The Seduction of Miss Amelia Bell (15 page)

T
hey burst into the castle like a gust of torrid air. Grendel followed them toward
the stairs, where they nearly mowed down Malcolm in their race to ascend.

“Luke was askin’ fer ye both earlier,” he called out on the way down.

“Thank ye, Malcolm, that’s where we’re heading,” Amelia called back.

Malcolm paused and turned to look at them, his grin spreading over his handsome face.
“Ye’re no’ goin’ anywhere near his room, lass.”

“Continue on yer way, Cal. We’ll see ye later.”

“Much later I’m hopin’,” Malcolm murmured, doing what Edmund asked him to do. “Grendel!”
He called out over his shoulder when he heard the door to Edmund’s room shut and the
mongrel whining on the outside of it. “Come to the Great Hall with me and I’ll share
my meal with ye.”

He smiled as Grendel barreled down the stairs behind him.

Edmund looked at the woman sitting on his bed waiting for him. What was it that plagued
him with the urge to smile like a fool every time he beheld her? Is this what became
of a man when a lass began to chip away at his heart? Did he forgive every offense;
choose not even to think on them, but rather on the indelible vision of his woman
in his bed? He assumed it was by the odes Darach’s father, Finn, sang to his wife.

“My heart is racing,” she said, bringing her hand to her chest and looking up at him
from behind long, thick locks of hair. Innocence and seduction. Her skin was pale,
her eyes wide and sparkling in the candlelight.

“We can go back to the garden,” he managed, moving toward her. He hoped she’d say
no. He didn’t want to leave the room…for a month. When she shook her head and shuddered
on an anxious breath, he wondered again if she was aware of her power to seduce men
just by sitting on a bed.

“Perhaps we can sit and talk for a little while?”

Did a man’s heart give in to every request? “Of course,” he granted, joining her on
the edge of his bed. “Let me begin by asking ye a question.”

“All right.” She looped her arm through his and tucked one leg under the other. “What
is it?”

“Why haven’t there been a thousand suitors fer ye at Queensberry’s door?”

“There were many, at first. But the more incidents I provoked, the fewer the visitors.”

“But yer dance card was full the night we met.”

She smiled, then shook her head. “No, ’twasn’t. In fact, ’twas empty.”

“Ah.” He laughed. “A ruse well played if yer intent was to make me want to keep ye
all to myself.”

“No, ’twasn’t that.” She turned to conceal the scarlet streak spreading high across
her cheekbones. “I was mortified by my empty card. Ye were the last person I wanted
to tell.”

He took her hand and kissed it delicately. “How could any man be unwilling to fight
any foe, even misfortune, fer ye?”

“There was only one man, Edmund, ’twas Walter.”

He doubted Walter would have cared if she had three eyes. Marrying her bound him to
the Duke of Queensberry, who was, at the moment, one of the most powerful men in Scotland.

Edmund thought about the first time he was told of her misfortune by her father, and
then again by her very own lips. He hadn’t put much stock into it, not believing in
such drivel. But how many times over the last few days had he saved her from catastrophe
without her even knowing it? Yesterday when they were in the library, a heavy volume
of
Hamlet
somehow fell from its shelf and set a course directly for her head. He managed to
reach out and grab it before it struck her. Twice while they strolled Ravenglade’s
grounds, he veered her gently out of the path of a hornet’s nest. When she nearly
fell down the stairs—twice—he’d asked Henrietta to sew the hems of her gown a bit
shorter to keep her from tripping over them, without her knowing, of course.

And those were only the times when she could have been hurt. He was still trying to
forget how he narrowly avoided sitting on the garden mattocks she’d placed directly
under him a little while ago.

“And now,” he told her softly, “there is me.”

She closed her eyes when he cupped her jaw in one hand and covered her mouth with
his. He loved kissing her, taking his time, teasing her, biting her, tasting her,
taking his fill.

“I think ye’ve conquered the misfortune in my life already,” she groaned, drawing
in a breath.

“’Tis what I do.”

She giggled into his neck, then drew back to shine her smile on him full force. “Edmund,
slayer of giants. Will ye stop at nothing and slay me as well?”

“I’ll stop at nothing to protect ye.”

Her eyes searched his, looking for something he hoped she found. “And what have I
done to earn such a champion?” she whispered on parted lips.

