Bridegroom Wore Plaid (22 page)

Gil eyed Ian up and down, his expression unreadable. “I’ve told her you’ll be kind to her.”

“Of course, I’ll be… When did you have occasion to tell her this?”

“She’s not sanguine at the prospect of wedding you.”

Understatement, particularly from Gil, who was blunt even for a Scotsman—also a dodge where an answer to Ian’s question ought to have been.

“I understand this, Gilgallon, for she’s made no effort to hide her hesitance from me. Nonetheless, she and I have agreed to try, to attempt to become better acquainted, and to establish some mutually agreeable means of going on. If you have a better plan, even if you have a worse plan, I’m happy to hear it.”

“I have no plans at all.”

He who had little independent wealth, had no plans to wed in the near future. Con was in the same boat, Mary Fran as well. Fiona had their only prayer of amassing some coin, because her entire family would see to it, and they had ten years to work on the problem before Ian would consider allowing the girl to wed.

Ian regarded his younger brother. “Bachelors all over Scotland with no plans are raising up their bairns as we speak, Brother.”

“I’ve no damned bairns, and you know it.”

“You’re Fee’s favorite uncle, Gil. That’s a high honor in itself.” And Gil unabashedly enjoyed children.

Just as Augusta enjoyed children, for Christ’s sake. Ian shoved that thought off a mental cliff, one with a fine view of pleasure, folly, and heartbreak.

Gil’s face creased into a reluctant smile at the mention of his ranking among the uncles. “Show me these blighted settlements. I can’t promise I’ll get them all read tonight, but I’ll make a start.”

Ian ambled back to the desk and sorted papers. “These are the financial conditions. These are the special terms. I’ve kept it as simple as I could, but it’s binding as hell, and the details can’t be ignored.”

Gil followed Ian to the desk and picked up the discarded spectacles. “Are you going to require the younger sister to marry you on the same terms if Genie is unwilling or unable to complete the ceremony?”

“Bloody damn…” Gil’s tone had been casual, but he’d spotted a glaring oversight in Ian’s draftsmanship. “This grows worse and worse. Hester’s a lovely girl, but she’s barely half my age. She’s a damned child, Gilgallon. I’ve no interest in waiting for my bride to grow up before we can get the consummation of the vows over with—and that’s assuming I can even manage such a thing.”

Gil took Ian’s chair and put Ian’s glasses on his own nose, giving him an uncharacteristic scholarly air. “You don’t have to do this, Ian. We’re not starving.”

“We’re living a precarious farce, Gil. You know it and so do I. The only thing we have to barter for a substantial dose of cash is the title. Even after I’m officially installed as earl, there’s no guarantee the solicitors will turn loose of the earldom’s trusts, assuming anything remains there in any case.”

Gil crossed booted feet on the corner of the desk. “The reports say the trusts are healthy.”

“Those reports are written by lawyers. They can say any damned thing they please without actually lying.” And Ian was damned if he’d try to wheedle one bloody groat from their aging cousin, the Baron Fenmore, who’d somehow gotten himself appointed overseer of the trusts in Asher’s absence.

“Go to bed, Ian. Dawn comes early enough. Don’t obligate yourself to marry Hester. Let Altsax be the one to think of that contingency. He wants your title for a trophy so badly he’d probably marry you himself.”

“Which would be enough to give a brave man nightmares.”
More
nightmares.

Gil pulled the candles closer, and Ian left his brother to the inanities of legal construction. Being able to function as a lawyer didn’t mean a man took any joy from the task.

“Excuse me, my lord.”

Genie Daniels sat on the top step before the first landing, tucking her dressing gown over her toes. She looked like a schoolgirl caught spying on her elders the night of the ball.

“Genie. You couldn’t sleep?”

“I did sleep, but I couldn’t remain asleep.” Her gaze went everywhere—above Ian’s head, to the foot of the stairs, over Ian’s shoulder—never to his eyes.

Ian lowered himself beside her, experiencing a reluctant stab of fellow feeling for the other person being dragooned with him to the altar. “A wee dram of the
uisqe
beatha
might help with that.”

“I couldn’t.” She was hiding a smile, a small, dim smile.

He felt like he was sixteen and standing up at his first assembly, all awkwardness and uncomfortable silences between frequent trips to the men’s punch bowl.

Maybe she felt that way too?

“How’s your ankle?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“And your head?” Today’s ailment had been a megrim.

“Much… fine, thank you.”

Another silence, laden, struggling.
Hopeless.
Ian blew out a sigh and gave up on polite conversation. “Genie, lass, would you prefer it if I gave you all the flowery words and declarations we both know to be false? I can muster a good show if that will make you less… uncomfortable. I was young once. I remember…”

He was
still
young, dammit.

“Please, my lord, let’s not make this any more false than it already is.” Her hands clenched around fistfuls of robe, but she said nothing else.

How could something be made
more
false?

“Will you ride out with me after luncheon tomorrow?” It was all he could think of to offer her. On horseback, she would be assured he’d keep his hands to himself—the idea of taking liberties with her being absurd in any case—and the grooms would stay in close attendance.

“I’ll see if my aunt can accompany us.” She laid her cheek on her knees in a posture reminiscent of the way Augusta had sat on the blanket that morning, nothing merry about it.

Augusta…

Ian got to his feet and extended a hand down to her. “A general outing, then. We’ll muster the household and hope the rain moves off. May I escort you up to your room?” Where, if he had any sense, he’d steal a little kiss, presume to touch her hair, or at least take her gently in his arms. At some point they had to become accustomed to touching each other beyond the civilities.

