The Knight's Temptress (Lairds of the Loch) (31 page)

“Come here to me,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“Provide you with yet another reason that James Mòr would never believe I am a woman, let alone one daft enough to marry into the Stewart family.”

“Will you agree to tell your parents straightaway about our marriage?”

Meeting her gaze and holding it, he said, “I don’t bargain, Lina. Not after I have made a decision. Now, put those covers down and come here to me.”

Lina was not afraid of him, although she did wonder if he had thought she might be, or had even hoped that she would be. He still held her gaze, but she looked steadily, silently back at him until his lips moved, diverting her attention to them. They thinned, and a tiny dimple showed just to the right of them.

Without thinking about what she did, she let the covers slip. Then, sensing a new, exciting kind of tension, she licked her lips and looked into his eyes again.

They were smoldering. He reached for her and she leaned toward him as he did. Without effort, he pulled her into his arms, captured her lips with his own…

… and began tickling her.

Lina shrieked, but Ian’s lips muffled the sound, and he was too strong for her to escape. Soon, though, he was no longer tickling but stroking her, teasing her nipples, making her blood race and her heart pound. His tongue slid into her mouth, and hers darted to meet it.

When he moved over her, she spread her legs to receive him without giving thought to the initial pain she had felt the night before. By the time she did think of it, he was inside her, moving gently. She felt a distant, residual ache, but the other feelings he stirred soon banished all thought of pain.

When he climaxed, he fell away from her. But he lay for only a moment before he said, “Don’t move yet, lass. I want to teach you one more thing to keep you from forgetting me whilst I’m away.”

“How could I forget you,” she murmured, smiling.

Without replying, he kissed her breasts and her belly. Then he moved lower and lower, his legs between hers again as he eased toward the foot of the bed, kissing and licking her until she began to squirm and moan.

Then his fingers returned to where his cock had been earlier, and she could feel his breath there, too. He murmured, “Be still now. Just feel and enjoy.”

His fingers moved away, and his tongue began to do things she had never imagined a tongue could do. Soon afterward, she cried out again in pure pleasure.

When she could breathe normally, Ian moved up beside her, drew her into the shelter of his arms, and said with a smile, “Will you remember?”

“Always, aye.” Lowering her lashes, she wondered briefly if she had any hope of persuading him to take her with him and decided she had none. He had made up his mind, and he was a gey stubborn man. She would have to study him more to learn what persuasive measures, if any, might work with him.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

Knowing that to share those thoughts would merely supply him with another challenge, she kept silent.

“Tell me.”

She felt much more comfortable with him now than she had expected she ever could, and she wished he were not leaving. But she would not tell him those things either. So, she said truthfully, “I was thinking what a puzzle you are to me.”

“How so?” He sounded more sleepy than curious.

Nevertheless, she said, “My family thinks of me as the persuasive one. I can nearly always persuade my sisters and others to heed me. But you are a puzzle.”

“I told you we’re likely to fratch, lass. If you are wise, though, you won’t fight me after I’ve made up my mind.”

“You did promise always to listen.”

“I did, and I will but only up to a point. If you have already said it without persuading me, saying it again or haggling with me won’t aid you.”

“I would not do those things,” she said. “I do hope, though, that you will tell your parents straightaway that we have married.”

“I will tell them,” he said. “I did not mean for you to think I would not. I just disliked the bargain you offered. That one won’t sway me, Lina, ever.”

Remembering, she felt a little guilty. But a woman had so few weapons. Quietly, she said, “It is important to me that you tell them. I feel as if we have married without their permission. And I don’t like the feeling.”

“Nor would I if I felt the same way,” he said. “But my parents have been urging me to keep my eyes open for a wife since I turned eighteen. So I am as certain as one can be that our marriage will please them. They’ll also understand that you will be safer here than anywhere nearer Dumbarton, let alone at Dunglass.”

His saying that she would be safe sent a shiver up Lina’s spine just as Lady Aubrey’s assurance of her future well-being had done. Determined to be sensible, reminding herself that she and Ian had married and should make the most of their time together, she summoned up a smile and said, “How soon must you go?”

“Not today,” he said firmly. “I’m too worn out from making love to my lady wife. Sakes, I may have to stay in bed all day to recover,” he added.

When she shook her head at him, he said, “In troth, I want to give the men at Dunglass time to reduce what are like to be a plethora of plans to a possible few.”

“Who has yet to come?”

“Jamie sent for Douglas to come, and Douglas will bring other Border lords to make up Jamie’s army. I’ll welcome them after I’ve taken the castle, but the last thing I want is tension between powerful Border lords who think Jamie should have put them in charge. I’d liefer take the castle with men from Loch Lomond clans.”

“But everyone’s loyalties have split. Faith, nearly all of us here descend from Earls of Lennox. Yet look at us. Thanks to Lennox and the House of Albany, clans, even
families, have divided. We fight amongst ourselves as much as we fight others.”

“
We
aren’t fighting now,” he said pointedly. “Art sure you want to get up?”

“I hope you won’t command me to stay in bed,” she said. “I look forward to enjoying more such activity, but I’d liefer get up now and break my fast. We can walk outside the wall afterward if you want to see more of Tùr Meiloach. Or we can go somewhere quiet, talk, and get to know each other better.”

