Never Kiss a Laird (8 page)

“That’s an appropriate name for
someone who rides across the Scottish moors in a thunder storm,” Sally opined.
 

“
Och
,
begorra
,” Hugh obliged in a heavy brogue, making Sally
laugh.
 
“That explains me, but what
brings you to our moor?” he asked, eyebrows
raised
.
 

Treading warily, Sally cursed
herself for not having a story ready for just such an occasion.
 
It made sense that people might ask her why
she was staying in Thorne, but in her desire to execute her plan and escape her
untenable situation at home, she had not bothered to come up with a reason for
her presence in the small village.
 
Thinking quickly, she replied, “I am staying with an old school
friend.
  
She, uh, is unwell and cannot
travel to London
at present, so I determined to come visit her.”
  
Surprised and pleased by her own quick wits,
Sally smiled broadly at the Earl.

“I am acquainted with most of the
local families,” Hugh replied.
 
“With
whom are you staying?”

Sally’s temper started to rise.
 
What business was it of his?
 
 
Hugh
saw a spark forming in her blue eyes, and was not surprised when she spoke more
sharply.
 
“I’m sure you cannot be
interested in my arrangements, sir,” she said repressively.

“Oh but I am!”
 
Hugh contradicted blithely.
 
“I cannot but feel that it was remiss of you
to venture out without a groom in unknown country, and with a storm brewing.
 
I am surprised that your host would have
allowed it.”

“I assure you,” Sally retorted, her
quick anger rising, “that I am perfectly capable of looking out for myself.
 
Your comments on my behavior are completely
without interest to me.”
 
She stopped,
self-consciously aware that she had indeed been most grateful for the
gentleman’s assistance.
 
Beauty could
have shaken her off, and then both she and her horse would have been in dire
straits.
 
Unbeknownst to Sally, this
internal debate was transparently depicted on her unguarded countenance, and
when she finally looked up, she saw such amused understanding in Hugh McLeod’s
brown eyes, that she felt her spurt of annoyance die out.
 

 
“That was rude of me,” she apologized with a
graceful smile.
 
“I truly am grateful for
your help with my horse.
 
I love her
dearly, and would not want her to be hurt on the moors.
 
And your help yesterday as well,” she added in
a grudging tone.

“At your service,” Hugh bowed
deeply.
 
“And the name
of your school friend?”

Sally pressed her lips together at
his persistence, but held on to her temper.
 
“You would not know her,” she temporized.
 
“She is a,
er
, a
shut-in!”

At that moment a crack of thunder,
the loudest yet, broke immediately over the cave.
 
It set the horses whickering nervously, and
the Earl pulled them a little farther into the relative calm of the cave.
 
Tethering them in the dark recess therein
settled them down, and Hugh moved to the opening of the cave to gauge the
weather.

“These thunder storms can pass as
quickly as they come on,” he called to Sally.
 
“We should be able to make a dash for it soon, with no worse effect than
a good drenching.”

Sally came forward to stand next to
him, looking out over the grey moors.
 
The sky was dark, and after each clap of thunder, a fork of lightning would
shoot through the sky.
 
The view was
stark and grey, but magnificent.
 
A gust
of cold, February air blew at them, and Sally began to shiver.
 

The Earl looked at her with
concern.
 
“You look chilled to the bone,”
he noted.
 
Reaching for her hands, he held
them in his own, and she clung to them savoring the warmth that radiated from
his gloved hands.
  
He looked at her
red-tipped nose, her chattering teeth, and the damp fabric of her riding
dress.
 
 
She looked entirely adorable to him and he
fought an impulse to pull her into his arms.
 
Her lips would feel cool and soft, but would warm up quickly, the Earl
mused.
 
He saw that she was looking at
him quizzically, and gave himself a mental shake.
 

“Let me give you my jacket, Miss, Denlington,”
he offered, starting to strip off his green riding jacket.
 

“On no account in
the world!”
 
Sally exclaimed.
 
“You will catch your death.
 
Why should I have two
coats, and you none?”

Hugh paused in the act of
undressing, and looked at her with exasperation.
 
“I am several times your size, ma’am, and can
weather the cold much better than you can.”

