Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 01]
Page 5
His smile turned wicked and something akin to amusement gleamed in the depths of his deep brown eyes. But then all traces of merriment faded and his expression grew cold, hard, and angry. “Aye, I could pleasure you,” he said. “If I was wont to . . . which I am not.”
Isolde swallowed hard. Embarrassment dampened her palms, and mortification rode hard on her shoulders, while her heart threatened to gallop out of all restraint and bounds.
“Your being here has naught to do with pleasure,” she snapped, amazed the words hadn’t stuck to her tongue.
Donall the Bold merely arched a brow.
Heat crept up Isolde’s neck. “I would have words with you.”
“Words that make you blush?” His lips curved in another cold smile.
A knowing smile.
He knew what she wanted of him.
He knew and was making sport of her.
“Private words of great import.” She met his mocking gaze with another interpretation of her da’s laird’s look.
“I can scarce wait to hear them.” One corner of Donall the Bold’s lips quirked with what she hoped wasn’t amusement.
“I’ve ordered a repast brought up,” she blurted, hoping to steer the conversation in a different direction.
Anywhere but into the realm of what must happen between them.
What had to happen, and would, if ever she could embolden herself to seduce him.
Not yet ready to be so daring, she wet her lips and hoped the layers of her chemise and skirt concealed her trembling knees. “I’ve also arranged to have raiment fetched for you.”
“You are full kind,” he said.
Isolde knew he did not mean a word.
Hoping the meager light from the hearth’s low-burning fire and the chamber’s two hanging cresset lamps was too poor to reveal her discomfiture, she smoothed the folds of her gown. “Further, if you prove less . . . less slanderous of my person than you were earlier, and if I see no cause to be fearful in your presence, I shall see you unchained.”
“So you are brave as well as kind.” A half smile played at the corners of his mouth, but it was clearly another of his mocking smiles.
Definitely not a sincere one.
“I’ve no need to be overly courageous. Two of my best warriors guard the door.” She declined to mention they now stood a goodly distance away, well out of decent hearing range.
“My guardsmen are well armed,” she declared, fighting the unsettling impression he found her words . . . amusing. “Harm me and they will be upon you in a heartbeat. Let loose more of your slurs—”
“My slurs?”
Irritated more by his arching brow than his sarcastic tone, Isolde crossed the room to a row of tall, arch-topped windows. Cut into the thickness of the wall, the windows were the room’s best feature and, in fine weather, provided sweeping views of the neighboring isles.
But they were shuttered now, not that it mattered. The storm raging beyond them suited her mood. And it was far more prudent to stare at the neutrality of closed shutters than to turn around and face him.
Him, and the heavily curtained bed looming so close behind him.
“To what slurs do you refer, lady?” Again, his tone held a trace of amusement.
Plague take the man!
Isolde whirled around, her patience flown straight through the shutter slats. “ ‘May your manhood wither and fall off,’ ” she quoted, not caring if she sounded like a fishwife. “ ‘You’d sooner—’ ”
“ ‘Sooner plunge my staff into a she-goat,’ ” he finished for her, a slow smile spreading across his handsome face.
A smile so cold it chilled her to the marrow of her bones. His glance lighted briefly on the iron band around his ankle and the length of chain binding him to her bed. “Pray tell me, fair one, what man with blood in his veins would not protest at such confinement?”
His words sliced away the last threads of her fast-dwindling composure and the knocking of her knees increased to such a degree the clatter could surely be heard by all within ten leagues of her humble castle’s walls.
Worse, she found herself unable to answer him, for someone else’s words crowded out her own.
As if Devorgilla stood beside her and whispered in her ear, the cailleach’s thin, reedy voice echoed in Isolde’s mind . . . How many men do you suppose would keep a civil tongue under such circumstances?
Something light and cool brushed along the exposed nape of her neck, lifting the fine hairs there, and sending a delicate little ripple down her spine.
Isolde glanced behind her, half expecting the crone to be hiding in the shadows of one of the deep window embrasures, but naught was there.
