by Karen Ranney
He looked surprised, staring at her without speaking for several moments.
“Have you any knowledge he might wish an annulment, Lady Fairfax?”
She shook her head.
“Then I should not concern yourself with that thought. Especially since His Lordship has made ample provision for your future.”
Because of Montgomery’s generosity, people would not have to take her in, show her charity. She’d have enough money to set up her own household no matter what happened in the future.
“Is my husband returning to America, Mr. Kerr?”
The solicitor didn’t answer her immediately. Finally, after an agonizing minute, he shook his head. “I have not been told that, Lady Fairfax.”
“Would he tell you?”
His face settled into disapproving lines. Was he annoyed because she’d asked? Or annoyed at the thought of Montgomery doing anything without consulting him?
“He would have to do so, Lady Fairfax. There are any manner of details that would need to be arranged if His Lordship decided to return to Virginia.”
She told herself she should be grateful for the settlement and not delve further into Montgomery’s plans. Another example of meekly acquiescing to the future?
“If you’ll sign these, Lady Fairfax,” he said, “I’ll take them to the appropriate authorities. The next time you’ll see me will be in Scotland.”
“You’ll be in Scotland, Mr. Kerr?”
“I live in Scotland, Lady Fairfax. At Doncaster Hall.”
She signed where he indicated, keeping her emotions in check. Later, out of Mr. Kerr’s presence, she would think about everything he had said and whether to worry about it or not.
Montgomery’s errands had been successful, resulting in promises from several companies to expedite his orders to Scotland. London was too congested for his purposes. Edmund had assured him there was room enough in Scotland to do what he wished. He entered the townhouse with his thoughts occupied by the design of the air flow chambers only to be stopped by the sight of his wife.
Veronica was sitting on the steps.
He didn’t need any type of clairvoyant gift to figure out she was annoyed.
“You’re waiting for me, I see,” he said.
She didn’t speak, merely stood, walked down the steps, her gaze not leaving his. Instead of approaching him, however, she walked into the parlor, never glancing back to see if he followed.
Montgomery debated going on to his library and finishing the lists of equipment he needed, then discarded that thought. This conversation had been coming since the night before, when he’d decided it would be wiser to remain celibate than to bed a stranger.
Evidently, Veronica was angry about his decision.
That was not, however, the first comment she made when he followed her.
“Are you returning to America?”
He entered the parlor, a plainly decorated chamber, the antithesis of the room in which they’d been married. The Countess of Conley was given to an over appreciation of her furnishings. Mrs. Gardiner was, blessedly, more restrained in her taste.
“We’re going to Scotland.”
Veronica clasped her hands together and looked up at him.
“Are you taking me with you?”
“What made you think I was traveling to Scotland without you?”
Relief flashed in her eyes, so quickly that if he’d not made a practice of studying the men in his command in the last four years, he might’ve missed it.
“When? When are we leaving?” she asked, flattening her hands against her skirts.
“This afternoon,” he said, realizing he should have told her earlier. He’d been used to thinking only of himself for so many years, he’d have to become acquainted with another person’s needs.
“The train leaves at two. Will you be ready?”
She nodded.
He retreated to the sofa, set at a right angle to the fireplace. Upholstered in a green and flowery fabric, it was a bit too feminine for his tastes. Perhaps an English parlor was a woman’s domain.
Veronica didn’t sit beside him. Instead, she stood in front of him and repeated her first, surprising, question.
“Are you returning to America?” she asked.
“Why would you ask that?” Caution tempered his words.
She took a step toward him, then another, halting only when she was an arm’s length away.
“Why did you give me a settlement?”
When he didn’t answer, she frowned at him, standing in front of him as if he were a boy in short pants and she his chastiser. He wasn’t particularly fond of being chastised.
He leaned back, folded his arms, and regarded her.
“You’ve provided quite adequately for me, Montgomery. Is that supposed to make up for desertion?”
“Desertion?” he asked, surprised. “I provided for you, Veronica,” he said. “Be satisfied with that.”
She studied him for a moment, as if deciding whether to believe his answer.
“You didn’t come to me last night,” she said, finally, startling him again.
He wasn’t used to her straightforwardness. She didn’t flirt. She didn’t hide behind double entendres. She wasn’t the type to hint at anything. Instead, Veronica came right out and told him what she was thinking.
A woman’s wiles had no effect on him, but her directness was fascinating. So, too, her voice. With her accent of Scotland, she changed words, made them sound new, as if English were a language he’d just started to comprehend.
How the hell did he answer her complaint?
“I’m not prepared to bed a stranger,” he said, giving her the truth.
She blinked at him several times.
Did she feel something from him? Oh, for the love of God, was he beginning to believe she actually had a Gift?
“How will we be anything other than strangers if you continually avoid me?”
“I haven’t continually avoided you,” he said. “We haven’t been married a full day yet.”
“It’s been a full day,” she said, glancing at the mantel clock.
“Are you always this argumentative?”
She considered the question. “I believe I was,” she said. “Not lately, of course, but when I lived with my parents. My father liked to debate. I often took the other side of an argument simply to please him.”
