Moving slowly, Hadden seated himself on the cushioning sheepskin, stretched out his long legs, and kneaded his thighs as if they ached. “But he must have been an elder! What did this Englishman think he could do?”
Her gaze slid sideways toward him. She watched his hands move up and down along his muscles, and unconsciously she mimicked him, rubbing her legs with long, pensive strokes. “He could seduce his old sweetheart away from her miserable English husband and take her with him, that’s what.”
She injected humor into her tone, but she wasn’t truly amused. Sorrow lurked behind the brave smile, the lifted brows.
“He was the black sheep, then,” Hadden pronounced.
“Not in the MacNachtan family. In the MacNachtan family, all the men are black sheep.” Sitting forward, she delved into the trunk as if she could hide behind the contents.
But she couldn’t hide from Hadden. Not when he was getting the answers he’d sought. “Who else?”
“Hmm?” She raised her ingenuous gaze to his.
He didn’t believe the innocence for a moment. “I never heard this before. Who else was a black sheep?”
“Oh . . . my father, for one.” The paper rustled as she unwrapped the knobby bundle, and a five-inch-tall stone statue of a naked woman with bulbous breasts emerged. She chuckled again, but this time her mirth seemed forced. “Look. From Greece. Uncle thought she was a fertility goddess.”
“Really?” He barely glanced at the ugly little figurine. “What did your father do?”
“After Uncle was exiled, Papa decided to make his stand for Scottish freedom, and in an excess of patriotism—and whiskey—he rode to Edinburgh to blow up Parliament House.”
Hadden had seen the noble pile of stone last time he’d visited Edinburgh, and said acerbically, “He didn’t succeed.”
“No. He and my brother drank their way through every pub in the city, telling everyone of their plan.”
Hadden’s astonishment grew. “Your brother, too?”
“My mother said they did it on purpose, telling everyone of their scheme, because they were both too kindhearted to think of actually hurting anyone, English or no.” Andra unwrapped another package and showed him a statue of much same size as the other one, but made of bronze.
As she held it up to him, the miniature woman dressed in a cord skirt saluted Hadden, her golden eyes ablaze.
“From Scandinavia,” Andra told him. “My uncle said she as a fertility goddess as well. The natives put quite a store in her.”
Hadden plucked the female deity from her fingers. “Are they in prison in Edinburgh?”
“Who? Oh, my father and brother.” Andra’s elaborate casualness didn’t cozen him. “No. They were put to the horn, outlawed—a matter of great pride to them—and they fled to America. My father died there, but my brother writes occasionally. He’s married quite a hearty woman, born in that country, and he’s doing well.”
“How old were you when all this occurred?”
“Eleven.”
“I see.” Hadden saw more than she wished. Her men, the ones who should have defended her against all hardship, had abandoned her for ineffectual glory. She had been posed on the cusp of womanhood, ready to dance, to flirt, to be courted by the local lords, and instead she’d had to become the sole pillar of stability in the MacNachtan clan. “Your poor mother,” he said experimentally.
Her fingers shook a little as she unwrapped another package. “Yes. Well, Mother was frail to start with, and when the soldiers came, they upset her, and she took to her bed . . . look!” She cradled a delicate clay statue of a woman in a full skirt, naked from the waist up, clutching a snake in each hand. “From Crete. We think . . .” Her voice trailed off. She frowned at the bare-breasted creature, rubbing the feminine curves slowly with her fingertips. Then she looked up at Hadden. “You don’t want to know about this.”
“About the fertility goddesses in all their bare glory?” Then, with obviously unwelcome shrewdness, “—Or about your family?”
It told him volumes when she gulped and jerked back. ”Don’t be daft. About the goddesses, of course.” She tried to shove the goddess back into the trunk, but he rescued the painted figurine and placed her on the floor with the others. Andra scurried to the next trunk, if one could be said to scurry on her knees.
