But that was a tall order for Grembly.
And Isaac had a duty to the crown.
Though his heart was elsewhere. He feared that leaving would mean leaving behind his heart in Scotland.
He was a coward for walking into the MacAllens’ the night before without saying a word to Nora. But the trip from Edinburgh had been a long one, and Stuart had not gone willingly. The man was a blackguard, and Isaac was thankful Nora would no longer be marrying him. Isaac’s legs ached from being in the carriage all day, so it had taken him longer to limp up into the house when he deposited the soon-to-be newlyweds back at Esslemont Abbey.
Nora had been there on the stairs, gazing down at him like Nike personified, clutching onto the railing. But he had noted her red eyes. He always saw what the others ignored and what she tried so hard to hide from the world.
She stood above them all, far more deserving of love, her shoulders carrying the quiet strength he loved most about her. It had taken every ounce of strength he had left not to walk up those stairs, scoop her up in his arms, and kiss her properly.
Nora MacAllen needed to be kissed and kissed well. And Isaac was more than up to the challenge.
But now that he had done his part to set things right with Maeve and Stuart, things had grown complicated by Mr. MacAllen’s demands that the two be married. Isaac couldn’t help but feel he had hurt Nora in the process by having returned the two lovers.
Though without his help, the family would have been splintered and left to find their younger daughter on their own. Not that they had done anything. Which only meant that Nora would have taken it upon herself.
Something protective within Isaac made him volunteer for the task. Mrs. White was right, he was exactly the person they had needed to find Maeve, who, to the surprise of her father but not Isaac, was staying with Stuart in a rundown bawdy house not far from the Royal Lyceum Theatre. Isaac had entered the room to find the couple in bed with an actress, the trio not ashamed to have been discovered.
And Isaac was all too relieved to have found the pair so he could return to Nora.
How could there be anything more than that quiet, sad kiss between them when he was to leave?
He rolled over in bed, cursing the soft mattress. Damn bed. Damn Scotland. Damn that miserable bastard who didn’t know a good woman when he had her. Damn Isaac’s own heart for being so easily owned.
No, that wasn’t correct. Not this time.
Isaac was possessed by Nora. He couldn’t get her out of his mind, out from beneath his skin. With each breath, his body craved her. More, more. He wanted to consume her and breathe her and taste her. He wanted to sink into the heat between her legs and give her pleasure and hear the song of it upon her lips. Those sweet, perfect lips. He wanted to see her windswept in the highlands and to hear her laugh as the sun washed over the freckles splashed across her face. And greedy as it was to admit, he wished to feel her hand slip into his and experience the sudden peace that washed over him at not pretending to be so lonely in this life.
His body ached, but not as badly as his cock. He reached beneath the covers and gripped his shaft, already hard in his hands, and stroked. He kept his eyes closed, imagining Nora before him. How he would slowly undress her, how he would taste the salt of her skin, skirting his lips over the gentle slope of her shoulder. How he would draw away her lacy undergarments with his fingers, so delicate, as his mouth trailed behind, tasting every inch of her.
Isaac gripped himself more firmly, his hips tightening. He had never been a religious man, but by God, would he love her right if ever given the chance. He would love her and honor her and show her what it meant to be man and wife. He would see that she understood what love could feel like.
Warmth pulled at his limbs, spreading throughout his body in an intoxicating rush. He increased his pace, his breathing quickening.
He pictured her laid out in front of him on the bed, the sheets twisted in her palms as he showered kisses down her body, parting her before him so he could taste her on his lips. And how she would shake at his touch and run her fingers through his hair, then pull it as she came—with his tongue between her thighs.
He stopped, thinking for a moment he had heard a knock at the door. But it was too early for anyone to call. The sun wasn’t even up. And fuck, he was close to spending himself. It had been far too long, and the need was there, his balls aching.
He gripped his shaft, tugging hard, until once again, there was that sound at the door.
