Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Two days later
Rory stood at the front doorstep of Dalhousie Manor and tucked a skeleton key inside his trouser pocket. His informal visit to the kitchens had met with success.
But that was for later.
After his night with Juliet, he’d settled on a strategy.
Sometimes in the absence of a source of burning desire, one’s desire increased.
So, he’d stayed away in the absurd hope that would give her a few thoughts.
Two days later, here he was—the one unable to stay away a day longer.
It called into question which of them his strategy had done its work upon.
He adjusted his cravat, only just resisting the impulse to sniff his armpits. He hadn’t been this nervous at the prospect of seeing a lass since his green youth. He needed to be at his best. After all, he was here to convince a very strong-minded lass to be his.
Satisfied that all about him was in order and he didn’t reek of farm toil, he lifted the door knocker and gave it three firm raps. A few seconds later, the door swung open, and Rivers appeared, his cheeks flushed and his eyes harried.
“Is all well, Rivers?” asked Rory, alarmed.
“All is as it’s been these last seven or so days, milord,” said the aged butler, standing aside to allow Rory entry.
Seven or so days.
Since the arrival of Juliet and Delilah.
“Ah,” said Rory, handing Rivers his greatcoat, a garment necessary in Scotland—even in spring, depending on the mood of the day.
He crossed the entry corridor that opened into the receiving hall and found a room transformed.
It was now a proper theater, with the stage and frame completely finished and twenty or so chairs arrayed before it for the audience.
Greenery had been brought in and arranged about the room. Rory sensed Juliet’s talented hand.
Speaking of Juliet…
She, along with Delilah, and the whole host of Dalhousie brothers were gathered about the stage area. No one noticed his presence at the back as everyone concentrated upon individual tasks—some engaged in painting a backdrop, others pacing about the boards rehearsing their lines.
But it was Juliet and Delilah who held his gaze as they faced one another in the center of the stage, looking suspiciously like combatants.
Perhaps they were enacting a scene… But, no, Delilah looked decidedly put out with her cousin, while Juliet wore her customary cool, impossible-to-penetrate smile.
Rory had been the recipient of that smile more times than he could count. In fact, until very recently, he’d thought that was simply her smile. But now he knew it for what it was: a defense fortified by a will as strong as steel.
And Delilah knew it, hence her brow creased in utter frustration.
“The fact is, Delilah,” said Juliet, “there is no harm in it.”
“No harm in it?” huffed Delilah. “Those are Shakespeare’s words.” A beat. “Shakespeare.”
Clearly, Juliet was accustomed to passionate defenses from her cousin, for she continued, undeterred. “But it was Shakespeare who understood that language evolved. He himself evolved it on many occasions.”
Delilah remained utterly unmoved by Juliet’s argument.
Rory had no idea who would win the row, but it hardly mattered to him. He only had eyes for Juliet—her quiet boldness, her confidence, not to mention her beauty.
This bold, confident, beautiful woman had once held a secret infatuation for him.
And he hadn’t noticed.
Well, he was noticing now, though he might need to have his sight tested and take up spectacles, for how hadn’t he seen her?
“Greetings and salutations, Lord Kilmuir,” Oliver Quincy called out from his self-appointed place of overseeing the painting of the backdrop. “Are you come to engage in our amateur theatrics?”
In unison, Juliet and Delilah’s heads whipped around.
But it was one pair of eyes the clear, bright green of spring buds that caught his. Surprise shone in those depths. Curiosity, too. And something else…
Pique.
If he wasn’t very much mistaken, Juliet was irritated.
With him.
The possibility existed that his plan of staying away for a few days might’ve been a bad one.
“And where have you been?” demanded Delilah. “It’s been four days since you’ve shown your face for rehearsal.”
Rory ripped his gaze away from Juliet when every instinct demanded he stride directly to her, toss her over his shoulder, and make right whatever had gone wrong with her. “What with all the rain and piglets and my dog—”
Juliet snapped to. “Clootie? What about her?”
“It was something she ate. She’s herself again.”
But Juliet didn’t seem yet satisfied. “You’re keeping an eye?”
“Aye,” he reassured her. How could he not be half in love with a woman who harbored a soft spot for his shaggy beast of a dog?
“Have you even looked at your lines, Rory?” asked Delilah.
“I wasn’t aware I had any,” he said. “Wasn’t I to be a carpenter?”
