Almost Heaven

by Judith McNaught

  “Walk?” she repeated, stunned by the discovery that he was evidently as aware of what she was doing as she had been aware of him, sitting at the table. “It’s dark out,” she said mindlessly, searching his impassive features as he arose and walked over to her chair. He stood there, towering over her, and there was nothing about the expression on his handsome face to indicate he had any real desire to go anywhere with her. She cast a hesitant glance at the vicar, who seconded Ian’s suggestion. “A walk is just the thing,” Duncan said, standing up. “It aids the digestion, you know.”

  Elizabeth capitulated, smiling at the gray-haired man. “I’ll just get a wrap from upstairs. Shall I bring something for you, sir?”

  “Not for me,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t like tramping about at night.” Belatedly realizing he was openly abdicating his duties as chaperon, Duncan added quickly, “Besides, my eyesight is not as good as it once was.” Then he spoiled that excuse by picking up the book he’d been reading earlier, and—without any apparent need for spectacles—he sat down in a chair and began reading by the light of the candles.

  * * *

  The night air was chilly, and Elizabeth pulled her wool shawl tighter around her. Ian didn’t speak as they walked slowly across the back of the house.

  “It’s a full moon,” she said after several minutes, looking up at the huge yellow orb. When he didn’t reply, she cast about for something else to say and inadvertently voiced her own thoughts: “I can’t quite believe I’m really in Scotland.”

  “Neither can I.” They were walking around the side of a hill, down a path he seemed to know by instinct, and behind them the lights from the cottage windows faded and then vanished completely.

  Several silent minutes later they rounded the hill, and suddenly there was nothing in front of them but the darkness of a valley far below, the gentle slope of the hill behind them, a little clearing on their left, and a blanket of stars overhead. Ian stopped there and shoved his hands into his pockets, staring out across the valley. Uncertain of his mood, Elizabeth wandered a few paces to the end of the path on the left and stopped because there was nowhere else to go. It seemed colder here, and she absently pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders, stealing a surreptitious look at him. In the moonlight his profile was harsh, and he lifted his hand, rubbing the muscles in the back of his neck as if he was tense.

  “I suppose we ought to go back,” she said when several minutes had passed, and his silence became unsettling.

  In answer Ian tipped his head back and closed his eyes, looking like a man in the throes of some deep, internal battle. “Why?” he said, still in that odd posture.

  “Because there’s nowhere else to walk,” she answered, stating the obvious.

  “We did not come out tonight to walk,” he said flatly.

  Elizabeth’s sense of security began to disintegrate. “We didn’t?”

  “You know we didn’t.”

  “Then—then why are we here?” she asked.

  “Because we wanted to be alone together.”

  Horrified at the possibility that he’d somehow known what thoughts had been running through her mind at supper, she said uneasily, “Why should you think I want to be alone with you?”

  He turned his head toward her, and his relentless gaze locked with hers. “Come here and I’ll show you why.”

  Her entire body began to vibrate with a mixture of shock, desire, and fear, but somehow her mind remained in control. It was one thing to want to be kissed by him at the cottage where the vicar was nearby, but here, with absolute privacy and nothing to prevent him from taking all sorts of liberties, it was another matter entirely. Far more dangerous. More frightening. And based on her behavior in England, she couldn’t even blame him for thinking she’d be willing now. Struggling desperately to ignore the sensual pull he was exerting on her, Elizabeth drew a long, shaky breath. “Mr. Thornton,” she began quietly.

  “My name is Ian,” he interrupted. “Considering our long acquaintance—not to mention what has transpired between us—don’t you think it’s a little ridiculous to call me Mr. Thornton?”

