Page 12 of The Scot Beds His Wife

Howdida man come by eyes so impossibly green? Set like precious gems in features crafted by the same celestial hand that pulled the treacherous Sierra Nevada from the wild, willful earth.

It wasn’t only his spectacular height and breadth that set him apart from the scant crowd—if one could call it a crowd after experiencing the crush of humanity at London’s Charring Cross Station—it was his uncommon magnificence. Samantha tried to find a different word. Something less dramatic, less ostentatious, and simply couldn’t.

He was, in a word… Magnificent.

Though his suit was the very picture of elegance, the shoulders barely contained within were anything but.

Having only just had her first gowns hand-altered for her in Chicago at Alison Ross’s expense, Samantha wondered if his tailor made as much fuss over the girth of hisarms as her seamstress did over her own extraordinary height?

Samantha had been raised around her share of rough-hewn men with muscles built by long days of labor, and she’d taken the time to appreciate them.

Hell, she’d been married to one.

Damn, but the Highlander holding her was born into the world with more than his fair share of physical allowances.

She’d never in her life seen his like.

“Thank you,” she breathed, then cleared the detested note of feminine awe from her throat.

“American?” An expression of equal parts scorn and seduction lurked beneath a haughty brow, and she had the sense he’d known that even before she’d articulated a word.

She nodded in confirmation. “You can set me down now.”

To her chagrin, his hold tightened, the gleam in those unnatural eyes both appreciative and roguish. “I’d rather not. Ye’re light as a wee baby bird, and about as stable on yer feet, it would seem. Perhaps it’s safer I hold ye a while.”

Samantha became instantly certain that every second in his brawny arms was more dangerous than the last. Had to be thatdamnedaccent. An unsightly cretin could seduce a woman sounding like he did.

Shit,she realized. Her pistols were in her handbag, too.

Struck by the sudden intuition that she might have to shoot at this man someday, she decided she’d do her best to miss his attractive face.

“Put. Me. Down,” she commanded. “Or I swear to Christ, I’ll scream so loud, they’ll hear it in London.”

“That wouldna help ye in these parts, lass.”

To avoid the equal shares of titillation and trepidation his words evoked, Samantha glanced around, noting that they’d already garnered rapt attention from the severalevening travelers at the station, but none of them seemed inclined to offer her aid.

Hell, no one even batted an eye at his rank, inappropriate behavior. Though she took comfort in the fact that neither did they seem alarmed on her behalf.

Summoning her best glare, she directed it at him, opening her mouth to deliver a censure every bit as scathing as the unwanted heat prickling beneath the skin of her chest and throat and spreading south.

He interrupted her by bending to gently place her feet on the platform. “I’ve been the cause of many female screams, I’ll admit, but never because of distress.”

Any retort she could summon was lost to a gasp at the sudden clench below her belly button.

His reluctance to release her certainly seemed less practiced than his wicked humor, but he eventually did. Not before he took an unnecessarily long moment to steady her.

Samantha did her best to ignore the way his big hands left imprints of sensation on her corseted waist as she narrowly avoided tripping over the train of her skirts in her haste to put space between them.

The distance created an alarming new problem. It had been impossible to grasp the full magnitude of his beauty from so close.

It was enough to render her speechless.

Samantha slammed her eyes shut, grasping for an excuse for this inexcusable attraction. She was exhausted, hungry, and unutterably soul-weary.

And ultimately alone.

After an arduous rail journey across the entire United States, she’d embarked from the port of Philadelphia on a ship a great deal less crowded than it had been when it arrived. She’d filled the Atlantic with tears of grief andpain, along with the upheaval of nearly every delicious meal afforded to her as the first-class passenger and apparent Scottish heiress Alison Ross.