by Tessa Dare
Her voice trailed off. When Logan turned to look at her, he could see she'd grown still. He recognized that pale, disconnected expression on her face. It was the same look she'd worn at their wedding.
She'd called it shyness, but to Logan, it looked rather like shock. He'd seen it in soldiers, particularly the ones who'd survived the ugliest of battles. Their eyes stared for miles, and their minds seemed to be somewhere far away.
"Maddie?"
She shook herself.
"This is Captain MacKenzie," she told the women, pushing the basket into Logan's hand and backing away. "He's going to distribute the gifts today."
"Wait," he said. "You mean to just leave me here with all this . . ." He fished a small tin out of the basket. " . . . rose-hip beautification balm?"
"I've just remembered a woman down the lane who's entered her confinement. I meant to look in on her."
"It can wait until you've finished here."
She shook her head, and then she was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Maddie hastened away, ducking behind a long, narrow stone cottage with a sloping thatched roof.
Once alone, she wrapped her arms around her middle, hugging herself tight. Her teeth chattered, and her skin prickled all over.
She felt a touch guilty for leaving Logan on his own, and under false pretenses. There wasn't any woman who'd entered her confinement in this humble village. Not that Maddie knew of, at any rate. But she found a ewe nursing a pair of lambs in the stone enclosure behind the cottage, and she decided that made her honest enough.
When the crowd had closed around her, the cold had closed in, too. She'd known she had to get away, and the truth never made a useful excuse.
Over the course of her life, she'd learned this lesson over and over again. If she begged to be released from a social obligation on the grounds that she was simply too shy, her family and friends never took her at her word. They insisted she only needed to give it a chance. They wheedled and nudged, telling her of all the fun she would have. This time, they promised, it would be different.
It was never different.
Maddie had long ago accepted the truth. The same occasions that brought joy and merriment to others were torture for her. And no one would ever understand.
Once she'd recovered her composure, she walked back to the cottage's corner and peeked around it to observe.
The women were still crowded around Logan and his basket of beauty supplies. They tapped the bottles he offered and peered into jars of cream, talking and giggling amongst themselves. He uncorked a bottle of eau de toilette and held it out for a young woman with coppery hair to sample the aroma.
After taking a cautious sniff, the young woman laughed and smiled. A wash of pink touched her freckled cheeks. Maddie suspected it had nothing to do with the bottled scent and everything to do with its handsome purveyor.
Goodness, he looked fine today. The morning sunlight brought out the ginger highlights in his hair and turned his skin a warm bronze. The air about him was one of command and ease. He was in his element. He'd likely been raised in a baile much like this. He knew just how to greet each of the cottagers who came forward, from the oldest grandmother to a curious youth who came down from the grazing slopes.
When she could see that Logan's basket was emptied and the women had begun returning to their cottages with their new treasures, Maddie emerged from her hiding place. They bid their farewells to the dogs and children and began the walk back.
Logan didn't seem happy with her. "That was quite a trick you played, abandoning me to play tinker with the lasses."
"I don't think it was my gifts that those lasses were interested in. I think they were more curious about you."
"I would have done better to walk out to the fields and have a talk with the men."
"I suppose that would have been more lairdly, you mean."
He made a dismissive noise. "It's not being lairdly. It's doing my duty. Getting to know the neighbors. Letting them know they needn't worry about their future." He slid her an assessing look. "Speaking of worries, what happened back there?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"I think you do. When the women surrounded you, it was like you went away somewhere else. Or pulled inside yourself somehow. You weren't there. I noticed the same during our wedding."
She bit her lip. "Do you think the women noticed?"
"I canna say. But I noticed."
She looked into the distance. "I've told you. I'm shy."
"That seemed like something more than shyness to me."
She shook her head. She was used to her family and friends not understanding. But it was a new low when even her imaginary sweetheart refused to accept the truth.
"I'm timid in groups, that's all. I always have been. And I hate that it sometimes makes people feel I'm not interested, but I don't know what else I can do."
"Dinna worry. You'll have a chance to make a good impression on Beltane."
"Beltane?"
"The first of May. It's a traditional Highland celebration, reaching back to the pagan times."
"I've heard of it," she said. "But I'm not sure why I'd be making an impression on that day."
"I've invited them to the castle and asked the lasses to spread the word. We'll extend the invitation to anyone living in the area."
"You're having a party, then?"
"It would be more accurate to say that you are having a party. The lady of the castle is the hostess, is she not?"
Maddie's steps grew agitated, and she nearly stumbled over a rock. "The first of May is barely a fortnight from now. That isn't enough time to prepare the castle. Or, for that matter, to prepare myself. I've never hosted anything."
"These people need a connection to the traditional ways," he said. "A celebration to look forward to. And they need to know that the land is in good hands. It's important that they see us working together."
"I just wish you'd asked me first."
"I might have asked. But I was decided on inviting them no matter your answer."
"Well. How very commanding of you."
"I'm not accustomed to making decisions by committee, mo chridhe. For mild-mannered discussion, you should have posted your letters to some cleric from Hertfordshire. If you didna want a Highland officer, you shouldna have wished for one."
