Once Upon a Tartan (11 page)

She was so close to him she could see the verdigris gradations in his pupils—green, gold, agate, amber, black, brown, an entire palette of colors—and she could feel the warmth and strength of his grip through the thin cotton of her sleeves. The urge to comfort him—to soothe him—was strange, unwelcome, and irresistible. She smoothed the fingers of one hand down his chest, marveling at the heat he gave off.

This simple caress was a mistake, or possibly the smartest thing she’d ever done.

He bent over her, firmed his grip on her forearms, and pressed his mouth carefully but relentlessly to hers.

Hester had been kissed before and hadn’t found it at all appealing. Men who’d had too much wine with dinner, chased by a few cigars and port, did not have much to recommend them when they were bent on mashing their teeth into Hester’s lips or slobbering on her neck.

On Spathfoy, the wee dram of whisky tasted lovely—all dark, smoky apples, and spice. He didn’t mash, he caressed with his mouth. His hands shifted to Hester’s back and held her close; his strength and heat enveloped her. She moaned with the pleasure of his nearness, and then the damned man took his mouth away.

She grabbed a fistful of his cravat. “Don’t you…”

“Hush.” He ran his open mouth along her throat, leaving heat and wanting to trickle down through her vitals. When he brought his mouth back to hers, Hester sank a hand into his hair and opened her mouth beneath his.

He groaned, a soft, sighing breath into her mouth—so intimate, Hester felt as if she’d downed the whole flask of whisky. She burrowed closer, until he took his mouth away again, and she wanted to howl at the unfairness of the loss.

His hand cradled the back of her head while she stood in his embrace, her forehead resting on his chest. “This will not serve, Hester Daniels. I owe you a sincere apology for taking liberties no gentleman would think of appropriating. I offer you my most—”

She reached up without lifting her face from his chest and put her hand over his mouth, more to feel the shape of his words than to stop him from speaking. His apology didn’t matter, but the sound of his voice was something she wanted to take into her senses through every possible means.

“Tell me about the damned Bible.”

He expelled a bark of humorless laughter, which she felt against his chest. “The damned anything. I have a theory that a good bout of swearing helps settle the nerves. Foul language re-establishes a sense of equilibrium and diverts uncouth feelings into their natural expression.”

She did pull back then, far enough to peer into the bleak depths of his eyes. “So this is a damned kiss?”

“A bloody awful, misguided, bedamned, miserable excuse for a bleeding kiss. I told you not to trust me, Hester.”

He looked as unhappy as Hester had seen him. This was a small comfort. She went up on her toes, kissed his cheek, and offered him a small comfort in return. “I do not now, nor do I have any intention in the future, of trusting you.”

He caught her to him for one more brief, fierce hug, then let her go. When he helped her into the saddle, he managed it while barely touching her, and not looking at her at all.

He did not shake the blanket out, but simply rolled it up and stashed it behind his saddle, then vaulted onto Flying Rowan’s back. They went directly home, trotting and cantering through the heather without a single word of conversation.

In her head, Hester was testing his theory, using every naughty, off-color, and outright bad word she knew to describe his advances. It didn’t work. When they ambled into the stable yard to hand the horses off to a groom, Hester was still hoping Spathfoy would offer her another bloody awful, misguided, bedamned, miserable excuse for a bleeding kiss—rather damned sooner than later.

***

“Is all in order with our visiting earl?”

Augusta kissed Ian before he could get out a reply, and then he had to kiss her back, and
then
he had to hold her and pet her while he tried to recall what her question had been—even as she was stroking her hand over his arse in the most proprietary fashion.

His adorable arse.

“Spathfoy is a great big lout, speaking the Queen’s English with such precision it nigh left my ears bleeding. He’s cozening Fiona with tales of the golden city to the south, and likely bedazzling Aunt Ree with his university-boy manners.”

He patted her bottom then recalled they were standing in the rose gardens where any servant peering out of any window might see them. “I’ve invited his lordship to dinner tomorrow, but I think he’s afraid you’ll start nursing The Terror right at the table.”

“You were naughty.” She rested against him more heavily. “Ian MacGregor, must I remind you of the requirements of proper behavior?”

