Never Been Bit (18 page)

Sorcha crossed her arms beneath her breasts and moved to stand beside Alec. “Ye’re a liar,” Sorcha said.

“How dare you!” The baroness jumped to her feet and probably would have attacked Sorcha’s person, had the duchess not stepped between them.

“Why do you assume she’s not telling the truth, Miss Ferguson?” Her Grace asked. Something flashed in her eyes. Pleasure? Enjoyment? But it was gone before Sorcha could identify it.

Sorcha shrugged and looked up Alec with the most flirty grin she could force onto her face. He looked positively green. “Because he was with me last night. All night. We left the ball early and went straight ta my room. And he was there until dawn. I would have kent it if he’d left.”

Alec’s body relaxed marginally. So, he wasn’t put out by the suggestion. Perhaps?

“I-I meant the night before,” the girl began.

“Did ye?” Sorcha broke in. “Hmm. He was with me until dawn that night as well.” She shrugged. “In fact, he has been with me every night. All night. I quite find that I like wakin’ up in his arms.”

“Well!” the duchess said. She clucked her tongue for a moment. “This does change the situation a bit.” She looked hard at Alec. “I can’t believe, Mr. MacQuarrie, that you would take advantage of a dear, sweet creature like Miss Ferguson.” Then she cast her eyes on Sorcha. “I suppose you can’t be blamed for being taken in by such a rogue, handsome and charming as he is. And since you’ve disproven Miss Overton’s claims, he’s free to marry you instead, my dear.”

Alec choked.

Sorcha bit back a grin. How fortuitous.

“I assume that you
were
planning an elopement, Mr. MacQuarrie?”

“No.” Alec cleared his throat. “I intend to ask her father for her hand,” he croaked out. “I’d planned to travel there next week.”

Sorcha threaded her arm through his. “Under the circumstances, we might have ta do it a little sooner, darlin’,” she cooed at him. “After all, I could be carryin’ yer bairn.” She patted her flat stomach and smiled brightly at those in the room. “And I couldna be more delighted.”

Alec’s face went from green to purple. He started to sputter, but nothing came out.

“Well, then, we’ll have to ensure that this secret will remain among the occupants of this room,” the duchess informed them all.

The tears from the two ladies on the settee had suddenly dried up, and they sat stone-faced, looking at the duchess.

“Secrets such as this are hard to keep private,” Lady Overton said, her nose raised slightly in the air.

“Yet they
will stay
private all the same,” the duchess warned. “Or I’ll be certain that the party who shares the news of the blessed nuptials will live to regret it.”

Both women blanched. Alec snorted.

Then Alec bent and kissed Sorcha’s cheek quickly with a glare that said, “We will discuss this.” Oh, she could imagine they would.

~*~

Alec was going to kill Sorcha, just as soon as he had her out from under the ever-watchful eye of the Duchess of Hythe. He captured Sorcha’s elbow in his hand and tightened his grip. The little wood sprite didn’t even have the sense to look remorseful about the string of lies that had just ruined her fate. “Come along, lass,” he grumbled. “We have a lot to discuss.”

“Oh, I imagine you do.” The duchess’ light eyes actually twinkled.

Damn it to hell, how could the duchess’ eyes twinkle? Did she find the ruination of lovely young women amusing?

He’d never thought of Her Grace as malevolent before.

Alec frowned at the older woman, and then he directed his
fiancée
over the threshold.

As soon as they entered the corridor, Alec spotted the duchess’ sentinel footman, wrapped up in vines and lying on the floor fast asleep. Good God! He tugged Sorcha closer to him and hissed, “What did you do to him?”

She shrugged. “He dinna want ta let me pass.”

She should have listened to the footman. Instead, she’d destroyed any future she might have had. “Let the man go, Sorcha.”

She heaved a sigh and then flicked her wrist toward the downed footman. Almost instantly, the plant released the servant and began to recede toward its pot. “Happy now?”

“Hardly. You can’t go around revealing your powers and attacking poor footmen.”

Sorcha giggled. “Oh, he willna remember a thing.”

That was a terrifying statement. “Why not? Did you give him a potion too?” Alec frowned.

Sorcha giggled. “Nay, I just told the vines ta tighten right above his wrists. It helps ye get ta sleep if ye pinch right there. Did ye ken that? Elspeth showed me that a while back. Very helpful if one needs ta cure a bit of insomnia.”

