Amanda Scott (24 page)

“Faith, but you are too large,” she exclaimed against his lips. “Take care!”

“Don’t be foolish,” he said gently, though she could hear amusement in his voice. “’Tis naught we have not done before.”

“But—” The protest ended in a gasp as his mouth claimed hers again and he plunged into her, filling her as she had not known that one body could fill another. The ache was nearly unbearable, making her want to cry, and she felt tears trickling down her cheeks.

“Oh, please, sir,” she begged, barely able to get out the words when at last his mouth released hers.

Hearing her moans and her plea, Hector felt a surge of pleasure, believing that her passion matched his own. The way she had squirmed under his soapy hands earlier was as nothing to her writhing now, and his body seemed to have gone mad with the passion she stirred in him. As if it had taken on a mind of its own, it plunged into her harder and harder until it spent itself at last, and with a gasp of release, he collapsed atop her, breathing hard.

“Sorry, lass,” he murmured as he eased some of his weight off her. “That was magnificent! Left me limp as a rope though, so I hope I’ve not suffocated you.”

She did not reply, and at last, he raised himself up and peered carefully into her face, astonished to see tearstains. “Cristina? Sakes, did I hurt you, lass?”

“I think so,” she said, sounding a little breathless still. “I did not know, you see, did not imagine what you were doing. I mean I do know about such things, but obviously not as much as I should.”

Frowning now, he eased out of her and rolled aside, pushing back the coverlet as he did.

“Sakes,” he exclaimed, staring at the crimson stains on her lower body and his own in stunned amazement, “you were still a maiden!”

“Aye, of course,” she said.

“But you said we had lain together as man and wife!”

Eyes widening with evident bewilderment, she said, “We did.”

“Not if you are still a maiden, we didn’t,” he retorted. “You lied to me!”

“I don’t lie,” she said. “We were married, sir. How could we lie together
except
as man and wife?”

The ache between her legs was easing, but his angry expression caused a greater ache in her heart. The evening had been going so well. She had been enjoying herself more than at any other time since leaving Chalamine for Lochbuie. Indeed, she could not remember a more pleasant occasion, right up to the moment he had unexpectedly plunged into her. She realized now that she ought to have expected some such thing, for she knew how animals mated and had suspected that humans did something similar. But that was one of the many things her mother had failed to explain before her death, and Lady Euphemia, being a maiden herself, had never thought to explain it either, if she knew.

It had not occurred to her that the phrase “lying together as husband and wife” might mean more than a couple’s sleeping in the same bed after they married. That it did mean more was certainly clear now.

“I didn’t know,” she said as he sat up and swung his legs to the side of the bed. “Does it matter so much?”

“Aye, well, it matters enough,” he said, his voice a near growl that sent a new sort of shiver up her spine. “Had I known when I woke up that fatal morning, I could simply have handed you back to your father and demanded an annulment on the spot. Since we had not yet consummated our marriage, I should easily have acquired one, and you need never have come to Lochbuie.”

His anger seemed to cool as he spoke, and she was glad. In truth, she was also glad that she had not known the details of consummation before that night, especially if knowing would have kept her from coming to Lochbuie. “I’m sorry I’ve angered you,” she said. “I just didn’t know. No one ever told me.”

“I’d like to believe you,” he said, adding with a sigh, “Sakes, lass, I do believe you, for other than your part in our wedding in submission to your father’s will, you have never given me cause to believe you have lied to me or that you would. Still, I must think on this. I cannot take you with me tomorrow, but I’d meant—”

“Tomorrow?”

“Aye,” he said. “The message I received after supper came from Duart, from my father—a command to present myself at once. That he’s unwilling to wait even four days until I go to talk with Lachlan before we go on to Ardtornish leads me to believe that he has heard rumors from Lochbuie that displease him.”

“About wanting an annulment?”

