Border Fire (22 page)

“I do not want to defy you at all,” she said. “I want only to make matters clear between us. I want to know what you expect of me, and I want you to know that I am not likely to change my nature merely because you want me to.”

A thumping noise diverted both of them, and they turned to see Jemmy Whiskers’ head sticking out from under the lid at one end of the basket. A moment later, the little cat emerged altogether and immediately sat down to groom itself.

With a wry smile, Sir Quinton said, “Now there’s a lad that knows how to look after what’s important. I shall take a lesson from him just to show you that I am not set upon always getting my way. Do you intend to stand against that wall all night, little wife?”

Glancing over her shoulder, Janet saw that she had nearly backed into the wall near a window embrasure. Outside it was nearly dark, but looking out, she saw that the view encompassed acres of upper-Teviotdale woodland. The Teviot joined Broadhaugh Water far below, and she could hear its merry chuckling.

“It is beautiful, is it not?” he said, moving to stand beside her. Pride and the love he felt for his home colored every word.

“Aye,” she said, “though I’ll see it better by daylight. What town is nearest?”

“The only real one for miles is Hawick,” he said. “’Tis where I bought your gown.” He put an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. “’Tis a soft gown, and gey lovely, but ’tis time to take it off, lass. I would look upon you without it.”

Rivers of heat washed through her, making it difficult to breathe. She did not know what to do with her hands, or what to say. Surely, she should say something intelligent, something wifely, but her imagination failed her. She had no experience upon which to draw. Her lips felt dry, and her breath rasped in her throat. She could feel her heartbeat. Indeed, she could hear it, like a dull thudding in her ears.

Sir Quinton’s palm cupped the side of her face. “I promise that you have no need to fear me, Jenny. I have never beaten a woman in my life.”

“It is not that,” she murmured.

“Then what?”

“I do not know what I am supposed to do.”

“You need do nothing yet. First, I shall act as your handmaiden. Just imagine me, if you can, in a maidservant’s cap and apron.”

The absurdity of the suggestion made her smile.

“That’s better. If I had been thinking clearly at the time, I would have asked Francis Tailor to reveal the fastenings on this gown. Where the devil are they?”

“I thought you were the one with experience, sir,” she said demurely.

“My experience is not so vast as to include all manner of buttons and laces, madam. Will you show me, or must I devise my own way into this dress?”

“No, don’t! You will tear it, and then I shall have nothing to wear.”

“Then show me.”

Reluctantly, she showed him Lady Gaudilands’ clever fastenings. He proved an apt student, and when he reached her corset, she stepped away from the window, unable to believe that no one could see them standing there. He chuckled at her modesty but took the opportunity to close the shutters against the night’s chill. Next he lit candles at the fire and set them in their holders; then he removed his doublet and shirt before returning his full attention to her.

“Next time I will show you how my clothing must be removed,” he said, slipping her gown from her shoulders. It fell, a velvet puddle at her feet.

Although she knew she was blushing, she felt more comfortable with him. She had feared that a husband might simply demand that she undress herself and let him do what needed to be done to get a child upon her, but clearly that would not be the case. He seemed to want her to enjoy their coupling.

His touch continued to stir new and exciting feelings in her body, fascinating and delighting her, and making her wonder what caused them. Could she stir similar feelings in him? Was it wanton to wonder such things?

Her corset, petticoat, and underpinnings came off next, and she shivered in her thin smock.

“Jump into bed, lass,” he said. “I’ll stir up the fire.”

A knock at the door startled her and sent her flying for the bed. He laughed when she snatched back the blue counterpane and dove beneath it.

Still chuckling, he said, “Shall I let them in?”

“No! Oh, pray, sir, do not!”

He was still chuckling when he went to open the door.

Wondering if she could pull the bed curtain closed from where she lay, she decided in favor of yanking the counterpane to her chin instead.

“I’ll take that,” Sir Quinton said at the doorway. “You can take yourself off to bed now, Tip. I won’t require anything more tonight.”

She heard a murmured response, and then her husband’s contagious chuckle. When he kicked the door shut and turned, he was holding a large, well-laden tray.

