She stepped back to admire her handiwork. And him.
He looked even more magnificent and handsome in the feileadh than she'd imagined.
"Do I meet with your approval?" he asked as she stood staring at him. "Do I look like a Scot?"
She didn't answer with words. She launched herself at him and took his mouth with a heated kiss, grinding her hips against him in blatant, brazen invitation.
He instantly responded with equal fervour, clasping her to him.
"I want you to make love with me, Nicholas. Now!" she ordered, panting as if she'd run for miles to be in his arms.
"Gladly," he growled.
He kissed her passionately and thrust his tongue between her lips. His hands stroked and caressed her body, gliding over the fabric undl, with a low growl of pure animal hunger, he picked her up and took her to his bed. Watching her, his eyes full of heated need, he hurried to take off his belt.
"No!" she gasped, half sitting. "Like that."
She reached up and grabbed his belt to pull him down on top of her. Her eager hands attacked him, stroking his back, his chest, his nipples. With soft moans and anxious whimpers, she bent her legs, so that her skirt fell about her hips, exposing her nakedness to him. As he raised himself on his hands, she grabbed his buttocks and pushed him closer. The feileadh bunched between them, but not enough to keep him from thrusting eagerly inside her warm, moist, ready body.
She came nearly at once, arching and bucking and breathing hard through clenched teeth, her hands gripping his arms until her knuckles were white. She called out his name as wave after wave of pleasure ripped though her while he continued to thrust undl, with a cry of ecstasy, he climaxed.
Sated and spent, he fell against her. "By the saints..." he murmured, gasping for air.
Her breathing was ragged, too. "I thought the feileadh would suit you, but I had no idea..."
He raised himself and looked down at her flushed face. "Was it just the feileadh?"
She smiled like one drugged, or drunk, blissfully replete with the euphoria of making love. "Not just the feileadh. Your body. Your legs. Your knees." She lazily caressed his cheek. "You've got very handsome knees, Nicholas of Dunkeathe. I'd suggest you wear a feileadh all the time, but your maidservants would surely be too distracted."
"And you?" he said, lightly kissing her nose. "Wouldn't you be distracted?"
Her happiness diminished. "If I were still here, yes, I'd be distracted."
"I'm sorry, Riona," he said, and there was sorrow and remorse in his dark eyes.
"I'm not sorry," she said sincerely as she brushed a lock of hair from his face. "And I don't—I won Y—regret the time I've spent with you."
He tenderly stroked her cheek. "You truly are an amazing and generous woman, Riona Mac Gordon. How I wish I could marry for love."
She had longed to hear him say that he loved her, yet hearing it now gave her nothing but pain, and the certain knowledge that her heart would break when she left Dunkeathe, and him. "Whatever we've shared, it's enough," she lied.
He drew her closer. "Stay the night with me, Riona."
"You know I can't."
"A while longer then," he implored. "Just be with me for a bit longer."
She couldn't bring herself to refuse his request. "Very well— but you'd better take off that feileadh, or I'm going to want to make love with you again."
"Are you trying to tempt me?"
"I think you're the one tempting me, my lord."
He didn't take off the feileadh until later.
Much later.
NICHOLAS AWOKE when a beam of early-morning light fell across his eyes. As he opened them, squinting, he thought of Riona, as he had every morning since the first time they'd made love, and even before then.
Last night she'd been trying so hard to keep things happy and carefree between them, as if she could make him forget the inevitable. More poignant than tears would have been, her efforts had brought pain along with happiness, sorrow with the pleasure.
He'd tried to respond in kind, to sound merry and happy in spite of what must be. She deserved no less, and so he hadn't refused her request to don the feileadh, even though he was sure he'd look ridiculous.
Clearly, to her, he hadn't.
He smiled to himself as he recalled her passionate attack. What a lover. What a woman! And how he would miss her when she was gone.
Dreading the day she must go home, he'd asked her to stay with him longer. No, he'd begged her, and while he would rather die than beg of any man, he didn't regret beseeching her to remain with him.
