Judith E French (11 page)

She sucked on her top lip. It felt numb. Her head was definitely spinning, but Ross was very close, and she felt safe. “I’m not,” she protested. “I’m happy . . . happy because Barbara has . . .” She took a deep breath, raised on tiptoe, and slipped her arms around his neck. “I think I’m in love with you,” she said.

“Are ye now?” He chuckled as he caught her up in his arms and climbed the remainder of the staircase. “Did ye drain the keg, sweeting?”

She shook her head. It was hard to talk when her lips were numb and Ross smelled so good. She laid her head against his chest. “You’re nice to me,” she admitted. “I don’ t want you to go away—ever.” She sighed heavily. “I want you to stay with me and be my hus-husband.”

He made a gruff sound deep in his throat. “Where are ye sleeping, hinney?”

“Greer. Greer’s room. I’m sleeping in Greer’s chamber, and Greer’s sleeping in . . . I don’t know where Greer’s sleeping, Ross. Am I supposed to remember?”

Ross carried her easily up another twisting flight of ever-narrowing steps to the chamber at the top of the tower and shouldered open the low door. The only light in the room came from an arrow slit in the massive stone walls. Anne blinked to accustom her eyes to the semidarkness and smiled as he lowered her onto a low, sheepskin-draped bed. She locked her hands behind his neck and refused to let go. “I mean it,” she said. “I do want you for my husband.”

Ross kissed her cheek. “That isn’t part of our bargain, sweeting,” he answered. He loosened her arms from his neck and sat on the bed beside her. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but I’ve no need for a wife . . . at least not a wife like you.”

“Hmmpt.” She pouted and brushed his mouth with her finger. “I thought you liked me.”

“Aye, but I do.” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “I find ye the loveliest lass I’ve seen in all of Britain. It’s just that we come from different worlds, love. Ye know nothing of mine, and what I know of yours, I’ve wee use for.”

She pushed herself up on her elbows and kissed him. For a second, she felt him hesitate, then his mouth melted against hers, and he pressed her back against the bed. Anne’s lips parted, and she sucked gently against his tongue. Ross groaned, and his kiss deepened.

“You see,” she murmured. “I like you very well indeed.” She rubbed her cheek against his and threaded her fingers through his hair. “All of you is very . . . very . . . nice.”

He chuckled and nuzzled her throat. “And what do ye like best about me?”

“I like your thighs—I mean your eyes.” She giggled. “You have eyes like a fallen angel.” His hand had dropped to the bodice of her gown. She could feel the heat of his palm through the layers of clothing, and she squirmed up a little so that his palm cupped her breast. She looked up into the dark, ebony pools of his eyes, and suddenly it was hard to breathe.

Moonlight spilling through the arrow slit reflected off the planes of Ross’s high cheekbones and accentuated the strong line of his chin. He’s beautiful, she thought, the most beautiful man I’ve ever known. A lock of his hair fell forward, and she caught it between her teeth and tugged gently.

“Dinna begin what ye canna finish,” he said.

“Don’t go,” she begged. “I want you here with me . . . I want you . . .” She inhaled with a ragged breath. Ross’s nearness was as heady as the wine she had drunk at supper. She knew she was asking him for what no lady should ever ask—but it didn’t matter. A hunger deep within her cried to be filled. Just once, she thought, just once, I want to know what it’s like to be loved by a man like this.

“Hinney.”

She strained against him, offering her mouth to be kissed, her body to be caressed. “Please . . .” she whispered. “Stay with me.” She covered his hand with hers and pressed his palm harder against her aching breast. “Kiss me . . . here . . .”

“Aye . . . hinney.” His warm mouth was moist against her throat as he lifted her against him to unlace the back of her gown and then her stays. He kissed her bare shoulder, and Anne felt the embrace of cool night air against her skin when he pulled her linen chemise over her head.

“My bonny, wee Anne,” he rasped as he laid her back against the sheepskins. “You’re beautiful.” He fumbled with the strings of her old-fashioned barrel pad, then broke them when they knotted, and tossed the garment away.

Joy spiraled down to coil in the pit of Anne’s belly. He was lying—she knew he was lying—but she didn’t care. The words were so sweet to her ears. Hesitantly, she caught his head between her hands and pulled him down to her naked breasts.