Before he could comment, she took another step closer. “You’ve never even kissed me,” she said.
“Why do I worry you?”
She blinked at him again.
“Last night, you said I worried you.”
“Oh, good heavens, Montgomery, you’re an American. You’re different from anyone I’ve ever met. You’re a stranger. I’d be a fool not to be worried.”
“Yet you still wanted me to come to your bed.”
“I’m a bride. You’re supposed to come to my bed.”
“Am I?”
“Don’t you know?” she asked, blinking at him.
He was almost tempted to continue to tease her, to see what she would say. She amused him, and he hadn’t expected that.
“A kiss? Is that all you want?”
Without giving her a chance to answer, he reached over and grabbed her skirt, pulling her toward him until she tumbled into his lap. Her hands fluttered in the air for a moment until his arms locked around her waist.
“In what way am I different?”
She was evidently not prepared to answer that question because she simply stared at him.
He tipped her head back, his attention on her face, a face even then coloring under his inspection. He lowered his head.
“I’m a Virginian,” he said. “You can’t utter a dare to a Virginian and expect him to ignore it.”
Her eyes widened.
Amused, he placed his hand over her eyes.
“You’re supposed to be overcome by passion,” he said, bending to kiss her lightly. “Or at the very least, overwhelmed by romance.�
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“I don’t think I’ve ever felt romance,” she said against his lips. “Or passion.”
Now, that was a challenge.
He removed his hand and her eyes popped open. Evidently, their first kiss hadn’t impressed her. He lowered his head again, his mouth gently resting over hers.
His tongue traced her bottom lip, coaxed her mouth to open, then thrust inside. She made a sound in the back of her throat. Protest or appreciation? At the moment, he neither knew nor cared.
Kissing Veronica was a surprise. She was trembling in his arms. One of his hands reached around to smooth over her back. The other slid to her bodice, a thumb reaching up to rest just below her breasts.
When his hand moved, she gasped, such a delicate protest he wasn’t certain if she was offended or simply surprised. He tested the thought by cupping a breast.
She abruptly drew back, her face crimson.
“That wasn’t a kiss,” she said.
“You haven’t any experience, have you?”
She stared at him. “Any experience? Of course I haven’t,” she said, sounding shocked. “I think I know how it’s done well enough. We had cats and horses. They’re not altogether shy about mating.”
He wanted to smile but knew if he did, she might interpret his emotion incorrectly. He wasn’t feeling humor as much as he was an unexpected tenderness.
His celibacy was suddenly useless and unnecessary. He wanted his wife, his unexpected Scots wife, who was all innocence and ignorance, who spoke of being fey, and who managed to startle him with her directness.
She was like the wind, as changeable as the flow of air itself.
He should stand, excuse himself, and be about his work. Instead, he lowered his head to kiss her again.
“Proper behavior, Veronica, is what separates the upper classes from those who would ape their betters.” Aunt Lilly’s dictum. “You know nothing of proper society, Veronica.” That comment from each of her cousins in turn.
“I don’t think it’s proper to be kissing in the parlor,” she said, pulling back from their last kiss.
From the smile on Montgomery’s face, she’d obviously amused him. She didn’t have time to think about it because he leaned down and kissed her again.
He tilted his head a little, and the kiss became something different. She felt as if the top of her head were spinning. His breath entered her mouth, and it was the most intimate act she’d ever experienced with another human being.
He deepened the kiss, and she no longer thought about being proper. Besides, compliancy was the mark of a good wife. Until, of course, he started unbuttoning her bodice. She slapped his hand away, but it returned. The second time he did it, she broke off their kiss and glared at him. The third time she slapped his hand away, he shook his head.
“I have no intention of becoming naked in the parlor, Montgomery Fairfax.”
“Not naked, Veronica. Just a little, shall we say, loosened?”
“I’m loosened enough, thank you.”
“You’re a bride, remember?”
He was down to the fourth button, and she placed her hand against the skin he exposed. She suspected he would continue unbuttoning her, but she was already revealed nearly to her waist. She grabbed both sides of her bodice and held them together, a fact that didn’t disturb him one whit.
Instead, he reached past her hands and began to work on her corset laces.
That was too much.
“Stop it, Montgomery,” she said.
“Very well,” he said, and reached up to cup one of her breasts.
Oh dear.
Gently, almost tenderly, his thumb brushed across the tip, and a jolt traveled through her body. She shook her head, as if to negate the sensations, then gripped his wrist with both hands to stop him.
He kissed her again, and it didn’t matter.
Her shift was fastened at the front with a tiny silk bow. He pulled one end, slid his hand inside the garment, his fingers dancing across her skin to rest against the outer slope of a breast.
Exactly what part of the Empire was she supposed to think about at the moment? She would think of Scotland, deeply grateful she was returning home, despite the circumstances. She would think of her own little village, Lollybroch, and all the joy she’d felt while living there. She would not think about what he was doing with his fingers.
How could she think of anything when he was kissing her so deeply?
