be more tipsy than I thought.”

  “Or are you more prudish than I believed?” Her eyes, glowing like sun-kissed amethysts, challenged him.

  He enjoyed the fire he saw there, her confidence. It was as though taking the role of aggressor sparked something in her. Still, he wouldn’t let her do anything she’d regret.

  “I better see you home.”

  Prim hiccupped against his chest. “I’m not so tipsy as you think, you know. Only happy. I suppose you hadn’t seen enough of one from me that you’d mistake it for the other.”

  “I only want to see you happy, lass,” he swore.

  “Then take me home.”

  Chapter 23

  I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.

  ~ Mary Wollstonecraft from A Vindication of the Rights of Women

  “We’re here.”

  “What?” Prim asked drowsily.

  She’d spent the short journey across the park curled against his side, purring like a kitten as she nuzzled his neck. It was all James could do to keep his hands to himself.

  “You’re home,” he told her.

  Her heavy lids widened with confusion as she peeked out the carriage window. “I thought we were going to your home. We cannot...do this at my home.”

  “We are not doing this at all, remember?” he said, though it went against every instinct in his body to say so. But for Prim, to do what was best for her, he would suffer the frustration. “I won’t face you the morning after and see sorrow in your eyes, lass. Believe me, such nobility sits ill within me, but when I make love to you there will be no doubt in my mind that you want it, too.”

  “I do,” she said. “I only protested about going to my home tonight because I don’t want my children to assume there is something more between us if they saw you in my bedchamber. The girls in particular have gotten caught up in Shane’s stories of them having a new father someday and Ellis likes you so much already. You’re all he talks about. I couldn’t bear to get their hopes up.”

  Her sensible explanation sounded remarkably lucid. He’d never had reason to give children much thought when it came to his lovers. That he did hope to be the father they wanted, she couldn’t know. Yet.

  Prim’s gloved hand stroked his cheek. “You’ve shown me a different way of living, Jamie. As difficult as it is sometimes to act upon it, it is the life I want for myself. I want to set an example of strength and confidence for my daughters to follow. The more I’m with you, the more self-assured I become. More adept at acting on my desires. And what I desire is you.”

  Her confession sent his pulse thrumming once more. All the nobility in the world couldn’t have stopped him from taking her lips. Their mouths meshed, hot and hungry.
Prim rose against him, her breasts pressed to his chest. Her arms winding tight around him.

  “Yes, Jamie...”

  James groaned and tore his mouth away. “Blast it, lass. I don’t want you to have any regrets.”

  “I won’t,” she protested. “I made this choice.”

  “A choice that contradicts everything I know about you.”

  Prim pushed away from his side and stared up at him, searching his face in the dim light of the carriage lamp. “Do you think I’m not a bundle of nerves inside, Jamie? Do you think I’m not shocked in myself? I am. A maelstrom of doubts and self-incrimination struck me within seconds of asking you to take me home. To take me to your home.”

  James sat back, disappointed in her words though they only mirrored his own thoughts. “Then wh—”

  “Let me finish,” she begged, holding up a hand. “Immediately following was dissatisfaction in myself. Those were the thoughts of a woman too overcome by the opinion of others to do as she pleased. The thoughts which have controlled my life for years. They came by rote, James, not because I actually believed them. Though nothing will come of it that society would approve of, I want you. For myself.”

  And he wanted her, more than he’d ever imagined possible. But it was her assuredness that nothing would come of it that sealed his resolve. Nothing would come of it because she didn’t want it. She didn’t want marriage.

  She didn’t want him.

  With any other lady, James would have rejoiced at such a stalwart rejection of a permanent attachment. But not Prim. The one he wanted the demand of marriage from. How could he tell her he was now the one who wanted more? How could he convince her otherwise?

  He wouldn’t force her by convention to his ways, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do all that was in his power to persuade her otherwise.

  “No regrets?”

  “Not one.”

  James opened the sliding door separating them from their driver who was probably wondering what kept them. “Once around the park, if you please.”

  “James,” Prim protested.