A Highland Conquest Page 12

  Chapter 12

  Lauren was overtaken by a sensuousness she never dreamed she possessed. Her lips softened and parted, and her body moved to meet his, molding to him as if it had been fashioned for just this moment. Kissing him was the most natural thing in the world, and the most exciting. Innocence slipped away from her fingertips and an instinctive knowledge took its place. The world spun, lifting her out of her hitherto chaste existence and carrying her toward a luxurious fulfillment. Consummation beckoned, promising all manner of sensual delights, but a cool voice whispered a warning. “Fool if you trust him, fool if you trust him…”

  “No!” With a gasp she drew sharply away, and got up hastily from the bank. Her skirts brushed the ferns, and a slender branch from the oak tree overhead caught briefly in her hair, dislodging it from its pins so that it tumbled in confusion about her shoulders.

  “Lauren—”

  “I don’t trust you, Lord Glenvane. I have no reason to, you see, because I know what fate you and your brother have plotted for me.” Her voice shook as she struggled to gather her scattered senses.

  He stared at her. “You what?”

  “I overheard you last night, when you agreed to help him settle his gaming debts.”

  For a moment he was too thunderstruck to say anything, but then he ran his ringers slowly through his hair. “How much did you hear?”

  “Enough to see through you now.”

  “Oh? And what exactly do you think you see now?”

  “I see…” She faltered, for what did she see? How could it further his brother’s cause if he himself made love to her?

  His gray eyes were bright and intense. “It seems you cannot explain, for to follow your reasoning leads to a puzzle. What logic can there possibly be in my actions now?” he said softly.

  Still she tried to fight the compelling sensuality which he had stirred within her. “I don’t begin to know what passes for logic where you are concerned, Lord Glenvane.”

  “No, but I begin to understand you a little better. Suddenly I see the reason for your trickery before dinner, why you managed to prevent Jamie from escorting you, and then contrived to be seated next to me.”

  “A dextrous turning of the tables, you will agree,” she replied defiantly.

  “Oh, poetic justice, no less.”

  “I trust you also understand more what I meant when we rode back to the castle this morning?”

  “About being pursued for your fortune? Yes, I understand.”

  “I also trust that you will convey my displeasure to your brother?”

  “I will see to it that he desists forthwith; you have my word upon it.”

  “And your word is to be trusted, sir?”

  “Yes. Lauren, you will never know how much I regret my equivocation where Jamie’s plan was concerned. I didn’t want to have any part in it, but at the same time I was trying to convince myself I didn’t want you. It was impossible, for I want you too much.”

  Her breath caught, and she whirled about to face him properly. Was he trying to gull her with his practiced words? Or was there some truth in what he said? “Please don’t say that if you don’t mean it,” she begged, her wits in such confusion that she could hardly bear it.

  “I mean every word, Lauren,” he replied quietly.

  She was afraid of the consequences of believing him, and that fear made her uncompromising. “If that is how you feel, I find it inexplicable that you should agree to your brother’s suggestion. To say that you were trying to resist me yourself just isn’t good enough.”

  “It’s the truth. Lauren, you have no idea how bitter an experience my marriage was. It has curdled my whole existence—at least, it has until now. Besides, I never for a moment really believed Jamie would succeed with you. In fact, in my heart of hearts I rather hoped you would deal him the snub he deserves, for his gambling debts have long since gone beyond anything reasonable. I was shirking my own responsibilities, if you like, secretly wanting you to curb his excesses for me. He’s a grown man and should be displaying at least a modicum of responsibility, but instead he frequents every gaming hell he can find, and he pursues other men’s wives. He’s hardly a jewel in the Ardmore family crown. But then neither am I at the moment, I suppose.” He added this last on a scathing note of self-recrimination.

  She glanced at him but said nothing. She felt dazed, wanting him to be telling the truth, wanting him to really mean the regret he expressed.

