The Devil Wears Plaid (16 page)

G
RAEME WAS CLASPING HIS
ribs in a white-knuckled grip. One of the boy’s eyes was swollen shut and an ugly bruise, already beginning to yellow around the edges, stained his clenched jaw.

Several of the men rushed to aid him but it was Jamie who reached him first. He slipped an arm around Graeme’s shoulders just as the boy’s legs began to crumple beneath him.

“Would’ve been here sooner…” he rasped out, leaning heavily against Jamie’s chest. “Damn horse threw a shoe a few leagues back.”

As his men gathered around them, Jamie eased Graeme to a reclining position on the ground, stricken by guilt. He should have known Hepburn wouldn’t have any qualms about shooting the messenger. He should have sent Bon—someone who was as crafty as the Hepburn, someone who wouldn’t have underestimated the auld buzzard’s potential for treachery.

“What did those bastards do to you?” Jamie demanded, wincing along with Graeme as he ran a careful hand over the boy’s battered ribcage.

“Nothin’ I won’t survive.” Graeme grinned up at him, his split lip giving his smile a rakish tilt. “Got in a few good licks meself, I did. Made those fancy footmen o’ the earl’s think twice aboot knockin’ heads with Graeme MacGregor.” Reaching inside his jacket, Graeme tugged out a leather pouch, his hand trembling ever so slightly. “I did just what ye said, Jamie. I gave the Hepburn yer letter and he said to give this to ye.”

Jamie accepted the offering, managing a pained smile of his own. “You did us all proud, lad. Especially me.”

As Jamie rose, Lemmy dropped down to take his place, tugging Graeme’s head into his lap with a gentleness that should have been impossible for his enormous hands.

Jamie gazed down at the Hepburn’s missive. No cheap foolscap this but a thick sheet of creamy vellum, folded into perfect thirds and sealed with a daub of crimson wax bearing the Hepburn’s crest.

He broke the seal and carefully unfolded the paper beneath the watchful eyes of his men.

Even though he’d never learned to read, Bon bounced up and down on his tiptoes in a desperate attempt to see over his shoulder. “Don’t leave us danglin’, lad. What does it say?”

It didn’t take Jamie long to scan the handful of curt words scrawled on the paper. He refolded it with painstaking care. He had imagined this moment for so long, had anticipated the dizzying rush of triumph he would feel.

But as he lifted his eyes to meet Emma’s questioning gaze, he felt nothing but a piercing stab of regret. “He’s agreed to our demands. The ransom is to be delivered on the morrow.”

He only managed to hold Emma’s gaze for an elusive moment before she turned and disappeared into the ruins without a word.

E
MMA SAT AT THE EDGE OF
the round stone platform that had once housed the old bell tower of the abbey, hugging one knee to her chest. The roof and most of the walls of the structure had collapsed long ago, leaving the platform open to the sky and reachable only by a flight of narrow stone stairs worn nearly smooth by rain and time.

The wind that usually raged so passionately over this mountain had subsided to a mild breeze that sighed against her cheek and toyed with the loose tendrils of hair at her nape. The moon hung over the uppermost peak of the mountain like a glowing pearl, twice the size it had been in Lancashire yet still far beyond her reach.

A loose pebble went skittering off the far edge of the platform.

She turned, unable to stop a treacherous surge of hope from leaping in her heart. But it was only Bon who emerged from the shadows at the top of the stairs. He hovered at the fringes of the moonlight, plainly uncertain of his welcome.

“Don’t worry, Bon. It’s safe,” she assured him. “I’m not armed.”

He moved to stand beside her, his snaggle-toothed grin no longer menacing to her eyes but winsome. “The way ye were handlin’ that bow today, I’d wager a man’s heart will never be entirely safe as long as ye’re around.”

“Perhaps that’s why your cousin is so eager to be rid of me,” Emma replied lightly, hoping to hide the bitter edge in her voice. “Why aren’t you down there celebrating with him? He must be beside himself with joy. After all, the earl is about to give him his heart’s desire.”

“He still won’t tell me or any o’ the lads what that is. And it’s not like Jamie to keep secrets from me.”

