Waking the Princess (21 page)

Christina nodded and felt sudden, surprising tears prick her eyes. Just the lye in the air, she told herself. But she, too, wished that Aedan MacBride could defeat the curse that doomed the brides of the lairds of Dundrennan. Suddenly, she desperately wanted him to be happy. And she did not even know why it meant so much to her.

"Oot wi' ye, noo, for I've work to do, and so have ye." Effie opened the door, and Christina thanked her for her help and stepped outside. Cool air blew over her damp cheeks and through the freshly curled hair along her brow.

She gathered her skirts and hurried back to the house, wondering if she would see Aedan that day.

Chapter 14

"Tableau vivante,"
Amy said in a tortuous French accent, "is a game like charades, but played as living statues. We usually mimic artworks, but tonight we will act out scenes from literary works."

Lady Balmossie peeked dubiously from her needlework. Seated on the sofa, Aedan smothered a smile, although he agreed with his aunt. When Amy had suggested parlor games after dinner, he wanted to flee to his study. Her parlor games were usually tedious, but the temptation of playing any sort of game involving Christina Blackburn overruled his initial impulse.

"We'll use the hallway for our stage and the doors as our curtains. When your tableau is ready, knock on the door and we'll open it." Amy waggled the slip of paper in her hand. "Now, we've all drawn partners and have been assigned literary works from the papers in my basket. A pity that Meg and Dougal are not with us this evening, for they are both very good at this game."

"Amy, dearie, they wanted to be with their bairns," Lady Balmossie said. "We canna expect them to come with us to Dundrennan nearly every day."

Amy shrugged. "The more the merrier, Auntie. Well, Cousin Aedan, I believe you and I have the first turn."

Aedan glanced at the slips of paper in his hand. One named a Shakespearean play and the other named his partner—Christina Blackburn. Pleased with his good fortune in the draw, he looked up. "According to this, I am partnering Mrs. Blackburn." He saw Amy's expression falter.

"But you and I were supposed to—oh, mine says John. Very well," Amy said, and she had the grace to smile at John Blackburn, who had returned from Edinburgh that afternoon. "Aedan and Christina will go first, then."

Aedan rose and bowed to Christina. She stood, blushing, and he tucked her hand in his elbow. "Give us five minutes," he told the others. "Or a bit longer. This may be complicated." He led her toward the double doors.

Lady Balmossie grumbled. "Rob Campbell, you and I are partners. We may as well forfeit now, for I willna be verra guid at playing taboo." Rob laughed.

"Remember the rules," Amy called to Aedan. "You must pay the forfeit if you take too long out there. You'll stand in the corner until someone gives you a kiss to set you free!"

"A silly rule and a silly game," Aedan murmured to Christina as he escorted her into the hallway. She chuckled. He slid the pocket doors shut behind them so that they were alone in the dim, lamplit corridor.

"Here is our assignment, Mrs. Blackburn," he said, showing her the paper. "Romeo discovers Juliet in her tomb. Not very merry, I'm afraid, but Amy made the choices. It is her game."

"I suspect she wanted to be your partner and hoped for a good faint in your arms."

"Ah, well. I believe you've done that yourself, madam. Was it worth the trouble?" He cocked a brow.

"Mm, perhaps." Her hazel eyes twinkled. "We'd better hurry, or we'll pay the forfeit."

"We'll win. I never lose, actually."

"No? You must have been insufferable as a lad."

"Quite possibly." He looked around the hallway. "Shall we use a bench or chair for Juliet's tomb?"

"According to Amy, we can use only our imaginations and ourselves. And I cannot lie on the floor in this gown." She indicated her crinolined skirt of gleaming lavender blue satin.

"Very well." He dropped to one knee, raising the other, his thigh straight and firm. "Sit on the floor and lean against me."

"Oh, I must not—"

"Mrs. Blackburn, what is not otherwise permissible is encouraged in parlor games. I suspect that is why they are so tediously common. Lean on me, madam."

She sat carefully, her skirt spreading around her in a billowing, airy cushion defined by the crinoline. A frothy hint of petticoats peeked at the hem. She leaned against him.

"I doubt Juliet reclined like a Roman empress taking dinner," she said.

"Relax, madam, you look quite enchanting that way." He slid his left arm beneath her shoulders. "Comfortable?"

"Quite." She tilted her head, closed her eyes.

"I doubt Juliet wore spectacles," he drawled.

She slipped them off, and he tucked them away in his coat pocket. "Are we ready now?" she asked.

"Not yet," he murmured, cupping his fingers around her bare shoulder. Her lavender satin gown had a deep fall of lace across a low-cut bodice that revealed her upper shoulders and chest, and a demure strand of pearls looped her throat. Touching her soft skin, Aedan gazed at the lace edging that rode the luscious swells of her breasts.

A lightning strike of desire tore through him, and he drew a breath against it. Leaning forward, he rested his other hand at her slender waist, snug in black velvet. He felt the gentle rise and fall of her breath.

Lowering toward her, his face mere inches from hers, he kept his movements slow, studied, vying inwardly for control over himself. He had promised to act with better chivalry—and he had tried to be impassive toward her.

But he could not. When he had kissed her before, he had felt far more than lust—something different from any feeling he had expected, or known. Hot and exquisite as lust, but deeper, expansive, as if he felt the heat and spark of his own soul.

Realizing that he could not stop that feeling, and aware that he was vulnerable to her, he felt an odd sense of alarm.

