The Bad Luck Wedding Night, Bad Luck Wedding series #5 (Bad Luck Abroad trilogy) (12 page)

A sardonic smile accompanied his words as he muttered, "I'd hate to hear what the townspeople called your wedding gown." Then, before she could decide how to reply to that, he reached for her hand and tugged her toward the door. "Enough wedding talk. Let's walk, shall we? Since we've settled the immediate business, I'd like to visit with you a bit. Let's take a stroll beside the loch. It's a mild evening, and the moon is near full. I remember how you enjoyed the reflection of moonlight off the water when we walked along the Trinity River. Wait until you see its silvery shine upon the loch."

He guided her through a maze of staircases and corridors to an arched wooden doorway, pausing to remove his jacket and place it about her shoulders. "Welcome to Glencoltran, Sarah," he said softly before he leaned over to press a friendly kiss against first one cheek, then the other. "I should have a bouquet of flowers to present to you, but I fear 'tis the wrong season for such. I recall you had a fondness for flowers. Remember how Wilhemina Peters sneezed all the way through our wedding?"

"Roses," Sarah absently replied, shocked by the slow spread of pleasure from the spot where his lips brushed her skin. "Roses caused Mrs. Peters to sneeze. Brides in Fort Worth have abandoned the more fragrant varieties because of her susceptibility."

"Does she still shoulder her way into the front pew?"

"Right next to the bride's mother every time."

He chuckled. "Some things never change."

Like Nick leading her down the garden path, she thought as he escorted her out of the castle and into a crisp, moonlit world.

Sarah snuggled into the protection of his jacket, still warm from his body and perfumed with a woodsy, masculine scent that teased at her memory. They strolled without speaking along a garden path, the only sounds the scrunch of gravel beneath their feet and the whisper of an intermittent breeze through the evergreens. When the path opened out onto a rocky shore where moonlight painted a silver swath across a midnight lake, Sarah couldn't help but smile. "How lovely."

"This is one of my favorite spots on earth. Glencoltran is a tenth the size of Hunterbourne and has little of the gilt and glamour. But for me, it's home." He held her hand and helped her climb over a shadowy boulder, then asked, "So, tell me about your home, lass. Tell me about your life in Fort Worth."

The sound of his nickname for her sent a nostalgic chord singing through her and she sighed. "I have a good life in Texas, Nick. That hasn't changed. I have a lovely home on the south end of town, an occupation I enjoy, and dear friends."

His hand gripped hers a fraction tighter. "A lover?"

"No." Heavens no. She shuddered at the notion. Then, because a woman did have her pride, she added, "Not at the moment."

He must have thought she was cold, because he slipped his arm around her and pulled her close. Casually he asked, "What about children? As I recall, you wanted to have a houseful."

Children. Leave it to Nick to hone in on her greatest regret. But to get children, she'd have to be intimate with a man, and she'd yet to meet anyone she trusted enough to do that.

Oh, she'd tried to move on after Nick left. She'd been up-front and honest about her marital status and for the most part circumspect in her actions. Because Fort Worth was a frontier town and populated mostly by men, she had never suffered a shortage of gentlemen callers. Why, she'd received four marriage proposals in the past year alone. She'd lost track of how many she received in the years since she and Nick had parted ways.

On three separate occasions she'd come close to accepting. Twice she'd gone so far as to have the annulment papers prepared. But when the time came for her to fix her signature to the page, she'd never quite managed to find the heart to do it. It was easier to stay married to an absent husband. Safer. Because not only did she not trust the men, she didn't trust herself.

She'd loved Nick. It had been a young love, true, but love nonetheless. She'd believed in him, and he'd left town with another woman the day following their wedding. After that, how could she trust her own judgment in matters of the heart?

Their stroll had taken them toward a small wooden boathouse built along the water's edge. Nick released the latch on a pair of broad wooden doors, and they creaked open to block the gentle but chilly breeze. Sarah stood inside, lost in thoughts of the past, barely noting the faint, fishy scent that hung on the air.

Moments later, lamplight flickered. One, two, then three lamps glowed, chasing away the shadows, revealing not the skiff and fishing supplies she had expected, but a cozy table and a quartet of chairs. "What's this?"

"Too many females in the house. A man needs a place to call his own, and I like to listen to the lap of waves upon the shore when I play cards."

Then the confounded man went and picked up the conversation where it had left off. "Sarah, don't you still want that houseful of children?"

She tossed him a look of annoyance, then shrugged. "My friends the McBrides have children to spare when I am plagued by maternal feelings."

"Seems like a poor substitute."

"The McBride children are special. I've told you stories about them over the years. The girls had a reputation for trouble when they were younger, but the boys..." She made a mock shudder. "They have far surpassed their sisters. I love them all dearly, but an hour spent with any of them goes a long way toward reminding one of the challenges of parenting."

He lifted a deck of cards from the center of the table and shuffled them. Fanning them out, he held the cards out to her, saying, "You run from challenges now, lass?"

"Hardly." She chose a card. The trey of clubs. "I'm here, aren't I?"

Nick laughed at that, then chose his own card. The queen of hearts. "Curse it all, I lost."

"Lost? What sort of card games do they play in Scotland? In my part of the world, a queen of hearts beats a trey of clubs handily."

"Aye, it's the same here. But you see, it was all in the terms of the bet. I told myself if you won, I wouldn't do this."