Insomnia? Good God! And he was supposed to marry this lass? The one who didn’t think twice about drugging poor defenseless grooms or tying footmen up with vines and lulling them to sleep? Alec shook his head. He couldn’t marry Sorcha. He refused to ruin her life, despite the fact that she was more than ready to throw it away on her own.

He wouldn’t be party to helping her with the actual throwing.

“Anyway, he’ll wake up soon and think the whole thing was just a dream,” Sorcha continued. “And he willna tell anyone about it because he willna want ta admit ta sleepin’ at his post.”

“Have it all figured out, have you?” Alec tugged her farther down the hallway, away from the now slightly snoring footman who was sprawled across the corridor.

“I wouldna say I have it
all
figured out. I’m just good at improvisin’.”

“Good at getting yourself in heaps of trouble is more like it,” Alec growled, scanning the corridor in hopes of finding a quiet salon or parlor in this wing. Shouldn’t there be one nearby?

“I think ye were the one in trouble back there, Alec. I was simply helpin’. Ye’re welcome, by the way.”

You’re welcome? She had to be joking! Alec stopped in his tracks and grasped both her arms in his hands, staring down into her innocent brown eyes, which were as guileless as those of a newborn fawn. “Helping? Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Sorcha?”

She nodded and smiled sheepishly. “Aye, I saved ye from having ta marry that connivin’ lass. I promise ta be the best wife ye could have ever hoped for. I mean, I’m no’ Cait, but—”

Damn it, they were back to Cait. Alec couldn’t help but wince. Besides, that was hardly what he’d meant. Finally, he spotted a doorway just a few feet away. Thank God. He tugged her farther down the corridor and was relieved to find the small salon unoccupied.

“Don’t move,” he warned her, and then he shut the door behind them to keep anyone from happening upon them.

Alec took a deep breath and then turned back to face the lady who had plagued his thoughts since his arrival in godforsaken Kent.

“Look, Sorch, I have no doubt you’d be the best wife any man could hope for, and somewhere out there is a man who’ll thank his lucky stars every day of his life that he found you… But that man isn’t me, lass. I can’t marry you.”

Her face fell at those last words. “But I thought…”

Alec would have given half his fortune for her to finish that statement, but she looked away from him as her lips pressed together in annoyance. Bloody wonderful! She’d tried to come to his rescue, and he’d ended up hurting her feelings, which was the last thing he wanted.

He tucked a stray lock of her dark hair behind her ear and let his finger linger on the corner of her jaw. “Sorcha, I’m not the sort of man
you
should marry. Tell me you see that.”

“Would I have been better off if I’d kept ta my original plan and brought Lord Radbourne up ta scratch?”

Alec frowned, and it took every bit of strength he had not to shake some sense into her.

The damned Lycans again. “Keep your distance from those beasts, Sorcha.”

Finally, she met his gaze, a question burning in the warm brown depths of her eyes. Then her finger poked his chest.

Hard enough to make him wince. “I just saved yer wretched hide. And this is the thanks I get?” She stepped back from him. “Since it’s clear ye doona want me, I doona ken what I’ll do. I just told the Duchess of Hythe ye have been in my bed.”

She’d set her sights back on that blasted Radbourne. He could feel it in his bones. “I never said I don’t want you, Sorch. I said I can’t marry you. I care too much for you to ruin your life that way.”

Sorcha swiped at a tear that trailed down her cheek.

“Lord Kettering dinna feel that way, and neither did Lord Blodswell.”

Alec still couldn’t believe the former vampyres had actually thought to foist themselves on women more deserving. “Selfish pricks, the both of them,” he grumbled under his breath.

But Sorcha heard him and she gasped, most likely over his choice in language. “I canna believe ye said that.”

“Sorcha, just help me find a way out of this mess.”

Her stubborn chin jutted upward. “Ye’re sayin’ life with me will be a
mess
? Is that what ye really think?”

No, that wasn’t what he really thought at all. Life with her would be an adventure he’d never forget, but for her— “I thought we rubbed along well, Alec.”

“We do—” he began.

“Then I doona see the problem. And with me ye wouldna have ta pretend ta be somethin’ or someone ye’re no’. Ye wouldna have ta enchant me, and ye wouldna have ta take sustenance from butcher shops or that awful club, and—”

“Beg your pardon?” Did she mean
Brysi
? How the devil did she know about his club? And was she once again offering her blood to him? Alec nearly groaned at the thought of sinking his eyeteeth into Sorcha Ferguson.

