His gaze flickered downward again and settled on the twin steel-butted dags tucked into her belt. “Please do not tell me you went out on a night like this … alone?”
“Robbie met me at the bridge. Eneas brought me home.”
That almost brought forth a groan. “Sweet Jesus. Your cousins are here, too?”
“All three of them.” She paused and some reckless inner demon could not resist adding, “Eneas sends his fondest regards.”
Angus's mouth tightened further, for he and Eneas Farquharson of Monaltrie were not exactly the best of friends. Eneas had waited for Angus outside the church the day of their wedding and pinned him against the wall by a fistful of his fine grogram jacket. He had pressed his lips to the blade of his dirk and sworn a solemn oath to personally carve out The MacKintosh's heart should there ever be a whisper of mistreatment against their Annie. Angus had heard him out, had suffered the double threat of brute strength and glittering steel without a word, then had coolly straightened his clothes and walked away. To Anne's knowledge, they had not spoken since.
“Does Fearchar know the countryside is swarming with militia?”
“It is not the first time Granda' has been named on an English warrant,” Anne said. “He knows who his friends are … and who would sell him out for a few copper pennies.”
“A thousand pounds is hardly a few coppers.”
“Nor is it thirty pieces of Judas silver.”
The barb struck home, for Angus had been apportioned somewhat more than thirty pieces of silver to form up a regiment of MacKintosh men to serve under Lord Loudoun's command. According to Duncan Forbes, the compensation was intended to provide the men with uniforms and weaponry as well as the half shilling a day they earned in pay, but few Highlanders saw it as such. Not when wealthy lairds insisted on several thousand pounds sterling over and above any expectations of costs.
Anne did not wait for a rebuttal—not that one appeared to be forthcoming. She walked toward the dressing room instead, dragging the sodden ribbon out of her hair as she went.
“I am cold and tired. Can we not talk about this in the morning?”
“Actually, no. Since I have been sitting here for the past three hours with all manner of imagined and creative explanations for your late-night absence running through my mind, I would rather talk about it now.”
She paused at the door and cast a small frown in his direction. Although his voice was as smooth as satin, there were fine white lines of tension bracketing his mouth, and while the hand that held the wineglass was no longer swirling it, the contents continued to shiver.
Her gaze flicked involuntarily to the neatly turned sheets on the bed. The bedchamber itself was half of a four-room suite, the largest in Moy Hall, with two suitably well-appointed dressing rooms that divided Anne's bedroom from his. In the first three and a half years of their marriage, they had slept apart only a handful of nights; most of the time they had shared—and enjoyed—the massive canopied bed in Angus's room.
In the last six months, however, the opposite had held true, and the strain between them had become so obvious, even to the household servants, that the maids had begun to turn down both beds.
“Surely you could not have been thinking I was with another man,” she said softly.
His hand curled around the stem of the glass and his mouth formed a small pucker before he met her gaze. “Frankly, no, that was not my first thought, but I admit it was one of them. And in truth, it might have been preferable over some of the alternatives. The mind … conjures all manner of things on a dark, windy night.”
“I am sorry if you were worried. But I truly thought you would stay the night in Inverness.”
“And that makes it all right to gallop around the countryside with loaded guns in your belt?”
“I was hardly galloping about the countryside. I was at Dunmaglass.”
“Ah.”
There was enough innuendo in that one little sound to make her search his face a second time. The exercise proved to be futile, as it always was when his guard was up—which seemed to be most of the time these days. When he chose to retreat behind his well-groomed mask of indifference, regardless of what he was thinking, regardless of whether he was in a rage or the height of despair, his eyes, his expression gave away nothing. There were occasions Anne envied his ability to detach himself so completely, and others—such as now— when she resented it with all the passion of her Highland blood.
The notion that he might have thought…
But that was foolish. The very idea that he would even suspect she had gone to see John MacGillivray …
“I went to Dunmaglass to see Granda',” she said evenly. “He was the one who set the place for the meeting, not I.”
She watched him empty the dregs of his wineglass, then reach for the decanter to refill it. “If you were so sure I was not coming home tonight, you could have invited him here. You've done it before, have you not?”
Anne chewed on the edge of her lip. Indifference might be the mask he wore, but ignorance was never a question, and not knowing how to answer the charge, she merely evaded it. “He is my grandfather. He wanted to see me; I obliged.”
“I am your husband. I expect to see you when I come home.”
“Perhaps if you were at home more often,” she retorted, “those expectations would be more happily realized.”
She went into her dressing room, and when she was out of sight, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. She heard a sharp sound as the base of the glass hit the table, but when he did not appear in the doorway as she half expected him to, she covered her face with her hands and slowly shook her head, cursing her tongue for its impetuousness.
But Angus had indeed pushed himself out of the chair and was halfway to the dressing room before he thought better of it and stopped. He could see her through the lighted crack between the door and the frame, and his jaw clenched hard enough to set the muscles in his cheek shivering.
“I… have never forbidden you to see your grandfather— or any member of your family, for that matter,” he said after a long moment. “I only hoped you would see the need for discretion.”
