“What?” Kitty asked curiously, her tone low.
“Doing to her what I want to do to you.” His eyes met hers and she was agog by the molten gold heat in them. They seduced without words but spoke volumes. Surely, she had been mistaken in thinking his desire was not specifically for her, for it seemed as if they burned for her alone, that his desire was directed solely at her. He wanted her. Answering heat in the pit of her stomach flared as a dozen scenarios flew through her mind of the things he might do to her.
“Would you like me to tell you all the things I’d like to do?” he asked, as if reading her mind. His voice was deep and gravelly with desire, enough to set Kitty’s heart pounding. “How I long to take your in my arms, to strip you bare and do hundreds of unspeakable things to you? How the lust you have incited in me consumes me until I can think of little else?”
God, he is good! she thought, as a little shudder snaked its way down her spine. She wanted to put aside all her misgivings and have him tell her, with his deep, seductive brogue, each of those hundred things he might do to her! Just the sound of that gravelly voice was enough to seduce. He could reduce her to a quivering mass on words alone, she thought. But no! she chastised herself. One night with Jack wasn’t going to gain her a thing and might strain her friendship with Abby and Francis if things went badly. She wanted him as a lover eventually. She was realistic enough to admit it. If she were going to take him as her lover though, she would expect it to be a long affair.
An attentive affair.
And a monogamous affair.
She wasn’t certain Jack had it in him to be all those things.
And what if he married? she thought, and shook her head. Not if. When! From all she had heard from Abby, the estates Jack had inherited earlier in the year when his brother died had been mortgaged to the hilt and all the previous earl’s creditors were now hounding Jack for payment of their vowels. This stubbornly proud man had refused loans from his family, claiming debt made for bad relations, and with no time for investments or other long term possibilities, his only plan was to wed well to an heiress of means.
Though he had said in the park that the idea of marrying some silly debutante had become repugnant to him, Kitty knew he had no choice but to give in eventually. She hated the thought of him being barreled into making such a move. If only she had access to some of her funds, she thought. She and Eve might be great heiresses but most of the funds they had came to them from their Da. Oh, he gave freely with quarterly allowances that would surely be enough to help Jack out, however, to access her funds, she would need to wire her bank in Boston or New York. Any withdrawal would be immediately noted by her husband and lead him quickly to her. She couldn’t take that risk.
She shook her head and considered Jack seriously. But perhaps there might be a way to spare him the necessity of immediate marriage and gain all that she desired in return. She studied him thoughtfully over the rim of her teacup.
“You want me for your lover, Jack?” Her voice was grave enough for Jack to understand it was a practical question, not one of seduction, and his manner cooled a bit.
“Aye, I do,” he returned with simple honesty, though he felt that the word ‘lover’ simply couldn’t fully encompass what it was he wanted from her, for in his mind the word was too polite and dispassionate. He wanted her surrender, her challenge, enthusiasm and fervor. He wanted her naked and sweating beneath him, panting for breath and begging for her release before he might beg her for his own. He was certain he could easily become a slave to her as much as he’d like to have her submissive to him.
“I thought you said you wanted to be my friend.”
Jack frowned as she threw that rebuttal out coolly. “Aye, I want that as well. As I said, lass. I actually enjoy your company and that is a rare thing for me.”
“Abby says…”
“Abby has been saying a lot about me, it seems.” Jack could only imagine what kind of horror stories his sister had told this lass about him. Abby did love to spread tales. Unfortunately, they were not at all flattering to him. Hope danced through his mind that Kitty wouldn’t be completely driven by what she might have heard.
“Mmmm, she does,” Kitty nodded in agreement, still breathing in the steam from her cup before setting it aside. “So many stories, I think there might not be anything about you that is a mystery to me.”
“I’m not really as bad as all that,” he defended himself against the unknown. “A sister, any sibling really, is bound to tell lies about their older brother. How about if we simply forget I have a sister at all and start over?”
“So, you don’t need to marry for money to save your estates?”
There was no reason to deny it. “Aye, I do need to do that,” he confessed a bit sheepishly. No man liked to have his weaknesses, his shame, so openly aired.
“So you want me for your friend,” she clarified, counting the details off on each finger,
“you want me for your lover. Is there some part of you, Jack Merrill, that is thinking to have me for a wife as well, to gain the fortune you need?”
It was a sticky question and one that Jack wasn’t sure he knew how to answer. Hell, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer it at all! How to confess that, aye, it had crossed his mind – actually been his plan! – to wait out her divorce and marry her the moment the ink was dry, gaining not only her fortune but unlimited access to her person in the process?
“I know you haven’t forgotten I am married,” she continued, as if the frozen expression on his face wasn’t enough to reveal the truth. That look was painting a far bleaker picture than any words might have, but, still goading him, she went on. “But you did have plenty of questions to ask the other night about my divorce and how it was proceeding. How quickly I think it will be done, and the like. You were thinking of waiting it out and pouncing on this rich, defenseless divorcée before I even had a chance to breathe, weren’t you? I’m a pretty bright woman, Jack. It wasn’t hard to figure out. But please correct me if I’m wrong.”
