She let her hands fist up his shirttails so she could slide her hands beneath the rough linen and set her palms flat against the heat of his skin.

He let out a fervent sound of near pain, and almost sprang back from her, kneeling above her to rip off the waistcoat and shirt and fling them away unseen. He closed his eyes when she put her hands back to his skin, and hissed a breath in through his teeth—a pleased rather than painful sound. She did it again, stroking across his smooth flesh, and he swore roughly under his breath, and collapsed down onto her, pinning her hands flat to his nipples with his weight.

He lay upon her for only a moment before he levered himself away and went at the laces of her sturdy quilted jumps as if he were untying a Christmas present all wrapped up to foil him. But no sooner were the laces done away with—flung to join his waistcoat on some lower branch—than he had loosed the drawstring of her shirt, and was pushing it away with the straps of her stays and chemise to bare her shoulders. Beneath the confines of the remaining layers, her breasts began to feel full and aching. One hand rounded to her back, and she arched toward him to give him access, her nipples contracting and rasping with painful pleasure against the starched muslin of her stays.

His mouth returned to hers, the rough, taut texture of his lips rubbing against hers, the whisky-laced tang of his tongue tangling with hers as he kissed and kissed and kissed her. She was kissing him back, returning his heated, open-mouthed kisses with all the fervor she had kept hidden under the tight lashing across her soul, while he ripped away the laces.

This was the mad pleasure she had tried to write about. This was the intoxicating rush of sensation that she had given expression in words put finally into glorious deed.

And then the stays were loosened, and falling away with her chemise, pulled down to reveal the tight furls of her breasts, aching and sensitive in the cool morning air. His hands closed over them carefully, caressing, worshiping. He dragged his thumbs across the peaks, and feeling and sound blossomed out of her—a gasp that matched the exquisite and unexpected bliss—and she pushed herself up into his hands, letting her head fall back, closing her eyes so she could only feel. Only feel him. And the pleasure that grew like a rose out of the thorns of her life.

He followed his hands with his mouth, closing his lips around one sensitive nipple, licking and sucking at her, sending seeds of want and need falling to ground deep in her belly. A sound of shocked surprise blossomed from her mouth.

Elspeth opened her eyes to the glorious green daylight, opening her soul to the sensations snaking through her body, the tight tension that twined through her like a vine, clinging and coiling deep. She wanted to move with it, to twist and turn against him. Her fingers curled into his hair, holding his head as her body undulated like a flower bent by the strong summer wind.

“Aye, lass,” he breathed against her skin. “That’s the way of it.” Encouraging her with his words, filling her with something more desperate than anticipation as he kneed her legs apart and settled himself hard against the juncture of her thighs. His lips returned to hers as his body joined hers in movement, creating a dance to music that they alone could hear—the string of nature’s symphony, the song of the skylark and the keening cry of the hawk.

His work-roughened hands fell to her skirts, dragging up the hem, exposing her legs to the bright summer air. And then his hands were back at her breasts, fondling and fawning until heat and something fiercer, something bright and shining and insistent, budded to life within, pulsing up from her belly. Between her thighs, her muscles clenched in heightened anticipation.

Chapter 20

“Elspeth. Sweet, sweet Elspeth.” His voice was shredded, wisps of grass blown and bent, as he rucked up her skirts. “Open your legs to me.”

She did so, looking down the length of their bodies to see his gaze focused on the pale tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs. Her body seemed to shift within itself, changing into something new and different, uncharted ground in the small map of her life.

“Yes,” she said, more to herself than him. Yes to new and different, yes to changes. Yes to the new dance between their bodies. A dance that quickened with the sensual tug of his hands against the bared flesh of her upper thighs.

“Yes,” he answered, resting his forehead against hers as they watched his hand part her flesh.

She felt open and vulnerable and strong and proud when he touched her. Her muscles clenched in delight, her skin came alive with sensation, streaking across the surface, making her swell and bow like a stem under the weight of a heavy blossom. And she was arching up into his hand, like that blossom seeking the warmth of the sun, needing to be closer and closer still.

“Elspeth.”

His call came like a prayer to her ears, a plea that only she could hear, a boon only she could grant. “Aye,” she answered, assenting to whatever he might ask, wanting anything of this heavy delight drenching her in bliss.

He slid one long finger inside her, and a ripple of strong pleasure surged from her core, radiating outward through her body, growing stronger and stronger, becoming a wave of sensation that crashed through her, making her gasp for air.

“Sweet Elspeth,” he crooned against her ear as he worked his other hand beneath to cup her bottom. And then he turned, bending her backward with the strength of his need, crushing her into the long grass as he took the tight, needy peak of her breast back between her lips.

She made another inarticulate sound of pleasure and want and abandon, giving herself over to the exquisite torture of pleasure. His breath answered, harsh and strained at her ear. “Let me love you. Let me lie with you.”

His words elicited something so sharp and so strong and so near to hurt it was as if the need was clawing its way out of her soul. “Love me. Lie with me. Please.”

His head swooped down and captured the nubbin of her straining nipple, teasing it with his teeth before sucking fiercely, as he loosened the fall of his breeks and positioned himself at the opening of her body.

She could hear and feel the rasp of his breath coming in audible pants, as if breathing had begun to pain him. As if the need within him was just as sharp and cutting. She planted her feet flat against the floor of grass, pushing herself into his weight, bucking her hips against the probe of his cock.

