Untamed (27 page)

She didn’t look any different than she had yesterday. She had the same eyes, the same face, the same skin. And yet nothing was the same at all.

She let her gaze slide over her reflection, her fingers tracing a path over lips that had burnt from his kisses, along her throat where his mouth had conjured shivers, to the valley between her breasts where her heart had beat so hard.

Och, Amalie, you’re far lovelier than I e’er could have imagined.

He’d been looking at her breasts when he’d said that, his brow furrowed with emotion, his eyes dark. Were they beautiful? She cupped them as he had done, explored their velvety crests with her fingers, and watched her nipples slowly pucker into tight little buds, their tips exquisitely sensitive. The only thought she’d ever given to her breasts was how best to hide them, first from the disapproving gazes of the nuns and then from the lustful stares of men. She’d known only that they were meant for suckling babies. She’d never known they could be a source of such pleasure.

She remembered what it had felt like to have his hot mouth upon them, to feel his tongue tickle her, to feel his lips nip her—and desire, fresh and new, began to build inside her. Slowly, so slowly, she slid her hands down over her rib cage to the rounded curve of her belly, wondering at the tension she felt there. Then with one hand she reached farther still, her fingers sliding over dark curls to cup her sex as he had done.

I ken why you cannae sleep. I ken what your feelin’, for I feel it, too. If you let me, I can ease the longin’ inside you, Amalie.

Oh, but she was sensitive there! ’Twas a place she’d never touched except to bathe and stem her monthly flux, for the sisters had punished girls who’d touched themselves beneath their skirts. But she was not at the abbey now. She delved deeper, then drew her hand away and found her fingers rich with her own musky scent and damp with a strange, slippery wetness, as if her body had wept silky tears in its need for him.

It felt as if a great mystery had been opened to her—a world of pleasure she’d never known existed—and yet there were so many questions she’d wanted to ask him, still so much she needed to know. If she’d experienced so much pleasure, why hadn’t Sister Marie Louise? Was it normal for a woman’s desire to return so quickly after release? Would it be just as pleasurable if he joined his body to hers, or was that when it hurt?

For me to get you wi’ child, I would have to join my body—this part of me—with yours and spend my seed.

That part of him had seemed very large, so she could certainly see why it might be painful. And yet she couldn’t deny that the thought of being joined to Morgan roused some primal part of her. When she’d been aroused by his touch, she’d ached inside as if her body longed for him to fill her. Did all women feel that way?

She would ask him about all of these things tonight.

Just the thought of seeing him again sent a warm rush of excitement through her. She slid her hands back up her body, hugged herself, and spun on her toes, filled with the urge to laugh. But she was already late for breakfast. She finished dressing, then hurried downstairs, her thoughts turning to Morgan’s punishment.

“Bourlamaque has set him to digging a privy,” Lieutenant Durand told her as he waited for his morning audience. Then he grinned. “Rillieux is mucking the stables.”

She sighed with relief, grateful Morgan had been spared some greater humiliation. And the morning seemed even brighter.

A
malie drifted through the day in a dream. She tended the roses in the garden, visited the hospital, mended one of Bourlamaque’s waistcoats. But although she spent the hours in much the usual way, nothing felt the same.

The world had changed.

It was as if her heart had little wings, as if her body were made of gossamer, as if everything around her were bathed in golden light. She felt almost giddy and more than a little rebellious, keeping the beautiful and precious secret of last night inside her. Had she ever known such a feeling of happiness?

She was in love. She knew it. She must be.

She loved Morgan MacKinnon.

She moved through her day thinking of nothing but him. The way he’d looked at her, his gaze both fierce and tender. The way he’d been with her through every breath, every shiver. The way his big man’s body had pressed against her, surrounded her, his large callused hands—hands that had killed—so gentle, unleashing feelings inside her she’d never known before.

So much of her life she’d felt invisible, a dark girl in a world of pretty, sun-haired children. Apart from her father, no one had ever cared to hear her thoughts, unless it was to admonish her for the nature of them. But Morgan, dear Morgan, listened to her. He listened to her and saw things in her that no one had ever seen.

