Authors: Bertrice Small
Reaching out with a single finger, he pushed the digit into the valley separating her breasts. “Look at me,” he commanded her. The finger was enclosed between the warm flesh. Their eyes met. “How long will you make me wait, Adair?” he asked her quietly.
“My lord”—she found her voice was shaking as she spoke—“I am no whore.”
“You are a woman who has known a man,” he said low. “How long have you been widowed now? A year?
Do you not long for passion again, Adair? Or perhaps your good lord did not know how to give you pleasure.
Perhaps he only took it.”
“Andrew was a good man,” she defended her dead husband.
“I will be good to you too,” he promised her, and he withdrew the finger from between her breasts even as he took her hand in his. “Such a little hand, Adair, and it is so cold. Let me warm it for you.” He took the hand between his own.
For a brief moment she let herself enjoy the sensation of being seduced, but then she told him, “You are very fortunate to have found me, my lord. I am a lady, as your mother, God assoil her good soul, was.” Adair crossed herself piously. “I have restored your household to a semblance of order, and I will keep it that way. You were wise to expend your silver purchasing Elsbeth and me.”
“And now I would have value for my coin,” he said, amused by her desperate attempt to turn him from his purpose. “I did not buy a housekeeper when I purchased you, and you cannot be so foolish as to believe that I did. And no one else thought it.”
“Are you so in need of a woman that you must buy one for your hall?” Adair demanded to know. “I told you that I am no whore.”
“Nay, you are not,” he agreed. “But you will be my mistress, my honey love. I saw your reaction when I took your hand in mine.”
“I do not know what you mean,” Adair desperately denied.
“Aye, you do,” he said, and he pulled her into his lap.
Adair struggled to rise. “Please, my lord,” she whispered. “Do not shame me before the others, I beg you.”
She could feel tears pricking at the back of her eyelids.
She wasn’t ready for this. Not yet! Not tonight!
“Be easy, my honey love,” he told her. “None other will accost you. They know that you are mine alone.” He held her against him, stroking her dark hair. “Put your head on my shoulder, Adair, and let me love you.”
She relaxed briefly against him, and his grip on her loosened. Feeling it, Adair pulled away from him and fled the hall and down the stairs into the kitchens.
Duncan Armstrong and Murdoc Bruce burst out
laughing, but their mirth was cut short, for the laird arose and followed after Adair. His look was black, his face determined.
“God’s blood,” Murdoc said low. “He means to have her tonight.”
“He’s fallen in love with her,” Duncan replied softly.
“Our brother has fallen in love with his English slave.
Only love would drive a man to that kind of madness.”
Adair heard him behind her. She practically fell into Elsbeth’s arms at the bottom of the stairs. “Nursie!” was all she could say. And then the pair were almost bowled over by the laird as he reached the bottom of the staircase.
Elsbeth immediately grasped the situation. “Now, there, my lord, perhaps this is not the best time for what you want.” Her arms tightened about the now sobbing girl. “There, there, my chick. All will be well. Nursie is here for you.”
With a smothered oath Conal Bruce stamped back up the stairs.
When she was certain he had gone, Elsbeth set Adair back from her embrace. “Aha, you baggage!” she said.
“And what was that all about? As much as it grieves me to say it, sooner or later you must go to his bed.”
“I know,” Adair answered. “But not tonight. I am not ready yet. Let his desire for me burn hotter and brighter.”
“What is this talk?” Elsbeth said, not just a little shocked. “You sound like . . . like . . . I do not know what you sound like, but I do not like it. What mischief are you planning? And do not gainsay me, for I know you too well to be lied to, Adair Radcliffe. You are up to something.”
“I am going to make him lust so strongly for me that when I do yield myself to him, he will let me have whatever I want,” Adair said.
“And what is it you want?” Elsbeth demanded to know.
“A horse, for when I have one I shall ride back to Stanton,” Adair responded.
“Without me,” Elsbeth said firmly. “Stanton is gone, child. It is not there anymore for you, or for anyone else.
We need a good home, and we have one here at Cleit.
Tease the laird. Make him fall in love with you, and then make him wed you. A lady needs a husband, Adair, and the laird has no wife. With the death of our good duke, Richard, and with King Henry’s displeasure toward Stanton, England is a closed door for you. You must face that you have no title. No home. No lands any longer.”
