Chapter 15
Connor stood close enough that Violet could feel the heat of his body through the space between them.
The space she wanted to remain.
The question still hung between them.
Are ye certain ye have no more rules else to share, wife?
The study seemed smaller than it had been a moment ago. The desk sat at her side, close enough that her fingers had curled around the edge without her mind’s permission.
The door stood behind Connor, much too far away for any retreat that would look dignified. Beyond it, the cèilidh continued with fiddle, feet, and laughter, all muffled by wood and stone until the life outside felt like another world.
Inside this room, there was only Connor’s gaze, the low fire, and the dreadful awareness that her body had stopped obeying the sensible parts of her.
Violet drew a breath and reached for the safest shield she had.
“The rules are for John,” she said.
Connor’s gaze stayed on her. “Aye. The bairn has caused a great many things tonight.”
“Well, it is necessary, and I daenae appreciate ye saying it like that.”
“Like what?”
“As if I am using him.”
His face did not harden. That would have been easier. He only studied her, calm and far too attentive. “Are ye?”
“I am protecting him,” she responded, well aware that the answer came quickly because it was true.
It had to be true. John needed her, and Jane had begged her to find him, love him, and make sure he did not grow up neglected by men who would not think twice about getting rid of him. Everything Violet had done since the dungeons had been for him.
Connor let the answer sit long enough to make her aware of how tightly she was holding the desk.
“Was it for John’s protection that ye looked ready to scratch the widow’s eyes out?” he asked.
Her head snapped up. “I did no such thing.”
His eyebrows lifted faintly. “Nay?”
“Nay.”
“Ye crossed the hall and ordered me out before the woman finished asking. I think there is a lot we need to talk about.”
“I was protecting the dignity of our marriage.”
“Is that what we are calling it?”
“It is what it was.”
“Violet.”
Her name on his lips made the room warmer. She hated that. She hated more that she noticed the rough edge in his voice when he said it quietly.
“What?” she asked.
“Ye’re shaking.”
Violet looked away, and her gaze caught on the maps and papers near his desk. Even the cup he had not touched and the broad mark of his hand resting against the wood made her feel out of place.
Everything in the room was ordered and managed.
Everything except her.
Connor’s voice lowered. “I would never have danced with another woman on me wedding day.”
The words unsettled her more than any accusation.
She swallowed. “I didnae ken that.”
“Ye could have asked.”
“Asking would have implied I cared.”
“Do ye?”
The room fell too quiet.
Violet continued to hear the cèilidh through the door, the scrape of a chair somewhere in the hall, the bright rise of a fiddle. She heard her own breath, shallow and unsteady.
The answer should have been simple. It should have come at once, sharp and useful.
It did not.
Connor’s eyes flickered. That should have made her angry enough to recover. He looked as if her silence had told him something he intended to handle carefully. Instead, he stepped closer.
There was still room to move away. She saw it clearly.
If she shifted left, she could pass the desk.
If she stepped back, she could put the chair between them.
And if she wished to leave, he would let her.
She knew it with a certainty that frightened her more than being trapped would have. She could leave. She should leave.
Instead, she stayed.
“Ye ken, ye get on me nerves a lot. I can never guess what ye are up to,” he said.
Violet forced her voice to remain steady. “Does that disappoint ye?”
“Disappointment has never made me want to kiss a woman senseless.”
Heat surged through her so quickly that she nearly stepped back. She should have scolded him. She should have reminded him of their arrangement, John, distance, the entire sensible structure she had carried into this room and frankly thought she could stand ten toes on, abandoned piece by piece.
Connor’s voice lowered. “Ye keep making rules. I keep wondering which one ye want broken first.”
“This is exactly why we need them.”
“Name the next one, then.”
“I…”
“Aye?”
“I was about to.”
“Before I stood too close?” he asked, his mouth curving in a slight, devastating smile. “That one may be harder to mend.”
Violet should not have looked at his mouth. It happened once, swift and foolish, before she dragged her gaze back to his eyes. Connor saw it. He saw everything she wanted hidden.
Then he leaned in, and his mouth touched hers.
Her whole body answered before she could stop it.
His lips moved over hers with a restraint that drew her forward instead of forcing her still.
Her fingers left the desk and caught in the front of his coat.
