One Night With the Laird (22 page)

There was a flick across her cleft that had her jerking again in her bonds. This was fiercer than the caress of the feather, sharp, only a shade away from pain but so intense that it was almost but not quite enough to bring her to climax. She gritted her teeth and waited, aware of nothing but the thrum of need between her thighs and the hard beat of her heart.

A second passed, two. Still she waited, her body screaming for release. She felt a stroke across her buttocks, like tongues of fire. The sensation was extraordinary. Mairi’s skin felt as though it were lifting to the touch, stinging with the most delicious mingling of pain and pleasure. She felt another stroke that was hot and sharp and in that moment she realized it was a whip, a cat-o’-nine-tails with the softest leather strands.

Shock splintered through her. She barely had time to think before she felt another light stroke and found herself pressing her groin down hard against the arm of the chair in a vain attempt to force her body to orgasm. She had to find surcease from the desperate need that spiraled inside her, and yet it seemed impossible. Each time the whip fell it took her closer to the edge and then left her hanging there helplessly.

She heard a sound, felt another blow that was gentle yet with a smart that made her body twitch and throb. She realized that she was on tiptoe, trying to spread her legs even wider in blatant appeal as she desperately sought fulfillment.

She heard Jack laugh. “You are as deliciously responsive to this as I suspected you would be.”

There was another flick, this time across her cleft, a slither of sensation that made her cry out her need. The whip danced along the vulnerable skin of her inner thighs, the caress of it both sharp and sweet. Again Mairi hung on the edge of orgasm for one long unendurable minute, waiting, wanting to beg. Then the sensation of pleasure faded just a fraction, taking her a step back from climax. She could have cried with frustration.

Jack came back round in front of her, kneeling down. He put a hand under her chin, raising it so that she met his eyes. His own were dazzlingly bright with arousal.

He kissed her, slowly, deeply, ran his hands all over her body, pinching her nipples lightly so that she could not help jolting against the bonds.

“Just a little more,” he said softly. “You can take a little more.”

Mairi was not sure that she could but she was damned if she was going to ask him to stop. She had never dreamed of such wicked, carnal pleasures.

Jack walked away. This time Mairi turned her head to watch the reflection in the mirror, drinking it in greedily, all shame and all restraint forgotten. She shook at what she saw there, her body bound and arched over the chair, Jack with the whip in his hand.

He came to stand behind her once more. She watched him in the mirror, waiting, nerves stretched, her body so taut it trembled. She watched as the whip fell; she saw her body rock in response to the blow, felt the bite through a haze of sensual delight.

The tip of the whip touched the hot damp skin at the nape of her neck, then slithered all the way down her spine, feathering over her ribs, stroking her buttocks. It danced across the soft skin of her inner thighs again and brushed her cleft, curling for one unbearable moment against her nub.

Mairi’s stomach tumbled. She let out a keening cry and felt her body rock on the very edge of orgasm. Then, as she shuddered and burned, she saw Jack reverse the whip. A second later the cold, hard wooden handle parted her folds and pressed against her nub, rubbing back and forth against her slick core in sinful caress.

She lost all control then and tumbled over the edge of orgasm, her head filled with blinding light, the pleasure so intense she almost fainted. Her body pulled against the tug of the belt that still held her pinioned. The whip handle pressed harder against her pulsing body and she thought she would scream from the inescapable sensations, and then the head of the whip slipped deep inside her and she came again, the sensation violent and crystal-sharp, her cries muffled against the arm of the chair.

She heard the thud as the whip hit the carpet and then Jack was filling her, taking her in long, hard strokes. She was exhausted, drained with the intensity of the experience, and in this position she could do nothing to anchor herself; her body moved helplessly to the rhythm of his as he held her hips and spread her wider and thrust deeper, harder, using her unashamedly to slake his lust this time until he too came fiercely. She felt so weak with ecstasy that when he freed her from the belt she simply slumped in his arms, eyes closed, and felt him lift her, kiss her gently, and lay her down in his bed. His arms enfolded her. His lips touched her cheek.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly.

“Oh yes,” Mairi said. Overwhelmed, sated, she wanted only to sleep.

“Open your eyes,” Jack said, as he had once said to her before when they made love, and she could hear the amusement that laced his voice. It was inordinately difficult to force her eyelids to lift. They felt weighted by pure satiation.

“Will you marry me?” he whispered as she opened her eyes a tiny bit and forced herself to focus on his face. He was smiling, his fingers tangling gently with her hair, and there was so much tenderness in his eyes that she wanted to cry out against the unfairness of it. It undermined her. He showed her everything but love.