Nothing stirred save the storm-driven wind racing through the night beyond Dunmuir’s snug walls.
Of such a gentle, caressing breeze as had drifted past her there was no trace.
This time when she turned back to the MacLean, his dark countenance had turned to stone. “Know this, Isolde of Dunmuir, ne’er have I done harm to a woman, and ne’er shall I,” he said, barely restrained anger tainting the rich timbre of his deep voice. “There is naught under God’s heaven that could drive me to do so.”
He crossed his arms. “Nor can you tempt me to touch you in other ways.” He stared at her so penetratingly, she feared he could see clear into her soul. “Should you foster such ignoble intentions.”
A particularly strong gust of wind rattled the closed shutters, a howling gale followed by a sharp clap of thunder, as if the very heavens meant to underscore his disdain.
He took two steps toward her, as far as the chain would allow. A strange glint sparked in his brown eyes. “As for the slurs you find so distressing, were I to voice what I truly think of you, you would abandon your ill-chosen plans for misplaced revenge and run for the safety of your mother’s skirts.”
Isolde flinched. Would that she could seek the comfort of her mother’s understanding. But the light had gone out of her mother’s eyes long ago, and with it, her senses.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the insolent lout what she thought of him, his stance arrogant, his legs spread beneath one of her bedsheets, hands braced on his lean hips, and his too-bonnie face darkened with displeasure. But she said naught, for her mouth had gone too dry for her to speak.
The blackguard appeared as much a mind reader as old Devorgilla. And he made her feel as exposed as if she already stood before him wearing naught but her indignation.
Turning away, she rested her hands on the back of a chair. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her, and she was weary from the chaos and turmoil that had swept into her world since Lileas’s death.
Damn the MacLean for reminding her she’d lost her mother as well. Isolde blinked back the hot sting of tears. Though, even now, the lady Edina sat belowstairs in Dunmuir’s great hall, comforted by warm blankets and the elders’ respectful attentions, Isolde’s vacant-eyed mother might as well be long in her grave for what little notice she took of the world around her.
A hesitant cough sounded behind her, but she wasn’t about to turn around. Some wild-brained notion entered her mind that he sensed he’d pushed her too far, that his next words might be different entirely from the insults he’d spewed at her thus far.
But she did not want his comfort.
Saints forbid.
She had ample solace from the cailleach, and from Bodo, when she needed it. She also had the rough-hewn devotion Niels and Rory afforded her. And she had the crone’s anti-attraction potion.
Should she need it.
Not that she’d seen a fig of the MacLean’s legendary charm. Still, his looks alone would’ve stolen her heart were he any other man.
And the fluttery sensations that whirled and eddied through her each time he turned his dark gaze on her were surely caused by irritation and naught else.
Isolde slipped her hand into the folds of her skirt and fingered the leather-wrapped flagon of anti-attraction infusion. The potion would purge her o
f any possible flarings of interest his alarming resemblance to her dream man might awaken in her.
Before she could think better of downing the bitter-tasting tincture, she unstopped the flagon, and lifted it to her lips. Three rapid gulps were all she could manage before a convulsive shudder swept over her.
“Mother of God, woman, what are you about there?” came the MacLean’s outraged voice behind her.
“Naught that concerns you.” She wheeled to face him, a leather-wrapped flask clutched tight in her hand. Her creamy skin had gone a shade paler, and her beautiful eyes were wide and overbright.
“So long as I am chained to your bed, lady, what you do does concern me,” Donall said dryly. “I would know what foul brew you’ve swallowed and why?”
She pressed her lips together and simply stared at him. Proud, indignant, and obviously struggling to ignore the shudders still wracking her elegant, and temptingly supple body.
A body whose tremors he wouldn’t mind stilling by drawing her tight against him in a crushing embrace, saints preserve him.
As if she sensed her victory over his flagging will to resist his attraction to her, she lifted her chin and gave him a tiny, grudging smile.
