The Madam's Highlander

by Madeline Martin

  Marian stood and parted her cloaks to reveal the overlarge blue gown beneath where her stomach swelled outward.

  “My hands are cold,” Freya said, half hoping Marian would tell her it was unnecessary to touch her stomach.

  “I dinna mind, and neither will he.” Marian smiled. “Besides, my stomach is hot as an oven. Mind ye dinna burn yerself.”

  “No wonder he's wriggling in there then.” Freya drew her hands forward, slowly, carefully, until she met the bulk of Marian's stomach. It was indeed hot, a nice reprieve from the biting cold, and surprisingly hard. But then, it was full of a babe, all curled up within the protection of Marian's womb.

  Marian placed her hands over Freya's, pushing her palms deeper into the firm skin. Something within pushed back. Freya gasped and tried to draw back, but Marian held her in place. There was another shift, a form within swelling and then fading back away. Then something hard, possibly pointed?

  “I think I just felt an elbow,” Freya said, disbelief in her voice.

  Marian laughed. “Aye, ye probably did. He loves to jam those things around inside of me. But then he's a healthy lad, strong and fiery. Like ye.”

  “Like me?” Freya pulled away slowly.

  Marian drew the cloaks over herself once more and nodded with a smile. “Aye. I imagine him being like ye – able to take on anything.”

  “I dinna deserve a sister as good as ye,” Freya said for the third time.

  “Aye.” Marian put her hands on Freya's cheeks. “Ye do.” She glanced behind Freya's shoulder to the open door of the barn and grinned. “I need to get back to the house.”

  Freya looked at her in confusion before glancing over her shoulder to find Ewan standing there. And damn it all if her heart didn't give a silly leap of excitement at the sight of her pretend husband.

  ***

  Ewan couldn't help the smile on his face as he regarded Freya standing in the center of the barn. Her simple black cloak made the fairness of her skin as white as fresh snow and the rosy freckles he adored stand out even more.

  He nodded at Marian as she passed with a secret smile playing on her lips. She put a hand to her belly in a gentle caress, and he knew she'd seen him watching.

  He'd been there when Freya had touched Marian's stomach, and when her wonder-filled voice echoed through the large, open space. He knew how great a step Freya had made in loving the growing child, and he knew how much that meant to both women.

  “Good afternoon, husband.” Freya emphasized the word husband and cocked a hand on her hip. “Should ye no' be in bed?”

  “I canna take being there anymore.”

  “Should ye no’ be with yer Ma?” she teased.

  It was true, when he wasn’t lying abed, he’d been in his mother’s company. She had been reluctant to let him out of her sight, through fear, through love. And she knew he was keeping a secret.

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about having left the Black Watch, even though he suspected she knew. She hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t told. Perhaps they both felt the ghost of his father’s crimes pressing upon them.

  Ewan held his stomach. “If she makes me drink any more tea, it'll spill from my bullet wound.”

  Freya gave a lovely, throaty laugh. “I dinna know that I can fix something like that.”

  “Speaking of the wound, it's feeling much better. Whatever was in the poultice helped.” He eyed her. “How do ye know so much?”

  She shrugged off the compliment. “Well, I wouldna say I know so much, but ye canna have an ill mother and run a brothel without learning a bit as ye go.”

  “I heard ye got a letter.” He glanced at her empty hands.

  She pulled it from the depths of a pocket and pushed it back in. “Everything is fine there.”

  “But ye canna go back,” he surmised.

  “Aye.” Freya shifted her gaze away, but not before he caught the flash of regret.

  Regret at having lost Molly's for the time being? At being here instead? At having saved him?

  He should apologize for the kiss again. He'd been so foolish to have kissed her at all, after what she'd done for him and his mother.

  “Thank ye,” he said instead. “For what ye've given up to save us.”

  Freya nodded. “Ye were right,” she said softly. “About the babe.”

  “I saw ye touching Marian’s stomach.” Ewan stepped closer. “I’m proud of ye.”

