The Lady Most Willing Read online

  Byron stretched his feet out toward the fire. A log cracked in half and sent a shower of sparks like live bits of gold up the chimney.

  “My father believed that nothing mattered except for one’s reputation,” he said, staring into his mug.

  “He would have approved, then, of your broken betrothal?”

  “Without question. Though I should say that, in point of fact, she broke the engagement after . . . after the incident.”

  “Did you love her?” Speaking the words sent a little pulse of savage longing down her neck. Why would his fiancée kiss a dancing master when she could have kissed this complex, beautiful man? It was inconceivable.

  “No,” he said morosely. “And obviously, she didn’t love me, either. But I didn’t ask for love.” His expression made it clear that was an important distinction. “I never asked for that.”

  “You should have,” Fiona exclaimed, before she could catch herself.

  He pushed to his feet and squatted before the fire, using the poker to move a half-burnt log closer to its heart. He moved with a powerful grace that belied his large physique. “I begin to share your opinion.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t look back at her. “Neither love nor affection is a prerequisite for marriage amongst the nobility,” he continued. “But faithfulness is. That’s what a woman’s reputation means: that she won’t sleep with another man, and leave a cuckoo to inherit one’s estate.”

  “I think kindness is important,” Fiona said, thinking of Dugald and his lack thereof.

  “Of course. Sanity is also a good attribute in a spouse.” Humor laced his words again, albeit humor with a dark edge.

  “You’ve omitted physical attractiveness,” Fiona offered. “From what I’ve seen during the season, gentlemen find beauty tremendously important.”

  He was placing another log on the fire, but he half turned in order to see her face. “Why do you single out my sex? Don’t ladies feel the same about their future husband’s appearance?”

  She thought about it. Dugald hadn’t been handsome, not in the least. Of course she would have preferred a good-looking man, but when her father had presented her with the marriage, it never occurred to her to say no for that reason. “We generally don’t have the freedom to choose on that basis.”

  He looked back at the fire. “The dancing master was going bald. That’s what I remember most: the way his head shone in the back.”

  Without conscious volition, Fiona rose and walked a step to his side. But once there, she was at a loss. Obviously, he had cared about his faithless fiancée, no matter how much he protested to the contrary. She put a hand tentatively on his shoulder. Her velvet sleeve was a little too long; its folds fell over the arm of his coat. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He got to his feet. “I didn’t care about her overmuch.” Perhaps he was telling the truth, but she knew instinctively that he would never admit it if Lady Opal had broken his heart.

  Byron was a stubborn, stubborn man. That square chin conveyed a level of obstinate, masculine strength that a woman could lean against—and battle—for the whole of her life.

  Fiona found herself smiling at him as if he were a true friend, as if genuine affection flowed between them. Somehow, beyond all reason, she felt as if she had just become friends with a pompous, irascible turnip of an English lord.

  From the look in his eyes, he had come to the same realization at the same moment.

  Then his eyes fell to her lips. She licked them nervously. “Of course,” she said, her voice coming out in a breathy tone that reminded her uncomfortably of Marilla, “of course you didn’t love her!” Somehow she managed to give the sentence a perky tone that was utterly inappropriate.

  His eyebrow shot up. He was mocking her, and yet . . . yet there was sensual promise there as well.

  “No,” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer, at least not directly. Instead, he reached over and pulled one of her hairpins and, before she could stop him, another. Without pins to hold it up, her heavy hair tumbled down over her shoulders.

  Byron made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like a hum.

  “What are you doing?” Fiona said, stepping back and frowning. Her spectacles had slid down her nose; she pushed them back up. “I have already informed you that I am not an appropriate person with whom to conduct a flirtation, Lord Oakley.”

  “And I have already warned you about using my title,” he said, his voice throaty, and just as she remembered his threat of a kiss, his arms came around her and his mouth descended on hers.

  It was not her first kiss. In the heady days before her father matched her with Dugald, she had kissed two boys. For years afterward, she had remembered one of those kisses in particular. She could even remember the sharp smell of the pine needles that crackled under their feet as she and Carrick Farquharson stood in the shade of a garden wall. There had been no second kiss. Carrick had left to fight in His Majesty’s army, and never returned; his body lay in a grave somewhere in France.

  Byron’s mouth brushed across hers, and she smelled pine needles, like a ghost of a promise. It was awkward. She didn’t know what to do with her arms, or her spectacles.

  The only thing she felt was a deep sense of rightness . . . and an equally powerful sense of wrongness. “We mustn’t do this,” she whispered.

  He eased back enough to remove her spectacles. Holding her gaze, he carefully put them on the mantelpiece.

  That just meant that Fiona could see his face even more closely. Her brows drew together as she tried to make sense of what was happening. “Why are you kissing me?” she said, keeping her back straight, so that she didn’t relax against him like the veriest trollop. And then, fiercely, “Is it because you know of my reputation?”

  “Have you kissed a dancing master as well?” His voice was threaded with a lazy sensuality that made her step back, though his face blurred when she did it.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Then what spurred your lost repute? Not that I would believe such a rumor, because any fool could see that you’re not the one in your family handing out kisses like bonbons.”

