The MacGregor's Lady Page 21

  And yet he was a little pleased when she closed the door behind them, sat herself down on the sofa, and crossed her arms. “You may have that word now, my lord.”

  She’d closed the door, which meant he hadn’t had to see to it himself. “How are you?”

  Some of the fight went out of her. She uncrossed her arms and picked up a blue satin pillow from a corner of the sofa. “I am so wroth with Enid I could howl. She had the modiste take in my waistlines, and the result… suffice it to say, I will not be wearing my most fashionable attire anytime soon.”

  Asher ambled across the room and poked up the fire. “She means well. She wants you to make a good impression.”

  “The better to marry me off to some fellow with a moldering estate in the Lakes, while the hapless Mr. Trundle stumbles about in Aunt’s gun sights like some penned hart at a Continental battue.”

  The Lakes were beautiful. Now was not the time to make that point. Asher appropriated a seat beside the woman whose suffering he would alleviate by any means possible. “We have a greater problem than Enid’s just desserts.”

  Hannah hugged the pillow to her chest. “How much worse can it be? I was found nearly undressed in your exclusive company by two of the biggest gossips in captivity, and all because Malcolm insisted on looking up some word or other at that very moment.”

  “Quaquaversal. It means from all sides, or all about one.”

  She closed her eyes and hugged the pillow more tightly. “I know my Latin, Asher MacGregor.”

  That she was forgetting to my-lord him was a sign of her upset. What had been repugnant to her rebel sensibilities had become a means for her to keep distance from him, and now…

  He tugged on the pillow. She didn’t give it up, but met his gaze for the first time since they’d closed the door. “We need to discuss tonight’s little drama, Hannah.”

  Ian had certainly discussed it with Asher, at length and in volume, supported by Gil and Connor. At least Spathfoy hadn’t been in the room.

  “I swear, Asher MacGregor, if you’re going to blame me—”

  “I blame myself.” He tugged on the pillow, and this time, she let it go. “I should have done exactly as Lady Alcincoate said. Planted you in a chair in full view of the ballroom, let you catch your breath, and borrowed somebody’s painted fan to revive your flagging energies.”

  “I fainted, Asher. I was not in need of reviving. I could not breathe.”

  On that feeble remonstration, she hunched forward and fell silent, not a silence Asher could read. In the interest of not saying the wrong thing—purely in that interest—he used one hand to knead the muscles between her neck and shoulder blade. “I cannot abide that you are so upset.”

  That hadn’t been on his list of things to say—and he did have a list. A well-reasoned, thoroughly rehearsed, intelligently worded list of negotiating points.

  She relaxed some under his hand. “You won’t easily be able to find a bride after this, though I don’t think you’ve been looking very hard.”

  “How do you think I could possibly—? Come here.” He pulled her back against him, wrapped both arms around her, and rested his cheek against her temple. She hadn’t resisted, not in the least.

  “My siblings had a very pointed discussion with me.” It had come out, “M’ siblin’s had a verra pointed discussion w’me.” Asher heard the burr stealing into his inflection and made another mental grab for those well-articulated reasons.

  “Siblings will do this,” Hannah said, nuzzling his throat. “Grandmothers know of almost no other kind of discussion.”

  Her grandmother was the last person Asher wanted on Hannah’s mind at present. “I am a physician, Hannah, which is why tonight’s situation will not immediately erupt in scandal.”

  She pulled back to regard him warily. “You’re saying it will eventually erupt in scandal?”

  His list had gone completely out of his mind, leaving him drowning in Hannah’s gaze. She expected the truth from him. She deserved the truth, though he hadn’t wanted to force her decision on the matter.

  He gently pushed her head back to his chest. “When you remain unwed and are not found to be with child, there are those who will speculate that being a physician, I was in a position to relieve you of your burden.”

  Cut the wee bairn from her verra bodie, was how Ian had put it—shouted it. The most delicate inference in the world couldn’t hide the brutality of the idea, and yet, Ian’s tirade had been inspired by whispers that had already started around the ballroom.

