The Blood of Roses (37 page)

“To William, Duke of Cumberland!” he roared. “To his victory over those who would dare rise in arms against the throne and to all of us who vow to see the victory swift and complete!”

“To Cumberland!” came the enthused, passionate echo. “To victory!”

13

H
amilton Garner wove his way along the musty castle corridors toward his own quarters, his patrician face flushed from the combined effects of many toasts and the zealous pride he felt in being singled out by the duke to take personal command of retraining the troops. It had been a risk, bringing himself to the general’s attention like that, but it had worked! Cumberland had last been seen talking with Colonel Guest, and it was Hamilton’s bet that, by morning, he would be permanently assigned to the duke’s personal staff.

After arriving at his rooms, he kicked the outer door open and stood a moment on the threshold, his green eyes gleaming as he drank in the luxurious accommodations he had won for himself by proving both his loyalty and his worth to General Cope and Colonel Guest. The cold masonry walls were draped in rich tapestries, the massive armoire and dressers were made of cherrywood, warm and lush on the senses. The bed was four-posted, perched on a platform two feet high, canopied in velvet, piled high with satin coverlets and quilts stuffed with goosedown. Underfoot were Persian carpets and, should his boots track mud upon them, either of his two personal valets would be on their knees in an instant, restoring the pile to perfection. The fireplace was Corinthian marble, the multitude of candelabra cast in solid silver, the very air he breathed was redolent with exotic spices and perfumes supplied for and used lavishly by the silk-encased figure who lounged against the nest of pillows on the bed.

He kicked the door shut with the same indifferent boot and approached the bed. Smiling crookedly, he reached down and lifted a lock of hair from the girl’s shoulder and slid it through his fingers. She scarcely glanced up.

Hamilton’s fingers twisted slowly around the hank of hair, taking up the slack and forcing her to tilt her face up to his.

“Such a warm welcome,” he murmured. “One might almost think you were not happy to see me.”

“I’m that happy, I can hardly control masel’,” she replied indolently, jerking her head to free it from his grasp.

Garner gave her the moment. Waiting until her attention had returned to the box of bonbons, he took up a fistful of hair and yanked it so savagely, the chocolates scattered and the girl scrambled onto her knees, yelping in pain. Garner’s mouth was greedy and voracious as it plunged over hers, his hands brutal as he grabbed two fistfuls of silk and ripped the flimsy gown she was wearing from neckline to knee in one tearing sweep. A graphic oath of contempt broke from the full pouting lips and she raised her hands, beating them ineffectually against the wall of his chest.

Garner only laughed and caught her wrists before the sharp little nails could wreak any real damage to his face and throat. “Ahh, my sweet Maggie. A pleasure as always to find you in such an accommodating mood!”

“Let go O’ me, ye bastard!” she hissed. “Ye reek O’ sweat an’ piss, an’ I’ll no’ have ye crawlin’ on me this night, ye can be sure.”

Garner laughed again and wrenched her hands down and around into the small of her back. Bending forward, he closed his mouth around the soft white flesh of one exposed breast, not the least surprised to feel the nipple harden into a stiff little button at the first flick of his tongue.

Another benefit of being held in favor, he mused. He had his choice of any bed in Edinburgh, any woman, any whore, any milkmaid who happened to take his fancy. This one had come into his hands a few short weeks ago, as fiery and fiesty a she-cat as he’d ever sought to tame, but well worth the effort and the expense to do so. She had come highly recommended from Colonel Putnam, who had lost her on a roll of the dice and later offered twice the price to buy her back. Intrigued, Garner naturally had tried her out for himself, and, well, she had been in his bed ever since.

Maggie MacLaren was a local girl, and as such, never submitted without a show of resistance. However, once she had been dutifully “conquered,” she was not the least adverse to employing any and all of her considerable talents to ensure there was always some extra token of esteem left on the nightstand each morning.

