by Gina Conkle
Did she have more questions for him?
He had one for her.
Chapter Ten
Will ambled across loose soil, a breeze teasing his mussed queue. Talk of family brought ghosts of questions past. Of mistakes made and lessons learned. Though Will trod on English soil, he was every inch a proud highlander. Not years nor a lost war could change that.
“That was kind of you to help Mr. Baines,” she said.
Will mounted the bottom step and stopped, eye level with her. “It was the decent thing to do.”
She didn’t move. He was heart-achingly decent.
One side of his mouth curved up, and her traitorous breath hitched loudly. Will’s mouth twitched, victorious at his effect, no doubt.
A tender gauntlet had been thrown, and she was not one to shirk a challenge.
With a bold hand, she brushed back a lock of hair batting his cheek. The texture was thick gold and twice as smooth. She tucked it behind Will’s ear and he stilled, a lion tamed.
“You really are a good man, Will MacDonald.”
“You say that like it’s a new discovery.”
“I might have known it once before, but it bears repeating.”
“A mon never tires of hearing it.”
“Is that an invitation to stroke your pride?”
“Stroke whatever you like, lass,” he said in a feather-soft voice.
She huffed at her own weakness. She’d walked right into the snare of innuendo and Will was not one to let opportunity slip from his fingers.
“You are the worst flirt, Will MacDonald.” A reprimand delivered with a smile, while her hand rested on his shoulder.
“Flirting is good for the soul. Flirting with the right woman, even better.”
Her heart sang. He managed to say playful things yet be endearing. Complex emotions flooded her lust-addled body. The right woman? Dangerous words, indeed. And like a woman reaching for her own calamity, she petted his velvet-clad chest.
“Ours is a . . . particular arrangement.”
“Playing your betrothed,” he said agreeably.
Midnight enfolded them, the river’s hush their only companion. Will’s big hand slipped inside her cloak and found her hips. Five fingers and his palm, the warmth an imprint she’d remember for the rest of her days. Will sought her chest-petting hand, brought it slowly to his lips.
He touched a knee-watering kiss to her wrist, the same as he did the first time he kissed her years ago. She was crushed and elated, her body pliant, her soul stiff.
How could he do that? Give so reckless a kiss?
If she was lost, Will was equally taken. His eyes a torrid storm, his breathing that of a desperate man. Their mouths touching was inevitable, yet they stood in the unknown. Their past dust; their future without hope.
A connection lost forever.
Will’s grip on her wrist tightened painfully and a tempest broke fast and furious.
Their mouths met, hot and agitated. Longing and need fused them. Will was velvety smooth, salty and sweet. He was life and she kissed him deeper for it. His strong hand cradled her hip, wooing her, drawing her close, as if to say Your body belongs right . . . here.
With me.
She gloried in being close to him. Will’s arms holding her. The moon and the stars blessing them. It was a kiss to melt a woman’s resolve and scatter her wits, a kiss that ended too quickly. Eyes closed, she held fast to the pleasure of her passionately kissed mouth. To simply feel again.
But life demanded her presence.
Sand crunched under restless boots. Will.
When she opened her eyes, her gaze found his haunted glare.
He was once again the man she’d found in Marshalsea Prison.
Kissing her wrist was a bad idea. A carnal kiss to her mouth alone . . . that’s what he should’ve done. Lust easily sated. Now, he was stuck with the fragile glow on her face—the moment too hallowed for Anne to open her eyes. Women put such emphasis on first kisses and how they happened.
Maybe he did too.
He fidgeted, irked with his rash behavior. If there was a message in kissing her wrist, he refused to think about it.
“My feet are cold and wet,” he said.
Anne checked his legs, her tender glow fading. “We should get you inside before you catch a chill.”
A brief walk up the stairs and across the lane, and they found Anne’s iron key in the door. Cecelia must’ve left it. He’d forgotten about her and the others inhabiting this house. For a span of time, no one else existed save Anne and him. Even the beast within had been docile and drugged by that kiss.