She wriggled in his arms, settling, tipping her head back. Her breath was fruity and gentle upon his cheek. He wanted to taste her mouth, her creamy skin, round his hands over her soft breasts. Holding her, even innocently like this, worked a strange, hot magic on him.

"Are you ready, Romeo?" she said lightly.

He could not answer. She was close enough to kiss, mouth luscious, breasts rising, falling provocatively under the lace. Leaning toward her, he closed his eyes, sighed.

She sagged in feigned death against him, trailing her outer arm to the floor, tilting her head. "Here lies your Juliet, awaiting your heartbroken soliloquy."

"Mm," he said, and could not think of a quote to utter—he whose memory for poetry never failed. He kept still, fearing he might lose his restraint. Playing this game with her had been a lapse in judgment, he thought. He should have begged off.

Christina shifted, and the sweet quiver of her breasts sent desire plunging through him. He frowned.

"Romeo, do try to look passionate," she complained.

"I would, if you behaved more like Juliet on her tomb and less like Thistle, twitching and chittering."

She scowled, and Aedan chuckled. Sometimes with her, he felt at ease enough to be playful, something he had all but lost in the last few years.

Obediently, she folded her hands, dropped her head back gracefully, waited in silence. Aedan noticed that she had adopted, unwittingly, the pose of the girl in the painting. But she was no longer just a fascinating model—she was now familiar to him, part of the fabric of his daily life, increasingly dear to him. And he knew now how sweet yet seductive she could be, how stubborn and calamitous, quick-witted and perceptive.

What rushed through him then had all the force of desire, yet was deeper, profound. He feared to name it.

Christina opened an eye. "Are you ready?"

"Aye," he murmured. "And how is it you are here in my arms again? The strangest of coincidences, madam."

"I will try not to fall near you again or by chance be your game partner. Will that do?"

"Hmm." It would not. He leaned over her.

She tilted her head, exposing a beautiful swanlike neck. In her satiny, seductive gown, trying not to smile, she was bewitching and innocent all at once.

"Passion, dear Romeo," she whispered.

Passion.
Suddenly he was filled with it, dark and strong and ripe with it. She roused him, haunted him as no woman ever had, ever could. But he could not fall in love with her.

"Miss Burn," he said, "you know not what you ask of me."

"Take the mood," she said.

"Oh, I have the mood. I cannot think of the words."

"Say this, then, Romeo—'O my love! my wife! Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, hath no power yet upon thy beauty.'" She quoted, leaning her head on his arm, closing her eyes.

He stared down at her, his heart slamming. He understood just how Romeo felt—and suddenly how the ancient Druid prince had felt when his princess had faltered, asleep in a briar.

Love battered the gates of his soul. He began to tremble.

Lifting a hand, he cupped her cheek. "'O my love... my wife.'" Whispering it near slayed him. This was no longer a game.

"Much better." She smiled. He melted.

"Aye," he said, and then he kissed her.

She caught her breath, then opened her mouth under his, and he knew her hunger matched his own. Resting her hand on his neck, she welcomed his tongue inside her mouth, where she was wet and delicate. Wrapping her close, moving his lips with hers, he felt himself fill to bursting, felt his heart awaken.

His left hand cupped the gentle warmth of her shoulder, and the other was spread fingered on her high black velvet waister. She shifted in his arms, turned, and his right hand slid upward over lavender satin to touch the swell of her breast. She moaned breathily, undulated so that his fingers easily slid beneath the upper edge of her corset and lacy chemise and found her nipple, soft, warm, stiffening under his touch.

Deepening the kiss, mounding his hand over her breast, he touched tongue to tongue, and finger met nipple, and he began to sink into a whirlpool from which he feared—he knew—there was no escape but one. And it would demand the price of his heart.

A little knock came on the other side of the drawing-room doors. Christina gasped, jerked, and Aedan straightened, settling lace and satin into their previous arrangement.

"Oh, dear God," she whispered raggedly. "What is this between us?"

He had no time to answer—and could think of none—for Amy called and threatened forfeit. He felt stupefied by Christina's extraordinary effect on him. He could not explain it. He certainly did not know what to do about it.

"Ready, you two?"

"Aye, one moment," Aedan answered. Swiftly Christina adopted her pose, eyes shut. He did, too, and stayed motionless.

The doors opened. While the others batted names about, laughing over whether the tableau represented Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Elaine, or some other tragic literary couple, Aedan held Christina in the shadowed hallway. Remaining completely still, he hardly listened to their banter, for he had come to a staggering conclusion.

Against his will, despite resistance, he knew that the laird of Dundrennan was falling dangerously, disastrously, in love.

* * *

Steady rain pattered against the library windows, filling the room with a peaceful susurration. At a large table, John and Amy looked at books of ancient costumes, Amy turning pages while John sketched in a notebook. Meg and Dougal shared a settee by the fireplace, their heads close in private conversation. Above the mantel hung the painting of
Mary, Queen of Scots
by John Blackburn the elder.

Christina sat alone in a bay beneath the gallery, a stack of books on the table beside her chair. Reading, she glanced at Dougal and Meg, sensing their respect, their love, for each other. Glad for them, for they treated the gift of love kindly, she felt a deep loneliness in that moment.

She had thought, once, that she had found love, but that romantic dream had turned to sorrow and guilt. Thinking of slow kisses with Aedan MacBride and more, she had craved it shamelessly.

She was only infatuated, she told herself. He had healthy masculine urges, and she had needs and passions equally too—and Aedan made it clear he did not want love. But he wanted to touch her, and she wanted that too, desperately, with him.