Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Unwed and Unrepentant\Return of the Prodigal Gilvry\A Traitor's Touch (15 page)

‘There's no need of history when memories are long,'
Iain explained in response to her puzzled look, realising he'd spoken the Gaelic first.

‘You speak like a native.'

‘My mother was from the Highlands. I was born and bred in Glasgow. I only have a few words.' It was more than he ever told anyone, and he was as taken aback as Cordelia by this revelation. Iain resorted to throwing more unnecessary coals on the fire to hide his confusion. His mother again. He had to be rid of this association. ‘I was jealous,' he said abruptly, ‘I had no right to be and I'm not proud of the fact. As you keep reminding me, our betrothal is not real, but there it is, I was jealous.'

Now that it was out, he felt better. Iain began to straighten the papers on his table, then realised this was one of Cordelia's habits. ‘It's— That— What happened— What didn't happen in the bedchamber— It's never happened to me before.' He could feel himself flushing like a wee lassie. ‘I couldn't sleep for thinking about it, if you must know.'

‘I can see you haven't.' She touched his face briefly, her fingertips soft on his bristles. ‘I didn't sleep either.'

‘You look a hell of a lot better for it than I do.'

‘Perhaps I'm more practised in concealment. Bella thinks I am. She said that I was always an inventive prevaricator. I fear she was right.'

‘Poor wee soul. You really have had quite a day of it.'

Cordelia grimaced. ‘Home truths, the kind I hate the most. I notice you don't defend me.'

Iain caught her hand. ‘I don't doubt you had just cause.' Her fingers curled into his. It was the simplest thing, the most basic of contact, and yet more intimate than anything that had happened last night. The only other hand he'd ever held had been Jeannie's. Her wee hand was so tiny, the fingers chubby, the nails grimy. Closing his eyes, he could feel it, hot and usually sticky, always trusting. He gazed down at the slenderness of Cordelia's fingers twined in his. Trust. ‘I had a sister once.'

He felt the shock of his revelation in the way her fingers tightened around his. ‘Jeannie,' he said, though her name came out sounding strangled. He couldn't remember the last time he'd said it aloud. It was the reason he'd been unable to name a single one of his ships after her. ‘Jeannie,' he said again.

‘What happened to her?'

He couldn't answer, but his face must have spoken for him. ‘Oh, Iain.' Cordelia lifted his hand to her lips, pressing a kiss to his taut knuckles. ‘I'm so sorry. Was she very young?'

‘Seven.' He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. Already he had said more than he had to anyone. Already it was too much.

‘It's why you are so determined I shall see my own sisters?' Cordelia kissed his hand again, her fingers twined even tighter around his.

‘Aye.' He had a grip on himself now, and forced his eyes open. Hers were wide, fixed on his, more grey than blue today, shadowed from her sleepless night. She'd not lied about that. She had not lied at all. Yes, she had omitted salient facts, but faced with his reaction, who could blame her? Didn't he have his own shameful secrets? Cordelia had at least had the courage to reveal hers, while he...

Iain reluctantly disengaged his fingers. ‘It's because of Jeannie that I feel so strongly you've a right to go to Arabia, but she's not the only reason I'm here, pretending to be your future husband, Cordelia. I tried to kid myself on, told myself that I was being noble, and I tried to pretend that it was about my ships as much as your sisters, but last night proved me wrong. It's about us. This— What did you call it?'

‘Personal aspect?'

‘Aye, that.' Iain grinned. ‘I can't believe we're having this conversation. I'm a Glasgow docker, when all's said and done.'

‘I think you're underestimating yourself.'

‘A wee bit, maybe.' Iain realised he'd been aligning his papers again. Cordelia's habit. ‘I've said some things that I'm ashamed of—not because they were lies, but because I've felt them. It is a man's world, and I'm but a man. Humbling as it is, my reactions last night were about as clichéd and unthinking as it's possible to be. You've not once cast my experience up at me.'

‘Rather because I haven't let my mind dwell on it than because it doesn't affect me,' Cordelia interrupted, looking faintly uncomfortable.