  He went on. “Oh, I know that none of this excuses me, and that to blame Jamie is a little base, but I’m trying to explain my actions. Lauren, I wanted to turn from you, but every time you were there I wanted you more.” He looked at her locket as a shaft of sunlight flashed upon it. “In the boat yesterday, when I learned about your fiancé, I felt suddenly closer to you than ever. We had something in common, you see, something that erased the obstacles. You had as much reason to spurn any thought of entanglement with me as I had with you. Your fiancé died at British hands, and my marriage died at American hands—the one was canceled out by the other. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Her heart was thundering in her breast, but she clung to common sense as she nodded slowly. “Yes, I understand that, sir, but I do not understand why you have omitted all mention of Lady Maxby. What place does she have in all this?”

  He looked away and drew a heavy breath. “When you arrived here and saw me with her in the garden, I had just told her that our—er—liaison was at an end. That was all it had ever been—a liaison. I have never offered her marriage or anything permanent and she was fully aware that that was how it was. Oh, I’d been trying to break it gently for days, but somehow the time never seemed quite right. I knew that I couldn’t possibly allow things to continue between us while I was so preoccupied with you.”

  Recalling Isabel’s manner during those first moments, Lauren could well believe that he was telling the truth. But Isabel’s conduct since hadn’t been that of a woman who meekly submitted to the ending of the liaison. “Do you believe Lady Maxby accepts the changed situation?”

  “I’d be a liar if I said I did, but in the end she will have to accept it, because I no longer feel the same way about her. I will always regard her as a friend—we go back too far for that not to be so—but as a lover…” He shook his head. “What there was between us commenced when she’d been a widow for a year and did not endure on my side for longer than a few months. It was over for me before I went to London, and certainly long before I met you. I don’t want to part from her on bitter terms, but I fear that in the end it may be the only way, for she insists upon trying to win me back.”

  “No woman finds it easy to be rejected, or supplanted by another.”

  “Women do not have the franchise on that, for I know only too well what it is like to be rejected and supplanted. Deceit and unfaithfulness are the two things I cannot endure, and that is why I am doubly ashamed of having briefly gone alone with my brother’s stratagem. Forgive me, Lauren, forgive me for having let you down. You have invaded my life, and it is the sweetest invasion imaginable.”

  His words touched something deep inside her, and suddenly she knew that she believed everything he’d told her. “Oh, Rory,” she whispered, stretching her hand out hesitantly toward him.

  He seized it gladly and drew her down on to the bank once more. She went willingly, lying back in his arms. His lips were only inches from hers, and she could feel his heartbeats. His voice was soft.

  “My confessions are almost complete, Lauren, but what I haven’t confessed is the depth of my feeling toward you. It’s more than mere attraction, and far more than desire. Lauren, I love you almost beyond all endurance.”

  Her heart almost stopped within her, and her green eyes were filled with tears of joy and disbelief. “You…love me?” she whispered.

  “More than I have ever loved before.”

  “Oh, Rory…” His name was a sigh on her lips as she linked her arms around his neck to draw his mouth down to he
rs, and she pressed achingly against him. Her lips parted, and the tip of his tongue curled luxuriously against hers.

  Passion stirred through her, a keen passion that was eager to cast restraint to the four winds. She craved him with an urgency that threatened to rob her of consciousness itself. She wanted to surrender right here on this mossy bank, to be naked in his arms with the warm August sun on her skin, to feel his lips upon her breasts, to possess and be possessed… It was an almost irresistible temptation. They were alone, the moment was theirs, and so great was the tumult of desire that the remnants of her defenses crumbled away into nothing. If he wanted her now, then she was his.

  But he drew back from the brink, cupping her flushing face tenderly in his hands and kissing her once more upon the lips. “To go further now would be to risk destroying what we have, and that is something I will not do. You must always be able to trust me, and you will not if I take you now, for in your heart of hearts you will wonder if my intention was only to seduce you. You are too precious to me for that.” He stopped her protest with another kiss, and then smoothed the hair back from her forehead before gazing lovingly into her wide green eyes. “I feel as if you’ve been part of my life forever,” he whispered.

