Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught
“Is that how it’s done?” he asked, his eyes beginning to glint with amusement. “Somehow I didn’t quite imagine you allowed convention to dictate your every move.”
To a gambler without ties or responsibility, the rules of social etiquette and convention must be tiresome in the extreme, and Elizabeth realized it was imperative to convince him he must yield to her viewpoint. “Oh, but I am,” she prevaricated. “The Camerons are the most conventional people in the world! As you know from last night, I believe in death before dishonor. We also believe in God and country, motherhood and the king, and . . . and all the proprieties. We’re quite intolerably boring on the subject, actually.”
“I see,” he said, his lips twitching. “Tell me something,” he asked mildly, “why would such a conventional person as yourself have crossed swords with a roomful of men last night in order to protect a stranger’s reputation?”
“Oh, that,” Elizabeth said. “That was just—well, my conventional notion of justice. Besides,” she said, her ire coming to the fore as she recalled the scene in the card room last night, “it made me excessively angry when I realized that the only reason none of them would try to dissuade Lord Everly from shooting you was because you were not their social equal, while Everly is.”
“Social equality?” he teased with a lazy, devastating smile. “What an unusual notion to spring from such a conventional person as yourself.”
Elizabeth was trapped, and she knew it. “The truth is,” she said shakily, “that I am scared to death of being here.”
“I know you are,” he said, sobering, “but I am the last person in the world you’ll ever have to fear.”
His words and his tone made the quaking in her limbs, the hammering of her heart, begin again, and Elizabeth hastily drank a liberal amount of her wine, praying it would calm her rioting nerves. As if he saw her distress, he smoothly changed the topic. “Have you given any more thought to the injustice done Galileo?”
She shook her head. “I must have sounded very silly last night, going on about how wrong it was to bring him up before the Inquisition. It was an absurd thing to discuss with anyone, especially a gentleman.”
“I thought it was a refreshing alternative to the usual insipid trivialities.”
“Did you really?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes searching his with a mixture of disbelief and hope, unaware that she was being neatly distracted from her woes and drawn into a discussion she’d find easier.
“I did.”
“I wish society felt that way.”
He grinned sympathetically. “How long have you been required to hide the fact that you have a mind?”
“Four weeks,” she admitted, chuckling at his phrasing. “You cannot imagine how awful it is to mouth platitudes to people when you’re longing to ask them about things they’ve seen and things they know. If they’re male, they wouldn’t tell you, of course, even if you did ask.”
“What would they say?” he teased.
“They would say,” she said wryly, “that the answer would be beyond a female’s comprehension—or that they fear offending my tender sensibilities.”
“What sorts of questions have you been asking?”
Her eyes lit up with a mixture of laughter and frustration. “I asked Sir Elston Greeley, who had just returned from extensive travels, if he had happened to journey to the colonies, and he said that he had. But when I asked him to describe to me how the natives looked and how they lived, he coughed and sputtered and told me it wasn’t at all ‘the thing’ to discuss ‘savages’ with a female, and that I’d swoon if he did.”
“Their appearance and living habits depend upon their tribe,” Ian told her, beginning to answer her questions. “Some of the tribes are ‘savage’ by our standards, not theirs, and some of the tribes are peaceful by any standards. . . .”
Two hours flew by as Elizabeth asked him questions and listened in fascination to stories of places he had seen, and not once in all that time did he refuse to answer or treat her comments lightly. He spoke to her like an equal and seemed to enjoy it whenever she debated an opinion with him. They’d eaten lunch and returned to the sofa; she knew it was past time for her to leave, and yet she was loath to end their stolen afternoon.
“I can’t help thinking,” she confided when he finished answering a question about women in India who covered their faces and hair in public, “that it is grossly unfair that I was born a female and so must never know such adventures, or see but a few of those places. Even if I were to journey there, I’d only be allowed to go where everything was as civilized as—as London!”
“There does seem to be a case of extreme disparity between the privileges accorded the sexes,” Ian agreed.
“Still, we each have our duty to perform,” she informed him with sham solemnity. “And there’s said to be great satisfaction in that.”
“How do you view your—er—duty?” he countered, responding to her teasing tone with a lazy white smile.
“That’s easy. It is a female’s duty to be a wife who is an asset to her husband in every way. It is a male’s duty to do whatever he wishes, whenever he wishes, so long as he is prepared to defend his country should the occasion demand it in his lifetime—which it very likely won’t Men,” she informed him, “gain honor by sacrificing themselves on the field of battle while we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of matrimony.”
He laughed aloud then, and Elizabeth smiled back at him, enjoying herself hugely. “Which, when one considers it, only proves that our sacrifice is by far the greater and more noble.”
“How is that?” he asked, still chuckling.
“It’s perfectly obvious—battles last mere days or weeks, months at the very most While matrimony lasts a lifetime! Which brings to mind something else I’ve often wondered about,” she continued gaily, giving full rein to her innermost thoughts.
