One Night With the Laird (19 page)

Mairi blushed. “I couldn’t afford to wait around for a hero to save me,” she said dryly. “There was no time.”

“So you asked your childhood sweetheart to marry you,” Jack said.

“My childhood friend,” Mairi corrected. “Archie and I had never been sweethearts, but we were friends. He was gentle, very kind. But he was also weak. I think I knew it, even though I was young.” She hesitated. She was not sure that Jack would understand Archie’s weakness. Jack was one of the strongest men she knew.

Jack was waiting but with a shade less angry impatience now. Mairi felt the tightly wound tension inside her ease a notch.

“So we wed,” she said flatly. “It was a disaster right from the start.” She dropped her gaze. “We tried to make love but it was painful and embarrassing and although we did consummate our marriage...” She broke off. No need to tell Jack how utterly ignominious it had been, how she had felt ugly and unwanted as well as completely baffled at how dreadful the physical act of lovemaking could be. “After a week I think we realized that if we were to preserve even a friendship we had to stop trying or there would soon be nothing between us but bitterness and shame,” she said. “So we had separate bedchambers, separate lives. By this time Archie had inherited his godfather’s fortune and he established endless charitable trusts and I... Well, I threw myself into good works and tried to forget that my marriage was a sham.” She gave Jack a twisted smile. “I still loved Archie very much as a friend, but I was too young and too naive to realize the true reason for the failure of our marriage.”

“I imagine,” Jack said, “that your husband preferred men to women.”

Mairi nodded. “I had no idea. He started to disappear at night. I thought he had a mistress and I never questioned where he went because it was too painful.” She knotted her hands together. Those nights had been endless as she had lain awake, wondering, torturing herself. “I suppose I was to blame in a way,” she said, “because I pretended there was nothing wrong—”

There was an ugly set to Jack’s mouth. “You were not to blame,” he said gruffly. “In any way.”

Mairi stood up. She felt too agitated to keep still, hemmed in, restless. “Finally four years ago Archie disappeared one night and never reappeared. He left a letter. He said he was sorry, that our marriage had been a sham from the start and was void in the eyes of the church and the law because he had wed me only to conceal his preference for men. He had said he had wanted to help me when my father threatened to marry me off but that he had not had the courage to tell me the truth about his nature.”

She heard Jack swear under his breath.

“He ran off with his lover,” she said. “He said he could not bear the pretense any longer. He staged his own death to spare his family the scandal. Afterward I discovered that he had made all his fortune over to me, out of guilt, perhaps. I do not know. I never understood why he could not have told me the truth. We would have managed somehow.”

“It’s difficult to see how you could have done so without tearing yourselves apart,” Jack said. He came over to her and took her cold hands in his. His touch was warm. It comforted her. After a moment he drew her into his arms. They felt strong, like bands of steel. He smoothed the hair away from her hot face, and although she did not want to rely on him emotionally, Mairi let herself rest for a moment in his arms.

“No wonder you feel so alone,” Jack said. His tone was hard, but Mairi knew he was not angry with her. His anger was for a man he could not help despising. “He left you with too great a burden to carry on your own.”

“Lord MacLeod knows,” Mairi said. She shivered, feeling hot and cold at the same time as though she had the ague. “He is the only one. It was he who hushed the whole matter up, paid people off, made sure that I was legally free. Not that I had any desire to wed again.” Another shudder racked her. “Archie writes to him, I believe, and Lord MacLeod sends money sometimes. He never tells me any news and I do not ask. God help me, but I cannot forgive Archie. It still feels too much of a betrayal.”

Jack cupped her face in his hands and tilted it up so that he could look at her. “And throughout it all,” he said, “you never once betrayed him in return.”

“I was tempted,” Mairi said. She felt her skin heat beneath the cool touch of his fingers. “To start with I felt crushed by Archie’s lack of interest in me, but there were plenty of men who made their admiration for me plain, so I realized I was not unattractive. Why are you smiling?” she added.

“You are correct,” Jack said. “You are not unattractive.”

Mairi smiled too, reluctantly. “Yes, well, I could have taken a lover, but I was stubbornly loyal to my marriage vows.”

