Kathryn Caskie (35 page)

“Verra well then, lass. Ye shall have yer wish.”

Wide strides carried them fast across the pier to where her footman waited.

“Rufus, help me,” Eliza called out to him, but to her astonishment, he only grinned back at her. This was a conspiracy! What had she done to deserve this?

“Are we ready go then, guv’nor?” the coachman called down to Magnus, fully discounting Eliza’s pleas for help.

“We are indeed,” he told the driver. The footman opened the door and Magnus tossed Eliza onto the seat cushion. “Ye know the way.”

“That I do, guv’nor,” the driver replied. “Have ye there in no time at all.”

As the coach jerked forward, Eliza scrambled for the door handle, but Magnus pulled her back to the cushion and rolled atop of her.

“Ye’re going to marry me, lass. Within the hour. So ye might as well get used to the idea.”

Rule Twenty-one

When you are equally matched, engage.

Fury flared within Eliza as she stared up into Magnus’s rather amused eyes. “Marry you?”

“Aye. And ye have no say in the matter. The time for foolish, noble delays is over. Besides, ye know ye love me and dinna try even once to deny it.” He cocked a brow at her and grinned a bit, goading her all the more. “Think of this as yer reward for yer martyrdom and sacrifice.”

“You’re mad.” Eliza lurched against him and, finding herself quite unable to move her arms, bit at his throat to show her frustration.

Magnus reared back, his eyes wide with surprise. Then his gaze darkened, growing ever intense as his interest in her new game increased.

Before she could take another breath, his lips came down hard upon her own, just long enough for her to taste the salt on them. Then he pulled back, as if he thought she might lay her teeth to his skin again.

Or perhaps, he was inviting her to do just that.

Strangely, the possibility thrilled her. Already she felt her resistance giving way beneath his searing kisses. Seizing the last tatters of her resolve, Eliza slammed her hands to his shoulders and shoved with all her strength to knock Magnus from atop of her.

For a moment, his weight shifted, and she reveled in the thrill of approaching success. But before she could taste her victory, his hands swung upward and cuffed her wrists.

“Let go of me, you great Scottish beast!” she cried, though the outburst only netted her a chuckle. Enraged, she bucked against him, but the action seemed only to embolden him.

Magnus held her fast and stared deep into her eyes. “Fight me all ye will, lass, but yer struggles will get ye nowhere. I canna be swayed. Ye are mine, Eliza, and I will not rest until God and England agree.”

When her mouth fell wide open with the shock of his words, he kissed her, exploring her mouth with his tongue, sending rivulets of sensation deep within her. She moaned at the pleasure of it.

A slow smile eased across Magnus’s mouth. “If this has become a battle of wills, lass, ye’ve lost already.”

Magnus’s chest pressed Eliza deeper into the seat cushion with every inhalation and she gasped a broken breath, all she could do beneath his weight. She could feel him harden against her, a sensation that sent heat pooling between her own legs.

Lightly, she ran her tongue across her bottom lip and as she softened beneath him, Magnus sighed. Their battle was finished. And to the victor went the spoils.

This time, when his mouth hovered above her own, she closed her eyes and parted her lips, inviting his tongue inside, wanting to feel its warmth and slickness against her tender flesh.

As his lips touched hers, he opened his fingers and released her wrists. She brought her arms down to his shoulders and threaded her fingers through his thick hair until her hands met and clasped behind his head.

But then a burst of fresh air raced between their bodies. She opened her eyes and saw he had leaned back. There was a tug at her neckline. In the next moment, his fingers lifted her breasts from her rigid stays and his teeth bit down ever so gently on the tip of her aching nipple. She groaned at the wanton pleasure of it.

Somehow he knew just where to touch to heighten the tautness building inside of her. Under her skirt, Magnus fumbled against her underpinnings while twisting for position between her knees.

He looked down at her with a disablingly sexual gaze, drew her skirts high, and slipped his palms silkily against her bare thighs, pushing them apart. Her eyes locked tight with his as he guided her knee over his shoulder, until he disappeared beneath the crumpled drift of skirts and she felt his mouth between her legs.

