As if she would do anything for him, let him do anything
to
her, no matter how shocking or forbidden. If he was a master of the art of love, then tonight she was his willing and eager pupil.
She cupped his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her, to really see her. “You’ve given me everything I wanted, Simon. What do you want?”
“You,” he said hoarsely. “Only you.”
Then there was no more time for words, no more time for thought. There was only that driving rhythm where their bodies were joined.
Simon clenched his teeth as he drove himself into Catriona with reckless abandon. It was as if her touch had unleashed a wildness in him that he’d been fighting to tame his whole life. For once, instead of seeking his lover’s pleasure, he was seeking only his own.
Which made it all the more extraordinary when he heard Catriona cry out his name, felt her taut, velvety folds convulse around him in a paroxysm of ecstasy. Rapture came rolling through him like thunder, driving all reason before it until all he could do was collapse on top of her, shuddering and spent.
They lay there for a long time in each other’s arms, their chests heaving, their breath coming in ragged gasps. Catriona’s voice was still tinged with awe when she finally managed to wheeze out, “Now I know what Jem and Bess were screaming about.”
“And now I remember what it’s like to be two-and-twenty,” Simon mumbled into her hair.
Catriona’s eyes widened as she felt him harden anew deep within her. “Why, Mr.
Wescott, you can’t be serious!”
He lifted his head, a rakish glint in his eye. “Why, Mrs. Wescott, I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
C
atriona awoke to the delicious sensation of Simon stroking her breasts. Pressing her rump to his groin, she snuggled deeper into the warm cup of his body before murmuring, “It’s really quite reprehensible of you to fondle me just because you believe I’m asleep and can’t defend my virtue.”
He slid his other hand between her legs and began to stroke her there as well. “You’re absolutely right. I should be deeply ashamed of myself. Just what do you intend to do about it?”
She gasped with delight as he slid his longest finger into her. “Hmmmmm…I don’t know. Pretend I’m still asleep?”
She closed her eyes, but it was impossible to pretend for long. She couldn’t muffle her sighs and whimpers of pleasure as he tugged gently at her nipple, couldn’t stop herself from arching against his palm as his hand had its wicked way with her.
“The first time we met,” he murmured, brushing his lips over her nape with a possessive tenderness that made her shiver, “I believe you tried to instruct me in the fine art of lovemaking, did you not? What was it you said? That the male simply bites the back of the female’s neck to hold her still while he mounts her from behind?”
Catriona shuddered anew as Simon nipped the back of her neck at the precise moment he slid into her from behind.
“You never told me what comes next,” he whispered in her ear, buried to the hilt in her but not moving a single muscle.
“This,” she replied breathlessly, rocking against him in a rhythm older than time. “Only this.”
******************
A short while later Catriona lay cradled in the crook of Simon’s arm, deliciously drowsy but not wanting to waste another precious moment of the night on sleep. His hand played in her hair, twining first one curl, then another, around his finger. As the chill had deepened, laying a sparkling layer of frost over each fallen leaf and blade of grass, he had drawn the blankets up around them both to create a cozy nest.
“I thought my tender young heart was going to break when you smiled at me on the docks the day you returned from Trafalgar,” she confessed. “I was sixteen years old and somehow I just knew that you were going to sweep me into your arms right in front of Alice and all the world and proclaim your everlasting devotion.”
“I’m afraid I was a bit distracted.” He gazed up at the shimmering sweep of stars, his profile inscrutable. “You weren’t the only ghost from my past in the crowd that day. My mother was there as well.”
Catriona frowned, thinking she must have misheard him. “Your mother? I don’t understand. You told me she died.”
“I told everyone she died. But the truth is that she finally found a wealthy lover who wasn’t married. Oh, she swore she was leaving me with my father for my own good—that I had reached the age where I needed a man’s influence in my life and that he could give me a home and a future she could never hope to provide.” A short, bitter laugh escaped him. “When she left me at the solicitor’s office, she held me as if she would never let me go and cried the prettiest tears you ever saw. But she forgot that I’d seen her cry those same tears in dozens of different roles over the years.”
“What if they were real?” Catriona asked softly. “What if she truly believed she was doing what was best for you, even if it broke her own heart?”
“Then she was a bloody fool,” he said flatly. “I would have been better off living on the streets, picking pockets and peddling my body to strangers to make my way in the world than living off of my father’s charity. The only thing he despised more than her was me.”
Catriona gently stroked his chest but could do nothing to soothe the ache in her own heart. “What did you do when you saw her on the docks that day?”
“The same thing I would have done for any pretty woman. I winked at her and kept walking. By the time I glanced back, she was gone. I heard later that she had married her lover and was living a respectable life in Northumberland.” He slanted her a rueful look.
“I’ve never told another soul that she’s alive, not even my father.”
“That makes two secrets I’m bound to keep,” she replied solemnly. “That your mother is alive and that you’re not given to ravishing virgins.”
He rolled on top of her, lacing his fingers through hers and imprisoning her hands on either side of her head. The fierce look in his eyes took her breath away. “But I am given to ravishing you.”
“After tonight,” she whispered, opening her legs for him, “that’s no secret.”
******************
Simon stood at the edge of the cliff, watching dawn sweep across the vale below. The wind stirred his hair and tugged at the edges of his open shirt. Puffy little clouds tinged with pink drifted through the brightening sky, so close it looked as if he could reach out and touch them. But he knew that if he tried, they would melt through his fingers like the vapor they were.
