Plaid to the Bone (6 page)

Her vision blurred with unshed tears. They trembled on her lower lashes but didn’t fall until Grizel said her name. The old woman scurried over and put her bony arms around her.

“Oh, my lamb, what has the wicked man said to make ye weep?”

She wished her maid could read so she wouldn’t have to recount the way Adam’s words took this already princely bridal gift and made it even more dear.

“It’s . . . I canna say, Grizel. Dinna make me, but . . . ’tis a far more lovely collection of words than I can bear.”

Grizel’s lips curled into a smile. “Oh, my lady, I’m so happy for ye.”

Cait put her head on Grizel’s shoulder and wept, sure the old woman thought they were tears of joy.

Instead they were tears of bitter realization. Her father and Morgan MacRath had lied to her. Adam Cameron was not a monster. He wasn’t a tyrant. He wasn’t cruel.

He was a man she might have learned to love.

Adam was no judge of weddings, but he allowed that his was suitably joyful. His people stood shoulder to shoulder, filling the small kirk and craning their necks for the pleasure of seeing their laird take a wife. A trio of bagpipes played a spritely tune as his bride processed down the aisle. Even the priest seemed jubilant, tapping his toe under his cassock in time with the echoing melody.

He only wished Cait had met his eyes more than once or twice while the rite was intoned over them. When he took her hand, her fingers trembled, chilly as icicles. He enclosed her hand between both of his, but no matter how long the priest warbled on, Adam couldn’t seem to warm her.

As they knelt side by side, he snatched a glance down at her. His mother’s necklace rested on the smooth curve of her breasts.

“The pearls suit ye,” he leaned down to whisper when the priest turned his back to them for a bit.

Her lips twitched in a half smile. “No’ bad for grains of sand, aye?”

But then their fleeting moment of connection vanished in the ritual and droning sacrament that would unite the two of them into one. Strange that a few whispered confidences over his bridal gift felt more intimate and true than the recitation of their vows.

During the wedding feast, his bride scarcely ate a bite and spoke little. Adam hoped she was merely suffering from maidenly nerves over the coming night. If that was all that troubled her, he’d settle her fears easily enough. Cait was passionate once roused. He was confident they’d deal well together.

But Adam couldn’t focus on her when his people were intent on raising toast after toast to them. He could have kicked his own arse up between his shoulders when he didn’t notice that old Grizel and the two chambermaids, Jane and Janet, had spirited her away between one boisterous drinking game and the next.

It wouldn’t do to get foxed on his wedding night. He waited for only two more rounds of drinks, then left to the accompaniment of shouts and good-natured jokes. Once he quit the Great Hall, he took the stone stairs to the upper story two at a time.

Adam hadn’t been seeking a wife, but he was surprised to discover he was more than ready to have one. His father had always claimed Adam’s mother was the best part of him.

After she died when Adam was a boy, he was convinced his father was right. Without her gentle influence, the laird of Bonniebroch grew increasingly hard-fisted and hard-hearted. Always a strong leader, his father stopped directing his efforts against those who might threaten his people and turned
on
his people instead. He controlled every aspect of their lives and enforced his will without pity.

Adam hoped he wasn’t likely to run roughshod over his people like his father had. But just in case his authority grew into a license for cruelty, a woman like Cait, one who had the courage to stand up to a mob, should provide more than enough of a conscience to keep him even-keeled.

Of course, at the moment, he was thinking about other attributes besides her character. Memories of silken limbs and soft skin made him quicken his pace down the corridor.

When he flung open the door to his own chamber, the servants were still fussing around his bed. Cait was sitting in the middle of it while her women brushed out her hair, giggling and whispering words of advice. The covers were tucked under her armpits, but her shoulders were bare.

Except for the pearl necklace, she was naked already. The thought of Cait in naught but her skin gave him an aching cock-stand between one step and the next.

“Leave us,” he ordered. When the women didn’t scurry away quickly enough to suit him, he thundered, “Now!”

So much for not being a tyrant, but a man ought not to be tried when he was in such straits.

The servants bent to snatch up the discarded pieces of Cait’s wedding dress and skittered out of the chamber, dropping curtseys and covering their mouths with their hands to hide their smiles as they went.

When the door closed behind them with a hollow thud, Adam finally turned back to his bride.

