Betting the Scot (The Highlanders of Balforss)

by Trethewey, Jennifer

  After a long silence, she asked, “Why did you name your horse Gullfaxi?”

  “Gullfaxi is the horse the Norse god, Thor, gave to his son. I ken the name means something like one with the golden mane.” Her golden mane had come undone and hung in loose ringlets down her back. Unable to stop himself, he touched her hair. Rather than object, as she had in the past, she smiled up at him.

  “Do you believe in that sort of thing, the Norse gods?”

  “My grannie did,” he said. “Up here in the north, all of us have some Viking blood running through us.” He stopped walking and turned Caya to face him. “I need you to know, I’m no’ a heathen. I mind the first commandment, but until two years ago, we didnae have a kirk. The old clergyman visited but three times a year. I’m not accustomed to attending every Sunday. But I will if that’s what you want.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  He didn’t think he’d done a good enough job of convincing her of his faith, so he added, “I believe in God. I do. It’s just that he and I, well…”

  “You don’t always agree. I know.”

  When he looked at her again to measure her response, he saw her suppress a shy smile. She might be laughing at him, but he didn’t care. He’d be her fool if it made her happy.

  “I’m fair angry with him at the moment, to be honest.”

  She chuckled out loud. “Why?”

  “Three times I’ve asked him to help me win you, and three times he’s rained on my head.”

  They both laughed and continued walking down the path, her arm linked with his, a connection he never wanted to break.

  She was quiet for a good while longer before she asked, “What were you doing when you found me in the field?”

  He thought for a moment. He couldn’t remember what had fueled his decision to leave the stillhouse and take the drover’s path to Balforss. “I suppose I was meaning to find you and beg you not to marry James Oswald.”

  Her only reply was, “Oh.”

  He was on shaky ground again. He would have preferred if she had said, “Don’t worry. You’re the only man in the world I would ever marry.”

  They emerged from the woods into the backyard of his house—their house. The view from the rear did not impress. The stable was, as yet, unfinished, the fencing around the henhouse needed repair, and stacks of uncut lumber waited for him under a lean-to shelter. Project after project, all of which required time, time he needed to spend making whisky, time he needed to spend courting Caya.

  He held the back door open and followed her inside. They were alone again in the kitchen, and God save him from his uncle’s wrath, but he was glad of it. She opened the shutters, turned to face him, and leaned back on the window ledge, silhouetted in the early afternoon sunlight. He stepped toward her, but she lifted a palm to stop him.

  “What was the dream Magnus told me about, the dream you had about me?”

  So, she knows about the dream.

  He sighed. His dream was not something he wanted to discuss. His uncle had warned him not to tell Caya lest she think him daft. Worse, he had misinterpreted his dream. “It’s a doaty dream, and you wouldnae believe me even if I told you.”

  “Have you ever lied to me?” she asked.

  “No. A’course not.”

  “Then I have no reason to doubt your dream.”

  He wanted to be close to her when he told her about such personal things, sit beside her as he had in the wagon on the way to Balforss, but he had no chairs in the house. What was he thinking? He hadn’t a bloody place for her to sit. The only stick of furniture in the house was… No, he couldn’t invite her to the bedchamber.

  “Sit with me on the bunker.” Before she could object, he gathered her by the waist and lifted her onto the worktop, then hopped up next to her, both their legs dangling. “It’s like this: I sometimes have dreams, special dreams, dreams different from regular ones because they feel real. And while I’m dreaming I say to myself, ‘This is real. This will happen.’ Then, whatever I dream of always happens the way I dreamed it.”

  “I see,” she said. “And you dreamed about me?”

  “Sort of. I dreamed of a yellow-haired lass sitting in a field of gowans—daisies you call them. Even though I couldnae see her face, I knew the lass was my wife.” He swallowed hard. “And when I saw you in the tavern, I was certain you were the lass in my dream.”

  “So, even before you gambled with my brother—before you promised him—you dreamed about being married to me?”

  “Aye. My dreams never lie.” He looked away. “Or at least they hadn’t until…well, now I’m none so sure.”

  “Why?”

  “I cannae say why. I’m just not sure I have it right.”

  “Is it because you’re not sure I’m the woman in your dream?”

  “I want you. More than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. But, if I’m wrong and you aren’t the lass in my dream, then I’ve taken you away from your life. I’ve ruined the plans you had—”

  She stopped his havering with a hand to his chest. “Declan, you’re not wrong. In fact, I know your dream is right. I know I’m the woman in your dream.” She winced and put her fingers to her hurt lip. It had started to bleed again.

  “Och, lass, does it hurt?”

  She brushed away his concern. “Do you know the meaning of my name?” she asked, and a fat tear trickled over her pretty freckles. “Caya is the Cornish word for daisy.”

  Declan closed his eyes and let her words glide down his back like warm honey. He felt himself bend and sway toward her. Their foreheads touched, and her breath tickled his chin.

  “Caya, I love you.”

  …

  A warm rush of emotion flooded Caya’s entire body. “You love me?”

  Declan sat up straight and blinked. “Did I say that out loud?”

  She adored the stunned look on his face. “Too late to take it back.”