Knowing that he had been found out, Jack could do nothing more than shake his head, seeing all his plans for the future fly from his grasp. There was no way he’d be able to surreptitiously sweep her off her feet if she were aware of his intentions.
“Don’t look so glum, Jack!” she said, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket and genteelly dabbing at her nose. The idea she had been working on in her subconscious suddenly came to a focal point in her mind. “I am going to make this easy on you.”
“You are?” He raised a suspicious brow, wondering just what, about all this, she considered easy. His plans were ousted. A week devoted to her seduction lay in waste. Time he didn’t have to spare. He knew not where to turn from here.
“I am,” she nodded, and cocked her head a bit as she considered him. “I’ve told you that Eve wired my father requesting that he begin the petition for my divorce, right?”
“You did.”
“There was a response delivered this morning that Da has met with a lawyer to start the paperwork and has a judge friend of his, high up in the New York circuit courts, who he believes will pull some strings and push the divorce through more quickly than expected. Da’s lawyer expects perhaps a month, maybe two, before the decree is final. Mother, of course, is prostrate with humiliation and refuses to leave her bed lest society discover she has a divorcée for a daughter, but,” here Kitty shrugged philosophically, “she will get over it.”
“I am very pleased you will finally be freed from that bastard,” he said sincerely. “I don’t see how you will get him to sign the final papers though. He will have to actually sign them to see the thing done, you know.”
“Da is working on that.” She waved her hand dismissively, with complete faith that her father would find a way. Given what Jack had heard of Lelan Preston, he didn’t believe her trust was misplaced.
“I fail to see how your triumph will make anything easier on me though.” Unless she was about to propose to
him, there wasn’t much mystery left for him. With his motives exposed, she would never consent to marry him now.
“I’m about to tell you what you can do. Until my marriage is over, I want you to accept monies from Eve to get you out of the worst of your debt.” She held up a hand as he started to interrupt. “I would just do it myself, but I fear a transaction from my accounts would mark a path for Freddie that would lead straight to this door.”
“I can’t–” he began, but this time Kitty cut him off.
“Your debts are not your fault, Jack, but your pride is. You have friends who have offered again and again to lend you enough to expunge every debt you have, but you have stubbornly denied them. Why? Pride?” she taunted him lightly. “I know you feel like you might bankrupt them in the process. Still, you say no, even to a little to stave off the worst of it, or enough to grow some investments to see the balance taken care of. Perhaps your worries are that the total amount of your debt will overwhelm, for example, Francis’ fortune, though I gather he is well enough off. But – and I want you to trust me on this – there is no amount you might possibly owe that would diminish what Eve has.”
Jack considered this for several moments, wrestling into submission his impulsive need to immediately reject her offer so his logical mind might analyze what she was saying. It was true, Francis had offered to pay off his debt repeatedly, but other than the humiliation of seeing his friend on a daily basis and knowing he owed that man everything, there was indeed the fact that he feared that the loss of so much ready cash would damage Glenrothes’ own life and estates. After all, he had nine siblings he was responsible for. There had been no one else who had a fortune capable of sustaining such an open-ended loan, but to consider taking a loan from Evelyn? He couldn’t help but shudder at the thought. “I could not.”
“Swallow your damned pride, Jack,” she insisted with some irritation. “There is no place for it in a situation as dire as yours.”
“It’s not so bad…”
“Abby tells us everything, remember?” she interrupted, and smiled as he cursed his sister soundly.
“I believe I need to stop confiding in my sister.” He shook his head, defeated. “And if I do this thing, then what? I cannot live my life owing your sister.”
Kitty shook her head, sympathizing with what such a debt would mean to him. Even if pride allowed him to take on such a debt, he would never be able to live his life with it staring him in the face on a daily basis. “Of course not. That is why, when my divorce is granted and my husband cannot take what is in my name alone or find me because of it, I will give you, free and clear, enough to pay Eve back and to start your life again without the burdens your father and brother left you.”
“You would just give me the money?” he repeated, as his mind warred between temptation and revulsion at being the object of such charity.
There was his pride raising its head again! Pushing it aside, the picture she painted was heavenly after the weighty events of the last year. Freedom from the irony of his ‘inheritance’, a term that normally meant ‘getting’, not the constant giving he had faced since then. Not taking the modest fortune he had built through his own investments over the past ten years and applying it to pay off the perfidy of the previous earls of Haddington. What would it be like to be free of his nightmare? To move forward without continually being hounded by the past? To owe no one anything?
But he would owe her, he realized. He would owe Kitty for the rest of his life. The reason he had never taken a loan for the lump sum of his debt was because he had always known his properties would never produce enough income to pay such loans back while keeping his books in the black. It would take even more to expand with investments enough to turn an annual profit. Kitty offered enough to accomplish that and asked for nothing. Which was just as well, since he had nothing to offer in return. Except…
“If I do this, I will marry you,” he announced, just as Kitty sneezed.