  “My fiancé’s name was Dugald,” she began. She took a deep breath, but he interrupted.

  “A terrible name.”

  Words bubbled up in her chest, but she didn’t open her mouth to blurt out the story of ivy, and windows, and a reputation so blackened that she was infamous throughout the Highlands. The truth was that she longed for another kiss, just one, before he learned the truth and turned his back in disgust.

  When she didn’t speak, Byron cupped her face with his long fingers, carefully—as carefully as he did anything else. Yet when he put his mouth to hers, there was nothing sensible about his kiss. She opened her mouth to his without thinking, wrapping her arms around his neck and standing on her tiptoes.

  It was a wicked kiss, deep and wild and glad. She could taste it in his mouth, that sudden, vivid delight, as clearly as if he had said so aloud.

  The knowledge of his pleasure curled in her stomach, flared into an odd heat that made her shiver against him, and then he was kissing her so fiercely that her head tilted back.

  It was dark behind her closed eyelids. She concentrated on the taste of him and the smell of him, and the way one kiss melted into another, kisses that made her ache and breathe as if she were running, but not away—toward him, closer to him.

  Her arms curled more tightly around his neck; then his hands slid to her back and he pulled her against his body. As if it mattered to him that she feel all that hardness and strength.

  Their tongues tangled and she slid her fingers into his short hair. Part of her was frozen in stark disbelief that an English earl with white-blond hair and a muscled body was kissing her. Making her feel meltingly soft, and impatient. Making her long for more.

  That thought was instantly followed by a rush of panic. She—Fiona—didn’t allow herself to long for anything. She never had.
That way was madness. She kept herself sane by never wishing for what she could not have, by recognizing that life had sensible boundaries.

  Longing would mean acknowledging that she wished that her mother hadn’t died, that her father cared about her more, that she had never met Dugald, that people had believed her . . . It meant the heartbreak and desperation of knowing that she wanted children, that she wanted a husband, that she . . .

  Her panic was as chilling and as overwhelming as an ice-cold wave breaking over her head. She pulled back. “I can’t do this,” she said, her voice rising to a squeak when she looked up at Byron and understood that longing wasn’t strong enough to describe what she was feeling. She seemed to have succumbed to a kind of madness, though she hardly knew him.

  In an impulse for self-preservation, she reached out, put her hands on his chest, and pushed at him. She felt hard planes of muscle under her fingers as she pushed, which merely increased her alarm. He didn’t even fall back a step.

  “I’m not like this,” she said, her breath sounding harsh in her ears. “I don’t do this. I know I have a terrible reputation, but I’m not . . . I’m not a whore.”

  “I would never think that!” he said, quick and fast, and some errant part of her saw his chest rising and falling as fast as hers and was triumphant and glad. He wasn’t unmoved by her, by plain Fiona Chisholm.

  Even so, she fell back another step. She would not allow herself to want him. He wasn’t hers. He could never be hers.

  “No,” she repeated. But there was something uncertain in her voice, and his eyes flared, hot and feverish.

  It didn’t matter that he couldn’t be hers; clearly, he was thinking that she could be . . .

  “No,” she said with a gasp, and she almost spoke aloud, but it was too foolish to even think that the Earl of Oakley would consider a mere Scottish lass to be his. The possessiveness in his eyes probably meant he was considering making her his mistress. “I am not a strumpet,” she said, stronger now. “I’m not. Even if I am Scottish, and . . . and not beautiful.”

  “You are beautiful.”

  She stared at him blankly for a second, because she had always trusted herself and her judgment. All her life. She had been a mere six years old when she discovered that her father was weak. All of ten years old when she realized that Marilla was always angry—too angry to be a loving sister. Sixteen when she learned that Dugald was a bully. And what she saw in this man’s face, this almost-stranger’s face, was trust, desire, and longing. For her.

  “No,” she whispered. “You mustn’t.”

  He reached out for her again. “I already do.” His voice was sure and confident.

  Fiona struggled free before his lips could again touch hers and make her fall into that pool of hot, wild desperation. “This is madness,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You, sir, should have better control of yourself than to exert your seductive wiles on a—a maiden like myself.” Because she was a maiden, even if no one believed her. “I am not available to slake your lust,” she added.

  “Slake?” Laughter shone in his eyes along with that deeply unsettling gleam that spoke of lust.

  She waved her hand impatiently. “Whatever you wish to call it. I am not a strumpet whom one can tumble just because the door is locked. You are not the first to try to take advantage of me, you know. And you shall not succeed!”

  It was all different from Dugald trying to climb in her window, but it felt good to shout at him.

  The startled look on his face was worth it, too.

  “I would not have taken advantage of you,” he said, his brow darkening.

  “Then why is the door locked?” she challenged.

  “To keep your bloody sister out,” he snapped back. “It had nothing to do with the two of us being inside.” He walked over to the door and unlocked it.