  Hannah drew up into a knot of tension in his arms. He waited, holding her loosely, expecting her to cry, to screech, to cry and screech. Instead, her voice was quiet.

  “That is the most vile, vulgar, mean, unfair… how could they accuse you of such behavior when you’ve been nothing but decent, kind, gracious, patient, generous…” She exhaled and went pliant against him for a long, quiet moment. “I cannot abide this. I give up, Asher. I surrender. I’m leaving the battlefield to those who find it entertaining to assassinate character and choke the very breath out of women while they do. I don’t know how to fight this, this… army of small-minded venality, and my scheming aunt, and my dratted stepfather. You win. I can’t do this alone anymore.”

  You win.

  For more than a minute, he said nothing. He stroked his hand over her back, trying to sort out feelings that ought not to be engendered by a woman’s acceptance of a marriage proposal.

  Sadness was there, for her, because in part her capitulation was caused by her surprising—and gratifying—indignation on his behalf. He hadn’t foreseen that, hadn’t put it on his list.

  He also felt some peace. They were to marry, and that felt right. A rebel countess from the wilds of Boston suited him, a treasure no one else had noticed, a woman who had backed, bullied, and blustered her way into his heart without even meaning to.

  And he felt… desire. The lust was leavened with relief, to have the chase over and won—her word—and the certainty of mutual pleasure assured. He savored that feeling even as his awareness of Hannah’s body next to his became more acute.

  She wore only nightclothes, no stays, no corsetry or bustle. Nothing but cotton, Hannah, and the scent of sweet lavender. When he gathered her closer, she tucked herself against him with every indication of complicity.

  “You are falling asleep, my dear. You are worn out.”

  She muttered something that was not a protest, so Asher scooped her up and rose, crossing the room with her in his arms. Without her evening finery, she was a smaller package, also more…

  Simply more.

  “I hate it here.”

  “Love, I know that. You’ll like Scotland, though.” Love it, he hoped.

  He laid her on her bed, drew the covers up over her, then turned to tend to her fire lest he linger overlong on the sight of her. Her braid was a thick, burnished rope against the pillow, her eyes lambent by firelight. He wanted nothing—nothing—so much as he wanted to get into the bed and simply hold her.

  And to hell with the riot starting up in his trousers.

  “Asher?”

  He made sure the logs and coal were pushed to the back of the andirons and the screen was snug up to the bricks. “Go to sleep, Hannah. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Kiss me.”

  The last of his sadness on her behalf vanished.

  She was prepared to immediately enjoy the fruits of her surrender, a notion he wholeheartedly endorsed. This much, he could undertake happily, and so could she. They could bring each other joy and pleasure in abundance, and with marriage looming, they could do so without reservation.

  And yet, he hesitated. “You are tired, Hannah, and it’s late, and we still have much to discuss.”

  From drowsing in his arms, she was now quite awake and wrestling off her dressing gown. “I miss your kisses. If I’m to be pilloried for being a wanton, and you accused of worse behavior than that, I will at least have a kiss.”

  He di
d not trust himself to stop at a kiss, and like an angelic chorus bursting into song, his male brain produced the thought: Nor did they have to stop at a kiss. An engaged couple was permitted all the liberties of their married counterpart, provided they were discreet.

  He could be discreet, his cock cheerfully assured him, as discreet as hell.

  Fifteen

  Hannah assured herself that catching a ship from Edinburgh for Boston would be no effort at all. Asher would take her North, she’d linger long enough to ensure no one could accuse her of carrying his child—Though what would that matter, given the even worse conclusions Polite Society had already drawn?—and she’d leave this godforsaken land with or without Enid’s companionship.

  That Asher understood how badly she needed to go home—finally, finally, understood—had to be what explained his capitulation to their mutual attraction. Hannah was too pleased at his belated attack of sense to congratulate him on it.

  She regarded the man standing beside her bed, the man whose reputation was now at risk because of her. Of all the times they had sinned, an innocent situation would be what had landed them in trouble.

