Mia Marlowe (5 page)

“No, poque is more skill than chance.” For better or worse, he’d earned his new Scottish title.

“So ye fancy yourself a knowledgeable betting man. Perhaps ye’d care to make another wager then, based on something else in which ye may be skilled,” she said.

“What do you have in mind?”

“I told ye I didna have a beau. In fact, I’ve never had one. Many a gentleman caller, o’ course, but none I cared to keep. In fact, I’ve never even been kissed.”

Alex snorted. “Perhaps
you
don’t like
men.
”

A russet brow arched. “I like men fine. But I’m particular, ye ken. I’m no’ one to be had for a little light wooing.”

His curiosity, along with other parts of him, was thoroughly piqued about what it might take to have her. “What’s the wager then?”

“I’m fair peeved with ye now, milord, what with ye no’ wantin’ to wed me.” She leaned toward him. “I think it would take considerable skill on your part for ye to convince me to allow ye a kiss.”

A smile tugged his lips. Nothing could be simpler. “What stakes will you wager?”

“How about me brooch?” She fingered the ivory cameo at her left shoulder.

“You rate yourself too cheaply. That’s not nearly enough for your first kiss.” He eyed her mouth and was reminded again of a ripe peach. He’d bet it was as sweet as one too. How had she gone unkissed this long?

“What would ye consider a fair penalty should I lose then?” she asked.

“Actually,” he said, an idea for finding her an alternate bridegroom taking root in his mind, “I’d hate to think we’ll be wed without you having anyone with which to compare me. If I win this little wager, I expect you to kiss two, no, three other men between now and our wedding day.”

All he’d have to do was make sure she was caught kissing someone else by a busybody tongue-wagger and the ensuing scandal would break the engagement for him. Lucinda MacOwen would be shuffled off to the preacher with the other man she’d kissed quicker than she could say “Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

Her lips quirked. “A most original penalty. I accept. And if I dinna allow ye to kiss me, what should ye forfeit?”

“How about ownership of that prize Blackface ram?”

“Done,” she said in a businesslike tone. “A princely wager, sir. Grand Champion Black Watch Farrell Loromer has been the making of the MacOwen herd. My father once turned down two hundred pounds for him. Now, after offering me such a rich inducement not to succumb, how do ye propose to convince me to allow ye a kiss?”

Damn.
He’d never considered that a sheep would be worth so much.

“You’re thinking about this all wrong,” he said. “A kiss isn’t a prize for a man’s enjoyment only. A woman well-kissed is a thoroughly contented creature.”

“Oh, aye?”

“Aye, I mean, yes.” He was an Englishman, dammit. It shouldn’t be so easy for his Scottish roots to pop out. “A kiss is more than the mere touch of two pairs of lips. It’s sharing a breath. It’s holding each other’s souls.”

Her lips parted softly. “Ye make it sound almost a sacrament.”

“If it’s done right, it almost is.” He moved closer to her on the bench, one arm slung casually over the granite back.

“And I suppose ye know how to do it right.”

“So I’ve been told.” He leaned toward her.

She leaned toward him too, till their faces were a hand’s breadth apart. Then she pulled back. “That’s still no’ enough for me to allow it.”

“The question of who allows a kiss isn’t really relevant. Both parties have to want it, need it, for a kiss to be truly magical. There’s no allowing. A real kiss just happens.”

“It catches a body unawares, then. Sort of like our betrothal, aye?”

“Aye.” He didn’t correct himself this time.
When in Scotland . . .

He reached up to brush her cheek with his fingertips. She leaned, catlike, into his touch. Her eyelids fluttered closed, her lashes sooty crescents on her cheekbones. Alex thumbed her mouth and her jaw went slack, the warmth of her breath spilling onto his hand.

To his surprise, he ached to kiss her with a need that almost burned. He bent his head to capture her lips, but she gave herself a little shake and broke the spell. She scooted to the farthest end of the bench. Then she slanted him a gaze that dared him to try again.

“Magical kisses, ye say. Magic is for a child’s bedtime story, Lord Bonniebroch, no’ for adults fully grown such as we.”

“Call me Alexander,” he said.

“Not His Muchness?” she asked archly.

“Not until you’ve seen if I deserve it.”

Her eyes flared and she flicked her gaze to his groin for the space of several heartbeats. It was as if she’d stroked him. He’d mistakenly thought he couldn’t get any stiffer.