  But when he turned around, he wasn’t irritated any longer. He looked like a gleeful boy. “Thanks to that lock, I’ve just realized that I have ruined your reputation,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “We’ve been locked in a room together. We’ll have to marry. It’s what a gentleman would do.” He walked toward her, his eyes intent.

  “Oh!” she cried in frustration, stepping backward. “Why have you changed like this? I don’t understand you!”

  “I decided this afternoon that I wish to make a woman fall in love with me.”

  Fiona glared at him. “So I am the subject of an experiment? Are you planning to accost young ladies on a regular basis?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Then what on earth are you doing?” she cried, exasperated. “I don’t believe for a moment that you plan to ruin my reputation and marry me, if only because it’s already ruined. It’s very unkind of you to make jokes of this sort to a woman like myself, who has no prospect of marriage.”

  “I suspect I have gone a little mad.” Byron lunged and scooped her into his arms. “Whenever I touch you,” he whispered against her lips, “I feel as if you are the woman I have been looking for my whole life, though I have denied, even to myself, that I was looking.”

  Despite herself, her lips softened and he took her invitation, embroiling her in a kiss that made her feel soft and feminine, all those things that she wasn’t.

  More than anything, it was a possessive kiss, the kind of kiss a man gives a woman whom he is determined to make his, to have and to hold . . . Madness or no, her every instinct told her that Byron was telling the truth: he wanted to marry her. And he wanted to bed her. Craving swept her body like a drug, making her sway against him. He groaned deep in his chest, and pulled her still closer.

  “We can’t,” she said, the words emerging in a little sob. “I haven’t told you . . .”

  “You will be a wonderful countess.” His hands stroked slowly down her back, leaving her feeling as if her skin woke only after he touched it.

  “No, no, I will not,” she gasped, unable to believe that they were having this discussion. “We don’t know each other.”

  “I didn’t know Opal, either, as is manifestly clear,” he offered, his eyes hot with desire. His hands—

  “You shouldn’t touch me there,” Fiona managed.

  His hands tightened on her bottom, and then slid upward to her hips. “I love your curves,” he said thickly. “I promise to spend at least forty years getting to know you.”

  “I know why you are saying this,” she said, trying to ignore his touch, though she couldn’t make herself move away from him.

  “Because you are delectable?”

  “Because you have decided that Lady Opal only staged her affection for the dancing master. You could tolerate her betrayal when you thought she was in love with another man, but now you feel bruised.”

  “You taste like apples,” he said, ignoring her comment and taking her mouth again.

  She allowed the pure pleasure of his kiss to sweep her under. It was bliss, this kissing, the way their tongues played together, the way he held her, as if she were shy and precious and beautiful, when she was none of those things.

  This time it was he who pulled back. “I know enough about you, Fiona.”

  “You know nothing,” she said shakily.

  “You are very intelligent and you love to read.” He dropped a kiss on her left eyebrow. “You are extremely kind, even to your sister, who would strain anyone’s generosity. You love deeply and you’re very loyal. You don’t suffer fools gladly, but you are instinctively polite.”

  He kissed her right eyebrow, and his hands tightened on her hips. “You have beautiful curves,” he said, his voice darkening a trifle. “Your hair has red tones that look like the most precious jewel in the world. I want to drape you in rubies. I want to see you lying on my bed, wearing nothing but a ruby necklace.”

  Fiona felt as if she were caught in some sort of dream. Byron’s eyes were fervent. He meant every word. And he had no idea, none at all, of what had happened to her.

  She squared her shoulders, s
ummoning the courage to crack open the little enchantment that had bewitched them both, when the library door suddenly opened.

  They swung about to find Mr. Garvie standing on the threshold. “Supper is in an hour,” he told them in his usual surly tone. “So if you two mean to dress, you’d better get at it.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Fiona said, and like the coward she was, she fled. She could feel tears coming as she ran up the stairs. It was so—so unfair. Byron was undoubtedly suffering from some sort of temporary madness. But he looked at her in such a way . . . and said those things . . . things she never thought she’d hear from anyone.

  It was cruel that she couldn’t marry him. She caught herself thinking a hateful thought about Dugald before she pulled herself together.

  Her chest felt hollow, as if there was a physical reason for the ache there. It was absurd. She didn’t even know Byron. He may have decided that he knew her, but all she knew was that he was an absurdly beautiful man, an English earl who’d been thrown over by his fiancée, and for some fairly inexplicable reason had decided on her as a replacement, even though she’d told him at least three times that her reputation was ruined.

  “I’d like a bath, if you please,” she told a stray retainer she encountered in the hallway.

  He put up a protest, but she fixed him with a tiger’s eye and he backed down. “You’ll miss supper,” he said in a parting shot.

  Hopefully, he would be right.

  Chapter 14

  Taran was not employing the great hall for dining; a storm this fierce sneaked in through windows and took over the larger rooms. The wind howled as it rounded the corners, scouring under the doors, keeping the air frigid and moving.

  Instead, supper was to be served in the antechamber where they’d taken all their meals. It was small and cheery; a boy had been assigned to keep a fire burning there all day. Its small mullioned windows were so crusted with snow and ice that the wind couldn’t even make them rattle.