Page 37 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
“Aye, lass, I’ve wished,” he said with a snort. “I’ve wished for things you’d no’ understand.” He noticed a fuzzy curl of hair behind her ear. He wanted to touch it, to tuck it up into the rest of her hair.
“Miss Kent will agree with my putting hope above despair and wishing,” she said breezily, ignoring him. “I’ll save my breath for her.”
“Aye, she will, because she knows nothing of the world and of how people struggle for farthings.”
“Well,” Miss Holly said, dipping down to avoid the bough of a tree. “She is very young yet—”
“She is scarcely out of the nursery. She hasna the proper knowledge of the world and how bloody cruel it can be.” He said it without thinking, had allowed his grousing to tumble off his tongue. He hadn’t even realized what he said until Miss Holly suddenly stopped on the path ahead of him and twisted around, startling him. She was standing very close to him, and this time he noticed the faint fan of lines in the corners of her eyes. Laugh lines, his mother called them. When had she laughed? What amused her? He wanted to see her laugh.
She certainly wasn’t doing so now—she folded her arms and glared at him. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Mackenzie, but I think you enjoy your cozy mantle of pity. You wrap it around you like a winter cloak.”
His brows rose slightly. He supposed he ought to take offense, but Miss Holly was drumming her fingers against her arm, a habit he’d noticed in her before. What he had not noticed was how long and delicate her fingers were, and he was seized, utterly seized, with the idea of touching them to his lips. They were like an exotic fruit he’d never tasted.
“You spend each day in search of it!” she insisted.
He took her hand, pulling it away from her arm to hold in his palm.
She looked at her hand, then at him. “Won’t you at leastattemptto find some good in your situation? Or do you intend to march to the altar with that dour look and a world of woe on your shoulders?”
Rabbie was listening to her with only one ear. Even so, he scarcely heard her, as his heart had begun to beat wildly in his chest. He slowly lifted her hand and kissed her palm.
Miss Holly gasped as if she’d been stung and yanked her hand free of his. “What is the matterwith you?”
“Diah,I donna know,” he said with unabashed honesty, and suddenly reached for her, one hand on her waist, the other to the side of her head. And he kissed her. Aye, he kissed her. He knew only that the urge to do so had filled him so violently and swiftly that he couldn’t stop himself.
Miss Holly pushed against him, but Rabbie slipped his tongue into her mouth and met hers, and it was so sweet, and so soft, and so bloody arousing that he was shocked by it. It was a bolt of lightning striking him from above and lighting him up. He hadn’t felt this spark in so long, had assumed he would never feel it again, and yet here it was, reverberating through his body, causing his parched soul to thirst for more, and proving to him that he was alive. He wasalive.
He did not want to let go. He knew, vaguely, that his family was just ahead of them on the path, and still, he could not make himself let go. Especially not when Miss Holly, for all her blustering and condescension to him, opened her mouth and kissed him back. This was not the startled kiss of an innocent lass—her lips eagerly pressed against his as her body pressed against his chest and groin. Her hands were clinging to his arms and her tongue was moving with his. Miss Holly was kissing him as hard as he was kissing her.
And then she made a soft, but unmistakable sound of pleasure in the back of her throat that exploded in his head. Suddenly everything was raining down on him—desire, greed—and just as suddenly, she shoved against him with all her might. She was strong, too, because he stumbled backward. She gasped for air and moved away from him, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth. “Are youmad?”she whispered.
Rabbie thought about that a moment. “Aye.”
She looked frantically to the group ahead, but they had disappeared on the path. No one had noticed them kissing like two lovers. She turned back to him, staring wildly at him. Her hand was shaking. “You are to marry my friend!”
“Your charge,” he amended.
“No, Mr. Mackenzie, she is myfriend.I am incensed for her! Yes, she is young and inexperienced, but she is hopeful and she wants to make you a good wife.”
“Why are you the one to defend her thoughts? Why does she no’ speak for herself?”
Miss Holly blinked. “She’s shy!” she blustered.
“Uist,”he said. She was ruining this moment, ruining that kiss. “I think there is more to your interest in her marriage than you will admit, aye? But donna scold me, lass—I’m a grown man.”
She gasped. “That does not give you the right to crush a young woman’s heart!”
She said it so vehemently that he wondered briefly, curiously, if she was speaking of Miss Kent at all. He put his hand on her shoulder and dipped down to look her directly in her eye. “It was a wee kiss, no’ a declaration of love. Donna make more of it than there is.”
“Thatwas more than a wee kiss!”
“Was it? Then I will bow to your superior understanding of kissing, aye? No doubt you read about it in Lord Kent’s impressive library. No doubt you’ll correct me now,” he said, and spread his arms wide, indicating he was ready to be addressed.
“I am speaking the truth! Why do you object to it?”
He pressed a hand to her neck, and spoke earnestly. “I object to the fact that you speak about things you canna possibly understand. I didna seek to wed your little lamb, aye? I wouldna wed at all, were it no’ for my duty to my family. Donna speak to me of what is right and wrong. You canna possibly know what that is in this land.”
She stared at him. Her gaze slowly drifted to his mouth, stirring the embers in him. Some of the fight seemed to have gone out of her and, rather subdued, she said, “I know quite a lot more than you think I do, sir. And I know that if you gave Avaline only half a chance, you could very well be pleasantly surprised. Have you no regard forhersituation? Can you not see how difficult this is for her? Can you not imagine how kissing me would hurt her?”
