Nicola Cornick - One Night with the Laird

“Goodbye, Mr. Rutherford,” she said. “It is fortunate that Methven Castle is large enough that we need see little of each other during our stay.”

She picked up the secateurs again, gripping the cool metal tightly against her hot palm.

In a moment he would be gone.

Jack’s gaze fell on the roses with their deep red petals. They looked rich and vibrant against the sun-warmed wood of the table. The sunshine slanted light and shadow across his face, accentuating the high cheekbones and the hard jaw. Mairi felt her heart skip a beat. He looked up and met her eyes, and her heart jolted again for fear that she could not hide her reaction to him.

“My grandmother would like those flowers,” Jack said, surprising her. “She adores roses. Do you grow them here?”

“In the walled garden,” Mairi said. She touched the petals lightly. “These were cultivated specially and named after me—Mairi Rose...” She stopped, catching herself, remembering that in Edinburgh that night she had told him her name was Rose.

Jack did not appear to have noticed. His head was bent as he considered the flowers. He did not move.

After a second Mairi’s breath came more easily. She walked toward the door and put her hand on the knob again, pulling it wider in a clear signal that it was time for Jack to leave.

“Good day, sir,” she said sharply.

Jack looked up and met her eyes.

Her heart stopped at what she saw there. The cool indifference was gone. In its place she saw incredulity and anger and a fierce heat that made her breath catch.

“Rose,” Jack repeated, very softly.

The tight, breathless sensation in Mairi’s chest intensified. The doorknob slipped against her damp palm. She felt a craven urge to make a dash for the stairs, to run, to hide. Except that there was nowhere to hide.

“I believe,” she said, and her voice was now no more than a thin thread of sound, “that you were leaving, Mr. Rutherford.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed, his gaze intensifying on her. She felt another shiver chase down her spine. Then he smiled.

“Actually,” he said, still very quietly, “I don’t think I was.”

He came across and leaned past her to place a palm against the drawing room door and closed it very firmly.

CHAPTER THREE

JACK WATCHED MAIRI walk away from him. Each step was a deliberate move to put distance between them. She looked composed, elegant, every inch the aristocratic lady.

His gut instinct was confirming what his mind was still refusing to accept. This was the woman with whom he had spent the most explosively passionate night of his entire life. This was the woman he had been seeking for the past three months.

He felt a blinding rush of fury. He had felt angry and frustrated enough when he had imagined that his mystery seductress was a complete stranger to him. To realize that it was Mairi MacLeod who had used and discarded him was breathtaking. Clearly she had had absolutely no intention of ever revealing her identity to him. It had probably amused her to reject his advances and then pick him up as though he were for hire. The only surprise was that she had not left payment when she was gone in the morning.

The knowledge that he had been a fool as well as a dupe did not soothe his fury. He should have recognized her but he had been so bound up in lust that he had missed the clues to her identity. He felt another sharp pang of anger, made all the more acute by the sudden and devastating knowledge that he still wanted her. She might be amoral, spoiled and deceitful, but he wanted her very much indeed.

She crossed the room toward the wide marble fireplace and turned back to face him. The afternoon sun struck through the long windows with their filmy drapes and spun a soft golden glow about her. Her gown of palest blue was a shocking, ethereal contrast to the striking dark auburn of her hair. She stood bathed in a gentle light, but there was nothing gentle about her beauty and Jack felt an equally fierce pang of response. He wanted to dislike her. He had every reason to dislike her. Strange, then, how the discovery that she was the passionate wanton of his dreams suddenly made her the most fascinating woman he knew.

He looked at the tender line of her neck and the way that the loose curls of red-gold hair caressed her nape and he was instantly transported back to the house in Candlemaker Row, the twisted sheets and the hot darkness, the intimate slide of her skin against his. He felt his body harden into arousal.

“You are Rose,” he said. “You spent a night with me in Edinburgh three months ago.” He knew it had been her. He had seen the truth reflected in her eyes a moment before, but he wanted to make her admit it.

She turned to look at him. Her expression was guarded, betraying no hint of emotion. “I am,” she said, “and I did.”

Jack was reluctantly impressed. Nine out of ten women would have denied it, claiming that they did not know what he was talking about. But perhaps Mairi was so brazen when it came to taking lovers that she did not care about protecting her reputation with lies.

“I expected you to pretend not to understand me,” he said.

Mairi raised one shoulder in a shrug. “That would have been a tedious conversation when we both know the truth,” she said.

She sounded indifferent, but there was a tension in her slender body that told Jack that she was nowhere near as cool as she seemed. That pleased him. She had been in control on the night she had seduced him. Now it was his turn.

“Mairi Rose,” he said. “How convenient to have an alias when you require it.”

Her lips tilted upward in the parody of a smile. “I have three names,” she said. “Mairi Rose Isabella.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Even better,” he said. “A choice of aliases.”

“I didn’t want you to know who I was,” Mairi said. She spoke dismissively, as though it were a matter of little importance that she had deceived him. Jack felt his temper catch. It was a novel sensation to be treated as though he was of no account, and it was not one he cared for.

“That,” he said, “was obvious. The plain black carriage, the army of silent retainers, the anonymous—if luxurious—tenement house hidden away down the back streets...” His anger was still simmering and he wanted to provoke her. “I can only assume that you have had a great deal of practice when it comes to selecting and seducing your lovers, Lady Mairi.”

If the barb hurt she ignored the sting.

“I apologize if you feel I used you,” she said sweetly. “A man of your reputation is surely accustomed to casual encounters.”

“I would still prefer to know the identity of the woman with whom I am making love,” Jack said cuttingly.

She smiled. “I do not believe you complained at the time, Mr. Rutherford.”

She laid emphasis on his title, as though deliberately drawing attention to the fact that she outranked him, a duke’s daughter and he nothing more than the younger son of a baron.

Well, hell. She might be proud; she might pretend to be above his touch, but she was still an amoral wanton and he still desired her.

“I’m not complaining,” Jack said. “I cannot deny that I enjoyed having you.” He had been deliberately crude and he saw the color come into her face. He felt no remorse; it was the least she deserved having flaunted her brazenness in his face.

“I might have preferred that you admit to your desires honestly,” he continued. “But the sex itself was very pleasurable. I like that you allowed me to do whatever I wished to you. A woman without inhibitions is a rare thing.”

He saw her expression harden into hauteur. She did not like being treated with such disrespect. Well, now she knew how he felt.