Letting Claire roll onto her back again, he tugged the sleeves from her arms and eased her out of the wet gown. Thinking himself almost finished, he was amazed to discover the quantity of petticoats and other undergarments he still had to tackle. One by one, he shifted her out of them, then removed her slippers.
As he rolled the silk stockings down over her slender calves, Claire smiled and purred in her sleep, giving a provocative little twitch of her hips. The sight roused Ewan, searing away any chill that might have lingered in his flesh.
Could he find the restraint to
behave
like a gentleman … even though he wasn’t one?
Now, for instance. The few underclothes Claire still had on weren’t even damp. But that did not stop him from having a go at the row of hooks down the front of her corset. He told himself he was doing it so she could sleep more comfortably. But he didn’t altogether believe his own excuse.
Why did women bind themselves up in such miserable contraptions? he wondered as he struggled with one uncooperative hook. He didn’t admire the exaggerated figures corsets forced their bodies into, and he detested the hard stiffness, just where they should be soft and yielding.
In fact, he had never found a single thing to like about them … until this moment. Now, he had to admit there was something mighty appealing about the way a woman’s flesh burst out of one when it came off!
Claire gave a sigh of pleasure when hers finally fell open—the kind of sound Ewan might have hoped to coax from her if they’d been lovers. How he wished they
were
lovers—hoped they could be. That and so much more. If only she were wrong, and he was not ten years too late!
He sat for a moment, watching the soft flicker of firelight play over her bare arms and shoulders. Beneath the sheer confection of fine linen, lace and ribbon that covered her upper body, her small, perfect breasts fairly pleaded for the attention of his hands and lips.
Or was that his own desire doing the pleading?
Either way, he found himself reaching for her, just as her eyes drifted open. He froze, wondering if she was sober enough to realize what had happened and make a fuss.
“Ewan?” She didn’t look frightened or angry. “Where am I?”
He pulled his hand back from where it hovered over her breast, aching to touch. “Ye’re in … my room, lass. Ye see, it started to rain on the way home from the ceilidh and ye … nodded off, so I had to carry ye into the house. Then I didn’t know which room was yers and …”
“I remember.” She gave a slow nod. “I told you to bring me here.”
“Aye, so ye did.”
With languid grace she raised one bare arm and stared at it, as if it she had never seen it before. “You took off my clothes.”
It was not an accusation, just a statement of fact that appeared to surprise her somewhat.
“Aye, I did. They were wet, and I was worried ye’d catch cold in them, so I …” He picked up the dressing gown to explain how he’d intended to put it on her.
She didn’t give him the chance.
Her lips curved in a befuddled grin. “Are you going to ravish me?”
“No!” he insisted with as much sincerity as he could muster when his body throbbed with desire for her. “It’s like I told ye … the rain and … I couldn’t find yer bedroom … and yer clothes all wet …”
“No?” Claire’s grin puckered into a pout. “Well, I wish you would!”
Her hand slithered toward him like a fair, tempting serpent, coming to rest on his leg. “Is there any way I can persuade you to change your mind?”
Persuade him? Was the lass daft? It was taking every crumb of willpower he had to stop himself!
“Now, Claire, ye don’t mean that.” He tried to move out of the range of her touch, but his body refused to cooperate. “It’s all that cider in ye. Too much of it can make folks a wee bit … randy.”
“Randy?” She giggled. “Is that what you call it?”
She began to caress his thigh through his thick cotton nightshirt in a way that roused him unbearably.
“You
made me randy ten years ago, and you still do.”
That was not the kind of thing he needed to hear, just now.
“I’m flattered … I reckon. But this isn’t the right time or place.” His body protested that for what she—and he—wanted, there could be no
wrong
time or place.
“Have you not had enough ale to be randy for me?” She removed her hand from his leg and struggled to sit up. “I could fetch you some more.”
“Ye’re in no shape to fetch anything,” he told her as she sank back onto the carpet. “And I swear, it isn’t that ye don’t make me rand—I mean, that I don’t find ye attractive.”
