In Your Wildest Scottish Dreams (41 page)

Most of her sweetest memories included him, and now, some of her worst.

She turned to him, wishing the moon would emerge from behind a cloud and illuminate him.

“Why didn’t you tell me what you felt all those years?” he asked.

“I tried,” she said, looking away.

“When?”

“The night you were entertaining the Russians. When Lidia Bobrova couldn’t walk without hanging onto you.”

“Just before you disappeared.”

She turned to look at him. “What would you have said if I’d managed to tell you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I would have been shocked, but then I was already feeling a little odd. You had just kissed me, you see.” He reached over and placed his arm around her shoulders. “I wasn’t able to forget that kiss for a very long time.”

“I should have seduced you,” she said. “You would have had to marry me.”

He laughed. “If Duncan hadn’t shot me.”

“When did you know you loved me?”

“It began the night we kissed. But before I knew it,
you were married and here I was, feeling as if I’d been hit by a cannonball. In all those years I told myself to forget you. To go on with my life. I met a nice sensible woman I discovered I couldn’t marry because she wasn’t you.”

She sighed and put her head on his shoulder.

“I can’t be sorry, Lennox,” she said. “If you’d married her we wouldn’t be here now.”

“In the garden with my wife.”

My wife.
She loved the sound of that.
Mrs. Cameron
. That, too.

“When you came home you were Glynis, but all grown up. Everything crystallized in that moment.”

“I tried to forget you,” she said. “I tried, truly. But every time I turned around and saw a man with black hair, I was reminded of you. Every time the wind blew the scent of the sea to me, I thought about you.”

“Every day’s a new day, Glynis. A new start. We shouldn’t carry around the past like sacks of coal. We’re married and we’ve the rest of our lives together. Let’s not waste time regretting what happened.”

Could she do that? Could she simply accept her good fortune and turn her face to the future? She was going to try.

“We’ll shock the gossips of Glasgow with how happy we are,” she said. “Still, I imagine they’ll carry on for a while with tales of me. Mrs. Cameron, involved in a shooting in the Lafayette Hotel. Or Mrs. Cameron, knifed by a madwoman.”

“Mrs. Cameron, solving a murder.”

“There was that, I suppose,” she said.

“Mrs. Cameron, adored by her husband.”

Her toes curled.

She glanced up at him, his face limned by moonlight. He was her best friend and always had been.
Now they were lovers with a thrumming need stretching between them.

“And I want you, Lennox. I have for a very long time.” When he bent and kissed her softly, her breath left her on a gasp.

She tilted her head and looked at him.

“Lennox,” she said softly. “Are you trying to seduce me in the garden?”

He bent until his lips hovered just over hers. “Now that’s an idea, Glynis Cameron. Would you dare to be so brazen?”

He stood and pulled her up to him. His mouth landed on hers, crushing her lips. His hand slid around her neck, cupping her head as his mouth opened, demanding surrender. His tongue slid between her lips, inciting her moan as she dropped her head back into his palm.

His body fitted against hers as if they were designed for each other. He kneed her legs apart, his thigh rubbing against her, the friction almost unbearable.

Her hands scrabbled inside his shirt, desperate to feel him, to taste him. Heat sizzled through her, danced with fiery feet up her spine and back down, settling in her abdomen.

Suddenly, they were on a grassy spot near the intersection of garden paths. To her left was the kitchen garden. To her right was the path to the flower gardens. And Lennox’s fingers deftly unfastening the buttons of her bodice.

“I’ve noticed you’ve no hoop,” he said, his moonlight grin charming her.

“I’m at home. I’m only wearing a petticoat.”

“Good, as long as it doesn’t spring up and hit me, we’ll manage fine.”

She didn’t have a chance to ask him how, exactly,
they would manage before he’d freed her breasts, leaving them exposed to the moonlight and his seeking lips.

He yanked her close, her back arching, his mouth branding her with his touch. Her hands gripped his arms as he lifted her and just as gently deposited her on the grass.

She realized he had no intention of removing her clothing at all, not with his hand insistent beneath her skirt. All she could do was reciprocate, but he was placing kisses all over her breasts, driving every thought from her head.

“Take your trousers off,” she managed to say to his answering chuckle.

“I’ve no wish to be bare-assed naked, my darling Glynis.”

“I don’t know why,” she said. “It’s a beautiful ass.”

Laughter added another spice to passion. The sensation flooded through her body to puddle low in her stomach.

She wanted him now and needed him forever.

The moonlight accentuated the planes and shadows of his face. He was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen, monochromatic, alluring, and hers.

Her breath left her on a groan when he found her with his fingers.

“Ah, Glynis, you’ve spoilt me for any other woman.” He levered himself over her. “No one else will ever love me like you do, my darling girl.”

Pushing her skirts aside, he found the open slit in her pantaloons and entered her.

“They won’t make the top of my head explode. Or make me feel like I’m out on the ocean with a new ship surging beneath me.”

“Are you calling me a ship?” she asked, feeling an exultation she’d never before experienced. She wanted to laugh and shout at the same time.

“You’re my ship, Glynis. Mine.”

Words were beyond her. All she felt was delight and need and tears and joy and a wanting deep in her bones.

He withdrew, entered, and withdrew again, a movement like the endless tide. She toed off her shoes, wrapped her legs around his, her heart racing and her breath sawing in her lungs.

His talented mouth drugged her with his kisses, teased her nipples until they were erect and begging.

She could see the moon over his shoulder bathing them in a bluish light. Pagans in the garden, loving on the good earth of Scotland, mating in hunger and near desperation.