Grinning, his mouth still clamped to her breast, Garner pushed her down onto the mattress and, without further preamble, unfastened the codpiece of his breeches and thrust himself between her thighs. His groan was genuine; she was hot and slick and tight as a leather glove. She offered the usual show of defiance, struggling to unseat him for all of a minute, her hair flying, her teeth bared, her feet kicking and gouging and digging into the bedding for traction. But just as suddenly, her curses became moans and her efforts to bar his driving thrusts became violent surges to grind as close to him as humanly possible. Her hands fought his restraining grip until he released them, then they were flung up and around his shoulders, clawing and tearing into him until their frenetic activity nearly sent them lurching off the side of the bed.

As it was, Hamilton thought she might never let him go. The long, energetic legs were locked tightly around him, holding him in place until every last possible shiver of ecstasy had run its course. When she released him, Hamilton collapsed limply on the mattress beside her, his flesh throbbing with aftershocks. The sweat rolled off his brow, soaking a wide damp patch on the satin coverlet; his wig had been torn off his head and cast aside to land precariously close to the flame of a burning candle.

“Thank Christ the rebels never thought to use you as a weapon.” He gasped. “They could have had the rebellion won by now.”

Maggie’s head was tilted forward, her brows crumpled in dismay as she inspected the damage brought about by his brass buttons, leather belts, and starched lapels. Her breasts, large enough to satisfy any man’s wildest fantasies, were chafed as red as the dye in Hamilton’s woolen tunic; her inner thighs were pink and itching from the friction of the nankeen breeches. All in all, however, she supposed the discomfort was worth the price of seeing her
Sassenach
lover quiveringly depleted. He was insufferably vain, obsessed with his own self-image, and ambitious enough to be a cunningly dangerous man.

Tall and lean and undeniably handsome, the flaxen-haired officer exercised daily to keep his body in peak condition. He also dueled with fellow officers at the hint of an insult, mainly to dispute any taint of cowardice that might have clung to him following his former command of the 13th Dragoons. Immediately after the fiasco at Colt’s Bridge, it was said he ordered his two junior officers shot for cowardice and hanged twenty men from the rank and file as an example. Following a repeat of their performance at Prestonpans, Garner’s regiment had only managed to come away with their lives upon the intercession of General Cope himself, who had wisely counseled that to have them all shot or hanged would serve no purpose other than to delight their enemies.

Garner’s approach to women was as cool and arrogant as his personality. He was an adequate lover—not the best she had had by any means, but energetic.

“If tha’s how ye judge yer weaponry,
Sassenach,”
she said sardonically, eyeing the limp digit of flesh that flopped out from beneath his codpiece, “I’d still be wary O’ yer chances against ma kin.”

The jade eyes opened slowly. “One of these fine days, my rebel minx, I might begin to think your tongue is growing a measure too sharp for my liking.”

“As long as it’s only ma tongue”—she laughed—“then ye’ve nae worries.”

Garner contemplated the swollen moistness of her lips a moment, then let a smile curve across his own. Until recently, he had shown little interest in her background. Other than noting the fact she was Scottish and posessed exemplary skills between the sheets, he had barely paid any attention to her. Winning her on the toss of a die was not exactly a challenge to his manly powers of seduction, but where most women were easily captivated and made slaves to his blond, virile dominance—and, in turn, quickly boring him—Maggie MacLaren was proving to be the exception. Only one other woman had shown the same combination of fire and ice. Catherine Ashbrooke had been the embodiment of passion and desire; it had raged in every sultry glance, glowed from every luminous curve of soft white flesh. Yet she had held herself aloof, as if she hadn’t cared a wit if he were alive or if he dropped dead at her feet.

The image of dropping dead—or wounded, as it were— at her feet caused Hamilton’s face to harden perceptibly. Wealthy, refined, spoiled, and beautiful, Catherine Ashbrooke had come the closest to winning an honest proposal of marriage from him. Instead, she had played him for a fool, manipulating herself between two lovers and selling herself to the victor. The humiliation he had suffered in losing the duel to Montgomery had been nothing compared to the mortification of discovering she had not sought an annulment for their marriage, had not left the black-haired merchant at the nearest inn as she had promised, had not even deigned to leave a note telling of her change of heart so that he, Hamilton Garner, might be spared the nudges and exchanged winks of his men as he chased up and down the length of England searching for her.