“No,” she said. “No, thank you.”

“So polite.” He was looking at her with the same gentleness and suddenly Mairi could feel her heart cracking. Much more of this and she would agree to his proposal, against her better judgment, against all common sense. And that would be a disaster.

Suddenly she felt wide awake, fear chasing away her exhaustion. She sat up. “Jack,” she said. “Don’t do this. It’s over.”

There was sheer stupefaction in his eyes. “Is this because of what just happened?” he said. “I know I pushed you hard—”

Mairi silenced him with her fingers pressed against his lips. “It’s nothing to do with that,” she said. “I enjoyed it.”

She felt him relax. “Then there is no need for us to part, ” he said. “We could continue to see each other when we return to Edinburgh—”

Mairi shook her head. “No,” she said again.

“If I asked you to change your mind,” Jack said. “If I tried to persuade you...” He moved to take her in his arms, but she held up a hand to ward him off.

“Please,” she said. “Please don’t try to persuade me. I don’t want to live my life hoping against hope that one day you will learn how to love again.”

She sat up, looking for her clothes, realizing that she had none since she had walked into the room completely naked. She certainly did not have the bravado to walk out again in the same way. This was awkward. Sliding from the bed, she grabbed Jack’s linen shirt and quickly slid it over her head. It was a mistake to borrow it; it smelled of Jack and her heart clenched with pain.

She realized that she was waiting for him to say something and as the silence unrolled she felt hope flicker within her and knew that it would always be like this. She would wait and hope and each time the disappointment would destroy her a little more.

“Goodbye, Jack,” she said softly. She knew that the following day they would make a public goodbye in front of everyone, but this one was just for them. She leaned down and kissed his cheek and when he still said nothing, she left.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
HERE
WAS
A
bitter little wind from the north as Mairi stood on the top of the steps at Methven waiting for the carriage to be brought round. She shivered; her summer spencer seemed too light for the chill. But perhaps the chill was inside her.

Lucy was looking worried. “I wish you would stay a few more days,” she said anxiously. “I don’t like to think of you traveling on your own.”

“I’ll be fine,” Mairi said. She could not wait to be away, to be alone. “You know how heavily armed Frazer and the boys are. And so am I.”

Lucy smiled. “But you won’t have Jack with you.” Her face puckered again. “Have the two of you quarreled? You seem very distant with each other.”

“No,” Mairi lied. She shivered again. “Not at all.”

Lucy’s expression conveyed her disbelief more clearly than any words.

“All right,” Mairi admitted. “The engagement is over. Please don’t ask me more—” She broke off, teeth chattering, aware that she was perilously close to tears.

“Oh Mairi!” Lucy hugged her close. “Send for me if you need me,” she said. “And I might just kill Jack after all.”

At that moment Jack came out the door. He looked sinfully handsome in a superbly cut riding coat. Mairi caught her breath. He came down the steps toward her, his expression serious. He did not speak but took both her gloved hands in his and raised them to his lips. Mairi’s eyes jerked to his face, and her heart did a curious little twist. His eyes were deep and dark, their expression so different from the usual mocking amusement with which he faced the world. She knew he was telling her without words that he cared about her, respected her, and that what had happened between them mattered to him. He was telling her everything except that he loved her. She had no idea how to deal with this, what to say, how to behave. It had never happened to her before.

Her fingers trembled in his. She felt his clasp tighten for a moment and then he half smiled, the corner of his mouth tilting up in the way that always made her stomach tumble with longing.

“I will send word when I am back in Edinburgh,” he said, “and I will come to see you when I have spoken to Mr. Innes.”

“Thank you,” Mairi said.

He nodded, hesitated, then bent and brushed his lips against her cheek. It was a cold caress. He handed her up into the carriage, hesitated again over releasing her hand, then let her go.

Three days later, back at Ardglen, she felt even worse. She should have gone to Edinburgh, really, where there would at least be some company and some entertainment, but she could not bear to be there while Jack was in the city. She was too afraid of seeing him with another woman. She did not fool herself that he would be without female companionship for long. Everything seemed to hurt. It hurt dreadfully. The blow of losing Jack never seemed to ease. The pain seemed to sharpen rather than decrease, and it exhausted her to put on a brave face and deal with all the paperwork from the estates. She even considered going to Jack and telling him she had changed her mind about his proposal because anything would feel better than this dragging pain. Pride and principle made for cold bedfellows, she discovered, particularly because she was in love. She got as far as calling the carriage. But in the end she sent it away because she knew that nothing had changed. Jack did not love her and that was all there was to it.