“’Tis nothing ye’ve done, Amelia, and it can never be undone by ye.” He bent to kiss
her again. This time, she fell back on the bed, taking him along with fistfuls of
his shirt in her hands.

Feeling her beneath him made him hard as steel. He wanted her, throbbed for her, and
he was tempted to tear away the two flimsy layers of wool between them, spread her
wide, and sink deep. The thought of it almost brought him to climax.

But she was untried and untouched. And though every nerve ending in his body burned
for her, ached to be her first, he didn’t want her to regret anything. She wanted
to live her life and all the pleasures of it, and she would. He would help her, but
that one pleasure would have to wait until he knew she truly wanted it to be with
him and not just some memory to warm her while she lay in bed with her future husband.

“I fear if I take ye, I won’t let anyone else ever do so.” It was a statement of truth
that pained him as it left his lips. He kissed her chin, the column of her neck, to
redirect his thoughts.

“And I fear,” she whispered into his hair as he bent his head to her throat, “that
if ye take me”—she inched her thighs open wider and almost purred in his ear while
she moved, a subtle shifting that pressed her crux to his hard shaft and ignited his
passion into something he was no longer sure he could control—“I will never be satisfied
with anyone else.”

Aye, he wanted that. He wanted her to refuse the chancellor’s hand, unable to marry
him because of memories that plagued her. Memories of Edmund inside her, atop her,
behind her, beneath her. He wanted to drive her wild, make her scream, and drench
him in her desire. He smiled as he wedged his cock against her and she undulated her
hips. She wanted him.

“Ye want to know pleasure, woman?”

She nodded, then laughed nervously when he began unbuttoning the front of her gown.
She caught her breath when he pressed a kiss to the milky mounds of her breasts. Another
button unfettered, more of her exposed, his hot tongue spreading like fire over her
until her breasts spilled out into his hands. He groaned like the beast she set free
and dipped his hungry mouth to her sweet coral nipple. He alternated between sucking
her, laving his tongue over the small tight bud, and then grazing his teeth over it.
She writhed in pleasure when he outlined her other breast with his finger. When she
moaned, he tore the rest of the buttons away and kissed the flat belly he exposed.

He wanted to pleasure her but he wasn’t certain he could do it without wanting her
more than before. He had to stay strong. She’d already decided to go forward with
her proposed marriage to the chancellor. The last thing he wanted was to lose himself
to her completely…or to bring a bastard into the world. He wouldn’t send her off carrying
his child. He’d made sure that he’d left no babes behind after he lay with a woman.
There weren’t many women, but he used precautions. His true father hadn’t cared about
his bastard son or the lass he lay with and it had nearly cost Edmund and his mother
their lives.

With that thought guiding him, he controlled his breath and his desire while he inched
down her body, exposing more of her, kissing her everywhere, loving the sounds he
dragged from her. He pulled her skirts up over her belly and basked for a moment in
the sight of her gartered thighs and soft white hose covering her legs from the knee
down. She looked like an enticing, intoxicating goddess lying there, waiting for him
to continue undressing her. He did, taking his time, enjoying every inch of her.

He kissed the gooseflesh along her inner thigh. She trembled but he went farther,
mindful of her short, shallow breath, of every quiver of her flesh. The scent of her
so close drove him wild, but he took his time freeing her from each tied garter, rolling
down her hose and plucking them from her feet.

She laughed when he kissed the top of her foot, her ankle. The slide of his fingers
up the back of her bare calf made her arch her back and call out his name.

She was so lovely, so perfect. He rose up on his haunches, his cock stretching the
wool of his plaid and making her large eyes even wider. He spread her legs. She closed
them again.

“Lass.” He smiled down at her. “Be at ease.”

She nodded and at the gentle nudging of his fingers, she spread her legs wider.

When he bent to her and pressed his mouth to her warm, moist center, she cried out,
then giggled and squirmed away. He laughed, watching her, but soon his intentions
grew darker and this time when he moved to taste her glistening pearl he cupped her
buttocks and drew her up, stopping her from moving.

He drank his fill, holding her steady, plunging his tongue inside her. Her groans
grew louder, higher, until he thought Lucan would surely hear them. He didn’t care.
He wanted to bring her to the pinnacle of passion.

“Edmund, I can’t…Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” She gasped, then moaned, and then shuddered
to her core.

He laved her engorged nub and suckled, his own blood coursing through him like the
sea in the fury of a storm. He watched her lose herself, clutching fistfuls of his
bedcoverings, grinding her hips into his face over and over until she collapsed, spent.

