Katharine Ashe - When a Scot Loves a Lady

“I trust you are well, Milch?”

Her knees turned to porridge. There was nothing for it but to grasp the back of the chair for support and hope she did not collapse.

“I am, my lord. My good wife too. There’s to be snow tonight, by the looks of it.” The door thumped shut.

“Tell me at once if you will, has Lady Katherine returned here of late?”

“She’s just within, sir. I’ll take your coat now.”

Boot steps, and he came through the door. He halted.

“Kitty.” Her name was a mere breath. His shoulders seemed to settle as he scanned her face, then all of her from neck to toe, then her face once more. Mr. Milch crossed the chamber to the kitchen and out, and Kitty drank in the sight of the man she loved.

“Hello, Leam.” She folded her hands in a vain attempt to still their mad trembling. “What brings you to Shropshire?”

Remarkably, he laughed. “I suppose I should say the fishing.” He smiled, and everything inside her fused together into one messy heap of honey. “But instead I shall tell the truth. You brought me, of course.”

“Then did you see Lady Justice’s pamphlet, or speak with my servants?”

“Kitty, Cox is apprehended. I left him in a magistrate’s jail not thirty miles from here.”

She clutched the sofa harder. “Then he was the one? Oh, I am relieved.”

His gaze seemed quite warm. “How did you discover the business with the cameo?”

“Ned had it on Christmas Eve. He said he’d found it months earlier on the road.”

“And you doubted his word so much that you connected it to Cox, then to me?” His beautiful mouth still hinted at a smile.

“Well, yes. And no. At the time I thought it strange how Mr. Cox had been so friendly with you at first, then decidedly less so later. Also anxious. Then that day at the park—” For the first time in days her throat was thick with tears. Being so near him, alone in this place where she had fallen in love with him, was not conducive to her well-being. “She is very beautiful and I thought I had seen her before.

Then I remembered Ned’s cameo and realized how I recognized her. When you told me Mr. Cox had lost something valuable and believed you had it, it all seemed to make sense, although I am not certain it should have. But I felt I had to do something and you could not find him, so I sent the letter to Lady Justice hoping that she would print it and he would see it and show himself. Really, I never imagined it would all work out.” But it had given her another excuse to flee.

He shook his head slowly, then took a deep breath and opened his mouth. But she could not allow him to speak and say things she would remember forever, such as he thought her wonderfully clever.

“It was to my advantage to rout him out,” she said quickly, “but I am glad you did because I honestly don’t know what I would have done except try to blackmail him if he had come here. But I am not a blackmailer by nature. A snitch, certainly, but—”

“Kitty, I am not leaving here tonight. You cannot talk me gone from this place no matter how you go on.”

“I was merely explaining. And you did ask. Yesterday Ned admitted to me that Hermes found it out by the stable and brought it to him the night of the storm.” Beneath his intimate gaze, the familiar ache of longing wound its way around her so tightly it stole her breath, wonderful and awful at once.

“What did Mr. Cox want of her cameo?”

“He kept it to ensure he could extort money from me through her. When he lost it, he became somewhat unglued, it seems. Thus the shooting and threats.”

“That is nonsensical.”

His eyes intensified. “Did you read the inscription on the back?”

“No.” She reached into her pocket for the trinket. It felt like tiny knives every time she touched it.

She flipped it over.

Her breaths stuttered.

“I—I do not understand. Did—did he divorce her before she married you?”

“He never divorced her. They are still married, as they were when she and I said our vows.”

Kitty’s heart slammed against her lungs.

“Oh, Leam,” she breathed. “I am sorry.”

His eyes widened. “You are sorry?”

“Yes, I am sorry this time. So very sorry for you, and for your son of course.” And miserable again in a manner she could never have anticipated. Euphorically miserable. She suspected what was to come next. She wanted it more than life, yet she could not bear it. “Here.” She went forward and placed the cameo on the table, then moved away from it. “You must wish at least to have this.”

“I’ve no wish whatsoever to have it.”

“But—”

“Kitty, marry me.”

For the second time in as many months, her palm met her nose and she could not seem to detach it.

“Oh. That was abrupt.”

Through her fingers she saw him swallow jerkily.

“That is not precisely how I hoped you would respond.” His voice was tight. “Is that a no? Do you wish, after all, to remain unwed?”

Kitty’s hand slid from her face to her constricted throat. “No,” she whispered. “Not remotely. But —but…”

“But perhaps you have another offer, or simply wish to await one from another quarter.”

“No. I have no such offers or wishes.” She must say it aloud, no matter how painful. “But your feelings for her, Leam—I cannot compete with that. Before, it was imaginable, but now that she is actually still alive…” Perhaps it was too painful to say after all.

Incomprehension shifted across his features. Then, abruptly, understanding.

“Kitty,” he said, his voice quite low, “my feelings for her were shallow and disintegrated swiftly.

Half of the guilt I carried these years was because of my sheer relief over having narrowly missed living my entire life with a person so ill-suited to me. I was relieved I had driven her to the grave. You may despise me now for it, but it is the truth and I told you I wish no secrets between us.”

She gaped. “But all these years, people—Gossips have said—”

“It was all an act. To gain sympathy and trust.”

“All? Did you never feel for her anything profound?”