* * *

E
DINBURGH
WAS
DRY
, dusty and largely empty of company since most of the aristocracy had left the city to spend their summer on the grouse moors. Jack found it curiously quiet and lonely. It was not that he craved the excitement of balls and soirees; what he wanted, what he needed, was Mairi.

He had thought that once they were apart he would be able to move on. After three days, though, he had been obliged to acknowledge, if only to himself, that this had been naive. Privately he was terrified of the power Mairi still had over him. He had been away from her for only ten days and yet he missed her desperately. Her wanted to see her, talk to her, hear her voice. He had to resist the urge to ride out the seven or eight miles to Ardglen simply to see her. He was shocked how difficult it was to withstand that impulse. It felt not only inexplicable but outrageously sentimental as well. He wanted to be with her all the time, to touch her—of course he did—but to hold her as well as make love to her. It felt as though a part of him was missing. Whenever the door opened, his hopes would surge that she had come to find him and then they would drop like a stone.

The only thing he could hope for was that action would drive out this peculiar obsession, and so he exerted himself to find and deal with Michael Innes in the quickest and most ruthless way possible. The other advantage of that was that as soon as he had news he could take it back to Mairi. Yet it would make no difference. She would still refuse to marry him and he could see no way past that impasse.

Business was a welcome distraction. It was Jack’s firm belief that every man had his weakness and it proved easy enough to use his contacts to discover Michael Innes’s Achilles’ heel.

Innes’s one vice was a gambling habit that kept him particularly short of money. What he earned, his wife spent. He was gambling with debt. Jack suspected it was that which made Mairi’s fortune so unbearably tempting to him and made the perceived unfairness of her inheritance stick in Innes’s craw.

It was past eleven on his third night back in Edinburgh when Jack presented himself at a discreet establishment just off the Royal Mile. His host, a tall, dark man with jet-black hair and eyes almost equally as dark, drew him into a small reception room off the side of the entrance hall. Lucas Black was said to be the illegitimate offspring of foreign royalty but no one knew for sure. The only thing Jack had discovered about the man was that he was ruthless and determined to succeed. That made them two of a kind and from that they had forged a friendship.

“Your quarry is here, Jack,” Lucas said. If he genuinely had foreign antecedents no one would have guessed it from his speech. He sounded like the product of the best English public school. “You owe me a favor. Mr. Innes is so overawed he has already lost several thousand pounds.” He smiled. “But then I doubt he would ever normally receive an invitation to play in a house like this or in such exalted company.”

Jack grinned. “I’m grateful to you, Lucas, especially that you were able to find sufficient players when Town is so sparse of company. I’ll cover Mr. Innes’s losses against the house.”

Lucas inclined his head. “That is thoughtful of you.”

“My pleasure,” Jack said. “I have already bought up most of his other debts.”

Lucas gave a soundless whistle. He sat down on the edge of the desk, foot swinging. “Poor fellow. What can he have done to displease you?”

Jack hesitated. “It is Lady Mairi MacLeod he has displeased,” he said. “I am here on her behalf.”

There was a gleam of laughter in Lucas’s dark eyes now. “He has upset Lady Mairi? Then it is surprising that he still has his balls. I hear she is a crack shot.”

“The best,” Jack agreed. “But on this occasion she prefers to work through me—and with subtlety rather than with outright violence.”

“I heard the news of your betrothal,” Lucas said. “My congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Jack said. It was odd; the words hurt. They made him realize that soon, once he had spoken to Innes, he would be sending a retraction to the newspapers and his connection to Mairi would be formally severed.

Lucas was looking at him speculatively. “I never thought to see you of all people in love, Jack,” he said. There was a hint of amusement in his voice. “But actually it rather encourages my faith in human nature.”

“I’m not—” Jack started to say automatically, then stopped.

“Spare me the conventional denials,” Lucas said. “A man does not go to the amount of trouble that you have done for Lady Mairi MacLeod without some fairly strong reason. Your cousin wrote to me,” he added, “to put me in the picture once he knew your plans for Innes.”

“Devil take Robert,” Jack said, but he said it without any heat. Lucas was right on both counts; he was in love with Mairi and there was no point in denying it. It had taken him a hell of a long time to realize it—too long—because he had not wanted it to be true.

