Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (13 page)

“I’ve a mind,” he said as he shoved his pistols back into his waist sash, and took her by the hand, “to see directly to our bargain and your education.” He headed straight for the door leading out to the long, walled garden full of conveniently lengthening shadows cast by the golden twilight that made dark corners and hidden spots aplenty. He was sure he could hide them away where they wouldn’t be found by inconvenient, interfering vicars or eagle-eyed mothers.

“How entirely impetuous of you, Captain Wigamore.” She was nearly running to keep up, but still that clever mind of hers kept ticking on, challenging him at every turn.

Oh, she was a trial, this clever, curious, teasing lass—Captain Wigamore being the name given to a legendary highwayman of the last century, and also a very good jest at his reputation as a moderate, Whigish Tory.

“You can call me whatever you like, fair Diana”—he was as careful as she not to use her real name, which might alert bystanders to their identity—“once you give me what I came here to get.”

Such frankly indelicate talk seemed to encourage her more. Instead of blushing, she laughed, and challenged him just as frankly. “And what is that, my fine captain of the road?”

“Your mouth,” he growled as he swung her behind a hedge, and underneath the canopy of the trees. “On mine,” he finished before backing her up against a particularly sturdy looking trunk.

He kissed her laughing lips with all the heat and force of his want, built up over days and days of waiting and wanting. Of having had only one brief sip of her that had left him hungry for more. A hunger that was always held in check by good manners and breeding and political necessity. And a damn lack of opportunity.

But he had the opportunity now, and he bloody well meant to take advantage of it.

She didn’t object at all to such treatment. She smiled, and settled her back against the tree, and tipped up that stubborn chin in expectation. “No sweet words to soften me up? That’s how you used to inveigle Linnea into kissing ye.”

“Linnea always refused.” Her sister, Linnea, had been something of a prude.

Quince gave him that mischievous, incendiary look from under her lashes. “I won’t.”

Devil take him, she was spark to his bonfire.

Alasdair settled into her, comfortably close. Close enough to inhale the delicious mixture of rose and orange blossom perfuming the hollow at the base of her neck. Close enough to whisper the Scots burr she liked into her ear.
 
“Ye don’t need soft words, wee Quince Winthrop. Ye need hard kissing. And I aim to give it to ye.”

She tasted of rain and whisky. And hesitation, which proved as darkly provocative as any whisky and twice as potent. She went to his head in a way nothing else did. Nothing else ever had. “Had a wee dram, did ye, wee Quince?”
 

“Aye. For courage.”

He felt his lips curve into a smile even as his mouth found the delicate lobe of her ear. “Ye don’t need courage with me, lass.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re the one with the guns. Which are rather sticking into me.” She pushed him away enough for him to miss the pliant warmth of her body. “Do you mind?”

She pulled the pistols out of his waistband without waiting for an answer, and put them God-knew-where, but he didn’t care, because she was already back, looping her hands about his neck, and plastering herself against his chest, offering her sweet, kissable lips.
 

She felt so very good. So very alive. So very right.

“Easy for me to do,” he murmured as his lips found hers in another incendiary kiss. He filled his arms and hands with her, holding her tight, tracing her lithe curves, angling her jaw so he could better take all she so generously offered. She was curiosity and confidence, all nubile warmth and comfort, despite the fact that she kissed with more enthusiasm than finesse, with her lithe torso plastered to his chest, her bare arms clasped around his neck, and her lips pressing ardently to his.
 

“Strathcairn,” she sighed between kisses.

“Aye, lass,” he encouraged. “That’s the way of it.” He angled his head to deepen the kiss. To teach her something more of tongue and tasting. Of patience and subtlety, and taking her time. Of drawing out the pleasure to make it last.
 

Oh, the things he could teach her. “So impatient.”

“It’s one of my better qualities.” She fisted her hand in his hair, and pulled his mouth back to hers, breathless and ardent.
 

“Just as patience is one of mine.” He covered her hand with his, entwining their fingers, and eased back from her, determined to slow things down. They didn’t need to seduce each other, but there was no need for them to rush. He smiled at her, open and relaxed, full of lazy satisfaction. The way he used to look, he supposed, all those years ago, before he had gone to England and learned to be staid. “You can’t just rush into the theory and system of kissing.”

She matched his smile, and cozied herself flush against his chest. “A System of Kissing devised by the Marquess of Cairn? That is a book I would actually read.”

“Says the lass who knows her Shakespeare. You just want people to think you’re a flibbertigibbet, don’t you?”

“A flibbertigibbet gets kissed more than a scholar.”

“Does she?”

“Oh, aye. Because she needs to be educated in the ways of kissing.”

 
His laughter ruffled the soft curls along her temples, and he smiled down at her, gently chafing her soft bare skin of her upper arms with his palms, warming her to his touch. “I’ll give you an education, lass. But you may not go teaching it to anyone else without proper authorization.”

“And would you give authorization?”

“Nay.” His voice turned gruff—almost revealingly so. “For some reason I cannot currently fathom, I don’t like the idea of you kissing other men, and teaching them what you’ve learned from me.”

“To be fair, I haven’t learnt much from you yet, so it’s hard to reckon if I’d want to share your techniques with the wider world.”

She was teasing him, he knew, but he couldn’t seem to stop his arm from encircling her, and gathering her tight so the top of her stays rested against his chest. “In my opinion, the wider world is generally not worthy of such advanced techniques.”

“Such a cynic,” she teased.
 

He could not kiss the sass from her lips when all he could do was smile.

“And frankly, Strathcairn. I’d rather have your kisses than your opinion.”

