The Lover

by Nicole Jordan

“You gravely underestimate yourself, mouse.”

  “Do I?” Her glance was less challenging than despairing. “Were I a woman you desired, you would not be so eager to seek feminine companionship elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?”

  “I saw you in the orchard with the Widow Graham. Don’t think to deny it.”

  He stared at her a long moment while a dull flush crept over his cheekbones. “I regret you saw that.”

  Sabrina looked away, cursing her rash tongue. She had not intended to confront Niall with his transgression, yet his response wounded her anew. She had wanted—desperately hoped—for Niall to deny his liaison with Eve Graham meant anything to him, but he had not. The shimmer of guilt she’d seen in his eyes was little consolation.

  “No doubt my sensibilities are too tender,” she forced herself to say dispassionately.

  “I think you are making too much of what you saw.”

  “Am I?” Her angry gaze fixed on him again. “How tiresome of me to want my husband to remain faithful to his marriage vows.”

  His brows snapped together. “What of you and Keith Buchanan? How different is that from my dalliance with Eve?”

  “I never made love to him! I never even thought of kissing him!”

  When Niall merely glowered darkly at her, Sabrina swallowed miserably, her throat achingly tight. “I should not be dismayed. I know very well what a libertine you are.”

  “Have I ever pretended otherwise?”

  Sabrina flinched. “No. And I have never pretended to care. I’ve told you often enough, you are free to indulge your illicit pursuits elsewhere.”

  He leaned casually against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his powerful chest, his countenance stark and unyielding once more. “I do not recall requiring your permission, mouse.”

  “Indeed, you do not. I doubt you will miss me, in any case. I’m certain the Widow Graham will be glad to offer you solace in my absence.”

  “I suspect she will.”

  “She is welcome to you,” Sabrina retorted, ashamed at how her voice quavered. “Of course, you need not limit yourself to her. With me away, you can take the opportunity to bed every wench in sight.”

  “Mayhap I will.”

  She would not cry. His callousness rammed into her like a fist, but she would not let him see her pain. She would not give him the satisfaction.

  Summoning every shred of dignity she possessed, Sabrina turned on shaken limbs to fully face him. “Well then, there is nothing more to be said, is there?”

  Niall regarded her narrowly, knowing he was to blame for the bruised look in her eyes, for the suspiciously bright moisture that gleamed like tears. Beneath his savage anger, guilt knifed at him.

  Mrs. Paterson rapped on the door just then, to say Colm was ready to escort Sabrina to the waiting horses.

  Her spine rigid, Sabrina brushed past Niall without a word.

  He did not accompany her below. Nor did he watch as she reached the yard and collected her dog and then mounted her horse.

  Instead, he stood with his back to the wall, his jaw clenched, as she rode away, out of his life.

  His foul temper did not improve with Sabrina’s absence. Colm returned to Creagturic, reporting her safe arrival in Edinburgh, but although Niall vowed to resume his life without her, he couldn’t quite manage it.

  He couldn’t stop thinking of her, remembering the taste of her. He missed Sabrina, and not simply for the carnal pleasure she brought him. He missed arguing with her, missed her stubborn defiance. He missed her gentleness, her courage, her wry humor, her scathing wit.

  The slightest things reminded him of her. He could find nowhere in the Highlands to hide from her memory. No refuge where he could forget.

  More damning, his savage humor was taking a toll on his clansmen, and proving a danger as well. Several days after Sabrina’s departure, Niall was engaged in a practice fencing match with John in the yard, when he parried a thrust and struck a return blow too fiercely.

  With a grunt of pain, John dropped his rapier and gripped his arm, blood dripping from beneath his fingers.

  Niall swore darkly at himself and took a step forward, intending to inspect the wound, but John waved him away, scowling.

  “Ye’d best find yerself a willing lass to soothe yer temper, lad. Ye’re like a wildcat with a burr under yer arse. Till then, I’ll thank ye to keep away from me. ’Tis for cert, I’ll no longer act yer whipping post.”

