Chapter 8 #3
“I’m sorry, Augusta. Post-Williams should be horsewhipped, and regardless of your circumstances, the man betrayed your trust.”
“I don’t dwell on it.”
But it ate at her. He could see that. That she’d given herself to someone unworthy and gotten nothing, not children, not pleasure, not a ring, nothing in exchange for her trust corroded her soul.
“Augusta…” He leaned forward so his face was beside hers, his left cheek to her right. “I wish…”
She moved only an inch, to tilt her head closer to his so they touched at the temples. “Hush. There’s nothing to say. I wish too.”
They remained in that odd, touching nonembrace for a long moment, until thunder rumbled off to the east. Ian raised head and saw the clouds were moving in.
“Time to leave, Augusta. I didn’t bring rain gear, and the footing can be treacherous if we get a downpour.”
She nodded, got up, and helped him fold the plaid and repack the rucksack. When she started back down the path, Ian didn’t even try to take her hand. His misery—for her and for himself—was too great.
· · ·
A man of parts and sophistication didn’t quail when his best-laid plans met with less than complete success.
The baron shifted a little in his covert, listening with one ear for the approach of Augusta and her escort from the ramparts.
Crouching behind boulders was hardly how the baron wanted to spend his morning, but a man of greatness was capable of sacrifice and dedication when the end was worthy.
The cat drinking the cream had been pure bad luck. Poison was discreet, true, but inaccurate dosing was a hazard, and the necessary stealth meant results couldn’t be guaranteed.
And the bull had been a spur-of-the-moment inspiration, more an intent to maim than kill, because an invalid could easily be finished off if injured internally.
But time was wasting. A certain mistress would be getting restless, and so another improvisation was called for.
The earl had mentioned—very quietly—to the middle brother to make excuses for him at breakfast because his lordship would be showing Miss Augusta up to the tor, and opportunity had knocked loudly.
This was a certain indication that fate favored the baron’s plans.
The earl and the spinster had argued their way up the mountain, from the bits and snatches Altsax had overheard dodging along behind them. The earl was a doting escort, which boded well for Genie’s future.
Except very possibly, Genie would end up marrying the middle brother.
Alas, needs must. She seemed attracted to the man, so no loss if the current earl was sacrificed on the altar of the baron’s plans as long as Genie bagged her title and the Daniels’s family fortune remained safely ensconced in the baron’s capable hands.
In any case, one oversized Scotsman with pretensions to decency was no loss at all.
Altsax cocked an ear, hearing the crunch of footsteps on the rock-strewn switchback above him. Augusta had argued the earl to silence, poor man. The death of such a woman ought not even be mourned.
· · ·
Augusta tried not to think, not to feel as she made her way down the hillside. Going down was in some ways trickier than coming up—a metaphor for having said too much and implied even more with the man moving along in front of her.
She could love him. There ought to be some consolation in knowing she was capable of loving a man, any man. She had wondered, after all.
The earl turned to speak over his shoulder. “Watch your step. The footing is loose and tricky here. I’ve landed on my backside more than once.”
Watch your step. Going up, it had been easy to ignore the sheer drop on her left, the way the track was carved out of the hillside so the slope rose on her right almost like a wall. A shower of pebbles rained down from above, causing Ian to stop and turn to her.
“Best we keep moving.” He held out a hand, but Augusta hesitated one instant before allowing herself the pleasure and torment of joining her hand to his.
In that instant, several things happened in rapid succession. Another shower of pebbles rained down, this one also containing more sizable rocks. Instinctively, Augusta ducked her head and shrank back against the slope beside her.
Then a peculiar, dull thud from above. Her first thought was thunder, except the sound had a different resonance than thunder, made the earth shake in a different way.
Ian shouting her name.
The impact of his body against hers as he plastered them to the vertical wall of earth and rock.
The feel of him surrounding her, solid rock at her back, solid man everywhere else, as earth, pebbles, and rocks went bouncing down the slope around them.
“Don’t move.” His voice, a harsh rasp right in her ear.
And the feel of him so close to her they were breathing as one, almost as if they’d just been erotically intimate.
“Are you all right? Augusta, talk to me.” Still, he didn’t move, and the warmth of him contrasted starkly to the chill and shock moving through Augusta’s body.
