Chapter 8 #2
“Are you trying to poison us, Lucy?”
He wouldn’t put anything past Culross.
Lucy paused. And then burst out laughing. Her laughter was as radiant as the young woman herself. Like bells in the churchyard on Christmastide morn. Vibrant and clear and bright.
Hers was a kind of merriment that left her enchantingly full cheeks crimson like the berries of an ivy bush.
The manner of laugh that filled even the darkest corners of a sinner’s soul, like his, with light it had never thought to see or know again.
Lucy’s mirth faded to a final chuckle. She dusted tears from her face, leaving a speck of flour alongside a slight dimple in her cheek. “I’ve certainly never been thought to be the best of cooks, but neither have I been noted to poison anyone either.”
With an amused shake of her head, the young woman returned to the task she had been at prior to his interruption.
“May I join you?” he murmured.
Lucy’s head shot up. Her surprise matched his own.
“It is your residence, Arran. You certainly needn’t ask my permission.”
He frowned.
That was hardly the welcome invitation he had—
What had he wished to hear? For what reason?
That disturbing question at the back of his mind, Arran refused to take a seat.
“Forgive me. If you would like time alone, I understand. It has been a difficult day for you,” he murmured.
Arran started to go.
“Wait!” Lucy exclaimed with a speed too great to be feigned. “Don’t go! I am used to company, particularly in the kitchen.”
There it was. A statement that gave some real indication of her origins. She came from humble upbringings.
That explained her refreshing forthrightness.
Arran propped his hip at the edge of the table and watched her as she worked.
She moved with the same ease amongst the kitchen that he did his ship. It was a place she clearly felt comfortable and knew her way about.
Only… His eyes lingered on her fingers.
She returned and gathered up a fresh batch of dough.
He watched her as she slammed the moist mixture onto the table. She began to knead. Her long, capable fingers curling into the dough. Squeezing, softening. Turning it over. She repeated the process. He stared transfixed. When she stopped, she collected a rolling pin.
“You have a way with your hands,” he said, his voice garbled to his own ears.
There came no outward indication she caught the thread of desire in his harsh tones.
“I enjoy baking.” Her hands were strong. Capable.
The act was not a sexual one. Or it shouldn’t be. Yet there was an eroticism to the way she moved her fingers.
A wave of lust reared within him.
Christ. Say something. Anything. Just stop looking at those fingers and imagining them wrapped around your—
“What are you making?” His voice contained a lower, harsher quality.
Fortunately, Lucy appeared indifferent. “Baking,” she clarified.
She briefly paused and looked up. “I am baking.” With her forearm, she brushed back a small cascade of curls that fell over her brow.
To no avail.
It only conjured imagining those tresses fanned out—
“What kind of—?” Madness is this?
Wide-eyed, Lucy looked up. “Arran?” she asked tentatively.
She couldn’t be as confounded as Arran was.
His neck went hot.
It appeared Lucy’s tendency to talk to herself was contagious.
Arran cleared his throat. “What kind of help may I provide?” he neatly side-stepped.
“Yer jesting,” she said, the silver flecks in her eyes twinkling.
Arran smoothed his features. “About baking?” he touched his hand to his chest. “I would never.”
Lucy’s smile returned. “You have baked before!”
She sounded so absolutely delighted at the prospect he hated answering with a declination.
“Never.”
He hated even more the disappointment that flickered in her revealing eyes.
Another flash of color formed in her cheeks. “Of course, you haven’t,” she said. “It was a silly question.”
Silly because a nobleman wouldn’t ever be familiar with the kitchen.
He liked even less how presumptuous the truth made him sound.
Arran began rolling up his sleeves. “I am a quick study.”
Lucy stared at him. Did she gauge his seriousness? Or did she see more than she should see? More than he should show.
By the time he got his second sleeve up, she was all smiles. “Fortunate for you, we have arrived at the most fun part, Arran.”
“You never did say what it is we are making, Lucy?”
Lucy held up a finger.
Turning in a swift whir of skirts that sent her hems snapping about her, she rushed to the counter.
Blackguard that he was, Arran’s gaze lingered on her delicate ankles.
“Here it is!”
She turned around quick, and he managed to draw his gaze up just in time to avoid being caught leering like a bounder. Guilt clawed at him.
Lucy came skipping over with the item in question. “It is—”
“A biscuit mold,” he finished for her. “We are making biscuits.”
His hadn’t been a question. She nodded anyway, setting her enormous midnight coils dancing wildly about her shoulders. She clarified. “Gingerbread.”
“Gingerbread,” he repeated.
Campbell’s favorite.
