There was a charming playfulness in his eyes, which again surprised her. He had not shown this side of himself before.
“You are a terrible tease.” She attempted to swipe the jewels from his grasp, but he hid them behind his back. “I should kiss you like I did at Drumloch,” she said, “just to punish you.”
The playfulness in his eyes vanished instantly, and his tone grew serious.
“Those are dangerous words. Please, allow me.” He moved behind her to drape the pearls around her neck and fasten the clasp. “I’ve never been called a tease before,” he said while she tingled at the sensation of his warm hands gracing her nape. “It was always the other way around, where women were concerned.”
“But our situation is not like anyone else’s, and I am not like most other women.” She was referring to her memory loss, of course.
He moved to face her again. “No, you are not. You are more beautiful, and a thousand times more intriguing.”
Lord help her, she felt as if she were floating in a sea of heavenly bliss.
“May I have my earbobs now?” she asked, holding out her hand.
He kept his eyes on hers while he dug into his sporran again, pulling out one earring at a time. He handed them over and watched her fasten them to her lobes.
“Now you look like a proper heiress,” he said.
She lifted an eyebrow. “I am hardly proper. You should know that better than anyone, for you have slept with me under the stars for five days straight, with no chaperone in sight.”
“Now who’s being a tease, reminding me of such a thing?” His eyes smiled in a way that made her pulse thrum.
“It takes one to know one, sir.”
He grinned. “Aye, and if I were not half-dead from lack of excitement over the past three years, I would show you how dangerous it is to tease a man like me. I am attracted to shiny things, you see, andyou,my lady, are quite dazzling.”
Catherine inclined her head at him. “I appreciate the compliment.”
But it was so much more than that. She loved the fact that he was flirting with her and allowing her to see his famous charm, which he had kept hidden from her until now.
He held out a hand. “May I escort you to supper?”
“That would be delightful,” she replied. “I am absolutely ravenous.”
***
For more than ten years Lachlan had managed to avoid permanent relationships with women. He could spot a frisky lassie at twenty paces, and such women, in turn, seemed able to recognize in him a mutual inclination for involvement without commitment. They recognized that he did not seek or want love. He’d had it once, with Glenna, and when she died he decided there would never be another to replace her.
Over the years, no woman had come close to making him feel the things he had felt with his first real love—the tragic adolescent longing, the willingness to sacrifice everything for that one person, who seemed destined to be one’s only mate forever. The power and poignancy of his brief love affair and marriage had never touched him again after Glenna.
He had, in subsequent years, been faithful to her—not in body, but in heart. He had sought intimacy through sexual dalliances with women who did not require more from him than mere physical pleasure.
Until the curse, of course, which had exiled him to a life of celibacy and a complete absence of intimacy of any kind.
Tonight, however, as he escorted Catherine into his chief’s private dining chamber, he felt all sorts of unbidden emotions stirring within. Emotions he found both disturbing and enticing, for he wanted her with something more than just physical desire.
As they walked side by side through the corridors of the castle, he breathed in the intoxicating scent of her flowery perfume. Everything about her challenged his capacity for restraint—her gleaming red hair and soft cherry lips; her ample breasts, spilling out of her tight bodice in a luscious burst of temptation. It all made him feel reckless, and that worried him, for she was not a frolicsome tavern wench with loose morals. She was something else entirely.
At last, they entered Angus’s private dining chamber, where a hot fire was blazing in the massive stone hearth. The mahogany table was polished to a fine sheen and adorned with silver candelabras and colorful bowls of fruit. The walls were paneled in dark cherry oak, the windows covered in heavy velvet drapes.
Angus and Gwendolen turned to greet them in the glow of candlelight. A servant brought a silver tray and offered them wine in gold-plated, jewel-encrusted goblets.
“Lady Catherine, the gown is stunning on you,” Gwendolen said. “I hope your chamber is sufficient to meet your needs.”
The conversation continued in a light vein, for it was not every day that a famous Scottish noblewoman from the Lowlands came to dine at Kinloch, and certainly not under such bizarre circumstances of mistaken identity and possible kidnapping, depending on who was describing the events.
They dined on bowls of spiced beef broth, followed by fresh roast goose bathed in a thick cream sauce, and boiled greens.
