My Scot, My Surrender (Lords of Essex)

by Howard, Amalie

  “He got tangled into some wire.”

  The boy’s eyes widened to huge round orbs. “Are ye Sassenach?”

  “No, but I was raised in England.”

  “Ye talk funny.”

  Brandt shrugged. “I suppose I do.” He leaned conspiratorially down to the boy. “What does amadan mean?”

  The lad gave him a delighted grin. “It means idiot.”

  Indeed, he was that and more. Brandt gave Ares a brief rubdown and settled the horse beside Lockie. Running his fingers along the horse’s gray flanks, he stroked down its nose. The horse nickered and turned its head into his shoulder.

  “At least I’ll have you,” he murmured. “Even if I can’t have her. No matter what your mistress thinks, she deserves better than me.”

  Sorcha was nowhere in sight, but he expected she was already inside. He thanked the boy and made his way to the cottage. It was a tiny, well-kept place, though he could see that recent repairs had been made to the wooden planking. He knocked on the front door, and it was opened by a pleasant, plump-cheeked lady who all but dragged him to the kitchen where his wife was face-deep into a bowl of stew.

  “Yer man is a fine-looking one,” she remarked, pointing out a chair for him. Sorcha scowled into her stew. Cherub-faced children peeped at him from behind a nearby door and scampered back when they saw him staring. They had the look of the boy from the barn.

  “I’m Mrs. Maxwell,” she said and placed a hearty bowl of stew on the table. “Sit and eat up, lad, afore it gets cold.”

  He offered her a clipped bow and took the seat. “Thank you, madam.”

  “Och, lad, so proper,” she said, fanning herself. “We dunnae get many visitors around here. Yer wife said ye were travelin’ through to Inverness. That’s where Mr. Maxwell is, ye ken. For the wool.” She bustled around the small but cheery space, shooing two children from underfoot. “If ye’re lookin’ fer a place to bed doon, ye can sleep in the barn, but ’tis no’ any place fer a lord and his lady. Sorry that we’ve no’ go’ the room.” She grew embarrassed. “The nearest monastery’s a full day’s ride west.”

  Brandt had no desire to put this kind family in any danger, and the shorter the amount of time they tarried here, the better it would be for all concerned, especially with Coxley on their heels. No, they would camp in the woods.

  “We’ll be on our way. You’ve been very generous, Mrs. Maxwell,” he said as he tucked into the savory stew. After eating nothing but venison, salted meat, and beechnuts during the endless journey north, it was delicious. “Thank you for your kindness and the wonderful meal.”

  She blushed. “Dunnae fash yerself, lad. ’Tis a right pleasure.”

  Sorcha said something in Gaelic that had the children bursting into laughter. Brandt knew it was likely about him, though he was grateful he hadn’t heard the word amadan thrown in there. Clearly, she was still furious; she wouldn’t even look at him.

  Her cold silence continued until long after they’d eaten and been packed up with vittles for the road. Brandt noticed the odd looks Mrs. Maxwell was giving them, and she pulled him aside at the door when they were leaving.

  “A bit icy lately, aye, lad?” she whispered. “Yer lass is wantin’ fer yer affection. Dunnae wait too long, ye ken.”

  She winked, her meaning evident, and Brandt found himself flushing dully. Good God, since when did he require advice on sexual congress from a sheep farmer’s wife? Was the tension between Sorcha and him that obvious? To his consternation, Mrs. Maxwell gave him a hearty pat on his behind and winked again. “Get the wee lassie with a bairn, and she’ll settle right doon.”

  For the briefest of seconds Sorcha met his eyes, as if she had heard what Mrs. Maxwell had whispered in parting, and the ensuing image of Sorcha pregnant with his child stole every rational thought from his head. She would be radiant. But Brandt knew it would snow in hell before he’d let that happen, no matter how much he desired her. He had no intention of spreading his bastard seed about, not for all the horses in Scotland.

  Heading west in the direction of the monastery, they did not speak for the first few hours. Brandt busied himself with the counting of sheep again, then cattle, and then boulders. In all that time, Sorcha had not so much as glanced in his direction. He was beginning to long for Malvern’s men to come along so he, at least, would have a diversion. Soon, he grew weary of his own company and pretending to be a human abacus.

