‘Is my gown too fine?’
‘Susanna, the lassies may well be admiring your clothes, but the men are far more interested in what is beneath them.’ Fergus pulled her closer, so that her skirts brushed his plaid as they walked, matching their steps. ‘I can’t blame them for wondering, I think about it myself, far too often for my own good. ’Tis one of the advantages of the plaid over the trews, you know, that I can do so without fear of discovery.’
‘Fergus! For shame, we are on our way to church.’
‘The things I think of when I look at you, Susanna, I think I might be on my way to hell.’
The sermon in the church at the end of the village was long and incomprehensible to Susanna, since it was given in the Gaelic, but she was content to listen to the soft cadences of the language and to pass the time feasting her eyes on the solid figure of Fergus beside her in the closed pew. When he sat down, the plaid rode up his legs. She only just resisted placing her gloved hands on the exposed flesh. She did not resist imagining the rest of his body under the cloth. Fergus was not the only one destined for hell, she thought guiltily, realising that the closing prayer was finished and that he was perfectly aware of the fact that she had not been paying any attention at all to the black-clad minister.
There was another sermon later in the day in the private chapel belonging to the castle. Christmas in the Highlands was a day for praying, not celebrating. ‘We do that at the end of the year,’ Fergus told her.
At Hogmanay. When they must break forever. The unspoken words cast a pall over the day.
The days hurtled towards the New Year. At night, Susanna and Fergus slept entwined, though in the morning they pretended they had not. Their daytime shows of affection took on a desperate edge as the calendar moved inexorably on. The temperature dropped. The waterfalls which trickled down the rock faces, and which in the spring would become cascades from the melting snow, now froze into glittering icicles.
On the last day of the year, there was another good luck horse shoe to be cast, this time from a boat in the middle of the loch. Instead of returning to the castle, Fergus led them into the forest. Here, the ground was softer, moss and brown bracken underfoot, for the high Caledonian pines had protected it from the snow. The light filtered silver through the branches, the air smelt of resin and peat and fallen needles, which made the ground underfoot soft and muffled their footsteps. They stopped at a strange pool, the water green, deep, seemingly bottomless and icy cold to touch.
‘They say that this belongs to the wee folk,’ Fergus told Susanna. ‘Faeries,’ he explained, seeing her puzzled look, ‘and mighty powerful they are believed to be, in these parts. You’ve no idea the lengths some people will go to, to keep them happy—or to blame them when something goes wrong, whether it’s a lost shoe or a changeling child.’
‘Do you believe in them?’
He shook his head. ‘No, but I’m not daft enough to say so. It is said that if you look deep enough into this pool, you will see your heart’s desire. Do you want to try it?’
Susanna gazed down into the greeny water, smiling at the foolishness of it, but aware too of a strange fluttery feeling inside. It was the cold, she thought, even though she was wrapped in a fur-lined cloak which Fergus had found for her. Just the cold. She stared down, and could not for a moment work out what was wrong with what she saw. A reflection, which should be there. Except that it was not hers, it belonged only to the man behind her. She stared again, more intently, but though Fergus remained clear as if she were looking in a mirror, there was no trace of her own face. ‘Did you see that?’
‘Your reflection,’ he said. ‘Of course I did.’
‘No, I mean…’
She turned, but he was not looking at the pool. ‘We’re going to have to work awful hard at convincing people at the ceremony tonight, for I fear we’ve been too convincing in the run up to it,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to quarrel with you.’
‘Well, it’s that or spend a lifetime with me, and I know you don’t want that,’ Fergus replied with a wry smile. ‘I’m glad you came here. I hope you get whatever it is your heart really desires.’
‘Freedom. Independence.’ The ideas so long coveted sounded empty. But her heart’s desire was certainly not the man who had been reflected in the pool. It could not be. It was not what she had planned. ‘And you, Fergus, I hope that you’ll get your heart’s desire too. I hope you find your biddable wee wife, and I hope she makes you happy.’ She meant it, Susanna told herself resolutely. Even if she did sound most unaccountably forlorn. Fergus deserved someone to—to care for.