Shouldna, couldna, wouldna.
"Silly me. I dreamed big."
He gave her a sly grin. "And you got it."
The lewd implication in his statement made her blush.
"Can we please discuss the fact that we are egregiously mismatched?" she asked. "Two days in, and our marriage is already a disaster. I keep thinking there must be some other solution. If you will not accept a lease . . . perhaps I could sell some of the land to you."
He snorted. "Sell it to me for what? Do I look like a wealthy man?"
"You're an officer. Or you were. Your commission must have been worth a significant amount."
"I attained that rank through a field promotion. My captaincy wasn't worth the same as a gentleman's. It gives me and the lads enough to start on, but that's all."
"Oh. Well, that's too bad."
"If I had the gold to purchase land outright, I would have done that on my own. It would have been a great deal easier."
Maddie didn't know how to take that statement. Was she supposed to believe he'd been driven to this dishonorable act--forcing her into marriage--out of honorable motives? Or was she supposed to feel like she was his second choice?
She fingered the brooch affixed to her tartan sash.
Well, there was her answer.
She was his second choice.
"Say I'd never written a single letter," she said, her voice softening. "Say your men didn't need any help. What would you have wanted for yourself, Logan? A home, a wife, a family? A trade, or a farm . . . ? What did you dream about?"
"I dreamed of nothing."
"You can't say nothing. Surely you must have--"
&n
bsp; "No." His tone was curt. "Lass, I never dream at all."
Damn.
Logan hadn't intended to say that. It wasn't something he talked about often. In point of fact, it probably wasn't something he'd spoken of to another soul, ever. He knew it marked him as strange.
But he'd spoken of it now, for some daft reason.
She stopped in the middle of the path and turned to him, searching him with those clever, dark eyes that had the power to see not only what was there but also what wasn't.
"I don't believe you," she said. "Everyone has dreams."
"Not me." He shrugged. "When I close my eyes at night, there's naught but darkness behind them. Just emptiness until I wake."
It was Logan's greatest fear--the thought that had likely preserved him through many a battle and campaign--that when it came for him, death would be nothing but an endless night. He'd be a shivering boy again, caught alone in the empty darkness.
Forever.
"But last night, you--"
"Last night I what?"
She pressed her lips together. "Nothing. It's just so strange. I've never known someone who didn't dream at all."
"Never developed the talent, I suppose. I was an orphan with nothing. What use would dreaming be? I wouldna have known what to dream about, even if I'd tried."
"Surely it's not too late to learn." She reached out to brush a bit of fluff from his sleeve. As if she wanted to touch him but had thought better of it. "You don't have to be trapped in a marriage to me. Not if you don't want it."
He pulled her to him, roughly. Letting her feel his body pressed against hers. "I dinna think you can doubt what I want."
"Yes, but there's wanting, and then there's wanting. The desire of your body might not be the desire of your soul."
He made a dismissive noise. What soul?
"This life you're so determined to create for your friends and the tenants--a cottage, crops in the ground, cows at pasture . . ." She touched the front of his shirt, somewhere close to his pounding heart. "A bonny Scots lass to welcome you home from the fields every evening, keep you warm at night, give you bairns . . . Maybe you want that for them so badly because it's what you really want, too."
He pushed the idea away. "You're the one with an excess of imagination. And I must say, it hasna made your life much better, has it?"
"Perhaps not."
"It doesna matter what I want. Much less what I dream about. My soul has no say in the matter. None of this has anything to do with me. I came here to marry you because it's what the men need. I'm taking one for the clan."
She flinched at his words.
He knew at once he'd hurt her.
And it didn't feel nearly as satisfying as he'd hoped it would. It made him feel rather small, actually. Like a boy caught winging rocks at songbirds.
She exhaled slowly, then nodded. "Thank you for that. After watching you with the tenants, I was in far too much danger of liking you."
As she strode away from him, the feisty swing in her gait beckoned him to follow.
"You did want a new reason to despise me, after all. I'm just trying to oblige."
"You're doing a fine job of it, too."
"So you're upset with me."
"Yes."
"Insulted. Angry. Irritated."
"All three."
"Excellent."
He caught her arm and pulled her to face him, letting his gaze wander over the flushed skin at her throat and the rise and fall of her corseted breasts. An attractive spark of defiance lit her dark, secret eyes.
"Then our next stop is the bedroom, mo chridhe. You should be ready to make this marriage real."
Chapter Twelve
Oh, no.
Maddie immediately rued her foolish words.
"Don't be absurd," she said.
"I willna be absurd. I mean to be incendiary."
Maddie wished she could think of a tart, sophisticated reply to set him in his place and get herself out of this. But the brisk wind whipping at her skirts seemed to have stolen her wits, as well.
So in lieu of a sophisticated reply, she made a juvenile one.
She stammered nonsense for a moment, then panicked and fled.
The winding path back to the castle was suddenly much too long. Maddie needed to be home at once. Home in her bed, inside a cozy tent of pillows and blankets.