Before she quite knew what had happened, she found herself backed against a support post. As his gaze fixed on her mouth, memories flooded her mind and she was suddenly sixteen again. She recalled stolen kisses at the Literary Society meetings. Those moonlit walks beside the Trinity River.

Lost in the pleasure of the past, Sarah swallowed hard. His arms encircled her waist, and the glitter in his eyes took on a dangerous tint as he lowered his mouth to hers.

At the first touch of his lips, Sarah was sixteen no longer. She was here, in a lamp-lit hideaway beside a Highland loch being kissed by the man who had haunted her dreams for a decade. Only now she wasn't sixteen, and his kiss was so much more.
He
was so much more.

Nick had always made her go soft inside. This time he made her melt. The scent of him. The taste of him. The rough rasp of his tongue against hers. The fluttery sensation low in her stomach that his kisses brought to life. Her knees went weak, but he pressed his lower body against her, supporting her, holding her in place. The proof of his desire was hard against her.

Sarah whimpered even as heat roared through her. What was happening to her? What was he doing?

His teeth nipped at her bottom lip and she gasped. In response, Nick made a noise, a growl, deep in his throat, and the sound of it skittered through her blood like a current.

A yawning ache opened up inside her, centered in her loins. Its intensity frightened her and gave her the will to push against him. "No," she said. "Stop this. Stop it, Nick. I didn't come to Glencoltran for this."

He murmured a protest against her mouth, then slowly stepped away, his arms falling to his sides. His eyes gleamed warm and unrepentant as he shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "Actually, I suspect you did. I suspect this might be exactly why you've come to me."

Emotions stampeded through her like cattle. Need and regret and yearning. Fear. Pulsing, numbing, heartbreaking fear. She'd trusted him before, and he'd broken her heart.

This time he could destroy her.

Her voice was shrill and tremulous as she scooted away from him. "This is a mistake. You never should have made me come here."

"Sarah..."

The fragrance in the air now struck her as fishy, and her stomach took a roll. She had turned to flee both the building and her husband when she heard him call, "Think about it. I would give you bonny children."

Sarah ran from the loch as if chased by a monster of the deep. Back in her room, she buried her face in his jacket, in his scent, and fought back tears she didn't understand. When horns later she finally got to sleep, she dreamed of a fairy-tale castle filled with the happy laughter of bonny, blue-eyed children.

It's bad luck for a bride to laugh on her wedding day.

Chapter 7

"Well? Who is she?" Lady Charlotte Ross asked when Nick strolled into the family sitting room the following morning in search of a strong cup of coffee. He'd asked his family to assemble here in private to hear his explanation about Sarah, a tangle of truth and lies he'd put together during the long, mostly sleepless night.

He felt like one of the ancient suits of armor his youngest Scots sister Robyn used in her mock battles—old and battered and beaten. The few minutes he'd slept had been filled with dreams of Sarah, hot, erotic dreams that left him needy and aching. Twice the urges had propelled him from his bed and sent him toward Sarah's, determined to turn fantasy into reality. Thank God for cold stone floors and bare feet. The combination cleared his thinking enough for him to realize the folly of his intent.

"You look awful, Nicholas." Lady Melanie Ross set down her cup of chocolate with a clatter and a spill. "Is it her fault? Aurora thinks she's your mistress and that you invited her to Glencoltran, only she was supposed to meet you in the hunting lodge, not the castle."

"Melanie!" Lady Aurora Ross protested. "You weren't supposed to tell him. I'm not supposed to know about mistresses."

"None of you are supposed to know about mistresses," Nick groused, scowling as he poured coffee into an oversized teacup. "Be quiet. One thing you girls must learn if you're to make successful marriages is that you don't bring up forbidden subjects and pepper a man with questions before he's had his morning coffee. Now, sit and be still."

They didn't obey him, but then, his sisters seldom obeyed him. What they did was ask one another questions, leaving him out of it, yet letting him know exactly what information they wanted. In addition to being the most loving, caring creatures on earth, his sisters were ultimately female—bright, scheming, and manipulative. In some ways he pitied the men who would finally win them.

Nick downed his first cup of coffee quickly, then sipped at the second more slowly. At that point, Melanie decided it was safe to speak to him. "We don't know much except that mistresses are wicked, Nick. Is this woman wicked? If so, why did you bring her to your home?"

"You are completely mistaken," Nick declared. "Sarah is not a wicked woman."

Aurora pinned him with a look. "Sarah? That's her name? And who is she?"

"As soon as the rest of your sisters arrive, I'll tell you all of it. This is an explanation I want to go through only once."

The trio nodded, then Charlotte asked. "We'll be done by noon, won't we, Nicholas? I'm to meet Rodney and Lady Pratt in the drawing room then. She has yet to give her blessing to the match, and I'm hopeful she'll do it before they leave this afternoon."

"The Dragon Lady." Aurora shuddered dramatically. "You know, Charlotte, it occurs to me that Rodney is lucky she spent last Season in Paris. If you'd met her early on, I'll bet you'd have thought twice about falling in love with her son."

"She's the reason Flora and Alasdair cut their visit to Glencoltran short," Melanie said, referring to Nick's other Scottish sister, Gillian's twin Flora, and her husband, "Every time Dragon Lady Pratt looked at Flora's babies, she made them cry."

"That's not true," Nick countered. "Flora and Alasdair never intended to stay longer at Glencoltran. They had other commitments at home at Laichmoray."

Charlotte sipped at her chocolate and said, "I cannot get over how much alike Flora and Gillian look. How did you ever tell them apart when they were young?"