He sat back on the bed and swiped his hand across his mouth. Hell, she was irresistible
lying there, out of breath, sleek with sweat. She looked at him and he smiled, satisfied
with what he had done for her. Her eyes dipped to his erection jutting toward the
ceiling beneath his plaid.

She reached for him, her eyes wide with apprehension. He wondered if she had ever
seen a man naked before.

“’Tis all right, Amelia,” he said softly, moving out of her reach. “This time was
fer ye.”

She nodded, smiled at him, and then closed her eyes. “I never thought anything could
feel so good.”

He moved along the bed to lie beside her and take her in his arms. “There are things
that feel even better.”

She leaned her head on his chest and wrapped her arm around him. “Sarah has always
told me as much, but truly, I can’t imagine anything feeling better than that. My
body is still tingling.”

He pushed himself down and pulled at his plaid. He wanted to show her, but it could
wait.

“Thank ye, Edmund.” She pressed a kiss to his chest, then snuggled closer to him,
her bare breasts making it extremely difficult to rid himself of his erection.

He’d wanted to give her pleasure. He had. Why then did her gratitude feel the same
as when he held the door for a woman? And why the hell did it feel so bad?

S
arah reached her hand out to Lucan’s door for the fourth time in the space of ten
breaths. Each time she retreated, not knowing what to say when she stepped inside.
She had stayed away for days. What excuse could she give him? She certainly couldn’t
tell him the truth, that Amelia was correct about her. She was a coward. She’d always
lived her life with careless abandon, never giving her heart to one man, but sharing
it with many. Because she was afraid to. She was young, pretty, and unbound by the
shackles of nobility. She could do as she pleased. And she did. She’d never cared
what anyone at Queensberry thought of her, save Amelia.

The men who partook of her never cared what became of her afterward. She liked it
that way. No attachments. No expectations. No heartache.

Malcolm Grant was the perfect man to give herself to. But she hadn’t. And the reason
was lying in a bed behind that damned door.

Her heart banged loudly in her ears as she reached for it again and this time the
sound of Amelia crying out halted Sarah’s movement. She turned, agape, and stared
at the door to Edmund’s room across the hall. Then she smiled.

“Well, good fer ye, Amelia dearest. I’d love to see yer mother’s face after she heard
that.”

She wasn’t angry with her friend over the words they’d shared earlier in the garden.
Sarah had been wrong to stay away from Lucan’s bedside. The poor man had almost died.
She intended to make up for her callousness by apologizing—no harm in doing that…if
she could just open the door!

Girding up her loins one last time, she pushed on the door, then paused outside of
it when it creaked open.

“Grendel?” a husky male voice called out. Damn it, but that voice plagued her dreams.

She stepped inside the room. “Do I look like a hairy, overgrown beast to ye?” She
tried not to look directly at him, but her eyes had a mind of their own. And goodness,
but he looked unforgettable!

It frightened her that for all of Malcolm Grant’s charm and striking good looks, Lucan’s
was the face she thought about all day. His smile didn’t beguile with dimples but
with sincerity and with the kind of grace that only true beauty possessed. It didn’t
hurt though that his color had returned and his clean dark hair hung loose around
his shoulders. Coupled with the gleam of his golden eyes, he looked more like a wolf
lying there than a man.

“Sarah.” He propped himself up higher on his pillow and smiled at her like nothing
she could ever do could offend him. “’Tis nice to see ye.”

He was not like any other man. He had touched her heart, and there was no sign of
him letting up.

It was a mistake coming here. She nodded, then turned and looked at the door. Was
it too late to turn and run out? Nae! She would admit to being afraid to feel anything
for him but she wouldn’t run away!

“How are ye feelin’?” she asked, strolling into the room and keeping a firm grip on
what she was too scared to give anyone else. “Ye look fine…good…better.” She wanted
to bite her tongue off and then fling herself out the window for sounding like such
a fool.

“I’m hoping to be out of bed in a few days.”

