Fourteen
DARIA, WITH HER flowing, sparkling gown and dark golden hair, was already seated by the time Jamie had hobbled into the parlor on his damned leg, his family in tow.
“What would you like to hear?” she asked.
The Campbells merely looked at one another.
“Shall I choose for you?” She began to play. Jamie couldn’t help but notice the surprise on Geordie’s face—the lad had missed Laurna’s playing as much as he had. Robbie and Aileen—who had what some might term a stormy marriage, and he would term a bloody cyclone—seemed to soften as they took seats on the settee. Music had always had a calming effect on the Campbells, thank the saints, and one of Jamie’s great regrets was that more of them were not trained in the art. They’d been content to allow Laurna to be their high priestess of music.
Jamie eased himself into a chair and stretched out his leg. He was accustomed to overcoming illness or injury quickly, but he had discovered that lead was a formidable opponent. His recovery was slow, and tonight his leg and side ached. He caught Robbie’s eye and gestured to the bottle of whisky on the sideboard.
Jamie was watching Robbie pour two healthy tots when Daria Babcock sang prettily, “My love is a river that always flows, my heart a seed from which love grows. I cannot remember the words to this tune, and therefore I hope it ends rather soon.”
Even Geordie smiled.
Daria gave them a sly look and played the rest of the tune expertly. When she finished, Robbie clapped loudly, and she graciously accepted his applause with a slight nod.
“Her mother sings like the angels,” Hamish said dreamily. “Now, lass, let’s have ‘The Battle of Otterburn,’ aye?”
“Pardon?”
“Ach,” Hamish said with a flick of his hand. “You’ve played it a dozen times if you’ve played it once. Go on, then.”
“Hamish,” Jamie said softly, “Laurna is gone.”
Hamish looked at Daria, his expression full of confusion as he tried to sort it out. It pained Jamie to see his once robust uncle like this.
“Shall I play a waltz?” Daria suggested.
“A what?” Aileen asked.
“A waltz,” she repeated, and looked around at them. “Are you not familiar with it?” she asked, her face lighting with pleasure. “You must learn it! It’s a dance that has become wildly popular. Here, allow me,” she said, and before anyone could respond, she popped up from the bench and grabbed Geordie’s hand, pulling him off the chair. His mouth opened, and if he’d been able to speak, he would doubtless have protested rather loudly. But Geordie was helpless as Daria put his hand on her waist, and placed her hand on his shoulder. With her other hand, she took his and held it out. “On the count of three, we will move three steps to the left, then three to the right. Do you understand?”
Geordie rolled his eyes.
“Splendid!” she said, and began to hum, moving Geordie to the left, and then again to the right, stepping delicately to the count of three. But as Geordie could not seem to follow, she looked at Jamie. “Perhaps you might count it out for us? One two three, one two three,” she said.
“Count it out,” Jamie repeated incredulously.
“Yes, just count in threes,” she said breezily, and added unnecessarily, “to keep time.”
He rather thought it beneath the dignity of a laird and groused, “I do no’ keep time.”
“We’re ready!” she said cheerfully, pretending he hadn’t spoken.
He frowned at her lovely smile. “One, two, three,” he said.
Daria began to move Geordie about in time to Jamie’s counting. Aileen sat up, watching Daria’s feet closely, obviously intrigued by the dance, and Robbie, in an unusual show of kindness to his wife, held out his hand. “Come then, mo ghraidh, let us waltz.”
Aileen looked up at him with surprise. She hesitantly slipped her hand into his, allowing him to pull her up. With their heads bowed together, they began to study their steps.
“No, no, you’re missing a step,” Daria said to them, pausing momentarily in her instruction of Geordie. “I grant you it is difficult to move when the beat is not precisely to tempo,” she said, casting a sidelong look at Jamie.
“What? Am I no’ doing as you said?”
“It’s one two three, one two three.”
“I know how to count to three,” Jamie growled, and began to count again, slapping his hand in time on the wooden arm of his chair.
Daria stood behind Aileen with her hands on Aileen’s waist, moving her in the right direction. “There, you see? It’s really quite easy.” She smiled as she returned to Geordie and began again. “Here we are, one two three, one two three . . .”
