He didn’t want Penny to experience the same.
And when had he begun to care about her feelings?
Perhaps because it was much easier to consider her a pawn when he had not known the whole woman. And he did now. Courageous, fierce and beautiful. He had found her silly. He found her pursuits of saving creatures to be a mark of that silliness. But he could see now that it spoke to something deeper. And he had not asked for that. Had not asked for any manner of insight into who she was.
Because it didn’t matter. It shouldn’t. A man in his position was most definitely in want of a wife, but he did not need to know that wife. He did not need to care about that wife. There was a lot of ground between that and the abuses his father had dealt out. And no need to cover it. He could not afford softness, but that did not mean cruelty.
Because there was enough cruelty in the world as it was and if a man was soft he could hardly keep it out of the walls of his castle.
He knew that to be so.
For what had softness ever gained him?
It could not bring that boy back from the dead. Any more than it could protect the one here now.
He turned sharply and walked back into his bedchamber. His blood was stirred from being woken from sleep and he should never have gone into the bairn’s room. That was her domain, not his. It was not up to him to care for a wee babe.
Women’s work. And if the woman needed a child to keep herself occupied, that was her concern.
His was with the safety and protection of them, of the clan.
She was his. And they would both do well to remember it.
* * *
He could not sleep. He prowled the room for the better part of an hour and could hear Penny and the wet nurse moving about the room.
Then, she finally came back in.
‘You could have stayed,’ she said, ‘if you weren’t going to sleep.’
‘I don’t want you caring for the babe at night any more. You must move him in the room with the wet nurse.’
‘I want to take care of him.’
‘It is impractical. There is a reason a woman is here to see to his needs. You are the wife of the Laird. It is not your responsibility.’
‘He’s my baby.’
‘He is a foundling.’
‘He’s mine,’ she said. ‘As if he came from my own body. As you will not dictate to me how I care for him.’
‘Aw, but, lass, I will dictate it to you. Because I am your Laird.’
‘You are my husband,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know what has you in a state.’
‘I am The MacKenzie. I create the state.’
She frowned ferociously. ‘You are an arrogant sod. And it is well past time you slept.’
‘I’m not a bairn that you can put down to sleep,’ he said.
‘Then don’t behave like one.’
Anger fired through his blood, for she had no right to speak to him in such a manner. And there was no reason for her words to feel as pointed as a dagger. No call for it to feel as if she was speaking directly to his soul. This clan was his. This castle was his. She did not determine the rules.
‘You do not dictate to me, Penny.’
‘And you don’t seem to understand that this is not simply about a child. You hold yourself back. Not just from him. From me.’
‘Perhaps you have forgotten,’ he said, ‘as you have grown so comfortable here in my care, but you are my captive.’
‘Am I? I rather thought that you were mine.’
‘You mistake me,’ he said, ‘because I have not been cruel to you. And I will not be. But do not mistake that for care.’
She drew back, as though he had struck her. And that only made him all the more angry because, if he had struck her, she would not be able to stay standing. And he would not. He didn’t think she understood just how well she had been treated. He owed her nothing. She was an Englishwoman with a father who was barely better than his own. She was defying him with the child and he was allowing it, to an extent.
‘You would be a good father,’ she said softly. ‘You would be a good husband. I know you think you’ve been a husband to me and you have. But not all of you. You’re fighting it. You’re fighting your feelings and you’re fighting me.’
‘I’m fighting nothing. It’s you who are fighting the way of things. The truth of things. You do not wish to live with the true state of the world, with the state of this life. I’ll allow you the babe, but do not push me further.’
‘I think that perhaps the real problem is that you do care. And you want more.’
* * *
Penny could see the moment that she had pushed her husband one too far. The banked fury in his green gaze would’ve been terrifying if she had not known that he would never harm her.
Physically.
Emotionally, however, he had the power to devastate. And she knew it. He had the power to destroy her with a few carefully placed words and she knew that he would not hesitate to do so if it came down to it.
Then, he closed the distance between them, all that fury like a green fire.
‘You forget,’ he said. ‘You forget what you’re here for. You forget what a wife is for.’
He wrapped his arms around her, his hold rough.
He had never treated her like this, not even in the beginning. For in the beginning he’d had a care for her innocence. Now that was gone.
She could see that he had been tested past his limit.
But she… She had not been.
She was not the innocent that had first been taken by Lachlan Bain, she was not that girl. She was not the girl who had been locked away, weeping and wailing in her bedroom, unaided by her father or his staff.
She was not even the girl who had mourned the loss of a servant boy who had been her only window into humanity. Because that boy was before her, buried beneath this mountain of a man, but she knew he was there. Because she had seen a glimpse of it when he’d held the baby.
