Questions for a Highlander

by Angeline Fortin

  “I do not,” he answered, drawing himself up.

  “‘No one is such a liar as an indignant man’,” she promptly returned, quoting from Nietzsche.

  “I know that one, having just read from Beyond Good and Evil,” Jack answered with a wry grin. “Your sister actually recommended it. But no, in this I do not lie.”

  “Truly?” Kitty was puzzled. “You tell me you like children and you want to meet my daughter, but you come up with a convenient excuse to leave before that?”

  “I do like children, and I would enjoy meeting your daughter,” he replied quickly, raising a haughty brow in return before solemnly crossing his heart. “That was no lie, I swear.”

  Kitty fought to deny the corner of her lips to rise in a smile over his antics. “And this business? Are you going to tell me that you truly had a meeting yesterday?”

  Jack frowned, wondering how to swear to such a thing, before acknowledging he could not. Strange he might easily lie to every lass he met but he couldn’t look this woman in the eye and do the same. “Very well, I did not have a meeting.”

  “I knew it!” she smiled triumphantly. “Why did you rush off then?”

  Thinking a half-truth was better than none at all, Jack answered, “I left because I wanted to kiss you very badly. Quite frankly, I wanted to do much more and felt that I shouldn’t rush such a thing, especially with a married woman, most particularly one I had just met and, though she may be pursuing a divorce, one who might not be interested in an affair or feel that same desire in return.”

  Kitty’s smile fled in the face of such ardent truths. That alluring heat was back in Jack’s eyes just as it had been for the better part of their excursion the previous day but now she truly understood what it meant. He didn’t merely find her attractive, he wasn’t only flirting with her, and he didn’t only ‘like’ her as he had said. That was how she had always deciphered such looks from men in the past when she had flirted before and in the early years of her marriage. Light, playful. But that wasn’t all a look from this man held. No, Jack wanted her. He wanted her to be one of the bevy of women she had heard so much about from her sister and his.

  He wanted her in his bed.

  An image dashed through her mind before she could catch hold of it, leaving only an impression of heat, sweat and bodies entangled, and Kitty caught her breath. “Oh.”

  “That is all you have to say?”

  “Oh, my?”

  Jack threw back his head and laughed aloud. Her eyes widened upon viewing the thick column of his throat. The muscles flexed and tendons disappeared into the column of his shirt. The image brought with it an entirely new perspective of things to Kitty. Suddenly, she found herself wondering what Jack looked like under those fancy clothes, when she had only before marveled how handsome he looked in them. Now she noticed the breadth of his chest and thickness of his thighs not with simple appreciation but…she wasn’t certain how to define it…speculation?

  “I didn’t think you might ever be struck speechless, my dear Kitty!” he laughed again. “Have you no comeback greater than that?”

  A smile did twist her lips now. “‘For what do we live, but to make sport of our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?’”

  Haddington’s brow creased as he thought this over for a moment before shaking his head in defeat. “You have me. Who wrote that?”

  “Jane Austen,” she answered, pleased that she had stumped him. “It’s from Pride and Prejudice.”

  “Ahh! I should have known!” Jack waved his hand dismissively. “Romantic sop.”

  “It is not!” Kitty’s back straightened in defense of one of her favorite authors.

  “It is,” he insisted, calmly taking her hand. “Even your Mark Twain said as much. I think he said it was rubbish or some such, but please rest assured that I was not making sport of you, my love.” Jack kissed her hand with a glint in his molten gold eyes. “If the truth leaves you dumbstruck and speechless, you must know that you leave me the same way with alarming frequency.”

  A little shiver ran up her arm as the warmth from his lips penetrated her thin glove. She stared at him, accessing, searching for the truth but before she could respond, Jack raised his head, looking about. “Ah, we’re here at last!”

  Not waiting for the coachman, Jack opened the door and leapt down before turning to drop the step and offer Kitty his hand. “May I?”