‘I'm glad to hear it, but all that goes to show is that you're a lot more honest than me.' He meant it as a compliment, but she looked even more uncomfortable. ‘What have I said?'

‘I— It's nothing.'

‘It's because I'm rambling, isn't it? I'm trying to get to the point, but it's difficult.' Iain strode over to the window and back. Six steps. Two less than Cordelia. ‘Look, I'll stop beating about the bush. I want you. I've never wanted any woman the way I want you, but I don't want that—that man to come between us. I need to be sure I'm not just paying lip service.'

‘Pretending to come to terms with it, then casting it up later, you mean?' she said drily.

He flinched, but did not deny it.

‘At least we know where we stand now.' She moved past him to pick up her bonnet and gloves, her expression for once quite closed to him.

‘No, you misunderstand me. I'm saying that I'm wrong and you're right, but I'm also saying I need time to be sure of that. And for you to be sure of that.'

‘Yes. You know I can't help feeling that all this talk of something that simply happened that day in Glasgow is putting the whole thing out of proportion. When all is said and done, it is simply an act that people do every day.'

‘Is this your attempt to sound like a man?'

‘It's my attempt to put things in proportion.'

‘And to remind me, no doubt, that you're not interested in our faux betrothal becoming real.'

Cordelia eyed him warily. ‘You don't need reminding. You are not interested in marriage any more than I am. Besides, I seem to recall that we agreed familiarity would breed indifference.'

Iain swore under his breath. ‘If we go on at this rate, we'll end up hating each other. I think you'd better go.'

Her expression clouded. ‘I see.'

‘You don't. You're not the only one who struggles with home truths, and you've dealt out a fair few this evening. It was a brave thing to do, to come here and talk to me like you did, even if it wasn't quite the done thing, and I am very glad you did, but I can't look at you without thinking—frankly, wanting to prove to you that last night was an aberration. I need a bit of thinking time and I need to be alone, that's all, and before you ask, for the last time, I'm not going to renege on our contract. As far as the world and your father are concerned, we are betrothed, and in three days' time, we'll be aboard that ship sailing from Plymouth.'

‘Bella suspects it is a ruse, our engagement.'

‘You know, there's a bit of me that would like to consign Bella to the devil.'

‘There's a bit of Bella that would like to take my place by your side. If she were betrothed to you, she told me, she would take care to remain there.'

Iain shuddered. ‘Spare me.'

He followed her from the lodging house, escorting her out into St James's, where he hailed a passing hackney. Back in his rooms, he struggled with a gust of longing for a good dram. The knowledge that the dram he'd get would be second-rate, even if they had such a thing as whisky in the London taverns, held him back, rather than the usual memory of what the stuff had done to his father.

Feisty, he'd called Cordelia and he'd not been wrong. He should be honoured that she'd confided in him and he was, as well as shaken up, turned inside out by what he'd learned about himself and—aye, still plain jealous.
There is no comparison,
she'd said last night. She had turned D'Amery down. It was Iain she wanted. He was the only man she'd ever told the truth to. The only man she'd ever been betrothed to. Faux betrothed. But all the same, it was more than she had given D'Amery.

He put a guard over the fire and returned to the table strewn with papers feeling just a bit better. He picked up his pen and dipped it in the inkpot. As to last night—an aberration, just as he'd said. She was spot on as to the cause of it too. A perceptive wee thing, was Cordelia. A mite too perceptive for comfort. Ink dripped on to the letter he'd been writing in response to one of the many notes he'd received today from men he had failed to meet at Armstrong's excuse for a small family gathering. He blotted it hurriedly.

‘Devil take it, when did I become someone who has to pick apart every idle thought!' Iain kicked back his chair and strode through to his bedchamber, retrieving his coat from the back of the door. He would not go in search of whisky, but there was nothing wrong with a bit of food. With his stomach full and at least one of his bodily needs satisfied, maybe he'd get some perspective.

