Kiss Me, Annabel

  How the hell had he forgotten that there were no sheets on the bed? Only the stained tablecloth was there. He couldn’t put a lady on that. He stopped.

  Annabel had her arms around his neck, but there were tears in her eyes. “What?” he asked, bending his head to kiss her. “Why tears?”

  She shook her head and pressed her lips against his chin. He felt his body throb with need; he was coiled tighter than a spring, desperate for her body. So he rolled himself backward onto the cloth, stains and all. His ass burned from the bee stings, but her luxurious female curves hovered above him, making his vision blur.

  Even though her eyes were still teary, she was smiling. After a hasty wrench at his breeches, he slid up, into her, completing her, completing him. She surged forward to meet him with a cry. And then he was thrusting into her with no apologies for his lack of finesse, just a joint madness and a shuddering pleasure that rocked between them.

  Ewan threw back his head and tried to focus on the rough-hewn logs of the roof. He wouldn’t go without her—he wouldn’t—

  His hips surged upward, demanding that she come deeper…his hands shaped her breasts until she fell forward, burying her face in his neck.

  Harder and harder he pounded, his mind black, but the words kept beating in his head until finally he gasped them through the burning in his chest. “I don’t have to marry you just because we slept together. Or due to that scandal in London.”

  She froze above him, her eyes wide.

  “I have to marry you because you are mine.” He stared at her, craving her even as he took her, with a desire that would never die. “You are mine. Mine.”

  There were tears sliding down her cheeks now, but she was with him, her body shuddering with his every stroke, coming to meet him.

  “God Almighty, Annabel,” he finally said, his teeth clenched with his need to bring her with him. “I love you, don’t you see that?”

  But then he finally lost the battle with his hunger. The air exploded from his lungs and his vision went black, and the only thing he felt was the shuddering of her body against his. And dimly, dimly through the explosion of pleasure in his body, he felt gratitude for the way she sobbed his name as she clenched about him.

  Twenty-six

  “This has gone far enough,” Imogen said, making her voice as clear and commanding as possible.

  She and Mayne were alone in a sitting room in the Wood and Horn. They had traveled all day, and barely had time for baths and a change of clothing before a late supper. Directly thereafter, Griselda had taken Josie off to bed and left Imogen and Mayne together.

  Yet that rather astonishing intimacy seemed to have gone unnoticed by Mayne. For the last hour, he had been seated before the fire wrapped in a fascinating book about halters and bridles he’d discovered in a corner. She had spent the time examining the room: one long-necked bottle of wine, one suit of armor minus an arm, one portrait of a Miss Jogg. She knew the name of the long-nosed young lady because she’d actually gone over to examine her tarnished name-plate.

  That was how tedious the evening was.

  “What has gone far enough?” he asked, not even looking up.

  “Your indifference toward me.”

  She finally got his attention; Mayne blinked and looked up.

  Imogen had meant to be seductive, once he stopped reading his musty book. She meant to dance across the floor and perch on the edge of his armchair and coax him into taking liberties with her, or flirting with her, or doing anything that would make her feel as if she were a beautiful, desired lady.

  Instead she heard with horror her own voice crack as she said, “Surely you despise me.”

  Mayne put down his book. “Are you asking me to kiss you?”

  The words were at her lips before she could stop them. “How can you spurn me when you’ve accepted every invitation offered in the past ten years?”

  She was seated opposite him, her hair gleaming in the firelight, her low-necked gown a shade of rose that suited her dark coloring. With that wild light in her eyes she looked like a passionate gypsy, the kind who would steal a man’s purse and his heart at once.

  “I do not wish to go to bed with you.” He saw her shoulders grow slightly rigid and felt a pang of guilt.

  “Why not?”

  “Put it down to my age.”

  “You’re not so old. Don’t you think—” She paused and he saw her throat work for a second. “Don’t you think I’m beautiful?”

