Highland Temptation (7 page)

She sighed. “If you insist.”

He hesitated. Closed his eyes and opened them, looking at her with a deep tenderness. Then, softly, “Aye. I'll stay.”

The next day brought with it a cold spring rain. Colin and Emilia laid an oiled cloth over their luggage and huddled under the phaeton's hood. They traveled a good distance during the first half of the day, their soaking-wet and miserable-looking horses plodding along the muddied and increasingly pitted roads.

Colin and Emilia kept warm and dry, despite an errant wind that would sometimes send a spray of rain into their faces. Though it was impossible for her to draw, as they were bundled together under Colin's warm woolen plaids, she'd wondered more than once if there could ever be a more pleasant journey. Being out in the crisp air was so much better than being inside a stuffy enclosed carriage; she contemplated why more people of her class didn't travel this way.

A sea of green surrounded them at every turn, everything growing abundantly in this season. Pastures, forests, gardens. Wildflowers just budding with promise of a riot of color to come. She couldn't wait for the weather to clear so she could draw it all.

At noon, Emilia took out a package of bread, cheese, and dried meat she'd brought from the inn, and she and Colin shared bites of it as they continued on the road. The innkeeper's wife had given her a skin of water, which they passed back and forth.

Intimacy again. In an entirely new way, but a way Emilia enjoyed. She was not sitting stick straight knowing eyes were on her to see if she retrieved the proper fork and didn't make a faux pas. At home, when she ate with her father, he was a stickler for perfect propriety at the table. This was altogether different. Relaxed and enjoyable, with a constant exchange of touches that comforted her in a way she couldn't explain.

“Do you think it'll stop?”

“The rain?” Colin's lips twisted. “Nay. Not today, at least. I'd wager it'll get worse before it gets better.”

“I don't mind. I think I like it. I feel quite warm under the protection of the hood.”

“I'm glad,” he said. “How's your back?”

She realized she'd begun to lean against the padded bench. “It's perfectly fine,” she said. “I cannot feel a thing.”

“Good.”

She handed him a bit of cheese, and he popped it into his mouth. “So, tell me about where you grew up in Scotland. Is it very close to where we'll be in Inverness?”

“Nay. My family lives to the southwest, in Inverary, on the banks of Loch Fyne.”

“And what does your father do on the banks of Loch Fyne?”

“He was a politician.”

“He is no longer with us?” she asked softly.

“Nay. He died of the consumption over ten years ago.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It was long ago, and he was gone so often while I was a lad I hardly knew him.”

“Where was he?”

“Sitting in Parliament. He was the MP for the Ayr Burghs for several years. My da spent most of his time in London and rarely took the rest of us along with him.”

“So you remained in Scotland with your mother and sisters.”

“Aye.”

“Why did you not follow in your father's footsteps and become a politician?”

“I did follow in his footsteps, to a certain extent. When I was eighteen, he purchased my commission in the 92nd, as his father had for him when he turned eighteen.”

“Is that what you wanted at the time?”

He shrugged. “It was what was planned for me since birth. I accepted it and went into military service without complaint.”

“You were in the army for quite a while, then,” she murmured, calculating. “From the time you were eighteen until Waterloo. You must have fought in many battles.”

It was a long time before he answered. “Aye.”

And at the dark tone of his voice, something clicked within her. The battles…so many of them. So much violence and death. Would that not eventually damage the very soul of a man? She kept her voice light. “And you were with Major Campbell from the beginning?”

“Aye. He was a lieutenant when I was an ensign.”

“Why did you stay in the army for such a long time?” she asked softly. “Surely it is not an easy life.”

He gazed ahead of the horses, deftly directing them around a large puddle. “Aye, 'tisn't. But I made a good soldier, and I was surrounded by men I admired. I never thought of selling my commission. Until…” He faltered for a second, then said in a grating voice, “The Battle of Quatre Bras. And Waterloo, shortly after.”

Emilia nodded, but remained quiet. This conversation was out of her depth—she had heard about the massive losses suffered by both sides on that field near the village of Waterloo, but she could not begin to imagine what it could possibly be like to be in the midst of such butchery.

