The Highlander’s Accidental Wife (Queen’s Edict #3)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

A hush fell around them, and Helena started, glancing from side to side before she could stop herself. But even the music had faltered, and more than one gaze met hers, wide and alarmed. She found herself bristling, and her eyebrows knitted together.

Why, how rude.

“Ye’re askin’ me, love?” came a low, teasing voice, and her breath caught, her heart skittering with nerves. “Are ye quite sure?”

Helena whipped her gaze back to his, regretting her rudeness, and made to speak—but for once, she found herself at a loss for words. This close, she realized she had to crane her neck a bit to look up at him. And the eye focused on her was the loveliest color she’d ever seen—a sharp mix of indigo and deep blue. There was intelligence on his face, in his words, and then he smiled.

Her stomach contracted, actually contracted in an involuntary spasm of muscle, and her heart gave another excited jolt. That wicked gleam of white revealed in his dark beard, the slow and delightful motion of it.

Helena felt as though she’d be run through with a silver arrow—or as though she’d come down with a fever. Perhaps the exertion had all been a bit much.

“Hmm, I see ye are havin’ second thoughts.”

The man made to step away, but Helena—who’d clearly lost her mind, even if she’d never been a stickler for propriety—reached out a hand to stop him.

“Of course not,” she said and stood up straighter. She could tell this man did not often have words with such tall women. Yet, rather than looking off-put, it seemed to intrigue him. “Of course, I want to dance with you. Who else is tall enough?”

The man stared at her for a moment, and she cursed her unruly tongue. But then he smirked and seized her hand and waist without further ado. She let out a breathless laugh, easily falling into step with him.

Everyone thought her such a graceless, too-tall wallflower, more interested in books than balls—and Helena rather thought such a thing was foolish. Could she not have an interest in both? She may not be the best dancer, but she was fair enough.

“Ye are a lovely dancer,” the man said in a true tone of affability and enjoyment, not out of surprise or condescension—as was the wont of the gentlemen who deigned to dance with her. “One of the best I’ve stepped with, I think.”

If she was meant to stay hidden, this man could not pay her compliments that made her feel as though she were glowing from the inside out.

“Thank you,” Helena said. “You are the loveliest dancer I’ve stepped with as well.”

The man laughed now, and when joy filled his face, Helena thought her heart might stop. Drat him for being so handsome in general, but it became downright unreasonable how good-looking he was when he laughed.

“And the tallest,” he said.

“Oh yes,” Helena agreed.

She couldn’t help it—she smiled at him.

Something flared in his eye, and silence fell between them. Then, the music slowed a bit, and he pulled her close. Her cheeks flamed, and she turned her gaze away, then felt his breath next to her ear. Chills cascaded through her.

“But nae the choice ye would have made if ye werenae runnin’ for yer life, hm, sweetheart?”

Helena shot him a startled look, and he fixed her with an intent gaze, all laughter and joy gone. The stern lines of his face made her question her sanity a bit. This was a brutal warrior who held her and spun her, who she had so foolishly tangled into her affairs.

“Ye are in danger.” He did not phrase it like a question. “Quite a bit if ye sought me arms for safety.”

“I—” Helena hated apologizing, but she suddenly felt compelled to.

He tilted his head to the side as a smile flitted across his face again. “Mind, I’m nae complainin’ about yer techniques, lass,” he all but purred, and Helena both wanted to laugh and kick him. “But I imagine there’s perhaps another way out of this stramash.”

“Kiss me.”

At that, she knew she’d shocked the man again, and he all but stumbled to a halt. To avoid drawing further attention, even though Helena knew there were countless eyes on them, the man pulled them to the side, in an alcove near an arbor with early creeping vines covering it and shadows beyond.

“Say that again,” he said in a low, thrumming tone. “Because I could have sworn?—”

Helena caught the front of his shirt and gave him an imploring look. “Please, Sir, kiss me.” She glanced back, and sure enough, she saw her father’s men shoving through the crowd. “If I’m ruined, they’ll leave me alone. They would not dare?—”

They would not dare return Lord Lovell’s daughter sullied by the wrong Scotsman.

“I beg you,” Helena whispered as the man stared down at her, rigid and unyielding under her hands. “Just one kiss.”

“Ye dinnae have to beg.”

Before Helena could grasp that, he’d pulled back her hood and caught her around the back of the neck while cradling her face in his other hand. Then, there was a soft, teasing brush of a kiss across her lips, surrounded by tickling bristles, and she sucked in a breath.

Wait, I…

Helena wasn’t sure what she was asking for. Only a sense of the entire world tipping rushed at her, and she didn’t know what she wanted. But her body did.

Unable to help herself, she leaned in, chasing another kiss, and she realized in a split second that he’d been teasing her—taking her at her word so as to torment her. For, now, he gave her a proper, devastating kiss.

Her entire world spun, and heat washed over her, as though a sun had risen and drenched her in golden fire. If the sky had gone from early evening to bright blue, she would not have been surprised. Or if the seasons had changed.

Everything had changed.

For once, she couldn’t think. She could only feel. And oh, how she felt.

He lingered on her lips, sank his teeth lightly into her lower one, which did all sorts of wonderous and dangerous things to her brain. And then, of all things, she felt him smile against her lips.