  Freya’s cheeks colored a soft pink. “Aye, well, it was a good idea. To try.” She looked up at him. “Thank ye for talking some sense into my head.”

  “It made her verra happy.”

  Freya smiled softly to herself. “Aye, I think it did.”

  Ewan stared down at the woman he’d slept next to for the last four long nights without touching. But God, how he’d wanted to touch. To caress. To kiss.

  Freya watched him carefully. “And ye were right about me.” She spoke in such a quiet tone, it didn’t echo in the large, empty building. “I'm holding on to the horror of it all, regretting my inability to help.”

  He put a hand to her shoulder blades. “Come into the house and we'll talk. Captain Crosby is gone, if that's why ye're here.”

  She looked around, her gaze drifting around the room. Ewan did the same, taking in the empty stalls cleared of any hay, the rusting tools lining the wall and leaning against one another in dilapidated resignation.

  “That's no’ why I'm here,” she said. “Do ye ever...” She shook her head. “...feel like ye need purpose?”

  Ewan crossed his arms and lifted his brow in her direction. “The only thing I have in my life right now is my mother and a fake name.”

  Freya lowered her head and chuckled. “Aye, foolish of me.”

  “Did ye have something in mind?” he queried.

  He hoped to God she did. After a lifetime of rigorous training, of early morning drills and late night guard posts, this sedentary life was making his blood go thick in his veins and his mind whirl in too many different, aimless directions.

  She strode over to a crooked row of tools. He noticed a plough of some sort, a scythe, and several other farming tools. “Do ye believe in second chances? Third chances even?”

  “I believe in as many chances as it takes. I'm a soldier.” The phrase died on his tongue. Because he wasn't a soldier anymore. He was a deserter. A traitor.

  He clenched his jaw.

  Fortunately, Freya did not appear to notice the slip. She stroked a hand lovingly over the handle of a spade, the wood appeared to have long ago turned gray and split in several places. “We need all the chances we can get to make this work again.”

  Ewan lifted the scythe and examined the dull, rusted blade. His side hardly hurt him despite the action, a good sign indeed. If he were careful, he could sharpen the blade to where it needed to be to slice the tender stalks of - of what?

  “What will ye grow?” Ewan set the scythe aside.

  “Hay.” Freya's tone was quiet with the weight of something he didn’t know. “I tried to do it once on my own before, and it was possible with several servants for only one season before the weather turned bad.”

  “Ye dinna strike me as the farmer sort of lass,” Ewan said. He tried to keep from chuckling lest he get a sharp look from her.

  “But I strike ye as the madam type of lass?” She put her hand on her hip.

  He shrugged. “No' in that outfit.”

  She lowered her head and her gaze went warm. “Do ye like it better when I'm naked?”

  The hot memory flashed in his mind of her beautifully firm, shapely body. Aye, he did like it when she was naked. He hadn’t been able to get the image from his mind. Every time he saw her, every time he closed his eyes, every time they lay beside each other in the wide expanse of the bed, neither touching the other.

  And he’d thought of the kiss. The way she’d tasted sweetly of jam and tea. How lush her bottom lip had been when he’d caught it in his mouth.

  An angry wave of frust
ration washed over him. Where was his discipline? His fortitude? She’d sacrificed everything for him and he’d taken advantage of her in her fragile emotional state.

  She watched him from lowered lashes, her cheeks an even deeper shade of pink, flushing down her throat and beneath the clasp of her cloak.

  The silence between them was not uncomfortable. No, it was charged with the dance of intimacy, all the words they did not say.

  Freya’s tongue flicked out between her lips, moistening them. His gaze lowered, inadvertently taking in her beautiful mouth, that full bottom lip.

  He wanted to kiss her. Again.

  He started, in an attempt to offer a reply of some sort, unsure of what to say.

  Freya put a finger to his mouth. “If ye apologize for the kiss one more time, I'll no' ever kiss ye again.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she rose on her tiptoes and caressed his mouth with hers. Her face was cold from the chill in the air, but her lips were warm, her tongue hot.