He could pretend that he had no connection to the child. He could pretend he didn’t want one. But she had seen it.
He was not made of stone.
He might wish that he were and she had the feeling that he did.
When he spoke of the woman who died on the battlefield, of the baby, the baby he’d held in his shirt, she could see his pain.
She could see that it wasn’t a lack of love that he possessed. It was too much. A deep well of caring that was far too great for him to contend with.
The boy who had come all the way to England to try to save his clan. Who had been too late to save his mother.
The boy who had—like her—tried to find hope in small things.
It was why he had let her trail around after him, she was convinced of that.
It had not been an accident and had not simply been because he was trying to patronise his master’s daughter. No. It had been more. It always had been. And at every turn the trust he had tried to have in humanity had been abused.
The way that her father had cheated him.
It was only on a battlefield covered in blood that he had found any sort of salvation.
It was no wonder he could not find faith enough to allow himself to care.
And this was where her strength was tested. This was where she proved that she had been changed by all of this.
Because as he held her against his chest, all his fury pouring down over her, it would be easy to shove her love, to shove her fear, down deep, to not let him see any of it.
But she would not turn away from her feelings.
Oh, she had thought she loved the Duke. Because of his manners. Because of his family.
Because he represented a soft, gentle life which had felt like the stuff of dreams after her hollow, cold upbringing.
But she had not nee
ded gentility. She had not needed safety.
She had needed wildness and adventure, and all of the things that she had never imagined she would be strong enough to endure. She needed his ferocity.
Because only this, only this hardness, only the strength, could have demolished the walls inside her.
She could have lived a quiet life with the Duke. Protected, cosseted.
But in the end, it would have been little different than the neglect.
A slightly softer prison, perhaps.
But she would’ve never found herself.
For she was strong and she was fierce. She was enough to be the bride of a warrior. To be the lady of this castle.
To stand and defend her child. And to fight for her husband.
For his heart. To fight for the battle of all that he was.
Because they both deserved to be whole.
She had seen marriage only as an entry to a new life.
Because as a lady her destiny was to be with her father until she was with a husband. And so to leave her father… There had to be a husband. She had known only that she wanted different. She had not known that she wanted everything. But she did. Everything.
Love.
Not that sweet sort of pleasantness she had imagined finding at Bybee House. Days spent needlepointing with a cat. But this wild, untamed ruggedness that cut swathes of tenderness through her heart. That made her exposed and vulnerable as much as it made her strong.
Love.
This bright, brilliant, terrifying thing that made her strong enough to stand against the Highlander.
This man had been to war. And he had never truly left. For he was fighting. Fighting against himself.
Against what he sought to destroy, a weakness in his blood that she knew wasn’t there.
Not in this man.
And she would show him. She would show him not only her strength, but his own.
He kissed her, hard and punishing, and she knew that he was trying to take this thing that had built so much closeness between them and force a wedge. But she wouldn’t allow it. She didn’t need books any more. She knew his body. And she knew all the ways that she could make it hers just as well as he knew how to make her body his.
And so she met him. She thrust her tongue deep into his mouth, wrapping her arms around him, pushing her fingers through his hair. She bit his lower lip and he growled. She found herself being propelled backwards on to the bed, his large body covering hers. He tore at her dress, her stays, her chemise, shoving it all down her body and throwing it down the foot of the bed like insubstantial gauze.
He had only been half-dressed, so it took her less time to divest him of his garments, leaving him as naked as she was. His arm was like a steel band around her waist, and he pinned her to the soft mattress, her breasts crushed to his broad chest as he continued to kiss her as though it might save them both.
Or damn them both.
He seemed to be on a path to hell and wanting to drag her along with him so he could prove the point.
Perhaps that they were too different. Perhaps that this was not sacred after all.
But it was.
In all of its forms. For between them, this passion could not be corrupted.
He kissed her, deep and hard, then, with his arm still wrapped around her, he turned her, wedging his cock against her bottom, moving her half-ruined hair out of the way and kissing a hot trail down the back of her neck. He pushed his hand between her thighs, teasing her swollen flesh with his fingertips.
‘Still you’re wet for me,’ he murmured against her ear. ‘Wet for a monster. How does that make you feel?’
She drew her head back and met his gaze. ‘Strong.’
He growled again, manoeuvring her on to her stomach before drawing her up to her knees, his chest over her back. ‘Let us see how strong you are, then.’
He positioned his hardness at the entrance to her body, slick and ready for him. But she had not taken him like this before.
This was what she had read about. This was what she knew.