“Now here’s a dilemma,” he said, grinning. “Shall we satisfy the hunger in our stomachs first, or that of our lust?”

Her stomach growled in reply. “I believe I am famished, sir,” she said.

“Tip did not bring us anything as grand as what Margaret provided at Branxholme,” he said. “Just bread and meat, and I think that pot has soup in it.” He bent his head and sniffed. “Beef broth with bits of something floating in it, and mugs to drink it from, but they forgot to send a ladle.”

“We can dip it out with the mugs,” she said. “Put the pot near the fire to keep it warm, and we can have the soup later if we want it. All I want now is a slice of bread and beef. Did your Tip bring us aught else to drink besides the soup?”

“Aye, ale and wine both. Which would you like?”

“Wine, please.”

He poured some from the jug into a pewter goblet and handed it to her.

She sipped, feeling the warmth of it seep through her as she watched him dispose of the soup pot by putting it almost into the embers at the edge of the fire. Then he set the jug of wine within arm’s reach on a side table near the bed. She liked watching the play of muscles in his arms and back as he moved. He was a well-built man.

At last he carried the tray to the bed, and she shifted her legs so that he could set it on the counterpane, which was something she never would have allowed at Brackengill. What civilized person ate in bed? But she said not a word until he handed her a thick slab of bread with a warm slice of rare beef atop it. Then, with deep sincerity, she said, “Thank you.”

While she nibbled, trying to keep crumbs from falling into the bed, she watched him cut another slice of beef into strips. He popped these into his mouth, one at a time, chewing while he swabbed up beef drippings from the platter with a slice of bread as thick as the one he had given her. Plainly, he was hungry, too.

When she had finished her bread and beef, he took the tray away and set it on a chest near the fireplace. Snuffing the candles, he came back to bed. Already it was dark outside, but the fire cast a flickering orange-gold glow over the bedchamber, and when he climbed into bed, he left the curtains open.

“I want to see you,” he murmured, sliding under the coverlets beside her. “Take off your smock.”

Daringly, she said, “I thought you were to act the handmaiden, sir.”

“Does your maid take off your smock?”

“If I tell her that she must, she does.”

He chuckled again, pleasing her, for she had meant to make him laugh. She was coming to know him better, and that pleased her, too. When he reached for her smock, though, she found it awkward to keep changing position to let him take it off, and so she helped, sitting up while he pulled it off over her head. When she moved to lie back again, however, he stopped her with a hand on her upper arm.

“Don’t move. I want to feast my eyes. Jenny lass, you have beautiful breasts. I begin to think that I have won a great prize in you.” Bending his head, he kissed the soft rise of her left breast, making her gasp.

While her attention was focused on his moving lips, his right hand cupped her breast, startling her again, but when his thumb brushed across its nipple, she inhaled sharply, amazed by sensations stronger than any she had felt before. She wanted to touch him. Tentatively she moved her hand to stroke his bare shoulder, surprised at how warm it felt. Curious now, she stroked his arm, feeling its muscles tense beneath her fingers.

“Your hands are soft and warm,” he said. “Mine are not too cold, are they?”

“No.” The whispered word was barely audible.

“Ah, lassie, I think that I am going to enjoy marriage after all. Lie back now, and let me pleasure you.”

Inhaling deeply, hoping to calm her fluttering nerves, she obeyed.

“If foes but kenn’d the hand it bare,

They soon had fled for fear.”

Q
UIN MARVELED AT THE
softness of her skin. Her breasts were firm, high, and plump, her waist so tiny, yet her hips wide and womanly. She would bear children well, and he had a yearning to see those children. They would have sons—a dozen sons—and all strong, fine men of whom a father and mother could be proud. It was easy to imagine this bonny lass a mother of strong sons and beautiful daughters.

She lay naked beneath him, the glow from the firelight dancing on her skin. Her eyes were wide, and he knew that she remained wary of what lay ahead. It was a pity that she’d had no mother to prepare her for marriage, that she had not thought to ask Margaret, or that Margaret had not realized she needed teaching. At the same time, he was glad that he would teach her, that she would learn from no one else.