“I desired her then, infatuated as only a young man can be, foolish beyond measure and full of my own consequence and vanity.” He stepped forward. “But, my sweet girl, I had no idea then—” His voice was rough. “Nothing within me of this longing to give until I am empty, of drowning in the deluge of being filled again with each word, each touch. I had no idea of you.” His eyes were so beautiful, full of everything she dreamed.

“Poetry, my lord?” She could barely grasp breath to whisper. “How very fine.”

His brow knit. “Don’t toy with me, Kitty. With a word you can crush me. If it is to be that word, give it to me now. I am not a patient man and I have already had to wait too long to know if you will ever be mine.”

“Oh, Leam.” Her voice nearly failed. “How can you be asking me this now? After everything?”

His handsome face washed with despair. “Then I am too late, or perhaps too recklessly honest. I am dismissed.”

“You are not dismissed. You—” She sucked in breath, flooded with his mistaken anguish, her fear, their love. “I love you. I love you so desperately. So—” He crossed the space and crushed her in his embrace, then her mouth beneath his. Kitty gave herself up to his kiss, to his arms holding her and the fantasy of his love, now real. She wrapped her arms about him and willed it to go on forever.

“Never stop,” she whispered, then again, “never stop.”

“Never. Especially if you promise to never stop pressing yourself up against me.” Laughter rumbled in his voice. He kissed her neck and the tender place at the base of her throat and her mouth and eyes, as though he would not stop indeed.

With effort she drew away from his mouth, her hand stealing up to smooth along his jaw. “I am frightened, Leam.” She searched his hungry eyes. “Frightened that you doubted even a little. You must have been certain of my feelings for you.”

“A man is certain only about that for which he cares little. And in this, my love, there is no measure for how greatly I care. Never assume my certainty. Tell me every day, I beg of you, my Kitty.”

“I daresay I will have difficulty confining it to once a day.” She stroked her fingers through the streak in his hair. “I can be tenacious when suitably motivated.”

His mouth tipped into a half smile. “Madame Roche said you are like a bloodhound. Or a shepherd dog. I cannot recall which she decided on.”

“The impertinence. When did you speak with her about me?”

“At Willows Hall.”

“Whatever for? Were you spying on me?”

“I was falling in love with you, and endeavoring with all my might not to write sonnets to the divine gracefulness of your little finger. I had to at least talk about you. She was eager.” He smiled unevenly, and in his eyes shone all the emotion of youth and passion, all the hope and drama of the poet she adored.

“Then why did you put me off?” she whispered.

“I feared to hurt you. I feared the violence of my jealous nature.”

“But no longer?”

“No.” He stroked the backs of his fingers along her cheek tenderly. “I have remembered what love is. It is honesty. It is goodness. It is living for another’s heart. I love you, Kitty.”

She put her hands on his cheeks, drew his face down, and kissed him warmly. Then more warmly still.

“You may write sonnets to my little finger now, if you wish,” she murmured. “Are you still inspired to?”

“More than ever,” he said against her neck. “I shall write them to your little toe, as well, not to mention my other favorite parts of you. But not until I have put those parts to more pleasing uses first.”

“Does that mean you are going to show me more wicked things men do with their mistresses?”

He chuckled. “If you wish.”

“I wish.” She trailed her fingers to his cravat and began loosening it. “But first, I have something of great importance to tell you.”

“More important than that you love me?”

“Very important.”

He drew away to look into her face, his sober once more. Kitty’s palm slipped to her belly, then over her abdomen. His gaze followed, then lifted to hers, his lips parting.

“I had always believed…” She could only whisper.

His chest rose in heavy breaths. “Kitty?”

“I was wrong. You were right. It is very difficult for a woman of such enormous pride to admit—” He dragged her into his arms again. This time his kiss did not simply please, it consumed, and she gave him her hunger and wonder and happiness in return.

“I have undressed you in this chamber before,” he said huskily, his wandering hands making her heady. “But I should like to do so tonight in greater privacy.” He laced their fingers together and drew her toward the stair.

She held back, quirking a grin. “Ask me like a barbarian.” She went onto her tiptoes and kissed his jaw. “When you talk like that, you see, I want to cast myself at you quite urgently.”

He curved his warm, strong palms around her face, then lowered his mouth to hers and possessed her with such gentle, thorough, intoxicating care she was obliged to cling to his arms to remain standing.

“Come lie wi’ me, lass,” he murmured, his eyes bright with all the spoken desires that were no longer secret. “Make me the happiest man the nicht.”

She sighed. “You will make it last forever?”

He kissed her again. “An foriver.”

“That, my lord,” she whispered against his lips, “is the best idea I have ever heard.”

A Regency gentleman’s classical education introduced him to not only the great prose authors of the ancient past, but also to quite a lot of poetry. At the forefront of the European Enlightenment, Scotland boasted a university in Edinburgh that produced engineers and physicians who went forth to labor throughout the vast British colonial world. But, as Leam tells Kitty, Edinburgh was also lauded for its philosophers, churchmen, and poets. You can find more on the love poetry Leam recites to Kitty on my Web site, www.katharineashe.com.

In the mid-eighteenth century, Scotland’s long struggle to remain free of English domination came to a head. The outcome (among other influences) was to prove England’s making as an empire, securely investing Britain with the fruits of Scottish talent and labor, both at home in government, and abroad throughout Britain’s ever-expanding colonial territories. In the north, however, not all Scots were entirely content to be subjects of a conqueror’s crown. My Highland rebels are, nevertheless, fictitious.