Scotsmen Prefer Blondes (18 page)

He wanted to take it.

His hand was already moving toward his buttons when he stopped himself. He hooked his thumbs in his breeches. “I want you. But I can’t have you.”

Her eyes flickered. “I thought...”

She stopped. She swallowed, hard, and slowly tugged her chemise up over her breasts. “I misunderstood, my lord.”

The ice was back in her voice. He pulled her up into his arms and crushed her against his chest.

She tried to pull away, but she couldn’t break his grip. He skimmed a hand over her cheek, used it to push her tousled curls back behind her ear. Holding her there, he leaned in and growled, “I want you, Amelia. I want you everywhere, in every way.”

She shuddered against him, leaned in to rest her forehead on his shoulder. She still wasn’t talking, though.

He brushed a kiss on her neck and felt a tremor of her reaction. “Amelia, understand. If we were married, nothing would stop me from taking everything you offer. But you’re still a lady. I won’t risk leaving you with my child until we’re safely wed.”

She stroked his chest, letting her hand rest over his pounding heart. “I’m half tempted to shoot you.”

His lips curved as he moved lower, pushed her chemise aside to kiss her shoulder. “Save your bullets for after the wedding — it will take an army to get me out of your bed then.”

She laughed, the ice melting. “I’ll ask Alex to add militia expenditures to the settlements.”

“Consider it done, my lady,” he said, nipping her earlobe with his teeth. She arched against him, her laughter turning breathy.

He didn’t want to stop. And for a few moments he didn’t. He let himself kiss her, let his tongue have what his cock could not, and it was both pleasure and torment. No matter what else happened between them, this — this pleasure, this need, this connection — was real.

Finally, he broke it off. She moaned in protest, but he had to retreat. The pressure in his balls wouldn’t let him stop if he didn’t end it now. “No more, Amelia. I’m dying.”

“You deserve to, if you leave me like this,” she said, breathless.

How many other women in the ton felt like that? For all that Amelia wasn’t what he’d sought when thinking of marriage, he was glad that he hadn’t gotten what he wanted. He thought back to Alastair’s comment about finding pleasure in duty.

With Amelia, it was impossible to tell where duty ended and pleasure began.

“Four days, darling. Our wedding is four days from now. We can survive until then.”

He wasn’t sure he could, and Amelia’s face said the same. But that dark look was in her eyes, the one his seductions momentarily expelled, the one that always came back. “How can I know it will always be like this between us?”

“You can’t,” he said, his impatience sparking. “No one can see the future. But I can guarantee that if you walk away, you will never find anything like this again. Better the devil you know, darling.”

She closed her eyes.

He waited. There was nothing else, short of force, that he could do to convince her to give up her fantasies of evading their wedding. He wasn’t so noble that he wouldn’t use it. Alex would never let her leave Scotland unwed if he knew what had happened tonight. But there was still time to let her make this decision on her own. And he would rather have her think she had chosen freely than hate him for making that choice for her.

Finally, she opened her eyes, leveling them on him. He felt another jolt of lust. Her gaze was direct, challenging — the meeting of an equal, not the submissive frailty of most debutantes. He wouldn’t mind her submission, but the challenge she presented made him ache for her.

“You negotiated the settlements with Alex,” she said, her voice clear and steady. “But I want to add my own terms.”

“You couldn’t be better provided for. The settlements for your widowhood are extremely generous. I will show you what we agreed to, if Alex hasn’t yet.”

She waved a hand at that. “I trust both you and Alex know how to arrange finances. I don’t care about the money.”

“Then what do you care about?” he asked.

Amelia paused, and he saw her struggling to decide something. His fiancée still had secrets. Would she share them now?

“I know you need a political wife,” she said when she finally spoke. “I don’t mind attending parties, and I will do my best to host whatever you wish. But socializing is not what I want to do with my life. If you promise that I can use my days however I choose, I will marry you without complaint.”

“What do you want to do with your time?” he asked.

“What I’ve always done — read, write letters, visit with my friends,” she replied.

Her voice was light. But then, her request seemed light. Most aristocratic wives spent their days engaged in precisely those activities, without needing special dispensations from their husbands to do so.