“Yes, Wife, I fear you must. At great length and in considerable detail. The privacy of our bedchamber would be an ideal location for this reminder.” He growled this command into her ear, which caused her to cuddle against him, her shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. She was such a dignified woman generally that he loved to make her laugh. “I would have reported earlier for my lesson in proper deportment, except I cut into Ballater to arrange for a few wires to be sent.”

He turned her under his arm so they could start walking toward the house before Ian’s interest in his wife’s scolding reached embarrassing proportions. “Wires are expensive, Husband.”

“But expedient. Matthew and Mary Fran need to know there’s an English lordling slithering about in their garden.”

“Is he slithering?”

“The poor bastard is here as the old man’s emissary. I think Spathfoy has orders to reave little Fee right out from under our noses, and the guilt of it is nigh killing the man.”

“Do you mean reave in the legal sense, or in the Scottish sense?”

“That’s what one of the wires was about, to see if there are any custody suits recently brought regarding our niece, and to see where Quinworth is lurking while his son is on holiday in our backyard.”

“You didn’t send one to Mary Fran and Matthew?”

“I sent three. Now about that lecture you promised me, Countess? I have been exceedingly remiss, I am planning on being naughtier still, and my only hope of proper guidance rests with you.”

He scooped his wife into his arms and carried her up two flights of stairs, only to hear a certain Terror waken from his nap in a predictable state of loud and hungry indignation just as Augusta was on the point of unfastening her husband’s breeches.

***

A list of known aphrodisiacs had circulated among Tye’s confreres at university, but lemon verbena had assuredly not been among the foods, fragrances, and substances named.

Nor had fresh air, or the scent of heather, or the sound of a burbling Scottish stream, or proximity to tartan wool, but something or
someone
had so unbalanced the relationship between Tye’s self-restraint and his base urges as to violate every tenet of common sense.

One did not accost decent young women, no matter how much in need of kissing they might seem.

One did not kiss young ladies who had given no overt indication they were receptive to such advances.

One did not allow oneself into compromising situations where any wandering neighbor might come upon one.

But one was also having great difficulty forgetting the kiss,
and
the compromising situation,
and
the decent young lady from whom the kiss had been stolen.

Behind his closed door, Tye wrote a letter—
not
a report—to his father, who was rusticating at the family seat in Northumbria. To his sisters, he dashed off notes full of drivel about the fresh Scottish air and beautiful Scottish skies. He wrote to the steward of his estates in Kent and outside Alnwick, and in sheer desperation, he even wrote to his mother in Edinburgh.

And still, when he sanded the last epistle, he had not in the least changed the fact that he’d kissed Hester Daniels.

Thoroughly, but somehow, not thoroughly enough.

And worse yet—
far
worse
—she had kissed him back.

He tossed his pen down and leaned back in his chair, his gaze going to the view of the gardens, stables, and grounds stretching between the manor and the surrounding hills.

Maybe the fresh Scottish air was to blame.

He enjoyed sex enthusiastically when it came his way, and it came his way frequently. Friendly widows were thick on the ground in the social Season, and if they were ever in short supply, Tye had been accosted by any number of wives intent on straying. Then too, there were women on the fringes of Polite Society with whom arrangements involving coin and exclusive sexual access could be discreetly made.

Those women were available once terms were struck. Hester Daniels—jilt, tease, spinster, or whatever inaccurate label she wanted to put on herself—was
unavailable
t
o him.

And always would be.

A quiet triple tap on his door interrupted another round of self-castigation.

“Come in.”

“Uncle!” Fiona literally skipped into the room, leaving the door open behind her. “I read to Aunt Ree, and we spoke French, and she said I could write to Mama in French tomorrow if I look up five very big words tonight. Are you writing letters?”

“I was.” He shifted the stack of missives to the side while the infernal child scrambled up onto his knees.

“May I see?”

“No, you may not. Shouldn’t you be at your lessons?”

“I did my reading lesson. Tell me some big words in French. You have to spell them.”

“Here.” He passed her a pencil. “Spell this: p-e-s-t-i-l-e-n-t-i-e-l.”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s French for niece.”