“Anne,” he whispered.

Her senses reeled as she savored the sensations of his face pressed so intimately against her. His hair was a cascade of raw silk, tickling, caressing . . . His breath was warm as his lips parted and his wet tongue flicked out to taste her skin. She moaned softly and arched against him, stroking the rippling muscles of his neck.

“Woman, ye would tempt the devil.”

His fingers cupped her breast, and she sighed with pleasure, a sigh that became a startled “Ohhh” when Ross’s mouth covered the bud of her left breast and he suckled the nipple until it became a hard, erect peak.

She dug her fingernails into his bare shoulder where the folds of his
breacan-feile
had fallen away and buried her face in his hair. The pulsing in her loins had become a live flame, and she forgot who she was and who he was. Nothing mattered but the throbbing pleasure, the bittersweet anguish of wanting him.

She drew in a deep, shuddering breath as he teased her right breast with the nub of a callused thumb and caressed her exposed midriff with his lean fingers. Her head spun, and the room fell away. She was floating on a moonbeam, and the heat of her fever brought whispered words of love to her tongue. “Ross . . . Ross . . .”

Her throat constricted as his fingers moved with tantalizing slowness down over her flat stomach to stroke the curls below. He nuzzled lower, letting his tongue trail a line of searing kisses down to her navel and then still lower. She whimpered as his fingers delved ever so lightly into the moistness between her thighs.

“Oh!” Desire flooded her veins, turning her bones to water.

“Darling,” he whispered thickly. The sound of his voice made her shiver with joy. He ran a hand down her stockinged leg and raised her knee to nibble at the spot where her garter was tied.

Slowly, he rolled her stocking down, kissing each inch of her leg in turn, until his hot breath tickled her instep.

“What are you doing?” she began. “No man . . .” But then he’d begun on the other stocking, and his free hand was doing delicious things to her inner thigh. This time, he didn’t stop when he reached the spot where her garter had been. His flicking tongue teased the place where his fingers had traced invisible circles of excitement.

“I want to taste you,” he whispered. “Let me taste you, sweeting . . . all of you.” He raised his head and stared at her with luminous eyes. Her protests died on her lips, and, heart pounding, she fell back against the pillow.

“Sweet Anne . . .”

Tremors of pleasure fanned the flames of her passion as Ross parted her legs and pressed hot, wet kisses against her woman’s mound. “No,” she protested. “I . . . can’t . . . you can’t . . .” But the fire in her blood burned back the last of her restraint, and she opened to him like a flower to the rain.

She moaned as she felt the seeking caress of his hard, hot tongue. He caught her hips in his hands and raised her up off the bed. His searing tongue flicked and tantalized until she cried out for release, and when he plunged deep within her wet folds, she felt her body convulse and shatter into a thousand shards of crystal teardrops. Each teardrop pulsed with joy as it tumbled through a rainbow of color and sound. And when the pieces that had once been Anne fell to earth, Ross was there to catch them and rock them against his chest until they melted once more into a living, breathing woman.

She snuggled against him, unable to speak, unwilling to break the spell of ecstasy. I love you, she cried silently. I love you.

He held her without speaking. His lips brushed the corners of her mouth and her eyelids with butterfly-soft kisses, and when he pressed his mouth to hers it was with great tenderness. Finally, after what seemed to Anne like hours, he laid her down and covered her with warm sheepskins.

“Stay with me,” she murmured sleepily.

“Nay, lass. I fear ’tis nay safe.”

“But you . . . you . . .” She knew what she wanted to say, but her lips wouldn’t form the words correctly. She was so sleepy and it seemed too much effort to open her eyes. “What if I have . . . a baby? Will you still go away?”

He chuckled. “From tonight?”

“It could happen.” She tried to raise her head from the pillow, but the room was spinning. “Why . . . why not? We did . . . we did do it . . . didn’t we?”

He laughed again and leaned over her to kiss her forehead. “Good night, my innocent.”

