The Highlander's English Bride Read online

  It seemed if she intended to bring this seduction to a halt, the first move was up to her. But, oh, what regret burdened her heart as she strove to bolster legs that had turned to jelly.

  "You’re going to let sensible win." He raised his head and stared down at her.

  His unconcealed disappointment made her exult. She hadn’t only learned how it felt to kiss a man. She’d discovered how it felt when a man wanted her to the edge of desperation.

  Emily had never thought of herself as a girl who could make a man shake with need. Yet Hamish, handsome, clever, worldly Hamish, was completely at her mercy.

  How interesting. How astonishing. How…delicious.

  "I am." Regret didn’t only weigh down her heart. It weighed down her answer, too. "This was meant to be a kiss, and only a kiss."

  In the moonlight, she caught the flash of his straight white teeth as he smiled. As the tension eased, she breathed a sigh of relief. He meant to abide by his word and let her set the pace.

  At that moment, Emily realized with harrowing clarity that somewhere in all their topsy-turvy dealings, somewhere since that chaotic night at Pascoe Place, she’d fallen in love with her husband.

  Oh, no, this promised to be a disaster. She had absolutely no idea what to do with this irresistible, uninvited, all-encompassing love. Because even if she became Hamish’s wife in every sense – and it was inevitable that she’d end up sharing his bed – love was a step too far. They’d spent most of their time together squabbling. This new concord might not last. In fact, it was likely that it wouldn’t.

  "What is it, Emily?" He didn’t sound like the man who’d been lost to pleasure such a short while ago.

  Oh, dear, she forgot how perceptive he was. Was she capable of hiding her love from him? Could she bear for him to feel sorry for her? When he said he cared, did that mean he could come to love her?

  One thing she did know – tonight’s revelations were so fresh, so powerful, she needed time to consider them before she took any action.

  "Nothing." She winced at the faint sharpness. She’d like to think that their old combative relationship was gone forever, but so many years of quarreling couldn’t disappear without a trace.

  He frowned, but she couldn’t read his expression. Curse this moonlight. It hid as much as it revealed.

  "I didn’t frighten you, did I? You won’t believe me, but I came out here with good intentions. Once we started, I lost my head. You’re…"

  He spread his hands, and she realized that even with his unexpected poetic bent, he couldn’t find the words for what they’d experienced. The magic they’d summoned was beyond description.

  "No, I wasn’t frightened. That was a wonderful first kiss, Hamish. Thank you."

  He smiled, and her poor aching heart cramped in longing. For renewed physical pleasure, but even more, for him to love her as she loved him.

  What would it take to earn the love of a man like Hamish Douglas? Did she have a chance? His mother had thought so. From the first, she’d been convinced that this was a love match. That was back in the days when Emily could barely speak a civil word to her new husband.

  Emily straightened her shoulders and told herself she’d do her best to win his heart. She had his desire. It was a good start.

  Chapter 21

  Hamish regarded the chaise longue in his study with contempt. The "longue" part of its name was a foul lie. If he lay down, his legs would wave off the end.

  He wasn’t sleepy anyway. During his time at the tower, he’d become used to staying awake most of the night, so he could stargaze. This morning, he’d tumbled into bed after dawn and slept like a log until Emily turned up on his doorstep.

  Emily…

  His surfeit of sleep wasn’t at the root of his restlessness. Unsatisfied desire was.

  He’d imagined he couldn’t want his wife more than he did. He’d been wrong. When he’d kissed her, she’d been a wonder, sweet and passionate and more responsive than any woman he’d known. The instant he took her into his arms, good intentions went up in smoke. One taste of those lush lips, and he drowned in carnal hunger. When she called a halt to an encounter that rapidly spiraled out of control, he’d been an inch from tossing her down on the ground and seeking his pleasure.

  Once his brain returned to working order, he was grateful that she’d stopped him. For her first time, she deserved better than a quick tumble in the open air. And his pride insisted that she came to him, fully aware of what she did. His turbulent past with Emily had beaten down his arrogance. He’d give half his fortune to hear her admit she wanted him. If she placed no more conditions on their union, he’d hand over the other half without a qualm.

