Scotsmen Prefer Blondes (Muses of Mayfair) Page 19

  “I know where it is, but I haven’t slept in it yet,” she said. It connected to Malcolm’s chamber, but she only used it for dressing — all of her nights since their wedding had been spent tangled in his sheets.

  He nodded, feigning oblivion at the undercurrents between them. “I have papers to see to tonight and wouldn’t want to disturb you when I finish.”

  She looked over his shoulder to the footmen who waited to clear the table. “If you could escort me before you return to your study, I would be most grateful.”

  He saw the line of her gaze and looked over his shoulder. He offered his arm to her, but as soon as they reached the foot of the stairs, he stepped away. “You don’t need me, Amelia. Go to bed.”

  She frowned. “What is the matter? You’ve never behaved like this before.”

  “Never?” He laughed. “You’ve known me less than a month. Perhaps this is who I truly am.”

  His voice was grim. His mouth was hard, as though she’d stolen every last kiss his lips could ever give her. His eyes weren’t the ones that had enchanted her in the library — they were the slate grey of rain on stones. Standing this close to him, he smelled of soot and peat and damp wool, ancient and elemental.

  She shivered. “Tonight was difficult and I am sorry for it. But perhaps a bath and a bit of rest is all you need.”

  Malcolm stared at her. “You think a bath will solve this?”

  “It might. There’s no harm in trying, is there? You can join me if you like.”

  He’d shown her the pleasures of bathing together earlier in the week. She would have sworn that he enjoyed it too — and they could both use the distraction. But he showed no sign of taking her invitation. “I must work. If you cannot sleep, I’m sure you have a correspondent to write to.”

  The comment slapped at her like a gauntlet, part taunt, part question. “My letters can wait for the morning.”

  “How gracious of you to put off your letters for me,” he said.

  “Is that what is bothering you? My writing?”

  He didn’t respond. Instead, his eyes met hers. His gaze was a battering ram attempting to break through her calm façade.

  Amelia refused to blink. She might not be Amelia Staunton anymore, but even as Lady Carnach, she hadn’t changed so much that she would give anything away. She held his gaze steadily, unflinching even as his eyes narrowed.

  He pulled back abruptly, raking a hand through his hair. “You are a cold one, aren’t you?”

  He had finally found the words to make her flinch. “What are you going on about, Malcolm? Is this about my writing? The fire? Something else?”

  “Nothing, darling.” The endearment sounded like a curse. “Go to your bed. I’ve much to consider after tonight’s fire.”

  She thought about reaching out to him. Her hand was already lifting, drawn to him.

  But she dropped her hand. She couldn’t face the questions in his eyes, not when she didn’t know what the consequences would be — or whether she could confess her sins without losing him. Prudence’s letter was still tucked in her reticule, and while she didn’t know what Prudence had apologized for, the note felt like a dangerous scrap of treason that Amelia might hang for in the end.

  She feigned a yawn. “Very well, Malcolm. I’m sure I appreciate a night without you.”

  He scowled. Amelia wanted him to argue. She wanted him to demand that she take back the words. It was crazy, that desire for a fight, but her whole body throbbed as anger rushed through her.

  He didn’t give her satisfaction. He walked away instead. If this was a battlefield, she had routed the enemy — but her victory was decidedly hollow.

  * * *

  Hours later, Amelia scowled as she punched her unfamiliar pillow. She tried fluffing it again, flipping it to the cool side, but it wouldn’t stay cool for long. The mattress was new, and she should have slept dreamlessly without the weight of a solid male tipping her toward him.

  Could she really not sleep without him?

  Amelia rolled out of bed. She told herself that the excitement of the storm and the fire kept her awake, not the yawning emptiness beside her. She threw open the drapes of one of the windows, grabbed her writing desk, and settled into the window seat. If she couldn’t sleep, she could pour herself onto the page instead.