Jamie shifted restlessly in his seat. Though he’d never cared much for dancing, he felt uncomfortably removed from the festivities, as if he were a dog watching from outside a window. He had an almost urgent desire to stand up with Daria, to look at her lovely face and shining eyes as she moved.
Such thoughts were even more disturbing than his desire to dance.
“All right then, with the music. We’ll need a partner for you, Geordie,” she said, and smiled at the footman. “Would you be so kind as to bring a willing female? Oh, bother, you might be searching all night for a willing one. Any female will do.” She sat down at the pianoforte and began to play before anyone could question her, or stop her from bringing in the entire clan. She called out instructions as she played, and after a few false starts, Robbie and Aileen began to move in synchrony. “Splendid!” Daria called from the pianoforte. “One two three, one two three!”
Aileen, Jamie was surprised to see, was beaming up at her husband. Jamie had not seen her smile quite like that in an age, and he was reminded that he’d once considered her a bonny lass. The footman ushered a maid in, and Geordie grinned at her, took her by the wrist and the waist, and began to dance. The girl protested that she did not know what he was about, but in a few moments she was dancing, her focus intent on her feet.
There was something different in that small parlor that perplexed Jamie. It was vague, intangible, but he could feel it. He couldn’t name it until he heard the maid laugh, then it suddenly struck him. Since the night Geordie had called Cormag out, there had been no laughter at Dundavie. Not until tonight. Not until an English rose taught them to dance.
They danced until Hamish stood up and clasped his hands behind his back and attempted to dance a jig to the unfamiliar music. But his age and his infirmity had left him without any natural rhythm, and he was soon knocking into the other dancers.
Everyone stopped dancing the waltz to give Hamish a wide berth. Daria seemed uncertain of what to do and stopped playing.
“Cluich!” Hamish shouted at her, telling her to play on.
“Uncle, it’s time we all retired, aye?” Robbie said, putting his hand on his uncle’s shoulder.
But Hamish clearly had other ideas and shrugged Robbie off. “Cluich, Laurna!” When Daria did not respond, Hamish lunged for the pianoforte.
Geordie stopped him, gently pushing him back.
“Take him,” Jamie said, gaining his feet. This was another once unheard of but increasingly familiar side of his uncle—the quick temper, the rash actions.
Geordie linked his arm with Hamish’s, urging him to come along and gently pulling him to the door.
Hamish looked confused, staring up at Geordie as if he weren’t certain who he was. “Has Laurna finished, then?”
“Aye, she has,” Robbie said, and held out his hand for Aileen. He glanced at Jamie, gave him a nod. “Oidhche mhath.”
“Good night, lads,” Jamie said. “Aileen.” He handed Geordie’s slate to Aileen.
When they had gone, Jamie looked at Daria. She had stood up from the pianoforte, her expression full of sympathy for the old man. Jamie started toward her, but his leg had stiffened and he limped more than he had all day. When he reached the pianoforte, he eased himself down onto the bench.
She slowly sat beside him. “What happened to Hamish?”
Jamie wished he understood precisely what had happened to his uncle. “I donna know,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “It began a few years ago and has grown worse.” He touched a few keys, playing a song from a distant memory of his childhood when he’d been forced by his mother to engage in music lessons. “It will make you a proper gentleman, Jamie,” she had said.
Daria smiled with delight. “You play!”
“I do no’,” he said with an easy smile. “I remember a few things from my music lessons, but I donna play. You, on the other hand, play very well, lass. Thank you for indulging us, aye?”
“Should I take from that you were suitably entertained?” she asked, and playfully nudged him with her shoulder as she began to play lightly, her fingers scarcely touching the keys at all.
“Aye, that I was.” He’d been entertained in a way he could not describe. He was softening, he knew it. He did not care to be soft; scarcely anything annoyed him more than giving in to a woman’s smile. “When I was a boy,” he said, turning his attention away from the curve of her neck, “Hamish was considered the family historian. He would regale the entire clan with tales of heroic Campbell ancestors.” He smiled at the memory. “He would act out the more gruesome parts of our history with long swords and descriptions of bloody body parts for the boys, myself included. Now, he canna recall his full name most days.”