She handed Colin the skin of water, and he took a deep swallow. They were silent for long minutes, Colin focused on negotiating the increasingly pitted road and Emilia gazing at the rain-drenched pasture that disappeared into the mist.

They finished their luncheon, and Emilia busied herself with packing the remains into a small satchel. Then she put her gloves back on and adjusted the plaid over them, resting her body against Colin's before she realized what she was doing—or how comfortable she was doing it. How natural and easy it was, when a couple of days ago touching any man in such a fashion would have seemed utterly brazen.

He smiled down at her, his amber gaze soft and his eyes crinkling at the edges, and she yawned.

“Lean against me awhile, lass,” he suggested, his voice a low rumble.

Her bonnet, with its wide straw brim, prevented her from resting her head, so she removed it and set it at her side before laying her head on him.

Tucked against his hard body, ensconced in safety and warmth, she drowsed comfortably for the remainder of the afternoon.

It was dusk when they stopped. Despite the rain, they'd made good time and were now in Nottinghamshire, north of the area where Pinfield's country house was located.

Colin hoped they were far enough from Emilia's old home that no one would recognize her. There was no use in pressing on tonight. Rain was falling in buckets, and the roads were so bad he couldn't negotiate them in the dark with only the help of lanterns, which might not remain lit in the downpour. Not to mention that the horses were done. He'd brought them as far north as they could manage in one day.

He helped Emilia from the carriage as the lads came to take the horses. “Keep your head down,” he murmured to her, “and dinna speak unless you must.”

She nodded, and he smiled at her, the urge to kiss her almost overpowering. “Let's go, then.”

Again, there was only one room available, but it wasn't ready for them—Colin hadn't realized that March was such a busy time of year for travel, though it made sense, he supposed, as the London Season was just getting under way.

The innkeeper invited them inside and offered them hot tea beside the fire while their room was being prepared. There was nothing to do but agree, and he followed the man to a small walnut table beside a roaring fire in an enormous stone hearth. Fortunately, the space was otherwise empty, the hour being too early for dinner. Emilia removed her bonnet, and he couldn't fault her for that. It would look even more odd if she kept it on. He took it from her and hung it on a nearby hook as she patted her damp hair, which had sprung out at endearing angles from the knot coiled above her nape.

They removed their gloves and reached toward the fire. The flames spread much-needed heat over Colin's numb fingertips, and he curled and flexed them in relief.

“Here, now, I've brought ye some nice hot tea,” a feminine voice said from behind him.

He turned to the round woman bumbling toward them. She set a teapot and two cups, along with a small plate of cakes, on the table. “Just baked these this afternoon,” she told them, red-faced and grinning as she poured tea first into one cup then the other. “Thought ye might like a few with your tea.”

“Thank you.” Colin took his cup and cradled it in his hands, loving the feel of the warmth spreading through his palms.

“And here's a pot o' cream for ye.” She placed the small cup of cream on the table then took her empty tray and tucked it under her arm. “Might I fetch ye anything else?”

“Thank you. This'll do,” he told her.

She glanced at Emilia as if waiting for an answer, then she frowned when one wasn't forthcoming. “Why…is that…are you Lady Emilia Featherstone?”

Emilia's eyes widened, and she glanced frantically to Colin, who had gone stiff from the tips of his fingers to his toes.

He spoke in his deepest Scottish brogue. “Lady Emilia Featherstone?” Before she could answer, he continued, “We dinna ken any Lady Emilia Featherstone, ma'am. This'll be Mrs. Montgomery, my wife these past two years.” Emilia didn't even look as old as twenty-one, her true age, so he hoped the woman would believe that she'd been married two years.

The woman looked surprised. Emilia remained mute.

“My wife doesna speak much,” he explained. “She suffered from an…er…infection of the tongue when she was a lass.”

“Oh. Dearie me…I'm sorry,” the woman said. “It's just…” She smiled kindly at Emilia. “You look just like a chit I knew who lived in a grand house near here—Pinfield Manor. Have ye heard of it?”

Emilia shook her head.

