If You Desire

Chapter Six

Jane's cousins called him Hugh "Tears and Years" MacCarrick.

Because she'd wasted an inordinate amount of each on him.

Now that the giddy rush of seeing him again—and the effects of the deceptively potent punch—had worn off, she stared into her dressing table mirror, combing out her hair after her bath. When her eyes glinted in the glass, Jane realized she was about to go wasting even more. She laid down her brush beside the message from Claudia saying they'd all gotten home safely, then put her head in her hands. She shoved the heels of her palms against her eyes, as if that would stem the tears.

Countless nights crying and years of her life she'd squandered. Jane—who knew how precious time was!

When Jane was only six, her mother had died from a lung inflammation, and since then Jane had never beencontent . Perhaps she knew too well that she could never take for granted a single second, and that was what made her restless. Perhaps she was simply never meant to experience a feeling of complete satisfaction.

She burned to travel, to experience exciting new places—but was it wanderlust, or the yearning to be wherever shewasn't at the time? Ten years ago, with Hugh at her side, that anxious feeling had dimmed to a point where she could ignore it. She couldn't explain why.

Then he'd left her behind without a word.

She'd grieved for him, longed for him, and had wasted nearly half of her life on him.

Damn him, no more, she swore to herself, and yet still she replayed their history in her mind, seeking, as usual, some answer as to what she'd done to drive him away….

"The Scotsman is mine."

Jane had made that declaration to her cousins with her very first look at him. Her heart had stuttered, and she'd decided then that she would be the one to make him happy so his eyes wouldn't be so grave. She'd been thirteen and he'd been eighteen.

He and his brothers had come down from Scotland to summer at their family's lake house, Ros Creag, which shared a broad cove with Vinelands, her family's. When she'd charged up to him to introduce herself, he'd chucked her under the chin and called her "poppet," and it sounded wonderful the way he said it with his brogue. He was kind to her, and she followed him everywhere.

At her urging, her father had also visited and befriended the reclusive brothers, though they seemed to want to have nothing to do with the rest of the merry Weyland brood. Somehow he persuaded them to come back down the following summer, delighting her. Since he had no sons, Papa was set on recruiting them to work in his import business.

By the end of the next season at the lake, whenever she got a bee sting or splinter she ran to Hugh alone.

Her fifteenth summer they returned again, but Hugh spent most of the time frowning at her, as if he didn't quite know what to make of her. When she'd turned sixteen, just when she'd started to fill out, he'd avoided her entirely. He'd decided to work for her father, and spent all his time with him at Ros Creag, discussing the business.

She'd cried from missing her big, solemn Scot. Her cousins told her she could have anyone and that they didn't want her pining over "that rough MacCarrick," but upon seeing she would not be dissuaded, they'd suggested she play dirty—and her cousins had known what they were talking about. Their saying was, "Man bows before the Weyland Eight. And if he won't bow, we'll make him kneel."

Claudia had said, "Now we scheme, Janey. By next summer, we'll make sure you have low-cut dresses, soft as-silk hands"—she grinned a devilish grin—"and a shameless demeanor. Your Highlander won't know what hit him."

But he didn't come the next summer, leaving Jane devastated. Until that one night when luck was with her, and he'd arrived with an urgent message for her father. Whatever could be pressing about relics and antiques, Jane couldn't fathom.

Before he could ride off again, she made sure he saw her, and he gaped as if he didn't recognize her. A single night's stay had turned into two, then three, and he couldn't seem to spend enough time with her.

Her older cousins had taught her much in the previous year, and every day he was there, she teased and tormented him for the days he hadn't been.

She'd learned that whispering in his ear could make his eyes slide shut and his lips part, and that running her fingers through his hair as she hugged him could make him hiss in a breath. As often as she could, she'd coaxed him to swim with her—especially after that first time, when he'd frozen in the middle of shrugging out of his shirt to silently watch her removing her skirt and blouse, until she was in naught but stocking, garters, and a chemise. After they swam, Jane—never one for modesty—had slipped from the water in the transparent garment. She'd followed his rapt gaze on her body before he finally jerked his face away. "Hugh, can you see through?"

When he'd turned back to her and given her a slow nod, his eyes dark, she'd said, "Well, darling, if it's only you." She'd noted that it had taken him a very long time before he'd been able to get out of the water that day.

During what would prove to be their last afternoon, they'd been lying side by side in the meadow, and she rolled on top of him to tickle him. He despised it when she tickled him, and for hours afterward was surly and tense, his voice husky.

But that time, instead of shaking her off, he reached up and tugged her ribbon loose to free her hair. "So fair," he rasped as he ran his thumb over her bottom lip. "But you know that well, do you no'?"

She leaned down to kiss him, intending not the torturing little kisses on his ear before she whispered to him, or the brushing of her lips on the back of his neck that she'd been giving him all summer. She wanted her first real kiss.

But he took her shoulders and pushed her up, grating, "You're too young, lass."

"I'm almost eighteen, and I've already had marriage offers from men older than you."

He scowled at that, then shook his head. "Sìne, I'm leaving here soon."

She smiled sadly. "I know. That's what you do when summer's over. You go back north to Scotland. And every winter I miss you very much until you return to me here."

He just stared at her face as if memorizing it.

Jane had never seen him or heard from him again. Not until this night.

She'd been so convinced Hugh would marry her—it had been a foregone conclusion for her—that she'd only been counting the days until Hugh deemed hernot too young. She'd believed in him so much, certain they would be together. Yet he'd known he was going to work abroad for years, had known he was leaving her behind. It had been a conscious decision on his part, and he hadn't even told her why.

He hadn't asked her to wait for him, or given Jane her chance to make him happy.

And now, ten years later, she stared into the mirror, watching the tears roll down her face….

Tonight, the women Jane had seen at the masquerade had hard eyes for all their swagger and flirting. They were bitter, but it wasn't simply due to economics or circumstances, as Belinda lamented.

Those hard-eyed women had been hurtby men .

Jane recognized it in them with perfect clarity, because this very mirror reflected the same quality growing in her own eyes every day. She could finally acknowledge that.

She would do whatever it took to avoid that fate. Bitterness was a life sentence, and it was one that was entirely avoidable.

She dried her tears—for the last time.

Early tomorrow morn, she'd accept Freddie's proposal.