  The thought broke her heart in four different pieces, only one of them for him.

  “We can discuss anything you want in the morning, Asher. For now, please kiss me.” More explicit than that, she could not be, not with words.

  When he might have subjected her to another spate of his infernal reasoning—wonder of wonders—he unbuttoned his waistcoat. Anticipation and relief started a duet in Hannah’s body in close harmony: a sweet melody and a throbbing rhythm. She shamelessly gawked at him as he hung his waistcoat over a chair then sat to remove his shoes and stockings.

  His shirt came next, and because he’d turned back the cuffs, he could undo a few buttons and pull it over his head.

  “That’s cheating, Asher.”

  He looked up from undoing his trousers. A slow male smile revealed white teeth and impending trouble. “Shall I put the shirt back on, Hannah? Would you like to undo me buttons, then, unwrap your prize button by button?”

  Ah, the burr. She adored the burr. “Now you’re stalling.”

  A man could shuck out of his trousers and underlinen in nothing flat, and then he could stand there, all shadows and strength not three feet away, while a woman ached to touch him.

  “I want you, dear heart, verra much.” His desire was made evident by the erection arrowing up along his belly. A peculiar male endowment Hannah wanted to study—some other time.

  “I want you too.” She’d told him she wasn’t a virgin, and she had not lied—not in the medical sense—but her prevarication was making her anxious to get matters under way. “Come to bed, Asher, please.”

  She was using please rather a lot. She’d use it more, willingly, if it would get him under the covers with her. What followed now, and possibly in the next several weeks, would be hoarded up against the rest of Hannah’s life, against all the arguments with her stepfather, all the maneuvering with the lawyers. She could endure those battles if she could have these pleasures with this man for herself now.

  As he climbed into the bed, dipping the mattress so heavily Hannah rolled to his side, she admitted one serpent to her garden: consummating her dealings with Asher was a two-edged sword. She would have the pleasure and joy of the memory, but she’d have the torment of it too.

  “Now, madam”—he slid an arm under her neck and brought her flush against his side—“did you say something about kissing?”

  “In a minute.” She wrestled free of his embrace. “You distracted me, flaunting your wares. I have a few wares of my own… what?”

  He lay on his back, his arms laced behind his head to reveal dark tufts of hair at his armpits. “Slowly, my love.”

  Comprehension dawned. When Hannah would have drawn her nightgown straight over her head, she instead slipped a button at her throat through its buttonhole. “This nightgown has a lot of buttons, my lord.”

  “I’m a patient man, though I’ll no’ tolerate any me-lording nor Balfouring when we’re abed, Hannah.”

  A patient mon. She hoped he’d speak Gaelic to her when their bodies were joined, hoped he’d say naughty things in any language—and mean every word. More buttons came free, and all the while, Asher watched her. When she would have crossed her arms to lift the nightgown away, he stopped her by using her braid to tug her down to him.

  “Kisses, madam?”

  The things he knew… How could Hannah have guessed that kissing him with her nightgown half-on, half-falling off her shoulders would be more inflammatory than were she stark naked? Soft, worn cotton took on sensual powers, dragging over Hannah’s chest, back, and arms as Asher levered up to set his mouth to hers.

  He held back. She’d kissed him enough to know that this delicate tasting of her lips was intended to part her from her reason, and it was working.

  “Stop teasing, sir.”

  He shifted, and in a blink, Hannah was on her back, pinned by a grinning Scottish earl apparently in no mood to take direction. “Stop managing. It’s a habit ye’ll give up, Hannah, at least when we’re abed.”

  “The day I—”

  Now the kissing began in earnest, a wondrous onslaught of male guile intended to convince Hannah she didn’t want to manage him in bed, not ever. She decided instead that she’d learn to tease him, to enjoy the wares she wasn’t quite sure how to flaunt—and to enjoy his wares.

  “That’s better, love. We’ll go slowly, and take our time, and all the pleasures—”

  She pinched his derriere, not hard, but enough to take pleasure in the resilient abundance of muscle on his backside as her toes stroked along the curve of his calf.

