A Scot to the Heart (Desperately Seeking Duke #2) - Caroline Linden Page 0,87

pressing her mouth to his neck, damp from exertion.

I love him, she thought with a start of amazement. I love him.

After several minutes he lifted his head and gazed at her. She smiled back—good heavens, she might never stop smiling from the euphoria thrumming through her veins. His own lazy but happy expression sent her heart soaring.

“A fortnight,” he whispered. “With only this to warm my heart and blood.”

She moved, undulating against him, and he caught his breath. “Perhaps it will encourage you to return sooner.”

He grinned. “God willing.”

He helped her restore her clothing, and then sat on the bench holding her hand while she leaned against his shoulder, telling her about his trip to see the lord advocate. Rarely had Ilsa felt this blissful sort of joy; his hand, so large and strong around hers, his body so solid and wonderful beside her. Was this what love matches were like?

“I’ll come to call when I return,” he told her when they finally walked out. It was nearly noon, when the gardens would open to other visitors. He tried to argue that he would see her home, but she told him her maid and Robert would be enough. It would be hard enough to conceal the happiness bubbling inside her without him; she was afraid that if he walked back into Edinburgh beside her, it would be in all the newspapers tomorrow that Wild Widow Ramsay had thrown herself at the next Duke of Carlyle. “You’ll be here?”

She laughed, reaching up on her toes to kiss him one last time. “Where would I go? You’re the one who keeps leaving again and again.”

He cupped her jaw and kissed her on the forehead. “I may go mad from missing you these next several days.”

And I you. She tugged the cloth at his throat back into place, having dislodged it during their frantic coupling. “You shan’t,” she said firmly. “How shall you find your way home if you run mad?”

He laughed and let her go, reluctantly. “Then I shall ride like the wind, throw diplomacy to the dogs, and race back as if the banshees were after me.”

And at that moment, it felt as if Fate was smiling upon her, deciding to repay her for her lonely childhood and indifferent first marriage by showering pure happiness upon her.

She should have known better.

Chapter Nineteen

Drew left the next morning for Ardersier in strangely high spirits.

He had expected to have done this already. When he left Carlyle Castle, he’d planned to spend a week with his family in Edinburgh arranging their move to England, assess Stormont Palace in a few days, return to Fort George to resign his military obligations, and then relocate to Carlyle to assume his role as heir. He would be back within two months, he’d assured the duchess and Mr. Edwards.

That deadline had already passed. The brief trip to Stormont Palace had turned into a visit of two weeks’ duration. He had lost another several days to the Edinburgh thieves and what to do about them. And, of course, he’d spent time with Ilsa, which he had not foreseen at all.

Not that he regretted it in the slightest. In fact, as he traveled northward, he spent considerable thought working out a new plan. Fort George was the first step—he had savored for too long the prospect of resigning his commission in front of Fusty Colonel Fitzwilliam—but everything else would be different.

In this plan, he wasn’t going back to Carlyle. What he’d told Ilsa was true: the duke could very well live decades longer. As convenient as it might be for Edwards to instruct him in person, Drew thought he was perfectly able to learn via letter. If Stormont Palace could be run efficiently and smoothly without the duke setting foot on its grounds in twenty years, Carlyle Castle could get along very well with him in Edinburgh, particularly since he had no actual authority as long as the duke lived.

And the duchess had said only that he should endeavor to become respectable and sober. She’d wanted him to find a suitable wife. At the time Drew hadn’t known a single suitable woman, but now that he had met the most suitable woman imaginable, there was no need for Her Grace to introduce him to any others. Ilsa might not be the bride the duchess had had in mind for him, but she was genteel, wealthy, and beautiful, which the duchess could hardly fault.

And Ilsa possessed one advantage which obliterated any and