What he did not understand was his desire to see her smile. The pride he felt over this thing she had planned.
He took a seat at the head of the table, with her at his left. And as he sat, he spoke to the men there about the way the Highlands had been these last years. The way that things had changed. And the ways in which Lachlan was determined to see them restored.
All the while, Penelope sat, bearing the countenance of a real wife. A proper wife.
A lie.
* * *
When dinner was finished, the music began to play. And his men, deep in their cups by then, all began to shout for the Laird and lady to give them a dance.
Lachlan, for his part, hadn’t danced without the aid of alcohol and outside a pub for more years than he could count. And before that, he did not think he ever danced.
This was necessary. The show of strength and unity. And if it was what the people wanted, he could not deny them. If part of him relished the idea that Penny would have to be close to his body again, that was inconsequential.
He was simply human.
Simply a man. A man who wanted to dance with his wife.
He pulled her to him, the dance much more at home in a tavern than here, but he didn’t much care. The fiddle was moving fast and the other dancers were already drunk. Penny clearly didn’t know how to dance a reel, but she followed as best she could.
When it was his turn to grab hold of his bride, he took her in his arms and didn’t return her to the line, spinning her around with her crushed against his chest.
She laughed, her smile wide with her joy…
She was happy. Here with him.
In this moment she was happy.
It tangled itself around his heart, around his soul. He hadn’t thought either of those things still existed inside him.
It was clear the display pleased his men, for they clapped along with the music, sending great shouts up into the air. And something shifted inside him. For this was what it meant to be home. This was what it meant to be in Scotland. To be in his clan. This hall. This castle. This music.
He was not an outsider here.
He was not an outsider for the first time in years. His accent was no different, his words not unique. The manners and dancing and food were familiar.
Penny smiled, her blonde hair twirling right along with her.
And he felt something…something he had not felt in years.
Happiness.
It was an ache that bloomed in his chest and spread outward. And for a moment, he could not breathe past it.
She had been right. There was happiness here.
He thought it might be contained in her smile.
When the dance finished, his heart was thundering hard, his blood firing through his veins. And perhaps his head was a bit dizzy from drink, though he hadn’t had overmuch, but he dragged her away from the dance floor, away from the party and into an alcove. He backed her against the wall then and finally did what he had wanted to do for days.
He crushed her mouth beneath his, claiming every stolen kiss that she’d taken from him. Every missed touch.
She wrapped her arms around him, her fingers spearing into his hair, kittenish sounds rising in her throat. Sounds of encouragement.
She had inflamed in him a desire that he did not understand. This creature who he had bedded in the most perfunctory of ways, but who had ignited in him a need that far surpassed any he had ever felt before.
He was not gentle. He did not give quarter to her innocence. He consumed her, his kisses deep and long and hard. He plundered her mouth with his tongue, taking all that she would give and then demanding yet more.
He was hard as steel and, if she were a whore, he would have demanded she take herself down to her knees and pleasure him with her mouth. The very image of his darling angel taking his cock between her lips created a fire in his veins.
They were so close to the party that anyone could see them. But it didn’t matter, for he was chief. He was The MacKenzie. And this was his home. This was Scotland. It wasn’t England. She belonged to him here. Him and no other. And whatever he desired, it might be his. Whatever he wanted.
He was not in shackles any more. He was not enslaved.
He had spent so many years labouring to find himself a free man. Fighting for a country he didn’t owe allegiance to. Earning what should have been his twice over.
He had earned it with bravery on the battlefield, had seen countless atrocities and more bloodshed then those who had not been to war could ever believe. He had toiled and clawed his way back to Scotland. And he had claimed her on his way. Payment for all those years of working for her father.
His payment.
Justification for his kisses, for risking her exposure, fuelled him.
He pulled the top of her dress down, exposing the rosy crests of her breasts. She was lovely. Far beyond anything he could’ve possibly dreamed.
So changed from the little creature who had brought him the bird.
How would he have ever known that he would have found such satisfaction in her arms? There was no thought now. Only a roaring in his veins. In his head.
Mine.
For he was a conqueror, his bloodline that of warriors.
And what his body understood was staking a claim.
Not wedding vows spoken in a church and recognised by soft English society, but an earthy, physical alliance. One that she had denied him these many days.
He would be denied no longer.
He kissed her. Kissed her until her lips were the colour of crushed rose petals, until she trembled beneath his touch.
‘To your knees, lass,’ he said, his voice rough.
She looked up at him, with wide, wild blue eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’
Suddenly, the world came back into focus.
Suddenly, realisation overtook him. He was no better than his father acting out of the fire in his blood. Acting like a man possessed. Like a man owed the bodies of everyone and everything around him.