Now it was he who made an inarticulate, animal sound of pleasure as he worked himself free, shoving interfering clothing away so they could be flesh to flesh. Skin to naked skin. Heart to open heart. “I need—”

She needed, too. She wanted. She ached. She desired to be one with him.

She went at the loosened folds of his clothes, pushing the fine, rumpled linen of his shirt over his head, using her feet to urge the breeks down and away so she could wrap her heels around his sleek flanks, and wrap her hands around the strong pillar of his neck.

And still she needed more. She needed the push of his body into hers. She needed the strength of his hands gripping her hips, pulling her tight to him as he bore down into her body, until he was inside her and around her, filling the emptiness within with his body and his love.

There was a tight moment of uncomfortable friction, but it dissolved, dissipating into something sweet and yearning. Something that built, piling up like a hayrick, loose and billowing. And then he began to move and the hayrick of pleasure was shifting, raining down around her, falling apart and blowing away to leave the want open and exposed.

She felt as if she were being ridden on the wind, racing faster and faster toward some steeple over the next hill, and she couldn’t breathe for the pace. Couldn’t hear or speak or think. Couldn’t do anything but abandon herself to his driving rhythm, riding the pleasure higher and higher up the hill.

She was aware of the gasps he drew from her as he rode faster still, giving way to abandonment with each increasingly mindless stroke of his body into hers.

“Please,” she heard, and had no idea whether it was he or she that spoke. But he answered by grasping her bottom with both his hands, holding her hips, tilting them upward to meet his strokes.

She wrapped her legs around him, grasping him tight to her, straining to hold the reins.

He arched up on his knees, a growling howl of pleasure and need and anguished triumph tunneling out of his chest. She felt it vibrate all the way through her, bringing her pleasure and pain and joy that she had to touch his face, had to make him open his eyes to see her. To see how much she loved him.

She reached out to stroke his face, and he turned into her caress, kissing and nipping at her fingers. He smiled down at her, his beautiful body undulating above her, dancing just for her, until she could no longer meet the heat in his eyes, and closed her own against the tide of feeling that broke over her, drenching and burning all at the same time.

He cried out and threw his head back, pulsing into her so strongly her climax broke over her like a wave of flame, taking her up and burning her to a glowing cinder spiraling away, upward into the sky.

Chapter 21

Hamish came back to himself slowly, as if he had taken a clout over the head and was still in a daze. He rolled onto his back on the thick grass and gathered Elspeth to him. His Elspeth, who lifted her sweet face to the sunshine like a pagan worshiper.

He felt rather pagan himself after having worshiped her with his body. What a fool he had been to think that only experience conferred wisdom. What an ass he had been to overlook the strength of innocence. Elspeth was his ideal because she was both, and neither.

Upon that particularly impractical and philosophically convoluted thought, Hamish took her hand, lacing their fingers together, holding them in quiet, everyday intimacy. It felt good and right and wonderful and terrifying.

Because he wanted this feeling, this warm bubble of quiet contentment to last forever.

But it could not. Life had to go on. Decisions had to be made. But not quite yet.

Not until the heat of lust had ebbed enough to make her shy and wanting her clothes. She turned her back to set herself to rights, and he brushed a long strand of grass from her hair. “You’ll come with me to the lodge? We can make plans there. Decide what needs to be done.”

He would speak to her Aunts later. Declare himself as a gentleman ought.

The decision gave him a warm feeling of rightness. Or belonging—belonging to something, and someone, he had chosen for himself. Elspeth was the beginning of a family of his own, free from the encumbrances and expectations of his parents. Free from their guilt and hypocrisy. Free to write books and laze about orchards all day if they wanted.

“Aye.” She gave him a luminously hopeful smile.

“It will all be right as rain, Elspeth,” he assured her. “We’ll be the happiest people in all of Scotland. In all of Britain.”

“I do hope so.”

He laced his fingers with hers and pulled her to standing. “I hope your Aunts won’t tax me with not fixing their eaves today, but I find I have other, more pressing commitments.”

“Like me.”

“Exactly like you.” They walked in companionable, contented silence to the edge of the lane that led to Cathcart Lodge, until he had to draw her off into the verge when a four in hand coach sped close by, forcing them to crowd into the hedgerow to let it safely pass.

But immediately after it did, a face popped out of the window, and the coach began to slow, coming to a full stop just at the edge of the village, whereupon a gentleman, followed by a young, fashionably dressed lady, stepped lightly into the grassy lane.

“Mr. Cathcart?” the young lady called. “Hamish!” She smiled and waved. “I thought that was you. I told Papa it was so.”

“Hello?” Hamish shaded his eyes, but suspicion hit him like a shovel to the back of his head. Master Lorimer, a brewer from Edinburgh’s southwest side, climbed down behind his daughter and heir. He had met them but once, at a shooting weekend.

Hamish could all but feel his father’s hand stirring this pot.

“Elspeth, why don’t you go on to the Lodge. I’ll follow you directly.” But Elspeth had no time to respond before the brewer’s daughter had made her way down the lane upon them.

“Don’t go, Hamish. It won’t do you know, running away, looking like a scarecrow, with straw in your hair. Not when we’ve driven all this way to find you.” She smiled in a way that bared her teeth, much like an aggressive dog, grinning before it bites. “Rusticating with dairy maids, have you been, Hamish? Your mother will be all agog to hear.”