“I do have Stanton!” Adair declared stubbornly.
“There is no Stanton,” Elsbeth replied wearily. “You have nothing anymore but a single gown and a bed space in the kitchens of a border keep. There is no shame in starting again, my chick. Get this fine young border lord to wed you, and be happy. Really happy for the first time in your life,” Elsbeth advised.
“You do not understand,” Adair said sadly.
“Nay,” Elsbeth said, “ ’tis you, my chick, who refuses to accept what has happened. Even if you managed to return to where Stanton once was, you would have no house, no cattle, no people. And sooner than later King Henry will give that land to someone he wishes to bind to him. You never heard from Lady Margaret after you returned from court; nor has your sister, the queen, written to you. You know a lady must have influential friends, and you have none, Adair. The life you once lived is over and done with, my child. You must make the best of this new life.”
“I am tired,” Adair replied. “I want to go to bed.” She disappeared into the little chamber with the two bed spaces.
Elsbeth shook her gray head despairingly. She had never thought she would betray Adair, but she was going to warn the laird of Cleit about her mistress’s foolish and futile desire to return to where Stanton once
stood. Not immediately, because her mistress could suddenly face their situation and change her mind. But if she saw that Adair was going to do something foolish, then she would go to the laird. She had sworn to John and Jane Radcliffe long ago that she would protect their daughter, and she would. She would protect Adair even from herself. Slowly she climbed into her own bed space. Adair was pretending to sleep, although Elsbeth knew very well that she wasn’t. She slipped beneath her coverlet, pulling it up over her shoulders, eventually sleeping herself.
But later Adair seemed to have quieted, and Elsbeth considered that she was facing the painful reality of their situation. It was a great relief to believe it, but Elsbeth knew she would have to watch Adair closely, for it was not often she gave up when she had made a decision to do something.
Upstairs in the hall, Conal Bruce sat by his fire with a dram cup of his own potent whiskey in his hand. He was alone, for he had threatened his two brothers with serious injury if they remained. He was not of a mind to be teased further. His male member ached with its need, but he would be damned if he would go and visit Agnes Carr’s cottage. He didn’t want Agnes’s warm and blowsy charms tonight. He wanted Adair. He wanted her mouth, soft and willing. He wanted her body, eager and yielding. Each time she came near he smelled the elusive fragrance of woodbine, and his senses reeled.
She had been in his keep for a month now. The days were growing shorter. The nights longer. And he was suddenly lonely.
What the hell was the matter with him? She was his slave. She belonged to him. He had paid Willie Douglas a silver penny for Adair. Not one of King Jamie’s black pennies minted from cheap copper, but a real silver penny, full weight. He could order her to his bed. He
should
order her to his bed. She was his! And then he heard Adair’s voice in his head:
I am not a whore.
No, she wasn’t a whore. She was a lady, and a man needed to woo a lady. Even if she had fallen on hard times and was now his servant. But, of course, the problem with wooing Adair was that his desire for her was already great.
And each time she came near his lust rose sharply, pricking him like a spur. He groaned and swallowed the whiskey. They could not go on playing this game.
In the morning Adair brought the small individual trenchers of oat stirabout to the high board. “Elsbeth has put chopped apples and grated some cinnamon into your oats,” she told the three brothers. “She says she hopes you like it.”
“ ’Tis good having a woman back in the kitchens,”
Duncan Armstrong said, smiling. “And a clean shirt when I want one,” he added.
Adair smiled back at him. “A well-ordered household is best,” she agreed.
“We’ve rebuilt the henhouse in the courtyard for Elsbeth,” Murdoc said to her.
“I saw when I went to gather eggs this morning,”
Adair replied. “ ’Tis a fine job too, Murdoc.” She turned to Conal Bruce. “Do you think, my lord, we might have a milk cow or two? ’Twould be less costly, and if we get a heavy snow it will be difficult to send to the village for our dairy supplies.”
“We used to have several milk cows,” the laird said.
“We ate them after Mam died, for we longed for meat more than milk,” he admitted.