  He stood up. She was right: he had always been catholic in his tastes, and she was both lovely and available. He brought her to her feet, but even as he did so, he knew…he just knew.

  She met his eyes and now there was fury in hers. “I hate you!” she cried.

  He dropped his hands instantly. “I expect you do.”

  “How dare you…how dare you. I saw you try to make yourself and then you—you—”

  “Which has everything to do with my incapabilities and nothing to do with you.”

  She froze. “Are you incapable?”

  For a second he toyed with the idea. Let her spread the word that he was a limp lily…but no. Instead he walked over to her and crushed his mouth onto hers. Her lips were plump and full and tasted of tears and anger. His body had never failed him, not even after two bottles of brandy, and it didn’t now. He pulled away from her, took her hand and deliberately pressed it to the front of his trousers.

  “There!” he said, voice bleak. “Am I incapable?”

  A tiny, triumphant smile curled her lips. “No.”

  “But there’s more to me than functioning equipment. I would guess that your husband was as bungling riding a woman as he was a horse.”

  She gave a small squeak but he didn’t stop. “So now you’re wanting to use me, like a square of gingerbread at the fair, to amuse yourself and make you forget your memories.”

  All that weariness he felt at the very idea of tending to another woman in bed, of making her dewy-eyed so that she’d coo and promise she’d never felt that before—all that weariness came into his voice. “You don’t give a damn about me, Imogen. And to be brutally honest, I don’t give much of a damn about you either. And that’s where we are.”

  She stared at him, eyes wide, fist clenched to her mouth.

  “People like us shouldn’t be going to bed together. There’s no bloody point in it. Don’t you see that? You married for love, for God’s sake!”

  “But you said—you said Draven—”

  “I’m sure he was crap in the sack,” Mayne snarled. “But you loved him, didn’t you? So even if he wasn’t making you faint, he had something I’ve never had.”

  She whispered it. “What?”

  “You loved him. Lucky bastard that he was.” He said it deliberately, slowly. “Maitland didn’t die unloved.”

  Then he swung about, on the point of leaving the room. “And he loved you too. So leave it be!” His voice echoed off the old walls. “The stupid sod loved you. He eloped with you. He said he loved you when he was dying, for God’s sake. What right have you to discount his feelings?”

  There were tears in her eyes, and he was in no mood for tears. But he waited.

  “None,” she said, and her voice broke. “I’ve no right at all.”

  He made to leave, but when she sank to her knees, he went over and picked her up.

  But only because there was no one else around to do it.

  Twenty-seven

  Annabel sat on the bed and stared at the rough-hewn wall, but her view was blurred by hot, humiliated tears. She should be riotously happy. Ewan had said he loved her. A sob tore its way up her chest.

  The truth of it was shockingly, brutally clear. She had spent her girlhood figuring out how to make a man desire her. She hadn’t neglected a single item that might be helpful: she knew about kisses that fired a man’s loins with their suggestiveness, about glances that promised private delight, about sleek movements of one’s hips that could make a man’s hands shake.

>   She was an expert at arousing desire.

  No, the uglier word was more appropriate: lust.

  The irony was that she had achieved precisely the marriage she hoped to gain from her practice: marriage to a rich man blinded by his lust for her. A man who was kindly and generous in his dealings with others, would never reproach her for having no dowry and would buy her all the gowns she wanted. Sobs were burning her throat.

  Her life felt like one of those fairy tales that pretend to be enjoyable but finish up with an unpleasant moral. The richest man in Scotland was so riveted by lust that in the heat of the moment, he swore fidelity and even love.

  It was unfortunate that she wasn’t stupid enough to ignore the difference between lust and love.

  If only she were ugly, or scarred, or even—she wiped away more tears—if she had a particularly nice personality, she might believe Ewan. But she’d never hidden truths from herself. Her only skill was figuring numbers, and yet she was lazy enough to never wish to do it. She was charming when it suited her, and a fishwife when it didn’t, something her father would have attested to.

