Rexanne Becnel (13 page)

He shrugged. “I think it’s more than that.”

She drew herself up, uncomfortably aware of his implication. Unfortunately, there was only one way to deny it. She tugged at the waist of her bodice. “I’m sure you will think whatever evil thoughts you like regardless of anything I say, so I shall not squander my breath debating the matter. I accept your offer, Mr. MacDougal. Harness your animal to the carriage. But be quick about it, if you please. The heavens sound ready to open up.”

And open up they did.

No sooner were the animals switched than the storm pitched a fit over them. The driver, wrapped in an oilcloth slicker, walked at the two animals’ heads, leading them through the tempest, while Mr. MacDougal’s man mounted and led the lame horse behind them.

To Sarah’s chagrin, Mr. MacDougal wasted no time in joining her inside the curtained carriage.

He removed his beaver hat, shaking the raindrops from it, then fastened down the canvas window covers. Finally he faced her. “What a story we shall have to tell about this night.”

Sarah did not respond, but only watched warily as he settled himself across from her. The rain beat furiously upon the carriage as he laid his hat aside, then removed his riding gloves, and stretched his long legs out before him.

She shifted her legs and swept her skirts aside so they would not brush his boots or breeches. Then she arranged a satin tufted pillow behind her head and closed her eyes.

“Planning to sleep? Or just pretending?”

Despite his amused tone, Sarah kept her eyes closed. “I am feigning sleep, Mr. MacDougal, because I did not wish to hurt your feelings by not conversing with you. If you were a gentleman, you would understand, and you would cooperate.”

When she heard his snort of derision, she continued. “But alas, as I should know by now, you are not a gentleman.”

“No, I suppose I’m not. Not by your exalted standards. But I’m glad of that,” he added. “From what I’ve seen, most of your so-called gentlemen are men of leisure who’ve never once lifted a hand in honest labor.”

Her eyes popped open with a snap. “That’s absurd. My brother is a perfect gentleman; he also manages his estates and my mother’s. My brother-in-law—also a gentleman—breeds the finest horseflesh, besides keeping at least a hundred people gainfully employed.” She gave him a superior smile. “Can you say as much for yourself?”

He crossed his arms. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

Despite her best effort not to, she gaped at him. “You can?”

“I can. But I’m curious. Did your brother and brother-in-law inherit their properties from their fathers?”

When she pursed her lips without answering, he continued. “Of course they did. That’s how it works over here. But it’s different in America. Where I’m from, anyone with the intelligence, the willingness to work hard, and the drive to succeed can do so. Everything I have—property, business, reputation—I earned with the sweat of my own brow. No one gave me anything. And yes, I keep a crew of anywhere from fifty to two hundred men working on my various projects.”

Though she did not want to be, Sarah was nevertheless impressed. Assuming, of course, that what he said was true. Yet somehow she knew it was. He might not be a gentleman by her society’s stringent standards, but he was a man of some talent and honor. Like James and Neville, it seemed he worked hard for his family and the other people who depended on him. Added to that, he had embarked on this lengthy quest to find his father for the most loyal of reasons: to prove his mother an honest woman.

Despite all her reasons to hate and fear the man, Sarah found herself hard-pressed to do so, even though in the low light of the inside lantern, with that one-sided smirk curving his lips, he looked less the gentleman than ever. He’d loosened his cravat, and his casual dishabille, coupled with his relaxed sprawl, proved him nothing like the gentlemen of her acquaintance.

Yet that very difference seemed also to draw her to him. There was something about the man, something physical. Even relaxed, he exuded power, and something in her—something coarse and primitive—reacted in the most perverse manner.

He scared her, he infuriated her, and she had every reason in the world to despise him. Yet he managed all the same to excite her. She knew enough of that wicked emotion to recognize it, especially when it was so terrifyingly powerful.

That his eyes were so steady upon her only exacerbated her reckless response to him, but she was hard-pressed to look away.

Then it occurred to her that she’d planned to elope with Lord Penley based on feelings not nearly so strong as this, and she jerked her gaze away from his. Good Lord, what a dreadful thought!

