Sweet Temptation (17 page)

Sara was roused at dawn by the noise of the army readying itself to march. Men hitched horses to ammunition wagons, wheeled guns onto the road, and cooked what breakfast they could come by over open fires. It was a cold, damp morning, and the leaden sky promised more rain.

Sara and Betty hurried into their clothes, quickly swallowed the food prepared by their sullen hostess, and waited in front of the cottage for someone to come for them. But when the troops began to move away, Fraser still hadn’t appeared. When it seemed they were going to be left behind, Sara ran into the road and stopped one of the wagons.

“Stand away,” called the driver gruffly. “I havena room for lightskirts.”

“Even a heathen Scot can tell my mistress is a lady!” Betty informed him, incensed that he should impugn Sara’s character.

But the man’s highland upbringing hadn’t engendered any respect for the arrogant lowlanders or their proud ladies. “Ye’ll have tae walk like the rest o’ us, if ye want tae reach Glasgow.”

“I don’t mind walking if I must,” said Sara, “but I can’t carry these trunks.”

“Then leave ‘em behind. Ye can have little need for a lot o’ fancy clothes.” Sara planted herself in the wagon’s path, prepared to block the progress of the entire army if necessary, but just then the Prince came riding briskly through the ranks, upsetting everyone and creating disorder around him on his way to the front. He pulled up next to Sara.

“Mr. Fraser has not come for us, and we have no means of reaching Penrith,” she explained.

“Why have you not taken her up?” he demanded of the driver. “Put the ammunition in another wagon if you must, but make the ladies your first concern.” The dour Scot was not pleased, but he could not disobey his Prince. So Sara and Betty were soon settled in the wagon and bouncing along the cut up road, much more uncomfortable than they had ever been on the stage.

It rained heavily all day. The bad roads became even worse, and tempers flared out of control. Sara was miserably cold. She huddled shivering inside her cloak, wondering how soldiers with their limbs exposed by their kilts could stand such misery. Lord George Murray, brother to the Duke of Atholl and commander of the Prince’s army, went up and down the ranks shouting encouragement all during the miserable day.

But there was too much work to be done for the men to worry about the cold. The four-wheeled wagons began to mire in a road already churned up by thousands of horses and men, and before the middle of the day, the main body of the army had left the ammunition train behind.

Their progress came to a complete halt when they reached a stream where they had to make a sharp turn and climb a steep hill upon crossing. Wagon after wagon entered the stream, only to become firmly stuck. By the time Sara’s wagon entered the stream, the banks were a deep morass and the men exhausted and irascible.

“Wait,” she called to the driver. “We’ll climb down.”

“Milady, you’re not going to drag your skirt through that muddy water?” exclaimed Betty, aghast.

“The wagon will never make it with us.” Betty looked like she meant to argue, but the handsome blond Scot of the day before unexpectedly scooped Sara up in his arms, meaning to carry her ashore. Betty immediately blocked his path, a sword hastily snatched up from the wagon in her hands.

“I would like tae help,” he offered apologetically.

“Like you helped yesterday, I suppose?” Betty growled, stabbing the sword point in his chest. “I can take care of my mistress without your help.”

“But I have her already.”

“You’ll not have your breath if you don’t put her down.”

Sara felt foolish, dangling helplessly in the big man’s arms, while he and Betty argued over who should carry her a distance of only a few feet.

“Put that sword down, Betty. I can’t have you starting a war over me. I accept your offer and your apology,” she told the Scot, “but I would much prefer to walk, even through water.” However, the Scot carried Sara across the stream. It was with ill grace that Betty allowed it, and she didn’t let him off without a dire warning. “Touch my mistress once more, and you’ll not see Scotland again.”

The little drama had momentarily obscured the fact that their wagon had become stuck in the stream. While exhausted soldiers rested against tree trunks or sank to the muddy ground, the driver whipped his tired horses to no avail. Without a word, Sara waded into the stream and put her shoulder to the wheel. Betty, loudly decrying the cruelty of a world which required such sacrifices from women, waded in after her.

