Once Upon a Tartan

nightclothes modestly covering her from her neck to her infernally sturdy gray wool socks.

“Good evening, my lord.” She did not look surprised to see him, but he was surprised by all that hair. In the firelight, it gleamed like new pennies and old gold, made him want to get his hands on it and bury his nose in it.

“Good evening, Miss Hester.” And now what? His brilliant plan was proving lamentably thin on details.

“Perhaps you’d close the door, my lord? You’re letting in quite a draft.”

He closed the door, though a part of him wanted to protest that propriety demanded it be kept open.

“I am no bloody good at this.” He glanced around the room, hoping some other idiot fellow had made that announcement.

“At what?” She rose from her chaise, belting her robe with snug efficiency and crossing the room to stand before him. “Your hair is damp.”

“Everything is damp in this damned rain.”

“Come.” She took him by the hand and tugged him closer to the fire. “We can enumerate all the things you’re not good at, and perhaps a few of the endeavors at which you excel.”

There was innuendo in her words—she excelled at innuendo, turning innocent remarks over cards into smoldering flirtation. He let her tow him to the carpet, where she sat on the end of the chaise, behind and above him when he lowered himself to the floor.

“Tell me what you’re no bloody good at.” He felt her fingers at his nape, teasing the curling ends of his hair from the collar of his night robe.

“Subtlety, for one.” No, that was not accurate. Nor even honest. “I am not familiar with what is expected when a man is in pursuit of a lady.”

Her fingers stilled, and he heard her rustling around behind him. He was tempted to keep his eyes on her at all times, in case she’d taken a notion to shed her clothes and climb on the bed.

Which thought had even his cock making stupid, hopeful pronouncements.

“Are you a virgin, my lord?” She put the question casually as she resumed her seat, but she’d scooted, so she sat on her chaise with one leg on either side of him.

“You asked that merely to shock me, Hester Daniels. I will not dignify it with an answer.”

“If you are”—her voice came so near his ear he could feel her breath on his neck—“then one shudders to think of how skilled you will be when you’re no longer such an innocent.”

He felt something—her lips, her nose—graze his ear, and then a brush was being drawn through his hair. It was the oddest sensation. He brushed his hair several times a day, but to be sitting lower than Hester while she tended him this way… Some of the tension eased out of his shoulders.

“What is the sigh about, my lord?”

“I do not excel at pursuit in the romantic sense.”

The rhythm of the brush did not falter. “You’re no bloody good at it?”

“Apparently not. Are you interested in becoming my marchioness, Hester?”

She hesitated, then resumed grooming him. “If you’re asking whether I’m trying to trap you into marriage, my lord, you can take your bloody romantic incompetence, leave, and not come back.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her chin on his crown. “I would miss you though. Honesty compels me to admit that much.”

Her words implied there were things she wouldn’t admit, which was encouraging.

“That wasn’t exactly my question.” He laid his cheek on her forearm. “How is it you’re soft everywhere? Even here.” He nuzzled the crook of her elbow, which bore a concentration of lavender scent.

“I took a bath in hopes you’d come visit, Tiberius. Did you take a bath in anticipation of making a call?”

“Of course not.” Except he had. And to ensure a dignified interval between the last of their evening meal and his next interlude with her.

“I’ve noticed something about the nights here in Scotland.” The damned woman ran her tongue around the outside of his ear. This sent all manner of peculiar shivers down his spine, each of which landed with an erotic tingle in his groin.

“The nights are damp,” he managed. He’d never before in his entire life labeled anything in his direct experience as a tingle.

“The nights are quite short, Tiberius. The sun goes down later and comes up earlier. If you’re on a particular errand, you’d best be about it.”

He left off sniffing her knuckles. He’d come over here intending to seduce her into accepting a proposal of marriage. Despite her earlier rebuff, it still seemed like a sound plan—at least the seduction part did.

“You will please forgive my lack of efficiency in this regard.” He turned and half rose in one movement, so he was kneeling between her spread knees and she was blinking back at him. He plucked the brush from her hand and set it aside. “Be warned, Hester. I have recalled my purpose for joining you in your boudoir.”

He swooped in, lashed his arms around her, and fused his mouth to hers. She did not immediately kiss him back, but neither did she resist. In that moment, when he might have hesitated or drawn away, he eased her to her back on the chaise.

And then, ah then, she caught fire, fisting her hands in his hair and spreading her legs so he might wedge himself closer.

“You made me wait, you dratted man—” She muttered this against his teeth.

“You left me to question, infernal female—” He wasn’t sure what the rest of the sentence might have been, for Hester shifted beneath him, making him abruptly aware of how his growing erection was snugged up against her sex.

Snug, but not as close as he wanted to be.

“Spath… Tiber… Tye, for pity’s sake, kiss me.” She dug her nails into his backside so that even through his robe, she got his attention.

“Too many clothes, Miss Daniels.” He crouched over her, vivid images of her naked on the chaise while he devoured her fogging his brain.

She went still beneath him. “Let me up. I can’t remove your clothes when we’re wrestling among the furniture.”

He liked the sound of that, so he sat back and regarded her. Her cheeks were flushed, her breathing was deep, and her eyes held a slightly wild light. “You first, my dear. I was more than patient on the last occasion, if you’ll recall.”

She blinked again, the haze of passion cooling in her gaze. “Ladies before gentlemen? Are we concerning ourselves with deportment now?”

He realized two things in the next procession of instants: First, the idea of coaxing her from her clothing was not onerous in the least. He’d done it before, and he was looking forward to doing it again. The reward—her, relaxed and comfortable with her own nudity as well as his—was well worth the effort.

Second, and this took some fortitude to admit, he did not want to rush her, did not want to push her past any boundary she wasn’t willing to exceed. She desired him, and that was probably as far as she knew her own mind.

And she hadn’t said she wouldn’t be his marchioness.

“Fine then, leave your clothing on. I feel no such compunction.” He shrugged out of his robe and let it slide to the floor while Hester’s chest rose with a substantial breath. He didn’t move, but remained sitting back on his heels while her gaze slipped over his shoulders and down his torso, to the erection arrowing up from his groin, then back to his face.

“I love that you’re shameless about this.” She’d said it solemnly, but then her lips quirked up. “You’re so proper about everything else, and in some way, you’re proper about this too.”

She wasn’t laughing at him, exactly, but he felt a frisson of ridicule in her words. The same faint sense of puzzled censure his father turned on him in almost every communication between them.

“Shamelessness can have its rewards.” He put a hand on her knee, and abruptly, she wasn’t smiling. She was watching his hand as he gave her a slight squeeze through her night rail.

“I can feel the warmth of your hand even through my clothing, Tiberius. You make me a stranger to my own body.”