“And that is?” he prompted, grinning, watching her as if he never wanted to stop.
“Why do you suppose, after all that, they call us the weaker sex?” Their laughing gazes held, and then Elizabeth realized bow outrageous he must be finding some of her remarks. “I don’t usually go off on such tangents,” she said ruefully. “You must think I’m dreadfully ill-bred.”
“I think,” he softly said, “that you are magnificent”
The husky sincerity in his deep voice snatched her breath away. She opened her mouth, thinking frantically for some light reply that could restore the easy camaraderie of a minute before, but instead of speaking she could only draw a long, shaky breath.
“And,” he continued quietly, “I think you know it”
This was not not the sort of foolish, flirtatious repartee she was accustomed to from her London beaux, and it terrified her as much as the sensual look in those golden eyes. Pressing imperceptibly back against the arm of the sofa, she told herself she was only overreacting to what was nothing more than empty flattery. “I think,” she managed with a light laugh that stuck in her throat, “that you must find whatever female you’re with ‘magnificent.’ ”
“Why would you say a thing like that?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Last night at supper, for one thing.” When he frowned at her as if she were speaking in a foreign language, she prodded, “You remember Lady Charise Dumont, our hostess, the same lovely brunette on whose every word you were hanging at supper last night?”
His frown became a grin. “Jealous?”
Elizabeth lifted her elegant little chin and shook her head. “No more than you were of Lord Howard.”
She felt a small bit of satisfaction as his amusement vanished. “The fellow who couldn’t seem to talk to you without touching your arm?” he inquired in a silky-soft voice. “That Lord Howard? As a matter of fact, my love, I spent most of my meal trying to decide whether I wanted to shove his nose under his right ear or his left.”
Startled, musical laughter erupted from her before she could stop it. “You did nothing of the sort,” she chuckled. “Besi
“Wouldn’t I?” he asked softly. “Those are two very different issues.”
Not for the first time, Elizabeth found herself at a loss to understand him. Suddenly his presence was vaguely threatening again; whenever he stopped playing the amusing gallant he became a dark, mysterious stranger. Raking her hair off her forehead, she glanced out the window. “It must be after three already. I really must leave.” She surged to her feet, smoothing her skirts. “Thank you for a lovely afternoon. I don’t know why I remained. I shouldn’t have, but I am glad I did. . . .”
She ran out of words and watched in wary alarm as he stood up. “Don’t you?” he asked softly.
“Don’t I what?”
“Know why you’re still here with me?”
“I don’t even know who you are!” she cried. “I know about places you’ve been, but not your family, your people. I know you gamble great sums of money at cards, and I disapprove of that—”
“I also gamble great sums of money on ships and cargo— will that improve my character in your eyes?”
“And I know,” she continued desperately, watching his gaze turn warm and sensual, “I absolutely know you make me excessively uneasy when you look at me the way you’re doing now!”
“Elizabeth,” he said in a tone of tender finality, “you’re here because we’re already half in love with each other.”
“Whaaat?” she gasped.
“And as to needing to know who I am, that’s very simple to answer.” His hand lifted, grazing her pale cheek, then smoothing backward, cupping her head. Gently he explained, “I am the man you’re going to marry.”
“Oh, my God!”
“I think it’s too late to start praying,” he teased huskily.
“You—you must be mad,” she said, her voice quavering.
“My thoughts exactly,” he whispered, and, bending his head, he pressed his lips to her forehead, drawing her against his chest, holding her as if he knew she would struggle if he tried to do more than that “You were not in my plans, Miss Cameron.”
“Oh, please,” Elizabeth implored helplessly, “don’t do this to me. I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know what you want”
“I want you.” He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and lifted it, forcing her to meet his steady gaze as he quietly added, “And you want me.”
Elizabeth’s entire body started to tremble as his lips began descending to hers, and she sought to forestall what her heart knew was inevitable by reasoning with him. “A gently bred Englishwoman,” she shakily quoted Lucinda’s lecture, “feels nothing stronger than affection. We do nor fall in love.”
His warm lips covered hers. “I’m a Scot,” he murmured huskily. “We do.”
“A Scot!” she uttered when he lifted his mouth from hers.
He laughed at her appalled expression. “I said ‘Scot’ not ‘ax murderer.’ ”
A Scot who was a gambler to boot! Havenhurst would land on the auction block, the servants turned off, and the world would fall apart “I cannot, cannot marry you.”
“Yes, Elizabeth,” he whispered as his lips trailed a hot path over her cheek to her ear, “you can.”
His lips brushed back and forth across her ear, then his tongue touched the lobe and began delicately tracing each curve, slowly probing each crevice, until Elizabeth shivered with the waves of tension shooting through her. The instant he felt her trembling response, his arm tightened, supporting her, while his tongue plunged boldly into her ear. His hand curved round her nape, sensually stroking it, and he began trailing scorching kisses down her neck to her shoulder. His warm breath stirred her hair and his whisper was achingly gentle as his mouth began retracing its stirring path to her ear again. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll stop whenever you tell me to.”