“I don’t know that. It could as well be the assault on your sisters, for a belief that I had failed to protect my guests would certainly displease him. I’ll know what it is only when I speak with him, but if it has thrown him into a temper, I’m guessing I’ll not enjoy the conversation. I was thinking I might take you with me in the hope that your presence might soothe him. Now, however—”

“Faith, sir, I could not be ready to go tomorrow in any event,” she said. “I still have things I must do to prepare for the court at Ardtornish, and what of my sisters? My aunt? And what of the guests you invited here to Finlaggan?”

“None of that matters now,” he said grimly. “No guest will trouble you if I am not here, and I mean to go to Duart alone. As for Ardtornish, I think it will be easier if I go there alone, too. If rumors are flying about, as they seem to be, I’d as lief we not provide grist for new ones. Nor will I want to leave you alone there if Lachlan has other duties for me. Someone has to lead the flotilla that goes to fetch the Steward. I think Lachlan will go, but he may send me.”

“Do you mean to leave me here then, and not let me take part at all?”

“Aye, at least until I decide what course I mean to take—about us.”

Disappointment, and fear of what his course would likely be, brought tears to her eyes, but she blinked them away, trying to think. He had apparently been willing to forgive her for her part in the horrid wedding, and even to share his bed. Then, upon discovering that she was still a maiden, he had grown angry again, had apparently felt betrayed all over again. And, fair or not, it was all her fault, again.

So why did she feel so angry, and why did his decision to leave her at Lochbuie seem so unfair? Why did she want to rail at him and call him names, to fly into a rage as loud and violent as any Mariota had ever created?

Her fingers curled when he stood up. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I must think.”

“Then think in here, my lord. It is your bed, after all, not mine.” Gathering her dignity, she slipped past him out of the bed, picked up her robe from the stool over which he had cast it, donned it hastily, and left the room.

She paused on the stone landing, hoping he would come after her. When he did not, she pushed open her bedchamber door. By the time she had shut it behind her, tears flowed freely down her cheeks, but she recalled that her thighs were bloody, and she did not want Brona to find her so in the morning.

By the time she had cleaned herself and climbed into bed, she had regained most of her composure, but her thoughts still refused to order themselves. Although she told herself she was only disappointed that he would not take her to Ardtornish to meet Robert the Steward and enjoy the Shrove Tuesday festivities, she knew that the deeper sadness she felt derived from more than that.

She had begun to hope that he would not send her back to her father.

Having raised her to the greatest height of pleasure and delight that she had ever known, he had dropped her from that height to crash on the rocks of her own creation. Just as she had begun to believe he might decide to keep her as his wife, Fate had intervened again to smash her hopes to splinters.

“Will I never learn?” she muttered. “I’d be wiser not to care at all about anyone, because the people I love most always seem to slip away just as I realize how much they matter to me.”

It was too late where Hector was concerned though. Despite the short time they had been married, she had moved beyond thinking of him as merely a kind and charming man. She knew now that he could be as cruel as his nickname suggested—thoughtless, irritable, and impatient—but none of that mattered, because she was swiftly coming to suspect that she had fallen in love with the wretched man.

Hector had watched with an ache in his throat as Cristina left his room. He wanted to leap after her, to stand between her and the door and forbid her to leave. But believing the urge stemmed from no more than childish anger and frustration, he had successfully resisted it.

He told himself that she had now twice betrayed him, that he had no sooner forgiven her for the first time than she had betrayed him again. Nay, it was worse, because he had forgiven her for the one without even knowing about the other.

How could anyone blame him for his fury? Kirk law was clear enough on the subject. If a couple failed to consummate their marriage, annulment was no more than a formality. If consummated, it became more difficult, requiring powerful connections and considerable money. Had he known himself eligible to apply on the strongest grounds, he would have done so at once. He might have had to go outside the Isles, since the Green Abbot was the only cleric within them wielding sufficient power to grant a simple annulment, but Clan Gillean had powerful friends in Stirling and Edinburgh, and in Paris if need be.

However, in the case of a consummated marriage, only the Pope could grant an annulment, and their marriage was certainly a consummated one now.

The twin voice in the back of his head muttered that he was no worse off than he had been, since he now stood in exactly the same situation as he had before, but he did not want to hear it. He did not feel as if he were no worse off.