With Logan safely on the other side of the bolted door.
Lifting her hem, she left the footpath and began a route straight overland, walking as fast as the muddy ground would allow her.
"Don't walk that way," he called after her.
She ignored him.
I will walk where and how I please, thank you. I'm not one of your foot soldiers. You do not command me.
"Ack."
Maddie nearly tripped over her own hem. She looked down. In her haste to prove her independence, she'd independently taken a grave misstep. The entirety of her half boot had disappeared into black, fibrous mud.
When she tried to pull it loose, her other leg immediately sank, too--all the way up to her knee. What was this muck? It acted like quicksand, drawing her further and further down.
"Logan?" she called. "Logan, please come at once. I can't move my feet."
He stood a few feet to the side and surveyed her situation. "You've stepped in a bog. Happens all the time."
"So it's happened to you?"
"Och, no. I'm not that stupid."
Of course not, Maddie thought bitterly. Of course this would only happen to her.
"But I have unmired many a cow and sheep," he continued.
"Wonderful. If you'd just be so kind as to unmire me. Quickly?"
A hint of amusement gleamed in his eyes. That look told her something terrible.
He was going to help her, but he was going to enjoy every minute of this first.
Maddie twisted and pried at her leg, to no avail. It was well and truly stuck, and her heart was rabbiting about her chest.
He clucked his tongue. "The first rule of bogs: dinna panic."
"What's the second rule of bogs? I think we should just skip to that."
"No thrashing about," he said. "You'll fatigue yourself. Just be calm and wait for your body to reach its equilibrium."
Easy for him to say.
She tried to reach for something, anything, to grab onto. Her hands caught only air and loose grass. The bog tightened its grip, swallowing her hips.
"Logan," she cried. "Logan, it's getting worse."
"That's because you're struggling."
"Of course I'm struggling! I am being swallowed alive. And you're just standing there."
He crouched to her eye level. "You'll be fine. Most bogs are no more than waist deep."
"Most bogs," she repeated. "So some bogs are deeper."
"Almost no one dies of miring."
"Almost no one? If you're trying to reassure me, you're going about it all wrong."
"Relax," he said. "The ones who do perish, they die of the exposure or thirst. Not because they're sucked under."
"So you're saying . . ."
"You'll be fine. We'll build a little roof over your head and bring you bannocks twice a day. You can live here quite happily for years."
Maddie clenched her jaw to keep from smiling or laughing. Every time she made up her mind to despise him, he showed a flare of that disarming humor. She refused to reward him for it.
"Not to worry," he said. "It takes hours for the weight of the peat to cut off circulation to your limbs."
She groaned in despair as she sank further still. The peat and mud sucked at her legs, pulling her waist-deep in muck.
She was truly beginning to panic. Landing knee-deep in a bog was a funny situation, even she would admit--for a minute. Maybe two. But immobilized in freezing, waist-deep mud with the distinct possibility of never working herself free?
This was not her idea of a pleasant afternoon. Especially when it seemed likely to become her final afternoon.
She cast him a beseeching look.
He looked at the mud. "If I pull you free, will you promise to bed me for my pains?"
"Here's what I'll promise, Logan MacKenzie. If you don't get me free, I will come back from the grave and haunt you. Relentlessly."
"For a timid English bluestocking, you can be quite fierce when you choose to be. I rather like it."
She hugged herself to keep her hands out of the creeping mud. "Logan, please. I beg you, stop teasing and get me out of this. I'm cold. And I'm frightened."
"Look at me."
She looked at him.
His gaze held hers, blue and unwavering. All teasing went out of his voice. "I'm not leaving you. Ten years in the British Army, and I've never left a man behind. I'm not leaving you. I'll have you out of this. Understand?"
She nodded. She was beginning to comprehend why his soldiers would follow him anywhere, and why the tenants trusted him on sight. When Logan MacKenzie took a soul under his protection, he would die before he let them suffer harm.
Maddie's wasn't a soul under his protection, not truly. He meant to use her for her lands, plain and simple. But at least she had the comfort of this knowledge: He couldn't leave her here.
So long as their marriage remained unconsummated, she was of no use to him dead.
"First, draw a good breath," he told her. "In and then out. Slowly."
"I don't want to waste time with breathing. Can't you just pull me out of this?"
"Breathe," he repeated.
It would seem he wouldn't help her until she obeyed him. She closed her eyes, drew a breath, then released it.
"That's it, again. More slowly this time. And again, until you've calmed."
Those half dozen slow, forced breaths were the most torturous moments of her life. But at the end of them, she did feel somewhat improved. Her rioting heartbeat had calmed to a slightly less deafening clamor.
"When you're ready," he said, "you can begin to move back and forth."
"How?"
"Just rock to and fro. As if you're dancing."
"Oh, Lord. That's it. I'll die here. I don't know how to dance."
He chuckled. "Lass, the bog doesna know that."
She did as he directed, swaying back and forth. She felt like a clock's pendulum moving in treacle. At first, she could only move an inch or two to either side, but after a few minutes' effort, she could manage a reasonable sway.