My Lord Jack Read online

  “You’ll catch your death,” he chided. He shrugged free of the coat and, reaching behind her, bundled the warm wool about her shoulders.

  “But now you will be cold,” she protested with a small shake of her head.

  “Nay, I’ll not be,” he said with perfect honesty, for the shock of her going missing, the desperate hunt about the tavern and grounds, and now the relief at finding her safe had brought the perspiration trickling from his pores. And then of course there was the nearness of Claudia herself; even under the best of circumstances, the latter tended to make his temperature spike and his blood heat.

  But the prospect of some departing wedding guest catching sight of them and construing the worst—that she’d meant to escape or, more damning still, that he’d been helping her—sent a wave of chilly dread crashing over him. If he had half a brain, he’d whisk her out of plain sight—and harm’s way—and quickly.

  “Come along.” He took back the candle and, laying firm hands on the tops of her shoulders, turned her about in the direction of the byre.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, twisting her head to look up at him even as her slippered feet stumbled to keep pace with his longer gait.

  “Someplace more or less warm and dry and private where I can hear myself think—and you talk.”

  “Oh” was all she said and, although he tensed himself for an argument, amazingly she didn’t give him one. Indeed, she didn’t offer up so much as another word, only looped an arm about his waist and pressed against him.

  Not that he minded. Even now, when she’d as good as frightened him out of his few remaining wits and he had every reason to be mad as hell, he liked having her close. More than liked. One wee glimpse of those moonlight-bathed breasts was all it had taken to bring his cock leaping to life. Even now he was hard and swollen, aching and stiff, and it was sorry he was that he couldna claim the camouflage of his coat to cover up the proof of what he already kent to be God’s own truth.

  He wanted her. Beyond that, he loved her. When he thought she’d gone missing, he’d felt his heart twist until he was sure a part of it must have broken off entirely. The call to find her and bring her safely back had bordered on compulsion, more an act of absolute necessity than of duty or even honor.

  But he meant to tell her none of this. His objective in leading her into the byre was to get answers, not give them, and until he was satisfied as to why, just why, she’d struck off on her own without so much as a by-your-leave, neither one of them was going anywhere.

  The byre was a relatively small wattle-and-daub structure that backed up onto the kitchen and served to shelter the chickens, sheep and pigs that supplied the inn with eggs, milk and ultimately their flesh. Usually the latter touched Jack’s heart with sadness and not a little anger, but at the moment he was too caught up in the maelstrom of his private emotions to think beyond Claudia. It was as if the world, his world, had reduced itself to the petite person of Claudia Valemont and what she would say or do within the next few minutes would decide whether it continued to turn on its axis or became stymied in the bog.

  He yanked open the byre door, going in first to light their way. She followed him inside without argument or question, setting him to wonder once again at her uncharacteristic complacence even as he pulled the warped wood closed behind them with a shuttering smack. Mindful of the dangers of so much straw and dry wood and his own trembling hands, he used his candle to light the globe lantern hanging from a peg inside the door, then snuffed out the candle and pocketed it.

  Only then did he trust himself to turn about to face her. Folding his arms across his chest for protection—hers—he demanded, “What the devil did you think you were about, to go striking out in the dark and by yourself?”

  She answered with an expansive shrug, an utterly Gallic gesture that would have knocked his coat from her shoulders had she not already slipped her arms inside the sleeves. “I have told you, I was warm from the dancing, the people, the fire. I wished for some air, that is all.”

  Given her brittle tone, he suspected there was more to it, a great deal more indeed, and he meant to hear the whole of it, for if she was at risk for escape, better he learn so now than later. “Then why did you no come and find me? I would have gladly brought you.”

  She was standing just far enough from the light that most of her face was cast in shadow but not so much that Jack missed the telltale worrying of her bottom lip with her teeth; the mannerism, he’d learned, meant she was thinking and thinking hard.

  Another shrug and then, looking away from him, she said, “I saw you speaking with that…that little girl. I did not wish to disturb you.”

