Where All the Dead Lie

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Memphis watched Taylor sleep. She was an angel in repose, cheeks rosily flushed, her mouth slightly open. He wanted to take his thumb and run it along the bottom of her lip, just where it was full to the point of spilling over. He had to sit on his hand to stop the urge. He wanted to wake her and watch those mismatched gray eyes focus fully on him, the pupils dilating in welcome. He wanted to crawl into her hair and pull it around him like a blanket. He wanted to shower her with roses, whisper words that would make her laugh. He wanted to feel her skin warm to his touch. The thought of taking her to his bed, flushed with desire, nearly drove him mad.

God, he wanted to rut with her until his balls ached.

He hadn’t felt so strongly about a woman since he met Evan, and being forced to compare the two, to seek out the sameness and the differences, almost made him ill. He was certainly not over Evan. Her death left a gaping hole inside him. The only thing that seemed to fill in the edges was thoughts of Taylor. Having her so near was intoxicating.

But to win her away from her chap was proving more difficult than he ever expected. He hoped that showing her how accommodating he could be, how much freedom she would have with him, no pressure, no fighting, would show her it wouldn’t be so bad being the wife of a viscount. He hoped that her outings with his friend Maddee would help Taylor find herself again.

He knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way. Taylor wasn’t his to take. If he could whip out a knife and cut her away from the uptight Fed, that would make life easier. Or he could just give up, find someone else. Maddee had been encouraging him to find another, more suitable woman for months, ever since he came back from his trip to the States heart-struck.

He’d gotten the feeling that Maddee would like for him to move on with her, but that would never happen. Not only was she married to one of his oldest friends, she wasn’t his type. Too dark-complected, too brash and forward. Too American. She’d made a move on him once at a party in Inverness, before Evan’s death. They’d been seated around a formal dining table and he’d felt a small, creeping hand slide up his leg and settle onto his cock. Maddee, resplendent in a low-cut emerald dress, kept up her conversation with the gentleman on her right while she fondled Memphis.

At first he was too surprised to stop her, and for a moment, he gave in to the pleasure of her illicit dexterity, but a quick glance across the table at his lovely bride had finished the matter. He’d delicately removed her hand and they’d never spoken of it.

That lapse didn’t diminish her abilities as a doctor, nor as a friend. Since then, she’d kept her physical distance, and their friendship continued unabated.

She’d been with him when he got the news about Evan.

Maddee and Roland had come up to London that day, were staying at his flat in Chelsea. The three of them went shopping, saw a show. Went to dinner. And all the while, Evan had been dead, her car plunged into the icy waters, the baby…

Oh, he had to stop this. Evan was gone. Gone forever. He wasn’t to blame. He knew that. Maddee had reassured him, over and over, that he wasn’t to blame. But he carried the guilt with him anyway. If he hadn’t left her alone…

Taylor shifted a bit in her sleep, pulling Memphis back to the now, and he glanced out the window to see they were at the Killicrankie roundabout, which exited to the grounds of the estate.

He roused Taylor from her slumber. She came awake immediately, eyes wide and distant.

“Nightmare?” he asked.

She cleared her throat and whispered, “Yes.” Honest and simple, which made him feel more connected to her than before. If she wouldn’t let him in, he didn’t have a chance; by admitting her fears, showing him her weakness, she was opening the door a bit.

She yawned and her jaw cracked. She opened her ever-present notebook to a fresh page.

Where are we?

“Almost there. We’ve just taken the roundabout into Dulsie.”

She looked around and smiled, and he could tell she was charmed. The farmland turned into rolling hills of heather, then a sudden forest, huge fir trees placed so closely together that getting a hand between the trunks would be a challenge. When things spread out a bit, larches, transplanted sequoias, oak, birch and aspen abounded.

The road twisted into the woods for thirteen miles before it opened into a glen, tucked into the base of the mountains, with a small loch that fed the burns throughout the estate. The entry was stone, forty feet high, a massive archway with steel gates that could be closed against entrants.

A chicken, flushed from the heather on the side of the road, burst across the drive. Taylor giggled. Memphis did his best not to cringe at the sound; it wasn’t the open, carefree laugh he was used to hearing from her.

It’s huge. I’ve never seen such a big chicken.

“They’re Buff Orpingtons. Free-range, at that. Heavenly eating.”

The car drove on, the span of three more heartbeats. He watched her face as the house came into view, almost laughed aloud at the surprise he saw there. She turned to him, eyes shining in delight, and he simply placed his arm around her shoulder and squeezed.

“Welcome home,” he said.