Julia London - [Scandalous 02] (30 page)

“Indeed it is,” Lindsey said in a strangled voice. And as Jack turned to look at him, he noticed they were pulling up at Jack’s house on Audley Street. Lambourne House!

“What the devil?” he asked, confused.

Lindsey and O’Conner dissolved into fits of laughter. Grinning, Christie leaned across the coach and clapped Jack on the shoulder. “My friend, you will not hang today. You’ve been released for lack of evidence. The prince has forgiven you.”

Dumbfounded, he stared at the lot of them. “Do you mean…”

“Yes,” Lindsey said, and spasmed with another fit of laughter.

“Bloody hell, do you think you might have said so a wee bit sooner?” he exclaimed crossly, his ire soaring. But the realization that he was free suddenly began to register. “Lizzie!” he cried. “Has she—”

“She’s inside,” Christie said, opening the coach door.

L
izzie had finally given in to Fiona’s desire to dress her. Today she was wearing a beautiful green and white day gown, overlaid in organza and embroidered with tiny butterflies around the hem and sleeves. She might not have warmed to London, but she had warmed to fine ladies’ clothing.

Her hair was knotted at her nape and she wore pearl earrings to match her necklace, likewise borrowed from Fiona. Fiona was leaving on the morrow, returning to Scotland to prepare for her wedding. Lizzie was going to miss her. They’d become good friends in this long fortnight.

She would not miss Gavin, who had accepted the news of a change in her heart with élan. When she’d discovered what Jack had done for her with the king, she’d found the courage to cry off, and told Gavin truthfully that while she would always hold a fond place in her heart for him, she’d fallen hopelessly in love with Jack.

“Lambourne?” he said. “He’s locked away.”

“And my heart with him,” she said sincerely.

Gavin smiled. “I can hardly claim no’ to have noticed it,” he said with a weary sigh. “I am sorry for it, for I’ve always been right fond of you, Lizzie, I have indeed. But I will wish you the best.” He shook his head, looked at
his hands. “Perhaps this is just as well, aye? For I think I have fallen in love with London and the friends I have met here.”

The
ladies
he’d met here—Lizzie knew very well what Gavin had been up to, thanks to Fiona.

Gavin spent the fortnight of Jack’s captivity taking a lease on a smaller but suitably situated town home. He intended to stay on in London indefinitely, and wrote his father, asking him to look after the Gordon estate in his absence.

Lizzie had written Charlotte, too, telling her she’d be home just as soon as she could. But she would not leave London without speaking to Jack, and now that he’d been freed…

She was quite nervous. He was coming home today, and she didn’t know how he’d feel about finding her here. She checked her reflection one last time in the mirror and was tucking up a curl when she heard him.

“Lizzie!”
he shouted.

She whirled around and put a hand to her heart to still it. It would not be stilled. She flew out of the suite, down the hall to the curving stairs, her feet flying down the marble steps to the entrance hall.

Jack was standing there, his hat swept off his head and clutched in his hand. His gaze raked over her. “You’re here yet.”

“Aye,” she said uncertainly.

He suddenly strode forward, cupped her elbow, and marched her into the gold salon. Just inside the door he paused, and the two of them looked at each other. How long they stood there just gazing at one another, Lizzie could not guess. A world of meaning and understanding seemed to flow between them in the silence.

At last Jack spoke. “Gordon, he’s…?”

“Gone,” she said quickly. “Our understanding has come to an end.”

His eyes narrowed. “And what of our understanding?” he demanded. “The handfasting?”

Lizzie’s heart skipped a beat. She swallowed down her fear and lifted her chin. “I’ve no’ cried off if that is what you mean. You sent me a bonnet—”

“Woman, I’ve never in my life imagined one could attach so much meaning to a bloody
bonnet
. It was a hat! No’ a jewel, no’ a horse—”

“And I am still waiting to hear you say that you esteem me,” she said stubbornly. “If ye donna, I will return to Thorntree today and you have my vow I shall never bother you again.”

“I donna
esteem
you!” he cried heavenward, and Lizzie’s heart lurched. “What is in that head of yours, lass? I
love
you!”

Lizzie gasped. Desire began to flow in her like a living, breathing thing.

