She took a single sip of her wine to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth, but set it aside almost immediately, not wanting to risk numbing her wits more.
“When I saw you standing there, I thought… well, I hoped …”
“You hoped I had finally come to my senses and decided to join you?”
“Something like that,” she acknowledged softly.
“Well, I haven't. Come to join you, that is. I have, however, come to ask you what the bloody hell you think you are doing. You and those damned cousins of yours.”
He asked the question so casually, kept his voice so mellow and low, they might have been sitting in front of a blazing fire at home discussing the next crop of apples.
“None of us made the decision lightly,” she began. “Or entered it in haste.”
“No. No, I understand it took you nearly three weeks to gather the signatures of enough fools willing to follow you to Aberdeen. Oh, yes, I've heard all about your petition. I can even tell you who signed it and what threats were employed to get them to do so. What I do not understand is why you can't see that they are using you—Fearchar, your cousins, all of them. They used you to get to MacGillivray, for there was no other earthly way he would have broken his oath to me.”
She felt another shiver, one that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the frost in his eyes.
“As to that,” he asked quietly, “was it not enough to have humiliated me by taking control of the clan? Did you have to fashion horns for me at the same time?”
“Horns?” Her voice was a bewildered tremor. “I don't know what you—”
“That was quite a touching scene I just witnessed between you and MacGillivray. It must have been so much more convenient for the pair of you while you were living with him at Dunmaglass.”
A second log caught fire, throwing more light across his face, and for the first time Anne saw that there was more than just anger rendering his face gaunt and tight. There was pain as well. Deep emotional pain, so naked and vulnerable on a man who prided himself in his composure that she felt her heart begin to wither and crumble into a heap of dust.
“Angus … John has never been anything other than an absolute gentleman in my presence. Not by word or deed has he ever sought to offer more than his hospitality and friendship. I moved out of Moy Hall and into Dunmaglass, yes, but only as a guest and only to avoid having any taint that might become attached to my name or actions spill over to yours. Dunmaglass was as much an army camp as Bannockburn is now, and I sorely doubt we could have found a private moment together to do so much as touch hands, let alone touch anything else, even if we had been so inclined. Which neither of us was. I never forgot I was a married woman, and neither did he.”
“That did not seem to be the case a few moments ago. Not when you had your heads together at the end of the path. And not by the way you said his name when you opened the door just now.”
She bit the edge of her lip. She hadn't realized she'd gasped out John's name, just as she wasn't completely sure what she would have done had it been he and not Angus standing on the threshold. But it was Angus who was here before her now, with more than just his husbandly pride bruised. She had gone behind his back and she had usurped his authority within the clan, but what choice had he given her? What choice had he given his clansmen? It was obviously one they had not wanted to make, for she had seen reports as well. There were spies and couriers going back and forth between the enemy encampments like a trail of ants. Angus had left Inverness with six hundred clansmen, but by the time they arrived in Edinburgh, most of them had quietly slipped away and either gone back home or crossed over the moor to join the prince. But she would not throw that in his face. As for his assumption that she had moved into Dunmaglass so that she and MacGillivray might carry on some wild and passionate affair…!
“I have had far too much wine tonight,” she admitted shakily, “and I am really not strong enough to do battle with you, Angus. I am certainly not strong enough to lie to you. If you choose not to take my word for it, then you are going to believe the worst and nothing I can say or do will change your mind. But I swear I have not been unfaithful. I'll not insult either one of us by saying I have not had thoughts and dreams … some of them vivid enough to keep me awake through the night. I will also freely confess that I have been lonely and frightened and perhaps even a little desperate to have someone hold me and treat me like a woman. I have feelings for John, yes, but I don't know what they are and I have never acted upon them. What you saw outside was a man putting his heart into my hands and my refusing it because I care too deeply for another. Simply that and nothing more. As for the rest, I am only too well aware that Fearchar used me as a means of getting what he wanted, but so has everyone else at some time or another, including you.”
“Me? How the devil have I used you?”
“Oh, please, Angus. Why else would you have agreed to marry me if not because you hoped it would win Fearchar's support away from Cluny MacPherson as clan chief? Why else, if not because you thought that marrying a Farquharson would prevent the clan from splitting apart, exactly as it has done now?”
A shadow flickered briefly behind his eyes. “That was not why I married you.”
“It never occurred to you, not even when you hesitated at the altar and it was so obvious you wanted to be anywhere else, with anyone else but me, that you were doing it strictly and stoically for the good of the clan, that it was just another thankless part of your duty, another tiresome and unwanted burden you inherited along with the title?”
“Anne …” He was genuinely appalled. “I never thought that. Not once.”
She passed a hand in front of her eyes as if to ward off the futility of any more lies. “Fearchar told me he had to practically threaten you to honor the agreement. He also told me that you, in turn, demanded the dowry money because you knew he did not have it, and he would have had to forfeit the contract if he could not raise the stipulated amount.”
“It was five thousand pounds,” Angus murmured. “And if I truly had not wanted to go through with the marriage, Anne, I would not have been in that chapel at all.”
