Marshal and the Heiress (21 page)

She shook her head, as if she could shake him off, shake the kiss off. But it had been more than a simple kiss, and he knew it. He knew she knew it.

Hell, how much more of a fool could he be?

“Papa!” Sarah Ann's voice was more insistent.

Lisbeth turned around—reluctantly, he thought—toward the sound of Sarah Ann's voice. He watched as her trembling hand moved along Shadow's withers, and the animal shuddered with pleasure. He knew exactly how the horse felt. Shudders were raking their way through him, too.

“Lisbeth …”

She stilled, but didn't turn back to him.

He'd lifted a hand, but it fell back to his side. “I'll see you at dinner?”

She nodded, still not looking at him.

It was just as well. He didn't know what he wanted to say to her. He left the stall and walked toward his daughter.

Lisbeth clutched her hairbrush desperately as she stared at herself in the mirror. She barely registered the disheveled state of her appearance—hair flying in ten different directions, clothes covered with horsehair. Her attention was focused entirely on the hot, liquid sensations coursing through her body.

What was happening to her? She could still taste him, feel him, feel his arousal crushed against her, the memory of which only intensified the throbbing in her belly.

No one ever had kissed her like that. Jamie's kisses had been almost chaste, respectful. He had never explored the inside of her mouth. She was astounded at how that intimate play had inflamed the rest of her body. Had she been too bold? Too wanton? She'd only wanted to prolong those new and mysterious urges. God help her, but she'd wanted more. She'd wanted to explore every one of those urges, follow them to … wherever they led.

Lisbeth swallowed hard. She made a bloody poor seductress. She'd planned to use Ben, to convert him to her way of thinking. Instead, she'd fallen victim to the sound of his voice, to the sight of his tall, lean body and his lined face and intense blue eyes. She was helpless against the feelings aroused by the feel of his lips on hers and his hands skimming her body.

One moment he'd been hostile and aloof, and she couldn't for the life of her think of anything she'd done to make him so. Then in the space of a heartbeat, he'd changed. When exactly had frigid reserve turned to searing heat? And when precisely had she lost control and become helpless in the face of his passion?

But she
couldn't
be helpless. She couldn't allow herself to fall prey to the sensations he aroused in her body. It mortified her to think that, twice now, she'd been on the verge of giving herself to a man who thought she was willing to trade her body for a few acres of land and a stable of horses. For that was what Ben thought. And why shouldn't he? He had every reason to—because she'd given him every reason.

Angrily, Lisbeth ran the brush through her hair. She wasn't angry at Ben, but at herself. She'd worked for years toward a goal that was now in sight. She wasn't going to lose her way along the path in a fog of lust. For that was all it was—lust. And what she needed was cool logic to convince Masters to support racing Shadow.

With that plan in place, Lisbeth chose a plain, almost prim, gray dress for dinner, and tamed her hair into an equally prim knot. She only wished her wayward emotions could be tamed as easily.

Chapter Twelve

The loch glimmered in the morning mist, the ruins of a Scottish castle providing a haunting backdrop.

Ben reined in Bailey and caught his breath as he neared the gray-blue waters of the loch. But it wasn't the lake that drew his attention. It was Lisbeth.

She had ridden ahead on a fine gray horse and now waited at the lake's edge. She was wearing a green riding dress, a matching hat perched rakishly on her auburn hair that was subdued into a twist. He had never seen a woman who rode with as much confidence as she did, or who sat a horse as gracefully. Even the light rain appeared to cause her little bother. Indeed, her face looked heavenward, as if in welcome.

She turned toward them and watched as they approached. Sarah Ann was mounted proudly on her mild-mannered pony. She had been practicing diligently during the past several days, and Ben had finally decided she rode well enough to make the short trip to the loch.

Still, he kept a lead on the pony, though he allowed Sarah Ann to hold the reins. He himself had saddled Peppermint, inspecting every part of the saddle first, as he had his own. He hadn't forgotten the way Lisbeth's husband had died.

Sarah Ann, wearing her own new riding dress with a matching coat and hat, chattered excitedly to Peppermint. Her face was flushed with excitement, and Ben had to smile at the picture she made. He dearly coveted a painting of Sarah Ann as she was at this moment.

