But she had no right to wanthim. Even though she didn’t know it was him.
He didn’t mind her wanting Jack Pike, the charming, handsome, funny captain sitting in front of her. The man who had spent all day halting the clearances in the duchy and making sure there would be no more Dunmore sheep crossing her farmers’ fields. The man who had given her sherry and mulled wine, who had loaned her a pound, who had stood up to Reeves. The man who had paid her flattering compliments that weren’t true and flirted with her.
Sheshouldwant Jack Pike.
But she didn’t. She wanted some duke she had never seen. Whom she would likely cuckold as soon as she could find another man foolhardy enough to bed her.
Because, after all, breeches or not, she was a woman, wasn’t she? And women were grasping. Fickle. Untrustworthy.
But he would show her. He would murder whatever dreams she held of being a duchess. Right now.
“Once he is named duke and if he decides to marry, MacNaughton will be shopping for a wife the way most lords do. In London. At balls. During the Season. He will have his pick of debutantes. The most beautiful daughters of the richest marquesses and earls. He will make a good match to a lovely and accomplished young lady of good breeding and wealth despite his duchy being not the richest and so far away from London. Unmarried dukes are much in demand.”
“I see.”
He looked at her face. The poor woman looked wretched now. All of the glow and fun and pleasure which had blossomed in her for the last two hours was gone.
Well done, Jack.
“Cheer up, Helen. You’ll still have me.” He winked.
Surprisingly, a little of her glow came back. “Aye,” she said softly. “’Tis good to look on ye. I’m glad for that. I must take beauty where I can get it.”
“But you are surrounded by beauty, Helen. Kinmarloch is beautiful.”
“Aye.” She sighed. “But I suppose ’tis like how it must for ye, looking in the mirror. Ye see it so often ye forget to enjoy it. Ye see only the neck scratches and are blind to the brown eyes, the bewitching smile, the cheekbones—”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re not throwing yourself at me now, Helen?”
“I am too tipsy to throw anything, Jack Pike. I must go.”
She stood abruptly from her chair and swayed, and Jack had to make his way very quickly to her end of the table to grab hold of her.
Damn. She was so light but like steel under his hands. Her cheek made contact with the lapel of his tailcoat as he caught her. Her leg brushed his.
He should give her another glass of wine and take her upstairs and make free with her in her childhood home. He would enjoy himself. Her words about his looks meant she would enjoy him. And, after all, she was not under his protection, as a countess in her own right. And when Jack took Helen, he would work out a little piece of the anger he had for all the women who sought men not for themselves but for what they possessed.
It was a first-rate idea.
However, like all first-rate ideas, there were a host of repercussions. Jack fixed his mind on two. First, when he caught her, he had felt the knife—or was it a dirk?—strapped to her leg under her dress. Would she murder him as he fondled her? Second, he was fairly sure after pleasuring himself with Helen’s body, every meal he had in the castle would be laced with poison or shards of glass thanks to the redoubtable Mrs. Mac.
Jack didn’t want glass in his food. Or poison. Or a dirk in his already scarred chest.
He put Helen back in her chair.
“Sit there. You’re going home in the carriage.”
She made as if to stand again. “Nae, Mr. Pike, I widnae want to trouble ye—”
He pushed her down. “Jack. And shut up, Helen. I mean, Lady Kinmarloch. I am proxy for the purported next Duke of Dunmore so consider this the duke speaking. You are going home in the carriage. Sit. Stay.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Aye,mo luran.” She giggled.
He went and ordered the carriage to be made ready. Then he went down to the kitchens and found Mrs. Mac and told her to put the biggest ham in the larder in a basket and put the basket in the carriage along with several loaves of bread.
He came back upstairs from the kitchens and got Helen’s coat from Macthingy, the manservant-cum-butler. The patched coat was very thin. Not suitable for nighttime, for March, for Scotland.
He led Helen to the carriage and put her in it and sat across from her.