“I do need to talk with your father today, to help draft those documents he mentioned yesterday,” Ian said. “We did not take time to do it then, and we must do that before I go. Shall I shout for Hak and send him to fetch your lass?”

Lina agreed. But when he strode to the door, naked, opened it, and shouted across the landing, she dove back under the covers until Hak had received his orders and gone to find Tibby. Then, suddenly shy about getting out of bed naked, she felt immense relief when Ian pulled on his breeks and a tunic and said he would go and find out when Andrew wanted to draw up the marriage documents.

When he had gone, she relieved herself in the night jar and put on her shift from the day before. Memory returned then rather abruptly of Lady Aubrey’s eerie intrusion during their previous night’s activity.

When that image had appeared and then vanished as if unseen breath had blown out its light, she had felt dizzy and disoriented. Now she wondered if her captivity with Lizzie and all that had followed it might have affected her mind.

Guiltily, she realized that she ought to have told Ian about the incident. Before she could even ponder that thought, though, a more startling one took its place:
What if she had inherited her mother’s gift and seen some future event?

Feeling silly even to wonder such a thing, she discarded that notion, too.

Surely, if she had inherited the gift, or curse, of seeing into the future, she would have known it long before now. The strangest of Andrena’s gifts presented itself soon after her birth. And Andrena had known since childhood that she could tell how people were feeling, what they might be thinking, and if they were trustworthy. Muriella, too, had known as a child that she had an extraordinary memory.

Striving to imagine what to say if she did tell Ian, Lina decided she lacked the courage to try. He would likely insist that she had been daydreaming at a time when she ought to have kept her attention on their consummation and him. In short, he’d be annoyed, and she did not want to irk him again so close to his departure.

A light rap on the door announced Tibby’s arrival with a fresh shift, Lina’s favorite blue kirtle, and a crisp white veil. Tib helped her dress and was handing her the silver chain girdle to clasp around her waist when Ian walked in.

Startled, Lina nearly objected to such a lack of ceremony but recalled in time that another right of husbands was to walk in on their wives whenever they chose.

He cocked his head as if he had noticed her mixed reaction. But he made no comment other than to say he had talked with Andrew. “If you’d like to enjoy some fresh air, my lady, I thought we might go down to the shore. I could not see from inside if the tide is in or out—”

“It is in and on the turn, sir,” she said.

“Sakes, how do you know? One cannot see well enough
from that window, and I doubt that you have left this chamber.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know how I know, but I do. After living here so long, I expect it is just something one learns to sense from the sounds of the waves.”

“I don’t hear any waves.”

“Then perhaps that is how I know. In any event, we cannot go all the way down, if that is what you had hoped. But we can walk on the cliffs or in the woods.”

He said dryly, “Not thinking of sinking me in one of your hungry bogs or feeding me to one of the fierce beasts we hear so much about, are you?”

“Nay,” she said, smiling. “Not if you behave.”

He grinned at her and turned to Tibby. “Take that veil off her ladyship, lass. I want to see her hair in the sunlight.”

Hearing his tone, Lina wondered what else he might want to see.

Dougal was in the woods above the tower, waiting for Lady Aubrey. His father had watchers everywhere. Andrew Dubh likely did, too. But Pharlain had one or two living amid Andrew’s people. Thanks to one of them, Dougal knew how much her ladyship loved the wee burn-fed pond just below him in the woods.

She came often, his informant had said. Moreover, she had not been able to visit the pond since leaving for Bannachra Tower. She would come today.

Because of his swim, he wore only his tunic, which had quickly dried. He had not been so foolhardy as to come unarmed, though. He had carried his dirk in his teeth and had it in hand now, but he did not expect to use it. The
women of Tùr Meiloach felt safe on its land. That simple fact would work in his favor.

He heard her humming, and then he saw her. As expected, Lady Aubrey had come alone. When she knelt by the pond, he stepped out from behind a tree.

She heard him and looked up. “You were foolish to come here,” she said.

“Ye ken who I am, then.”

“Aye, sure. You look much as your father did at your age. But do not think you will harm me. I have only to scream to bring warriors down upon you.”

“They would not catch me,” he said confidently, although if the truth were known, he felt edgy. Things that men had said about the MacFarlan women were whispering themselves to him. “Ye won’t call them, though, for I mean ye nae harm today.” He put slight emphasis on the last word and saw that she had noted it.

“What do you want?” she asked.

That was easy. “The charters to Arrochar. They belong to us, and we’ll need them to show his grace when he comes north. Ye must ken where they lie.”

“I fear that I do not,” she said, apparently unperturbed.

“Ye’re a Seer, so ye’ll find them,” he said. “Ye’ve seen how easily I found
ye
and how safely I walk on this so-treacherous land of yours. I can find your daughters, too, madam, wherever they are. If ye don’t get me the charters, ye’ll lose one daughter, then another, and then the last. That last one will be the lady Lina, for I want her to feel the pain of losing her sisters and all that I shall tell others meantime about her shameful behavior.”

“Lina has done naught for which she need be ashamed,” she said calmly. “Moreover, you will harm her only at
your peril. She is married now to Sir Ian Colquhoun, who will avenge any stain cast upon her character.”