The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae by Stephanie Laurens
“That she’s truly gained her revenge. Yes, I agree. So!” She rose as if compelled to do so. Brow furrowing, she paced before the fire, back and forth between their chairs. “Let’s say I have to remain ruined for three days. The most critical point is that if Mirabelle ever guesses the truth—that what we present to her is a charade and I’m not ruined in the least—then, if I understood you correctly as to her character, she’s malicious enough, vindictive enough, to withhold the goblet beyond the first of the month purely out of spite.” Pausing, she glanced at him. “Is that a reasonable assessment?”
“Yes.”
She studied his face, then, still frowning, resumed her pacing. “So we have to convince her that I’m ruined, and until you have the goblet literally in your hands we can’t afford any mistakes. We’ll have to have an agreed fiction and be consistent in ensuring she sees only that.” She glanced at him. “Does she have any correspondents in London?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I would have to frank any letters she sent, and if she received any, I would be told, so yes, I’m certain. Why?”
“I’m trying to define what sort of young lady she’ll imagine I am. If the last information she has about me is from five years ago, when I was sixteen and not yet out, then she can’t have any idea what I’m really like.” Swinging around, she met his eyes. “Answer me this—how will she make up her mind that I’m ruined? On what will she base her conclusion?” When he didn’t immediately reply, she spread her hands. “All she’ll know, all she’ll see, is my behavior, and yours.” Halting before him, she locked her eyes on his. “How I behave, and how you behave toward me while we’re in her sight, is going to be the key.”
He fought to keep his expression impassive even though his instincts were already bristling. “What sort of behavior are you envisaging?”
She heard the warning in his voice, but chose to pretend she hadn’t. “I have to play the part of a gently reared, well-bred, delicate and sensitive English young lady kidnapped from her home, cruelly and frighteningly wrenched from the bosom of her family, and hauled unceremoniously to Scotland. She knows I’m twenty-one. She’ll expect me to be near-terrified, overcome and overwhelmed, timid and fearfully cringing and shrinking from all risk of exposure, wanting to flee but without a clue what to do or where to go.” She paused, frown deepening. “Not a ninnyhammer—I couldn’t manage that—but in terms of getting out of the situation, I’ll have to be in a panic, but at a total loss, and positively devastated over being ruined.”
Warming to her theme, she went on, “I should be constantly bemoaning my lost prospects, indeed, be almost prostrate with grief over the life I’ve lost.” She glanced at him. “I need to construct a character who can believably wail”—flinging out one arm, she touched the back of her other wrist to her forehead—“I’m ruined . . . ruined!”
Dropping the pose, she looked at him. “If I can’t do that convincingly, if I can’t make Mirabelle believe beyond all doubt that I believe I’m ruined, then she’ll never believe it, either.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, then asked, “Do you think you can pull that off? The persona you’ve described is nothing like you.”
“My part in this will undoubtedly qualify as a stellar performance, but if we want that goblet back, we have to pull off the necessary charade.”
There was more, he knew, namely the part she hadn’t yet broached. “As you’ve noted, it’s ‘we’ who have to pull off this charade.” He held her gaze. “So what’s my role?”
She looked into his eyes, hesitated—and he knew beyond question that he wasn’t going to like her answer.
Confirming that, she adopted her most earnest, most reasonable and persuasive tone. “This is, I admit, supposition—I can hardly claim to know your mother’s mind—but my interpretation of her demand is that she wants to see me ruined. She wants to be there, a witness, while I cope with the painful and devastating realization.” Pausing, she arched a brow at him.
Lips thin, he let a moment tick by before conceding, “I can’t say you’re wrong.”
She nodded. “So Mirabelle will expect me to be a quaking-in-my-slippers virgin, otherwise my ruination won’t ring true. And the only way I’ll be able to quake believably, well enough for her to swallow, is if you appear to be a potential threat, at least to my quaking persona.”
He let a moment slide past, then clarified, “A sexual threat?”
She nodded. “Don’t forget—in our charade you feel nothing for me. I’m just the irritating and troublesome ton female you’ve had to seize and drag all the way from London to the highlands in order to save your clan. You can’t show any softness or partiality toward me, and you can’t act protectively, at least not in any way that Mirabelle might see. If anything, you need to treat me with contempt, disdain, even disgust. To you, I’m dispensable, of no real account, otherwise you would never have done what you supposedly have, and on top of that, I’m a reminder of what you’ve had to do, had to become—a dishonorable kidnapper.
“Precisely because you violently dislike what your mother has forced you to do—and from what I understand, that’s a part of her scheme, too—you aren’t at all pleased with me. I’m the living embodiment of your failure to live up to your family motto. I’m a symbol of your personal disgrace. You’ll need to pretend to feel darkly toward me, an antipathy that will allow me to cringe and to be as fearful of you as I need to be to convince her that I believe there’s no hope for me—that I’m a disgraced and ruined woman, socially worthless and forever beyond the pale, and that I see and fear every possible repercussion of that.” She considered, exhaled, then glanced at him.
He captured her gaze, held it. After a long, drawn-out moment, flatly stated, “You’ll need to think again.”
