One Night with the Laird

She picked up the secateurs again, gripping the cool metal tightly against her hot palm.

In a moment he would be gone.

Jack’s gaze fell on the roses with their deep red petals. They looked rich and vibrant against the sun-warmed wood of the table. The sunshine slanted light and shadow across his face, accentuating the high cheekbones and the hard jaw. Mairi felt her heart skip a beat. He looked up and met her eyes, and her heart jolted again for fear that she could not hide her reaction to him.

“My grandmother would like those flowers,” Jack said, surprising her. “She adores roses. Do you grow them here?”

“In the walled garden,” Mairi said. She touched the petals lightly. “These were cultivated specially and named after me—Mairi Rose...” She stopped, catching herself, remembering that in Edinburgh that night she had told him her name was Rose.

Jack did not appear to have noticed. His head was bent as he considered the flowers. He did not move.

After a second Mairi’s breath came more easily. She walked toward the door and put her hand on the knob again, pulling it wider in a clear signal that it was time for Jack to leave.

“Good day, sir,” she said sharply.

Jack looked up and met her eyes.

Her heart stopped at what she saw there. The cool indifference was gone. In its place she saw incredulity and anger and a fierce heat that made her breath catch.

“Rose,” Jack repeated, very softly.

The tight, breathless sensation in Mairi’s chest intensified. The doorknob slipped against her damp palm. She felt a craven urge to make a dash for the stairs, to run, to hide. Except that there was nowhere to hide.

“I believe,” she said, and her voice was now no more than a thin thread of sound, “that you were leaving, Mr. Rutherford.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed, his gaze intensifying on her. She felt another shiver chase down her spine. Then he smiled.

“Actually,” he said, still very quietly, “I don’t think I was.”

He came across and leaned past her to place a palm against the drawing room door and closed it very firmly.

CHAPTER THREE

JACK WATCHED MAIRI walk away from him. Each step was a deliberate move to put distance between them. She looked composed, elegant, every inch the aristocratic lady.

His gut instinct was confirming what his mind was still refusing to accept. This was the woman with whom he had spent the most explosively passionate night of his entire life. This was the woman he had been seeking for the past three months.

He felt a blinding rush of fury. He had felt angry and frustrated enough when he had imagined that his mystery seductress was a complete stranger to him. To realize that it was Mairi MacLeod who had used and discarded him was breathtaking. Clearly she had had absolutely no intention of ever revealing her identity to him. It had probably amused her to reject his advances and then pick him up as though he were for hire. The only surprise was that she had not left payment when she was gone in the morning.

The knowledge that he had been a fool as well as a dupe did not soothe his fury. He should have recognized her but he had been so bound up in lust that he had missed the clues to her identity. He felt another sharp pang of anger, made all the more acute by the sudden and devastating knowledge that he still wanted her. She might be amoral, spoiled and deceitful, but he wanted her very much indeed.

She crossed the room toward the wide marble fireplace and turned back to face him. The afternoon sun struck through the long windows with their filmy drapes and spun a soft golden glow about her. Her gown of palest blue was a shocking, ethereal contrast to the striking dark auburn of her hair. She stood bathed in a gentle light, but there was nothing gentle about her beauty and Jack felt an equally fierce pang of response. He wanted to dislike her. He had every reason to dislike her. Strange, then, how the discovery that she was the passionate wanton of his dreams suddenly made her the most fascinating woman he knew.

He looked at the tender line of her neck and the way that the loose curls of red-gold hair caressed her nape and he was instantly transported back to the house in Candlemaker Row, the twisted sheets and the hot darkness, the intimate slide of her skin against his. He felt his body harden into arousal.

“You are Rose,” he said. “You spent a night with me in Edinburgh three months ago.” He knew it had been her. He had seen the truth reflected in her eyes a moment before, but he wanted to make her admit it.

She turned to look at him. Her expression was guarded, betraying no hint of emotion. “I am,” she said, “and I did.”

