Page 55 of Highland Fire
Nor did the girl excite her envy. If she felt anything for her it was a tepid pity.
When Rand had introduced them, after that first electrifying shock, she could hardly believe her eyes.
So much pink and white put her in mind of a frothy dessert.
The girl’s taste was atrocious. Only the bonnet was stylish, and it was ruined beyond repair.
This girl did not know enough to present the semblance of a woman of taste and fashion, a woman who cared about herself.
No one had ever seen Lady Margaret with a hair out of place.
That was the way to keep a man interested.
She smiled benignly into the night. Keeping her voice low and intimate, she murmured, “If you are not returning to Scotland—and I could scarcely credit that you really meant to desert Cranley so soon—do you plan to take in the season in London?” As they both knew, she would be in London, and though it was many months since he had made use of it, Rand still had the key to her house in Mayfair.
“Caitlin taking in the season? I can’t quite see it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. She has it in her to cut quite a dash. With the right hair and clothes, and your mother to guide her, she might surprise us all.”
She didn’t know what she had said to annoy him, but suddenly she was aware that his eyes were as hard as flint.
Hoping to retrieve her position, she went on hurriedly.
“She’ll charm the birds right out of the trees with her quaint Scottish accent.
Her voice is soft and melodious and…and really quite musical. ”
“Yes,” he said. “I could listen to it for hours on end and never grow tired of hearing it.”
There was a silence; then she let out a breathy laugh. “So that’s the way of it, is it?”
He did not pretend to misunderstand her, nor was there a hint of apology in his voice. “Yes. That’s the way of it.” A moment later, he fished something out of his coat pocket. “I’ve been meaning to return this to you.” He pressed a key into her open palm.
Her hand closed around it automatically.
Never was she so close to breaking one of her own cardinal rules.
At the end of an affair, when it was time to let go, it was best to do it gracefully.
But then, she was the one who usually brought the thing to an end.
Looking at that finely molded mouth and the vivid blue eyes that she knew would darken in passion, she experienced such a sense of loss that she feared she was on the verge of creating a scene.
Blinking to dispel her tears, she lifted her head a fraction. “She’s a fortunate girl,” she said lightly.
“Thank you.” The reply was grave and lacked warmth. “But it’s customary, I believe, to congratulate the gentleman on winning the lady and not the other way round.”
She hardly heard his words. This coldly polite stranger, she thought wildly, could not be Rand. He used to tease her and act the gallant. The little Highland upstart had got her claws into him good and proper, had set him against her. Well, two could play at that game.
On the point of moving away, she pivoted to face him. “Oh, now I recall what it was that Caitlin told me. We were in conversation with Peter. He offered to inveigle an invitation to Cokes’s place, Hokham in Norfolk I think it is, and she said…” She frowned in concentration.
“Yes?”
Her smile was unconvincing. “She said that there would not be the time, that there were matters begging her attention in Scotland and that to delay could prove disastrous. It was all farm talk, so I’m afraid most of it went over my poor head.
But it did seem to me, Rand, that Cranley and her duties here did not weigh too heavily with your young wife.
” And on that parting shot, she floated away.
Rand threw the end of his cigar into the shrubbery and inhaled several long breaths, trying to get command of his anger. “Venomous!” he said under his breath.
Such condescension! Such thinly concealed contempt!
And what struck in his craw was that none of it was deliberate, or at least, it had not started out that way.
Her tactlessness came, rather, from a proud and unfeeling disposition.
As if he wanted to make Caitlin over into a pale copy of the fashionables who thronged Mayfair!
Caitlin, who had more genuine feeling in her little finger than Lady Margaret had in her whole body.
As if his wife required guidance from anyone on how to conduct herself in polite society!
As if it mattered! Good God, if Lady Margaret only knew of the life Caitlin had pursued in Scotland she would be horrified.
She had judged Caitlin and found her wanting, and that proved to Rand how small-minded she was.
The wonder was, he had not perceived it sooner.
Caitlin had it in her to be and do anything she wanted, as she had proved since coming to Cranley.
He was well aware of the strain she was laboring under, and he was tempted to throttle his shatter-brain mother for the trick she had pulled on him.
It was bad enough that Caitlin had to go through the ordeal of presiding over a houseful of guests almost as soon as she had set foot inside the door, but that one of those guests should be her husband’s former mistress was appalling.
It didn’t help that his mother was trying to make up for her awful gaffe.
Mothers should not meddle in the affairs of their grown-up children.
She should have known that if he had wanted to marry Lady Margaret, he’d had ample opportunity to offer for her.
When he’d stepped from the coach and his eyes had alighted on his erstwhile mistress, he’d felt like a tall oak suddenly struck by lightning.
He’d been on tenterhooks, thinking that Caitlin might know of their connection, and he’d hardly drawn breath till those first few minutes were safely over.
It wasn’t that he minded Caitlin in one of her rages.
It was simply that he didn’t want his family’s first impression of his wife to be that she was a virago, and she would have been a virago if she’d known that he’d been introducing her to his mistress.
He wasn’t forgetting the night she had thrown her dirk at him when she’d found him in bed with one of the barmaids at The Fair Maid.