“Andra.” Hadden laid his hand on her arm. “Tell me the truth.”
Andra flung open the lid with such vigor, the aging wood cracked. “I’ll find it in here,” she said feverishly. “I’m sure will.”
“Find? . . .”
“The marriage kilt.” The paper crackled as she peeled it away. “That is why you came, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t. He knew it. She knew it. But the lass vibrated with unfettered emotion, frightened by what she knew and what he guessed. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t face the truth, and he supposed he understood that.
Yet he didn’t like it, and his anger rose again.
How dare she compare him to those other men? To the worthless milquetoasts in her family?
And how dare she compare herself to her mother, a frail creature crushed by the loss of her husband and son? Andra was not frail; she was strong, facing life and all its trials without flinching. He had his suspicions, and if they were right, it was life’s dividends that she feared.
“Would you like to hear the tale of it?” she asked.
Recalled to the conversation, he asked, “Of what?”
She huffed like a steam engine. “Of the marriage tartan!”
She stilled when he approached, and waited until he picked up the sheepskin. “Tell me.” He gathered the goddesses and strategically distributed them throughout the room. Returning to the trunk he brought out more well-wrapped treasures. He smiled at the lusty treasures he found, and distributed them, too.
A man could not be too thorough.
“The marriage kilt is the kilt worn by the first MacNachtan when he married.” She was dropping tartans in a pile beside her, searching with more vigor than grace. “He was an older man, a fierce warrior, and one reluctant to take a woman to wife, for he believed exposure to such softness would weaken him.”
“So he was wise.” He didn’t wait for her to respond to his provocation, but wandered away again, to drape the sheep-skin across an aged bench of solid oak.
“Wise as are all men,” she said tartly. “But one day he was forced to pay a visit to the MacDougalls, for they were stealing his cattle, and there, in their stronghold, he met a girl.”
“I already foresee his downfall.” The evening sun had reached that point on the horizon when its beams shone directly into the chamber, burnishing it with the glory of light.
“She was a beauty, and he loved her at once, but she was proud and wanted nothing of him, not even when he washed and trimmed his hair and beard and came a-courtin’ like a youth smitten with his first sweetheart.” He heard her voice sweeten with the Scottish brogue as the rhythm of the tale swept her. “She would have none of him, so he did what any full-blooded MacNachtan would do.”
“Kidnapped her?” he ventured, because right now kidnapping seemed a right and clever course to take.
And her reply delighted him. “Aye, kidnapped her as she wandered the hills. But she was no frail flower. She fought so much, he stripped away his kilt and flung it over her head to blind her, and wrapped her up so she couldn’t strike him, and thus carried her away.”
She sat, holding a folded, tattered tartan in her hands and smiling at it.
Walking up behind her, he asked, “What is the ending of the story?”
“They were very happy all their lives together.” She craned her neck to look up at him. “And this is it. The Mac-Nachtan marriage kilt. In our family, it’s a tradition that the groom throw it over the bride’s head and sweep her away. It’s said that every union thus blessed will be a happy union.”
Leaning over, he took the kilt and spread it wide over his hands. It was old, so old that the black a
nd red and blue of the plaid had faded to an almost indistinguishable blend. The stitching had given way, and the hem was more fringe than cloth. But along the middle, the wool was well woven.
He smiled at it, then at her.
She saw his intention in his stance, in his amusement, and because she knew him better than any other living person knew him. Standing, she eased away.
“I already kidnapped you once. It was one prime day that lives in my memory—but apparently not in yours, and now I know why. I was too pleasant, too kind.” He lifted the tartan. “I failed to follow tradition. I didn’t cover you in the marriage kilt.”
She bolted for the now-closed trapdoor.
“No use, my lady,” he said. “You’re mine.”
Six
Grasping the handle on the trapdoor, Andra tugged.
Nothing budged.
She tugged harder.