“I don’t . . .” She waited for him to explain, to say something more. “I was . . . was wrong,” she admitted. “I don’t care if you did steal my earrings. I want you to be my . . . be my . . . Ross, are you listening to me?” But when she opened her eyes, she was alone in the tower chamber, and only the cold moonlight shining on her discarded garter told her that she’d not dreamed it all.

S
unlight touched Anne’s face. She yawned and stretched, then froze as she remembered some of what had happened the night before. A slow smile began at the corners of her mouth and spread across her face.

Naked, she rose from bed and went to the arrow slit in the tower wall. She had to stand on tiptoe to peer out at the ground far below.

With tentative fingers, she stroked the surface of the heavy blocks of stone. The window was high and deep, wider at the inside of the room, and narrow on the outside so that an archer might shoot out at enemies with the least amount of danger to himself.

The gray stone windowsill had warmed where the sun’s rays streamed across it. My life is like this window, Anne mused, but opposite. All that I knew was narrow and confined, but my window to the world has opened outward. Before her planned wedding to Murrane, she had watched life through a narrow slit in thick stone walls. Now the passageway had opened so that if she tried hard enough, she could slip through to the sunlight outside.

Ignoring the cold morning air on her bare skin, she scrambled up to kneel on the rough stone and looked out. At the far end of the loch, hills rose out of the water to vanish in mist, an ethereal blanket that covered much of the lake and framed the countryside in soft walls of velvet gray. Anne inhaled deeply of the fresh air, and her eyes twinkled as she smelled heather and the pleasant damp scent of water washing against the lake grass and the rocks at the foot of the tower.

“Dinna jump.”

She turned toward his teasing voice and smiled when she saw him standing in the doorway, and Ross thought the sight of her in the sunlight, garbed in nothing but her soft brown hair falling around her shoulders, was the bonniest thing he’d ever seen.

“Ross,” she murmured, her voice husky with invitation.

Atch, so that was the way of it, was it? He smiled back at her, and she stretched and ran her fingers through her hair. His heart skipped a beat, and he felt the warmth grow in his loins. “Wee Anne . . .” he murmured. There was more of woman and less of girl about her this day than he had seen before. “I wanted to see ye before ye went down to the others . . . to be certain ye understood about . . .”

She held out her hands to him, and he crossed the room and took her in his arms. She fit like an arrow fits the bow—like the bark of a canoe fit the frame, and she smelled of soap, and rose petals, and woman.

Anne raised her heart-shaped face to be kissed, and he knew he was lost. The hunter in him tensed to flee, but the man brought his mouth down to hers and drank of her sweet offering. “Anne.”

He caught her around the waist and lifted her up, letting his eyes take in the curves of high, firm breasts, creamy thighs and the soft brown curls between them. His throat constricted as he brushed the nub of one rose-tinted breast with his lips and brought her close to him.

Anne wrapped her bare legs around his waist and smothered his face with kisses. She tangled her fingers in his hair and whispered his name as no woman had ever said it before.

The tight aching beneath his kilt intensified as he remembered the wet woman-taste of her and the sound of her cries of pleasure in the night. “Anne,” he growled. And then he was pushing her back against the heaped sheepskins on the bed and crushing her mouth with his.

The texture of her tongue as it twined and thrust against his, the warm honey taste of her mouth, the satin smoothness of her bare skin against his ignited a fire that only she could quench. She bucked and moaned beneath him, scratching his skin with her nails. Her head was thrown back, with her golden-brown hair tumbled around her shoulders; her gray-green eyes were heavy with passion.

His fingers splayed across the curve of her hipbone, then slid lower to gauge her readiness to accept him. He murmured her name again, fighting his raging desire to possess her completely, desperately holding back to give her time to catch up.

She arched her hips against him and lifted her love-swollen breast to be kissed and sucked. “Love me,” she cried urgently. “I want you.”

She shuddered with arousal as he used his fingers to ease the pathway. She was so small—so tight. The thought drove him mad with longing. He could wait no longer. Cushioning his weight on his arms, he plunged into that sweet, hot, mystery.

Anne’s eyes widened, and she bit her lip against the pain. He felt the tear of tender flesh, and then he was in. Slowly he withdrew, kissing her and fondling her breasts to excite her again. The pulsating urgency of his own need boiled within him, and he thrust in deeply.

