Fascination -and- Charmed

Stella Cameron

This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

Fascination
Copyright © 1993 by Stella Cameron

Charmed
Copyright © 1995 by Stella Cameron

Excerpt from
His Magic
Touch
copyright © 1993 by Stella Cameron

Excerpt from
Only by Your Touch
copyright © 1992 by Stella Cameron

All rights reserved.

For Denis Farina, a Dangerous Man.

And for Adventurous Women everywhere.

March 1822. Castle Kirkcaldy, Scotland

“Teeth? Teeth!” Arran Francis William Rossmara, Marquess of Stonehaven, flung wide his arms and collapsed onto a sofa. “Teeth, Calum? I ask you to describe this female and you tell me she has good teeth! In God’s name, man, we are not discussing a brood mare.”

“Are we not?” Calum Innes’s dark eyes shone with innocent surprise.

Arran leveled a finger. “You, my friend, are trifling with a desperate man, a man who may shortly take your miserable throat in his hands and squeeze out your miserable
life.
”

“Hm.” A broad smile revealed the true, irreverent, and wholly roguish nature of Calum Innes. “As you say, we are definitely
not
discussing a brood mare.”

“Well?”

Calum inclined his head, and firelight sought the red in his brown hair. He was a tall man, almost as tall as Arran himself, his lean elegance and economy of movement guaranteed to turn the heads of many men—and every female with an eye for a handsome man.

He arched a brow. “Grace Wren? That’s who you’re asking me about?”

“Yes, Grace Wren.” With a single irritated tug, Arran wrenched off his black neckcloth. “That is the name of this woman I’m supposed to welcome into my home, is it not?”

“It’s the name of the woman you sent me to London to find.”

“I did not
know
the woman’s name when I sent you to London. I did not know the woman. Confound it, I
still
know nothing of her.”

“Her name is Grace Wren.”

“Calum,” Arran said warningly.

“And she has good teeth. At least, from what I could see—”

“
Calum!
”
Arran roared. “Enough. I am considered a quiet man. A patient man. But, as you well know, this matter holds no humor for me.”

“Nor for me,” Calum said with a deep sincerity his twitching mouth belied. “Securing a wife for the Savage of Stonehaven is an exceedingly serious matter, one that carries weighty responsibility.”

Arran had known Calum since they were both small boys when, through circumstances neither of them ever mentioned, Calum had come under the protection of Arran’s parents. They had grown up together, attended Eton and Oxford together, and bedded their first woman together—a lusty and willing farmer’s daughter who had been bright-eyed and still eager for more energetic games when her two young partners wanted only exhausted sleep. Together they had grown to manhood and had already watched the passing of their thirty-third years, yet Calum Innes’s merciless baiting could still drive his oldest friend, companion, and trusting employer to near madness.

At this moment Calum was regarding Arran’s thunderous face with feigned surprise. “Could it be, my lord, that I have caused you some annoyance?”

“The Wren female is coming—
if
she comes—strictly on approval,” Arran said coldly. “If she suits, there will be a marriage.”

“Almost her exact words.”

Arran draped his arms along the back of the sofa. “Surely I have misheard you.

Calum cleared his throat and went to examine sheets of hand-drawn music strewn atop one of three pianos in the vast, heavily paneled gallery that was Arran’s music room. Calum rested the tip of a long forefinger on a page and began to hum.

“No, no,
no!
”
Arran shot to his feet and strode to jerk the music away. “Not like that. You murder every note you attempt, so do not attempt them at all.”

“You wound me. Is this a masterpiece intended as an offering at noble George The Fourth’s visit to our honored land?”

Arran had to smile. “You are particularly bloody tonight, Calum. We both know that neither Sir Walter Scott’s Fat Friend nor any other shall ever know who penned this piece. Not that it is likely to be heard outside these walls.”

“No doubt it is terrible,” Calum said with an enormous sigh. “A monstrosity, as are so many other works being played around the world for people who applaud yet do not know that yours is the name that deserves the praise.”

“Enough of this.” He could not face another discussion about the way he chose to live his life. “What did you mean when you said my words were almost the same as Miss Wren’s?”

“Merely that Miss Wren absolutely agrees with the terms you laid forth.” The mythic garden scene in an Oudry Tapestry Calum must already know thread by thread suddenly became freshly interesting.

Arran eyed him suspiciously. “Good.”

“She is rather a small thing.”

“How small?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Calum frowned and held out a hand. He made airy estimates at varying heights from the glistening, dark wooden floor. “Perhaps this small.”

Arran found his palms were unaccountably damp, and folded his arms tightly. “If that is correct, then you have arranged to bring me a child.”

Calum raised his hand several inches and leveled it against his body. “There,” he said, smiling afresh. “The top of her head definitely approached my shoulder. Yes, that is her height.”

“Good God.” He hated this, all of it. “One of those wretched, simpering, weeping, frail creatures who need a firm anchor in the mildest of breezes.”

“I really don’t think Miss—”

“I told you she must be healthy and strong, and you know why.”

“She assures me she is very healthy and strong. Lack of height does not always denote frailty.”

“What of her body?”

