Claiming the Courtesan (9 page)

Eventually, Kylemore left his companions and came across to where she waited. In the uncertain golden light, his expression was unreadable. Whatever liquor he’d imbibed had made no inroads on his uncanny control. She suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold air and everything to do with what he might want from her.

Was he still angry over her insult? Did he mean to punish her? She’d long ago accepted that none of the Macleishes
would interfere if the duke chastised her physically. In London, he’d never mistreated her. Here beyond the reaches of civilization, who knew what he’d do if she tested his temper far enough? He might kill her. Sometimes on this endless journey, she wished he would.

He knelt before her in a pose that conveyed nothing of supplication. “Give me your hands.”

His voice brooked no argument. Wordlessly and with a scorn she wanted him to see, she obeyed. She did her best to hide her fear, as she had since he’d reappeared to fracture her quest for chaste anonymity. A pity she knew her false bravado didn’t fool him in the slightest.

He bound her, then tied the end of the cord around his own wrist. The pattern was familiar after the nights in the carriage, when both had grabbed what sleep they could sitting opposite one another. But tonight, of course, was different. For the first time, they hadn’t traveled through the night.

Although she thought it unlikely he’d ravish her in full view of his men, she couldn’t stop herself from hissing, “Remember your promise.”

His face remained impassive. “Don’t worry. You’re safe enough for now.”

Sometimes she wondered if she imagined his tamped blaze of desire, but on this occasion she had no doubts at all. Lust all but smoked from his lean form.

Strange to consider that while he’d always been in many ways a puzzle to her, she’d never had any difficulty assessing his precise level of sexual arousal. When she’d seen him across Sir Eldreth’s crowded drawing room, she’d known immediately that he’d wanted her. She’d known that even before she’d known who he was.

She wished to heaven she’d never found out who he was.

The duke lay down. For as long as she could, Verity sat up, but eventually exhaustion made her stretch out next to him.
He grunted wearily and tugged one of the rugs up to keep them from the chill. She waited for him to haul her into his arms, but he lay separate from her and stared up into the rough rafters of the roof. The men across the room gradually settled. All was quiet apart from the rain pattering on the roof when Kylemore spoke.

“Don’t pin your hopes on your brother rescuing you.”

Verity didn’t answer but moved as far away from him as the length of the ties allowed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t far enough to forget he was there.

Verity woke to a delicious feeling of heat and comfort. It was dark, but something told her night was almost over. To confirm that impression, the first morning bird called from the trees outside the cottage.

Kylemore’s powerful arms twined around her, and he slept heavy and still beside her. His scent and heat surrounded her like a sensual miasma. Under the blanket that covered them to the waist, he’d flung one long leg across hers in an unmistakable claim of ownership.

It was too much for her to bear. Choking with outrage, she struggled frantically to put some distance between them.

He groaned as he half woke. “Jesus, woman! What is it?”

“Let me go!” she said in a fierce whisper, punching him wildly in her attempt to free herself.

He sat up and rapidly worked at the cord that tangled them together. “Damn it, Verity. Settle down,” he snapped.

Thank God he no longer clutched her as if they were lashed together in a rough sea. She took her first full breath since she’d woken.

“Tie me to something else,” she said, still with a trace of her earlier hysteria. “I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“You’re being absurd,” he said in a bored voice, fiddling with the knotted cord.

“Is everything all right over there, Your Grace?” One of the Macleish boys lifted his head and rubbed bleary eyes in the light of the dying fire.

“Nothing I can’t handle.” Then a short burst of Gaelic that made the other man laugh sleepily.

Verity had no trouble interpreting their masculine amusement at her foolishness. She wished every male on earth to Hades at that moment. With the hottest spot reserved for the fiend at her side.

Eventually, Kylemore straightened the ties. With a long-suffering sigh, he lay down once more. She was thankful to notice he kept a space between them this time.

“Don’t touch me again!” she said vehemently, lying on her back and staring blindly up into the shadows in the roof.

“As you wish, madam,” he said wearily. He rolled away and went back to sleep with annoying speed.