“It is Mr. Smith’s favorite,” she echoed Arran’s silent reflection.
Yes, Campbell did love gingerbread. Arran’s cousin had a history dating back to age five of plucking them from the family’s plates when their focus was elsewhere.
“He once told me that when he was a lad, he’d filch his brother’s gingerbread when he wasn’t looking.”
“Did he also tell you he continues to do so to this date?” he said, his voice sharp.
As soon as the petty pronouncement burst from Arran, he let silent curses fly inside his head.
Lucy froze. She looked up from that lone biscuit cutter.
Lucy burst out laughing. The mesmerizing minx doubled over with the force of her amusement, her hilarity so great she gripped the edge of the counter to keep from doubling over.
As contagious as her mirth proved, Arran couldn’t even muster a grin.
A fast, familiar growing guilt clawed its way back—for altogether different reasons.
And with this exchange that held him captivated and frustrated, Arran had confirmation to chase away all his doubts. Lucy was Campbell’s sweetheart.
Nay, not sweetheart. Betrothed. A dark, insidious bead of a sinful emotion he refused to name formed in that organ in his chest.
Lucy waved the tin cutter in front of him. “I am in awe.”
Aye. As am I.
Her eyes glowed like the brightest stars in the clearest night. “Have you seen all the ones available to your staff?”
“I’m afraid…” Bloody terrified. “I haven’t.
“Oh, you must!” Against his inner turmoil, she chatted away like they were the best of friends, united by a shared love.
Not for him. Not even at the mention of Campbell. But for those biscuit molds she carried with a reverence befitting the King’s crown.
Christ. She was even more beautiful when smiling, her dimples accentuating elegantly arched cheekbones. “I use a knife to carve the shape into a little man…” she was saying.
For the love of God, they were made of tin and wood, and she spoke of them being so far beyond her reach.
It was too much.
“My cousin couldn’t be bothered to purchase you a mold for your baking?”
His question came out harsher than intended.
It shouldn’t have come out at all.
The lady paused. She glanced up from the cutter that’d brought her such excitement. “There is no such thing as a gingerbread lad mold.”
“Oh,” he said dumbly. Arran’s jaw rippled. He’d done this. He’d extinguished the radiant light she wore like an aura about a soft, luminous figure.
And he was desperate to restore Lucy’s natural glow.
Arran cleared his throat. “Forgive me, that was rude. Sleep eludes me,” Because I had thoughts of you in my head. “And I’m a cranky sort when tired. Like Campbell.” That last admission came out not of malice but of a long running jest the McQuoid-Smiths remarked upon.
“Indeed?” Lucy’s lilting voice crept up into a question. She cocked her head at a jaunty angle. “I cannot imagine Mr. Smith cranky.”
Because Campbell was the affable sort.
Arran of old shared that with his cousin. Not anymore. Hence why it’d been Campbell who’d wooed the whimsical Lucy LeBeau, a captivating young woman who marveled over biscuit cutters.
God, longing for his cousin’s betrothed? He tamped down a grimace. And here Arran believed he’d hit the lowest depths of depravity. He owed it to Campbell and Lucy to make this moment right.
“His nickname is Dragon,” he said.
Lucy’s eyebrows lifted. “Surely not!”
“Not on account he’s a fire-breathing monster, but because…” He dropped his voice for effect.
“Aye?” Lucy clung to his words like Arran were a great shanachie, those Scottish storytellers of lore long ago, and he wondered at such sweet innocence, still alive and real in this Scottish beauty.
Caught in the snare of her enthusiasm, Arran leaned closer, dipping his head towards her.
Hunger blazed fresh; his body punished him for that careless decision.
Lucy blinked wildly. “Aye?” she urged, breathless.
“He sleeps like the Dragon in King Arthur, who slumbered so deep it formed a hill.” He intended to form those words into playful ones.
The low, hoarse quality ruined the effect.
“In fact, he slept so deep…” That gentleman you love and are destined to marry.
“That all the McQuoid-Smith children, with wooden swords in their hands, were granted entry into his chambers. They jumped about his mattress, even on Campbell? Through it all, Campbell slept.”
Arran failed to elicit the laugh he’d not realized he’d been longing to do.
Lucy’s gaze moved searchingly over his face, her jade-green stare as much a mystery as the woman herself.
“Who was it?” Her whispery soft question brushed his lips like a tender caress.
Bespelled, he faintly registered himself answering with a shake of his head.
“Who allowed the children inside Mr. Smith’s chambers?”
That was the one part of Arran’s story she’d ask after? Not about Campbell? Or how he’d responded when awakening? Not so much as a wistful smile or dreamy gaze.
“Me.”