“And after he left and you were free?”

Mairi bit her lip. “I was too unhappy in the beginning. I did not want to remarry and I was too inexperienced to know how to manage an affair. So I pretended.” She gave a little shrug. “I flirted but it was all for show. ”

Jack’s gaze scanned her face and she felt vulnerable and exposed beneath that clear appraisal. “I wish I could find him,” Jack said. His tone was fierce, the violence just beneath the surface, controlled but no less powerful for that. Mairi felt the force of his anger in the same way she had done when Wilfred Cardross had attacked her. “It would give me the greatest pleasure to kill him myself,” Jack said, “and make the fiction a reality.”

Mairi pressed her fingers to his lips. “No,” she said. “Please—”

She broke off as he silenced her with a kiss. It was hard and full of turbulent emotion.

“Mairi,” he said. Then: “Damn him for hurting you.”

He kissed her again, so swift and fierce and yet with a tenderness in it that made her heart race. She clutched the lapels of his jacket and tried to draw him even closer. Her head spun. She wanted him very badly. The emotions of the night had stripped away all her defences.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Stay with me. Please.”

Unbelievably she felt him hesitate. “I don’t think—” he started to say, and she kissed him again, desperate.

“Don’t tell me you have scruples about taking advantage of me tonight,” she said, when their lips parted. “I thought you were no gentleman.”

She felt him smile.

“So did I.” He loosed her, scanned her face again. She could see hesitation and wariness in his, almost as though he were afraid. Then he gave a sigh, as though he were surrendering, and scooped her up in his arms and carried her through to his bedroom.

* * *

J
ACK
LAY
AWAKE
watching Mairi as she slept. He knew that he should carry her back to her own room. By now it would be abundantly clear to her maid that Mairi was in his bedchamber and had been there for some considerable time. The poor girl was probably desperate to retire for the night and would not know whether to wait or simply go to bed. The discreet fiction that he and Mairi had been practicing over their affair had been blown to pieces.

The problem was that he wanted to keep her here with him. He was tired of pretense, of creeping around like a backstairs lover who was ashamed of his behavior. He had already resigned himself to the fact that his lust for Mairi was not going to burn out. What he felt for her was not so simple. He was also determined to protect her, even more so now that he knew her secrets.

He raised a gentle hand and smoothed the hair away from Mairi’s cheek. She stirred in her sleep, making a soft sound and pressing closer to him, turning her face instinctively up to his. Something like a fist clenched tight in Jack’s chest, sweet and poignant at the same time. He surrendered to another impulse and kissed her very softly.

Mairi stirred again and opened her eyes. When she saw him her lips curved into a smile, a smile that was sweet and warm and knowing. It sent a flare of lust through him and something else, something more potent and powerful still. Jack recognized the lust. That he understood. The rest was a mystery to him.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart,” he whispered, and she closed her eyes again, snuggling closer into the curve of his arm.

Jack thought of Archie MacLeod then and felt the tenderness in him dissolve into a wave of primitive fury that was almost ungovernable in its strength. The man was weak through and through for not having the courage to tell Mairi the truth from the first. Unlike many of his contemporaries Jack had no issue with any man’s sexual proclivities, but he most certainly had one with MacLeod’s behavior. The fact that MacLeod had walked away, leaving Mairi and his father to deal with the aftermath of his desertion, was the act of a coward.

With a muffled curse he got up and crossed to the dresser, splashing water from the bowl onto his face, trying to think clearly. He was fairly certain now that Michael Innes could have no idea at all that Archie MacLeod was still alive. With MacLeod alive, Innes was no longer the heir to Strome or the MacLeod barony. If he raised the matter in court he would be dispossessed of his inheritance. It was not in his interests to dig up this particular scandal.

On the other hand, the penalty for sodomy was death. Jack doubted that the courts would impose such a sentence on the son of a peer, but he could understand why Lord MacLeod would do all in his power to protect Archie from that danger. MacLeod still loved his son no matter what the man had done. He could not take the risk. And if the matter went to court at all, it would give rise to the most monstrous scandal. The entire family would be destroyed. And Mairi... Here Jack released a long breath. Mairi would suffer most of all. As the former wife of so infamous a man, she would be dragged down into the cesspit of gossip and be utterly ruined.