“This may be the first time he’s ever had one worth keeping.”

“We wouldn’t begrudge him nothin’ he wanted,” Bon admitted. “He’s sacrificed too much for us. He’s allus been a canny lad, ye know, haulin’ around books he was barely big enough to carry. He could have
stayed down there in the Lowlands and made his own fortune like a proper gent. But when he heard his grandfather was ailin’, he came back here. To take care o’ us. To take care o’ everyone on this mountain who’ve always depended upon the Sinclairs for their survival.” Bon hesitated as if he longed to say something else. Something more. But he finally just ducked his head, gazing down at his feet. “I just come to tell ye I’m sorry we ruined yer wedding. And I hope ye and the earl will be”—he cleared his throat, plainly struggling to choke out the words—“verra happy together.”

“Thank you,” Emma whispered, the sudden tightness of her own throat making it impossible for her to offer him any other absolution.

After he had made his way back down the stairs, leaving her alone, she turned her face back to the moon only to find it shimmering behind a watery veil. The girl who had gazed upon that same moon from her bedchamber window as it drifted over her father’s orchard seemed like a stranger to her now—a naïve child who had believed a man’s quality could be measured by the eloquence of his speech or the fine cut of his coat.

How was she to accompany the earl’s men back down that mountain on the morrow and pretend she was still that girl, who had never tasted Jamie’s kiss, never felt her body begin to melt beneath the
smoldering heat of his desire for her? How could she be content with jewels and furs and gold or even a nursery full of children conceived not out of love or passion but desperation and duty?

After feeling her body and her heart come alive beneath Jamie’s touch, how would it be possible to lie night after night in long-suffering silence with the earl grunting and heaving on top of her, her teeth clenched to keep from screaming? Especially now that she knew he might not be a kindly old man after all but a murderer, ruthless enough to cut down his own son for daring to love the wrong woman.

She blinked back her tears, bringing the moon into crisp focus. She
wasn’t
the same girl she had been and she would never be that girl again. No matter the cost, she was no longer willing to deny her own passions, her own desires, simply to preserve the peace of those around her. Her mother had spent Emma’s entire life living just such a lie, sacrificing her own happiness so she could go on making excuses for Emma’s papa.

But she was not her mother. And she was no longer the girl who had stood before that altar in the abbey of Hepburn Castle, prepared to pledge her heart to a man she would never love.

All she needed was someone to help her prove it.

*   *   *

J
AMIE BRACED BOTH HIS
hands against the rough stone of the abbey’s altar. That single stone had somehow survived the devastation of battle and years of neglect, proving there were some things even time could not destroy.

He wondered how many christenings it had seen, how many weddings, how many burials. How many lives had begun there? How many had ended?

The small church had been a ruin for as long as he could remember, no doubt destroyed in one of the many wars and skirmishes that had left their scars on this rugged and beautiful land. Even though it had been reduced to little more than roofless walls and moss-covered rubble, an air of dignity still hung over the place, as if neither God nor time had forgotten this had once been holy ground.

He ran his hands over the pocked stone, wishing he had the words to express the tumult he was feeling. Although he’d always been a believing man, he’d never been a praying one. He’d assumed it would be best if he and the Almighty didn’t discuss their differences of opinion.

For how could God claim vengeance was His when Jamie could feel the weight of it resting so heavily on his own shoulders? They’d always been strong enough to bear that burden in the past but now he felt as if it was dangerously close to crushing his heart. Tomorrow he would send Emma down
the mountain. He would never again sleep with her warm body tucked into the shelter of his own. Never again hear his name on her lips. In a few days she would be standing before an altar just like this one, preparing once again to become the Hepburn’s bride.

He dug his fingertips into the stone, wishing he could smash the altar to rubble with his bare hands.

“Jamie?”

At first he thought he had imagined that melodic whisper of sound, that it was nothing more than a product of his own feverish longings.

Relinquishing his grip on the altar, he slowly turned.

Emma stood there at the edge of the moonlight like the ghost of all the brides who had come to this place to pledge their hearts to the men they loved.