“I am unharmed.” Her voice was calm, detached even. “You?”
“The blanket in the rucksack spared me the worst of it.”
She ought to be saying prayers of thanksgiving. She should be so grateful they hadn’t been killed she could think of nothing else. Though what would a life of ought-to-be and should-be get her, but more years, more decades tending her chickens in Oxfordshire?
She kissed him. Found his mouth with hers and anchored her hand in his thick, silky hair to keep him from turning his head.
A young girl purporting to be a wealthy heiress got kissed from time to time—Augusta wasn’t a complete tyro—but kissing Ian mattered.
This kiss had no pretensions to it about comfort, goodwill, incipient familial affection, or anything else polite and excusable.
She was desperate for him to kiss her back.
He growled, and she panicked, twining an arm around his waist to prevent him from leaving her. She drew back only long enough to pant two words.
“Please, Ian…”
“Augusta, love, we shouldn’t…”
And then she was giving thanks after all. His mouth settled on hers gently but firmly. Her desperation became something else entirely, and she realized she was going to be well and thoroughly kissed by a man who knew exactly how to go about it.
His mouth explored hers, moved over her lips slowly, like a weather front passing over the land, then moving on. She felt his nose grazing over her cheeks and forehead, her eyebrows, her jaw. She’d never been nose-kissed before, and it made her insides flutter wonderfully.
Then he was back to business, his mouth on hers, his tongue greeting her lips.
“Open, love.”
This was novel and more wonderful still, to taste the tea-sweet essence of him, to feel a part of him making its way delicately into her awareness and into her body.
Between them, she felt a rising ridge of male flesh against her belly, felt it pressing against her in a way that aroused wanting in places female and secret. She moved into him, felt his hand cradling the back of her head, felt sealed to him and still not as close as she wanted to be.
“Kiss me back, Augusta.”
His voice, low, harsh, and so very male, sent the wanting out from her depths to her breasts and her mouth and even the palms of her hands.
She used her tongue as he had, to trace the contours of his mouth, to learn the taste of him, to join them in a way that felt so right, she wanted to weep with the beauty of it.
And still, it was not enough. Augusta kept one arm lashed around Ian’s waist and used her free hand to stroke the wool of his kilt.
The fabric was smooth and soft beneath her palm, his hip a lean, elegant curve.
He widened his stance, and Augusta realized that a man in a kilt was a man who might be intimately explored.
She slid the kilt up along his thigh, bunching the material between their bodies.
His mouth went still on hers while Augusta raised the fabric higher.
The flesh of his erect member was hot. She drew the backs of her fingers up his length, thanking God and Scottish national pride for a fashion that allowed a woman to indulge in such daring.
Her almost-betrothed had not allowed her to touch him. In their furtive joinings, Augusta had been told to hold up her skirts, to be quiet, to be patient for just another minute. The only thing she’d desired was for him to finish before somebody came upon them.
With Ian, her curiosity and desire were going to set the hillside on fire. She wrapped her fingers around his shaft, wanting to tear the kilt off his body.
Only to go still as she felt a breeze on the back of her calf.
Yes. A thousand times, yes.
“So verra soft, ye are,” Ian murmured against her neck. He bunched up her dress another few inches, and more cooling air hit Augusta’s legs. She’d worn drawers, of course, but they were thin with age and many washings, little protection against Highland breezes or lapses in sanity.
“Ian, please—”
“Wheesht, love.” He drew his hand up the back of her thigh, hiking her leg around his hip. Augusta had never hated fabric more—the thick wool of his kilt, her cotton drawers, her petticoat, her dress—all of it was so much frustration.
And none of it, apparently, enough to daunt Ian.
Augusta felt the brush of his fingers across the slit in her drawers, felt the brush of his nose across her cheek.
“Don’t you dare stop, Ian MacGreg—”
His mouth settled over hers, a lazy, knowing mouth full of kisses and mischief. Wonderful, glorious mischief.
“Just this once,” he whispered. “Ya ken?”
She nodded, knowing exactly what he was demanding. Through all the fabric bunched between them, she found him with her fingers again. “I understand.” He was going to permit them a lapse—one lapse here on the hillside, while the clouds tried to crowd all that bright, brilliant sunshine away.