Bride of Lochbarr

by Margaret Moore

  Propelled by that desire, anxious with need, she surrendered completely to the passion surging through her body, and his.

  “Oh, yes,” she gasped, her breathing ragged, her throat rough with dryness. “Oh, please, yes!”

  Tension. Need. Desire. Building and building to a crescendo.

  Sighs. Moans. His. Hers. Whimpers, almost begging. For what? She couldn’t say. She didn’t know the words. Only this feeling. This incredible feeling.

  His body suddenly tensed and he groaned, a sound rising deep within his throat.

  And just as suddenly, she felt him, harder and stronger, pushing inside her. Primitive. Powerful. Virile. Hers.

  She gave a cry like someone discovering something they thought lost forever as wave after wave of release surged through her, and left her sated.

  Adair collapsed against her, panting. She held him to her, cradling him in her arms, their bodies sweat-slicked.

  So that was making love, she thought, still basking in the aftermath. Those girls hadn’t done it justice. Not at all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  LYING ON HIS SIDE, Adair watched Marianne as she slept, the tumble of her blond hair hiding her face like a veil.

  Last night had been a revelation. The kisses he’d shared with Marianne before the wedding had hinted at a hidden well of passion. Now he could believe that well might be bottomless, and he’d married a woman capable of deep feelings and heated desire in wondrous combination.

  Yet when he’d stood beside her during the wedding ceremony, she’d seemed so stately and so proud, he’d foreseen a reluctant bride who would take him into her bed only as an unwelcome necessity, in order to have children.

  Closing his eyes, he savored the memory of the moment she tore off her shift, as if she couldn’t wait to make love. The sense that she desired him that much was even more heady and overwhelming than the sight of her naked beauty.

  Marianne shifted, unconsciously brushing the hair from her face before turning to her other side, unknowingly presenting her naked back to him. He yearned to run his fingertips down her spine, brushing them over her silky flesh, then following their progress with his lips.

  He inched forward with half a mind to wake her, until the shutters trembled from the wind, the edges knocking together.

  That wasn’t the way to rouse his bride.

  He quickly got out of bed and crossed the room. He was naked, but the cold didn’t bother him overmuch. As he started to secure the shutters, he peered out at the sky visible between the narrow opening.

  It looked to be another fine day, heralding, he hoped, better weather that was here to stay until harvest. He couldn’t remember a wetter spring.

  He opened the shutters a little, breathing in the fresh, cool air. Voices nearby exchanged greetings, and somewhere a dog barked. He could hear the muted words of women gossiping at the well outside the hall kitchen.

  He looked at the sky again and realized, with a start, that it must be late in the morning.

  He fastened the shutters tight. Newly wedded or not, he shouldn’t have lingered so long. He should be up and about, checking to see if the patrols sent out at dawn had returned, and if they’d noticed anything suspicious. In spite of Sir Nicholas’s denials, he wasn’t ready to believe the Normans had nothing to do with the missing cattle.

  It was sobering to think that one Norman in particular was his brother-in-law. Nevertheless, a legal relationship wouldn’t absolve Sir Nicholas or his men if they were caught stealing Mac Taran cattle.

  He should also ask his father when they’d inform Sir Nicholas of the marriage, and how many men would go with him to deliver the bride price.

  Adair turned back toward the bed and Marianne, still sleeping. She must be exhausted after their journey and…last night. He would let her sleep.

  His clothes lay on a heap on the floor and her shift was on top of them. He quickly and quietly dressed in his wrinkled shirt and feileadh, fastening it tight about him and putting his dirk in his belt.

  He glanced at his claimh mor, leaning against the chest. Sir Nicholas might yet come seeking his sister, and if he found her married, in spite of the bride price Adair would pay—five hundred marks, his father had decided, nearly all the coin Adair possessed—there could be trouble. Nevertheless, he decided to leave the long, heavy sword behind. If the alarm was raised that the Normans were coming, he could always run and fetch it.

