Clad in a dark cloak and the mask of the dragon. And all that appeared of the man beneath the mask was the fire of his eyes.
But still she waited … waited because she knew the sweet succulence of his touch. Waited because she could not run. Whether he brought pure ecstasy or the silver flash of death, she would wait, because she could not run.
He came nearer and nearer, and still she held. Whispers surrounded them, gentle on the breeze, growing louder. She heard the sound of the surf, crashing far below. The salt taste of the sea sprayed against her face, and there were no more whispers as the wind rose to a crescendo. He spoke to her, in the burr of the Highlands, and he told her that Castle Creeghan awaited her, that the castle needed a bride. That it was her last night alone …
And then he was before her, and she saw the deep-bronzed strength of his long-fingered hands fall gently against her breast and travel to her throat. He cast aside the dragon mask, and his features were bare and handsome as he moved low against her. His fingers caressed her throat, and she didn’t know if he meant to kiss her … or to kill her.
There was no kiss. She awoke with a start, and suddenly she was angry, very angry. A candle burned from the desk, and outside, the darkness of the night was beginning to fade as the rising sun struggled to cast a pink glow into the room.
She leapt up, not taking the time to think, and burst into the dressing room.
The second the door opened, he shot up. He stared at her, dark hair tousled and disheveled, his gaze sharp. The blanket fell from his chest, displaying its hard-muscled nakedness. “What is it?” he demanded harshly.
“You!” she told him, hands on her hips. “You! How dare you threaten me.”
Both dark brows shot up, a small smile curved into his lip, and he leaned comfortably upon an elbow. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“Indeed, I would. Yes, I need the emerald. It was never Mary’s, it was always mine. Margaret kept it for me for a while, but then she thought that she, being in Richmond, was in an even more vulnerable state. She arranged to get it to Mary. Mary must have asked your brother to keep it safe. Maybe he didn’t know where it had come from, although I cannot believe Mary didn’t tell him. That, my Lord Creeghan, is the truth, and you better believe it!”
“Will I?” he asked politely.
“Yes, if you expect me to exchange vows with you in order to catch a murderer. I did come here for Mary, too. And that you will also have to believe. She sent me letters about how frightened she was, and she was my friend, my very good friend. If someone here did kill her, then that someone must be punished.”
“Someone …” he murmured. “So does that mean that you no longer believe it was me? Or Bruce?”
“Bruce is dead. He could not have rendered me unconscious in the crypts.”
“Ah, but I could have. I was there with you, soon after the deed.”
She didn’t reply immediately. If she had any sense, she would consider him the prime suspect.
But love had stripped away her common sense. She shivered, remembering her dream. If he did mean to harm her, would she be able to regain her soul and run?
“I am in this room,” she offered.
He cast aside the covers and stood. He had slept naked, but he seemed not to notice his state as he gripped her wrists and forced her eyes to his by the power of his will. “I do not suspect you!” she said, wishing now that she had not come. It was too disturbing to be held by him so.
“Only upon occasion,” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“All right, Martise. It’s nearly dawn. We are about to wed. So I will believe in you, believe your words, if you will put your trust in me.”
“But I—”
“Your total trust. Not sometimes, but always. Not ‘I do not wish it to be him, but perhaps it is.’ Nay, lady, believe in me, and I will help you.”
“Help me what?”
“To find the emerald. You must want it very badly. To have risked my room, believing that I might be the murderer …”
She wrenched her hands free and moved away, leaning against the door. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a wise move. The laird of Creeghan lacked not one bit of his power and arrogance in his naked state.
She tried to keep her eyes steady with his, and not to allow them to fall. “Yes, I need it very badly. I have a home in Virginia that means very much to me. I’ll lose it if I can’t pay the new county and state taxes on it.” She paused briefly, lashes falling, then rising swiftly. “I need something other than, er, Confederate currency.”
“A house? A plantation, I imagine.”
“Yes.”
“Good tobacco crops, cotton?”
“Yes.” She had forgotten just how well he must know Virginia. “Some of the richest soil in the state,” she told him.
He was silent for a moment, watching her. “Perhaps, if I survive, and Creeghan survives, we can save this place of yours, too.”
She lifted her chin high. How could he carry on a conversation so nonchalantly?
“I don’t want your charity,” she told him. “I just want my own emerald.”
“Perhaps it can be found. But,” he added on a note of wry humor, “I imagine that you’ve searched thoroughly for it already. I don’t know where to begin to look myself.”
“It must be here!” she said desperately. Then she couldn’t bear standing across from him as he was, and spun around to leave.
“One moment!” he said sharply. She paused with her hand upon the doorknob.
“What?”
“I never threatened you over the emerald.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“You came in here telling me that I had threatened you. And that you weren’t going to let me do it. What were you talking about?”
“Oh,” she murmured. Her knees felt weak. She needed to escape.
She had come in upon him in a thunderous fury.