His thoughts of Sarah Ann were more welcome than usual—anything to distract him from thoughts of Lisbeth. He'd been trying his damnedest to stay mentally removed from her. Meals were tolerable enough. Hugh had returned, and he and Barbara usually kept a conversation—or argument—flowing. Barbara couldn't seem to keep from flirting with both Hugh and himself, and Hugh invariably took offense. Ben equated living in the manor with living in a building full of dynamite. He never knew when someone was going to light the fuse.

He'd come close to refusing Lisbeth's suggestion that they take Sarah Ann to the lake this morning. Both he and Lisbeth were as much a part of the dynamite as Hugh and Barbara, and the electricity they generated was dangerous. But Sarah Ann had begged so. And he
had
promised her days ago that they would explore the lake.

But he didn't need to be this close to Lisbeth, nor did he want to be enchanted by her plans. Yet the boy in him warmed to the idea of a lake, Scottish castle ruins, and a picnic in the rain.

A picnic in the rain, and a formal party. That seemed to characterize the personalities of the two mismatched sisters-in-law.

Lisbeth galloped back to where he had stopped. “It's very bonny, do you no' think?”

He pushed up the collar of his sheepskin coat, and she laughed, a clear happy sound. She always seemed happier, more relaxed, away from the manor.

“Aye,” he said, but he was looking at her, at the dancing pleasure in her eyes.

She appeared not to notice. “The castle across there belonged to one of the Hamiltons centuries ago. It was taken and destroyed by the king after the Forty-five—when Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated and so many Scots slaughtered at Culloden. They say it's haunted.”

“And what do you say, Lady Lisbeth?”

“Every castle an' every ruin in Scotland is haunted,” she said, her smile disappearing, “but mostly, I ken, by memories. Scottish history is full of tragedy and feuds and revenge. I think it must be hard for Americans to understand.”

“We've had our share of tragedy and feuds. But our wounds are mostly fresh ones.”

“But there are no old wounds to the Scots. They relive each one of them every day of their lives and take perverse pleasure in doing so. The hurt of forty-five is as fresh today as it was more than a hundred years ago.”

Ben had learned enough of Scottish history to know that Culloden, the site of the bloody climax to the uprising of 1745, was sacred to the Scots. The war had divided Scotland into two factions, the Jacobites who supported independence and those Scots who allied themselves with England, and had destroyed the clan system.

“And what of your family, Lady Lisbeth?” he asked. “Barbara said you came from the Highlands.”

“Aye,” she said. “I was a Mackay, a clan well known for its fighting. Within the family as well as without.”

There was something sad and wistful about her words. She had said very little about her family, or background. She seemed very alone except for her horses and dog.

“You have no brothers or sisters?” he asked.

“No sisters,” she said. “Four brothers.”

“Is that why you ride so well?”

She looked at him, puzzled.

“Did your brothers teach you?”

“No.” Something about the way she said it made him hesitate to pursue the subject. It was really none of his business.

Sarah Ann had been sitting patiently on her pony, but she'd apparently had enough of conversation. “Can we go to the castle?” she asked.

Lisbeth looked to him for an answer.

He gave her a non-committal shrug. “Is it safe?”

“There really aren't any ghosts or goblins,” Lisbeth said with a bit of a smile. “Jamie used to love the place when he was a boy. He told me he used to prowl and pretend he was an outlawed Jacobite. He took me there several times and showed me some passageways that still exist, and once I nearly fell into an old well. There are a lot of those—old holes and loose stones.” She turned to Sarah Ann. “You will have to hold tight to your fa's hand.”

“What's ‘fa'?”

“Papa,” she said. “Father. We Scots just shorten it a little bit.”

“Fa?” Sarah Ann rolled the sound around in her mouth.

Ben grimaced. He was just getting used to “Papa,” for goodness' sake.

“There's one place that's partly covered where we can eat,” Lisbeth suggested.

“I wondered about the … picnic,” he said.