  Puzzled, he leaned one shoulder against the wall and cast his thoughts back to earlier that evening but still couldn’t recall conversing with any children. Most of the bairns had either fallen asleep or been put to bed upstairs before the dancing had even begun. The only person of any age that he’d spoken to beyond a nod or a word in passing was Milread. Och, but he supposed there had been Neilli, though the latter had been no idle chat.

  “If you mean the lass with the nut brown hair, I suppose wee Neilli might be considered a girl by some as she’s no quite seventeen but—”

  “Certainement you and…and ‘wee Neilli’ seemed to be enjoying yourselves,” she broke in, black brows arched and the eyes beneath them narrowed to reproachful slits as though he were the one whose behavior wanted for explaining. “Why, I am surprised you even noticed I was gone.”

  Not quite certain how the tables could have gotten so turned and in such a short span, he shoved away from the wall, closing the distance between them in three stomping strides. “Oh aye, I noticed. And it was a rare merry time of it I had, too, tearing about the inn’s four corners in search of you.”

  In the midst of his tirade, suspicion tickled the edges of his mind like a feather. Might she be jealous, he wondered, then dismissed the notion as ridiculous. He was not the sort of man to rouse a woman to jealousy—or anything else for that matter. Freakish height and breadth aside, he was an executioner. ‘Monsieur le Borreau’ she called him, though she hadn’t in a while.

  “As for Neilli, I only stopped to speak to her because I thought she might have seen where you’d got to, but all she could say for certain was that you’d disappeared in the middle of the dancing.”

  “Oh,” she said, mouth forming a near-perfect circle to match the vowel.

  For a talkative woman such as Claudia, the response was suspiciously short. For the first time it occurred to him that her silence, what she didna say, might be a good deal more telling than words.

  He was making a mental note of that insight for his future dealings with her when point-blank she asked, “Did you think I had run away?”

  He started to deny it but stopped himself, reasoning that if he was going to demand honesty from Claudia, he must expect to give it in return. “When I couldna find you, what was I supposed to think?”

  Jack’s admission sent a spray of chilly water shooting down Claudia’s spine and, despite the warmth of his coat wrapped about her, she shivered. She was being foolish, foolish and sentimental. Of course he didn’t trust her nor should she blame him. She’d been lying to him for weeks, was lying still. And yet how it stung to see the doubt, the mistrust, flaring in those amber brown eyes.

  She gulped down the hurt even as earlier she’d gulped down the ale. Biting her lip, she asked, “Would you care very much if I had?”

  His gaze, incredulous, shot to her face. “Of course I would care,” he replied, sounding insulted. ’Tis my duty to—”

  “That is not what I asked. I asked would you care. Would you miss me?”

  He hesitated. “Aye, lass, I suppose I would, no to mention I wouldna much care to be called upon to hang you.”

  Why whenever they came to the cusp of closeness must he flaunt the grisly means by which he earned his living, almost as if he were trying to push her away? She opened her mouth to ask as much whe
n the music of a harp filtered through the closed barn door. The young woman’s voice that accompanied it rang clear and true and plaintively sweet.

  “’Tis ‘The Ballad of Barbara Allen,’” Jack told her and she nodded because, incredibly, she’d heard it once before—not that Miss Chitterly’s rather studied delivery had ever struck such a soulful chord in Claudia’s breast as did this Scottish lass.

  Inspiration struck and, remembering she’d been planning all day for them to make love and not war, Claudia reached for his hands. “Come, dance with me, Jack.”

  Jack’s pulse thrummed beneath the pad of her thumb. “What, here?”

  Still holding on to him, she shrugged. “Why not? There is no one to see us.”

  “Because I’m a great clumsy clod, that’s why not.”

  More than a little tipsy, she stamped her foot into the straw. “Why must you always speak of yourself so? You move most gracefully.” And silently, she added to herself, thinking of the many times she’d turned about to find him standing just behind her.

  “For a great hulking beast, you mean.”

