by Arnette Lamb
“No. You promised to keep your lusty proclivities on a short leash.”
A devilish smile enhanced his dark good looks. He bent from the waist, his shoulder-length black hair grazing his cheek. “What length leash would suit you?”
He was saying one thing and meaning something else. She didn’t know him well enough to understand either. For some reason she looked at the door where the woman had been, then at the door before her. “I’m not sure. Perhaps a furlong.”
He chuckled. “I could make a bit of mischief and more with so mighty a leash.”
Feeling out of her depth, she took the offensive. “Making mischief always was your strong suit.”
“Just as teaching me to kiss was yours.”
Outrage barreled through her. “That’s hogwash, Malcolm Kerr. Every time I saw you, you tried to paste your sloppy lips on me!”
Calmly he said, “You started it.”
“I did not!”
“Aye, you did.” Leaning against the door, he folded his arms over his chest. “’Twas Adrienne’s birthday party. You were five. I was six. You’d seen her kissing Charles and talked me into trying it with you. I liked it and tried to recapture the experience numerous times.”
His recollection reminded her that they’d once been friends. But not for long. “According to rumor, you’ve made a vocation of kissing any woman who’ll let you.”
A rakish grin gave credence to his vile reputation. “Just don’t forget ’twas you who lured me onto the path of sin.”
Delivered with quiet intensity, the sermonlike words made her laugh. “Go ahead, Malcolm. Condemn me for your ill-gotten fame. Just remember. Only one of us enjoys sloppy kisses.”
All his humor vanished. “No man has ever made you feel desire?”
No man had bothered to come close enough, she almost yelled. Her experience with kissing had begun and ended with Malcolm Kerr. The confession sounded so pitiful she wanted to cry. His concern seemed so earnest she looked away. “Is this my room?”
“Alpin …” he entreated softly. “You’re dissembling.”
Putting as much scorn into her voice as she could muster, she said, “Oh, please, Malcolm. Unlike you, I don’t reveal the details of my affairs or flaunt them before strangers.”
He pushed open the door. “Of course. How indiscreet of me, a stranger, to ask.”
She glided past him. “Indiscretion. Another of your sterling qualities.”
“Why do I doubt you’re as prim and proper as you let on?”
Even with her back to him, she felt his keen gaze and had the strangest notion that she had unwittingly challenged him. The possibility gave her pause. At length she faced him and said, “Because you wouldn’t know prim-and-proper if it crawled into your sporran.”
His eyes narrowed and he looked into his chieftain’s pouch. “Prim-and-proper would never crawl in here.”
Aghast, she said, “I should slap you.”
“But you won’t. Make yourself at home, Alpin. Should you decide about the length of that leash, I’ll be in my study.”
More annoyed with herself than with him, Alpin stifled the urge to slam the door in his face. Putting on a sweet smile, she closed the door. Her suite contained a sitting room, a bedchamber and privy, and a smaller room for her maid.
She walked to the open windows and sighed with relief.
Moments after her arrival she’d feared Malcolm might send her away. Through careful maneuvering she’d ensconced herself in his household and found living proof of his scandalous reputation. Lucky for her and her cause, he’d be so preoccupied with his lusty proclivities and his gorgeous mistress that Alpin would be free to put into motion the next step in her plan.
She gazed down on the castle yard and smiled. A gape-mouthed Alexander helped Alpin’s maid from the carriage. Battle-hardened soldiers, laundry maids, and even the children of Kildalton stared in disbelief at Elanna.
His mind a muddle of conflicting thoughts, Malcolm stared at the bar of sunlight seeping beneath the door to Alpin’s room.
Alpin’s room. In my own castle.
Having her here meant he could make her life miserable on a daily basis. He could avenge the stinging blow she’d dealt him so long ago. The prospect should have made him smile. But the moment their conversation had turned to the innocent, fumbling kisses they’d shared as children, he’d sensed a vulnerability in her. Did she pine for an island beau or had she been truthful when she claimed to have had affairs?
