Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (47 page)

He kissed her emphatically, with unmistakable promise and passion. “Only nice, my Lady Cairn? I could offer to make it exquisite.”

“My dear Lord Cairn, I do wish you would.”

He swept his wife into his arms. “Come away with me, lass, and let me take ye home.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

The moment Alasdair got her out of the rain, and into the house, he took her face in his hands, carefully, slowly, giving her all the time in the world to change her mind, letting his thumb rub across her skin, soft and warm, until he well and truly lit the spark between them, and she was all but begging for his touch.
 

He kissed her gently, lightly, not wanting to press either his luck, or his urgency upon her. Because the moment his lips touched hers, he could feel the iron-willed self-control that had seen him through two days of sitting beside her in the coach, and a long night of sleeping beside her at the inn, and days of waiting for her to recover, and another sleepless night in his own bed, slip away like the rain dripping from the heavens, falling away to nothing.

Because no matter her larcenous skills, or her avowed lack of scruples, or her surprising moral core, he wanted her so badly he ached. But she was young, and tired, and wet, and chilled, and emotionally wrung out. And he was a gentleman.

 
He kissed the corner of her mouth, and then the taut, sweet slide of her cheekbone, before he put his lips behind her ear, to kiss his way down the exquisite, sensitive tendon. “I’ll have you warm in no time, lass.”

Quince let out a soft exhalation of pleasure, and tipped her head away to give him access. The scent of rain and citrus evaporated off her skin, filling his head. “Orange blossom—a bridal scent. Who would have thought you so sentimental?”

“I’m not sentimental,” she whispered back. “But oh, by jimble, I have missed our lessons in kissing.”

He found the very edge of her ear lobe with his teeth. “How unfortunate for you.”

She shivered, and turned toward him, seeking his mouth. “How so?”

He took what she offered, tasting the sweet pliancy of her lips. “Because,” he whispered against the corner of her mouth. “We are married now, lass, and any tuition”—he let that rough Scots rumble she liked so much drench his voice—“would naturally be more advanced. And involved.”

“Oh, aye,” was her breathless encouragement.

He left her lips, and took a deep breath. Because this was too important to get wrong. “Let me be sure I understand you, wee Quince.” He tipped her chin up so she would see that he was being serious, even as he teased and kissed and smiled. “You would not object to me leading you upstairs at this very moment, and divesting you of each and every piece of your clothing, and making passionate, but entirely thorough love to you?”
 

“So long as you don’t object to me doing the same.”
 

“I most assuredly do not object.”

“Good. I thought you’d never ask, Alasdair.” She gave him the gift of his name with that wonderfully mischievous, inviting smile. “And we don’t even have to go all the way upstairs. We could kiss, and make passionate love somewhere nearer to hand.”

“Nay.” He resisted her pull upon his hand. “There are plenty of days for making love upon the dining room tables, and smashing every plate in the house, if we so choose. We’ve all the time in the world to be impetuous and exuberant, and loud and laughing at some later date. But today, I am going to make love to you properly, with a soft, comfortable, clean bed at your back. Because we have only one first time, wee Quince. And we’re going to take our time. And get it right.”

“Alasdair.” Her laugh was nearly giddy. “You are such a romantic.”

“For you—for us—I’m prepared to be. And I like the way you’ve taken to calling me Alasdair. But when the time comes, you’re going to call me Strathcairn. But not yet. Not for a little while. Not until you’re naked upon that clean, warm bed, and you are breathless with longing, and you say please, Strathcairn, please.”
 

“Please, Strathcairn, please let us do that now,” she said immediately, to let him know she wasn’t going to completely give him his way.
 

But she had met her match in him. “Not yet.” Though he laced his fingers with hers, and drew her hand to his lips. “Because we have a few scores that needs must be settled, you and I.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of that, Alasdair.”

He felt her withdrawing, but he didn’t let her retreat too far—he held her hand, and kept her close enough to unhook the clasp of her cloak.
 

“Quince.” Once the wet cloak fell away, he began to seek out her hairpins, pulling them out of her fox-bright fall of hair, one by one. “You do realize that in the course of the aforesaid stripping of clothes, and making thorough, passionate love that we will both be quite, quite naked?”

“Quite.” Her eyes brightened with interest. “Though my education was most irregular, I do understand how it’s done, Alasdair.”

He wouldn’t let the fact that she was lavishing his name upon him like a gift deter him from his point. “And you do also realize that in the course of such thorough, passionate love making, that you may, in the natural course of things, fall pregnant.”

“
Fall
pregnant—what a ridiculous thing to say, Alasdair. Such things don’t exactly
befall
a woman all by herself.”

“Exactly. But let me be more specific—you, my sweet wee Quince, may become pregnant. Which is something, you may recall, that was a barrier to your marrying me.”

“Aye.” She drew back, with a frown—a single line pleated itself between her brows, as if remembering. Or reconsidering—he could only hope. “I did.”

“And have your wishes changed?” he asked quietly.