“Then you shall have them.” His hands came up to cup her face gently between his palms. “Wee Quince Winthrop,” he murmured. Such an interesting, intriguing amalgamation of contrasts, this lass. “That’s the first element of the system, lass. Saying each other’s name. Sweet like. Soft and easy, as if the name itself were dear.” He bent his head to nuzzle against her ear, and her head fell back, her eyes closed.
 

“I’m only dear to you because I’m letting you kiss me.”

“True,” he admitted in the same teasing vein. “But I do believe you’re becoming dear to me because, kissing or no kissing, I haven’t had this much fun in years.”
 

And it was true. He had denied himself for years. He had held himself back. Until he had met her, and his need for her—for fun, for a
thrill
—had built like a wave of want behind a dam. He’d never met a young woman like Quince Winthrop—a woman who challenged his wits as much as she appealed to his senses. A woman he could not—try as he might—get out of his mind.

“Careful, Strathcairn. Don’t go getting
romantic
on me.” There it was again, that teasing tone that equated romance with the influenza.

“Not a chance. I’m only here in the service of my fellow mon to give ye a thorough lesson in kissing. And the second lesson is go slow. Take your time. Savor the kiss. There’s no need to rush.” They had all night. He could kiss this lass until the cows came home, and then went back out again.

“What if I am in a rush?”

He could not tell if she were teasing. “Are you? What else could you possibly have to do that is nearly as much fun as kissing me in a dark, secluded garden during a masquerade, where no one kens who we are, and when we have all the time in the world to do what we want to do? Where else are you going to get yourself such a thrill?”

Her smile was sly and delightful and utterly incandescent. “I have several ideas, but none so easily to hand as you.”

“That’s it, lass.” He settled a little more of his weight into her, pressing his chest against her enticingly trim bodice, easing his growing arousal. “You’ve so much more to learn. I’m afraid you need more instruction in the various systems and theories of kissing before you’re properly thrilled.”

“Less theory.” Her hand curled around his nape. “More kissing.”

He let his own fingers explore, sliding up into her artfully disarrayed curls. Her hair was as soft and slippery as the rest of her, sliding through his fingers. “I promise, my clever, curious Quince, that I will make the wait very much”—he skimmed the very tip of his finger along the delicate skin at the side of her temple to make her head tip obligingly to the side—“worth your while.”

“Will you?” She sounded out of breath, as if she had been chasing after her usual teasing bravado, and lost it along the way.

“I will. I can.” He eased closer, until his mouth was but a hairsbreadth from the sensitive shell of her ear, and whispered. “I promise.”

Her eyes fluttered shut on a whisper. “I’m beginning to believe you.”

He kissed her lips again, without reservation, without holding back or thinking or even breathing. He kissed her with his mouth and his tongue and his longing, setting fire to the bonfire of want burning within him.
 

She was so warm and alive, clinging to him with supple strength. She kissed him back with equal amounts of ardor and playfulness, laughing and smiling as if kissing him were either the greatest joke or the greatest fun ever.
 

They fell apart from sheer need for breath. “Please tell me it’s the greatest fun.”

She somehow followed his obscure reasoning. “The greatest fun,” she confirmed. “So far.”

The groan that tunneled out of his chest was laced with his own laughter. Even her torture was fun. “Ah, wee Quince, don’t tempt me like that. Don’t tempt me to do things we’ll both regret.”

“I regret nothing so far. But—”

“Quince?” A low voice came from the other side of the hedge. A woman’s voice.

Alasdair instinctively shielded her from view. “Who is it?”

“Shh.” Quince clamped a hand across his mouth. “My sister, Plum,” she whispered. “Oh, by jimble. She’s such a bossy, interfering hen of a busybody.” Quince let him go, and ducked deeper into the shadows of the hedge. But she was not inviting him to join her. “You’d better go.” She pointed back toward the house. “Quickly. She may have my mother or father with her. Hurry.”

Alasdair didn’t like the thought of leaving her. But he liked the thought of coming face to face with Lord Winthrop, or God help him, Lady Winthrop, even less. It would put paid to all his best-laid plans for the future if he were discovered in the shrubbery with his hands all over wee Quince Winthrop.
 

If he wasn’t careful— and he was always careful—well, nearly always—he could end up married to the most unsuitable lass he’d ever had the blessed good fortune to meet.

But there were worse fates.

It was as if the ground shifted beneath his feet—he felt unsteady, lightheaded. Not at the thought of marriage—which he had long contemplated with all clear-headed seriousness, drawing up a list of suitable society misses—but at the thought that there would be worse fates than being bound to wee, unsuitable, unpredictable, but ever-so interesting Quince Winthrop.
 

Who was staring at him the way a vixen might eye a hound—wishing him elsewhere. “Strathcairn. You have to go.”

“You’re always saying that to me,” Alasdair grumbled.
 

But she had already turned away from him, was already straightening her bodice—if the gauzy drapery she was passing off as a gown even had a bodice—and adjusting her mask with a finality that said she had taken enough tuition for this evening.

“We’re not done with the lesson, Quince. In fact we’ve barely even started.”

“Aye. I am sorry. But if I’m caught with you, Mama will come after me like a— Well, like a mother. That’s likely why she sent Plum. I’m sure you understand.”

He did not understand.

He understood only the need to feel her lips beneath his. The need to hold her face between his hands. The need to taste the sweet tartness that was wee Quince Winthrop.
 

But go he did, after one last quick kiss upon her lips. “You have tree bark in your hair. Meet me later. Please.”

And then he swallowed his need, and his hunger, and his pride, and left. This is what he had come to—slipping through the shrubbery like a naughty schoolboy.
 

All because she’d asked.

And damned if he didn’t already know he would do whatever she asked, whenever she asked him again. Damned if she wasn’t going to be his fate.