She wished he’d say something. Anything.
How was it that she and this man had just been closer than she’d been to another living soul since she left her mother’s womb, and she hadn’t a clue what was rolling around in his noggin?
She’d gone to bed that evening sick at heart, and not only on account of the cruel display Alex had put on at supper. Despite his assurance that he’d honor the other points of their marriage contract, she’d been convinced that he meant to wait a decent amount of time and then turn her out, since their marriage hadn’t been consummated. No more worries on that score.
’Tis done. I’m a wife in truth now.
But that didn’t mean things would get any easier for the pair of them.
Especially since, yes, there it was again. She wasn’t mistaken. The man was snoring softly.
She wedged her arms between them and heaved.
“Get off me, then, ye great ox!”
He came awake with a snort as he rolled to one side. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter, the man says,” Lucinda fumed. “Ye fell asleep.”
He knuckled his eyes and blinked slowly. “I don’t know about Scottish customs, but sleep is a generally accepted pastime in England.”
“But no’ the now. No’ when ye’ve just taken me maidenhead.” She tucked the coverlet under her chin. “Have ye naught to say to me?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“And?”
“I . . . thought you forgave me.”
“Aye, I did, but have ye no words of—” Of love, she almost said, but she snipped off the words before they tumbled out. If the man had to be prompted to speak of love, he couldn’t have many deep feelings on the matter. “Never mind.”
He rolled onto his back and laced his fingers behind his head. “Now that I’m wide awake again, I have to say, you were . . . incredible, Lucinda.”
“Aye?” No one had ever named her incredible at anything before. Her heart leaped up in hope, but she reined it in. There were too many highs and lows with Alexander. When would they find that calm center she so longed for?
“Aye,” he repeated with a grin. Then he reached for her and tugged her close. He was so warm it was like snugging up to a banked fire. The embrace wasn’t a declaration of undying affection, but her skin tingled where it touched his. She wished he’d ripped her night rail even more thoroughly so more of her would be flush against more of him with not a scrap of fabric between.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have let myself go to sleep. Bad form,” he admitted. “But I was so relaxed after . . . and it felt so good to sink into a sleep without dreams.”
“Everyone needs to dream, Alex.”
“Not the dreams I have.”
“Do ye have night terrors then?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it that. Besides, it’s just the one. But it comes almost nightly.”
She raised up on one elbow and looked down at him. He was so handsome, he made her feel unaccountably shy. She distracted herself by teasing the sandy hair that whorled around his brown nipple.
“If the night phantom comes to ye that often, ’tis of some import. Tell me yer dream, Alexander.”
He rolled toward her, pinning her beneath his body, and kissed her again. Languid and slow, he nipped at her lips and teased her with his tongue.
“Ye’re trying . . . to distract me,” she said between kisses. He covered her mouth and the ache that had been stilled between her legs so recently throbbed afresh. Lucinda reached around him and squeezed his tight buttocks.
Oh, aye, Knowledgeable Ladies’ Guide, the man has an excellent seat, for certain sure.
But much as her body urged her to go blithely with Alex’s lead, her head told her not to be so easily turned. She shoved against his chest again.
“Alex, I mean it. No more playing. Tell me the dream now.”
“Then more playing?” He nuzzled her neck.
She sent him a smile full of promise. “Aye.”
He gave her one more lingering kiss and then sighed. “Very well. Since I became Lord Bonniebroch, I’ve been plagued with a dream of a weeping woman. The dream is dark, so I can’t see her clearly. I’ve no notion who she might be. All she does is sob . . . until it breaks my heart and I wake in a cold sweat.”
“And ye’ve only dreamed of her since ye came into yer Scottish title?”
He nodded.
An idea struck Lucinda, but she wasn’t sure she should mention it after what happened at supper. Still, if she could help him understand what he was dealing with, she had to try. “D’ye think . . . I mean, could it be your mother ye hear weeping?”
