The Lady Most Willing . . . (18 page)

Byron’s mouth brushed across hers, and she smelled pine needles, like a ghost of a promise. It was awkward. She didn’t know what to do with her arms, or her spectacles.

The only thing she felt was a deep sense of rightness . . . and an equally powerful sense of wrongness. “We mustn’t do this,” she whispered.

He eased back enough to remove her spectacles. Holding her gaze, he carefully put them on the mantelpiece.

That just meant that Fiona could see his face even more closely. Her brows drew together as she tried to make sense of what was happening. “Why are you kissing me?” she said, keeping her back straight, so that she didn’t relax against him like the veriest trollop. And then, fiercely, “Is it because you know of my reputation?”

“Have you kissed a dancing master as well?” His voice was threaded with a lazy sensuality that made her step back, though his face blurred when she did it.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then what spurred your lost repute? Not that I would believe such a rumor, because any fool could see that you’re not the one in your family handing out kisses like bonbons.”

“My fiancé’s name was Dugald,” she began. She took a deep breath, but he interrupted.

“A terrible name.”

Words bubbled up in her chest, but she didn’t open her mouth to blurt out the story of ivy, and windows, and a reputation so blackened that she was infamous throughout the Highlands. The truth was that she longed for another kiss, just one, before he learned the truth and turned his back in disgust.

When she didn’t speak, Byron cupped her face with his long fingers, carefully—as carefully as he did anything else. Yet when he put his mouth to hers, there was nothing sensible about his kiss. She opened her mouth to his without thinking, wrapping her arms around his neck and standing on her tiptoes.

It was a wicked kiss, deep and wild and
glad
. She could taste it in his mouth, that sudden, vivid delight, as clearly as if he had said so aloud.

The knowledge of his pleasure curled in her stomach, flared into an odd heat that made her shiver against him, and then he was kissing her so fiercely that her head tilted back.

It was dark behind her closed eyelids. She concentrated on the taste of him and the smell of him, and the way one kiss melted into another, kisses that made her ache and breathe as if she were running, but not away—toward him, closer to him.

Her arms curled more tightly around his neck; then his hands slid to her back and he pulled her against his body. As if it mattered to him that she feel all that hardness and strength.

Their tongues tangled and she slid her fingers into his short hair. Part of her was frozen in stark disbelief that an English earl with white-blond hair and a muscled body was kissing her. Making her feel meltingly soft, and impatient. Making her long for more.

That thought was instantly followed by a rush of panic. She—
Fiona
—didn’t allow herself to long for anything. She never had. That way was madness. She kept herself sane by never wishing for what she could not have, by recognizing that life had sensible boundaries.

Longing would mean acknowledging that she wished that her mother hadn’t died, that her father cared about her more, that she had never met Dugald, that people had believed her . . . It meant the heartbreak and desperation of knowing that she wanted children, that she wanted a husband, that she . . .

Her panic was as chilling and as overwhelming as an ice-cold wave breaking over her head. She pulled back. “I can’t do this,” she said, her voice rising to a squeak when she looked up at Byron and understood that
longing
wasn’t strong enough to describe what she was feeling. She seemed to have succumbed to a kind of madness, though she hardly knew him.

In an impulse for self-preservation, she reached out, put her hands on his chest, and pushed at him. She felt hard planes of muscle under her fingers as she pushed, which merely increased her alarm. He didn’t even fall back a step.

“I’m not like this,” she said, her breath sounding harsh in her ears. “I don’t do this. I know I have a terrible reputation, but I’m not . . . I’m not a whore.”

“I would never think that!” he said, quick and fast, and some errant part of her saw his chest rising and falling as fast as hers and was triumphant and glad. He wasn’t unmoved by her, by plain Fiona Chisholm.

Even so, she fell back another step. She would
not
allow herself to want him. He wasn’t hers. He could never be hers.

“No,” she repeated. But there was something uncertain in her voice, and his eyes flared, hot and feverish.

It didn’t matter that he couldn’t be hers; clearly, he was thinking that she could be . . .

