“I do, very much.” For as he had thought, what was not to like? His bedroom suite was truly the most finely appointed room he had ever occupied. The mansion itself held every modern convenience a person might ask for, unlike the drafty medieval fortress he had inherited, where chamber pots were still required. Kilberry was even equipped with a swimming pool and bowling alley!
Maggie appeared pleased by his statement, oblivious to the turmoil raging inside. “We used to rent a smaller house closer to town for the summers, though it was not facing the water. When I convinced Mr. Preston we simply must have our own summer home here, I thought we would build along Bellevue. It is certainly a more fashionable address, but Lelan simply had to have this land. It was his dream for almost a decade to get it built.” She looked over her shoulder at the glorious residence. “The house, of course, was completely designed to make me happy. Hunt, you know. I confess, certain members of my family thought I married beneath myself and Lelan would never amount to much. It was quite nice to give them this as a kind of thumb to the nose.”
“I have never seen a private residence its equal,” Francis offered sincerely.
“It’s not the house we love though,” Eve told them, then shook her head when they guffawed in disbelief.
“No, truly,” Kitty chimed in, and swept her arm toward the extensive lawns behind the house and to the magnificent vista beyond. “What Da really wanted was this, this natural splendor to contemplate through the twilight of his life. It’s the most beautiful place on earth. He always said he swore he could see Ireland from here.”
“I wish Da could have had more time to enjoy it,” Eve said sadly.
Maggie shook her head. “He had a long life, a good one. He would not have wanted any of us to dwell in sadness. Kitty, we’re about finished here. Take Lord Haddington down to see the view.”
It was a command, certainly no subtle matchmaking. Jack felt he had seen through the woman’s machinations the moment they had met, because he had seen that look in the eyes of many a mother over the past decade. She knew his title, assumed his wealth and had determined to have them for her daughter.
His current insouciance when faced with a woman’s determination to see him wed puzzled him. In the past, such knowledge would have sent him to the nearest exit. With Maggie Preston, it amused and intrigued. It did not rankle.
Standing, he gave Kitty a little bow and held out his hand. “Shall we, madam?”
“Kind sir!” She fluttered her lashes playfully. She laid her hand on his offered arm as they strolled across the lawns toward the pathway of crushed oyster shells that marked the Cliff Walk. Their footsteps ground a rhythm as they turned south on the path.
“I’d like to apologize for my mother,” she offered at length.
“No need,” he denied. “She is an interesting, entertaining hostess.”
“You know what I mean,” Kitty snorted. “She is ever the matchmaker. She sees you, a single earl, and associates it immediately with a title for me. Her ‘gone but not forgotten’ dream.”
“Does she forget you are already wed?”
“She sees only that the end is in sight and pictures you as my salvation from social ruin.” Her lips quirked in amusement. “She won’t stop hinting. I just want you to be aware of her plans.”
“I will attempt to remain stoic throughout her endeavors.” He led her to a bench set a bit down from the mansion and took a seat beside her.
“I love to just sit out on one of these benches and savor the sights and sounds here,” she confessed, taking a deep breath of the ocean air. “It’s the best part of Kilberry. It has a peace that one never sees in the city, despite the constant noise of the waves.”
All that wealth behind them and she thought the ocean view the best part of it all? He shook his head, not understanding. Granted, it was a magnificent view. Below the Cliff Walk, towers of stone rose from waters along the coast, providing a tool for the waves to break against, sending frothy sprays of water continually shooting into the air. Jack laid an arm across the back of the bench behind her as she stared out over the water.
“Isn’t it lovely, Jack?” she sighed into the comfortable silence. “Thanks to Da, Eve and I will always have this place.”
Jack stared down at her lively green eyes so bright with emotion. “You are lovely.” He tightened his arms around her shoulder and traced a finger down her cheek. “I have missed our time alone these past several days. Our solitude on the ship seems far away.”
“Yes, it does.” Kitty raised a hand to Jack’s cheek. “I know I’ve told you time and again, but I am very glad you came on this trip. Not only because of the support you have offered me, but also because I would have missed you.”
“Would you now?”
“I think so.” She leaned forward and nipped his chin playfully.
Jack, however, only frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Why would you have missed me? What can I possibly provide you that you don’t already have?” he asked, voicing his earlier wonderings. “I look at all you have, heard all your father has left for you and I can’t help but question. What are you doing with me, Kitty?”
Kitty blinked and looked up at him with serious eyes, wishing she might just tell him that she loved him but feared such a confession would drive him away. “You still think having money and having things makes life a better place, don’t you, Jack? I understand your father left you with little. Your struggles this past year have been difficult ones, but surely you remember what life was like before all that?”
“What are you getting at?”
“You weren’t always this obsessed with wealth, I think. Back before this burden was set upon you…even when you didn’t have a lot of it. Think of the things you enjoyed before money became your focus,” she insisted. “What did you appreciate in your life before all this?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t do much at all really. I traveled a bit, but most of it I spent with the MacKintoshs. One or the other.”
“Before your brother died, you didn’t just go around throwing good money after bad at whatever struck your fancy, right?” she clarified. “You spent time with friends and family?”