He didn’t let on that she had aroused his suspicions. “I’m not a tyrant, darling. If you want to visit your friends when we are in town, I won’t stop you.”

She looked up at him, her eyes flickering back and forth across his face as she tried to read his intentions. He hoped he looked supportive, not curious. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because he felt her relax, just a little, in his arms.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make him wonder.

“Is there anything else you wish to agree to before the wedding? Anything you should tell me?”

Amelia looked at his feet. “As we discussed, I don’t have any secret children or scandalous former lovers. You’ll find me quite boring, I’m sure.”

It was an adequate answer, even though she hadn’t specifically said that she had nothing to tell him. He let it go. It wasn’t like him to leave a thread dangling, but whatever her secret was, it wasn’t anything that would excuse him in the eyes of the ton — or his own conscience — if he jilted her.

So he laughed instead of questioning her further. “Never boring, Amelia. Whatever awaits us, it won’t be boredom.”

She smiled up at him, and his suspicions were temporarily buried. It was enough to have her in his bed. Theirs wasn’t a love match and might never be, if his duty to his clan occupied him as much as it should. But they would still find pleasure together.

And if love didn’t grow between them — he told himself that lust would surely be enough.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Amelia survived until the fourth day — but only just. In the moments when her mother, and then Madeleine and Ellie, left her alone, the solitude that usually helped her to temper her emotions gave her too much time to think. Her thoughts oscillated wildly between excitement and escape, between eagerness for Malcolm’s touch and fear that her attraction to him would destroy her.

As the carriage carrying her to the church lurched on the rough road, she thought it wasn’t so farfetched that he might be her doom. She had behaved like an utter wanton when he demanded it, needing only the slightest encouragement to ask for the pleasure she’d always denied herself. When she awoke the next morning, safely tucked into her own bed after sneaking across the length of the darkened castle, she was ashamed that he had stopped when she had not. If he hadn’t pushed her away, she would have ended the night in his bed, beyond all reasonable thought, and no longer a virgin.

Tonight, her first night as Malcolm’s countess, her virginity would likely be gone. Malcolm wouldn’t refrain again, not when he watched her for the past three days like a rebel readying an ambush. But she hoped she maintained her reason. She couldn’t afford to give away her sanity, not if she wanted to remember who she was and what she really wanted from her life.

Madeleine interrupted her brooding. “You’re frowning, Mellie. What is the matter?”

Amelia gripped the strap affixed to the wall as the carriage jolted on another rut. “We should have ridden to the church. This road is abominable.”

“Is that all that bothers you?” Madeleine asked.

“Of course not,” Amelia snapped. “If I recall, you had nerves on your wedding day and I didn’t press you about them.”

“Likely because you were hoping I would give in to them and toss Ferguson aside,” she retorted with a laugh.

“I will allow that I was not precisely charitable about the Duke of Rothwell’s pursuit of you,” Amelia said. She continued over Madeleine’s snort. “But I do see the depth of your feelings for him. It made your wedding day a joy rather than a burden.”

She and Madeleine were in a carriage, their last moments alone before Amelia’s wedding. Amelia’s mother and Lady Carnach had gone ahead, as had Ellie, Ferguson, his sisters, and Malcolm’s brothers. They would be waiting in the church, or the kirk, as the MacCabes called it. And Malcolm would be there too, ready to claim the rest of her life as his own.

She shuddered, just a bit, but Madeleine saw it. She reached out and took Amelia’s hand. “Are you sure you see Malcolm as a burden?”

Amelia wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t keep thinking about it if she wanted to walk down the aisle without bolting. “What will be will be, Madeleine. My fate is tied to him whether I like it or not.”

Madeleine didn’t respond. Amelia stared out the window. The Highlands were a fairy tale — hills and crags covered in vegetation and drenched in mist. It was raining on her wedding day. She tried not to take it as an omen.

“Do you love him?” Madeleine asked, squeezing her hand.

Amelia sucked in a breath. “I barely know the man.”

“I didn’t know Ferguson above a fortnight before he offered for me, but I already knew I would love him.”