Oui,
she loved him. He might be a Ranger, a
chi bai,
or even the man who’d fired the shot that had killed her father, but still she loved him.

The realization took her breath away, left her floating. And yet it also left her with a niggling worry. What if he did not love her?

S
he did not see him again till supper, when he came to the table in a French captain’s uniform looking so handsome she found it hard to breathe. His long hair was still damp from his bath, his Scottish warrior braids hanging past his broad shoulders, which were now adorned with golden epaulets. The dark blue of his coat made his blue eyes seem even bluer, the sun-bronzed skin of his face a sharp contrast to the white of his waistcoat. And across his chest where a French officer of noble birth might have worn a blue or red sash, he wore one of Scottish plaid in red, green, blue, and white.

“Miss Chauvenet.” He bowed, pressed a light kiss against the back of her hand, his touch making her skin tingle. “How bonnie you are this even.”

But his gaze showed nothing of his feelings. Gone were both the fierceness and the tenderness, replaced by a kind of distant courtesy, as if he were only now making her acquaintance. And though she tried to make conversation with him during the meal, his attention and good humor were given to Bourlamaque and the other officers.

“To Capitaine MacKinnon, who was a French ally in his heart all along!” Bourlamaque said, toasting Morgan with a glass of his favorite Bordeaux.

Even Lieutenant Rillieux joined in the chorus of cheers, raising his glass and drinking deeply, his dislike for Morgan apparently overcome at last.

It ought to have been the happiest of moments, and Amalie
was
happy, but rather than the intimacy she’d felt this morning when Morgan had kissed her awake and sent her to her own bed, she felt only emptiness stretching between them.

It wasn’t until after the men had retired to Bourlamaque’s study for their nightly brandy that she had the chance to speak with Morgan. She found him standing alone in the sitting room staring out the front window as she had the night when he’d first kissed her. Even from a distance, she could feel the tension seething beneath his skin.

She walked up behind him. “Morgan?”

At the sound of her voice, he stiffened. “Let me be, lass.”

She might have done as he asked, but she felt so lost and confused, and she needed to understand. Almost afraid to hear his response, she summoned the courage to speak. “Please do not turn me away. If you do not care for me, if I’ve done something to earn your displeasure, please tell me.”

He kept his back to her, his body rigid, and when at last he answered her, his voice seemed strangely flat. “There was a lass in my village on Skye who let herself be wooed and deceived by an English soldier. They met in secret until her belly grew big and round with his bairn. After the babe was born, she was dragged from her father’s house into the streets, where the women struck her and cut off her hair. Men and women and children threw slops at her and berated her with shouts and curses, drivin’ her from the village and into the wild. I was only a lad at the time, but recall the horror on her young face. I dinnae ken whether she and the bairn survived or whether they died of cold and hunger. No one spoke of her again.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Though Bourlamaque has accepted me, not every man here has. To them, I am still the enemy. I wouldna see such a terrible fate befall you, lass.”

“But how could such a thing happen?” The very thought was laughable. “You are one of us now. Monsieur de Bourlamaque would not permit it!”

“We are in the midst of a war, Amalie. None of us can see where this will end. If it should become known that you and I…”

His words unsettled her even though she knew what he was describing could never happen. “No man here would dare to harm me, not with you and Monsieur de Bourlamaque to protect me. Besides, Monsieur de Bourlamaque has given his blessing for you—”

“Aye, he has granted me permission to court you, and in turn I have given him my word that I willna dishonor you. And yet if you come to me again in the night, I dinnae ken if I can keep that promise.”

It was then she noticed that his fists were clenched.

She wanted to reassure him, wanted him to know what she knew—that he was an honorable man and would never deliberately hurt her. “Last night, you—”

He turned to face her, his eyes filled with anguish. “Aye, last night I kept my word, but I am a man, Amalie. My blood is as red as any man’s. The fire has been put out in you, but not in me. All day I’ve suffered in a hell of my own makin’, wantin’ what I cannae have. I’ve tried to work you out of my blood, tried to sweat you out, but the moment I set eyes upon you or hear your voice…I ken you dinnae understand what I’m sayin’, but for pity’s sake, lass, keep to your own bed. You and I—we cannae be.”