He tried to picture her writhing naked with a man, the nipples of her luscious breasts standing at pert attention, the lavender of her eyes darkening with desire. But he realized he knew little about the woman she’d become, wouldn’t know the truth from a lie on her lips. In his occasional letters Charles had seldom mentioned her, the grief-stricken widower had been consumed by the loss of his wife.
He put aside his confusion; now that she belonged to him he had all the time he needed to learn about Alpin MacKay.
He remembered her shock at seeing the nearly nude Rosina standing in the open doorway of his bedchamber. Petulant and eager to return to her native Italy, Rosina had taken her anger out on his staff.
His patience grew thin. Same as his mistresses before her, Rosina was supposed to have stayed at Carvoran Manor, his estate near Hadrian’s Wall. But the moment his father and Lady Miriam had left for Constantinople, Rosina had moved into Kildalton. He usually shared this castle with his parents and his younger half sisters; he simply didn’t want Rosina intruding on his privacy or influencing his impressionable siblings.
Rosina was an accommodating and inventive bedmate, and she served a necessary role in the current political problems, but as a constant companion she bored him to tears and disrupted his household. Eager to lessen the complications of his life by one, he went to his bedchamber.
He found her lounging naked on his bed, practicing one of her more seductive moves. She trailed a long tapered fingernail from her thigh to her navel.
Smiling, she stretched her arms over her head. Holding the submissive pose, she purred, “Come back to bed, my lord. I find I like it here.”
The old hunger roiled in his gut and lower.
He stared at her navel and the webwork of tiny lines, a memento of the stillborn child she’d borne her former lover. She’d bear no bastards for Malcolm. Alpin MacKay had seen to that.
He walked to the bed and sat, the mattress shifting beneath his weight. The heady smells of the past night’s lovemaking blended with her signature scent: roses. She even tasted like freshly crushed petals. “As much as I would enjoy whiling away the day, I cannot.”
Rolling to her side, she bent one knee, giving him an unobstructed view of her femininity. “You’re angry with me because I dismissed the housekeeper yesterday.”
He was angry, but taking her to task always proved futile.
“Only a fool would call my mood angry, Rosina, especially after the dessert you fed me last night.”
She cuddled her cheek against her shoulder. “You kept me awake until dawn.” Her hand dipped lower. “But I’m rested now.”
Temptation dragged at him. He had assizes to conduct. Judgments could wait until tomorrow. Saladin could return today. If so, Malcolm could hear the report at supper. Alpin would be at the table. Alpin.
Rosina reached for his hand. “You’ll find another housekeeper,” she said without a trace of an accent.
She struck a nerve, but the argument was old and unwinnable. Rosina wouldn’t lift a finger. “I could use your help these days.”
She huffed and indignantly challenged, “Do you want a mistress, a clerk, or a housekeeper, my lord?”
He almost confessed that he wanted all three—and more. But he knew well the difference between dreams and reality.
“What I want, Rosina, is for you to return to Carvoran Manor. Alexander will take you there.”
Anger flared in her eyes. “I think I shall return to that rustic hunting lodge you call a manor
.” She jumped from the bed and strolled naked across the room. When she reached the washstand, she picked up the water pitcher and shook it. “This is empty. There are no clean towels, and that lazy Dora hasn’t brought me anything to eat.”
With no housekeeper, Malcolm needed someone to take the staff in hand. With Alpin MacKay here—He stopped the thought. A solution blazed in his mind.
Rising from the bed, he walked to the door. “I’ll tell Alexander to saddle your horse. You’ll have to pack yourself.”
Rosina stared, her shoulders slumped. “You’re truly sending me away?”
“Aye.” He opened the door.
“What about the messages Saladin brings from the north?”
“I’ll bring them to you, as always.”
Cupping her hands beneath her breasts as if offering them to him, she said, “Will I see you before then?”
Under normal circumstances he would have taken her in his arms. Instead, he lied. “Of course. You’re too beautiful to leave to your own devices.”
“Devices?” she hissed.
He stepped into the hall and pulled the door closed just as the pitcher crashed against it.
