Susan Johnson (8 page)

“Why don’t I come back later?” A dazzling light seemed to emanate from the lady seated before Munro’s desk, as if she absorbed the rays of the sun shining through the bank of windows behind Munro. As if she absorbed their heat too. She always struck him gut-hard; he preferred lesser feelings toward women. “We can go over the matter of the archway between the main house and the new wing this afternoon.”

“Look now,” Munro urged, immune to his employer’s discomfort. “I’ve redrawn the plans. Why come back when you’re already here?” He was pawing through the stack of prints on his desk. “I think you’ll find all your suggestions appropriately incorporated. Elizabeth has already given them her approval,” he finished, looking up with a grin.

Momentarily startled at the obvious informality between his architect and hostage houseguest, Johnnie’s gaze quickly regauged their proximity. And his next reflection, decidedly possessive in nature, questioned the exact measure of that friendship with a jaundiced glance. “Really,” he said, “in that case you must show me them.” And he strode into the room with the grudging resentment of a guardian protecting his personal property.

Ignorant to Johnnie’s misjudged suspicions as he surveyed the array of new designs, Elizabeth and Munro jointly annotated the redesigned drawings. “Actually, Elizabeth helped draw these cross sections,” Munro noted when they came to the detail drawings.

“He let me handle the unimportant details,” Elizabeth interjected with a grin.

“Never say the foundation is unimportant,” Munro gallantly protested.

“Well, just boring then,” she cheerfully pointed out. “You did all the beautiful relief arabesques—and most wonderfully, I might add.” The smile that passed between Elizabeth and Munro was duly noted by the Laird of Ravensby.

“Although tomorrow,” Elizabeth went on, “you
must
let me try my hand on the cartouche.”

And Johnnie was shocked to see her stick her tongue out at Munro as a child would at play.

“Or will you pout?” Munro teased.

“I most certainly will.”

“In that case I have no choice.”

“How insightful. You see,” she playfully said, turning to Johnnie in her good spirits as though he were a part of their banter, “how accommodating he is?”

“Indeed.” And the single quiet word wiped the smile from her face, so sharp its query.

“Acquit me, Ravensby,” she snapped, “from the multitude of your sins.” She’d changed completely in that flashing second from a lighthearted maid to an imperious female, her expression one of disdain.

“Johnnie, you’re out of bounds,” Munro said quickly. “Apologize.”

They were friends, the two men, cousins raised in the same household, but Johnnie’s eyes when they swiveled to Munro held no friendship. “As Laird,” the chief Lord in Roxburgh said to his cousin, “I have no bounds.”

“She’s not like your other women, Johnnie.” Unintimidated, often in disagreement with Johnnie over the years, Munro pugnaciously repeated, “Apologize to Lady Graham.”

“And if I don’t?” While he’d been uncommonly circumspect in his desires, when he’d been denying himself like a chaste knight, Elizabeth Graham and his cousin had been enjoying a flirtation.

“That’s enough!” Elizabeth sharply exclaimed, rising from her chair, the anger in her voice distinct. “You’re mistaken, Lord Graden, in your presumptions. Although with your reputation it’s understandable. Kindly excuse me from this unsavory discussion. Hotchane would have had you both thrown into the river to cool off.”

“He could have tried,” Johnnie darkly muttered, still heated from an unrecognizable jealousy.

“Hotchane survived seventy-eight years, my Lord, because he enforced his will with his Redesdale army.”

“But he’s dead now, my Lady,” Johnnie murmured. “And the Redesdale army is across the border.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Of course not.” His voice had further hushed.

“Kindly recall I’m a hostage. There are certain rules.”

“And kindly recall
I
make the rules here.”

She paused for the space of a heartbeat. “I see.” Drawing a small breath, she sarcastically went on, “In that case I no doubt require your permission to leave.”

“Leave?” The tone of his voice required more definition from her.

“This room.”

He hesitated just long enough for discourtesy, an implied lesson on the extent of his power in the Borders.

