by Tessa Dare
She shut her eyes. Her dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks. "You truly must kiss me when you do that."
Logan obliged her, this time pressing his lips to hers.
As he sank into the lush heat of her kiss, a wildness gathered and growled within him.
He wanted her. All of her. Under him. Surrounding him. Taking him into her softness and heat.
And he couldn't get enough of her sweet taste. As if possessed, he pushed her arms against the mattress and kissed her neck, her brow, her lips, her lovely breasts.
Then he moved lower.
He rose up on his knees and began to kiss a trail down her linen-sheathed body. From the hollow between her breasts . . .
To her shy, adorable navel . . .
And further.
From far away, he heard himself murmuring in Gaelic. Words began tumbling from his lips, unbidden. Words he'd never spoken to any other woman in his life.
"Maddie a ghradh. Mo chridhe. Mo bean."
Maddie, darling. My heart. My wife.
Her fancies had started to addle his brain, too. What was she doing to him?
He spread the linen tight over her hips, revealing the dark triangle of shadow guarding her sex.
And then he bent to kiss her there.
She flinched and bucked, bashing him in the head with her knee.
Ouch.
With a low moan of pain, Logan rolled to the side, clutching his head.
He stared up at the bed's wooden canopy, struggling for breath. Had he been wondering what she was doing to him? He knew what she was doing to him.
She was killing him.
That's what she was doing to him.
"What . . ." She clutched the bedsheets to her chest. "What was . . . Why would you do . . . that?"
Why indeed.
"Because humans have more imagination than lobsters, mo chridhe. There's more than one way to share pleasure."
She was quiet for a long moment. "How many ways?"
He rolled onto his side to face her, skimming a single finger from her breastbone to her belly. "Here's an idea. I'll demonstrate them, and you keep count."
This time her silence seemed endless.
"Perhaps another time, thank you." She turned onto her side. Away from him.
And that was it, then. Wanting pulsed through his body, coiling and sparking with electric intensity. He didn't dare put his trust in pillows or decency to contain it.
It would be another cold, restless night on the floor.
Chapter Ten
Maddie found it impossible to sleep.
Last night, the whisky and her overwhelmed emotions had left her too exhausted for anything else. Tonight, her body sizzled with unspent energy and frustrated desire.
Whenever she closed her eyes, she thought of his mouth on her.
There.
For that one, heated moment, it had felt good. More than good. A jolt of bliss had streaked through her. She still felt it lingering in the soles of her feet and at the juncture of her thighs.
Would he want a woman to put her mouth on him?
There?
Humans have more imagination than lobsters, he'd said. And yet Maddie--who was human the last time she checked--could not quite bend her imagination that far.
Of course, she might have had a better idea if she'd ever seen all of him in the flesh.
She turned onto her side and wriggled closer to the edge of the bed overlooking his pallet on the floor. The bed frame creaked. She froze for a moment. And when she heard nothing but his even breathing, she crept closer still, until she could peek down at him.
The dim glow of the banked fire revealed his figure slowly.
He lay on his side, shirtless, only partially covered by his thin, unbelted plaid. His back was to her. In the firelight, he looked cast in bronze. Except that bronze didn't move, and his back seemed to be . . . convulsing?
At first she thought it merely a trick of the light. Then she had the sudden, mortifying thought that he was awake and laughing at her. But after blinking a few times, she understood what was happening.
He was shivering.
"Logan," she whispered.
No answer.
She quietly lowered her feet to the floor and crept down to sit beside him.
"Logan?"
She laid a light touch to his shoulder. He wasn't feverish. On the contrary, his skin was ice-cold. His entire body was racked with tremors, and he seemed to be murmuring something in his sleep.
She leaned closer to listen. Whatever he was saying, it seemed to be in Gaelic. The same word, again and again.
Nah-tray-me?
Judging by the violent way he was shivering, if she had to venture a guess, she would suppose nah-tray-me meant "cold" or "ice" or perhaps "look, a hallucinatory penguin."
Oh, Logan.
Since her attempts to wake him hadn't worked, Maddie turned her attention to warming him instead. She pulled the heavy quilt from her bed. Then she lay down behind him, drawing the quilt over them both.
Propping her head on one hand, she drew soothing caresses over the lines of his shoulders, neck, and back. She made gentle shushing noises. He didn't wake, but gradually his shivers began to subside. The tension in his muscles uncoiled, and his body relaxed against hers. Skin to skin. The masculine, soapy scent of him filled her senses.
Her heart swelled. Tenderness unfurled in her chest like a wisp of smoke, spreading and permeating her entire body.
I dinna do cuddling, he'd said.
She nuzzled the velvety cropped hairs at the nape of his neck, smiling secretly to herself. Perhaps he didn't do cuddling, but she did. She was excellent at it, apparently.
Madeline Eloise Gracechurch: Stealth Cuddler.
What Logan didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
But if she wasn't careful, it just might tear her heart in two.
At the first sign of daylight, she rose and slipped into the adjoining chamber, where she dressed herself in a simple muslin frock. She inched her way down the spiraling steps and arrived in the high hall, which Logan's men had turned into their temporary camp.
