When a Scot Loves a Lady

“The stable.” His voice was husky.

So, perhaps roguish intent after all. She did not take his proffered arm, heading straight for the outbuilding and her continued ruination without anyone assisting her to it.

Inside, he pulled the door shut, came to her, surrounded her face with his hands, and covered her mouth with his. Her hood tumbled off and she sank into him, reaching for him beneath layers of wool.

He kissed her slowly at first, as though he were savoring her, then with increasing intensity like he was starving, pushing her back against the wall and bringing their bodies together as he used her mouth to excellent purpose. She wanted every second of it.

She wanted it too much, given the circumstances.

She tore her lips free. “Wait!

Wait.” She pushed him to arm’s length, but her fingers betrayed her, clutching at his waistcoat to prevent him from going farther away. “What do you think you are doing?”

“Whit A been wishing tae dae all day. An it wis an awfu lang day, lass.”

“You recited poetry to me last night. In French.” Then he’d left. And it took her hours to fall asleep. And now, exhausted and strung tight from the day endeavoring not to stare at him, she was excessively peevish. But mostly because he now stood arm’s-length away, only his big warm hands wrapped about her waist, and she wanted instead every bit of him pressing up against her again.

“C ontre vous, contre moi , v ainement je m’eprouve,” she whispered, “I struggle vainly to be free, from you and from myself. It is from Racine’s play, Phaedra. You lent it to Lady Emily.”

Beneath his waistcoat she felt his heartbeat and taut breaths. He did not speak.

“But it is a tragic story,” she added.

He smiled. “An it’s bonnie varse ye be wishing, rather, A’ll be fain tae oblige.” He grasped her hands and moved close again. Warily, she let him. Bending his head, he nuzzled the wonderfully sensitive spot beneath her ear. Kitty sighed. He murmured with only the gentlest lilt of Scots, “‘Around me scowls a wintry sky, that blasts each bud of hope and joy; and shelter, shade, nor home have I, save in these arms of thine.’”

“Your countryman, Burns, I think.” A new sort of trembling overtook her, deep as where he had been inside her the night before. “What happened to the French?”

“A’m warming up tae it. Blanditias molles auremque iuvantia verba adfer, ut adventu laeta sit illa tuo.” He kissed her neck, her throat at her speeding pulse, and she tucked her hands beneath the capes of his greatcoat, holding on to his shoulders.

“I don’t know Latin,” she quavered. “I shall require a translation.”

“‘Bring soft blandishments and words that soothe the ear, that your coming may make her glad.’” Kitty’s breaths thinned, her knees weak. He must simply be mimicking, and a master at it. What man would disguise such a voice of rich, masculine power if it were natural to him?

“And who wrote that bit of advice, my lord?”

“Ovid.”

“Ovid?” Ovid.

“Dae ye prefer the modern poets tae the ancients, than?”

He knew no respect for her sensibilities. “I waver between. Perhaps medieval would do.” Laughter welled inside her alongside desire, even as the slice of disquiet expanded.

“Y asi mi suerte ignoro en la contienda, y no querer decirlo y que lo diga: vagando voy en amorosa erranza.”

She circled her palm around his collar into his hair, feeling him as she had not given herself allowance to do the night before. “And that?”

“Dante.”

“That explains why I did not perfectly understand it.”

“‘And thus’”—his hands shifted down her back, his mouth teasing hers with light nibbles

—“‘being all unsure which path to take, wishing to speak I know not what to say, and lose myself in amorous wanderings.’” This was nearly too much to bear. “Wandering speech,” she breathed, “or hands?”

“Baith.”

“I s-see.” He pulled her tight to him, his palm spread across her behind nesting her snug against his hips. Kitty’s blood turned to warm syrup, but even as her breaths shortened from his words and caresses, unease overruled her pleasure. What game was he playing with her? And why, given the liberties she allowed him, wasn’t she privy to it yet?

With the backs of his fingers he stroked tenderly along her cheek.

“‘So beautiful with her delicate limbs, fair waist, and long eyes,’” he murmured, “‘that she put the splendor of the moon to shame with her radiance.’” Kitty could not draw air. “Wh-what was that?”

“Hindustani. Verra auld.”

“I daresay.” She steeled her voice and said at her most proper, “I am still waiting for the French.”

A marvelous smile split across his lips, a glimmer of sheer admiration in his eyes. Then something changed. The glimmer grew warm, warmer.

“Je reconnus Venus et ses feux redoutables ,” he said, his voice beautiful and deep and not in the least bit teasing, “d’un sang qu’elle poursuit tourments inevitables.”

Kitty trembled. “Venus’s torment,” she whispered. She felt that fire in her blood too. For two days it had sought to consume her and now she wanted nothing more than to submit to it fully again.

Everywhere they touched he heated her, his thighs and hips pressed to hers, his hands on her back. But she would be a fool to think that was all of Venus’s torment.

And finally she understood perhaps too well how her pretense with Lambert had been wrong. He had done very badly by her, but she should never have pretended anything with him, no matter her reason, as this man was clearly pretending. If she allowed herself to be with the earl now when he was denying her the truth so obviously, she would suffer. When she had been young and impressionable, a man claimed to care for her but had only been using her. More than even her ruined reputation, her heart still bore the scars of that falsity. She could not allow herself to be with a man who would not tell her the entire truth now.

“You are wonderfully well versed in verse, my lord,” she said, gathering her courage. “Do they teach all of that at Edinburgh University?”

“The Athens o the North, they call it.”

“I thought Scotland produced mostly engineers and doctors. Poets too?”

“Aye, poets. Philosophers an churchmen. Cads an thieves.” A grin slipped across his lips. Kitty could not manage to look away.

“You must have studied prodigiously hard.”

“Must hae.”

“Now tell me the truth.”

He stilled.

“About why you spoke the way you did last night,” she added, more certain now.

A single brow rose beneath a tangled strand of dark and white hair. She wanted to run her fingers through the streak and to ask him how he had come by it or if he had always had it, to know something of him real and tangible. But another lazy grin slipped across his lips.

“A man’s bund tae say any nummer o things at sic a maument, lass.”

“It was not what you said.” Your body is art. I must have you now. “It was the manner in which you said it that caught my attention.” And the devastating play of his fingers.

He held her gaze, and the place where those fingers had dallied hours earlier ached.

“I heard you speak to Mr. Yale in that manner too.”

“In whit manner’s that, maleddy?” His gaze revealed nothing now.

“What game are you playing, my lord? Why the deception? Or is the deception the poetry-reciting London beau? A fine tool of seduction, I suspect, for the unwary.”

“Nou, ma girl, why woud A hae been needing tae seduce ye at precisely that maument?”

But she would not be sidestepped.