“Nay, we havna—” Colin began, but the woman interrupted him.

“I was a chambermaid—years ago, when I could manage all them stairs—that house had hundreds.” She laughed lightly and patted her expansive girth. “But then the lady of the manor passed on and the lord and his girl went off to London. I lost my position, so I came home here to Markham Moor, where I met Mr. Thomas—he's the stable master here—and became Mrs. Thomas.”

“Aye, well—” Colin began.

“You do look exactly like Lord Pinfield's daughter, ma'am. Exactly! Quite uncanny it is.”

“That's verra interesting,” Colin murmured. “But my Mrs. Montgomery was born and raised in Inverness. She's a MacDonald by birth, Scottish through and through.”

Emilia smiled and nodded.

“Well, isn't that something,” Mrs. Thomas mused. “Quite uncanny, indeed.”

“The innkeeper said dinner is at seven?” Colin asked, trying to change the subject, and remind Mrs. Thomas that she probably had some other task to attend to.

“Oh, aye, sir. Seven on the button!”

“Is it possible for dinner to be brought to our room? It has been a long and wet day of travel for us.”

“Oh, certainly. I'll have someone bring you a tray, then.”

“Thank you,” Colin said.

“You're very welcome, sir. Ma'am.”

Emilia nodded, and smiled when Mrs. Thomas lumbered away. As soon as they were alone again, she widened her eyes at Colin. He shook his head slightly, hoping she'd act as if nothing untoward had happened, and that she wouldn't speak.

He poured a bit of cream into her tea. “Have some tea, love,” he said. “It'll warm you.”

She nodded, pink suffusing her cheeks
,
then cradled the tea in her hands as he had and took a sip. He did the same from his cup. They ate the cakes, which were delicious, and drank their tea in silence, until the innkeeper came to tell them their room was ready.

With a sigh of relief, Colin jumped up, his gloves in hand, and retrieved Emilia's bonnet and gloves. He thanked the innkeeper, who gave them the key and directed them to their room on the second floor. Colin guided Emilia upstairs, his hand to her back above her healing wounds, his heart beating far harder than it should.

They reached the room, and he unlocked the door. They went inside, finding a spacious room with a large bed. The space was cold but clean, and their luggage had already been brought up and placed along the wall beneath the window.

He closed the door behind them and released a long breath. Emilia sighed at the same time. “I remember her. Her name is Nora, and she was a chambermaid. She was much thinner then, but—”

“You did well, lass.” She had behaved perfectly, but he was still uneasy. Nora Thomas wasn't one to keep her mouth shut if someone came by asking questions. But there was nothing to be done about it. If they left now, they'd raise more suspicion. They'd just have to keep up the pretense that Emilia was a young Scottish wife—not Lady Emilia Featherstone of Pinfield Manor.

She frowned. “I felt…ridiculous.”

“You were perfect.”

She sighed again, looking down, and he tossed his gloves to the small table and cupped her cheeks in his hands. Her cheeks were soft and pink from her proximity to the fire downstairs. She blinked bonny gray-blue eyes at him, and he couldn't stop himself this time. He bent down and kissed her.

It felt like she'd been waiting for this moment her entire life.

Sir Colin Stirling was kissing her, his warm, dry lips moving hungrily over hers. She opened her mouth and mimicked his movement, wanting more. Not wanting this to ever stop.

His big hands slid from her cheeks to behind her neck, his fingertips pressing into her hairline as he held her locked against him. She reached behind him, grasping the backs of his shoulders and clutching him to her.

He yanked back, but she didn't let him go far.

“I shouldn't be doing this,” he whispered, his breath hot on her lips.

“Why?” she demanded.

“I made a promise…”

She could easily guess what promise that had been. “To not besmirch my honor?”

“Aye.”

“I don't care.” She moved in, this time initiating the kiss. He didn't rebuff her, thank God, because she would have been mortified if he had. He quickly took control again, pressing soft, small kisses, sipping from her lips, and she sighed in pleasure. When he nudged her lips open and gently flicked her teeth with his tongue, she gasped. His fingers tightened in her hair, and she pressed her body against his, her heart thrumming when she felt the rigidness beneath his kilt. But that didn't make her pull away; instead, it compelled her to kiss him harder.

