Claimed By The Laird Part 21

The music spun onward, a whirling spiral of sound that echoed the whirling spiral of her thoughts. Christina felt the tears close her throat because it only made her feel worse, more afraid, standing on the edge of danger, not ready to take the leap. She realized that this was all about her, not about Lucas. It was about whether she could trust herself to love him again. It was whether she was prepared to take that risk.

Lucas's mouth hovered over hers. "I love you," he murmured. His eyes were full of tenderness and desire. "I'll never stop loving you. I cannot promise not to die, but I have no intention of leaving you for a very long time."

Christina almost lost herself then, trapped by the fierce black gaze that held hers, her heartbeat racing and the rest of the world forgotten as he held her close. Then someone b.u.mped against them and apologized and she realized that the waltz still went on and that people were staring. Her hand came to rest on his chest. "We are scandalizing the ballroom," she whispered.

"Now, that," Lucas said, "is where I do not give a fig for society's opinion."

Before Christina was aware of what he was about, he had whisked her out of the doorway into the hall. It was quiet here, with the noise and chatter of the ballroom muted. Lucas drew her behind a group of statuary and kissed her. There was no gentleness in it, no hesitation, nothing but raw, explosive pa.s.sion, so fierce and dangerous that her head reeled. Still kissing her, he started to pull her toward the stairs. They stumbled in their haste and she heard him give a mutter of impatience against her mouth, and then he had scooped her up in his arms and was taking the stairs two at a time. He put her down outside her chamber door and they kissed again, hungry, desperate, then crashed through the door with Lucas slamming it shut behind them.

"I gave you a chamber in the east wing," Christina said as his mouth finally lifted from hers.

"At this precise moment, I can't remember where that is," Lucas said, "and I don't care."

He tumbled her down onto the bed and Christina reached for him. Everything she had been feeling in the past few days, the hurt, the anger, the confusion and the longing, fused into one huge burst of need. She had felt it that morning when they had kissed. Now she ripped his jacket and shirt off, the beautiful formal evening clothes she had admired him in only hours earlier, and then she realized that they did not even belong to him.

"I've just ruined the evening clothes Jack loaned you," she gasped as she smoothed her hands over his shoulders and chest, exulting in the warm slide of skin on skin.

"It was only his second-best suit," Lucas murmured. His lips brushed the hollow at the base of her throat. "I'll buy him a new one." His hands were busy on the fastenings of her gown, tugging, struggling with the b.u.t.tons and bows. "d.a.m.n it, why must you wear so many clothes?"

With a growl of frustration he pulled them off haphazardly and threw them to the floor, leaving her naked.

Then everything changed and became slow and languorous. Lucas ran a hand down her body with lazy pleasure and she tilted her head up so that her lips found his. She opened to him without holding back, and they kissed gently, yet there was a feverish edge of need to it as though any moment they might fall beyond control. Lucas bent his head to her breast and Christina arched against him, feeling her breath fracture and the desire inside her wind ever tighter. His tongue flicked her nipple and she groaned aloud.

"Trust me," he whispered against her hot skin. "Give yourself up to me."

Again his tongue flicked over the sensitive tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and she squirmed helplessly. Pleasure was a deep, dark tide inside her now, washing through her, demanding release. Lucas pressed his lips to the hollow of her stomach and she gasped, reaching for him, but he held her hands fast so that she had no choice other than to lie still.

She closed her eyes. Light danced across the backs of her eyelids, fantasy and pleasure merging as she focused on the sensations he was arousing in her body. His lips and tongue trailed a path across from one of her hip bones to the other. Tingles chased across her skin and her hips lifted in desperate appeal. At once he slid a hand between her legs, his fingers seeking and finding, stroking with such knowing skill that she cried out. Her body rippled and clenched, but he felt the response and drew back, leaving her hanging tantalizingly on the edge.

"Not yet."