“I saw a greater need to take some food and warm clothing for the children. Do you know they all fear for their lives and must live in a cave now? Eneas says the little ones are brave and they do not complain, but it's bitter cold most of the time and they both have heavy chests and … and Mairi suffered a miscarriage last month. She slipped on some rocks …”
Her voice trailed away and Angus watched her lower her hands. She folded them over her belly as if she were feeling the tearing loss herself and her face crumpled to expose a terrifying vulnerability. He took a halting step forward, then another, but by the time he had convinced himself she would not slam the door on him, the opportunity was lost.
“I am … genuinely sorry to hear about Mairi,” he said gently. “But at the moment, it is your health I am more concerned with. The water in the bath should still be warm. Hardy has been adding fresh buckets every half hour or so. I … can have him bring more, if you require it.”
“No. Thank you. It is fine.”
He looked up as she passed before the narrow slice of light again, her hair streaming down her back like a red silk curtain. As he watched, she gathered fistfuls of the curls and twisted them into a haphazard pile on top of her head, catching all but a few straggled wisps between a pair of mother-of-pearl combs. That left her neck and shoulders exposed, and, when she turned slightly, the pale white swell of her breast.
Anne emerged a short time later, her body rendered shapeless in a thick chenille robe. Risking a glance into the corner, she saw that her husband was still there. His head was leaning back against the upholstery and he was staring up at the ceiling, seemingly engrossed with the patterns the firelight made on the ornate plaster moldings.
She unfastened the combs from her hair and started working out the tangles. It was still damp from the melted snow,
and the first few strokes of the hairbrush proved stubborn as always, but she was grateful to be doing something that did not require conscious thought. The long ride to Dunmaglass and the meeting with her grandfather had left her more exhausted than she cared to admit, and she was down to her last reserves of strength. She had half hoped Angus would have retired to his own chamber by now, for she was as confused as she was tired, and did not think she could withstand any more confrontations.
More important, she had never deliberately lied to Angus and did not particularly want to start now, so she prayed he would not ask her for any more specific reasons why Fearchar had called her out on such a cold, bleak night. She could scarcely believe the irony of it herself, being asked to lead a rebellion within the clan when she had worked so hard to dampen the rebellious streak within herself.
Anne's hand faltered in the middle of a brushstroke.
She had tried, she really tried hard to be a good wife, to learn the manners and demure behavior that would not embarrass her husband in the company of his peers. She struggled daily to erase the harsh edge from her brogue, to learn to walk and talk with the proper decorum; she fought a constant battle to curb her emotions, to be more like the frosty, aloof women whose faces were in danger of cracking if they laughed out loud.
She used to laugh a great deal, the sound hearty enough that it often won a reluctant smile from her more reserved spouse—and not just the smile he gave out so freely and falsely in company, but the slow, lethally sensuous smile he usually reserved for the privacy of their bedroom.
Sighing, she rested the brush in her lap for a moment.
Despite the circumstances surrounding their wedding, he had never given her any reason to question her ability to please him as a woman, nor had she ever given him any basis to suspect she went to his bed each night merely to fulfill her wifely obligations. There were times she could have wept from the sheer pleasure of feeling his hands, his mouth on her body. And there were times, when the lights were low and he was deep inside her, she imagined she could sense a longing for intimacy that went beyond the physical act of their union. Times when the urgency of his whisperings and the hungry rovings of his hands and mouth were as contradictory as they were confounding. He was a skilled, generous lover, and his body betrayed his pleasure in ways no amount of mental discipline could control. In turn, he awakened needs within her that made her more than willing, and often shamelessly eager, to go to his bed at night.
The very notion that he had sat in the dark and suspected her of having a lover was ironic enough to almost make her smile. There were countless times over these past six months when she had sat in that same chair and wondered the same thing about him.
Angus had never given her any reason to believe he had been unfaithful, but men were inherently sly creatures when it came to such indiscretions. Married men, especially handsome, worldly men accustomed to the courts of Europe, were expected to keep mistresses; it was as commonplace as keeping two sets of plate in a household, one for special occasions, one for everyday use. Few of his peers would have understood any reluctance on his part to sample the less inhibited beauties who seemed to arrive by the shipload each time the English garrison was reinforced. Wild Rhuad Annie was the kind of woman a man took behind the stable to toss her skirts above her head for a sweaty romp. She was not the kind men married or to whom they remained faithful.
Yet Angus had not touched her, sweatily or otherwise, in over a month, and she suffered a genuine melancholy for the lack. The tingling in her body now had less to do with her quick scrub and proximity to the fire than with the heat in his eyes as they watched her every move. His shirt being carelessly unfastened did not help her powers of concentration either, nor did the movement of his fingers as he absently stroked the stem of the wineglass.
Her own fingers fought the urge to press down into the junction of her thighs, to stop if she could the ache that seemed to be growing there by the second. But having discovered there was more to marriage than arranging dinner parties and keeping track of seventy household servants, Anne could not simply command her body to go cold. Nor could she act as if the patterns thrown by the firelight were more intriguing than the remembered feel of his breath on her neck or the sensation of his fingers skimming across her breasts.
