Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Juliet released a sigh against Rory’s neck, sending goose bumps cascading down his spine.
It was hard to escape the feeling that he was running out of time with her.
And it wasn’t through his body that he would achieve his desired end.
He needed the words.
But for now he had the dance as they moved in step, the music of the strings a bright accompaniment to the music in his heart.
He had Miss Juliet Windermere in his arms.
He had Miss Juliet Windermere sighing into his neck.
He had Miss Juliet Windermere gazing up at him with those eyes the clear green of emeralds as if he were the only man on Earth.
As if she were the only woman for him.
“You are magnificent.”
Those had been her words to him yesterday.
No one had ever said anything like that to him—or likely, believed it of him—not even himself.
Not until Juliet.
She believed him capable…magnificent.
And if she could believe it of him, he could be it.
It struck him that from the beginning they’d gone about the business of coming to know one another backwards.
He knew the feel of every line and curve of her body.
He knew precisely where to touch her—where to lick her…
where to nibble her—to send her pupils flaring and legs trembling with naked desire.
He knew how to bring her to the edge of release and tumble with her over it.
But he hadn’t known this. How she felt in his arms as she moved with the music of a waltz.
To touch her in this formal way, open to the eyes of an entire village, was new.
“There is so much I don’t know about you, Miss Windermere,” he found himself saying, a mild panic striking through him.
A secret smile lit about her mouth. “But so much you do.”
The music was winding to an end, and a sense of urgency took Rory over. Soon—within seconds—he would no longer have an excuse to touch her.
And that wouldn’t do.
“Come with me,” he said. He hoped he didn’t sound as desperate as he felt.
“Where?”
“There’s a place I want to show you.”
A hard light passed behind her eyes. “Is it a place Miss Dalhousie—”
He wasn’t about to let her finish the question. “A place you will love.”
The stubborn set of her jaw was at odds with the battle in her eyes, as if her mind were telling her to refuse him, but her curiosity wasn’t allowing her.
He searched for the correct combination of words, and of a sudden, he knew exactly what they were. “Another place we can dance.”
A heartbeat later, she nodded. Curiosity had won the day.
He had won the day.
The waltz chose that moment to end with a sweeping flourish of strings.
Rory held onto Juliet’s hand as he rushed her off the dancing floor before anyone could take note and through the doors that opened onto the terrace.
Their fingers twined, they stepped onto a path that led through a small stand of oaks.
In silence and trust, she followed as they cleared the woods and began a short ascent up a rocky sheep scramble, their only light that of a gibbous moon and winking stars in the crystalline sky.
They came to halt at the top, the vastness of the nightscape all around them. “What am I looking at?” she asked, her voice thick with awe.
“Our fairy glen.”
A narrow valley spread below them with grass that shone green muted with the slate-gray of night, stones of all shapes and sizes strewn about. All one had to do was look a little closer to see the rocks weren’t scattered about, but precisely arranged into the shape of a large spiral.
“This place is magical,” she whispered, as if not to disturb the magic.
“Aye.”
Her gaze flicked toward him. “I do love it.”
For an instant, his heart caught in his chest. I…do…love… A wild hope had surged that the sentence would end with a word different from it.
He gave himself a mental shake. He couldn’t think of that other word.
Not yet, at least.
If ever.
He cleared his throat. “There’s a fairy glen on the Isle of Skye, too.”
“Oh?”
“It’s considerably larger and more intricate.”
She nodded with understanding. “A place Scáthach might’ve known.”
“Aye.”
She turned so she faced him squarely. “Didn’t you lure me out here with the promise of a dance?”
“That I did, lass.”
He reached for her hand and slipped her elegant fingers through his considerably thicker ones.
Then he caught her at the small of her waist and pulled, her body swaying forward until she was fast against him, slender and soft against his bulkier form.
Their feet began moving, not in the steps of a waltz or a mazurka or any other dance that might be happening in the assembly rooms at this very moment.
But in a dance of their own making.
This dance was simply them beneath the stars, moving to the beat of their hearts…the only music the in and out of their breath…the faint susurration of a summer night’s breeze…the distant song of a nightingale.
Informal and intimate was this dance. No eyes upon them. Their eyes only for each other.
There were the intimacies of the body, and there was this—an intimacy that tapped a deeper well.
The intimacy he’d been seeking all along.
He’d sensed it thrumming beneath the other intimacies they’d shared, but hadn’t known how to unlock it.
Their moonlit dance finished, he released the small of her back, but held on to her hand, and led them to a grassy patch of turf at the edge of the hill. He shrugged off his evening coat and spread it flat, wide enough for both of them. He took a seat, hoping she would follow his lead.
She did.
Together, they sat in silence, shoulder to shoulder, and gazed upon the fairy glen below, the inky, twinkling sky meeting the horizon on the far side of the valley.
He’d bound this woman to him with his body, but that wasn’t enough.
It never had been.
He wanted her to be his.
Not for mere reasons of the body.
But for one deeper.
That of the heart.
“Not that I agree with Oliver Quincy very often,” he began.
Juliet’s head craned around to give him the full force of a horrified stare. Not the most auspicious beginning.
“Let us hope not,” she gasped.
Rory forged on. He had something to say. “Still, Quincy may have made an important point in all his chatter, before, of course, missing the point entirely.”