It was solid, unmoving. She glanced behind her, and still Hadden stalked onward, coming relentlessly for her. She gave one last desperate yank—and the handle came off. She tumbled backward, and the marriage kilt floated over her head.
Hadden wrapped her in it and in his arms, and his deep voice crooned, “Surrender, darling. Your loyal servants have locked us in.”
The musty old cloth leaked light like a sieve, and she could have grabbed it and ripped it off her head, but reverence for the MacNachtan past restrained her, and Hadden had no compunction about taking advantage. He lifted her from behind, and she bucked like an unbroken filly, twisting, trying to escape from an embrace that felt too right.
He placed her on a hard, flat surface, high enough above the floor that her feet dangled. He swept the kilt away, and her face was level with his. She sat on the narrow square of the lamp table, her back against the wall, Hadden pressed between her legs.
“Kidnapped. Kidnapped as surely as the first MacNachtan kidnapped his bride. I have fulfilled the conditions. I am your groom.” His blue eyes sparked as he spoke.
If she could have, she would have shot flames from her eyes. “You are not my groom. I’m not living my life guided by some wretched old superstition—”
“Why not? You’re living it guided by some wretched old fears.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Did he know? Had he guessed? Or had someone told him something they should not? The thought of such a betrayal grated at that private part of herself, the part even she never dared to face, and she accused, “You planned this.”
He matched his nose to hers and in a low, intense tone, said, “Not I, lady. If I wanted to take you where you could not escape, I know of lonely places on the moor better suited to our kind of loving. No, for this, blame your own trusted servants.”
Relief mixed with indignation. He didn’t know. But—“What do you mean, ‘our kind of loving’?”
Bold as you please, Hadden placed his palm over the warmth between her legs. “The kind without affection of kindness or love.”
She grabbed for that hand. “It was never like that.”
“You used me.”
A just accusation, and she wanted to think of some clever answer. But how could she think when he ignored her attempts to break his grip and instead lightly and rhythmically pressed his fingers against her. His touch initiated a longing low in her belly, sweeping all other sentiment aside. “This won’t solve anything,” she said weakly.
“It will solve everything.”
“How like a man to be so simple.”
“How like a woman to complicate a simple situation.” In a lightning-swift move, he slid his other hand up under her skirt.
“Please, will you—”
“I will,” he pledged, crowding her even more. “I am.”
She let go of his one hand and lunged for the other as it made its leisurely way up her leg, which was encased in pantalettes and stockings. The loose hand now moved to circle her breast. She grabbed for that. He nipped at her lips, then swept them with his tongue. She caught his ear between the pinchers of her fingers and pulled his head away. The hand beneath the skirt skimmed over the sensitive skin at the top of her thighs.
He swarmed over her, stinging her senses with unsubstantial nibbles and soothing kisses. As she took action on one front, he moved to another. She was always one step behind. She’d never confronted such resourceful tactics before, and she objected with silly squeaks of dismay. ”Don’t! Blast you. No! Not there! Not—”
Opening the slit in her drawers, he lightly touched her sensitive feminine bud, then abruptly, without finesse, buried his fingers inside her.
Her eyes opened wide. She flattened her spine against the wall. Lust—ah, it had to be lust—swept her away, tumbling her along like a pebble in a spring flood.
She’d been in a rage of disappointment and embarrassment for so long, she hadn’t consciously thought about her body or his body or how they’d mingled so magnificently for one night two months ago. Yet her erotic dreams had come frequently, bringing her to lonely completion, and they must have kept her body in readiness, for his fingers slid in dampness.
Dampness. Just because the sight of him had excited her, and the scent of him fed her perceptions. But if her body was weak, her mind was not.
“I can’t respond. Too many disturbing memories stand between us.” After she spoke, it occurred to her he could have laughed. After all, she was obviously responding, regardless of any distress in her mind.
