Bridegroom Wore Plaid (30 page)

He’d asked her a question. “What?”

“What does my body tell you?” He’d gone a little Scottish on her, “ma bodie.”

She opened her eyes. “Your body tells me you know far more about this business than I dreamed there was to know.” A whole sentence, clearly spoken while he tugged a little here and there.

“What else?” He didn’t bother to hide the smug humor in his voice.

“That you’re patient and naughty, also inventive.”

He smiled, teeth gleaming in the darkness. “Such flattery.” He took her hand and guided it to his erect penis.

“You’re aroused. Still.”

“Seems I am.” His finger dipped lower—when had she parted her legs? “Seems you are as well.”

She was… damp. Augusta frowned, some of the erotic haze lifting from her brain. With… Oh, she forgot his name—the anemic blond fellow with the clammy hands—she’d thought something must have been wrong, because it had felt like he’d been pushing sandpaper into her body.

“Is it bad that I’m aroused?” She could ask Ian that, now.

“For God’s sake, woman. Do you think I’m turning m’ balls blue…” He stopped and smiled crookedly.

“Do they really turn…?” She could not imagine such a thing, but there had been
so
much
she hadn’t imagined.

“No, hinny, it’s a phrase to describe when a fellow’s asked too much of his patience. When do you bleed, Augusta?”

She didn’t even blush at his inquiry. The question was intended to protect her from dire consequences—her life among the yeomanry had provided at least that much insight.

“Soon. I expect I won’t be joining the shoot.”

“You are a woman of providential good timing, my heart. There’s more I’d share with you, but it grows late.”

Was he
leaving
? She bundled into his long body, hiking a leg over his hips in a display of need that would have been unthinkable an hour earlier. “I don’t want you to go. Not yet.”

“I’m not leaving this bed until I’ve attended to your pleasure, Augusta Merrick, and my own as well. But I’m debating…”

She loved hearing his words rumble in his chest while he held her. Loved the scent of heather clinging to his skin, loved the solid warmth of him. But this debating…

“What are you debating about, Ian?”

“When you were with your beau, how was it?”

She drew slightly away. “Surely this is not a fit topic…?”

“Love, we’re abed after midnight with my clothes in a heap on the floor. There are no unfit topics except for how quickly a Scottish summer night passes. Did he cover you, put you on your knees before him, sit you in his lap, have you ride him—?”

She put her hand over his mouth while her mind’s eye tried to picture the wild things his words suggested. “I sat on the edge of a desk, and he stood between my legs. I got a cramp in my leg all three times, and my stomach hurt because I had to hold my skirts away and there was nothing to balance on.” And the desk had been hard, and the entire business furtive, hurried, and worst of all—disappointing.

“A cramp… Damned English. It’s a wonder there are any wee English babies about. I suppose we’ll go with tradition then, unless you decide you want something else.”

“Tradition?”

He shifted, looming over her on all fours. “All you have to do is spread your legs a bit and hold onto me. You tell me if I’m getting it wrong. Pull my hair, swat my backside, bite my ear.”

“Skelp your bum?”

“Aye.”

“Ian?” He went still while the covers settled around them.

“Love?”

“This isn’t what I expected.”

He shifted back, frowning. “I’m not a formal man, Augusta. The earl isn’t who I am, it’s a responsibility…”

“Hush.” She had to brace herself up on one elbow to lay two fingers over his mouth. “This is so much more than I’d envisioned… What was I thinking? To imagine I had anything to give you under circumstances like this?”

“Ah, but you do. You give me so much, Augusta.” He caged her body with his, and now, now when he’d set about kissing her, his mouth on hers, his body blanketing hers, she wanted to tell him things, to make sure he understood that this was the greatest gift… trust, tenderness, and pleasure. These few hours would illuminate decades of a solitary life in the prosaic shires to the south, give the years meaning, give Augusta herself meaning.

For these few hours, she loved and she was cared for by a good, worthy man.

She wrapped her arms around him, fiercely glad to feel the warm, blunt head of his erection graze the skin low down on her belly. She wanted this, wanted him, craved him. Craved to be as close to him as she could be.

“That’s it…” He probed lower, an easy nudge and retreat a little off target. “Hold me, Augusta. We’re in no hurry.”

Oh, yes they were.
“I want…”

“There.” He found his mark but barely seemed to notice. “That’s what you want, aye?”

“How can you…?” She fell silent as he did it again, a friendly little greeting between bodies, almost something more, but not… “Ian…
please
.”

“Hmm?” He dipped his head to kiss her, giving her his tongue to draw into her mouth. She put her demands to him orally, undulating her hips in counterpoint to his movements.

“Greedy,” he growled. “Lovely quality in a naked lady.”

“Ian MacGregor.” She tried to lunge at him when next he came nudging and whistling around the neighborhood.

“Bossy is a verra dear quality too.”

She ran her hand down his arm, found his hand, and brought it to her breast. Bossy,
indeed
.

“A woman of discernment.”

With her fingers over his, she closed his grip on her nipple, and abruptly, all the teasing went out of him. She’d beat him at his own game, if a game it had been, and then the only sounds in the room were the rustle of the sheets and the sounds of their breathing.

He crossed the line from teasing to penetration. Crossed it by small, slow increments, while Augusta made demands on his tongue and kept his fingers closed on her breast. A tantrum was welling up inside her, a hot ball of undifferentiated wanting for him, for his body, for closeness so consuming…

She went up in flames, the conflagration sparked by the indescribable pleasure of his body joining with hers. When she started a low keening against his neck, he added power and depth to his thrusts, until Augusta felt as if each push and retreat ricocheted not just through her body, but through her soul as well. The pleasure built until she didn’t know if she was straining toward it or away from it, until she became the pleasure itself—incandescent, consumed, and consuming.