Chapter Eight

I
t took HMS
Pique
four long weeks to sail to Gibraltar, and a further six days to reach Zante, during which time Cordelia, the only female on board, was forced to spend most of her time alone in her cabin for lack of what their stern captain termed adequate supervision. Iain, whose enthusiasm for the power of steam over sail had offended the ancient mariner, fared little better. Arriving at the island close to Greece known locally as Zakynthos, currently a British protectorate, they were both overwhelmingly relieved to quit the claustrophobic atmosphere of the frigate, and to make the most of the brief interlude before they continued their journey.

Zante was a beautiful island. The Mediterranean sun was hot. Not the tentative warmth of an English summer, but the true dry heat of the south. The sea itself had turned from azure to turquoise as they sailed into shallower waters. The town of whitewashed stone houses, seemingly pristine in the bright sunlight, stretched out from the harbour, which nestled in the crook of a rugged range of low-lying hills, the dark green, velvetlike tree cover giving way to a burnt brown halfway up. The distinctive wooden fishing boats, their pointed prows and narrow hulls testament to the island's Venetian occupation, crowded the white sands of the beach, while a large frigate, several cargo ships and a host of other brightly painted boats of indeterminate purpose fought for mooring space. The air was fresh, tangy with salt, pine and pungent with the recently landed catch. The ruffling breeze quieted the heat, taming it from the fierce, ovenlike blast which ruled the island's interior, to a beguiling warmth that heated without smothering, making the skin tingle and tighten but not burn.

Cordelia perched on the jetty, watching the fishermen repairing their nets, dangling her bare feet into the water. England and all its conventions and inhibitions were almost impossible to imagine. ‘I've missed this so much,' she said, turning her face up to the sun. ‘The heat, I mean, and the sky. It is so very blue compared to England. The light is so very dazzling, yet it has such clarity.'

Beside her, Iain, who had just returned from finalising the arrangements for their onward journey, shaded his eyes from the glare. ‘It certainly makes Scotland seem
gie driech,
' he said. ‘Though for shades of grey, there's none can compete with home.'

‘I know. Though I have to say, for shades of green, there is nothing like the Highlands.'

‘I'd forgotten you'd been there.'

‘I have written the guidebook to prove it too. You must take a look at it sometime. I'd like to know whether you think I've captured the spirit of the place.'

‘The Governor has invited us to dine with him.'

He had deliberately turned the subject. Cordelia slanted a look at him from under the wide brim of her sun hat. His eyes were impossibly blue, almost the colour of the sky above them. He returned her gaze blandly enough, but the message was clear. Unwilling to spoil the moment, she chose to accept it and, taking his hand, scrabbled to her feet. ‘Must we? I can't tell you how sick and tired I am of being chaperoned. I am not sure which the captain feared most, that I would seduce his entire crew, or that our being caught in—
in
flagrante delicto
would rouse his crew to mutiny. Either way, he significantly overestimated my charms.'

Iain smiled. ‘On the contrary, I think it is you who underestimate them. It's not just that you're a wee beauty, which you must know perfectly well from looking in the mirror, but there's something about you that makes a man's thoughts turn to—what did you call it—
in flagrante delicto.
I know mine do.'

‘Iain!' Fire stole over her cheeks which had nothing to do with the Mediterranean sun, though the truth was, she was much more relieved than embarrassed, having spent the better part of their voyage telling herself that Iain was most likely relieved by their forced separation, and that if he was, then so too was she.

‘Cordelia. There were times at sea when I thought one look would send me up in flames,' he said softly. ‘That smile of yours, it positively smoulders, did I ever tell you that?'

‘No.'

They were standing on the quayside. Iain was dressed formally, in trousers and jacket of pale brown linen, with a white shirt and even a stock tied around his neck. His face was tanned, his eyes seemed to turn bluer every day. She wanted to kiss him. Even though it was every bit as impossible here on the jetty as it had been on the ship, she wanted to kiss him.

‘One good thing about all that time I spent wandering the decks on the
Pique,
'
he said, ‘I got the chance to think. We're very alike, you and I.'

