Authors: Susan Sizemore
Besides, he knew that one day wouldn’t be enough to burn out desire if he gave in to the weakness that was bred into his bones. He’d have the woman, certainly, but necessary coupling for physical release and to produce an heir was not the same as 44
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endless hours of love play. There was a proper time and place for conjugal duties and that time was not now.
So he kept his lust in check and reluctantly let Maddie walk away. She went to the hall, no doubt to pursue some woman’s work. And to avoid his company as well he supposed. He hoped. It should be some comfort to him to know that she wouldn’t welcome him in bed any more often than wifely duty required.
It should have comforted him but it didn’t. He knew that he secretly wanted a wife who’d love him the way his mother had loved his father. But that love had brought out the man’s weakness when his mother died, made him prey to the fairy’s woman’s call.
If he hadn’t sought love to release his grief, he wouldn’t have lost himself.
Rowan vowed he’d set about making the stranger properly his wife without emotional entanglements for either of them tonight. In the meantime, he had told Father Andrew two days ago that he’d spend today seeing to the account books with him.
Since he had given his word to tally figures with the priest, that’s what he would do, wedding day or no.
* * * * *
“This is ridiculous,” Maddie said, and paced the length of the hall one more time.
She was full of wild nerves and pent-up energy, and she hated it. It was akin to the cravings that had sent her on the way to Glasgow, only worse. She could analyze it but that didn’t help much. Maddie recognized that this bubbling in her blood was all hormonal and out of her control. It was her body trying to control her actions—a biological clock or time bomb or something.
She hated being out of control.
While she wasn’t as phlegmatic as her new husband, she wasn’t given to fits of hysteria either, even if that’s what she really wanted to do. To just give in and let it rip, to scream and pound on things then wrestle someone to the ground and have her way with him.
She wasn’t going to do that of course.
All right, she had good reasons to be hysterical but she had already decided she wasn’t going to let a case of time traveling coupled with mating urges get to her.
Having decided not to let it bother her, she knew she could be rational about the situation. However as the day wore on, she became more and more perturbed. She eventually had to admit it wasn’t time traveling that bothered her. It wasn’t even the idea of having a husband. In theory, she liked the idea of having a husband.
It was sex.
Oh she could lie to herself or come up with all sorts of rationales, but when it came down to it she was scared to death of sex. Maybe she always had been. It was this conjugal rights issue that was unsettling her. She’d married Rowan Murray, made a 45
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promise to be his wife for a year and a day. To share his bed, his board and his life. She had promised. He was going to expect her to fulfill her vows.
Having made them, she told herself she was prepared to fulfill them. She was a sensible, straightforward, honest person. She always tried to do what she said she’d do.
She was terrified of going to bed with someone, especially a stranger who looked so much like the one man she thought she could love. Not only wasn’t Rowan Murray anything like Toby, he was the enemy who’d backed her into a corner where she was forced to face her worst fears.
She stomped her foot emphatically. She didn’t think of herself as the foot-stomping type but under the circumstances the physical release of energy seemed to help. “I will not think of Rowan Murray as the enemy.” People in the hall stopped what they were doing to openly stare at her as she spoke but she ignored them
.
Even if he is the enemy
, she added to herself,
I have to find some way to get along with
him
.
The fear had been with her for a long time even if she hadn’t realized that’s what her avoiding men was about until now. Rowan Murray hadn’t caused the initial problem. She’d always been awkward and self-conscious and uncomfortable with her over-endowed body. Her mother had always said she’d outgrow it if she’d just let herself. Maddie supposed she was a slow learner about some things, because twenty-eight seemed awful late to finally start coming out of adolescent shock.
She went back to pacing.
Despite the fire raging in the central hearth, the place was cold. The clothes she’d been given consisted of several layers of wool over a linen shift. This helped insulate her body from the frigid air but her hands were cold as ice. She also noticed that she had them balled into tense fists at her side. She wished she had pockets to tuck them into but since pockets hadn’t been invented by this era, she tucked her hands into her wide sleeves and held her arms close to her body as she walked. It made her feel like a nun.