She sighed, but the sound held more resignation than surrender. “Yes, well, I realize you’re not going to like behaving like that, but I don’t think we can avoid it.”
To his surprise, she refocused on his eyes, her gaze sharper, more intent, her expression unusually sober. “You haven’t told me this, but reading between the lines I feel sure that part of what Mirabelle wants is to see you bending to her will, and the most emphatic demonstration of you bowing to her is if she successfully forces you to act dishonorably. To turn your back on the family motto, and on the character you’ve held to despite everything she’s forced you to do. She wants to hurt you, to pay you back for not supporting her against your father, and thus far she’s been denied. She’s forced you to kidnap three Cynsters sisters, but by sheer luck, or fate, or whatever you will, you’ve been able to do so while escaping any permanent stain on your conscience. Fate has protected you. But this time . . . even though you haven’t stepped over that invisible line, you have to convince her that you have. That you believe you have, so that there’s no longer any point in holding to any moral line, because you believe yourself already damned.”
She held his gaze unwaveringly. “You need to convince her that you will do anything to satisfy her demands, up to and including that you’ll force yourself on me.”
He’d grown colder and colder. An icy rage howled inside him—with no outlet; it wasn’t the woman who stood before him he was furious with. It took him several long moments before he could draw breath and, his gaze still locked with Angelica’s, anchored by hers, quietly state, “In other words, that if it were necessary to reclaim the goblet, I’d rape you.”
She didn’t like the word any more than he did, but she didn’t back down. “You need to give the appearance that you would. That you don’t care—that you no longer have morals or honor, and all you want is the goblet back regardless of what it takes.”
Unflinchingly, she held his gaze. “In this charade you have to make her believe she’s won, that she’s beaten you into submission. If you don’t, if she suspects you’re still unbowed, that you’re sti
Silence fell.
For a moment, he remained unmoving in the chair.
Abruptly he came to his feet, driven by an overpowering impulse to fling away across the room and refuse to deal with this anymore.
Startled, she took an involuntary step back.
Instantly he stilled, without thought put out a hand, gently grasped her arm. “Sorry.”
She dragged in a breath, lifted her chin. “No—I’m sorry. I’m pushing you, and I know I am.”
He hung his head. Let his hand remain on her arm, holding, but not tightly.
After a moment, he drew in a breath and looked at her. Locked his gaze with hers, searched her eyes, then, slowly, shook his head. “You may be an excellent actress, but I’m not that good an actor. I cannot conceive of behaving in a way sufficient to convince Mirabelle that I would harm you. Not so much as a hair on your head.”
She studied his eyes, then pulled a face. “Yes, well . . .” She exhaled, then drew a huge breath, straightened to her full height, and tried to look down her nose at him. “In this, you and I don’t have a choice.”
“We always have choices.”
“Indeed, and that’s precisely what I’m suggesting. None of this will be real. Our choice is to pretend, to trick and deceive someone who deserves to be tricked and deceived. In order to win back the goblet, we need to pretend to give Mirabelle everything she wants—we can’t afford to make a mistake in that, and we’re running out of time.”
Before he could respond, with a swish of silk skirts she stepped closer and set her fingers across his lips. Looked into his eyes. “Enough for tonight. No—don’t argue. Just think about it. I will, too. We have tomorrow, and tomorrow night, to refine our plan. If we can come up with something else, some other way, we will. But for now . . . enough talking.”
In that moment he wanted, more than anything else, to be distracted—to forget the impossible ugliness she’d described. “What, then?”
She smiled, her inner siren peeking out to tantalize him. “Come to bed.”
He’d thought her invitation meant that he should take her to bed, but it was she who took him. She who, with a small, seductive smile, took his hand and led him across the floor, who, with a blend of threat and promise, forced him to stand by the side of the bed and let her disrobe him.
Unclothe him.
Then she damned near unmanned him by going to her knees and taking him between those rosebud lips, and with innocent skill tormented him until he sank his fingers into her fiery mane and instructed her in what she wanted to learn.
When, head back, every muscle locked, he managed to ask, in a voice hoarse and gravelly, how she’d known to do what she was doing, she looked up at him, her eyes almost all emerald, and murmured, “Imagination.”
If he’d thought it was distracting, overwhelming, when he took her, he discovered it was even more so when she took him. When she wove her enchantments with hands and lips, with a delicate skill he knew was instinctive, driven not by thought but by simple desire—the desire to pleasure him.
She overwhelmed him.
And when she finally rose up and took him in, sheathing him in the hot, slick bounty of her body, he knew nothing beyond the moment, beyond the sheer glory and the unrelenting pleasure of her body rising and falling, riding his.
The end came slowly, yet still too soon.
He saw stars and touched heaven, and she did, too.
Spent, she collapsed upon him. His arms around her, he held her close.
And for those moments, let the benediction they’d wrought soothe his soul.
Angelica woke in the dark of the night. He’d disengaged their bodies, untangled their limbs, and drawn the covers over them. He lay on his back with her snuggled against him, cradled in one arm, her head on his chest. She could hear his heart thudding, slowly, evenly, beneath her ear, and knew he wasn’t asleep.