She moaned, reached up, and gripped his jacket with both hands, fisting the material to pull him closer.
His hand came up to touch her cheek, and before she knew what he was doing, his fingers were spreading through her hair, dislodging her careful bun.
Heat was pooling in her body, coming from everywhere at once. Her cheeks flamed; it was difficult to breathe, and any thoughts of Scotland flew right out of her head.
Montgomery should wear a placard, some type of warning stating he was dangerous. The tips of her fingers tingled, as if they sought to touch the planes of his face and smooth over his jaw.
Was that permissible? Or was it considered wanton? And was wanton the same as common?
Montgomery’s hand lingered on her breast, his fingers trailing over her skin. He kissed her until her face was hot, and her lips felt swollen. Her heart was beating fast, and other parts of her body were throbbing in time.
She had never been so thoroughly enchanted.
Her hands rested on his shoulders, and when he moved to kiss her throat, her head dropped back to allow him . . . anything.
When he kissed the base of her throat, she held her bodice open for him. When she heard the fabric of her shift rip, she wished, in a fleeting and forbidden thought, that he’d managed to remove her corset as well. As it was, her breasts were plumped up in a manner that was most assuredly lascivious and thoroughly naughty.
She almost fainted when he kissed her there, and when Montgomery drew a nipple into his mouth, she felt it throughout her body. First one breast, then another, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked on her. Her hands reached up to trail through the hair at his temples, measuring his cheekbones and the angle of his jaw. When he would have pulled away, she kept him in place, pressing her palms against the back of his head.
Oh my.
His hand trailed beneath her skirt, and she shivered when she felt his palm against her thigh. His fingers pulled on the bow of her garter, shocking her further.
Did he think to undress her here?
“Montgomery,” she whispered frantically.
“Veronica,” he said, his voice soft and smooth and seductive.
“Should you be doing that? Here?”
“No,” he said. “I shouldn’t.”
He did not, however, stop. His fingers began to walk up her leg.
No one had ever mentioned something like this might happen. No one had ever warned her she might be ravished in the parlor.
Montgomery was stroking her skin as if learning every inch of her.
She should have begged him to stop. Instead, she shockingly wanted to be naked so no barriers of corset and petticoats and hoops stood between them.
“Oh, pardon, Your Lordship.”
Montgomery froze.
She kept her eyes closed, holding her breath, shocked into immobility. She kept her cheek against Montgomery’s. If she couldn’t see Mrs. Gardiner, then the housekeeper wasn’t there.
“What is it, Mrs. Gardiner?” Montgomery asked, flattening his hand against the apex of her thighs. His fingers danced over her skin, horrifying her.
Was he going to continue to ravish her in full view of Mrs. Gardiner?
He placed his other hand against her back, pressing her against him. Perhaps Mrs. Gardiner wouldn’t see her bodice was gaping, her breasts visible, her nipples wet from Montgomery’s mouth.
“I’ve prepared a hamper for your journey, Lord Fairfax. Is there anything else I can do?”
Go away. Oh, please go away.
She’d never been so embar
rassed in her life.
A moment ago, she was willing to be taken on the parlor floor. Now, she wanted to sink into that same floor and disappear.
“Thank you, Mrs. Gardiner. We don’t require anything further.”
She still didn’t move. He brushed aside her hair to whisper in her ear, his voice sounding amused.
“She’s gone,” he said.
“She was never here,” she said. “Never here, Montgomery.”
Brushing aside his hands, she buttoned her bodice herself, noting with some dismay his hand hadn’t moved from beneath her skirt.
His fingers toyed with her garter again, and she grabbed at it outside her skirt.
“Stop that!”
“You’re right,” he said, his eyes glittering, his smile producing the dimples she’d once suspected. “The rest will have to wait, Veronica.”
She couldn’t breathe again, and that pulsing ache was only growing. She wanted to touch him, stroke her palms up his chest, down his arms.
He should be half-undressed as well.
With some regret, she pulled away from him and stood, straightening her skirt with deliberation, her gaze focused on the action of her hands. She would not look at him.
What had happened?
Was that seduction?
Because if it were, she knew why all the warnings had been issued to her and to any unmarried woman. If she’d known, if they’d all known, what seduction was like, they would have fallen, moaning, into the hands of their seducers, begging for more of the same.
Chapter 10
By the time they reached Inverness, Veronica was furious with her new husband.
For hours, she’d sat beside Montgomery in the first-class cabin with a dozen other people, all prosperous citizens. The accent of Scotland welcomed her home, and the closer they got to their destination, the more grateful she was to Montgomery for making the journey possible. Her gratitude did not, however, offset her irritation with him.
Montgomery had been taciturn, if not downright forbidding, for the whole of the journey. Whenever she was tempted to broach a subject, he’d send her a look, and she’d keep silent.
After a full twenty hours aboard the train, they’d finally reached Inverness station in the middle of a storm.
The station was very loud, its tall, pitched roofs and ceiling windows echoing the rain. Dozens of arches led from one platform to another, each of them filled with talking people, purposefully walking toward their destinations.