She swung back around, bracing herself by the door. “Last night,” she began softly. There was no substance in her voice. Her eyes fell again despite her best efforts, and she felt a riddling of sweet excitement rip through her. Like an Apollo or a Zeus, or any classical god crafted of marble or granite, he was truly beautiful in his naked form. But he was not made of marble, and muscle and sinew rippled within him, and the pulse of his heart was evident in his veins, and all that was rugged and masculine and rawly seductive about him was very much in evidence.
“You threatened that last night should be my last night alone,” she snapped out, drawing up her eyes.
He smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. “I wasn’t threatening,” he assured her, and added softly, “I was promising.”
“You are really an insolent rake,” she retorted heatedly. He shrugged and walked toward her. “All right, then, it was a warning.”
He stood right before her. She felt the radiating heat of his body, so very close.
“You are forcing this marriage, Laird Creeghan, and beyond that, you would threaten—”
“Warn,” he interrupted.
“And bully.”
“I do protest,” he said, and, by then, he was very close to her. Flames leapt in his eyes, and he leaned forward. He did not touch her lips, but his tongue flicked over her lower ear, and then his mouth formed in a soft kiss at her throat.
She felt the pulse leap and stagger within her, and she knew that he felt it too. She wanted to move her hands upon his shoulders, to taste the bronze flesh there. But she held still, and when his eyes met hers again, she reminded him, “We’re not married yet.”
“Nay, we’re not,” he agreed.
But a hand was now on either side of her head, palms against the door. She could feel the heat and hardness of his loins, pressed close, through the various fabrics of her clothing. He touched her lips lightly. “I can wait,” he told her. “For I know that the prize I await is greater, and perhaps all the sweeter for the torment.”
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“I must get back to my room,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because we shall be discovered.”
He shrugged. “And if we were? What then? I am the laird of the castle. No one questions my will.”
“But they whisper and they talk.”
“It is not yet six. No one will be looking for you.”
How could anyone infuriate and seduce so damn easily? she wondered. And yet it had become a point of her will, and her pride, and she would not give in to him. Well, whatever came from this alliance, she would not be among those who instantly obliged the laird of the castle.
She lifted her chin and managed a sweet, seductive smile of her own. “We’re not yet married,” she repeated.
“There’s still no reason for you to run, lass,” he said softly. Then he pressed his finger to his lips. “Shh!”
She went still, feeling him against her, hearing the hallway door to the bath being opened. Her eyes opened wide with alarm, but his gaze upon her was lazy, decadent, and amused. She heard the splash of water and frowned.
“’Tis Hogarth and the lads with water,” he said. “This morning, we can share my bath.”
“I’ll not—”
“Shh!” he repeated. And a second later, there was a tap upon his door. “Bryan, Bryan Creeghan?” Hogarth called softly. “’Tis six, and yer bath is ready.”
“Thank you, Hogarth,” Bryan called loudly, eyes never leaving Martise’s. “I am awake.”
“Is there any thin’ else, then, me laird?”
“Nay, I’ll be fine on my own, Hogarth. Thank you.” The door closed. He still stared at her, smiling. “Come, join me.”
“I don’t care for a bath.”
“What? My bride does not intend to bathe for the nuptials?” he said in mock horror.
“Well, you see,” she retorted, “I was not given time to respond with a proper gown, or shoes, or hose, or chemise—so it would seem futile to pretend this shall be a customary wedding.”
“Alas! And I’d dreams that my Southern beauty would smell as sweet as a rose against a winter’s day.”
She arched a brow in disbelief. “Am I to believe that Hogarth would give you, the laird of Creeghan, rose-scented soap? I had imagined a bridegroom with some alluring, spicy scent, something a bit more to his gender than roses.”
“One never knows what Hogarth might have supplied, Mistress St. James. He is a very keen and astute fellow.”
“Too keen,” she commented dryly.
“He is our only other conspirator in this charade, Martise. But never mind, we’ve only to talk. So come,” he said, “indulge me while I bathe.”
He turned around and left her against the door, striding with the confidence of a sleek and muscled cat across the room to the bath. He opened that door, and within seconds she heard him sinking into the large tub.
She could have turned away. No ropes bound her, no arms held her, not even the power of his eyes kept her there. But she walked on through the dressing room and perched upon a hamper. From her spot she could see his shoulders and head and neck, but little more. It seemed a comfortable enough position.
He knew she was there.
“The full moon comes tomorrow night,” he told her.
“And it coincides with All Hallows’ Eve!”
He shook his head with irritation. “You are still convinced there is witchcraft, and there is none, I tell you.”
She was standing, angry. “You don’t want to believe that there is witchcraft, and you have blinded yourself! I tell you what I saw—”
“And I tell you that it is a ruse to cover some other crime.”
“What other crime?”
“Wreckers,” he said softly.
“Wreckers?” She came to his side.
“The Lady Mae will be sailing near our shore tomorrow night. I’m sure her captain has not thought of All Hallows’ Eve.”