“A lass can make an educated guess, and it appears to me, ye’re much of a muchness,” she said coolly, as his trousers betrayed his roused state again. “Remember, I’m farm raised, Alexander. I may never have been kissed, but there’s naught on a male frame as will shock me, be it on man or beast.”

This Scottish girl was a constant surprise.

“I’m gratified to hear it. But back to magical kisses.” He still needed to win this bet, so he moved over next to her. “Adults need magic more than children, you know.”

“Adults fully grown,” she repeated with another wicked glance at his lap.

His cock responded with a deep throb.

He’d started this day by winning a Scottish estate. Then this strange woman had all but flung herself into his arms, keeping him from his business of providing an advance guard for the king’s coming visit. And finally, as unlikely as it seemed, he found himself unexpectedly in possession of a fiancée. After a morning like that, any man would lose his temper over such unrelenting torment from said fiancée.

“All right, woman, do you want to hear it baldly? Yes, I want you. You’re as tempting a young lady as I’ve ever run across and I’m fair bursting with the need to kiss you.”

“Weel, then,” she said, palming his cheeks. “Since ye put it like that . . . let’s see if there be any magic between me and ye.”

She closed the distance between them and before he knew what she was about, her lips brushed his. He didn’t move as she gently explored his mouth.

He’d always avoided virgins, preferring the company of courtesans and ripe widows. Even as worldly as his other partners had been, none of them had kissed him first.

The sweetness of Lucinda’s kiss made his soft palate ache to taste her more deeply. It was time for him to show her what a real kiss was. He palmed the back of her head, wrapped his other arm around her and drew her closer.

Alex traced the seam of her mouth with the tip of his tongue and she opened to him, warm, wet, and wonderful. Her hitching breaths made his balls ache. He swallowed her low groan of need as he stole the air from her lungs and replaced it with his own.

A shared breath. Holding each other’s souls.
Those words had been calculated to pique her curiosity. He never dreamed they might feel true.

He tongued her softly, letting her suckle him. Then he encouraged her to slip hers into his mouth as well. She teased him with it for a bit and in frustration, he showed her exactly why a French kiss was but a rough parody of another sort of joining. He thrust into her mouth in long strokes, his groin aching because only their mouths were so engaged.

Long before he was ready for the kiss to end, she pulled back and gazed up at him, wild-eyed. She rang the pointed tip of her tongue over her kiss-swollen top lip. Then she smiled.

A satisfied smile that told him somehow he’d been royally hoodwinked. He might have won the bet, but she’d make him regret it.

“Well, Your ‘Much of a Muchness,’ it appears I lose,” she said. Her breaths still came in short gasps, but her eyes gleamed in triumph. “You’ll still be in full possession of a Blackface ram once we wed and I get to kiss three more men before Christmas Day.”

Alex sucked in a hissed breath and was instantly awake. He sat up quickly and realized he wasn’t in the strange hall near the weeping woman. He was in Hester MacGibbon’s kitchen. The old lady had insisted he stay on with them in the interests of thrift, but she didn’t truly have a bed for him. He’d stretched out on the pallet where her footman usually slept.

Could this strange dream be “the weeping woman” Sir Darren MacMartin warned him about?

The nightmare had been disturbing enough. Waking from it was almost worse. He felt helpless, frozen with anxiety. He couldn’t do anything for the woman. Worse, he recognized the fear that had made him gasp when he woke.

Alex had felt that before. He hoped the fear was dream-induced too, but his memories of the distant time when his mother had left him were a jumbled mess. He wasn’t sure what was a true memory and what was a dream.

It could be classified as a nightmare either way.

The sky outside the small window in the kitchen was lightening to a dirty gray. Alex lay back down and waited for his heart rate to return to normal.

He tried, without much success, to conjure his mother’s face. He’d been four years old when she died, but she’d left him when he was much younger than that.

She’d had long dark hair. He remembered that clearly. He remembered the feel of it between his baby-fat fingers, the long strands curling around his childish fist. And the way she smelled, soft and powdery, sweetly infused with attar of roses and honeysuckle.

But he couldn’t see her face in his mind’s eye. Oh, he knew what she looked like. When Alexander was twelve he’d discovered the only portrait of her his father hadn’t destroyed up in the attic. It was a small painting, no bigger than his hand. The miniature had probably been sent to his family when the match between Wentworth Mallory, Alex’s father and the future Marquis of Maldren, and Finella MacGregor, was being arranged. Alexander’s older brother told him the families had joined forces so each of them would have a claim on land on either side of the border.