  More tears slid down her face. If your own father doesn’t love you, then it should be no surprise to find that other men aren’t inclined to do so. Ewan had merely glimpsed what she was really like, and he had immediately blurted out his reluctance to marry—at least until lust got the better of him. But how long would lust last?

  The pain of it was like a raw ache in her chest. She sat on the bed and shuddered with sobs, rubbing away the tears with her damp nightgown. It wasn’t like her to succumb to tears in this fashion. She had rarely cried when her father was sharp with her, even in the worst moments of her childhood. Yet somehow the tears just started up again, for all her attempts to stop.

  The door opened quietly. Ewan’s hair was dripping wet again.

  “How you can bear to enter that stream I don’t know,” she said, hastily blotting her face and pretending that her eyes weren’t red.

  “I’m used to cold water,” he said. “My nurse used to say that I was fairly addicted to cleanliness. I often bathe in the river that runs behind the castle, and it’s freezing in the depths of summer. Why are you crying, Annabel?”

  She managed a weak smile. “Foolishness. I’m hungry, I think.”

  “I’ll give you a glass of milk. And I’ll put on potatoes,” he said. “After that, I’m going to walk to the next village. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.” His voice was grim. “I’ve been an idiotic bastard, Annabel. I can’t even say how sorry I am.”

  “It’s not so bad,” she said, but her voice rasped, and he scowled. Then she realized what he was saying. “You can’t walk to the next village! It’s growing dark. How on earth will you find your way?”

  Ewan put six potatoes into the pot. They should at least fill Annabel’s stomach until he could return with a horse, a carriage and warm clothes of all kinds. “I’ll find the way,” he said curtly.

  Then he came over to her and dropped a kiss on her head. “I’ve milked the cow. Expect me back before the morning.”

  “Ewan—”

  But she spoke to empty space.

  Four hours later, Ewan realized that he may have paid lip service to the idea of hell, but now he had a realistic idea of it. He had stumbled along for an hour or so, keeping to the path by luck rather than skill, until rain started to fall. By a half hour after that, he was wet to the skin. His boots—made of the finest leather and designed for a gentleman planning on an afternoon’s drive—were taking in water like twin sieves. By his count, he’d fallen off the road three times, and once he had landed up to the knees in mud.

  Moreover, there was no sign of a village. Finally Ewan turned about. He couldn’t leave Annabel alone with nothing but potatoes and a malevolent cow in need of milking.

  For some reason, going back to her was easier than walking away. He managed to stay on the road, and walked into the house just as the rain began to slack off. Annabel was asleep, huddled under the Kettles’ thin coverlet. Two gowns were draped on top of her for warmth, and the fire had burnt low again.

  Ewan felt a searing stab of guilt. He’d taken an exquisite, laughing young woman away from the London ballrooms that were her natural milieu and reduced her to a tearful, freezing damsel in distress. What’s more, he’d taken her virginity, and given her only potatoes to eat. And for what? Due to a quixotic idea that he would alleviate her fear of poverty?

  No. Annabel had accused him of not being honest with himself. The truth of it was that he’d sent his carriages away out of pure, unadulterated lust, no matter how much he would like to dress it up in fancy ideas. He’d seen this cottage, and the idea of being alone with her sprang into his mind with the strength of any temptation.

  The temptation of the devil, obviously.

  He put a log on the fire as quietly as he could, grappling with a bout of self-dislike such as he’d never experienced before.

  Annabel woke up with a little scream.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, stripping off his shirt. One of the damnable things—in a long string of the same—was that he had no more clean shirts. He’d have to put on a shirt that was not entirely clean. Grimly he chose the least soiled and pulled it on.

  “Did you bring a horse?” she asked groggily.

  Somehow he managed to get the word out. “No.”

  “No?”

  “I couldn’t find my way to the village. I failed you, Annabel.”

  There was silence from the bed.

