Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (31 page)

“Well, if you aren’t the contrariest girl this side of the Cairngorms.” But he smiled as he said it, as if her show of independence amused him.

She put up her chin. “You should see me on the other side.”

“I hope the view improves.” With that, he left her to nurse her prickly feelings in quiet, and pulled his hat down over his eyes to doze, as if the rocking carriage were as comfortable as a bed.
 

She could find no such comfort. However well slung the traveling coach might be, she already ached from head to toe. Certainly her arm was the worst of it, but she also had bruises and scrapes aplenty from her fall and sojourn through the brambles.

She shifted to lean her left side against the padded backrest to make herself as comfortable as possible, leaning her head against the sash. Outside the city, the morning air smelled of hay and hedgerow flowers. Of ease and summer. She closed her eyes and tried not to think, not to worry and fret about what would come next, and let the heat of the sun melt away her aches and pains.

And the next thing she knew she was waking up with her head on Strathcairn’s lap. Or rather his thigh. His firm, long, sinewy thigh.

It was one thing to touch a man when one was standing on one’s own two feet, dancing, or even asking to be kissed. It was quite another to wake up with one’s head pillowed in what she could only term his nether regions.
 

Heat, and something more uncomfortably comfortable, blossomed up the column of her spine.

A glance told her Strathcairn had shifted her to his side of the coach, and now had his arm snugged around her waist, just below her breasts, holding her to him as she slept. And she in turn, had her bandaged arm curled over his thigh.

It was warm and cozy, and deeply, deeply intimate.

But the fact that he had done this—had moved her while she was asleep and couldn’t object—bothered her in a way that she could not articulate, much less understand. She liked to be in charge of her own self. But that had all changed now, with marriage.

Quince couldn’t stop from pushing herself to sitting. But her head spun from the sudden movement.

“You’re awake, lass.” Strathcairn gathered her against his shoulder to steady her, while his other hand brushed her hair away from her forehead—he must have taken off her stylish plumed tricorn hat. Or rather, Plum’s hat. Not that she was going to speak of hats while he was caressing her face with such easy intimacy.
 

“It’s all right. Stay where you are. You need the rest.” And then he added, as if he perhaps felt the need to justify himself, “You were shivering.”

“I don’t feel cold.” Not while she was held against the furnace that was her husband.

But Strathcairn’s hand closed over hers where they fisted in her skirts. “Your hands are cold.”

They were. And it was nice to have his fingers warming hers. But still, all this…closeness made her…ill at ease. Strangely agitated. Too aware of his size and heat and presence.

She looked away. “Where are we?” The shadows had lengthened considerably, and the heat had gone from the day.

“Some small way outside of Stirling, I should think.” His words were spoken against her temple, warm and stirring against her skin. “Your hair is very soft. How strange when all the rest of you remains so steadfastly prickly.” His voice was quiet and almost contemplative, as if he were trying not to pick an argument, but as if she were a puzzle he still could not solve.

That made two of them—she hardly understood herself, because uncomfortably comfortable as she was, she stayed in his arms.

But his strange compliment seemed to call for some answer. “I suppose it’s only soft because I don’t put a mountain of powder in it.”

“How delightfully unfashionable of you.”

Quince didn’t want to argue, but she was herself. “I am more than unfashionable, Strathcairn. I am—what did you call me?—unapologetic. Pray don’t fool yourself into hoping that I have changed overnight just because I am injured, and we are married.”

He shifted away to regard her down the length of his perfectly straight nose. “Do you do this on purpose? Make it difficult for people to like you?”

Oh, holy glass houses. This was something more that intimacy—this was presumption. And an uncomfortably accurate assessment at that.
 

Heat and mortification at being so thoroughly discovered made her throat too tight to breathe. It was never particularly nice to hear such a frank assessment of one’s character. While she had
not
actually tried to make it difficult for people to like her, the result had been the same—with everyone except the Marquess of Cairn.

Who continued to regard her in that minutely assessing fashion. “What a curious lass you are—borrowed gowns, no maid accompanying you, and a fairly small set of trunks, considering. One wonders what you did with all your ill-gotten gains?”

“Ill-gotten gains are still hard-gotten gains, Strathcairn.” Her aching arm was proof enough of that.

“Are they?” He pulled his feet under him and sat up. “By the devil, then I almost feel sorry for you.”

“Almost?” She matched the sarcasm in his voice. “But not quite.”

Finally he smiled. “Not quite.”

“Don’t worry, Stratchcairn. I shan’t ask you to play lady’s maid. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

He scoffed openly. “That point remains moot.” He cast his gaze at her bandaged arm. “I doubt you can even cut meat.”

“Then I shall eat soup.”

“The contrariest lass this side of the Cairngorms,” he muttered only half under his breath. “Have it your way. We are arriving at our inn.”

“I had no idea it had grown so late.”

“It has. The horses need rest. Unlike you, they have toiled instead of sleeping the day away. Though you look the better for the rest, I dare say.”
 

“Careful, Strathcairn. That might almost be a compliment.”

“Careful, Quince. It wasn’t meant to be.”

Quince could make nothing out of that comment, because they had indeed arrived, and Strathcairn was already climbing out and handing her carefully into the busy yard of the Bee and Thistle, a solid-looking gray stone inn bustling with ostlers and other coach passengers.

He escorted her across the inn yard, but despite her long sleep in the coach, or perhaps because of it, she was exhausted by the time she had followed him up the stairs to the small room he procured. She eyed the small, low ceilinged space under the eaves. “Are we to share?”