  “Thank you, sir.” She smiled down at him as she pulled her skirts aside to descend the steps to the ground.

  The earl took both of her hands in his and held them wide, assessing her up and down. She was wearing a walking costume with a tight, waist-length cream colored jacket with black buttons up to her throat and black lace peeking out from the collar and cuffs, over a multi-tiered skirt of cream whose swooping scalloped layers were edged with black lace, each overlapping the next. A black lace bow on the side finished the skirt. With her matching hat and parasol, she was a picture of loveliness. “Did I mention that you look very lovely this morning? Most appropriate for the Botanic Gardens, my dear. Your skirt looks like the petals of a rose ready to blossom.”

  “My thanks once more, my lord.” She took his offered arm and grinned up at him, showing a slight dimple on one cheek. “Are we to walk from here?”

  “If you don’t mind,” Jack replied. “There are a dozen footpaths and bridges that we cannot see any other way.”

  “I don’t mind at all.” She gestured with her parasol for him to lead on and they wandered down the pathway into the gardens. All around there were lush profusions of springtime flowers just coming into bloom this time in late May. Their brilliant hues splashed against the green of the flowering shrubbery and lawns, to create a vivid mosaic of color. Jack led her down a path while her head turned this way and that, his silence allowing her the time to absorb it all. Across the lawns was a glimpse of a peaceful pond surrounded by trees, with its glass-like surface broken only by the ducks paddling their way along. A little waterfall trickled from one end, initiating a little brook crossed by the arching bridge they approached.

  Chapter 14

  “My goodness, Jack!” she sighed in appreciation at the fairy tale-like enchantment of the area. “It’s simply lovely! Why, look at all these flowers! There are many here I have never seen before!”

  “The botanists have been working on this for almost two hundred years, all told,” he informed her. “They travel the world and bring back anything new they might find and plant it all here. There are also hothouses for some of the more tropical specimens that are unsuited to our climate. They are farther along the way.”

  “You make it sound as if you know a bit about it,” she prompted.

  “I suppose I do,” he sheepishly divulged with a grin. “This was one of my favorite places when I was lad. Father would come to town…he said to attend Parliament but I would guess now it was to gamble. Mother would bring me here. It is one of my earliest memories of her. Then Judith would bring us,” he added, referring to his stepmother, Abby’s mother. “Occasionally I’ll bring Tristram and play catch with him.”

  Kitty looked about at all the children with their nurses or families, playing on the lawns, many with picnic baskets nearby, prepared to make a day of it. Clearly, it was a popular place to bring children to play. She cast Jack a sidelong look, trying to imagine him with his shirtsleeves rolled up, tossing the ball to Abby’s little boy. It was difficult to imagine. Studying him as she was, she caught his widened eyes and shaking head. “What is it?”

  “I should have thought to invite your wee Hannah along,” he admitted. “I apologize for not thinking of it. My sisters always loved it here, as well. They would chase the butterflies or feed the ducks.”

  “No need to apologize, Jack,” she answered, though she was more taken aback by his consideration that he should have invited her daughter at all than the concept that it had been a lack of forethought on his part. Freddie had not once invited, or even thought to invite, Hannah wit
h them anywhere they went, even to the beaches and parks in Newport, and he was her own father! Unable to help it, Kitty felt her heart warm even more to this complex earl.

  “In any case,” he went on blithely, “we shall come again and bring the lass. But what of you? Do you truly like the gardens?”

  “So far they are just delightful.”

  “As are you,” he offered gruffly, with a shake of his head from his inner disgust at the sappy drivel he had been spouting since her arrival. He was beginning to wonder at himself.

  For her part, Kitty felt a renewal of the heat and attraction that had captured her attention in the carriage at his warm words. Again, she imagined what it might be like to kiss him, to cradle his naked body with her own. Damn him! He had planted that little seed and now she could not stop it from growing. She was a fool to even think such a thing. She was a married woman after all! There shouldn’t be any part of her mind that might consider an affair a constructive step during divorce proceedings!