“Was she pretty,
Sassenach?”

“What?” he asked, startled out of his reverie. “Who?”

“Whoever ye’re thinkin’ about wha’s makin’ the drool hang down yer Up an’ wee willie there spring back tae life like as if he’d been stung by a bee.”

Hamilton glared at her and sat upright, the flush in his cheeks betraying more than the distant gleam in his eye. More than enough to provide Maggie with a fistful of barbs.

“Do I remind ye O’ her?”

“Not likely,” he snapped, cursing as a button on his waistcoat became snarled around a loose thread. Maggie, sniffing some profit to be made, rose to her knees before him, her nimble fingers taking over the task of unfastening belts and buckles, buttons and laces.

“Was she beautiful?”

The muscles in Hamilton’s jaw flexed. Beauty was relative, was it not? Compared to spun gold, Catherine’s hair was indeed beautiful. Compared to sunlight and moonlight, her face was more radiant, her body more ethereal. Compared to nectar, her lips were sweeter.

“She was a bitch, actually.” Hamilton sighed wanly. “A yellow-haired, blue-eyed bitch. But she came with a very impressive pedigree and could have set me up quite nicely for the rest of my life.”

“Could
have? Ye mean ye lost her?”

“The duel was rigged,” he blurted angrily. “The contest was hardly fair, what with her and—” He stopped, noting the gleam of interest in Maggie’s golden eyes. He had answered more than she had asked, had told her far more than he had ever intended to let her know. She was studying him closely, speculatively, as she loosened his shirt and ran her fingertips down over the smooth bulge of muscles across his chest. Lower still and she encountered the hard ridge of scar tissue over his ribs—the only blemish of ugliness on an otherwise classically perfect body.

“So,” she mused. “Ye fought a duel f’ae her an’ lost.”

The jade eyes flared and his hands grasped her shoulders so tightly his nails gouged her flesh. “No one has ever bested me with a sword,” he hissed, jerking her forward. “No one!”

Her eyes glowed maliciously. “Ye have the scars tae prove someone did.”

“The duel was supposed to be to the death. I drew first blood, by God, and was about to finish him off when the coward balked and turned away, his sword tip lowered as if to concede. And when I, suffering some delusion of mercy, thought to grant him his life, he attacked. I lay near death for days, and when I regained consciousness, I learned the bastard had run away. Both of them had run away. Oh, she lied so sweetly. Lied to me as I lay bleeding in my humiliation, but I should have guessed the two were in collusion all along.”

Releasing the pressure on Maggie’s shoulders, he clenched his fists on his lap and ground the heels of his palms into his knees as he continued. “When I was fit, I followed them. I spent weeks combing the inns and posting houses, hoping to pick up their trail and deliver them both their just rewards. But they were gone. Vanished. I could not believe it at first—they were hardly an invisible couple. But everywhere I asked after a slender blonde woman and a tall, black-haired, black-eyed bastard from hell, I was shrugged aside.”

Maggie was engrossed in watching the remarkable shades of fury that colored his expression, but at the description of the errant lovers, her eyes grew larger and rounder, the breath quickened in her throat, and an unwitting rush of excitement caused the skin around her nipples to pucker and darken in anticipation.

“Having found them nowhere, I gave up and returned to my regiment just as the news of Charles Stuart’s arrival reached London. I have not forgotten nor forgiven either one of them, though, and sometimes … the image is so clear, the desire to win my revenge is so strong, I see his face on the enemy—in taverns, in crowded streets, even once riding at the head of an enemy patrol. It wasn’t him, of course. It couldn’t be. Montgomery and his whore-bitch are hundreds of miles away, crawled back into their London snakehole or, more likely, somewhere on the Continent, laughing over what a fine fool they made of me. Dearest Catherine. Dearest, sweetest Catherine … how I do hope we meet again someday.”