An Invitation To Pleasure. Marguerite Kaye

their first anniversary, watching Jason stagger up the stairs, looking every bit the drunken debaucher that he was, she resolved to be done with regrets.

      Her husband refused to countenance the shame of a formal separation. They continued under the same roof, he continued to work his way through her inheritance, but the “sweet-tempered heiress” who neither thought nor acted for herself was long gone. That very morning two years ago, Susanna had extinguished the naive and dependent creature who was Jason’s wife. From her ashes emerged a woman who prided herself on her strength in the face of adversity. Destitute widow as she now was, she was looking forward to her independence. She would never again allow a man to shape her life.

      Susanna smiled to herself as she imagined Captain Lamont’s —goodness no, the Laird of Kilmun’s—surprise at the changes in her. His unexpected invitation to spend Christmas in the Highlands had arrived out of the blue. She could not deny it had piqued her curiosity, and was all the more welcome since the alternative was to spend the festive period with her parents in London. Her parents mourned their son-in-law as his wife could not. Susanna had abandoned her widow’s weeds after three months. She would not be Jason Mountjoy’s relic.

      How astonished her host would be when she told him, as she had often wished to, that his harsh truths had eventually found their mark. True, she had still become that most absurd of clichés, the heiress wed by a feckless and charming fortune hunter, but in the same circumstances she doubted very much that any gullible girl would have done other than opt for the path of least resistance. She had married, and for a while she had been miserable, but she had no doubt at all that her misery would have lasted a great deal longer had she more illusions to cling to. There was even a chance that she would be clinging to them still. Her widowhood could easily have been the ending most seemed to think it, instead of the beginning Susanna was eager to embrace. For planting those first seeds of doubt, she owed the Laird of Kilmun a debt of gratitude, and so she would tell him.

      The boat scudded its way towards a tiny jetty, and Susanna’s thoughts turned to her host. The Laird of Kilmun, indeed! She hoped the husk of the man had managed some sort of recovery, but he had been so far gone, she doubted it was possible.

      The wind let up and the snow eased, laying the landscape open as if a curtain had been drawn. She gazed around her with the disoriented feeling of one who has travelled too far in too short a time, catching her breath at the unexpected beauty of the place. Wild the Highlands were, but they were also staggeringly lovely. The village, with its white-washed cottages, their thatched roofs glistening with snow, lay in a crescent around the harbour, the church taking the slightly raised ground at the northern end. In the distance, gently rolling hills gave way to craggier peaks, snow-frosted and sharply defined against the pale blue of the winter sky. The waters of the loch had calmed to a gentle lapping onto the pebbled shore. A gull soared high above the fishing nets which were hung out to dry on the beach above the line of the tide. The air was salty, clean and painfully cold, unlike anything Susanna had ever breathed. Everything in view seemed to be painted with the crisp, clear lines of an amateur painting.

      As she clutched the calloused hand of the ferry man to climb ashore, she saw him striding towards her. A tall, broad man he was, who exuded strength and vitality with every step. Long, muscled legs clad in tight trews covered the distance between them so quickly that his hair, worn long and loose to his shoulders, flew out behind him. Auburn hair, it glinted fire in the weak sunlight. A rough growth of stubble gleamed the same colour on his chin. Tanned skin he had, and a mouth curled into the hint of a welcoming smile.

      Susanna’s stomach did a little flip-flop. It was the eyes. Though the lines at the corners seemed less pronounced, and the hard edge of pain was no longer there, they were his eyes, a strange colour that must be hazel but looked amber. Was it really him? The man she had known had been tense to the point of breaking, as if he were held together by wires, his face hollowed out by suffering. She had forgotten, but it came back to her vividly now, the way he had looked out at the world, as if from a long distance away.

      This could not be him, this wild-looking, vital Highlander. Nerves, a faltering of her hard-won confidence, surprise, admiration and a sharp twinge of attraction wrestled for dominance. She was still trying to form her thoughts when her hands were clasped in his, a rough cheek pressed to hers, and the scent of wool, leather and man enveloped her.

      ‘Lady Mountjoy,’ Fergus said.

      ‘Captain Lamont?’

      ‘Aye, but it is actually Laird Kilmun now.’ She looked dumbfounded. Fergus wanted to laugh, but he was fair dumbfounded himself, for she seemed quite transformed. The female he remembered had been coltish, unsure of herself. He recalled downcast eyes and clasped hands, a mouth prim with the effort not to cry. The woman before him had a distinct air of confidence about her. He remembered her as a pretty wee thing conventionally turned out. Now she stood on the jetty, looking nothing like. Memorable rather than beautiful, she was all high cheekbones and wide-open grey eyes. Those he did remember.

      The wind had whipped several wispy tendrils of hair out from under her bonnet. Her skin was very pale, her lips very red, her hair blue-black, the starkly contrasting colours giving her a touch of the exotic. A most unexpected stirring of his blood made him remember something else from that first meeting of theirs. He had kissed her. Or he had only just stopped himself from kissing her. It was the way she’d stood up to him, challenging his tirade, that had roused him. For a demure wee thing, she’d packed quite a punch. Now she was no longer a demure wee thing, but quite clearly and very delectably grown into her skin, it would be amusing to see if he could stoke her fire. It had been a long while, too long a while, since he’d had either the inclination or the opportunity for a bit of verbal sparring, but damn, there was something about this woman that made him want to forget all about taking life seriously and do just that.

      Fergus smiled. ‘Has the cat got your tongue, Lady Mountjoy? No, I can’t call you that, it sticks in my craw. Since our acquaintance is of such long standing, perhaps you would allow me to call you Susanna, and you may call me Fergus?’

      She simply stared, as if he had asked her to call him the devil, and damn, if it didn’t make the devil in him react. ‘I wonder now, though you would not kiss a mere captain all those years ago, have you a kiss for the laird?’

      She looked as if she was torn between slapping him and doing as he was bid. Then, to his astonishment, she laughed. It was a wonderful sound, like the gurgling of a stream. ‘You are quite outrageous, Captain—Laird! And in one sense, wholly unchanged, for you must still be taking enormous liberties. In every other sense, however, I barely recognised you.’