  It was an odd turn of affairs. Normally he was a man who loved his solitude. Valued it, even. Now, the abundance of it was driving him mad.

  Kicking Ares into a canter, he pulled alongside Sorcha. Her face was stony. “You know, most men would long for a wife who doesn’t speak,” he began conversationally.

  “Ye don’t want a wife. Ye’ve made that abundantly clear.”

  Success! The first words that had left her mouth in hours. “I’m becoming quite partial to the way you fall back into your Scots brogue when you’re angry.”

  She looked like she wanted to jump from her horse and pummel him into the ground. Her lips flattened into a line as she increased Lockie’s pace. Ares kept up easily. “Can’t you see I wish to be alone?” she snapped.

  Her emphasis on you and her rounded vowels were not lost on him. Brandt smiled. He preferred her temper to the cold silence she’d subjected him to for the better part of the day, and he couldn’t help goading her. “Young ladies tend not to know their own minds.”

  He could practically see the flames coming out of her ears. “Ye…you…conceited, arrogant—” She broke off in suffocated rage. “I very well ken my own mind.”

  “Ken means know, correct?”

  She snarled at him, and Brandt laughed. Her face turned the color of a ripe apple, but he did not heed the warning. The sight of her impassioned, ferocious glower made him ache all over, particularly in his nether regions as he succumbed to the most erotic arousal of his life. Brandt reached for her reins and her eyes widened. He pulled them to a stop, and before she could make a sound, he set his mouth to hers.

  Their lips met in a tangle of lust and heat and simmering mutual hunger. Her tongue circled his, drawing it into her mouth. He gave it to her, and she sucked it deep, eliciting a strained groan from his throat. Sorcha tasted like honeyed ale and sunlight, fire and ice, and everything in between. She made him see entire constellations and feel like his body was no longer his own. Brandt clutched her closer, losing himself in the heady sensation. Without breaking their kiss, he plucked her from the saddle into his lap.

  Her pliant thighs—the sight of which he’d gorged himself on for days—pressed delectably against his stiff groin. Sorcha moaned into his mouth, her hips wriggling as if she, too, sought the satisfaction that only the merging of those two parts could bring. She experienced pleasure in the same way she expelled anger—with unabashed fervor. Panting softly, her lips parted wider as they sipped and stole from each other. Brandt wanted her mouth, her heart, her soul.

  His hand cupped her breast, and his greedy fingers sought her taut nipple beneath the linen of her shirt. God, he loved the shape of her…the soft round weight of her in his palm. Plucking the ruched tip between his fingers, she arched hungrily into him. He needed that pebbling peak in his mouth, but he did not want to release the sweet cling of her lips or the marauding, bold tongue of hers that set him aflame.

  Lockie whinnied softly, and reason pierced through his lust.

  “Sorcha,” he gasped, pulling apart. “We must stop.”

  “Who says?” she asked, banked blue flames simmering in her eyes.

  Her mouth was so deliciously pink that he had to kiss her again. It was a mistake; it only made him want more. With reluctance, he dragged his mouth away. “We can’t. We shouldn’t.”

  “You want this as much as I do.” She wriggled her bottom atop his jutting length, making his head spin. “It’s just kissing, Brandt.”

  Her words made him want things. Impossible things. Things that were out of reach for someone like hi
m. With her, it could never be just kissing. He understood that as well as he knew his horses. She was as lethal as opium…one taste, and he would be lost. Willingly and forever.

  And he would drag her down with him.

  Brandt reached for the restraint that had never failed him until lately. “I know,” he said hoarsely, “but I also know where this leads, and we have to do what’s best for you.”

  “What’s best for me or what’s best for you?”

  “They’re the same thing.” He drew a shuddering breath. “And not just so you can have the chance to marry a man of your station. I’m not the man for you.”

  Sorcha’s body went still. “Why?”

  He did not speak for a prolonged minute, the demons of his past choking him. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m…not worthy of you.”

  “Because you’re illegitimate?”

