Chapter 9
Culross had ensured no McQuoid lady could ever be used by their family for power gain ever again. They lived for love matches. Now, were they to marry that would be the only union their ladies could make.
For the ultimate cap to the day, Culross stood with Meghan, ready to do anything for him—the heat of her desire poured like fire from her proudly erect frame.
Culross kept his hands as the fastenings at her shoulders; his fingers were all that kept her gown in place. Her own faint hold of her bodice would keep nothing up.
He let her believe her efforts were not in vain.
He allowed her the decision, but he already knew what it would be.
Just as he knew he wanted the rest of the articles she had donned for Hartwell burned to ash and scattered amidst the sands of time.
He leaned forward and breathed softly upon the narrow dip between her shoulder and collarbone.
“You are free, little bird,” Culross whispered.
The moment Meghan’s arms fell, he released his grip on her dress. It fell in a heavy, satiny whoosh about her feet.
Clasping his right hand at her insignificant waist with his other, he reached for her already seeking fingers.
Culross helped her step over the mountain of silk and organza and then freed her.
A proud Aphrodite, Meghan faced him.
Vae Victis—Woe to the Vanquished.
He drank in all of her in that filmy shift. The fire’s glow enhanced the lace garment’s translucency. The proud pink tips of her breasts jutted forward, with her desire and cold. The thatch was darker than any strand on her head.
He sucked in a breath. “Beautiful,” he said huskily.
She had been ordained for another and so had dressed accordingly for her wedding night.
A shy smile teased Meghan’s lips.
Wordlessly, he divested her of that scrap meant for Hartwell, until Meghan stood bare as Eve, and as tempting as the succulent fruit from which all sin had sprung.
His blood would never mix with a McQuoid.
But for now—and only for now—she belonged to Culross.
He dipped a hand in and tested the water’s temperature and straightened.
Culross would not take her virtue, but before he returned her to the McQuoids, Culross would make up his transgressions against her by giving her enough pleasure to make up for the absence of a husband.
Holding Meghan’s hand, he guided her into the waiting bath.
The moment she sank under the surface, her eyes fell shut, and she moaned her pleasure. She lay as languid and unbothered as a mermaid taking sun from atop a rocky ocean outcropping. “It feels so good.”
Culross darted his gaze all over her. At last, Culross had the answer to the question that previously dogged him: where did Meghan’s freckles go?
He inhaled sharply.
Everywhere.
The answer was everywhere. They twisted in lines he followed with his eyes, until his breathing came in slow, shallow billows.
This was the price to be paid for absolution. Culross had this exquisite, tempting nymph, and he was about to run his hands all over her lithe body, taking nothing for himself.
Bracing himself against an inexorable lust, he rolled his sleeves up, and then knelt beside the toiletries set next to the tub.
He started with her lustrous, heavy curls.
With the Hartwell tiara abandoned on the side of the old Roman road Culross plucked her from earlier, coupled with her spirited fight, most of Meghan’s abundant blonde-brown curls hung in a tangle about her waist.
Two slender gold hair combs did all the work of the missing crown and pins. They held as firm as their spirited mistress.
Honed in on a particularly difficult snarl, Culross gently loosened the strands caught in the teeth of the combs. He attended his task with the same care he used when working twisted lines during a storm, and with none of the speed.
He nearly worked the last tangle free and froze; his gaze locked onto the well-known noble crest, and with it came a very timely reminder of just who it was Culross attended.
His nostrils flared.
Hartwell affixed a brand.
But how easily I removed it.
Primal satisfaction pulsed in his veins. Culross’s would be the most meaningful mark of all.
He pulled the bauble free.
Meghan winced.
His neck went hot at that brief lack of control.
“My apologies,” he said gruffly.
“I assure you, I barely felt anything. I am used to having my hair pulled much more than this, August.” While she chatted, her voice held a languor and the contentment of one who enjoyed her current situation.
“When I was young, my brother, Campbell, and Cousin Arran were the absolute worst offenders,” she murmured.
A tic pulsed at that second reminder.