A grin spread across his face, and he chuckled softly.
He was congratulating himself on the way he had handled his wife’s ire when she had finally confronted him with the knowledge of his relationship with Lady Margaret.
How he had longed to tease her, to set spark to the dry tinder of her temper and watch the flames go up.
He dared not, for the simple reason that there were thirty-odd people in residence at Cranley and he wasn’t quite sure what form her revenge would take.
He wouldn’t put it past her to dose his soup with a powerful purgative, or worse, gunpowder.
She liked nothing better that to take him down a peg or two.
Gradually, his smile faded. He was thinking of the blunder he had made in letting slip that he had consulted Lady Margaret about what was best to be done about the fix they were in.
Under the circumstances, he did not see what else they could do.
He was thinking of Caitlin. In view of their forced marriage, any rumors were bound to reflect on her.
People would say that he had been an unwilling bridegroom and that he was looking to resume his affair with Lady Margaret.
Nothing could be further from the truth on both counts.
Nor would he tolerate Caitlin’s name being bandied about by ill-bred louts, be they male or female.
Caitlin was right in saying that it was an intolerable situation, but there was no easy way around it.
This last thought put him in mind of Lady Margaret’s parting shot.
He recognized spite when it stared him in the face.
That was the worst of affairs. No one could predict what a woman would do when a gentleman tried to extricate himself from the relationship.
Some were avaricious; others were spiteful.
Few were gracious. He had expected better from Margaret.
He idled his way into the billiard room and was not surprised to find Peter there. When he left him, Rand went immediately in search of his wife.
He turned her into his arms with all the confidence she had come to expect of him. He must have known from the rigidity of her spine that she was feigning sleep and that he was not exactly in favor this evening.
“I won’t have you brooding,” he told her. “I know everything is strange to you. That will pass. The house, my family and friends—you will soon be comfortable with them.”
The champagne had befuddled her thinking. She had to concentrate very hard to make sense of what he was saying. As from a great distance, she heard her own voice, “ Mo gaol orist . What time is it?”
“Don’t pretend you were sleeping, because I know that you were not.
It will get easier.” He said the words fiercely, and she turned her head on the pillow to look up at him.
More gently, he went on, “I know that England seems strange to you. That will pass. You have not had the time to make a life here for yourself yet. When you do, your thoughts will turn less and less to Scotland. You are mistress of Cranley. How can Strathcairn compare to that?”
“Mistress of Cranley? That means nothing to me.” She did not notice that he had recoiled as if she had slapped him.
Her thoughts were still on Lady Margaret and her own appalling inadequacies when she compared herself to that paragon.
She waited hopefully, willing him to say something that would reassure her.
“You are determined to despise everything English. Well, you married an Englishman. Your children will be English.”
“You are chief of Clan Randal,” she cried out. “You are Scottish too.”
“Scotland means nothing to me,” he retorted. “I could not care less if I never see it again.”
“But…”
He stopped her words with the fierceness of his kisses. She sensed the violence in him, but did not understand its origins.
“Rand, it’s all right, it’s all right,” she murmured, and tried to gentle him with little kisses pressed to his throat and shoulders.
He didn’t want her gentle. He wanted her wild for him, as hungry for him as he was to take her, and he told her so graphically, with no attempt to pretty up his words.
Between deep harsh breaths, his voice almost savage, he said, “I’ll make you forget Scotland.
I’ll make you forget everything but this.
I am your husband, and in English law, that means something.
You are mine, Caitlin, to do with as I please.
No, don’t turn away from me.” He wrenched her back. “And this is what pleases me.”
He used her as he had never used her before, revealing that dark and primitive side to him that never failed to win an answering response from her. Again and again, he brought her to the brink of fulfillment, then prolonged the moment until she was sobbing with her need for him.
“You are mine,” he told her again. “Mine.” And he plunged into her, sending them both hurtling to their first climax.
Before she had time to recover her breath, he was turning her in to him, his lips and hands beginning to work their familiar magic. It wasn’t the first time he had tried to initiate her into things she wanted no part of, but it was the first time he refused to take no for an answer.
“There is no shame in what passes between a husband and wife in the marriage bed,” he told her. “I want to know your body as intimately as you are going to know mine.”
She was allowed no modestly as he remorselessly explored every inch of her.
“No,” she moaned when his hands cupped her hips and his tongue sank into the secret place between her thighs.
Then rational thought slipped away and her feeble protests became pleasure sounds.
She tried to warn him that it was all too much for her, but he wouldn’t listen.
Before she could prevent it, her body contracted and the crisis overtook her in a flood of sensation.
Breathing hard, still dazed with the force of her release, she was given her next lesson.
Eyes holding hers, he showed her the touches that could drive him crazy for her.
Modesty was forgotten when she took the lesson one step further and used him as he had used her.
She was rocked back on the bed with such violence that the breath was knocked out of her.
“Rand,” she cried out. “What is it?”
He laughed triumphantly. “Little wanton! I know, now, how to hold you. This is the only thing that matters.” And he buried himself deep inside her. “I want to hear you say it.”
He got his wish. In the clear light of day, however, it was not the passion that Caitlin remembered but the vague threat that Scotland might be lost to her forever.