She made a sound of appeal and frustration and he laughed, rolling on top of her, sliding a leg between hers. She could feel the hardness of his thigh and the thickness of his arousal and she tried desperately to draw him in to her, but he resisted. The strength of him held her trapped as he returned to kiss her again, deep demanding kisses that only served to build the heat and the fever higher. He drew back and stroked the damp hair from her face.

"Trust me." There was such an intensity of emotion in his black eyes that she felt dizzy. "I won't let you fall."

He kissed her again, carnal, sensual, so that her body twitched with desire and she shifted in another vain attempt to pull him closer to her. He held back; she could see his smile, and he bent his head to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s again, the brush of his stubble against her sensitive skin an exquisite torment.

"I know what you are doing." She gasped the words. "You want..."

"Everything." His fingers caressed her again and she jolted. "I want you to give yourself to me without reservation."

His hand pushed her thighs wider, and then he was inside her and she almost cried out with relief as he possessed her. He held her hips, withdrew a little and then plunged deeper. Her body rose to meet his at each stroke. It was fierce, terrifying and glorious. She felt as though she was abandoning something of herself and yet finding something she had never imagined. The fear that had dogged her steps, the refusal to trust was destroyed forever in the intensity of her emotions. She wanted to give her heart freely. She wanted to share her life with him.

"I love you," she said. "Lucas..."

The world shattered into tiny, brilliant fragments. She felt him holding her, heard him say her name and felt him shaking as much as she was. He drew her close and she curled into his side, too exhausted to think, dazed. And then she drifted gently into sleep with her body and mind entangled in him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

LUCAS WOKE TO a sensation of warmth and contentment. Christina was lying with her body curled into the shelter of his. Her hair fanned across his chest and tickled his nose and chin. She was smiling, fast asleep. It felt as though she belonged in that precise place, in his arms, resting next to his heart.

It felt as though they belonged together.

Strange that now, after so many years of cutting himself off from any sense of belonging, he should feel as though he had come home, not to a place but to a person, Christina, the other half of his soul.

There was the sound of the door opening, a rattle of bed curtains, no scream this time.

"You again!" Annie said cheerfully. "You had better get down to the kirk. This can't go on."

Christina was stretching, yawning, her eyes soft with sleep and so much love that Lucas felt his heart turn over.

"A good idea," she murmured, smiling at him.

"We will speak to Mr. MacPherson this very morning," Lucas said.

"Papa-" Christina said, sounding suddenly uneasy.

"He will not stand in our way," Lucas said. "And if he does-" he kissed her "-we will elope."

"I rather like the thought of eloping with the gardener," Christina said. "But before that, I will see you for breakfast."

Somehow Lucas managed to find his way back to the chamber in the east wing that Christina had had prepared for him the night before. Jack's valet had thoughtfully laid out another set of clothes for him. Lucas vowed to take rather more care of this set. He washed and dressed and made his way downstairs. A number of the guests were already gathering for breakfast, but before they could go in to eat there was a peremptory knock at the front door. When Galloway opened it he was swept out of the way like flotsam on the tide as a posse of soldiers marched in with Eyre at their head.

Lucas felt a cold, solid weight of dread settle in his stomach. When Eyre had not troubled them the previous day he had hoped it was because the riding officer had heard that Christina was alive and well and that in the absence of any evidence he could not touch her. Now he saw how deeply he had underestimated the man. Eyre had merely been biding his time.

"Lady Christina!" Eyre boomed, and turning, Lucas saw that Christina was just coming down the broad staircase and into the hall. Eyre, puffed up with self-importance, strutted toward her.

"What the devil is this?" Lucas demanded. The dragoons stood awkwardly to attention, a half dozen of them under the command of a captain who barely looked old enough to be out of short trousers.

Lucas looked at Christina. She was standing on the bottom step, very straight, very pale. Her gaze touched his briefly and Lucas saw a welter of fear and anger there and felt his skin crawl with hatred. This man had tried to kill her. He had hunted her down and tried to shoot her. He saw Christina lace her fingers together tightly to stop them from trembling and felt a wave of protectiveness so fierce it shook him.

