Scotsmen Prefer Blondes (19 page)

He had returned from Edinburgh the previous day, saying nothing about Prudence other than that he had found a post chaise to take her safely to London. Amelia didn’t deserve a message, but the lack of one fed her guilt.

She drew in a breath and wiped her hands on her skirts. The gesture didn’t alleviate the clamminess inside her gloves. She picked up her bouquet, a dramatic clutch of white hydrangeas that stood starkly against the icy blue silk of her newest dress. When she’d purchased it in London before the trip, she hadn’t intended for it to be her wedding dress, but it was an appropriate nod to the blues that featured prominently in the MacCabe colors.

Alex strode over and opened the carriage door again. “Ready, Amelia?”

He reached up and plucked her out of the carriage, setting her down carefully to avoid any puddles that would soak through her slippers. She was grateful that the rain had subsided to a drizzle; when she took off her pelisse and handed it to a servant standing near the door, her dress still looked dry.

She held out her arm for Alex, but he didn’t offer his to her. Instead, he pulled her into a hug. “I wish you very happy, Amelia. I hope you know that.”

All morning, her eyes had stayed dry — but Alex’s gruff tone was enough to wet them. “I know, Alex. I hope you find your happiness too.”

He shrugged, then squeezed her again before stepping back. “With you and Madeleine settled, perhaps I shall.”

“As though we held you back. I rather think it’s your books that keep you unwed, not Madeleine and I.”

Alex started to ruffle her hair, but she yelped and he remembered not to muss her hairstyle. “We all have our passions, do we not?” he said.

He didn’t know about her writing. For the first time, though, she wished she had told him. His duty had made him stuffy, but he had never discouraged her. If anything, until Malcolm came along, he had been more accommodating than any other guardian she knew.

She wondered again why he had been so quick to make her marry Malcolm, particularly when he knew just as well as she did that Prudence needed the match. But the start of her wedding wasn’t the time for confessions or confrontations.

She lightened her tone. “Perhaps Madeleine and I should force you to marry, since you’ve done all the honors so far,” she teased.

Alex had the grace to laugh. “If you find the woman who equals either of you, send her my way.”

She took Alex’s arm and let him lead her across the vestibule toward the inner sanctuary door. Amelia hadn’t intended to marry. But she would walk into the church like she wanted to be there, like she had no doubts at all about this union. She owed it to her family. She owed it to Prudence.

She owed it to Malcolm.

They paused long enough for someone to open the final door. Her hand tightened in the crook of Alex’s arm; the other made a fist around the flowers she carried.

When Alex escorted her into the church, suddenly walking faster than she could ever be ready for, she felt like she had been dumped into another time. The crowd was positively medieval, boisterous and enthusiastic, more like fairgoers than the stern, somber Presbyterians she had expected. She knew the MacCabes belonged to the Church of England, but even in the south, she had never seen a church with such an air of raucous celebration.

If this was a fair, she was the main event. Alex half-dragged her up the aisle. She looked straight ahead to the man who waited for her. She felt like a jouster without a horse, moving inexorably toward her foe.

Not her foe. Her husband.

His gaze was hot and heady as she approached. If he had looked like a rebel planning an ambush before, this was the moment when his efforts bore fruit. As Malcolm took her arm from Alex, she felt the unbreakable strength of his grip — and the restraint as he brushed a kiss across her knuckles, then stopped himself from doing anything else.

She smiled at him. Then she realized her smile was genuine, which only made her smile more.

Amelia was afraid — no, terrified — of what marriage meant.

But if she had to stand in front of an altar, Malcolm was the only man she wished to stand there with.

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said.

She thought Ellie and Madeleine, standing just behind her, were both prettier than her, but the way Malcolm looked at her made her believe it. For a moment, it was just the two of them. If it could always be just the two of them, perhaps she wouldn’t be scared. A life with him, and without any other social ties, sounded almost perfect.

“You are quite handsome yourself, my lord,” she replied.

“Not the most handsome man in all the land?”

She laughed. “You are, but I wouldn’t want it to go to your head.”