She started to turn away, clearly disdainful of his efforts to patronize her, but he quickly set his wine aside and caught her shoulders, forcing her up onto her knees before him, bringing their faces so close she had no choice but to look up into his eyes.
“While Fearchar was telling you these fables, did he happen to mention where he came by the money for the dowry?”
“He said he was forced to sell off a valuable parcel of land.”
“Valuable?” Angus snorted. “It was a stretch of bog along the edge of Meall a'Bhreacraibh that sits under three feet of water for nine months out of the year.”
“Meall a'Bhreacraibh? But… you have land adjoining that moor.”
“Aye, and my agent thought I was mad for buying more at such a ridiculous price, but he did as he was told and paid for it in cash, and never told Fearchar who the simpleton was who paid so much for something so worthless.”
“You gave him the money?”
“Call me the biggest fool for it, if you will, but I thought the price well worth it.”
Her lips parted slowly, and her shoulders lost some of their stiffness. “You did?”
“Then”—he seemed to stall over the words for a moment—“and now. I never regretted my decision for a moment, Anne. And if I appeared to hesitate in the church that day, it was because I was afraid if I moved, I might wake up and the dream would shatter. You see, I knew even then that MacGillivray would have been your likely choice had the two of us been standing side by side. Fearchar told me you and he were lovers—”
“We were never lovers,” she began.
“I knew that on our wedding night, and you can have no idea how thankful I was you were a virgin—solely because you would not know how much terror I was feeling that you might think me an inadequate lover compared to John.”
/>
Anne felt the particles of dust in her chest stir and begin to take shape again. “Yet you married me anyway?”
He brought his hands up from her shoulders to cradle each side of her face, then bent his head forward until their brows touched. “I had seen you out riding on that great beast of yours and I swear my heart stopped from the sheer beauty of the moment. Your hair was wild, your skin was flushed from the wind, and your laughter …” His hands tightened and his eyes closed. “I thought if I could just hold that moment in my heart forever, it would be enough. But then I found the betrothal papers, and I knew I could hold so much more.”
Anne said nothing; she just stared. His lashes were dark against his cheeks, and his mouth looked so grim it took all of her willpower not to simply fling her arms up around his neck and crush his lips beneath hers.
But she resisted. She moved her hands slowly instead, lifting them to touch his cheek first, to brush aside an errant wave of hair, then to thread her fingers deep into the silky brown locks. She tipped her mouth up to his, her eyes wide open, her body edging closer, and felt the tremors in his hands as they slipped down to her neck, then her shoulders again, and for the length of two, three pulse beats she feared he might still push her away.
Her lips pleaded silently for forgiveness, begging his to respond. And when they did, parting around a harsh groan of abandoned pride, his arms went around her and gathered her close, so close she feel his heart thundering within his chest. The air was driven from her lungs on a cry of unabashed relief, but his mouth was there to capture it, to share it, to revel in the mutual banishment of any lingering fears and hesitations. He brought her up hard against him, devouring her in the punishing caress of a man who had allowed himself to think the worst even though he had been desperate to believe it could not be so.
Anne responded with pure carnal joy. It trembled through her arms and quivered the length of her body, turning her blood to liquid fire. She drove her hands deeper into his hair and refused to let him break away, not even to grasp at a mouthful of air or plead for a moment of space to accommodate the sudden pressure swelling at his groin.
A rough curse brought him swiftly to his feet, dragging her with him. His mouth stayed fastened over hers but his hands flew down to tug at her coat, to tear aside her doublet, to fumble with her shirt, and finally, with a curse that voiced his impatience as well as his lust, to rip it from neck to hem in his haste to expose her flesh to his hungry lips. Anne arched her head back, groaning like a wounded animal when she felt the suckling heat close around her breast, but when he would have picked her up into his arms and carried her to the bed, she stopped him with a shallow cry.
Wide-eyed, panting lightly through swollen lips, she pushed out of his arms and backed up against the wall. When she could retreat no farther, she unbuckled her belt and kicked her way out of her boots and trews, then stripped off the loosened upper garments, all save for the shirt, which she left hanging open over her breasts.
“I want you to take me here,” she said huskily. “Right here. Against the wall.”
He was not entirely certain he grasped what she was asking, or that he could walk that far unaided. “Right there?”
“Here.” She nodded. “I have a demon that needs exorcising, my lord, and I want to burn this into my mind so that when I close my eyes, this will be all that I see and feel.”
Something in the timbre of her voice turned Angus's bones to jelly and his flesh to iron. He had not planned on this, not at all. In fact, when he had seen her standing out under the starlight with MacGillivray, the pair of them exchanging whispers like lovers, he had almost walked away and not looked back.
Now there she stood with her coltish long legs bared, her body lush and ripe, challenging him to take her in a way that sent the blood pounding into an erection that was already perilously close to causing him permanent damage.
