by Amanda Scott
Finding the nub known to be the most sensitive part of a woman’s body, he teased it with his finger until she was moaning again, then slid the finger inside her. Feeling her open for him, he moved gently over her and eased himself in.
She gasped. “You’re too big!”
“Be easy, lass, a woman’s body adjusts itself.”
If, in the end, it was not that easy, he was skillful and she remained submissive. So the task was done.
Pounding to his culmination, he knew he must have hurt her. But coupling was necessary for any husband and wife, and initiating it was the duty of any new husband. In any event, Lina seemed relaxed afterward and made no complaint.
In fact, he thought, she seemed strangely distracted. Too sated to twitch a muscle, let alone to talk, he concentrated on recovering enough energy to move.
Stunned—and abruptly unaware of anything else that was happening to her, other than a rather distant ache—Lina had found herself staring at Lady Aubrey and wondered how her mother had entered a room with two locked doors.
Obviously, she could not. No one could do that. But her mother stood right there, not six feet from the bed. Lina opened her mouth to ask what she was doing, but when she tried to form the words, her lips would not cooperate…
While she puzzled over this oddity, she realized that Lady Aubrey was not in the room at all but in another chamber altogether, as if a wall between the two had opened to reveal her standing there. She knelt then, opened a carved wooden chest, and reached into it.
As she did, a muscular arm reached around her from behind and a large hand clapped over her mouth.
Startled, Lina tried to scream but heard no sound. Feeling weight bearing down on her, she realized that Ian had collapsed atop her and was breathing hard.
Apparently aware that he was crushing her, he muttered, “Sorry, lass. I hope I did not hurt you too much.”
“No, sir, I barely felt a thing,” she said, finding her voice when he rolled halfway off her and no farther. “Forbye, the strangest thing just happened.”
“Aye, sure, but you’ll get used to it,” he muttered, and snored.
Since it was clearly not the best time for her to try to explain what had happened, she decided to think more about it before telling anyone. Sliding out from under Ian, she poured water from the ewer on the washstand into the basin and cleaned herself. As she did, she realized that she was sore down there. The aching eased quickly, so she blew out the candles and climbed over Ian—apparently without disturbing him in the least—and slept soundly beside him.
When she awoke Wednesday morning, he still slept, so she lay quietly until he, too, awoke.
When he turned over and saw her, he said with a grin, “Good, you’re awake. I’ve a rare hunger for ye, lass. I think this marriage is going to be a good one.”
When he reached for her, she sat up, clutched the covers to her breasts, and scooted away. Returning his smile with a wistful one, she said nonetheless firmly, “First, sir, I would explain why I must go with you to Dunglass.”
Chapter 13
Having three sisters, Ian knew better than to declare that he needed no explanation, because he had made up his mind. His attention having shifted to other parts, he offered the tactful suggestion that they could discuss the matter later.
“I would prefer to discuss it now,” Lina said with her usual tranquility. “Sithee, sir, if you do not take me home with you, just think how it will look.”
“How do you think it will look?”
She cocked her head, as if she wondered why he had to ask. Then, soberly, she said, “Do you not mean to tell your parents about this, about us?”
“Of course, I’ll tell them,” he said, although the truth was that he had not spared that forthcoming event a thought. The only time he had considered his parents’ opinion was when Andrew had said they would not object to his marrying Lina. Nor would they, he reassured himself. However…
She continued to watch him. Her expression was unchanged, but he had that feeling again that she looked right into his mind and knew all that was there. That would explain why he could sense so strongly that she was dissatisfied with his answers. In fact, for all the heed that she had paid to the last one…
“Did you hear me?”
“Aye, sure. I just think you should give your decision more thought.”
A shiver shot up his spine. “Look here,” he said, “you begin to sound like Dree. Do not tell me that you also think you know what people think and feel.”
“Of course not. I can only tell when you are not being entirely truthful.”
“Oh, is that all?” He wanted to shake her. “Just what makes you think you can do that?”
Her smile was rueful, not triumphant. “Likely, I’ll wish I had not revealed my secrets,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t know how I know. I just do. But I can often tell by your expression or the way you tug that strand of hair you are holding.”
Flicking the offending strand behind his ear, he exhaled with what his sister Susanna would call his long-suffering sigh and said, “I’ll admit that I hadn’t given my parents much thought, lass. But you ken fine how much they love you. Do you imagine that they will not welcome you to our family?”
“I know they like me,” she said. “And they have always been welcoming. But they will be more so if you tell them straightaway and do not seem to hide me away here. Mercy, sir, you could be gone for months. What would anyone think?”
“Everyone will think exactly what your father does, that I’m leaving you where you will be safe,” he said, keeping his temper with difficulty. Where had her delightful submissiveness gone? Weren’t wives supposed to obey their husbands?
“What people think will depend on you,” Lina said. “If you ‘forget’ to mention a little thing like your marriage, I expect they will think any number of things, none of which will redound to my credit. But if you take me with you—”
“You can put that notion out of your head,” he said curtly. “Dunglass is but three miles from the rebels at Dumbarton. I want you far away from there.”
