by Jackie Ivie
“That’s na’ going to be easy. He’s immense. I’ve heard tales. He’s evil. He’s frightening.”
Lisle frowned. “I ken as much,” she whispered.
“I doona’ envy you,” Angela said softly.
“I’ll just have to keep my mind on his handsomeness, and not on what it hides.” She took a deep breath. “He does have that, you know.”
“I know. I saw him.”
“Yes.” There were those shivers again. The ones she’d die before admitting to. Lisle frowned. They didn’t stop. They got stronger. She gulped. “He’s tall, he’s manly, and he’s gorgeous. Why, if this was taking place under other circumstances…” She almost got it out before her voice failed, and she just let it trail off. To do anything else would crack her composure open. That, she wasn’t going to allow. She was not going to let anyone know what Monteith was doing to her. That would be the worst indignity of a whole heap of the same ever since she’d met him.
Angela put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed slightly. Then it was gone, as she stepped back and tilted her head to one side, as if surveying their handiwork, and not like she’d just put almost more weight atop her stepmother’s shoulders than she could support and still go through with it.
“Doona’ move. I’ve got an idea,” Angela said.
“For what?” Lisle asked.
“A circlet about your head. We can fashion one from the creeping azalea that Mary brought back from the cliffs just this morn, although I’ve told her over and over not to go there. I’ll be right back.”
Lisle looked levelly across at Angela and nodded solemnly. She didn’t trust her voice.
Chapter Five
The carriage was for her, and it was empty. The interior was just as luxurious, new, and bare as the one she’d ridden in when she visited him, perhaps more so. Lisle sat on one of the tanned, leather-covered, padded seats and looked about her. She wondered how many of the carriages he owned, and if they were all reeking of newness and wealth, and wasteful expense.
She shook her head. She was going to have to teach that man the value of his gold, before he spent all of it and made the Monteith clan look even more foolish than they were already perceived to be.
The coach halted with an unprofessional movement, making her rock like the hanging lantern at the far side. The door opened. It was Aunt Fanny, Aunt Mattie, and the ghostly Aunt Grace, who looked even more insubstantial in the lamplight and faded day.
“We’ve something for you, lass,” Aunt Mattie said, after clearing her throat. “Something auld.”
“And God be with you,” Aunt Fanny whispered, stepping forward to hand her a small packet. Lisle was almost too surprised to reach down for it.
Then, they were gone, fading back into the shadows alongside the road. Lisle unwrapped her present with trembling hands to reveal a very old, chipped brooch, containing a bit of crystal at the center. She trembled with the sob, but had it under control before the coach rocked to another stop.
The coachmen were silent, but they had been that way since the first time she’d journeyed to Monteith and had a groomsman open the door for her and assist her in. This time, it was Angus MacHugh, looking sheepish, and with red-rimmed eyes that only two reasons could cause. One was too much drink; the other she didn’t want to know.
“Here, Lisle lass,” he said in his gruff voice, and shoved a bundle at the flooring before disappearing into the night faster than the aunts had. She didn’t have to look to see what it contained; the movement of the coach starting up made the bundle shift, and any remaining air in the bladders sighed out with a moan. Her hand wasn’t just trembling, it was difficult to control as she lifted the edge of the old MacHugh tartan that wrapped the bundle.
He’d given her his pipes.
Lisle sat, holding them to her breast, and letting the plaide soak up tears the MacHugh clan had just caused.
“Damn them all, anyway!” she whispered, her arms pushing further moans from the bags with the pressure she held them to her. They should have just let her go. It would have been easier.
If smitten really were a condition with emotion and meaning attached to it, he was very afraid he had it. Langston stood at the altar and watched as she walked toward him, enhancing the organ music and the reverence of the place with the slow, gliding way she was moving. She had a bundle of something wrapped in the MacHugh sett and held to her, with as much pride as a bouquet of flowers. Her head was high, making the auburn color reflect all of the candles he’d ordered and personally supervised the placement of, and there wasn’t any part of her that wasn’t ethereal, stunning, and absolutely breathtaking.
He nearly thumped himself in the chest to start up his breathing again, but settled with clearing his throat and swallowing around a strange lump that wasn’t moving anywhere.
She was very pale, mirroring the ecru shade of her gown, even to the lack of coloring of her lips. Langston swallowed again and licked his own lips, wishing he’d had Etheridge tie the mass of white satin at his throat a bit looser, since it scratched his skin with the movement and made it all somehow worse.
She reached his side and glanced up at him, startling him with the vivid contrast of those sky-blue eyes to her pallor. Then, she dropped her gaze, while a light bloom of color touched the tops of her cheeks. That was interesting, he told himself. It could be a sign that all wasn’t lost, and that the bit of something he’d seen flicker through her eyes yesterday was actually what it had appeared to be at the time—interest.
If he interested her as a man, despite everything she thought of him, there might actually be a rhyme and reason to why he was forcing the woman he was losing sleep over into doing something she deemed so patently horrible. Her lashes were dark brown, the length easily seen against her pallor. She didn’t look up to him again; not when he reached for, and received, her cold, trembling hand in his; not when he answered his vows, with a voice he had to clear his throat to find; not even when she whispered her own troth.