But the key . . .
It looked the same as another woman’s key, the one he would press into a lump of wax tomorrow. Crossing Anne’s threshold, he was two parts restless and one part practical. If a man was on the eve of a crime, he ought to get a good night’s rest. For the time being, getting the gold was his job. With muck too thick for an iron scraper, he removed his boots and stockings in the entry hall. Anne locked and barred the door, her sand-encrusted hems in view. He was barefoot, rolling his stockings and ruing the moment Anne freed him from Marshalsea.
“Give them to me,” she said. “I’ll see them cleaned.”
“No need. I’ll hang them over a chair.”
“You won’t require me to do that for you. In your bedchamber?” Her question came with grave hesitation.
“I was teasing you about the tender mercies, Mrs. Neville. You’re no’ required to do anything for me.” He balled the stockings, irritation building.
“Isn’t that what you want?” Eyes wide, she looked genuinely startled.
He squeezed the knot his stockings made. I want a lot of things, lass.
A pair of sconces caught the shine in her rich black hair. Somehow a mere hand’s breadth separated them. Anne’s mouth was a ripe red curve, her eyes a fascinating green.
“It’s what you bargained for. Today, in my salon.” Her pretty mouth moved, saying astonishing things. “I’m prepared to give you what you want, but I ask a boon. That we wait until the gold is in our keeping. Otherwise, sex might become a . . . distraction.”
His bare toes pressed hard on the cold floor to keep him from toppling over. His mind was reeling over one fact after another. Only one of them needed absolute clarity.
“You think I’m helping you because I want sex?”
She blinked. “Isn’t it?”
He flinched, the blow like a punch below the belt. Holy Mother of . . .
She thought that of him?
A carnal creature roared inside him. He could take her. He still ached behind the placket of his breeches, but another beast reared its head, long of claw and cruel in nature. Anne was the one to satisfy both . . . just not the way she was thinking.
She raised her hands to touch him? To comfort him?
He manacled her wrists, his voice whip sharp. “Don’t.”
Anger came off him in waves, evaporating all tenderness. Anne gawked. She was the heart of his fury. Her petticoats tangling his shins, black hair wrapping his hands. They were confoundedly, inexplicably tied together. He couldn’t let her go. In eight years, he never had. Truth slammed him like a musket ball.
He still loved her.
Eyes wide, he absorbed this astonishing fact.
He’d not left England these eight years because of Anne. Since his release from the prison hulk, he’d made a habit of donning his kilt and closeting himself with the best ale and whisky his money could buy, then drowning his woes on a certain August day. Until this year, he’d committed his kilt-wearing crime in private. But this year he’d been desperate.
And the reason was standing before him.
The woman in his clutches, stunned, beautiful, and utterly maddening.
He let go of her and stalked two, three paces by the salon door where their bargain began. He was exploding inside, his body restless, his heart worse. Emotions ricocheted like black powder set afire by a dozen fuses. Th
is should be a glorious moment. Rare was the day a man realized he loved a woman. For him, it happened twice . . . to the same confounding woman.
His back to her, he rubbed his chest. Everything ached. He wanted to break something and not think, not feel. This morning, in her late husband’s bedchamber, he knew what he’d wanted. Sex was never part of the arrangement made in Anne’s salon. After their blistering kiss, he understood why she’d think as much. But, bartering her body? To get his help to steal the gold?
Pacing again, he couldn’t be sure which was worse: love unreturned or her body traded in a bargain. With him.
“I canna believe it.” He swung around chewing words. “You’ve gone all day thinking I bargained to use you for . . . reitheachas.” He practically spat the word.
Reitheachas. Rutting. Ramming. Base use of a body.
Anne’s eyes were sharp slits.
“I see you understand me,” he said, breathing hard.
“Thanks to your cousin, my Gaelic education continues.”
Her tone was formal, lady-of-the-house, while he could barely contain his rage. His armor was off, splintered in a thousand pieces.