  He broke out into one of his winning smiles. She wanted to fling her arms around his neck and kiss him. Never had she felt this kind of joy.

  “You dinnae mind me saying it, then?”

  “Not at all.”

  He hopped down off the work bench and stood in front of her, eye level. “Look, I cannae change the past, but if my sword and dirk frighten you, I can put them away.”

  She remembered what Flora had told her. A Hieland man is, and always will be, a warrior at heart…You cannae change that…Dinnae even try. She touched his cheek. “Your weapons don’t frighten me.”

  “Are you sure? Because I can sell the whisky business—”

  “No. Never. I don’t want you to change for me. Truly.”

  He favored her with another brilliant smile. “Feel my heart,” he said and held her palm to his chest.

  The organ pumped under her hand with such force and at such an alarming rate, she worried for him.

  “Do ye feel it, a leannan?”

  “Yes.” She thought she might fall right into those fathomless dark eyes of his.

  He slipped an arm around her waist and lifted her from the bench, held her against him high off the ground so she looked down at his handsome face. All at once the boundaries of their bodies seemed to meld. She cupped his cheek and felt the rasp of his bristly beard. Slowly he let her body slip down the length of his until her toes touched ground. The room began to spin.

  Declan’s lips brushed against the cup of her ear. “I’d do anything for you, Caya. The only thing I willnae change is the passion I feel for you. You cannae let it frighten you, love.” His body shuddered, sending vibrations through her as if they were already one.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  “I dinnae want to hurt you.”

  “Kiss me.”

  His lips pressed a light touch on hers. Hers parted, and his tongue, wet, tentative, and alive, slipped inside her mouth, delicately searching for an answer. As if directed by his desire, her hips surged forward against his. Declan gasped.

  Shocked by
her own wanton behavior, Caya pulled away. They stared at each other wide-eyed and breathless. How did he do it? How did he stir her desire into a frenzy with just one kiss?

  He swallowed. “Dinnae be afraid, lass.”

  “Has passion ever overcome you in that way before?”

  He shook his head. “No. Never. But …”

  “But what?”

  “I liked it.” A slow grin appeared on his face, an irrepressible, rakish grin with a promise of mischief behind it. “I’d marry you now, if I could. Take you to my bed and make you mine forever. I want you so.”

  She put a hand to her heart, certain hers might be beating dangerously fast, too. “You would?”

  He straightened to his full height and stepped back, looking as if a new idea had just occurred to him. “Aye. We can marry now—today if you’ll have me. I know a way.”

  “How?”

  “We can ask my uncle permission to handfast.”

  “Handfast?”

  “Aye. It’s the same as marriage. Then, later, we can marry in the church.”

  She slapped a hand over her mouth and turned away. The church. The vicar. James. She’d completely forgotten about Vicar James.

  “It’s a legally binding marriage ceremony in Scotland,” Declan said, a note of supplication in his voice.

  “I need to tell the vicar.”

  He let his head tip back and groaned. When he lifted his head, he pleaded, “Why do you talk of that God-botherer at a time like this? I’m asking you to marry me.”

  She understood his agitation, yet he had to know how important it was that she spare Vicar James any unnecessary embarrassment. “I need to tell the vicar I can’t marry him. It’s only fair.”

  He stared at her for a long time, motionless. Then the air seemed to go out of him. His shoulders dropped, his head tilted to one side, and the buckle in his brow disappeared. “You’ve a kind heart, a leannan.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Yet another reason I love you. But I ken the Reverend James Oswald is a grown man. He can take it.”

  She went to him, slipped her arms around his waist and hugged. “Please.”

  “All right.” He crushed her to him, then released. “I best wash before I take you back. It won’t help with Uncle John’s temper, but Auntie Flora might take pity on me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My uncle is going to give me a thrashing for being alone with you.” His face had that green tinge she’d seen before when he was upset.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll protect you.”

  Instead of laughing at her silly joke, he said quite seriously, “You would, wouldnae you?”

  “With my life,” she said, and knew it was true.

  He left her to drift idly through the empty house while he went above stairs to wash. Standing in the dining room, she imagined a long table filled with friends and family come to supper. She and Declan would sit at one end. Flora and John at the other. Alex, Lucy, Jemma, and Ian, on one side. Agnes, Fergus, Magnus, Margaret, and Hamish on the other. My, she had a large family.

  She hadn’t seen the second floor of his—of their house. The bathing tub was up there. What else? Declan, of course. A bed, perhaps? The combination of the two could only mean danger. Was she thinking wicked thoughts again?

  Her footsteps, slow and purposeful, echoed through the drawing room and into the cavernous entry hall. Halfway up the staircase, she paused to consider the weight of sin. What drew her upward? Curiosity? Desire? Love?

  At the top of the landing to the right, she could hear movement behind a closed door. Declan was in there. The door to the back room had been left open, and she went inside. The fireplace caught her attention immediately. Declan had tiled the surround in Delft ceramic, the pastoral depictions painted in indigo on white. In the corner of the room angled toward the center, a dark green bathing tub patterned with a raised garland of flowers around the rim. A tub fit for a princess.

