Chapter 5 #2
Ah, he was making light of her. “You want me to say ‘love’ so you can then mock me?” She should have known better. “Forget I said anything,” she muttered.
His firm lips tipped up at the right corner. “I don’t believe I will, ma petite.”
Jeremy folded his arms across his big, broad chest; a defined ridge of muscles rippled and strained against his royal-blue wool jacket, trimmed along the lapels and cuffs with rich black velvet.
The sight of him—pure masculine strength and beauty—held her frozen.
Another glint entered his eyes, this one the cocksure arrogance of a man who’d noted her interest.
When faced with the choice of him addressing her mortifyingly frank appreciation or giving the other embarrassing truth, Linnie opted for the latter. “My family settled on a husband for me.”
“Ah, the whole you-want-a-choice business,” he said. “Your entire family agreed on a husband for you?”
She gave a terse nod.
“For a family who prides itself on love matches, this is certainly a first,” he drawled.
Aye. It felt nice to be of a shared opinion with him. And suddenly, just as he’d predicted, everything came pouring out. “I am so tired of it all.”
“That is a great deal to be—”
She glowered him into silence. Newly surly Jeremy or not, she had no patience for his perversity. “After Myrtle got left behind and Cassia stowed away and Brone eloped and Dallin defied a duke to marry for love and Ar—”
Jeremy’s eyes thinned on her.
Linnie opted to leave off that last one about his archenemy. “Are you wondering what I realized?”
His droll grin said he knew precisely what she’d done there. “Do tell, love?”
“Each of them took control of their lives and fates. They did something.”
“Myrtle got left behind.”
“Do not focus on Myrtle.” She wrinkled her nose. “Either way, you are missing the point.”
“The point being?”
“They made choices, Jeremy.” Linnie brought her hand slashing down. “They tired of waiting for life to happen. They chose: to run away or defy a duke in the name of love or—”
“Get left behind, like Myrtle?”
Linnie flicked him in the forehead.
“Ouch.”
Linnie froze, locked in on where she’d hit him.
Oh, God. These scars were not ones made by blades, as the papers had purported and the gossips whispered.
He’d been burnt.
Jeremy’s biting drawl snapped her from those musings he’d so hate. “And you’ve been waiting for life to happen?”
I’ve been waiting for you . . .
Linnie forced a smile when her heart only felt heavy. “I believe that in the McQuoid-Smith family, there are two groups.” She held up her left hand. “The first: the doers and seers. They are the ones who don’t let life pull them along, but instead seek out their destiny.”
“The other?” he asked, sounding bored.
Linnie popped her right palm up. “The lost ones. Those who become lost in the commotion.”
“And that is you.”
Linnie glared.
Jeremy lifted his palms. “Mine was a question.”
Linnie believed that as much as she believed the sky to be green. She chose not to take the bait. “I’m tired of being questioned. I’m seen as the flighty one, as are Cassia and Meghan.”
“Yes, but in fairness, Cassia is flighty.”
Her lips twitched. “Stop it.”
“Let me ask you, Linnie. Is it that they haven’t trusted you to make choices?” He crossed his arms while observing her. “Or is it more that you don’t trust yourself to make them on your own?”
Linnie started. “I . . .” She shook her head. “I trust myself.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
Unnerved, she shook her head. She’d not held herself back.
In the other room, where Jeremy’s company for the evening now kept company with Cousin Arran, desire-filled shrieks and pleas rent the air.
Oh, God help me.
“Imagine you are free to make whatever choice you want, Linnie. What do you want from life? What do you want to do and see?”
Linnie drew back.
He was the only person who’d ever put that question to her. Neither her favorite cousins nor her sisters. Not her mother. No one.
Why, she hadn’t even really asked it of herself. Aye, she’d always wanted Jeremy to be her husband, but . . . beyond him, she’d not considered until now.
“I . . .” Linnie hesitated. “I believe I have the McQuoid-Smith wanderlust blood. I find myself envying you, Arran, Cassia.” She stole a peek, expecting to find him drolly mocking.
He wore a serious expression. “Then do that, love.”
A lusty cry split the quiet and ended the moment.
“Very well. I take it you have your acts of rebellion against the McQuoids already planned out.” Jeremy spoke quickly, and she knew he’d deny it if so accused, but that he did so to spare her from the horror further unfolding over there.
“In fact, I do,” she confirmed with a pleased little nod. She dampened her lips. “The first . . .”
His gaze flew to her mouth. Heat blazed in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely, but he did so in that desirous way he’d spoken when he’d mistaken her for someone else.
Linnie touched her neck. “Following the last Official McQuoid-Smith Meeting, they decided to invite someone into our holiday traditions, and I’ve withheld my support and issued a challenge of my own.”
