Mary Fran and Matthew

Three

Activity was the army’s typical prescription for sexual restlessness, and Matthew found it served in most cases, though after tramping through the Balfour woods for an hour, he still couldn’t get the scent and feel of Mary Frances MacGregor out of his mind, or set aside the conundrum of how honest to be with her. When a man wanted something more than a flirtation but deserved less than an attachment the usual rules were no help.

“Good day. A fine morning for a ramble, is it not?”

A man sat in dappled sunshine on a rough bench a few yards up the path. He rose to a substantial height and came toward Matthew. The fowling piece over his shoulder was exquisite, the stock and handle chased with silver. The fellow’s attire was as fashionable as country turnout could be.

“Good day…” Matthew’s heart gave a lurch as he placed that tall figure and the slight German inflection lacing the man’s greeting. “Your Highness.”

Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel, Prince Consort to the Queen, father to a growing brood of princes and princesses, and devoted sportsman, stood in the Balfour woods, frowning at Matthew.

“It’s Colonel Daniels, isn’t it?”

“Just plain Matthew Daniels, sir.”

The frown cleared. “I recall your situation now. Her Majesty has fretted over you, Mister Daniels. May I assure her all goes well with you?”

Matthew hesitated an instant too long, proving to himself how distracted he’d become with his hostess at Balfour. “All goes well enough. My family is visiting at Balfour in hopes of securing a match between my sister and the earl.”

“A delicate business, the advantageous marriage.” The prince’s eyes danced while he made this observation. “Walk with me, Mr. Daniels, because my wife will want a full report on you and on the matchmaking at Balfour. I would not disappoint her for anything.”

One did not refuse a royal invitation, particularly not when one had nothing better to do but brood over whether a temporary liaison with Lady Mary Frances was worth the unpleasantness bound to ensue if she learned of the scandal hanging over Matthew’s head.

“How fares Her Majesty, sir?”

“She loves it here, and the children enjoy it as well. I struggle along too, of course, between the fishing, the grouse moors, the deer-stalking. One must bear up under the press of duty.” More German humor lurked in his words, both broad and subtle. His Royal Highness produced a flask and held it out to Matthew. “All is not so very well with you, though, is it? Your papa is not an easy man to spend time with.”

The Queen was not the most political monarch to take the throne, but she kept her hand among the peerage socially, as Matthew well knew. “My father is a randy old jackass.”

“So why not sport about at the summer house parties or among the fashionable beauties in Edinburgh? The company there is delightful for an unattached fellow.”

What to say? The Prince was a devoted husband and father, a well-educated man who did much to improve the situation of the same working-class people who treated him with such disdain. He was also one of very few who knew the truth of Matthew’s past.

Matthew took a nip of lovely whisky and passed the flask back. “For the present, at least, I am not suitable company for fashionable beauties, and with one possible exception, there are no beauties who interest me.”

His Highness tucked the flask into an inner pocket of his shooting jacket, shouldered his piece, and sighted down the barrel as they walked along. “Do you know, Mr. Daniels, that though there is war brewing here and there about the realm, and the condition of our cities is a daily disgrace, and the nonsense that goes on at Westminster is without end, the only thing that truly can disturb me is difficulty between me and my wife? She is my exception, and I flatter myself that I am hers. One does well to pay attention to the exceptions.”

“My past—” Matthew fell silent. He wasn’t going to complain, for God’s sake, not to the Prince Consort.

“If she’s truly exceptional, that will not matter—if it even comes up. Would you like to give this gun a try? It’s heavy, but flatters my vanity, and the aim is excellent. It was a gift from my wife.”

Matthew accepted the fowling piece and spent another hour tramping about the woods, shooting twigs and branches of His Royal Highness’s choosing, and telling himself his past really ought not to matter to Mary Frances.

Provided all she wanted from him was oblivion and desire.

***

“The hell of it is, Gordie really had asked me to marry him.” Mary Fran made this disclosure to Matthew—he was no longer Mr. Daniels, even when they were in company—while they strolled the gardens after dinner. The men had abandoned their port and cigars by mutual agreement, leaving a surprised Mary Fran to accept an invitation to enjoy the flowers.

“Were you going to take him up on his proposal?”