If he wasn’t already intrigued, he would have been then, when her chin trembled, a tear slid from the corner of one eye, and she still managed to whisper the words that were saving her family. He was so aware of her, and the strange emotion she was making him suffer, that it almost made him forget that she probably hated him.
She didn’t look like she was at that emotion at the moment. She probably wasn’t at anything other than shock. The one glimpse she’d given him showed him that. It was the same, unfathomable look she’d had when she’d first read what he wanted from her, right after her gasp of reaction. She’d dropped the missive, put her hands to her cheeks to cover them, and then spun and stomped right out of his house, without one backward glance. He didn’t even know if she’d read through what he was offering.
All of which meant less than dust to him next to how she seemed to be shying away from the moment he was waiting for, and Langston was more than a little annoyed to find he was trembling at the thought. Me? Shaking? He realized it in disbelief before putting all his effort into stopping the tremor of his own hand holding hers before she felt it.
She didn’t want to kiss him. She didn’t want to be near enough to him to touch him. Her cold hand gave him that indication as it just lay within his grasp, holding a chill to it, when he wanted to send nothing but warmth. She was going to have to kiss him, though.
The thought that he had to force it gave him little satisfaction, but the desire to feel those lips against his made it something worth risking. He was losing sleep over it, he was being plagued ceaselessly with it, he was finding it difficult to concentrate. There was only one thing to do about it. See if the reality matched the dream. He could hardly wait for the end of the ceremony, sealing her to him, and making her his for this lifetime…his wife, his partner, his mate.
They were pronounced man and wife and Langston turned his head slowly, savoring the time it would take, and holding his breath at what he’d find. He wasn’t disappointed, although she was looking
up at him with the look that went straight through him again, just like that first time. He could have been anyone, as long as it was anyone else. His eyes narrowed as he knew that’s what she was wishing for.
She had a bit of rose to her cheeks that she couldn’t disguise, and a touch of the same to her lips. She also had more tears hovering at her lashes, but not going anywhere from there.
He turned fully to face her, and she did the same motion. Langston was a large man. He always had been, although he’d been much more lean when he’d first left Scotland. He was dwarfing the vicar who had just said the words, and making the woman look like a waif next to him, rather than the flesh-and-blood goddess she was. Something sparked through the opacity she was hiding behind, startling her, and bringing even more rose to her cheeks.
Langston caught his smile before she saw it, but he couldn’t do a thing about how his heart stumbled, his breath caught, and how all of that made his hand tremble again as he reached for her chin, tilting her upward for him. He watched the lashes flutter to her cheeks as she closed her eyes. He knew she wasn’t doing it to experience it more fully; it was to shut him out.
Langston drew her closer, his arm molding about the slim waist to lift her from the floor, feeling the bundle she held as it was the first thing to touch his chest, and then his lips were at her ear, whispering words his mind hadn’t cleared. “I’ll na’ claim a kiss until you give it freely,” he said, and he could have bitten his own tongue off the moment they left his lips.
He only hoped the surprise on her face wasn’t the mirror to his own as he pulled back; seized, and then held, by sky-blue eyes that hadn’t an ounce of disinterest in them, but were full of life and shock, disgust, and confusion.
That would have to do. Langston felt the flush creeping up the side of his neck, and wished now that he’d had the cravat tied higher, to stop her from seeing it. He knew she was, too, for her eyes didn’t leave him as he set her back on her feet and started walking, holding her at arm’s length and then letting her go completely. The fact that she didn’t move away from him was the only sign she was giving him that she wasn’t going to die on the spot after all, although that was probably what she’d been wishing; that, and the way her lashes fluttered, and her cheeks went from rose to red, and then dead white again as she realized it.
He’d never seen anything as intriguing as this woman he’d just married, and he wasn’t letting her out of his sight. The prearrangement he’d made to send her to Monteith Hall in the separate carriage was tossed right out of his head. He wanted her by him, with him, eating, sleeping, and caressing him. He wanted her to learn about him, and he wasn’t going to able to give her any clue.
The walk to the carriage was excruciating, the ride was going to be worse, and there was nothing she could do about any of it. What was one supposed to say to a stranger one had just wed, giving the rights to one’s body to? Especially a stranger that wasn’t even going to force it?
He had no right to be chivalrous. How dare he do something so against character that it tossed her emotions up into a blur of confusion before giving them back to her? He was supposed to be vicious; taking, ravishing, stealing…exactly like the Sassenach had done to every woman they came across after Culloden. He was supposed to be a devil. He was supposed to have evil intent behind those eyes that looked to be so brown, they were almost black. He surely wasn’t supposed to be chivalrous.
Lisle was at his side when he reached yet another carriage, where the door was opened by two groomsmen smiling—no, they looked more like open grins, she decided—at both her and Monteith, while they waited for the couple to enter, so they could be sealed in together.
That was it, she told herself. He was waiting. He’d force her when they were alone, and no one would be there to rescue her, or even hear her screams. He’d probably ordered them to drive slowly; to give him enough time to make certain she hadn’t a bone left that wasn’t violated.