They'd talked and laughed and whispered like children as she told him stories of Glencleith and he told her some of the pleasant things that had happened in his life, until passion had kindled again. He began to caress her, and she him. Then they'd kissed, soft and gentle, warm and tender. They made love again, as if time meant nothing.
Once again he'd been tempted to ask her to be his wife. To live with him and run his household and bear his children. To make him happy and joyful in a way he'd never imagined, and to let him try to make her happy, too.
Yet as always, the memory of the worst days of his youth, when he was beaten and starving, cold and wet, completely at the mercy of men bigger and stronger than he, arose.
And silenced him.
He couldn't lose Dunkeathe and all it represented.
Yet what if Marianne was right, and he came to regret losing Riona even more?
Dunkeathe was a fortress, a pile of stone. Riona was light and joy, happiness and bliss. She was loving and generous, shrewd and resolute. Dunkeathe would be empty once she was gone.
He would be empty, and more lonely than he'd ever been before, in his great fortress of cold, hard stone. What if he
discovered that he'd given up the greater prize for a castle and the capricious favour of kings?
He rolled onto his back—and instantly realized he wasn't alone.
Then he saw the long blond hair.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"SHITE!"
The earthy curse exploded from Nicholas as he scrambled out of the bed.
Her hair loose and unkempt, Joscelind emitted a little shriek as she sat up, holding the sheets to her bare breasts.
"Get out of my bed," Nicholas ordered, quite oblivious to the fact that he, too, was naked.
"But my lord—"
"Now!" he roared, the word reverberating around the room.
"You don't want me? Even though I'm willing to give myself to you before our marriage?"
"No!"
More enraged and outraged than he'd ever been in his life, Nicholas grabbed his discarded breeches and tugged them on. He spotted the feileadh—the garment he'd worn last night, the one his beloved Riona had shown him how to wear—neatly folded on the chest. Riona must have put it there before she left, before this other woman had come into his chamber and crawled into his bed.
As he yanked on his boots, Joscelind covered her face with her hands and started to weep—or sound as if she were.
"Stop that," he snapped. "I'll not be swayed by false tears. Get up and get dressed and get out of my bedchamber. If you're discovered here—"
"If I'm discovered here, you'll have to marry me, if you're an honourable man."
He reached for his shirt and tugged it on. "Then woe to you, my lady, for I'm not that honourable."
Joscelind slowly and deliberately climbed from his bed, his sheet wrapped about her. "Who do you think you are?" she demanded as if she were the one sinned against. "You're nothing but an upstart mercenary who managed to persuade some fool of a king to give you an estate. You should be grateful I'd lower myself to sleep with you before marriage."
Fists pounded on the door, and a Saxon voice called out, "My lord? Is anything amiss, my lord?"
Damn her! And damn him for shouting. "No," he called out. "All is well. A bad dream."
"Will you marry me?" Joscelind asked without lowering her voice.
He
swivelled on his heel and glared at her. "Even before this little trick of yours, you would never have been my choice. As for lowering yourself, I'm sorry being in my bed is so demeaning. You should have saved yourself the trouble."
Shooting him an enraged look, she ran to the door and threw it open. "Guards!" she called out before he could stop her. "Come back!"
Nicholas grabbed hold of the door to close it. "Don't bring scandal and shame on yourself. Your trick didn't work. Your gamble didn't pay off. Accept that and go, before your reputation is ruined."
Her lip curled as she regarded him with wrathful contempt. "My reputation won't be ruined, because you're going to marry me. You can act as if you're pleased you've successfully seduced me, or you can look like a lascivious cad forced to do the honourable thing, but either way, you will marry me. My father will insist. Need I remind you he's a rich and powerful man?"
The Saxon guards returned, breathless from running back up the stairs. They came to a stunned halt at the sight of Joscelind wearing only a sheet, on the threshold of Nicholas's bedchamber— as well they might.
"Joscelind," he warned through clenched teeth.
She ignored him. "Fetch my father," she commanded imperiously. "At once!"
The guards looked to Nicholas for confirmation.