He rolled off her and sat upright. “After all these years why would I start dreaming of her now? And trust me, if I decided to dream of her, I’d make every effort for it to be a more pleasant one.”
“Ye may have no say in it. I’ve never met anyone who could direct their dreams. ’Tis too jumbled up with the spirits and memory and whether we had too many turnips at supper.” She sat up too. “Ye see, when we dream, I believe the veil between this world and the next wears a bit thin. The departed can get our attention more easily when we’re asleep.”
He cast her a dubious frown.
“Truly. I mind the time right after my grandsire died. I was a little girl then, but he came to me in a dream, smiling in that twinkly sort of way he had as he sat on the foot of my bed. And then he said to me, ‘Lucy-girl, tell yer grandmam I love her and that’ll never die.’ Then he winked at me and was gone.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”
“And you really believe your grandfather appeared to you in a dream?”
“I dinna ken, but I do remember it pleased my grandmam out of all knowing when I told her of it the next day,” she said. “And why shouldn’t my grandsire speak to me so? Doesna the Scriptures say angels spoke to Joseph while he slept?”
Alex cocked a brow at her. “I bow to your superior knowledge of holy writ, but I’m not convinced. Besides, my mother has been gone for a long time. Why would she begin to trouble me now?”
“She was Scottish, aye? Now that ye’re in the Highlands, ye’re closer to where she spent a great deal of her life. It may be she can reach ye easier here. And I dinna think she means to trouble ye. Sounds as if she’s sorrowing over something.”
“She has plenty to be sorrowful over,” he said softly, then he shook his head. “But that can’t be it. The previous Lord Bonniebroch had them too. It’s doubtful my mother decided to visit him by night.” He narrowed his eyes and cast Lucinda a sidelong gaze. “How is it you know so much about dreams and visitations from the dear departed?”
Lucinda swallowed hard. It was the perfect chance for her to tell him about Brodie MacIver. But the bridge she and Alexander had built between themselves was so tenuous, she didn’t know if it would stand the strain of introducing her ghostly companion just yet.
So she arched up to kiss his jaw and nibble his earlobe. “So many questions. Are ye intending to talk all night, husband? I thought ye wanted to play.”
“Never have our hopes been so high. Yet for all its bright promise, the felicitous state of Lord Bonniebroch’s marriage isna the only bolt which must slip if the curse is to be broken. I’ve yet to decide if our laird has the strength to lift the others.”
From the secret journal of Callum Farquhar,
Steward of Bonniebroch Castle since the
Year of Our Lord 1521
Chapter Twenty
“Lu—” Alexander couldn’t seem to find the end of her name. It got caught in his throat while she tormented him with all the skill of an accomplished courtesan, teasing and stroking. She’d taken to love play like a spaniel to the water. He’d never have believed her a virgin if he hadn’t claimed her purity himself.
Of course, the fact that she wanted to touch and taste every bit of him with boundless enthusiasm may have colored his perceptions a bit. Once she got him to agree to grasp the spindles
in her headboard and not let go until she gave him permission, she began a thorough exploration of his whole body.
“How strange that ye should be so soft near to where ye’re so hard,” Lucinda murmured as she fondled his ballocks with one hand while stroking his cock with the other. As if to make a liar of her, his balls tensed into a tight mound. “Hmm. It appears I’m mistook. Do ye change so at will? Or is it like a sneeze and ye canna stop it from happening?”
Then she bent and licked him from base to tip. It was a good thing she didn’t really seem to expect an answer to her question. He was incapable of speech.
Alex was also incapable of keeping hold of the headboard for another moment. He grasped her hips and pulled her up so he could slip into her. She was wet as waterweed, slick and welcoming and he slid into her tight channel with the rightness of a homecoming.
“Ye promised ye wouldna let go of the headboard,” she chided, but she rocked her hips slowly, luxuriating in having him fully seated inside her.