“Do you need an assist in?” he asked, at her elbow, since she had been standing there, stupidly looking at the yawning opening of the carriage like it was supposed to swallow her up without her having to expend any effort.
“I—I…uh, no,” she answered, stumbling over the words and having to look away from the humor that was starting to haunt every bit of every look he was giving her.
He stood back a step and waited while she lifted one part of her skirt with a hand, showing that her slippers were caved in at the heel, and not fully on her. It wasn’t because her feet were too big, although she suspected that was what he thought, since he had even more humor about his features the next time she dared to glance at him. It was because the linen wrapped about her blisters had made the slippers too small to wear.
If the other coaches were luxurious, there was no description for this one. Lisle stooped to get in, running her hand along red and black–patterned silk that could only have come from the Orient, meeting dark mahogany everywhere else, and trying to keep the gasp in where he couldn’t hear it. She should have known it wouldn’t succeed.
“I had it built in Edinburgh. For one occasion, and one only. Then, I’m retiring it,” he informed her, in a bored-sounding voice.
“Good Lord, why?” she asked, before she could stop herself. Then, she busied herself with putting the pipes reverently at her side, arranging her skirts about her ankles, and taking up as much of her side of the coach as she could, so he wouldn’t even think about sitting next to her.
He looked like he’d known what she was about, too. He entered, the carriage rocking slightly with his weight, which, from the stolen glimpses she was still trying to keep him from seeing, looked to be considerable. She couldn’t imagine where he’d gained such an amount of bulk to his frame. From all she’d heard, he didn’t do a thing, except spend gold.
“For posterity,” he replied, with the same bored tone that hadn’t a hint of depth, sense, or reason to it.
Lisle glanced at him again. He wasn’t looking at her. He was settling himself on the opposite bench, opening the buttons on his black coat, and then pulling a bit at the white material he’d swathed all about his throat. She couldn’t stop the smile.
“Something amuses you?” he asked.
“What is that for?” She pointed.
“It’s called a cravat. Menswear. For formal dress occasions. This being one of them.”
“A cravat,” she replied, without inflection.
“I decided that if we have to dress in the English fashion, I may as well adopt some of their ways. You doona’ like it?”
“It looks like a bundling of scarf, in the event of cold weather.”
“My valets will be crushed,” he replied.
“Valets?” she asked.
“Personal servants. I have a score of them. Very observant chaps, very conscientious in their duties, very precise. According to Etheridge, this is the height of fashion in London.”
“Oh.” It was all she could think of to say. The height of fashion in London? she repeated to herself.
“I’m na’ very fond of it, but one must play by the rules one is given, nae?”
“If you’re asking about living under Sassenach rule, and liking it, you’re asking the wrong person,” she replied, using the exact same, bored tone of voice he was.
“That’s distressing,” he replied.
“That’s not the most distressing part, let me assure you,” she continued.
“It’s not?” he asked, almost jovially. At least, it looked like he had even more humor to his features when she looked up. It was muted the moment their glances touched, until it became almost a frown.
“I’ll not be made fun of,” Lisle announced.
“I’d never allow such a thing to occur.”
“Good. Then we’ll start this marriage by discussing your spendthrift habits and the cessation of them.”
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“You. Spendthrift. It’s a word attached to your name…our name, more oft’ tha
n necessary. Nae one likes a neighbor with more gold than they have. It’s making enemies of us.”
“Do tell,” he responded and quirked one of his eyebrows.
“Someone should have told you sooner. The more you toss gold about, the more contempt you’re held in. I doona’ like it.”
“So?” he asked.
“You’d best not mean what it sounds like you mean with that tone, my lord.”
“Oh, please. Call me Langston,” he replied, smoothly and easily. Almost too smoothly and easily, she was thinking.
“Langston?” she asked.
“It is my given name.”
Lisle giggled.
“I’ve not received that response a-fore. Tell me. What is it about my name that amuses you so?”
“Langston and Lisle,” she replied, dropping her tongue on the beginning consonant so it rolled. “You doona’ find it funny?”
“Nae,” he replied, and the word hadn’t a bit of amusement or humor attached anywhere to it.
“Well, I won’t allow any child of ours to have a name beginning with an L, then,” Lisle continued. “We’ll be worse than laughingstocks.”
The sigh that came from his side of the coach must have been his reply, for he didn’t say anything for long enough that she had to fill in the gap. “Is that your acquiescence?” she asked.
“You’ve been formally schooled,” he replied evenly…too evenly. The lamplight was swaying slightly, highlighting him and then moving away, so she couldn’t tell why he sounded so different.
“Of course. Ellwood MacHugh dinna’ betroth just any lass,” she said to that, lifting her chin slightly, so he could tell his insult had been taken and replied to.
“Perhaps we’d be better off partaking of wine.” He was speaking, but it didn’t sound like his self-assured, bored voice, nor did it sound like any voice he’d used before. It sounded young, and in a higher pitch than before. She wondered why.
“Wine?” Lisle asked.
“What wedding coach comes complete without wine?” he replied.