  “I know, for I feel the same.”

  “Oh, Lauren, my sweet, sweet Lauren,” he breathed, pulling her into his arms and kissing her once more. His passion was more controlled now, but no less fierce for all that. Here on the island, for these few precious minutes, they were free to indulge their newly declared love, free to hold each other and say anything they chose. The moment they returned to the castle, propriety would bind them to correct behavior.

  How long they lay together on the bank she didn’t know, but it seemed all too short a time. Again it was Rory who brought the moment to a close, bending over to kiss her forehead before sitting up. “I think we will cause undue comment if we stay here much longer. There is nothing indecorous about a gentleman conducting a lady to see ruins upon an island, but that lady’s character might be called into question if she lingers too long about what can only be a fairly short guided tour.” He indicated the few scattered ruins in the dell before them.

  She sat up as well, leaning her head on his shoulder for a moment. “I want to stay here forever. I love you, Rory,” she whispered.

  “And I love you. You’ve conquered my heart, Miss Maitland from Massachusetts.”

  Her lips parted to reply, but then another heavy curl of her hair fell loose from its pins, and with a slight laugh at how disheveled she must look, she reached up to try to rectify matters.

  “Allow me,” he said, getting up and moving behind her to take out every last pin before shaking the heavy tresses until they spilled freely over her shoulders. Then he twisted the hair up into a smooth coil on top of her head, and replaced the pins. He stood back to admire his work. “You will do handsomely, now Miss Maitland.”

  “I’m alarmed at how expert you are with such things, sir. Just how many times have you had cause to attend to ladies’ hair, Lord Glenvane?”

  “Often enough to know what I’m doing,” he confessed, smiling.

  “Yes, I can imagine that is very true.”

  “You flatter me.”

  She met his eyes. “No, I merely see what other women see when they look at you.”

  “Well, Miss Maitland, knowing the effect you have upon those of my sex, I trust that you are not similarly well versed in the many ways of tying gentlemen’s neckcloths?”

  She smiled. “No, sir, I am not. Apart from you, there has only ever been Jonathan, and I confess to never having come so close to complete surrender with him.”

  “I would be inordinately jealous if you thought you had,” he said softly, drawing her to her feet. “Oh, I don’t know how I am going to manage when we return. I will want to kiss you all the time, but that wouldn’t do at all, for it is not how one is expected to go on in polite society.”

  “Indeed it is not, sir.”

  “Propriety must be observed, and we must conduct ourselves with suitable decorum for the time being. There must not be any raised eyebrows concerning haste.” He put his hand tenderly to her cheek. “One step at a time, Miss Maitland from Massachusetts, one step at a time…” He kissed her and then held her close, his cheek against her hair for a moment before he began to lead her from the clearing.

  But she held back. “What will you say to Jamie?”

  “The truth—that you overheard our conversation. He won’t persist after that, I promise you.” He smiled into her eyes. “Then, when the time is right, we will allow our love to be known.”

  She returned the smile.

  His thumb caressed her palm. “I’ll never fail you again, I promise,” he said softly, and gave a rather incongruous laugh.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I was thinking of the entertainment I have planned for this afternoon. Madame Santini is to give her recital in the music room, and I shudder at the prospect. She arrived not long before we returned from Rab’s, and she has a formidable repertoire at the ready. In my present mood I shall require earmuffs if I am to endure.”

  They laughed together as they walked hand-in-hand from the glade.

  Lauren felt as if she were in a dream as he rowed her away from the island. The past hour had been the most wonderful of her life, and she was afraid that in a moment she would awaken. But as he smiled at her, while she leaned back upon the cushions with her parasol, once more trailing her fingers in the cool water, she knew that it wasn’t a dream. She knew too that when she returned to her room at the castle she would remove Jonathan’s locket and never wear it again.