"Perhaps we should speak privately, Mr. Eyre," Christina said. Her voice was very steady. Lucas was proud of her. "As you can see-" she glanced around at the shocked crowd of guests milling in the hall "-we are hosting a party here today. It really is not appropriate for us to discuss business in front of everyone."

Eyre gave a derisive snort. Lucas could see the gathering through the riding officer's eyes: the aristocratic house, the opulence, the flowers, the servants and the privilege, all of the things that Eyre resented most in the world. Even his nephew had been accepted into this gilded world now, into the one place where Eyre would never be welcome. Lucas knew Eyre would not back down. On the contrary, this would give him the stage he wanted to humiliate and ruin Christina before everyone. He could see it in the gleam of anger and triumph in Eyre's eyes. The riding officer was relishing this. He was enjoying every moment.

"I am sure you have no secrets from your family and friends, my lady," Eyre said. "I am sure they are all aware of your criminal activities. But if not-" he braced his legs a little wider, leaning back, a self-important stance full of confidence "-allow me to tell them all about it."

Lucas saw Lucy and Mairi exchange a frankly incredulous look. Gertrude's mouth had fallen open. Under other circ.u.mstances, Lucas might have found it amusing that Christina had shocked her family so comprehensively, but this was no laughing matter. Eyre was intent on destruction.

"A couple of nights ago," Eyre said, "acting on information given by an informer, we instigated a search for the whisky still that we knew was operating illegally on the Kilmory estate. We discovered a bothy in Loch Gyle that we believe had recently been used to brew the peat-reek."

Robert Methven gave Lucas a meaningful stare. Lucas knew he was telling him to keep quiet, that he would deal with this. Lucas could see the sense in that, since he was Christina's betrothed and hardly impartial, but the need to defend her burned into him like a brand.

"Do you have any evidence, Mr. Eyre?" Robert said politely. "Did you recover any of the apparatus of distilling?"

Eyre shot him a look of intense dislike. "No, my lord," he admitted, "but we have the informer's word for it that the whisky still was there."

Jack shrugged. "Informers will say a great deal if they think it will gain them material benefit," he said. "Was your informer Mrs. Parmenter, by any chance? I think it is fair to say that she has quite a grudge against this family and will say anything to cause trouble."

"The informer," Eyre said grandly, "was Lord Lachlan MacMorlan. He also laid information to the effect that Lady Christina was the leader of the Kilmory whisky smugglers."

Lucas saw Christina sway and took the steps to her side in one bound, sliding an arm about her waist.

"Lachlan?" she whispered. "Lachlan was the spy?" She looked utterly devastated. "Why would he do such a thing?"

"For money, I imagine," Robert said. His mouth was set in a very hard line.

The hall was in uproar. Gertrude appeared to be having the vapors. Allegra was crying. Richard had his arms about her, comforting her, swearing that he had not known. Lucy and Mairi looked completely stricken. Mairi groped for a chair and sat down hard. Jack took her hand in his.

"Lachlan," Mairi said. "The low, scheming, deceitful worm. I always thought he would sell his own family for profit, and now he has."

Eyre, Lucas noted grimly, was grinning, delighted to have caused such chaos. "You may be interested to know, sir," he said, turning to Lucas, "that my suspicion is that Lord Lachlan was also instrumental in the death of your brother. He and Alice Parmenter were lovers. They were in it together."

Lucas felt Christina's fingers tremble in his. Her expression was agonized as her eyes met his. "No," she said. "Oh, no. Lucas..."

Lachlan, Lucas thought. A drunkard, a fool, dismissed as negligible by everyone because they thought he was lost in wine. He felt dizzy with the shock and he felt a fool for not seeing it sooner, for not realizing. He remembered the look Lachlan had given him at the stables that day, sharp and appraising. He remembered the duke saying that the whole family had gathered in Edinburgh for Christmas. He remembered Alice saying that she wanted a younger lover. He had not known that she already had one in the shape of the duke's son, a man who had been a conniving criminal under the disguise of a drunken sot.

The duke was looking perplexed. "But Alice was my-"

"Your Grace," Robert said sharply, and the duke fell obediently silent.