  He went still, though he was unsurprised by her candor. He’d come to learn that she was not a woman who played word games. “That’s the least of it. I never wanted a wife. I’m not fit for marriage, Sorcha. Not a true marriage.”

  “And there is nothing true about any of this?” There was no hurt in her question, simply quiet curiosity.

  “Our deal was real,” he said, avoiding her question. “You had something I wanted.”

  “Lockie.”

  Brandt nodded. “Yes. At the time, I thought it an acceptable trade.”

  A shallow breath lifted her shoulders. “And now?”

  Now it was dangerous. More than dangerous.

  In the beginning, it had been a neat, quick transaction—a name for a horse. The spark between them had been there from the start. Stupidly, he’d hoped to throttle his desires as he’d done countless times in the past with other females, but then, he’d never met a woman quite like her. Even now, his body’s tension against her soft thighs hadn’t abated in the least. Passion had a way of blinding people to reality. And the reality was he should never have married her.

  “Now, everything has changed,” he replied softly.

  Something indecipherable flickered in her expression before she hid it. “You told me earlier that what we want and who we are sometimes do not coincide. But sometimes they do. Sometimes things make sense.” She put a hand on his arm, and his pulse leaped beneath it. “What I feel now makes more sense than anything has in days. And I know you feel it, too.”

  “That’s lust, nothing more.” He felt her flinch at the vulgarity of his words, but he closed his eyes, knowing she would not let the matter rest. “This is not what you’re imagining it to be, Sorcha,” he said. “I am not your savior, and the emotions you’re feeling are…misleading, brought upon by recent events. Trust me, your gratitude and your misplaced esteem will fade.”

  Sorcha didn’t answer for a long time, only sat pondering him in deep thought. Without a word, she slid from his lap to the ground. “I may not be as worldly as some of the women you have known, Mr. Pierce, but I think your life has jaded you to the point that simple things have become unrecognizable. What two people feel for each other can be more than the sum of its parts.”

  He watched as she led Lockie to a clearing and started to set up a place to camp for the night. Every time he thought he’d gained the measure of her, he realized how much he didn’t know. She continued to surprise him at every turn, whether it was with her courage or her wit or her intelligence.

  Brandt knew he should say something, but words seemed to have deserted him. Perhaps she was right. Maybe he truly was that jaded. It did not matter. She—and no other woman—could not change who he was.

  After a while, he descended from his saddle. “I’ll keep watch.”

  Chapter Eleven

  By the following afternoon, Sorcha’s wound had finally ceased hurting. Though the dried blood on the bandage had clung to the incision that morning when she’d changed it again, this time without Brandt’s help, the sharp pain was gone, replaced by a bruised ache. She had no complaints over small aches, and had learned in the past not to voice them.

  After seeing Niall’s hand taken, and the pain he’d endured, even after the bandaged stump had slowly healed, Sorcha had known she would never again complain about cuts, scratches, or any sort of ailment. His wrist and arm, he’d explained, would light up in pain every now and again, as if reliving the brutal separation of his hand. The agonizing sensations had finally gone away, though it had taken well over a year.

  Sorcha pictured Niall now, a strong, capable Maclaren warrior. If Malvern sent a contingency of his men from Tarben Castle to the Maclaren keep with orders for retribution, Niall was powerful enough to fight this time. He and the rest of the Maclaren men and women would put up with only so much oppression. Once they learned Malvern had attacked and killed Maclaren men, they would raise arms.

  She closed her eyes against the images of her home being attacked. Of her people fighting for their lives. Stop whining about not wanting your life of privilege, when many are born to far less. Brandt’s admonishment the day before kept coming back to haunt her, and each time it did, what felt like a piece of her soul ripped apart. Her healing wound was nothing in comparison, and no salve like the one she’d been applying to heal and keep out infection would ever be able to extinguish it. He was right. She’d been more than selfish.

  The afternoon sun had risen through the canopy of trees, which had been starting to spread out, making it a bit easier for her to direct Lockie through the mossy and rocky undergrowth. It would be several days’ journey to Brodie, and stopping at the monastery would be a welcome respite after their punishing pace. She heard Ares moving close behind her, his low huffs and snorts more noise than Brandt himself had been making all morning. He’d said more than enough yesterday, after he’d pulled her into his lap and kissed her with unmistakable longing. He’d wanted her. Badly.