She peered over at her escort. The night was warm enough that he’d shed his jacket and carried it over one arm as he walked beside her. He wasn’t touching her, and she… missed him. Missed the touch of him, missed the greater proximity necessitated by walking with arms entwined.

“I don’t know if I was going to accept. I’ve puzzled over it. Gordie was the marquess’s spare, and an earl’s daughter would be considered acceptable in his family, even a Highland earl’s daughter. I’m fairly certain I chose him because he was not acceptable to mine.”

“Because he was English.”

Matthew spoke the words softly, though in the dying light, Mary Fran felt the frustration in him.

“Any Englishman would have annoyed my family, but we did marry, didn’t we? Gordie was as much a Lowlander by breeding as English, though English alone does not cast a man from my family’s favor.”

“Then what was his besetting sin?”

His curiosity seemed genuine, and she ought to tell him, but even after all she had told him, the words didn’t come easily.

“Let’s sit a bit.” She glanced around for a bench, until Matthew took her arm.

“Up the hill, we can watch the stars come out.”

She was a widow, they were in full view of the house, and Matthew was damnably proper with her at all times. “To the pines, then.”

They walked in silence. Even when he switched his grip and held her hand—fingers laced, no gentlemanly pretense of guiding her along involved—Mary Fran didn’t comment on it.

Didn’t comment on the simple, profound, and rare pleasure of merely holding his hand.

“This will do.” He’d chosen a spot partway up the last slope before the woods took over the park, a place where young evergreens surrounded a shallow bowl and the sod was covered with thick grass.

He spread his coat on the ground, and when Mary Fran lowered herself to it, she realized they weren’t in view of the house after all, not when they were in the grass. A soldier would have known that when he’d chosen their location. Matthew came down beside her and settled back to brace himself on his hands.

“You were going to tell me the rest of it, Mary Fran. The part about why Gordie was such an ideal choice for mischief and a bad choice as a husband.”

Plain speaking, indeed. She plucked a little white clover flower from the grass, then another.

“He was a tramp, you see.” She spoke lightly, so the words wouldn’t stick in her throat. “I knew it, knew that’s how he’d come by all his flirting and flattery. He was experienced, and I was eighteen and so wicked smart.”

“I was eighteen once too.”

“But, Matthew, were you such a calculating little baggage you essentially tossed yourself under the regimental tomcat because you thought surely, a man that naughty would know how to look after you your first time?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice, from rising up the back of her throat as she spoke. “I was wrong, though.”

He moved closer while she systematically plucked hapless clover flowers from the grass.

“I was so bloody, blasted wrong.”

The sound of ripping grass filled a small silence.

“He hurt you.”

She nodded and forced her hands to stop their pillaging. “He hurt me two ways. First, he was not considerate, and then he was not discreet. The second injury was far worse than the first.”

A hand landed on her shoulder, warm and solid. The night wasn’t cold, but the warmth of that hand felt divine. She forced herself to continue with her confession despite the comfort Matthew was offering. “I think Gordie was trying to make me scream. Insurance, in case I wasn’t going to accept his proposal. We were at the regimental ball, a throng of people right out in the corridor.”

He drew in a breath, as if the words gave him pain. “You didn’t scream.” His hand slid across her shoulders to wrap her in an embrace. “You didn’t scream, you didn’t run to your brothers, you didn’t ask for mercy or quarter, but you would not allow your child to be born a bastard.”

“I might have.” She turned to press her face against the side of his throat. “I might have cursed my child that way, except Gordie bragged to his fellows about his latest conquest. His own officers were so disgusted with him that somebody got word to my menfolk, and then six weeks later there were documents executed and the handfasting became official. Ian and Asher promised me Gordie would be sent to Canada, and I’ve wondered if Asher wasn’t the one who made sure I was widowed. I was so stupid.”

“You were so young.”

His thumb traced up the tendon in her neck, a little nothing of a touch, but it eased her soul. He did it again and again, until Mary Fran began to cry.

“I didn’t come out here with you to blubber and carry on like some—”

He slid his hand gently over her open mouth and left it there, giving her a place where she could finally let the screams go. As his arm closed around her more snugly, she keened into his splayed fingers, her fists clutching his shirt in a desperate grip.

“It shouldn’t still hurt like this…” She shook with the remembered indignity, with the hopelessness and pain of it. She cried for a stubborn young girl with too few options, and for a sad, tired widow who had even fewer. She wept for her daughter, for all the daughters, and even for the family whose love and respect she’d betrayed.