“Do you think I’ve thought of anything else these long weeks? There, then, you have it—I love you, Lizzie Beal! I have loved you I think since the moment you jumped from the window at Castle Beal! I have loved your spirit and your determination, and how you’ve cared for your sister and done your best to keep Thorntree from ruin, and I…I
love
you,” he said, taking a small step forward. “I love you more than I have a right to, for I’ve done some bloody awful things. But I love you more than I thought possible.”

“Jack,”
she whispered.

He reached for her the same moment she leapt into his arms. He enveloped her in his arms and kissed her deeply, kissed her like a man who had thirsted for love
and had faced his own mortality and who would never let her go, not ever.

She returned his kiss just as passionately. He felt as hard and strong and secure as he ever had. He pushed her up against the door, and lifted his head. “By the bye, you could no’ be more beautiful, but today you take my breath away.”

“Say it again,” she sighed longingly as his gaze began to drift down her body. “Say you love me, Jack.”

“Please,
leannan
…donna make me say how much I love you, for you will faint with astonishment,” he said as his hands followed his gaze, painting a path down her body, sending delicious shivers through her. “You remained here. You waited for me,” he said, as if he could not quite believe it.

“I would have waited through eternity,” she said, and clasped his head in her hands, made him look at her. “I love you, Jack, with all my heart. I will never love another.” She moved her hands to his chest.

Her warmth radiated through his skin like sunshine, and as he gathered her in his arms, he felt himself rising up, hard and eager to make love to her.

“Allow me this truth, Lizzie,” he said, sobering. “I’ve never been in love in my sorry life until now. I donna want to be the sort of man my father was, but there are times that I fear it—”

She stopped him put her hand across his mouth. “Fiona told me. But you…you are far superior to him in every way. Jack, you were willing to sacrifice your life for who you love. You are your own man—you are no’ him. On that, I would stake my own life.”

No one had ever said words like that to Jack, and it made him feel as tall as a mountain. “
Diah,
I love you,
lass!” he said, and put his mouth to her neck at the same moment he picked her up. He carried her across the room and put her down on the settee, determined to show her just how much he loved her then and there. He went down on knee beside the settee, his hands already working at the fastenings of her gown. The need to be with her, to hold her, was suddenly overwhelming. “
Alainne,
” he said, using the Gaelic word for
beautiful
. “You can no’ know just how beautiful you are to me.”

“Show me,” she said, and sat up, drawing her legs under her so that she was on her knees. She took his head in her hands once more, and said, “Please, Jack. Please, I beg of you, show me how much you adore me.”

He grinned. “Are you
begging
me?”

“I am begging you,” she whispered, and kissed his temple, then his cheek.

“Well, then, as you’ve asked me in such a pleasing manner,” he said, lifting her breast from the bodice of her gown, “I am very happy to oblige.” He took her into his mouth as Lizzie bent over him with a giggle.

Jack showed Lizzie that afternoon that he’d never desired anyone or anything so completely in his life. He’d found the purest form of love in the most unlikely place, and Jack realized, as he and Lizzie reached new heights of ecstasy, that he had, at long last, come home.

T
here were many in Glenalmond who predicted Carson Beal would not go willingly to the authorities when it was discovered he was poaching slate from the Thorntree mine. It was Newton who discovered it and it was Newton who convinced Carson that he should surrender.

Newton was a loyal man, but his loyalties had shifted to his wife, Charlotte, and the baby she carried in her belly.

In an ironic twist of fate, the Beal clan voted Newton laird and put Carson on the wee bit of arable land Newton had farmed for several years.

Neither Charlotte nor Newton cared for Castle Beal, however, and they gave it to the clan. Tours of the castle brought some much-needed revenue to the clan’s coffers. Lizzie gave Thorntree to Charlotte and Newton free and clear after she and Jack married. She and Jack took up residence in the abandoned Lambourne Castle, much to the delight of a small clan of Haines people, whom Jack had never really known, but among whom he found his society, and he ruled over it with the same joie de vivre he’d had in London.

He kept in touch with his old friends, and occasionally one would come to Scotland to call. The summer past,
Lindsey had come for a fortnight with his wife, Evelyn, and their wee daughter.