  Muttered curses came from the next room, and she caught sight of Declan through an open connecting door. As if sensing she was near, he turned. He flapped the loose ends of his stock at her. “Will you help me with this bloody thing?”

  She knew how to tie a stock as neatly as anyone. She looped the ends of Declan’s stock and tugged them into a gentlemanly knot. He smiled down on her, and she felt domestic, adored, and grown-up.

  An issue that had plagued her early on jabbed her in the side.

  “I’m twenty-five,” she blurted.

  He cocked his head. “You mean you’re twenty-five years old?”

  “Yes.” She waited for his disappointed reaction.

  He stared at her for a moment. Was the gap too great? Did he consider her too old? After all this, would he cast her aside? Declan swallowed hard, pain etched on his face. Whatever he was about to say would likely cut her in two.

  “I dinnae care about that, but if we’re telling secrets… I’ve never been with a woman. I mean”—he shot a quick look at the bed—“that way.”

  She shook her head. “I think that’s lovely.”

  “You dinnae mind?”

  “No.”

  Relief and joy transformed his face. Dear Lord, he was beautiful. “Good,” he said. “We’ll figure it out together, then?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you see your bathing tub?”

  “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

  “That wee room is yours for bathing and dressing and, well, whatever it is women do in private. And this…” He swept his arm to indicate the entire room. “This is our bedchamber.” His gaze paused on the bed, and his ears turned pink. “Erm, that’s our bed,” he added low and quick. He shrugged a shoulder backward and craned his neck as if she had tied his stock too tight.

  She imagined the two of them lying naked, locked in a passionate embrace, kissing. Only this time, Caya didn’t shut the box on her fantasies. She threw the lid wide open and let her wicked thoughts run wild. She sat down on the edge of Declan’s bed, their bed.

  His eyebrows nearly met his hairline.

  “I’m not afraid of your passion. I’ve never been afraid of your passion. It’s my own I don’t trust when I’m with you. You make something inside me spin out of control.” Lightheaded, out of breath, her body began to float off the mattress. “Every time you…you…”

  He pounced, hooked his hands under her arms, dragged her across the mattress, and settled the length of his body against hers. He groaned something in Gaelic and then covered her mouth with an almost brutal kiss. The weight of him, the trembling restraint in his hands, and the power behind his kiss threatened to undo her. Dear God, would she come apart in pieces if she just let go?

  When he finally broke the kiss, he rested his forehead against hers, breathing hard, pressing himself onto her, swollen and hard, which made the need to feel friction between her legs even more urgent.

  She heard herself whimper, “Please.”

  Declan rucked up her skirts in jerky, desperate moves, then rolled between her legs and pressed hard, rocking against the…yes…there… right there.

  “Oh God. I love you,” he rasped in her ear. Suddenly he scrambled to his knees. Why? She was about to protest when she saw him unbuttoning his fall as fast as he could. He flicked the last button, and it tumbled out. Caya lifted herself to her elbows and stared, fascinated at its size, the way it stood by itself, belligerent and blunt-ended, jutting from a thick growth of black hair. Then Declan lifted her skirts and took the same long look at her parts.

  “Jesus. You’re beautiful.”

  He leaned forward, weight on his forearms, and kissed her, a long and lingering kiss. Just as his tongue slipped inside her mouth, he lowered his hips until flesh met flesh. She sighed. At last, what she had desired, what she had long anticipated, fantasized about, was happening. Declan was loving her. He began a slow, rhythmic, rocking motion, letting his solid member slide against that slippery spot, that point of no return spot, that place between her legs that
needed his touch, ached for his touch. Then he, he…he stopped. What was wrong?

  Declan lifted his head. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “That.”

  She heard a clopping, rattling, jangling sound in the distance. “I don’t know.”

  He pushed himself off the bed, lurched toward the window with his britches around his knees, and caught himself just in time. She tugged down her skirts and joined him. Outside, twin horses pulling a gleaming black carriage careened toward the house.

  “They’ve come to show you the new Balforss carriage.”

  “Jesus.” He yanked up his britches. “If my uncle catches us alone upstairs, he’ll have my balls for breakfast.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Declan hustled Caya out of the bedchamber and down the stairs. They hit the bottom step just as Alex swung the front door open. Doesn’t anyone knock anymore?

  “There you are, Caya,” Alex said. “Lucy got worried, and we came looking for you.”

  “Is Uncle John with you?” Declan asked.

  “Nae.”

  He exhaled. At least his life wasn’t in immediate danger.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you,” Caya said.

  “Dinnae fash yourself. You gave Lucy a good excuse to go for a ride in the carriage. She’s calling it ‘The Chariot.’ Want to come along?”

  Caya pranced out the front door, presumably to join Lucy in The Chariot. He would have followed her, but Alex blocked his way.

  “Who else is here?” Alex asked, sounding critical and way too much like Laird John.

  “No one. Why?” he challenged.

  “You were alone with the lass?”

  In Declan’s opinion, Alex had no right to gather a head of steam over something that was none of his business. “Hold your wheesht, man. Dinnae try to pretend you disapprove. I ken you spent time alone with Lucy before you married.”

  “Aye, but we were betrothed.”