Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03]

by Wedding for a Knight

Especially not for him.

  Not now.

  Not after she’d declared herself so beautifully in front of God and all his kinsmen. And especially not after he’d known the gift of her lush curves straining against him—and that through the folds of her ridiculously voluminous cloak!

  He’d lose his soul when the time came for them to stand in a full-naked embrace.

  He blew out a gusty breath, knew himself already lost.

  “Well, lass?” he probed, toying with the glossy black curl, praying she’d not disappoint him. “You ken tonight’s significance?”

  She nodded, wordless, but her magnificent eyes brimmed with glittery starlight—the brightness of unshed tears and newfound hope.

  Hope, acceptance, joy, and . . . aye . . . a desire that surely burned bright as his own.

  And seeing those emotions shining all over her beautiful face nearly brought him to his knees. Still, his honor forced another question from his tongue.

  One for her ears alone.

  “You are aware of what next transpires when we are escorted abovestairs?” He near choked on the words, hoped her boldness wouldn’t abandon her now. “In especial, what will happen after our kinsmen leave us?”

  Taking her lower lip between her teeth, her only outward sign of nervousness, she nodded.

  Then she drew a long, quivering breath. “I have e’er yearned for this moment,” she said, her dark eyes luminous. “Be assured that I will revel in what happens when we are alone. There shall not be a moment of it that I have not dreamed of for long.”

  She took her hand from behind his neck just long enough to swipe at the moisture shimmering high on her cheek. “Far longer than you know,” she breathed, her voice hitching.

  “Lass. . . .” Magnus could say no more, the thickness swelling in his own throat refused to let out the words he burned to say.

  And as well, for his gawking kinsmen had edged near, the whole long-nosed lot of them tilting their heads and cupping their ears to try and catch whispered intimacies he wasn’t about to share with them.

  His bride showed much less reluctance.

  Smiling triumphantly, if a bit wobbly-lipped, she lifted her chin for a kiss . . . letting the seductive brush of her curves, still rubbing so soft and yielding against him, demand he give her one.

  Trying not to hear the ribald shouts erupting all around them, Magnus swept his arms around her, dragged her flush against him. Lost, he arched her voluptuous body until they stood lips to toe, so close they almost melded together.

  A throaty purring sound escaped her as she stretched her fingers into his hair, caressed his nape, her touch sending delicious shivers rippling down his back.

  “Are you not going to kiss me?” She parted her lips in an invitation no man would even think to deny.

  “Aye, I am going to kiss you indeed,” Magnus vowed, holding her gaze, reveling in its smoldering intensity.

  I shall kiss you in ways you ne’er dreamed of, sweet lass.

  Raw desire pounding through him, he lowered his head, intending—for now—only to brush his lips over hers a few times, but she slid one hand down his back to cup his buttocks and—saints alive!—urged his hips ever tighter against her own.

  Another deep, throaty purr came from low in her throat at the startling, bone-melting impact, and before he’d slid his lips but once, twice, across the yielding softness of hers, she stunned him by sliding her tongue inside his mouth.

  “Christ and all His saints!” he moaned against her lips, his breath mingling with hers. The intimacy enflaming him, his entire body tightened as her tongue met his in a hot, sweeping glide.

  You are unmanning me, he thought he heard himself growl, not quite sure if he’d spoken the words aloud.

  And even if he had, he didn’t care.

  Wielding her best weapons with boldest intent, she unraveled him stroke by sweet-sliding stroke. Hot, slick, and deliciously silky, her tongue swirled over and around his in a lascivious dance that shot jolt after jolt of heat ripping across his groin.

  And each lush sweep, each hot tangle of her tongue with his, claimed another never-to-be-won-back piece of Magnus MacKinnon—deftly turning what should have been a quick, perfunctory pass of his lips over hers into a breathy, open-mouthed kiss. A white-hot conflagration of sharpest, most brilliant need.

  A wild slaking, a drinking in of each other’s essences, that set his senses to reeling and had him so ragingly hard, so needy, he was close to tossing her over his shoulder, charging out of the hall, and tossing up her skirts to thrust himself full-tilt inside her as soon as he’d put the throng of roistering onlookers behind them.