  Turning, John stalked off, leaving Niall to run a hand raggedly down his face as he cursed himself roundly. He had no right to punish his kinsman for his own misery.

  Venting another oath, he retreated inside the house, upstairs to the drawing room, where he poured himself a generous tumblerful of Scotch whisky and flung himself into a chair.

  Fiend seize it, he did need a lass. The trouble was, he wanted a certain lass he couldn’t have, one who wished him to perdition.

  Niall stared morosely at the cold hearth as Sabrina’s damning words from their last bitter argument echoed in his mind.

  I did not ask to wed you. I was duped into it…

  We need not endure each other any longer…

  You cannot claim that you want me as your wife. I am merely an encumbrance to you…

  Niall squeezed his eyes shut. Sabrina was utterly wrong on that score. She might wish to be free of him, but she meant far more to him than any encumbrance. He was reconciled to their marriage now. Perhaps he’d been compelled by honor to wed her, but he was no longer interested in gaining his freedom. For reasons he couldn’t comprehend, she had become increasingly precious to him.

  Niall took a long swallow of the potent liquor, welcoming its fierce burn down his throat. He didn’t know how many women he had made love to in his lifetime, but he knew Sabrina was different from them all. With her he’d felt an intimacy, a connection, that he’d never felt with any other woman. She filled a loneliness he’d never even realized existed.

  Curse her.

  He’d been captured by her spirit, her strength, the incredible softness of her, her sweet excitement when she was in the throes of passion. He had taught her about pleasure—and inexplicably experienced a soul-deep pleasure in return. Even her defiance and sharp tongue aroused him.

  She was his match in every way.

  She made a splendid chieftain’s bride. Though he had fought her every effort, she had forced him to look beyond his blind hatred to bring peace to the Highlands. She would doubtless make an admirable mother of his bairns. She would give him strong sons and passionate daughters….

  Niall shut his eyes at the startling thought, yet his mind persisted in seeing Sabrina cradling a child at her breast, a tender smile on her lips. His child. The vision had a powerful charm to it.

  A bairn of his loins would bind Sabrina to him in a way that merely uniting their clans never could. It required a vast leap of imagination, however, to picture them enjoying such domestic happiness together.

  Emotion came in an uncomfortable flood as Niall remembered Sabrina’s wounded look at their bitter leavetaking, when he’d refused to deny the meaninglessness of his dalliance with Eve Graham.

  Were I a woman you desired, you would not be so eager to seek feminine companionship elsewhere.

  Niall drained his glass, trying to dismiss the memory, but the sight of Sabrina’s pale face couldn’t be banished. There had been a harsh vulnerability in her eyes, a torment that he had put there.

  Standing to refill his glass, he cursed himself for his folly. Admittedly, when he’d realized how obsessed he was becoming with his rebellious wife, he had panicked and tried to drive her out of his mind, his heart. He’d been a fool, though, to think he could forget Sabrina in some other woman’s arms.

  He infinitely regretted his idiocy now. It had been nothing short of criminal, and not solely because he had nearly broken his marriage vows. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d destroyed something fragile and precious: Sabrina’s trust.

&
nbsp; And then he’d pretended not to care.

  His callous insistence that he had every right to commit adultery had been cruel. His only excuse was that he’d felt inexplicably wounded himself. Sabrina had declared her intention of leaving him, and he’d wanted to strike back at her. He had intentionally hurt her—brave, proud Sabrina.

  A sharp longing knotted Niall’s insides. He didn’t want to hurt her in any way. He wanted to hold her, make love to her, cherish her…He wanted more than a carnal union with her. He wanted to know her thoughts, what she felt. He wanted her honor and trust. He wanted her respect and loyalty.

  He wanted fidelity from her.

  And yet he’d done little to earn any of those things. She thought him a worthless libertine, a wicked adulterer. In truth, he’d given her scant reason to believe him otherwise. More damning, he’d given her no reason to want him for her husband.

  A scowl darkened Niall’s brow as he stared down at the liquor in his glass. He would not, could not, allow himself to believe he’d lost Sabrina. She belonged to him. And he had never failed to win a woman when he put his mind to it.