“Don’t hide behind your coolness, madame. Tell me the truth,” he said in a harsh voice just above a whisper. “You were going to trot me up to your bedchamber and play harlot for the sake of stolen treasure?”
“I wasn’t going to trot you up to my bedchamber,” she hissed back. “Cecelia’s there.”
He felt his jaw drop. “You were going to lie down with me . . . in your late husband’s bed?”
Shock got in line behind frustration. Which was the greater crime? Anne coldly selling herself for gold? Or taking him to her dead husband’s bed? Lips curling against his teeth, he couldn’t say.
“Forgive me. I misunderstood your intentions.” Her mouth pursed. “Most men wouldn’t find my offer difficult to swallow.”
“I’m no’ most men.” I wanted to marry you.
Anne flinched as if he’d spoken his fierce thoughts aloud. The curse of intimacy came in understanding someone yet remaining far apart in accord. Why couldn’t they breach this wedge between them?
He raised frustrated fists to fight it, asking a furious, exasperated, “What happened to you?”
Silence crashed the entry hall. Anne’s eyes were hollow. Black holes in midnight forest trees held more light. She was far from reach, and he didn’t know how to get her back.
Door hinges whined on the floor above their heads. Footsteps pattered, bringing Aunt Flora’s voice with them. “Is something amiss?”
Anne smoothed her palms down her skirts. “It’s me and Will.”
“Oh?” Floors creaked. More footsteps.
“Go back to bed, Aunt Flora. All is well.” Anne recovered enough to sound commanding.
The barest pause and, “As ye say, dear.”
They waited until a door clicked shut. It was enough time for tempers to cool and for him to see Anne in a new light. The line of her mouth was stalwart, but her eyes were shaded with emptiness. Twin candle stubs were guttering their last. Soon they’d be in the dark, and Anne would have an excuse to slip away, the same as she’d slipped away eight summers ago. Years of hardship had battered him into the man he was today. Prison’s solace had chiseled his mind. Shipyard labor had molded his body. He’d gained a new trade and put war and rebellion behind him. Anne had not.
She had one thing right. His help came with a price—her answer to the question which had racked him all these years. A question which stirred the beast of pain and rejection inside, a question that waited eight years for an answer.
“Why didna you come to me at Castle Tioram?”
Chapter Eleven
Her knees buckled. Insults, threats, and arguments with those most dear had never stopped her. Neither did greedy men and ham-fisted rogues. Nothing could sway her from a goal once the seed was planted. But, Will’s question . . .
She slumped against the entry table and clutched her stomacher from cruel, phantom pain behind the cloth she gripped.
“Of all the things to ask me.” She hardly recognized her paper-thin voice.
Will took a half step forward. “Are you going to be ill?”
She was, but not the kind he could heal.
Why did that day matter anymore? A lifetime had passed.
Hadn’t it?
Wounds of the soul were treacherous things. They scarred. They toughened. They generally made a body wiser. Until one day, a letter, a memory, or in this case, a pointed question ripped them wide open. What she was satisfied to bury, Will sought to unbury. Their natures couldn’t be more different. But the wretched war had taken more than her young love. It had stolen from Will too. He deserved to know what had happened; telling it was her challenge despite the spinning hurt climbing higher inside her.
A secret wanted out.
Her tongue was heavy with it. “This is what you bargained for. To know why I didn’t run away with you.”
“Yes.”
She looked beyond Will, dragging in a ragged breath that cut her insides. It hurt, how good and different he was from other men. Will’s ambitions swam in deeper waters: he preferred truth over gold. His patience in seeking an answer was equally astounding when all this time she’d thought he didn’t care.
At the moment, impatience clouded his brow and banked rage lit his eyes. Will was done waiting.
“Do you remember the day I was supposed to meet you?” she asked.
“It’s branded on me.”