The way animals came together. Not face to face, or with the female riding astride, but this base coupling, which between the two of them she knew was designed to make her feel as if they were distant.
She arched her back, moving herself against him, urging him to thrust inside.
He gripped her hips, hard, and then slammed himself home. He controlled the pace, the depth, and it was punishing.
She turned to look back at him and their eyes met. The desperation that she saw there told her that his dominance was only a façade, for he was no more in control of this than she. He might be the one with the physical strength to control the movements, but he was just as captive to it as she was.
Hope bloomed inside her. Bright and brilliant.
For she was not a captive now.
She had been a captive in her life with her father, hoping to move to a life of more acceptable captivity beneath the rule of her husband.
But the Duke had wanted her only because he had seen her as easy. She had helped his sister and his sister liked her. It would create peace in his house and it removed him from having to engage in the marriage mart.
She would only ever have been a pawn to him, though he never would have said that to her.
Those manners, after all.
But Lachlan…
He wanted her.
He needed her.
He was wounded and needed to be healed, and she could see that she was the one who would be able to accomplish it.
He could not minimise her power. Not with his strength, not with his control. Because it was too late. The bond had been created between them and he needed her.
And she had seen it.
As if he could read her realisation, as if he could read her thoughts, he grabbed hold of her hair, pulling her head so that she could no longer look at him. Pin prickles of pain broke out on her scalp, but it only reminded her of how powerful the desire between them was. For even that pain twisted and became need.
For even that made her slicker, made her hotter, brought her closer to the edge.
Ruin.
No. This was not ruin.
It was salvation. For them both.
‘Lachlan,’ she said, whispering his name like a prayer.
And he fractured. His movements became harder, more intense, and the depth of his hardness moving inside her body combined with the pressure built a deep, aching spiral of pleasure that built and built, so deep inside her she thought she would never be able to withstand it when it broke.
Then it did, her body pulsing around his, drawing from him his pleasure, making it her own.
They shattered together. And, somehow, it made her feel whole.
He moved away from her, breathing hard, and she knew that he had reached his completion inside her. She was happy for it. Pleased with the loss of control. She knew he would not be.
He swore a vile oath.
‘Don’t you know by now?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you know by now that the blood in your veins is not tainted by your father? The blood in your veins is infused with everything you’ve done. With everything you are.’
‘Do not tell me the way of the world, lass. You are a child. A child who never left your estate until recently. You know nothing of the world.’
‘I know about grief. I know about hope in the face of hopelessness. I know about staying strong when everything crumbles around you. I have seen sadness, despair. I have felt it. I know what it is to live small, you’re right about that. But I know what it is to live big, too. I have done that. Here. With you. And I… Lachlan, I didn’t know that I can have so much. I thought that I would count myself fortunate if I could find a way to survive in comfort. But here I have learned
to live. And I… I never expected love, Lachlan. Ever. And when you stole me away from the life that I had planned for myself… You told me you would even deny me children and I was in despair. But it is the strangest thing, because it is through that that I found the deepest, most true part of my heart. I love you. I love you, and I had no expectation that I might love a husband. I do. Different than any sort of love I’ve ever felt. Different than I thought love could be.’
‘No,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘There is no place for love here.’
‘There is every place for love here. This is such a vast, untamed place. A winding valley. It is the perfect place for it.’
‘But I am not the man for it. I’m not the man for your love. I don’t want it. I can’t return it.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because it is the way of things, lass. I am The MacKenzie. I have to be strong. I have nothing in my heart. I have fire in my belly, and that is the best that can be asked.’
‘Lachlan,’ she said. ‘You love your people. You loved your mother. And I believe you loved that child you tried to save…’
‘Love is useless,’ he said. ‘It only turns you into a grieving sack of pain. My mother loved. She loved my father for his sins. She loved every one of her children who died and she loved me, who failed to return to her in time. What did love give to my mother?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about your mother. I think love made my father grieve in a way that hurt me, too. He loved my mother, for if he did not, I don’t know that he would’ve minded if I cried. I think it reminded him of his own pain and he didn’t want to feel it. But isn’t that the real problem? That we don’t let ourselves bleed? That we don’t let ourselves feel? That is a prison. It’s a prison that feels hopeless. At least pain is something. I think the real problem is when we feel nothing.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘The problem is when we forget our purpose. Feelings cloud purpose.’
‘And what of your anger? What of your revenge?’
‘Perhaps it did cloud my purpose,’ he said. ‘Because I brought you here. And perhaps this is no place for you.’
‘Lachlan…’
‘You are my wife and will continue to be the lady of this manner. But we do not need to share a bedchamber. We do not need to share a life.’
Harlequin Historical July 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2 Page 70