Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (8 page)

But he was suddenly unsure if his best would be good enough. If his experience would prove equal to her native wit and natural curiosity.
 

It would be a monstrous thing to disappoint wee Quince Winthrop.

And with that realization, Alasdair could no longer fathom what he thought he was doing alone in a dark room, kissing wee Quince Winthrop. All he knew was that if he didn’t taste her lips with his, he would go mad.
 

“That’s fine, lass, fine,” he murmured encouragement, and held himself scrupulously still as her lips skated along the line of his jaw to his ear, and back. “Take yer time. No need tae rush—”

“Strathcairn,” she breathed into his ear. “Do shut up.”

And then she was there—her lips sliding along his, pressing against his with the beginnings of desire, learning the texture and taste of him. And he was falling and flying and yearning, already dying for her. Already addicted to the astonishing sweetness of her lips on his.

His arms ached to hold her. To cup her moonbeam face, and stroke the line of that stubborn chin. To run his fingers into the artfully tousled disarray of her bright chestnut hair. To explore all the secret places that would set her passions alight, and leave her too flushed with pleasure to lead him a merry dance.
 

But he had to go slow, and let her set the pace. No matter her veneer of brashness, every fiber of his being told Alasdair that wee Quince Winthrop was an innocent. Every instinct he possessed told him that she was a lass rife with secrets, and that he had to go slowly and carefully if he wanted to uncover them one by hidden one.

The temptation to surrender himself to desire was nearly too great. She smelled too delicious. She tasted too sweet. “Quince.” He breathed her name like an endearment, repeated it like a prayer. “Sweet Quince.”

In response, her hands slid up his coat, crushing the velvet lapels. He let her draw him in, let her pull him closer as curiosity became pleasure, and pleasure began to grow into passion. Let her decide to press herself fully against him so he could feel the hard boning of her stays through the soft layers of frilly muslin fabric.
 

He opened his mouth to her, and her tongue stole across his, sly and questing. She drew his lower lip between hers, and he had everything to do to mute the moan of pure, unbridled lust that tunneled out of his chest.
 

His back came away from the wall, and he leaned into her, hungry for the warm pliancy of her willowy frame. His hands stole up to cup her face, and angle her head just so. Just so he could kiss her more deeply, just so he could hold her steady while he kissed her deeper and deeper still.

She kissed as she was—agile and acrobatic, curious and capricious, delightful and determined. She was light and air and sunshine in the velvet dark of the empty room. She tasted of danger, dark and bittersweet like morning chocolate, and after one kiss, already deeply addictive.
 

He could lose his head over this girl—he very nearly was losing his head over this girl. She was water, clean and fresh and cold at the bottom of a deep, dark well. And he wanted to drink his fill of her.

It was only when his hand crept down the long slide of her neck, and around the delicate curve of her shoulder, and across the cage of her stays toward those magnificent wee breasts, that something deep within Alasdair’s brain—some cautious, wary shred of self-preservation—told him he ought to stop. Told him he must stop before a lesson in kissing became a lesson in something entirely less innocent.
 

“Jesus God, Quince.” He let go of her before he gently took her arms, and carefully set her away.

Her eyes opened slowly. “I don’t think God had anything to do with that.” Her voice was full of wonder and lazy happiness. “But if he did, tell him I want more.”

“Sorry, lass.” He held her at arm’s length, and then stepped back himself. He had to. Because warm, welcoming wild roses were wreathing his brain, and giving him permission to do stupid things. Stupid, pleasurable, necessary things.

The moonlight slanting through the window revealed a look of perturbation on Quince’s face that told him she did not share his misgivings. “Why ever not?”

All the reasons he thought he had marshaled quit his brain. Why not, indeed?
 

He fell back upon platitudes. “Well, wee Quince, this is neither the time nor the place.”

“Why not?” she repeated with more heat as her hands came to rest defiantly on her lovely lush hips. “We’re alone in the privacy of the dark. No one knows we’re here.”

He felt his own frustration rise to keep up with hers. “Because we are alone, in the dark, and someone will soon know we are here, because someone is bound to miss you, and come looking.”

She waved his concern away. “Not for me. No one ever does.”

It was his turn to ask, “Why not? Does no one have a care for your well-being?”

She nearly laughed. “Why would they? I’m perfectly capable of looking out for myself.”

That fact was entirely debatable. Mostly because she was alone in the dark with him. And he had already had his hand on her magnificent breasts. And because she was still in a room with him after he had had a hand on her breasts. And because he wanted his hand back around those breasts. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be here, wee Quince Winthrop.”

He liked calling her that—wee Quince Winthrop. There was music and magic in her name.

“I am here because you agreed to our bargain. But if you won’t keep to your half, then there’s no need for me to keep to mine.” She took a deep, almost purifying breath. “So that’s done, then.”

“Not so fast, my wee lady.” Alasdair reached out, and almost caught her muslin sleeve to hold her from leaving. But he remembered his pledge, and left his hand out between them in the empty air. “We’re not done, Quince. We’ve only just begun. You can’t think you’ve learned how to kiss properly from one wee buss.”

“No, I can’t. But if you aren’t willing to teach me, then I’m sure I can find someone who is.” She turned for the door.