His ferocity startled her. A sconce candle died, its smoke trailing thinly beside Will. In the gloom, he was no more than a beastly scowl with hair askew and the white of his shirt showing. She braced a hand on the table. Fresh beeswax glossed the surface, buttery smooth, supportive and friendly, if furniture could be that.
“It was the nineteenth of August. The day the war started.”
“I know,” he ground out. “I was there. Waiting for you.”
She saw Will as he was then. The windblown highlander, kilt swinging, long hair buffeting his back, a flintlock tucked in his belt. He belonged to Scotland and Scotland belonged to him.
Her finger found a tiny bump of excess beeswax. She rolled it between thumb and forefinger, the past coming forth in brilliant color. The grass a rich green skirt around Castle Tioram, the skin of Loch Moidart a restful blue. The tides were out and the sun full. Will had boldly gone to gather the cache of weapons and ammunition in daylight, weapons he’d stored in the castle’s ruins. The Uprising was upon them, and her desperate need to be with Will outweighed distant voices. Her family in Edinburgh, the man she was to marry yet had never met . . . all vanished when she found the highlands. Her first nineteen years had been as nothing. A wisp of memories, not full-bodied life.
She’d been adrift and Will became her anchor.
But passing into life with Will wasn’t all a pleasant dream.
“I was packing my things when Morag stopped me,” she said, strength growing in her voice.
Morag was the innkeeper who’d hosted them while they waited in the village near Castle Tioram for instructions to journey to Skye, as originally planned, or to journey instead to Arisaig. Her betrothed, Angus MacDonald, had gone missing. Apparently, he was no more interested in marriage to her than she to him.
Tarrying near the castle ruins was no hardship. More time with Will, more summer-blessed freedom. From the moment they’d left Edinburgh, she rode a horse alongside him every day. By Linlithgow, they’d kissed. By Stirling, they’d fallen in love. By Drummond Castle, she’d given herself body and soul to the landless golden-eyed highlander.
Will had shared enticing plans—if she’d go with him.
She was not noble blooded. Her father was a merchant, increasing his circumstances. Her marriage had been about gaining purchase in Western Isles trade. Her rebellious choice to run off and marry Will was brazen enough, never mind that it would happen during a war.
The Uprising had been a
n argument of principle which faded quickly under the fair skies of young love. Will was a cocksure rebel. He’d been equally sure of persuading the MacDonald of Clanranald to make him a tacksman, to secure rent for the clan chief. The chief, he’d boasted, had already offered him land on the Isle of South Uist. Land he had no reason to take until her. Will had spoken of them being together forever, and she drank it in as a maid of nineteen would.
There was no going back.
Until Morag stopped her.
The pebble-sized wax forgotten, she hugged herself, comfort for what was about to come. Will watched her intently, curious, frustrated, his nostrils flaring as if he’d rattle the truth out of her. Her heart beat strong and true. She was no delicate lady to be rescued. She was hardy enough to follow the drum, but that August day, her eyes had been opened. Others did need rescuing—the weak and the innocent, those who couldn’t speak for themselves.
“Morag told me it is the duty of the strong to look after the weak and fragile.”
Will was a thunderstorm. He couldn’t know a stony lump was rising inside her, so dark and hard yet formless.
“Morag had brought water for me to wash with. She’d seen blue veins on my breasts,” she explained with astonishing quiet.
“Blue veins?” His face twisted in confusion. “What the devil does that mean?”
She swallowed hard. Her secret was fighting for a path to her tongue.
“I was . . . with child,” she whispered.
There. It was out. She was lighter for it and freer than she’d been in a long time. A burden shared. Will, however, sagged, his brawny form reduced by hearing of his unborn child.
“But . . . it was—we were barely two months . . .” Will’s tongue stumbled and he went starry-eyed and mute.
Nothing silenced a man like the shock and wonder of fatherhood. At least that’s what Morag had said to her. It took eight long years to finally see for herself.
She laughed softly. “We were worse than rabbits, though I suspect your seed was planted our first time together.”