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Her arms slid around his neck, her fingers slipping into the cool thick strands of hair at his nape, and she answered his kiss as if a woman drowning. And maybe she was. She felt pushed to the edge of reason.
His kiss was everything. His kiss made her want a future with him, a future where she could always feel this real and alive, this sensitive and physical. In his arms, she wasn’t just a brain, wasn’t a girl with intelligent thoughts, but a flesh and blood woman made of skin and nerves, heart and hope.
The chilly cottage bedroom forced Ella to action. Shivering, she pushed away from the door and stripped off her clothes before tugging on pajamas. Her pajamas felt icy which cooled her heated skin. Her bed was cold, too, and she curled up in the stiff chilly sheets, cold from the bed, even as she was remembering August again and how the hot, dizzying kiss always ended the same.
With him breaking away from her, with him saying,This should not have happened. It was a mistake.He was not free.
How that hurt. Remembering now, months later, still hurt.
It would have been better to have never kissed him, better not to know how good his mouth felt, how good he felt then to experience pleasure only to be rejected.
It was why she hadn’t wanted to see him again. He wasn’t a bad person. She didn’t hate him. She could forgive him for the fierce hungry kiss. She could forgive him for making her body feel so beautiful. But she couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done to her heart.
Maybe that wasn’t right of her. Maybe she shouldn’t hold it against him, but she’d kissed plenty of men and no one had ever threatened her sense of self, no one had touched her heart. Her heart wasn’t easily captured, either.
No, Ella wasn’t one to fall in love. But Baird’s kiss had almost done it. His kiss had almost done her in.
*
Baird didn’t sleepwell, waking repeatedly only to tell himself to stop thinking and just sleep.
It wasn’t easy to stop thinking when Ella was just down the narrow hall. He hadn’t expected to be sharing the cottage with her. He’d been certain she’d be in the house close to her sister. A wise man would move out of the cottage immediately, but Baird did not want to be in the house. He’d visited Langley Park before and was always overwhelmed by the sheer size of it, and the number of staff, and the grandeur of the interior. He’d grown up in a firmly middle-class family in Glasgow, as the youngest of four and the only son.
After three daughters his parents were thrilled to have a boy and Baird never lacked for anything. His older sisters used to tease him that he was spoiled rotten, but even they doted on him. Yes, he was spoiled rotten—he knew every day how much he was loved. He never took their love for granted, and he never asked for things he knew his parents couldn’t afford.
He wasn’t supposed to go to Eton. His family didn’t send the girls to expensive private schools, never mind boarding school. Baird was happy in the local school, but his teachers immediately recognized Baird’s potential. For years, they spoke of Baird’s undeniable intellectual gifts. He needed more than what they could offer him. He would flourish with a challenging curriculum. Baird’s family explored options, but they were all so incredibly expensive.
When he was twelve, his headmaster mentioned the King’s Scholarship at Eton, sharing that it was an incredibly demanding exam, but if needed, the award could cover everything—tuition, fees, room and board. The headmaster believed Baird should try. Only fourteen scholarships were awarded every year, but if Baird studied and prepared, who knew?
The last thing Baird wanted was to go away for school. He was happy with his family, happy with his sports, and his older sisters who continued to spoil him rotten. But to appease his parents, who were truly good parents, he studied for the exam, taking it the next May when he was thirteen.
It was an incredibly difficult exam, an exhausting exam that left Baird feeling empty. He was certain he hadn’t done well. He knew some things, but some of the papers and subjects were beyond him. He did what he could, the best he could, and no one was more surprised than him when he won one of the coveted King’s Scholarships for September.
He did not want to go but his parents were so proud—their son, their Baird, their baby—had succeeded in earning one of the awards, earning his place at Eton with the brightest and best in the United Kingdom. They would miss him, of course, miss him terribly, but what an opportunity.
Baird never told them how homesick he was. He never told them how he was mocked for his thick Glasgow accent, or what some of the other boys called hisrustic ways, which infuriated him, because it wasn’t as if he was born under a rock. He was no more rustic than they, and at least he had proper manners and knew better than to bully other lads for things they couldn’t help or change.
Some of the bullying eased when Baird picked up a hockey stick. A growth spirit was putting size on him, and he already had speed. The fact that he also excelled in rugby and rowing meant that he was just as strong in sports as he was in the classroom. It was during the Lenten season when Baird and Alec met. They were playing on different teams but knew of each other, and Alec was the one to approach Baird and introduce himself.
Baird didn’t know what to think about Viscount Sherbourne. Why would the future earl want to be friends with him? Was it a joke? A prank? Had someone put Sherbourne up to it?
But no, Alec was just as miserable as Baird—for different reasons, though. While Baird couldn’t wait for school holidays to return home, Alec dreaded the visits to Langley Park. Alec had no one at home, and it was excruciating returning. Baird loved his family, they were a proper family, and he told Alec he was always welcome at the MacLaurens. They didn’t have a big house. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they had a lot of love. Soon Alec was going home with Baird for holidays, and over the years, the boys developed an unbreakable bond.
They stayed close at university and supported each other through their twenties—Alec at Langley Investments, working beneath his cold and exacting father, and Baird becoming a lawyer, first earning his degree in Scots Law, and then studying for the tests that would allow him to practice law in England as well. Baird was hired immediately by one of London’s biggest firms and he spent the next five years representing international cases, traveling more than he was home. The money was excellent, though, and he sent as much as he could to his parents every month, allowing them to retire, and pay off their house, and buy a new car.
Baird probably wouldn’t have switched his focus to family law if it weren’t for his father’s heart attack. Baird realized he was never home to see his parents and there was an intriguing opportunity for him in Scotland that would allow him to split his time between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Ready for change, and a lot less international travel, he took the position with the prominent Scots firm, which proved to be a good decision, at least financially. Switching to family law was even more lucreative than corporate law, allowing him to pay off his parents mortgage so his father could retire. Baird had bought property himself, living in one and leasing out the others. Because money had been such a concern when he was growing up, he knew he should be grateful it wasn’t an issue anymore, but there were times he felt like he’d sold his soul to the devil. There was no joy in learning all the ugly hateful things people did to each other—said to each other—when their marriage failed.
Baird didn’t fall asleep until midnight. When he woke and saw that it was not even six o’clock, he tried to fall back asleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. Perhaps the best thing to do was go for a run and work through all the thoughts and the worries he never shared with others.
He was the one people went to with their problems. He didn’t ever want to be a burden. He didn’t want others to feel pressured or troubled, and so he kept everything inside, and for the most part, it worked.
This morning was different, but the run would clear his head. It always did.
*
Ella woke tothe smell of coffee. There were few things she loved in the world as much as that first cup of coffee, and she threw back the covers and tugged on sweatpants over her pajama pants, adding a sweatshirt over her sleepshirt before going down to the kitchen to see if there was any coffee left for her.
Baird was in the tiny kitchen standing before the tiny sink, in thick fleece sweatpants looking out the kitchen window, so completely lost in thought that Ella froze on the threshold unwilling to interrupt him. She also couldn’t look away from him, either. From the dark hair curling at his nape, to his strong slightly hooked nose, to the powerful width of his shoulders, he was an incredibly appealing man.