  Unashamed by her desire, she let her gaze slide from his face over his breadth of shoulders to his chest and the flat ridges of his belly. “You are large, yes, but your body is strong and beautiful.”

  He lifted her chin on the edge of his hand, forcing her gaze back up. Stark, hungry eyes bore down into hers. “Dinna mock me, Claudia. Not now.”

  He wanted to be touched, she realized, this hangman whose own touch he hoarded for bringing death but never pleasure. “I but speak the truth as I see it, monsieur.” A giggle slipped out and she admitted, “For I have drunk too much to lie. The ale, I fear it has gone straight to my head.”

  He dropped his hand from her face. “In that case, I should see you home.”

  She shook her head. “In a little while, yes, but not yet. Dance with me first. There is a dance I used to dance in Paris called the waltz. Do you know it?”

  He shook his head. “I dinna ken much of dancing.”

  Ah, so she’d been right. Ignorance of the steps and a fear of appearing foolish were at the core of his repeated stubborn refusals. Hastening to reassure him, she explained, “The waltz is much simpler, much slower than a reel and is danced between one man and one woman only.” Only just realizing she still held on to his hands, she guided his right beneath the bulky coat she still wore. “You have only to rest your hand at the center of my waist like so,” she assured him when, flushing, he started to withdraw, “and with the other take hold of my hand.”

  She brought her own hand out from his coat’s overlong sleeve to rest on his elbow and felt him flinch as though she’d touched him with a hot poker instead of her own light and suddenly chill fingers. Noting how rigidly he held himself back from her, she had to hide a smile. Pauvre Jack, he didn’t know what he was in for.

  “Now what?” he asked, his stiff jaw and stoic eyes making her think of a man about to face the torturer.

  “Now, monsieur, we dance. A simple one-two-three, step in, step close. See how we are making a small circle?”

  Staring down at their moving feet, he nodded.

  She let him take her through a few more turns before offering, “Très bien, very good, but perhaps smaller steps and do not lift your feet so high. It is not so much a step as it is a glide.”

  Gaze still fixed on the floor, he asked, “People in Paris dance like this in public?”

  She couldn’t help laughing but mostly because it felt so wondrous, so right, to be in Jack’s arms. “The waltz comes from Vienna, not Paris, although it is very popular there as well and danced in all the finest ballrooms of the city, or so it once was,” she amended and amidst the thrill of being in Jack’s arms, her heart gave a little dip.

  “You hail from a verra queer country, Mistress Valemont,” he said, but at last he’d left off staring down at the floor to look at her. There was even a flash of a smile in his eyes, and she could sense some of the tension lifting from his limbs.

  Encouraged, she leaned closer. She’d never bothered with buttoning his coat and now the tips of her breasts brushed against his chest. “The two of us like this, it is nice, is it not?”

  He didn’t answer beyond a shy nod but his body spoke volumes. Try as he did to hold himself back, she felt the hard pressure of his arousal against her belly, felt her own body’s answer in the aching swell of her breasts and the sticky dew forming inside her thighs.

  They completed a few more circuits until, like a clock winding down, they stopped all at once, their feet ceasing to either step or “glide.” The lesson at an end, it was nothing short of madness to linger let alone to touch yet Jack couldn’t seem to stop from doing either. As if it had developed a will of its own, his hand slid upward from her waist, traveling over the hard casing of whalebone corset to the soft underside of her breast.

  She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “Hmm, I love the way you touch me.”

  Only then did he realize that he was flicking the edge of his thumb over the peak of her breast and that it was his attentions and not the chill air that had caused her nipple to harden into a firm little point.

  Dropping his hand before it could pillage further, he bit back an oath. “Christ, Claudia, I shouldna be touching you at all.”

  Her eyes shot open and her lower lip protruded in such a way that Jack ached to draw it inside his own mouth, to suckle and taste, to nibble and tease. “Why not?” she asked, all innocence, as if she hadn’t a clue to the chaos she was creating.

  Myriad replies leapt to mind. Seizing on the one with which she would be least able to argue, he said, “Ye’re my prisoner.”