“You won't mind if I remove some encumbrances first,” he murmured, his voice low and fierce, his cloak already hitting the floor. He ripped at the brass buttons on his tunic and waistcoat, tearing them off as one garment, casting them aside without a care as to how close they came to the fire grate. Toe to heel he removed each boot and kicked it aside. His shirt was tugged free of his breeches and pulled over his head; the buttons over his codpiece were released, an action that caused his flesh to surge forward, rigid and tall against his stomach before the unwanted garment was shoved below his hips.
Anne stood perfectly still against the wall, her body drowning in alternating waves of heat and icy anticipation. Her eyes were all that moved, avidly devouring the glorious lines of his naked body. There were some subtle changes, she noted. The muscles in his arms seemed to be more defined, his thighs thicker with sinew, and there were more distinct ridges of power sculpted into the lean bands across his waist and belly.
“You have not been sitting idly around the barracks,” she said, as breathless as if she had been running.
“There are a few muscles I've not had the opportunity to exercise,” he murmured, beginning to close the gap between them.
Because she could not help herself, she stared openly at his erection. “They do not appear to have suffered.”
“Believe me”—he drew a breath and exhaled it slowly— “they have suffered.”
He stopped just shy of touching her and let his gaze roam down the torn seam of her shirt. It was as bold as a physical caress and Anne felt the cloth quivering to echo her body's needs. She moistened her lips and saw his eyes flicker upward, saw his flesh take a small leap even as his hands came forward and slowly, deliberately peeled the edges of cambric aside. The fingers of one hand skimmed upward to capture a breast, the other went lower, brushing lightly over the tangle of coppery curls before slipping between her thighs.
Anne pressed her head against the wall. She was trembling, slippery with the heat of wanting him, and she heard him suck in a slow breath at the discovery. He stroked again, deeper this time, his finger tracing along the folds of her flesh, probing the silky rifts until he heard her imploring whimper and felt her thighs tighten around the intrusion. He moved forward again so that it was no longer his fingers sliding to and fro into the wetness, no longer just a teasing threat.
When her hips started to curl upward to meet him, he bowed his head, his mouth nuzzling her neck, his tongue painting rivers of fire along her throat and across her shoulder. His hands smoothed over her breasts, his thumbs toyed with the stiffened peaks of her nipples, making short work of the rest of her patience.
Cursing softly, Anne brought herself up onto the tips of her toes, pressing her bared breasts against him. She reached down and grasped hold of his flesh at the base, refusing to let him thrust forward again without knowing some of the torment he was evoking. A groan brought him sliding into the tight sheath of her fist, his flesh hot and sleek with her moisture. She squeezed her fingers and held him there, rubbing herself over the smooth, engorged head until the pressure became exquisitely focused and his hips bucked with his own urgency.
“I don't know,” he gasped, “if this can be done gently.”
“It just needs to be done,” she countered.
The teasing was over.
He brushed her hand aside, parting her thighs with a hunger that elevated desire to raw lust. Greedy for the feel of her, he lifted her and settled her over his flesh in the same fluid motion that saw him thrusting upward as deeply as the angle of penetration would allow. He staggered a moment, nearly undone by the ferocity of sensation that poured around and through him, but the climax was a small one, controllable. It even helped to temper the overwhelming need he felt just to slam into her for quick gratification. She had already wrapped her arms around his shoulders, clutching at any means to give her leverage and bring her closer, but at his ragged command, she hooked her legs around his waist and locked her ankles behind. He bent his knees, putting all his power into the next upward, inward thrust, reaching a depth even he had never dreamed possible before
.
Anne's head arched back and she cried out. He stopped on a panted oath, fearing he had hurt her, but her hands clawed into his back and her nails gouged into his skin and her body strained so feverishly against him that he gave her what she asked for and did not hold back again.
Anne's pleasure was explosive. Her orgasm began at the first stroke of his flesh and did not relent until long after he had shuddered through his own release. Even then there were shivers and tiny quaking spasms of pleasure that kept her arms locked tightly around him. She doubted she could have moved anyway, for he still held her braced against the wall, his legs trembling, his chest heaving in a ragged effort to catch and hold a breath.
Anne did not care if they remained there forever. Nothing mattered, not the war, not the prince, not the fact she was pinned like a starfish against the mudded timbers of a small, dusty cottage. All that mattered was that she was in her husband's arms, that those arms had been shaking with the force of his pleasure … and were doing so now with the startling, surprising sound of his laughter.
“Sweet God above,” he gasped. “Grant me mercy and tell me why, tell me how you manage to do this to me. I was ever such a sane man. Sane, confident, noble, dignified. Look at me now.”
Languid and drugged on passion, her thighs running slick with the proof of his fall from grace, Anne took his face between her hands and kissed him. “I do not have to look, my lord husband. I can still feel you inside me and I detect no lack of confidence there.”
“And this demon you sought to exorcise?”
“He is well and truly gone.” Anne smiled and drew his mouth back down to hers. “But just in case …”
Anne was wakened by the sound of a foot thumping gently into a boot to seat it. She raised a hand to rub her eyes and saw a shadowy figure searching around in the gloom for missing articles of clothing. He had found his breeches and his boots, but his shirt seemed to be eluding him.
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