Her sigh was answer enough, before she added, “Nay.”

The crash of disappointment hit him like a cold wave, dousing his hopes. “Devil take it.” He let out a deep sigh of his own. “That is most unfortunate.”

“Alasdair.” It was she who reached for his hand this time. “Why must it be?”

“Because Quince, it is a request that is impossible for me to honor.”

“Why? Can’t we—you—do something?”

“Something?”

“Take precautions,” she insisted. “I know such things exist.”

“You do? What an astonishing sort of education you seem to have gotten, lass.”

“Alasdair, you ken what I mean—I’ve
heard
things. Married women talk about such things all the time when they think no one else is listening.”

“And you’re always listening.”

“Always. And don’t give me that look, Alasdair, because I ken you’re always listening, too.”

“I am, but not to talk about preventing pregnancy.” A gentleman had to have standards.

She was all curiosity and frustration. “I thought you had been educated in France?”

“Alas, my education seems to have a serious gap. I did, however, concentrate on learning other skills.” He set to demonstrating one such skill, kissing his way from the delicate turn of her wrist, up along the sensitive skin of her inner arm to her elbow.

“How studious of you, Alasdair.” Her voice was taking on that soft, blurry edge. “Top marks for initiative.”
 

He took another initiative, and moved to stand behind her, and kiss his way across her nape. “Very studious. Very skillful.”

“Then what, my very skilled friend”—she turned, and looked up at him with a bright, encouraging gaze—“can be done?”

He kissed the end of her lovely sweep of nose. “I—we—can take precautions. But they are not entirely effective. So even if we did take precautions, we would still be taking a very great chance. A very, very great chance. So if you want your lesson in anything more than kissing, you’re going to have to choose.”

She thumped his chest with her forehead—taking him to task. “How inconveniently like you to confront me with such a choice.”

He wrapped his arms around her trim little waist and held her tight against him, and rained gentle kisses along her collarbone. “Why don’t you think of it, wee Quince”—his lips found the sweet spot just at the very side of her neck below her ear, where he could bite down gently—“as a dare.”

“Oh, by jimble, Alasdair.” He felt rather than saw the slow dawning of her smile. “Under all those scruples, you’re a scoundrel, Alasdair. It’s almost as if you ken that I’m the sort of lass who can’t resist temptation.”
 

“Oh, I know, lass.” He took her mouth in a kiss that he intended to be so tempting it was just short of immoral. “I know.”

“Oh, holy sweet cream tea,” she said when she came up for air. “I’ll take your ruddy dare.”

“Thank God.” He caught her up in his arms, kissing her deeply before letting her slide down the lovely warm wall of his chest. So deeply she couldn’t quite feel her feet touch the ground.

But she was still herself, and could not give herself over entirely to sunshine and heather. “But does it not frighten you?” she asked, since the moment seemed to call for complete candor. “The idea that I could have a child just like me—a thieving, secretive magpie. It’s not just frightening—it’s terrifying.”

“Nonsense. A wee lassie like you? I’d love it. I’d love her,” he insisted. “And give her proper attention so she would find and exercise her passions in the right side of the law.”

“But what if it were a boy—an unruly, larcenous lad—”

“Stop it, lass. You’re borrowing trouble.” He heaved out a long-suffering sigh. “Why can you not see the good in yourself? Why do you insist on being bad?”

“Because I am myself.” She had to make him understand what a ruddy chore it was to be good, and how much better she had loved being bad. “And I had so much rather be bad and have a lark. Larkiness is good for the soul.”

Alasdair shook his head. “But bad for the heart, lass,” he said quietly. “Bad for
my
heart.”

Something that had to be her own heart suffered a pang of regret. “Oh, Alasdair. I didn’t mean—

“And if you have one scruple left in the whole of your body—which I know you do—you’ll know that it is bad for your heart as well.”

Quince discovering she did have at least one scruple left, because she ached for him, this man who had stood by her through so much. “I do have a heart, Alasdair. Which I was rather thinking about giving to you.”
 

He waited no more than a second to pull her into his arms, and crush her against his chest. “And you said you weren’t romantic.”

  
Relief, and some far, far sweeter emotion, made her unexpectedly teary. “And I’m not. I’m practical, and realistic, and—”

“Romantic,” he insisted, kissing the corners of her hot eyes.

“All right,” she conceded. “Maybe. Probably. If only you’ll stop all this palaver, and take me upstairs and have your way with me, I will be as romantic as you like.”
 

“I thought you’d never ask.” And then he swept her into his arms.

Quince wrapped her arms tight about his neck and didn’t say another word. She did not stop him, nor pause to give herself a moment more to think on what she was about to do—about to do at last.
 

She relished the giddy shiver of anticipation that raced across her skin, and seeped deep into her bones like warm honey. She allowed herself to settle comfortably against his chest as he carried her through the hall and up the main staircase, thought she was rather flummoxed to find herself almost paraded through the house, like a triumphal prize.