He grasped the spindles again. “I’m sorry.”
“Ye’ve been saying that a lot this night.”
He grinned at her. “Only this time I don’t mean it. I just couldn’t wait any longer, Lu. I had to be inside you again. But now, I’m completely at your mercy. Do with me as you will,” he said. “Only don’t stop doing with me or I’ll die.”
“We canna have that, can we?” She cocked a brow and smiled down at him, beneficent as a Botticelli angel, wicked as his most lascivious dream.
Lucinda set the pace. She bent to allow him to rub his face in the sweet hollow between her breasts. He caught a nipple as she started to raise back up and held her there as he sucked. He thrust upward as she bore down on him.
He could go deeper. He had to. He longed to release his white-knuckled grip on the headboard so he could press her hips down further. He’d rut her completely. He’d split her in two. He’d—
“Hold me, Alex,” she pleaded and he let go of the spindles.
He grasped her hips and held her down, driving himself in completely. She arched her back, thrusting her breasts forward, her head falling back so her hair cascaded down her spine and tickled his ballocks.
She moved on him, building the friction and heat. He began his mental spelling bee again to keep from emptying himself into her before she came. She had to come again first. He longed to feel her fisted around him, pounding around him—
Lucinda. A-D-N-I . . .
Even spelling backward wasn’t working. He was losing the battle with the pressure rising in his shaft. He decided to switch to French.
Amour. R-U-O-M—
There was no stopping it this time. His body demanded release. Just as he began to go off like a Roman candle inside her, she came with him. They rode the bursts of pleasure together till they were utterly spent.
She’d been waiting for him, the little minx.
He’d been waiting for her . . . all his life. As she collapsed on his chest, he held her close. It made no sense if he thought about it logically. He hadn’t known her much more than a week and yet, there was something inside him that recognized her. There were myriad things for him to learn about her, but at some deep level, he already knew Lucinda down to the soles of her little arched feet. Strangely enough, she seemed to know him as well.
And she hadn’t turned away.
That was a Christmas miracle in its own right.
But on top of that, she made him feel something he’d never felt before. He wasn’t sure yet what this emotion or sensation or whatever-it-was ought to be named, but this hot lump in his chest was too uncomfortably real not to mean something. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her sweet scent.
“Thank you,” he whispered. Thank you for not turning away when you saw who I really was, he finished silently.
“Ye make it sound as if I rendered ye a service. ’Twas no’ like that. I rather think what we do together is a gift we give each other.”
“It is. But thank you all the same, love.”
Lethargy stole over him, that drowsy don’t-give-a-tinker’s-damn-about-anything sensation that followed a good hard swive, but he knew he dared not let himself drift off again. Not until she did, at least.
If he was going to stay awake, he needed to be upright. Alexander rolled her off of him and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
“Ye’re leaving me?”
“No, just stretching my legs.” The odd passage between his chamber and hers rose in his mind. “Want to go on a bit of an explore with me?”
She wrapped one of the blankets around her shoulders and climbed out of the bed to join him. “Where to?”
Heedless of his nakedness, he wandered to the wall where the doorway had opened, trying to find it again. The secret passage was so cunningly disguised; there were no visible seams in the richly paneled walls. Then he looked at Lucinda’s fireplace. Another figurine depicting the first Scottish king stood sentinel on the mantel.
He tilted the statue and Kenneth MacAlpin opened the doorway again. The candles in the tin sconces were still flickering in the long stone passageway. Lucinda gasped in surprise.
“I do believe your MacAlpin is my favorite historical monarch,” Alex said with a grin.
“Mine too, if he led ye to my chambers this night.”
“That was actually Mr. Farquhar’s doing.” The disturbing vision of the old steward stepping from the looking glass still rang as true in his head, but it couldn’t be. Farquhar had probably slipped in through the door in the conventional manner just as Alexander was surfacing from a dream of him popping from the mirror.
