Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 26

I shall never drink again, she thought as she crept along the path toward the village, not a single wee dram. The sunlight that brightened the valley shone right through to the back of her skull, hurting her. Holding her parasol was exhausting, though sipping a pint of salty broth for breakfast as Lucian had suggested in his morning note had much improved her. Lucian. I shall never be drunk like a sailor in front of my husband again …

A small figure came running toward her, her pale blond hair flashing in the sun. Anne. The girl must have lain in wait for the toffees she had been promised yesterday. The tin was in Hattie’s satchel, rattling against a flask with chamomile tea that had been provided by a pale but smiling Mhairi.

Her little friend halted at a respectful distance and ducked her head.

“Good afternoon, angel.”

A gap-toothed smile spread over Anne’s face. Hattie offered her hand. “Shall we have a picnic?” She gathered up her skirts and steered them off the path over hunks of heather toward one of the gnarly trees that were scattered across the plain. They settled in a sun-dappled patch, and Hattie opened the satchel and took out the tin. “Here you go, dear.” The girl took a long time to select a toffee, but then she grabbed one, unwrapped it, and stuffed it into her mouth rather quickly. She also took the parasol and put it over her shoulder to sit under it as though it were a tent.

“Shall I photograph you like this?” Hattie murmured. “With a parasol?”

Anne just looked at her while toffee ran down the corner of her mouth.

“Oh dear.” Hattie tugged off a glove and wiped with her thumb. “But yes, that is exactly what I shall do. And you could bring a toy. You have a toy?”

This invited a high-pitched explanation about a doll in half-comprehensible Scots, and Hattie nodded along as images took shape in her mind.

Anne left with her cheeks and pockets crammed with sweets, and Hattie rested against the tree. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves and carried the spirited song of a skylark across the valley. She curled her bare fingers into warm earth. The sweet scent of sun-dried heather rose from the soil. How simple, she thought, rubbing grains of sand between her fingertips, how simple to just be here under this tree. She did not even feel tempted to send her mind wandering off to Paris. And much as she loved and missed Oxford with its honied walls and domed lead roofs, the stained-glass windows and quaint parks, the punting and the Pimm’s and the leisurely strolls in the botanical garden, she couldn’t remember the last time she had had the pleasure of seeing such a pure, blue sky. The breeze had driven all fumes from the colliery away to the east. Lucian would have known such pristine skies as a boy. How did he bear London now, a city forever shrouded in smoke?

Lucian.

Hazily, she remembered her whining and groping the night before and she wanted to expire. But there were other memories, too. Warm, careful hands undressing her. Callused fingertips grazing the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees. Lucian’s lips, soft against her brow. A tender pulse began to throb between her legs. She was no longer indisposed, nor intoxicated. In several hours, her husband would return from his excursion.

In the near distance, the lark ascended toward the sky in an arrow-straight line. Hattie watched the small body hover in midair, teetering as if holding the balance on a precipice, and how it sang through the inevitable fall back to earth.

The sun was low on the horizon when she returned to the inn. She found fresh towels and heather soap on the bed, and she indulged in a lengthy sponge bath. She settled in the armchair wearing a clean chemise beneath her robe and waited.

Lucian’s heavy footfall announced his arrival, and her breathing turned shallow when he stepped into the room. His hair was damp. The hard look in his eyes diffused when he took in her state of undress, and her skin warmed beneath his gaze.

“Your hair is wet,” she said, and it came out too high.

He ran a hand over his head. “I went for a swim after the inspection. There’s a small loch near the north face.”

A vision of his naked white body parting the dark waters made her shift in her seat. “I trust your inspection went well?”

He shrugged out of his dusty overcoat and hung it on the clothing rack next to the door. “It didn’t.”

“Oh no.”

He took a medicinal brown bottle from his trouser pocket and placed it on the table. “Two of the newer tunnels along the northern coal face have unsafe ceilings,” he said and sat down heavily. “It appears Rutland had coerced the miners into pillar mining. Seems like dancing at the wedding sealed their trust in me enough to share this information,” he added cynically.

“I don’t understand pillar mining,” she said, “but I’m sorry you are encountering trouble.”

He began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Pillar mining means advancing a tunnel into the coalface to extract the coal, and when it is time to retreat again, miners also get what they can from the pillars that were left to ensure the static safety of the tunnel,” he explained. “The tunnel collapses as the miners withdraw.”

She felt herself pale. “That sounds dangerous.”

“Gets most of the coal, causes almost half of all fatal accidents,” he confirmed. “It also means the mine is even less viable than I thought, because much of the yield stems from an extraction technique I’ll not support.” He tossed his waistcoat onto the next chair and attacked the knot of his cravat. “And to conceal the low yield, Rutland hadn’t even had the tunnels mapped.”

“Please don’t enter these tunnels again,” she said. “Please don’t make the men go in, either.”

He paused, the cravat ends trailing around his neck. “Why?”