  Ignoring his tone, Elizabeth tried to keep hers nonjudgmental and continue her explanation. “I used to blame you entirely for what happened that weekend we were together,” she began softly. “But I’ve come to see things more clearly.” She paused in that valiant speech to swallow and then plunged in again. “The truth is that my actions that first night, when we met in the garden and I asked you to dance with me, were foolish—no, shameless.” Elizabeth stopped, knowing that she could partly exonerate herself by explaining to him that she’d only done all that so her friends wouldn’t lose their wagers, but he would undoubtedly find that degrading and insulting, and she wanted very much to soothe matters between them, not make them much, much worse. And so she said haltingly, “Every other time we were alone together after that I behaved like a shameless wanton. I can’t completely blame you for thinking that’s exactly what I was.”

  His voice was heavy with irony. “Is that what I thought, Elizabeth?”

  His deep voice saying her name in the darkness made her senses jolt almost as much as the odd way he was looking at her across the distance that separated them. “Wh-what else could you have thought?”

  Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned fully toward her. “I thought,” he gritted, “you were not only beautiful but intoxicatingly innocent. If I’d believed when we were standing in the garden that you realized what the hell you were asking for when you flirted with a man of my years and reputation, I’d have taken you up on your offer, and we’d both have missed the dancing.”

  Elizabeth gaped at him. “I don’t believe you.”

  “What don’t you believe—that I wanted to drag you behind the hedges then and there and make you melt in my arms? Or that I had scruples enough to ignore that ignoble impulse?”

  A treacherous warmth was slowly beginning to seep up Elizabeth’s arms and down her legs, and she fought the weakness with all her might. “Well, what happened to your scruples in the woodcutter’s cottage? You knew I thought you’d already left when I went inside.”

  “Why did you stay,” he countered smoothly, “when you realized I was still there?”

  In confused distress Elizabeth raked her hair off her forehead. “I knew I shouldn’t do it,” she admitted. “I don’t know why I remained.”

  “You stayed for the same reason I did,” he informed her bluntly. “We wanted each other.”

  “It was wrong,” she protested a little wildly. “Dangerous and—foolish!”

  “Foolish or not,” he said grimly, “I wanted you. I want you now.” Elizabeth made the mistake of looking at him, and his amber eyes captured hers against her will, holding them imprisoned. The shawl she’d been clutching as if it was a lifeline to safety slid from her nerveless hand and dangled at her side, but Elizabeth didn’t notice.

  “Neither of us has anything to gain by continuing this pretense that the weekend in England is over and forgotten,” he said bluntly. “Yesterday proved that it wasn’t over, if it proved nothing else, and it’s never been forgotten—I’ve remembered you all this time, and I know damn well you’ve remembered me.”

  Elizabeth wanted to deny it; she sensed that if she did, he’d be so disgusted with her deceit that he’d turn on his heel and leave her. She lifted her chin, unable to tear her gaze from his, but she was too affected by the things he’d just admitted to her to lie to him. “All right,” she said shakily, “you win. I’ve never forgotten you or that weekend. How could I?” she added defensively.

  He smiled at her angry retort, and his voice gentled to the timbre of rough velvet. “Come here, Elizabeth.”

  “Why?” she whispered shakily.

  “So that we can finish what we began that weekend.”

  Elizabeth stared at him in paralyzed terror mixed with violent excitement and shook her head in a jerky refusal.

  “I’ll not force you,” he
said quietly, “nor will I force you to do anything you don’t want to do once you’re in my arms. Think carefully about that,” he warned, “because if you come to me now, you won’t be able to tell yourself in the morning that I made you do this against your will—or that you didn’t know what was going to happen. Yesterday neither of us knew what was going to happen. Now we do.”

  Some small, insidious voice in her mind urged her to obey, reminded her that after the public punishment she’d taken for the last time they were together she was entitled to some stolen passionate kisses, if she wanted them. Another voice warned her not to break the rules again. “I—I can’t,” she said in a soft cry.

  “There are four steps separating us and a year and a half of wanting drawing us together,” he said.

  Elizabeth swallowed. “Couldn’t you meet me halfway?”

  The sweetness of the question was almost Ian’s undoing, but he managed to shake his head. “Not this time. I want you, but I’ll not have you looking at me like a monster in the morning. If you want me, all you have to do is walk into my arms.”