Alexander always thought his mother was pretty enough that his father should have wanted Finella for herself, not for any land that came attached to the match.

She peered solemnly from the small canvas, her gray eyes serene, her mouth just a little tight. Had she ever smiled? Alex had no recollection of it.

He shook off the memory and scrubbed a hand over his head, standing his hair on end like a startled hedgehog. He didn’t have time to fret much about the past. Especially one as shadowy as his. The present gave him enough to worry about.

With any luck, he’d see the MacOwen sisters to Dalkeith Palace. Lucinda would find another beau among the Christmastide revelers and he’d be free of this unexpected encumbrance.

Alex had no clue what would free him from Sir Darren’s weeping woman.

 

 

Moving Lucinda MacOwen and her sisters to Dalkeith Palace turned out to be as complicated an enterprise as organizing the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt. Clarindon, the turncoat, had made good his escape to the palace, which was located some miles south of the city.

Of course, Clarindon protested that someone needed to be in residence there to begin seeking out any Radical sympathizers among the Scottish nobility, but Alexander knew the truth. His friend didn’t want to miss any of the festivities leading up to Christmastide—hunting in the surrounding countryside capped by evenings filled with drink, card playing, and, if Clarindon were lucky, a bit of wenching on the side.

“Even though you’re officially spoken for, old chap, it won’t hurt for me to get a running head start before you get there,” Clarindon had said.

So shepherding the MacOwen ladies to their new holiday quarters fell completely on Alex’s shoulders.

For a thrifty Scottish family, the MacOwen girls weren’t short on personal effects. There were enough trunks filled with feminine frippery to warrant their own conveyance. Alexander dutifully arranged for a sturdy cart for the baggage and a coach to transport the women.

He decided to buy a horse for himself.

“Best ye let me bear ye company when ye do,” Lucinda told him while he hauled one of Aileen’s trunks down the narrow staircase. “If an Englishman tries to buy a horse in Edinburgh, he’ll likely find himself getting skinned by the dealer.”

“Just because I’m English?” Alex was beginning to think the king’s proposed visit to this backwater country was not only a bad idea, but a dangerous one. “Do all Scots hate my countrymen so?”

“’Tis no’ exactly hate, ye ken. More like mistrust, I’d say. There’s a long history between our peoples and it willna vanish from folks’ memories simply for the wishing.”

She stacked a hatbox on the trunk he’d deposited by the front door and followed him back up the staircase to fetch the next bit of baggage. Alexander had tried to hire porters to do the lifting, but Great-Aunt Hester wouldn’t hear of it.

“There’s no call for me to allow strangers in the house,” the old woman had protested. “No’ when me great-niece’s betrothed is a healthy young man and sound of limb.”

So if Alexander wanted the MacOwens to move, he had to do it himself.

“It would go easier on ye if ye wore that MacGregor plaid sash when ye buy a horse,” Lucinda said.

Damned if he was going to hide behind a scrap of fabric just to fool the locals. “I’m not a MacGregor.”

“Aye, ye are, if your mother was one,” Lucinda said. “And I’ve noticed ye dinna seem eager to present yourself as Lord Bonniebroch, either. A Scottish laird always commands respect.”

But I’m not Scottish. I’m English,
he thought furiously as he stomped back up the narrow staircase. She seemed to vacillate between his two nationalities depending upon whether it suited her argument to consider him as one or the other.

There was no ambiguity for Alex. Any part of him that might have been the least Gaelic had been drummed out of him by his father’s resentment toward the woman who gave Alexander birth. “I’ve been a Mallory much longer than I’ve been a Scottish laird.”

“Well, then, I’ll go with ye when ye buy your horse to protect the Sassenach from being hoodwinked by the locals,” she said with a curt nod, as if that ended the matter. “Dinna fuss with me. ’Twill ease your way.”

But being near her gave Alex no ease. He had to keep in mind that he was trying to rid himself of his betrothed, in the kindest possible way, of course. So there was no point in developing any sort of attachment to her. No need to court or even befriend her. He hunkered behind stiff courtesy to disguise the fact that his gaze kept drifting to Lucinda whenever she was near or that she crowded out even thoughts of his mission for the prime minister when she was not.

But he realized she was right about Scottish attitudes toward his kind. So when Alex headed for the public stables, Lucinda MacOwen’s arm was looped around his elbow and her hands were shoved into a white rabbit-fur muff. The brisk cold painted her cheeks a becoming peach and her pelisse hugged her bosom in a snug embrace.