There was nothing else to be done. Joscelind had forced his hand. "Go."
As they left, he went back into the room and threw himself into his chair to await Lord Chesleigh. "Get dressed, Joscelind."
She slammed the door and marched up to him. Then she raised her hand and slapped him hard across the face. "I am not some whore you can use and discard."
He didn't so much as flinch when she struck him. He had Yves Sansouci to thank for that. He'd endured harder blows than that many a time. "You came to my bed and now you demand to be paid. What does that make you, if not a harlot?"
She raised her hand to strike him again, but he caught her wrist and held it only tight enough to still.
It was then he saw the bruises on her arm.
His rage changed to anger of a different sort. He knew wounds too well not to realize that these could be no accident. They came from a man's harsh grip.
"Who did that?" he asked as he released her and got to his feet.
"If you don't marry me," she replied, her eyes gleaming, her lips thinned, "I'll say you did."
Appalled and disgusted that she would even suggest making that accusation, he said, "I have never hurt a woman in my life, and no one can say otherwise."
She stuck out her noble chin. "I'll say you enticed me to your bedchamber and when I refused to make love with you, you forced me. That mark is proof of how you held me."
God help him, she would, too. "I've never taken a woman against her will. It was your father, wasn't it?"
Her face flushed, but she pressed her lips tight and didn't answer.
"Why did he do it? Or does he require no excuse to hurt you?"
A tear rolled down her cheek, but still she didn't speak.
He thought of what Riona had said about the pressure being brought to bear on the women here because of him, and cursed the day he'd thought of his plan to find a wife—except for one thing. It had brought him Riona.
"My lady," he said, his tone less angry and more reasonable, "if Lord Chesleigh were a loving father and you told him that I raped you, he would demand that I be tried and executed—or he'd challenge me himself. No loving father would insist you wed the
man who forced himself upon you." He thought of Percival's scheme. "Or did he send you here?"
Before she could answer—if she were willing to answer—Lord Chesleigh rushed into the room. He took one look at his sheet-clad, dishevelled daughter, then he strode across the room and struck her with a fierce, backhanded blow. "Whore!"
Nicholas grabbed Lord Chesleigh's arm and yanked him back so hard, he nearly pulled the man off his feet. "Strike her again and you'll have me to deal with," he growled before he cast the man off.
Lord Chesleigh straightened and ran a haughty, disdainful gaze over Nicholas, his shirt unlaced, his hair uncombed. "I'll have you to deal with regardless, son-in-law, " he declared as Joscelind had put her hand to her red cheek and started to weep. "I don't know what honeyed words you used to seduce my daughter, but honour demands that you marry her. I won't have my family name besmirched, especially by an upstart like you."
"At least now I know what you really think of me, my lord," Nicholas said with undisguised loathing.
Percival appeared in the door. "Why the noise? What's going —?" He looked from Nicholas to Joscelind, then glared at Nicholas. "What kind of lustful, lascivious scoundrel are you?" he demanded. "Eleanor's not enough to slake—?"
"Eleanor?" Joscelind shrieked, turning on Nicholas. "You've been with her, too? What have you been doing, using us as some sort of harem?"
"I haven't made love with you, or Eleanor," Nicholas replied, his rage now under the same iron control that had stood him in good stead on many a battlefield.
Percival's face was so red, it was nearly purple. "Rogue!" he cried. "How dare you deny it! Eleanor's been your lover for days."
As Lord Chesleigh and his daughter glowered at Nicholas, he serenely met Percival's heated stare. "You have proof of this accusation, this stain upon your cousin's reputation?"
Percival blinked, then flushed. "I've seen her enter your chamber at night."
"If that were true, why didn't you stop her? Why didn't you ask her what she was doing?"
Beads of sweat dampened Percival's forehead.
"Perhaps you didn't ask these questions because she didn't come to my chamber at night, or any other time."
"Eleanor will confirm what I say!" Percival fiercely averred.
"Are you sure?"