For a while they rode in silence, with only the slackening drum of the rain to fill the void. Sarah struggled to tamp down her inappropriate feelings for this man—this enemy of her family, she brutally reminded herself.

As his silent presence moved in on her, however, as his aura of barely checked masculine power made her stomach jump, her skin burn, and her fingers twitch, she knew she must do everything in her power to resist his allure. She’d set out to prove to her family that she was not the silly social butterfly they all thought her to be. Succumbing to this man’s virile appeal would only prove them right.

And then there was the matter of her sister’s birthright. It didn’t matter that she could understand the position he took. She could not allow him to hurt anyone in her family. That was the only reason she had for dealing with him at all, her sister’s birthright and her mother’s happiness.

So she straightened against the heavily padded squabs, cleared her throat, and assumed her haughtiest tone. “I assume you’ve had time to think on your discovery today.”

“My discovery?” His brows arched as if in question, but his eyes grew wary.

“Yes. Mr. MacNeil’s revelation.” She hesitated a moment, disliking the cruelty she must resort to. “I know…I know it must have been unpleasant to hear. He seems a very ugly sort of person. Nevertheless, you cannot still hope to prove your allegation.”

He crossed his arms. “I do not discount the possibility that my parents only wed after they learned my mother was breeding. The way I see it, once the truth came out, MacNeil and his wife—my aunt—abandoned my mother. She then turned to her lover, who married her but then probably got cold feet at the thought of introducing such a simple lass to his grandiose family. So he sent her—trusting soul that she was—on to America, promising to follow. Of course, the lying bastard never did.”

“That’s pure conjecture,” she protested. Though privately she agreed with his coarse assessment of Cameron Byrde’s character.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and addressed her earnestly. “I found his letters to her, Sarah. He knew where she was because she’d written to him. And he knew about me.”

“I do not doubt you are his son,” she said. “But just because he wrote to your mother does not mean he married her.”

“He sent her a hundred pounds,” he bit out. “He sent her a hundred pounds, then washed his hands of us both!”

His voice, though low, had grown angry. Yet Sarah also detected an edge of pain in it and it was that which most affected her. He was so completely sincere in his quest. Everything he said
could
have happened, she supposed. Obviously he believed it had.

But there was still no proof, she reminded herself. No proof. Certainly there was no reason to throw her sister’s and mother’s lives into total disarray over the tragic scenario he painted. So she brutally beat back any feelings of sympathy for him.

“Have you never considered, Mr. MacDougal, that you are precisely what Mr. MacNeil said?” She cringed inside at her hurtful words, though she knew she must say them.

In the ensuing silence the interior of the carriage seemed actually to grow cold.

“If I am a bastard,” he said, enunciating the word with icy precision, “it is not by birthright, but rather by conscious choice. Just as you were born a lady,” he went on, “but have chosen to become a coldhearted bitch.”

Sarah flinched. She deserved that, and more. But she had finally realized what she must do if she was to resist this man’s dangerous appeal. She must make him hate her, so that she could then hate him in return. She thrust her nose in the air and regarded him through slitted eyes.

“I believe you had better ride outside, Mr. MacDougal.”

“Why? Afraid the heat between us might melt the frost you keep wrapped about you like a cape?”

“Get out!” she cried, shaken to the core by his perceptiveness. “Now!”

“No.”

The finality of that single word was so unexpected she gaped at him in shock. “What?”

With one swift movement he lunged forward, leaning over her, trapping her between his powerful arms. “I said no, Sarah. No. You will not order me about like some lackey. You will not turn up your nose at me, not when we both know it’s all a farce. Call me a bastard if you want. I don’t care. Before this night is done, I vow, you’ll be calling me your darling bastard.”

Then he kissed her, hard and fierce, forcing her head back against the high leather seat.

Caught utterly off guard, Sarah shoved at his chest, though a part of her knew it was useless. He was strong, both his body and his will—and his masculine appeal. He meant to teach her a lesson, about him and about herself.