Sorcha continued as though he’d never said a word. “I ken what ye are, Alec, and I accept ye exactly that way. And ye ken what I am too. That’s rare for us witches, and somethin’ we only share with our spouses. There wouldna be any need for secrets. And—”

“All right, you win.” He couldn’t seem to shake the idea of taking from Sorcha whenever he wanted. His incisors started to descend. Damn it, why had she planted that thought in his head? He was turning out to be just as big a prick as both Kettering and Blodswell.

“Did ye say I won?” She gaped at him.

In a moment of weakness, he had. “Aye. You win,” he said again.

What else could he do? She’d gone and ruined herself already with that Banbury tale she’d told the duchess.

Waking up in his arms every morning.
Good God, he couldn’t believe she’d said that!

Besides, Alec reasoned, if he didn’t take her in hand, she’d set her sights on one of those blasted Lycans again.

None of them would take the care with Sorcha that Alec would. No matter what he thought about himself, he wouldn’t see her tied to one of those drooling beasts. Not in this lifetime or the next. But the
real
reason that he’d acquiesced, the reason buried so deeply in his soul that he didn’t even want to acknowledge it, was that he truly did want her.

He wanted her like nothing or no one he’d ever wanted before. He wanted to taste every inch of her and trail his fingers from one enchanting freckle to the next. He wanted the freedom to look down her
décolletage
anytime he wished without reprimand. He wanted to delve deep inside her, clutch her to him, and pierce her slender neck, and then do it all over again.

Sorcha threw her arms around Alec’s neck and squeezed him tightly. “I’m happy we got that sorted out.”

Sorted out. He’d be sorting this out for the next several years, he was certain. Alec was equally certain somewhere deep in his chest, where his heart had once beat, that Sorcha would regret the rashness of this decision. On the day that finally happened, he’d die a second death.

“Ye meant what ye said, dinna ye?”

He couldn’t remember half the things he’d said in the past hour. “Which thing, lass?”

She rolled her eyes. “Did ye really mean ta ask Papa for his permission?”

Oh, that. Alec nodded. That was the least he could do, considering he was going to ruin her life. “Aye.”

She leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

“We’ll start for home tomorrow, then?”

“Considering the fact that you thwarted Lady Overton’s plan to trap me, we should probably leave this morning.”

Chapter Seventeen

Sorcha burst into her chambers bubbling over with giddiness. However, her levity vanished when her eyes landed on Caitrin, who sat very primly on the edge of Sorcha’s bed. “Cait.”

The seer smiled softly and then rose from her spot. “So, I see ye arrived in time ta save him.”

Cait had known exactly what would happen when she sent Sorcha to Her Grace’s private sitting room.
Havers!

Was Cait sad about the fact? Perhaps a bit jealous? “Are ye all right with this?”

Cait nodded once. “Ta be honest, I wasna a few years ago, but I am now. Dash was my future. I just had never seen it. But I have kent for quite some time that Alec is yers.”

Cait had
always
known? Sorcha took a staggering step backward. Was that why Cait had fought so hard against accepting one of his many offers?

“I would offer ye my congratulations, but yer journey is far from over, Sorch. Ye have more than a few obstacles standin’ in yer way.”

“What obstacles?” Sorcha asked, though she knew her friend would never say.

Cait shrugged her answer. “Dash and I’ll go with ye ta Edinburgh.”

Sorcha shook her head. “That doesna seem wise, Cait. Dash and Alec together?”

Cait heaved a beleaguered sigh. “It isna up for debate, Sorch. Ye are no’ yet married, and ye canna travel all that way with Alec alone. Ye do still have a reputation ta protect.”

“But—” Sorcha began to protest.

“No buts,” Cait interrupted. “Besides, our travelin’ coach is already packed and ready ta go.”

“I need ta pack my things,” Sorcha mumbled. There was obviously no reason to argue. But as she glanced around the room, she noticed that her personal things were missing from the bedside table. She opened the wardrobe to find that all her dresses were gone. “Where is everythin’?” she asked of no one in particular.

“I had yer maid pack it all up,” Cait answered with another shrug of her shoulders. “The coach is ready.”