Katharine Ashe - When a Scot Loves a Lady

Now she understood better why her mother had not allowed the gift. Her father’s mistress had chosen them, the woman Kitty never once met but who shared his life for thirty years.

Kitty fiddled with the ear bobs between her fingertips. Lord Blackwood said she should not have been with Lambert. He assumed she had been Lambert’s mistress, as everyone did. They were not wrong, to a degree. She had given herself to Lambert Poole when she was foolishly young and in love, and then again when she sought information that would ruin him. She had made her spinster’s bed; she could be no respectable gentleman’s bride now. But her behavior with a barbaric Scot made it perfectly clear that she needed a man in her life.

No. She needed that man. A man wholly unsuitable for her in every manner except one in which he suited her better than she had ever imagined possible. Hurried and unsatisfying, her experiences with Lambert had not prepared her for Leam Blackwood. Beneath the Scot’s heated gaze and strong hands she felt as helpless as the bird Ned had brought home for dinner, and just as easily consumed.

Innocent … as she had been when she first met Lambert—not during her first season in society, but years before that, at the age of fifteen, in Barbados. At that time her father’s mistress had taken precedence in his life. Kitty’s mother sought to win him back and she had not wanted her daughter to witness the struggle. Conveniently, the earl was rusticating his eldest son for yet another occasion of unfilial behavior. Aaron went along with his twin as always, and Kitty and her governess were sent too.

Lambert, managing his father’s neighboring plantation, came to Kitty in secret, encouraging her to sneak away from her governess to be with him. Aaron soon discovered it and brought it to an end, and Kitty was sent home to England heartbroken, not believing what Aaron told her—that Lambert hated Alex and only wished to use her dishonorably. Four years later, after their family emerged from mourning the earl’s death, Kitty finally made her bows to society and met Lambert again in London.

He pretended to still love her. She believed his promises and she finally gave her innocence to him.

But in all of that, in the tumult of girlish infatuation, she had never felt the heady confusion and sheer, unrelenting desire she did now.

She set the pearl earrings in place, smoothed her tired skirts, and for the hundredth time that day tried not to think of the earl’s words, that he did not know who she should have been with, that he had nearly called out Lambert three years earlier at that ball. Upon what grounds she could not guess, and it made her stomach flip over. He had adored his wife and remained faithful to her in refusing to again marry. Society accounted him an incorrigible flirt, but not a philanderer; he did not engage in indiscriminate affairs. He would not take full advantage of her.

In the corridor Mr. Yale appeared, trailed by a wolfhound.

“My lady.” He bowed. “I understand you are to thank for the holiday aspect of our surroundings below. You are all graciousness.”

“Sir, we stand upon the most brief acquaintance, I realize—”

“And yet one feels as though we have all known one another an age,” he finished with his slight smile.

“I suppose there is a sense of familiarity due to our remarkable circumstances.” A familiarity that had encouraged her to wrap her arms and mouth around a stranger in the alcove beneath where she now stood.

“No doubt.”

“Will you cease teasing Lady Emily?”

His brow lifted. “Ah, a champion arises for Marie Antoine.”

“Do not imagine you can flummox me, Mr. Yale. I have two brothers and both are masters at plaguing me.”

“I know that you can hold your own in company a great deal more exalted than mine.”

Kitty’s tongue felt dry. Everyone knew of her involvement in Lord Poole’s exile. It would never be forgotten.

“Will you treat her civilly, please, sir? She is young and bookish and hasn’t the knack for the regular concourse of ladies and gentlemen.”

He studied her a moment, in his face intelligence and thought. Kitty could not but wonder again how he and the earl had come to be such close companions.

He took her hand and bowed over it, this time deeply.

“It will be my pleasure to abide by your wishes, my lady.” But his eyes twinkled, mischief just beneath the surface.

She smiled. “Really, sir. You could at least—” Boots tread upon the stair and the dog’s tail set up a racket slapping against the wall. Lord Blackwood entered the corridor.

“Back so late, Blackwood? Your animals returned hours ago.”

“Flirting wi’ the leddy, Yale?” He looked perfectly at ease and not at all like he had kissed her out of her senses that morning.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Mr. Yale released her hand and moved toward the stair. “Leaving that to a better man than I, old chap.” He descended.