“No,” she said with a gasp, and she almost spoke aloud, but it was too foolish to even think that the Earl of Oakley would consider a mere Scottish lass to be his. The possessiveness in his eyes probably meant he was considering making her his mistress. “I am not a strumpet,” she said, stronger now. “I’m
not
. Even if I am Scottish, and . . . and not beautiful.”

“You
are
beautiful.”

She stared at him blankly for a second, because she had always trusted herself and her judgment. All her life. She had been a mere six years old when she discovered that her father was weak. All of ten years old when she realized that Marilla was always angry—too angry to be a loving sister. Sixteen when she learned that Dugald was a bully. And what she saw in this man’s face, this almost-stranger’s face, was trust, desire, and longing. For
her
.

“No,” she whispered. “You mustn’t.”

He reached out for her again. “I already do.” His voice was sure and confident.

Fiona struggled free before his lips could again touch hers and make her fall into that pool of hot, wild desperation. “This is madness,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You, sir, should have better control of yourself than to exert your seductive wiles on a—a maiden like myself.” Because she was a maiden, even if no one believed her. “I am not available to slake your lust,” she added.

“
Slake?
” Laughter shone in his eyes along with that deeply unsettling gleam that spoke of lust.

She waved her hand impatiently. “Whatever you wish to call it. I am not a strumpet whom one can tumble just because the door is locked. You are not the first to try to take advantage of me, you know. And you shall not succeed!”

It was all different from Dugald trying to climb in her window, but it felt good to shout at him.

The startled look on his face was worth it, too.

“I would not have taken advantage of you,” he said, his brow darkening.

“Then why is the door locked?” she challenged.

“To keep your bloody sister out,” he snapped back. “It had nothing to do with the two of us being inside.” He walked over to the door and unlocked it.

But when he turned around, he wasn’t irritated any longer. He looked like a gleeful boy. “Thanks to that lock, I’ve just realized that I
have
ruined your reputation,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “We’ve been locked in a room together. We’ll have to marry. It’s what a gentleman would do.” He walked toward her, his eyes intent.

“Oh!” she cried in frustration, stepping backward. “Why have you changed like this? I don’t understand you!”

“I decided this afternoon that I wish to make a woman fall in love with me.”

Fiona glared at him. “So I am the subject of an experiment? Are you planning to accost young ladies on a regular basis?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then what on earth are you doing?” she cried, exasperated. “I don’t believe for a moment that you plan to ruin my reputation and marry me, if only because it’s already ruined. It’s very unkind of you to make jokes of this sort to a woman like myself, who has no prospect of marriage.”

“I suspect I have gone a little mad.” Byron lunged and scooped her into his arms. “Whenever I touch you,” he whispered against her lips, “I feel as if you are the woman I have been looking for my whole life, though I have denied, even to myself, that I was looking.”

Despite herself, her lips softened and he took her invitation, embroiling her in a kiss that made her feel soft and feminine, all those things that she
wasn’t
.

More than anything, it was a possessive kiss, the kind of kiss a man gives a woman whom he is determined to make his, to have and to hold . . . Madness or no, her every instinct told her that Byron was telling the truth: he wanted to marry her. And he wanted to bed her. Craving swept her body like a drug, making her sway against him. He groaned deep in his chest, and pulled her still closer.

“We can’t,” she said, the words emerging in a little sob. “I haven’t told you . . .”

“You will be a wonderful countess.” His hands stroked slowly down her back, leaving her feeling as if her skin woke only after he touched it.

“No, no, I will not,” she gasped, unable to believe that they were having this discussion. “We don’t know each other.”

“I didn’t know Opal, either, as is manifestly clear,” he offered, his eyes hot with desire. His hands—

“You shouldn’t touch me there,” Fiona managed.

His hands tightened on her bottom, and then slid upward to her hips. “I love your curves,” he said thickly. “I promise to spend at least forty years getting to know you.”

“I know why you are saying this,” she said, trying to ignore his touch, though she couldn’t make herself move away from him.

“Because you are delectable?”

