Chapter Seven
Violet wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or worried that Ewan had decided to release her from the dungeon and take her up to his nice warm solar.
But once she saw the fire, she didn’t care.
She rushed toward it with her hands outstretched and shuddered with pleasure as delicious heat seeped into her bones.
He poured some amber liquid in a crystal glass and thrust it at her. “Drink this.” His voice was gruff.
“What is it?”
“Whisky. It will warm you.”
She took a sip and grimaced.
He poured himself a dram and tossed it back, then poured another, sat in one of the chairs by the fire and nursed it as he studied her.
She disliked his intensity. It made her self-conscious.
But she sloughed the feeling off and adopted a mantle of insouciance.
At least she hoped it was insouciance. The whisky helped tremendously.
She sashayed to the other chair and sat as well, then dragged it closer to the fire and poked her feet toward the licking flames.
He stared at her feet and frowned. She couldn’t help looking down as well, and she grimaced. No wonder they’d captured his attention.
Her delicate slippers had finally fallen apart and she’d spent the better part of the day with bare feet. They were filthy.
He stood and crossed to the dresser, picked up his water pitcher and poured it into a bucket, which he set on the hearth.
“What are you doing?”
He glanced at her. “Warming water. Those feet need to be washed before you crawl into my bed.”
An incongruous laugh bubbled from her lips. “I’m not crawling into your bed.”
A storm cloud lowered his brow. “You most certainly are.”
She took another sip of her whisky. Then another. “I shall not. I already escaped that fate twice today, thank you very much.”
Ooh. He didn’t like that. The storm cloud darkened more. For some reason it amused her.
“I am no’ Craig. I do no’ force women.”
“Oh pish.” She waggled her fingers at him. “You’ve bullied me plenty since you kidnapped me.”
“I dinna kidnap you! That was Callum MacAllister.”
“You brought me here. You held me prisoner. You made me slave in your kitchens.” She leaned forward and hissed, “You locked me in your dungeon.”
“It wasna like that and you know it.” But it was. It was exactly like that. He knew it too. She could tell by the red tide creeping up his cheeks.
A curl of warm elation settled in the region of her chest. She swung her feet—in this chair they didn’t touch the floor. “I can’t imagine what Edward will have to say about all this.”
It was comical, the way he blanched. Spewed his drink. Sputtered. “Edward? Who the hell is Edward? Is he your beau?”
Really. There was no need for him to snarl the word.
“Edward is my cousin. He’s a duke. And a very powerful man. He will very likely have you hanged. That’s what they do to men who kidnap girls, you know.”
“I dinna kidnap you.”
“I doubt it will make any difference.”
He glared at the fire and tossed back his drink. “Probably not,” he grumbled.
They sat in pleasant silence for a minute or two.
Well, it was pleasant for her. She was enjoying his discomfort.
Perhaps it was the whisky that made her bold, or the fact that she’d been so miserable when the evening ended and was not so miserable now, but when the question that had been plaguing her rose in her mind, she asked it.
“Ewan, why do you hate me so?” She was glad her tone was merely quizzical and not melodramatic, as it probably would have been had she not downed half her drink.
He blanched again. “I doona hate you.” He got up and poured another dram. And then brought the decanter back to the little table between them.
“You do. You hate me.” She studied him from beneath her lashes. “I wish I knew why. When I was a girl I...I thought you liked me.”
He rubbed his palm over his face. “I did like you.”
“Then what changed?”
He didn’t answer so she asked the other question burning in her breast. “Why did you leave Browning?”
His head snapped up. The feral look in his eyes gave her a start. “I dinna leave.”
“You did. One day you were there...and then you were gone.”
“I dinna leave. I was banished.”
Her heart thudded. “What?”
“My mother was turned out. Let go. Without references.”
All the blood drained from her face. For someone of the servant class, that was akin to utter disaster. They would have been destitute with no home, no money, nothing. “Why?”
“You know why.”
“I do not.”
He studied her in silence. When he spoke, his voice was a low thrum. “Why did you tell your father about that kiss?”
She wrinkled her brow. Tell her father? That Ewan St. Andrews, the lowly groom, the upstairs maid’s son, had kissed her? He would have flayed him on the spot. “I didn’t.”
“Really?” He said it as a question but he wasn’t asking. He stood and paced, raking his hair as he’d always done when he was upset. It made him seem young again. A boy again. Hers again.