He wondered fleetingly where Wilfred Cardross came into the matter. Cardross’s attack was no coincidence. He was sure of it. There was a pattern here, but at present he could not see it for what it was, and until he could unravel it Mairi would not be safe.

Smiling a little wryly, Jack slid back into the warmth of the bed, drawing Mairi back into his arms. He could see how thoroughly Lord MacLeod had manipulated him now. It had not merely been a matter of finding a man who would give Mairi the protection of his name until the threat of scandal had passed. The old laird had been looking for a man who would marry his daughter-in-law. He had chosen him because he was strong enough to deal with the threat Michael Innes posed, but he had also believed that once Jack knew about Archie MacLeod he would marry Mairi and keep her safe against the danger of the truth ever coming out. He had known that no man of honor would abandon Mairi to the scandal.

Jack rubbed a hand through his hair. The only question left was whether he really was the man of honor that MacLeod believed him to be.

Mairi was awake. He heard the covers rustle as she turned over to look at him. Her eyes were a hazy blue, soft with sleep and satiation. She smiled at him and yawned delicately, stretching, her throat arching, her body as sleek and satisfied as a cat in the sun.

“So,” he said softly, “how do you feel?”

“It is odd,” she said, “but I feel very happy.” The smile deepened in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, and Jack knew she was not talking about the sex but about something a great deal more profound and a great deal more dangerous. She had trusted him. She had entrusted her secrets to him. There was no going back.

The thought made him feel uncomfortable and he sought steadier, less emotional ground.

“I hope,” he said, “that I have managed to convince you that you are indeed an exceptionally attractive woman?”

She laughed, though he thought he saw a shade of reserve come into her eyes. She had noticed that he had refused to engage with what she had said.

“The only mystery is why you waited so long to take a lover,” he said.

Her gaze slid away from his as though she was thinking back, considering. “I did not take a lover because it mattered too much, I suppose,” she said. “It felt too important simply to be treated as another fashionable diversion.” She smiled. “You look shocked, Jack.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “You must be the only man in Scotland who would prefer his mistress to be a faithless whore.”

“That would certainly be more my style,” Jack said. “I’ve explored every vice there is and treated sex as no more than a pleasant game.” He did not want commitment and he had never asked for it in return. Now, though, he considered it. If he were to take Lord MacLeod’s commission to its logical end and marry Mairi, he would offer her, if not his love, then certainly his fidelity.

Mairi was regarding him with her clear-eyed candor. “Why have you had so many lovers?” she asked, turning his question around.

“Because it did not mean anything at all to me,” Jack said. For the first time in his life he felt, if not ashamed, then regretful that matters had not been different. He sat up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not mean that to sound disrespectful to you.”

Mairi shook her head. “You said nothing that was a surprise to me,” she said. “I knew exactly where I stood when I agreed to our affair.”

“What changed for you?” Jack said. “Why did you agree?”

Again she considered the question thoughtfully. “I suppose I was tired of a life lived without color or excitement,” she said. “I was tired of always being in control and battening down my emotions. I wanted to know how it felt to make love with passion.” She sat up and pulled back the covers, about to swing her legs over the side of the bed. “I must go. It would not do for Jessie to come looking for me. As it is she will be wondering where on earth I am.”

Jack caught her hand in his. “Stay,” he said. He was shocked at how much he wanted to keep her with him. He ran his hand up her bare arm, turning it over so that he could press a kiss to the hollow of her elbow. He brushed her hair aside to kiss the point of her shoulder. When she neither responded nor moved away, he laid her back against the pillows and pushed back the covers, exposing her breasts, taking her nipple in his mouth, stroking his hand down over her rib cage and stomach. He felt the tension leave him as he heard her sigh and felt her body loosen and warm beneath his hands and mouth. This was familiar, this game of seduction. Yet somehow beneath the familiarity was a difference. He felt uncertain; he was almost fearful that she would turn away from him and that if she did he would in some strange way be lost.