Daria nodded and played another couple bars. “May I ask you something? Why is Geordie so angry? He may have told me his grievances against me, but alas, his spelling is so very atrocious, I can’t understand it.”
Jamie couldn’t help but laugh. “Aye, in English as well as Gaelic. My brother was never one for the classroom. He wanted to be a soldier, a slayer of man and beast. He is a smart man, a good man, aye? Yet I never knew how poor his writing was until he became mute.”
“Until?” Her hands paused gracefully on the keys. “He’s not always been mute?”
Jamie shook his head. “It’s a recent injury. In the course of a meal that was intended to bring the Brodies and the Campbells together, no’ drive them apart as they’ve been for two hundred years, Geordie acted rashly. He called another man out,” he said to Daria’s questioning look. “In the Highlands, there’s no’ much that can stop two men who want a go at each other, aye? And, as these things generally go when two clans are involved, there is no’ much that will stop brothers and cousins and sons and fathers and uncles from joining the fray.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding.
“And,” Jamie added with a sigh, “as these things go for brash, hotheaded young men, Geordie was so badly wounded in the melee that he was made mute.”
“How tragic!”
“Aye. Whether or not his voice will return remains to be seen,” he said. “But at present, a man who once made better use of his tongue than his hands is now reduced to a slate and a wee bit of chalk. That’s what angers him.”
She gazed thoughtfully at the keys, playing lightly once more.
If only she knew the whole story of that supper, that infamous, meticulously planned supper, which had been intended to put to bed some of the more egregious complaints the Brodies and Campbells had harbored against each other the last two centuries. Jamie’s first thought—when Cormag Brodie had said whatever it was he’d said (his words lost along with the pig that had been roasted for the occasion), and Geordie had flipped the table, sending crystal, china, wine, and pig flying—was that he was right to have wanted a much smaller affair. His second thought—as Cormag had lunged, his hands grasping for Geordie’s throat—was that perhaps it would be best if the Brodies and the Campbells never dined together.
The melee had spilled into the old bailey, with Campbells swinging fists at Brodies, and Brodies swinging swords at Campbells. It had ended when Cormag swung his claymore wide, striking Geordie in the neck. If Geordie had not been so agile, he might be headless now. If Cormag had been a little less meaty, he might have lost his life as well, but the knife Geordie managed to stab into his leg had not penetrated so deeply as to drain his life’s blood.
As three men struggled to drag Cormag away, Isabella had said, “I canna enter into a permanent union with a man whose brother would wish my brother dead. I’m sorry, Jamie.” She’d followed her kinsmen out, daintily holding up the hem of her gold gown so as not to drag it in the blood and muck.
It had been a moment when Jamie could not think of what to say. He was the sort who needed time to think, to mull, when presented with a weighty matter such as the end of an engagement and the crash of dreams for a happy union and a family. He was the sort to choose his words carefully . . . so he hadn’t spoken at all.
He had not called her back.
The end of his engagement to the fair Isabella had been a blow to Jamie’s heart, and, admittedly, his ego. He’d been quite fond of her, and supposed he still was. She was pretty, with wide green eyes and copper hair. But he was a laird, and women did not cry off from engagements to lairds.
“It must have been horrid for everyone involved,” Daria said, as if he’d just told her the story aloud.
“Aye. In more ways than I could ever explain.”
“Well,” she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye, “I am a good listener.”
He laughed. “I’ve said enough, aye? It was a night for the ages, one that shall go down in the annals of family history; a night in which Geordie lost his voice and I lost my fiancée.”
“Your fiancée! How did you lose her?”
“In the usual way,” he said, smiling a little. “She cried off, since her brother had just been stabbed by my brother.”
Daria’s eyes widened with surprise and fixed on him, as if she expected him to tell her that he was jesting. Her gaze did not waver, and neither did his. Jamie noticed—and not for the first time, no—that she had long, darkly golden lashes and brown eyes flecked with tiny bits of blue and gray, rimmed with black. Eyes that could live forever in a man’s memory.
“You must not tell me any more,” she said, her gaze dropping to his mouth. “Or I shall feel quite sad for you and be resolved to help you. I think there can be nothing as dangerous as resolving to help one’s captor.”
“Diah, I could no’ bear your help, I am certain of it.”
“You, sir? I think you could bear nearly anything.”