He realized that he was shaking. He felt strange. The one thing he had not wanted to do—to love and risk losing again—and there was not a damned thing he could do about it. Lucas was smiling as he led him through a large salon where a smattering of Edinburgh society was at play. It was an exclusively male gathering. Cigar smoke wreathed the air. A number of gentlemen nodded to Jack as he passed. Lucas ushered him into a smaller salon through a door at the back. Here there were only a half dozen players. Introductions were brief, as Jack already knew several of the people around the table. Michael Innes met his gaze without a flicker of recognition, which pleased him. Evidently the business that had taken the lawyer out of the city until recently had meant that he had not heard the gossip of Mairi’s engagement.

The game was deep basset and the atmosphere in the small room was already tense. Jack held his own for the first hour, winning a little, then losing a little, watching with interest as Innes became completely engrossed in the game. He had the air of the hardened gambler, his attention rapt on the turn of a card.

Jack exerted himself a little and was soon winning steadily. As Innes lost he drank more and it was apparent he could not hold that drink, for he soon became flushed and erratic. He had a run of luck; Jack saw how it gave him confidence and the confidence made him careless, so that his concentration waned and he lost all that he had gained. By the time the game broke up Jack had a number of Innes’s IOUs in his pocket.

As the others filtered out of the room, Innes plucked at Jack’s sleeve. His fair face had a high color now and his eyes were a little glazed. He swayed on his feet like a sapling in a gale.

“Sir...”

“Mr. Innes?” Jack said smoothly.

“Apologies,” Innes said. “There will be a slight delay in settling my debts.”

Jack raised his brows and said nothing. Innes looked uncomfortable.
“I have expectations,” he muttered.

“So I understand,” Jack said coldly, “but I hope you do not expect me to wait for Lord MacLeod to die before you pay me. I don’t care to wait on a man’s death.”

The dull color settled deeper into Innes’s cheeks. His pale eyes slid away from Jack’s hard gaze.

“No,” he said. “You don’t understand, sir. Sooner than that... My cousin Lady Mairi is vastly rich and soon that money will be mine.”

Jack glanced up. Lucas Black was standing in the doorway. At Jack’s nod he came into the room, closed the door behind him and leaned back against it. Innes shot him a glance, then turned so swiftly back toward Jack that he lost his balance and almost stumbled. Jack pushed him not ungently back down into the chair he had so recently been occupying, where he scrambled back against the cushions as though he were trying to make himself as small as possible.

“Sir—” he protested, and his voice was a bat’s squeak of fear.

“You interest me very much, Innes,” Jack said. “Tell me more about these expectations of yours.”

* * *

M
AIRI
WAS
STILL
at breakfast when word came from Jack that he had talked to Michael Innes the previous night and would call on her later that morning to discuss the matter with her. The note was very formal. Even so she felt a wild flare of hope and then an equally abrupt tumble of spirits. She was doing it again, she thought, refusing to relinquish her dreams. Whoever had said that hope was the very last thing to die had been in the right. It seemed she never learned.

She had no taste for breakfast anymore, so she decided to take a walk instead. She needed to be outside, to think, to plan what she would say to Jack, how she would deal with seeing him again. But she did not want to do it here in the gardens that reminded her so vividly of Archie. Suddenly at last she could see that she needed to escape the hold Archie had had on her life. She had to start afresh. Telling Jack about the past had freed her and even if her future could not be with him, she knew she could move forward now.

She let herself out of the little gate in the walled garden and took the path by the stream that led uphill behind the house. The earth was tinder-dry, crumbling beneath her feet. The sun beat down hotly and she was glad to have remembered her parasol. The air was thick with warmth, so unusual for a Scottish summer. It made walking hot and tiring, but she was still happier to be out in the fresh air.

By the waterfall halfway up the hillside she stopped and sat down to rest, soothed by the sound of the water and the buzz of the bees in the heather. From here the house at Ardglen looked a tiny neat oasis in the midst of the surrounding wild countryside. This had been one of Archie’s favorite places; it was odd that she had felt drawn here when she had not walked this way for years. It was as though she still could not quite escape Archie’s spirit, as though there was something unfinished in their business.

She stood up and carried on with her walk. The path passed behind the waterfall across a narrow rocky ledge made slippery with spray. Here the ferns and bracken grew thickly. As she came out onto a little open grassy expanse on the other side, she thought she could smell smoke carried on the faint breeze, but it seemed so unlikely on such a glorious day that she shook her head and forgot about it. She followed the path around the jut of a rough stone buttress. A little farther and she would turn back because she was starting to feel tired. There was a tumble of rock here, too fresh a fall to be covered in the mosses and lichens that grew in profusion in this little valley.

She sat down on one of the rocks to catch her breath, resting her parasol against the stone beside her, closing her eyes and turning up her face to the sun. It should have felt peaceful and yet she was aware of a sense of disquiet, as though someone was watching her.