And when the tears finally, finally subsided and Matthew’s thumb was brushing gently over her damp cheeks, still she stayed wrapped up in his embrace.

“I am so ashamed. Bad enough I must comport myself like a strumpet, even worse I should seek pity for it.”

Matthew snorted at that pronouncement. “If an eighteen-year-old virgin can behave like a strumpet—which premise I do not concede—then you should forgive her for it. Look around at your housemaids, Mary Fran. They don’t know the difference between proposition and flirtation, not unless they’ve been in service since childhood. You were even more protected than they, more sheltered, and your grandfather very likely was overbearing and old-fashioned. Have you ever discussed this with your brothers?”

“The shame of it…” She started to pull away, needing to use her hands to better express herself, but Matthew bundled her closer.

“Spare me your Highland drama. I don’t mean you need to review all the specifics. Simply ask your brothers if they ever discussed it with your grandfather. My guess is they feel even more ashamed for letting you slip the leash than you do for taking up with a man who was likely lying in wait for you, grooming you for his own ends, did you but know it.”

“Grooming me?” She hated the term, because it brought to mind a pony standing docilely in the cross ties, preening at the attention given to mane, tail, hooves, and tack, never noticing the fellow in the corner strapping on roweled spurs and flexing a stout whip.

“Setting you up,” Matthew said, “leading you on, getting his hands on the dowry your family worked so hard to save for you, beating out all the other fellows to the prettiest young lady in the shire, the most highly titled…”

She subsided against him, considering his words. He did not have the right of it, but for the first time in eight years, Mary Fran considered that perhaps she didn’t entirely have the right of it either. Gordie could be charming and tolerant, but when he’d pressed his body to hers, the gleam in his eye had been not merely possessive, but smug.

Smug, like a man whose plans have played out exactly to his liking.

“I can hear the compression building in your mental engines, Mary Fran. The night’s too pretty for that.”

“You’ve given me much to think about, Matthew Daniels.”

“Let me give you a little more to think about.” He shifted her so she was on her back, the fine silk lining of his coat between her and the fragrant grass.

“Matthew?” What on earth was he about?

“You’re not eighteen. You’re a lovely, desirable woman with a lot to offer the right man. You have choices now, Mary Frances. Make those choices, and I’ll abide by them.”

He kissed her, and after no longer hesitation than it takes for a lady to smile in the darkness, she chose to kiss him back.

***

Lady Mary Frances MacGregor had needed kissing almost as badly as Matthew had needed to kiss her. With the moon rising like a benevolent beacon and the summer air cooling around them, Matthew felt the urge to intimately cherish a woman for the first time in a long, long time.

He desired her, of course he did, but other feelings eclipsed that desire easily. Admiration for her, protectiveness—he’d felt those things for his wife, too—but also a tenderness that hadn’t found a place between spouses who’d joined in an expedient union.

He and his wife had been partners, comrades in arms and convenient sources of comfort for each other, but with Mary Fran, he wanted to be a lover. Call it a dalliance, an affair, a discreet liaison—he was not worthy of her hand in marriage, but he could share pleasure with her.

“I’ll stop.” He made her that promise while grazing his nose along the swell of her bosom. Her scent was luscious here, flowery and sweet. His mouth was literally watering for the taste of her.

“You’d best not stop yet, laddie.” She winnowed her fingers through his hair and gripped his scalp in such a fashion as to hold him still for her plundering mouth. “Not bloody… Not if you… God, yessssss.”

He eased her breast above her décolletage and ran the tip of his third finger over her nipple. She went still, as if focusing on his caress. He certainly focused on it, on the satiny, ruched flesh beneath his fingertip, on the pale, smooth curve of her breast in the moonlight.

“Lovely. Exquisite. Gorgeous…” He closed his lips around her nipple. “Delicious.” She arched up, a soft, lovely sigh escaping her as Matthew drew on her. Her fingers stroked over his hair, traced his ears, and then cupped the back of his head.

“Matthew Daniels, you are wearing entirely too many clothes.”

She was smiling as she squirmed under him. He could hear her smile; he could taste it. “You’re scolding me?”

“I’ll be tearing your shirt off in a moment—or skelpin’ yer bum.”