  Onlookers who, from their increasingly bawdy shouts, seemed more than eager to see him do just that.

  Only here in the hall—to their enthralled delight!

  “If she kisses him like that during the bedding ceremony, I swear I am not exiting the chamber!” a rowdy kinsman roared close by Magnus’s ear.

  So close the man’s ale-fumed breath fanned across his cheek. Close enough for him to know the lout had already enjoyed a more than ample eyeful.

  Indeed, the clansman’s persistent ale fumes reminded him that not just one but every MacKinnon on the isle had witnessed his capitulation—a notion that doused his lust faster than if he’d poured a bucket of iciest loch water into his braies!

  “By God, I’d say the lass has her heart hung on him!” another clansman bellowed the moment Magnus broke the kiss, and set his heavy-breathing vixen from him.

  Nigh panting himself, hottest need still blazing inside him, he searched the hall for prattle-tongued Dagda, eager to have done with the remaining traditions and throw off the yoke of onlookers.

  More eager still to do some serious looking himself—just not at an assembled mass of ugly, bearded faces!

  And until he’d composed himself, he wasn’t looking her way, either.

  His blood yet burned too hot for him to risk even one glance in her direction. Even standing so near to her left him trembling in the aftermath of the riptide that had just swept him.

  The aftermath of her boldness.

  A brazen act the like of which she’d ne’er believed she’d perform. Moistening lips gone decidedly tender from their soul-devouring kiss, Amicia drew in small, shallow breaths. She struggled against the overwhelming need to press her hand to her breasts and pull in great, greedy gulps of air.

  Faith, did she need them.

  She’d run to within an inch of shaming herself. Nay, more than an inch. Yet even if she could retrace her steps and start anew, she’d do the same again. Mayhap even hold him tighter than she had, kiss him all the harder when he tried to break away.

  There could be no shame in seizing a dream.

  A happiness she’d been chasing too long not to grasp firm and glory in, now that it’d come tantalizingly close to her reach.

  Nay, she would not be ashamed.

  She’d only be furious with herself if she hadn’t allowed herself such sweet, sweet bliss.

  Even if now, in the afterglow of their startlingly intimate kiss, he wouldn’t look at her.

  Later, once they were alone and the bedchamber door’s drawbar soundly in place, she’d address that long-standing habit of his. She’d make him look at her . . . and at places other than her peaty-brown eyes!

  For now, though, she let him gaze where he would.

  And following that gaze, her jaw dropped, for the jostling mass of clansmen were stepping aside, freeing a path through their midst for Dagda and the old laird. A common enough sight in Coldstone’s cavernous hall—until one spied the enormous bronze drinking mazer Dagda held aloft.

  “’Tis the Claiming Cup,” Magnus whispered, his warm breath a caress at her ear. “A great bronze drinking vessel believed to hail from Reginald’s time, and even if not, it is of great antiquity, fashioned with miniature war galleys embossed around its rim,” he told her.

  “All newly married MacKinnons must share of a drink from it. Fir
st the pair, together, and then the mazer will be passed to our kinsmen. Everyone present will drink from it, usually a fresh-made batch of heather ale. . . .” He paused, amazed how easily the words our kinsmen had rolled off his tongue.

  Stunned at the way his heart warmed at the implication.

  “Dagda will speak a few words, and then after everyone has had their token sip, the feasting will commence.”

  “And thereafter the bedding?”

  Magnus nodded, unable to speak, his throat, and certain other parts of him, being too tight and swollen for him to risk forming another word.

  Not if he didn’t want to sound like a spluttering eunuch.

  Blessedly, the approach of Dagda and his da spared him any such embarrassment. Not far behind them, Colin was making his own slow progress through the crush as well, the fair Janet hanging on his arm—her lips looking nigh as kiss-swollen as Magnus’s lady wife’s.

  A condition that would explain the notable absence of the two from the hall until just now—as did the slight swagger to Colin’s almost-good-as-new strides.