“Because it is dangerous.”

“Ah.” His smile was crooked. “Don’t fash. The men who go are experienced.” He pushed his braces off his shoulders. “And I would leave you a very wealthy widow.”

Her stomach clenched with a visceral emotion. His wickedly handsome face gone forever, his gravelly voice no more … He gripped the back of his shirt and pulled it over his head, and the sight of hard muscle and soft chest hair quieted all thought.

Lucian uncorked the bottle and poured oil into his palm. The scent of rosemary filtered through the air. He reached back, and the slide and flex of his biceps while he massaged his neck was a work of art.

“Do you need assistance?” Her voice came out husky.

He paused. The knowing darkening in his eyes knocked the breath from her.

She went to him on unsteady legs. He hadn’t moved; when she assumed a position behind the chair, his hand was still curved around his nape. He bared it to her with a slight hesitation, and her fingers hovered. He smelled of herbs, of fresh water and the hills, like a creature from the wild in the shape of a man. A well-made man. She touched him, causing a slight ripple of tension. His skin felt slippery and cool beneath her fingertips. She gave a tentative stroke toward the curve of his shoulder, leaving a glossy sheen. A scar marred the back of his right biceps, and she moved her hand down and stroked the twisted skin with special care. Stories were mapped out on this body. If she took Lucian inside her, she would know him in ways that an exchange of thoughts alone would never afford her.

She reached over his shoulder to pick up the bottle, and he leaned back, against her breasts. The room swam before her eyes. She straightened and poured more oil, and pressed her palms into heavy, knotted muscle. “You’re impossibly hard,” she said.

“You could say that,” came his dry reply.

Oil welled between her fingers; heat welled in her belly. Her massage unraveled into an aimless, mindless caress. Lucian reached back and caught her wrist. He pulled her hand down to his chest and held her there, and the fast thuds of his heart beneath her palm quickened the yearning beat of her own.

“I’m not making it any better, am I?” she whispered.

His voice was dark and low. “You have made everything better.”

He laced his fingers through hers and guided her to his side, then onto his lap, until she straddled him. She took him in, the smoky gray of his eyes, and his curls, black-blue like Scottish nights, and she knew it would be like riding a storm.

He dipped his head. It was a careful contact, a light bump of his mouth against hers, searching, like a question. She parted her lips in answer, and then she was lost in a slow, openmouthed kiss. Her fingers sank into his hair, reveling in the thick, silken texture. His hands were on her body, gliding over delicate fabric in warm, soothing strokes until she softened. He held her in his gaze, reading her, when he put his hands under her hems and palmed up along her thighs.

She said out loud what crossed her mind: “You are very good with your hands.”

Dark delight sparked in his eyes. He settled his good hands on her bare bottom and squeezed, and rays of heat fanned through her thighs down into her toes. She arched with a sigh, and he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her throat. “You’re very good to touch,” he said.

He ran his hands up her spine, taking her chemise with him, and the robe, and briefly, the world was a cloud of muslin. She should have felt shy, but Lucian’s gaze drifted over her soft naked shape with such hunger, it made her want to lean back and purr. When he passed his hand over her breasts in a gentle reacquaintance, she pressed a little closer. Feeling the strength in his hands made her feel weak, a new kind of weak she knew only with him and the only type of which she desired more.

Unexpectedly, he rose with her, and she gave a squeak when he sat her bottom down on the cool wooden surface of the table. He stepped between her thighs.

She glanced up, vaguely alarmed. “What are you doing?”

He leaned over her and swiped across the table, sending notebooks and folders clattering to the floor.

“Appreciating you,” he murmured, and urged her back until she rested on her elbows. The next kiss wasn’t gentle; it was carnal and deep, making her feel how well their mouths fit together, how well they would fit together. She was gasping for breath when he released her, her body rosy and shimmering with heat.

His warm lips skated along the curve of her jaw, then his tongue glided down over her neck.

“This is hardly decent,” she stammered, a farce of a protest.

“What part of it?” he breathed against her ear. His warm chest was pressed against her breasts, and it felt delicious and she couldn’t think.

“I’m not a …”

He dragged his hot mouth lower, over the slope of her breast.

“I’m not a … ahh.”

Her tender nipple was clamped between his teeth.

“… banquet,” she said weakly.

He released her and followed the sting with a soothing lick. “And yet I want to relish you,” he said, his voice like smoke. “Devour you, if you let me.”

It sounded dangerous, so naturally, she ached for it.

He brushed a kiss between her breasts. “Will you?” he asked, looking up at her. “Let me?”

The place between her legs ached for it, too. It felt slippery and empty.

His hands were on her hips, his thumbs stroking lightly. He was well in control of himself.

“Yes,” she whispered, uncertain whom she wished to unleash more.

She watched his eyes darken before his lashes lowered.

