If You Desire

Chapter Twenty-five

"Oh, bloody hell." The seventh circle of hell. That's what Hugh looked like he'd ventured into as more and more of her family filed out of the house and approached them. Belinda was here with her husband and children, and Sam and her family had arrived as well.

She had to laugh evilly. "Too late to run. You're snared,

I'm afraid."

"Aye, and you'd best enjoy it," Hugh muttered. "You go back to a locked cellar."

"Jane!" Samantha cried again, her russet curls bouncing. "What are you doing here?"

"Aunty Jane!" five children called as they besieged her, trampling her to the ground as she laughed.

Belinda clapped her hands in delight. "But you said you couldn't come this week!"

Then they noticed Hugh behind her, and everything went silent while jaws dropped. The children stared up at the towering Highlander in wonder. To break the awkward moment, Jane held up her hand, and as expected, Hugh shot forward to help her to her feet.

"What'she doing here?" Sam asked, never one to mince words.

Hugh gave Jane an expression as if to say, "Indeed."

"Well, he's…we're married."

Sam's jovial husband, a physician named Robert Granger, murmured to Sam, "Not four days ago, you told me she was marrying Bidworth."

From the side of her mouth, Sam answered, "That's because shewas ."

"Well, obviouslythat did not happen," Jane said blithely. "So wish us well and meet my new husband."

Hugh knew her cousins—barely—so she introduced Hugh to Robert, and they shook hands. If Hugh's threatening look hadn't deterred him, Robert would likely have bear-hugged him a welcome into the family.

Then she presented Hugh to Lawrence Thompson, Belinda's husband, a prankster and a considerable wit with a ready laugh, who cradled his hand after Hugh shook it.

Seeing all of them lifted Jane's spirits and made her realize how much Hugh's awful words had hurt her.I'll still leave you.

Hugh eyed everyone with such a leery demeanor, so noticeably out of his element, that she couldn't resist. She knew she had a diabolical gleam in her eyes when she faced Hugh and said, "I absolutely must catch up with my cousins and show off my new ring. In private." He was subtly shaking his head. "Hugh, why don't you get to knowthe other husbands —they like to drink scotch and sit on the lawn about this time of morning. Talk about the stock exchange and such."

She hadn't missed his wary glance at the children either. "Oh, and, children, your new uncle Hugh loves to buy presents and treats. You've only to tell him what you want!"

"Off of him now!" Robert exclaimed as he shooed bairns off Hugh. "Run along and play!"

Hugh wanted to fall down with relief when the last one made yet another request, released his leg, then scampered away. Jane really was going to do this—she truly was leaving him to deal with these men. She and her cousins had gathered up bottles of wine and strolled out on the dock without a backward glance.

"Don't know what Jane was thinking, to set the hounds to you like that!" Robert flashed him a sheepish grin.

"But, finally, it's just men." He led them over to a set of wicker lawn chairs and, once seated, began pouring a round of drinks, though it was not nearly ten.

"So, what do you do, MacCarrick?"

Hugh reluctantly sat and accepted the glass, not knowing his way around this. "I'm…retired." He'd never been forced to make conversation. Never spoke unless something needed to be said. In more than one way, he'd been perfectly suited for his occupation.

"That's the way to do it, my boy!" Robert raised his glass—then drained it. "Retire, take a beautiful bride, and enjoy life."

Lawrence worked on his drink more slowly, but not by much. "Are you and Jane starting a family straight away?"

Hugh shrugged. After seeing her happiness when all those bairns waylaid her, he had never been more keenly aware that he could never give her children.

Robert sank back with his second drink on his knee. "We waited, Sam and I, nearly three years to start."

Waited?So odd to hear these upper-class gentlemen speak of topics like this. "Waited" meant contraception.

Robert and Lawrence then mused on how their wives had behaved and looked when pregnant ("quite lusty" and "pleasingly plump"), how children changed a man ("didn't know what I was about before them"), and other things Hugh tried his damnedest to block out.

He kept glancing over at Jane and her cousins deep in conversation, knowing she was telling them everything about last night. Each time she closed in to whisper to the two women, he cringed, feeling his face flush violently.

After a grueling hour of conversation Hugh barely heard, Lawrence suggested that the men target-shoot. Hugh ran his hand over the back of his neck, knowing he would have to miss. Though he had a powerful desire to impress Jane, to shoot as these people had never seen, he stifled it, aware how unwise it would be to demonstrate exactly what he excelled in.

A quick glance told him that Jane had shaded her eyes with her hand to see. Would she remember that he could shoot? She used to tag along with him on hunts all the time, had tromped with him over every inch of woodlands in the area.

Hugh recalled one of the first times Jane had accompanied him. Afterward, she'd bragged to Weyland about Hugh's shooting: "Papa, you wouldn't believe how he can shoot—so calm, and steady as a rock! He hit a duck at seventy yards at least in a stiff breeze."

Weyland had eyed him with new interest. "Did he, then?" Hugh hadn't understood why at the time. He'd had no way of knowing that Weyland was sizing him up for a lethal profession—one that had provided wealth to a second son who'd had none, and laid out the path to walk with death….