They stumbled to the bed, and he pulled away for a moment to wrap his hands around her waist and lift her onto the mattress. He kissed her as he sat beside her, and they lay down together on their sides, facing each other with their lips locked.

Keeping one hand curled around her nape, he moved the other, stroking down her upper back then to her ribs and over the dip in her waist, avoiding her wounds, before grasping her upper thigh in his hand and tugging her until her body was flush against his.

His lips moved to her jaw, then her ear as his hand traveled again, gently pressing her onto her back while he moved her dress up her hip and stomach until he was cupping her breast. Even through the layers of fabric separating her skin from his, she felt it to her core as his thumb stroked her nipple. She shuddered, her whole body racked with sensation from that touch as his teeth closed gently over her earlobe.

She turned to him, kissing wherever her lips could reach—his lightly stubbled jaw, across to his lips again, his flesh there soft and warm. Their tongues tangled, and with his hands on her breasts, Emilia thought she might swoon from the eroticism of this moment. She'd never been kissed, but she'd dreamed of kissing Colin from the moment he stepped into her father's home. She'd imagined kissing as a gentle movement of a man's lips over a woman's. But this—this was intense, arousing. Her skin crawled and her blood boiled, and she wanted more, deeper.

“Emilia,” Colin whispered gruffly, pulling back for just long enough to say her name before he was kissing her again, as if he couldn't get enough of her, his lips moving all over her face, her jaw, her neck, and the exposed skin of her chest. His hot tongue trailed a path along the edge of her bodice. “You taste so good,” he muttered. “So damned good.”

She pushed her hands into the thick brown waves of his hair, so different from her own wispy curls. She arched into his kiss, and he responded by kissing her harder, his fingers tightening on her breast and his lips firming over her skin.

Gasping, she moved her hands from his hair to his broad shoulders, feeling the powerful play of muscles beneath his waistcoat.

“Oh,” she whispered, feeling terribly feminine in the presence of his intense masculinity. She moved lower, over his arms, then over his hand where he still manipulated her breast.

“Do you like that, Emilia?” he whispered gruffly. “Does it feel good to be touched like this?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He softened his touch. “Do you like it gentle?”

“Yes.”

“Or hard?” He pinched her nipple, and she nearly leapt off the bed.

“Yes,” she groaned. The hard pinch hadn't hurt at all; it had made pleasure burst through her like a rocket.

“Mmm…” he whispered. Moving higher, he was at her lips again, his voice rumbling through her. “I could kiss you all night.”

“Yes, please.”

He laughed.

Someone knocked on the door. They both went rigid, Colin's body like steel over hers.

“Aye?” he said, turning his face to the door.

“I've brought ye up a bit of warm water, for you and your lady to wash, Mr. Montgomery.”

It was Mrs. Thomas's voice. Eyes narrowed, Colin climbed off Emilia, and she slid from the bed as he strode toward the door. He looked back at her before he opened the door, ensuring she was presentable, she supposed. She smiled and nodded, then turned to the table and began to draw the pins out of her hair one by one.

Colin opened the door and murmured thanks to Mrs. Thomas, but when she tried to bustle in, he told her they were tired and were attempting to rest a bit before dinner.

“All right, then,” the older woman chirped. “Here's yer hot water. And I warmed some towels for you. And would ye like me to bring another warm brick for your bed? It's wretched cold in these rooms on rainy nights…”

“Nay, I thank you,” Colin said patiently, and Emilia smiled. He was a very patient man. By now, her father would have been so annoyed, he'd probably have the woman dismissed from her position. Emilia had seen him do that at least a dozen times over the years, and it was quite a painful thing to witness.

The door closed, and she turned to see Colin's arms laden with towels and a steaming basin. She hurried over to help him, taking the towels as he set the basin on the table. “I canna decide if she's overly friendly or just a busybody,” he grumbled.

“Perhaps a bit of both.” She laid the warm towels beside the basin and then stood awkwardly beside him, sensing his reticence.