His expression was serious. ‘What do you mean?' Cordelia asked warily.

‘We're both independent. We don't like to have our minds made up for us. It's one of the things I admire about you most, your determination to go your own road. If you'd been less yourself ten years ago, you would have taken the easy route and gone back to your family with your tail between your legs, or you'd have married D'Amery.'

‘If I'd been less myself, as you call it, I'd have married one of the men from my father's list.'

‘I hadn't thought of that,' Iain said, looking appalled.

‘I'd be a stout matron with a full nursery and an empty bed just like Bella. Though Bella is no longer stout.'

‘And her bed is no longer empty,' Iain added.

Cordelia screwed up her face. ‘I know I am nearly thirty years of age, but there is something simply not right about discussing such delicate matters when the subject is one's stepmother who is, let us not forget, making a cuckold of my father.'

‘Not quite his just desserts for the way he's treated the women of his family, but it's a start,' Iain said grimly. ‘But right now, I'm not much interested in Armstrong. I'm trying to tell you that I owe you an apology.' He mopped his brow with a large, very clean and very white square of cotton. ‘You were in the right of it to refuse D'Amery both times, and you were in the right of it when you told me it was none of my business what you'd done with the man— I mean when you said that you had...'

‘Enjoyed carnal knowledge,' Cordelia said, pleased to hear that she sounded matter of fact, hoping her hat would hide the colour stealing over her cheeks.

‘Aye, that.' Iain mopped his brow again, though there was no trace of sweat. ‘But I need to be completely honest with you, Cordelia. While I'm glad, more than happy, that you enjoy it, I'd rather not think about you enjoying it with anyone other than me. You can call me a hypocrite, but...'

‘If I did, I'd have to apply the description to myself. I know you have been with other women. I know there will be other women after me, but I don't want to think about them.' Cordelia caught at his hand as he made another unnecessary swipe at his brow. ‘So I'm forgiven?'

Iain shook his head vehemently. ‘There's nothing to forgive you for. It's me who is begging pardon of you. I did judge you, and far too quickly. I'm sorry.'

The relief she felt took her aback, for she had been trying very hard not to think of how she would feel if Iain had judged her as she suspected most others would. ‘Thank you.'

‘Are we sorted now, do you think?'

She thought about it. She thought about telling him about the other men. It was not only a cowardly desire not to spoil the moment that held her back, nor yet the fact that she was in the habit of keeping her own confidences. They simply didn't matter to her, and Iain had made it very clear he didn't want to know. So she quelled the tiny niggling doubt, reminding her shrinking conscience that she and Iain were not really betrothed, that their future together extended only so far as Arabia, and nodded her head. ‘I think we are,' she said.

Iain smiled. One of those smiles that darkened his eyes and gave her that feeling she had eventually decided to call slumberous. He had taken hold of her hand again. She took a step closer to him, and there it was between them, that tingling tension, that acute awareness, that yearning.

She tilted her face as he dipped his. Their lips met. Warm skin, salty with sweat. Kisses were so different under this sky, under this sun. Freer from constraint. It was a climate made for kissing. His tongue touched her lower lip. She opened her mouth to him. Scorching heat, contrasting with the delicacy of the kiss, made her shiver. She felt him shudder too. He reached for her, his hands spanning the flair of her hips where her corset ended, but almost immediately let her go.

‘I have no ambition to become a show for our former shipmates.' He nodded in the direction of the
Pique,
easily distinguishable in the harbour, despite the crowd of other ships.

Cordelia swallowed her disappointment. ‘Must we really dine with the Governor? I know it's rude and ungrateful of me, but I don't want to make polite conversation about England and politics.'

‘I don't think we can avoid it,' Iain said. ‘Once I gave him your father's letter of introduction, he insisted we spend the night at his house, and since we don't sail for Athens until the morning tide, I said yes. Besides, I can't lose sight of why I'm here. The man might prove useful.'

Cordelia sighed, leaning on Iain's arm as she pulled on the rope sandals she had purchased from one of the host of vendors who had clustered round the ship in Gibraltar. ‘You are so practical.'