God damn it all to hell.
He groaned as he sat up, quickly throwing on his trousers to see who was at the door. He checked his pocket watch—half past five—as he shuffled out of his room. Anyone in their right mind would be sleeping at this hour.
Isaac adjusted himself quickly, hoping his frustration wasn’t too obvious, before he swung the door open, fully prepared to bark at whoever had interrupted him. “Do you know—”
Nora stood with eyes wide and lips parted, the Scottish Highlands having kissed her cheeks red.
“—It’s early,” he sputtered. “I—”
Nora threw down her bags and rushed forward, grabbing his face in her cold hands and kissed him.
This wasn’t sad or quiet. This rioted through him, shaking Isaac awake with its passion.
He fell back a step, allowing her inside, before he turned her in his arms and kicked the door shut behind them.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, drawing her lips away from his for a moment. “Couldn’t—”
He teased her bottom lip with his teeth, drawing out a sigh. “I couldn’t either. I’ve been thinking of you.”
Her hands ran through his hair as she pressed herself against him, the two of them lost in sweet oblivion. Isaac was sure he had died—how this time, he didn’t care. But sure as heaven above he must be dead—for Nora to show up on his doorstep when moments before he had been about to spill himself at the very thought of her.
“I realize this isn’t proper.” Nora let out a rough laugh laced with the doubt that her kiss hadn’t possessed. “But if I had been braver last evening, I would have kissed you…”
Her hands left his hair and skirted his bare shoulders.
“Nora.” He pulled away, instantly regretting the loss of her. He leaned his forehead against hers, his arms tugging her tighter as they spun into the middle of the small cottage, his paintings strewn around the place. If they didn’t watch their step, they were likely to be covered in oil paint. He closed his eyes, cursing under his breath. “Nora,” he whispered again.
How he loved her name.
How quickly he had grown to love her. Somehow. This was love after all, wasn’t it?
“My sweet Nora.”
Isaac kissed the edge of her mouth, tracing the line of her jaw as he made his way south, kissing her neck, then the hollow of her throat. Her body melted against the small table in the kitchen. His hand shook as he reached for the collar of her dress, his lips still pressed to her as something by the front door caught his eye.
He sobered, scratching his jaw as he peered between the beautiful woman laid out before him and the trunk by the door. “Where are you going?”
“Leaving.” Nora sat up and wiped a hand across her mouth, the perfect picture of lust with her heavy-lidded eyes. “I have an elderly aunt I can stay with. I am sure she needs the h-help.”
Her beautiful hair cascaded down around her shoulders, her dress collar still open, revealing a slice of freckled skin. Her eyes, wide and full of want, met his. So much between them remained unspoken. How was it possible to know someone completely and not at all?
“Don’t leave,” he said, his voice husky. “Please.”
She shook her head. “I can’t stay, n-not now. I should have found a safer place.”
“Safer?”
He stood between her legs, the table hitting his thighs as he did. He pinched a lock of her hair between his fingers, careful not to scare her from speaking. “You’re not safe now?
Has someone hurt you?”
She straightened, hesitating before she touched him again, circling her arms around his neck. “You’re not wearing a shirt.”
“I wasn’t expecting company so early.”
“It is early.” She yawned. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sor—”
He didn’t let her finish. Couldn’t let her finish, in fact. He kissed her, this time a slow, drugging kiss that felt as if it lasted hours, yet when their lips parted, he was altogether too sorry to see it end so soon.
“Marry me,” he whispered, nose to nose with her.
“What?” She tensed beneath his touch.
He pulled back, cupping her face in his hands. “Nora MacAllen, please marry me.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “You can’t mean that.”
He kissed her, and properly, to show her he meant it. She nuzzled beside his cheek, shaking her head as she pulled away.
“I’m dreaming.”
“No.”
Nora gently pushed him away. “We hardly know each other. And I doubt my father will give permission for m-me to marry an Englishman.”