  To Magnus’s further relief, Dagda the grim wore a smile. Or rather, her best semblance of one.

  Looking well-pleased indeed, she didn’t even grumble annoyance when some of the vessel’s contents sloshed over the elaborate rim to spill down the front of her widow’s gown.

  A light touch to his sleeve proved to him that he’d only fooled himself by thinking the arrival of the heavy bronze mazer would get his mind on . . . other things.

  More grateful that Scots favored plaids than he’d e’er been in his life, he turned to find Amicia peering at him, her brow knitted.

  “Shouldn’t your da be the one to speak whate’er will be said when we drink from the mazer?”

  “Da used to say the words, to be sure,” he admitted. “But he relinquished the duty to Dagda years back when he began ailing. The ceremony falls within her responsibilities as seneschal, and she always seems to relish it as her part in MacKinnon weddings. With all her faults, the old lass has e’er had a soft heart for . . . young pairs.”

  He’d almost said young lovers, but caught himself in time.

  Passion was well and good—a bliss he’d sorely missed in recent times. Years, were he honest. Love, however, was something he was not near prepared to consider.

  Not even this night.

  Mayhap never.

  Another tug at his arm underscored the silliness of any such notion. Just how bad it stood with him. “Aye?” he asked, wishing he didn’t feel as if he were teetering along a cliff-edge and about to lose his balance.

  “Why is it called the Claiming Cup?” His wife posed the one question he’d hoped she wouldn’t.

  “There’s a good reason for that,” he said, trying to give the words a light tone. “The mazer is brought forth after the bride and groom have accepted, or claimed, each other. The shared drink signifies their union as one. The passing of the mazer around the hall symbolizes their oneness with the clan and . . .”

  “And . . . ?” she prodded when he hesitated.

  Feeling defeated yet again, Magnus reached to skim his fingertips down the curve of her cheek. “And,” he began, his tongue annoyingly thick, “some claim the passing of the mazer gathers all the happiness in each clan member’s heart.”

  “But there is more, is there not?”

  Magnus nodded. “The ‘collecting of the clan’s goodness’ is why the new couple share not only the first sips from the Claiming Cup, but also the last,” he explained. “It is believed those last two sips contain joy of a brilliance to rival all the stars in the night sky. And that, fair lady, is Clan Fingon’s gift to each new married pair we welcome into our midst.”

  She sniffed at that.

  Sniffed, and glanced aside.

  But Magnus could see she was blinking furiously.

  Still, true to her MacLean heritage, she recovered with all speed to pin him with a most penetrating gaze.

  “Is all well with you, my lord?” she wanted to know. “You sound rather . . . pained.”

  “Och, to be sure, I am fine,” he said, laying on a deliberate bluster, lying through his teeth.

  He wasn’t well at all.

  Or mayhap he was.

  More well than he’d e’er thought to be again.

  Chapter Eleven

  CANDLELIGHT GLEAMED on the Claiming Cup, turning its gilt-bronze to shimmering gold. In especial, the embossed war galleys circling the mazer’s rim shone with eye-catching brilliance. Each galley boasted a sail crafted with a different inlaid gemstone and these flashed colored sparks of light as Dagda carried the ceremonial vessel around the great hall, making certain each clansman partook of the ritual sip.

  The sharing of his heart’s gladness and joy.

  A spectacle Magnus watched with mixed feelings from his place at the high table.

  The sadly displaced high table.

  A botheration he’d sworn to keep from his mind, if only for this night, but an annoyance nonetheless. And one that had returned with howling vengeance the moment he’d escorted his lady to the table’s temporary place of eminence at the lowest, most humble end of the hall.

  “It matters not.” Amicia leaned close, her words and the press of her hand to his sleeve letting him know how well she read him. “I would savor this night were the high table placed in the middle of the wildest moor and with a fierce black wind raging all around us.”

  Magnus looked at her, found her watching him with an expression that made his heart clutch. Not trusting himself to speak, he patted her hand, gave it a warm squeeze.

