by Virna DePaul
Shit. Shit! As he circled around on his horse again, she noticed an amused grin across his face. So what? Now that he was out of the castle, he didn’t have to hide his true feelings behind that blank mask he’d worn. The idea almost stopped her in her tracks, but she forced herself to keep going.
“Well, um, yeah, I have to get my bags,” Molly lied. “I arrived early and stayed in the village.”
He nodded and glanced back at the castle. “You could’ve asked Mack to drive you. It’s quite a hike to the village.”
She shrugged. “I don’t mind. Good to stretch the legs after such a long flight from Boston.”
“Right. How do you like Boston, Miss Rose?”
“Oh, Boston is, Boston is just…the best,” she said as she continued to walk, with him on his horse trotting beside her.
She’d never fucking been to Boston.
“That must have been quite an accomplishment, attending Harvard, Miss Rose.”
She cleared her throat and eyed the horse. What were the chances she could outrun a thoroughbred through the mud? She finally ground to a halt, sighed, and blinked up at the Duke through the steadily increasing specks of rain.
“Harvard was just…”
He leaned over his horse and closer to her. “The best?”
She nodded. “The best.”
As their gazes clashed, somehow her mind wandered away from talk of Boston. Instead, she suddenly saw the two of them on the grassy knoll just behind his shoulder; it would serve perfectly as a place for him to lie her down. If he tore away her clothes, stripped her down and exposed her, what would his ravenous eyes devour first? Her nipples would be hard and peaked and yearning. Her hair, the curls caught in the thistles and thorns, would lay around her head, debauched and eager for his touch. The blood running through the vein along her neck would be racing as she stretched it out for his hot breath, his scalding tongue, his bruising teeth. It would all be his to feast on.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
Yours, she thought. I want to be yours. I want to be the girl who succumbs to the appetite of a duke. I want to give myself to you and in return have you give yourself to me.
Only that was quite impossible. And not because she was a commoner and an imposter. But because he was a stranger to himself.
“I’m Priscilla Rose,” she said, not blinking. “And I must be leaving.”
She turned to continue down the road to the village, but he blocked her with his horse’s wet nose.
“I know you’re not Priscilla Rose. So, who are you?”
“Your horse is blocking my way, Your Grace.”
“His name is Sir Galahad. What is your name?”
She rolled her eyes. Of course the horse’s name was Sir Galahad.
“My name is Priscilla Rose and you and Sir Galahad are blocking my way.”
Instead of leading his horse out of Molly’s way, he urged the horse to take a step closer, forcing her to backtrack on the gravel road. As she attempted to duck around them, the Duke matched her movement by guiding the horse’s head this way and that. She glared up at him as she stumbled down the small embankment off the road. Still, the Duke forced her backward.
“What is your name?” he repeated.
Molly tried to stand her ground, but Sir Galahad nuzzled his nose against her shoulder and she tripped backward again.
“Is this how you treat all your international guests, Your Grace?”
He shrugged even as the thunder clouds churned behind him. “Only the ones that try to take me for a fool. Now, tell me your name.”
Molly threw up her hands. “Priscilla Rose. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m Priscilla Rose.”
Her backward progression abruptly stopped when her shoulders collided painfully with the sharp bark of a tree trunk. She stood there as the Duke studied her, head quirked to the side, eyes mistrusting. Then he suddenly dismounted and dropped the reins. Sir Galahad wandered off to graze on the wild grasses, but Molly still could not move.
He held his hands loosely at his sides, but they might as well have been pinned to the tree on either side of her head. His feet stood shoulder width apart across from hers, but she imagined them kicking each of her boots further apart and wedging themselves between her legs. He held himself a foot away from her and yet she couldn’t have moved less had his body been pressed squarely against her, holding her tightly against the tree, his groin pushing eagerly against her, his attraction obvious.
Molly couldn’t move. She didn’t want to move.
The rabbit was trapped.
Panicked, she forced herself to look past his demanding gaze to follow the dirt road that wound through the lush green hills of the Scottish countryside. She didn’t want to be tempted to share her secrets with this man. And she knew the more she looked at him, the looser her lips would become.
They stood in silence, the only audible sounds the wind through the grasses and the occasional swish of the horse’s tail.
“Why did you paint my eyes the way you did?” he asked, and Molly swore she caught a hint of vulnerability in his expression, the same vulnerability she’d seen when she’d first entered the ballroom. He shifted from one foot to the next and for the first time appeared to be anything but comfortable and in control. It was his eyes, now, that flickered away from her.
“I’m not going to drag you to prison or press charges or anything. I just need to know… why’d you paint my eyes that way?”
If she let her brain do the talking, she could just play dumb, tell him she needed to get to the village, and never look back. But he was genuinely confused, and allowing himself to be vulnerable, and she couldn’t resist being honest with him.
“My name is Molly Lane. I’m traveling around Europe to study art and when I was in your castle I noticed the William McTaggart hanging—”
“The what?” he interrupted.
“The painting. The painting in the hallway, just past the section restricted from the tourists? Famous Scottish painter, William McTaggart?”