  Yet, there was. And she couldn’t shake it.

  Determined to push the thoughts from her mind, Kitty chatted on about the sights of the park, asking about the different plants they encountered. Eventually, curiosity about Haddington returned to the forefront of her mind as she considered his partially admitted seduction – slow or not – as a counterpoint to his search for a bride. Surely, he shouldn’t be spending all his time with her if he truly needed to be courting an heiress. Hesitantly, she asked, only to be answered with a rueful shake of his head, as he explained the very thoughts he’d mulled over earlier.

  “I see your point,” Kitty readily agreed. “I mean, my father is nearly twenty years older than my mother, but I don’t see that disparity in age between them now. Mother is often very stern while Da is a jovial sort, acting far younger than his years. But still, I often see older gentlemen in society wedding girls so much younger than them that I often not only feel for the girls but wonder at what those men are thinking.”

  “Oh,” he chuckled, “I know what they’re thinking, to be sure. For the most part, I can’t say that I disagree with their motivations. After all, what man doesn’t want a young beauty for a wife? I’d wager your father felt the same way.” When Kitty looked offended, he merely patted her hand where it rested on his arm with another low laugh. “Don’t get your back up, my dear. Most men don’t see any problem with a young wife. From a purely visceral perspective it strokes a man’s vanity, but a lovely face alone is not enough to make marriage palatable.”

  “So what would you prefer then?”

  “Oh, a lovely lass in her middle or later twenties with a fat pocketbook and an intelligent mind,” he responded, aware that he described Kitty perfectly, albeit unintentionally.

  Kitty, however, was thinking in a completely different direction, considering an obvious choice. “I must ask you then, Jack, though I can understand why you might not consider young Fiona MacKintosh whom I have heard so much about,” – Jack shuddered here – “I don’t understand why you haven’t pursued Moira. She is of the right age and fortune, and is especially intelligent.”

  “Did you know your sister once asked me that very thing?” Jack asked, instead of responding directly to the implied question.

  “And?”

  “You are right to think she would make an excellent choice,” he finally responded reluctantly. “She has all those things, and I do like her very much, but unfortunately too much like a sister to consider wedding.”

  “But it would solve all your problems, and I know that Moira has been of a mind lately to marry,” Kitty argued, remembering the conversations she’d had with her friends the previous day.

  “But I would still need an heir someday as well,” he maintained. “While I might gain from Moira a pleasant and amusing companion for life, I would never be able to get an heir from her.”

  “Why ever not?”

  Jack merely raised a brow and, after a moment, Kitty flushed red with understanding. “Oh.”

  “Aye,” he teased. “Oh.”

  They wandered for a while longer while Kitty regained her composure. “But she is very beautiful,” Kitty offered after several long moments.

  “I suppose she is,” he allowed, “but the thought of shagging a lass I’ve known since she was a toddler is a bit more than I can bear.”

  Shagging. That he had used that term to a woman on such short acquaintance was not lost to Kitty. She was unable to stop the flush of embarrassment flooding her cheeks, though from his casual demeanor, Jack either saw little to be uncomfortable about or hadn’t realized he’d used the word. While it had been whispered around the boarding school she had attended in England, it was not a colloquialism most Americans might be familiar with. Given the images flickering through her mind, Kitty almost wished herself too naïve to understand it.

  While she took deep breaths to banish the impressions such a base word as ‘shagging’ brought to mind, they continued their stroll, eventually emerging from a copse of trees. They came upon a picturesque pond, over which a red wooden bridge arched, reflected in the calm waters below to create the illusion of a perfect oval. It was so breathtaking that Kitty had to pause in appreciation. Being raised in the city or in Newport, she had never seen a landscape so lush.