  With quiet, cautious steps, he left the teach, closing the door softly behind him. Walking through the yard toward the hall, he called a greeting to the servants and clansmen who were going about their usual business. A few returned his salutations. Most said nothing, giving him the slightest of nods for a response.

  As if he’d done something truly unforgivable.

  All the good feelings he’d awakened with slipped away.

  His father and Barra would no doubt tell him it would take time for the people of Lochbarr to accept his marriage, and his Norman bride. With a mental jolt, he realized that much would depend on Marianne and her ability to adjust to life among his clan.

  Supposing she’d want to. Supposing she would try.

  Alone with him in their bed was one thing; a Norman woman living among the clan was another. And Marianne was a proud woman.

  But she was also an intelligent woman. Surely she’d see the need to fit into life in Lochbarr.

  And if she didn’t? Or it she didn’t think such a thing worthy of effort? If that proved to be so, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.

  He pushed open the bossed oaken door of the hall and entered the dim building. Cormag sat at one of the trestle tables, his head over a bowl of thick, gray brochan, a heel of brown bread beside it.

  As Adair looked around for Dearshul, the hearth fire smoldered and smoked, making the air murky.

  Cormag raised his bloodshot, bleary eyes. “So, did she bleed?”

  “Don’t be disgusting, Cormag, if you can help it,” Adair replied with a sneer as he headed for the door.

  Cormag chortled and dipped his bread in the wooden bowl. “I wouldn’t put it past a Norman woman to claim she was a virgin and weep and wail, only to discover she’s already been used by half her brother’s garrison. Maybe that’s why she fled with you—didn’t want her brother to find out she’s no better than a striopach.”

  One hand on the hilt of his dirk, Adair slowly swiveled on his heel to regard his cousin. “Shut your damned mouth, Cormag.”

  “I don’t have to do what you say,” his cousin replied, baring his teeth in a grin that was more like a grimace.

  Adair started toward him. “She’s my wife, so you’ll keep a respectful tongue in your head.”

  Cormag threw down the bread. It rolled off the table and fell to the floor, where a large black dog hurried to gobble it up.

  Cormag got to his feet, shoving the bench backward so that it scraped loudly across the stone floor. “There was a time you would have agreed with me that the Normans were all scheming bitches and bastards. But that was in the old days, before you were besotted with a bonnie face and a pair of fine breasts.”

  “I’m not bewitched. And I told you, speak respectfully of my wife. Aye, and treat her as she deserves, or you’ll regret it.”

  “I’d like nothing better than to give her what she deserves,” Cormag said, his eyes gleaming in a way that disgusted Adair as he made a gesture that was more disgusting still. “Except that I won’t forget she’s a Norman while I’m at it.”

  Adair shoved the table sideways, so that it wasn’t between them anymore. “I told you to shut your disgusting mouth, Cormag,” he growled, drawing his dirk.

  “Oh, aye?” Cormag mocked as he pulled his knife from his belt. “And what’ll you tell your father if you kill me? Not that it’ll matter. He’ll forgive you. He always does, no matter what you do. If anyone else did what you did, he’d be banished, or staring at a hangman’s rope, but not his blessed boy.”

  Cormag started to circle Adair. “Everyone i
n Lochbarr knows how you’re favored. We’ve all seen it a hundred times, and never more than yesterday. You came back here with that Norman’s sister, putting us all at risk, and what does Seamus do? He gives you leave to marry her. And then this morning, he goes himself to set it right with the Norman while his precious son stays at home in bed, wallowing like a pig in mud with his bonnie Norman bride.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “About what? The fact that he treats you like a prince’s brat?”

  “He’s never gone to Sir Nicholas without me.”

  Cormag’s loud, mocking laughter echoed in the stone building, the sound and what it meant making Adair’s blood run cold. “Has he not?”

  Adair turned on his heel, heading for the door.

  “That’s a surprise, is it?” Cormag called after him. “Then do you not know about the letter he took, the one she wrote?”

