How to Marry a Highlander

“The proprietor o’ Brown & Cheaver Booksellers.”

“The bookseller?”

Lord Eads took a step toward her. “Seems he wishes to court Abigail.”

“He does?” She was short of breath.

He halted so that mere inches separated them. “He said he niver imagined I’d allou such a thing, but he begged for her hand.”

“Did—” Her heart was performing complicated pirouettes. “Did you give it?”

“Aye, I gave it. Who woulda thought Abby’d be the first?” Affection played across his face. He truly cared for his sisters’ happiness.

“Do you consider a bookseller a suitable match for your sister?”

“He’s a guid man wi’ a steady income and a fine shop. If she’s got no trouble wi’ it, I dinna.”

“You must be thrilled,” she babbled because his eyes had taken on a gleam of pure intentionality and now that the moment she’d been dreaming of for eighteen months was finally happening she had no idea what to do. “I must congratulate you on this happy news, my lord.”

“’Tis I that should congratulate ye.”

“Oh, no. I really didn’t have anything to do with it.” What was she saying?

“They’d already met be—” He slipped his hand into her hair.

“Oh!” she sighed. His touch didn’t feel like she had dreamed it. It felt infinitely better, strong and warm and confident, and as he bent his head she got dizzy on his scent of exotic spices. Her eyelids fluttered down. “I have never kissed a man who was wearing a skirt before,” she whispered.

“’Tis no a skirt.”

“Be that as it may . . .”

“But ye have kissed a man?” he said over her lips.

“Once.”

“What was he wearing?”

He was laughing at her again, even at this moment. Or rather, with her.

She liked it. It made her heart feel light and deliciously free.

“Muddy boots and a coat that smelled of shotgun smoke.”

“Bounder.”

“Definitely a bounder. He cornered me in the gunroom after he returned from shooting with my brothers. I thought I would give it a try, to see what all the fuss was about, you know,” she said airily.

“What did ye discover?” He was drawing this out, to torture her or because he didn’t wish to do it. But he had come in the middle of the night to pay his debt on the wager. Perhaps he was as eager as she.

“Discover?” she breathed.

“Aboot the fuss?”

“That it was overrated.”

His thumb stroked the tender ridge of her cheek. “Then he wasna doing it right.”

“Are you going to prove that now?”

“Aye.”

Her lips were sweet. Sweeter than he’d imagined. Sweeter than any woman’s lips he’d ever tasted. He caught her soft sigh in his mouth and stroked his thumb across her buttercream cheek dusted with pale cinnamon freckles. He tasted her again, this time longer, deeper, and her lips were soft responding, then eager.

His cock stirred.

He broke the contact. “Ye’ve anly been kissed once afore? By the bounder?”

“Yes.” Her breaths were quick against his lips. “Only that once.”

“Ye’ve got a knack for it.”

“I’ve thought about it quite a lot,” she said shakily. “Was that all I get? That one?”

“That wasna quite one, nou was it?”

She shook her head.

He took her lips again, this time more fully, and she responded more fully.

He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and urged her lips apart.

She opened to him upon an intoxicating sigh. He traced the edge of her satiny lower lip with the tip of his tongue and she gasped then sought him with her tongue. Her soft, pink, wet, agile tongue that lately he’d been imagining doing things no lady’s tongue should ever do—things to him. Her tongue that tasted like sugared lemons and tangled with his, eagerly drawing him inside her, urging him deeper with each kiss.

He should halt this. He should have already halted this. He shouldn’t have come. He shouldn’t be in this house in the middle of the night with this woman’s mouth beneath his. But she’d sparkled in that ballroom like sunshine, and he’d wanted to take her into his arms and give her that dance.

When his sisters embarrassed themselves she hadn’t blinked a lash but saw to the fiasco calmly and serenely.

Now she was eager in his hands, seeking his caresses with her mouth, and hot inside. Good lord, she was feverishly hot. She’d be hot everywhere inside, and damp, and virginally tight. She was going to make some lucky man a fine wife indeed. Some very lucky man.

Her hand slipped across his chest and pressed against his heart.

Duncan choked and set her away from him.

“Payment delivered,” he said gruffly.

She blinked dazed eyes. Her soft pink lips were moist and so lush it hurt to look at them. It hurt to look at her. It hurt to know how it felt to have her hand on his chest.

She nodded. She didn’t offer him a saucy quip or glimmering grin, and that was the worst of all.

“Guid nicht.” He reached for the door, swung it open, and escaped into the darkness to which he was well accustomed.

7

Teresa went to the hotel after breakfast. She found Elspeth poking out a tune on the pianoforte in the parlor, Moira embroidering, Abigail in her corner reading, and the elderly woman in black staring silently out the window.

Abigail lifted her head. “Duncan’s gone to the shop wi’ Una.”

“Where are Lily and Effie?”

Elspeth plunked a minor chord. “Ma most foolish an heedless sister is suffering the consequences o’ her indulgence.”

“Effie’s got a megrim,” Abigail explained.

“I shouldn’t wonder at it.” Teresa went to her. “May I offer you congratulations?”

Abigail’s cheeks grew ruddy. “Mr. Brown’s engaged to take me walking in the park this afternoon. Duncan told me what he intends to ask me.”

She squeezed Abigail’s hand. “I am so happy for you.”

“At least Abigail has a sense o’ propriety,” Elspeth said sourly.

“Oh, Speth, don’t go naggin’ this early in the morn,” Effie said from the doorway with a hangdog face. “I canna bear it.” She turned a wary look on Teresa.

Teresa went to her. “A cup of coffee, a small beer, a glass of water, and sleep sleep sleep.”

Effie’s red eyes widened.

“Without delay,” Teresa said. “But first tell me where to find your twin.”

“She’s hiding,” Effie said with less defiance.

“Where?”

“In the kitchen. ’Tis where she always hides.”