That was too much for the men. Exhausted though they were, their pride would not allow women to do work they themselves could do. Silently they went into the water up to their middles; the wagon was out of the stream and up the steep incline in a matter of minutes.

“We can walk,” Sara said, when the driver stopped for them to climb up again.

“Ye shall ride,” commanded Lord George, coming up behind them unexpectedly. “We have no’ time tae wait on ye.”

They only made four miles that day. Darkness came upon them well before they reached Penrith, and they were forced to spend the night in open country in plain sight of enemy patrols. There was a farmhouse nearby, and in spite of the overt hostility of the inhabitants, Lord George commandeered it for Sara.

“We can’t take a bedroom,” protested Sara.

“Ye have walked most o’ the day, and ye must be exhausted,” said Lord George.

“We can sleep in a barn,” Sara offered heroically, but was unable to suppress a shiver at the thought.

“The men were there afore ye, and I doubt the Queen’s arrival would cause them tae quit it afore morning. Ye and yer maid will take one room, and my staff will take the rest.”

“I do have one request,” Sara said, almost ashamed to ask for anything of this badly overworked man. “Is it possible to heat water for a bath?”

“I’ll not have my girls carrying water for a damned Jacobite lightskirt,” spat the farmer.

Betty stepped forward and dealt the man a ringing blow. “Take care how you speak of my mistress, or you’ll be roasting over the very fire that heats her bath water. It’s not for the likes of you to be questioning anything she does.” Sara quickly mastered an impulse to come to the unfortunate man’s defense. Betty’s harsh treatment might be unwarranted, but Sara sorely wanted a bath.

The water was duly heated, and Sara was able to soak away the day’s accumulation of mud and ease her aching muscles. In the soft light her pure white skin glowed like alabaster, without a single freckle to mar its perfection. Her soft blue eyes shone with contentment as Betty washed her hair. It would take some time to dry the luxuriant mass of strawberry blond tresses, but not nearly so long as when her hair was a foot longer.

Sara rose from the water and savored the luxury of having Betty pat her dry. She tried to catch a glimpse of herself in a small hand mirror, but Betty kept getting in the way. “Do you think my body is attractive?” she asked, remembering the feel of Gavin’s lips on her skin.

“It’s not my place to say,” muttered Betty, drying her with businesslike efficiency.

“But you must know something.
You
haven’t spent your whole life within the walls of a girl’s school.”

“A man will take to just about any female that’s prettier than his hunting dog and weighs less than a brood sow.”

That was not the boost in confidence Sara was hoping for. “I mean a man like Lord Carlisle. After having lots of beautiful mistresses, wouldn’t he expect more than an average female?” She looked at her trim body and pulled a face. “I’m too skinny,” she said, remembering Clarice’s opulent form and longing for just a few of the buxom widow’s curves. “I look like a boy.”

“Men don’t go about choosing their wives the same way they choose their mistresses,” Betty said reprovingly.

“But they must look for some of the same things in both.” She didn’t think she could stand it if every man needed a wife
and a
mistress. She couldn’t share the man she loved with anyone, especially not a woman as beautiful as Clarice Wynburn.

“It’s nothing you have to worry your head about,” replied Betty, firmly ending the conversation. “You’re his wife, and he has to take you the way he finds you. That’s a husband’s duty.”

Sara allowed herself to be tucked in, but she had a feeling that however much other men might behave according to Betty’s dictums, Lord Gavin Carlisle was different. Her curiosity was far from satisfied—she really wasn’t sure Betty could satisfy it—but she was too exhausted to think about it anymore tonight. She drifted off to sleep and dreamed of Gavin, spurning an endless parade of voluptuous widows in favor of his slender, lissome wife.

“I don’t want to see anyone, and I most particularly don’t want to see Colleen Fraser,” Gavin barked at his valet. He didn’t want to eat breakfast, not with his head pounding away like a piece of field artillery, but the news that Colleen had come to Estameer a second time killed what little appetite he had.