“Aye.”
“That’s what I have missed for years, Jack. Don’t you see?” Kitty stared back over the water. “I haven’t had a true friend available to me since I wed. No one I could trust. Talk to. Now I have Eve, Abby and Moira once more, and I have you. Money buys many nice things, solves many problems, but it doesn’t comfort us when we’re alone. Doesn’t keep us company on a lonely night. Even you admit that what you have is friendship, even when you have nothing else.”
“You would offer something so prosaic as ‘friendship is the greatest treasure’?” he said, jokingly.
“You know it is.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “Imagine your life without the MacKintosh brothers. Without Abby and your sisters. Do it! Not a pretty life, is it? That is what you help save me from. That is what I am doing with you.”
“That is all?”
“I thought we had already covered this,” she teased, caressing his cheek. “Friendship, laughter,” she pressed a kiss where her fingers had touched. “Desire,” she kissed the corner of his mouth. “Passion.” Her lips met his, lightly. “You are many things to me.”
“Friend?” he questioned, picking up where she had left off, kissing her even more deeply. “Lover?”
“Soon,” she whispered low, and parted her lips to welcome his tongue as he pressed her back against the bench. His mouth met hers over and over as his hand crept up to cup her breast. “Oh, Jack!” she sighed. “Not soon enough!”
“The wait is killing me, my love,” he whispered into the twilight. “I want you so badly. I want to take you, fill you.”
His words left Kitty shuddering in his arms, longing for his possession. “Our time will come, Jack. Mr. Jensen said just a couple more days.” She leaned in and kissed him
again. “Perhaps we should just refrain from this until then. I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Bugger that, Kitty,” he growled, tightening his arms around her. “I’ve been uncomfortable for a bloody month! Why stop now?”
Kitty couldn’t help but laugh as his lips claimed hers once more.
Chapter 28
Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much life.
- Henry David Thoreau
Two days later, their time still had not come. Kitty was tempted to throw her convictions to the wind and creep into Jack’s room one evening to join him in his bed.
Instead, they spent their nights in frustrated solitude, foolishly arousing each other to the breaking point before going off to their solitary beds.
The days were spent in pursuits that were more innocent, much as they had in Scotland. Having introduced Jack to her mount, Claudio, and others in the stables, they rode along the beaches and cliffs of the area as a pair, and a foursome when Eve and Francis chose to join them. They bowled and played croquet with the children on the vast lawns behind the house.
They procured appropriate swimwear from her father’s closets for Jack and Francis so they might enjoy the swimming pool as well, though they did so without the ladies as it was considered inappropriate for the opposite sexes to swim together. Though Kitty and Eve would have enjoyed taking their children to the public beach, the family was still in mourning and confined to private amusements within the boundaries of the estate.
Though he was vastly enjoying his time at Kilberry, it was beginning to seem to Jack his summer was going to be restricted to family dinners, innocent walks and eternal frustration, when a knock came on his bedroom door late one evening. Expecting Sung Li with an evening libation, Jack was astounded to find Kitty on his doorstep.
“What is it?” he asked, thinking something must be amiss to bring her to his door. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” she grinned broadly at him. “More than fine, really. May I come in?”
Jack waved her inside, shutting the door behind her. He was uniquely aware of time and location. Very aware Kitty was alone in his room with him. He could smell her perfume. It had an elusive, oaky quality. Arousal swept him as he heard her breath, his, and no others. They were alone as they had not been in weeks. Ever. His bed loomed through the open door of his sitting room. He imagined leading her there, urging her down on the bed. Finally taking what he wanted so badly.
“What?” he asked, as he realized she was speaking.
“There was a telegram waiting in my room from Mr. Jensen,” Kitty beamed up at Jack, her excitement barely contained. “Judge Fulmont signed my divorce petition today!”
Jack blinked at her in disbelief, wondering if his avid imaginings were influencing his hearing. “It’s done then? You are a free woman?”
“Yes,” Kitty laughed giddily, hugging her clasped hands to her chest before clapping in her excitement and hopping about a bit. “Oh Jack!”
Jack caught her in his arms as she flung hers about him, and swung her off her feet in circles as she squealed and laughed. Her joy was infectious and he couldn’t help but laugh in turn.
When he set her back on her feet and found her eyes dancing with joy and excitement, his heart sang for her, knowing how much her freedom from Hayes meant to her. Her life was now her own. He bent, kissing her exuberantly. Just as quickly, that exaltation turned to passion and he took her lips again as heat flared.
His fingers worked with the buttons down the back of her bodice as he licked her lips and tempted her tongue to come out and join his. Only when he was pushing the sleeves down her arms did Kitty think to question his actions.
“May I ask what you think you are doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“Why, I’m getting you naked, my love.”
“Whatever for?”
Her Scottish earl merely raised an amused eyebrow. “Do you have to ask?” Cupping her cheeks tenderly, he kissed with all the pent up passions of the past month. “I have been waiting for the day when you were no longer a married woman so I might seal our bargain. If I take your words correctly, your divorce is final. You are free.”
“I am free,” she sighed.