  “I don’t know what I want,” Elizabeth cried, looking a little wildly at the valley below, as if she were thinking of leaping off the path.

  “Come here,” he invited huskily, “and I’ll show you.”

  It was his tone, not his words, that conquered her. As if drawn by a will stronger than her own, Elizabeth walked forward and straight into arms that closed around her with stunning force. “I didn’t think you were going to do it,” he whispered gruffly against her hair.

  There was praise for her courage in his voice, and Elizabeth clung to that as she raised her head and looked up at him. His smoldering gaze dropped to her lips, riveting there, and Elizabeth felt her body ignite at the same instant his mouth swooped down, capturing hers in a kiss of demanding hunger. His hands bit into her back, molding her pliant body to the rigid contours of his, and Elizabeth fed his hunger. With a silent moan of desperation she slipped her hands up his chest, her fingers sliding into the soft hair at his nape, her body arching to his. A shudder shook his powerful frame as she fitted herself to him, and his lips crushed down on hers, parting them, his tongue driving into her mouth with hungry urgency, and their dormant passion exploded. Heedless of what he was doing, Ian forced her to give him back the sensual urgency he was offering her, driving his tongue into her mouth until Elizabeth began to match the pagan kiss. Lost in the heated magic, she touched her tongue to his lips and felt the gasp of his breath against her mouth, then she hesitated, not certain. . . . His mouth moved more urgently against hers. “Yes,” he whispered hoarsely, and when she did it again he groaned with pleasure.

  Ian kissed her again and again until her nails were digging into his back and her breaths were coming in ragged gasps, mingling with his, and still he couldn’t stop The same uncontrollable compulsion to have her that had seized him two years ago had overtaken him again, and he kissed her until she was moaning and writhing in his arms and desire was pouring through him in hot tidal waves. Tearing his mouth from hers, he slid his lips across her cheek, his tongue seeking the inner crevice of her ear while his hand sought her breast. She jumped in dazed surprise at the intimate caress, and the innocent reaction wrung a choked laugh from him at the same time it sent a fresh surge of pure lust through him that almost sent him to his knees. Out of sheer self-preservation he forced his hands to stop the pleasurable torture of caressing her breasts, but his mouth sought hers again, sliding back and forth against her parted lips, but softer this time, gentling her. Gentling him . . . and then it all began again.

  An eternity later he lifted his head, his blood pounding in his ears, his heart thundering, his breathing labored. Elizabeth stayed in his arms, her hot cheek against his chest, her voluptuous body pressed to his, trembling in the aftermath of the most explosive, inexplicable passion Ian had ever experienced.

  Until now he had managed to convince himself that his memory of the passion that erupted between them in England was faulty, exaggerated. But tonight had surpassed even his imaginings. It surpassed anything he’d ever felt. He stared into the darkness above her head, trying to ignore the way she felt in his arms.

  Against her ear Elizabeth felt his heart slow to normal, his breathing even out, and the sounds of the night began penetrating her drugged senses. Wind rifled through the long grass, whispering in the trees; his hand stroked soothingly up and down her spine; tears of pure confusion stung her eyes, and she rubbed her cheek against his hard chest, brushing them away in what felt to Ian like a poignantly tender caress. Drawing a shattered breath, she tried to ask him why this was happening to her. “Why?” she whispered against his chest.

  Ian heard the shattered sound in her voice, and he understood her question; it was the same one he’d been asking himself. Why did this explosion of passion happen every time he touched her; why could this one English girl make him lose his mind? “I don’t know,” he said, and his voice sounded curt and unnatural to his own ears. “Sometimes it just happens”—to the wrong people at the wrong time, he added silently. In England he’d been so blindly besotted that he’d brought up marriage twice in two days. He remembered her reply word for word. Moments after she’d melted in his arms and kissed him with desperate passion, exactly as she’d done tonight, he’d said,

  “Your father may have some objections to our marriage, even after he understands that I’ll be able to provide for your future.”