Tears filled her eyes, but the pain vanished to be replaced with a sparkling wonder. She began to move again, under him, with him . . . hesitantly, instinctively. Then, too soon, he reached the apex of his own rapture, and his desire exploded in a firestorm of blinding ecstasy.

He rolled away and pulled her against him as his breath came in great shuddering gulps. “That, hinney,” he gasped, when he could speak again, “is the stuff of making bairns . . . nay what we were about last night.”

She cuddled against him, making a soft whimpering sound deep in her throat.

“Did I hurt ye? It has to be that way for a woman the first time. But it will never be that way again.”

She hid her face in his chest. “I thought . . . I thought last night . . . After what we . . . what you . . .”

“Nay, sweeting, that was but love play. This is the real work.” He chuckled and lifted a damp tendril of her wheat-colored hair. “I fear we’ve made an end to your maidenhood.”

She hid her face again. “I didn’t know it would be so nice,” she whispered. “No wonder Mavis has made it her life’s work.”

“’Twill be better next time, hinney.”

She caught his hand and nibbled the tip of his index finger. To his surprise, he felt a wave of new desire flood his veins.

“Did I please you?” she asked quietly.

Please me? he thought. How to tell her that his joy went beyond the physical pleasure she had given him? What words would convey to her how he really felt? What could he say that would make her understand how deeply his feelings for her ran? He was not a man to whom such words came easily.

“Did I?” Anne repeated.

“Aye, but it shames me that I couldna do as much for you.” Her tongue darted the length of his thumb, and he shivered with pleasure.

“When can we try it again?”

He laughed. “With a lass, it is always
now
, but with a man, ye maun have a wee bit of patience.” He cupped her small, rounded buttocks possessively. Anne was a beautiful, desirable woman . . . but she was more than that. The word
love
surfaced in his mind, and he pushed it away to answer lightly, “If you keep pestering me like this, ’twill be sooner than usual.”

She giggled, a warm, soft sound that caused a bubble of happiness to form in his chest. “We are truly man and wife now, are we not?”

“Aye, lassie, that we be.” He’d answered what she wanted to hear . . . but was it a lie? Was she truly his wife now? Had their coming together starting with his fool’s mistake in stealing the wrong woman—been part of his fate? The Indians believed that a man’s future was written in the stars on the day he was born, and that a man was never whole until he found the woman who was meant for him. His Scottish heritage scoffed at such superstitious Indian nonsense, but his Delaware blood whispered that it was so, that this was the woman he’d searched half a lifetime for and crossed an ocean to find.

“Do you remember what I said to you last night?” Anne asked. Her gray eyes were large and luminous. Her smile twisted his guts and made him want to promise things he knew he’d regret.

“The part about my being wonderful, or the part about you liking my thighs best?”

She drew small circles on his chest with her finger. “Not that,” she protested. “The part where I said I wanted you for my husband . . . my true husband.”

Ross sat up. Suddenly the room that had been so cool had become stifling. The stone walls of the tower seemed to press in around him until he found it hard to breathe. He wished he could answer her in his mother’s tongue—the English words would sound harsh. He’d cut off his right arm to keep from hurting Anne, but it would be crueler still to let her believe something that could never be. “I’m honored, hinney,” he replied gruffly, “but my life isn’t here—it’s in America. All of this . . .” He motioned. “I’ve no use for it.”

“Not this godforsaken castle in Scotland, but England. I’ve money, Ross, more money than you know. If you stay with me, you can have whatever you want.”

He sighed heavily and rose from the bed. “Aye, the money for my passage home.” He retrieved his plaid and wrapped it around him. “Did your mother bring the amount ye asked for with her?”

Anne’s hopeful expression faded. “I don’t know. She’s greedy—she and my stepfather would like to consider all that’s mine as theirs. Barbara won’t give up gold easily.” She drew a sheepskin over her bare breasts. “She’s a hard woman, Ross. You’re one of the few who have ever stood up to her.” She swallowed. “Can’t we fight her together? Can’t we try to make our marriage work?” She moistened her lips with her tongue. “Don’t you owe me that much?”