  God, her tongue. She stroked inside his mouth, brushing his tongue with her own and setting off an explosion of excitement. Anticipation. Want.

  His body prickled with desire and he found his hands curling into her hair, pulling her closer against him. She pressed her body to his, her hips meeting the spot where arousal grew hard and insistent.

  Lust pounded through him and echoed in his ears with a steady roar. If his behavior was feral, Freya did not seem to mind. Rather, she matched his excitement with a frenzy of her own.

  Her hands moved in a restless, aimless path over his back, his arms, his chest. His abdomen.

  A low groan escaped deep in his throat. His hands shifted under her cloak so his palms could glide over her narrow waist and up to her breasts.

  His fingertips skirted over the line of her bodice. A swell of flesh met his blind touch, firm and round. Freya moaned and pushed her breasts toward him.

  The chaste life he had been so proud of now worked against him, welling against the dam of his control like a raging river. He didn't know how much longer he could fight the torrent of lust, of need.

  Or if he even wanted to.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ewan's body burned with a fire unlike any other he'd encountered before. He'd been with women in the past, of course. Not many, and only ones who were unwed and not virgins. Women who understood his inability to offer anything other than a solitary night.

  Lust had been a basic need fulfilled - an itch scratched until the next time it chafed again.

  But Freya, whose shapely, naked body had dusted his fantasies like sugar, who shared his bed and whose presence kept him from sleeping, was different. The woman turned a needful itch into so, so much more, into something maddening.

  He stilled in his discovery of Freya's body under her cloak. If he did let this continue, he might not be able to stop.

  She grabbed her bodice and jerked it downward so the heat of her freed breasts met his fingertips.

  He sucked in a breath and allowed himself to be led into an empty stall. His body went hot despite the cold, burning with an anticipation he could not snuff. A quiet click met his ears and the cloak Freya wore fell away. The conservative bodice remained pulled low, revealing the beauty of the breasts he'd but glimpsed before.

  Her rose-colored nipples had drawn into taut buds. With a groan, he ducked his head and sucked the first one into his mouth. He flicked his tongue over it repeatedly until Freya squirmed against him, frustrated.

  He eased her skirts up and let his fingers trail up the smooth path of her inner thighs to where the juncture between her legs grew warmer and warmer until it was hot. He slid his middle finger along the slippery slit between her legs before gently probing within.

  Freya gasped and her legs bent, as if they meant to buckle. He clasped her waist with his free hand and gently eased his finger deeper inside her while finding the swollen bud of her sex with his thumb.

  She clutched at his cloak for a long moment before jerking it from his body. No sooner had it fallen from his shoulders when her fingers pawed at his leine, and it too joined the discarded cloak. The cold he hadn't felt before bathed his skin in the most delicious contrast. Hot bodies and cold air, a private act in a public enough place, his wife and yet not his wife.

  “My bodice.” Her voice was husky with lust, a voice meant for the bedroom, for love.

  He switched his attention to her other nipple, cradling the heaviness of her breast with one hand while fumbling with her lacings with the other. Finally, he caught the dangling end and tugged it free. He straightened and captured her lips while his hands snagged and pulled repeatedly at the bindings of her bodice. Ewan sucked Freya's full lower lip into his mouth and gently bit down. She hissed her pleasure and their breaths mingled, sharing between them the little air left.

  “Here?” he groaned. “In the barn?” Even as he spoke, he drew the bodice off her body.

  She reached behind her back to undo her skirts. “Ye'd rather do it in the silence of the home with everyone having tea below, wondering at all the curious sounds?”

  “Ye raise a good point.” Ewan tugged at his belt and his kilt fell away.

  Freya’s gaze eagerly grazed down his body, and she drew in a slow breath. “God, ye're a beautiful man.”

  She slipped down her skirts, revealing the wool stocking still drawn up past her knees. Never had wool stockings been so alluring as those clinging to the long slender legs of Freya Campbell.