  “I’ll start out again the minute I’ve milked the cow.”

  “But Ewan, we can’t just leave Peggy’s house and the cow and the chicken. What would the animals eat?”

  Ewan ground his teeth. He remembered this feeling. He’d had it before, when Rosy was brought to him after a week in the company of bandits. She had cowered and cried pitifully, when she wasn’t staring into space. He knew then that all the money in the world couldn’t solve some problems, but it seemed he must have needed to learn that lesson again.

  “The fire feels so good,” Annabel said sleepily. “Come lie down, Ewan.” She rolled closer to the wall, a fragrant bundle of womanhood with no idea how she affected him.

  Ewan had decided long ago that it was one thing to believe in God, and it was another to besiege Him with requests, like a peevish child asking for sweets. But he broke his own rule that night, and before he fell asleep—carefully leaving a space between himself and his not-quite-wife—he sent up a fervent prayer.

  It wasn’t very elegantly phrased, and Peggy might have been insulted had she heard it. But Peggy was in no mood to be listening to whispers on the wind. She was holding her tiny Annie (Annabel having been deemed too elegant). Annie’s mop of bright red hair marked her Scots to the bone; her father couldn’t stop grinning, and neither (when he had the news) could Mac.

  Before Ewan even dropped off to sleep, the redoubtable Mac was already on his way to the cottage, prudently bringing with him a large basket of food and a change of clothes for his lordship. Mac had long been of the opinion that lords, like other men, are the better for a full belly and a change of clothing. Besides, he was itching with curiosity to see how the master survived without two hot baths and three square meals a day.

  In the end, Mac had not time to form an opinion on this point: the carriage no sooner entered the square than the earl had popped his countess (or future countess) into the vehicle and ordered them to make haste.

  Annabel’s and Ewan’s relief at being rescued was so acute that they didn’t even speak once they were in the carriage. It wasn’t until they were drawing to a halt in an inn yard that Annabel realized she did have one thing to say. “I’m afraid that I’ve taken a bit of a cold. So I’d like my own room, please.”

  A second ticked by, and then: “Of course. You’ll be far more comfortable, and your maid can see to your comfort during the night. Annabel—I’m so sorry.” There was something raw in Ewan’s voice.

  Annabe
l frowned at him. “You are hardly responsible for my cold.”

  “I took you to that awful place.” His eyes were almost black and he really did have an anguished look in his eyes.

  “You must think I’m wasting away from a romantic disease like consumption,” Annabel said, forgetting that she was grief-stricken and almost giggling. “I only have a cold, Ewan. Probably my nose is bright red, but I assure you that I am not near death.”

  He didn’t smile back at her. “Your nose is perfect,” he said.

  “Now you’ll have to do penance for lying,” she told him, moving toward the carriage door. But he stopped her, wrapping his arms around her and carrying her into the inn.

  He didn’t let her go until she was snug in a bedchamber with a tub of steaming water ready. The fact that Annabel dropped a few more tears into her bath was obviously due to her weakened condition.

  Twenty-eight

  It was a castle. A huge castle made of dark gray granite, with overhanging windows and little turrets and even what appeared to be a formal pond out front. They had been driving all morning, through woods so tall and dark that they seemed to stretch into infinity. They hadn’t passed a house, or a village in hours. And then, all of a sudden…

  They rounded a bend in the road, and it lay below them, shimmering in a pink mist left from a quick rainstorm. The trees on the surrounding hills looked black against the rain-drenched sky.

  “That’s Clashindarroch Forest,” Ewan said. “The River Bogie runs down that way, behind the castle; we pipe it in through pipes my father installed. He was by all accounts a great innovator. I put in a plunge-bath off the kitchen because Uncle Pearce said he would have liked it.”

  “Is Pearce your father’s brother, then?”

  “My grandfather’s brother, actually. He’s a great-uncle.”

  “You have a plunge-bath?” she said, a little belatedly. “How wonderful!”