A soft smile played on her lips. He wondered if she was flirting with him now, hoping that he would agree to take her to Edinburgh or give her grandmother undeserved leeway. Daria Babcock might believe she knew the ways of men . . . but Jamie Campbell knew women.
He leaned closer. “And what of you, leannan? How is it that a woman as lovely as you has descended from a woman who is as mad as a hen?”
She closed her eyes and bent her head closer to him. “You’ve quite clearly become very fond of my Mamie.”
He couldn’t help himself; he grazed her temple with his lips. “I assure you, I have no’.”
Her smile deepened; small dimples creased her smooth cheeks. “But are you not the least bit curious to see how she fares?” she asked, and tilted her head to one side as Jamie moved his mouth to her jawline.
“No,” he said, dipping to her neck.
“But we had an agreement,” she murmured.
“We have only one agreement, leannan. One thousand pounds in exchange for you.” He couldn’t seem to stop himself from cupping her face, his fingers splayed against her head. He tilted her head back and moved to kiss her, but Daria quickly inserted her fingers between them, pressing against his mouth.
“You promised me I would see her. Duff said he sent a messenger with the letter I wrote her and she wasn’t there. I’m worried, and you promised.”
Damnation. She had him. She’d seduced him with her smile and her beauty and her unfailingly spirited nature, and even worse, she knew that she had. Jamie could see it in the dance of her eyes, the curve of the smile on her lips. “You want my promise, lass? You have it,” he said, and grabbed her hand, pulling it away at the same moment he pressed his mouth to hers, claiming it, drawing her lower lip in between his teeth.
She was lush, her lips, her body, all of her. He anchored one arm around her and pulled her closer. This woman was irresistible, with her smile and her glittering eyes, and Jamie kissed her with a surrender that surprised him.
Her mouth, as soft and succulent as he’d remembered from that hazy dream in her grandmother’s cottage, was warm, and Diah, moving erotically against his mouth. The kiss was molten; it had the potential to melt him into nothing.
It wasn’t enough—he needed more. He suddenly twisted her about and draped her over his lap, her face between his hands. She gave a small cry into his mouth when he did it, but then she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding herself tightly to him.
He tasted her as if she were some English delicacy, and imagined tasting the more intimate folds of her body. He sank deeper into the sea of longing, riding the wave of pleasure. He cupped her breast, filling his hand and then sliding it down to the hem of her gown, finding her bare leg.
She tried to speak, but he would not allow it. She arched her back, pressing into him, and bent her knee. Something fell off the pianoforte with a crash. He hoped it wasn’t a candle, hoped Dundavie didn’t burn around him, but in that moment, he hardly cared if it did. He was too bewitched, too engrossed in the feel of her in his arms.
Daria pressed against him, her hands sweeping around his neck, her breasts pressed to his chest. She thrust her fingers into his hair, skirted the top of his ear, then found his shoulders, felt the tension in his muscles. Jamie’s body hardened with anticipation. He was only moments from lifting her skirts, from sliding his hand between her legs . . . but his damnably practical head overruled his groin. He did not need this English rose to complicate his life any more than she had already.
She dropped her hand; it hit an ivory key and the sound roused him completely from his lust. With a strength he would have sworn he did not possess, he lifted his mouth from hers. He kissed the bridge of her nose, then pressed his forehead to hers, cupping her head in his hands, calming his ragged breath.
When he felt his senses return to him, he gazed at her.
She gave him a self-conscious smile that put dimples just below the roses in her cheeks. “When shall we go to Mamie’s?”
Jamie sighed. “Incorrigible, you are. When I am assured I can ride, then, aye?”
Her smile broadened; her eyes twinkled with delight. “Aye,” she mimicked.
She sat up and tucked a thick strand of hair that had fallen from her coif into the chignon at her nape.
“Good night, then,” Jamie said, turning away from her and her captivating smile. “Off to bed with you.” Go out of my sight, leannan, so that I will not be tempted.
Still smiling, she rose gracefully from the bench. Her fingers trailed across his back and shoulders as she passed him.
He did not watch her leave, but waited until he heard the door shut and then lowered his brow to the top of the pianoforte, his eyes closed, his jaw clenched against a burgeoning physical desire.