Page 42 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

Seven years ago, Tavish had nothing to recommend him. That hadn’t changed. He was still penniless without any clear prospects. A future with him remained shrouded in want and uncertainty. Assuming Tavish even wished for a life with her, of course.

And yet . . . the thought of leaving him without even saying a proper goodbye, without a private discussion that offered her a modicum of closure . . .

No note magically appeared under her door.

She did not pen one of her own .

Nothing occurred to spur her to action.

But that bit of fuse continued to smolder. To crave and yearn.

She tossed and turned. Events of the past week played over and over in her mind.

The flash of Tavish’s rifle.

Gone.

The clutch of his palm at her waist in the water.

“Isla . . .”

The faint, feather-touch of his lips.

She wanted to wrench open the shutters, toss up the sash, and scream into the summer night.

Argh!

She drummed her feet against the mattress, instead.

This simply wouldn’t do.

With an exasperated huff, she tossed off the counterpane and drew on her dressing gown. Slipping out her door, she glided on bare feet down the hall and up the stairs.

The vacant bedroom beside Tavish’s was just as quiet as it had been the first night of the house party.

This was as near to him as she dared come. To sit in the room beside his—a wall firmly between them—and whisper her goodbyes.

It would have to be enough.

She closed the door behind her with a soft snick .

Directly opposite the door, the window stood with shutters open, light from the full moon flooding the room.

A four-poster bed rested to the left, curtains tied back and counterpane neatly pressed. It was a sizable piece of furniture—thick, rectangular bedposts supporting a heavy wooden canopy. The sort of furniture at home during the reign of the Stewarts.

To the right sat a marble fireplace with a clock ticking the hour on the mantelpiece. A painting hung on the wall above—the wall that separated Tavish’s bedroom from this one.

Was he lying in bed there, thinking of her? Wishing for a few last words, but unwilling to risk it?

As she stepped farther into the room, the ghostly shadow of her reflection flickered in a mirror to the right of the window. Her eyes appeared huge, wide and apprehensive. A glance out the window revealed the kitchen garden and the lake in the distance, bathed in moonlight.

She felt him even before he turned the door handle.

Staring into the mirror, she watched Tavish close the door and lean against it. An echo of her position that first night of the house party, when his note had summoned her here.

Ah.

So he had been lying awake, too.

Slowly, she turned around.

The sight of him clubbed her senses.

Tall and broad, of course. That same cleft in his chin. The same pillow lips. The same eyes gleaming in the low light.

But tonight, his auburn hair was tousled, as if he had been tugging at it.

His clothing was in a similar state of disarray.

He wore only breeches, braces loose and dangling to his knees, and a shirt—tucked but unbuttoned and sagging open to mid-chest. Like herself, he was barefoot.

Even in the low light, she could see the column of his throat and the line where his neckcloth always sat, separating the tan of his neck from the lighter skin below.

That bit of bare chest rendered her light-headed. As did the shadowy muscles moving underneath when he took three steps forward, halving the space between them.

She had seen his bare chest before. Of course, she had. When they swam in the eddying pool or lounged about on the grassy bank, drying afterward. But that had been the chest of a boy. This . . .

Her eyes drank him in. How had she thought herself prepared to face him? The whole week had been a slow seduction. Not on his part, but her own.

She had seduced herself.

And now, her only thought was for that too-faint kiss. The smoldering fuse yearning for the tiniest spark to erupt into flames.

Isla took two steps toward him before stopping herself.

The sound of her own breaths echoed in the room—too fast, too urgent.

“Isla.”

She closed her eyes at the sound of her name. Gravelly and winded .

As if he, too, were seconds away from coming undone.

“Ye shouldn’t be here, lass. Nothing good will come of this. This is our goodbye.”

“I know.”

“Fletch intends to propose to ye tomorrow. Ye should go back to bed.”

“I know.”

And yet, her feet remained rooted in place.

“We won’t see each other again.” She could hear the pleading in her voice. “Not alone. Not like this.”

“Nae. We both ken it ends here. It ends now.”

She nodded.

“Ye don’t want me, ye said,” he continued. “Not me nor the life I offer.”

Malton Hill rose in her mind, mist lifting over the fields into the gold of sunrise, sheep lowing in the distance. The scritch of her quill as she met with tenants to collect rents and discuss their concerns. Mrs. Tippets with her arms around her fatherless children, eyes brimming with thanks.

“I don’t.” The words sounded like heartbreak to her ears.

“Well.” He looked away from her. “There ye are, then.”

She stared at his profile, willing him to close the distance between them. To do something to ease the weight of their memories, their longing, the pang that—

“Goodbye, Isla. I wish ye every happiness.”

He spared her one final glance before dipping his head and turning for the door.

“Tavish . . .” She gasped his name, just as he had hers in the grotto.

He pivoted back to her.

Suddenly, she knew what came after those ellipses.