She had only herself to blame for all the time she missed seeing him in it. She looked
now, trying to take her fill in the quickest time possible. He wore a shirt or nightshirt
possibly—she couldn’t tell with half of him beneath the covers—but his covering did
nothing to thwart the breadth of his shoulders. She remembered tending to his wound,
removing his plaid to the vision of carved steel and thinking how ravishingly beautiful
he was. But she’d been with beautiful men before. Lucan MacGregor was so much more
than good looks. She didn’t know too much about him since he’d been asleep for almost
half the time she’d known him. But he’d been nothing but kind to her, and his cousins
loved him very much. He’d told her that he dreamed of her. She dreamed of him, as
well. She knew what he looked like in the throes of ecstasy thanks to the dreams that
tormented her. He had a deep dimple in his chin that she dreamed of licking while
he sank deep into her, stretching her to her limits, making her cry out with pain
and with pleasure. She shook her head to clear it.

“Ye bring the sun with ye, lady.”

“I am no lady, sir.”

He smiled. “I am no courtly, well-bred man. I confess here and now that a few times
when ye thought me asleep, I was in fact listening to ye sing while ye tended to me.
I heard ye talking to yerself and to me while I drifted from this world to the next.”

He heard her? What had she said? Her anger that he’d tricked her subsided in the next
moment when he spoke.

“Ye captured my attention the first time I saw ye, and then my heart while ye brought
me back to life.”

Heaven help her, who taught this one how to put words together and strip a girl of
all her defenses?

She didn’t know what to do without them. “Ye embarrass me.”

“Fergive me.”

She thought in that moment that she could forgive him anything.

“I should go.” She offered him an awkward smile, afraid that if she stayed she would
never be rid of the thoughts of him naked and sweating over her…or even more dangerous,
thoughts of him wooing her with flowers, pretty words, and tender kisses like the
ones noble ladies whispered about at balls. “I’m verra’ happy to see ye so well, Lucan.”

She turned away. “Tell me,” he said, stopping her. She returned her gaze to him to
find him sitting up taller in the bed and folding his arms across his chest. “I feel
like I havena’ been fully awake with ye since we arrived. What do ye think of Ravenglade?”

“’Tis nice…” She gave the room a quick looking over. “A bit dusty.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “Ye would like Campbell Keep. ’Tis more lived in. I’d like to show
it to ye.” He looked down at himself and then at her with a crooked grin she found
irresistible. “As soon as I’m up and about.”

She chose to ignore how rakishly handsome he was and give her attention to her skirts
instead of him. “Ye called yerself a Campbell at Queensberry.”

“My grandmother is a Campbell, as was my uncle. The keep was his.”

“And is the keep now yers?”

“Aye, ’twill be when I take a wife.”

She nodded but said nothing.
That
was a topic she didn’t want to continue. She decided it best to shift it now.

“May I ask ye something?”

“Of course.”

She turned back to him and even moved closer to the bed, to him. In all her days she’d
never found it so difficult to speak to a man. She gritted her teeth and pressed onward,
refusing to be rendered mute or witless by anyone.

“Why are ye bein’ so kind to me yet again? I practically let ye die! Why, if it weren’t
fer Amelia and Edmund tending to ye day in and day out, ye likely wouldn’t be here
right now. I didn’t bring ye back to life, they did. I didn’t even visit ye and here
ye are treatin’ me like I did nothin’ wrong. Why? What have I done fer ye that I should
deserve such consideration?”

For a moment he simply sat there looking at her like he didn’t know her or what to
say. Then he cleared his throat. “I admit that yer absence troubled me. There were
even days when I grew angry with ye, but ’twas because I felt hurt. But I decided
that when I did see ye again, I wouldn’t waste time clinging to those feelings. I’m
baffled about what I did to keep ye away, though. I’ve been worried that mayhap I
insulted ye in my delirium.”

She mulled over a few excuses as to why she’d stayed away but they all seemed so trite
and made-up—which they were. Damn it, she couldn’t lie to him, and that was just another
thing that was so dangerous about him. She never had problems lying to other men.

“Nae, of course ye didn’t insult me. Delirious or not, I doubt ye know how to be discourteous.
I just…Well, I can’t…Ye…Och, fer goodness sakes, I am fond of ye.”

The room was silent save for Sarah’s heartbeat thudding in her ears like a booming
drum. For a moment, she couldn’t swallow. Her head felt a bit thick and she feared
she might faint. Did she just admit that she was fond of him? Was she mad? She laughed,
praying that he would laugh, too, and they could chuckle over such a ridiculous statement.
“What I meant to say was…I think ye’re verra’…Well, yer thoughtfulness makes me…”
She finally gave up and slapped her hands against her thighs. “Yer kindness makes
me uncomfortable. I know ye’re probably just nice to everyone but—”

“I see.”