  But she couldn’t write, not when her muse wanted to consider Prudence’s request for forgiveness instead of her current story. Amelia tried all her tricks — adjusting the light by adding candles all around the room, sharpening her pen until it could draw blood, scrawling on the edge of the page and waiting for the lines to become letters. But her usual geometric patterns all turned into castles instead of squares and diamonds. And her heroine, Veronique, may have wanted to be rescued — but as Amelia looked out the window, she suspected she would never want to leave the Highlands again.

  “Blast it all,” she swore under her breath.

  She set her desk in front of her, leaned back against the paneled embrasure, and hugged her knees to her chest. She hadn’t wanted to marry, but she would be lying if she tried to convince herself that her former life — her boring, predictable life, brightened only by a passion she couldn’t divulge — was better than this. Malcolm was nothing she’d expected from marriage.

  Something within her whispered that she could like spending her life with him very much indeed.

  But she wanted the life of the last two weeks, not the role he would expect his countess to play in London. Perhaps she could convince him to stay in Scotland. Then she could write every day and sleep in his arms every night, which just might be perfect. And if they stayed in Scotland forever, it wouldn’t matter what Kessel discovered or what Prudence had done.

  Amelia was dreaming of that conversation when Malcolm flung open the door connecting their rooms. She’d made her chamber as bright as day with her candles, and the light reflected the hunger in his eyes. He was already stripped to the waist. If his eyes hadn’t proclaimed why he was there, the bulge in his breeches did.

  She grinned at him. “I thought you wished to sleep alone.”

  He shut the door behind him. “I overestimated my ability to stay away.”

  “Why did you want to stay away?” she asked, capping her ink and stowing it in its box.

  He leaned against the doorjamb, his hands behind him like a child denying himself a treat — or a prisoner awaiting the gallows. “I told you I had to work.”

  “So you said.” She set her desk aside, slipping her papers into their case. But she didn’t go to him. “Does your presence mean your work is finished?”

  “My work is never finished. And it seems your correspondence isn’t either.”

  He jerked his head at her desk. His hair was wet, like he’d dunked it in a washbasin, and his jaw glistened as he ground his teeth.

  She didn’t want to lie to him. But he hadn’t questioned her directly — just as he hadn’t answered her question about his work, and why he had intended to avoid her bed.

  And perhaps she was a coward, but she didn’t want to tell him tonight. So she chose distraction over dishonesty. She yawned, stretching her arms above her head, feeling her nightrail tighten across her breasts. “Tell me what you want from me, my lord.”

  He closed the distance between them and crushed her against his chest. She laughed as he cupped her derriere. She felt the length of him against her belly. Perhaps he wasn’t saying everything. Perhaps she couldn’t tell him what she wrote. But there was no denying he wanted her.

  She rubbed against him. “Surely you want to sleep, my lord? After such a long day...”

  He nearly growled as he kissed her, nipping at the smile that curved her lips. She wrapped an arm around his back, twined her other arm around his neck, felt his wet hair glide through her ink-stained fingers. She hadn’t been able to pour herself onto the page that night, but perhaps giving herself to this kiss would be enough.

  Their kiss was slow, deep — devotion rather than demand. She
let him sink into her, met his tongue with her own, burned under his clever hands. She felt like an altar and an offering all at once, unable to tell who was the worshipper and who was the sacrifice.

  That question would have mattered to her once. She didn’t worship any man, and she would never be a sacrifice. But by the time he pulled away and started blowing out the candles, she wanted him badly enough to play any role he asked of her.

  He unbuttoned his breeches as he extinguished the light. His fingers were as steady and sure as his steps around the room, still utterly in control despite his obvious need. She turned to close the drapes, eager even though everything fluttered wildly at the intensity of his purpose.

  “Leave them open,” he ordered.

  She stepped back, still looking out the window at the valley below, suddenly uncertain. Behind her, his breath hissed. The last light was snuffed out. The smoke from a dozen dying candles threaded through the room.