‘And insightful, I hope,' he said,

‘I suppose you are going to claim to have read my mind again?'

‘Rather, I'm hoping we are of the same mind. Look over there.'

Iain pointed at the steeply shelving sandy beach. ‘Fishing boats,' Cordelia said, puzzled.

‘And they are not needed again until the morning. How do you fancy a wee trip?'

‘Can you sail one of these?'

Iain laughed. ‘Well, obviously I'll have to install an engine, but—for goodness' sake Cordelia, have a wee bit of faith. Do you want to go? It will be just the two of us, mind.'

Her heart did a silly leap, and seemed to catch in her throat.
Just the two of us.

‘If you have changed your mind,' Iain said, ‘I need to know. For myself, just so we're clear, I don't think I can bear to wait another day of being with you and not touching you. But if it's just me...'

‘It's not just you,' Cordelia said hurriedly. Not something she would ever have admitted to any man before, for she enjoyed the dance—or she had, until she met Iain. No games. Her heart was already fluttering with anticipation.

The merest flicker there was, in response from him. A tightening of his expression, a widening of his eyes, a flare of heat which she would have missed had she not been looking for it. He took her hand without another word and led her down the jetty to the beach, handed some silver coins over to a young boy, who stowed a wicker basket in the bottom of the boat. Cordelia clambered in. Iain and the boy hefted the boat down into the shallow waves, and then Iain too jumped aboard. A final push from the boy, and they were off, bumping over the wavelets and out into the bay.

Iain divested himself of jacket, waistcoat, stock, shoes and stockings, stowing them neatly in the prow of the boat where the nets would customarily be held, before tending to the single sail. Cordelia, perched aft on a narrow wooden board, was, for about the hundredth time since they had sailed from Plymouth, deeply thankful that she had abandoned the layers of petticoats and undergarments necessary to fashion, and pulled her skirts tightly around her knees, for the breeze was already picking up.

It ruffled Iain's shirt, making the soft cambric cling to his frame, giving her the tantalising glimpses of his outline she'd been trying not to notice on board the
Pique.
Now, Cordelia allowed her gaze to rest on him as he focused his attention on sailing them out of the bay along the north coast of the island, on the breadth of his shoulders, the corded sinews of his forearms, the narrowness of his waist and the tautness of his buttocks too, as he bent over the side of the boat to retrieve a trailing rope.

They hugged the shallower waters of the coastline, waters so clear that the sandy bottom could be seen, and the glittering shoals of fish too, darting in formation backwards, then forwards, disappearing under the boat and emerging out the other side. Away from the harbour town of Zante, the island rose steeply out of the sea, high white cliffs topped with their velvetlike carpet of brown and green, eroded by the Mediterranean into vaulted caves and intriguing narrow fissures. The wind teased her hair, the salt stung her eyes and the sight of Iain heated her blood. Cordelia had never felt so elated nor so relaxed, a curious mixture. There was not another boat in sight. Not a soul could be seen on the island's clifftops. They were as alone as if they were at the ends of the earth. Or in paradise.

She laughed to herself, and tilted her head back, closing her eyes, allowing her skin to drink in the sun and the salt and the spray, pulling the pins from her hair and leaning so far back that the ends of it trailed in the water.

* * *

Iain wiped the spray from his eyes and tightened his hold on the sail ropes. She was light in the water and highly manoeuvrable, this wee fishing boat, though he doubted she'd survive a day in the rough coasts at home. He cast a quick glance behind him to tell Cordelia so, and his words died in his throat. She was leaning back, her hair, glinting gold from the weeks in the sun, streaming out behind her, long strands of it trailing in the sea. Like a mermaid. Or a Selkie. Or a siren.

Her skin was lightly tanned, and it suited her, and she didn't seem to mind losing her ladylike paleness. There was something incredibly sensual about the line of her body, the arch of her back, the line of her throat, the swell of her breasts. His mouth was dry. He was embarrassingly hard.