He grinned at her. Her stomach settled into place. When Alastair cleared his throat, she stood beside Malcolm, somehow relaxed and nervous all at once.

The ceremony passed quickly. Later, she wouldn’t remember most of it. She remembered their vows, though. And when she looked at Malcolm directly, their eyes focused only on each other as he held her hand.

He was a more polished version of the man she had first kissed in the library. His hair, while still longer than fashionable, was better controlled, and he had removed all trace of stubble from his face. The smoothness only highlighted the sharp, angular planes of his jaw, and even though his aquiline nose had been broken at some point in the past, he still looked entirely in command. She felt a brief thrill as he vowed to have and to hold her forevermore.

He was the first man she’d ever known who seemed capable of that vow.

Malcolm finished in a strong, steady voice, without a hint of regret. She managed to match his confidence. If she faltered a little over her vow to obey him, he didn’t seem inclined to hold it against her. His lips twitched, and half the clan snickered, but his grip on her hand was reassuring.

When she finished, she thought she heard her mother sigh with relief, but she couldn’t look away from Malcolm long enough to check. Taking the ring from Alastair, he slid it onto her finger.

“With my body, I thee worship,” he said, amusement — and something else — evident in his voice.

He caressed the palm of her hand as he left the ring in place, and she felt a brief flare of heat. The gold band, its perfect square-cut sapphire surrounded by a circle of diamonds, seemed to carry a weight of cool foreboding, but she dismissed the thought. Bad omens were good for her stories, but they had no place in real life — not if she wanted to avoid turning her marriage into a Gothic horror.

The rest of the ceremony passed in a blur, until Alastair closed his prayer book and allowed his solemn façade to crack. “Welcome to the clan, Amelia,” he said warmly, before raising his voice to address the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Earl and Countess of Carnach!”

The church erupted in cheers, as though they had witnessed a match born out of love rather than coercion. They grew even louder when Alastair said, “Malcolm, you may kiss your bride.”

Amelia turned to face her new husband, and she caught a brief flash of some strong emotion lurking in his eyes before he reached out, tilted her face upward, and kissed her. The kiss was just as hot and intense as their first kiss, but something had changed. He tasted of peppermint rather than whisky. And this wasn’t a seduction, but a possession. It ended almost immediately, but Amelia could still feel the heat of his mouth on hers.

She wanted to kiss him again. His silver eyes mirrored her desire. But there would be time for that — time for everything, now that their lives were intertwined.

As they walked back up the aisle, showered with cheers and laughter, she felt the first true crack in her heart.

And at that moment, she knew she was doomed.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The wedding breakfast wasn’t a small family gathering — it was a feast fit for a medieval laird, filling the great hall with every man, woman, and child within two hours’ walk of the castle. The festivities spilled out onto the lawn, and the feasting looked ready to continue for another week.

Amelia wasn’t sure she could last another hour.

She drummed her fingers on the ancient oak table, next to her nearly untouched plate. The breakfast — if one could call a meal of this magnitude a breakfast — had already lasted three hours, and the kitchen was still sending up vast platters of food. Perhaps she should have been more involved in the planning, if only to shorten the celebration.

To her left, Malcolm tilted a bottle of champagne into her glass. They’d said little at the table — but there was little they could say, sitting side by side at a grand table on the dais overlooking the hall, flanked by their families.

They hadn’t said much in the carriage after the ceremony, either. Then again, it was hard to talk when their tongues were intertwined.

She stopped drumming her fingers and picked up the champagne. She hadn’t wanted to marry him and didn’t intend to obey him — and yet, when she kissed Malcolm, she forgot all that.

And if she was now obliged to share his bed, if she could give in to all her hidden desires with no repercussions — why did she have to wait another minute for him?

“You’re blushing, darling,” he murmured in her ear.

She sipped her drink, then looked sidelong at him under her lashes. “You would be too if you knew my thoughts.”

She felt like a hoyden, but his lips curved into a smile that matched hers. “If you knew my thoughts, that pretty blush of yours would be permanent.”

