“I would like to make ye spend, Jack Pike.”
“You’re very sweet, Helen. Go back to your bed. The rest of your training can wait.”
Sweet? Sweet? She was anything but sweet. Was the man mad?
She knew she should feel gratitude right now. The most beautiful man she had ever seen had kissed her mouth and her breasts and her private place and given her an ecstasy which would be burned into her body forever. He had paid attention to her in a way no one else ever had.
But she didn’t feel gratitude. She felt anger. And a deep, deep grief. He had done nothing to hurt her, but she was hurt anyway.
He dinnae want me. Despite all he did to me, he dinnae want me doing anything to him. I dinnae arouse him. I’m ugly.
“Aye,” she choked out. She got out of the bed and put her nightdress on. As she fled the room, she did not answer when he said, “Good night, Helen.”
She woke late.She put on her brown dress. He was not downstairs. Not in the breakfast room nor the drawing room nor the Great Hall.
Mags was sitting in the morning room, looking at an illustrated book.
“These pictures are so pretty, my lady. See?”
“Have ye seen Mr. Pike this morning, Mags?”
“Nae. He left already, I was told.”
Left. Gone to Cumdairessie, no doubt. To be with a beautiful woman who already knew what to do. One he wouldn’t have to train, one who was not a burden.
“I was sorry to have missed him. Since he willnae be back,” Mags went on, looking at Helen’s face. “Aren’t ye sorry, my lady?”
Helen felt a dread dragging at her chest. “What do ye mean, he willnae be back?”
“He’s gone home to London.”
She ran out of the morning room and ran upstairs and burst into the small bedchamber where Jack Pike had seen her naked body and touched her and kissed her and told her that he loved kissing her—twice—and made her spend with his tongue.
The room was empty. His clothes were gone.
She did not cry. She did not wail. She wanted to do those things, but she did not. After all, she was Helen Boyd, Countess of Kinmarloch.
In my own right.
She lay herself down on the bed and buried her face in the blanket. Stupid. Very stupid. Because the smell of him there made her want to cry even more over a man whom she had no right to cry over.
When she came back downstairs again, eyes dry but her lungs tight with no room for air in them, MacDougal gave her a letter with her name on it. And her title. And the wordsin her own rightafter her title.
Helen:
I am off back to London sooner than expected. My address is below and you are to write to me of any problems you have with Dunmore sheep on Kinmarloch land. Or really, any problems. You and Mags are to stay at Dunmore Castle until the cottage is finished.
If you have any need of money, you are to go to Mrs. Mac. I know you wouldn’t take money from me so I have given it to her. It is what is extra from the value of the dirk, over and above the cost of the cottage. I don’t want you getting into debt to a toad like Reeves again. And I want you and Mags to eat, is that understood?
Whatever you do, Helen, don’t marry Reeves or a man like him, under any circumstances. If there ever comes a time when you feel you must do something like that, you are to write to me immediately so I can put a stop to it. I know you don’t like doing what you are told, but you must listen to me on this.
And don’t feel badly that the Duke of Dunmore will never come to Scotland. You are well shut of the scoundrel. He would never make a good husband.
Yr. Friend,
Captain Jack Pike.
PS I meant what I said about kissing you.