Jack was reluctantly impressed. Nine out of ten women would have denied it, claiming that they did not know what he was talking about. But perhaps Mairi was so brazen when it came to taking lovers that she did not care about protecting her reputation with lies.

“I expected you to pretend not to understand me,” he said.

Mairi raised one shoulder in a shrug. “That would have been a tedious conversation when we both know the truth,” she said.

She sounded indifferent, but there was a tension in her slender body that told Jack that she was nowhere near as cool as she seemed. That pleased him. She had been in control on the night she had seduced him. Now it was his turn.

“Mairi Rose,” he said. “How convenient to have an alias when you require it.”

Her lips tilted upward in the parody of a smile. “I have three names,” she said. “Mairi Rose Isabella.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Even better,” he said. “A choice of aliases.”

“I didn’t want you to know who I was,” Mairi said. She spoke dismissively, as though it were a matter of little importance that she had deceived him. Jack felt his temper catch. It was a novel sensation to be treated as though he was of no account, and it was not one he cared for.

“That,” he said, “was obvious. The plain black carriage, the army of silent retainers, the anonymous—if luxurious—tenement house hidden away down the back streets...” His anger was still simmering and he wanted to provoke her. “I can only assume that you have had a great deal of practice when it comes to selecting and seducing your lovers, Lady Mairi.”

If the barb hurt she ignored the sting.

“I apologize if you feel I used you,” she said sweetly. “A man of your reputation is surely accustomed to casual encounters.”

“I would still prefer to know the identity of the woman with whom I am making love,” Jack said cuttingly.

She smiled. “I do not believe you complained at the time, Mr. Rutherford.”

She laid emphasis on his title, as though deliberately drawing attention to the fact that she outranked him, a duke’s daughter and he nothing more than the younger son of a baron.

Well, hell. She might be proud; she might pretend to be above his touch, but she was still an amoral wanton and he still desired her.

“I’m not complaining,” Jack said. “I cannot deny that I enjoyed having you.” He had been deliberately crude and he saw the color come into her face. He felt no remorse; it was the least she deserved having flaunted her brazenness in his face.

“I might have preferred that you admit to your desires honestly,” he continued. “But the sex itself was very pleasurable. I like that you allowed me to do whatever I wished to you. A woman without inhibitions is a rare thing.”

He saw her expression harden into hauteur. She did not like being treated with such disrespect. Well, now she knew how he felt.

He strolled toward her across the room. As soon as he got close she turned away from him. He had the impression that given half a chance she would simply walk out on him, but as he was now between her and the door, he had cut off her escape. Which was good, because he had not finished with her yet, not by a long chalk.

He circled behind her. She kept her head bent so that all he could see was the sweep of her lashes dark against the curve of her cheek and the pure lines of her jaw and throat. She looked impossibly delicate. Her air of vulnerability was most deceptive. “Why did you choose me that night in Edinburgh?” he asked, his voice hard. “There must have been a reason. What was it?”

She looked directly up at him then. “I am sorry,” she said. “You appear to be laboring under a misapprehension, Mr. Rutherford.” Her blue eyes, dark as midnight, mocked him. “When I picked you up at the ball I did not even know it was you.” She paused just long enough for the insult to sink in. “You could have been anyone.”

Jack felt a rush of pure, primitive fury, impossible to deny, difficult to explain. She was taking blatant shamelessness to a new level in claiming that any man would have sufficed as her lover that night. And instinct told him she was lying.

He grabbed her arm and jerked her close to his body. At such close quarters he could smell the sweet elusive fragrance that had haunted his nights. He could hear her breathing. It was not quite steady.

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You must have known it was me. You chose me deliberately. I believe you have wanted me from the first time we met and your protestations of virtue were nothing but a sham.” He was not sure if it was pride or stubborn instinct that forced him to press the matter, but he was sure she was not telling the truth.

If she was a liar, though, she was a damned fine one. Her eyes were very candid. She shrugged. “Whether you believe me or not is your choice, Mr. Rutherford,” she said. Once again there was a touch of mockery in her voice. “Perhaps you have too good an opinion of yourself to wish to accept that I did not recognize you. My observation of you over the past few years suggests that your arrogance is such that you assume every woman must find you irresistible.”