He liked that idea, but her brother might disapprove of a shredded garment should they meet the earl upon returning to the house. Matthew rested his forehead on her collarbone. “Undress me, my lady.”

“You want me to do all the work?”

“Of course not.” To make his point, he straddled her and used his teeth to pull her dress off one pale, freckled shoulder. “There will be enough work to go around.”

She hugged him, with her arms and legs both, to the extent her skirts and petticoats permitted it. “You make me feel foolish, Matthew Daniels.”

“I make you feel pretty and desired, which you are.” He sat back and started to work on the myriad buttons fastening the front of her dress. “I make you feel entitled to a little pleasure and some companionship. I make you feel, for a time, a little less lonely.”

She stroked a hand over the trousers covering Matthew’s burgeoning erection. “I suppose pleasure and companionship are an improvement over oblivion and desire.”

Abruptly, what he’d intended as a gift to her—a gift to them both—felt inadequate. “Are you asking me to stop?”

Her brows knitted as she shaped him through the fabric and sent pleasure shuddering through him. “Matthew, I’m asking you to hurry.”

He hurried. He hurried carefully, as though his life depended upon it, hurried through the unbuttoning and unlacing and loosening and unfastening—and without tearing a single button or seam.

When she lay beneath him, her clothing and stays pushed aside—thank God for the old-fashioned, front-lacing country variety—the moonlight turning her breasts, ribs, and belly to so much living alabaster, Matthew took her hands and settled them on his chest. “My turn.”

“Close your eyes, please.”

He obeyed, which meant he felt the little tugs and twists as her fingers worked at his neckcloth, then at his waistcoat, and finally, his shirt. He could not be naked with her in the sense of revealing his past, but he could share the simple pleasure of physical nudity with her.

“You are such a braw, lovely man.” Her burr had thickened—a braw, loovly mon—while her hand skimmed down his breastbone, spreading warmth over his chest.

“I’m a man in need of kisses.” He shrugged his shirt off and shifted to prop himself on an elbow beside her. “Moonlit kisses taste the best.”

They felt the best too, particularly when Mary Fran’s hands roamed his person as if she’d sketch his soul with her touch. She lingered in the oddest spots—his nose, the soft skin inside his elbow, her thumbs in the vulnerable hollow of his armpit—and her hands felt as though they warmed not just his body, not just his lust, but his soul.

“Ye are no’ hurryin’, boyo.”

“I’m pleasuring.” A fine idea, one his conscience took to with the dreadful enthusiasm of a martyr. Mary Fran wasn’t particularly objecting either, so Matthew stroked a hand up her long, shapely leg, baring calves and knees and muscular thighs as he did. “I have the oddest urge to worship your knees.”

“Ye daft Englishman.” Such affection she put into her scolds. Matthew felt an abrupt pang of pity for the departed Gordie Flynn. The man had bungled badly, irrevocably, but had probably been unable to help himself.

Matthew knew exactly how that felt. “Spread your knees a bit, love. Pleasuring takes a little trust.”

She spread her knees more than bit. “And far too much time.”

He’d decided to keep his pants on, which meant the feel of her nails digging into his buttock was muted, a teasing hint of the intensity he craved with her—more damned martyrdom.

“Matthew Daniels, when are you going to bestir—Oh, that is…” Her hand relaxed on his bum and smoothed over him in a languorous pat. “That is lovely.”

Lovely was an understatement. To his questing fingers, the folds of her sex were dewy and hot, soft and sweet to the touch. He wanted to feast on her by moonlight, visually, orally, tactilely, but did not indulge himself beyond what would pleasure her directly.

“Shall I stop?”

She shifted to flat on her back and kissed him as his fingers dallied between her legs. When he dipped shallowly into her heat, she moaned into his mouth.

“More?”

Her grip on Matthew’s hair was fierce enough to distract him from the lust racketing through him.

“Aye, more. Now, if you please.”

“Always in a hurry. Don’t rush me, Mary Fran. I’ve things to see to.”

She was exquisitely responsive, and Matthew had the sense she wasn’t sensitive merely from long abstinence. Despite his own period of self-enforced celibacy, he found the resolve to drive her mad with arousal, then soothe her with petting and kisses, then drive her mad again.