  She would have turned, but his hands on her shoulders stopped her. He kissed the base of her neck, just under the heavy mass of braids pinned to her scalp. The gesture drew a moan from her lips.

  “Amelia,” he breathed into her hair.

  His voice was rough, as rough as the hand he dropped to her breast — as rough as the slamming of her heart against her ribcage as his fingers bit into her sensitive flesh. She twisted her head back and tilted it as he kissed her again. The angle was awkward, and she would have turned if he’d let her...

  But he didn’t let her. There was an edge to him she hadn’t felt before. As he slid down to kiss her throat, she felt that edge pressed against her vein. She shuddered as his caresses turned more demanding, as every flick of his thumb against her nipple turned into a taunting symphony of sensation. His other hand moved lower, tracing the flare of her hip, then slowly bunching up the fabric of her nightrail in his fist.

  She was still conscious enough to notice the glass in front of them and the vast swathes of countryside beyond. She started to push away his hand, but his fist kept her skirt — and her — pinned.

  “The window,” she whispered, still enthralled enough that her modesty couldn’t entirely overrule her desire.

  “No one will see. Not without light behind us.”

  Then his hand slipped under her skirt and settled between her legs. She was already wet for him. She bit back another moan as he slowly stroked her.

  “Still want me to stop?” he asked a few minutes later, when she was trembling on the precipice he’d driven her to.

  “Never.”

  He kissed her earlobe, then tugged it with his teeth. His hand stayed buried in her wetness, enough to keep her on edge without letting her come. His other hand dropped away from her bosom, and she arched back toward him in protest.

  “Greedy wench,” he whispered.

  “Only with you.”

  His fingers stopped, just for a moment. The world stopped too. In the dark, with the stars as their audience, she felt like she might be left hanging there forever, a swirling constellation of need.

  Then he stroked her again. He freed himself from his breeches to press insistently at her back. He pulled her against him, then leaned over her, forcing her to lean too, until she was bent toward the windowseat.

  “Brace yourself with your hands,” he ordered.

  The edge was back in his voice, and it had cut through his control. If she was a proper lady, she would run from such a beastly act. But she wasn’t proper — and the emptiness between her legs wouldn’t let her go until he’d filled it.

  She put one shaking hand, then the other, on the windowseat. The cool brocade was textured enough to hold her steady. He nudged her legs apart, tapping at each calf with his foot until she’d taken the stance he demanded.

  He was still wearing his boots. She almost came at the thought, at the touch of polished leather against her skin when she was nearly naked before him. He planted himself behind her and lifted her nightrail until cool air caressed her backside. He replaced the air a moment later, and his manhood grazed against her cleft as he moved to enter her.

  “Amelia,” he whispered again.

  He plunged into her as he said her name. She screamed as he filled her, deeper than he’d ever gone before, deeper than she’d realized was possible. She tried to pull away, but his fingers dug into her hips and held her beneath him. He’d often let her set the pace over the previous two weeks, but not tonight. Tonight he made the rules. He pulled back, then slammed into her again, and again, and again. She shuddered, her legs trembling, her arms wanting to give out, to bend lower, until she was a mindless beast beneath him.

  Her orgasm, when it finally crashed over her, was strong enough to break her. She sobbed his name as she came. He wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her up as he drove into her again. Then he went rigid against her, and his grip was unbreakable as he shot his seed into her womb.

  She floated for a few minutes, trapped between him and the sky. But she fell back to earth when he pulled out. He swatted her nightrail back into place. She felt like a meal half finished and left abandoned, with tears on her face and his seed on her thighs.

  When she turned to him, he was buttoning his breeches. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” she asked.

  She hated the quaver in her voice. But if it should have earned his sympathy, it failed. “I must be up early in the morning. You’ll sleep better undisturbed.”