Verity listened to Kylemore’s even breathing, while her heart pounded with dread and self-doubt. How could she snuggle up to him with the trust of a child? She hated him. She feared him. And if she’d learned anything, it was that she had to be constantly on her guard. This time, her blistering contempt focused solely on her own ruinous weakness rather than on the obliviously slumbering rake beside her.

T
he rain stopped before dawn, and the day promised to set fair. Verity stood next to the duke in the unreliable sunshine and watched the detested coach rattle away down the hill.

“Is this our final destination?” she asked incredulously. “I imagined something more fitting to Your Grace’s consequence.”

She’d left—under his escort, of course—to wash in a stream that ran behind the ruin. Now she found their transport abandoning them. Doubtfully, she glanced at the tumbledown cottage. It was whole but hardly luxurious.

“The coach can go no further in these hills. Now we take the ponies.” He gestured with one elegant hand toward a previously unnoticed string of horses tied under a tree.

This was the most information she’d managed to coax out of him in days. “But didn’t you say we go to Kylemore Castle?”

“No. I said the Macleishes did. My home isn’t nearly pri
vate enough for what I intend.” His voice bit, as if he realized he’d briefly treated her as a fellow human being and now regretted it. He strode over to where Angus and Andy, apparently all that remained of their escort, waited.

She stumbled after him, risking another withering setdown. “That’s very well, except for one thing.”

He turned to her. Ill-concealed impatience shadowed his fine-boned, intelligent face. “I’ve already told you—what you wish is of no consequence.”

She gritted her teeth. “But it is of very great consequence that I don’t ride.”

The blank look of genuine amazement that chased his annoyance away would have made her laugh in other circumstances. Obviously, the thought had never occurred to this scion of the aristocracy that the entire world wasn’t flung on horseback before it could walk. But Verity had never ridden. She was frightened of horses, a legacy of a childhood accident when one of her father’s draft team had trampled her.

“You’ll pick it up soon enough,” he said flatly after a pause. He left her and headed toward the ponies as though his pronouncement solved the issue. When she didn’t immediately follow, he stopped and turned his head. “Come on.”

“No,” she said sullenly.

Nothing on earth—dangerous noblemen with uncertain tempers included—was coaxing her any closer to those snorting, murderous beasts.

He sighed with irritation and stalked back in her direction. “We can’t stay here. You must see that. The coach has gone. The ponies are the only way we can proceed.”

“Then I’ll walk.”

He cast a speaking look at her slight figure. “You’d collapse halfway up the first hill.”

“Then leave me here to starve,” she snapped. “That should be plenty of revenge for you.”

“Not nearly.” He spoke lightly, although she had no doubt he meant what he said.

“I’m not riding.”

His jaw firmed in a way she’d have found daunting if she hadn’t already been so daunted by the prospect of getting on a horse. “Yes, you are.”

She sidled away but not quickly enough. He caught her wrist and tugged her closer. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Without releasing her, he bent and scooped her into his arms. He hadn’t carried her since they’d left Hinton Stacey. For a moment, surprise and unwelcome memories of how he’d kissed her in the carriage held her quiescent.

Then she started to wriggle. “Put me down!”

He laughed, damn him. “Behave or I’ll throw you over my shoulder again. We haven’t time for this nonsense. If the weather breaks, you’ll think our journey until now paradise in comparison.”

“I don’t ride!” she protested.

“You do now.” He paused and gave her a searching look. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

She thought she caught fleeting concern in his eyes. Then she dismissed the impression as the kind of wishful thinking she’d abandoned with her chastity so many years ago. Anger with herself added extra edge to her retort. “Of course I’m shaking, you great oaf.”

He laughed again, the heartless bully, confirming that his brief moment of compassion had never existed. “You’re giving Angus and Andy great entertainment. They’re convinced all Sassenach women are mad.”

“I don’t care,” she muttered.

She was shivering violently by the time Kylemore stopped in front of the lead pony, an evil-looking dun. In spite of everything, she shrank against her tormentor.

“Please, Your Grace, put me down.” Not even the most sympathetic ear would hear anything except a mewling plea in her words.

Of course he didn’t relent. He’d snatched her from her home to torture her, after all.