“Matthew, I canna… I willna… Ach, damn ye…” She trailed off into muttered Gaelic, most of which Matthew understood, thanks to Scottish grandparents on his father’s side. She called him daft and damned and dear, among other things. Lest she reveal unwitting confidences, Matthew increased both the pace and the pressure of his caresses.

“You can have your pleasure, and you shall, my lady. Fly free, Mary Fran.”

He infused the last admonition with a touch of command, despite himself, and though he wanted to watch her face as pleasure overcame her, he instead bent and took her nipple in his mouth.

When he drew strongly on her, she started bucking against his hand in short, sharp rolls of her hips. He thrust two fingers deep into her heat and felt her body fist around him in pleasure. The sensations were in some ways more intimate than coitus, more punishing than a shared climax would have been. Inside his breeches, he was undergoing torture, but in his heart, he flirted with something approaching absolution.

“Ye wretched, pestilential mon.”

“You’re welcome.” He pushed her over to her side and spooned himself around her. “You’ll take a chill in a moment.”

“Not with your great, lovely self draped around me. You make me rethink my estimation of the English.”

“Don’t.” He tucked his arm around her, cradling a full breast in his hand.

She kissed the back of his wrist. “Are you giving me an order, sir?”

“I’m begging you not to trivialize this shared pleasure as some exercise in international diplomacy. Are you all right?”

He was not all right. He was suffering the pangs of unsatisfied lust, which he’d suffered often enough in his life, but he was also suffering more of that need to cherish a woman—this woman.

“No, I am not all right, Mr. Daniels. A relatively harmless, well-mannered if gorgeous fellow has just sashayed out under the stars with me and plucked from my grasp not only my very dignity, but also the one thing I could keep—”

Her voice caught a little. Matthew threaded an arm under her neck and gathered her closer. “The one thing you could keep?”

“Damn and blast you, Matthew.” She heaved out a sigh and shifted. For a frustrating moment, he thought she was going to sit up and start dressing, but she instead shoved him to his back and straddled him. “What just happened—inside me, between us—it has happened before.”

“Frequently, I hope.”

She left off nuzzling his throat to frown at him in the moonlight. “Only when I’m drowsing, ye ken. More asleep than awake. It never happened with my husband. I wouldn’t allow it.”

“Mary Frances MacGregor, you probably drove the poor bastard right out of his mind, which is exactly what he deserved for entrapping you.”

“I drove him to Canada.” This was said miserably, the words muttered against Matthew’s shoulder.

He recognized guilt and recognized even more when guilt had been carried too long. “Gordie had choices too, Mary Fran. A marquess’s second son has a damned lot more choices than an eighteen-year-old virgin has. He could have transferred to a ceremonial regiment, could have apologized, could have wooed you properly, could have admitted he’d been desperate to secure your hand at any price because he was smitten. You would have let him serve out a reasonable penance and then taken pity on him.”

She went still in his arms, her whole body in an attitude of listening. “I might have. I have a terrible temper, but I’m not unjust, usually. Fiona would say as much.”

Matthew traced the bones and muscles of her back, marveling at the texture of her skin, wishing he could count the freckles on her shoulders. Her silence suggested she was still thinking, reconsidering matters she’d long ago arranged in the optimum configuration for self-torment.

He knew how that felt too.

“When he took ship, I saw him off. The night before…”

Matthew gently squeezed her nape, and she sighed. “You forgave him. It’s good that you forgave him, Mary Fran. Men are much in need of forgiveness, particularly young men who’ve been spoiled their entire lives, and men afraid of losing their heart’s desire.”

When she said nothing, Matthew groped about for his shirt and waistcoat, piling them loosely over her. His next objective involved extracting his handkerchief from his trouser pocket and stuffing it into the hand she’d curled onto his chest.

While the stars winked into view and started their slow journey across the night sky, Matthew Daniels indulged—shamelessly and without limit—in the need to cherish a woman.

***

The season was flying by, just another summer, just another stretch of long, long days between the brisk months of spring and the brisker months of autumn, and yet Mary Fran had to admit this summer was also different.

Wonderfully different. The source of the difference walked along beside her while Fiona gamboled ahead of them.

“She has your energy,” Matthew observed, “your sense of things to see to.”

“My sense of recklessness. I worry for her.”

He patted the hand she’d curled around his arm. “You should make a list of the matters you must fret about. Write it down and haul it out at first light every day. Spend a full minute worrying about each item on the list—no skipping and no skimping—and then forbid yourself to waste any more time worrying until the next day.”