  “Ah oui, that is so, and because I am, the law gives you the right to beat me.” A wicked smile touched both her mouth and her eyes and she went on, “Hmm, what was it? Ah yes, as many as twenty strokes, I think?” She made a face, then shook her head, sending an ebony curl fanning over his chest. “And yet you may not dance with me, may not touch me in kindness? This Scotland of yours is a most strange country, monsieur, a most strange country indeed.”

  Och, but the little minx had recalled his verra own words to tease and fuddle him. “Be that as it may…” Resolved to be strong, he started to set her from him.

  She caught his hand and pressed it to her once more. Her silk-sheathed breast, warm and buoyant, filled his palm. “I want you to touch me,” she said and the earnestness in her eyes, the desperation edging her voice told him this wasn’t a game to her, at least not any longer. “I’ve dreamt of it and of…of touching you, too.” She flattened both hands against his chest, the palms massaging his pectorals in slow, sensual circles.

  Jack felt himself hardening at her touch, not just his nipples but his cock, too, though he hadn’t thought the latter could get any harder. He wondered if she felt it pressed against her belly; as close as they stood, surely she must. If she did, she must ken how near he was to sweeping her off her feet and laying her down on the straw-covered floorboards. From there it would be but a short step to sin, to taking her amidst the scents of straw and manure and sweat, his ragged breaths and Claudia’s small soft moans mingling with the stirrings of the animals.

  But even on the precipice of jettisoning his honor and his vow, some small part of his brain refused to shut off. Until now, he realized, he’d been more than a little disdainful of those who gave in to their carnal desires. Arrogance masquerading as virtue, fear as chastity. But gazing at Claudia, seeing the desire he felt reflected in her eyes, imagining all the things he wanted to do to her and have her do to him, he finally, truly understood what it meant to be wanting and weak and…human.

  Humbled, he drew his hand away from her breast, then gently lifted hers from working its butterfly magic on his chest. Turning it over, he pressed a kiss into the blister bitten palm and said, “We canna do this, Claudia. It’s no that I dinna want ye, lass,” he hastened to assure her when he saw the raw, wounded look leap into her eyes. “I do, more t
han you can begin to know. It’s only—”

  A blast of cold air whipped inside the byre, causing the lantern light to flicker and blink. That and the sudden jolt of shock on Claudia’s face caused the remainder of his apology to dry up in his throat. He swung about to see Alistair standing inside the half-open door.

  “Verra cozy,” he remarked with a chuckle, looking from Jack to where a mussed Claudia stood just beyond him, his coattail reaching beyond her knees.

  Jack felt his face heat. How much had the innkeeper overheard let alone seen? If the rumor were to get out that he’d seduced Claudia or she him, for sure she’d be removed from his keeping. That she might be made to serve out the remainder of her sentence in the tollbooth, subject to gaol fever and the advances of the randy warder, sent a quiver of fear shooting through him.

  Minded that they’d stopped before doing anything strictly wrong, he schooled his features to impassivity. “Mistress Valemont was giving me a lesson in dancing. The waltz,” he added for good measure, trusting that Alistair wouldn’t know just how intimate a dance that might be. “What is it you want, Alistair, or is it that you missed me?”

  Scowling, Alistair reached into the breast pocket of his patched frock coat and pulled out a crisp vellum square. “This came on the morning mail coach. I meant tae gi’ it tae ye earlier only—”

  “You thought you’d have a wee look at it first,” Jack finished for him and snatched up the letter.

  Muttering about ingrates and ne’er-do-wells and barmaids who couldna be trusted to keep their skirts down, Alistair shambled off, throwing the door closed behind him.

  Jack stared down at the letter in his hand. He took note of the seal of the Crown, recognizable despite its having been broken already, as well as the franking with “On His Majesty’s Service” and “Immediate” marked in bold red letters, and felt the heavy press of responsibility and something akin to dread descend upon him.

  “It is not bad news, I hope?” Claudia came to stand beside him, studying his profile, which no doubt registered the grimness of his thoughts.