  “Ye're mighty bonny yerself, wife.” He swept her in his arms, her skin hot against his, warming him in a deliciously intimate way. He drew her down to the ground, on the makeshift bedding created by their abundance of discarded clothing.

  Something pinched at his waist. The bullet wound?

  The thought entered his mind once before Freya opened her legs beneath his hovering form and stared up at him with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. No longer feeling the pinch, he eased on top of her and let his mouth caress hers. His cock throbbed as though it would explode, pulsing with such greed. It was impossible for him to find her center without guiding himself toward her with one hand.

  He pressed the head of his cock against the slick wet heat of her and rubbed it up and over her, readying her. Her hands curled into fists against the clothing she lay atop. Then he thrust in - hard and deep.

  Freya gasped sharply. Not with lust, but with...pain?

  He stilled, his cock buried inside the wet grip of her. He longed for the continual stroke of her silky sheath, and his back muscles ached for movement. “Am I hurting ye?”

  Freya blinked up at him. “Ye're no' hurting me.” She flexed her hips, drawing him closer.

  He groaned and thrust deeper inside her. Freya's head lay back and a soft moan escaped her parted lips. His body tingled with sensations until they threatened to overwhelm his mind. Hunger and pleasure and lust mixed into something bigger than even he could control.

  Freya drew one leg over the side of his waist that didn’t pinch and, pulling him closer to her, drew him tighter with every thrust. It was then he noticed her tensing around him. She whimpered - a hungry, desperate sound - and then cried out. Her body clenched around him again and again, squeezing until he could hold the dam back no more and his lust poured from him in a great roaring groan.

  He drew her beside him and lay her head over his chest. Their bodies were slick with sweat, which quickly chilled in the cold. They would need to dress soon or suffer the consequences. He slid a hand down the narrow dip of her waist and over the swell of her hip.

  “How's yer wound?” Freya asked.

  Damn. He'd forgotten about that. How had he not even felt it during their lovemaking? She sat up and looked down at his waist.

  He sighed and got to his feet. “The last thing I feel like thinking about right now is my wound.”

  “It looks fine,” she said softly. Her cheeks were bright red, as were her lips, swollen from his kisses. She drew her sark over her head with trembling fi
ngers. Ewan frowned. Why were her fingers trembling?

  He glanced down and saw that while his waist appeared fine, evidence of blood appeared on another part of him. A more telling part of him.

  And suddenly it all made sense - the sharp gasp when he'd entered her, the way her hands shook now, the amount of attention she placed on his waist.

  Freya Campbell, owner of a famed brothel in Edinburgh, who sold sex to feed her family and keep her farm, had been a virgin.

  ***

  Freya quickly yanked her clothes on. If she didn't bring it up, he wouldn't notice. If he assumed she was the kind of woman who would readily pull a man into a barn and have him there where anyone might happen upon them, he would never suspect—

  “Ye were a virgin.” Ewan's voice came out airy with wonder. He turned to her and his brow furrowed. “How is that possible?”

  She shrugged as if it were a non-issue. For it wasn’t an issue. “It's nothing.”

  “It isna nothing. I just...I just took yer maidenhead.” His jaw clenched and he glared at her.

  Glared at her - as if he were angry over it when it was her virginity.

  He tugged on his leine and belted his plaid.

  “Mind ye dinna reopen yer wound,” Freya snapped.

  “If I dinna tear it minutes ago, I willna do it now.” He frowned, softening. “Ye should have told me.”

  “If I did, ye wouldna have lain with me.”

  Ewan looked away, and she knew she was right. He wouldn't have. The warm glow in her body was beginning to chill.

  Ewan ran a hand through his hair. “I wouldna take a woman's maidenhead. I'm no' that kind of man.”

  Freya scoffed. “It means more to ye than it does to me.”

  Ewan caught her hand, his touch tender. She looked down. His long, tapered fingers all but made hers disappear beneath his. Powerfully large hands which had been so gentle, so enticing when he'd touched her. Her nipples hardened at the thought.

  Perhaps the warm glow was not chilling after all.