And she, foolish girl that she was, reckless woman that she’d grown into, she wanted to learn everything.

M
ARSH
knew his behavior was reprehensible. He knew he was taking advantage of the situation. But there was something in him that would not stop. She wanted to deny everything—that Cameron Byrde could have been such a callous lout; that Maureen MacDougal could have been his first wife; that he himself could be the man’s true heir.

But it was not those denials that drove him to such violent passion. Even as he took possession of Sarah’s lips and held her trapped in his embrace, he knew that much. It was her denial of the attraction between them that struck the most incendiary sparks in him. It was that denial that fed this insatiable need of his to make her admit to the truth.

Beneath them the carriage swayed gingerly down the wet, rutted road. Above them the rain eased to an erratic, pattering drumbeat. But between them lightning struck, igniting a firestorm of feelings that flared swiftly out of control.

Marsh was not certain what he’d meant to prove, how far he meant to press her. But when Sarah’s fingers curled around his coat front, when her lips softened and her mouth parted beneath his, he forgot everything except the need to delve deeper into this font of pure pleasure.

His tongue tasted, tested, and probed, and found greater acceptance with every thrust. Then she let out a little moan, her tongue met with his, and had he the wherewithal to have realized it, he was immediately and irrevocably lost.

No longer was it merely his own pleasure he sought. No longer was revenge the fuel that urged him on. What he wanted, what he needed—what he must have—was that little moan again. He wanted to make her moan and whimper and cry out with the pleasure he brought to her.

In that mad moment inside the lumbering coach, with the driver and his own manservant only a call away, he wanted to make Sarah Palmer soar with pleasure until she was limp with it.

That it would bring him physical satisfaction too was undeniable. But it was not his primary aim. For all her sophistication, this difficult, arrogant snob of a woman was a novice in the art of pleasure. He had no doubt of that. And he was something of an expert.

So he would give her an introduction, and then…and then he would just see where it would end.

He pressed his suit and drank deeply of the sweetness she offered. Delicious mouth that tasted of minted tea; flawless skin that looked like pearl and smelled like lilies. He shifted to the seat alongside her, drawing her against him, reveling in the firm, feminine weight of her. Beneath all the trappings of civility and the strictures of society that she clung to, Sarah Palmer was a passionate woman, one long past being ready for a taste of sexual desire.

He slid an arm around her waist and drew her forcefully to him. Yes, she was ready, and so was he.

Sarah slid onto Marshall MacDougal’s lap—sprawled over him, actually. How had this happened, this sudden shift of their positions, this unbelievable shift in her attitude toward him? For heaven’s sake, she was kissing him as if she wanted him to continue.

But then the truth was, she did.

She let out a little groan of dismay, or perhaps it was a moan of surrender. At once his tongue delved deeper, possessing her mouth in a manner she ought to find obscene. But she did not. To her dismay his tongue, sliding between her lips then out again, filled not only her mouth, but somehow her whole body as well. He heated her with that simple, primitive act so that she felt full, almost to bursting. And when his arm clasped her fully against him, the feelings only increased.

Then she realized that one of her thighs was trapped between his, and that her skirts were bunched up nearly to her knees. Alarmed, the first bit of good sense finally intruded into her utterly besotted brain.

“Oh, no,” she breathed when he moved his boldly seeking lips to the side of her neck, then down to the exposed curve of her shoulder. “This will…this will never do….”

“Don’t resist me, Sarah. I promise you will be glad if you just do not resist.”

“But…but I must,” she murmured, even as she arched her neck to let his lips move in a series of devastating nibbles along her excruciatingly sensitive flesh. “You will…you will have to get out of the carriage.”

By then, however, he’d pulled her around to face him so that she actually straddled one of his hard, muscular thighs. No skirt protected her own thighs from his. No petticoat or even chemise. Only the finely twilled wool of his riding breeches separated that most private of her feminine parts from his solid male flesh.

She thought she would melt all over him.

He clasped both of his hands around her waist and pushed her slightly away from him. Then he pulled her back.