  Adair wheeled around, to see Cormag nearly giddy with the knowledge that he knew something of which Adair was so obviously ignorant.

  “You mean to say she didn’t tell you? My, my, Adair, you must be losing your touch with the women.”

  Adair gave his cousin a frigid smile. “My wife and I had better things to do last night than talk about letters.”

  Cormag’s eyes flashed envious fire for an instant. “But for Seamus not to tell you he was going, let alone leave you behind—maybe you’re not the favored son anymore.”

  “I notice he didn’t take you, either, Cormag. You must have been too drunk,” Adair retorted as he strode out of the hall.

  He wouldn’t believe Cormag. The man was a lout, a liar and a lustful, lazy oaf. His father was probably still in his teach.

  As he headed toward his father’s quarters, Adair spotted Dearshul hurrying toward the kitchen. He called to her and she came running, her expression quizzical.

  “Is my father still abed?”

  She shook her head. “No. He and Lachlann and ten others left for Dunkeathe at dawn.”

  Cormag hadn’t been lying? His father had gone to face Sir Nicholas without him? Adair could hardly believe it—but Dearshul would have no reason to lie.

  Cormag probably wasn’t lying about the letter, then, either, for his father would want to take that when he went to see Marianne’s brother.

  Adair glanced upward. The sun was halfway to noon. They’d be nearly to Dunkeathe by now.

  “Fetch some food for Marianne, will you?” he asked as he started toward his own teach to get his claimh mor.

  He couldn’t catch up to his father and the others, but he could meet them on the way back. If they came back. If that Norman didn’t throw them in his dungeon.

  He shoved open the door to his teach. His bride, his wife, sat up swiftly, holding the sheets to her creamy breasts, her hair an unkempt mass of gold, her eyes wide with shock. “What’s wrong?”

  “My father’s gone to Dunkeathe.”

  “Without you?”

  She sounded as incredulous as he had been.

  His anger diminished. Slightly. “Aye.”

  Her brow furrowed as she considered. “It’s probably better that he tells Nicholas what happened without you there. Nicholas might try to kill you on the spot.”

  Adair stiffened. “He could try.”

  “Yes, and that surely occurred to your father. A fight between the two of you would only end in more trouble. I think it’s best your father went without you after all.”

  “Either way, he’s already gone.” He didn’t want her to know that he’d been kept completely in the dark. “He took your letter.”

  “I should think so.”

  He wondered what she’d said and when she’d written it. Probably before the wedding. “You told your brother we were lovers.” He didn’t make it a question, but a statement of fact.

  She brushed a lock of hair from the side of her soft cheek. “Yes.”

  He heard something in her voice that gave him pause. “What else?”

  She got out of bed, wrapping a sheet around her slender body. Her fair hair tumbled about her shoulders.

  The sight was nearly enough to make him forget what he’d come there for, as well as his father and everybody else in Lochbarr.

  “I told him that we had married and I asked for his forgiveness.”

  His mind snapped alert. “You did what?”

  “I asked for Nicholas’s forgiveness. I thought it best.”

  “You thought it best to humiliate yourself?” Adair demanded, incredulous and a little disgusted.

  She raised her chin and faced him squarely, as imperious as an empress though she only wore a sheet. “I’m surprised you’d suggest marriage to you was humiliating.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  She adjusted the sheet. “I did what I thought necessary to preserve the peace.”

  He tried not to be distracted by the thought that one tug would send that sheet falling to the floor. “At the expense of your pride.”

  “Yes, at the expense of my pride,” she answered. “Just as some men will do what they consider necessary because their consciences will permit nothing else, and no matter what other consequences there might be.”

  He hadn’t expected that.

  Nor was he prepared for her next remark.

  “Your father told me about Cellach.”

  He let his breath out slowly as he wondered what exactly his father had said about Cellach and her fate.

  As always when he thought of Cellach, the terrible images quickly blotted out the happy memories of the girl he’d loved with all his boyish heart.