Nae! That wasn’t what she meant to say.

“Ye prefer a man like Malcolm, who will use ye fer his satisfaction and then coldly
cast ye aside.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

The wry quirk of his mouth was both heart-wrenching and irritating. “Ye may have found
it somewhat troublesome to convey, but yer meaning was clear.”

“Nae, ’twasn’t.” She left the window and marched toward him. “A man like Malcolm will
never win m’ heart. But ye make me uneasy and I am not a fool to tempt fate and lose.”

Sarah could tell by the glint of steel in his smile that he didn’t understand her
meaning. She was glad.

“So then, I make ye uncomfortable
and
uneasy. Anything else?”

“Aye, angry!” She turned on her heel to storm out of the room. And she wasn’t running.
She was leaving!

“Ye make me angry, as well,” he confessed, bringing her steps to a halt. “Angry that
a beautiful woman like ye would settle fer a man who couldna’ be bothered to look
at her—to look deeper than the shape of her bosom and the curve of her hips. Though
there is nothing wrong with those either.”

“Then ye’ve looked,” Sarah said, turning slowly, arching her brow at him.

“I might not be a fickle rogue”—one edge of his mouth cocked upward—“but I’m a man.”

She sized him up and remembered his body while she sewed him back together. He was
a man all right. She would give him that. “Ye’re not a rogue. Ye’re more like a knight
of old. I have never known one.”

“Thank ye.” He shined his smile on her full force, making her a bit weak in the knees.
“I was named after one.”

“A knight?”

“Aye, Sir Lucan from King Arthur and his knights of the round table. Sir Lucan was
Arthur’s butler.”

“He was a servant?” Sarah asked, delightfully surprised. When Lucan nodded, Sarah
did her best to keep her heart in check. She liked everything about this man and it
frightened the wits out of her.

“What if I don’t want a man to look deeper?” she asked quietly.

“Then ye haven’t met the right man.”

She laughed. “And how will I recognize this answer to m’ dreams?”

He stretched his arms out to his sides, unwittingly inviting her to fall into them.
“He’ll make ye smile as much out of bed as he does in it. He’ll come to know what
makes ye happy and then do everything in his power to give it to ye. Ye’ll find his
interest in things that matter to ye and his protection from the things that dishearten
ye. He’ll see yer faults and love ye despite them.”

God help her, she could love this man. Every nerve ending in her body went ablaze
with warning. Run and to hell with what anyone thought! But she took a step toward
the bed, and then around it.

“I don’t believe in that kind of love, Mr. MacGregor.”

“Well fortunate fer ye, he’ll convince ye that yer wrong.”

For some mad reason, Sarah felt like laughing and grinning like a loon. Was he that
cocky? She hadn’t thought so. What else was he hiding from her? She wanted to find
out, but not now. Now, her heart was pounding too hard, and her legs didn’t feel like
they could keep her up another moment. Now she needed some fresh air.

“I will be sure to keep my eyes open fer this man,” she promised and turned to leave.

“He’ll be right here.”

Sarah’s blood rushed through her veins as she closed the door behind her and leaned
against it.

She knew the right thing to do would be to stay away from him. No good could come
from this. He was the nephew of Clan Chief MacGregor of Skye. That likely made him
something. She was a servant. If she wanted to protect her heart she should stay away.

The door across from her opened and Edmund poked his head out. When he saw her, he
smiled and hopped out of the room, closing the door behind him. “Would ye happen to
know where my aunt kept her gowns?”

She pointed right, then watched him go. She looked at the door, debating for only
a moment before she knocked and plunged inside.

Amelia sat propped in the bed, clutching Mairi Grant’s torn gown together at her chest.
When she saw Sarah, her mortification subsided.

“I would speak with ye when ye’re done,” Sarah told her.

Amelia smiled—rather, she appeared to be bubbling over. “I would speak to ye as well.”

Sarah went to the bed and kissed Amelia’s cheek as she had almost every night since
they were children. “I will be the one needin’ advice on affairs of the heart this
time, sister.”

“Oh, Sarah.” Amelia offered her most tender smile. “What do I know of love?”

Sarah smiled and then shrugged her shoulders on her way out of the room. “Then mayhap
we will teach each other.” She stopped at the door and turned to look at her dearest
friend once again. “Lord knows ’tis a sentiment sorely lackin’ in our lives. Mayhap
’tis time fer change.”