Sally compressed her lips.
 
The act stopped her teeth from chattering,
but was motivated by frustration.
 
If one
more person thinks they know better than I do what is good for me, I just might
scream, she thought to herself.
 
Aloud
she said, “I believe I will not die from being a little cold, sir.”

 
“Don’t be a little
fool
,”
he responded impatiently.

 
A crack of thunder almost obscured his words,
and as another gust of frigid wind assaulted them, Hugh took her hand and
pulled her further into the little cave.

She wrenched her hand free, and turned
slowly to face him.
 
Sparks darted from her blue eyes, which had narrowed
alarmingly.
 
“A fool?”
 
she
repeated in the
purring voice that her brothers had learned from experience to fear.

Hugh met her eyes, thinking how enchanting
she looked when she was enraged.
 
He
threw up his hands, laughing.
 
“My
apologies,” he acknowledged.
 
“That was
most ungentlemanly.”

Sally nodded her head regally, but
the effect was spoiled as she shivered convulsively in the wintry air.

“Come,” the Earl coaxed.
 
He opened up his jacket, and pressing his
chest to Sally’s front, wrapped the coat around her shoulders as far as it
would reach.
 
“This is a little unorthodox,
but I can’t just stand here and watch you turn into an icicle.”

Sally stiffened, but the heavenly
warmth emanating from the soft, linen shirt Hugh McLeod wore under his jacket
was too delicious to resist.
 
Snaking her
arms under his jacket, she wound them around his waist to clasp her hands
behind him, resting her cheek on his chest.
 
Still shuddering with cold, she nestled into the warm body, a heavy sigh
escaping her lips.
 
Hugh’s arms held her
tightly, and as his warmth seeped into her, the shivering slowly stopped.

Overhead the thunder continued to
boom, but seemed to be getting farther away.
 
Sally knew she should move away, but felt an incapacitating reluctance
to move.
 
She became aware that Hugh McLeod’s
hands were slowly caressing her back, and that the chest underneath her cheek
was moving up and down a bit faster.
 
Her
mouth felt oddly dry, and her own heart rate seemed to be picking up a bit as
she leaned back and her eyes locked with a pair of molten brown ones.
 

“You are so beautiful,” Hugh
murmured, as he lowered his head slowly and Sally raised hers to meet his
searching mouth.
 
Hugh’s lips pressed
hers apart, and when his tongue touched hers, Sally instinctively pressed
back with her own
.
 
One of Hugh’s hands slid up to cradle Sally’s head, gently angling her
so that her mouth met his more completely, and she couldn’t repress a
moan.
 
How could those skillful lips that
were pulling at her lower lip, the tongue that was circling with her own, cause
sensations to course throughout her entire body?
 
Sally marveled, completely unable to stop
herself.
 

Hugh’s hand slipped a little lower,
caressing the soft round of her buttocks, and electricity seemed to shoot through
her body all the way to the sensitive tips of her breasts.
 
Sally’s breath came more quickly, and Hugh
released her mouth, nibbling along the side of her neck to a place beneath her
ear that seemed oddly connected to her very core.
 
She pressed her breasts against the hard
chest below his linen shirt, feeling that her own jacket was very much in the
way.
 
A throbbing sensation was beginning
between her legs, a distracting and foreign sensation that seemed to fill her
body with a need to move,
a
restless energy that
pushed at her very skin.
 
She groaned aloud
and dug her fingers into the hard broad shoulders, and Hugh captured her mouth
once again.
 

His hand came up and caressed her
breast, his thumb moving over the pebbled tip that pushed against her
jacket.
  
Sally’s hands moved down Hugh’s
back, feeling the muscles beneath the linen shirt, as they reached the top of
his breeches, she felt him tense.
 
He
deepened their kiss, and Sally moved impatiently within his hard embrace,
urgently trying to satisfy her need, but not exactly sure how to.
 

A crack of thunder stopped their
movement momentarily, and Hugh raised his head.

As if the spell had been broken
Sally abruptly released the warm body, and stepped backwards quickly, eyes wide
in wonder, one hand pressed to her reddened lips.
 