His brow rose precipitously. “If it doesn’t offend your maidenly sensibilities.” Strathcairn stepped aside to let her enter. “We are married, after all. Although frankly, I didn’t think you had maidenly sensibilities.”

“I suppose I don’t. Must have sold them along with my scruples.” He had to stoop to make it through the doorframe. And then she saw what answered for a bed—“You’re too tall, for one thing. And for another you can’t mean that I’m to fit in there with you?”

His eyebrows rose even higher, but he kept his face a careful blank. “We’ll manage.”
 

Quince was dubious. And weary, though she had done nothing but sit and evidently doze all the day through. But the pain in her arm had grown more than tiring—it was ruddy uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to seek out the tisane with laudanum her mother had pressed upon her in a vial, and gulp the bitter dose down without waiting to mix it into tea.

Strathcairn was watching her. “Is that wise?”

“If it isn’t, it’s done.” Let him make from that what argument he would.
 

But he did not argue. He looked at her with that rueful half-smile that only just warmed the corners of his eyes. “Then let us get you comfortable and lying down as soon as may be.”

“I’m perfectly capable,” she began. But the truth was, she was not. The redingote, while
 
gorgeous, had a long row of buttons marching down its front—buttons devilishly tricky for her to undo with one of her hands bandaged.

And Strathcairn, drat his perceptive eyes, saw all of that. “It’s either me, or we scandalize my secretary by asking him to assist you. But as that would only serve to infuriate me, rather than scandalize you, you’ll have to make do with me. So—”
 

He backed her into the bed until she was sitting, and then he went to his knees in front of her to unlace her shoes, which, unlike the borrowed redingote, were her own—the unfashionable, comfortable, worn half-boots she customarily wore. There were only so many sacrifices she was prepared to make in the name of fashion. Or vanity.
 

“Do a great deal of walking, do you?”

The question seemed strange. But what was strange was that they really knew so little of each other, but for quips and kisses. She had no idea of his daily habits, of his true likes and dislikes, other than the fact that deception of any kind was abhorrent to him. What if he was indifferent to music? What if he didn’t like animals? “Do you like dogs?”

He tilted his head in that way that made her think he was trying to see her better. “Aye. Why?”

“I should like one. I’ve always wanted one. Papa didn’t want any about—he feared they would dig up his gardens. But I should like one of my own.”

“Would you? There’s bound to be a puppy or three, or eight, available at Cairn. When I was a boy, the place always seemed to be lousy with them.”

“Thank you. I should like a puppy. For comfort.”

What a strange thing to say. But she felt strange. An almost unpleasant warmth was blossoming within her chest, and spreading into her lungs. “I don’t like this feeling.” She tugged off her lace fichu, flinging it away so it was easier to breathe.

“And that will be the opium in that damn vial, no doubt,” Strathcairn said obliquely.

She frowned at him. “I don’t have opium.”

“Laudanum is just a tincture of diluted opium, wee Quince. I thought you knew that.” He brushed her hair off her face again, and Quince found the gesture infinitely more confusing than she had the last time. “Good to find you don’t like it.”

She might not have liked it, but it made her want to rub her face into the cradle of his hand, as an animal tamed to touch. And it made her want to touch his face the same way. To stroke her hands along the hard line of his jaw, and feel the scratchy bramble of his whiskers rising just below the surface. “I saw you in the brambles, you ken. Last night. You were very angry.”

“I was,” he confirmed. “But I’m not now.”

No, now he was unbuttoning her redingote, and reaching up under her petticoats to tug free the ties of her garters, and divest her of her stockings. His clever, long fingers brushed against her skin, and she couldn’t help the strange compulsion that had her pressing her knees together, trapping his hands. She was all over shivers and quivers and feelings dancing over the surface of her skin. “I’m not angry either. I’m…” She had no idea what she was.

“It’s the opium, lass. Takes some like this.” He eased her knees apart enough to take down her stockings, which he tossed over the arm of a nearby chair.
 

“Are you going to take me like this?” She wasn’t exactly sure what she was asking.

“Nay, lass. Just set yourself at ease, and let me see to your comfort.” He began to ease her redingote off her shoulders.

She rubbed herself against the heat of his hands, trying to ease the itchy need crawling across her skin. “I don’t want comfort. I want—”

She wanted to touch him, to exercise the strange, itchy compulsion to press herself against him, to feel the rough texture of his skin against her cheek. And she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing just that—latching her arms about his neck and laying her lips to his mouth, tasting the rough tang of the nip of whisky he had taken from the ostler on his lips. Rubbing her bodice against his chest. Wrapping her legs around him as if she could climb him like a tree. A tall towering tree that smelled of spice and pleasure and passion—

“Easy now, lass. You’ve taken a bigger than advisable dose of laudanum.” He plucked the vial from her hand.

“I don’t care. I want you to kiss me. I want to kiss you, and touch you, and—” Appease the agitation skittering across her skin, making her feel strange and restless and weightless all at the same time.

“Aye, lass, sure,” he murmured against her forehead. “There’s plenty of time for more. No need to rush.” He placed a gentle kiss on the corner of her mouth, and another on her nose. “I’m not going anywhere. We’ve all the time in the world.”
 

The compulsion was working its way out of her, leaving her strange and sad and tired. And he seemed to understand. He laid her back against the pillows, and stood.

He looked so tall and stern looming over her. But his rough voice was kind, if not gentle. “Save your breath, as well as your kisses, and rest, Quince. We’ve a whole lifetime to argue and make up.”

Chapter Twenty