Cait was not smiling.

What was wrong now? He’d never felt less welcome to a woman’s bed. And this was the one who ought to have been most receptive to him. She was his wife, for God’s sake.

Still, the woman was naked when she might have been swathed in flannel up to her chin. He ought to count his blessings, but would it strain her to unbend and give just a bit?

“Once again, ye have me guessing, Cait.”

“How so?”

“Ye greet me bare as Eve in glory, but ye’ve no invitation on your face.”

“Ye ought no’ be surprised at my state of undress.” One of her brows lifted. “Ye ripped my night shift to pieces, remember? I didna wish to scandalize Grizel by asking her to repair it before we were wed.”

He chuckled. “That’s probably as well. The old woman did threaten to put an adder in my boot if I gave ye grief. She might think a ruined night shift deserves a visit from a snake.”

“Grizel would never harm ye,” Cait said quickly. “Dinna say such a thing. No’ ever, no’ to anyone, d’ye hear?”

That was more of a scolding than he’d received since he was a boy. But Cait was talking to him at least, which was several steps up from the aloof way she behaved at their wedding feast. He sat on the foot of the bed and tugged at his boots. They didn’t slide off as he’d hoped.

“Some husbands might expect their wives to help them,” he grumbled.

“Some wives might be dismayed that their husbands are so far gone with drink they are incapable of undressing themselves,” she said in a maddeningly pleasant tone. “But I have confidence in ye, Adam. I believe ye’ll figure out how to unlatch your own buckles.”

Buckles.
That was the problem. He’d have thought of it directly. He bent down, unfastened them, and was able to toe off the boots. Then he undid the leather straps that held his sporran and deposited it on the floor.

“I’m no’ so far gone with drink,” he said, grateful his words didn’t slur. He might be a bit fuzzyheaded, but he wasn’t drunk.

“’Tis no matter to me if ye are,” she said. “Of course, it may mean ye’re unable to consummate the marriage. Excessive drink can do that to a man, I’m told. But dinna fret. I’ll prick my finger and leave enough blood on the sheets to satisfy the watchers that everything’s been done as needs to be.”

Adam stood and unwound his plaid from around his shoulders. In a few blinks, he’d unwrapped it from around his waist and was wearing nothing but his long shirt. Despite the fact that the woman was more irritating than any grain of sand could ever have been to an oyster, he still sported an impressive cock-stand.

“Ye willna have to prick your finger, lass.”

He pulled his shirt over his head to stand naked before her and was rewarded by the look of maidenly dismay on her face. He was generously sized and he knew it. Then his conscience needled him.

“I’ll no’ hurt ye, Cait. We’ll go slow, aye? In fact, ’tis best that way.” He stretched out on the bed beside her, propping himself on one elbow. “But a wedding calls for a bedding and that’s just what we’ll have.”

She seemed to shrink down under the covers a bit.

“Does it no’ seem odd to ye that we’re almost strangers and yet we’re to do this thing?” she asked in an odd voice.

Adam didn’t have it in him to tell her most men didn’t even need to know a willing lass’s name before shagging her silly.

“We’re no’ strangers.” He traced along the edge of the pearl necklace with one finger. Gooseflesh rippled over her skin. “We’re husband and wife.”

“In name only.”

“Time will settle that. By morning, we will be joined in truth.”

“But . . .” She looked away from him. “I dinna love ye.”

“Nor I ye.” That jerked her gaze back to him. “But I promised that I
will
love ye and I am a man of my word.”

“And ye think that’s all there is to it?” She sat up straighter and folded her arms over her chest. “Ye just decide ye’re going to love someone and that’s it?”

“Of course. Love isna about flutters in the belly, no matter what the poets say. It’s about honoring and preferring another over your own self. ’Tis no’ about feeling. Feelings can change. Love is about doing.” He was surprised she didn’t know this already, but he was learning quickly that women had strange ideas sometimes. “How else do ye think so many made marriages have flourished over the years? Ye purpose in your mind to love someone and ye do it.”

“But what about your heart?”

“The heart is a tricky thing, Cait. Desperately wicked, the Good Book says. Who can know it?” He reached up and cupped the back of her head. “Trust me, lass, ye’re safer with my will than my heart. I will myself to love you till I’m dust. That which I’ve promised, I’ll deliver.”