  He was too conscious that he was a mere floor above her. If he lay down in this room, he’d only stew in his frustration. So he did what he’d done every fine night since he’d holed up in this tower, hoping to heal the scars that his failed marriage had scored into his soul. He took off his shoes, picked up a lantern, collected a notebook, and climbed to the roof. While all the time, his animal self shrieked that he was heading in the wrong direction.

  ***

  For once, the beauties of the night sky didn’t hold Hamish’s attention. He couldn’t shift his mind from the softness of Emily’s lips, her salty honey taste, the beguiling little sounds she made as he kissed her. His hand didn’t want to grip a pen and record his observations. It wanted to cup Emily’s luscious breast and shape the perfect curve of her rump. He didn’t want to focus his mind on planetary orbits. He wanted to lose it in the delights of seducing his wife.

  After an unproductive hour, he released a weighty sigh and turned away from his telescope. The only stars he could see tonight were the ones he’d found in Emily’s eyes. He’d kissed her with lingering enjoyment before he abandoned her to her solitary bed, and she’d looked at him as if he set the sun in the heavens.

  Only as he stood did he notice that he wasn’t alone under this glorious clear sky. "Emily…"

  She perched on the parapet near the steps, wearing something dark. As she rose and ventured toward him, he realized that she’d put on one of his jackets. She must have one of his shirts on under that. A line of pale material showed beneath the black.

  He bit back a groan. The shirt covered her to her knees and revealed the sweetest calves and ankles he’d ever seen. Her luxuriant dark hair was loose and tumbled around her shoulders. The lantern’s frail light turned her into a creature of mystery and enchantment.

  "I couldn’t sleep," she said softly.

  "Neither could I."

  She might trust him, but when she came to him half-naked in the middle of the night, she tested his willpower to breaking. If the angels had a scrap of mercy, she’d stay where she was, well out of reach.

  The angels weren’t feeling in a generous mood. Emily approached, to stop an arm’s length away. Hamish braced as if for a blow and told himself he’d lived for eleven long months without claiming her. What was one more night of longing? Or even a hundred?

  Except her presence made abstinence bite so much deeper. When she was a whole country away, he’d endured his futile desire because he had no choice. With only a pace separating them, it became impossible to keep his hands off her.

  But Hamish was horribly aware that so close to achieving his goal, he was at the greatest risk of losing everything. If he broke her trust, if he pushed her beyond what she was willing to give, if he frightened her with the magnitude of his craving, she could just as easily hie back to London and consign him to a lifetime of loneliness. So while every cell in his body urged him to seize her and carry her downstairs to the empty bed, he kept his hands by his sides.

  "What are you working on?"

  How to woo a skittish wife. "I might have found a new moon for Saturn."

  He sounded brusque. Hamish didn’t want to discuss heavenly bodies, when the only heavenly body he gave a rat’s arse about was Emily’s.

  "Hamish, that’s wonderful."

  He sucked in a breath and forced the curtness from his tone. "I’m still confirming my observations. It’s an odd bugger – a strange shape and the orbit is unlike anything I’ve ever seen."

  Interest sharpened her expression. "Show me."

  "Emily…"

  "What?"

  "You’re not…dressed."

  She couldn’t be that ingenuous. Surely she knew that it was cruel to flaunt herself like this. Girls were always wrapped up in layers of undergarments. Even unworldly creatures like Emily Baylor learned in the nursery that the sight of too much feminine flesh turned men into beasts.

  He couldn’t read her expression. Blame it on the lamplight. Blame it on the fact that he was going insane.

  "I’m not cold."

  Nor, God damn it, was he. He ground his teeth until they hurt and pulled out a stool. "Then help yourself."