Delilah gave a tiny roar of frustration. “I suppose you can be Charles.”
Rory shrugged. It made not an iota of difference to him.
“I thought I was to be Charles,” piped up Quincy.
Delilah flicked an indifferent wrist. “You can be Hymen.”
Quincy’s chest puffed out. “The god of marriage suits me perfectly well. Am I to take a dual meaning from that bit of casting, Lady Delilah?” he asked, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“Pardon?” Delilah looked utterly nonplussed.
“That perhaps you have marriage on your mind of late?” The man winked.
Delilah met Quincy’s eye directly and held it. “No.”
A throat cleared behind Rory. Ravensworth had chosen this moment to make his presence known.
Rory nodded in greeting for his old friend. “Sebastian.”
“Rory,” said Ravensworth before addressing the room at large, and Delilah in particular. “I see a problem with the casting of Charles.”
“You would,” muttered Delilah who had taken a sudden interest in her copy of the play.
“If I’m not mistaken,” he continued, “Charles is the wrestler in As You Like It.”
“Mm-hmm,” was all he got from Delilah.
“Who is defeated by Orlando.”
She tapped her copy of the play. “It’s all here in black and white.”
“And James Dalhousie is to play Orlando?”
James stepped away from the backdrop he’d been painting, brush still in hand. “I am.”
Ravensworth pointed toward James. “So he is supposed to defeat him?” He was now pointing at Rory, who had a good six inches and three stone on the lad.
“It does rather defy belief,” said Juliet, ever the voice of reason.
Except when she was begging for his touch.
Rory gave himself a mental shake. This wasn’t the time or place.
Later.
Delilah’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “It’s a play. It’s all about setting reality away from the world of the stage, isn’t it?”
Of everyone, James remained unmoved. “I could take him anyway.”
Rory realized the lad was talking about him. A mouthy lad, to be sure.
Ravensworth barked a hearty laugh. “I don’t suggest putting it to the test any time soon, old boy.”
A few chuckles sounded around the stage. James’ fists clenched at his sides. The boy certainly felt the need to prove his mettle. Rory remembered that particular masculine feeling at his age.
Well, the lad would figure it out. Rory had more important matters on his mind—like Miss Juliet Windermere.
Right.
He found himself striding up the center aisle, stopping only when he reached the front of the stage. He held out his hand. “Miss Windermere, would you like to practice our lines together?”
Her straight black eyebrows lifted with surprise. But he could see no help for it. He needed to get her alone, and the direct seemed the only way.
She opened her mouth, but it was a flabbergasted Delilah who answered, “But Charles the Wrestler and Celia don’t speak any lines together.”
The statement of the obvious landed in the room like a solid object.
“Perhaps,” began Juliet, her unflinching gaze fixed upon him, “you’ve left your copy of the play at Baile ìm and would like to borrow my copy?”
“Erm, aye.”
She took his hand and allowed him to help her descend. “My copy is in the small drawing room. I’ll show you your lines.”
And with that, Rory followed Juliet away from the chaos of a stage production in rehearsal, his gaze having a devil of a time being gentlemanly and staying elevated at her shoulders.
The narrow valley where her shoulder blades met beckoned the eye down the long length of her spine to the subtle sway of her hips—and a little lower, well, that would be her sweet, round arse, wouldn’t it?
Two days had been too long without this view.
A few right turns had them out of the receiving hall. Knowing the house as he did, Rory saw that Juliet was, indeed, leading him to the small drawing room.
He had other ideas.
On impulse, he reached out and caught her hand from behind. She cast a questioning glance over her shoulder. “What are you—”
He gave his head a silencing shake and twined his fingers through hers. “Come with me.”
She looked as if she might resist, then she let him draw abreast with her. The question hadn’t left her eye, but she hadn’t pulled her hand away from his either. He liked the feel of her hand in his. Slender and elegant, like the rest of her.
But it was more than the humid press of her skin against his.
It was the trust given.
Down one corridor, then another, he led her, the silence between them easy. He liked that. But it also held a tension.
He might like that better.
Without tension, there couldn’t be release.
Soon, they were walking through a disused wing of the manor, the only sound the muted fall of their footsteps across second-best, Aubusson rugs.
“We played hide-and-seek here as children,” she observed on a laugh. “When you and Archie could be convinced to actually seek us.”