“What shall I tell the young lassie when she comes again, for ye know she will?” Lester demanded firmly, not the least bit deferential to his young lord. He remembered the day Gavin was born, and he could never bring himself to look upon him as anything but a boy.

“Tell her I’ve gone to Glasgow,” Gavin thundered, throwing down his napkin and rising from the table, “because I have.”

“Ye have no need tae travel all the way tae Glasgow, if ye’re looking tae do business. Edinburgh canna be half so far.”

“Where I go is none of your concern, you nosy old rascal. But for your information, I’ve already been to Edinburgh, and I don’t like their prices. There must be more of the old man in me than I bargained for. It looks like I was born to haggle over the last penny.”

But as he traveled the cold, wet roads across Scotland, he admitted it was just as well he was out of Colleen’s way. He had first succumbed to her lusty ardor five summers back, but he had been at Estameer for nearly three weeks and had not had the slightest desire to quench the fires that raged in his loins in Colleen’s embrace. It hadn’t been necessary for him to dream about Sara every night to realize she was the only one who could satisfy the thirst which now bedeviled him, body and soul.

The more often he remembered the look on her face when he stormed out of his father’s house, the more convinced he became that he had misjudged her. At the time he had been too enraged to care, but as the anger of that morning faded, a myriad of impressions began to emerge from the mist, providing him with a clear picture of his father’s cold rage, the Burroughs women’s incredulous disbelief, and Olivia Tate’s chagrin. He didn’t care about his father, and hadn’t given more than a minute’s thought to Olivia and the Burroughs, but he could not get Sara out of his mind.

It wasn’t her shock or surprise. He’d been shocking and surprising people for years; it was-their own fault if they expected something else of him. It wasn’t even the hurt, though Gavin never intentionally hurt anyone who hadn’t hurt him first. For the hundredth time he recalled the words he had flung at her. No, not at her—he hadn’t even had the decency to speak directly to her—at his father, but meant for her. No, they
weren’t
meant for her, but she thought they were, and he had done nothing to cause her to think otherwise.

It was as though some part of her, one of the intangible
somethings
that make a person an individual, had died. No, that wasn’t it either. She had come face to face with something terrible, something that undermined the whole foundation of her beliefs, that literally threatened her existence, and she had drawn inward to protect herself. And he was that something.

She had come to him open and welcoming, expecting him to be the boy she remembered, and he had turned on her in a furious rage. She had somehow regained enough confidence to come to the marriage bed trusting that he would not hurt her, and he had shattered that hope as well. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he had said he didn’t want her. During the day he could almost forget his infamous treatment of her, but the grinding weight of guilt seemed to grow heavier each night.

He knew he wanted her—God! His body grew rigid with desire every time he thought of her—but he felt an overwhelming need to make her hurt go away. He didn’t know which he wanted to do first, or if he could do one and not the other. It was all tangled up in his mind at the moment, but it was probably too late either way. He couldn’t believe he had rejected Clarice and Colleen for a skinny, virginal girl, and then abandoned her to the mercies of the Earl! “You are truly your father’s son,” he told himself furiously.

He cursed and dug his heels into his horse’s side, driving the animal forward at a gallop.

Chapter 12

As they left Shap two days later, Sara saw troop after troop of enemy light horse on the hills beside the road, riding in pairs against the skyline.

“You think they mean to attack us?” Betty asked, her eyes wide with fear.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Sara said, not taking her own eyes off the following troops. “We never studied military tactics at Miss Adelaide’s.” A short time later, the sound of trumpets and kettledrums broke upon their ears so suddenly it surprised a scream of fright out of Betty. Certain that Cumberland’s army would rush down in the next instant and slay them all without hesitation, Sara sat rigidly in her seat, and wondered why it had seemed important to leave London immediately. It was certainly foolhardy to continue on this ill-considered journey, when she was caught between two armies chasing each other across England.