Fear, doubt, dismay—all appeared in Percival's face. "Of course she will," he stammered. Then he straightened his narrow shoulders. "You know it's true. If you're an honourable man, you'll marry Eleanor."
"He can't," Joscelind declared. "I'm the one everyone knows has been in his bed. He has to marry me. My family's honour—"
"Perhaps you should have considered our family Aonor before you acted like a harlot," her father snarled. "But you will be married to this knight."
Joscelind pointed at Nicholas. "He seduced me! He told me he'd marry me. That I was his choice. Why wait until Lammas, he said."
"That's not true," Nicholas countered. "I made no attempt to seduce your daughter, my lord, and she would never have been my choice even if I had."
Percival suddenly looked less upset. "Because you're going to marry Eleanor, aren't you?" he asked with more than a trace of desperation.
"The hell he is!" Lord Chesleigh declared. He marched up to Nicholas until they were nearly nose-to-nose. "Whether you've taken my daughter's maidenhood or not, you will marry her. Otherwise, I'll see to it that you lose this fine castle you've built and everything that goes with it—wealth, influence, the soldiers
you command. I'll have you reduced to nothing more than a common soldier again—and you know I have the power to do it."
"He can't marry Joscelind," Percival protested. "He's got to marry Eleanor. She might be with child."
Silence fell and everybody stared at Percival as if he'd turned green.
Nicholas wasn't sure if he should believe Percival or not—yet it if was true, whose child was it?
Looking at the vain man standing before him, mindful of the man's threats, he feared he knew. "Eleanor has never been my lover," he repeated coldly. "If the child resembles its father, won't it look like you?"
"I've never laid a hand on her!"
"No?"
"No! I thought she was the woman sleeping with you. But if she wasn't..." His eyes widened and his mouth fell open. "It was that Scot—that Riona!"
"Did somebody mendon my niece?" Fergus Mac Gordon asked, peering around the door frame.
As he took in the sight of the irate Lord Chesleigh, an equally upset Sir Pe
rcival, a very undressed Lady Joscelind and Nicholas's
state, his brow furrowed. Then his expression changed, to one of shock, dismay and disappointment.
Nicholas suddenly felt like the scoundrel these other men claimed he was, but for a different reason. However lonely and unhappy he'd been, and however happy Riona had made him, he'd sinned a great sin against the jovial little man and his niece. He'd treated Riona as if she were his whore, worthy of only a few fleeting nights of pleasure in his bed. She deserved more. Much more.
Sick with remorse, he cursed himself for his stupid, greedy, ambitious plan. His vanity. His arrogance. All the trouble he'd caused. And the trouble to come.
"I think we should leave this chamber and allow the lady to dress," he said, grabbing his sword belt as he headed for the door. "We'll assemble in the hall, where we shall settle this matter once and for all. I will decide today—now—who will be my bride."
RIONA HURRIED to her chamber door in answer to a flurry of knocks to find Uncle Fergus standing there, although standing was not precisely accurate. He was fairly jumping from foot to foot as if he were on hot coals.
"What is it? What's wrong?" she asked, fearing that there was some new trouble with Fredella.
"You didn't hear all that noise from Sir Nicholas's chamber?"
"I was asleep." Because she'd been exhausted after last night.
Then she gasped. "Has he been hurt?" she cried, trying to push past her uncle.
He barred the way. "No, he's not hurt. He's going to choose his bride this morning."
She stopped struggling and stared at her uncle in stunned disbelief. "Now?"
She backed away as Uncle Fergus entered the chamber. He closed the door, and when he turned to her, he was as serious as she'd ever seen him.
"My beauty," Uncle Fergus said sorrowfully, "something's happened...something I didn't expect from an honourable man. It seems, Riona, that he's not waited until Lammas to bed the woman he wants."
He couldn't be thinking of her, or he wouldn't be speaking in that way. Percival must have lost his patience and demanded that Nicholas wed Eleanor without waiting until Lammas, and told everyone why.
Uncle Fergus rubbed his chin. "Wheest, I wouldn't believe it myself, except that I saw her, wrapped in a sheet in his bedchamber."
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