Amelia pulled away from Madeleine’s grasp. “Not all of us are so blessed, Maddie.”

She was prevaricating, though. It was true she barely knew Malcolm. All the little facts, like what pudding he preferred, whether he liked to hunt, and where he bought his boots, were a complete mystery to her.

But she knew he was a good man. And she knew he could win her heart with nothing more than a quirk of his grin and the occasional moonlit adventure. She had never believed someone could scale her barricades so effortlessly. The thought of falling for him, of losing her heart and giving him everything, scared her more than anything else.

She wasn’t eager to see the church, but at least their arrival ended Madeleine’s questions. Through the window, the church loomed, ancient and imposing. Flowers arced over the doorway, dripping slowly onto the stone steps. Alex waited under the arch, ready to escort her.

Amelia willed a smile onto her face. She was nervous beyond belief — but no one in the church, least of all Malcolm, would see her fear.

*    *    *

Malcolm stood at the altar, feet firmly planted, hands clasped behind his back. The raucous laughter of his cousins and connections in the pews behind him filled his ears, making him wish they had eloped instead.

It would have been easy to elope. Any other parish in the area would have sufficed. Scottish marriages were easier to obtain than English ones, without the nonsense of reading banns or procuring special licenses.

Still, he didn’t like standing in front of his clan, hearing their carousing, and knowing he hadn’t done his utmost to fulfill his duty to them. Amelia would do as his countess — she was now the only woman he could imagine in that role — but she wasn’t the cool political bride he had intended to give his clan.

He just had to hope they wouldn’t all pay dearly for the ill-advised kiss that forced them into this.

He cast a sidelong glance at Duncan and Douglas, who leaned against the wall on the right side of the sanctuary. They were flashing hand signals at each other. From their devious grins and the direction of their stares, he suspected they were making an utterly scandalous wager about the availability of Ferguson’s twin sisters.

Malcolm sighed. His brothers were free to marry whomever they wanted. But he should have followed his duty, not his cock.

“Second thoughts?” Ferguson murmured from his place at Malcolm’s side.

“Is it that obvious?”

Alastair, standing in front of them, looked up from the sermon he was reading to himself. “You look ready for an execution, not a wedding.”

Malcolm jerked his head back at the gathered throng. “Our relations are ready for an execution as well. You could have made a fortune on the ceremony if you had brought meat pies to sell them during my beheading.”

“That might have been adequate recompense for the flock of sheep I’m missing,” Ferguson mused.

Malcolm laughed. “You should be more careful with your livestock. You’ve a duchess to support now.”

“I don’t care for sheep nearly as much as you do, it’s true,” Ferguson said.

Alastair snorted at the jibe, then tried to look pious.

“If you won’t care for your estate, you might at least look out for your sisters,” Malcolm said, nodding toward Duncan and Douglas.

Ferguson looked over, and his smirk turned to a scowl. Malcolm laughed again. Really, if he could have this with Amelia — the conversation, the comfort, the humor — he would be a happy man. Add in her luscious body, and he would probably die from pleasure long before his clan noticed that he hadn’t been particularly dutiful.

And if marrying her was a mistake...

It couldn’t be a mistake.

But if it was...he would enjoy the mistake as long as it lasted. Knowing Amelia, if their marriage was bad, she would find a way to escape long before he needed to send her away.

He heard the inner door of the church bang against the wall as someone threw it open. He turned and saw young Angus MacCabe, the son of one of his fourth cousins, run in through the open door. “The ladies are here!” he shouted.

Alastair picked up his prayer book, trying to compose himself.

Duncan signaled something to Douglas, who laughed aloud — then stopped abruptly at a glare from Ferguson.

And Malcolm’s blood turned to ice. In a few moments, Amelia would be his. And with her came a whole world of possibilities.

He said a silent prayer that she would be capable of seeing them.

*    *    *

Amelia waited in the carriage as her brother helped Madeleine out of it and escorted her into the church. Madeleine laughed at something Alex said as he opened the door, and Alex’s answering smile was the first bit of happiness she’d seen on his face since before he found her and Malcolm in the library.