Without shifting her head, she murmured, “Why are you awake?”
His breathing, soft and deep, paused, then resumed. “I’m thinking.”
“About our plan to trick your mother.” Statement, not a question.
He sighed. “I honestly don’t think I can do it. I’m simply not capable of behaving in such a way, not believably. Not to any woman, but especially not to you.” After a moment, he added, “I’m too much me, and you’re too much you.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Dominic glanced down at her gilded head. “For what?”
“I pushed for us to become intimate in part because I wanted the . . . bolstering of knowing how you felt about me while going through with our necessary charade. Because I felt I needed it, that having an intimate connection between us would reassure me through whatever we had to do. But in pursuing that, I didn’t think of you. I didn’t think about how us being intimate would make our charade that much harder for you.”
Pushing up from his arm, she leaned on his chest, looked into his face. Through the dimness, she met his eyes. “For me, our closeness is like armor, a shield that will protect me no matter what happens with your mother—no matter what she might say, no matter what you and I might be forced to do. For you . . . now we’ve been intimate, you see me as yours to protect, and acting as you’ll need to is now something that will . . . cut at you. Something that will go drastically and hurtfully against your grain. And for that I apologize—I didn’t think it through. I didn’t intend to add to the pressure your mother has already subjected you to.”
He didn’t know what to say. That she saw that, saw him, so clearly . . . slowly reaching out, he cupped the back of her head, drew her close and gently kissed her, a grateful, unarousing, unashamedly tender kiss, then he settled her against him again. Finally found words through the turmoil inside him. “We’ll find a way—you and I. Together, we’ll manage, and together, we’ll win.”
He heard his tone, knew he meant every word, that inside him such confidence yet remained. Dipping his head, he brushed a kiss to her forehead. “Sleep. We have tomorrow and tomorrow night to finalize our plan.”
She exhaled and relaxed against him; within minutes, she was asleep.
He listened to the soft huff of her breathing, felt the inexpressible comfort of her soft body against his side, closed his eyes, and unexpectedly slid into slumber, deep, dreamless, complete.
Inside the keep of Mheadhoin Castle, the delicate French clock on the side table in the countess’s bedchamber whirred softly, then chimed.
Mirabelle lay slumped on her stomach in the rumpled billows of her bed, her face turned away from her lover while she regained her breath, and her composure.
Her lover lay beside her, his large, heavy, naked body dark against her ivory sheets. One hard hand idly stroked her hip. “Have you had any progress reports from Glencrae?”
She pouted. “No. I told you—he never tells me anything.” She considered, then made a sound of disgust. “I fully expect him to return empty-handed yet again.” Her lips curved in vindictive anticipation. “And then it’ll be all over for him, and all the rest of his precious clan. All the people of the castle and estate who’ve never given me my due. If he doesn’t turn up with a Cynster girl in tow, I swear I’ll forget where I’ve hidden the goblet, and then they’ll all be out on their ears.”
“And what a shame that’ll be.” Rolling toward her, leaning over her, her lover nuzzled the sensitive spot where her throat met her shoulder.
Mirabelle couldn’t see her lover’s eyes, couldn’t see his coldly calculating expression. After a moment, his breath washing over the bare
She laughed. “Don’t worry—they haven’t found it yet, and they never will.”
Her lover’s lips thinned, but in dealing with her he’d learned not to push; if he did, she would dig in her heels just for the hell of it.
If he’d thought his own plans stood in any danger, he would have more than pushed, but as matters were unfolding . . . he really couldn’t see how he could lose. One way or another, Dominic Lachlan Guisachan was going to be ruined, and that was all he cared about.
Well, the first thing he cared about. But once Dominic and his clan were evicted from the Guisachan holdings, he would be there with the goblet in hand, waiting to step in and claim all his old foe was going to forfeit.
And that would be his final and ultimate victory. His clan would triumph, and the Guisachans would be gone. Making that vision a reality was worth any price—certainly the relatively mundane one of seducing and servicing Dominic’s ageing mother.
She hummed and shifted against him, rubbing her hip against his groin. Insatiable bitch. Returning his mind to the matter at hand, he slid down in the bed and set his mouth and his hands to keeping her amused.
As things stood, that was all he needed to do, until Dominic disappointed her one last time, and the goblet fell into his own hands.
Chapter Fifteen
They departed Kingussie and rode on beneath brisk breezes and overcast skies. Dominic kept them to a decent pace; Inverness was close enough that he didn’t need to rest the horses as he had through the previous days.
Alongside him, perched on Ebony, now a reliable mount, Angelica looked about her with undisguised interest.
He watched her drink in the choppy waters of Loch Insh, the wide sweep of the sky, and the hills filling their horizons. The northern slopes of the Cairngorms lay to their right, while the bleaker heights of the Monadhliaths loomed on the left. Directly ahead the road curved north through the pass above Aviemore. An indefinable beat in his blood told him he was nearly home, but Angelica seemed gripped by a similar eagerness to reach their destination. Or at least to look upon it.