Heat suffused her cheeks. This was wicked. So wrong. But then his tongue slid over the throbbing nub at her center and she arched against him, too astray in the tingling sensations to feel embarrassed. He licked at her, lapping at her need.

Eliza let her head loll back against the seat cushion. She was too lost in physical bliss to do anything but feel. She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes tight as he slipped his tongue deep between her folds and into her, driving her to utter madness.

Her body pulsated with satisfaction as the rhythm of his touch teased her until her grasp on sanity barely existed. Even her heart began to drum in her ears and between her quivering legs too.

“Magnus,” she cried out. She opened her eyes and pushed him back from her. She lifted her leg from his shoulder and bent forward.

She could see the defined bulge of him straining against his tight breeches as she slowly, tentatively, released his buttons. Looking up at Magnus for assurance, she slid her hand beneath the fabric until she held him, hot and pulsing, in her hands. Hesitantly, she ran her fingers up and down his shaft, gently, slowly at first. Then, as he grew impossibly large and rigid in her fingers, and she learned the power of her touch upon his skin, she quickened her stroke with authority.

They were moving to one unavoidable end. She knew there was no way to stop now. For either of them.

Without releasing his startling darkened eyes from her gaze, she eased back slowly onto the cool seat cushion, guiding him with her hand to the moistness between her legs. When her back flattened against the seat cushion, Magnus brushed her hands away and he positioned himself above her. Touching her
there.
Just barely.

She fought the urge to push against him, to take him inside of her. Instead, she raked her bottom lip with her teeth as he slid his hands under her and squeezed her buttocks.

Sucking in a breath against the burning sensation to come, Eliza grasped the bulk of his muscular arms for leverage and arched up as Magnus thrust into her. He filled her completely. Stretched her.

But it was easy this time. No sting. No pain. Only pressure. Only need.

And then it returned. The warm tightening, deep inside of her. The climbing pleasure, growing, intensifying, with each powerful thrust. She lifted her knees and locked her legs around his waist, wanting only to draw him deeper into her.

Magnus groaned and squeezed his eyes tight as she matched the rhythm of his thrusts. Eliza closed her lids, too, sinking her nails into his arms as every push brought her closer to her breaking point.

Nothing mattered now. All too willingly, she surrendered to the maddening sensation as Magnus thrust relentlessly inside of her, driving her into some deep, mindless abyss.

And then, when the tension could wind no tighter, something inside of her released, and she cried out. Fingers of warmth raced through every nerve of her body.

Magnus’s body shuddered within her. His thrusting stopped, and for a moment neither of them moved.

Eliza opened her eyes to see Magnus smiling down at her. He lowered himself atop of her and kissed her slowly, gently.

She sighed and smiled as she wrapped her arms around the man she loved. Never did anything feel so right.

As the coach raced through the summer-baked streets of London, Eliza never felt closer to Magnus or more alive in her own body. She no longer cared about what was right or where they were headed. Or why.

So long as they didn’t stop.

For a while afterward, they lay together, clothing askew, bodies damp.

Lud, if someone had told her that before her midday meal she’d be laying inside her aunts’ carriage with Magnus between her legs, she’d have thought them quite mad. But here she was. And, as much as she was loathe to break their intimate moment, the time to settle things between them had arrived.

“This changes nothing, Magnus,” Eliza finally managed. “You can still save Somerton, if only—”

Magnus cupped his hand over her mouth, hushing her. “Listen to me for once. Eliza, I love ye,” he began softly, “and that will never change.”

The sincerity in his voice touched her, and her eyes began to sting.

He bent and kissed her forehead. “I can live without fortune. Without land. Without my home. But I canna live without yer love.”

Tears of happiness breached Eliza’s lashes and came coursing down her cheeks in hot streaks. She sniffled, unable to form words. Not a single one.

Balancing on his elbows, Magnus took her face in his hands. “Ye are my life. Ye can sail to Italy or to the far reaches of China for that matter. But I will find ye. I’ll never stop, until ye are mine … forever.”

All at once, her noble vow to do what she
thought
was right seemed ridiculous to her. She sacrificed so much, but she had been so wrong. The only truth was their love and the rightness of their being together. Why hadn’t she realized this before?

