“Barbarian.”
“Princess.”
She blinked, clearly surprised that he’d returned her insult. Rather than replying, though, she slipped on her emerald gown and knotted the ribbon around the high waist. Before she could reach around for the button at the nape of her neck, Graeme climbed to his feet.
“I’ll do that, lass.”
“You do recall that you’re naked,” Marjorie pointed out, taking a long moment to look him up and down before she turned away.
Just her gaze made his cock stir again. “I thought I felt a breeze up my backside.” He took his time with the button, breathing her in all over again. Lemons had never been so arousing.
As he finished he pulled her long, loose hair back from her shoulders again. He’d never been a delicate or a gentle man, because he’d never found much use in it. His three brothers damned well didn’t require subtlety. Likewise the Highlands lasses with whom he’d spent an evening now and again knew they weren’t there for wooing or courtship.
Neither was Marjorie, but she was—despite what he now knew of her past—every inch a lady. He wanted to be gentle with her. He wanted to know every inch of her, spend long evenings before the fireplace in her company, wake to find her sleeping in his arms. Graeme took a hard breath in through his nose. Next he’d be writing poetry to her, trying to rhyme all the pretty words he generally avoided like the devil.
Damnation, she was going to be more trouble than he’d ever anticipated. If he had any sense, hewouldsend her away. Now. And he would burn the marriage license the moment it arrived.
“I’m going to fetch breakfast and bring a tray up to Mrs. Giswell,” she announced into the silence, shaking him out of his daydream. Or nightmare, rather.
Evidently she’d been less unsettled by the sex than he was. Graeme clenched his jaw. “I’ll join ye after ye’ve had a chance to talk to her. I suggest ye be persuasive.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Ye should leave yer hair doon.”
“And see myself called a lightskirt in addition to an upjumped heiress?” Her shoulders lifted and fell, and then she moved away from him.
Graeme didn’t want her leaving the room, not until he figured out what it was about her that he found so compelling, but he held himself still, anyway. He’d put enough chains on her, both literal and figurative. This one thing should be her decision.
With a hand on the door, she faced him again. “Why don’t you wear your kilt more often?” she asked, her cheeks darkening.
“Because the Maxwell and I arenae seeing eye to eye, and I suppose it’s my way of protesting his nonsense.” Though with the way she kept looking at him this morning, he meant to wear the tartan more often.
“Ah.” She turned away again and pulled open the door, then abruptly shut it again and strode back up to him, not stopping until she’d wrapped her arms around his shoulders, lifted up on her toes, and kissed him openmouthed. Then she fled the room, pulling the door closed soundly behind her.
Graeme blew out his breath. No, this wouldn’t be complicated at all.
Chapter Eleven
“I think if you look at it as items rather than numbers, you’ll have an easier time of it.”
Connell scowled. “What the devil are ye talking about?”
Stifling a grin, Marjorie stood up to pull a jar of smooth river pebbles off a shelf. “Put five of them on the table.”
“I ken how many five is, woman. And ye’re only pretending to be my tutor.”
“True enough. But if someone should ask what I’ve taught you, I’d like you to be able to answer without having to lie.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” the eight-year-old said grudgingly. “But I dunnae like it. I have to let ye know that.”
Marjorie wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t have so readily dismissed the idea of being a governess back in finishing school. Connell in the short time she’d known him was already more interesting than Lady Sarah Jeffers, and she’d spent nearly a year with that moldy-smelling woman. “I completely understand. Put five more pebbles on the table, separate from the first ones.”
She sat back to watch as he placed three more piles of five pebbles on the tabletop. Yes, he was definitely funnier and more sharp-witted than Lady Sarah. And, as she’d been discovering, he had no qualms over dishing out interesting tidbits about his oldest brother, a man the boy clearly adored.
“I’ve put yer damned—yer blessed, I mean—rocks on the table. Now what?”
“What is four times five, then?”
“I told ye that I dunnae know.”
“But you do.” She indicated the first pile. “How many?”