The earl set his hooded gaze on Kitty and she could not bear the lazy caress, not after seeing something so different in his eyes when he had held her. But she must pass by him to go downstairs.

Silence stretched. She fidgeted.

“This is extraordinarily awkward and not at all pleasant,” she muttered, entirely bereft of every social grace and attitude of comportment.

The corner of his very talented mouth twitched. “Than A’m tae take it ye winna be casting yerself at me again?”

“Oh, good heavens.” Her face flamed. “You haven’t any civility at all, have you?”

He laughed outright. Amid her complete consternation, and no little shame over her thorough hypocrisy, Kitty had the urge to laugh as well.

“Well, you needn’t be so plain speaking,” she insisted, hiding her smile. “I am exceedingly mortified.” And still exceedingly in need of his hands on her. Simply looking at him made her hot and a little hungry.

“Scots be a practical folk, lass.”

“I’ve heard that. But I had never seen it in action before and frankly wish I hadn’t still.”

“Forgie a puir fellow, than.” He bowed, never releasing her gaze.

“For precisely what? No! Don’t answer that.” She covered her face with a hand, an action she had never, ever once affected. But her palm seemed stuck to her nose. She was falling apart. “Good Lord, I haven’t any idea what to do or say now.”

Through her fingers she caught a glimpse of his eyes glimmering with pleasure.

“Mrs. Milch has called dinner early,” she mumbled. “Country hours for the holiday, I daresay.”

She moved forward, entirely tongue-tied and perfectly, gloriously alive beneath her skin. It felt so good to laugh inside, like a girl again, the girl she had put behind her at far too young an age.

She passed him. He grasped her arm, barely a touch that ground her to the spot like a Chinese candle planted in earth, bursting with fire.

“Lass.” His voice was unmistakably husky. “A winna take it amiss if ye chuise tae cast yersel at me again.”

Delicious weakness spilled through her. She tilted her gaze up.

“You will stare at my mouth quite distractingly often, won’t you?” she said breathlessly.

“A canna seem tae nae.”

She was trembling in his touch. She could do nothing for it. He bent his head, his mouth mere inches from hers.

She whispered, “You are not being consistent, my lord.”

“Naither be ye, lass.”

Kitty swallowed around the lump of courage in her throat.

“What do we do now?”

He paused, then: “Whitiver ye wish.”

She gulped in air, drew away, and hurried down the steps. She did not know exactly what she wished, only that for the first time in an age she looked forward to the next minute, the next hour. She felt like a girl awaiting her first Christmas. Like a gift, wrapped up, waiting to be opened by the Earl of Blackwood.

Nothing had happened between Kitty and the Earl of Blackwood at that masquerade ball three years earlier. Nothing of any rational substance. Yet he remembered it as something significant. And it had changed Kitty’s life, a life set on a single, wretched track until that moment.

Five years earlier, after Lambert took her innocence, then told her she must be content to have him as a lover but not a husband, Kitty had taught herself to spy. For the sake of revenge. To satisfy her angry soul.

In society she did not hang upon his sleeve. Rather, she made it a habit to remain at a slight distance from him in company, straining her ear to hear his conversation, especially hushed conversation with gentlemen. When he moved through a ballroom or parlor, she followed discreetly.

She believed herself infinitely clever; she was collecting information. A man such as he—who used an innocent girl the way he had used her—must have other secrets at least as dishonorable.

His secrets were in fact considerably more dishonorable.

She redoubled her efforts.

When he noticed her doggedness, she allowed him to believe she still harbored hopes of marriage.

He mocked her. On occasion he even bragged, revealing more than he should and making her despise herself that she had once admired such vanity and arrogance. Occasionally he propositioned her, finding her in private, making certain they would not be disturbed. She bore his embraces so that she could gain access to his pockets, his billfold, even once his private apartments.

Endeavoring to appear sincere, she suggested to him that perhaps she would find herself in an interesting condition, then he must wed her, to which he replied that were that to occur it already would have, that she was deficient, and that he certainly would not continue to meet her privately otherwise. She submitted to a secret examination by a physician to prove her determination to him; what she learned there hurt nearly more than she could bear. But the hope of revenge masked the pain.