“Then we’re sealing it right now. I have waited so long for this. Wanted it for so long,” he admitted, running his hands down her sides and coming up to cup her breasts in his big hands. “Now you will be mine. I will wait no longer. So unless you want me to just push up your skirts and shag you against the wall, this dress needs to come off.”
Kitty spun quickly, presenting her back, and Jack swallowed a chuckle at her enthusiasm before feasting his lips on her bare neck. “I am going to make long, passionate love to you, my love,” came the whispered warning in her ear, as he continued to push the dress lower until it fell to the floor. “I’m going to take you again and again.”
“Oh my,” Kitty sighed, when he guided her through to the bedchamber before releasing her. She sank onto the edge of the bed, conscious of the fact she was clad in no more than her corset and underclothes. Those nerves dissolved to awe as she watched Jack begin to remove his own clothing. He did so quickly, yet smoothly and with grace. It did not take long before he was barer than she.
The sight of Jack nude was nearly overwhelming to her senses. His body was large and long, his chest, arms and legs finely sculpted. Broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, he was a buffet of rippling muscles, and she was starving. Each muscle cut more definitively than any statue she had ever seen. To a lover of the arts, he was a joy to view. To a woman in love, he was the key to her complete undoing. Kitty stared wide-eyed in awe, blinking only when she reached his manhood.
“No protests, my dear? No witticisms?” Jack moved smoothly towards her, the strong muscles in his chest and legs bunching and stretching with the movement. He pulled her up to him, tilting her chin until he looked directly into her eyes. “Have you nothing at all to say?” he whispered to her lips, before brushing his softly back and forth across them.
“Why don’t you show me the rest of what this is all about? Perhaps I’ll find something noteworthy to comment on.” For all the cockiness of her words, Kitty’s voice wavered slightly as his bare body brushed against the length of her.
Starting at her wrists, Jack ran his open palms up the length of her arms to her shoulders, then over and down her back. Turning her, he unlaced her corset and dropped it to the ground. Cupping her bottom firmly in both hands, he moved upward again, roughly pushing her chemise off her shoulders and down, untying the laces for her drawers as he went. Deftly, he followed his downward course until she was nearly as bare as he. With a hot, calloused hand on her smooth belly, he pulled her back against him, loosening her hair while he kissed and nipped on her slender neck.
His hands rose up to cup her breasts, enjoying the size and weight of them in his palms, enjoying her shudder of pleasure when she arched back against him. He growled huskily in her ear. “I’ll show you noteworthy.”
Turning her, Jack pulled her up to him and claimed her lips in a fiery kiss even as he lifted her and lay her in the center of the massive bed. Kneeling on the edge, he peeled off each of her stockings, trailing kisses down her thigh, knee and calf as he went, until she was completely naked.
Jack looked up at Kitty’s face. Her thick, honeyed hair was in wild disarray about her shoulders, her eyes wide, and lips moist and parted. He thought he’d never seen her look lovelier, more wanton. Her body was slender but her breasts and hips full and tempting. Gripping her hips in his big hands, he pressed a hot kiss to her belly, just below her navel. His lips traveled up to her ribcage and to the underside of her breast, stopping to suck lightly on the tender flesh there. Still farther up his lips and tongue caressed her, over the tip of her breast to her neck.
He levered himself over her, brushing the length of his body against hers, savoring the feel of her smooth flesh beneath his, and relishing her s
hiver of delight when the springy curls on his chest chaffed at her sensitive nipples. His thigh separated hers as he met her lips again, allowing some of his weight to push her into the lush feather mattress and allowing her to feel his searing desire. For a moment, their bodies melded together from chest to thigh as he held her, his face buried in her neck. “Oh, my bonny wee Kitty,” he said, in a low voice she felt from the rumbling of his chest. Touched by what seemed to be a very emotional moment, more affectionate than passionate, Kitty tentatively ran her fingers through his dark hair. Encouraged as he squeezed her closer, her hands ran down his shoulders and arms, and up once more over the smooth firmness of his chest.
His lips began to move again, teasing her neck, the lobe of her ear. His hand came up to cup her breast, his lips moved down to worship it. Repeatedly, his lips, tongue and teeth toyed with the sensitive peaks until Kitty was sure she was going to burst from the swelling of feeling building up inside of her. She never before imagined anything could feel so…so good! Wonderful!
His lips nipped at her breasts once more then moved lower until, pushing her thighs apart, his tongue darted into her cleft. Squealing in surprise, she couldn’t stop the moan that followed as his tongue probed and his lips suckled. Her fingers curled into his shoulders, kneading the thick muscle there. She threw back her head, eyes closed, biting at her lower lip as her hips arched unconsciously towards him. He slid a single finger into her moist heat, multiplying sensations with that gliding and curling digit. The aching tension grew and grew, her entire body tensed with wondrous anticipation, and panic.
“Jack…” She gripped his hair to pull him away but he held tight. She moaned in torment. “Jack…no-o-o…”
He ignored her completely, running one hand up her bottom and around her hip. He drew his head back and looked up as she whimpered. He parted the dark blond curls between her quivering thighs and with his thumb circled her throbbing center while his finger thrust once more.
Questions for a Highlander Page 78