Nothing new about that.
Feeling like a nun wasn’t going to do her any good when Rowan Murray demanded his conjugal rights though.
She stopped as a ripple of shock ran down her spine. A slow, wicked grin spread across her face.
If he wasn’t the cause of the problem, maybe he was the cure.
“Conjugal rights work both ways,” she said. And went in search of Rowan Murray before she lost her nerve.
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“What?”
“Right now.”
“In the daylight?”
“No, in your bedroom. Let’s go.”
Rowan looked from the long-fingered female hand resting on his arm to the priest sitting across the table. Far from being outraged at Maddie having barged into his workroom and demanding that Rowan perform an act of sexual congress
right now
, Father Andrew was smirking. There would be no help from that quarter obviously.
He looked back at Maddie. She was all bright-eyed and flushed of cheek. Her words to him had been rushed, emphatic, but he sensed that this demand was not easy for her to make. He didn’t think it was lust that made her eyes blaze but terror.
“You don’t want me, woman.”
“You want me,” she countered.
“Aye,” he agreed, though he blushed to say so before the priest. “That I do. In my own time and way,” he added as he tried to control the eagerness that sprang to life within him.
She took a step back and looked him over with an eye as critical as any expert herdsman would a head of cattle at a sale. Having looked at her much the same way yesterday, Rowan balled his fists at his sides and endured her scrutiny, though it left him feeling more naked than if she’d actually stripped him bare.
“You’re not ugly,” was her final judgment.
Which was not the same as saying she craved to touch him and be touched by him.
“It wouldn’t matter how I look,” he reminded her. “I’m still your husband.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Which means you have the right to sleep with me any time you want, right?”
“That is indeed his right, my child,” Father Andrew answered for Rowan.
Maddie looked at the priest. “Well I think it ought to be my right to sleep with him anytime
I
want.” She turned a glare on Rowan. “And I want to right now.”
He understood immediately and with relief that what she really wanted was to get the wedding night over with. She wanted to do her duty, not make love. He couldn’t fault her for that. He could tell that her demand wasn’t fueled by passion. She had none of the teasing, wanton light in her eyes, none of the provocative grace he’d seen many times in the fairy wife when she’d easily seduced his father away from important work.
This mortal woman was practical. He approved.
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Though his heart cried out that he wanted more than that, a life without love was for the best.
“All right then.” He grabbed her hand and led her out of the church.
Maddie regretted everything she’d said and done since she’d gotten out of bed this morning as Rowan led her across the courtyard. She especially regretted the way his expression had gone all hard and closed off when she’d told him he wasn’t ugly. She didn’t know why that had hurt him but it had. It had actually been an understated way of saying he was the handsomest man this side of his look-alike back in her century, if completely impossible to deal with and rather rough around the edges.
The man must think he was a real dog or something. Great, a husband with a self-image problem as bad as her own. Just what she needed, someone else’s problems to deal with just when she’d discovered that she wanted to fix her own. He hadn’t shown any sign of being the least bit vulnerable since she’d met him. Of course, neither had she. He’d given her the impression of being the confident master of his fate and hers.
“Who knew?” she grumbled as he pushed her up the tower ladder before him and into the hall.
Besides, she was the one who was prostituting herself in return for security while she figured out how to get home.
Oh Lord! That was exactly what she was doing, wasn’t it?
She might suspect that Rowan didn’t like himself very much but she was none too proud of Madalyn McCullogh at the moment. What would her mother say if she saw her right now? Her father would be furious at her for agreeing to a shotgun wedding in the first place. Her brothers would offer to lynch Rowan and her sisters—rabid though happily married feminists to a man, uh, woman—would actually do it.
And once Rowan was swinging from a tree, she’d be left alone to face the lectures, not to mention the disappointed looks from her parents. Her only consolation was that if this had to be happening, at least it was in a foreign land in a far-off century.