  She tried to focus on that and keep her mind from the man at her side, but failed repeatedly as they made their way through the remainder of the gardens and eventually back to the waiting carriage. Kitty was aware of his manly stride as he walked by her side, the muscles in his arm under her hand. The strength and electricity transferred through his fingers as he handed her into the carriage and as he sat by her side on the long ride back to Carlton Terrace. His thigh brushed hers when the carriage jostled on the cobbled roads and her fingers itched to feel the muscles bulging there as he braced himself against the motion.

  Shagging.

  Raising her eyes to his, she found him watching her gravely as if he knew her thoughts and fought the same battle against inappropriate urges.

  In time, they arrived back at the Glenrothes townhouse and Jack stepped down from the carriage to help her alight, but rather than stepping up into the house, Kitty merely turned her face up to his. “Are you going to kiss me today, Jack?”

  “I should not,” he shook his head just a bit, truly uncertain how to proceed.

  “I think you should,” her voice was again the slightest whisper.

  Cupping her cheeks in his warm palms, he leaned closer, his lips just brushing her cheek, rousing a flood of anticipation in Kitty’s stomach. “Do you want me to, Kitty? Do you want me to kiss you right here?”

  Kitty swallowed so deeply she was sure he could hear it, and quivered in expectation that she was certain he could feel. “I want you to, Jack.”

  He tilted her head back and lightly brushed her lips with the calloused pad of his thumb as his eyes locked with hers, letting her read the desire that burned in him. When his thumb touched her lip once more, Kitty caught the end between her lips, kissing the rough pad and grazing her tongue across it, chafing it with her teeth, glorying in the growl of pleasure that escaped him. Challenged, he exchanged that digit for the softest of kisses, so delicately given that she almost groaned in desperation for a more resolute contact. His lips feathered hers, nimbly dancing from the top one to the bottom one, until she moaned in frustration as her desire rose to a feverish pitch. “Jack!” she ground out between kisses. “You’re driving me crazy!”

  The earl chuckled maddeningly against her lips before catching her mouth once more in a burning kiss so swift it was over before Kitty could even fall into it. He released her then, stepping back so quickly that Kitty almost stumbled leaning into him. Jack just steadied her and moved back toward the carriage.

  Kitty shook her head in bewilderment over his abrupt conclusion to their kiss. “I thought you were going to come up, my lord?” she reminded him breathlessly.

  His head shook in denial before he could stop it. Their brief embr
ace had gotten quickly out of hand and Jack felt he needed to run away from her before he did, or said, something he might regret. That touch of her sweet tongue had set his heart pounding. Damn her for looking so appealing…for being so appealing! If he didn’t run away now, he was likely to drag her off to the nearest bedroom and have his way with her, likely ruining any chance he might have of romancing her into accepting his not-so-honorable marriage proposal when it came.

  “Perhaps another time?” he asked, putting a careful amount of regret into his voice, though he did not truly regret leaving her company while his thoughts were so confused.

  Still dazed by the dizzying caress of his hands and depth of desire that his all-too-brief kiss had wrought, Kitty could only stare, puzzled by his abrupt departure, but returned the smile he gave her. “All right.”

  “And I shall see you tonight, yes?” he asked as he seated himself in the carriage, so anxious to get away.

  “You shall,” was her soft response, as her fingers came up to sooth her tingling lips.

  “Until then!” he waved, and urged the driver to carry him quickly around the corner and out of her sight.

  Chapter 15

  There is nothing better than a friend,

  unless it is a friend with chocolate.

  - Charles Dickens

  Townhouse of Lord & Lady Richard MacKintosh

  24 Moray Place

  Edinburgh, London

  Kitty could hear the lively conversation coming from Abby’s parlor before dinner that evening as she came back down the stairs after refreshing herself in one of the guest rooms. The confusion that had consumed her for hours after Jack’s abrupt departure that afternoon fled when he had taken her hand tonight as they arrived for dinner. He complemented her gown and beauty fulsomely and kissed her palm, leaving an unusual tingling behind that left her fighting the urge to scratch it away. Just like that, the uncertainty of the afternoon was gone and he was back in her good graces.