“This sounds very anti-McQuoid and very naughty.”
His playful repartee played havoc with her pulse.
“I will deny it to my dying day, Jeremy,” she solemnly swore.
“This I must hear.”
“I don’t want this stranger with us.” As my husband. “In our home. Not when you belong there. I’m attempting to have my family make amends with you and invite you back into our fold.”
Silence filled the air, made even thicker by the muffled sounds of lovemaking next door.
He stared at her. “Me?”
She nodded eagerly. “You are a part of the McQuoid-Smiths, Jeremy . . .”
His expression turned so cold it froze the rest of the words on her lips. “I do not want to be part of the McQuoids. I’d rather rot in hell for all time.”
“Jeremy, I am on your si—”
“I neither want nor need you to be on my side,” he hissed. “Just as I don’t want to be some prop in your girlish show of rebellion.”
Linnie drew back. “That’s not what this is.”
“What is number two?” he gritted out.
She hesitated.
Cursing, Jeremy snapped. “What is number t—”
“They have invited Lord Culross to dine.”
His body tensed, and then he released a cold, hateful laugh. “Your future husband is—”
Linnie summarily rejected that opinion. “He is not my future husband.”
“The new honorary member of the McQuoids.” He sneered. “The man who’s taken my place is none other than Culross?”
“No one could take your place,” she whispered.
“Ah.” He spoke slowly, egging her on. “Now it begins to make sense.”
“What does?”
Pointedly, he dipped his gaze.
From over Jeremy’s broad shoulders, Linnie caught a glimpse of her mussed gown and even messier tangle of curls about her waist in the mirror.
She blushed.
“That is why you are out here giving yourself to a stranger.”
Linnie gasped. “How dare you! I was not giving myself to a stranger, you lout. I was giving myself to you!”
Her chest heaved in a frantic up-and-down rhythm.
He stilled at the very same moment she registered what she’d said.
Linnie gasped. “Not that I was giving myself to you because of . . . because of . . .” She floundered.
Jeremy quirked a dark, ironic brow. “Yes?”
“Oh, stuff it, you sea crab,” she mumbled.
“You know that isn’t an insult, and I know you know because I taught you.”
Oh, how smug he sounded. And yet . . .
There existed a shade of teasing lightness in his silky baritone that transported her to another time with Jeremy, back when there’d been harmony and not enmity between their families.
“I’ve decided to make it one,” Linnie muttered tiredly.
The fight went out of her, and turning her focus back to the frosted glass windowpanes, Linnie sank onto the plush crimson cushion of a wrought iron sofa.
She stared out at her host’s snow-covered gardens, illuminated by the enormous full moon.
A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up.
Without asking, Jeremy availed himself of the place beside her, sitting so close his oak-hard, tree-trunk-wide thigh touched her smaller, slender one. Even with their garments as a solid textile barrier between them, heat radiated from where their legs touched.
Her mouth went dry.
Jeremy tossed an arm lazily over the curved back of their sofa for two. “Worry not, love. I’m the last man who’d judge you for needing an itch scratched.”
An itch scratched?
“Despite my rejection earlier . . . I’d be all too happy to service you.” The gleam in Jeremy’s eyes became cold, hard, and flat. “That is, unless, with the enmity between our families, you’d rather I fetch some other fellow to take care of the job.”
Then what he’d offered hit her square between the eyes. Linnie’s mouth trembled. Had he ripped her heart out, it couldn’t have hurt more than this.
Her vision blurred and Linnie blinked frantically. “How g-generous of you.”
Several tears seeped out.
Jeremy pressed his lips to form a tight white slash. “You believe I’m being cruel.”
“I believe you’re being a”—Linnie sniffled—“m-monster.”
He frowned like that had offended him. “Linnie, I hate your family, but I’m speaking plainly with you now. Sex is sex.”
“I don’t call it that,” she whispered furiously, angry with him, hating what he’d become.
“Lovemaking?”
“Yes.” Her cheeks warmed. “That is how I refer to it.”
“Linnie,” he said flatly, “there’s no love involved. What you call lovemaking is just a meeting of two base animals who use each other to find relief.”
It was a meeting of two souls.
Linnie wrenched her head in the opposite direction from where he sat.
She didn’t want to talk to him, and that hurt, because he was the one she missed speaking to most.
He sighed. “Fucking, sex, lovemaking . . . Call it whatever you wish and don’t punish yourself for having come for tha—”
She gasped. “That is not why I came.”
“I’m simply saying if it is—”
“Well, it’s not, Jeremy,” she snapped back. “So just leave it.”
Linnie’s shoulders fell and she looked to the man beside her, hardly recognizing him.