Enraptured (30 page)

“A new village—that sounds marvelous. And I shall set up a village school there.”

Coll laughed. “Now all we need to do is find the treasure.”

“Yes, that is a slight problem.” Violet sighed and looked around. “I haven't seen any mark like the one on your knife. Or any carving at all, really.”

“Nae.”

“Do you think we've taken the wrong track? That the engraving on the sgian-dubh had nothing to do with the treasure? Or we're looking in the wrong place?”

“I don't know. I don't even know that there
is
a treasure. But not finding the sign here does not mean that it isn't the key. It could be any number of other places—the graveyard in Kinclannoch or maybe we missed it at the Munro graves. We dinna know about the sign when we looked before. It could be around Meg's cottage.”

“Perhaps even somewhere among the standing stones.”

“Aye, or at Baillannan itself.” He took her hand. “Come now, lass, dinna be discouraged. We still have the subcellars to explore. That's where the secret room and the tunnel to the new house were.”

He led her back toward the entrance and down a narrow stone staircase. The long room below was so low-ceilinged that Coll had to stoop to walk through it. New wooden beams braced the walls. Carvings were along one wall, a strip of small rosettes repeated endlessly. It was hushed and still, the sound of their footsteps muffled by the dirt floor.

“This is the secret room.” He stopped before the wall at the end of the passage.

“Where?”

Coll reached into his pocket and pulled out a watch key. Holding the lantern up, he searched the strip of stone rosettes that decorated the wall close to the ceiling. To Violet's surprise, he stuck the key into the center of one of the rosettes and turned it firmly. The wall separated along a thin line, and Coll swung the concealed stone door outward.

Violet pulled in a sharp breath of excitement. “That's all it takes?”

“Aye. But you have to know about the key and which rosette to use. Those blasted flowers are all over the place at Baillannan; you could look till your eyes bleed and still miss the right one.” He ducked through the low doorway.

The small chamber inside was furnished, a table and chairs, bed, and cabinet seemingly waiting for its occupants. Candlesticks stood in the center of the small table.

“The tunnel to Baillannan is beyond the far wall; there's another rosette to use. But it has collapsed halfway there.”

“Surely someone did not live down here.” Violet's voice was hushed. An eerie quality to the small room seemed to call for low voices.

“We think it was the room where Malcolm used to meet Faye in secret.”

“Their trysting place.” Violet shivered. “It seems a little foreboding.”

“Maybe it was not back then, before murder was done here. We think Malcolm hid here when he returned after Culloden. Certainly he was killed here.” Coll pointed to the floor beside the table. “Jack and Isobel found the skeleton there, a dagger thrust in his back.”

Violet gazed down at the floor. “That's a terrible price to pay for loving someone.”

“Mm. I think it was more for his betrayal than his love.”

“You're a hard man, Coll.”

“He pledged himself to his wife, had children by her. And he broke that faith.”

“You think he deserved to die for that?” She studied him.

“Nae. Not to die. But I understand why Lady Cordelia hated him for it. I canna think of him as a tragic hero. He was off seeking glory, raising rebellion and bringing back treasure, but it was the rest of them, his women, his children, who were left to deal with the British soldiers and the punishment, the hunger and loss of land, the sorrow. A better man would have stayed to shoulder the burden.”

“You would have stayed.” Violet took his hand in both of hers and went up on tiptoe to brush a kiss across his lips.

“Aye, well, I'm not romantic.”

“Are you not? You seemed romantic enough last night.” She slanted a teasing glance up at him.

“Is that what you call it?” He cocked an eyebrow, his hands sliding around her waist and tugging her up flush against his body. “I'd have said I was desperate.”

Violet stretched sensuously, arching up against him. “Desperate?”

“Aye.” He bent to nuzzle her neck. “Hungry. Wild. Mad to have you. You always drive me to the brink. I can scarcely sit still of an evening, biding my time till I can come to your room, thinking about how it will be.” His mouth moved over her neck and face, punctuating his words with soft, breathy kisses. “Thinking how you'll quiver beneath my hand and make those little moans, the way your eyes will close and that secret smile of yours when I enter you. Your face when you come all undone beneath me.”

“Coll . . .” She twined her fingers through his hair. “You'll have me all undone right here.”

He let out a noise that might have been smugness or frustration or both, and his arms tightened around her, grinding her into his hard body. He kissed her as if he would never have another chance, his mouth searing, demanding. Violet welcomed the heat and the hunger, giving it back in full measure. The shattering of Coll's control never failed to stir her, the passion that overrode his strength challenging and matching her own. Something wild was in him, barely leashed, and she ached to meet it, to tame him . . . and surrender herself.

“No.” He pulled back, setting her away from him. “I will not take you like this. Not here. Not in haste and secrecy. And by God not in the cellars where Malcolm Rose was slain.” Coll drew a long, shuddering breath. “I promised myself this day with you. No one to pry or see, no need to pretend we are nothing to each other. I told Mrs. Ferguson we would be here all day and not to hold supper for us. I am going to have you in my bed. In my home.”

Violet looked up at him from beneath her lashes, her mouth sultry and reddened from his kisses. “Then take me there.”

V
iolet scrambled up the ladder
from the cellars, with Coll right behind her, his hand in a strategic place boosting her up over the edge.

