Nicola Cornick - One Night with the Laird

Can true love be born from scandal?

She is young and beautiful and fashionable, Edinburgh’s most flirtatious hostess. But within the merry widow beats a grieving heart. Lady Mairi mourns the husband she lost two years before—and no matter how accomplished a lover Jack Rutherford may be, their wanton night together was an encounter of the body only, and Lady Mairi would prefer to forget it.

But when Mairi is threatened by a blackmailer, Jack is the only man who can protect her. As they work together to uncover where the danger lies, their passion reignites. Little by little, the masks they wear burn away, and their most private secrets come to light….

‘Her books are fabulous.’

—New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn

‘Cornick is first-class, queen of her game.’

—Romance Junkies

‘A rising star of the Regency arena’

—Publishers Weekly

‘A riveting read’

—New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney on Whisper of Scandal

‘One of the finest voices in historical romance’

—SingleTitles.com

‘Ethan Ryder (is) a bad boy to die for! A memorable story of intense emotions, scandals, trust, betrayal and all-encompassing love. A fresh and engrossing tale.’

—Romantic Times on One Wicked Sin

‘Historical romance at its very best is written by Nicola Cornick.’

—Mary Gramlich, The Reading Reviewer

‘Witty banter, lively action and sizzling passion’

—Library Journal on Undoing of a Lady

‘RITA ®Award-nominated Cornick deftly steeps her latest intriguingly complex Regency historical in a beguiling blend of danger and desire.’ —Booklist on Unmasked

Don’t miss the Scandalous Women of the Ton series, available now!

WHISPER OF SCANDAL

ONE WICKED SIN

MISTRESS BY MIDNIGHT

NOTORIOUS

DESIRED

FORBIDDEN

Also available from Nicola Cornick

THE LADY AND THE LAIRD

DECEIVED

LORD OF SCANDAL

UNMASKED

THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS

THE SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT

THE UNDOING OF A LADY

DAUNTSEY PARK: THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON

Browse www.mirabooks.co.uk or www.nicolacornick.co.uk for Nicola’s full backlist

One Night with the Laird

Nicola Cornick

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Alison Lindsay. Thank you!

Contents

Epigraph Pleasure’s a sin and sometimes sin’s a pleasure. –Lord Byron

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Pleasure’s a sin and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.

–Lord Byron

CHAPTER ONE

Edinburgh, Scotland, April 1815

IT TOOK TEN minutes to cross from Edinburgh New Town to Edinburgh Old Town in a carriage, and for all of those ten minutes Jack had an almost uncontrollable erection the like of which he had never experienced before in his life. He had learned over the previous ten years that anticipation was one of the greatest aphrodisiacs of all; the anticipation he felt tonight was acute and almost impossible to bear.

Opposite him sat the woman who was the cause of his discomfort. He could not see her clearly in the drifting lamplight, but his awareness of her was sharp. Jack could smell the jasmine perfume that lingered on her hair and on her skin. He could see the shadow of a smile that curved her lips beneath the mask and he could still taste her from the kiss he had snatched a few minutes earlier. She had pushed him away then, but playfully, in a way that promised more, much more.

He had a rake’s reputation, but it was a long time since he had bedded a woman. He wondered if that accounted for this reckless urge to throw caution to the wind and take this woman he had met a mere four hours before. Jack did not know her name. He had not seen her face. He knew only that his sexual awareness of her was so keen that if he did not have her, and soon, he would be in danger of exploding with the frustration.

She knew it too. He could tell that she could feel the tension in the carriage, the expectation wound as tight as a spring. He wanted to wipe that satisfied little smile from her face with a kiss. He wanted to take her here in the carriage with each lurch of the wheels over the cobbles driving him harder into her body. He had no notion why she affected him so and he did not like it because it pushed him close to losing control; he only knew that from the moment he had first seen her he had wanted her.

The coach drew up with a sudden jerk. A groom, black-clad and inscrutable, opened the carriage door and let down the steps. Jack sat back to allow his companion to descend first. She gathered up the filmy silver skirts of her gown in one hand and stepped lightly down. Jack followed, glancing about him curiously. The carriage had stopped on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. He could see the dark bulk of St. Giles’s Cathedral. The streetlamps glimmered in the soft falling rain.

She took his hand and drew him along one of the narrow alleyways that plunged downhill away from the main thoroughfare. The darkness was absolute here. He could hear the tap of her slippers on the cobbles and feel the rain cold against his face, soaking his hair and his jacket. The walls of the tenement buildings pressed close on each side.

He was rushing headlong into danger; in these deep alleys he could be robbed and murdered and no one would come to help him. A knife in the ribs would be rich reward for his reckless pursuit of passion. He paused, good sense overriding lust for a moment, but then she turned to him, pressing her body against his, reaching up to kiss him. The cold tenement wall was at his back, but she was all heat and sweet fragrance. Her kiss was fierce and urgent, sweeping away any polite preliminaries, demanding a response. She put one hand on the nape of his neck and held his mouth on hers, tangling her fingers in his hair. He felt the hot slide of her tongue against his and groaned into her mouth.

He slipped his hands beneath her cloak and felt the slippery silk of her gown slide beneath his palms. He caught her about the waist and drew her closer. Her breasts were pressed against his chest and she rubbed her hips against his. It was galling to be so at the mercy of his senses when he was a man of experience and not a schoolboy, but Jack seemed powerless to resist the molten lust that was coursing through his veins.

The faintest thread of light glimmered in her eyes as she smiled at him. She broke away, but only to turn the handle of a door set back in the corner of the wall, deep in shadow. She took his hand again and pulled him inside.

The house was not as he had expected. Here, in this poor neighborhood of peeling walls and dirt-strewn cobbles, it was like a miniature palace. Everything was polished and rich and gleaming, wood, silver, gold. He saw it all only in a brief flash as she pulled him up the stone stairs: the jewel-bright colors in the long curtains that shut out the night, the scatter of cushions on the settle. When she stopped at the turn of the stair to kiss him again, she slipped a hand inside his pantaloons and stroked his shaft and he almost came there and then. He was panting with anticipation and lust, his mouth was dry, his heart pounded.