At last, he untangled the final strands and worked the gleaming accessory free. The hard metal still held the warmth of her head.
As Culross helped Meghan with her toilette, he ran through the first day of his mission—back to when Meghan had arrived in his rooms biting, clawing, and hissing like a hellcat.
He had anticipated a fiery resistance from the lady—and, as suspected, got one. The headstrong minx did not have a meek or submissive bone in her delightfully stubborn body.
The minute they were in his rooms, Meghan started like a fiery hellcat.
Taking a bite out of his flesh.
Hurling inventive curses.
A reluctant smile ghosted across his mouth.
The lady’s frustration only came after her inevitable defeat. She nearly wept—nearly. He abhorred tears and women who wept.
Meghan had responded just as any woman in her position would. To a point. Right until the moment the blindfold slipped loose and she discovered Culross was behind her abduction.
Meghan hadn’t wept or pleaded for her return to Hartwell—the peer she longed to marry for the title and power that came with that union.
“…August…I trust you.”
His lips fell to their usual grim line.
Instead, the moment her expressive eyes alighted on Culross, they had sparkled with dangerously unidentifiable emotions.
She had smiled at Culross.
Teased.
She had…unmoored him.
The damned fool.
Which of them—or both of them—Culross could not say.
Restless, Culross reached for the small bowl next to him and scooped a handful of soap and oils mixed with egg yolk. He began to shampoo her heavy hair, working the blend into a lather.
He regarded her intently.
The lady’s capitulation and seeming contentment at being with him should have felt like victory.
It did not.
As he massaged the soap through the rest of her hair, his jaw worked. She was too bloody trusting. It had been too damned easy. She and her lax kin had made it too easy for him. That—and that alone—accounted for Culross’s listlessness.
Finished with her hair, Culross wiped his hands on the wet towel draped along the side of the tub.
Humming softly to herself, unaware of his upheaval, Meghan trailed a nail over the bathwater. She traced some kind of shape only she knew; the rippled path she drew offered no clue to its design.
His eyes thinned to razors as he considered a new possibility.
She deliberately disarmed him.
The minx was a clever thing.
What made more sense: the lady’s shamefully easy cooperation, or that she was up to something?
Culross reached for the chipped porcelain pitcher.
“Close your eyes,” he instructed, wiping away a froth of bubbles from the corner of her brow. He guided Meghan’s head gently back.
The water poured softly, like the steady drip of a cool tap. He threaded his fingers through curls as untamed as their mistress.
The lady drew her knees in, sending the water lightly sloshing, and leaned forward to aid his efforts. The sleek muscles of her back rippled beneath the movement.
Culross’s body grew hot.
The lady’s sweeping, swan-like shoulders tapered to the downward curve of a slim waist—her shapely hips remained vexingly out of sight.
He was rogue enough to drink in the accidental sight she had granted.
Meghan sighed.
“You are a very good lady’s maid, August.”
He grunted.
Her mother and male relations would disagree.
Frowning, Meghan opened her eyes. She must have heard something in that nothing—but she was too innocent to know it for what it was.
Lust.
Culross rubbed the cake of soap into his cloth and, with the restraint of a thousand men, lifted her arm. His fingers curled around her velveteen skin.
He sucked in a hiss through his teeth.
Using her freckled path to guide him, Culross rubbed smooth circles with the soapy rag until he reached her feet.
Sweat built at his brow.
He gave extra attention to her shapely ankles that fascinated him.
A single bead of moisture wound along his cheek.
When had he lusted after any woman the way he did Meghan Smith?
By her birthright alone, he hated her.
His jaw shifted.
Hate and lust were an apt pairing.
With that reminder, he moved to her toes and washed them one by one.
Meghan’s breathy giggle did not help matters.
“Th-that tickles.”
Gritting his teeth, he let her leg down too quickly.
Water splashed wildly over the sides. Suds and droplets sprayed his face and lawn shirt.
Culross stood and came around to the other side of the tub. The water had developed enough of a sheen to conceal the lady’s naked form.
Meghan proffered her other shapely leg.
He wiped the soapy cloth over his forehead.
Why did she offer him so much?