Juliet snorted. “As he is wont to do.” She playfully nudged his shoulder with hers. “You’ve got my curiosity fully aroused.”
What a choice of words. Here he was trying to form an intimacy deeper than the physical, and here was his physical—his aroused cock, namely—thinking of something deeper it could do.
“What important point did Oliver Quincy nearly make?” she asked.
“One about women.”
“Doubtful,” she said with absolute, dismissive finality.
“And men,” continued Rory.
He was making a hash of this attempt at deeper intimacy. Perhaps he should just kiss her. Perhaps it was simply that he was better at convincing bodies to be his than at convincing hearts and souls.
“And what insight does Oliver Quincy almost have about women and men?”
“That women need protection.”
Finally, he’d veered back on course.
Juliet scoffed. “I realize that I shall sound like the most spoiled lady in all the world when I say this, but I have never once in my life felt like I needed protection. Such is the privilege of my rank, wealth, and family situation.”
Family situation. Something about that phrasing struck Rory.
But he couldn’t let his point rest yet. “Not even from a man like—”
Her eyebrows crinkled together. “I hope you’re not considering finishing that sentence with the name Oliver Quincy.”
“Me.”
“You?” she asked. Her eyebrows released and shot toward the night sky.
“It does occur to me, yes.”
“I could never want or need protection from you.”
The way she spoke those words with such earnestness and sincerity sent a feeling skittering through him. Yet…
Family situation. He now understood why the phrase stuck. “Your parents would’ve protected you.”
She blinked, and the moment transformed. Gone was the disdain and humor, and in its stead was sincerity and openness. He stepped into that opening. “Do you ever miss them?”
She set her gaze upon the fairy glen, head tilted, pensive. “It’s not them, precisely, that I miss. I never knew my parents. Rather I have these ideas of them.”
He reclined back onto his elbows, hoping the relaxed position would invite more confidences. “How so?”
“After they perished in the carriage accident, I came to live with my aunt, uncle, and cousins when I was barely toddling on two legs. My first strong memories aren’t of my mother, but of Delilah.
” A wistful smile softened about her mouth.
“She and I never left one another’s sight for at least ten years.
But I do have other early memories—faint ones—like memories that are echoes of other memories.
I have a memory of my mother smiling at me, but I also have a portrait of her smiling and it’s the same smile, so I don’t know if the smile I recall was one given to me or a trick of my mind. ”
Rory didn’t hesitate. “It’s her smiling at you that you remember, Juliet. I’m sure of it.”
He wasn’t certain who needed it to be so more—her or him. He didn’t like to see the supremely confident Juliet Windermere doubt herself.
“In some ways,” she continued, “I’m very much like my Windermere cousins. But in others, I’m not. And, sometimes, I’ll find myself wondering if the ways I’m unlike them are the ways I’m like Mama and Papa. I’ll never know.”
The words Juliet was speaking to him were words she’d never told another living soul, he sensed. They were feelings that lived in her heart.
That she’d voiced them to him was a gift—one he wasn’t about to take lightly.
She didn’t think she needed a man to protect her in the world—and maybe she was right.
But he did know what sort of man she did need.
One to confide in.
One to hear the secrets of her heart.
One who would protect those.
And she had that man.
Him.
On instinct, he reached out and caressed the side of her face, his fingers sliding around to the nape of her neck.
He tugged her toward him, and she swayed with the movement.
Only a brief instant of hesitation—nay, recognition—and her lips were touching his and a now-familiar spark lit through him.
The sort of spark that turned into a full conflagration when he deepened the kiss.
It was all the physical sensation of the kiss—the feel of her soft mouth…
the sweet taste of her…her specific heat—but it was more than the physical as she moved forward and needed him to steady her so she didn’t tumble over him.
But that was just it. Her naked wanting. She didn’t try to suppress or mask her desire. This honesty was impossible to resist. He would give her what she wanted every time she asked for it.
A feeling of possession streaked through him.
The gift of her was for him only.
Her mouth on his, her fingers found his cravat and made short work of the knot. Then her hands were beneath his shirt, roving across his chest. He gave in to the pleasure of being caressed by her as she gave in to the pleasure of caressing him. She liked all his muscles.
Clearly bent on ravishing him here and now, her hands trailed lower, and anticipation coiled inside him. If he wasn’t very mistaken, she was about to… Her fingers grazed across the front of his trousers, across his hard cock that was full to bursting, pulling a long, animal groan from him.
She smiled against his mouth and increased the pressure, rubbing up and down his length. “Juliet,” he rumbled.
“I like it when you say my name like that,” she spoke into the intimate space between their mouths.
“Like a man on the brink of perishing from desire?”
“Yes.”
That yes said so much more than yes. “Shall I pull my name from you in the way I like?”
Her pupils flared. “Please,” she implored.
She liked it when he was wicked with her. From the look in her eyes, he already knew her sweet cunny was wet and throbbing and aching for his touch.
In a smooth, efficient motion he secured her by the waist and flipped them around so she was lying flat on his jacket, back supported by springy green turf. He removed one of her gloves, then the other, before taking one of her wrists, then the other, in one hand. “Do you trust me?”
Alongside the desire in her clear emerald gaze twined that other emotion.
Trust.
“Yes.”