A smile that sank into him like the sun’s warmth on a fine midsummer’s day.
Donall closed his eyes and concentrated on the cold iron pressing against his ankle until its chill vanquished the stirrings unleashed by a single, fleeting smile.
When he looked at her again, she was replacing the little flagon’s stopper. She’d moved to the hearth, and the fire’s glow highlighted her curves and gilded her thick braids with pure gold. His pulse quickened in reaction, and he frowned against the ease with which she seemed able to stir his blood.
And this time the damnable shackle did little to still his untoward urges. But to his immense relief, the thought of Gavin being held somewhere within her castle walls did quell his ill-placed lust.
“Where are you holding Sir Gavin and how fares he?” he demanded, his tone gruffer than he’d intended.
She met his guaranteed-to-intimidate stare full on, her eyes blazing with a fine boldness of her own. “No ill has befallen your man. He is comfortable enough in a cell far more habitable than yours and will be sailed to his clan’s isle of Colonsay as soon as—”
“As soon as what?” Donall mimicked. “As soon as you and your graybearded minions have seen me draw my last?” At once, the annoyance vanished from her eyes and she paled visibly, flinching as if he’d struck her. “I understand why you are wroth with me,” she said, a hint of guilt lacing her words and flickering across her beautiful face. “But you err in thinking I—”
“I err?” His brows shot upward. “ ’Tis you and your buffoons whose heads are stuffed with falsehoods and nonsense.”
She began pacing the chamber, the hem of her black mourning gown swirling around her shapely ankles, her light, wildflower scent floating out to bedevil him anew each time she passed.
“Aye, sir, I do believe you speak the truth,” she said suddenly, peering sharply at him. “The notions that fill my head and haunt my dreams do appear foolhardy at the moment. Unfortunately, I am loath to relinquish them.”
Too flummoxed by her speech to do aught but gape at her, Donall waited.
She came to stand before him.
Dangerously close before him.
So close, another scent rose up from her, but this one offended his senses as foully as the pleasant wildflower fragrance roused him.
The remnants of the sharp-smelling potion she’d gulped, still clinging to her tongue.
A pungency so strong Donall forgot all else.
With lightning speed, he reached out and seized hold of her wrist. “I would know what manner of brew you imbibed.”
She tried to jerk away but he clamped his fingers in an iron grip. Apparently unaware of the offensive smell clinging to her, she glared at him. “What I swallowed, sirrah, was a potion to . . . to rid my complexion of freckles,” she declared in a rush, her whole demeanor challenging him to doubt her.
“Truth tell?” Donall captured her chin in his free hand and turned her face toward the glow of the nearest cresset lamp. “I vow the mixture is potent indeed for I see nary a freckle to mar your fair skin.”
“Then mayhap your eyesight is as lacking as your chivalry.”
Donall tamped down a near irresistible urge to throw back his head and laugh. At her audacity as well as the lame pretext she’d so glibly tossed at him.
The woman was an inveterate liar.
The fair-skinned womenfolk in his household had tried every freckle-purging remedy known to man and not one had e’er smelled so abominably.
“Ah, I do believe I see one.” Donall smoothed the side of his thumb over the curve of her cheek. “Aye, ’tis a great need you have of such an elixir.”
“My needs are greater than you can know,” she said, and a foul-reeking whiff of her breath caught him full in the face, even as the fleeting trace of vulnerability he’d glimpsed in her eyes caught him off guard and tugged at something deep inside him.
A disconcerting something he didn’t care to identify or scrutinize.
A most unsettling something.
The laughter he’d been trying to suppress ever since she made her ludicrous pronouncements about freckle-banishing potions froze in his throat and he released her as if she’d scorched him.
With effort, he concentrated on the ramifications of his present predicament rather than how soft her cheek had felt beneath his thumb or how the smooth warmth of her wrist had seeped into his fingers, distracting him so thoroughly he near forgot who she was and why he stood, half-naked and fettered, in her bedchamber.
He could not allow himself to fall prey to her comeliness.