“I told no one.”
“Not even a little confession to your Abigail? Not a whispered brag to a friend about the silly, stupid groom who doted on you?”
“You were neither silly nor stupid. You saved my life, Ewan. You were my hero. I would never have betrayed you like that.”
He whirled on her. “Then how did he know? How did he know everything? Why did he drag me into his study and strip off my shirt and cane me bloody?”
Pain swelled in her chest. Tears pricked her lids. She ached for that boy. “Oh, Ewan...”
“He called my mother into the room and made her watch as he beat me. As he called me, and her, all manner of foul names. And then when he was done, he delivered the coup de grace. He dismissed her.” Ewan stormed to her side and boxed her into the chair with one brawny arm on either side of her. “She was with child, Violet.”
“Oh no.”
“Yes. Horace Wyeth sent us out, literally, into the cold. With nothing.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Your father was a bastard.”
Violet could not respond. She knew it was the truth. Her father had been—and died—a less than honorable man. She brushed the tears from her cheeks. She did it surreptitiously because she didn’t want him to notice. “Where did you go? Did you have family?”
“No one.” He stalked to the fire and checked the temperature of the water in the bucket, swishing it with his fingers.
“Her people tossed her out when she turned up pregnant with me. She never spoke of them. We nearly starved that winter...” He broke off and stared into the flames.
He recovered himself with a sharp shake of his head.
He picked up the bucket, a sponge and a cloth and knelt before her.
“You doona want to hear the rest of this story, Violet. And frankly, I’m weary of telling it.
” He dipped the sponge into the bucket and picked up her foot, scrubbing harshly.
She allowed it. He needed something. Needed this.
By the time he’d finished the first and toweled it dry, he had calmed, at least a bit.
He was gentler with the other. When he finished, he dropped the sponge in the bucket and started to stand but she forestalled him with a palm to his cheek.
He froze at her touch. Closed his eyes. Leaned into it perhaps.
“I am so sorry, Ewan. But I swear to you, I never told.”
“Then how did he know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone saw us.”
She could tell by his reaction he had never considered the possibility.
Granted, they’d been in the woods, in a shadowy copse.
But they could have been seen. It broke her heart he’d simply assumed she had been so silly, so feckless.
That she’d blabbed about something as sweet and sacred as that kiss had been to her.
“I’ve never told a soul.”
“No one?”
“No one.”
Their gazes tangled. “I blamed you.” His voice broke. “I blamed you for years.”
She straightened his hair, fixing the damage he had wrought. “It’s all right.”
“No. It’s not. I should have known.”
She silenced him with a finger to his lips. “It’s done. Let it go.”
––––––––
Let it go.
Something he’d not been able to do for sixteen years. The prospect of releasing this burden, being free of its weight, tantalized him.
She tantalized him.
God. He wanted her.
He shouldn’t kiss her now. Even though she stroked his cheek in an enticing caress. Even though she looked at him as though she was willing to forgive him all. Even though her pink tongue darted out to dab at rosy lips.
He was betrothed to Kaitlin.
He was supposed to marry Kaitlin. He needed to marry Kaitlin. To buy the cachet, the entrée into the ton he needed to secure Sophia’s future.
Seducing his bride’s best friend was hardly good form.
He shouldn’t kiss her.
He rose up on his knees and leaned into her. Wrapped his arms around her and tugged her closer. Her eyes flared. A light he knew well and coveted. Adoration, trust, arousal.
He shouldn’t kiss her. He shouldn’t.
But he didn’t. She kissed him. She dipped her head and brushed her soft, sweet lips over his, suckling, nibbling his lower lip, enflaming him. And he was lost.
He yanked her fully into his arms and seated his palm at the back of her head and sealed his mouth on hers. He twisted to the side, pulling her from the chair and settling her on the thick Aubusson carpet before the fire.
She whimpered but it hovered on a sigh. She found the loose ends of his shirt. Her hands crawled up his back beneath it, scoring his flesh with their tender touch. He shuddered and deepened the kiss, questing.
God above. She tasted like honey and whisky and woman.
He couldn’t get enough. Unable to resist, he let his kisses trail over her cheek to her ear.
He sucked her lobe, which caused her to wriggle deliciously beneath him.
His cock, already hard, already ready, throbbed.
He nudged it into the softness of her belly, mimicking what he would like to do, what he would do.