Alexander stood at the top of the stairs. “The lass is in a temper.”
“She’ll get over it. Take her back to Carvoran Manor, and send her a bolt of blue China silk and a case of sherry.”
Alexander toyed with a carved thistle that decorated the wooden banister. “Aye, my lord, but there’s something you ought to know….”
Past surprises and short on patience, Malcolm again lamented the absence of Mrs. Elliott. At least he could depend on her. “What is it, Alexander? And if you tell me the men are complaining because the neeps ’n’ tatties were cold or the mutton tough, I’ll put them to clearing fields.”
That brought a smile to the soldier’s face. Standing straighter, he hooked his thumbs in the belt that secured his kilt. “’Tis Lady Alpin’s maid. She’s … ah … not what you’d expect.”
A commotion sounded on the stairs. Malcolm walked to the landing, but stopped in his tracks.
Gliding up the stairs was the most unusual woman he’d ever seen on Scottish soil. Standing as tall as Alexander, the maid wore a gathered skirt and full-sleeved tapered bodice of cotton batiste dyed yellow with bold slashes of red and blue. A matching turban covered most of her black hair. Atop the turban she carried a small barrel.
On the landing, she curtsied and inclined her head, her swanlike neck making the simple gesture of obeisance an exercise in grace. So keen was her balance, the keg barely moved.
Stupefied, Malcolm studied her ebony skin and deep brown eyes, his mind awash with thoughts of his friend Saladin. What would the Moor say when he returned to find a nubile African woman in Kildalton Castle?
Considering the chaos his own life had become, the answer made Malcolm smile. “You are Elanna, I believe.”
“Betcha that. The gods, they sing happy, happy song on the day I was born.”
Her speech contained a number of accents; beneath the musical quality of her Barbadian English, he heard a clipped, guttural sound. “I hope you aren’t homesick for Barbados.”
“I am Ashanti,” she said, lifting her chin. Then she held out the barrel. “I make you a gift of the water of Barbados.”
Alexander intercepted the barrel, tucking it under his arm as if it were a sack of wheat.
“You were born in Africa?”
She stood as still as a statue. “Same as many Ashanti girl children, I was stolen from my people. In Barbados market, Bimshire Charles bought me from a slave trader.”
Fascinated by her innate pride, Malcolm said, “What is Bimshire?”
“Bajan name for Englishman.”
“Bajan is the language of Barbados?”
“You plenty smart white man.”
According to Charles, Alpin had badly botched the matter of freeing the slaves at Paradise Plantation five years ago. Since she obviously owned this woman, Malcolm read the worst into the vagary. Alpin had been disloyal.
Thinking of the number of women in his household, he decided to put aside his curiosity over Alpin and Elanna until Rosina was gone. “You’ll find your mistress at the end of the hall.”
He motioned toward Alpin’s room, then made his way to the solitude of his study. Saladin would return to find a woman of his own race at Kildalton. One look at her and the chaste Moor would lose his heart.
Grateful that he would never fall prey to love, Malcolm eased into his favorite chair. His thoughts strayed to his favorite pastime: the domination of Alpin MacKay.
Alpin hung the last of her dresses in the wardrobe, her attention focused on the back panel of the clothes closet. She rapped lightly with her knuckles until the sound rang hollow. Then she searched for the latch that would open the door to one of the many hidden tunnels in Kildalton Castle. Her fingers touched metal. Applauding herself, she slid the panel aside and peered into darkness. The musty smell brought back memories of her childhood.
“Why you always call that Lord Malcolm a sniveling cur?” demanded Elanna. “He’s a mighty pretty man.”
Shelving thoughts of her lonely past, Alpin closed the panel and turned to her friend. “His looks don’t change what he is. A scoundrel.”
“Betcha that.” Elanna leaned over the bed and peered up at the canopy. “Nice needleworking here. You tell me what he was like before the mischief gods took his soul.”
Objectivity didn’t come easy to Alpin, especially where Malcolm was concerned. But her friend deserved an honest answer. “He was actually a sweet lad who hated his name.”