She felt the bulge in his trousers, the steady rise of his chest, the sudden tension he held in check when she opened to him and he made a low sound against her mouth.
She kissed him back with a need that terrified her. Her hands tightened in his coat, and for one foolish, honest moment, there was no widow, no hall, no rule strong enough to stand between her and the heat of his mouth.
Then sense struck late and clumsy.
Violet drew back a little, her breathing ragged. She did not release him.
Connor stopped at once, his hands staying where they had settled, one near her waist, the other braced lightly on the desk beside her. His eyes searched her face with a restraint that made her throat ache.
“Do ye want me to stop?” he asked.
Her fingers tightened in his coat.
“Violet.”
“I should.”
His jaw flexed. “That isnae what I asked.”
Violet breathed against his skin. She had built the whole day from proper answers. One was waiting behind the haze she suddenly found herself in. One that was sensible and wouldn’t throw her for a loop and make her face the troubles she had managed to bury from childhood.
Damn it.
Her mouth found his again before she could speak.
The second kiss undid what the first had merely threatened.
Violet tried, for perhaps three breaths, to keep some small dignity inside it.
Her hands stayed curled in his coat, as if she meant only to steady herself.
Then his mouth moved against hers with more pressure, and her fingers flattened against his chest, feeling the hard beat beneath the fabric.
She meant to push, but her hands pulled.
Connor noticed and drew back only enough for his breath to brush her lips. “Let me ken if ye want to stop,” he rasped.
“Ye keep saying things that make it difficult to think.”
“Good.”
“That was nae praise.”
“It sounded like it.”
She should have objected. Instead, a laugh caught low in her throat and turned into another unsteady breath when he kissed the corner of her mouth.
His hands settled on her waist, firm through the layers of her gown. He guided her by inches, giving her time to resist. She felt the desk behind her before she understood he had moved her there.
The desk.
His desk, with the neat stacks of letters and the untouched glass of whisky. A brighter tune rose beyond the door. The cèilidh had grown louder, and the reminder of guests nearby made Violet’s breath catch.
Connor paused, his hands remaining on her waist. “Do ye want to return to them?”
She looked past his shoulder toward the door. The handle, the wood, the path back to noise and smiles and safety all waited there.
“Nae really.” The words slipped out plain, ruining every careful lie she owned.
Connor’s gaze darkened as he leaned in and kissed her jaw, then waited. Her head tilted before she knew it. His mouth trailed down her throat, slow and deliberate, and the sound she made shamed her until his fingers tightened at her waist, as if he needed the steadiness too.
“Still with me, wife?” he asked.
“Daenae call me that right now.”
“Why?”
Her eyes closed. “Because I ken very well what ye are trying to do.”
Silence followed, lasting only a breath, yet it felt long enough for her to regret every honest part of herself.
Connor’s thumb moved against her waist. “I willnae take what ye forbid.”
Violet opened her eyes. “Then what are ye doing?”
“Showing ye what ye keep running from.”
The danger was not his hands; that was clearer than anything. It was the fact that she trusted them. Every pause, every question, every place where he held back made her want to give him the answer he waited for.
She thought of a true marriage, a shared bed, children she had sworn she would never risk, and a future her old illness had taught her to distrust. Wanting him felt like stepping toward a life she had no guarantee of keeping.
A small blue cloth tucked into her sleeve slipped free and fell beside the desk. Jane’s cloth. She looked down at it, startled back into sense. Connor followed her gaze, and for a moment, neither of them moved. Then he bent, picked it up, and set it carefully beside the untouched whisky.
“John is still safe,” he said. “Ye ken that, do ye nae?”
The gentleness almost broke her more than the kiss had.
“Connor,” she said, half-warning and half-plea.
“That sounded like a rule.”
“It was meant to.”
“Well, ye will need to try harder.”
His mouth returned to hers, and the argument scattered.
He lifted her onto the edge of the desk with impeccable strength, his hands steady even when his breath was not.
Papers shifted beneath her, and a pin loosened somewhere near her sleeve and struck the floor with a small click she should have cared about.
Connor’s hands were on her laces before she had finished deciding. She sat on the edge of the desk and let him undo them because her hands had stopped listening to her some time ago. The bodice gave, and cool air kissed her back, but then his palms replaced it.