  Determinedly he raised his glass to his lips and tilted his head back.

  It was hours later when Eve found him there in the drawing room, brooding in the dark. When she lit a lamp, Niall grimaced and tried to focus his unsteady gaze.

  “I had hoped,” she said doubtfully, “you might be desirous of company, since Lady McLaren is away. But I never expected to find you in such a state. You are not ill, are you?”

  “Aye,” Niall admitted truthfully, his words slightly slurred. “A fever for a wench.”

  Eve knelt at his feet, placing one delicate hand on his chest. “I can cure your affliction, you know. I can make you forget her.”

  Niall shook his head. He couldn’t forget. Didn’t wish to forget.

  Eve raised a delicate eyebrow as she studied him. “I cannot credit it,” she said slowly. “You’re enamored of your own wife. You, the greatest lover in Europe, ensnared.”

  He laughed harshly. “A supreme irony, is it not?”

  She lifted her hand to his mouth, her fingertips tracing its shape. “Perhaps you only need a taste of the pleasure we once shared. Come, darling, let me ease your pain.”

  Niall drew his head back. Whatever desire he had once felt for Eve Graham paled in comparison to what he now felt for Sabrina. “It wouldn’t be enough.”

  “No?”

  “No. You aren’t Sabrina,” he said simply.

  When Eve rose, making a visible effort to control her frustration, Niall stood unsteadily and made for the door.

  Giving a start, Eve took a step after him. “Niall…where do you go?”

  “To Edinburgh,” he said grimly. “To fetch my bride.” He intended to find Sabrina and demand her surrender—and put an end to this torment once and for all.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  Dawn broke over the city of Edinburgh, but neither the clatter of horses’s hooves nor the rumble of cart wheels on the cobblestone streets below penetrated Sabrina’s awareness as she stared blindly out her bedchamber window.

  Her eyes burned with unshed tears and lack of sleep. She’d had little rest in the four days since she’d left the Highlands, her heart shattered and bleeding.

  Curse him, curse him, curse him! Why had she allowed herself to love him?

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Sabrina rubbed her throbbing temples. Niall was not to blame for her misery. From the first he’d made it manifest he didn’t want her love. Yet that reminder didn’t help to dull the relentless ache within her, or quiet her tumultuous reflections. No matter how determinedly she refused to think about him, the memories persisted, stabbing through her mind in harsh rebellion.

  What an utter fool she’d been! She had vowed never to let herself succumb to Niall, but she’d failed wretchedly. She should never have journeyed to the Highlands. She was more desolate now than she’d ever been as a spurned spinster, before Niall had opened up the fissure in her heart.

  She could only pray that someday the pain would diminish. Until then she would try to bear up grimly.

  She intended to remain in Edinburgh with her stepfather. Though still weak, Charles had nominally recovered from his recent illness, yet she would care for his household as she’d done in the years before her marriage. She could make a life for herself here, a life that was dull but safe from the beguiling rake who had devastated her heart.

  Now that peace with the Buchanans was at hand, her clan no longer needed her. Nor did her husband, Sabrina thought with a bitter ache. Without her presence to inconvenience him, Niall could resume his former relationship with his beautiful mistress.

  Turning away from the window, Sabrina forced herself to begin the chore of tidying her bedchamber, though she had no heart for it.

  A short while later, her pulse lurched as she caught the low murmur of a familiar masculine voice from somewhere within the house, the velvet tones edged with impatience. Niall! What in God’s name was he doing here? Faith, she wasn’t prepared to confront him. Yet there was no time to hide…

  She heard footsteps—the sound of booted feet taking the stairs two at a time. When Niall appeared in the open doorway, his powerful body seemed to fill the small chamber.

  He wore the McLaren plaid and a deadly broadsword, while his jaw was unshaven and his hair clubbed back carelessly with a plain ribbon. With his sapphire eyes narrowed, he looked every inch the Highland warrior. He must have ridden through the night, Sabrina realized, and somehow managed to discover the location of her stepfather’s town house.