  If she had but known it, however, the locket was soon to be lost forever, and under circumstances which were by no means the accident they appeared to be.

  Chapter 13

  As the boat glided over the loch toward the castle, Lauren still found it hard to believe that she was suddenly so very happy. She gazed up at the flawless arc of the sky. “This is the most wonderful summer ever,” she breathed.

  Rory smiled. “True, but as far as the weather is concerned, you must shortly be prepared for a change for the worse.”

  She sat up slightly. “But the sun’s shining, there isn’t a cloud to be seen, and it’s been like this for months!”

  “I know, but a change is on the way, believe me.”

  “How do you know?”

  He shipped the oars. “There is just something different in the air, a whiff of the sea.”

  She stared. “The sea! But it’s miles away on the other side of Ben Vane!”

  “Precisely. Believe me, over the years I’ve learned to read the weather in these parts, and when one can smell the Firth of Clyde, there’s rain in the offing. Thunderstorms usually.”

  She suspected him of pulling her leg. “I don’t believe you, sir,” she declared.

  “You will when the deluge begins and there’s enough lightning to turn night into day.” He grinned. “It’s true, I swear it. If my father were still alive, he’d be vowing upon his gouty toe!”

  She laughed then. “Oh, very well, I believe you. The weather is soon going to change.”

  He rowed on and as the boat neared the castle Lauren observed the gardens, where the guests strolling and sitting in the sunshine appeared to be only ladies. “Where are all the gentlemen?” she wondered aloud.

  “In the billiard room where Fitz has taken on Sir Guthrie Dundee, an Edinburgh physician who is said to be the finest billiard player in Scotland. Needless to say, vast sums rest upon the outcome.”

  “I hope Fitz wins.”

  “Against Sir Guthrie? I doubt it. The man is a magician with ball and cue. Still, Fitz will be released from his misery in an hour’s time, when Madame Santini’s recital begins. I’ve left strict instructions that the billiard room is to be promptly vacated five minutes before her first song.”

  Looking at the crowded gardens again, Lauren was suddenly daunted by the prospect of e
ncountering so many. She needed a little time to prepare herself after all that had happened on the island. She looked quickly at Rory. “Please don’t return to the jetty. Can’t we go ashore over there, closer to the bridge and the road into the courtyard? I don’t want to see anyone else just yet.”

  Rory smiled. “Nor do I particularly. Very well, we’ll avoid the jetty.” He turned the bow of the boat slightly and then continued to row.

  * * *

  Jamie was no longer among the gentlemen in the billiard room, having lost interest in the play, and he’d been observing the boat for some time. As soon as he saw it wouldn’t moor at the jetty, he followed it along the shore and was waiting as the prow grated slightly upon the shingle at the edge of the lake. He was suspicious that his brother wasn’t serving his best interests, and that the Ashworth fortune wasn’t being guided in his deserving direction.

  Lauren’s heart had sunk as she realized he was there, but there was nothing she could do but accept the hand he offered to assist her out of the boat. “Thank you, sir,” she said reluctantly.

  “Lemonade is being served in the garden, Miss Maitland. Perhaps you would care to accompany me there?”

  Rory stepped ashore and spared her the need to reply. “I wish to speak to you in private, Jamie, and it can’t wait,” he said.

  Lauren seized her opportunity. “I’ll—er—go on, then,” she said, and then walked quickly away. She didn’t look back, not even when she heard Jamie’s dismayed exclamation.

  “She overheard?”

  Her steps quickened still more as she made her way around the castle wall to go into the courtyard by the main gateway, and thus avoid the gardens and the ladies for the time being. Only when she reached the coolness of the courtyard did her pace slow a little, but almost immediately Hester came from the gardens on her way back into the castle. She wore a plum silk gown with a wide gray sash and a gray gypsy bonnet tied on with plum gauze, and there was a glass of chilled lemonade in her hand. She was rather pale, Lauren thought with concern. Hester saw her and halted.