To ease his temper, he thought fondly of his mother, who always submitted to Colquhoun’s decisions without argument. Regrettably, however, the image that leaped to mind was his father’s chagrin when Lady Colquhoun entered the inner chamber uninvited to declare that he could not send Lina and Lizzie away at once.
“Your lady mother is there,” Lina said calmly, as if she were just clarifying her thoughts and not sending chills through him again. His hands itched to catch hold of her but not to shake her. He wanted to rip the covers off and, if she was not too sore from their previous exercise, to reveal more pleasures of coupling to her.
Instead, he said brusquely, “If, by the time I return, my father has not sent my mother to join my sister Susanna, I’ll be gey surprised. Dunglass itself may be teeming with Borderers and other ruffians by then. It will be no place for you.”
“Why are so many ruffians coming?”
“To do battle, if necessary,” he said. “You guessed when I rescued you that my father hopes to persuade James Mòr to yield Dumbarton to his grace. What you do not know is that the King ordered me to take back the castle for the Crown.”
Her lips parted and color drained from her face. “That castle is impregnable,” she protested. “No one could take it. James Mòr was able to do so only because the men who then guarded the castle still knew him as Murdoch’s well-behaved son and welcomed him. James Mòr will trust no one.”
“He would trust his mother,” Ian said, simply because broad statements like that one deserved contradiction. Although the thought was an intriguing one.
Lina raised her eyebrows in another speculative look. “You are gey good at disguising yourself,” she said. “And I have never clapped eyes on Duchess Isabella. But I doubt that she is over six feet tall or has shoulders as broad as yours.”
Her tone was solemn, her expression likewise. But the wench’s eyes danced.
“Come here to me,” he said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Provide you with yet another reason that James Mòr would never believe I am a woman, let alone one daft enough to marry into the Stewart family.”
“Will you agree to tell your parents straightaway about our marriage?”
Meeting her gaze and holding it, he said, “I don’t bargain, Lina. Not after I have made a decision. Now, put those covers down and come here to me.”
Lina was not afraid of him, although she did wonder if he had thought she might be, or had even hoped that she would be. He still held her gaze, but she looked steadily, silently back at him until his lips moved, diverting her attention to them. They thinned, and a tiny dimple showed just to the right of them.
Without thinking about what she did, she let the covers slip. Then, sensing a new, exciting kind of tension, she licked her lips and looked into his eyes again.
They were smoldering. He reached for her and she leaned toward him as he did. Without effort, he pulled her into his arms, captured her lips with his own…
… and began tickling her.
Lina shrieked, but Ian’s lips muffled the sound, and he was too strong for her to escape. Soon, though, he was no longer tickling but stroking her, teasing her nipples, making her blood race and her heart pound. His tongue slid into her mouth, and hers darted to meet it.
When he moved over her, she spread her legs to receive him without giving thought to the initial pain she had felt the night before. By the time she did think of it, he was inside her, moving gently. She felt a distant, residual ache, but the other feelings he stirred soon banished all thought of pain.
When he climaxed, he fell away from her. But he lay for only a moment before he said, “Don’t move yet, lass. I want to teach you one more thing to keep you from forgetting me whilst I’m away.”
“How could I forget you,” she murmured, smiling.
Without replying, he kissed her breasts and her belly. Then he moved lower and lower, his legs between hers again as he eased toward the foot of the bed, kissing and licking her until she began to squirm and moan.
Then his fingers returned to where his cock had been earlier, and she could feel his breath there, too. He murmured, “Be still now. Just feel and enjoy.”
His fingers moved away, and his tongue began to do things she had never imagined a tongue could do. Soon afterward, she cried out again in pure pleasure.
When she could breathe normally, Ian moved up beside her, drew her into the shelter of his arms, and said with a smile, “Will you remember?”
“Always, aye.” Lowering her lashes, she wondered briefly if she had any hope of persuading him to take her with him and decided she had none. He had made up his mind, and he was a gey stubborn man. She would have to study him more to learn what persuasive measures, if any, might work with him.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
Knowing that to share those thoughts would merely supply him with another challenge, she kept silent.
“Tell me.”
She felt much more comfortable with him now than she had expected she ever could, and she wished he were not leaving. But she would not tell him those things either. So, she said truthfully, “I was thinking what a puzzle you are to me.”
“How so?” He sounded more sleepy than curious.
Nevertheless, she said, “My family thinks of me as the persuasive one. I can nearly always persuade my sisters and others to heed me. But you are a puzzle.”
“I told you we’re likely to fratch, lass. If you are wise, though, you won’t fight me after I’ve made up my mind.”
“You did promise always to listen.”
“I did, and I will but only up to a point. If you have already said it without persuading me, saying it again or haggling with me won’t aid you.”
“I would not do those things,” she said. “I do hope, though, that you will tell your parents straightaway that we have married.”
“I will tell them,” he said. “I did not mean for you to think I would not. I just disliked the bargain you offered. That one won’t sway me, Lina, ever.”
Remembering, she felt a little guilty. But a woman had so few weapons. Quietly, she said, “It is important to me that you tell them. I feel as if we have married without their permission. And I don’t like the feeling.”