Eyre was still speaking, and Lucas snapped out of his thoughts as he heard Christina give a little gasp. She was the one who mattered now, he thought. Christina was the one who needed protection from Eyre. Everything else could wait until later.

"You are the woman we hunted into the waters of Loch Gyle on the night we went to destroy the still," Eyre was saying. "You were the leader of the smugglers, just as your brother said. You will pay for those crimes."

There was absolute silence in the room, a silence that rang with hostility. Lucas felt it and with it a fierce pride. Not one member of the MacMorlans, not Gertrude, not Richard Bryson, not the Duke of Forres himself was going to make this easy for Eyre.

"I thought," Jack said gently, "that you had no evidence, Mr. Eyre? You can scarcely arrest Lady Christina on no more than the word of her brother, who may well be a murderer."

Lucas saw the angry color come into Eyre's face at the challenge. But the man was dangerous still. He knew Eyre had not finished yet. He still had Christina firmly in his sights. The dragoons stood drawn up to attention, blank faced, awaiting their cue.

"I think that Lady Christina can be persuaded to confess, sir," Eyre said confidently. "Lord Lachlan gave us the names of each and every one of the smuggling gang. They are all in custody now, and their families with them. If Lady Christina helps us, then I am prepared to be generous and let them go. If not-" he shrugged "-they will bear the punishment for her crime."

Christina had turned paper-white.

"That is iniquitous, Eyre," Lucas said. He could not keep silent any longer. "It's no more than blackmail."

"It's persuasion, sir." Eyre's gaze rested on Lucas with disdain. "Lady Christina understands."

Lucas saw Christina close her eyes and take a deep breath. He knew what she was going to do. He knew it with a sense of inevitability that made him feel sick and cold inside. Christina was not the sort of woman to allow others to take the responsibility for her actions. She would take Eyre's devil's bargain because she would feel she had no choice, and Lucas would love her fiercely for it whilst feeling utter despair.

"Christina, please, no-" he started to say. Their eyes met and she smiled at him, though he could see the sparkle of tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said, speaking directly to him, as though no one else were present. "I'm sorry, Lucas. I love you so much."

She turned back to Eyre. "You are quite correct, Mr. Eyre," she said. Her voice was icy cold and steady. "I was the woman you hunted into the waters of Loch Gyle. I was the woman you shot and tried to drown. There are plenty of men who were witness to that, including Mr. Bryson and Mr. Black." She inclined her head toward Richard, who nodded grimly in return. He was looking at his uncle with undisguised loathing. Lucas felt a ripple of unease pa.s.s through the ranks of the dragoons. "You have already illegally imprisoned innocent children and burned people's property to the ground," Christina continued. She turned to the captain of the dragoons. "You must arrest me for smuggling, captain," she said. "I quite see that. But I accuse Mr. Eyre of attempted murder, so you had better arrest him, too."

"Ma'am-" The captain was completely out of his depth now.

"I'm ready to go with you now," Christina said, "but you must honor Mr. Eyre's agreement and release those Kilmory villagers who are now in custody. I take full responsibility for everything. Now take me away."

Lucas watched the dragoons escort her to the carriage that was waiting. He felt as though a part of him was being wrenched away.

He was losing her before they had barely made a beginning.

Jack had his hand on his arm and was speaking to him urgently but his words rolled off Lucas as no more than sound. He watched the carriage down the drive and out of sight. The soldiers had turned to Eyre now. He was bl.u.s.tering and protesting, but the young captain stood firm. A moment later they had snapped him in manacles and marched him away, too.

"Are you going after Lachlan MacMorlan?" Jack asked. "Bringing Peter's killer to justice was always the most important thing for you."

"It was," Lucas said slowly. He realized that Jack was right; until very recently he would not have hesitated. "Yes," he said, and as he spoke he felt something open up within him and fly free. It was as though he was finally able to let go and mourn Peter's memory rather than being driven by his need for vengeance. "But not now. I've got something more important to do first." And he saw Jack grin as he ran toward the stables, shouting for a horse.