‘I’m not sure a biddable wee wife is really for me. I’m too much the soldier still. I’d be ordering her about and making her miserable. I need someone to stand up to me.’
‘Send her to me, I will give her lessons.’ Susanna stared down at the pool, where the pair of them were reflected now. If you satisfied a heart’s desire, could you then leave him behind? She was being foolish, affected by the other-worldly atmosphere of the forest, by the approaching ceremony, by her imminent departure. But once she left, she would never again have the chance. And wasn’t that one of her own resolutions, not to let her life pass her by? Relieved at having found, with this convoluted logic, the excuse she did not even know she’d been seeking, Susanna turned away from the pool.
Her heart beat fast, her stomach churned. Was she making a huge mistake? No. Was she sure? No, not sure-sure, but definitely take-a-chance sure. ‘Fergus,’ she said, pushing the heavy folds of the cloak back over her shoulders and putting her arms around his waist, hooking her fingers into the belt which held his plaid in place to balance herself. ‘Fergus, make love to me.’
‘Susanna…’
‘Make love to me, Fergus. Not because I’ve changed my mind about us, or because I want you to change yours or because anything’s changed, but just because I want you to. That is, if you want to.’
‘You know I do. In fact, if you come much closer, you’ll see for yourself just how much I do.’
She did just that, deliberately brushing herself against the front of his kilt. She had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes darken, hearing the sudden intake of his breath. She was having trouble controlling her own breathing, which was first fast and then slow. ‘Fergus, I mean it.’ She smiled up at him, a slow, deliberately provocative smile. ‘Call it a farewell present. Farewell to the old year, farewell to the old us. I don’t care what you call it actually, I just want you to make love to me, because if you don’t I suspect I might regret it, and I hope you might too, and that is another thing we are both done with, is it not?’
Fergus cupped the back of her head, tangling his fingers in the thick chignon of curls which she knew would come undone with very little encouragement. ‘A goodbye present. Are you sure?’
‘Are you?’
‘I am absolutely certain,’ Fergus answered.
‘Do you think we will shock the faeries?’
She felt the deep rumble of his laughter in his chest, which was pressed up against hers. ‘Provided they’re the only witnesses, I don’t much care.’
He pulled her tight to him and kissed her. Not a gentle kiss, but a ruthless one, which was also exactly what she wanted. His lips were warm over hers, his mouth demanding and giving at the same time. She moaned softly and surrendered to the turmoil of wanting that churned, had been churning inside her since she had arrived here, or so it seemed. She kissed him back frantically, running her hands up his back, clutching at his plaid, his coat, his belt, anything which would allow her the purchase to drag him closer. His tongue touched hers, then plunged into her mouth. She licked into him. Their kisses had an edge now that was not enough.
Fergus unclasped Susanna’s cloak and spread it on the soft ground. They sank onto the fur lining together, kneeling, breast to breast, thigh to thigh, kissing, touching, stroking, snatching at buttons and fastenings, tugging at cloth in a frantic desire to find flesh. Finesse was beyond t
hem, they wanted simply to be joined.
Her breasts ached for his touch, and his cupping them through her gown intensified it, but the gown fastened at the back, and there were too many layers of petticoats and stays and chemise to deal with, and the ache was worse lower down. He tugged at her nipples through it all, and set up a searing path of fiery lust straight down to the heat between her legs.
Their kisses deepened as their hands tore at each other. She was lying on her back on the cloak now; her gown rucked up under her. He was over her, between her legs, his hands parting the two halves of her pantalettes, stroking the tops of her thighs, then stroking the folds of her sex, and then stroking inside her. The sound she made was guttural.
His plaid made it easy for her to touch him. His buttocks. Firm. Clenched. The rough hairs of his legs. The softer flesh at the top. The potent weight of his seed. And the thick length of him, velvet smooth and engorged, curving up under his plaid. She wrapped her fingers around it and felt him pulse, felt her own muscles throbbing inside as his fingers slid slickly in and out and over her. She was swollen and ready. And he was swollen and ready. His tongue plunged into her mouth. She released her hold on his shaft and arched under him, desperate, desperate for him to be inside her before it was too late.