“Coll!” She whipped around as she stepped out onto the ground, unsure whether she wanted more to scold him or to throw herself into his arms and pull him down on the ground with her.

“Yes, my dear?” He climbed out, the sack containing the food the cook had given them flung over his shoulder. Desire was stamped clear on his face, but a teasing twinkle accompanied the heat.

“I thought you wanted to go home to, um, ‘properly' do this.”

“I do.” He grinned, hooking his arm around her waist and pulling her tight against him. He bent down to nip lightly at her earlobe. “But that does not mean I canna savor a few ‘improper' liberties along the way.”

“So you think you can have it both ways?” She cocked an eyebrow.

He chuckled and leaned in to whisper, “I'd like to have it every way I can with you.”

Heat flooded her at his words, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her lips against the tender hollow of his throat.

Her name was a low rumble in his chest, and he dug his fingers into her buttocks, pressing her even more tightly against him. “Would you have us do it here? With Old Angus watching?”

“What!” Violet sprang back from him and whirled around, scanning the area. Behind her Coll laughed, and she gave him a black look.

“Well, he could be.” Coll cast a glance all around. “Look at all the trees out there he could be hiding behind.”

“Now I feel as if someone
is
watching us.” Violet scowled at him. She could not help but remember the day when she had walked home from Meg's cottage and had along the way felt so strongly that someone had been hiding, watching. It gave her a little shiver to think about it.

“We could give him something to see.” Coll's hand slipped beneath her cloak to glide over her body. “But I think that I would rather have you all to myself.”

But they saw no one on their way to the dock, not even Old Angus. To Violet's surprise, Coll rowed the boat straight across the loch and tied up near Meg's cottage, taking the longer path around to the gatehouse. Avoiding Duncally sprang, she knew, from his desire to be apart and alone and freely together, and she wanted it as much as he.

Inside his house, Coll turned the lock, his face filled with both satisfaction and anticipation as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. But now that they were here, he seemed in no hurry. He stripped off his jacket and stoked the fire, letting its warmth seep into their bones. Bracing his hands on the mantel, he gazed down at her for a long moment, then bent to kiss her. He touched her nowhere but her mouth, and somehow the separation of inches between them was as arousing as if his hands had played over her body.

He stepped back and dropped into the chair before the fire, stretching his long legs out in front of him. His voice came out in a rasp: “Undress for me.”

Violet's eyes widened with surprise. “What?”

“I want to watch you.”

His words coiled in her like a flame. Locking her gaze on his, she reached up and began to unfasten the small, round buttons. Her fingers moved with slow deliberation, and gradually the bodice sagged open, revealing a slice of white cotton chemise beneath. Violet slipped her arms from the dress and let it slide inch by inch down her body to pool at her feet on the floor.

Color flared along his cheekbones, and his chest rose and fell more rapidly. Violet untied her chemise and hooked her forefingers into the neckline, sliding them back and forth along her skin. The garment drooped lower and lower. She left it hanging, looped on her arms and barely covering the pink circles of her nipples, and reached down to undo the ties of her petticoats. The garments whispered down her legs, leaving her clad in only the flimsy covering of her pantalets and the chemise that barely clung to her breasts.

With a shrug, the chemise was gone, the full, round
globes of her breasts freed. Coll sucked in his breath sharply, and her lips curved up at the sound. Violet's smile teased and promised, beckoned and tempted, as she lifted her hands to pull the pins from her hair. He swallowed, his eyes fixed on her hair as bit by bit the strands slipped from her fingers. Soft as silk, her thick, dark hair spilled over her breasts, parting over the thrusting points of her nipples.

Coll's fingers dug into the arms of his chair, his heavy lids drooping over the fire in his eyes. She stepped out of her shoes and braced her foot on the seat of the chair beside him, sliding her garter and stocking down her leg. Violet lowered the other stocking, and then, finally, untied the ribbon of her pantalets and let the last of her undergarments fall. Coll reached for her, but she evaded him nimbly.

“Oh, no. I'm not yet done.”

Violet sank to her knees before him. Coll's breath hitched in his throat as she untied his heavy boots and pulled them off, her breasts swaying with every movement. Stretching up, she went to work on the buttons of his shirt, starting at his waist. He jerked at the touch of her hands, then stilled, his body taut as wire stretched to the snapping point.

Violet thrilled to the fire in his eyes, the fierce control that lay in his bunched muscles, the barely leashed hunger. She slid her hands down the open sides of his shirt, grazing his skin as she pulled his shirt free from the waistband and reached for the buttons of his breeches. The muscles of his stomach jumped, his skin washed with heat.

Suddenly he was on her, bearing her back onto the rug in front of the fire, his mouth ravaging hers, his body covering her. Coll plunged his fingers deep into her hair, and he slid down her, his mouth roaming over her neck and breasts.
Shucking off his breeches, he parted her legs and thrust into her, hard and fast and deep. His breath was ragged in her ear, heat pouring from him in waves.

Violet curled around him, moving in instinctive rhythm with him, her hunger and fire at one with his. No thought was in her, no caution or reason, only a primitive, deep desire to join with him, to take this man inside her and lose herself in him. She clung to him, and together they rode the storm into a shattering ecstasy.