  He struggled to ignore how the jacket parted down the front and the hem of his shirt rode up as she settled in the place where he’d devoted so many lonely nights to staring at the skies. He also failed to ignore the jiggle of her breasts as she wriggled around to find a comfortable angle for the telescope. To facilitate his observations, he had the lamp turned down low, but it still revealed far too much of his beautiful wife.

  She was going to kill him stone dead. And just as he was on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough, too. He was surprised steam didn’t come out of his ears, he was so hot for her.

  "I can’t…" she murmured.

  For pity’s sake, she really would kill him. He set his jaw until it threatened to crack and leaned in to help with the focusing. He caught a drift of her jasmine scent, always alluring, doubly alluring since he’d kissed her and tasted her skin and glimpsed the passion locked inside her luscious body.

  "Ah," she said in satisfaction.

  "Can you see Virgo?"

  Most girls – most people – would have no idea where to look, but Emily was Sir John Baylor’s daughter. She’d known how to find the constellations before she could read. "Yes."

  "Look west. It’s small. Tiny really. Just a pinprick of light. It could be a distant star, but it acts like a moon."

  While she scanned the sky, he kept silent.

  "I don’t…" Then she gave a glad cry. "I see it."

  "I need to do a lot more work before I’m ready to present my findings."

  "But how marvelous." She turned her head. "Congratulations."

  He was so close, her breath was warm on his cheek when she spoke. If he shifted an inch, he could kiss her again. Every muscle went taut as he imagined taking her in his arms again.

  Blast it, he didn’t dare kiss her. After their kisses, it had nearly broken him to relinquish her to a chaste bed. He jerked away and only came to a panting standstill halfway across the roof.

  Even that wasn’t enough. His shoulders slumped, and his hands fisted so tight that his nails dug into his palms. He was bloody grateful when Emily went back to observing the sky.

  Don’t balls this up, Hamish. You’re close to getting what you want. But you can still lose it all.

  It had been bad enough thinking he’d lost it all, when he’d been convinced he never had a chance of gaining it. The prospect of losing it all when he teetered on the brink of winning was too agonizing to contemplate.

  He stared up. From the moment he was old enough to understand that there were worlds upon worlds above him, he’d found peace pondering the skies. Tonight his earthly troubles were too overwhelming for those twinkling lights in the heavens to offer any solace.

  "This is a wonderful telescope."

  He told himself to act like a civilized man. "It’s based on Herschel’s forty-foot reflecting telescope."

  "But only a quarter of the length. Yet it gives such a clear image."

  "I reconfigured the mirrors. I didn’t have room up here for either a forty-foot telescope or that huge ungainly stand he had to build for it in Slough." William Herschel, who had discovered the planet Uranus late last century, had always been his hero.

  "It’s brilliant. No wonder you’re doing such good work here."

  "I’ll take you through what I’ve done, if you like." Few people in the world would be able to follow the course of his investigations. He was fortunate that his wife was among those few. He hadn’t only missed Emily’s physical presence. He’d missed sharing his work with her.

  "I’d like that." She stood up. "Now?"

  Now? When she was only half-covered and he could still taste her kisses? Not bloody likely.

  "Aren’t you tired after all that travel?" he asked with a hint of desperation.

  "Yes."

  "Then wouldn’t you like to go to bed?" He closed his eyes in dismay at his lamentable phrasing. He rushed on. "I spent most of the day asleep. You didn’t."

  "I’m…keyed up."

  Hell, Hamish could write a thesis on feeling keyed up. "Let’s go downstairs. Some of Bruce Mackenzie’s finest might help you to settle."

  She smoothed down the coat. He restrained a groan. The material pulled too tight against the body beneath it for his comfort. "What on earth is Bruce Mackenzie’s finest?"

  He made himself continue and hoped she’d put the hoarseness of his voice down to tiredness. "Whisky. Not entirely legal. The best distiller north of the border lives on the Achnasheen estate, devil take Fergus’s good luck. If Fergus feels in charity with me, he sometimes lets me have a bottle or two."

  "I’m not sure spirits will—"

  "A little bit won’t hurt you. And if you’re planning on becoming a good Scotswoman, you need to learn to love the water of life."