But an English duke certainly?
“There have been marriages based on far less than what we share, and we could have far more if we take the chance.”
“That’s hardly romantic, Isaac.”
“I can protect you.” He hated the edge of desperation in his voice.
Her fingers traced his collarbone, over the still-healing flesh that was yellowed and stitched. “It looks like you could use someone to protect you.”
More than she knew. “As my wife, you could do as you wished. You could roam all day if you wanted. And no one would be able to harm you.”
She sighed. “And who are you, Mr. Isaac Barnes, to make such promises?”
A pit in his stomach opened up, as it always had when confessing what came next. He wished to keep things the same, simpler. Sharing always changed everything.
He kissed her fingertips, his voice shaking as he confessed, “The Duke of Ashbornham.”
She drew her hand back.
“I can’t be a duchess.” Nora jumped to her feet, rushing around him out into the small parlor.
Heavy, Scottish rain meant to drill a chill down to one’s bones began pounding against the roof.
Isaac bowed his head, swallowing his hurt pride, and strode into his bedroom, grabbing a shirt draped over an armchair in the corner. He buttoned it, keeping his head down, even as he heard her in the doorway.
“Could you be my wife then?”
“My father will n-never allow it.”
He snapped his head up. “We’re in Scotland. We could elope.”
Her hesitations were all sound, but he hadn’t revealed the whole truth yet and already he sensed her slipping away.
Nora pushed off from the doorway, padding close as she unbuttoned the buttons he had just closed. “You’re a good man, Isaac Barnes, Duke of Ashbornham. A kind m-man who deserves to be happy.” She smiled up at him, her eyes glistening. “But I don’t have any idea how to be anyone’s wife. And you deserve someone better than me.”
“I don’t deserve you.” Men had died at his hands. He didn’t deserve to be in the same room as Nora never mind become her husband. He couldn’t feel less deserving in this moment.
“You don’t know me.”
“Then let me. Tell me what you want. You, Nora. Not your parents’ wish for you so they may achieve their own gain, not for Mrs. White’s continued friendship, and not for the fear of returning to London. Tell me what you want with us, from life, for the future.”
Nora leaned her forehead against his chest for one beautifully sweet moment before pulling back to gaze up at him. “The im-impossible is what I want, or so I’ve been told. A girl—”
“—a woman.”
She glared up at him. “No, a girl, at least in their eyes. A spinster at best. I want love, Isaac, without being c-cut down or laughed at. I want a family of my o-own. I want something more than hiding away, even if it’s f-foolish to believe that’s possible.” She unbuttoned two more buttons of his shirt, pressing her lips to his chest. “I want to be b-brave enough to have you as my own.” She rested her hand over his heart. “And to know that’s e-enough.”
What beautiful visions for herself. And yet where could Isaac fit in if he wasn’t completely honest? He should tell her. Now, before—
“—I must have your p-promise first.”
“Anything.”
“I have a dear friend who has gone missing, Daniel. Stuart had promised to help me find him. Daniel is Stuart’s cousin. But I fear Stuart helped in my friend’s disappearance. I have reason to believe he’s been committed to an asylum. Against his will.”
“And you need me to find him?”
She nodded, grabbing his hands in hers.
“You understand that’s dangerous,” he said. “That in finding him, it puts him at risk.”
“He’s at risk either way. Do you know w-what they do to patients?”
“Yes.” Those places weren’t humane. They were a place to hide those were considered unwanted, and a place to punish, all under the guise of medical advancement.
“You know I will help,” he said somberly. “But I’ll do so as a friend, not as a condition of our marriage.”
Her touch burned. She held his hand. The pad of her delicate thumb ran over the dried smears of paint on his skin, and then to his skinned knuckles.
“You have such beautiful hands,” she said. Isaac was arrested by her touch. She examined the lines of his hand with her fingers, igniting a fire within him.
“They’re only hands, Nora.”