He thought of mentioning Tessa, but discarded the idea. He felt guilty enough about the sudden transfer of his affections from one Talbot sister to the other.
“This was yer father’s room,” he reminded her, hearing the desperation in his own voice. “What do ye reckon he’d say if he could see us now?”
“I know exactly what he’d say.” Claire fixed him with a haughty glare uncannily reminiscent of her late father. “He’d say, ‘My dear, you are too wealthy, too clever and too plain for a man ever to want you
except
for your fortune.’ ”
For a moment, outrage burned in Ewan even hotter than desire. “He said
that?
To his own daughter?”
He wished Lord Lydiard’s ghost had haunted the place, so he could give the arrogant nobleman a piece of his mind. “The miserable, bloody bast—”
“That’s it!” Claire interrupted his indignant curse.
“Eh?”
“I can
pay
you!” She raised herself on her elbows. Her blue-gray eyes glittered with the silver of newly minted shillings. “Name your price for one night. I’m sure you’ll be worth every penny!”
Though she fixed him with an adoring smile, and the flimsy fabric of her undergarment pulled even tighter over her inviting bosom, Ewan felt as if the ale in his belly had suddenly gone sour. His throat tightened and it was all he could do to keep from spewing his guts out.
He’d fooled himself into believing Claire must have the same kind of feelings for him that he’d come to have for her. He’d hoped they could be a man and a woman in love, as equal partners. But that wasn’t the kind of feeling she had for him at all, nor had she ever.
She was only randy for him, and proposing to pay for his services. A fortune for a single night, but that did not make any difference. If he accepted her proposition, there would be no equality. He would be her servant, required to know his place and not expect anything from her beyond his wages.
“Well, Ewan, what do you say? I promise I’ll be totally discreet. No one need ever know about our little … tryst.”
What did he say? Couldn’t she tell he was too shocked and disgusted to speak? Or did she assume he’d be willing to do anything for the right price?
He hadn’t mastered his outraged pride enough to speak, but he could still move—to put as much distance as possible between the two of them. Because, in spite of everything, he still wanted her with a fierce lust that might master him if he let it. Lurching to his feet, he staggered a step backward, toward the dressing room door.
But he was not quick enough for Claire, who thrust out her foot to rub against his bare leg. “If you’re shy about using my father’s bed, we can always go to my room, instead. I’ll tell you which one it is this time.”
How part of him wanted to oblige her!
“Stay here if ye like.” He stalked toward the dressing room. “Or go back to yer own bed. Either way, you’ll go alone, for I won’t spend another night under this roof!”
“But Ewan!” she wailed. “What’s the matter? Have I said something wrong? After the kiss you gave me on the way home, I thought you mightn’t mind making love to me.”
He didn’t dare turn around or his resolve might crumble. And his pride along with it. “I’d tell ye what’s the matter, Claire, but ye’re too drunk to understand. Come to think of it, I’m not sure ye would, even if ye were sober.”
Slamming the dressing room door shut behind him, he pulled on whatever clothes came to hand—anything to keep him from going in his nightshirt to the railway station, where he would catch the next train south. He’d send for his trunk later.
Coming to Strathandrew had been a mistake. Returning to Britain had been a mistake. He’d tried to rewrite the past, only to find it was etched in stone as hard as the Grampian Hills. Whatever he might have made of himself in America, to people like Claire Talbot he would always be a servant.
Claire flinched when Ewan slammed the door behind him. She was sober enough to recognize the anger in his voice, but not sober enough to work out what it meant. Apart from the obvious, that she would not be spending the night in his bed, or he in hers.
When she’d opened her eyes to find him bending over her, removing her clothes, she’d assumed she must be dreaming. All her suppressed desire for him had fused with Mr. MacLeod’s potent cider to make her blurt out that scandalous proposition. She knew there were many reasons why it was wrong, but at the moment, they’d all eluded her.
Were any of them truly as compelling as her desperate need for him? Recalling the look of disgust on his face and the way he had recoiled from her touch, she knew there was no hope of that need ever being satisfied.