As if the universe wished to illustrate his point, her body relaxed, so her shoulders slipped beneath the water. A soft sigh eased past her lips while he rinsed her.
Why, when she had wanted her marriage to Hartwell? Would she have responded to the other man with the same eager enthusiasm?
His fist folded tight. The cake broke and he let the white remnants fall like the snow drifting outside. An unholy rage took hold.
Then Meghan began to sing.
The moment she opened her mouth, an unmistakable frisson shivered through him.
“O waly, waly, up the bank, And waly, waly, down the brae…”
He drew a deep breath through his nose.
The lady’s acting skills would land her no parts on the stage.
But her voice…
“Where I and my love were wont to gae. I leant my back unto an aik, Thought it was a trusty tree…”
By God, her voice.
Ethereal and divine as any siren’s, Meghan Smith’s singing would send sailors crashing into rocks.
Meghan offered him her leg, and he forced himself to return to the delightful task of running the damp cloth over the toned limb.
“But first it bow’d, and syne it brak, Sae my true love did lichtly me…”
She murmured languidly, “It was a snowflake.”
Culross paused. “What?”
“You were wondering what I was drawing in the water before, were you not?”
He had wondered what she looked like beneath those clear depths—and about her invisible sketch.
Disturbed she had known, he tossed the cloth into the dirty water and ignored her observation.
Culross stood.
He fetched a towel.
When he returned, he snapped the fabric open and Meghan glided to her feet.
He stood transfixed by her naked buttocks and the long graceful expanse of her back.
Meghan arched a guileless look over her shoulder that, from any other woman, would have been practiced.
Blinking quickly, he hurried to drape the towel around her.
While she undertook the enviable task of drying herself, Culross collected the white shift and gown hanging in the corner cabinet.
When he returned, he forced his gaze to the top of her head and handed her the shift.
Culross closed his eyes.
No words were exchanged.
No lust-filled caresses.
The whisper of fabric stirred the air.
His need for women did not extend beyond carnal matters.
So why did this act—the singularly most unsexual act he had performed with and for this woman—leave him hungering in ways he had never hungered before?
Am I the player in their plot against me?
Culross flexed his fingers once.
Flattening his mouth, he nodded toward the fire.
“It will dry faster.”
Seated at the foot of the hearth, Culross toweled the excess moisture from Meghan’s blonde-brown strands. Then he collected the porcelain-handled brush and dragged it slowly through her hair.
“You are very good at this,” she remarked, her tone peevish.
He paused mid-stroke, then resumed.
A reluctant grin tugged at the corners of his lips.
“You sound disappointed.”
“I find I don’t prefer to think about how you’ve become so proficient in a lady’s ablutions.”
Culross paused again, his stare fixed on the crown of her head. Her thick tresses had already begun curling back to life.
To the conclusion she had reached—that this was something he did, playing lady’s maid—he offered no correction.
Culross had relieved enough women of pins to be a master. Doing so was a rote part of sex. Hair came down. Indecent gowns and garters came off.
The rest of this?
Helping a lady into a bath and serving as a servant was something he had never undertaken.
A role that would otherwise repel him.
He bowed to no one—neither man nor woman.
He was not certain what he called this attentiveness to Meghan Smith—other than perhaps guilt.
Culross had been reared as an earl first.
When finished, August and Meghan sat shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip before the hearth. The flames danced gently.
His mind should have been on the sailing ahead of him.
Instead, it remained back in that bathtub.
And on his beautiful captive.
“What now?”
Culross slanted a glance at Meghan.
She sat with her knees drawn close, her arms draped loosely around them.
A log shifted, setting off a series of hisses and pops.
Meghan rested her head against his shoulder. She stared pensively at the flames.
“I expect you intend to take me to Gretna Green,” she murmured.
Gretna Green.
He stilled.
“You will not make it there, August.” She shook her head. “We will not. My family will anticipate that is where you intend to take me.”
That was where Meghan believed they were bound.
Snippets of things she had said earlier now stitched themselves together in his mind.
She assumed her ruin ended in marriage to him.
Bloody hell.