“What do you want?” he asked hoarsely, no longer able to pretend her answer didn’t matter to him.

She lifted her chin, her gaze as cool and steady as it had been on the night she had pointed his own pistol at his heart. “I want you to ruin me.”

S
WALLOWING HER TREPIDATION, EMMA
drifted toward Jamie, exposing herself fully to the moonlight and his burning gaze. In that moment he looked like every virgin’s worst nightmare—desperate and dangerous and only to be approached with tremendous caution, if at all.

“I’ve always been a very good girl,” she said, each measured step carrying her closer to him, “and a dutiful daughter—the one who was always called upon to set the example for my younger sisters. It was always ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, ma’am’ and ‘As you wish.’ I wore what my mother selected for me. I ate everything that was put in front of me, whether I liked it or not. I went everywhere I was told to go and did everything they asked of me.” She stopped just out of Jamie’s reach. “But I will not marry the earl. And you and I both know there’s only one sure way to convince him I’m no longer fit to be his bride.”

Jamie didn’t say a word. He just continued to gaze at her, his expression as unreadable as the petrified pages of the Holy Bible moldering in the corner.

She managed an awkward laugh. “Bon was right all along, wasn’t he? I know you’ve convinced yourself you’d have to be content with proving the Hepburn murdered your parents. But wouldn’t your vengeance be even more satisfying if you returned his bride to him having been ravished by a Sinclair? Especially a Sinclair who just happens to be his bastard grandson.”

“More satisfying for me, certainly.” Jamie folded his arms over his chest, the smoky heat of his gaze making her shiver somewhere deep inside. “What about that ramshackle manor house in Lancashire you love so well? If the earl demands his settlement back, how will your father keep his creditors from seizing the house and tossing the lot of you in the poorhouse?”

“I’m confident the earl will graciously insist he keep the settlement. Especially if he doesn’t want everyone in London to learn that he’s suspected of having his own son—and the mother of his grandson—murdered in cold blood.”

Jamie cocked his head, eyeing her with reluctant admiration. “I never would have guessed such a bonny face could hide such a ruthless streak.”

She flashed him a bitter smile. “Since coming to
the Highlands I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the best.”

“Your home may be spared and your father may avoid debtor’s prison but have you thought about the consequences you’ll suffer once you return to England with your family?” Jamie moved forward to circle her while he spoke, his husky burr weaving a web she no longer had any desire to escape. “The earl has a tongue like a viper. Rather than let anyone believe he was fool enough to let his young bride be stolen out from under his nose, he’ll start spreading rumors that you went into my arms—and my bed—willingly. And even if he doesn’t, it won’t matter to society if you were seduced or raped. The shadow your first fiancé cast over your reputation will be nothing compared to this. Decent folk will turn their heads when you walk by in the street. No one will receive you. You’ll be a social pariah and you’ll be giving up all hope of ever finding a husband or having a family of your own.”

“Then I’ll be free to return to Lancashire and live out my life in peace.” She faced him, giving her curls a bold toss. “If I get bored, I can always take a strapping young lover. Or two.”

He saw right through her bravado, just as he had the first time she had said those words. He reached up to trace the delicate curve of her jaw with the backs of his knuckles, his voice even more gentle than his touch.
“There are other considerations, lass. What if I should put my babe inside you?”

Emma didn’t bother ducking her head to hide the blush she could feel creeping over her cheekbones. She knew it was no use. “You may find me distressingly naïve but thanks to my mother’s tutelage I’m not completely ignorant of the ways of the world. Or of men. If there weren’t ways to prevent such things, then there would be more by-blows than legitimate heirs walking the streets of London.”

He nodded, conceding her point. “So you truly believe this is the only way to keep the Hepburn’s lecherous hands off you? To make sure you’re free to live out your life as the mistress of your own fate?”

She nodded, her voice finally deserting her now that her courage was spent. There were a thousand other reasons for going to his bed that she might have confessed to him in that moment had pride not stilled her tongue. She could have told him she wanted to feel alive at least one more time before burying herself beneath the crushing censure of society. That she didn’t think she would survive spending the rest of her life alone without first spending one night in his arms.

