LITMIR.BIZ

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      “These secateurs are sharp as any dirk,” Mairi said. Her voice was a little husky. “Step back, Mr. Rutherford.”

      It took Jack several seconds to process the words, and during that time the blade only pressed harder, so he thought it wise to obey. He brought a hand up, running his finger against the cutting edge. It was, as she had said, fiercely sharp. As was the look in her eyes.

      “I could disarm you,” Jack said. With a twist of the wrist it would be easy enough, but he suspected that Mairi MacLeod probably had another weapon concealed somewhere about the place, and she looked as though she would be very glad to have an excuse to use it on him.

      “You have lost the element of surprise,” she said pleasantly. “You have also overstayed your welcome.” She walked across to the door and opened it for him. “Goodbye, Mr. Rutherford,” she said.

      No fewer than three black-clad footmen came forward in a phalanx to escort Jack to the front door. Evidently they had been waiting to burst in and rescue Mairi if she had given the signal. Their expressions were threatening, especially the man who had failed to prevent Jack from entering in the first place. He looked as though he felt he had something to prove.

      Jack, who had taken on far more intimidating men in far more intimidating places than Lady Mairi MacLeod’s drawing room, stifled a smile. He briefly weighed the merits of causing a mill and regretfully decided against it.

      “You employ a private army,” he said, allowing his gaze to travel back from the row of black-clad retainers to Mairi’s face. “What is it that you are afraid of?”

      He thought for a moment that she was going to refuse to answer and would instead have him thrown out on his ear on the gravel without any further conversation.

      “I am a rich widow,” she said, after a long moment. “A very rich widow. There have been...” She hesitated. “Threats of kidnapping, of forced marriage. I employ an entourage for my own protection since I have absolutely no desire to wed again.”

      “I pity the poor fool who would try to force you into marriage,” Jack said. “You seem very handy with a weapon.” The look he gave her was insolent, sweeping from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and he saw the hot color sting her cheeks at his impudence. Her chin came up.

      “I shall be tempted to wield one again,” she said, “if you do not leave my house immediately.”

      Jack grinned. “You have nothing to fear from me, sweetheart,” he said. “I am even richer than you are and I do not intend ever to wed you, only to bed you. Again.”

      He flashed her a mocking smile before strolling in his own good time down the front steps. He almost expected to feel her dirk thudding between his shoulder blades. Instead he heard the door slam shut behind him. Another black-clad groom was waiting on the gravel, holding his horse for him. Through the archway to the mews, he could see a traveling carriage being prepared, not plain black this time but with the crest of the Duke of Forres and the arms of MacLeod entwined. It was the last word in luxury, fast and well sprung, sufficient even to deal with the state of the Highland roads. Lady Mairi was indeed making her own travel plans and they did not involve him.

      Once they were at Methven, though, she would not be able to avoid him. The castle was huge, but the nature of a house party was such that the participants were thrown together no matter their wishes. Jack was suddenly aware that he was looking forward to the visit with a great deal more enthusiasm than he had felt the previous night. A house party also gave ample opportunity for intimacy and he wanted to rekindle his affair with Mairi, wanted to taste again the heat and the passion of their night together. He wanted her, her fragility and her strength, the fierce emotions she hid beneath that cool exterior. He knew she desired him too. She had betrayed herself when she had kissed him. She might lie, but her body’s response to him did not.

      He was also still very angry with her for pretending indifference to his face and then seducing him secretly, for spending one night with him and then dismissing him like a paid lover. He recognized the anger and it interested him. He was not generally an introspective man, but something about Mairi MacLeod had him examining his reactions and his emotions like a poet or a philosopher. It was bizarre and he did not like it. But the anger was unusual. He did not generally bear grudges. He was not interested in revenge. Usually he forgot, moved on. It appeared that with Mairi MacLeod he had not moved on.

      He shrugged. That was easy enough to solve. Another night of rapture, this time on his terms, and he would be ready to forget her. It had always worked before. His interest in a woman seldom outlived the intimate knowledge of her.

      He encouraged his horse to a canter that raised the dust on the road. Lady Mairi MacLeod might be faithless and amoral, but then so was he. In that they were well suited. He was certain it would not be long before he was in her bed again.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      MAIRI SAT AT her desk with the household accounts spread in front of her. Jack Rutherford had gone, but the air still seemed to hum with his presence, fierce and elemental. It was impossible for her to concentrate. The columns of figures blurred before her eyes, and all she could see was Jack’s face and all she could feel was the touch of his lips against hers. She had wanted him very much and she knew he knew it.

      Damn him.

      She could not really blame Jack for being angry with her. Nor could she blame him for thinking her a whore when she had deliberately told him that any man would have done as a lover that night. That had been the literal truth, but no man could hear that without thinking her a shameless harlot.

      With a little sigh she laid her pen aside and pinched the bridge of her nose to ease the headache behind her eyes. She could not understand why she was attracted to Jack. He was the complete opposite of her husband, Archie, who had been gentle and kind. Yet from the moment that Jack had walked into the drawing room, she had been acutely conscious of him, of the vitality and energy he brought with him, of the confident swagger in his step and the muscular perfection of his body beneath the close-fitting and beautifully tailored clothes. She did not want to want him. Yet it felt as though he had in some way imprinted himself on her so that her senses craved him, the taste and the touch of him. She disliked intensely the feeling that she was so vulnerable to him, but she could not escape it.

      In Edinburgh she had used Jack shamelessly to drive out her feelings of loneliness and melancholy. She had sought out a man that night in order to forget for just a little while the huge weight of responsibility she carried and the secrets she kept. And for a time it had worked; she had forgotten everything in the bliss of Jack’s touch and the shocking, exciting sensations conjured by her own body. She had had so little experience of sex. She had had no idea, no notion at all, that it could be so delicious. It bore no resemblance to the mortifying fumbles she had endured at the start of her marriage to Archie MacLeod when they had barely managed to consummate their union.

      Well, she had certainly made up for that inexperience now. She could barely believe that she had acted with such brazen lack of restraint when she had been with Jack. So much of her knowledge had been theoretical before, gleaned only from the books in her father’s library.

      Even now the memory of Jack’s lovemaking made her feel very hot and slightly faint. She put her head in her hands and groaned. She hungered for Jack now. She wanted to know again that wicked pleasure she had felt at his hands. It was impossible. It could not happen.

      Two blackbirds squabbling on the terrace outside roused her with their noisy calls. Shaking her head impatiently, Mairi turned back to the file of papers on the desk. This was mainly correspondence that Murchison, her secretary, had already filtered and deemed important enough for Mairi to see. Archie MacLeod had not been an elder son, but he had inherited a huge fortune from his nabob godfather at the age of one and twenty. There were the two houses in Edinburgh, the country estate outside the city where Mairi was currently living and Noltland Castle in the eastern Highlands near the town of Cromarty. There was money in bonds and investments. There were endowments to charity and a dozen other business and philanthropic ventures. The entire inheritance

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