Nor dare he let himself be influenced by the disturbing aura of susceptibility that enveloped her at times, despite her obvious grace and courage.
She peered intently at him and he couldn’t help but notice the faint purple smudges beneath her eyes. To his great annoyance, the barely there shadows only underscored the air of vulnerability he was fighting so hard not to be affected by.
“You spoke of needs,” he said, holding her gaze but willing himself not to truly see her. “I, too, have needs most urgent. Detaining me ill suits my purposes and your own as well.”
Donall struggled to contain his wrath over the chaos that could soon erupt at Baldoon. Iain would keep a cool head only so long. “Having me put to death before a jeering circle of feeble-witted graybeards will spell endless grief for your clan. ’Tis a consequence you should well consider.”
Her far too appealing look of injured innocence evaporated at once and a flare of pure indignation blazed in her gold-flecked eyes. “Think you I am unaware of the folly of executing a MacLean?” She appeared to thrum with agitation. “Most especially the laird.”
Donall shrugged. “So you mean to intercede on my behalf at the execution?”
“There will be no execution,” she said, her obvious discomfiture announcing how much she resented making such a revelation. “I have other plans for you.”
The giant’s cryptic words rang again in Donall’s ears but he strove to ignore them. The notion was too preposterous to bear even a seed of possibility.
More absurd than the wildest tales the most highly skilled fili could spin in a hundred endless winter nights.
Stifling an inexplicable urge to laugh at the outrageous images parading through his mind, Donall forced himself to look disinterested.
Mayhap even a bit bored.
“Other plans?” he spoke at last, casually lifting a brow to emphasize his indifference.
She nodded. “A covenant.”
“A covenant?” An odd sinking feeling coupled with a distinctly perverse sense of hilarity soundly conquered his pretense of nonchalance.
He could almost see her redheaded dolt of a henchman looming up behind her, admonishing him to “be gentle with her” lest he wished his bones
ground to powder.
“What manner of covenant?” Not that he cared to know.
Isolde MacInnes drew a deep breath. “A pact of peace. A plan to ensure the long-lasting harmony my father sought and my sister died trying to achieve.”
Somewhere in the distance, thunder boomed. The low rumbles jarred the shutters and echoed off the walls, allowing Donall the brief respite he needed to gather his wits.
She could not possibly mean what he suspected.
No maid as exquisite as Isolde of Dunmuir would barter herself.
Not even for peace.
“. . . the sooner certain conditions have been met,” she was saying, seemingly unaware of the odious tang still tainting her breath, “the sooner you and Gavin MacFie may leave.”
“I shall leave, your ladyship, the instant the first opportunity affords itself,” he vowed. “And I vouchsafe Sir Gavin would tell you the same. Regardless of whatever conditions you think to suffer upon us.”
Two spots of bright red appeared on her cheeks. “Only
you must fulfill my conditions. I want naught from Gavin MacFie,” she said in a huff, and Donall inhaled another whiff of whate’er wretched brew she’d swallowed.
The pestiferous scent, her own words, and those of her oversized oaf of a guardsman combined to paint lewd and outlandish images in Donall’s mind.
The laughter he’d been repressing all evening escaped him at last.
Isolde MacInnes’s lovely eyes widened at his mirth, and the two spots of color on her cheeks suffused into a dull red flush that slowly spread clear across her pretty face.
“Lady, if you seek to bring about peace by the method I am sorely beginning to suspect you have in mind, namely by offering your bonnie self to me as my bride, then I must beg you not to imbibe any more of your foul-reeking brew,” he said, regretting the words even as they hastened past his lips.
“Marriage to you, sirrah, was never a consideration.” She bristled visibly. “What I had in mind was an alliance of . . . of convenience. One I was foolhardy enough to believe might benefit us both.”
She glared at him for a long moment, then stormed away, fleeing to the row of tall, shuttered windows on the far side of the room. There she stood, her back rigid, her shoulders squared, and hell and botheration, but he wished he could tear out his tongue.