Elanna paused in her inspection of the mattress. “What does ‘Malcolm’ mean?”
“He’s named for a former king of Scotland.”
She sat on the feather tick. “You said Alpin was also the name of a Scottish king. This is true, too?”
“Yes. We were both named for rulers of this land.”
Elanna shook her head. “Fancify that.”
“’Tis the only thing we have in common. And as a child, Malcolm refused to answer to his name.”
“What did they call him?”
“A different name for every day of the week. He would read about famous men in history—kings or philosophers, warriors or monks. Then he would choose one and become that man for the day—even down to his clothes.”
Picking up her leather case, Elanna put it on the bed and opened the latch. “You mean fancy pants and curly white wigs?”
Alpin remembered the day he’d pretended to be Charles I. Refusing a wig, Malcolm had worn a paper crown. At the time she’d run away from Sinclair Manor and was living in secret in the tower room. No one suspected her presence at Kildalton, because she ventured out of the secret tunnels only at night. “No. I don’t recall him ever wearing a wig. He once chose Caesar, though. You should have seen him wrapped in a sheet and wearing a crown of rowan leaves.”
Elanna tossed sacks of herbs onto the bed. “You sing happy, happy song about those times.”
“Yes. I liked him,” she said, and meant it, now that she knew he wasn’t the one who had told her uncle where she was hiding years before. “But that was long ago. Now he’s a greedy, self-serving wretch.”
Waving a bundle of dried sticks, Elanna said, “You could dose him with my squat-in-the-bushes tea.”
Alpin laughed. Elanna had an herbal concoction for everything from a broken heart to a wandering eye. “Perhaps I will.” Then an idea struck her, a way to secure Malcolm’s trust and her future.
She walked to the bed. “Did you bring the ingredients for your come-to-me sauce?”
Elanna’s dark eyes glittered with interest. “Betcha that. I brought plenty.” Then her excitement faded. “It’s no good without fresh figs or mangoes to hide the bitter taste. I only brought dried fruit.”
“Will berries do?”
Elanna shrugged. “Maybe so. We could make a juice.”
An aphrodisiac for Malcolm would suit Alpin’
s plans.
Chapter 3
Malcolm sat in his study, the now cold midday meal before him on a tray. He sawed at the braised rabbit, but no matter how small he cut the pieces, the meat was still too tough to chew. The brown bread would have been a welcome change, but only to a sailor six months at sea.
Giving up on the hare, he stuck his fork into a glob of what could have been perfectly cooked pearl barley or horribly overdone peas. He braved a taste and discovered barley with too little onion and too much salt and nutmeg. Nutmeg! His tongue grew quills.
Reaching for a mug of beer, he washed down the lumpy mess and cursed Rosina for running off another housekeeper. His stomach growled. At the rate he was eating, he might as well share Saladin’s Muslim fare. But a diet of nuts, berries, vegetables, and rice did little to quell his hunger.
He’d have traded his herd of fat Spanish cattle for a banquet of roast suckling pig, baked quinces, potatoes with parsley and butter, crusty bread, and a trifle big enough to fill a bucket. For that he’d have to wait until his parents and Mrs. Elliott returned. His mouth watering in vain, he slammed down the mug, pushed away from the table, and began to pace the study.
Like his father, grandfather, and all the previous earls of Kildalton, he conducted the commerce of his kingdom from this room. On Malcolm’s twenty-first birthday, his father, now the marquess of Lothian, had abdicated his lesser titles, then retired to a life of diplomacy and making his marchioness happy.
As a lad, Malcolm had basked in the glow of his father’s and his stepmother’s love. By example, they’d shown him the closeness a man and a woman could share, the mutual respect, the ability to forgive and forget. Alpin had cheated him of the chance to have a family of his own. He was destined to be a bachelor forever.
Even so, as a youth, Malcolm had prowled the better drawing rooms of Edinburgh, London, and Paris on a futile search for a woman and helpmate of his own to love. But when none of his mistresses conceived, he faced the grim truth that he would never wed. Only dishonesty would gain him a bride. He could not live with that bit of fraud.