No, she did not want to argue with him. She wanted to throw off her robe and sprawl naked on the hearthrug like a harlot if that was what it took to bring him out of that wretched corner.
Anne looked down at where the brush rested in her lap. According to the rules of polite society, it was considered très gauche to actually be in love with one's own husband. Was it also wrong to want to feel his arms around her, or to enjoy the physical pleasure of his flesh moving inside her?
“Here, let me help.”
Startled, Anne turned and found Angus standing beside her, his hand outstretched. She had not heard him get up or walk across the room. And because, for the moment it took him to lean over and gently prise the hairbrush out of her hand, she had no idea what he was offering to do, she remained warily still, only following him with her eyes.
“You look as if your arms are ready to fall off.”
“I can manage,” she whispered.
“I'm sure you can.”
Without further ado he took up the brush and moved behind her. It was the first time he had ever done such a thing, and in her indelicately aroused state she was not all that certain she could bear him doing it now.
He began by dealing quickly with the fiery disorder, using a man's brusque, no-nonsense efficiency. But when the brush began to run smoothly from her scalp to the ends of the curls, his movements slowed as well, and the strokes became noticeably more deliberate. Before too long the tangles and the dampness had been banished and on each silky pass of the brush, the gleaming strands began to crackle with static. The surface of Anne's skin tingled with the same needle-prick sensations. She sat breathlessly still, her heart pounding like a blacksmith's hammer, wondering if he could possibly be aware of the unbelievably erotic sensations that were rippling down her neck, down her spine, and pooling in her belly.
The edges of her bathrobe started to quiver where the chenille gaped slightly over her breasts. A particularly long, sensual sweep of the brush set off a corresponding wave of pinpoint implosions between her thighs, and her lips parted around an audible gasp.
The brush stopped.
She could not move, she could scarcely even breathe, and when he reached forward to run his fingertips along the curve of her neck, she almost could not stop herself from climaxing then and there. He used the excuse of gathering up the errant ribbons of hair that had escaped his attention, but when she parted her lips and released a second nearly soundless whimper, he abandoned the pretense and the caress lingered. His fingers went back and trailed across the warm, smooth curve, though there were no more errant wisps to catch.
The next challenge came as he split the one thick tail into three sections, and she realized he was attempting to plait her hair.
“I can do the rest,” she offered.
“No, no. I have started it, I'll finish it. Besides, I have probably watched you do this a thousand times, how difficult can it be?”
He made a few ineffectual twists before Anne smiled and reached around to relieve him of the task. Their hands met and brushed together, but he did not move away; he caught her wrist instead and held it a moment before raising it and pressing it against his lips.
“I lied to you earlier when I said that your being with another man was not my first thought. Reinforced by two bottles of claret, I thought I had arrived at a fairly obvious conclusion. Nor was the beast soothed overmuch when you said you had gone to Dunmaglass.”
“John MacGillivray and I have known each other all our lives.”
“Yes,” he said, tracing his fingers along the soft skin of her forearm. “And I have envied him that privilege before.”
Anne felt the heat of his breath against her wris
t, his fingers skimming into the crease of her elbow, and it took her two attempts to form the words “You have?”
“I have envied every man who has known you longer than I have,” he confessed.
It was likely the claret speaking, Anne thought, but if that was what it took, she would arrange to have a gallon by his chair every night.
His lips were on her wrist again, and now they were following the tingling path already conquered by his fingertips. The cuff of her sleeve had fallen well below her elbow and when he reached the chenille barrier it was a simple matter just to turn and press his lips into the curve of her neck.
Anne could barely hold her head steady. His mouth was warm, his tongue hot and moist where it swirled up to flirt with her earlobe, then scrolled a provocative path down to the collar of her robe. His hand was gently peeling aside the chenille, causing rivers of new sensations to flow downward, and Anne feared she was so near the brink of an orgasm already, the seduction would end before it had even begun. Moreover, he would know at a glance how aroused she was, for the skin across her breasts had shrunk so tight, the buds of her nipples were like small, ripe berries.
Without removing his mouth from her body he came slowly down on one knee before her. He pushed the robe off her arms and his hands smoothed over her breasts, cupping them in his palms. He wet each nipple with his tongue then watched, fascinated, as the firelight glistened off the blushed tips.
“Jealousy,” he murmured, “can be a terrible thing. Almost as terrible as pride.”
Anne might have had the wit to think of a response but for the thrill of feeling his lips part wider and slowly take her breast into his mouth. She melted forward, her fingers twisting into his hair, and he obliged by sucking harder, chafing her flesh with his tongue until she started making small smothered sounds in her throat.
But when she would have slipped off the edge of the chair and joined him eagerly on the hearthrug, he stopped her. His lips released her flesh with a soft, wet suckling sound and his hands went down to her thighs, coaxing them apart. A disbelieving heartbeat later, he was pushing that same warm and teasing mouth into the V of feathery copper curls, and Anne had to grip the edges of the chair to keep from lurching right off.
Midnight Honor Page 5