I didn’t know you could taste a smile .

That didn’t sound like her usual marshaled lines of logic and prose.

“Just the one, then, aye?” the man whispered as he pulled back. Then, he seemed to hesitate, losing some of that cocky self-assurance as he asked in a quiet voice that strummed a chord in her heart, “Lass?”

Helena realized she was holding on to his arms, breathing hard, and her knees had gone weak. There was a roar in her heart, a tumultuous storm that this man had awoken inside her, and something else—something that had her swallowing the plea in her throat. For she was indeed about to beg for another kiss.

She forced herself to remember what she was doing, how she needed to flee and escape her father’s men.

“Do—do you think they saw?” Helena asked in a slightly shaky voice.

She couldn’t yet look up, but then a large hand caught her chin and tilted her face up. At that moment, she thought he would kiss her again.

Instead, he asked, “Tell me who has frightened ye so, lass. ‘Tis nae the right color on ye.”

Again, Helena felt that flood of warmth, along with the unsettling sense that this man could see right through her—really see her in a way that no one, perhaps not even her best friend Emma, ever had.

Swallowing hard, she glanced over her shoulder and spotted the two men standing on the other side of the crowd. Their hands were hanging by their sides, comical looks of horror and shock on their faces, and a surge of triumph went through her.

She laughed lightly and nodded.

“Those two,” she murmured, a smile spreading across her face.

When she looked back at the man, he was staring at her, his lips slightly parted, and he seemed almost… dazed?

A bolt of nerves ran through her, and she stepped back. Had he recognized her? Did he regret their kiss?

“I think they saw.”

“Aye,” the man said.

He gave himself a shake, and his gaze sharpened, the amusement back on his face, along with an easy and cocky smile that sent a bolt of heat through Helena. For she knew the contours and taste of it.

How dare he.

“Well, ye’re free to go,” he said and tilted his head to the side. “Unless…” he trailed off, his voice lower, rolling with mischief—a sound that poured into her head like the honey and spice of her favorite sweets. “Ye think they need more convincin’?”

Lifting her chin, Helena chided herself for being a fool. Here this man was, laughing at her, probably amused by how easily she’d been undone by his kiss. Probably suspecting it had been her first.

Drat.

She hadn’t meant to think that, and now color flooded her face. A pressure rose behind her eyes, and she wished that he’d been kinder. But, after all, wasn’t this the reason he’d chosen her?

Something flickered across his face, and his smile vanished, but before he could speak, Helena said, “No. I thank you.”

She stuck out her hand, and he stared at it, then raised his eye to hers, something cold on his face now.

“It was well done.”

His eye narrowed, and then his lip curled. “Bloody English cheek, I tell ye.” He took her hand and went to shake it, then drew it to his lips, even as she tried to yank it away. “Ye think I didnae catch what ye really meant?” He pressed a lingering kiss to her knuckles, and she felt herself reddening further. “And what, I can kiss yer lips but nae yer hand?”

“That’s not it at all,” Helena protested. “I-I simply must go.”

She glanced back, and her shoulders sagged with relief at no longer seeing her father’s men standing there. Her ploy had worked.

Teeth nipped her knuckles, and she rounded on the man, again trying to pull away, but he yanked her close.

“Unhand me.”

He bared his teeth at her even as he gently linked their fingers. “Bossy thing.”

“Strange,” said a voice that sounded like hers, only it was far more breathless and archer than she’d ever heard in her life. “I rather thought you enjoyed it.”

She expected him to glare at her, not grin. “Aye, a bit of push and pull with a woman does stir me blood, and I dinnae care for a shrinking violet, but ye are askin’ for trouble.” His eye narrowed. “Or a firm hand.”

To her shock, he caught her other hand and pressed a kiss to her bare palm, sending a shockwave of sensations through her.

“Tell me why should I let ye go.”

“I am promised to another,” she blurted out.

To her surprise, the man’s face twisted into a snarl, darkness filling every line of his face.

She should feel fear, not a thrill. Yet, for a moment, it seemed he would carry her off past the sunset, and she knew she would not protest.

I have no plans to marry him, she almost said. I am running. He has no use for a bluestocking, I promise. No desire to marry Lady Highbrow—no one does, according to my father.

But then the man let her go and stepped back. “I see. Well, ye’re free to go now.” He looked away. “Nay one will stop ye.”

“Oh,” Helena said. She pressed her shaking, tingling hands together and tried not to notice how her legs were doing the same. “But…”

“Nay one will,” he said in a hard voice. “Ye’re safe. Go.”

He looked at her again, and from the way his jaw clenched, Helena read the clear meaning in his expression— before I change my mind.

For a moment, the daft and delirious side of her that had awoken with that kiss almost stepped forward, almost asked him to ask her to… what? Stay? Run away with this man she’d just met? For a kiss?

For a kiss that could set the whole world on fire, that could stir up the seas and shake the stars from the firmament…

“Thank you,” Helena said as she stepped back, pulling up her hood.

The man softly snorted, shaking his head as he glared at the sky.

“Truly, Sir. ‘Twas a grand first kiss.”

Helena was treated to a brief, startled look, his blue eye wide and heated, his posture suddenly curving toward her. But then she’d whirled around and was off running into the night.

I truly think I almost traded my entire future for that stolen kiss.