“That was because you were all too lazy to hunt,”
Adair responded. “I would remind you, my lord, that the cold larder is but half-filled. We need it full before the winter sets in, or you will go hungry. Elsbeth can do just so much.”
“She is right,” Duncan agreed. “We can hunt today, brothers.”
“Elsbeth will be very pleased,” Adair told them. Then
she curtsied and hurried away. She had found a small room off the kitchens where it was obvious that once the lady of the keep had had an apothecary. There was even a small pot of camphor gum on a shelf, along with some other nondescript jars she had not yet inspected.
She had been gathering materials for the last few days to make salves, ointments, and elixirs. She planned to begin on that task today. “They’re going hunting,” she told Elsbeth as she returned from the hall. “I’m going to spend my day making the medicines. Flora, you clear the board, and Grizel will clean the hall today. Jack, fetch me a crock of goose fat from the pantry, and put it on my table in the apothecary.”
“Sit down and eat,” Elsbeth said. “You’ve had nothing yet.”
The sound of footsteps made them all turn as the laird entered the kitchen. “Elsbeth, give us some bread, meat, and cheese to take with us today. Adair, I would speak with you privily.” He took her arm and drew her into the pantry. “I don’t want a resistant woman in my bed,” he told her. “But I can be patient no longer.”
Adair blushed at his candid words, and then she realized her back was against a tall cabinet. She could not flee him now.
He wrapped her single thick braid about his hand, pulling her against him. He ran a finger from his other hand along her lips, the gentle pressure pushing those lips slightly apart. Adair tasted the finger, and, unable to help herself, her violet eyes closed as he rubbed the finger back and forth along her mouth. A little sigh escaped her unbidden. He smiled softly. “You want to be loved, my honey,” he murmured against the delicate curl of her ear. “Nay, you are not a whore, but you are a woman.” He drew the finger away, and his lips met hers in a gentle but fierce kiss. “You want to be loved,” he repeated. “Tell me that I lie, Adair. That you have no cu-riosity to know what it would be like to be loved by me, to lie naked in my arms and find pleasure.”
“You are cruel, my lord,” she whispered back to him.
“You torment me, my honey love,” he said low. “I need you in my bed.”
“Do you not have a cotter’s woman to serve your lusts?” Adair asked him.
“I want none but you.” He groaned, and his hand found the swell of her breast beneath her gown. Fingers kneaded the tender flesh.
Adair whimpered softly as a thrill of excitement shot through her. His hand was gentle on her breast, yet his touch aroused her in a way she had never before been stirred. She could not deny him, though her arms hung at her sides, unrestrained.
“Such a sweet little breast,” he murmured. “I would see it uncovered and as God fashioned it, my honey love.”
“Please,” she pleaded with him. “They are all in the kitchen, my lord.”
“Tonight you will sit in my lap by the fire, and I will kiss you, and I will caress you, Adair. And you will not be afraid of me, will you?” He released his hold on her breast and on her braid.
“You do not fool me, my lord,” Adair said. Her courage was returning now that he was not so close.
“You will take me to your bed tonight because you desire me, and you own my person. But before I let you have my person, there is something I would have of you, my lord. I will not lie with a dirty man. When you return from the hunt and have had your dinner, I will bathe you and wash your hair. And the bed we lie on will be fresh and smell as sweet as you will, for I will see to it today.”
“I had a bath two months ago,” he said. “In the stream at the foot of the keep.”
“Did you use soap?” she asked him, pushing him back from her.
“Soap? We were swimming,” he exclaimed.
“Then you were not bathing,” Adair said implacably.
“Tonight I will wash you in hot water, and we will use soap, my lord. And I will have a brush.”
“Conal, where are you?” Duncan Armstrong stuck his head into the pantry. “We’re ready to go.” He looked quizzically at his brother.
“Are we agreed, my lord?” Adair demanded to know, looking up into his face. He had gray eyes. Stormy gray eyes.
“Must we use soap?” he wanted to know.
She nodded. “Aye.”
He nodded. “I have never been a man to avoid a challenge, Adair,” he told her. And then, turning, he was gone with his brother.
“What was that all about?” Elsbeth wanted to know.
They were alone.
“He cannot be deterred from bedding me, Nursie, but before he does I will give him a bath,” Adair told the older woman.