  Elizabeth had leaned back in his arms and smiled with amusement. “And what will you provide, sir? Will you promise me a ruby large enough to cover my palm, as Viscount Mondevale did? Sables to cover my shoulders as Lord Seabury did?”

  “Is that what you want?” he’d asked, unable to believe she was so mercenary that she’d decide whom to marry based on who gave her the most expensive jewels or the most lavish furs.

  “Of course,” she’d replied. “Isn’t that what all females want and all gentlemen promise?”

  You had to give her credit, Ian thought to himself, fighting down a surge of disgust—at least she was honest about what mattered to her. In retrospect, he rather admired her courage, if not her standards.

  He glanced down at Elizabeth and saw her watching him, her apprehensive green eyes soft and deceptively innocent. “Don’t worry,” he said flippantly, taking her arm and starting to walk back toward the house. “I’m not going to make the ritualistic proposal that followed our last encounters. Marriage is out of the question. Among other things, I’m fresh out of large rubies and expensive furs this season.”

  Despite his joking tone, Elizabeth felt ill at how ugly those words sounded now, even though her reasons for saying them at the time had nothing to do with a desire for jewels or furs. You had to give him credit, she decided miserably, because he obviously took no offense at it. Evidently, in sophisticated flirtations, the rule was that no one took anything seriously.

  “Who’s the leading contender these days?” he asked in that same light tone as the cottage came into view. “There must be more than Belhaven and Marchman.”

  Elizabeth struggled valiantly to make the same transition from heated passion to flippancy that he seemed to find so easy. She wasn’t quite so successful, however, and her light tone was threaded with confusion. “In my uncle’s eyes, the leading contender is whoever has the most important title, followed by the most money.”

  “Of course,” he said dryly. “In which case it sounds as if Marchman may be the lucky man.”

  His utter lack of caring made Elizabeth’s heart squeeze in an awful, inexplicable way. Her chin lifted in self-defense. “Actually, I’m not in the market for a husband,” she informed him, trying to sound as indifferent and as amused as he. “I may have to marry someone if I can’t continue to outmaneuver my uncle, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d like to marry a much older man than I.”

  “Preferably a blind one,” he said sardonically, “who’ll not notice a little affair now and then?”


  “I meant,” she informed him with a dark glance, “that I want my freedom. Independence. And that is something a young husband isn’t likely to give me, while an elderly one might.”

  “Independence is all an old man will be able to give you,” Ian said bluntly.

  “That’s quite enough,” she said. “I’m excessively tired of being forever pushed about by the men in my life. I’d like to care for Havenhurst and do as I wish to do.”

  “Marry an old man,” Ian interjected smoothly, “and you may be the last of the Camerons.”

  She looked at him blankly.

  “He won’t be able to give you children.”

  “Oh, that,” Elizabeth said, feeling a little defeated and nonplussed. “I haven’t been able to work that out yet”

  “Let me know when you do,” Ian replied with biting sarcasm, no longer able to find her either amusing or admirable. “There’s a fortune to be made from a discovery like that one.”

  Elizabeth ignored him. She hadn’t worked it out yet because she’d only made that outrageous decision after being held tenderly in Ian Thornton’s arms one moment and then, for no comprehensible reason, treated at first like an amusing diversion and now as if she were contemptible. It was all too bewildering, too painful, too baffling. She’d had little enough experience with the opposite sex, and she was finding them a completely unpredictable, unreliable group. From her father to her brother to Viscount Mondevale, who’d wanted to marry her, to Ian Thornton, who didn’t. The only one she could depend upon to act in the same reliable way was her uncle. He at least was unfailingly heartless and cold.

  In her eagerness to escape to the privacy of her bedchamber, Elizabeth bade Ian a cool good night the instant she stepped over the threshold of the cottage, and then she walked past the high, wing-backed chair without ever noticing that the vicar was seated in it and watching her with an expression of bafflement and concern. “I trust you had a pleasant walk, Ian,” he said when her door closed upstairs.