This Towering Passion

by Valerie Sherwood

  Lazily he pinioned both her arms in one big hand and slid the other hand beneath her smooth back. Coolly ignoring her comments—for Lenore was reviling him with every angry word she could think of—his lips traveled a burning path over her trembling breasts.

  “Lenore, you protest too much to be believed,” he murmured, and his warm lips shut off her angry protests.

  Lenore couldn’t have told whether she was more alarmed or excited. Having said no, she felt obliged to fight for her virtue. Against Jamie’s blacksmith’s strength, that was of little avail. Her breath was nearly cut off, and her heart was racing. Held firmly, feeling the heat of his body, the strong ropy muscles of his arms and his hard chest and thighs pressed against her, she found her own defenses faltering. She was young and her body cried out for love, to be held in a man’s arms. Jamie, who was used to easy conquests, was fired by Lenore’s temptress ways and taunting refusal of him at the last—he felt no qualms at taking her. For was she not his handfast bride, by her own word, and his by right?

  Lying there powerless beneath him with the breath sobbing in her throat, Lenore’s soft body quivered to passion against her will, for she had meant to fight him bitterly. Jamie’s skillful hands caressed her everywhere, until even where it was touched by the cool moonlight, her body was aflame. Once again Jamie had wakened strange wild passions in her, and this time—this time they were sweeping her on to a frenzy of desire that caused her suddenly to stop struggling, to relax her limbs and to wrap her arms about his neck in a fierce embrace.

  Jamie scooped her to him as fiercely; she thought he muttered something and her response was breathless, incoherent.

  Then it came—a sudden agonizing thrust between her thighs that made her cry out and sink back, weak and almost swooning. But even through the pain as her senses swam, she felt a call from deep inside her as if something chained and savage within her was struggling to be free. Against her will she could feel her body respond to him as passions deep within her fought to surface. It was shattering, this fire that consumed her body, that consumed her mind. And when it was over and she lay damp with perspiration and quivering from her struggle, she said weakly, “I—I did not think it would be like this.”

  “The next time will be much better,” he promised, dragging his fingers lightly over the soft tips of her breasts as she lay on her back. As if he had touched a raw spot, her quivering nerves leaped, and he gave a low laugh at this involuntary response. She tried pettishly to brush away his hand, but he persisted, exciting the pink nipples to hardness between a thumb and forefinger.

  Over her weak protests, he took her again, and this time to her surprise she felt almost immediately a deep tingling glow within her. It was not just her outer skin that welcomed him, but all her innermost being. Those chains she had forged over the horror of her brother-in-law’s brutal treatment of Meg, chains that had held her emotions bound and gagged all these years, were burst at last, and her savage inner self released. Flames seemed to burst through her loins and with a moan, Lenore flung herself upward against him. For wild primeval moments they clung together, straining violently, trying to meld their very bodies into one. When he had finished and rolled over to consider her, she gave a long gasping breath and looked at him with wonder.

  Jamie laughed. “Did I not tell you?” he teased. “Ye’ve a wild nature, Lenore, and ’tis surprised I am to find ye a virgin!”

  She gave him an affronted look and flipped over on her side, presenting the curving line of her back to him.

  “Ah, but I’m pleased about it,” he murmured, tracing her spine from neck to buttocks with questing fingers that made her squirm. But she wasn’t speaking to him after that remark. Surprised she was a virgin, indeed!

  Jamie sighed and tucked a great arm under her. Her anger didn’t keep her from nestling against his shoulder and soon she heard his rhythmic breathing. She stole a look at him. Her lover had fallen asleep.

  Lenore was wakeful. The anguish and splendor of her initiation into being a woman haunted her. Lying there beside Jamie, she looked up at the white moon through the branches outside the window very thoughtfully. She knew she could leave on the morrow. She could take her things and simply depart, trudging to the next village there to try her luck at employment. Failing that, she could try elsewhere—another village and another. Here in Twainmere the villagers might whisper behind their hands and nod wisely, guessing rightly that she’d become the young Scot’s mistress, but in some other town none would know how Jamie had used her.