Her body still hummed with the reverberations
of the feelings Hugh’s touch had aroused in her.

Sally met Hugh’s amazed gaze
unflinchingly.
 
She couldn’t in
conscience rail against his ungentlemanly behavior, when her own actions had
been so far from ladylike.
 
Instead of
kissing him back, she should have fainted, or had strong hysterics, she told
herself, wondering why she had responded in the way she had.
 

“Miss Denlington,” he murmured,
holding out his hand.
 
“Sally.”

She flinched as the false
appellation brought her back to the reality of her situation.
 
An overwhelming desire to leave engulfed her;
a need to be away before she was forced to make some false explanation, or to
lie further to the man before her.
 
 
She walked quickly to pull Beauty’s reigns
free, and tugged the horse out into the sleeting rain.

“Wait,” the Earl called
urgently.
 

“I have to go,” Sally called in an
unsteady voice.
 
“Thank you for your
help!”
  
She put one foot into her
stirrup and vaulted upwards, turning agilely to land on the saddle.
 
Slipping one leg over the pommel, and feeling
with her other boot for the stirrup, she urged Beauty into a canter, and as
soon as she was down onto the moor, thence into a gallop.

Chapter Five

Sally recklessly
allowed Beauty to race away from the caves, putting as much distance as quickly
as possible between
herself
and Hugh McLeod.
 
As the moors disappeared behind her and she
gained the road, she slowed her mare to a walk.
 
She needed time to try to understand what had just happened and to calm
herself
before going back to the cottage and the searching
eyes of her maid, Millie.

The storm had
blustered itself out, and there was only a drizzling rain continuing to
fall.
 
Sally raised her face to allow the
mist to cool her heated cheeks.
 
Such a
short time ago she had been chilled to the marrow, and now she felt as if her
bones had been melted in a furnace.
  
She
raised one hand to her lips, which felt tender and swollen.
 
Nothing in her existence had prepared her for
what she had just experienced.
  
Growing
up in the country, Sallie knew about animal husbandry.
 
She knew that something physical happened
between a husband and wife.
 
But the few
kisses she had experienced had not even raised her pulse.
 
She remembered with distaste the times that Simon
Atherly had pressed his hard lips to hers, and shook her head in wonder.
 
Nothing had ever opened the floodgate of
sensations in her like Hugh McLeod’s touch.

She pressed one
hand to her breast, and it felt as if the responsive tip was still tingling.
 
“So that is what these are for,” she said
aloud with a scandalized smile.
 
Her
breasts still felt full and heavy, and incredibly sensitive.
 
She shifted uneasily on the saddle,
remembering the feelings that had spread through her body.
 
 
She
had wanted more, and if the storm had not stopped Hugh McLeod’s actions, she
knew that she would not have been the one to stop him.
 

Then she
remembered the moment when she had come up with her alias.
 
“Den-ling-ton?”
 
she
repeated in
disbelief, smacking herself lightly on the forehead.
 
“That’s not even a real name!”
 

She was still
chuckling at this absurdity when Beauty came to a sudden halt in the road.

“I’m sorry,
dearest,” she crooned to the brown mare.
 
“My thoughts are I do not know where.”
  
As she chirruped at the horse and urged her back into motion, her eye
was caught by a movement in the hedgerow that ran along the lane.
 
Pulling back on the reigns, Sally looked more
closely, and saw a small, cloaked form huddling in the meager shelter afforded
by the bushes.

“Hello!” Sally
called, and the cloaked figure turned reluctantly around.
 
A small pinched face, surrounded by damp
brown curls looked up at her with an apprehensive expression.
 
The girl looked to be a little younger than
Sally.
 
Her cloak, which was made from
serviceable, rather than fashionable, grey fabric, was muddied and wet, and
Sally did not think it could be providing any warmth at all.

“Can I be of any
assistance?”
 
Sally asked, trying to
sound harmless and reassuring.

“No, ma’am,” the
girl replied in a quiet Scottish brogue.
 
“I’m sorry if I startled your horse.
 
I was trying to find a bit of shelter from the rain.”

“You look
wet-through,” Sally sympathized.
 