Calum pulled his watch from a waistcoat pocket and consulted its face. “Hector left a message for me. He wants to see me as soon as possible.”

Hector MacFie was Arran’s faithful estate commissioner, a tireless man who tended to be overzealous. “Hector can wait. Do not change the subject. Her body, Calum, and do not continue to toy with me.”

“Diminutive.”

Arran curled his lip. “Scrawny, you mean?”

“Slight might be a better description.”

“A pox on you, Calum. You’ve retained a fragile waif.”

“Be calm, my friend. I hardly think
retained is
the appropriate term. And the lady is delicate, nothing more.”

“Puny!”

Calum caught Arran’s shoulders in strong hands. “Miss Wren is a small woman of extremely compact and appealing proportions. I would never have approached her with our proposal had she not met all the requirements you stressed.”

“Do
not
use the word
proposal.
”

“That is what it is.”

“It is no such thing. We are merely offering a trial period to see if she will suit.”

Calum’s hard fingers dug deeper. “She will suit, Arran. She must. You need heirs, man, and you need them now.”

Arran closed his eyes. “There is time.”

“Not if you want to be certain there is at least one thriving offspring in your nurseries to ensure that Sir Mortimer Cuthbert and his son never get their hands on the Rossmara estates.”

“Do not speak my cousin’s name in my hearing. Not tonight.”

“Two years, Arran. All you have is two years, and if you still have no heirs, Mortimer—your cousin will have the right to be consulted on the—”

“On the administration of
my
estates in consideration of their eventual passage into the hands of his oldest son,
and
he will immediately draw a portion of all revenues,” Arran finished, the ice-cold spear of disgust driving at his gut. “You need not remind me. How my father could have allowed such an outrage, I cannot collect.”

“He gave you thirty-five years to ensure the continuation of your line. The old marquess knew what he was about. He knew you might need incentive to tie the ball and chain of matrimony around your ankle.”

“I tied it once,” Arran said through gritted teeth, and instantly regretted the remark. “If Father hadn’t died on my wedding day, he’d have written the new will he promised to write.” Their eyes met, and the other, the episode he could never forget, was present and horribly alive again. There had been a woman, and a child …

“Forget Isabel,” Calum said gently.

Never.
“Struan could have saved me this,” Arran said, referring to his younger brother. “He’s the stuff of good husbands and fathers. The will provided for him to produce an heir in my stead—and gave him until my fortieth year to do it.”

Calum clapped Arran’s shoulders. “Do not torture yourself with these reminders. Let it all go. Struan will never be a husband or a father, and you are taking the steps that must be taken.”

Arran turned away and went to draw back heavy red draperies from the casement. Only the blackness of a wild early March night greeted him.

“Her hair is pale,” Calum said from behind him.

“Perhaps she is so small and so pale that I shall not notice her at all. Perhaps I shall be able to accomplish what must be accomplished and scarcely notice the event.”

The sound Calum made was probably a cough, but it sounded more like a choked laugh. “Come, Arran, do not tell me you’ve lost interest in that for which you once held a formidable reputation. Surely my tireless lord of the bedchamber—and anywhere else where he could find his way beneath a fetching piece’s skirts—surely he has not become indifferent to planting himself between soft, white, and welcoming thighs.”

Despite himself, Arran felt the stirring of arousal. “How do you know that Miss Wren’s thighs are soft, white, and welcoming?” he asked in low tones.

“I have a talented imagination,” Calum responded, equally low. “The lady
is
a fetching piece. She has a tiny waist and hips rounded just so.” He drew the appropriate outline in the air. “Her neck is slender, and her breasts … small, certainly, but firm and high, and … Ah, yes, Miss Wren has breasts that should not be wasted either on spinsterhood or on a man who does not appreciate the very best.”

Stirring became insistent pressure inside Arran’s breeches. “You observed the lady who may become my wife very closely.”

Calum bowed, all hint of amusement lost to his finely drawn features. “I tried to see her with your eyes. Who better to do so than your best friend and adviser? You charged me to find a woman who would satisfy your requirements, and your instructions were exacting. I could hardly select a suitable candidate without looking at her. When she is your wife, you may depend that my regard will be of a very different nature.”

Calum’s reputation as a rogue and a rakehell was legendary in the best of circles. “It will be different from
this
moment forth,” Arran said. “And, yet again, she may never
be
my wife.”

“As you say.” Calum spread the tails of his dark blue coat and dropped into a leather wing chair close to a white marble chimneypiece that shimmered like an ice sculpture. “Her hair is pale, a silvery blond. She has dark brows and dark brown eyes—delightful in a startling manner. And I am assured that she will meet all your requirements.”

The hour grew late and Arran was anxious to return to the work he intended to accomplish before dawn. “She is mature, then?”

“Indeed. Four and twenty and nothing of a foolish paperskull.”

“Modest?”

“Exceedingly modest.”

“Of a docile nature?”

Calum leaned to toss a coal from the hearth back into the fire. “I found her most agreeable.”

“She would disdain excitement?”

Another coal required attention. “Miss Wren gave not a single report of any exciting event in her life.”