Yes, it might be the law that a man owned his wife, but he had seen what happened when a man took that to heart. The ways in which it could destroy a woman. A good woman. Of course she didn’t understand. She was an innocent. Corrupted only by the few times he had taken her, quickly and without much finesse, in narrow, hard beds in coaching inns. And he was demanding she get on her knees like a seasoned piece in a near public alcove where anyone could walk in. This lady of a wife.
Wasn’t that the point of her? To disgrace her?
No.
He had only ever wanted to disgrace her father. But tonight he had come close to disgracing her and that meant he’d dishonoured himself.
It could not be borne. Because that made him his father. The truth of his blood borne out in front of him.
‘Go back to the celebrations,’ he said.
‘Lachlan…’ Her voice was breathy, stunned.
‘Go back, lass,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’
She left, backing away from him, her eyes on his the whole time. An accusation, he felt.
Back here so little time and the corruption of his own blood was beginning to seep through his veins.
He waited a moment. Waited until the evidence of his own arousal was no longer pressing against the front of his kilt.
When he rejoined the party, Penny was there, looking stunned.
But she didn’t stay away from him. Rather, she crossed the space and joined him.
‘Lachlan… Why did you tell me to leave?’
‘You know perfectly well.’
‘I don’t.’
‘There are things a man does not use his wife for, Penny.’
‘What things?’
‘I’m not going to speak to you of this.’
/>
‘Why not?’
‘Enough,’ he said, his voice hard.
‘Why?’ She pressed again. ‘Why do you care how you use me?’
She asked the question without malice. And he had the feeling that she was asking it in much the same way she had asked why he had given her the jewellery box.
‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ he said, keeping his tone deliberately uncompromising. ‘It is simply the way of it.’
If he had failed the first time for answering in such a manner, then he had deliberately failed this time.
All the better.
For here, with all the power in the world he could want, he did not feel any more able to protect the weak than he had out in the world.
For he could not protect Penny from himself.
And that was a failure deeper than he could face.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Penny had been brooding since his kiss at the party.
He had…he had made demands of her she didn’t understand, then pushed her away, and she had never been more confused.
The touch of his mouth to hers had brought everything she’d spent the past few days avoiding roaring back to life inside her.
She hadn’t banished loneliness by barring him from her bed. She’d simply built a wall between her emotions and the manner he used to reach them. But it couldn’t hold for ever.
Because the silence between them was swollen. Large and filled with all manner of things Penny didn’t want to navigate. She had been doing well. She’d spent more time in the village, had started a sewing circle with some of the ladies and had become more than competent at cooking. And she had been able to set Lachlan to one side. Or at least see him as a project rather than a husband.
Then he had kissed her.
With that kiss he had stirred up every deep, longing thing inside her. There was that fire, that physical need. He aroused it in her so easily.
But there was more.
Deeper.
The way he’d danced with her in the great hall had felt like flying. His strength—whether quiet or on brute display—felt like a living force within her sometimes. As if his confidence and bravery had taken root inside her and grown, flourished and made her someone so different from what she’d been before.
She wanted to know him.
All those nights she’d refused him entry to her room and they talked. And in those quick moments he’d shown her so much. That humour he said he didn’t have. Patience. Kindness.
She ached to be close to him in every way she could.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think of it. But now she was consumed with it yet again. Along with his rejection.
It forced her to consider that he might not have pressed her, withholding because he didn’t want her. That she hadn’t ever had power over him as she’d imagined.
That second time they were together she’d felt his body tremble and she’d taken it to mean she could make him desperate, as he had made her.
But perhaps that wasn’t so.
Because she was naive. Because apparently there were things men did not ask of wives. And he had wanted one of those things, but…but not from her.
And she didn’t even have a clue what it might be.
It would have been better if she could hate him.
But the longer she saw him here, with his people, acting the part of chief, the more entranced she was by him. As she had been when she was a girl, trailing after him at the estate. How she hated that. That he seemed to have so much of a hold over her and she had none over him.
But he was so broad and brave, so willing to serve all of the people around him. Lachlan might not know how to show warmth, but she did. What he gave was strength, a steadiness that one could lean on. And while he had underestimated how much his people might need to have some joy…she thought she might not have understood how much they needed his strength.
As she talked to those who worked in the castle, it became clear just how badly scarred the clan was from the way his father had conducted his affairs.
Isla had told her horrible stories, worse even than about the mistress Lachlan’s father had killed. Understanding more of where Lachlan came from, why he hated his father so much that he despised the blood in his own veins…
It made her care more for the strong, iron Highlander who didn’t seem to have it in him to bend.