His body ached for her. The temptation to make her his at once was almost overwhelming, but he feared hurting her. He admired her pride, the way she held her head high and looked men in the eye. Most Englishwomen of his acquaintance behaved more submissively. They kept their eyes downcast, their words soft and gentle. They seemed obedient. They were not all alike, though, for people were different everywhere, and a man who behaved gently one day could be anything but gentle the next. Surely, it was the same with women.

Still and all, Scotswomen of his acquaintance seemed different from Englishwomen. Their tongues were sharper, and they seemed more likely to speak their minds. Shrewdly, he realized that he was thinking of women in his family, and he knew that Margaret Scott spoke more sharply to Buccleuch when they were amidst kinsmen than she did when others were about. Perhaps that was all it was.

Yet Janet Graham had spoken sharply to him from the first. Was it because she had seen him as a captive and thus an inferior? Surely her manner toward him would mend now that she was his wife. Perhaps, like Margaret, she would speak frankly now only when they were alone or with close kinsmen, and would behave with proper, dutiful submission when others were about.

Impulsively, he said, “You sometimes remind me of my mother.”

“Do I?” Her eyes seemed wider, larger than ever. “How so, sir?”

“When my father was still alive, she often spoke her mind to him. He told me that once when she thought there would not be enough food to last the household through the winter, she served his spurs to him on a platter.”

“Godamercy, she cannot have expected him to eat them!”

“Nay, she expected him to put them on and go a-raiding. For years, our meat was nearly all English bred. In those days, our wealth, like Buccleuch’s, lay not in gold so much as in the livestock we owned. That is a common state of affairs in the Scottish Borders, because men fear to plant or even cultivate their land. They believe the English have only to learn of a plowed field to raise an army of raiders.”

“Well, you have outwitted the English, sir, for you have taken one to wife, but if you think that I shall ever serve your spurs to you for supper, you are mistaken. As I said before, your raiding days must stop. Surely, if both King James and Queen Elizabeth want peace, and if the two countries will become one when Elizabeth dies, you can begin to cultivate crops without fearing destruction.”

“Can I, lass? Do you think your brother means to leave me in peace?”

She frowned.

“Your silence is answer enough,” he said. “Sir Hugh will not forgive me for marrying you, or you for marrying me.”

“Perhaps he will not.”

Her sad tone surprised him. “I thought you did not like him,” he said.

“Whatever gave you such a notion? Hugh is my brother, my only close kin, and I love him. We do not always agree, certainly, but we are siblings, sir, and it is human nature for siblings to disagree. I shall miss him fiercely.”

“Then we must see if we can mend matters sufficiently to put you on speaking terms again,” he said with a smile. “We will think about that tomorrow.”

She smiled. “Tomorrow?”

“Aye, because now I want to think only about making you mine.”

“You keep making me sound like property,” she complained.

“Aye, well, perhaps it is so. How else would you describe a man’s wife?”

“She is more important than his cows, I hope!”

Smiling, he touched a finger to the tip of one breast, making her gasp again. Wanting to demonstrate how easily he could stir her, he bent his head and took the nipple in his mouth.

She seemed to have stopped breathing.

He moved one hand, palm down, over her belly and lower to touch the soft curls at the juncture of her thighs. Tickling first the curls and then the opening they concealed, he inserted a finger and felt her stiffen, then relax when her body began to respond to his caresses.

She was ready for him, but he teased her a little more, until he heard her moan with pleasure. Then, shifting so that he could touch his lips to hers, he kissed her gently, then more possessively, exploring her mouth with his tongue while his fingers remained busy below. She stirred, stretched, and moaned more. Her hands clutched him, uncertainly at first and then with more confidence.

When at last he believed that she was aching for him almost as fiercely as he ached for her; he took her swiftly, knowing there was little he could do to protect her from the pain of that first time. He was sorry when she cried out but stifled the sound quickly with more kisses while he reached his own climax. Then, sated, he relaxed and held her close. Kissing her gently, he murmured, “It will not always hurt, lassie, I promise. Next time will be more pleasant for you.”