The twin voice murmured again, reminding him that had all gone as he believed it should have, he would now be married to Mariota.

Oddly, that thought steadied him as none before it had.

Instinct and common sense told him that marriage to Mariota would not have been what he had dreamed it would be. Recalling that he had thought he would enjoy gazing on her beauty for the rest of his life, he called himself a brainless fool. The lass never had a thought in her head that did not concern herself. She was childish, disobedient, and annoying in her chatter. But knowing he was well out of that marriage did not reconcile him to the one Macleod had forced upon him.

As he got back into bed, knowing he must sleep if he was to hold his own against Ian Dubh, he decided that one thing was certain. For once in his life, he was going to make his own decisions and follow his own course. He was not going to do what Lachlan would do. Nor was he merely going to bow to his father’s decree if, as he suspected, Ian Dubh meant to dip an oar into his personal affairs. His marriage was a sham, but it was
his
marriage, and only he would decide what to do about it.

Accordingly, the next morning, after a nearly sleepless night in a bed that seemed strangely uncomfortable, he left Lochbuie before sunrise without a word of farewell to anyone other than his steward, boarded his lead longboat, shorn overnight of its barnacles and manned by thirty oarsmen, and set out for Duart. He told himself that leaving in such a way was a kindness to Cristina, because she could tell her sisters and her aunt whatever she thought it best to tell them.

His sense of having managed things as well as possible increased with the sun’s appearance in a cloudless sky of cerulean blue. The tide was coming in, giving the oarsmen all the aid they needed for a speedy journey, and well before midday they were gliding oars up to beach on the shingle below Duart Castle.

Noting that his twin’s favorite longboat was not at its usual mooring in the little harbor, Hector felt the first hint of unease. He had counted on Lachlan’s support in whatever confrontation he faced with Ian Dubh.

Leaving his captain to see to the housing of the men with the castle steward, and his manservant to see his personal effects conveyed to the chamber he occupied during his visits, Hector strode off ahead of the others, climbing the hill to the castle entrance on the north side of the curtain wall.

The great timber door opened as he approached, and his brother’s porter welcomed him, adding, “Himself be waiting for ye, sir.”

“In the hall?”

“Nay, sir, in my lord’s chamber.”

Duart boasted a small inner chamber that his twin used as a place of business, where he met his informants and conferred with friends and allies of MacDonald of the Isles. Since MacDonald had doubtless already removed from Finlaggan to Ardtornish, Hector suspected that Lachlan had gone there as well, but since Hector had told him he would stop at Duart, he found it odd that even Mairi was absent. Had she been there, she would have come seeking him the moment the first guardsman on the ramparts spied his banner and shouted the news, but he saw no sign of her as he made his way through the great hall to the inner chamber.

He entered without ceremony to find Ian Dubh at Lachlan’s great table, a pile of documents and other such paraphernalia spread before him. He was writing on a sheet of foolscap, but he looked up when Hector entered.

“You made better time than I anticipated,” he said.

“Your message indicated that I’d be unwise to tarry.”

“Indeed, but wisdom does not seem to be your guiding precept these days, so perhaps it is not odd that I did not expect you to come with all speed.”

“Where is Lachlan?”

“Ardtornish, or mayhap elsewhere,” Ian Dubh said. “Boats for his flotilla have been arriving daily in Loch Aline, and that business of the petrel oil has grown unseemly again. His grace sent here to ask him to look into it, because apparently a few mischief-makers have begun spreading the trouble to other isles.”

“Mischief-makers?”

“Aye, but Lachlan will attend to them, and to the boats, so they need not trouble us now. I thought we should have a private talk about your activities.”

“Where is Mairi?”

“I asked her to let me speak to you alone. She is in her parlor and will doubtless be overjoyed to see you when you present yourself to her later.”

The atmosphere in the room chilled as Hector met his father’s stern gaze, and Ian Dubh let the silence lengthen before he said crisply, “You will abandon this notion of an annulment at once. I won’t have scandal, and since you got yourself into this marriage, you will make the most of it or suffer my extreme displeasure.”