Jack was happy to present his young son to the Lindseys. He and Lizzie had named him James, in honor of Newton, who, they discovered, had a given name after all.

At Lambourne, Lizzie was determined to erase Jack’s painful childhood memories from that forbidding old castle, and with Jack’s blessing she enlisted Fiona’s help to refurbish all the rooms. That meant Fiona and Duncan Buchanan were around quite a lot, and Jack, in turn, grudgingly came to admire Buchanan, his old nemesis. The two of them liked to hunt together, although neither would admit the other was much of a hunter.

Lambourne Castle slowly became a different place than it had been in Jack and Fiona’s youth. It was a happy place now.

That summer, however, Jack and Lizzie had returned to Thorntree, as Charlotte was fearful of facing her first lying-in alone. One lazy Sunday afternoon, they sat on the newly constructed terrace Newton had built. Dougal, who had determined he liked working in the service of the laird of Lambourne, was James’s nurse, and he carried around the wooden rocking pony James liked to ride.

Lizzie poured her husband a tot of whisky and handed it to him as they watched James ride his pony. Jack took the whisky with a frown and ignored his companions on the terrace, looking out over the gardens, which were much cleaner and brighter than he remembered. Mr. Kincade had a helper now, he’d heard. The lad Lachlan from Castle Beal was learning the art of gardening under Mr. Kincade’s tutelage.

“Still cross, are you?” Lizzie asked, putting her hand on Jack’s shoulder and squeezing fondly.

“Donna goad me,
leannan,
” Jack warned her.

“As petulant as a child,” Charlotte sighed.

“I’m no’,” Jack insisted. “But you must admit that my bows were as good as hers. I can hardly help the wind that kicked up!”

“There was a wee breeze,” Newton said. “No’ enough to put an arrow off course.”

Lizzie laughed roundly. “Admit it! You canna bear being bested by a woman in a game of archery!”

“Or racing,” Dougal helpfully added. “She’s a better horsewoman than you, too, milord.”

“Thank you, Dougal, for pointing that out,” Jack said tersely. “I suppose you all think she is a better fisherman than me, too, aye?”

Charlotte snorted; Dougal exchanged a look with Lizzie, then shrugged noncommittally. “Come then, me fine young lad,” he said to the baby James. “Let us walk among the flowers your Uncle Newton has seen fit to bring back to life.” He picked up James in one beefy arm, and strolled down the stone steps, into the garden.

“Really, Jack, it’s no’ uncommon for a Highlander to be good at such diversions as archery and fishing and riding,” Lizzie said. “We live off the land here, aye?”

“Lizzie, my love, you are no’ helping matters in the least,” he groused.

“Think of it this way,” Charlotte offered. “You are very good at cooking. Mrs. Kincade still speaks of the day her back ailed her and you made the bread as she instructed you.”

Jack shot his sister-in-law a look. “I thought we all agreed
that
was an emergency. One loaf of bread does no’ make me a cook.”

“Aye, but you clearly have a talent for it.”

“And making fires,” Newton added. “Quite handy when it comes to lighting peat.”

“Is that all?” Jack drawled.

“Embroidery,” Lizzie said.

With a growl, Jack abruptly leapt up and lunged for her, but she jumped out of his reach and picking up her skirts, began to run.

“You best run, Lady Lambourne!” he called after her.

Lizzie loved the sound of
Lady Lambourne.
She glanced over her shoulder—he was already on her heels. With a squeal, she flew through the pair of French doors, but Jack caught her by the waist and dragged her up against his chest. “You’ve gone and done it, lass, have you no’? For now I must exact my punishment.”

She laughed and twisted in his arms, tilting her head back to see him. “Punish me, Jack. Make me weep.”

He kissed her hard on the mouth, then lifted his head, brushed the rogue curls from her face. “If only I could make you weep with happiness as I do every day.”

Oh, but Lizzie wept. She wept with angels and her tears were drops of pure joy.

Jack slipped his arm around her waist and glanced over his shoulder. “Come, then, let us find a moment of privacy before Newton determines it is time I light a bit of peat,” he said. “The man goes about as if he is the bloody laird here.”

Lizzie laughed; Jack kissed her, then slipped his arm around her waist and the two of them hurried along to steal another moment of bliss before it came time to do the evening chores.