He’d left Catriona sleeping in their nest of blankets, half a smile deepening the dimple in her left cheek. He’d had ample experience creeping out of women’s beds before they awoke. He would usually slip silently out of their bedchambers, boots in hand, and never allow himself to suffer so much as a twinge of guilt. And why should he? He’d always given them exactly what they wanted from him and left them with a kiss on their brow, a smile on their lips, and a fond memory to cherish when the winter winds blew cold and their beds were empty.
But none of them had been his wife.
He certainly hadn’t treated Catriona with the delicate consideration a wife deserved. He had treated her like an experienced courtesan purchased solely for his pleasure. He had treated her the way his father had probably treated his mother.
Now he could add despoiler of innocents to his lengthy catalogue of sins. He couldn’t even blame the whisky this time. Although it had been the most intoxicating night of his life, he had been stone-cold sober when he took Catriona to his bed.
It hardly soothed his conscience to know she had been right. It would have been much kinder to take her quickly and without care to satisfy his own selfish needs and make her despise him. Instead he had used every seductive skill at his disposal to give her a night of pleasure she would always remember.
And one he would never forget.
******************
Catriona wandered out of the ruins of the great hall, wearing only her rumpled nightdress and a sleepy smile. She glanced up at the tender robin’s-egg-blue of the sky, shocked to see how high the sun had already climbed. Feeling deliciously decadent, she yawned and stretched with all of the lazy grace of Robert the Bruce. She was stiff and sore in muscles that had never been used before, but that only made her feel more like a bride who had been well loved by her groom.
An off-key whistling drifted to her ears. She cocked her head to the side, her smile deepening when she recognized the bawdy Scots ditty Simon had sung in the inn on the night of their wedding.
She followed the cheery sound to the spacious meadow that had once been the courtyard of the castle to find Simon leading the team of nags toward the wagon.
“Good morning, sunshine,” he said, tossing her a cocky grin. “I thought you were going to languish in bed all day. I was getting ready to poke you awake.”
She returned his grin with a dimpled smile of her own. “As I recall, you already did.
Several times during the night.”
To her surprise, he didn’t respond to her naughty jest with a wicked
bon mot
of his own.
He simply led the nags around to the front of the wagon and began to back them into the shafts.
She frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Hitching up the team. I’d like to be well clear of this place before Eddingham and his battalion of toy soldiers arrives. We’ve a long journey ahead of us if I’m to return you to your uncle’s house by the end of the week.”
She blinked. “You’re taking me back to my uncle’s house?”
“Naturally.” He devoted all of his attention to sliding a leather harness over one horse’s neck. “Where else would I be taking you, now that my job is done and all of our debts are settled?”
Catriona sucked in a breath that felt as if she were inhaling ground glass.
If you truly know what sort of man I am, then you also know I’m perfectly capable of making
love to you without loving you.
Simon had tried to warn her, but like the romantic fool she had always been, she had failed to listen.
A stinging shame whipped through her heart. She was no different from any of the other women he’d seduced. She’d fallen beneath the spell of his artful touch and honeyed tongue just as they had, eagerly trading her innocence and her pride for a night of carnal pleasure in his arms. For one agonizing moment, she didn’t know who she hated more—him or herself.
But that was before she noticed the muscle twitching steadily in his jaw. A muscle that made a mockery of his easy grin and a lie of every word coming out of his beautiful, treacherous mouth.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.
“I’m trying to hitch up these horses—and I do use the term loosely—so we can get on the road before the sun goes back down.”
“You’re trying to pretend that last night didn’t matter. That
I
don’t matter.”
After tugging the cinches tight, he straightened to face her, blowing out a long-suffering sigh. “I had hoped to spare us this awkwardness. I should have known this would be one of the perils of making love to a virgin. They tend to wax sentimental over the slightest bit of male attention.”
“Is that what you gave me last night—
the slightest bit of male attention
? Because I would have sworn it was more than that. Much more.”
He lifted his hands as if to ward off a blow. “Please tell me you’re not about to declare your undying love for me again. I’m flattered, but it’s really growing a bit tiresome.”
“Stop it!” she snapped. “You don’t mean a word of what you’re saying.”
He cocked one tawny eyebrow at her. “Of course I do. I may have spent my formative years backstage at the theater, but I’m not
that
accomplished an actor. If I was, I’d be competing with some tenor in tights for the lead in
Don Giovanni
instead of standing out here arguing with you.”
Catriona could no longer keep the tears from her eyes or the plea from her voice. “Why are you doing this?”
Simon crossed to her and tenderly cupped her cheek in his hand just as he had done that day in the barn. Now more than ever, his touch sent a shiver of irresistible yearning through her. “You’re a beautiful girl, Cat. What man in his right mind wouldn’t want to make love to you? I saw the opportunity and I took it. It may not have been the most scrupulous thing I’ve ever done, but there’s really no need for tears or recriminations. In the end, we both got what we wanted.”
“Did you?” she whispered, tasting salt as a tear trickled into the corner of her mouth. The mouth he had kissed with such unbridled passion throughout the endless night. “Is this what you want? Or is it what your father made you believe you deserve? What are you afraid of, Simon? Are you afraid I’ll walk away from you just like your mother did? Is that why you let me—and all of those other women—into your bed but never your heart? So you can always be the one to walk away?”
He gave her cheek one last lingering caress, then turned away from her and did just that, leaving her with no choice but to let him go.
S
imon felt an unexpected pang of grief when Catriona emerged from the ruins of Castle Kincaid looking every bit as proper and reserved as she had on the day she had marched into his jail cell. She wore a dove-gray walking gown of sturdy merino. Her strawberry blond curls were no longer loose and tumbling around her shoulders, but confined beneath a prim little bonnet with a brim that cast her eyes in shadow. She might have been any London lady strolling down Royal Street on a Saturday afternoon shopping expedition.