“You do not have children, Mr. Daniels. See how much good lists do you when that blessing befalls you.”

A shadow crossed his features, reminding Mary Fran that anything having to do with Matthew’s father, even something as oblique as an allusion to the baronial succession, invited that shadow into the discussion.

“I see one!” Fiona went scampering into the stables just as a marmalade kitten disappeared down the barn aisle ahead of her.

In the next instant, Mary Fran connected a tensing of her escort’s posture with the crunch of a boot on the walk behind them and a whiff of cigar smoke on the breeze. “I don’t know when I’ve seen a child exhibit such poor decorum,” the baron drawled. “Regular beatings are your only recourse at this point, Miss MacGregor.”

Matthew turned but kept his hand over Mary Fran’s knuckles. “Altsax, our hostess is Lady Gordon Flynn, if you’re to address her properly.”

“Lady Gordon Flynn? That means she’s claiming to have married the late Quinworth spare, and I would have heard of such a misalliance.” Altsax swung his gaze to Mary Fran, his smile diabolically ugly. “My own son is known as the corrupt colonel. You needn’t put on airs to gain the notice of the likes of him.”

Beside her, Mary Fran felt Matthew petrify with rage.

“Mama, come quick!” Fee’s voice, redolent with wonder, came from the stables. “I’ve caught one, and it’s purring!”

Altsax rolled his eyes. “No doubt my son has purred for you too, my lady. Alas for you, he’s purred for many. Pity you can’t ask his late wife about that, isn’t it?”

“Mama!”

Altsax offered Mary Fran a jaunty bow and spun on his heel as Matthew dropped her arm. Beneath his tan, he’d gone pale, his lips ringed with white. In his eyes, there was no emotion, no warmth.

“Lady Mary Frances, if you’ll excuse—”

She grabbed his hand, which he’d balled into a fist. “You’ll not let that man have the last word like this, Matthew Daniels. Do you honestly think I’d believe one word of the bile he spews? Your father is unnatural. Come.”

He hesitated as Altsax went whistling up the path.

“Matthew, please. You cannot help who your father is—what he is.”

Fiona emerged from the stables, cradling a ball of black and white fur against her chest. “He’s purring! I think he likes me—or maybe it’s a she.”

Mary Fran did not turn loose of Matthew’s hand, but she turned an indulgent smile on her daughter. “Of course the dratted beast likes you—they all do. Take it to the dairy, and I’m sure there will be a dish of milk about for a wee new friend.”

Fiona scampered off, leaving Mary Fran to half drag Matthew in the direction of the stables. “Say something, Matthew. Clootie Itnyre knows all the herbs and potions. I’ve half a mind to ask him what I should serve up to your father to permanently shut the baron’s foul, lying, obscene—”

They’d gained the aisle running between the loose boxes when Matthew spun her up against the wall and fused his mouth to hers.

He was enraged—Mary Fran tasted that in his kiss, though the rage wasn’t directed at her—and he was in some desperate, silent frenzy that was expressing itself as passion. He’d lost a wife—that explained a few things, but exactly what it explained she could not fathom, not when she had to hang on to the man kissing her simply to keep her balance.

“I could love you,” Matthew whispered, his voice hoarse in her ear. “God help me, I could have loved you.”

“Hush, Matthew.” She lashed her arms around him, held him tightly, held him as if she could protect him from every injury. “You’re grieving. When the loss rears up, there’s a temptation to find comf—”

This kiss was different. His mouth moved slowly over hers, as if the tumult and desperation of the last kiss had never happened. His body no longer pressed her back against the hard boards behind her; it sheltered and warmed.

“Come.” She eased sideways and took his hand, leading him down the rows of stalls to the saddle room. Wherever this was going, she wanted a locked door between her and the prying eyes of the world.

God help me, I could have loved you.

She’d no sooner thrown the bolt on the saddle room door than Matthew had her back against a sturdy wall. He rested an arm against the wall and leaned down to run his nose along her collarbone.

“You cannot defend me against my own father, Mary Fran.”

The way he hung over her conveyed both passion and something else—despair, in his voice, in his posture.

“Kiss now, talk later, laddie.”