It was so odd to want him. The heat of it scared her. It shamed her, too. She wasn’t ashamed to want him, but such base physical desires could utterly destroy her reason.

She could regain her reason tomorrow. She took another sip of champagne. “You won’t find me easy to shock, my lord.”

His hand slid down to her thigh, and the weight and heat of it seared through the silk. “And you won’t find me easily satisfied.”

She turned to face him fully. Time compressed in that moment, froze them for endless seconds. At the very end of her life, in her final moments, she would remember the hunger in his grey eyes, the sensual curve of his lips, and the way he wanted her — her, not titles or dowries or political machinations. In that beginning, at the creation of their world, the need and longing that flared between them overwhelmed everything else.

That morning, she didn’t know whether the longing would transform into love, or fade into apathy. She just knew she had to see where it would end.

He stood before she realized what he was about, then swooped down and plucked her from her chair. She reached for his arm. He dipped and slung her arm over his neck, picking her up and cradling her to his chest.

“Malcolm,” she exclaimed, “you’re mad.”

He kissed her forehead as his clan cheered. “It’s something of a tradition here. Unless you aren’t done eating?”

“Very well,” she said, suddenly feeling like her prim London vocabulary had no words for what she felt, to ask for what she wanted.

Malcolm knew, though. Her spine was rigid as he carried her through the hall. The ribald suggestions shouted by the clan discomfited her. But she relaxed against his chest after he cleared the stairs to the family wing.

“A strange tradition, don’t you think?” she asked.

His hand caressed her hip. “I thought so, but now I see the appeal. The first earl kidnapped his bride, and it ended as a love match. Carrying you off is supposed to be good luck.”

“You haven’t conquered me, you know,” she said.

Malcolm paused just long enough to kiss her. “I will.”

She should have been insulted, but his smug, confident grin as he strode toward the end of the passageway made her want to kiss him again. “Perhaps I shall conquer you instead.”

He shouldered open the door to his bedchamber and kicked it closed behind him. “You can try any time you like, darling. But today — today I have plans for you.”

He dropped her onto the bed, and she squealed as she hit the mattress. The sheets had been turned down by an expectant servant, and the drapes were shut. Malcolm left her sprawled inelegantly on the bed and went to the window to fling back the curtains.

“What are you doing?” she asked, coming up on her elbows.

He fiddled with the ties to hold the curtains back. The rain had stopped, and a bit of sun strayed through the glass. “I have to see you, Amelia.”

She felt a brief twinge of nerves. What if he didn’t like what he saw? “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

He opened the next set of curtains. “Do you know how your hair gleams in the sun, Amelia?” he asked. “In candlelight, it looks like spun gold. But in the middle of the day, it looks like an angel’s halo. If the rest of you is that heavenly...”

He trailed off. She swallowed hard as he turned to run a slow, roving gaze over her body. Sprawled on his bed, her legs spread and her breath shallow, she did feel conquered — and he hadn’t even touched her.

She lifted her hand toward him, inviting him with her body since she couldn’t find the words. He took two steps, sat on the edge of the bed, and brought her fingers to his mouth.

“I’m going to make you feel, Amelia. I’m going to hear you scream my name. And whether you wanted to marry me or not, by the time you leave this bed, you’ll never again doubt that we were made for this.”

She shuddered. She already felt. All the emotions she’d always kept in check were inches away from breaking through her last defenses. She wasn’t ready to let them out. The panic clawed at her, telling her he couldn’t see everything, that she couldn’t let him get that close.

Then he kissed her.

The panic didn’t die, but it retreated just enough to let her kiss him back.

He must have felt her tension. He pulled away. “Are you ready?” he asked.

It nearly undid her. The thread of sensual promise was still there. But when was the last time someone had been concerned for her? Not about her, but for her?

“I’m...” She took a breath. “I want to be. But I — it’s —”

She was incoherent. Amelia Staunton was never incoherent. Perhaps as Lady Carnach she would never have the right words again. That thought made the panic bubble up again.