  "The water of life?"

  "Uisge beatha. It’s Gaelic. That’s where the word whisky comes from."

  A faint smile curved her lips, made her breathtakingly lovely. And breathtakingly approachable, which was the last thing he needed when they were alone together in the middle of nowhere.

  "It really is a new world up here. How fascinating." She cast him a searching look. "You’re different, too."

  He paused in the act of picking up the lantern. He left his notebook where it was. Tonight, it contained no new observations. "Oh?"

  She watched him with that steady, perceptive gaze that always made him feel like she cut to his soul. As usual it made him uncomfortable. It was worse tonight when his soul was crammed with a thousand depraved intentions.

  "Yes. You seem more…yourself, more true to Hamish Douglas than the man I knew in London."

  He shifted under her assessing stare. "Go on with you, lass. It’s just the romance of the hills and the stars, and sleeping in a tower that the Vikings built."

  "The Vikings? So you’re part Norse."

  "Aye, a lot of the people in the glen are. There were longboats up and down this coast."

  A pleased smile curved her lips. "That’s how I’ve always thought of you, you know. As a fearless Viking. No wonder you never fitted in with those pale, skinny Londoners. I thought it was my imagination, but it wasn’t. You come from a long line of marauding warriors."

  Hamish bit back an offer to show her just how marauding he could be. "You really have fallen for the romantic Highlands."

  He waited for her to deny it, to remind him she was a cool-headed scientist just as much as he was. If William Herschel was his hero, Herschel’s brilliant sister Caroline, with a string of scientific achievements in her own right, had always inspired Emily. Caroline Herschel offered Emily a model for a female who made her mark in the world of the intellect.

  That mysterious smile still flickered across Emily’s face. "You know, you might be right."

  Heaven save him. He needed to get off this rooftop. He needed to cover up his wife – preferably in a suit of armor. He needed to jump into the burn and cool off before he did something he was sure to regret.

  With a sigh, he trudged toward the steps. "Let’s get you a wee dram then put you to bed."

  He stamped downstairs, once he checked that she followed. Sending Big Billy back to Lyon House had been a mad, reckless act. The peel tower was too small, when it came to Emily trusting him with her chastity.

  Hamish began to wonder whether the whole wide damned world was too small, when it came to keeping his hands off his delectable wife.

  Chapter 22

  Emily picked her way down to the study and paused in the doorway to watch Hamish dig two small glasses and a squat flask from a corner cupboard.

  "Are you sure you’re not cold?" Hamish asked without looking at her.

  "No, I’m fine, thank you." Scotland in early autumn was warm, much more so than she’d expected.

  However, she was most definitely suffering an agony of self-consciousness. When she’d prepared for bed, she’d considered sleeping in her crumpled shift. But much more appealing was one of Hamish’s clean white shirts, smelling of herbal soap and mown grass and sea salt – and the tiniest, most intriguing hint of him.

  After those incendiary kisses in the moonlight, she hadn’t been able to sleep. Her blood fizzed like champagne shaken inside the bottle, and a needy restlessness made her feel like ants crawled over her skin.

  It wasn’t just her body that was in a ferment. Her heart brimmed with the overwhelming love she’d only just acknowledged.

  Was falling in love with her fascinating husband a blessing or the worst calamity that could befall her? For ten years, she and Hamish had fought each other to a standstill. If anyone had suggested she was likely to fall in love with her father’s swaggering protégé, she’d have laughed her head off. Yet now she ached for him to take her in his arms and tell her he loved her, too.

  Emily was accounted a clever woman, but she found herself conflicted and confused. This dilemma was beyond the powers of science or mathematics to solve. Unless the equation really was as simple as one and one made two.

  Troubled and unhappy – yet, strangely happy too, because love was a gift, whether returned or not – she’d stretched out on a bed that smelled like Hamish’s shirt. Trying to quiet the turmoil in her heart, she told herself that tomorrow, she’d make some decisions.