She braced herself for mockery, but instead he spoke with a quiet steadiness that penetrated her dread as surely as a knife through soft butter. “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything, Verity.”

I’m afraid of you,
she admitted despairingly in her heart, then gasped as he dumped her unceremoniously in the sidesaddle. Only with the greatest effort did she keep herself from screaming. She froze into trembling stiffness.

The horse wasn’t large, but she felt a dizzyingly long way from the ground. She sucked in a deep breath to control her roiling nausea and clutched at the saddle for balance.

“Angus!” Kylemore shouted to the nearest giant as the horse showed every sign of bolting under its awkward burden.

The giant grabbed the reins and spoke soothingly to the heaving demon beneath her. Kylemore placed his gloved hands on either side of her. His looming nearness melted the icy paralysis that held her motionless, and she tried to slide off.

“Stop that,” he said softly, leaning in to keep her in the saddle. “You’ll frighten the horses.”

His effrontery penetrated even her all-pervasive panic. How she loathed him. Terror and hatred fought for dominance in her quaking soul. If only she’d wrenched the pistol from his grasp in Whitby and put a bullet through his black heart. She whipped her head up to glare at him.

“
I’ll
frighten the horses?” she repeated in outrage.

“Yes. They’re simple creatures. Hysterical women unnerve them.” Firmly, he hooked her feet into the stirrups and
adjusted the length. He placed one hand on the small of her back to hold her upright. She tried and failed to ignore the warm support. “You’re as stiff as a board. Relax.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she said resentfully while remaining as still as she possibly could.

How was she to cling on when the cursed beast moved? She would fall and its churning hooves would smash her to pieces. She closed her eyes and swallowed another surge of nausea.

Kylemore sighed and gently began to stroke her. Every nerve in her body focused on the circles his hand made on her back. Despite the shudders of fear that wracked her frame, she adopted a more natural pose.

“I can’t take you up with me,” he said gently. “My pony will barely hold my weight as it is. And the going is too rough and uneven for us to ride Tannasg.”

She felt what little color she had left in her cheeks drain away. Opening her eyes, she looked across to Tannasg, the duke’s huge gray gelding tethered nearby, who seemed to loom at least ten times larger than the denizen of hell beneath her.

He must have read her expression. “Exactly. Now, be brave. We’re going on with the ponies.” With his free hand, he loosened her fingers from where they hooked into the front of the saddle and placed them in the animal’s coarse mane. The pony shifted restively under her.

Kylemore whispered Gaelic reassurances to the horse. Verity was mortified to hear exactly the same tone he’d used to convince her to stay in the saddle. She was even more mortified when the animal proved just as pliant as she under his persuasion.

“I can’t do this,” she said unevenly.

“Yes, you can. I’ll lead you. You’ll be quite safe. Just hold on and pray if it makes you feel better.”

“Nothing will make me feel better,” she said with a trace of sulkiness.

He reached out to touch her cheek. “Take heart, Verity. You’ve never lacked courage before.”

The uncomplicated friendliness of the gesture astonished her so much that it took a few moments to comprehend something even more amazing. He’d just complimented her on something that had nothing to do with Soraya’s sultry beauty and everything to do with Verity’s sturdier qualities.

And he no longer seemed to think of her as Soraya first and Verity second. That deep voice had spoken her name without hesitation.

By the time she’d come to terms with that startling realization, their small caravan had lurched into motion, and she trailed meekly in Kylemore’s wake.

Beauty bit sharper than any blade. No matter how Kylemore tried, he couldn’t stop it slicing deep into his heart, making mockery of the armor he’d built up over years of absence.

From the broad back of his pony, he looked at the Highlands in late summer glory and tried to keep shrieking memories of terror and misery at bay. But they overwhelmed his ramshackle defenses and possessed his soul. He closed his eyes in unspoken anguish.

He hadn’t been this far north since he was seven years old. He’d forgotten the clear air, the endless rows of mountains fading to blue, the wide skies, the red of the rowan berries, the purple of the heather, the soft music of running water. He’d forgotten this ineffable beauty woven like a rich gilt thread through the wretchedness of his childhood.

Beauty.