  “Is something amiss?” she managed to ask, torn between alarm at facing Niall so unexpectedly again and worry at the urgency of his mission.

  He stood gazing at her, his eyes drinking her in. “Aye, very much amiss.”

  “My grandfather?”

  “Angus is well.”

  “Then…what…why have you come?” Her voice was a breathless whisper.

  “I’ve come to fetch my bride.”

  Bewildered, Sabrina stared at him, trying to judge the expression on his beautiful features. She could read fatigue there, and grim determination. “I…I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve missed you, Sabrina. I want you to come home.”

  “Home?”

  “Aye, to the Highlands where you belong.”

  She shook her head in disbelief, remembering the harsh words she’d exchanged with this man at their bitter parting. “I don’t belong there. And I don’t wish to return. My stepfather has need of me here.”

  “The servant said Cameron had recovered his health. That he had left early for his offices.”

  “He is still weak, however, and I mean to care for him. I shall make my home here, Niall. You’ve endured a long journey for naught.”

  His gaze cool, Niall propped a shoulder against the doorjamb, looking prepared to stay forever. “You have some objection to remaining as my wife?”

  Sabrina hunched her shoulders protectively. Yes, she wanted to cry. She never wanted to be so deeply hurt again as she’d been these past weeks. She couldn’t bear to live with Niall as his wife. She couldn’t bear to watch his infidelities day after day. Her heart would shrivel a little more each time, till it crumbled to dust. No, she could only pretend indifference and hide the savage pain as she shielded them both from this mockery of a marriage.

  Her chin rose. “I should think you would be pleased to be rid of me. Surely you can pursue your amorous affairs more freely without a wife’s presence to inconvenience you.”

  “I have no desire to pursue any affairs, amorous or otherwise.”

  “I expect your mistress might have something to say on that score.”

  Niall’s mouth tightened with impatience. “Eve is not my mistress, Sabrina, and has not been for a long while.”

  “What is she then?” Her sarcasm was cutting. “What do you call your frolic with her in the orchard—an afternoon tea?”

&
nbsp; His gaze never wavered. “A momentary act of lunacy. One I profoundly regret.” His intense eyes held hers. “I swear to you, it never went beyond a few caresses. I admit I intended to. I thought Eve could make me forget you…my obsession with you. But being with her had precisely the opposite effect. It made me realize what a treasure I had in you. How much I wanted you and only you.”

  Sabrina stared at him, unable to speak.

  “’Tis true.” Niall smiled humorlessly. “The entire time I was thinking of you…wishing you were the one in my arms. I felt no real desire for her.”

  “Indeed?” Sabrina retorted, finding her tongue. “You looked as if you were enjoying yourself mightily.”

  He shrugged. “Carnal pleasure is but an indulgence of the flesh. It means little if one feels nothing for one’s partner.” His voice softened. “You taught me that.”

  “I…don’t believe you.”

  “Believe it, Sabrina. Eve means nothing to me. She is merely a memory, one in my past.”

  “And you think that should make any difference to me? How could I ever trust you again after what I witnessed, Niall? Even if you stopped short of rutting with her, it was still a flagrant betrayal. You couldn’t possibly understand how much it hurt me.”

  “I’m sorry, Sabrina. More than I can ever say.”

  Sabrina shook her head. She couldn’t accept Niall’s professions of regret. The wound was too raw.

  Nor could she yet comprehend why he had pursued her here. Unless perhaps his stalwart Highland pride had been affronted because his wife chose to live apart from him. Or he feared losing the dowry his heiress bride had brought him….

  Her eyes stark with unhappiness, Sabrina stiffened her spine. “You can keep my dowry. My stepfather’s holdings are immense enough that he won’t miss it.”

  Niall’s gaze narrowed. “The dowry be damned. I never wedded you for your wealth.”

  “Oh, yes, I recall now, it was a debt of honor. Well, I absolve you of any obligation to me.”

  “Confound it…I don’t want to be absolved.”

  “You cannot possibly wish to remain tied to me.”