His lip curled, but his thighs clenched in response. “You aren’t serious?”
“You could wear your gloves, your shirt, your kilt or trousers, indeed, your vest and evening jacket if you were so inclined.”
“And that is what you want? To be fucked like an East End doxy and then tossed aside? Because that is what I will do,” he warned, the darkness gathering in his heart as answering clouds gathered in her features.
Her eyes were liquid silver as they narrowed at him, swirling with as many mysteries as the stars in the night sky. “I want a family,” she murmured. “And I’ll do what I must to get it.”
The naked, aching honesty in her voice pierced him with a poisoned arrow, and he could feel the toxins spreading through his blood. Soon he would be completely paralyzed, a victim of the opposing forces now quarreling inside him like two wolves fighting for dominance. The two strongest emotions known to man.
He took in a deep breath, the scent of her honey soap and the lavender water invading his senses with the subtlety of a Roman legion.
“Then on your head be it.” He stalked past her toward the door. “We’ll marry in the morning,” he announced, then slammed out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It astounded Farah that Frankenstein—er, Frank Walters couldn’t remember his given Christian name, but could recall the recipe for Indian curry with the endless measurements of exotic spices.
Once Murdoch had returned to dress her in a clean if somewhat dated white lace shift and a skirt of long and heavy wool Mackenzie plaid, she’d done what she could to soothe his worry that she was quite well after her confrontation in the washroom with Blackwell, and then promptly wandered to the kitchens.
Perhaps what this situation needed was more tarts.
She’d found Frank patiently slaving over a sumptuous feast, and she’d spent the rest of the afternoon taste-testing his fare, sampling the wine, and doing her best to forget that tomorrow she sealed her vow with the devil in a church.
And then she would belong to him. Her body would belong to him.
At half past eight, she stood in the lavish dining room studying a landscape canvas of Ben More that looked suspiciously like a Thomas Cole painting. A footman—whom she learned through a rather severe stutter was Gregory Tallow—lit an obscene amount of candelabra for a person dining alone. The clouds and sunset over the Highland peaks of the painting almost jutted out of the canvas, and Farah reached out to it, hoping to catch the evening before it disappeared.
“I have a fondness for Americans who paint in the Romanic fashion,” Blackwell said from the shadows of the entry.
Farah snatched her hand back, and turned to face him. “Oh?” It unnerved her that every time he announced his presence, she had the notion that he’d been watching her for some time, and she only became aware of him when he decided he wanted her to.
She took a bracing sip of wine, ignoring the fact that her face already felt flushed and her blood flowed warm with a few prior glasses from the expanse of the afternoon.
“M-M-aster Blackw-well!” The footman hopped to attention as though in the presence of a British colonel, adjusting his bow tie and smoothing his thinning blond hair. “We’d th-thought you’d dine in-n your study. Like u-u-u…”
“I understand,” Blackwell said softly when the other man’s speech failed him.
Tallow, who was slight of build and stature, blushed furiously and refused to look in Farah’s direction. “W-Walters already sent a t-tray.”
This keep certainly had a curious amount of Englishmen for a Scottish castle. Had they all been criminals? Farah felt pity for the little man, who vibrated with the nervous energy of a woodland deer and seemed just as apt to bound into a thicket at the slightest provocation.
“I can see that. But I’ve decided to join my fiancée for dinner.”
Farah was uncertain whose eyes widened more at the use of the word fiancée, hers or the footman’s. Tallow promptly disappeared without another arduous word.
Even in his impeccable black dinner jacket and collared shirt and tie, Blackwell evoked the image of the piratical highwayman. It could have been the kilt, Farah mused, or more likely the eye patch, as he’d donned it again. Or maybe the way his thick hair fell just a little too long to be completely fashionable. Though, she expected, it was most likely the manner in which he surveyed the opulence of his surroundings, as though he didn’t recognize them as his own, but would kill to keep them safe.
He looked at her that way, too. Like a possession he coveted.
She couldn’t imagine why; she’d promised to be his, hadn’t she? A wife was a legal possession, and the fact enticed her more than it should.
She set her wine glass down, deciding she’d had quite enough.
“What’s all this?” He gestured to the table laden with trays.
“Dinner.”
His snort conveyed absolute disbelief. “This is not dinner. It’s … gluttony.”
Frowning, Farah surveyed the table. The Indian lamb curry centered the meal as the main entrée, surrounded with fragrant flat breads. Partridge compote steamed next to a fried savory forcemeat pastry made of garlic, parsley, tarragon, chives, and beef suet enclosed in a buttery crust. The appetizer included oysters cut from their shell, sautéed, and then returned to be arranged in a bath of butter and dill.
The footman reappeared, and while he set a second place, Farah counted the admittedly obscene amount of desserts. Perhaps they should have left out the cocoa sponge cake, or the little cream-and-fruit-stuffed cornucopias with chocolate sauce. She absolutely couldn’t have chosen between the almond cakes with the sherry reduction or the coriander Shrewsbury puffs or … the treacle and vanilla crème brûlée. Oh, dear, perhaps she and Walters had gotten a little carried away this afternoon.