He gave himself a shake. It was hard to tell real from imaginary on a night like this. When Lucinda slipped her hand in his it seemed real enough. He’d have hated to wake if this was all just a dream.
“Much as I like seeing ye in naught but the skin God gave ye, d’ye think ye ought to put on yer trousers if we’re to go wandering behind the walls?” she suggested.
“You’re right. And you’d better put on something warmer too.” Her ripped night rail was scant protection from the elements. “It’s chilly in there.”
While Alex tugged on his smalls and trousers, Lucinda donned a fresh night rail and wrapper. Alex draped the blanket around her shoulders for good measure. They joined hands at the yawning opening in her wall.
“We’ll have to go single file.” He kissed her knuckles and then held her hand behind his back as he led her through the opening. He wasn’t surprised when the doorway grated closed behind them, but Lucinda gave a little squeak.
“Might we no’ get lost back here?” she asked in a small voice.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said. “We can probably go anywhere we want once we learn the system, but we’ll just follow the lighted candles back to my room for now.”
He pinched off the burning candles as they passed, throwing the corridor behind them into darkness. Alex fancied he heard something as they came even with the stairs leading to the dungeon. He hurried Lucinda past the dark opening and then stopped.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
It was faint, barely on the edge of sound. He might have imagined it completely. Nothing was more likely on this most fanciful of nights.
“What?” Lucinda cocked an ear.
He strained to listen, but the sound didn’t come again.
“I dinna hear anything but me own heart pounding in me ears,” Lucinda whispered.
“Alexander Mallory, Laird of Bonniebroch.” There it was again, a whisper like a courtyard full of dead leaves. Lucinda showed no sign of having heard it, but the voice sent a ripple of dread down his spine. Alex moved her in front of him, so he could keep his body between her and the stairs leading downward.
When they came to the staircase leading upward, Alex stopped. “Let’s go this way. I’m in need of some fresh air.”
The stone steps turned in a tight spiral but it didn’t take long for them to come to a heavy plank door
with a beam in a bracket across it. Alexander lifted the beam and pushed the door open. He and Lucinda stepped out onto the battlements under a sky blazing with stars.
There was no moon, no clouds, only a hazy path of dense fire trailing across the sky. Far to the north, lights danced along the edge of the earth in eerie shades of green.
“That’s something you don’t see in London.” Alex wrapped his arms around Lucinda from behind so he could shelter her from the cold.
“Oh, aye? We see them often in the winter.”
“I’ve heard of the aurora borealis, of course . . .” The green lights changed shape and wavered in long streams. “I never expected they’d be so full of movement.”
“That’s because they’re dancing,” Lucinda said. “We call them the Nimble Men. Look! That one just bowed to his partner.”
The sky did seem to be hosting a great ball for the dancing lights with stars winking against the blackness beyond.
“Sometimes, there are red spots here and there in the northern sky as well,” Lucinda explained. “When that happens, folk tell tales of great battles between the Nimble Men and their enemies. The sky is strewn with wound-stones and pools of faery blood.”
“I’ll wager it’s even prettier when there are red lights.”
“Aye, it may be fine to look upon, but I dinna like it when I think what it represents. Violence isna pretty. Why is it men must fight and kill?”
Her words took him back to the French battlefield where he’d hacked his way through a melee after his horse was shot out from under him. His senses were so acute, his memories of that time so vivid, he could still smell the metallic tang of blood and acrid smoke, still feel the burn in his sword arm from every thrust as his strength dimmed and the English trumpets sounded retreat, still remember the faint wisp of a mustache on the last young Frenchman he cut down before he made it back to the relative safety of the English lines.
“Sometimes,” Alex said wearily, “disputes among men can’t be settled by civilized means.”
“But wars mean fatherless bairns and brokenhearted women who must carry on without them. Why are men so bloody-minded? Why not just walk away from discord?”
Mia Marlowe Page 19