“Then what choice do I have?” He leaned down, his lips grazing hers like the brush of angel wings.

Emma’s breath caught in her throat. How was it that she could feel more like a bride standing here in
this crumbling ruin of a church than she had ever felt in the Hepburn’s majestic abbey?

“Wait here,” he whispered, drawing away from her with palpable reluctance.

She waited in an agony of suspense until he returned with the blankets from her bedroll draped over one arm. This time when he took her hand, she went with him willingly. As he led her out of the moonlight and into the shadows, she laced her fingers tightly through his, not wanting him to know she was quaking all the way down to her toes.

He led her to the corner of a small chamber where two walls still stood, defying the ravages of time. They had set up camp in the trees bordering the bluff so Emma knew Jamie had deliberately chosen this spot to protect her from his men’s prying eyes.

But before he could spread out the blankets, she grabbed his arm. “Wait!”

He eyed her warily, plainly fearing she had changed her mind.

She inclined her head toward the crooked stone arch that had once housed a door, indicating that it was his turn to follow her. Judging by the look in his eye, he would have followed her to the very ends of the earth.

They climbed those worn stone steps to the old bell tower, emerging in a misty pool of moonlight. She took the blankets from Jamie and spread them
out in the center of the tower, leaving only the sky and the moon to witness what was about to happen.

When she was done she faced him, feeling impossibly shy. “So what’s it to be, Mr. Sinclair? Do you plan to seduce me or ravish me?”

His lazy grin made her heart double its rhythm. “Both.”

He drew her against him, surprising her anew with his size, his strength, his irresistible heat. For a long moment, he simply held her, letting her grow accustomed to the feel of his arms around her, the whisper of his breath in her hair. She rested her cheek against his chest, feeling each shuddering beat of his heart as if it were her own. After a moment, she grew bolder, slipping her hands around his waist and beneath his shirt, marveling at the smoothness of his skin, the supple flex of the muscles beneath her palms as he lifted one hand to stroke her hair.

“Oh, dear,” she mumbled, suddenly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what she was about to do with this man.

“What is it?”

She kept her face buried in his chest. “My mother’s instructions seem to have deserted me. I’m not entirely sure how we should proceed from here.”

“Why don’t you leave that to me?” he murmured, tipping her chin up with one finger and lowering his mouth to hers.

He gently feathered his lips over hers, his undeniable expertise leaving little doubt that he knew
exactly
how to proceed. He didn’t kiss like a man who considered it simply a means to an end—some sort of quaint ritual required by females to coax them into taking off their clothes. He kissed her slowly and with exquisite deliberation, as if he would be content to spend all night just making love to her mouth.

She had always scorned women who swooned at the slightest provocation, but the tender flick of his tongue over hers left her so breathless and dizzy that she felt her knees go weak and her ears begin to ring as if there were still bells in the tower. She might have succumbed to the temptation but she didn’t want to miss a moment in Jamie’s arms. So she simply closed her eyes and hung on, tasting his tongue with her own until she heard a groan rumble up from deep in his throat.

When her eyes finally fluttered open, she was surprised to find them both on their knees in the middle of the blankets. Perhaps Jamie’s legs had failed him as well.

“That went very well indeed,” she murmured, sighing against his lips. “What would you suggest we do next?”

He leaned back to survey her face, his expression disarmingly earnest. “I thought we’d both take off all our clothes.”

Apparently she had been wrong about the kiss. “But… but… then we’d both be… unclothed.”

He pondered her words for a moment. “Well, if you’d like, you could just take off
your
clothes. I could keep mine on… for now.”

Emma eyed him, growing increasingly suspicious. “My mother never said a word about disrobing. I think I would have remembered that.”

It was Jamie’s turn to sigh. “Just what did she tell you?”

“She said I was to lie back and close my eyes and the earl”—Emma could not quite suppress her shudder—“my
husband
would simply fold the hem of my nightdress up a few inches—after the lamps were extinguished, of course—and perform his husbandly duty.”