There she stood, blinking, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and willing her heart to stop pounding in her ears.
Come along, then. Where are you?
Her gaze went to the corner, where the men's belongings had been heaped.
There.
Maddie hugged the perimeter of the room, treading on the balls of her slipper-clad feet until she reached the heap of baggage.
Whether they were in a sporran, a saddlebag, or a knapsack . . . Those incriminating letters had to be here somewhere, and she was going to find them.
She plucked a canvas haversack from the corner and opened it, gingerly poking through the contents. When she found nothing remarkable inside, she moved on to investigate the next. And then to a third.
The contents were humble, and much the same in each. A spare shirt or two, a pair of woolen fingerless gloves, a boar-bristle scrubbing brush, a pair of dice. Nothing much of note.
Until her finger found the sharp end of a needle.
To her credit, Maddie managed not to cry out. But the bag slipped from her grasp, hitting the stone floor with a light thud.
She went absolutely still and turned a wary glance over the hall of snoring Scotsmen. None of them seemed to have heard. The men remained unmoving lumps of plaid huddled under their tartans.
Apparently, the men wore their plaids as kilts by day and then used the same for bedding by night.
She wrinkled her nose. When did they wash the things?
When did they wash themselves?
"Good morning."
Startled for the second time in as many minutes, Maddie jumped and wheeled.
Apparently if you were Logan MacKenzie, you washed yourself now.
He stood in the doorway to a side chamber, bared to the waist and dripping. He propped one shoulder against the doorway and clutched his kilt before him with his free hand.
His pose was a classic contrapposto. He looked like a renaissance David, sculpted not from cool, stoic marble but from impatient flesh.
A thin trail of dark hair drew her gaze lower.
"You're awake early," she said.
"Not really. I rose shortly after you did." He looked her up and down. One eyebrow rose in interrogation. "Are you looking for something, mo chridhe?"
"Oh. Yes. I was looking for something." She twisted the corner of her apron and said the only thing she could. "I was looking for you."
"Me."
She nodded.
His mouth quirked with pure male arrogance. "Well, then. I'm at your service. What did you want with me?"
What indeed. Maddie swallowed hard. She wanted so many things, and most of them were ridiculous. She wanted to reach up and push an errant lock of hair from his brow. To put a shirt on him before he took a chill.
If he could read her mind, he would have a good laugh.
Somehow she had to find a way to calm all these fussy, caretaking impulses. Or channel them into some other activity.
Drat. Why were there never any underfed, shivering puppies about when a girl needed them most?
"I . . . merely wanted to bid you a good journey. I assumed you'd be going to Ross-shire today."
"I'm not going to Ross-shire today."
"But you promised Grant."
"I promise Grant the same thing at least six times a day. We were there months ago, and he doesna recall it. As far as he knows, we're always going to Ross-shire tomorrow."
"Oh. Well, then. If you're not busy doing anything else this morning," she said, "perhaps we could . . . That is, I hoped the two of us might . . ."
He stared at her, expecting her to complete that sentence, and Maddie had no idea what to say. Braid each other's hair? Play hide-and-seek? Search the loch for sea monsters? What activity could the two of them possibly share? Other than the bed-related activities that were obviously on his mind--and entirely out of the question.
As she stood there dithering, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. He looked toward the corner where she'd dropped the opened knapsack.
She hopped to the side, blocking his view and giving the knapsack a discreet nudge backward with her foot.
"I thought we could visit the tenants," she said. "Together."
"Tenants?"
"There are a small group of crofters up in the valley. You're the new laird of the castle, so to speak. They will want to make your acquaintance."
To her relief, the suspicion fled his eyes. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'd like to make their acquaintance, too. That's a fine idea."
He found a fresh shirt in his bag and pulled it over his head, punching his arms through the sleeves. As he did, she made note of the bag--a black-painted canvas knapsack.
The letters had to be in there. Now that she knew, Maddie could be patient. He couldn't hover over the thing every moment of the day.
"Then it's settled," she said. "We'll walk up along the creek together. I can take them a basket of . . . something."
Maddie started to warm to the idea. Perhaps visiting the crofters was the outlet she needed. She could play with the children. There might be a new baby she could hold.
Perhaps they would even have puppies.
As soon as they came within view of the baile, a trio of terriers came running to greet them.
The dogs yipped at Madeline's skirts as they approached a cluster of some dozen thatched-roof stone cottages set along the river's edge. High on the ridge, boys watching the sheep turned and looked down to watch them instead.
From one of the distant blackhouses rose the high, thin wail of an infant.
As they neared the baile, Logan drew Maddie to his side. "Listen to me. The people here will likely be frightened when they see us."
"Frightened of you?"
"No, of you."
"Me?" she asked. "But I'm just an Englishwoman, and not a very big one at that."
"That's precisely why they'll be terrified," he said. "Have you never heard of the Countess of Sutherland?"
"Of course I've heard of her. One can't fail to hear of her. She's a fixture in London society. An accomplished painter, too. Quite elegant."
"Oh, yes. So accomplished and elegant that she's become the most ruthless landowner in all the Highlands."
"I don't believe that."