  She was already disturbed. But even though she’d let Malcolm take her like an animal — even though she’d let him take her at all, after he’d dismissed her like a servant for the night — she still had a few scraps of pride. She gathered them around her like armor, until she could look at him like the Virgin Queen dismissing a courtier.

  “Do go on then, my lord. I hope you’ll pick an earlier hour next time you choose to use me.”

  She could have sworn he almost grinned at that — but why? And why did he bite down on his smile? Why did he nod curtly, like he was accepting a business proposal?

  Why did he leave her standing in the middle of her room, messy and aching for him?

  She crawled into her bed, knowing she wouldn’t sleep but unable to sit on the windowseat again after what he’d done to her there. She lay stiff and unyielding, staring up at the ceiling, hoping the darkness would smother the question she didn’t want to hear, let alone answer...

  Why was she falling in love with him?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Malcolm awoke at dawn and was at the village an hour later. The cottage ruins still smoldered under the brilliant early sunlight. The neighbors took turns watching for errant sparks, but the danger to the village had passed.

  The danger to him, though, was likely still asleep in the castle. And unlike a fire, she couldn’t be quenched, not even with the roughness he’d displayed the night before. Did she dream of him, like he had dreamed of her?

  Did she curse him for taking her like an animal?

  The residents were stirring when he arrived. He progressed slowly, asking after sick relatives, livestock, crops — everything that might need his attention. He hadn’t spent more than an hour in the village since his wedding. Not that his clan seemed to mind. If anything, they encouraged it.

  “Better for ye to be clucking over her than us, is what I say,” the baker proclaimed when Malcolm asked about his new oven.

  “It’s been a regular honeymoon for all of us,” the blacksmith said as he dunked a red-hot horseshoe into a barrel of water.

  “Shouldn’t you be at the castle to wake up your bonny bride?” the pub owner asked, with a leer that Malcolm might have punched him for if the man wasn’t so good-natured about it.

  And Sean MacRae wouldn’t hear any of Malcolm’s offers of assistance. He and his wife agreed — they would go to Nova Scotia as soon as they could arrange passage.

  Malcolm scowled as he accompanied Alastair back to the vicarage after he finished his rounds. “Our clan won’t win any awards for gratitude.”

&n
bsp; “And you won’t win any for humility,” Alastair said, pushing open the gate to his yard.

  “Your point?”

  Alastair shrugged. “It may be my religious persuasion, but unlike you, I don’t think you are the only one who can help them.”

  “I don’t believe I’m the only one.”

  Alastair laughed.

  “I don’t,” Malcolm repeated. “But it’s my duty to do what I can for them.”

  “True,” his brother said. He paused outside his house, turning to look down the lane toward the rest of the village. “Father would be proud, you know. Whether you keep everyone in the Highlands or not.”

  Malcolm ignored the compliment. “How can Sean want to go to Canada? It’s a hard place, full of savages, without roads or schools. Who would want to live there?”

  “Likely how we’re thought of in London,” Alastair pointed out. “Join me for breakfast?”

  “No. Speaking of London, I shall leave for the capital within the week. There’s too much to do before then to waste time talking about Canada over a plate of kippers.”

  Alastair sat on his steps, plucking a weed from a crack in the stone. “Is your countess eager to return to her circles?”

  Malcolm tapped his riding crop against his boot, suddenly unable to look at his brother’s face. “We haven’t discussed it.”

  “You haven’t discussed it.” Alastair shaded his eyes against the sun and looked up at Malcolm. “Are you leaving her here?”

  He should leave her here. She was a distraction — a glorious distraction, but still a distraction. Last night had proven it. In his study, sifting sightlessly through his ledgers, he couldn’t last more than a minute without thinking of her. Trying to focus only increased his desire, to the point that he could think of nothing but having her.

  She was a disease in his blood.

  He suspected there would be no cure.

  But the idea of leaving her behind was worse than the distraction of having her at his side. “She’ll go with me. She’s lived in London off and on for decades. I’m sure she’ll be glad to return there.”