The one weakness he’d never conquered until he’d encountered Soraya and fallen victim to even greater weakness.
Although originally, of course, her beauty was what had drawn him toward her and his own destruction. He’d glimpsed her, exquisite, perfect, proud, across Sir Eldreth’s drawing room and known he must possess her and keep her as his forever.

What he discovered now only deepened his insatiable fascination. Strange to admit he’d learned more about her during these days of arduous travel than he ever had when she’d played his cooperative paramour.

He’d come to realize Soraya was in many ways a falsehood. Soraya was at ease with her gorgeous body and with sexual pleasure. Soraya was a creature addicted to luxury who would recoil in fastidious horror at the privations of this journey. Soraya was endlessly compliant to a lover’s demands. Asked for one word to define his mistress, he’d have chosen
sybarite
.

Verity, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff.

Verity guarded her chastity like a miser guarded his treasure. Nothing of the seductress softened that intransigent soul. Every time Kylemore touched her, she looked like she wanted to cry. Or bite and scratch at him like a wild cat. Soraya had certainly bitten and scratched upon occasion, but only as part of her repertoire of love games.

Verity had endured the journey without complaint. When he’d set out on this trek, a childish streak in him had relished the idea of his mistress whining and caviling at the hardship. Her weakness would somehow justify how he treated her. But against his better judgment, with every day that passed, his grudging respect for the woman he’d abducted grew. It was damned inconvenient, but he could do nothing about it.

She took everything he threw at her and still came back fighting. He even found a grim amusement in realizing that she’d come closest to breaking not because of anything he’d done but at the prospect of riding a horse.

He didn’t want to respect her. He wanted to foster the rage that had sent him on this reckless quest. He wanted to hate her as he’d hated her in London, even while he couldn’t forget how he wanted her with every breath.

Broodingly, he surveyed the starkly magnificent scenery that surrounded him. There was a truth in this landscape that pulverized self-serving deceptions about how far he’d come from the sniveling craven he’d once been. He’d never intended to return to the site of his shameful agony and fear.

Yet again, it was bleakly apparent that what he wanted didn’t count. He just hoped to hell his ruthlessness endured. Perhaps he could fight his childhood recollections. But could he hold out against the woman who trailed after him, her flawless face ashen as she clung to her ungainly pony?

That night, they stopped at another deserted cottage. Verity noted there was no shortage of abandoned buildings to shelter the traveler. Plenty of buildings but no inhabitants. They hadn’t encountered another soul all day. Even accounting for the duke’s desire for secrecy, this seemed peculiar.

The countryside became wilder with every mile. Yorkshire, where she’d grown up, was more rugged than the south, but these dramatic Scottish hills and cliffs and lochs were outside her experience. She quashed a superstitious notion that Kylemore conveyed her beyond the reach of human help.

One thing, however, she was sure of—Ben couldn’t trace her here. Kylemore’s confident assertion that her brother would never find her was fully justified, damn him. The confusing maze of ridges and valleys meant nobody had a hope of tracking their party.

Her horse still made her nervous, although she’d managed to control it after a fashion. During her long day in the saddle, she’d decided the beast’s principal role was as a four-legged instrument of torture. She groaned and shifted her sore rump,
trying to find a more forgiving position on the ground. There was a rug under her, but it didn’t help much.

Kylemore crossed the room and dropped to his haunches before her. If she hadn’t hated him already, she’d hate him now. How could the rigors of travel not affect him? It was unnatural. He didn’t look tired or worn, although something told her his mind was troubled.

Not that she was naïve enough to imagine he fretted over what he did to her. No, something else disturbed his vaunted sangfroid. She banished any curiosity with a mental shrug. He was welcome to keep his secrets.

“Sore?” he asked softly. On the few occasions she’d seen his expression that day, she’d remarked its grimness. But right now, if she hadn’t known better, she’d believe he was genuinely concerned for her comfort.

She dismissed that fatuous conclusion and sent him a fulminating glare. “You’d love me to admit that, wouldn’t you?”

A faint smile flickered across his face. “Behave yourself or I won’t do my magic and make you feel better.”

She surveyed him sourly. “How are you going to accomplish that? Shoot me?”