He shrugged. “Never had much time for art, I guess.”
Molly stared at him as if she was a priest and he’d just shouted blasphemy inside a church. She could understand no time to cook a healthy dinner. She could understand no time to do dishes or vacuum or dust bookshelves, or to watch the nightly news.
But art? There was always time for art.
“Anyway,” she continued, ignoring what she’d just heard, “Mack saw me and mistook me for Priscilla, and I was going to leave, but then…well…then I saw you.” She looked down, feeling her cheeks burn slightly. “I painted what I saw.” It was so hard to find the right words to answer his question. “I painted who I saw.”
He shook his head, the movement almost angry.
“You’re not the ‘quietly and attentively sit for an official portrait’ type,” she said.
“It is my duty,” he answered, robotically, automatically, thoughtlessly.
Molly knew better.
“You’re not as prim and proper as you try to be, Your Grace. I could see it.”
His jaw clenched.
Molly stepped closer to him until only a few inches kept them apart. “I saw how hard you had to try to keep yourself under control. You wanted to touch me.” She amazed even herself by stating it so bluntly. She expected him to laugh disdainfully. Deny it. Instead, his eyes blazed like a million suns, and he whispered, “You don’t know me.” Only, she heard the uncertainty in his voice. Could he?
She lifted her chin. “But I do. You’re passionate and wild and restless. You’re not the Duke you pretend to be at all. I saw that. I painted that.”
“That wasn’t me,” he insisted.
Why was he fighting what she was saying? Why were the eyes she’d painted on that canvas so foreign to him, so unlike himself, so impossibly not him? For whatever reason, he must be guarding himself from strangers, possibly even those close to him. But maybe he was guarding himself from himself
as well. And that, she thought, would be the saddest possibility of all.
She tried to make what she wanted to say less insane than it sounded in her mind, but she kept fumbling for words. She wanted to say that the past few months, she’d traveled all around Europe and stood transfixed before the greatest works of art ever created. And she’d stood transfixed because the paint on the canvas, the clay molded on the stand, the watercolor streaked across the page, were each a part of that artist. To make art like that required opening yourself and pouring yourself into the art.
Her mother, a talented and devoted artist herself before her death, had always told Molly she couldn’t hide anything in art. She had to show the good, the bad, the ugly. She had to show her insecurities and her doubts, her jealousies and her anger, her passion and her frustrations. The acrylic had to feel her heartbeat, her sweat, her tears, and Molly had to let it.
So, every time Molly stood in front of great art, she was in awe, not just by the sheer brilliant skill required to make it, but by the artist’s honesty, the openness of their heart, the vulnerability of their soul.
After she stumbled into the ballroom and locked eyes with the Duke of Roxburghe, she’d stood transfixed the same way she had before the Mona Lisa. Because nothing had been hidden from her.
But that really did sound insane. Even Molly, wearer of an occasional feather in her hair, hugger of strangers that needed a hug on the subway, crier at a beautiful sunset, knew that was crazy.
“Do you see the man you painted standing in front of you right now?” the Duke finally asked.
She shook her head. “You’re hiding.”
An arrogant smirk played across his face as he closed the distance between them, forcing Molly to stumble back into the tree. He straddled her legs and loomed over her. “I’m right here,” he said.
“No, no, you’re not,” Molly insisted. “You just think I’ll be distracted by your dick pressed against my stomach.”
He chuckled darkly and braced his hands on either side of her head. “Is it working?” he asked.
His lips were just inches from her own. She could see the shades of green in his eyes, more varied than the landscape sprawling in every direction around her.
“Here’s another question for you,” he whispered when she remained stubbornly silent. “Knowing what we were asking of you, knowing you were supposed to be painting my official portrait, why did you paint me the way you did?”
He was so close to her. She was so close to him. Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to see there were miles and miles between them.
Just say “I don’t know,” Molly. Do it and get away from him. Instead she said, “I didn’t have a choice.”
His eyes flared and his head lowered and she swore he was going to do it.
He was going to kiss her.
Then the steady drizzle from the darkening sky turned into a torrent of heavy, loud droplets. The sudden roar was deafening. And to her combined relief and dismay, the Duke stepped away from her.
Chapter Four
Callum
The last thing Callum wanted was to cease his conversation with Molly. But getting caught in a torrential storm wasn’t exactly the most appropriate time to argue. And there would never be an appropriate time for doing what he’d truly been about to do, which wasn’t to continue their conversation, but rather kiss the hell out of her.
It was as if the Scottish sky had frowned down upon the foolish behavior of its new duke and decided to douse him with a healthy splash of water to get his senses back. It was what he’d wanted since he’d first seen her. Every sentence that did not beg her to move closer was a hard fought victory. Every movement of his hand that did not result in his fingers skimming under her thin T-shirt cost him more energy than running a full marathon. Every single step he did not take toward her magnetic, sexual draw was equal to one-thousand steps up a mountain. He was exhausted. And yet, he hadn’t felt more electric in months.