  “I’ve never petted a man with my feet before.”

  “Blessed saints, I hope not.” The humor in his voice sounded strained. “What other wee tricks would you like to try out on my poor, unsuspecting self?”

  “I’ll give you a list—later.” For now, the feel of his erection, warm, smooth, and heavy against her belly, distracted her sorely. She rolled her hips to remind him of the point of the proceedings, though the perverse man raised himself off her and shifted to his side, taking his weight and warmth away.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  He kissed her nose. “Between two people sharing a bed like this, Hannah, there’s no right and wrong. There is only what pleases us.” He drew his callused finger slowly down the midline of her face: forehead, nose, lips, chin, throat, and on down.

  “Are you going to draw on me or make love to me, Asher?”

  “Draw on you”—he nuzzled her breast—“for now.”

  He drew on her nipple with the wet warmth of his mouth, and Hannah nearly came off the bed. “That is… that is wicked.”

  She gripped his head, fingers fisted in his hair while heat leapt out from where he touched her. “That is wicked, and lovely. I can’t…”

  His hand drifted over her chest, tracing the bones of her sternum, covering her other breast, teasing, tormenting… teaching her that whatever she’d envisioned sharing with him, it was going to be much more personal and of much greater impact than she’d imagined.

  For a time, they drifted between kisses and caresses. Hannah discovered that her hands pleased him too—on the angles and planes of his face, over the warmth and power of his chest, down the sinewy length of his arms. He sighed, his breathing hitched, he murmured in unintelligible Gaelic, and he made not one peep of protest when Hannah wrapped her fingers around his engorged member.

  How long she mapped the feel of him she could not have said. She acquainted herself with downy, masculine hair, the smooth length of his shaft, the curiously silky head of his cock, and all the little twitches and inhalations that went with her touching him.

  “You’re braced in some regard, Asher MacGregor. You’re enduring this.”

  “I’m wallowing in it. You are very thorough in your explorations, Hannah, and that pleases me. I would not want you to
think otherwise.”

  He was being honest with her, though still… She trusted her sense that he was waiting for her to look her fill, waiting for her to gather her courage.

  “I’ve explored this part enough.” She tugged on his cock gently. “For now.”

  He shifted up again while Hannah, as naturally as dancing, subsided onto her back. “I will be the judge of what’s enough, woman, at least this time.”

  His kiss was different, more uncivilized. Hannah took that as an invitation to reciprocate, to explore his mouth with her tongue, to breathe through him and undulate up into the hand he traced down her ribs. Something inside her was coming undone—wonderfully, completely undone—and she wanted him undone with her.

  This time, he did not linger at her breasts or stop his quest at the soft flesh low on her belly. He brushed his fingers through her curls, gently, gently, a caress as maddening as it was arousing.

  “Asher, that’s all very—good gracious.”

  She went silent, let her knees fall open, and waited to see what he’d do next. One leisurely pass of his fingers up the crease of her sex, a little pressure on a particular spot, and words deserted her.

  “Shall I do that again, love?”

  “Mm.” She grabbed him by the back of his head and fused her mouth to his. He chuckled—the dratted beast—and repeated that most interesting caress, this time with a hint more pressure.

  Hannah pushed into his touch, and Asher smiled against her mouth. “She likes it. She likes it verra much.”

  She liked it so verra much she caught a rhythm as he explored for them both all the folds and creases of a woman’s most intimate parts. She liked it enough to growl into his mouth and to nearly tear his hair from his scalp.

  “You’re wet for me, Hannah. I adore that you’re wet for me. Shall I love you now?”

  She couldn’t even beg. She tried to scoot under him in answer, to wrestle him over her, and he allowed it, covered her with his heat and strength, braced himself up on his forearms, and went still.

  He hitched close, brushed her hair back from her forehead, and spoke right near her ear. “There’s no undoing this, my love. No turning back or forgetting it. This is forever.”