The very idea made him queasy.

“No, thank you, my lord.”

She sat right where she was, and Ian was so relieved not to be tried any further, he bid her good night and took himself off to bed. It wasn’t until he was tossing himself from one side to the other for the twentieth time that it occurred to him to wonder: For whom did Genie wait on the stairs all alone at midnight?

Nine

Julia Redmond was a sound sleeper, so sound Con had a few extra minutes to doubt his sanity and argue with himself over his presence in her bedroom—fruitless minutes while his cock clamored for him to be about a lusty man’s typical business in a willing woman’s bed.

Too bad for his cock, that wasn’t the plan.

“Connor?” Julia struggled up to prop herself back on her elbows, her braid a thick, coppery rope over one shoulder. “It is you, isn’t it?” She blinked in the moonlight streaming through her windows then reached out to where he stood beside her bed to take him by the wrist. “Say something, or I’ll think I’m dreaming.”

“Maybe you are dreaming.” He put one knee on the bed, pausing long enough to pull his shirt out of his breeches and over his head. “Lie back, Julia, and be silent.”

There was risk involved. Risk that she’d start shrieking, belatedly recovering her previously misplaced sense of decorum, but Con had seen the loneliness in her eyes, had heard the bewilderment and hurt in her voice when she’d tried to apologize to him in the stable.

“You have one chance to change your mind, Julia Redmond. You shake your head if you don’t want me here, or you nod if I’m staying.”

He waited as if he had all the time in the world, as if a Chinese rocket weren’t trying to launch itself from his breeches into her body. She nodded, slowly, solemnly.

Good. She understood this was no small concession on his part. He pulled the covers aside and settled his body right over hers, caging her with his bigger frame.

“Kiss me, Julia.”

He didn’t give her time to get all those female gears spinning in her brain; he charged forth, intent on seizing his prize, which was to say, he kissed her. Set his mouth on hers and consigned himself to the sweetest suffering known to man.

She kissed like a young girl, lips sealed, not like a widowed lady who went around propositioning near strangers in the woods. Her reticence pleased him, helped him lecture that trouser rocket into submission and gave him the patience to savor her.

Sweet, was his first impression when he traced her lips with his tongue. Sweet, soft, enticing—like the rest of her. He felt himself getting pulled into the kiss, the exploration and pleasure of it, while he sank a hand into her hair.

“Connor…”

“No words, Julia.” Except the mention of his name had parted her lips. He didn’t invade. He explained and waited for her to catch on, then demonstrated again. On the second try, she got the idea and touched her tongue to his lips, a little lick of warmth that coursed down through his body and made him want to clutch at her.

To shuck his pants and swive her witless.

He let the thought go, thanking the Deity he’d had sense enough to wear trousers rather than a kilt and to keep his trousers on and buttoned. Her tongue grew a tad bolder, venturing to explore the soft flesh inside his lips then retreating uncertainly.

He let out a growl of pleasure at her overture and felt her hips lift against his body.

She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t the aloof, standoffish lover he’d worried she might be. She was eager and shy and lovely, which was worse—far worse.

And much, much
better
.

He lifted off her a fraction of an inch, wondering when he’d let himself give her that much of his weight. It was too soon for that—they had a great deal more ground to cover first.

Julia’s hand came up, stroked over his hair, then clutched a fistful at his crown, holding him still for her questing lips. She’d apparently found her initiative, forging delicately into his mouth, seeking more of him.

And if he wasn’t mistaken, more of herself.

So he let go a little more, put some rhythm into his kiss, put some swagger and dare into it until she was orally consuming him, making little sounds of want and frustration that had Connor wishing his trousers to Halifax.

“Nightgown off, Julia.” She lifted her arms in compliance so quickly she almost clipped him on the chin with her elbow. It was a summer nightgown, gone in an instant, tossed who knew where in her willingness to show him her treasures.

And they were treasures. She lay on her back while Con sat on his heels between her legs. He let her suffer a few panting breaths of trepidation while he took lazy, decadent inventory by moonlight: Perfect, full, pale breasts crested with small pinkish nipples puckering invitingly in the night air. Shoulders a touch more broad than he’d anticipated on such a diminutive woman, but tapering to a feminine waist that curved right back out to lovely hips. Not quite an hourglass—she was sturdy and apparently not given to overly tight stays—but so very definitely a woman.

She turned her face aside, which he took for a silent plea for his hands, his mouth.
Him.
She’d be begging before he was through with her, and he’d be cursing.

He shifted forward to hang over her, so they touched only when he gave her his mouth again.
Start
slowly
, he admonished himself, teasing his lips over her features. Beneath him, Julia caught the shift, letting him set a more languorous pace. She also took advantage of the distance between their bodies to run her hands over Con’s naked ribs.

Her touch shifted gradually from a hesitant request to hungry seeking. She mapped his entire torso with two hands—his ribs, chest, waist, hips. Her fingertips explored his nipples slowly and thoroughly, as if she’d never explored such territory before.

Con had encountered female hands on his person in every imaginable intimate caress, but this…
plundering
of him was unraveling his composure. He retaliated by shifting up enough to catch her busy hands in each of his and press them to the mattress on either side of their bodies.

Which left him free to plunder her, to run his nose along the underside of each warm, rosy breast and hear her breath catch in her throat. He did it again, making her squirm delightfully beneath him, and then when he made a third, slower pass, she sighed and went quiet.

Surrender, of a sort.

Only then did he put his mouth to her, by degrees and inches and slow marches, making her wait and whimper while she tried to pull her hands from his. When he finally drew on her nipple, gently of course, she groaned.