Still… He gazed at her, swirling and smiling halfway across the room, candlelight glinting along the silver clips in her golden hair. When she and her gangly partner came to an abrupt stop, he actually felt unbalanced for a moment. When he saw what—who—hadstopped them, though, he pushed through the soft haze and started forward.Stapp.
As he reached the outermost dancers, Rebecca waved her fingers at him, though her gaze remained on the marquis. She knew the game they’d chosen to play, and while he might not have told her all of the twists and turns, she damned well had spleen. With a nervous half bow Mr. Basingstoke relinquished her to the marquis, and Donnach Maxwell put his hand on her waist, took her hand, and turned into the waltz with her.
Callum didn’t like it. At all. Whatever else that man had done to their family, he’d gone after Rebecca’s hand in marriage. Hell, he was still in pursuit, as far as he knew.Fuck.
They would have danced at some point during the evening; both he and Rebecca had realized that. She had to be swayable, for their plan to work. But not the damned waltz. Not a dance where the marquis held her in his arms.
He made himself watch, anyway. Aside from his vow to protect her, the sight of the two of them served to remind him of just how close he’d come to missing the chance to save her, and to have her. To know her again, and to realize all the ways in which he’d been an idiot ten years ago.
If she could knowingly dance in the arms of the man who had a hand in killing her husband, then he could watch her do it. But tonight, after they returned to MacCreath House, she would be his. Part of him wanted to think, to imagine, in much longer terms than that, but he stopped himself. The deeper they played this game, the more likely it became that he would die protecting her. And he couldn’t—wouldn’t—promise her a future he couldn’t deliver. No matter how much he’d begun to desire it.
Chapter Thirteen
“What did ye chat about?” Callum asked, appearing at her elbow as if out of thin air.
Rebecca took his arm, grateful for the solid warmth of his presence. “Air, if you please,” she said, trying not to look behind her to see if Donnach followed, ready to pounce on her again.
Without another word he guided her to the double doors that opened out onto the balcony. An iron railing ran along the front except for the section closest to the wall of the house, where shallow steps curved down into the pretty, walled-off garden.
A half-dozen guests stood about on the balcony already, and without pause Callum headed the two of them down the steps and into the torch-lit garden. Once amid the trees and flowers he led the way off the stone path and up to the back wall, beside a small stone birdbath ornamented with stone cherubs and a stone sparrow.
“Don’t trample the bluebells, or Lady Braehaudin will have you clapped in irons,” she cautioned, releasing her tight grip on his sleeve.
“I’ll keep that in mind. What did Stapp say to ye?”
Of course he wanted to know how his plan was progressing. Rebecca took a short breath. For a moment she’d thought he might have wanted her out here amid the shrubbery for something else, and she felt disappointed for and annoyed with herself all at the same time for wishing it. “He reminded me how volatile you are, and how you’d only bothered to reappear when you had an inheritance to claim. And how he and I have been friends for a decade, and confidants for fourteen months.”
His eyes glittered reddish in the reflected torchlight. “And ye said?”
“I agreed with him. He wasn’t lying, after all. Not about that.”
He nodded, a muscle along his jaw flexing. “And he thinks ye can still be swayed to his side, then?”
“Of course he does. That’s what we agreed on, isn’t it?”
“Aye.” Turning half away, he seemed abruptly interested in the birdbath. “Considering ye fainted dead away when ye set eyes onme,I wasnae certain ye had it in ye to smile at him. But ye did.”
That snapped her spine straight. “Don’t you dare try to turn this on me,” she hissed as loudly as she dared. “Yes, I smiled at him. You asked me to.” She dug her forefinger into his shoulder. “You wanted me to dance with him.”
“Nae a waltz.”
“Well, that wasn’t up to me, was it? Should I have refused? Told him, ‘no, I’ll only tolerate you for a quadrille’?”
He swung around so quickly she lost her balance. Callum caught her by the shoulders and shoved her backward against the stone wall, then claimed her mouth in a breath-stealing, openmouthed kiss. “Every lass,” hegrowled nearly soundlessly, his lean, hard body pressed along hers, “every lass for ten years was ye. Every damned one. There were times I almost wished Ian dead so I could have ye. I want ye for myself. I dunnae want to share an ounce of ye, even for justice. Or for vengeance.”
Heated, delighted shivers began between her legs. She would never, ever admit that on occasional, brief moments she’d closed her eyes and tried to imagine Ian was his brother, but Callum was here now, and real. Sliding her arms around his shoulders, she sank against him, relishing in his touch.
Callum pulled at her skirt, lifting it along her thighs. Rebecca opened her eyes wide, looking beyond his shoulder to see if anyone might be watching. Of course he’d chosen the most secluded spot in the entire garden—he was a born wilderness hunter, after all.
Holding her against the wall, he hiked her skirt up to her waist, lifted the front of his kilt, and drew her legs around his hips. As he slid inside her she gasped, covering the sound with her mouth against his shoulder. The distant realization that Ian would never have dared be so reckless and bold blasted into pieces as she locked her legs around his hips and he thrust into her again and again, hard and fast and desperate. She came, muffling her ecstasy against his mouth, not caring if he was scratching up her gown with bumping her up and down the hard wall at her back.
While she clung to him he released his grip on her thighs, holding on to the top of the wall on either side of her, shoving in hard as with a grunt he climaxed. He held her pinned there, a blue-garbed, half-naked butterfly splayed on a card, as he spilled himself into her. She could feel the hard breathing that matched her own, the taut center of him focused entirely on her.She spasmed again, abruptly and violently, as he gazed into her eyes.
At the other end of the garden someone laughed. Had they heard? “Put me down,” she whispered, still panting.
“Nae.”
“The longer we’re here the more likely someone will see us. For Margaret’s sake, put me down.”