The explosion of feeling caught her unaware, forced a startled cry from her, one silenced by Lennox’s kiss. Then he joined her in bliss, the moment frozen in time, a recollection she’d use to replace other memories not so dear.

When she came back to herself she was lying on the ground with her skirt still thrown up around her waist and her breasts bare to the night breeze.

“I’ve lost one of my shoes,” she said dazedly, remembering the bay in the stable. Now, at least, she knew how a shoe could be lost.

Had the estimable Mrs. Hurst engaged in a passionate interlude with the bearish stablemaster? They were both unmarried and of a similar age. She pondered the thought until Lennox spoke.

“It’s over there in the flower bed,” Lennox said. A moment later he abruptly sat up. “I forgot about your arm,” he said.

“So did I. I’m fine.” The wound ached a little, but that was a small price to pay for the bliss the rest of her was experiencing.

She fiddled with her skirt, pushing it over her bent knees.

“Are you certain?”

She placed her hand on his bristly cheek. Her heart expanded in a futile effort to hold all her happiness.

“I’m very certain, Lennox,” she said softly.

He arranged himself next to her, his arm a pillow for her head. She stared up at the sky and its panorama of swiftly moving clouds and stars. The moon seemed to wink at her as if promising not to speak of what he’d witnessed. Somewhere not far away, an animal scampered through the grass, no doubt to tell the tale of what he’d seen to his interested brethren.

“We have gamboled in the garden,” she said.

“That we have.”

She really should be more horrified but she only felt wonderful, her body still echoing with satisfaction.

“Do you think we were seen?” she asked, looking up at the windows.

“I sincerely hope not,” he said. “If so, we’ve certainly given the servants enough fodder for gossip. And my father and sister.”

Oh good heavens, she’d forgotten they’d returned. Sitting up, she stretched out her arm and grabbed her shoe.

“It’s all your fault,” she said. “You seduced me.”

“Or you seduced me.”

“Perhaps we seduced each other,” she countered. “Mr. and Mrs. Cameron frolicking in the garden as we were once accused of doing. Adam and Eve cavorting among the flowers and the vegetables.”

He laughed and she joined him.

If anyone saw them, she simply didn’t care.

“I love you,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him. “I love you so much, Lennox. I’ll love you forever.”

“And I love you, Glynis. With my whole heart.
Byde weill, betyde weill.
”

She smiled at the Scottish saying: everything comes to him who waits.

Tossing her shoe down, she leaned closer for another kiss.

I
f you’ve ever walked through Glasgow, you know the Glaswegian accent is difficult to decipher without practice.

Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland, is a wonderful place to explore. The Necropolis, begun around 1831, is the site of beautiful monuments by Scottish architects.

Scotland’s main contribution to the Industrial Revolution was the building of steel-hulled ships. By 1864 more than twenty shipyards existed along the Clyde and at least twenty thousand vessels were built there in the past two hundred years.

Few archival records remain relating to shipyard employment, so I took an educated guess at how many men might have been employed at Cameron and Company.

“Clyde built” has come to mean excellence and reliability. Cunard liners (such as the Queens) were Clyde-built ships. So, too, some of the paddle wheelers that traverse the Mississippi.

Something I never realized until my research on Clydeside shipyards: the Clydesdale horse was bred to haul lumber and various supplies along the Clyde.

William Cameron’s career was modeled after an amalgam of shipbuilders who had yards both in Russia and Scotland. Charles Mitchell, a Scottish shipbuilder, was decorated with the Imperial Order of St.
Stanislaus, Second Class (awarded to foreign nationals) for his work in St. Petersburg.

Glasgow’s police force, sometimes described as the first municipal police force, did more than just policing. Like the older city watchmen, they also called the hours, swept the streets, and fought fires.

Continue reading for a sneak peek at
New York Times
bestselling author Karen Ranney’s breathtaking second installment in the MacIain series

Scotsman of My Dreams

Coming August 2015

London

July, 1862

T
hree hours past noon on a muggy July day, Minerva Todd got into her carriage, jerked her gloves on, retied her bonnet ribbons, and stared straight ahead as if to speed the vehicle to its destination.

The day, although already well advanced, was shy on sunlight. Pewter-colored clouds moved in from the east, bringing with them a sodden breeze and the scent of rain.

She inserted a gloved finger between her cheek and the bonnet ribbon, wishing the fabric wasn’t irritating. Anything new was bound to chafe, at least until a certain familiarity had been achieved.

The dress was not new, however. Instead, she wore one of her serviceable dark-blue day dresses. She’d had half a dozen of the dresses made so she could detach the white collar and cuffs when she was working. Otherwise, she wore her most favorite garment, a divided skirt much like trousers.

Today she had to appear garbed like a proper woman of London, at least until this ghastly errand was finished.

As much as she would have liked to be on an expedition, the wet spring and early-summer weather had prevented it. Yet, even if she’d been blessed with sunshine in Scotland she wouldn’t have left London. Not until she had an answer about Neville.

Where was her brother?

The earl had not answered her five letters, the latest only three days ago.

She had no choice but to call on the man.

She’d heard stories about Dalton MacIain. The man had a foolish soubriquet—the Rake of London—and was rumored to have once had a royal lover, one of the cousins of the Queen herself.

The fact that he’d broken off the arrangement was scandalous enough, but he’d also recounted certain personal facts to a gathering of men no better than himself. Namely, that the woman in question liked the color red. To please her, he’d had his undergarments dyed crimson. He’d flaunted his Scottish heritage by parading around her rooms attired in nothing more than a swath of crimson and black tartan.