Imprisoned by his protective embrace, reassured by his promise, and seduced by his mouth and caressing hands, Elizabeth clung to him, sliding slowly into a dark abyss of desire where he was deliberately sending them both.
He dragged his mouth roughly across her cheek, and when his lips touched the comer of hers, Elizabeth helplessly turned her head to fully receive his kiss. The sweet offering of her mouth wrung a half-groan, half-laugh from him, and his lips seized hers in a kiss of melting hunger that deepened to scorching demand.
Suddenly, Elizabeth was being lifted and lowered onto his lap, then shifted down onto the sofa, his mouth locked fiercely to hers as he leaned over her. His tongue traced a hot line between her lips, coaxing, urging them to part, and then insisting. The moment they yielded, his tongue plunged into her mouth, stroking and caressing. Her body jerked convulsively with the primitive sensations jarring through her entire nerve stream, and Elizabeth surrendered mindlessly to the stormy splendor of the pagan kiss. Her hands shifted restlessly over his heavily muscled shoulders and forearms, her lips moving against his with increasing abandon as she fed his hunger and unwittingly increased it.
When he finally pulled his mouth from hers an eternity later, their breaths were coming in mingled gasps. Feeling almost bereft, Elizabeth surfaced slightly from the sensual Eden where he had sent her, and forced her heavy eyelids to open so that she could look at him. Stretched out beside her on the sofa, he was leaning over her, his tanned face hard and dark with passion, his amber eyes smoldering. Lifting his hand, he tenderly brushed a golden lock of hair off her cheek, and he tried to smile, but his breathing was as ragged as hers. Unaware of the effort he was making to keep their passion under control, Elizabeth let her gaze drop to his finely chiseled mouth, and she watched him draw an unsteady breath. “Don’t,” he warned her in a husky, tender voice, “look at my mouth unless you want it on yours again.”
Too naïive to know how to hide her feelings, Elizabeth lifted her green eyes to his, and her longing for his kiss was in their soft depths. Ian drew a steadying breath, and yielded to temptation again, gently telling her how to show him what she wanted. “Put your hand around my neck,” he whispered tenderly.
Her long fingers lifted to his nape, and he lowered his mouth to hers, so close their breaths mingled. Understanding finally dawned, and Elizabeth put firmer pressure on his nape. And even though she was braced for it, the shock of his parted lips on hers again was wild, indescribable sweetness. This time it was Elizabeth who touched her tongue to his lips, and when she felt him shudder, instinct told her she was doing something right.
It told him the same thing, and he jerked his mouth from hers. “Don’t do this, Elizabeth,” he warned.
In answer, she tightened her hand at his nape and at the same time turned into his arms. His mouth came down hard on hers, but instead of struggling, her body arched against him and she drew his tongue into her mouth. Against her breasts, she felt his heart slam into his ribs, and he began kissing her with unleashed passion, his tongue tangling with hers, then plunging and slowly retreating in some wildly exciting, forbidden rhythm that made the blood roar in Elizabeth’s ears. His hand slid up her side to her breast, covering it possessively, and Elizabeth jumped in shocked protest.
“Don’t,” he whispered against her lips. “God, don’t. Not yet . . .”
Stunned into stillness by the harsh need in his voice, Elizabeth gazed up into his face as he lifted his head, his eyes moving restlessly over the bodice of her dress. Despite his protest, his hand was still, and in her befuddled senses, she finally realized he was honoring his promise to stop whenever she asked him to stop. Helpless to stop or encourage him, she looked at the masculine fingers, still and tanned against her white shirt, then she dragged her eyes to his. Heat was beating behind them, and with a silent moan, Elizabeth curled her hand behind his head and turned into his body.
It was all the encouragement Ian needed. His fingers moved and spread across her breast, but his gaze was locked with hers, watching the way her beautiful face reflected
He nuzzled the other breast, his lips closing tightly around the taut nipple and her body arched, her hands tightening on his nape. Suddenly, he raised up, his eyes restlessly caressing her swollen breasts, then he swallowed and drew a long, tortured breath. “Elizabeth, we’re going to have to stop.”
Elizabeth’s swirling senses began to return to reality, slowly at first, and then with a sickening plummet. Passion gave way to fear and then to anguished shame as she realized she was lying in a man’s arms, her shirt unfastened, her flesh exposed to his gaze and touch. Closing her eyes, she fought back the sting of tears and shoved his hand away, lurching into an upright position. “Let me rise, please,” she whispered, her voice strangled with self-revulsion. Her skin flinched as he began to fasten her shirt, but in order to do it he had to release his hold on her, and the moment he did, she scrambled to her feet.
Turning her back to him, she fastened her shirt with shaking hands and snatched her jacket from the peg beside the fire. He moved so silently that she had no idea he’d stood until his hands settled on her stiff shoulders. “Don’t be frightened of what is between us. I’ll be able to provide for you—”