Susan Johnson (16 page)

“So blunt, my Lord.”

“I’m surprised myself,” he said with a grin, “at my frankness. It must be the three bottles of brandy I drank.”

“You dance well after three bottles.”

“It was because Munro’s horse went lame; I only drank to pass the time. Do you drink?” He’d wondered earlier.

“Occasionally.”

“Did you like the wines Mrs. Reid sent from Goldiehouse?”

“Yes, thank you.” How could she tell him that she’d not dared drink his wines after the first bottle, when her longing for him had reached such intensity, she’d nearly saddled a horse herself and ridden to Ravensby?

“Come have a glass of wine with me and tell me of your building,” he suddenly said, as if they’d not been discussing seduction, as if they were merely friends renewing an acquaintance. And he pulled her to a stop.

“I shouldn’t.”

“How can it hurt?”

An honest answer wouldn’t do; he’d take advantage of her susceptibility. “Perhaps one,” she said, because she didn’t wish to leave him.

Johnnie Carre had heard those words a thousand times before … that first small capitulation. He smiled down at her with an open, boyish grin, content with the progress of his seduction. “One it is,” he said, taking her by the hand. “Rhenish or French, my lady?”

But his warder, Munro, approached them later when Johnnie signaled a footman for a refill as if he, too, were keeping track of Elizabeth’s consumption of spirits.

The conversation turned more serious then, the particulars of construction taking the stage, and Munro wouldn’t be dislodged as the evening progressed, taking his duties as duenna to heart. Near midnight Johnnie gave up, ordered himself a fresh bottle, and indulgently listened to Munro and Elizabeth detail each step in the building process while he emptied an exceptional bottle of claret. It was only Saturday, after all.

And when Elizabeth took her leave much later, he
tolerantly remarked to his friend, “My compliments on your staying power.”

“I told you I’d keep you on leading strings.”

“She’s very delightful.”

“You mean besides in bed.”

He nodded. “She’s well-read.”

“If you had spent more time with her, you would have realized that before.”

“I was avoiding her because of Robbie’s circumstances. You had more opportunity to know her.”

“Because I don’t consider seducing every beautiful woman, you mean?”

“Sorry … force of habit.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered restraint.”

Johnnie looked for a considering moment at his cousin. “Not until yesterday,” he replied with a grin.

Munro groaned. “It’s going to be a long three days.”

Johnnie raised his wineglass to Munro in salute. “But an interesting three days, Cuz. I’m already looking forward to morning.”

And the next two days of wedding festivities continued apace, with Johnnie pursuing Elizabeth, Munro playing chaperon, and all three participants experiencing a high degree of frustration. The Grahams arranged a picnic outing, boat rides on the lake, impromptu races, dances at night, and of course the wedding on Monday afternoon.

Johnnie adhered to his promise of gentlemanly behavior, but that didn’t discourage him from attempting to bring Elizabeth into his bed of her own accord. But at the end of two days, he found himself depleted of compliant good humor. And evil-tempered.

Elizabeth had resisted the seductive Laird of Ravensby with all the logic of her sensible nature, but she wasn’t immune to the intensity of her emotions. And she lay awake at night, fighting her susceptibility, wishing she could allow herself to give in to her carnal longings.

Munro, for his part, counted the hours while he parried the insinuations and intimations and sat up late into the night protecting Elizabeth Graham from herself. And from his cousin’s skillful seduction. He was exhausted by Tuesday morning, when he felt himself being roughly jolted awake.

“She’s gone.” Johnnie curtly declared. Fully dressed, he stood at the bedside, Munro’s shoulder in his savage grip, shaking his cousin awake with an only partially restrained violence. “She left this morning. I wonder if she actually thought she would get away.” His fingers tightened.

Munro winced and grunted at the sudden twinge of pain.

Looking down, Johnnie seemed momentarily surprised. “Sorry,” he said, releasing his punishing hold and spinning away. He strode to the window overlooking the drive. Gazing at the landscape falling away to the south—to England—for a brief moment, he restlessly tapped his fingers on the pane. Then, turning back to his cousin, he decisively said, “You can come or you can stay. I’m beyond caring what you think, what
anyone
thinks.…”

“An unusual sentiment for you,” Munro sardonically murmured.