She squirmed around to scowl at him. “Niece is the same word with an accent like this over the
e
.” She drew her finger down in imitation of an accent grave. “Are you in a bad mood?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

For God’s sake… He set the child aside and rose. “Because I came up here for privacy, and you have intruded.”

Her brows drew down in an expression that put Tye in mind of her step-aunt, though Miss Daniels was unrelated to the girl except insofar as both females bothered him. “Then, Uncle, you should not have let me come in.”

“That would have been rude.”

“You’re being rude now.”

He wanted to bellow at the little imp, wanted to transport her bodily to the corridor, but she was regarding him with such an air of mischief he felt his lips quirking up. “My apologies.”

“You could tell me what’s bothering you.” She skipped to the bed, hopped up the three steps on one foot, then hiked herself onto the mattress. “Aunt Hester was in a bad mood when she came here a few weeks ago, but she explained to me that she’d had her heart broken. She came here for it to get better. Is your heart broken?”

“It is not. Please remove your person from that bed.”

She hopped down, again on one foot. “Aunt said her beau took unseemly liberties, and she should have coshed him on the head.” Fiona swung her fist in a fierce downward arc through the air while Tye smoothed the wrinkles from the counterpane of his bed. “I told Aunt Hester there are no beaus here in Scotland, we only have braw, bonny lads. Aunt Augusta said we had braw, bonny earls too, but she meant Uncle Ian. He winked at me when she said it.”

“Is that where you acquired such a lamentable habit, from your uncle Ian?”

She winked at him. “It’s a secret. I’ll see you at tea.” As quickly as she’d invaded his privacy, she skipped right back out to the corridor.

The ensuing silence had a peculiar, relieved quality. Tye had just sat back down at his desk when Fiona poked her head around the doorjamb. “May I call you Uncle Tye? Aunt Hester said your real name is Tiberius, which would be a grand name for a bear, I think.”

“It’s a perfectly adequate name for an earl, but yes, you may call me Uncle Tye.”

She grinned at him, a huge, toothy expression of great good spirits, winked once more, and disappeared.

Tye stared at his stack of letters. He had not mentioned any kisses in those letters, just as Hester Daniels hadn’t mentioned her worthless excuse for a fiancé taking unseemly liberties or needing his head coshed.

Which left Tye pondering why his own head had not been coshed by that fair lady when he’d taken unseemly liberties. Why she’d kissed him on the cheek without any provocation on his part at all.

He picked up the pencil and started making a list.

***

“I have been foolish.” Dear Hester made this pronouncement in tones indicative of an impending bout of martyrdom, so Ariadne set aside her third husband’s journal and resigned herself to patience.

“I hope you at least had a grand time being foolish.”

The girl dropped into the rocking chair by the hearth—a feat Ariadne hadn’t attempted without assistance or planning for more than a decade. “I am not jesting, Aunt. I was very rag-mannered to Lord Spathfoy.”

Ariadne gave the kind of snort an old woman was permitted even in public. “That one. He could do with some rudeness. He’s handsome as sin, in expectation of a title, and wealthy to boot. I hope you took him down several pegs.”

“I kissed him.” A furious blush accompanied this confession.

“I’m envious. Did he kiss you back?”

“You’re
envious
?” Hester shot to her feet and started pacing the small confines of Ariadne’s sitting room—small rooms were easier to keep warm—leaving the rocking chair to bob gently, as if inhabited by a ghost. “I toss propriety to the wind when I know the fate of my good name is hanging by a thread, and you are envious? Spathfoy isn’t some younger son trying to cadge a dowry so he can keep up with his gambling cronies. He’s going to be Quinworth, and I’ve disgraced myself utterly,
again
.”

The girl was overdue for some dramatics. She’d been pale and composed for weeks, only rousing from her brown study when Fiona dragged her out-of-doors or Ian got her onto a horse.

“You are not to blame for Merriman’s mischief, Hester Daniels. He was a bad apple, as my fourth husband would have said. Spoiled rotten and contaminating all in his ambit. Do you know how many men I’ve kissed?”