“Do you
have far to go to your destination?
 
If
you can climb up behind me, I’d be more than happy to take you with me.”

To her dismay,
Sally saw two big tears well up in the girl’s eyes, and tip over to run down
her thin cheeks.
 

Sally slipped
her leg over the pommel and slid to the ground.
 
She approached the small figure, and took the chilled hands in her
own.
 
“Whatever is the matter?”
 
she
asked gently.

“You’re not to
be bothered with my troubles, ma’am,” the girl whispered miserably.

“Nonsense,”
Sally said bracingly.
 
“Come, we can’t
stand here in this weather.
 
I have a
cottage nearby, and we can go there and talk much more comfortably before a
fire.”

She could see
the girl wavering, and allowed her no time to cavil.
 
Pulling Beauty over to a nearby stump, she
climbed into the saddle, and reached down to pull the waif up behind her.
 
The girl was a few inches shorter than Sally,
and very slight, and she fit neatly on Beauty’s back behind the saddle.
 
She wrapped her arms around Sally’s waist,
and within a very few minutes, the horse arrived at
Whitethorne
cottage.

Miles came out
to greet his mistress, whose arrival he had been expecting for more than an
hour.
 
“I was starting to worry about
you, Miss Sally.
 
That storm came on
without any warning at all!”
 
Relief
sounded in his voice as he approached to take Beauty’s bridle.
 
Noticing the small form behind Sally on the
horse he continued, “And who do we have here?”

Sally felt the
girl flinch, and she spoke quickly.
 
“I
have met a friend who needs a place to weather this storm.
 
Help her down, Miles.”

The groom easily
lifted the girl down, and then his mistress.
 
“There’s a fire in the sitting room, Miss, but I think you’ll still find
it uncomfortably cold.”
 
He looked at the
stone cottage with disfavor, shaking his head.

“It will be
better than nothing, Miles,” Sally said hopefully.
 
She put an arm around the sodden little figure
and shepherded her into the cottage.
 

The small
sitting room was furnished with a hard settle and a horse-hair chair which were
set in front of a large stone fireplace.
 
A fire crackled merrily in the grate, and despite Miles’s gloomy
prediction, the room was much warmer than the draughty hallway.
  
Sally pressed the girl down onto the settle,
and untied the strings of her cloak.
 

“Let me take
this into the kitchen,” she said to the girl.
 
“My maid can brush it and dry it before the fire there.”

Sally entered
the kitchen to find her maid sitting at the table with a collection of
vegetables spread out before her.

“I have no idea
how to turn this into supper for us,” Millie said, looking up at her
mistress.
 
“Do you think I should boil
them, or roast them in the oven?”

Sally picked up
a beet, and turned it over in her hand.
 
“I wish I knew.
 
Is there a cook
book here, by any chance?”

Her long
suffering maid held up a small volume.
 
“There is this.
 
There are many
recipes for rabbit and chicken, and as soon as we get one of those, we’ll be
fine.
 
What we have right now, however,
is these vegetables, and a sack of oats.”

“Oats,’ Sally
repeated with loathing.
 
She had
volunteered to make breakfast, and had discovered that it was harder than she
could have ever imagined
to turn
oats and water into
something edible.
 
Miles had manfully
eaten his full portion of lumpy, slightly charred and entirely tasteless
oatmeal, but Millie and Sally had decided that tea would suffice.
 

Millie suddenly
noticed the muddy grey cloak that Sally held.
 
“Where did that come from?”
 
She
took the cheap garment from Sally, and held it up by her fingertips, eyeing it
distastefully.
 

“I have rescued
a waif,” Sally admitted.
 
“Can you make
this wearable again, Millie?
 
And bring
tea into the front room?”

“Miss Sally,”
Millie said suspiciously.
 

“Not to worry,”
Sally reassured her.
 
“I found a girl who
was wet-through and stuck out in the storm and brought her back with me to warm
up.
 
We can give her a cup of tea, and
once the rain has stopped I will saddle Beauty and take her to her home.”

Millie merely
shook her head, and put the kettle on the stove.
 
A long acquaintance with her mistress had
inured her to surprises.
 