“No,” she insisted.
He froze, watching her pass over his hands with trembling fingers, tracing the scars and calluses in careful detail.
“Your hands hold stories,” she whispered. Then, to his surprise, she brought his hand to her lips and slipped his index finger into her mouth.
Isaac unraveled on the spot.
She ran the tip of her tongue along the underside of his finger before drawing her teeth down, and then dragging the tip of his finger forward and free from her lips. She peeked up at him, searching for a benediction. When he offered none, still shocked from her brazenness, she cradled his cheeks.
“You hold so many stories, Isaac, and I find myself wanting to h-hear them all.”
Isaac’s reached for her cheeks, drawing her face closer to his. “Sweet,” he whispered, bringing his lips to her forehead. His lips trailed down to her eyelids, then her button nose, until her arms wrapped around his neck.
“Tell me,” she whispered in his ear. “Oh, please, Isaac, tell me your s-story.”
His fingers threaded through her silky hair as he continued his exploration—one sweet kiss at a time as he committed her face to his heart. She smelled like heather, his little Scottish rabbit.
“T-tell me,” she whispered again, her voice catching as his lips moved down to her neck. “I s-so want to know you.” He savored the feel of her body pressed unabashedly against him, her flesh fitting to his as if they had always been two parts of a whole. He drank her in like a fine brandy, slowly and wholly, drunk on the way his body responded to hers.
I found her.
The thought stumbled into his heart and burst into an absoluteness that coursed through his veins and sank deep into his bones. His whole life he had been plagued by wearing his heart on his sleeve. Never did he feel the way he did now with Nora in his arms, his Nora.
Their lips joined in a shared passion that sang to Isaac like a siren’s song. So perfect. He longed to tell her everything, bare his very soul to her, but he foolishly thought that his kiss did just that. As they deepened their kiss, as his tongue entered her mouth and tasted sweet chocolate, Nora swayed and sank toward the ground.
Isaac gripped her elbows, releasing her lips, and instinctively drew her to him as they sank toward the floor.
“Tell me what you want me t
o say for you to agree and I will say it. I want so badly to say something poetic now and sweep you off your feet. You deserve to be wooed and fussed over, and I’m making a terrible mess of this proposal.” He laughed nervously. “But please, marry me.”
“Tell me the t-truth,” she said in a small voice. Her eyes were like the great lochs of Scotland, so deep that a man could lose his life seeking the bottom. He felt himself dropping perilously into their depths. There was no hope for his recovery.
He kissed her nose and her long, fluttering eyelashes.
“I love you,” he whispered. The confession surprised him. There was no doubt that she belonged in his arms, that they were destined to grow old together, that they would etch happiness onto each other’s faces. And yet that wasn’t the whole truth.
I am so many men, he wanted to confess. I am more than this man before you, yet this is all I have to give. It was a humble offer, especially for a duke, when others might say he possessed everything a man could ever want.
Nora traced the line of his nose before fluttering over his lips. Her face was blank, lost once more in thought; her mind was a busy place. Then a small smile started at the corners of her mouth and spread to her lips until she was gazing up at him and laughing once more, tears brimming in her eyes.
“Yes,” she answered, “yes, I will marry you, Isaac,” she said before pulling his lips to hers.
Chapter 7
Nora found herself staring at Isaac’s short missive. His handwriting was much like everything else about him—strong and elegant.
She chuckled to herself, raising a her palm to her cheek.
“Are you ready, miss?” Nora’s maid, Anne, asked.
Nora lifted her head and looked at Anne dressed fully in black and nodded at the young girl’s reflection in the mirror.
Meet me at the church at ten. A carriage will be waiting at the bottom of the hill. –I
Such simple words for a life-changing event.
Please marry me.
The man begged her to accept; she had never been so desired in her life.
Tonight she, Nora Jane MacAllen, was getting married.
The Duke’s Improper Bride Page 6