He paused, poised above her, his shaft nudging at her, and looked straight into her eyes. Amber and gold his were, dark with wanting, and seeing her, looking right into her. Almost, she did not need any more than that, and then he entered her, and she realised how wrong she was as he pushed up, inside her, and up, and she clung to him.
He paused. They lay joined. Then she put her arms around him and kissed him fiercely, and they began the final ascent together. He thrust, she clung as he withdrew, opened as he thrust again, tilting up to open more, feeling the clenching tightness of her climax claim her. She tried to hold it but it took her over, and Fergus thrust through it, harder and faster now, making the same guttural noises as she, plunging into her, his shaft and his tongue, harder, riding the waves of her orgasm until he reached his own, pouring himself into her with a wild animal cry, and holding her, tight, tight, tight in every way against him.
Chapter Seven
Susanna bathed in a scullery off the kitchen, for by the time it would take to carry the hot water up to her chamber, it would be cold. Mrs MacDonald herself stood guard at the door. Not even Fergus was permitted through, though she could hear him jokingly remonstrating as she lay soaking in the scented tub. After he was gone, she heard him still in her head, that guttural cry, the harshness of his breathing, the memory of it making her soap-filled hands linger on her breasts and between her thighs.
Dressed for Hogmanay, she wore an evening gown of crimson silk with jet beadwork around the hem. Her long kid gloves left only the tiniest gap of flesh between their ending and the little puff sleeves of her gown. She was putting a simple locket around her neck when Fergus arrived in her dressing room resplendent in his plaid, his face freshly shaved, his hair tied neatly back.
‘You look very lairdly,’ she told him, striving for a lightness of tone she did not feel. She felt sick to her stomach at the very thought of the pending ordeal. She did not want to deny him. They would hate her for it, all these people she had come to like and respect. They would see it as a betrayal. It felt like a betrayal. Her fingers were icy inside her gloves as she placed them on Fergus’s arm.
‘You look very lovely,’ Fergus said.
He kissed her on the cheek. A cold wee kiss it was, as if he was afraid to do more. Though more likely, he was simply falling into his role of spurned lover. She did not want to spurn him. Too late, as they made their way down the grand staircase, Susanna realised that it was already over. Their goodbyes had not been said, but there would be no more private moments, no more sharing of the big four poster bed with the bundling board, once their betrothal was ended. She panicked. She wasn’t ready. ‘Fergus…’
But he mistook her meaning, and gave her a reassuring and distant little pat. ‘Don’t fear, you’ll be fine.’
His face was set. Remote. He had already moved on, away, past this fake betrothal, to the time after. For Fergus, their lovemaking had been exactly what she had said it was, a farewell present. And for her—for her— What had it been for her?
The sweeping out of the old year through the huge front door of the castle was just one of the many things which were part of the Highland Hogmanay. Susanna watched and smiled a frozen smile and struggled with the growing conviction that something was horribly, terribly wrong. The faerie pool had shown her Fergus as her heart’s desire. She thought that making love to him would put an end to that, but it seemed to have had quite the opposite effect. She did not, could not possibly want to risk her true heart’s desire, her freedom, her independence, to take a chance on a man she had known a few short weeks, but she wasn’t sure she could leave him.
She couldn’t. She couldn’t go through with it. But as the clock ticked closer to midnight, and Fergus seemed to grow more and more distant, she thought she had no other option but to do so.
Fergus tried to concentrate his attention on the hanging of rowan for good luck over the doorway, and the hanging of hazel to ward off any evil spirits who might try and get in with the new year. But his eyes kept straying towards Susanna, pale and tense in her crimson gown. In his head, he replayed their lovemaking. A farewell is what it had been. He had no doubt that marrying her to atone for that fateful morning over three years ago would have been a huge mistake, but he was having serious doubts about whether or not he could let her go.