He nodded his head finally in dismissal.

She refused to verbally acknowledge his authority but simply turned in a swish of silk and walked from the room.

“So …” Munro murmured, “that’s the way of it.…” He was shocked at the tangible heat he’d just witnessed between his cousin and Elizabeth Graham—an explanation for Johnnie’s unjustified jealousy. “And you’ve managed to keep your hands off her?”

“Just barely,” Johnnie said with a sigh. “My apologies if I gave offense.”

“You
should
apologize to her.”

Johnnie shrugged. “She’ll be gone soon.”

“The negotiations are going well?”

“We’re down to the small details.”

“Ah … and it’s getting harder.”

Johnnie’s eyes met his cousin’s, amusement rife in their smiling blue depths at the unintended double entendre. “You might say that.”

“And this is all new for you—this abstinence.”

Johnnie’s sigh this time was an exhalation of strained resignation. “Totally.”

“Do you feel the inspiration of this new and noble temperance infusing your soul with virtue?” Munro teasingly mocked.

“Actually, I’m at the point of hitting the next person I speak to out of frustration alone.”

“Perhaps you
do
need to be thrown into the river as the lady suggested, to cool your ardor.”

“Perhaps
she
needs to be thrown into my bed to cool my ardor.”

“Hmmm,” Munro replied.

“Exactly,” Johnnie muttered. “A damnable quandary for a godless renegade like me.”

Late in the evening of the sixth day of Elizabeth’s detention, a final messenger arrived from Lord Godfrey with his agreement on a compatible time and appropriate place for the exchange of prisoners.

After seeing that his men were alerted to the morning rendezvous, Johnnie arranged to see Elizabeth and inform her of her imminent release.

He sent a footman up first, cautious of intruding into her chamber so late in the evening, wanting the lady to have time to dress, allowing himself every prudence. Then, waiting a circumspect half hour, he mounted the numerous stairways to the tower room.

At his knock, the lady’s maid, Helen, opened the door to him, her young face smiling, her bobbing curtsy deferential.

The candles were all aglow, he noticed, a maximum of light illuminating the low-ceilinged room, relegating the velvety shadows to remote corners. The crimson and indigo silk carpets gleamed under the flickering light, and the plaster relief on the ceiling took on a three-dimensional
quality, the acanthus wreaths and fruited garlands hanging short inches from his head.

Elizabeth Graham had chosen to greet him standing, her pale hair loose on her shoulders, undressed as it was in sleep. He noted the bed, quickly made, bore evidence of her recent occupancy, with the pillows in disarray. The mild disorder shouldn’t have prompted such a powerful response in him, but he felt himself quicken at the thought of her lying there.

He shifted his stance, restless under the pressure of his feelings, wanting to speak quickly and leave, wanting also paradoxically to render the minutiae of the room with infinite clarity into his brain, in memory of his rare, compelling need.

A shimmering green robe covered her night rail, the white lace of her sleeping gown evident beneath the rich brocade, fur-trimmed against the spring night. The room was cool in March despite the fire in the grate and the multitude of candles.

Or at least it was cool for her.

He felt on fire.

What did he want? Elizabeth wondered, her gaze mesmerized by his powerful image, the ceiling no more than a foot above his head, his height dwarfing the proportions of the room, the breadth of his shoulders enormous beneath his tartan coat, his muscular build vivid reminder of his strenuous physical life. The blue velvet of his coat collar, in contrast, was soft like his heavy downy brows.

What would it feel like, she thought, to trace their dark arc? How would he respond to her fingertips drifting over his face? In some unknown, secret part of her being, she wanted to be able to
make
him respond; she wanted, inexplicably, in some feminine, enigmatic way, to touch him intimately.

He offered himself openly to women. A natural posture for him. As natural, she didn’t doubt, as it was for him to accept what they gave him in return.

And he was offering her a degree of that freedom now … however unspoken the invitation.