Then he turned and strode toward Bourlamaque’s study to join the other officers, leaving her alone and shattered.

“M
y brother is dead! He died savin’ another man’s life! He is
no’
a traitor!” Connor MacKinnon’s voice roared through William’s study, his skin flushed with rage, his nostrils flared, his face pressed to within inches of William’s.

“You yourself have delivered the evidence against him. These were taken in your last raid.” William handed Captain MacKinnon the dispatches he and his men had stolen and watched as the rage on MacKinnon’s face turned first to disbelief and then to shock.

William had had much the same reaction. Witnesses had watched Morgan MacKinnon fall in battle, had watched as the French had carried his body off in triumph. Bourlamaque’s letter, signed by his own hand, had claimed that MacKinnon was dead. And yet Montcalm’s missives revealed a very different truth.

The words ran through William’s mind, words he’d read a dozen times this morning and then again this evening, some part of him strangely reluctant to believe his own eyes.

“As far as our new friend MacKinnon is concerned, it seems you may have been wise to offer him sanctuary. His obedience thus far commends him to me. I will admit I should like to have watched him shoot. I have never seen a man fire four shots in a minute, or strike his marks with the consistency you described in your last letter. His instruction of our soldiers might prove quite useful in this regard. And yet, my dear friend, I caution you again not to trust him fully, as you cannot be certain he does not possess some hidden purpose of his own.”

Though he’d led the Rangers for only a handful of months, Morgan MacKinnon had proved to be as dedicated a commander as his elder brother had been. William had trusted him to lead his men through the most calamitous circumstances with a clear mind. He trusted him to carry out his mission without fail. He trusted him to put military objectives ahead of personal ones. He’d trusted him and had never been disappointed—until now.

For it seemed that Morgan MacKinnon was not dead, as Bourlamaque had led them to believe, but had instead taken shelter with the enemy.

Deserter. Turncoat. Traitor.

These were words William could scarce associate with Morgan MacKinnon. The man’s loyalty to his brothers was unquestionable, his sense of duty to his men unflagging, his notion of honor—flavored by a certain Gaelic tendency toward romantic idealism—unimpeachable. It seemed impossible that he should choose to betray his brothers by teaching the French skills that would enable them to confront and slay his own men.

And then again, why not? He wouldn’t be the first man to break under torture, nor the first to save his own life by yielding secrets to the enemy. His forebears were Catholic Jacobites, long allied with the French. What was to keep him from going over to the French the moment they took him captive?

His brothers. His men.

William could not imagine him betraying them, and yet Montcalm’s dispatches to Bourlamaque were very clear.

Captain MacKinnon threw the letters down on William’s writing table. “Lies! ’Tis naugh’ but lies!”

“Is it?” William strode to the window and looked out at the darkened parade grounds. “In the past month, how many caches have you lost to the French?”

“We’ve lost three, but that doesna mean—”

“And in the three years prior to that?”

For a moment there was silence, and William could feel Captain MacKinnon’s seething rage. When the captain finally answered, he spoke through gritted teeth. “One.”

“How many rendezvous points and camping sites have the enemy taken from you?”

“Four, but they were old and rarely used.”

“Does it not strike you as a strange coincidence that the French have had such successes only since your brother was—”

“I willna listen to such slander! My brother could no more betray the Rangers than he could slay me wi’ his bare hands!”

“Then how would you explain it?” William turned to face him, found fifteen stone of angry Highlander standing close behind him, fists clenched, eyes filled with undisguised hatred. “How would you explain the meaning of Montcalm’s letters?”

“I cannae explain it!” The captain grabbed the letters off William’s writing table, crumpled them in his fist, then threw them back onto the table. “I willna believe it wi’out seein’ it wi’ my own eyes!”