When she entered
the sitting room a few minutes later, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and
three cups, Millie had to admit that their visitor did not look very
troublesome.
 
She was small and slim,
with thick brown hair that fell past her shoulders, and was attired in a
serviceable black dress, such as a maid might wear.
 
She had plain features, and a worried expression,
but did not look disreputable or criminal in nature.

“Thank you, Millie,”
Sally looked up as she entered.
 
“Put the
tray here please, and let me introduce you to Bridget.”
 

The girl stood
and curtseyed politely.
 
“How do you do,
ma’am.”

Millie’s
expression softened.
 
“Very
nice to meet you, Bridget.”
 
She
poured a cup of tea and handed it to the girl, who took it gratefully.

“I was just
asking Bridget where she was heading to when she got caught in the storm,”
Sally said.
 
She looked a question at the
girl, who colored painfully.

“I am a maid up
at the Castle, ma’am,” Bridget replied.
 
“Or was, I should say.
 
I was
turned off, and had been home to see if my mam and dad would take me in, but
they turned me away.
 
I was trying to get
to the village, when you found me.
 
I was
thinking they might need a maid at the posting house or
summat
.”

“Why were you
turned off?”
 
Millie broke in.

“Oh, don’t ask
me that, ma’am,” Bridget quavered.
 

“Don’t be
afraid,” Sally’s compassionate nature could not stand to see the girl in such
distress.
 
‘You have nothing to fear from
us.”

“It wasn’t
anything dishonest, ma’am,” Bridget assured them.
 
“I didn’t steal, or anything
like
that.
 
I fell in
love with the carrier’s lad, and Mrs. Cameron, that’s the housekeeper up at the
Castle, she found out and told the Laird, and I was let go without a
character.
 
How am I to find another job
without a character?”
 
She sniffed loudly
and her eyes filled.
 
“I’m sorry
miss,
I don’t know why I’m crying like this.”
 
She accepted a handkerchief from Sally, who
put an arm around her and gave her a quick hug.

“Where is the
carrier’s lad now?” she asked.
 
“Does he
know what has happened to you?”

“Oh, no, Miss,”
Bridget hiccupped.
 
“He works in London, and isn’t expected
back for a fortnight or maybe more.”

Millie, who had
been watching Bridget closely, suddenly spoke. “Why did your parents turn you
away?”

Bridget
reddened, and eyed Millie with a scared look.
 
“They were ashamed of me,” she muttered.

“Because?”
 
Millie
continued relentlessly.
 
“There’s more to
this story, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” Bridget
said miserably.
 
“I’m going to have a
baby.”

Sally sat back,
dumbstruck.
 
“How old are you, Bridget?”

“I’m eighteen,”
she replied.
 
“And Robbie is twenty and
has a very good job with a carrier in London.
 
He wants to marry me, and bring me to his
mother’s house.
 
But Mrs. Cameron said
the Laird wouldn’t keep a compromised girl in his house, and she turned me
out.”

Sally’s ready
temper surged up.
 
“They turned you out in
the middle of winter, when it was very unlikely that your family would take you
in?”
 
She stood and strode angrily about
the room.
 
“The Laird wouldn’t keep a
compromised girl!
 
If that isn’t just
like every man I’ve ever known.”
 
She
thought of her own family hustling her out of sight.
 
The poor compromised Denham girl.
 
She knew an irrational desire to meet the
laird and give him a piece of her mind.

“You should
write to Robbie,” she advised Bridget.
 
“Let him know that you are in trouble and need him to come sooner than
two weeks.”

“I can’t do
that,” the girl averred.
 
“I can’t write,
miss, nor Robbie neither.”

“That’s a
barrier,” Sally admitted, feeling a little daunted.
 
“Well, when he next comes to the Castle, can
you arrange to meet him?”

“Oh, yes.
 
If I can get a message to
Mary,
or one of the other maids at the Castle, I know they would tell him for me.
 
Unless Mrs. Cameron tells the carrier about
us, and gets him turned off as well.
 
I
have no money, though, miss, and nowhere to go until then.
 
If the landlord at the posting house finds
out I’m going to have a baby, he won’t give me a job, either.”