He knew she was goading him. Knew if she had wanted to kiss some other man she would have bloody well done so long before now, and not waited to strike a bargain with him.
 

“Well. You’ll not get what you’re looking for with some callow youth. Nay.” He shook his head, and gave her what he knew was a knowing smile. “Because they won’t understand you like I do, and they couldn’t possibly ken what it is you really want, wee Quince Winthrop.”

Like the curious clever creature she was, she could not help being intrigued. “And you do?”

He gave her a slow nod. “Aye, lass. I do.”

She did not answer, and for a moment, he wondered if he had played the wrong hand with this card player of a girl. “Come, Quince, lass.” He could not keep his feelings from his voice—it mattered too damn much. “You’re too young, and too pretty, and come from too nice a family to fall into such an idle, destructive vice as going into dark rooms for kisses. It might not be opium, or dallying with callow cads, but once the thrill of the mere dangerous wears off, you’ll be on to more forbidden pastimes to give you the same guilty thrill. Because that’s what you really want—not kisses, but a cracking good thrill.”

She paled stark white in the moonlight. Finally, he had hit a nerve. “Nay. I—” she denied, but all the heat had gone from her voice.

“Oh, aye, my wee Quince Winthrop. I reckon I know a thrill seeker when I see one.”

Because he, Alasdair Colquhoun, sixth Marquess Cairn, diligent, upstanding member of the Westminster government, had himself once done almost anything just for a thrill.

And damned if he didn’t want to do so still.

Chapter Five

His words might have been insulting if they hadn’t been so awfully true.

Strathcairn had her dead to rights—she had become inordinately attached to the sweet, coppery tang of danger. She might tell herself she lied out of necessity, and stole to feed hungry children and families, but the naked truth of the matter was that she was in it for the risky, illicit thrill.

And she had kissed Strathcairn to try to replicate it—her lips still tingled with something too heady to be mere excitement.

But this was no time to give Strathcairn and all his inconvenient, insightful scruples the upper hand. “Perhaps,” she conceded. “But the particular problem of the moment is that the poor kiss never quite reached the level of ‘thrill.’ Though I am given to understand that happens sometimes.” She tossed up one shoulder in a resigned shrug. “Unfortunate, but there you have it.”
 

“Nay, lass.” His ire brought out the marvelously musical roughness of his brogue. “Fortunate is what you are. It takes a great deal of care to be left wanting. And you were certainly thrilled enough to be left wanting more.”

Insightful, inconvenient man.

“Well, I don’t care much for being left wanting. It smacks of unfulfilled bargain.”

“You’d care if I left you ruined. Or perhaps not.” His smile was so knowing it was nearly intimate. “If I left you ruined, you’d be bloody thrilled enough not to care.”

Now
that
was insulting. And promising.

But she’d be damned if she would let the sting of the insult show. Though he was Strathcairn, she was no meek little miss to be intimidated by the fact that he seemed to have acquired a great deal of cleverness and experience along with his scruples. “I may be bereft of scruples, my lord, but I sold them for a profit I later spent on backbone. You keep to your part of the bargain—thrill without ruin—or I won’t hold to mine.”

Strathcairn smiled at her in that lethal, tomcat way. “Why then,” he finally decided, “you’re nothing but a wee, opportunistic scoundrel.”

Quince raised her chin, and smiled to show him she was a species of mouse that would bite him back. “What I am, my lord, is an
ambitious
scoundrel.”

“Scoundrel all the same,” he insisted, but there was at least a little amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes.

And she had to admit, she was coming to rather like the idea of being a
scoundrel.
Men were scoundrels. The hint of respect that the masculine term implied went a long way to mitigating any insult.

“Just so.” She gave him her best smile yet. “I told you, Strathcairn, I’ve long since done with being good. And the bare truth of the matter is that I had much rather be bad, and be
with you
—if you’ll agree to accommodate me.”

“Depends on how you’ll accommodate—”

She gave him her flat terms. “We’ve already made the bargain—I’ll only accommodate and help you if ruination is not in the cards.”

“It’s not.” His voice told her he was both frustrated with her obstinacy and very obstinate himself. “And that’s why I’m over here, and you’re all the way over there. But if we’re to go on, at some future point you’ll have to bow to my greater experience and superior judgment in these matters—matters related to ‘thrilling.’”

Quince wasn’t a lass who bowed much to anyone, and she rarely trusted anyone’s judgment but her own. But Strathcairn did have a point. “I suppose I might—just this once, mind you—accede to your greater experience. For the common good.”

His smile widened, gleaming in the moonlight. “Aye. The common good is a very good thing indeed.”

“Then we’re agreed.” This time she licked her thumb before she held out her hand, as a proper Scot would when making a bargain. “You’ll give me regular lessons in kissing.”

“If you’ll help me with these thefts.”

“Agreed.” Quince kept her smile to herself. Because the thefts weren’t going to be a problem anymore. She could guarantee it. “There’s my thumb.”

Strathcairn was enough of a Scot to do the proper thing—he licked his own thumb and struck it against hers. “Aye, we’ve a bargain.”

It wasn’t very romantic as propositions went, but she was a realist, and she’d take honesty over romance any day.