“What time are we leaving?” Megan asked, her eyes hard on her straying beau.
“I will go if Caroline is going,” William said, giving her a soft smile, and Caroline smiled back. To Alec’s eyes, Mears looked near as besotted as Brodie, and Caroline had eyes for no one else. He felt a hard nudge of jealousy.
“If the girls are going,” she said. “And Lottie, of course.”
“Oh. Of course,” Mears said, blinking at his fiancée as if he’d forgotten her entirely.
Alec frowned. Was there something between William Mears and Caroline? The viscount began to chatter about his mother, and someone named Sinjon, and Caroline’s eyes sparkled as she hung on every word, ignoring Alec entirely. He nudged her knee again under the table, saw a tide of color flood her face, watched her fingers tighten on the stem of her wineglass. She was aware of him, then, even if she pretended not to be. It brought out the devil in him.
As Muira cleared away the cock-a-leekie soup and served the second course, salmon, he took off his shoe. As Hamish came to refill the wineglasses, he found the hem of her skirt and worked his foot through the froth of her petticoats to touch her ankle. Her eyes widened, and her lips parted in surprise, but she kept her gaze fixed on William, laughing at his jokes, pretending Alec wasn’t there. He wouldn’t stand for that.
Unless she was very much mistaken, Alec’s stocking foot was caressing her ankle. What was he playing at? It tickled, and Caroline tried to move her foot away, but she bumped into William and his brows shot upward, and he gave her a wicked smile. He thought she was flirting with him? She moved her legs back again. Alec’s foot returned.
“And your mother, is she well?” Caroline asked William, trying to ignore the fact that Alec’s foot was climbing her calf, rubbing, teasing.
William’s knee pressed against hers on the other side, and she shifted, but that brought her closer to Alec. She shot him a sharp look, but he merely smiled at her and sipped his wine.
“We’ve just established that she is very well indeed,” William said.
Alec’s questing toes reached her knee, tickled. She swallowed a giggle, hiding it by taking a forkful of salmon.
“And Sinjon and Evelyn?” she asked after William’s brother and his wife.
“Healthy, as far as I am given to understand.” William leaned forward and smiled at her, just as Alec’s toes slipped behind her knee, moving against the sensitive flesh there. She gasped, and William grinned at her. “May I say you are looking particularly lovely tonight?” William said, his eyes scanning her face. Once she would have given anything to see that besotted look on his face. Now she was horrified.
“Thank you,” she murmured. Alec’s foot was insistently working at her knees, trying to force them apart. She stubbornly kept them closed. What on earth was he doing?
“And how is your father?” she asked William, only to recall they’d already discussed him too.
Alec’s foot edged higher, his toes flexing insistently where her stocking ended, and her naked flesh began. She shot him a sharp look, and he raised one eyebrow, and wiggled his toes. Her garter snapped, and she jumped.
“Are you quite all right, Caro?” William asked, patting her on the back, his touch warm between her shoulder blades, lingering just a little too long.
“Isn’t the tower lovely in the moonlight?” Alec asked. “It’s been a trysting place for centuries, especially at Midsummer.” Everyone else glanced out at the picturesque scene beyond the window, and Caroline shot Alec a sharp look. He smiled at her, a slow, lopsided grin of pure seduction. Her heart did a slow somersault. He took advantage of her shock to slip his foot between her knees. She took a sip of wine to hide her gasp.
“I believe I will remain safely indoors tomorrow,” Somerson was saying. “I dislike hunting at the best of times. The wet weather here does not agree with me.”
“Sometimes it’s quite windy,” Sophie added.
He was caressing the inside of her thigh. Caroline felt a shiver of desire pass through her.
He was sitting beside her, calmly eating his dinner, presiding over the table filled with guests as if he’d had his shoes on, his feet on the floor where they belonged, and was not driving
her wild. She tried to shift away, but other than unbelievable rudeness of shooting to her feet in the middle of the meal, she was trapped. Had he no mercy? She sent him a pleading look, but he merely raised one arched brow and grinned. His foot remained.
“Shall we set out at dawn?” Speed asked eagerly.
She reached down and dug her nails into Alec’s foot, and he shot her a wicked look that told her he did not intend to stop. She gasped as his foot slid farther still, coming to rest against a very sensitive spot indeed at the apex of her thighs. A soft cry of surprise escaped her lips. She couldn’t help it.
“I quite agree with Caroline,” Sophie said. “I should say that ten o’clock is plenty early enough. Perhaps even eleven.”
Alec’s toes wiggled, stirred, and Caroline shot him a look of pure anguish, begging him to stop. “More wine, Lady Caroline?” he asked politely. “You look flushed.”
Flushed? She was on fire. He was the devil himself, she decided. She bit back a sob when he shifted his foot again, pressing gently.
“Or we could plan to set out at noon, and take luncheon outdoors if the weather is fine.” Lottie suggested hopefully.
“You could be back in time for tea.” Charlotte said.