“Nor would I if I felt the same way,” he said. “But my parents have been urging me to keep my eyes open for a wife since I turned eighteen. So I am as certain as one can be that our marriage will please them. They’ll also understand that you will be safer here than anywhere nearer Dumbarton, let alone at Dunglass.”
His saying that she would be safe sent a shiver up Lina’s spine just as Lady Aubrey’s assurance of her future well-being had done. Determined to be sensible, reminding herself that she and Ian had married and should make the most of their time together, she summoned up a smile and said, “How soon must you go?”
“Not today,” he said firmly. “I’m too worn out from making love to my lady wife. Sakes, I may have to stay in bed all day to recover,” he added.
When she shook her head at him, he said, “In troth, I want to give the men at Dunglass time to reduce what are like to be a plethora of plans to a possible few.”
“Who has yet to come?”
“Jamie sent for Douglas to come, and Douglas will bring other Border lords to make up Jamie’s army. I’ll welcome them after I’ve taken the castle, but the last thing I want is tension between powerful Border lords who think Jamie should have put them in charge. I’d liefer take the castle with men from Loch Lomond clans.”
“But everyone’s loyalties have split. Faith, nearly all of us here descend from Earls of Lennox. Yet look at us. Thanks to Lennox and the House of Albany, clans, even families, have divided. We fight amongst ourselves as much as we fight others.”
“We aren’t fighting now,” he said pointedly. “Art sure you want to get up?”
“I hope you won’t command me to stay in bed,” she said. “I look forward to enjoying more such activity, but I’d liefer get up now and break my fast. We can walk outside the wall afterward if you want to see more of Tùr Meiloach. Or we can go somewhere quiet, talk, and get to know each other better.”
“I do need to talk with your father today, to help draft those documents he mentioned yesterday,” Ian said. “We did not take time to do it then, and we must do that before I go. Shall I shout for Hak and send him to fetch your lass?”
Lina agreed. But when he strode to the door, naked, opened it, and shouted across the landing, she dove back under the covers until Hak had received his orders and gone to find Tibby. Then, suddenly shy about getting out of bed naked, she felt immense relief when Ian pulled on his breeks and a tunic and said he would go and find out when Andrew wanted to draw up the marriage documents.
When he had gone, she relieved herself in the night jar and put on her shift from the day before. Memory returned then rather abruptly of Lady Aubrey’s eerie intrusion during their previous night’s activity.
When that image had appeared and then vanished as if unseen breath had blown out its light, she had felt dizzy and disoriented. Now she wondered if her captivity with Lizzie and all that had followed it might have affected her mind.
Guiltily, she realized that she ought to have told Ian about the incident. Before she could even ponder that thought, though, a more startling one took its place: What if she had inherited her mother’s gift and seen some future event?
Feeling silly even to wonder such a thing, she discarded that notion, too.
Surely, if she had inherited the gift, or curse, of seeing into the future, she would have known it long before now. The strangest of Andrena’s gifts presented itself soon after her birth. And Andrena had known since childhood that she could tell how people were feeling, what they might be thinking, and if they were trustworthy. Muriella, too, had known as a child that she had an extraordinary m
emory.
Striving to imagine what to say if she did tell Ian, Lina decided she lacked the courage to try. He would likely insist that she had been daydreaming at a time when she ought to have kept her attention on their consummation and him. In short, he’d be annoyed, and she did not want to irk him again so close to his departure.
A light rap on the door announced Tibby’s arrival with a fresh shift, Lina’s favorite blue kirtle, and a crisp white veil. Tib helped her dress and was handing her the silver chain girdle to clasp around her waist when Ian walked in.
Startled, Lina nearly objected to such a lack of ceremony but recalled in time that another right of husbands was to walk in on their wives whenever they chose.
He cocked his head as if he had noticed her mixed reaction. But he made no comment other than to say he had talked with Andrew. “If you’d like to enjoy some fresh air, my lady, I thought we might go down to the shore. I could not see from inside if the tide is in or out—”
“It is in and on the turn, sir,” she said.
“Sakes, how do you know? One cannot see well enough from that window, and I doubt that you have left this chamber.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know how I know, but I do. After living here so long, I expect it is just something one learns to sense from the sounds of the waves.”
“I don’t hear any waves.”
“Then perhaps that is how I know. In any event, we cannot go all the way down, if that is what you had hoped. But we can walk on the cliffs or in the woods.”
He said dryly, “Not thinking of sinking me in one of your hungry bogs or feeding me to one of the fierce beasts we hear so much about, are you?”
“Nay,” she said, smiling. “Not if you behave.”
He grinned at her and turned to Tibby. “Take that veil off her ladyship, lass. I want to see her hair in the sunlight.”
Hearing his tone, Lina wondered what else he might want to see.
Dougal was in the woods above the tower, waiting for Lady Aubrey. His father had watchers everywhere. Andrew Dubh likely did, too. But Pharlain had one or two living amid Andrew’s people. Thanks to one of them, Dougal knew how much her ladyship loved the wee burn-fed pond just below him in the woods.