“While the idea has its charms, it simply won’t do.” The callused pads of Jamie’s fingertips played lightly over her sensitive nape. He lowered his voice to a husky growl, his breath moist and hot in her ear. “Because I’m going to go mad, lass, if I can’t see you naked.”

This time Emma’s shudder was one of desire. “Perhaps you could coax me into taking my gown off. If you put forth your best effort.”

His throaty chuckle warned her that was just the challenge for which he had been waiting. Lifting the weight of her hair with one hand, he ever so gently
laid his seeking lips against the wildly beating pulse at the side of her throat. Emma gasped. Judging by the scorching sweetness of his lips against her flesh, it must be his intention to
melt
the gown from her body.

Her head fell back of its own volition, giving his mouth full dominion over the graceful column of her throat. After a few breathless moments of that delicious torment, she was forced to dig her fingernails into his sleeve just to remain upright. “For a brutish Highlander, you’ve a rather persuasive touch, sir.”

“Those fancy English gents are the ones who start all those nasty rumors about us and our sheep. They just don’t want their lasses to know what they’re missing.”

As his tongue swirled around the delicate shell of her ear, making her toes curl with pleasure, she bit back a moan. “Maybe they don’t want their sheep to know what
they’re
missing.”

Jamie’s laugh was a deep-throated rumble that warmed her from the inside out. While his mouth was having its way with her ear, his hands were gently easing her gown down to bare one creamy shoulder. Emma was ever so grateful to Muira for gifting her with such a simple gown, not one adorned with slippery pearl buttons or rows of sharp, steely hooks. Or painful stays to contain flesh already aching for Jamie’s touch.

All it took was a deliberate tug and one of her breasts was freed from the confines of the bodice. Jamie gazed down at her in the moonlight, his expression so dark with hunger it made both her pulse and her stomach flutter. She could feel her nipples begin to swell and throb in anticipation of the pleasure she sensed was coming.

That pleasure arrived with a jolt of pure sensation when Jamie leaned down and touched the very tip of his tongue to her. As he laved that pebbled peak with maddening tenderness, then drew it into his mouth, suckling deep and hard, Emma could no longer bite back a moan of raw delight.

She moaned again when he dipped his hand into the other side of her bodice and claimed that breast for his own as well, molding it to his palm and gently squeezing.

How was it possible a man could be possessed of so many hands? One of them had taken advantage of her breathless distraction to work its way beneath her skirt. Even now it was sliding between her knees and up, up, up until it brushed the silky curls between her thighs.

As Jamie closed his hand over her as if she no longer belonged to herself, but to him, Emma shook her head, nearly mute with shock. “But my mother never—”

Jamie withdrew his other hand from her bodice to
lay it over her mouth, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Would it be possible for you not to mention your mother again, sweeting? During lovemaking most men find that something of a… distraction.”

As he removed his hand, Emma laughed. “You’d have found her instructions for discouraging a woman’s husband from seeking her company in the bedchamber even more… distracting.”

Jamie surprised her by leaning down and kissing the very tip of her nose before lowering his mouth to hers once again. His lips slanted over hers, encouraging her to open wider for him, to welcome him deeper as his tongue began to take her mouth in a rhythm that was both carnal and irresistible. Before long they were breathing as one, her every sigh becoming one with his own.

Only then did his seeking fingers breach those curls between her thighs, finding a silk that was even hotter and slicker beneath them. He trapped her helpless whimper between his lips, his deft fingertips coaxing the tender petals of her body open like some exotic flower ripe with the sweetest and thickest of nectars.

Emma had never known such pleasure was possible. She was torn between clenching her thighs tightly together to ease the growing ache between them and letting them fall apart so Jamie could do it. But his touch only deepened the ache and before long her breath was coming in fierce little pants.

Ignoring the fact that she was already grinding herself against his palm in a frenzy of need, he stroked and petted and fondled her slick, swollen flesh as if there was nothing else in the world he would rather do and he had all night to do it. Just when she thought his exquisite torture couldn’t possibly get any more diabolical, he began to brush the pad of his thumb over the hooded little nub at the crux of her curls in maddening circles. Even as he did so, his longest finger slid lower, dipping gently once, twice, a third time before delving deep inside of her.