On the horizon, thunder cracked and lightning flashed. Water pooled in the dirt road’s divets, and Molly shivered in her soaked clothes. It was best for everyone that he hadn’t kissed her, of course. Still, he couldn’t let her go off on her own either. What kind of noble duke would he be to let the poor girl catch pneumonia from walking in the freezing rain?
He stepped away from her with difficulty, as if he was holding one end of a rubber band and she the other. He stared up at the skies and cursed whoever had sent this mad woman into his life at a time when he needed nothing of the sort. He hoped the cold rain would lessen the heat in his cheeks and the pressure in his groin.
“We need to get inside!” he shouted.
Blinking up at him with wet lashes, Molly nodded in enthusiastic agreement before stepping around him. Surprised, he reached for her wrist.
“Where are you going?”
Another flash of lightning. Her curls hung wet and limp around her pretty face. She pointed south.
“I've got to get to the village.” She said it as if it was the most obvious statement ever said.
He felt her pull against his grip, so he held on tighter.
“Are you crazy?” he yelled. “You'll never make it to the main road, let alone all the way down to Kelso.”
“I'll be fine.”
She grit her teeth and yanked her hand free. She turned and marched down the muddy road, slipping and sliding every step.
“Fucking stubborn arse,” he muttered.
She struggled onward, and he was going to let her go. This strange, maddening, perfect woman wasn't his problem anymore. He’d tried. He’d done what he could.
Grabbing his horse’s bridle, he put one boot in the stirrup and was about to mount…when he audibly groaned and started following Molly in the pounding rain, muttering every swear word he knew and making up new ones with every muddy step.
Without a word, he caught up with her and swept her into his arms. For the barest second, he imagined doing something else entirely. Standing there in the rain, her breath hitching in her throat, her eyes locked on his, her lower lip trembling, he wanted to forget his title, forget his duty, and remember the man he used to be. The man this American woman had somehow seen and put on canvas, taunting him with what could never be again.
What he could never be again.
As if reading his mind, she shifted just the barest fraction of an inch, bringing her face closer to his so that, he swore, their lips barely touched. He tasted her, her complexity, her vitality, and desire pulsed through him. She was a temptation. She shook his resolve to tamp down his more passionate nature, to be the good duke he needed to be, which included marrying a woman of royal blood one day.
She made him ache to be a red-blooded man, not a blue-blooded duke.
And therefore, she was forbidden.
With a sudden jerk of his face away from hers, he could breathe and reason again. He moved quickly, plopping her in front of the saddle. Dumbfounded and mute, she stared at him as he climbed up behind her and dug his heels into the horse’s flanks.
Temptation roared through him once again as he felt her slight body pressed against his, but somehow he managed to hold on to his restraint.
“I would’ve made it to the village,” she finally said, her voice breathless.
“Sure you would, lass. Sure.” He choked the words out and hated them. He sounded like a robot.
He sounded like a fucking duke.
* * *
The stable’s warmth made Callum sigh in relief, when suddenly Sir Galahad shook his mane and sent a huge wave of icy water crashing over them. He shivered and shook off the drops. His stable hand, Lloyd, arrived with towels draped over his arm.
“A bit muggy for a ride, eh, Your Grace?”
“Wasn't my choice,” Callum grumbled.
He slipped down from the saddle and reached up for Molly, who ended up falling on him rather than properly dismounting. Somehow, his hand curled around the side of her breast, and he hissed at the luscious feeling be
fore quickly setting her away from him.
Lloyd handed over the towels and took hold of Sir Galahad's reins.
“A peppermint for you, don't you think?” Lloyd cooed to the horse.
“Come this way, Miss Lane,” Callum said.
Still reeling from the feel of her breast in his large hand and the naughty stable fantasy that had suddenly formed in his head, Callum led Molly out around the side of the stable and towards the castle’s back entrance. They sprinted the short distance through the rain, and he politely held the door to the staff kitchen open for her to slip inside.
“Your Grace,” the three women in the kitchen greeted, barely looking up from the rolls of dough spread across the table.
“Um, how are you, ladies?”
Even to his own ears, his voice sounded like an alien imitating what he thought a human should sound like. He wished he could be less awkward and more natural and charismatic, but he was so afraid that if he let his true self out, his natural impulsivity would run amok. All the staff had loved his father when he was Duke, so he was acting just like his father had acted: strong and regal and firm.
After a round of 'Fine's, Callum stood awkwardly in the kitchen next to Molly. She glanced at a large pot.
“Is that split pea soup on the stove there?” she asked.
“Very good nose, dear,” one woman, said with a smile he'd never managed to elicit from any of the kitchen staff after all this time. He believed her name was Barbara. “Fancy a bowl?”
“Oh, I'd love—”
“We have to be going,” Callum interrupted. “Happen to know where Mack is?”
The women's chins returned to their chests and their hands to their dough.
“Last seen him with the doorman,” one of them, Tina he believed, answered.
Callum strode right out of the kitchen. Out in the hallway, he didn’t hear Molly’s steps behind him, so he stopped and turned around. The hallway was empty. He rolled his eyes. He was about to go fetch her when she came around the corner with a steaming bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other.