Shocked into silence for a brief moment, Kitty stared at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you right.”
“I said I’ll…”
She sneezed again, unable to stop it.
“…marry you,” he finished.
The hilarity of his statement hit Kitty and she burst out laughing even as she pulled her handkerchief out once more. “Oh, Jack!” she giggled, “I don’t want to marry you!”
“You don’t?” he asked, momentarily stupefied. Since he was twenty-something years old, there hadn’t been a single, unwed miss or, hell, even widow, that had not contrived to get him to the altar. Kitty had laughed the first day they met that Jack had an overblown ego, but, in truth, how could he not?
Other than the few unmarried MacKintosh brothers remaining, Haddington was one of the most eligible bachelors in Edinburgh. While he had no money, many did not know it, and since he had gained the title, women had been throwing themselves at him constantly in the hopes of becoming a countess. As he had said, he was single, handsome and titled. He was every classroom chit’s highest hope for a spouse. Yet this lass, this American, only laughed at his proposal, such as it was.
“You don’t want to marry me?” he asked slowly, just to make sure he had the right of it.
“No.” Kitty shook her head in amusement, since her announcement seemed to be so unbelievable to him. “You’d make a horrid husband.”
“You would be a countess!”
“And, truly, my mother would swoon with delight over that.”
“But not you?”
“No, not really.” She shook her head with a loud sniffle. “I’m an American girl deep down, Jack. Your title doesn’t mean very much to me. I mean I like you a great deal, but I have no desire to commit to another marriage before the one I have is even over.”
“What do you want then?” he asked, refusing to feel relief at her rejection and knowing that there had to be something she wanted of him. “I refuse to believe that you would do such a thing purely out of the goodness of your heart.”
“I want your friendship.”
“No, seriously.”
“My, what a cynic you are, Jack,” she declared with offense. “I’ll tell you why I’d do it, just so there is no mistake between us.”
“Go on.”
“I’d do it because I like you, Jack. I’d do it because you are the brother of one of my dearest friends, because I hate to see a man so bogged down in responsibility for something that isn’t even his problem to begin with. I’d do it because you make me laugh, and I appreciate laughter and friendship more than almost anything right now. And,” she grinned at him with smug satisfaction, “I’d do it because I can give you what you need and never realize that it’s missing.”
“You don’t even know how much I need,” he pointed out, while pushing aside the warmth her other words had brought to him. Was he to become a sappy sentimental like Francis and Richard? Heaven forbid!
“Doesn’t matter how much it is, Jack,” she assured him with a twitch of her lips.
“How can you say such a thing?” he wondered at her certainty. “You have a child’s future to provide for, you know?”
Kitty smiled a secret little smile and merely shook her head. “There is one thing you can do in return though, Jack.”
“Hah!” he barked with satisfaction. Haddington had never known a person to be willing to give something for nothing, aside from Glenrothes. He considered it beyond the boundaries of human nature. “I knew there had to be something! What is it?”
“When this is all over and your fortunes are recovered,” she took a deep breath, unable to comprehend the words she knew that were about to come out of her mouth, “I want you to be my lover.”
Jack’s jaw sagged and eyes popped at her words. “This is how I am to repay you?”
Kitty laughed again, hearing his disbelief in his appalled words. “No, Jack, not as repayment. I would never force you to…to…service me!” She flushed a deep red but still laughed heartily as his
expression only darkened, for that was clearly what he had been thinking. “I thought you said you wanted to be my lover!”
“I do,” was his unequivocal assurance. “Perhaps I’m being obtuse but I don’t understand exactly what you are saying.”
“I’m saying that I want to be your lover as well, Jack,” she said simply. “The idea of it is very appealing and I think we would enjoy each other immensely. I didn’t mean to imply I wanted you in return for the monies at all, but we really must wait until my divorce is finalized.”
“You want to be my lover,” he parroted, unable to believe his own ears.
“My, Jack, I never thought you were this thick.” This was followed by another sneeze that squeezed Kitty’s head with its intensity. “You have already been seducing me, I know you have. Your words just moments ago, why they could seduce a nun into submission. Your efforts have been most effective. I merely want to see that seduction through to its natural conclusion.”
Her words should have pleased him but Jack merely scowled at her. “If you want to be my lover as you say, then why have you been avoiding me?”
Kitty’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “I haven’t been.”
“You didn’t come down for dinner last night,” he pointed out. “Nor did you come out yesterday, or to ride this morning. Because of our argument at the opera house? Because I kissed you? Why?”
“I haven’t been avoiding you, you fool, I’m sick. Do you understand? I’m sick!” To prove the point, she sneezed painfully again and moaned.
“Really?”
“Really,” she nodded, blowing her nose.
“I thought…”
Kitty looked at him through watery eyes. “You thought what?”
Jack noticed then that her nose was red and chapped; he was surprised he hadn’t noticed it before. Her skin was flushed as well, making him wonder if she were feverish. Another sneeze overwhelmed her. “I…Good God, lass, you should be in bed.”
Questions for a Highlander Page 70