Touché.

She had his measure. If Jack had not been so angry, he would probably have found it amusing that Mairi MacLeod knew him so well.

He eased his grip on her arm, sliding his hand down to her elbow. Her skin was smooth and warm beneath his touch, the lace edge of her sleeve just brushing his fingertips.

“But you did find me irresistible, Lady Mairi,” he said. “Whether or not you knew my identity.”

He drew her closer so that her skirts were touching his thighs. She was rigid with tension now. He could feel it thrumming through her body and see the pulse that beat in the hollow of her throat. Awareness crackled between them as hot and sudden as a flame catching at tinder.

“I believe you chose me because you wanted me,” Jack continued softly. He leaned closer; spoke in her ear. “Perhaps it was instinct, perhaps you did not realize what you were doing, but you wanted me as your lover.”

Now, for the first time, he saw a different expression in her eyes and knew at once that this was precisely what she feared; that some deep and powerful compulsion had driven her to pick him out from all the men at the masked ball that night. For a split second she looked frightened, but then disdain smoothed the emotion away and her defenses were firmly back in place.

“I did not have you down as a romantic, Mr. Rutherford,” she said lightly, “and I hesitate to shatter your illusions once again, but I do not believe in some sense of recognition that binds people together. That is nonsense.”

“You don’t believe that desire is a powerful enough force to draw people together?” Jack questioned mockingly.

“The only thing that is powerful here is your imagination, Mr. Rutherford.” Mairi’s tone was chill now, all emotion locked away. She released herself from his grip and stepped away from him very carefully, the pale blue silk of her gown brushing his leg as she passed.

“I was not imagining that night in Edinburgh,” Jack said. “You were completely abandoned in my arms, without restraint or shame. Although by your own admission you respond like that to any man who beds you.”

Mairi spun around, cutting him off with a decisive chop of the hand. At last he had provoked her beyond tolerance. There was high, angry color in her cheeks, and her eyes were a glorious stormy blue. “Enough, sir,” she said. “You are insulting and your observations on my character and behavior are of no interest to me. It is time you left.”

Jack held her gaze. “You cannot have it both ways, madam,” he said. “Either you are a harlot who spreads her favors indiscriminately or you are attracted to me specifically and should drop this pretense of indifference. I do not believe that you have said a single honest thing to me this afternoon. Be honest in this one thing at least and admit that you want me.”

Their gazes locked, his fierce with heat, hers defiant. He had never known a woman quite so guarded. He had never felt so strong a compulsion as he did now, wanting to smash her defenses and force her to admit to her desires.

He raised a hand and brushed the loose tendrils of copper-colored hair away from her neck. The minute he touched her, she froze. He let his fingers slide gently down to the base of her throat, dipping in to the hollow there. He felt her tremble. It was a tiny but betraying gesture and it made his blood surge. Her skin was heating now beneath his touch, a pulse beating against his fingers. She felt soft and warm and tempting.

He leaned in closer so that his lips were a mere inch from hers. Her eyes were a hazy slumberous blue now, half-closed. He brushed his lips across hers in the lightest of kisses. She gave a gasp; he felt her breath on his lips and was suddenly possessed with the most ravenous hunger to drag her into his arms and kiss her senseless.

Instead he ruthlessly reined in the urge and kissed her again, a little deeper, a little longer. Her lips parted, clung to his, betraying a truth she had refused to put into words.

“You want me,” he said.

The ache in his groin was intense now. In a second he remembered being in the carriage on that helter-skelter ride across Edinburgh, remembered the anticipation and the driving need. He kissed her for a third time and she tasted as sweet as he recalled; he ran his tongue along her lower lip and dipped it inside her mouth, tangling with hers, the kiss deepening into blatant demand. Another kiss, hard and insistent this time, and he was within a few ragged steps of losing control, pushing aside the spray of roses that lay on the polished table and taking her on it.