Otherwise, she’d be in big trouble for getting involved in a marriage of convenience even if her mother had insisted she was getting a little long in the tooth.
She was in big trouble. This was a big mistake. Worse than that, it was wrong, immoral. It was too late to back out. This hit home when he dragged her up the stairs and the door slammed closed on his bedroom.
Oh hell
, she thought. Then she reminded herself that she’d instigated the proceedings, she had no one to blame but herself and it was time to get on with it. She was an experienced woman of the world. More or less.
She’d just never had sex with anyone before. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the mechanics.
She just had absolutely no idea what to do with the man now that she had him alone. Yesterday, when he’d been interested, her reaction had been to knee him in the groin. She’d followed this up by threatening to run him through. He’d still forced her to marry him. He’d still accompanied her to his bedroom.
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“Where’d all these candles come from?” Rowan asked as he took in the sight of his bedchamber lit with a soft, golden glow.
His question jolted her out of her self-absorption. “I have no idea,” Maddie replied.
“I didn’t tell anyone I was going to—well, you know.” The castle women must have divined her intentions when she marched off to find Rowan.
“Probably some damned love spell,” he grumbled.
A hot blush flooded her cheeks as she looked around the transformed chamber.
Still, she couldn’t help but smile at the notion of a love spell and at the misguided thoughtfulness of the clan women. The room looked very different in candlelight. The warm gold given off by the tiny flames masked the starkness of the stone walls, the Spartan angles of the box bed. Candlelight even softened the hard-set planes of Rowan’s long face.
He crossed to the table next to his bed and picked up a mixed bundle of bluebells and heather. “Wisewoman herbal rubbish,” he muttered. “Micaela and Rosemary’s doing no doubt.”
The unexpected aromas of beeswax and flowers permeated the room. That his sister and cousin had thought to make him a wedding bower brought a tender smile to his lips.
“Foolish women,” he said. “To waste their time so.”
“It’s sweet.”
He turned to face his wife. “Are you sweet?” After her glance slid past his to focus on the bed they were to share, he added, “Or just randy and ready to rut?”
Her gaze flashed angrily up. “Nice alliteration. But you don’t have to be insulting.”
“It was a simple enough question.”
Maddie considered the situation for a moment. She considered whether or not she should get into an argument with Rowan Murray. Then she decided that conversation was just a way of putting off the inevitable. It would be better to get on with the dirty deed—to see if she could live with it, him and herself.
“I think we should get undressed, is what I think.”
“Aye.” He reached for the buckle of the belt that held his kilt in place. “I ken you’ve the right of it.”
His movements were casual and self-assured, a faint smirk played around his lips.
Suddenly she doubted her earlier assumption that Rowan Murray had insecurities. She remembered how he’d accosted her with intent to rape the day before. Maybe he’d had second thoughts when she fought back but the intent had still been there. Maybe it still was.
Maddie could not make herself watch him get undressed. So she shed her overdress and then after a brief, nervous hesitation, untied the drawstring that fastened her chemise together at the neck. Even though Micaela had loaned her the medieval 49
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clothing, she’d donned her modern underwear and bra when she dressed. She still had this final, flimsy barrier on when her new clothes were left lying on the floor.
She shook with nerves as she stepped away from her clothing. It took all her willpower to approach the bed. A brief glance showed her that Rowan was naked.
Lean, long-limbed and rangy, fair-skinned with a light brown fuzz of hair on his chest and at his groin—she took in the details very quickly but thoroughly. They sent a shiver of warm sensation through her.
She’d wondered what Toby would look like without any clothes on. Now she knew. Only she didn’t know at all of course. And it wouldn’t be fair to Rowan to try to pretend he was someone else when they made love. She had always prided herself on being a realist, a pragmatist. She’d rely on that pragmatism to get her through this. Still, she felt a pang of sadness knowing it wasn’t Toby who she was about to give herself to.