  But . . . there was that in his strong body that thrilled her, and she knew in her heart that all the next day she’d be impatient, looking forward to the night when Jamie would clamber again through her window ... or perhaps the door would be left unlatched. For it was no secret from Flora that Lenore was Jamie’s handfast bride.

  His handfast bride . . . Lenore’s expression softened and she stole another look at the sleeping Jamie, his handsome features illumined by the moonlight and his hemp-pale hair turned a shimmering, snowy halo. The chest that rose and fell beside her with his even breathing was a manly chest, deep and wide ... the whole naked length of him was manly.

  Now that the storm of her passions had abated and she could think more sanely, Lenore asked herself: This wild sweet feeling that possessed her—could this be love? Perhaps she loved Jamie, perhaps that was why she had so flamed up in his arms.

  To be a handfast bride—perhaps that was none so bad after all. ’Twas the next best thing to being truly wed at the kirk. She pondered on that and gradually her spirits rose. There was a certain status in being a handfast bride; for Jamie had given her a promise, too, that he’d be hers forever if he stayed by her side for a year and a day.

  Tonight, fresh from her lover’s arms, Lenore was filled with the reckless confidence of youth. She smiled dreamily as she snuggled against the shoulder of her sleeping Scottish lover. Her James would never leave her, she promised herself. When St. John’s fires burned in the Cotswold Hills next June, he’d be hers for life. Then she’d take him to the kirk for all the neighbors to see!

  CHAPTER 3

  Life with Jamie and Flora had an entirely different flavor from the tug-of-war existence she’d known with Meg and Tom. Their table—no lavish board, but set with the gruel and meat puddings and dark bread Lenore was used to, for Flora was determined to adapt to English ways—rang with political arguments. Both of them disliked the Lord Protector, and Jamie sometimes grumbled that life among the Puritans of England was no better than life among the Covenanters of Scotland. But they both knew and were grateful that Twainmere was an out-of-the-way backwash and had escaped the full fervor of drab Puritan ways and harsh Puritan laws.

  “In Scotland you’d be put in the pillory for railing as you do!” scolded Flora.

  “Here, too, did the right people but hear me,” retorted Jamie gloomily.

  Lenore listened and wondered. Everyone knew that young Charles Stuart had crossed from Holland and the Scots had risen to greet him. At Gowrie House on the Tay he’d been crowned King of Scotland even though— ominously—Cromwell’s army had occupied Edinburgh on Christmas Eve. In March Charles had entered Edinburgh, and Jamie’d heard a rumor that he was training twenty thousand men to invade England.

  “ Tis nothing to do with us,” said Flora firmly. “We’re English now, Jamie.”

  Jamie gave her a steady look, but said nothing, and Flora’s expression softened. Lenore had learned to respect Flora. A woman of simple virtues—a barren widow, she called herself, though she was still handsome, tall and blond and blue-eyed like her brother—Flora had at first been standoffish; she had not welcomed the English girl with open arms. “You’ll be the death of him,” she’d predicted gloomily. “For Jamie’s too free with his ways here, just as he was in Scotland—and mark you, ’twill land him in trouble here the same as it did there.” She shook her head. “Handfasting—bah! Ye should be proper wed.”

  Lenore thought so, too, but it hurt h
er pride to say so. She didn’t want to beg for a husband! She wanted Jamie to take her hand and lead her joyously to the kirk.

  As the days passed, living so close in the tiny thatched cottage, tending the little kitchen garden together, eating all their meals at the same table, Flora grew fond of Lenore, who was always eager to do her share of the work.

  “Are ye with bairn, Lenore?” she asked bluntly one day as they washed clothes.

  Lenore blushed fiery red and shook her head in embarrassment. Flora had never before given any indication that she heard the nightly creak as Jamie climbed the wooden stair to Lenore’s room.

  “He’ll never wed ye—ye know that, don’t you?”

  Lenore didn’t know that. She gave Flora a startled look.