“A damnable aberration, as you well know,” Johnnie snapped, testy and exasperated after days of restraint. “But I’ve finally slipped my leash, Munro, and I’m after her. And don’t look at me like that.” Raking his hands through hair in an agitated gesture, restive and mutinous, he glared at his cousin, bereft of benevolence after three days of pretense and prevarication. “Thanks to your refined notions of good breeding, I’ve had a perpetual erection for three days, make it four; the ride down was hell. I’ve been teased and tortured beyond endurance … holding Elizabeth in my arms on the dance floor, wanting to kiss her luscious mouth, smelling that damnable clover-scented soap of Mrs. Reid’s that always reminds me of our time together at Goldiehouse, lying awake at night wondering what she’s wearing in bed or if she’s wearing anything or who’s sharing her bed.”

At which point Munro’s eyebrows rose.

“All right, all right,” Johnnie grudgingly agreed, his hand coming up slightly as if to ward off Munro’s dissent. “So she sleeps in a damned virginal bed. Do you know,” he softly queried, standing very still suddenly, “I almost climbed the tree outside her window simply to
watch
her.” He grimaced in disgust. “I’m like an adolescent in heat. And in my current mood”—his teeth flashed white in a grin and one dark brow rose—“I’d even consider tumbling you, if you weren’t so hairy. So I’ll have her now or at least try, dammit, like a man instead of a simpering fop. And you can’t stop me!”

“You’re beyond stopping, I’d say,” Munro acknowledged, rubbing his aching shoulder, his voice deliberate, his eyes half-lidded not in sleep but in assessment.

“At
last
we agree.” An intrinsic air of command colored Johnnie’s tone. “Do you ride with me? Or I can ride alone,” he added, his voice conciliatory, appeasing his cousin’s more decorous nature. “You needn’t come if it offends you.”

Tossing aside the covers with a sigh, Munro threw his legs over the side of the bed and, heaving himself into a sitting position, gazed at his cousin for a thoughtful moment. “Oh, hell … I’ll go. I’ve been your keeper for three days now. What’s a few more hours? At least I can bring your body back if the lady has her Redesdale guards kill you on the spot. Although,” he went on with a faint smile, “you’re not thinking she ran away because she finds you repulsive?”

“She ran for the same reasons I’m going after her,” Johnnie bluntly said. “She can’t help herself, nor can I.”

“You could be wrong.”

“I’ll find out then, won’t I?”

“Perhaps at the price of your life.”

He didn’t want to argue with his cousin about the style and degree and manner of Elizabeth Graham’s response to him the last few days; accomplished at reading female sensibilities, Johnnie didn’t question her interest. The Redesdale guard was another matter, but he doubted Elizabeth would protect her virtue so far as to allow him to be killed. “Nothing so dramatic will transpire,” he replied
to his cousin’s concern. “She’s above all a practical woman.”

“In which case she’ll refuse you.”

“We’ll see.…” In control of his life again now that he’d cast aside his abnormal discipline of the last few days, Johnnie’s voice took on a lazy drawl. His unreserved smile appeared, fresh as a morning sunrise. “Or maybe I’ll have her instead … if she doesn’t order me skinned alive first.”

Elizabeth had left very early that morning, unable to withstand another day of close proximity to Johnnie Carre without helplessly giving in to her yearnings. Restless, disquieted, stretched taut with longing after having Johnnie Carre tempt and seduce her every waking moment during her stay at Hawick, she felt her only option was escape. Or else take the scandalous Laird of Ravensby into her bed before all the watchful Graham guests, which would be tantamount to broadcasting her lust to all of Scotland.

Which consideration had ultimately prompted her to flee; last night, lying in bed unable to sleep
again
, she’d found herself considering the limited range of secluded retreats suitable for an amorous rendezvous, a site safe from prying eyes of guests and servants. And this morning she’d controlled her impulse to walk unannounced into Johnnie’s room only because she didn’t know its location. Panic-stricken by the intensity of her need, she decided it was time to leave. Short of embarrassing herself by exposing her unsated desire for the Laird of Ravensby before all of Hawick, she simply had no choice.

Once the environs of the Graham country house had been left behind, she’d felt less vulnerable. Instructing her driver to slow the horses to a walk as the road beyond the village narrowed, she’d found herself relaxing.