His uncompromising nature could be trying. And she’d seen it as an obstacle at first. Now she saw it as a gift.
She’d also discovered that Lachlan had been sending money back to his people from the moment he found out about his father’s death. A great many things had been restored in the months it had taken him to gain order with his business and get himself back to the Highlands.
It was why the castle was so comfortable now. Why it was fully stocked with food and staff. It also led her to truly believe that what he’d said to her about his bloodline was a truth he held deep in his heart. Because if he felt it was the most honourable thing for him to produce an heir, then he would. She could not understand, though, because she did not know men who weren’t utterly concerned with the carrying on of their line.
She had always assumed marriage would mean children. And she hadn’t realised how deeply comforting she’d found that certainty until it had been taken from her. How much she’d wanted that.
To be a mother. To have someone to love and care for. To find that connection.
But as much as many men were driven to further their bloodline, he was opposed.
His father had damaged him. Everything she’d heard about the previous MacKenzie convinced her of that.
She wanted to find a path to connect the ways in which she knew him. The way that they had been intimate in the bedroom. The way that they had talked on the back of his horse on their journey to Scotland. The commanding, forbidding man that she saw prowling around the castle, who had kissed her as though she was the feast, then ordered her to leave him. The man who said her jewellery box had meant nothing to him, but had seen it fetched all the same.
She even wanted to understand the man who presented her to his people as a prisoner of war, more than his wife, but who had presented her to all the clans as his lady. Because she felt that the truth of Lachlan Bain was somewhere at the centre of all those things, whether she was particularly fond of each and every piece of him or not.
She had a feeling that some of her problems with him stemmed from the fact that she was so horrendously ignorant of men and all there was to know about their physical desires. For she felt there was a key in that. To the things that bothered her now. She wished that she knew more.
But she had got to know a few of the women who worked in the castle. Most especially the maid who attended her.
She found it strange that Penny enjoyed making conversation and Penny knew that. But she couldn’t help herself. She was lonely. And she finally lived in a house filled with people. She was intent on taking advantage of that.
The head of the household found Penny’s intrusions somewhat irritating and Penny could tell. But then, one thing she was very good at was ignoring when people found her irritating.
It was a gift.
* * *
She was in the kitchen, poring over the weekly menu, Isla next to her eating a midday meal of bread and cheese, the young scullery maids rushing about the kitchen. ‘What do you know of men?’
Isla looked up from her bread. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’ But she could see that Isla did understand, only that she was hoping she might not have.
‘Men,’ Penny said. ‘I find that I’m woefully ignorant on the subject.’
One of the maids—Margaret—laughed. ‘You’re a married woman.’
‘It hasn’t seemed to help.’
She waved a hand. ‘Fine ladies who are married often know l
ess than kitchen maids who are not.’
‘Why is that?’ Penny asked.
It suddenly seemed deeply unfair to her.
‘Your lot protect you from the way of the world,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s not a bad thing, mind you. Men can be…’
‘Right rubbish,’ Flora, the other scullery maid, finished.
‘True,’ Margaret agreed.
‘Well, Lachlan is not. That is to say… The MacKenzie…’
‘Yes. I know what you mean.’
‘It just seems as though there must be more to pleasing men.’
The maids exchanged looks.
‘Do you know?’
‘I know a fair bit,’ Flora said, looking sly.
‘I was able to convince him to give me some proper terms.’
‘Which ones?’ Margaret asked, looking amused.
Penny knew that she was being mildly teased, but she didn’t much care. ‘Well, I know what a cock is.’
Margaret laughed, the sound a hoot, and Flora and Isla joined in. ‘That is a good place to start. Men are fond of their cocks.’
‘I’m not unfond of it myself.’
‘Also a good thing,’ Margaret said. ‘Nothing worse than finding yourself in the position of having to please a man you don’t find pleasing.’
‘All I knew about men and women I had…pieced together from reading about nature. Then I was a wife. I expected to hate him. He stole me from my home, from an engagement to another man. I didn’t know what to expect of a wedding night. But he can be so wonderful. And I find him beautiful.’
‘That’s a gift,’ Flora said.
‘It feels like a gift when we’re together. But then it feels as though he’s taken all the power away from me when it’s over. And I just feel… I feel.’
Margaret just looked sad for her then. ‘You have feelings for him.’
‘Feelings?’
‘Aye. I reckon you love him.’
Her words hit a strange place inside Penny.
Love.
She had never expected to love the man she’d married. She had felt, though, that she might love the Duke, and that had been such a wondrous and unexpected gift. With some distance she’d realised that it had never been him—she had not known him, how could she love him?—but the idea of him and all he represented.
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