“But what about your home?” Eliza asked, her voice was thin from the growing lump in her throat.

“Somerton is as good as gone, I know, though it never truly mattered to me anyway.”

“Not mattered to you? But I thought—”

“Nay. ‘Twas always her people, lass. For their loyalty over the years to my family, I owe them much. But I’ll find a way to help them, I swear it. I’ll call in favors, talk with other landowners. I’ll do what I must. But I canna do it without ye.”

Magnus rose from her, taking a moment to straighten his clothing. As he did, Eliza hurried to do the same. Though looking her best was an impossibility, she at least wanted to look presentable, for she knew that in the next minute they would together carve a memory.

Magnus knelt before her. Rocking with the sway of the carriage, he raised both her hands and kissed them, then looked into her eyes.

“I know I have nothing to offer ye but perhaps my meager earnings from what I reap from the land and sea. But if ye will do me the great honor of becoming my wife, Miss Merriweather, I will certainly be the richest man alive.”

Eliza drew a ragged breath, sure her heart would burst with happiness.

“Say ye’ll marry me, Eliza. Say it now.”

There was no impediment between them anymore. No reason not to be with the man she loved ..
.forever.

“Yes, I will,” she said, laughter mingling joyfully with her tears. Eliza leapt up and threw her arms around his neck.

As he gathered her to him and held her body close, it all became astonishingly clear. She never really needed Italy at all. Never needed to run away to protect her passion. Her artistic soul would thrive, wherever she was, in the warmth of their love.

She parted her lips and raised herself to meet his kiss, sighing with pleasure as his firm mouth claimed hers. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so blissfully happy.

Suddenly the carriage halted and they both pitched abruptly forward. They hit the forward seat, then crashed to the floor. Wherever they were going, they had, rather unceremoniously, arrived.

Eliza sat up and rubbed her aching head. “Where are we?”

But before Magnus had a chance to answer, the carriage door opened. Pender stood outside, peering inward at them, his mouth rounded in shock as he noted their disheveled condition.

Magnus charged forward, blocking his uncle’s view, and stepped down from the carriage. He slapped Pender on the back, with such force, that the older man stumbled forward.

"Congratulate me, Uncle,” Magnus said, grinning like a cat with several feathers jutting from its mouth. “Miss Merriweather and I are engaged.”

Pender turned his head to look back through the open carriage door at Eliza, all hooks and buttons finally fastened, blinking out at him.

“Oh,” he muttered. His lips hinted of a smile. “So that’s what you young folk call it these days.”

The next hours held such a whirlwind of activity that Eliza later wondered if it had all really happened. But the ancient Somerton sapphire on her finger, the ring that had belonged to Magnus’s own mother, was proof that it had indeed.

With Pender and her well-rouged aunts standing as witnesses, and fragrant orange blossoms in her hair, Eliza and Magnus had exchanged their vows before the vicar in the Featherton’s own rose-rimmed courtyard that very afternoon.

Her life had been utterly transformed with a single promise. But outwardly, nothing had really changed—not yet.

In the two weeks after the wedding, Pender oversaw the preparations of the Somerton townhome for debtor’s auction, while Eliza and Magnus made their marriage bed in her own chamber at Seventeen Hanover Square. But soon they would be heading north to the Highlands of Scotland to begin life anew as husband and wife.

And while their plans thrilled her, Eliza had never spent more than a few hours away from Grace. Though many times over the years she had fantasized of a day when her nagging sister was no longer part of her daily life, her heart ached just thinking about how much she would miss her.

In a gesture of thoughtfulness, Grace had sent word to her family of her nuptials, along with details of her plan to spend her first days of married life at Hawksmoor. She did not include, however, any indication of when she might return to London.

Aunt Letitia had remained stalwart in her belief that the married couple would return for the masquerade. And Eliza, unable to bear the thought of leaving without bidding farewell to her sister, had attached her hopes to the notion as well.

And so, as the masquerade commenced, Eliza stood, her face hidden behind a bejeweled domino, scanning Almack’s famed dance floor hoping to catch a glimpse of Grace’s golden curls.