But he didn’t laugh. Instead, he stroked her slowly, heating her more. “We have all kinds of memories between us The days we worked together. The evenings spent playing chess and laughing. The night . . . darling, do you remember the night?”
His voice sounded smooth, warm, sincere, and intent on her and her only. With that voice alone, he could seduce her, and she flexed her thighs to shut him out.
That didn’t work. Instead, the resultant pressure heightened her response.
And he noticed, for he was smiling. That warm, audacious, masculine smile that raised her ire and melted her bones.
“For a woman who not so long ago was a novice, you do this very well.” He might have been petting a cat, taking pleasure in her sensual stretching.
“I don’t respond on purpose.” She hacked at his left arm where it lay on her legs, but he replied by wrapping his free arm around her and nuzzling below her ear. She jumped when his breath raised the little hairs, and jumped again when his tongue licked the sensitive skin, “Unfair,” she snapped.
He didn’t draw back, but only paused. “Why unfair?”
“Because you learned what I like, and you’re using it against me.”
He chuckled, his amusement wisps of cool air on her heated flesh. “I’m not using it against you.” Between her legs, his fingers slid back and forth in a sweet friction. “I’m using it for you. And for me, too. You’re going to give me what I want.”
“What’s that?” she snapped. “Satisfaction?”
“Yes.” His thumb rubbed her until heat radiated along nerve ways already sizzling with fury. “Your satisfaction.”
She wanted to give a crushing retort, she really did, but she was afraid that if she opened her mouth she would moan. He made her feel good. He made her feel more. More than last time, more than ever before, more and fabulous.
Shocking, to be so angry yet so aroused.
He wasn’t shocked. He was aroused, too. She could tell by the rocking motion he used when he moved. The table rocked, his fingers rocked, he rocked, and something inside her responded to the rhythm she felt inside and out. Her muscles within rippled without her volition, and Hadden touched her ear with his tongue.
She convulsed.
She didn’t give herself up to the soul-searing pleasure. No, she fought it, but neither Hadden nor her body gave her a choice. She shuddered, maintaining silence, clutching at the edge of the table. She wanted his relentless fingers to stop, but when they did, and pressed against her hard, she convulsed again.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. “Just what
I wanted.”
She breathed in short gasps. “Just what . . . you wanted?”
He hadn’t kissed her mouth or touched her breasts or massaged her skin. He hadn’t taken time or done any of the things he’d done that first time when she’d crept into his bed. He’d just grabbed her between the legs, a crude, over-grown lout of a man, and in a few minutes brought her to ecstasy.
Not even the light of the setting sun softened the thrust of his chin or the impudence of his gaze. Such a deceptive thaw would have reassured her, and she wanted to make a statement, to refuse him in some definitive manner.
But this blatant assault had robbed her of wit, and the sight of him irritated her more than she could bear. Incited her more than she could wish. So she shut her eyes against him.
Slowly he withdrew his fingers. He fumbled at her waist with that hand. The other hand moved along her back.
Her eyes popped open, and she grasped his wrists. “What are you doing?”
“I’m unhooking your gown.”
“Why?”
“So I can do this.” He slid her bodice down.
“No!” She clutched at the neckline, but he was opening her chemise, and she dropped the gown and tried to save her frail modesty.
Too late. He had her undone, and, cupping her breasts in his palms, he lifted them until they pressed together, then buried his head in the seam. His tongue flicked back and forth, wetting one breast, then the other, raising goose bumps on her flesh and bringing her nipples to hard, aching awareness—awareness that he hadn’t yet given them the attention they thought they deserved.
Even her nipples rebelled against her control, and she clenched her fists and tried to smack him away before he realized how he aroused her.
That didn’t help. Her gown dropped into her lap. He caught the stool with his foot and dragged it close, then knelt before her like a mortal before a goddess. He gave her belly the attention she wouldn’t allow him to give her rigid nipples. A day’s growth of whiskers rasped the tender skin.
Scottish Brides Page 4