She heard herself moan out loud. Good heavens, she
was
melting! Like butter put to the flame, she was heating and dissolving, and it all centered down there right between her legs.

She was horrified by her reaction and embarrassed, yet completely unable to resist him when he performed that excruciatingly exciting movement once more.

“Damn, but you taste so sweet.” He whispered the words, hot and thrilling in her ear. “I want to lap you up.”

Lap you up
. Yes, she would like him to do just that. Run those lips all over her. Taste her. Lick her. Suck her.

She squirmed in agitation, wanting things she did not entirely understand, feeling her body in ways she’d never felt it before. She felt wild and reckless—

Reckless
.

The word ricocheted in Sarah’s head. Reckless, in her mother’s voice and her brother’s.

Hadn’t her reckless behavior been the cause of all the other disasters in her past? Hadn’t she vowed to keep those reckless impulses under control?

But before she could summon the will to react as she knew she ought to that cautionary voice, he slid her along his thigh once more, and lifted one of her knees to open her legs even wider.

She nearly swooned. Indeed, she would have toppled over had his arm not held her fast before him. Once more he caught her mouth with his, taking liberties no man had ever taken. The thrusting of his tongue mirrored the movement of her hips upon his thigh. He slid his tongue in and out and she shifted herself forward and back. His teeth and lips and tongue abraded hers, and his hard wool-clad thighs abraded the precious center of her.

Even his breathing, harder now and faster, seemed a part of a conspiracy, rousing her to unnamable heights. Her faint moans of dismay had long become cries of excitement, and she found herself panting and kissing him back, burning up with the feelings he roused in her, the lust. When would it stop? When would it end? She would die soon, for she could take no more.

Then one of his hands slid past her stockings and garter, and farther, up along her bare thigh. He was under her skirt, stroking her burning flesh with his broad, callused palm.

Sarah’s head was spinning. She was short of breath and light-headed, and she knew she should make him stop. But she couldn’t. Not for the life of her could she make him stop, for he stroked her now where she was burning, where she was melting.

Then he pushed his hand higher still and his finger slid within her.

That was when she exploded. That was when she arched up and cried out, an eruption as emotional as it was physical. She erupted and erupted again, feeling as if the last of her had melted all over him.

Afterward she lay limp and utterly spent, too stunned and bewildered to summon her wits about her. Only as she struggled for her very breath did she slowly become aware of the man beneath her, struggling to control his own breathing. Reality returned with a horrifying jolt.

Good God! What had she done?

Sitting on his thigh as she was, with her skirts hiked up around her hips, gave her an immediate and humiliating answer.

“Oh, no,” she gasped. With trembling arms she pushed herself awkwardly upright. Skirts up, legs apart, and wrapped in the arms of a scoundrel who would stop at nothing, it seemed, to hurt her family. And like the reckless—oh, so reckless—fool that she was, she’d cooperated fully with him.

This time she lurched backward, landing awkwardly on the opposite seat with her skirts up in her lap and her knees and thighs exposed to his view. Frantically she beat down the tangled layers of fabric, sheltering her legs from the air and from his watching eyes. But that still left her sitting opposite Marshall MacDougal in the aftermath of the most torrid interlude of her life. It did no good trying to restore her clothing to order, when they both knew how willingly she’d participated in what had just happened.

But what exactly
had
just happened?

She twisted her fingers together in her lap, and her downcast eyes stared blankly at the short space between his knees and hers.

Her heart was still racing; she could hear his breaths, harsh but beginning to slow. Outside, the rain beat steadily upon the carriage roof, isolating the vehicle from the rest of the world and making it a small island of light and heat all unto itself. And only she and Marshall MacDougal in it.

Rallying the remnants of her tattered pride, she managed to lift her gaze to his. What she saw on his face, however, made her choke on the words she was trying to form. Words of denial. Words of accusation. But the look in his eyes drove them all from her mind.

He still desired her.