He felt the prick of a blade at his throat.

“These secateurs are sharp as any dirk,” Mairi said. Her voice was a little husky. “Step back, Mr. Rutherford.”

It took Jack several seconds to process the words, and during that time the blade only pressed harder, so he thought it wise to obey. He brought a hand up, running his finger against the cutting edge. It was, as she had said, fiercely sharp. As was the look in her eyes.

“I could disarm you,” Jack said. With a twist of the wrist it would be easy enough, but he suspected that Mairi MacLeod probably had another weapon concealed somewhere about the place, and she looked as though she would be very glad to have an excuse to use it on him.

“You have lost the element of surprise,” she said pleasantly. “You have also overstayed your welcome.” She walked across to the door and opened it for him. “Goodbye, Mr. Rutherford,” she said.

No fewer than three black-clad footmen came forward in a phalanx to escort Jack to the front door. Evidently they had been waiting to burst in and rescue Mairi if she had given the signal. Their expressions were threatening, especially the man who had failed to prevent Jack from entering in the first place. He looked as though he felt he had something to prove.

Jack, who had taken on far more intimidating men in far more intimidating places than Lady Mairi MacLeod’s drawing room, stifled a smile. He briefly weighed the merits of causing a mill and regretfully decided against it.

“You employ a private army,” he said, allowing his gaze to travel back from the row of black-clad retainers to Mairi’s face. “What is it that you are afraid of?”

He thought for a moment that she was going to refuse to answer and would instead have him thrown out on his ear on the gravel without any further conversation.

“I am a rich widow,” she said, after a long moment. “A very rich widow. There have been...” She hesitated. “Threats of kidnapping, of forced marriage. I employ an entourage for my own protection since I have absolutely no desire to wed again.”

“I pity the poor fool who would try to force you into marriage,” Jack said. “You seem very handy with a weapon.” The look he gave her was insolent, sweeping from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and he saw the hot color sting her cheeks at his impudence. Her chin came up.

“I shall be tempted to wield one again,” she said, “if you do not leave my house immediately.”

Jack grinned. “You have nothing to fear from me, sweetheart,” he said. “I am even richer than you are and I do not intend ever to wed you, only to bed you. Again.”

He flashed her a mocking smile before strolling in his own good time down the front steps. He almost expected to feel her dirk thudding between his shoulder blades. Instead he heard the door slam shut behind him. Another black-clad groom was waiting on the gravel, holding his horse for him. Through the archway to the mews, he could see a traveling carriage being prepared, not plain black this time but with the crest of the Duke of Forres and the arms of MacLeod entwined. It was the last word in luxury, fast and well sprung, sufficient even to deal with the state of the Highland roads. Lady Mairi was indeed making her own travel plans and they did not involve him.

Once they were at Methven, though, she would not be able to avoid him. The castle was huge, but the nature of a house party was such that the participants were thrown together no matter their wishes. Jack was suddenly aware that he was looking forward to the visit with a great deal more enthusiasm than he had felt the previous night. A house party also gave ample opportunity for intimacy and he wanted to rekindle his affair with Mairi, wanted to taste again the heat and the passion of their night together. He wanted her, her fragility and her strength, the fierce emotions she hid beneath that cool exterior. He knew she desired him too. She had betrayed herself when she had kissed him. She might lie, but her body’s response to him did not.

He was also still very angry with her for pretending indifference to his face and then seducing him secretly, for spending one night with him and then dismissing him like a paid lover. He recognized the anger and it interested him. He was not generally an introspective man, but something about Mairi MacLeod had him examining his reactions and his emotions like a poet or a philosopher. It was bizarre and he did not like it. But the anger was unusual. He did not generally bear grudges. He was not interested in revenge. Usually he forgot, moved on. It appeared that with Mairi MacLeod he had not moved on.

He shrugged. That was easy enough to solve. Another night of rapture, this time on his terms, and he would be ready to forget her. It had always worked before. His interest in a woman seldom outlived the intimate knowledge of her.