She had believed that once before, when he’d disappeared off to America, leaving her with nothing but the memory of a single stolen kiss. Over the years she had come to accept her chaste lot in life. Then Ewan Geddes had returned, a man grown. He had gone out of his way to revive all those old feelings and make her achingly aware of everything she’d been missing.
Feeling a strange sensation on her face, she dashed her hand across her cheek. It came away wet.
Claire hated to cry. It never solved anything. Quite the contrary. It squandered time and energy that might be put to more profitable use, and it exposed a person’s vulnerability.
At the moment, she had no choice in the matter. That deceptively sweet cider had demolished the ironclad self-control she’d spent a lifetime forging. Tears coursed down her cheeks in spite of her. Soon sobs retched up from the depths of her heart. Yet, in some bewildering fashion, this passionate release of her emotions felt vital and satisfying.
She didn’t want Ewan to see her this way, though. She tried to crawl away and hide somewhere, but she was too weak and dizzy to do more than sit up with her knees bent in front of her, and bury her face in her arms.
Her tears had almost spent themselves when she heard the dressing room door open. She tried to stifle her sobs, but they were like wild things on a rampage after having been caged for too long.
“Aw, what are ye taking on like that for?” Ewan’s voice held a mixture of pity and disdain that ignited a spark of anger in Claire, too fierce for her tears to quench.
Though she shrank from exposing the ravages of her weeping, she raised her head to glare at him. “Why did you make me confess my old feelings for you, Ewan? Why did you flirt with me at the party and kiss me on the way home? Just so you could make a fool of me?”
Her questions made him flinch even as he protested. “I never heard anything so daft!”
She’d been daft, all right—daft to trust him! “It’s the kind of cruel trick I’d have expected from you, once. I thought you’d changed.”
The scoundrel did not even have the decency to look properly ashamed of himself. “But I haven’t changed, have I? At least not as far as ye’re concerned. I’m still nothing to ye but a hireling to do yer bidding.”
Now who was daft? She’d never thought of him that way, even when he’d been in service to her family. And certainly not now.
A fresh wave of misery broke over her. She knew it was the drink making all her feelings so raw. Tomorrow she might repent everything she said and did tonight. But she could not keep her emotions bottled up inside her a moment longer.
“You made me feel beautiful for the first time in my life,” she cried, “but it was all a lie! You really find me too repulsive to touch … even for money!”
With that, she hid her face in her arms again, wishing he would go and let her lament in peace. Her accusation hung in the brittle silence until she began to wonder if he’d slipped away without her hearing.
“Get one thing through yer fuddled head, Claire Talbot.” Ewan hurled his answer at her as he swept out the door. “It’s not
ye
I find repulsive. It’s yer damn money!”
The rain had eased to a fitful spatter by the time Ewan strode back out the side door and headed for the village on foot. He could have taken the pony cart or saddled up one of the horses from Strathandrew’s stable, but the explosive mixture of feelings inside him demanded some physical outlet. Walking was the safest one he could think of.
Besides, he didn’t want to be beholden to the Talbots for any more favors. He’d had about as much of their
hospitality
as he could stomach.
The whole humiliating confrontation with Claire ran through his mind again and again. To think she’d had the gall to be angry with him! Accusing him of leading her on, the way some women in America had enticed him, trying to get their greedy hands on his money.
Just thinking about it made him feel dirty.
He was far from proud of his conduct in the past week, to begin with. He had left Tessa with an unspoken understanding that he would propose to her as soon as she broke her engagement. Even if his feelings had changed, which he now questioned, he shouldn’t have kissed another woman—especially not her sister!
A noise on the road ahead shook Ewan out of his guilty reflections. A small procession of bobbing lights moved toward him, accompanied by the sounds of people laughing and talking in louder than usual tones. Damn! It must be the rest of the Strathandrew folks returning from the ceilidh.
Ewan froze in his tracks for a moment, then jumped the ditch and scrambled up a bit of a hill to find cover behind some bushes. He felt like a rank coward, sneaking off without a word to any of them, but he couldn’t abide the prospect of having to dodge their questions about where he was bound at this hour of the night, and why.