He sighed with impatience. The lass was so bloody sheltered. Everything had been handed to her on a gilt-edged tray. She had no idea how the common folk of the Highlands lived. A futile sense of anger swelled in his chest.
"The countess inherited half of Sutherland when her parents died. In the past few years, her agents have evicted village after village, forcing Scotsmen off the land by the hundreds and thousands. Stealing their farmlands to make way for sheep, burning their cottages to the ground, and offering them little in the way of compensation. Often with the assistance of the British Army."
He looked down at his redcoat with regret. He would have done better to wear a traditional great kilt today.
"Believe me, mo chridhe. The Highlands is the one place on earth where no one will underestimate the ability of a quiet-looking, gently bred Englishwoman to destroy lives."
"That's terrible."
That was vastly understating matters. "Try criminal. Shameless. Unconscionable. Any of those words would better serve."
She regarded the cluster of blackhouses. "So you're worried they'll think we're here to evict them?"
"I wouldna doubt it," he said. "Showing your face for the first time, with an officer of the Royal Highlanders at your side . . . ? They'll likely fear they're about to lose everything."
"Oh, goodness."
They were close enough now that Logan could glimpse faces in the windows of the cottages, peering out at them.
"Dinna worry," he said. "I'll assure them they've nothing to fear."
"If you say so."
A little smile curved her lips. Logan was irritated that she didn't seem to understand what he was telling her.
"At least you've brought gifts. What's in the basket?"
She rummaged through the contents. "A few sweetmeats and lozenges. Packets of raisins. But mostly it's Aunt Thea's surplus cosmetics and remedies. She sends away for every product advertised in every ladies' magazine. I like to see them put to some use."
He blinked at her. "These are your gifts?"
"Your men have depleted our stores of food, and I didn't have time to prepare anything else."
"What are they supposed to do with"--he held up a brown bottle and peered at the label--"Dr. Jacobs' Miracle Elixir?" He plucked a small jar out next. "Excelsior Blemish Cream?"
"Women are women, Logan. Every girl needs a bit of luxury and a chance to feel pretty now and then."
He passed a hand over his face. This was going to be a disaster.
"Miss Gracechurch! Miss Gracechurch!"
No sooner had Logan finished his stern warnings than the youngest occupants of the blackhouses began pouring out from their homes and rushing to meet Maddie in the lane. Soon she had children gathered around her, tugging at her skirts.
"What was that you said, Logan? That they'd be frightened of me?"
She reached into her basket and pulled out a handful of sweetmeats, distributing them into the waiting hands of the children.
"You might have mentioned that they'd know you already," he said.
"And spoil your informative lecture on the evils of the Clearances? That would have been a pity."
He shook his head. The canny minx.
"Hullo, Aileen." She crouched at the side of a gap-toothed girl who could not have been more than four or five years old. "How is your scar then, dear?"
She lifted the edge of the girl's sleeve and examined a thin red mark on her upper arm.
"Very cleanly healed. Good girl. You'll have a biscuit for that." She reached into her basket for the treat. "There, darling."
Once Aileen had run off, Logan
remarked, "That was an inoculation scar."
Maddie nodded. "I've been visiting regularly ever since I took possession of the castle. When I learned none of the children had been inoculated, I made certain to order the cowpox matter from Dr. Jenner. We performed the inoculations a month or so ago."
Damn, she just kept on surprising him. First with her beauty. Then with the illustrations. He'd been forced to accept that there was more to her character than he'd gleaned from her letters, but none of it fell too far outside the borders of his carefully mapped mental territory labeled "Madeline." She was privileged, sheltered, intelligent, curious, and far too crafty.
But this . . .
This was different.
As he watched her with the tenants' children, his conception of her pushed against its established boundaries. He was forced to add new descriptors to his list. Ones like "generous" and "responsible" and "protective." She was conquering new places in his understanding, brazenly invading territory he'd rather die than surrender.
This was all wrong. He'd come here to marry her and claim what he was owed.
He didn't want to like her--not any more than she wanted to like him.
"Not all of us English landowners aspire to the Countess of Sutherland's example," she said. "My father always adhered to strong principles of land stewardship, and inoculation is something I care about. My mother survived smallpox as a young girl. Though she recovered from the pox, her heart was weakened. I believe it was why she died young."
Logan knew, of course, that she'd lost her mother. Her father's happy remarriage had been detailed in many a letter. However, she'd never written much about the woman herself, and it hadn't occurred to him to ask.
"I was hoping this year to start a school," she said, deftly changing the subject. "Perhaps once your men finish their own cottages, they can work on building a schoolhouse."
"First they need to work on finding wives and making the children to fill it."
"That can likely be arranged. Several of the men hereabouts went to war and didn't return. More than one young woman found herself at loose ends."
Just looking around them, Logan glimpsed a few potential candidates--a cluster of lasses stood together in a doorway, whispering and giggling amongst themselves. They were quickly joined by others. Soon it seemed the entire population of the small village had come out to greet them, crowding around.
"You weren't exaggerating," he said. "They do appreciate your aunt's castoffs."
She looked up from her basket. "They're not usually this eager. That must be for you. When I . . ."