It was enough to make Alex envy the woolen garment, but he shook the thought from his mind. She might be his fiancée now, but that was an exceedingly temporary situation.

So long as he didn’t do anything to make it permanent. Like seduce the girl. Which unfortunately was an idea that entered his mind several times a day.

That was another reason he needed a horse. The exercise of riding hard would distract him from thinking about the delectable young woman wrapped in several layers of muslin and wool by his side.

And how best to get her out of those layers.

“I generally dinna trade with the likes of ye,” Mr. Gow, the local hostler, said, his wiry brows waving above his deep-set eyes like dozens of insect antennae. “Meanin’ no offense, I’m sure,” he added as a grumbling afterthought.

“Be easy, Mr. Gow,” Lucinda said. “Lord Alexander is half Scottish on his mother’s side. And Himself is the new laird of Bonniebroch, so he is.”

“Weel, be that as it may, ye’re fortunate that a daughter of Erskine MacOwen vouches for ye, your lairdship. Ye’ve the look of a Sassenach about ye.” Mr. Gow’s pinched expression relaxed a bit. “But if Lucinda says otherwise, I’ll take yer money.”

“Not until I see your wares,” Alex said. The man’s condescension pricked his temper but he needed a horse.

“Ye’ve come at a low time o’ year for horseflesh, ye ken. Spring is the best. All the lads come down out of the Highlands with fine beasties to trade then.”

“I can’t wait for spring.” Alex was no closer to locating any Radicals than he was when he first disembarked from the
Agatha May.
He’d already lost two days waiting while the MacOwen girls packed. “I need a mount now.”

“Weel then, ye’ll be wantin’ Badgemagus.” Mr. Gow led them to a stall where a shaggy-coated beast stood, rocking its weight from side to side. The horse was black as a lump of coal. It glared at them from under a shock of unruly mane.

“He’s plagued with some bad habits.” Alexander noted that the gelding had nibbled all around the wood slats of his stall. As if to prove Alex’s assessment of his temperament, Badgemagus gave the back slats an ill-tempered kick with a saucer-sized hoof. “And riddled with vice to boot.”

“Aye, he is that. But since the Fall, aren’t we all? His last owner fair ruined his mouth too, poor beastie. Might be that’s what’s made him so tetchy,” Mr. Gow said. “But he’s broad of beam and stout enough to pull any conveyance ye’d care to put behind him. And if he’ll let ye ride him, ye’ll find Badgemagus has a sweet gait.”

Alexander snorted.
If he’ll let me ride him.
He’d never met the horse he couldn’t subdue.

He opened the gate and entered the stall. The horse had one blue eye and one brown. “Is he blind in the blue eye?” He approached the gelding on that side.

“I wouldna do that, were I you,” Gow said.

The horse swung his head around in a blink and nipped him on the shoulder.

“Ow!” Alex rubbed the spot. No skin had been broken, but he was sure it would bruise later.

“I warned ye, did I no’?” Mr. Gow spat a glob of phlegm onto the straw-strewn dirt.

Alex grasped the horse’s headstall and gave it a quick jerk downward.

“None of that now,” he told the beast in a low, commanding tone. Badgemagus stamped his foot and whickered, sending dragonish puffs of breath into the cold air, but he didn’t offer to bite Alex again.

Mr. Gow chuckled. “Guess that proves Badgemagus can see just fine.”

“Hmph!” Alex said, realizing the sound was a common Scottish one, but not caring enough to censor himself. “Hmph” was better than the curse that was his alternative.

There was a lady present, after all.

Lucinda had climbed up to stand on the lowest slat so she could peer over the top of the stall at him.

Her brows drew together with worry. Evidently, Badgemagus had a reputation for mayhem.

Well, Alexander had a reputation for horsemanship and no sorry excuse for a Scottish horse was going to ruin it. He ran his hands over the beast to check his conformation beneath the shaggy coat. The gelding was horribly foot-shy and resisted all efforts to check his hooves.

“If you don’t behave yourself, my four-footed friend, I’ll personally see that you are shipped off to France, where they like horses very much indeed—so long as it’s boiled, stewed, or fried.”

As if he’d understood every word, Badgemagus stood still as stone after that while Alex inspected each hoof. The horse was not up to Alexander’s usual standards, but judging from the beast’s surly disposition, Alex didn’t meet with his approval either.