But she quelled her unspoken wishes and undefined feelings because she didn’t wish to be like Janet Lindsay—conveniently available for a night. With Johnnie Carre she’d be too easily forgotten, and her pride deterred her.

He was too beautiful and charming and overtly sensual to have to petition.

He was simply there for the asking.

And she wouldn’t ask.

At the price of eight years of her young life, she had a fortune now, and she intended to prudently use her hard-won wealth to create a protected garden of Eden for herself in Northumbria. Johnnie Carre, arch pragmatist and worldly sensual man, wouldn’t fit into her planned paradise.

So her voice was temperate and calm when she spoke, her expression schooled to betray nothing.

“You have a message?” she said.

“Yes, your father has agreed to a time and place.” He kept his voice as neutral as hers. “We ride for Round-tree in the morning to make the exchange. I thought I’d give you warning tonight.”

“So your brother will soon be home.”

“Yes.” He smiled, his happiness a tangible thing.

“Let me thank you now, then, for your hospitality. The morning will be frantic, no doubt.”

“No doubt.” He smiled again.

She was remarkable, he reflected. Cool and collected, without subterfuge, a woman genuinely composed. Was that coolness attributable to a marriage without passion, or had she always been so self-controlled? How would it be, he wondered, at sixteen, to lie with a seventy-year-old man, or at eighteen or twenty-four?

He wished to make her feel the difference, he suddenly thought, although an instant later he contemplated
how presumptuous his arrogance was. Perhaps she was abundantly familiar with young lovers.

“Have you had lovers?” he asked, unreasoning, without contemplation, the plain question like thunder in the quiet room.

Like thunder in her heart
. But Elizabeth subdued her tremulous reaction, considering instead the consequences when apparently he did not, and said, very coolly, “I beg your pardon.”

With most men that chill disclaimer would have been enough.

“Tell me,” he said.

She drew herself up very straight, as if her physical stance would act as barrier or still her racing heart. “I don’t have to tell you. And might I remind you … we’re not alone.”

He glanced quickly at Helen, as though he’d forgotten her presence, and when she appeared quite lucidly in his field of vision, he told her, “Go.”

“Stay,” Elizabeth commanded.

He was surprised to be countermanded. No one had dared since he’d come home from Paris at his father’s death eight years ago to become Laird. He hesitated a brief moment before he gestured toward the door with the merest nod of his head.

Helen gazed at Elizabeth for a heartbeat, apology in her look, and then left the tower room.

“Will you force me?” Elizabeth inquired as the door clicked shut, sarcastic in her anger. Like Johnnie, she’d been seldom thwarted in the last few years, save for the occasionally oppressive bonds of matrimony imposed by Hotchane.

“Of course not.” The thought was incomprehensible. “Answer my question.”

“About my lovers, you mean.” Haughty, she demonstrated the arrogance commensurate with her rank of heiress.

“Of course,” he said again, but his voice was softer now. In control again, familiar with seduction, he relaxed. “Have you?”

“Why does it matter?”

“I don’t know. It shouldn’t.”

“Then I won’t answer.”

“Why so defensive?” he mildly retorted. “I’m not judging you. Far from it.”

“I may not wish to discuss my private life with you.”

And at the phrase “private life,” Johnnie saw her again lying on the bed, the image so intense and vivid, he half reached out to lift her in his arms.

But he restrained himself. Walking over to a cushioned chair, he sat down. “I’m twenty-five,” he said.

She knew what he meant as though he’d written a lengthy essay on his feelings, but she was still fighting her own chaotic emotions. “Then I’m too old for you.”

“Really? Why?”

“Men like young women.”

He laughed. “How very sheltered you’ve been.”

“Maybe I’m just realistic.”

“Maybe you’re just wrong.” Janet Lindsay was older than he, as were several of the women who’d entertained him over the years. “You’re very beautiful, and I expect all the marriage applicants your father’s bringing round aren’t exclusively interested in your wealth.”