CHRISTINA SAT IN the parlor of the magistrate's house in Fort William. She had been staying with Sir Anthony and Lady Medway for approaching six weeks now. They maintained the polite fiction that she was a guest but everyone knew she was in fact under house arrest until the authorities in London decided what to do with her.

It was not an uncomfortable imprisonment, at least not in the physical sense. She was confined to the house but had the use of the library and the run of the gardens. What was uncomfortable was being an unwanted visitor in the house of strangers. Lady Medway had sent her daughters away, ostensibly to visit relatives for a few weeks, but Christina was sure it was because she was considered a bad influence. The magistrate's wife treated her with great politeness, but every so often Christina would catch her looking at her out of the corner of her eye as though Lady Medway thought of her as an unpredictable animal who might suddenly do something outrageous and shocking. She supposed it was no surprise; stories of her exploits and those of the Kilmory Gang had run like wildfire through the small Highland community. She was notorious now.

Through the unseasonably long, hot days of August, she reflected on whether she could have done anything differently but always came to the same conclusions. She could not have pleaded ignorance and left the other members of the gang to face the law alone, abandoning them to their fate. It was not in her nature. She had had no choice other than to take responsibility.

In doing so, though, she had sacrificed her own happiness and hurt Lucas, too. She thought of him every waking moment. It seemed the cruelest irony that she had come to love and trust Lucas completely and then she had had to turn her back on him in order to save those who depended on her. It had been the hardest decision of her life, and even now she felt sick in her soul to think of what she had done, but she could not see any other way.

She had not heard from Lucas. She was allowed no letters and did not know if he would even write to her if she was permitted to communicate with him. Lachlan had betrayed her and had killed Peter, too. It was horrific. She had had no chance to talk to Lucas about it, but she knew she could not blame him if he wanted nothing to do with her family ever again.

She dreamed of Lucas every night and woke in the mornings with a dull thud of disappointment when she realized that the man who had walked through her dreams was a ghost, no longer beside her. She knew that people said that in time such pain grew easier, but it did not feel like that to her.

One morning Lady Medway came into the parlor where she was playing a solitary game of cards. The weather had turned cold and dull, too chilly to sit out in the garden, and Christina was feeling cooped up and miserable. Lady Medway's demeanor, though, was full of repressed excitement.

"There is a gentleman to see you, my lady," she said.

Christina's heart did a giddy swoop only to dive down to her feet again when she saw the gentleman in question was not Lucas. This man was older, spare, sandy, travel stained as he handed his cloak to the overawed housemaid.

"I am Sidmouth, Lady Christina," the man said, appraising her with sharp gray eyes. "I am not at all pleased to make your acquaintance." He came into the room and strolled over to warm his hands before the fire. Lady Medway's housekeeper bustled in with a tray of tea and biscuits. It was clear that Lady Medway herself wanted to be party to the conversation, but Lord Sidmouth dismissed her with a very courteous inclination of the head and a word of thanks.

"I am honored to meet you, my lord," Christina said when they were alone. Her heart beat hard. She had never expected that the home secretary himself would pa.s.s judgment on her case, least of all that he would come all the way to Scotland to do it. "Will you take a seat?"

"Think I'll stand," Sidmouth said peremptorily. "I've been sitting down for the past several days." He laid an arm along the mantel. "You've caused me a great deal of trouble, young woman," he said. "I don't appreciate being obliged to leave London and come haring up to the Highlands like this. Scotland ain't my favorite place, y'know."

"I'm sorry for that, my lord," Christina said politely.

"Ah, well..." Sidmouth took a long swallow of the tea and selected a biscuit from the tray. "It was the only way I was going to get any peace. I suppose I should tell you first-" he sighed "-that your brother Lachlan has escaped justice and fled abroad. That problem, at least, was taken out of my hands." He looked at her from beneath lowering brows. "A pity that you did not see fit to do the same, madam. But I suppose one member of the family at least had to show a bit of backbone."