Finally, she looked up at him. He pushed a hand through his hair, not meeting her eyes. “You're a sweet, bonny lass, Emilia,” he said quietly.

She braced herself for the “but.”

“But…I canna.” He closed his eyes tight in a long blink then opened them again. “I dinna ken what would've happened had she not knocked just now.”

She gazed evenly at him. “I don't know, either, but—”

He shook his head, cutting off what she had been about to say. “Nay. You're an innocent, in every way. I'm here to protect you, not to…” His voice faded.

“Not to what?”

“Drag you into the dark with me.” He looked away, and she could see the tick of his racing pulse in his neck.

She frowned and reached toward him, but he stepped back. “Is that where you are, Colin? In the dark?”

He rubbed his face, frustrated, still not looking at her. “I dinna ken. I just know it's a place where a lass like you shouldna be.”

“I don't understand,” she whispered.

“ 'Tisn't for you to understand, lass,” he said wearily. He looked at her again, and his eyes were dark. Resigned.

“Colin—”

“You're a bonny woman, and I admire you very much. Too much. But I wilna be taking advantage of your vulnerable state. It canna happen again.”

With that, he closed himself to her. He hardly spoke to her for the rest of the night—there was no light conversation as they ate a dinner of pigeon pie, and there was no talk after. Tonight he didn't leave to “check the horses” as he had the night before, but he did make himself a bed on the floor once again, and he turned his back as she changed into her nightgown.

Perhaps she should be distraught, embarrassed first by her brazen display and then by his rejection, but she wasn't.

She understood why he had withdrawn. She understood it completely, and though she didn't agree, if anything it made her admire him more.

In addition, she now knew he was attracted to her. The subtle looks he gave her that she hadn't previously understood now held meaning. He found her appealing. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her. Perhaps more. And that truth made her feel tingly all over.

He checked the dressing on her back and decided to change it, though she hadn't bled through the bandages today. He made a pleased Scottish-sounding grunt when he observed her wounds.

“It's Lady Claire's salve, I think,” she murmured. “That stuff is a miracle.”

He didn't answer but rubbed more of the salve into the wounds, his big fingers ever so gentle, she almost fell asleep, as she was lying facedown on the bed. But then he bade her rise so that he could rewrap the linen about her torso. Yawning, she complied. He wrapped her, and she pulled up her nightgown, turning to him with a smile.

“Thank you. They're so much better I keep forgetting about them.”

“Not me,” he murmured darkly. He bent down as she watched and retrieved from his stocking the small dagger he'd been holding in his nightmare last night. He held it out to her, hilt-first, his lips tight.

“This is my
sgian dubh
. I sleep with it at my side each night, but 'tis too dangerous for me to do so now.”

Chewing on her lower lip, she moved her gaze from the proffered dagger to his eyes.

“You take it,” he said. “Keep it by your pillow. Use it if needs be, or—”

“I wouldn't know how to use that thing!” she exclaimed.

“You must protect yourself,” he insisted. “If there's time, wake me and give it to me, but only if I'm lucid, d'you understand?”

“Oh, Colin.” Sadness welled within her at his tight, dark expression. He didn't trust himself. He considered his nightmares a madness.

Not knowing what else to do, she took it from him.

“ 'Tis sharp,” he warned. “Keep it close, but be careful with it, aye?”

She nodded gravely and set the dagger on the side table. Seeing him watching her with narrowed eyes, she explained, “I'll sleep on this side of the bed, facing the table. I can reach it in a fraction of a second if I must.”

Lips tight, he nodded. “Just be careful. It'll slice your fingers right off if you handle it wrong.”

“I understand.” She hoped she'd never have to reach for the blasted thing in a hurry.

He gazed at her, and nodded. “Well, then. We should sleep. Another long day of travel tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she agreed. She climbed into the bed, but despite the hot brick that Mrs. Thomas had brought up, the sheets were cold. She curled into a ball, willing warmth into her limbs and thinking of Colin lying on the hard floor, probably colder and definitely more uncomfortable than she was.

Would the terrible nightmare visit him again tonight? She hoped not—not for her sake, but for his.