“Because you have decided that Lady Opal only staged her affection for the dancing master. You could tolerate her betrayal when you thought she was in love with another man, but now you feel bruised.”

“You taste like apples,” he said, ignoring her comment and taking her mouth again.

She allowed the pure pleasure of his kiss to sweep her under. It was bliss, this kissing, the way their tongues played together, the way he held her, as if she were shy and precious and beautiful, when she was none of those things.

This time it was he who pulled back. “I know enough about you, Fiona.”

“You know nothing,” she said shakily.

“You are very intelligent and you love to read.” He dropped a kiss on her left eyebrow. “You are extremely kind, even to your sister, who would strain anyone’s generosity. You love deeply and you’re very loyal. You don’t suffer fools gladly, but you are instinctively polite.”

He kissed her right eyebrow, and his hands tightened on her hips. “You have beautiful curves,” he said, his voice darkening a trifle. “Your hair has red tones that look like the most precious jewel in the world. I want to drape you in rubies. I want to see you lying on my bed, wearing nothing but a ruby necklace.”

Fiona felt as if she were caught in some sort of dream. Byron’s eyes were fervent. He meant every word. And he had no idea, none at all, of what had happened to her.

She squared her shoulders, summoning the courage to crack open the little enchantment that had bewitched them both, when the library door suddenly opened.

They swung about to find Mr. Garvie standing on the threshold. “Supper is in an hour,” he told them in his usual surly tone. “So if you two mean to dress, you’d better get at it.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Fiona said, and like the coward she was, she fled. She could feel tears coming as she ran up the stairs. It was so—so unfair. Byron was undoubtedly suffering from some sort of temporary madness. But he looked at her in such a way . . . and said those things . . . things she never thought she’d hear from anyone.

It was cruel that she couldn’t marry him. She caught herself thinking a hateful thought about Dugald before she pulled herself together.

Her chest felt hollow, as if there was a physical reason for the ache there. It was absurd. She didn’t even know Byron. He may have decided that he knew
her
, but all she knew was that he was an absurdly beautiful man, an English earl who’d been thrown over by his fiancée, and for some fairly inexplicable reason had decided on her as a replacement, even though she’d told him at least three times that her reputation was ruined.

“I’d like a bath, if you please,” she told a stray retainer she encountered in the hallway.

He put up a protest, but she fixed him with a tiger’s eye and he backed down. “You’ll miss supper,” he said in a parting shot.

Hopefully, he would be right.

Chapter 14

T
aran was not employing the great hall for dining; a storm this fierce sneaked in through windows and took over the larger rooms. The wind howled as it rounded the corners, scouring under the doors, keeping the air frigid and moving.

Instead, supper was to be served in the antechamber where they’d taken all their meals. It was small and cheery; a boy had been assigned to keep a fire burning there all day. Its small mullioned windows were so crusted with snow and ice that the wind couldn’t even make them rattle.

Byron changed into an evening coat and returned downstairs far faster than his usual wont. He walked over to one window and stared at the snowdrift blocking any view of the storm. He had been making an annual winter trek to Finovair for a decade or more, and he could not remember seeing the snow piled quite so high in the courtyard before.

Fiona was so different from Opal. She didn’t look away from him; she laughed straight to his face. She never seemed to be at a loss for words. She just said what she was thinking. He had a tremendous feeling of
rightness,
even thinking of the way her eyes shone with mischief.

She wouldn’t lie to him. She would mock him, and argue with him, and probably infuriate him, but she would never lie to him.

And she had told him about Marilla’s theft of her mother’s portrait. Perhaps if Opal and he had talked, really talked, she would have told him that she didn’t care to marry him. She wouldn’t have had to stage that scene with the balding dancing master.

If, instead, it had been Fiona who had decided she didn’t care to marry him, she would tell him face-to-face. Let’s say they were betrothed—a funny shot of heat came under his breastbone at the notion. He would like to put a ring on her finger. A ring that would tell other men that everything about her—from her sweet little nose, to those curved hips, to the perplexed look in her gorgeous eyes—it was all
his
.