Gently lest he spook her, he pulled her close and kissed her. Given the way she’d kissed him last night, he was surprised at her tremble now. Perhaps she really was afraid of the act itself.

He reached around her slender neck and unhooked the necklace.

“The box for it is in my chamber,” she said.

“Then I’ll put it in my sporran for the night.” He rolled off the bed and stashed the heirloom in the capacious badger-skin pouch. Then he walked back toward the bed. “Have ye ever seen a man, Cait?”

“Of course, I have. I’m no’ a helpless ninny. After my mother died, I served as my father’s chatelaine. I’ve nursed some of his fighting men when they were injured or sick, but . . .”

“But a sick man’s parts are no’ like a healthy one’s,” he finished for her. “Ye’ve never seen one angry before, aye?”

Her eyes flared and she flicked her gaze back at his groin. “Are ye angry?”

“No, I just mean . . . I’m no’ always in this state ye ken.”

“I should hope no’. Ye’d look as if ye had a tent pole under your kilt.”

Adam laughed. “I’ll no’ say that’s the finest thing a lass has ever said to me, but ’tis no’ the worst either.”

He lifted the covers and slid in next to her. She sidled away only a little. The heat of her body had warmed the space she vacated, but her feet were icy when they brushed against his shins.

“Brr, woman. Your feet are cold.”

She shifted them away from him. “I canna help it.”

“Weel now, there’s where ye’re in luck, because I can.”

Adam ducked under the blankets and found her delicately arched feet. He rubbed them between his hands and blew his warm breath on them. By the time he planted a kiss on each of her insteps, her icy toes had thawed. For a moment, he considered kissing his way up her legs to the soft folds between them but decided that brand of love play might be too decadent for a lass who, by her own admission, didn’t love him.

He couldn’t very well expect it of her this soon, and he’d always prided himself on being innately practical, but to his surprise, her words of denial had latched onto his heart with little barbed hooks. He wanted Cait Grant to love him, he realized. Not just to promise she would. Not just a vow to honor and prefer him, but to feel something for him besides this icy disdain.

He worked his way back up and out from under the mounds of blankets to lie beside her. He tugged her close and she seemed to relax a bit as their bodies pressed together, bare skin against bare skin.

“Thank ye, Adam,” she said softly. “That feels better.”

He smiled at her. “We’ll both feel better hereafter, I’m thinkin’. I ken ye wish for me to feel something for ye. I understand as it’s important to ye, but I’ve noticed something over the years. When I was feeling gloomy, if I acted as if I were happy, I started to feel that way.”

“So the feeling follows the action, ye think?”

“I do. And now,” he said, “I’m going to act as if I love ye, Cait.”

He covered her mouth with his in a kiss. Long. Slow. Questioning.

When he finally drew back, they were both short of breath.

“That was acting?” she whispered.

“It was, lass,” he said and nipped her bottom lip. “When it stops being mere doing and becomes love in truth, I’ll tell ye, aye?”

She nodded.

“And ye’ll tell me when ye love me,” he said.

She gulped and nodded again. “I will. Adam?”

He paused as he nuzzled the satiny skin of her neck and raised his head. “Aye?”

“Act as if ye love me some more.”

Cait had nearly drowned once. She’d chanced swimming in her selkie cove and got sucked out to the deeper, colder water by a wicked current. No matter how she struggled, she could make no progress back to the shore. The sea was merciless. It tossed her from one trough to the next, washing over her, sucking the breath from her lungs and the strength from her limbs. She’d been almost ready to give up and let the waves take her when a fisherman in a skin coracle happened to see her and hauled her, blue-lipped and convulsing, into his tiny boat.

It was some time before she felt her body was her own again and even longer before she trusted herself to simply wade in the shallows. She’d been overcome by a force more powerful than herself and she was wary.

She had the same sense of being totally overwhelmed when Adam kissed her, but she hadn’t been wary this time. She
invited
him to claim her.

Cait knew she had to become Adam’s wife in truth, but she expected to be able to maintain a wall around her inner self, even when their bodies came together. That wall was an illusion. Adam smashed through it the first time he suckled her breasts and a wave of tenderness and longing rolled over her.