  I’m not worthy of you.

  As much as she shunned being a lady, Sorcha wasn’t naive. She knew what her rank demanded. She was the daughter of a duke and would be expected to make marriage alliances as her sisters had for the good of the clan. She would be required to marry according to her station, as Brandt had said. But if marrying a nobleman meant marrying someone like Malvern, she’d rather elope with the pauper son of a pig farmer. She’d come close, though Brandt wasn’t a pauper and he raised horses. The fact that he was illegitimate had no bearing on his worth as a man, but Sorcha knew many others, including her father, might not see it that way.

  What Brandt felt and why was an old injury, one as old as the scars the she-wolf left upon Sorcha’s body, and just as deeply rooted. It had to do with his mother and the callous way she’d abandoned him, Sorcha supposed. He did not trust easily, and for good reason.

  If only Brandt knew the truth, that she did not intend to marry, either. There was no man she trusted enough to get that close. What she did want, however, was to experience what it would be like to be thoroughly seduced by a man. What woman wouldn’t? Just because people called her the Beast of Maclaren didn’t mean she didn’t dream of having someone look at her the way Brandt did. With thirst and desire in his eyes.

  Lust, he’d called it.

  She blushed, her insides clenching. Sorcha knew exactly what he expected their kissing would lead to. Copulation. Consummation of their false marriage vows. But what he didn’t know was that she’d gladly surrender her precious virtue for one night with him. One night of unstoppable pleasure. Lord knew she’d never have it with anyone else.

  Sorcha shifted in the saddle and winced at the pull of her healing skin. Her mother’s balm had indeed done its job. The cut was no longer weeping and had lost its angry red color. It had been a stroke of luck—no, a miracle—that Lockie had turned up, saddlebags intact, with Ares.

  When she’d asked Brandt if that was normal behavior, he had smiled.

  “Horses are like humans. Ares and Lockie respect and like each other.”

  “But they’re both males.”

  He chuckled. “Not all relatio
nships are about mating.” It had taken every ounce of her self-control not to blush at his matter-of-fact statement, though she had failed miserably.

  “I only meant,” she said, thankful that he was busy murmuring to Ares and not looking at her, “that as a pair of males, I expected them to butt heads the way most men do.”

  Brandt smiled. “Like your brothers?” Sorcha answered with a roll of her eyes. “No. Like humans, horses just seek connection. Some do it by color, by breed, by instinct.”

  Fascinated by the unexpected change in his demeanor at the turn of the conversation, Sorcha had gestured for him to go on.

  “Different groups gravitate toward each other. Certain breeds like to be with other equines of a similar temperament. They eat together and graze together. A gentle mare can find it quite stressful to be with a high-strung stallion.” His expression had grown fond when he’d stroked his horse lovingly from mane to hindquarters, and the envy she’d felt had been surprising. What would it be like to have such devotion directed at her? “Horses have a wonderful ability to bond. They’re amazing creatures. We can learn a lot from them.”

  When he’d spoken about his beloved horses, Brandt’s face had relaxed, along with every corded muscle in his body, and his chameleon eyes had warmed several notches. His voice had warmed, too, making her skin tighten and her body achingly attuned to his every word. Crooning to Ares and stroking the stallion’s withers, Brandt’s voice had taken on dulcet tones that made her want to rub against his palm.

  It had been puzzling, such an indecent reaction to his whisperings. She was not a horse. Though she had not been able to help imagining how it would feel to have those large, callused palms running the entire unclothed length of her body.

  “Enough, Sorcha,” she murmured, focusing on the widening path.

  She eased a breath into tight lungs as the edge of the forest thinned, a stretch of heather-topped field on the horizon, and grew anxious. With every change in the landscape, it reminded her that they drew closer and closer to their destination. And when they arrived, it would be the end. None of this would matter…not her unfulfilled desires, nor his. Brandt would leave, and she would stay.