The rain was still falling, shrouding the hills and giving them a magical quality. Occasionally a ray of sun, like a rapier blade, struck through the grayness for a fraction of a second, then disappeared. The castle ruins looked mystical—grand and tragic at the same time.

A pounding started in his heart. He had never been fanciful, nor had he ever felt this sense of fate, not even before a battle during the war. But suddenly his mind was clouded with images and emotions and even a premonition. It made no sense, none at all.

He tried to shove it all aside. Lisbeth was the cause, he knew. Lisbeth, with her eyes, and the lyrical lilt of her voice and speech that drew him to this land and all its violent emotions. He had wanted to get away from violence. He'd wanted peace. But he felt swept into centuries of furious passions.

He wasn't sure at all that he wanted to go near that castle.

“Mr. Masters … Ben?”

He liked the sound of his name on her lips.

Liked? Hell. Already tendrils of desire were curling in his groin. Her eyes were wide as they watched him, and he suspected she was seeing straight inside him, seeing the confusion that plagued him. He was a man who viewed the world with cynical practicality. He'd never considered that he could be seduced by swirling mists, echoes of dead armies—or by the wistfulness in a lovely woman who might be a murderer.

“Papa?”

He looked down. At least Sarah Ann was real. She was everything she appeared to be.

“Please can we go to the castle?” she asked impatiently.

He didn't want to go. Frankly, he was afraid to share the magic of the place with Lisbeth. But to refuse was to surrender to unnamed and irrational fears.

The rain dwindled to a mist, which was already lifting, and more shafts of light sprinkled the loch, like thousands of small diamonds thrown onto its surface. Ben looked toward Lisbeth, who returned his gaze with a puzzled one of her own. He wondered whether she had felt the strange pull from the past that he had.

Thrusting his misgivings aside, refusing to let them guide him, he made a decision. “I think a princess needs a castle,” he said, looking down at Sarah Ann, who rewarded him with a bright, open smile. It had been days since her last nightmare, since her face had clouded with poignant sadness. She still wouldn't relinquish her scarf, though today she had allowed him to tuck it underneath her fine, new riding dress.

Lisbeth grimaced. “It's rather a sad castle now.”

“We'll make it feel better,” Sarah Ann said.

“Aye, I ken you will.” Lisbeth smiled. She turned and this time she kept a companionable pace with Ben. He was reminded of a similar ride months ago with Mary May. Like Mary May, Lisbeth was comfortable with silence.

Even Sarah Ann fell quiet, full of awe apparently for the ruins, which loomed ever larger as they approached. Watching her, Ben knew that it would only be a few more days before she would be begging to ride without a lead. He wished he knew what boundaries to set, but parenting was too new. He wanted to give her the sun and moon and every star in the sky. The word “no” had become difficult, if not impossible to say.

Christ, his life—and he himself with it—had become unrecognizable.

Ben was conscious of Lisbeth's occasional gaze turning his way, the questions in her eyes. Every time their gazes met, heat flashed through his body, like lightning on a hot, dry Texas night. He felt every intense strike to the core of his being. She felt it, too. He sensed it, saw her flinch several times and move her gaze away quickly from his; but it always returned, just as his did to hers.

God, how he wanted to hold her. He wanted to fling away that jaunty little hat from her hair, take out the pins and run his hand through the long auburn strands. He'd thought Sarah Ann would be protection against feelings he didn't want or understand, but she obviously wasn't. The need for Lisbeth was still hot within him. Burning, in truth, and not even the cold mist of morning cooled it.

They reached the outer ruins of the castle, and Ben dismounted, then helped Sarah Ann down. Lisbeth waited for him to help her, too, though she never had required help before. He gave her his hand and caught her as she slipped down, feeling her body move against his. A new rush of heat coursed through him, even more painful than the last.

He hesitated a moment before stepping back, unwilling, unable, to move. She looked up at him through thick dark lashes that framed her hazel eyes. A shudder ran through him, a shudder of pure desire, and he felt her tremble in response.

“Papa?” Sarah Ann's voice was insistent. “I want to see the castle.”

He closed his eyes a moment, trying to jerk himself back to reality. Lisbeth didn't try to move away, and he felt her tremble again.