He had to let her go. It was what she wanted. She deserved to have what she wanted, but did she really know what that was, any more than he did?
As midnight chimed, and the first foot, a tall villager with black hair, bearing a bottle of whisky and the black bun, led the rest of the villagers in to witness the betrothal ceremony, Fergus swore softly to himself. He’d thought he needed to atone. Susanna had shown him how wrong his thinking had been, but even after he’d realised he would not try to persuade her, he’d become so accustomed to the idea of her as his betrothed that he hadn’t spent any time wondering what it would be like without her.
Susanna wanted to be free. But what was the good of liberty if you were not happy? Then again, what right had he to decide what was best for her? He shook his head, as if that would make sense of the whirl of thoughts going round and round, but it made no difference. Susanna wanted to leave. If she left he would be miserable. Did she really want to leave? Did he want her to stay if that was not what she wanted? Did he even have the right to ask her to stay? On and on it went, in circles and spirals.
When the great gong which stood at the side of the hearth clanged, Fergus was no further forward and beginning to panic. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not yet. But his villagers, crofters, tenants and servants with their ancient dependents and their bairns, generations of families crowded round, and any moment now, she would deny him, just as they had planned.
Susanna looked terrified as Fergus took her hand. They stood in front of Alec Fraser, the village elder who would conduct the ceremony. They had rehearsed the words briefly. She knew the Gaelic words which were her cue to tell him nae.
Alec chanted the ancient verses which were the prelude to the question. Finally, it came. ‘Do you take him?’ First in the Gaelic, then in painfully slow English for Susanna’s sake.
Silence. Her fingers curled into Fergus’s like a vice. ‘I…’
‘No! Susanna, don’t say it. Please don’t say it.’
‘I…’
‘I don’t want you to go. I know I should not say it, I know we had a bargain, I know that I have no right at all to interfere with how you want to live your life, but I can’t let you go. I can make you promises, Susanna, any number of promises, but I know they won’t mean anything to you. So all I ask is that you give me a chance. Give me a chance to prove that I can be the husband you deserve, that I can make you happy, that I’ll nev
er want you to be anyone other than yourself. Please Susanna, take a chance on me. Don’t go.’
‘Fergus.’ She was crying. He thought he had lost her, with those tears, until she smiled. ‘Fergus, I wasn’t going to say no. I was going to say yes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Because I realised today that I want you more than anything. Because I think, I really do think, that with you I’ll be free to be myself. I don’t know it, but I think it. And I want you. And right now, that’s enough for me to take a chance on. If you will.’
‘If!’ Fergus pulled her into his arms. ‘Just try to stop me.’
It was not Susanna, but Alec Fraser who stopped them though, with a sound punch to Fergus’s shoulder, when it looked as if the kiss would not stop. ‘Here now, we’ve not actually finished with the formalities, Laird Kilmun,’ he said in a shocked voice. ‘Keep your powder dry man, for a wee bit longer.’
This sally caused much laughter. Even more laughter greeted Fergus’s command to get on with it, which Alec did. The vows were said. The verses were sung. The betrothal ring was blessed with a foul-smelling potion that was, Fergus told Susanna in an undertone, even older than Alec. Finally, the piper struck up a lonesome tune, a pibroch, or lament. ‘For the passing of the old, and the beginning of the new,’ Fergus told his wife. ‘And once it is done, you and I shall quit this party and make one of our own, if you are agreeable. For I wish to make up for my lack of finesse earlier.’
‘If you will tell me your preferences, laird, so too shall I,’ Susanna replied with a wicked smile which reflected his own.
He gave a shout of laughter. ‘By God, do you mean that you’ve decided to play the biddable wife after all?’
‘That very much depends on what you bid me do.’ She dropped a mock curtsey, looking up at him from under her lashes.
Fergus took her hand, and led her to the foot of the staircase, where he turned and bowed to the people. He wished them all a good New Year, and Susanna joined him, speaking in faltering Gaelic.
An Invitation to Pleasure Page 5