Kiss, caress, tease… a little dusty sunshine came through a small window high up on the outside wall. Time slowed, and Mary Fran let the moment seep into her bones: The good smells of horse and leather, the flutter of a small bird up in the rafters, the soft wool of Matthew’s jacket, and the certain knowledge that of her own volition, she was going to make love with a man worthy of the honor.

“Mary Frances?”

He was asking permission to love her, permission to make love with her. She answered him by easing back and meeting his gaze. In the gloom, his eyes were not blue; they were simply watching her, ready for her to sigh and smile, to leave him here alone with his father’s accusations wreaking their vile havoc.

She shaped him through the fabric of his riding breeches. He was wonderfully hard, ready for her. When she freed him from his clothing, his head fell back, and he hissed out a slow breath. She stroked his length, reacquainting herself with the odd wonder that was the male breeding organ in anticipation of its pleasures.

As she traced her fingers over the smooth skin of his erect cock, she saw the tension in him shift from arousal to self-restraint.

“I could love you too, Matthew Daniels.” In that moment, she couldn’t not love him. Couldn’t deny herself the pleasure of his body, hard, masculine, and pressed against hers in desire.

She hated her clothing, simple attire though it was. Drawers and stays and chemise and petticoats—the morning was cool—came between Mary Fran and the man she sought to possess. Between kisses, sighs, and a few muttered curses, she stepped out of her drawers; with some assistance from Matthew, she got dress and chemise shoved about enough and her stays loose enough to free her breasts from their confinement, but the delay, the damned, fussy delay, had her ready to scream.

“Matthew, I want…” Mary Fran lifted her forehead from his shoulder to glance around. They were in a saddle room. The plank floor was littered with dried mud and bits of hay and straw; the only solid surface was a pair of trunks along the opposite wall. The entire space was designed for hanging bridles, stowing saddles on racks, and storing brushes and riding gear.

“We can make it to the hayloft,” she said, trying to find something amusing about dashing up the ladder out in the barn aisle.

“Bugger the hayloft.” Matthew shifted away, his shirt and waistcoat flapping open, his neckcloth hanging loose and wrinkled. He bent, and in one mighty heave, stacked the two trunks one atop the other. His next move was to grab a wool cooler—a MacGregor plaid, no less—and fold it over the top trunk. When he turned, his clothing askew, his erection straining up along his midline, his expression was unreadable.

“Or I can come to you tonight,” he said.

Mary Fran eyed the trunks. “I’m not sure exactly…”

He hauled her across the small space and hoisted her onto the trunks. “You sit.”

She shifted back a bit on the trunks. The cooler was thick, folded several times, and the seat wasn’t uncomfortable. The one shaft of sunlight fell on Matthew’s red-gold hair as he stepped between her legs.

“You sit,” he said again, bending his head so Mary Fran felt the words breezing past her ear as much as she heard them. “And we love.”

The arrangement was perfect. Despite the clothing, despite the surrounds, despite the discord Altsax had tried to sow, as Mary Fran wrapped her arms around her lover, all she felt was pleasure and the sweet, sweet privilege of making love at long last with the right man.

Matthew’s hands traveled over her slowly, touching her face and hair, tracing the line of her collarbone then easing lower to cup her breast in a caress that could only be described as cherishing. Better than that, even, was the time he gave Mary Fran to learn him in similar fashion.

She tasted the pale scar on the side of his jaw, used her lips and tongue to explore the contour of his small male nipples. His scent was clean all over, like sunshine and cool forests.

And then the feel of him, ah, the hard, warm feel of him, pushing intimately into her body. He was careful at first, a soft nudge, a sigh, another easy little push. The sun had never coaxed a snowy little crocus to open to its warmth as gently as Matthew Daniels joined his body to hers.

“Matthew, you’re killing me. Killing—”

“Then we’ll die together.”

She could not rush him, could not affect his damnably tender pace one bit. She tried, tried to recapture their previous frenzy with hot kisses, except he somehow turned them into lazy, hot kisses.

She dragged her nails down his muscular back, urging him faster, but by the time her hands reached his buttocks, her harrying had turned into a caress.

He was relentless in his tenderness and patience, a one-man onslaught of caring who would neither be dictated to nor distracted from his intention to devastate her with pleasure.

Mary Fran was practical woman, a woman who knew when she’d met her match, so she did something she would have never have considered doing with any other man: she surrendered and let herself be loved.