He turned away from her, unable to look into that small, hurt face as pain knifed through him. “Anne,” he began, “ye knew from the start that ours would be a marriage in name only.” He was a hunter who loved the excitement of the hunt—but he’d never taken joy in the kill. He’d brought down animals, and men when he had to, but it came hard to him. And when he had to, he made the kill quick and merciful. Better to hurt Anne’s pride a little now than to ruin her life by dragging her into a world she’d never accept.

“I didn’t change the rules,” she cried. “You did.”

He whirled on her. “Nay, lass. If the bargain was broken, we broke it together—each with our eyes wide open.”

“I don’t want an annulment, at least not now . . . not yet. We could try, Ross.”

He shook his head. “Nay. In this I will not weaken. My father waits for me in the Colonies. Even though I’ve failed him, I’ll not leave him to wait in vain. I’ll go home and tell him so.” He shrugged. “I care for you, hinney, more than I realized, but I dinna fit the coat of the man ye want. Have your annulment or not, as ye please, but I sail on the first possible ship.”

“And what happened here . . .” Tears rolled down her pale cheeks, and each tear was a steel-tipped arrow through his flesh. “It means nothing?”

Did she believe that—that it was only lust between them? Her angry words cut deep, and he struck back. “We both wanted it, hinney. We both took enjoyment from it. Can’t ye leave it at that?”

“Damn you!” she shouted at him. “Damn you to hell, Ross Campbell!”

He turned and strode from the tower room with her angry words flying around him. His mouth hardened as he reached the flight of stairs. It was time he left this hunting ground. It was not his place, and he was ill at ease here. He’d go back where he belonged, where the copper-skinned girls moved like deer through the autumn woods, where he knew his own mind.

For a few seconds, he thought of Anne, of showing her the forest that ran west forever, of paddling down a rocky stream with her in twilight, of making love to her beside a crackling campfire with only the stars for a canopy. He shook his head. “Nay, not the Lady Anne,” he murmured. Anne was made for silks and satin, for strings of pearls and royal masquerades. Anne was English through and through, and he was . . . He laughed. What was he? Not Scot, and not Indian . . . he was something else. And whatever he was, there was no room in his life for a woman like Anne.

He knew in his mind that he’d made the right decision. The question was, would his heart? Or would he spend the rest of his life wishing he’d kept Anne by him—no matter the cost.

 

Two hours later, Anne—properly dressed with Greer’s assistance—descended to the great hall in search of her mother. Ross had already ridden out on his stallion; Greer had informed her mistress of that fact as she brushed Anne’s hair and braided it into matronly loops. She’d also whispered the news that the young English gentleman had wasted no time in making Mavis’s acquaintance.

Anne paused at the foot of the stairs; the great hall was empty except for two people. Mavis and Roger were seated next to each other at the far end of the high table. Anne nodded a greeting to Roger and ignored Mavis. The housekeeper was giggling and popping wine-soaked bread and cold venison into Roger’s mouth. There would be time enough for Anne to remind Mavis of her proper duties in the castle when Roger had departed—now Anne had more important matters to attend to.

“Barbara’s in a foul mood this morning,” Roger called. “She went out. I think she may be looking for your husband.”

“No doubt,” Anne replied. Her eyes scanned the room as she walked. There were no dogs in evidence, and someone had cleaned away the spilled ale and dirty dishes from the night before. Something I taught them must have sunk in, she thought. Head high, she crossed the immense room and proceeded through the arch toward the outer bailey.

Her anger at Ross had receded, and she had no regrets for what had happened between them in the castle tower. Thoughts of their intimacy brought heat to her cheeks and a slow, curving smile to her lips. She sighed. Ross’s lovemaking had been marvelous. She wondered if he had left her with child.

I’d like a child, she thought. If I had a child, I’d never be lonely again.

She stopped in the cool shadows of the thick stone arch and fingered her golden amulet. Ross Campbell was exasperating, but he was the best thing that had ever happened to her! She’d be damned to hell if she’d give up on him without a fight.

It had been a mistake to shower him with calf-eyed declarations of love. A twinge of uneasiness plagued her composure. She’d known all along that what Ross cared for was her fortune. Why did she persist in expecting more?