Though she had no experience with the secret relations between man and woman, she knew a little bit about lust. She’d been the target of many a man’s seductive gaze, gazes that often became lustful as the evening drew on and the drinking grew heavy. But those other men’s lustful looks had meant nothing more to her than a distasteful sort of victory. Let them look and lust after her. They had better not presume, however, to touch.

But this man had touched. She’d let him. And worse, she liked it. She’d loved every torrid, shameful caress.

She averted her eyes again, only to have them focus on a suspicious dark spot upon the leg of his breeches. A damp spot right where she’d straddled his thigh.

Oh, God!
Not just straddling, but pressing and rubbing and grinding herself against him! That melting sensation had not been her imagination at all.
She
had made that damp spot on his breeches!

As if he sensed the turn of her thoughts, Mr. MacDougal moved one of his hands to his thigh, then smoothed his thumb back and forth over that awful, incriminating spot. “It’s no use denying your full participation this time, Sarah. It seems I have the proof.”

She refused to look at him. It was cowardly and it gained her nothing at all. But Sarah was completely unable to face him. Even her dread of that terrible interview with her mother, brother, and stepfather when they’d decided to send her north to Scotland had been nothing compared to this.

They rode on in an oppressive silence that seemed to amplify her guilt. Sarah struggled to focus her scattered senses upon the ordinary humdrum sounds around them. The rhythmic squeal of the left rear wheel. The steady drumming of the rain. The lantern swayed, setting weak shadows to dancing. All ordinary, everyday occurrences.

But they seemed strange now, surreal, given the unimaginable circumstances she found herself in, and her extraordinary, unforgivable behavior.

“I gather that was a new experience for you.”

Sarah felt his low voice like a physical stroke along her overstimulated nerves. How was she possibly to respond to that?

“Yes,” he went on. “Totally new. Do you…ah…understand what just occurred here, Sarah?”

She swallowed hard. “You took advantage of me,” she said. But her voice possessed little force and even less conviction.

He leaned forward, causing her to jump, and at last their eyes met. “Had I taken advantage of you, we would not yet be finished. Nor would I still remain in this painfully aroused and unrelieved state.”

When his meaning sank in, Sarah’s eyes widened and he gave her a wry smile. “I see you understand. I take it, then, that you also understand that you have not actually lost your virginity.”

Sarah’s lips trembled. “Perhaps…perhaps not. But I have certainly lost some part of my innocence.”

At that admission, as much to herself as to him, tears began to burn in the backs of her eyes. But she vowed not to cry—at least not in his presence. And so she fought them down.

He reached out and caught her hand in his, then held it firm when she would have pulled it free. “Do you understand what happened, what you felt?” he asked once more.

“No!” she snapped. “No. Nor do I wish to. I only want for you to be gone. Out of this carriage. Out of Scotland. Out of my life—all our lives!”

He released her hand and sat back.

She scooted to the corner farthest from him.

Not that the additional foot or so of distance was any particular help to her. He was still there, too close, too overwhelming, too masculine and virile and appealing for her to bear. But she could not take her eyes off him, nor let her guard down. There was no telling what he might do, now that he knew how susceptible she was to him. He had only to look at that awful damp place she’d made on his thigh to know the power he wielded over her.

He settled into his corner and studied her back with dark, impassive eyes. “You have just felt what the French call
le petit morte
. The little death. It’s the result of sexual arousal. The goal of it.”

Le petit morte
. She’d heard of it in one of the books her mother would have been horrified to know she’d read.

And what would her mother think of her actually experiencing it?

Sarah simply could not cope with that right now. She’d behaved in the most reprehensible manner; there remained nothing but for her to brazen it out. She stared balefully at him. “So. Are you happy now? You achieved your goal.”

One side of his mouth curved up in a half grin. “You achieved it. Unfortunately, I did not quite attain the little death.”

Too upset to be cautious, Sarah blurted out, “And why not?”

“I’m asking myself the same question.” His grin faded and something glittered, hot and dangerous, in his eyes. His hand tightened into a fist upon his thigh. “Would you be willing to help me get there?”