  “I’m glad he did, Adair, and you should be, too,” his wife said softly. “Now I understand why you hate my people so much.”

  He grabbed his claimh mor and started toward the door. Unless she’d seen Cellach’s tortured body, she understood only a small portion of his hatred.

  He glanced back to look at her, his bride, his wife, standing in that sheet, so lovely, so regal, so proud in spite of everything. “I’m going to ride out to meet my father when he returns. I’ll send Dearshul to tend you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Some gratitude at last, he thought as he left the teach, walking with some haste lest he give in to temptation, and go back to Marianne and pull off that sheet and—

  “Adair!”

  He halted as Roban came sauntering toward him, looking much the worse for a night of celebrating. His shirt was unlaced, his belt and feileadh precariously low on his hips, and his eyes were bloodshot beneath his light-brown brows. Wisps of straw stuck out of his reddish-gold hair, as if he’d spent the night in a haystack. Knowing Roban, he probably had, although whether he’d done so alone was subject to speculation.

  But if Roban was here, and Cormag, and himself, who the devil had his father taken with him to Dunkeathe, other than Lachlann, who was a clever lad but no warrior?

  Roban gave Adair a grin and a look that asked a host of questions. “I’m surprised to see you up and about, my friend.”

  Adair ignored the look to ask a question of his own. “Are you fit to ride?”

  Taken aback, Roban frowned as if mightily insulted. “Of course.”

  Adair started toward the stable again. “Then come with me.”

  “Where are we going?” Roban asked as he trotted after him.

  “My wife’s written a letter to her brother, and my father, Lachlann and ten others have taken it to Dunkeathe this morning, to try to make peace.”

  “To Dunkeathe without ye and me?” Roban cried, aghast as well as breathless. “And with only ten other clansmen?”

  “Aye,” Adair grimly replied. “I’m going to meet them when they return. At least, I hope so,” he finished under his breath.

  Roban hoisted up his belt and with it, his feileadh. “Right. I’m with ye, Adair, just as soon as I can get my claimh mor.”

  “THERE THEY ARE,” Adair noted with relief from his vantage point on the rise. He raised his arm and pointed toward the small band
of men riding along the road to Lochbarr, the sound of their horses’ hooves like a distant echo of thunder.

  “They don’t look like they’ve been in a fight,” Roban said, also relieved.

  Adair silently agreed, and they were going at a gentle canter, not as if they were in any great hurry or fleeing.

  Nevertheless, it was too soon to be sure. It could be that they were going at such a pace because some of them had been wounded.

  He punched Neas’s sides and rode down the hill along a narrow path through the bracken. Stones and pebbles rolled and scattered, some falling into a narrow stream of clear water on their right. Their progress was hardly silent, and they were clearly visible. His father raised his hand and called a greeting, and brought his party to a halt while they waited for Adair and Roban to arrive.

  Adair reached them first. Thankfully, he saw no sign of blood or bruises on any of them.

  But only his father met his gaze. None of the other grim, grave men did, not even Lachlann.

  Worse, there was something in his father’s eyes Adair had never seen before—a wariness that smote him to the heart, as if his father was suspicious of him now. “What happened in Dunkeathe?”

  “Sir Nicholas will make no trouble for us,” Seamus replied.

  The words should have brought comfort, but they didn’t, because of that look in his father’s eyes. “That’s good news, is it not?”

  Seamus smiled. With his lips. “Aye, ’tis good.”

  “He took the bride price?”

  “Aye.”

  Then if anyone should be annoyed…“Why are you not better pleased?”

  His father nodded at a little stand of pines a short distance from the road and a bit up the hill. “Come with me and I’ll tell you.”

  Adair wanted no more secrets, no quiet conferences in a corner or out of the way. “Surely Lachlann and the others already know what happened.”

  “I’d rather we talk alone,” his father said as Roban came within twenty yards of them on his slower horse.