When she was limp and panting beneath him, Ian kissed her cheek. “My dearest, impatient love, did you think I was trying to be aggravatingly deliberate for the hell of it?”

Without warning, Augusta found herself weeping. Blast him to perdition—for the tears were Ian MacGregor’s fault. She wept for all she hadn’t known, wept for years as no one’s dearest anything, wept for reasons that had no words. He was too generous with her, too patient, too caring, and this joining was much, much more than anything that had passed between them before, more intimate, more precious.

“Augusta Merrick, what am I to do with ye?” He angled an arm under her shoulders and enfolded her in his embrace. “You must stop putting it about that you’re English. Such tender sentiments belie the Scot in you.”

He pattered on, about she knew not what, and all the while, the heat of him throbbed inside her, and his callused fingers brushed away her tears. He moved lazily from time to time, sending spikes of renewed wanting through her.

“Ian?”

“Love?”

“I’m all right.”

“Tears aren’t unheard of in bed,” he said, bending his head again to brush his mouth over her forehead. “When it’s a good, honest loving, there can be tears.”

He was trying to explain something to her, but she couldn’t hold it in her mind. The din was growing in her body again, the need and joy and courage were cresting higher and higher, and now she knew the destination could be shared, knew the intensity of the pleasure he offered her.

They developed an entire bodily language of intimate caresses and sighs, smiles and teases. Worlds and worlds opened up for Augusta, until a snake slithered into her garden with the first gray glimmerings of approaching dawn.

“You should be going,” she said. It was easier to admit this because Ian was spooned around her, his chest to her back, while she faced the French doors with their relentlessly lightening shadows.

His lips brushed her nape. “I don’t want to leave you, Augusta.”

She’d told him she wouldn’t cling and cry, so she reached deep into the wells of self-respect and determination Ian had replenished so generously for her. “I’ll help you dress.”

He went still behind her, then she felt the covers lift and forced herself out of the bed. In the gloom, she passed Ian his boots and socks while he tugged on his breeches. He let his hands fall to his sides while she buttoned a few of his shirt buttons, and then, with no further ado, their time was over.

Still he didn’t go. He sat on the bed and caught her by one wrist. Her braid had long ago fallen victim to his clever fingers, so when he pulled her down onto one hard male thigh, her hair spilled over her shoulder between them. He swept it back.

“I have something to say to you, Augusta. You’ll not want to hear it.”

“Then say it quickly. If you’re found in here, there will be no dealing with the consequences.”

He nodded and pushed her head to his shoulder. “We agreed this time together can’t change anything, can’t make a difference, but, my lady”—he brushed his lips over her temple—“do you recall your description of the times you were with that sorry Englishman?”

“I do.”

“Augusta, I very much fear that if I’m forced into that sort of proximity with any other woman but you, I’ll be the one with a cramp in my heart and nowhere to balance.”

She smiled despite the lump in her throat. He was lying. He’d make it as beautiful for Genie—or whatever woman he married—as he had for her, damn him, damn Genie, damn, damn, and damn.

“I’m not coming down to breakfast,” she said, rising from his lap.

“Sleep in, then, and may your dreams be sweet.” His tone was so sad, so tender, Augusta didn’t trust herself to answer him. She walked with him to the French doors, where he paused and gathered her to him. “Augusta…”

He said something else, in Gaelic. She understood him, and she understood as well he would think the sentiment indecipherable to her.

“No more words, Ian, except thank you, and I will cherish this memory more than you’ll ever know.”

He nodded, kissed her lingeringly on the mouth, and then she was alone.

“You will always be my dearest love.”

In solitude, she said again aloud the words he’d given her. They lit a determination in Augusta she hadn’t known she was capable of. She could not be his wife, but she’d be…
bloody
damned
if she’d allow him to consign himself to a life of heart-cramps and self-denial. Let him find another wealthy bride, a woman willing to love and laugh along with him, to be his friend and his countess both.

Rather than Genie, who—a fool a thousand times over—loathed the very thought of marriage to Ian.

***

Ian considered going to his room for an attempted nap, but when a man’s world had been stood on end by a violet-eyed lady who sought nothing from him but memories and discretion, a nap would not serve.

He saddled Hannibal and lit out of the stable yard like the demons of hell were after him.

Which they were. Marriage to Genie Daniels had been a difficult but necessary duty before; it loomed like torture now.
Impossible
, unthinkable torture. Coupling with Augusta just now had crossed a line. They weren’t reeling from a brush with death; they weren’t deceiving themselves or each other about the probable outcome of their situation.

If nothing else became clear during Ian’s ride, he headed home knowing what his options were,
and
what
they
were
not
.

Connor leaned on his muck fork and frowned as Ian swung down. “Have you taken to abusing your only decent mount?”

“We walked the last mile.”

“And galloped five before that.”

Ian looped the reins over Hannibal’s head, and Con fell in step beside them as they walked into the barn. “I can put him up for you.”

“I’ll tend to my own mount, Brother. You’re up early.”

Con’s lips thinned. “The upcoming shoot means the chores will back up for a couple of days.”

The shoot and the dress ball they held the night before. The local gentry came by for the free food and the dancing. The English in the area showed up in hopes the royal neighbors might put in an appearance, which they had at least once a year.