Tavish . . . I can’t seem to stop wanting you.

Tavish . . . what are we to do?

He stood so very still, as if her thoughts diffused through the room, and he strained to hear them.

Isla would have thought him unmoved except for the flexing of his right hand, as if he fought the urge to reach for her.

And yet, he did nothing .

Merely waited.

Isla willed him to act. Any movement that would justify a response from her.

He lifted an eyebrow.

Do ye want something? that eyebrow said. If so, ye will need to claim it yourself.

A challenge.

Of course.

“Damn you,” she hissed.

It marked the first time in her life she had uttered such words aloud.

His lips twitched at her cursing.

There’s my lass , his gaze said. The woman who exists for me alone. The one who would say, “to hell with heaven and earth,” just to have me.

She would never curse in front of Colonel Archer. Only Tavish saw this uncensored side of her.

And he knew it.

His eyes glittered, sparking in the dim light—the final burst of heat needed for combustion.

Two steps and Isla was flush against that potent chest.

Her fingers threaded into the thatch of his hair, mercilessly pulling his head down to hers.

The touch of his mouth landed like a torch to dry heather.

Flames engulfed them both.

Isla moaned.

His large hands whipped around her waist, pulling her hard against him, a groan rumbling his chest.

Isla whimpered in return.

This was no tentative brush of a kiss.

No. It was a branding. A claiming.

Once, at Malton Hill, Isla and Matthias had witnessed engineers blasting through a hill to create an offshoot of the Kennet and Avon Canal. Though they were nearly a quarter-mile distant, the ensuing roar of sound had vibrated her breastbone and shuddered the earth.

Isla felt like that detonation of gunpowder—her balance jolted and smoke billowing from her skin to touch the sky. The explosion obliterated every thought but Tavish and the delirious pleasure of threading her fingers into his hair.

Angling his head between her palms, she feasted on his lips—sucking first the top, then the bottom into her mouth—teeth clicking in eagerness.

He growled his approval.

An arm braced under her buttocks, he lifted her backward not once breaking their kiss. Her spine encountered the bedpost, her feet barely touching the ground.

Bent over her, he devoured.

Like she was bread after weeks—no, years!—of hunger.

Like she was salvation and damnation all in one.

His lips moved from her mouth to her throat, then lowered to graze her collarbones before returning to her mouth and starting anew.

His hands were everywhere, slipping inside her dressing gown to clutch fistfuls of her chemise.

She felt fevered. Frenzied, even.

Seven years!

Seven long years she had hungered and yearned for this passion. This claiming.

This inferno of desire she had only ever felt with him.

Tavish was a man possessed.

He had intended to leave, to walk away before either of them did something regrettable. Kissing Isla that day on the path, no matter how brief, had been a colossal mistake.

Because it had taken up residence in his brain, that fleeting taste of her.

He felt akin to a former drunkard receiving a thimble of gin. Just enough to inflame the craving for another swallow but not nearly enough to quench it. And now, Tavish had dunked his head in the stuff, and he couldn’t drink fast enough.

But like a drunkard with gin, he feared no amount of Isla would satisfy him. He would need a lifetime, a hundred lifetimes, of just this—of touching, of tasting, of devouring her.

The sound of her choking gasp when his tongue found that sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder.

The curving arch of her spine that pushed her soft bosom to his chest.

The taste of her mouth, the honey and peppermint of her tooth powder.

Slow down. Ye need to slow down.

He knew this. He did.

If they continued, they would end up naked on the bed at her back.

He tried to hold onto the thread of that logic, willing it to douse the wildfire consuming them both.

But all his brain could summon was the devotion in her eyes as she gazed at him over the ribbon of their handfasting. And the seven years of lonely nights and aching want for his wife between that moment and this.

Her lips on his skin had never felt more vital.

That she matched him—kiss for kiss, touch for touch—only fanned the flames.

She did want him, no matter what she said.

Her teeth nipped his throat, drawing a deep hum of approval from his lungs.

She skimmed her hand inside the open collar of his shirt, laving a kiss to his sternum, before tugging at the cotton fabric, wanting it free.

He helped her, pulling his shirttails from his breeches.

And then her palms were underneath, skimming across his bare skin, moving from his spine to his stomach and back again.

It was . . .

Words failed.

Her body felt pliant as putty and just as yielding. He couldn’t pull her close enough, couldn’t kiss enough of her.

He was crazed, dizzy on need and want and the love pounding in his veins .

Later, he couldn’t say what broke through the lust-filled haze of his thoughts.

Some deeply ingrained instinct that had seen him survive the horrors of war, year after year. The same instinct that told him when and how to direct a bullet to his chosen target.

An infinitesimal sound. A shift in the air. Something.

A silent warning shouted at Tavish to duck.

Just as the Duke of Grayburn’s fist sailed through the space that his head had occupied.