  A wee concession she topped by trailing the fingers of her free hand along his jaw in the lightest of touches. Sweet, feathery caresses that sent small ripples of sensation all through him.

  Clearly bent on pursuing her advantage, she gave a soft little sigh . . . just the kind of feminine purr guaranteed to slip beneath a man’s skin and melt his bones.

  “Aye, sir, that would please me well—a table beneath the moon and stars . . . just for us. I would relish such a celebration,” she said, her voice low-pitched, smoky. “I wouldn’t even mind if we dined on simple pottage.”

  Magnus stiffened, her well-meant assurances dashing cold water on the languor she’d stirred in him, each word a lance thrust to his pride.

  Simple pottage washed down with watered ale would be the kind of fare she’d have to tolerate were her coffers not so bottomless—did her brothers’ largesse not provide every tempting morsel set before them.

  Set before every hungry mouth in the MacKinnon hall.

  Including the black-hearted dastard whose penetrating stare and malice he could feel coming at him in rank waves ever since he’d claimed his seat.

  He could also sense the miscreant’s smirking pleasure in his own discomfiture—yet every time he glanced round, he saw only the benign-smiling faces of his kinsmen.

  “You do not believe me,” Amicia was saying, taking her hand from his arm, the thread of hurt in her voice a hard fist in his gut.

  Magnus made a noncommittal sound, for a moment, not quite sure what she meant. But then he remembered—dining in the heather and sating oneself on starlight.

  A foolishly romantic notion she could almost make him believe in.

  “Nay, there you err,” he said. “I do believe you, and fully.”

  That is the great tragedy of it.

  He was the one who would see her spared a plaguey life marred with cares and too little meat. But now, after holding her, after tasting her kiss . . .

  “But you are . . . displeased,” she said, her eyes bright.

  “Amen to that—the stubborn fool,” Colin put in, leaning around several clansmen to level a stare at Magnus. “Mayhap ’tis you who ought to seek healing in your Beldam’s Chair. Perchance it can restore the wits I suspect you left on the banks of the River Earn.”

  “Aye, mayhap I should.” Magnus returned Colin’s stare with one of his own. “Your visits certainly have
honed the edge of your tongue.”

  He raised his ale cup. “Here’s to the Beldam’s Chair! May its curative powers aid the weary and the damned for all time.”

  But he slammed down the cup a mite too loudly. Truth was, he had been sneaking alone to the sacred stone chair. Though the saints knew what he hoped to accomplish by going there.

  He’d just felt a . . . need.

  He stared out into the smoky hall, his gaze latching on Dagda. Looking well-pleased with herself, she was giving a great bear of a red-bearded kinsman his obligatory sip from the Claiming Cup.

  And getting frightfully close to the high table.

  Magnus drew a deep breath, looked back at his wife. “See you, I would only . . . ah, lass—” he broke off, gestured to the opulence all around them. “Funding such splendor would have been a drop in the ocean had I not lost my fortune—the tourney winnings and booty that were stolen from their hiding place when I fought at Dupplin Moor.”

  “You can be proud you were there that day,” she said, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “My heart swells with pride that you were—that you stood fast to defend this land. And you did so when it must’ve been apparent before the first English arrow flew, that defeat would be inevitable.”

  The heat in her eyes softened to a heart-melting warmth. “Aye, you can be proud. Honor is the most noble cloak a man can swirl about his shoulders. The lost riches matter not a whit—not to me.”

  A goodly portion of the ice coating that had slid round his heart cracked and fell away, but not nearly enough. His pride still pulsed with agitation regardless of how uncomfortably tight his throat had gone at her words.

  Snatching up a freshly-topped ale cup, he tossed down its contents in one long swill. “It matters to me.”

  Undaunted, his bride slid a pointed look at the well-laden tables, but Magnus knew that she meant to indicate the clansmen crowding them and not the succulent viands.

  “This time it is you who mistake,” she said. “Take a good look at your kinsmen. All that matters is the light on their faces—their restored pride. Not the wealth lining those tables. Only the men sitting at them and the renewed purpose shining in their eyes.”