“You remember.” He wasn’t sure her memory cast him in the most heroic light.
“I once stayed hidden in the darkest corner of a wardrobe for an entire hour before I realized no one was coming to find me.”
“I hope you don’t still hold it against me.”
She gave a little shrug. “It was a good plan to rid yourselves of annoying little sisters for an afternoon.”
“Perhaps not my best moment.”
Her eyes sparked with mischief. “Perhaps you could make it up to me.”
That spark of mischief sent a lightning bolt of desire zigzagging through him. “Perhaps.”
Once they reached the door he sought, he stood aside and allowed her to enter first. For a room that saw guests perhaps twice a year, it was clean and bright, not a mote of dust floating on the air.
He closed the door and retrieved the skeleton key from his trouser pocket.
Juliet’s brow lifted. “Is this a kidnapping?”
He inserted the key into the lock, but didn’t twist. “I’ll leave it to you to turn the lock, if that’s what you choose.”
A dark light flashed behind her eyes. Desire. The idea sent a responding feeling coursing through him. Perhaps, even now, her thighs were pressing together beneath her skirts…
Exactly how he wanted her.
“I always did like this little study,” she said, glancing around.
Rory stepped to the bow window. “For its view overlooking the kitchen garden?”
Juliet smiled. “For exactly that reason. The kitchen is the beating heart of every estate.”
“Most ladies prefer a window that sweeps out to a picturesque view.”
“I’m not most ladies.”
“Don’t I know it?”
She might’ve blushed, but he couldn’t be sure as she took a seat on the saffron damask chaise longue. He remained standing at the window, propping a shoulder against the frame.
Her head canted with curiosity. “How did you come by the key to this room?”
“Mrs. Rush.”
“The housekeeper gave you the key?” she asked, incredulous.
“Well, I happen to know where she keeps the keys to all the rooms, and she finds the dimple in my left cheek charming.” He shrugged.
“The one when you half smile.”
“Aye.” He gave her just the smile. “She won’t notice the key has taken a walk for an hour or so.”
Juliet worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “Is there a reason you’ve brought me to this particular study? You couldn’t have known it was my favorite.”
In fact, he’d brought her to this room for two reasons. It was in the least used wing of the manor and…
It had a comfortable chaise longue.
“Perhaps,” she continued, “you brought me here because it’s also Miss Dalhousie’s favorite room and you thought it would provide me inspiration?”
Rory snorted. She was toying with him, surely. But he could see from the seriousness in her eyes that she wasn’t.
“Erm, perhaps,” was the best response he could give that wasn’t an outright lie.
Juliet’s gaze narrowed skeptically. “I’ve been writing the poem.”
Ah, this was better. “And how is Scáthach faring today?”
Juliet shook her head. “Not that poem. The other one. The one for Miss Dalhousie.”
Oh.
“The one I’m writing to woo her.”
He shifted against the wall. “Of course.”
“I took quite a bit of inspiration from the last place you showed me.”
Rory’s eyebrows gathered in a bunch. “The inside of my bedroom?”
A beat of time laden with the events that had transpired between them in his bedroom two nights ago loped past.
“The waterfall,” she said, at last.
Of course.
“Which does bring me to a point of curiosity,” she continued. “I’ve never seen Miss Dalhousie leave the indoors, except to take a carriage ride. She seems quite content to be within doors. All the time.”
Rory had no interest in—or intention of—discussing Miss Dalhousie. It wasn’t for that purpose that he’d brought Juliet to this room. But he couldn’t very well tell her as much.
Not with his words, at least.
He shrugged off his morning coat and tossed it toward the nearest chair.
A little frown pulled at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes followed as he unbuttoned his dove-gray waistcoat. “What, precisely, are you doing?” she asked, a pettish note to the question.
He was digging beneath her skin.
Good.
“It’s a bit close in here, don’t you think?”
She drew herself fully upright, all prim cool. “Not at all.”
“No?” He loosened his cravat and let it—and his shirt—fall open. “You look a trifle flushed yourself.”
“Not at all.”
The woman with every word in the English language at her command was repeating herself.
Another promising development.
An unconscious hand swiped across her neck and put the lie to her words.
She was flushed, indeed.
And he knew for fact what he’d only guessed at two nights ago.
She couldn’t resist him.
Which left him with only one more thing to say…
“Are you going to turn the key in the lock?”