Violet told herself she would put a stop to this shortly and believed it for approximately four seconds.
His mouth moved along her collarbone, and she felt the patience in it, the way he paused exactly where he should, as if he had considered this already and knew the order of things.
A letter crinkled beneath her, and she would have been mortified if she still had space for it. He gathered her dress.
“Connor.” His name left her lips without permission.
“I hear ye,” he said, then kissed up and down her throat.
His fingers found the inside of her thigh and moved with a slowness that shattered her ability to think in complete sentences. When he found the heat between her legs, she stopped thinking entirely.
She had expected him to rush it, but he did the opposite. Her hand curled around the edge of the desk. Outside, the fiddle climbed into something bright and celebratory, and she was aware of the guests the way she was aware of distant weather.
There, but not relevant.
Connor watched her face the entire time, and she didn’t know if she could bear it.
His hand was working her from the inside, but his eyes…
the brown in them was the real problem. They were fixed on her and reading her with a patience that should not have been more frightening than anything else he was doing.
She closed her eyes and decided to focus on his hand.
Her hips bucked against his hand before she caught them. He adjusted without comment, and somehow that made everything worse. The pleasure built slowly, but then his hands stilled, and he stepped back.
“Look at me,” he murmured.
Violet opened her eyes and immediately wished she had not. His face in the firelight was open in a way she had not seen before, and looking at it made everything sharper and considerably more dangerous.
He held her gaze and went down on his knees, and all the breath left her body at once.
His mouth touched the inside of her knee. She felt it travel upwards, and by the time he reached her thigh, she had lost count of her heartbeat. When his mouth found her center, she made a sound that the noise outside was not loud enough to cover, but she did not care.
He gave her no chance to care.
His hands settled on her thighs, and her fingers found his hair without direction. Her other hand pressed flat against the desk, and the corner of a paper cut into her palm. She kept it there anyway because she needed something to anchor her.
Lord.
She felt it the way she felt a tide, reaching further each time, and by the time she understood how close she was, there was nothing to do but let it happen.
Pleasure crashed over her in a long, shuddering wave as Connor’s hands stroked her thighs. She gripped his hair and pressed her fist against her mouth, letting the wave fully take her until there was nothing left of it.
The fiddle outside reached its peak and came back down. After that, there was silence. One so thick that it made the entire study feel like hell itself.
Then Connor reached down and found the fallen pin.
His hands were slower than usual as he helped restore what he had disturbed.
He fastened her gown, smoothed the front of her bodice, and returned the blue cloth to her with a care that made her throat tighten.
A loose strand of hair had fallen against her cheek, and he tucked it back without smiling.
“Hold still,” he murmured.
Violet gave a shaky laugh. “Now ye sound like Hannah.”
“Yer sister is a wise woman.”
Violet exhaled. “I am definitely nae telling her that ye said that.”
“I wouldnae either. I am quite fond of living.”
The slight humor almost steadied her. Almost.
Connor’s hand lingered for a moment on her sleeve before he lowered it. His voice was rougher when he spoke again.
“We could have more than this if ye bent some of those rules.”
Violet’s body still felt sensitive. She still remembered everything a bit too clearly, and even worse, her heart wouldn’t stop pounding.
She stepped back from the desk, gripping the blue cloth in her hand. “I cannae.”
Connor studied her. “Cannae or willnae?”
Her throat tightened. Behind her ribs, the old fear rose, cold and familiar.
She could not tell him about her life in sickrooms or about her sister’s worried face or even about how she had been so sick that her body made every future feel borrowed.
She could not say that wanting him made children, loss, and love feel closer than she could bear.
“Daenae ask me that tonight,” she rasped.
“Why?”
“Because I have no answer that will satisfy either of us.”
His jaw tightened, and his hand lowered before it could reach for her.
“I am retiring for the night,” she added, turning to make for the door.
Connor stepped aside. He did not follow.
Violet opened the door, and the noise of the cèilidh spilled in, bright and loud and impossible.
Outside this room, she was a bride being celebrated. Inside it, she had already broken the rules she had set to protect herself.
She started down the passageway with her gown straight, her hair nearly restored, and her body still trembling from what her husband had given her.
Connor remained in the study.