She was safe. Away from the irresistible Johnnie Carre, beyond the formidable power of his smile and charming ways, a comfortable distance from his unbridled sensuality.

Taking a deep breath, she inhaled the fresh summer air drifting in through the coach’s open windows, the day cool but sunny as if the change of temperature since yesterday reflected her own more temperate decision to leave. The tranquility and quiet of the countryside further calmed her, an added degree of serenity returned to her mind, and moderation was once again restored to her life after three days under the tempestuous spell of hot-blooded desire.

She had acted properly in leaving.

The wild and headstrong Johnnie Carre would have shattered her placid domestic existence.

Familiar with every inch of the Borders, Johnnie and Munro rode overland to save precious time, forcing a headlong pace, knowing they could gain easily on a slow-moving coach. Scottish roads were rough tracks off the main routes to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London; the carriage would travel at no more than walking speed.

A few miles north of the border, where the route passed through a small plantation laid out by a local landowner a generation ago, the sound of hard-ridden horses first caught the outriders’ attention. Automatically reaching for their weapons, they stopped to listen. Shaded by tall old pines fragrant in the cool early morning air, the narrow road had an air of isolation, separated from the rural countryside by acres of towering trees. An ambush in such remote surroundings was possible; they signaled the coach to stop.

As her carriage came to rest, Elizabeth leaned out of the window, surveyed the quiet lane, and shouted to her driver, “Is there a problem?”

“The outriders, my Lady,” her maid said, from her seat beside the driver, where she’d chosen to ride on the glorious morning. “They’ve heard something.”

Scanning the landscape in both directions, Elizabeth saw nothing but trees and a ribbon of dusty road. “Do
you
hear anything?”

“Not yet, Lady Graham,” her driver replied, “but Michael did, else he wouldn’t have raised the alarm. Best stay inside until we know for certain.”

The summer morning was too idyllic for danger, with birdsong melodic on the crisp air, the bright sunshine luminous ribbons where it gleamed through openings in the pine boughs, wildflowers splashes of color bordering the country road.

An assault seemed incongruous in such a picturesque setting.

But the sound of galloping horses suddenly reached the coach, and Elizabeth’s escort shifted their mounts into a position of readiness, an armed shield against danger.

And moments later, two riders appeared in the distance, traveling fast, racing point-blank at them. As each Redesdale guard sighted his musket on the horsemen, Elizabeth stretched a fraction farther out the window, more curious than frightened. Highwaymen were rare on summer mornings in the country; nor were they generally so bold in their approach. Narrowing her gaze, she focused on the riders. They were too distant yet. Several seconds passed as everyone waited in silence, the rhythm of hoofbeats loud in the stillness of the forest. At the moment her captain ordered his men to prepare to fire, she caught a glimpse of windswept black hair, recognized the familiar powerful frame on the horseman in the lead, the colors of the plaid, and hysterically screamed, “Don’t shoot!”

Redmond’s head snapped around.

“It’s Ravensby,” she said, breathless, the drama of Johnnie’s appearance stunning her. “Don’t shoot him!”

“We’ll see what he wants,” Redmond directed his men. “Keep him in your sights.”

“He’s not dangerous, Redmond.”

“Yes, my Lady.” But no one lowered his weapon.

• • •

“They might shoot you before you get within speaking range,” Munro pointed out as they slowed to a canter, his gaze on the firearms trained on them.

“No risk, no pleasure …” Johnnie amiably replied, stroking his lathered horse as he brought it to a trot. “Now don’t make any sudden moves,” he cheerfully instructed. And slowly opening his arms in a gesture of friendship, he showed his weaponless hands to the men guarding Elizabeth, a smile on his handsome face.

“Stop and state your business,” Elizabeth’s captain shouted, still cautious despite Elizabeth’s recognition.

“I’d like a word with Lady Graham,” Johnnie casually replied, bringing his horse to a halt.

No! was her first reaction when she heard his words … Lord, save me, her second. But a flutter of excitement struck her senses separate from any reasonable repudiation. And in the next moment she reminded herself she wasn’t a sixteen-year-old child without the means of independent action, but a grown woman capable of dealing with adult dilemmas, with temptation, with infatuation and desire. Surely, a few words with Johnnie Carre would be possible without a complete loss of restraint. After all, she’d kept him at bay for more than two days at Hawick.