He ground his arousal against her and she moaned, pleasure sparking every nerve along her spine and belly, down to her toes and up again. She threw one leg up and around him, holding him in place with a heel to his lower back as he rocked, rutted, without breaking his lips from hers.
His hand dragged up her thigh, working between their bodies until he found the slit in her drawers, then his finger was stroking along her cleft. He moaned when discovered her wet and wanting. “I kenned ye’d be wet,” he growled. One digit, then two slid insideher heat and her interior muscles clenched around him. “Fuck, Violet, ye’re desperate for it.”
“Oh please,” she breathed, “please—”
His teeth tugged at her earlobe as he pumped his fingers, twisting to reach some secret place inside her that made her toes tingle. She rocked her hips into his touch, the flick and press of his thumb against her clitoris sending her spinning, spiraling.
She had long since ignited and was burning with molten desire. Was his touch singeing the fabric of her drawers? Because the heat was so intense, she could practically smell smoke—
Wait.
She sniffed.
Callum sat up and sniffed as well. “Do ye smell that?”
The room beside them erupted in screams, and before Violet even had her skirts down, the connecting door burst open, ladies tearing through the door and into the small library without taking note of who already occupied the room. A thick cloud of pungent smoke billowed in their wake.
Callum pushed away from Violet, paused to lower her skirts rather expeditiously, and shoved into the ladies’ parlor. Although she couldn’t understand Scots, she grasped the general meaning of his ranting Gaelic curses, interspersed with Bridget’s frantic cries.
Violet was through the door a moment later, followed by Valebrook, and they both gasped at the sight. Callum was on his knees by the fireplace with what appeared to be a smoking tablecloth. Bridget clung to a smoldering clump of branches, her face and dress streaked with soot.
“Christ, Bridget,again?” Valebrook rushed across the distance and ran his hands over his wife’s arms before cupping her cheeks and kissing her. “I told you, no more summoning spirits at house parties.”
Her face twisted in a scowl. “It wasn’t even a proper summoning. Margaret wanted help with her niece’s—”
“Aunt Margaret was here?” Panic pushed Violet further into the room, where she spotted the woman in question reclining in a silk armchair, her feet propped on a footstool, smoking a cigar. “Didyoudo this?”
Her aunt waved a dismissive hand. “I had nothing to do with thefire, darling. Our Bridget is such a wonder with spirits and energies, and I thought to enlist her—”
“And my sage,” Bridget put in, lifting the clump of burnt twigs.
“…To rid you of your curse.” Her aunt’s expression resembled that of a saint.
Now flames were surely coming out Violet’s ears. “What curse?”
Margaret dropped her voice. “The one that keeps you from finding a proper husband.”
Violet was about to prove, scientifically, that it was indeed possible to die from humiliation.
“It made a bit of a mess, as you can see,” Margaret went on. “How fortunate our brave Scottish laird was close by to save the day.”
Callum stood up, charred fabric in hand. “I’m no’ a laird.”
Margaret shrugged as she pushed to her feet and gripped her cane. “It doesn’t matter. After all that excitement, I’m ready for bed.” She tilted her head and gazed beatifically at Callum. “I don’t suppose I could bother a strong highland laird like yourself to accompany me to my bedchamber?”
He gaped like a fish. “I—milady, I’m no’—” Finally he grunted and nodded, taking her proffered arm.
Callum gave Violet a quick nod as he passed, but Margaret held her gaze. “How fortunate he was here to be such agentleman.”
As Violet watched the man who had almost brought her to climax escort her elderly aunt to bed, she sank with a huff onto one of the non-smoldering footstools. Perhaps she was cursed to never find love or even a decent husband. More likely, she was doomed to be forever sexually frustrated.
Whatever the case may be, she fell asleep that night hoping that perhaps Bridget’s sage had done away with the curse after all.
Chapter 21
“Iwas told therewould be cannons!” Aunt Margaret thwacked Valebrook’s shin with her cane for the third time in as many minutes before she stabbed it into the soft earth and scowled.
The house needed airing out after the Oyster Incident and the Seance Debacle, so the following morning saw the entire party embarked on a slow trek across the rolling hillside to the far side of the grounds where a series of targets were propped up amongst the copses and thin trees.