  “But if ye got pregnant, then I’d make him take ye to the kirk if I had to kick him every step of the way,” said Flora in a fierce voice.

  “Well, I’m not pregnant,” muttered Lenore, disliking the idea that Jamie would have to be booted to the kirk.

  48

  “I don’t hold with handfasting,” sighed Flora, casting a gloomy look at Lenore. “ ’Tis seldom permanent.” Lenore bit her lip and bent over the clothes she was scrubbing, using perhaps more force than was necessary to get them clean. Jamie loved her, she was sure of it. He was so ardent, so possessive. Why, he didn’t even want her to go out! “Let Flora go to market,” he’d say, smiling down at her. “You stay home.”

  By the end of the second week she knew why he wanted her to stay home. On a brilliant sunny day Flora, on her way to the pigsty with a bucket of slops, fell and twisted her ankle, and Lenore went to the market in her stead. To her shocked surprise, she saw Jamie bending over a buxom farm girl who was giggling and looking boldly up into his blue eyes as if daring him to kiss her. When Lenore came up to them, the girl gave her a contemptuous look that made Lenore want to slap her rosy face. It said plainer than words: You’re nothing but his mistress, everybody knows that! But me—I’m looking for a husband, and Jamie’s wed to no one—he’s fair game!

  The girl flung away, and Jamie looked a little upset. “Where’s Flora?” he demanded. “I thought she was going marketing today.”

  “She fell and hurt her ankle,” Lenore said through tight lips. He’d have taken her arm, but she thrust her market basket at him, banging it against his ribs. “I’ll need you to help me carry things, there’s a lot to buy.”

  Jamie accompanied her docilely enough but once out of the corner of her eye she saw him turn and look after the farm girl with a fleeting smile.

  “What’s her name?” she asked crisply.

  “Who?”

  “You know very well who! That girl you were talking to!”

  “Oh, that one—Lizzie, I think.”

  “She seemed very friendly with you.”

  “Ah, that’s just her way. Lenore, you’re not jealous?” He gave her a wicked look.

  Lenore, who was very jealous, snapped “Of course not!” and kept her back as stiff as a poker as she loaded him up with her purchases.

  He teased her out of her ill humor as they walked home, but after that, whenever he was gone, she wondered. Flora watched her shrewdly. “Have a child,” she recommended.

  Lenore gave her an irritable look. That wasn’t the answer to everything. Suppose she did have a child and Jamie had a wandering eye anyway?

  Perhaps, she thought bitterly, she didn’t understand Jamie. Perhaps things were different in Scotland. She began to ask him probing questions about Scotland, only to be told in that easy voice that he was English now.

  For a time Jamie really had thought himself English, Lenore knew. In June—no matter how many sidelong glances he gave likely maids who walked by his smithy with a swinging gait—he had clasped his fiery young handfast bride in his arms and dreamed the nights away. All through the lovely days of July he seemed to forget the war clouds gathering in the north. But when, on the last day of July, Charles rode south at the head of a largely Scottish army, Jamie again bethought him that he was a Scot.

  He was restless and irritable in August. By now Lenore had rightly guessed what ailed her Jamie—he yearned to be out there with the men of the heather, marching to the wild sound of the bagpipes. She tried to make him forget by long, wild, languorous nights when he lay on her breast and the night sounds were muted by the reckless joyous singing in their own ears as they clung together, firing each other’s passions, and were swept up toward the stars in ecstasy.

  But Jamie’s roguish attention continued to wander. When one of the village girls was married and Jamie, riding Snowfire, won the wild race for the bride’s garters, Lenore had brooded at him. Irritably she watched his uproarious glee as he outmatched all the wedding guests in drinking the bride-ales—and turned and went home alone, determined to teach him a lesson. That night, when Jamie came upstairs and shut the door behind him, she pretended to be asleep.

  “Lenore,” he whispered. “Ah, Lenore, ye’re awake—I can tell from your breathing!”