When he put his hands on her, she was swept into the deep. He led her through intense peaks, but the taut valleys were no respite for she couldn’t wait to see what came next. She’d never guessed her body could be so filled with pleasure, so driven to alternating frustration and relief by a man’s mouth and hands.

He gave and gave, with no hint of taking. Each kiss, each caress, sent her deeper into his power. When he kissed down the length of her body, spread her legs and put his mouth on her most sensitive spot, she could have no more freed herself than she could have swum out of that pitiless current.

There was a measure of freedom in being so controlled, so given over to another’s will, she discovered. She knew what was required to consummate a marriage and the things Adam was doing to her weren’t strictly necessary. Surely such pleasurable, such lovely, dirty things had to be wrong, but she could let his wicked fingers and blessed mouth drive her to bliss without a particle of guilt over it. If what they were doing was sinful, the sin was Adam’s.

The second time he sent her spiraling to that dark place where her insides unraveled and her body bucked in time with the deep pulses, Cait ached so deeply, she nearly wept. She was so empty, so drawn out. It occurred to her that it was time she did a little giving.

Cait climbed on top of Adam and kissed him, open mouthed and ravenous. She was rewarded by a feral male growl. He grasped her buttocks and kneaded her flesh with no gentleness at all.

Adam rolled her over and pinioned her wrists together above her head with one hand. He used his other one to torment a nipple. The roughened calluses on his palm set her skin tingling.

She strained against his grip, trying to free her hands. She wanted to explore, to caress, to give to him as he’d given to her. “Let me . . . please, Adam . . . I want to . . .” she gasped between kisses that threatened to turn her to water. “. . . to touch ye.”

“Next time, lass,” he said, his voice passion-rough. “I’ve need of ye now and I canna wait.”

He settled between her legs and she felt the tip of him brushing against her opening. Cait went still as he entered her, sliding slowly in with surprising ease considering the size of him. Then he stopped at the barrier of her purity.

“I dinna wish to hurt ye, Cait, but there’s no help for it.”

And then with no more warning, he drove his full length home.

Cait gasped at the shock of pain, but it faded in a few heartbeats, leaving only the pleasantly full feeling of holding him inside her. His face was fixed with a look of such intensity as he gazed down at her. The raw-boned lines of his features were divided into light and dark planes in the flickering light of the fire.

“Are ye all right, lass?” His voice was taut as a bowstring.

She drew a ragged breath. He looked feral, dangerous. But if he didn’t finish what he’d started, she’d die on the spot.

“Dinna stop now.”

In answer, he pulled out and then pushed in again, filling her with his rock-hard erection. She groaned, awash in the pleasure of slick, hot flesh joined in a give-and-take rhythm. It was like the roll of a tide and just as unstoppable.

Cait cried out again, but not with pain this time. The gasp torn from her throat was the sound of feminine triumph as she engulfed him completely.

Adam moved inside her, his urgency building. Each time she moaned, he thrust deeper, harder. Hands joined in a white-knuckled grip, they strained against each other, surging toward some unseen destination.

There is surrender in bliss, a kind of dying that the body welcomes. They teetered for just a moment on the brink of that abyss, then plummeted over the edge together. Cait wrapped her legs around his waist and hooked her ankles at the small of his back to keep him close. Her insides contracted around him as his seed pulsed into her.

Spent and gasping, they clung to each other. Cait willed her heart to stop galloping and tried to measure her breaths into some semblance of normal. Finally, she and Adam fell into a somnolent rhythm as they shared her pillow.

“Is it always like that?” she asked as she unhooked her ankles and stretched her legs.

Still fully seated inside her, Adam propped himself on his elbows and looked down at her. “Nae, lass. It’s never been like that.”

Her mouth formed an “oh” but she couldn’t put breath to the word.

He smoothed her hair back from her face and pressed a kiss on her forehead. “And that was just our bodies and our wills speaking, as it were. Think what it’ll be like once our hearts are engaged and we love each other in truth.”

“Ye think it will be better then?”

His flat belly jiggled in a rumbling chuckle. “If it is, it’ll be like to kill me.”

His words were a blade to her heart. Killing him was exactly what she was charged to do. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him close, careful not to let him see her face lest he read the horror of what her father had laid upon her in her expression.

“But I’d die a happy man, Cait. I’d die a happy man.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. A single tear left a salty trail down the side of her face and slid into her ear.