He encouraged his horse to a canter that raised the dust on the road. Lady Mairi MacLeod might be faithless and amoral, but then so was he. In that they were well suited. He was certain it would not be long before he was in her bed again.

CHAPTER FOUR

MAIRI SAT AT her desk with the household accounts spread in front of her. Jack Rutherford had gone, but the air still seemed to hum with his presence, fierce and elemental. It was impossible for her to concentrate. The columns of figures blurred before her eyes, and all she could see was Jack’s face and all she could feel was the touch of his lips against hers. She had wanted him very much and she knew he knew it.

Damn him.

She could not really blame Jack for being angry with her. Nor could she blame him for thinking her a whore when she had deliberately told him that any man would have done as a lover that night. That had been the literal truth, but no man could hear that without thinking her a shameless harlot.

With a little sigh she laid her pen aside and pinched the bridge of her nose to ease the headache behind her eyes. She could not understand why she was attracted to Jack. He was the complete opposite of her husband, Archie, who had been gentle and kind. Yet from the moment that Jack had walked into the drawing room, she had been acutely conscious of him, of the vitality and energy he brought with him, of the confident swagger in his step and the muscular perfection of his body beneath the close-fitting and beautifully tailored clothes. She did not want to want him. Yet it felt as though he had in some way imprinted himself on her so that her senses craved him, the taste and the touch of him. She disliked intensely the feeling that she was so vulnerable to him, but she could not escape it.

In Edinburgh she had used Jack shamelessly to drive out her feelings of loneliness and melancholy. She had sought out a man that night in order to forget for just a little while the huge weight of responsibility she carried and the secrets she kept. And for a time it had worked; she had forgotten everything in the bliss of Jack’s touch and the shocking, exciting sensations conjured by her own body. She had had so little experience of sex. She had had no idea, no notion at all, that it could be so delicious. It bore no resemblance to the mortifying fumbles she had endured at the start of her marriage to Archie MacLeod when they had barely managed to consummate their union.

Well, she had certainly made up for that inexperience now. She could barely believe that she had acted with such brazen lack of restraint when she had been with Jack. So much of her knowledge had been theoretical before, gleaned only from the books in her father’s library.

Even now the memory of Jack’s lovemaking made her feel very hot and slightly faint. She put her head in her hands and groaned. She hungered for Jack now. She wanted to know again that wicked pleasure she had felt at his hands. It was impossible. It could not happen.

Two blackbirds squabbling on the terrace outside roused her with their noisy calls. Shaking her head impatiently, Mairi turned back to the file of papers on the desk. This was mainly correspondence that Murchison, her secretary, had already filtered and deemed important enough for Mairi to see. Archie MacLeod had not been an elder son, but he had inherited a huge fortune from his nabob godfather at the age of one and twenty. There were the two houses in Edinburgh, the country estate outside the city where Mairi was currently living and Noltland Castle in the eastern Highlands near the town of Cromarty. There was money in bonds and investments. There were endowments to charity and a dozen other business and philanthropic ventures. The entire inheritance had come to Mairi at Archie’s bequest.

Today’s crop of correspondence included reports from the trustees of all the various charities that Archie had set up. While his inheritance had been rich beyond the dreams of avarice, his generosity had been equal to it. He had been desperate to use the money to do good; there were almshouses for the indigent elderly, an orphanage, a cholera hospital, so many good deeds and good works that Mairi’s head swam whenever she tried to keep track of them all. She was the custodian of Archie’s inheritance now, though, and she had to be worthy of it. She had to continue his good work.

At the bottom of the pile was one last letter, written in terse legal terminology. It was from Michael Innes, the heir to the MacLeod barony. Mairi read the letter through once a little carelessly and a second time with a growing sense of irritation. It stated that Innes was bringing a case to court to prove that Mairi was an unsuitable chatelaine of the late Archibald MacLeod’s estates. He claimed to have evidence of her lax financial management and her personal immorality. He would be laying this before the courts and petitioning for all the late Archibald MacLeod’s holdings to pass to him.