  Lenore sighed and turned over, the moonlight silvering her rumpled hair and the carefully exposed tops of her white breasts. She opened her violet eyes, gave Jamie a devastating smile, and reached up a playful finger to trace the golden hairs that furred his bare chest. “You woke me,” she said reproachfully. “And me with a headache! You’d best sleep alone.” ,

  But her sparkling eyes belied her words.

  “You’ve no headache, you minx!” growled Jamie, reaching for her and flipping her back toward him as she would have turned away.

  The flat of her palm pressed against his deep chest kept him at a distance. “Do you love me, Jamie?” she asked idly.

  “Aye.” His voice was thick. “That I do.”

  She forgot about teaching Jamie a lesson. Instead she sighed gently and opened her arms. Eagerly her Scot swept back the light coverlet and claimed her. Bright shone the moon on their wildly thrashing bodies . . . but when the sun shone again he was gone. Lenore could hear him whistling in the smithy as he worked, pounding nails into horseshoes. His bold gaze followed honeyhaired young Mollie Paxton as she sidled by with a basket of eggs for the vicar, and he called after her and swept off his battered hat and bowed. Mollie’s laugh tinkled and she swaggered a bit too seductively as she walked on toward the vicarage.

  Watching from the cottage window, Lenore simmered. Jamie loved her ripe body ... at night when his blood was hot. But by day he loved all the girls. Loved them equally, as far as she could see.

  She stalked downstairs and Flora, without looking round, said, “Is that you, Lenore? Help me with this hot tallow, will you? I can’t seem to get these candles poured right.”

  Flora’s voice was strained and reminded Lenore that there was more than Jamie’s women to worry about.

  “ ’Tis no wonder,” said Lenore with concern. “Your hand’s shaking. Here—let me do it.”

  “I didn’t sleep much,” admitted Flora, gratefully handing the candle mold to Lenore. “I don’t seem to sleep well any more.”

  Lenore gave her a compassionate look. Flora was thinner and her eyes were haunted these days. Preoccupied and brooding, she seemed unaware of Lenore’s sudden coolness toward Jamie that morning. At sunset Flora looked out across the wine-red hills toward the north— the young King’s army was moving down from the north. “ ’Twill be a bloody business,” she muttered.

  That night, as she’d done so often lately, Flora had a nightmare. Lenore, lying curled in the curve of Jamie’s arm—though she’d hardly spoken to him all day—heard her scream and leaped up and ran down the stairs to find her shaking in a cold sweat.

  “I saw blood,” Flora murmured brokenly, her hands covering her eyes as if to shut out the sight. “A red splatter that spread and spread until it covered the whole countryside.”

  Lenore hushed and calmed her and returned to her bed, but as she lay beside Jamie, who hadn’t even waked, she suddenly felt cold. It was said the Scots had The Sight, and Flora was a Scot. Blo
od . . . she’d seen. Did that mean the countryside would really rise as Scotland had to join the dispossessed young King? If so, England would indeed be awash with blood, for the Lord Protector’s armies weren’t going to give up their lives so easily. Even the wisest men in the village shook their heads and muttered that Cromwell’s grip was firm, that England was held in strong hands—too strong for the young King to wrest free. On her pallet, Lenore shivered, and a prickle went down her spine—as if death had caressed her with fight questing fingers.

  Flora’s dark premonition caused Lenore abruptly to make up with Jamie. The next day he was delighted to find her all smiles and warm caresses, waking him with a kiss and leaning over him so that the tips of her soft breasts dragged lightly, deliciously across his bare chest. His eyes kindled and he pulled her to him. “Ye’re a hard wench to understand,” he murmured into the flaming cloud of her hair. “But for all your wicked moods, I’d rather have you than all the rest.”

  It was as near as he ever came to a commitment to her, and Lenore’s heart sang.

  Had Charles and his Scots won handily, Jamie might have stayed with his arms cozily wrapped around his fiery young handfast bride—even if his eye roved occasionally. But things went badly for the young King, and when word reached Twainmere that the Scots were deserting and fleeing back toward the north, Jamie ground his teeth at this information, while Flora looked more dour than, ever.