She was shivering suddenly. “The last ship—it was on the night of the full moon. But I don’t understand! Wouldn’t they need darkness for the ship to cast upon the rocks? Oh, you must be wrong! I saw those men in their cloaks making their circle about the fire. And the girl, the poor girl buried within the castle wall! What has she to do with such a thing?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s by the light of the full moon that one usually sees the other lights appear upon the cliffs. Perhaps the men need some light to carry out their devilish deeds, to set the traps, to lure the ships. There have never been any survivors.”
Suddenly she remembered the sailor who had washed ashore near the caves. With his last, dying breath, the man had whispered, “Creeghan.” And then Bryan had come … and the man had died.
She almost leapt up. He caught her wrist. Her eyes betrayed her as she stared into his.
“What is it?” he demanded harshly.
“Let me go.”
“Nay, not when you’re afraid of me again like this. What, what is it, tell me!”
She tugged upon her wrist, trying to rise, trying to escape him. He rose with her, and as he pulled her back, his foot slipped and they both came floundering into the tub, Martise soaked to the teeth and locked within his arms.
“Now look what you have done!” she charged him.
“No matter.” His arms tightened around her. “What is it that you’re not telling me?”
“My God, my clothes are soaked. How shall I explain—?”
“I’ll bring you clothing,” he said. “Talk to me, Martise.”
His words were warm against the dampness of her ear. His hand wedged beneath her breast, holding her tight.
“But how shall you explain—?”
“I am the laird of Creeghan. I never need explain,” he said with exasperation.
She spun in his arms, heedless of his wet, slippery body, or the pain of his hold upon her. “Aye, you are the laird of Creeghan! But there are certain things that you must explain. Like dead men, Laird Creeghan. Dead men who lie upon your shore!”
“What are you talking about, lass?”
Tears stung her eyes. “The sailor! The sailor they found on the shore. He whispered your name. And he was alive. And then you touched him. And then …”
“And then he was dead,” Bryan finished, mouth in a tight line. And he added bitterly under his breath, “So now I am a murderer again—and you are a thief!”
“I’m not a thief—”
“And I’m not a murderer! I’ve told you that oft enough!”
She exhaled slowly. They were close, her gown covering them both in a sodden cocoon. “He spoke your name!” she whispered.
He arched a brow in disbelief. “He said ‘Bryan?’”
“No, no! He said, ‘Creeghan!’”
“But that could mean anything!” Bryan told her with exasperation. “Creeghan is the castle, and Creeghan is the village, and the fishing dock, and the land. Girl, he did not accuse me—” He broke off, and ended softly, speaking almost under his breath. “He accused someone, something, within Creeghan.”
“He was alive—”
“I took the body to Edinburgh, Martise, and had him examined by an expert. No one could tell me the true cause of death, though exposure was a part of it. There was a wound, a horrible wound to his temple. Perhaps he was struck with some weapon—and perhaps he crashed upon the rock. Not even the doctor in Edinburgh could tell me that.” He stared at her sharply. “So you thought that I had killed him while you lay in the cave.”
“I thought nothing—”
“You’re lying.”
“I am soaked, and I would like very much to get out.”
He shifted, coming to his feet, bringing her along with him. So much water was caught within the folds of her clothing that the tub seemed barely filled. Waves of water cascaded from her. He smiled, but she thought that the humor was gone from his gaze. She tore her eyes from his and tried to draw up her skirt, wringing water from it.
H
e spoke her name, and she looked back to his eyes. His hand moved over hers, fingers curling so that she dropped the skirt. Then his touch moved to the tiny buttons at her throat and he began to undo them. When the gown lay open to her waist, he slipped his fingers beneath her shoulders and peeled the wet material down.
Martise shivered, standing in chemise and petticoats and corset and pantalettes and hose, but she did not move. He reached for the limp laces of her corset and untied them, and tossed the garment heedlessly from the tub. And she watched him still as the delicate ribbons of her chemise came undone, and that garment, too, was cast to the floor. The cold air moved over the dampness of her bare breasts, and his eyes still met hers while his hands cupped and curled beneath the fullness of the mounds.
He bent his head, and his lips pressed against the deep and shadowed valley he had created, then wandered lightly over the full globes, licking away the remnants of water that clung there. She lifted her hands, bracing herself upon his shoulders, sighing softly. His mouth moved, hot and wet. It covered a cold and achingly sensitive peak, and a soft sound escaped her. Her fingers tore into his sleek ebony hair and she pleaded softly, “Bryan, no!”
His whisper moved against her flesh. “Because we are not married—yet?”
“No, because I shall fall and perhaps drown,” she told him honestly.
He looked up into her eyes, laughing. “Mistress, how could I not force this?” he murmured, and he swirled her around, untying her petticoats, shoving them down in the water, and then releasing her pantalettes.
“Bryan—” she protested anew, but he was busy picking up the volumes of material, wringing them, and tossing the whole sodden bundle from the tub. Then he stepped from it and pressed upon her shoulders so that she went down to take the position that had once been his. He went to the cabinet for a huge towel to wrap about his hips and when he turned back to her, he had a lump of rose-colored soap in his hands.
“Well, ye canna deny, lass, that you’re already halfway there. And I did have dreams of a rose-scented bride.”
Emerald Embrace Page 27