He grabbed her hips harder as he put his mouth back on her, and she sank onto the table, her limbs loosening and spreading in an erotic surrender that somehow felt like victory. Lush kisses on her belly, strong fingers pressing into her thighs, opening her. A gentle roar filled her ears like the crash of distant waves. Lucian pulled her thigh over his oil-slick shoulder and buried his face in her lap. She stopped breathing. The first hot swipe of his tongue made her see black. He did it again, leisurely and with a hum in his chest, and her nails scraped across wood. She was writhing; he was unhurried, shamelessly relishing her as promised. By the time he was stroking a finger into her, then two, she was dissolving in dizzying heat. The only way to stand it was to moan, and to move against his mouth, his face, and on his sliding hand. She thought she felt him smile. When his fingers curled inside her, she clamped her thighs around his head and screamed.

She came to, trembling and with energy crackling over her flushed skin. She was still on a table. Sitting up. Lucian was leaning back into the chair, looking deceptively idle, with hazy eyes and a smug edge to his mouth. His mouth. She stared at it until it pulled into a faint smile.

“Welcome back, love.”

Golden flecks still danced across her vision. He had propped her left foot onto his knee, she realized, covering it with his warm hand.

“Sir, are you mocking me?” she said. Her voice was pliant like velvet. If she moved, she might float off the table.

“Mock you.” He slowly shook his head. “Did it feel like mockery to you?”

She had felt glorious. Worshipped and taken and set free. The key to Lucian was to feel him, she realized, not to think. Her natural inclination was to feel first, to rationalize second, in any case. Feeling his essence beneath layers of unfavorable appearances had drawn her to him since they had first locked eyes next to a Han vase.

Her gaze fell to the bulge straining against the front of his trousers, and longing stirred and mingled with the last ripples of her release. It was a longing she would carry until she sated it.

She looked her husband in the eye. “I want you,” she said.

He gave a soft huff. “You don’t owe me favors. I’ve wanted to work you over like this for a long time.”

“I want you.”

His gaze became alert. “It would make an annulment more complicated,” he murmured.

“Do you wish for me to beg?” she asked, and leaned forward. His eyes followed the sway of her breasts before he looked back at her face. “Because I won’t,” she said.

His features sharpened. “Well then.”

He extended his hand and helped her off the table.

Now she felt shy, naked in front of him, while he sat there in his trousers.

“We could do it like this.” He gestured at himself on the chair.

It took her a moment to envision the logistics of such a thing. “Why?”

“It might please you better,” he said, “to just take however much you want.”

His hands stilled on his buttons when she gave a small shake. Her body wanted his to cover her. “I trust you would stop,” she said. “You did before.”

A rueful glimmer in his eyes said he remembered their disastrous wedding night. “Yes,” he said. “I would stop.”

On the bed, their bodies seemed shaped to fit the other perfectly. Her own soft form seamlessly molded to the heat and weight of his, and when he finally eased into her, he held her, patiently, until she gradually shaped herself around the heavy warmth of him inside her, too. Then their joining became a blur of sensation. Warm skin tasting of arousal, muscle rippling beneath her palms, the guttural pleasure groans of a man enjoying himself. She opened her eyes when his movements lost their measured rhythm. She watched his face turn feral when he gave a last deep thrust and held himself inside her with his head thrown back.

He lay against her from behind with his thighs drawn up against the backs of hers, his body warming her like a well-heated brick. They were married, in all ways now. In her sated lethargy, the realization merely rippled through her.

“We must make haste, and prepare for supper,” Harriet finally murmured without any discernible enthusiasm. “We asked Mr. Matthews to meet us at seven o’clock.”

“Supper can go hang,” came Lucian’s deep voice.

He nudged her backside with his hips. He was hard again. More outrageously, she felt she would not refuse him.

He sat up, and she glanced at him, and her breath caught. His expression did not match his tone, or his crude nudging: his face was soft: eyes, lips soft, his hair deliciously rumpled. Her heartbeat stuttered. I could love such a face, she thought; I could love him badly. Goose bumps spread on her skin. She had always assumed that loving someone came first and desiring closeness followed. With Lucian, the urge to feel him inside her had come first, a risk she had taken. She felt very, very naked before him now. It seemed lust alone made for a flimsy blanket.

He had been stroking her hip; now he stopped. “Too sore?” he asked, his eyes searching hers.

She blushed. “No.”

He traced the color on her cheek with a tender fingertip. “If you’d rather not, tell me.”

His caress unwound something in her. She rolled onto her back. It might not be love, but whatever it was, right now, she wanted it, and needed him again, if only to douse the unexpected flicker of panic. Lucian spread her knees with an expression of restrained greed in his eyes that heated her core. Whatever it was, he badly wanted it, too. He made a noise in his throat when he entered her, an instinctive sound of almost pain, and she understood. Feeling him return to her was so good it hurt.

He slept a little afterward. She listened to his even breathing, thinking that the only time love had been mentioned between them had been the moment she had vowed to never, ever love him, and how this had not fazed him in the least.