Chapter 6

“What’s this about you thinking you’ll be coming with me?” he said in a harsh whisper. “And keep your voice down.”

Jeb looked over his shoulder, hoping they had a few more moments before the butler rejoined them in the wine cellar. Mariah’s invitation to visit the cellar when she and Hubert selected the day’s wine had been a ruse. He’d watched her select just enough wine that Hubert couldn’t possibly carry it up the steep steps himself. Then, just as he was halfway up, she knocked a bottle to the floor.

“Oh no! Oh dear! It splashed all over me! But it’s all right, Hubert,” she called. “I’ll get another. Let’s see, it was the Bordeaux, I believe. Yes. It’s over there on the top shelf, Mr. Danvers. Watch out for the glass.”

Hubert grunted his displeasure and continued up the steps, and she drew Jeb to the far aisle.

“I told you earlier,” she whispered. “I intend to go with you.”

“You can’t. I won’t allow it.” He clanked a couple of bottles together to cover their conversation.

“Then you will return to England without what you came for.”

His eyes widened, then narrowed in anger. “Why? If you leave it will signify your guilt! Why would you want to go to England?”

“It’s not that I want to go to England as much as that I want to escape Scotland. I want to escape my father.”

Mariah realized she’d revealed much more than she’d intended. “I have an aunt in London. My mother’s sister. I’ll go stay with her.”

Jeb was silent for several moments. Mariah felt a glimmer of hope when he spoke. “What’s your plan?”

“Does this mean you’ll take me?”

“No,” he fired back. “It means I’ll listen to your plan. Then decide.”

Mariah glanced toward the cellar stair, then explained her plan.

“You will leave tomorrow morning as planned. You’ll ride toward the MacKinnon’s keep. After about four miles, you’ll reach a fork in the road. Straight ahead will take you to the MacKinnons. The road to the left will take you to England.

“You’ll cross the border into England after a two-hour ride. After another two hours, you’ll reach an inn called the Keg and Copper. You’ll wait for me there.”

Jeb watched the light dance in her eyes as she relayed the plan she had obviously carefully devised. She watched him, her eyes darting from his eyes to his mouth and back. She wouldn’t have much luck reading his expression. No one ever did.

Mariah caught her lower lip between her teeth and raised an eyebrow, clearly begging him to say he accepted her plan.

He didn’t want to. He wanted to stay here, to linger in her presence. To discover more of the clever girl who was quite unexpectedly capturing his interest.

“And how are you going to get there?”

“Milly will get me there.” Mariah paced the narrow aisle. “You’ll leave in the morning. I will stay in Father’s sight all day.” She turned to busy herself with the bottles and looked over her shoulder at him. “I don’t want him to connect the two of us. After dinner, I’ll say I’m not feeling well and go to my room. As soon as I’m sure the house is asleep, I’ll go out through the kitchen and make my way to the stable and lead Milly out through a back gate.”

“It’s too risky. What if someone sees you?”

“They’ll think I’ve gone for a ride as I often do at night. I won’t be missed until late the next day.”

He could just see her doing that, riding out at night, a flowing cloak catching the wind, her hair tossed wild and free—

Mariah turned to face him. “By then I’ll have met you at the Keg and Copper, and we’ll be on our way to London.”

Jeb stood, then paced a few steps down the aisle, clinking bottles as he went. “I don’t know. There are too many—”

“If I’m not at the Keg and Copper by noon of the day after tomorrow, you can leave without me.”

“What about the jewels?”

“I will have them with me.”

“And if you aren’t able to meet me?”

Mariah breathed a heavy sigh. “You will have failed your Queen, and I will most likely be dead.”

Jeb turned sharply back to her. That couldn’t happen. What danger must there be here that a woman barely more than a girl could stand there and speak with such acceptance about her own death? Whatever it was, he needed to take her away from it, to stand between it and the alarmingly beautiful Mariah MacFarlane.

Words flew to his throat, words he could never speak because they would reveal too much of what was flooding his heart. But somehow she heard them. Or saw them. In his inscrutable face.

He stepped closer, knowing the small distance was the only thing that could save her from what he wanted to do.

“Mariah—”

Her lips parted as she drew a stuttering breath. She knew what he wanted, and as she took a small step toward him their hands met. He drew hers to his chest and took her face between his own hands. There was no fear, no hesitation in her eyes.

She wanted him to kiss her.

 

Mariah’s heart thundered in her breast. It plunged and soared as his lips touched hers, tenderly nudging her trembling mouth with his own. Her fingers found their way into the unruly hair that curled across the nape of his neck, even as his became buried in her own.

When he slowly drew away, she knew it wasn’t by choice, but by necessity. It had become too quiet in the cellar.

Neither of them spoke, but slowly, clumsily gathered the bottles they’d somehow abandoned on the shelves. The wonder of an unexpected but supremely satisfying kiss spun about them as they moved toward the stairs, staying closer together than they ought, but farther apart than they wanted.

He followed her. Mariah could feel his mind working already, though hers seemed puckishly sluggish. What would he do now? He wanted the jewels. He was desperate to give them to his queen. And she was desperate for his queen to have them.

But he wanted her, too. She knew it as well as she knew her own longing. If he would just see the wisdom of her plan, they might have a chance to be together, to discover if there was more than a kiss between them.

Here at Langholm there was danger at every turn. If her father or his men discovered that she was the one who had liberated the jewels, she might not survive his anger. Not outside a nunnery, at any rate.

She should never have touched the horrid things. Except she knew what her father intended to use them for, and she couldn’t allow it.

For the sake of England and Scotland, she couldn’t allow it.