Taming the Highland Bride (7 page)

Blowing a breath out, she moved forward and began to struggle to turn him over so that he was lying properly on the bed. It was harder than she expected. The man was large and heavy, at least six feet of solid muscle. It took quite a bit of effort and a lot of huffing and puffing to get him turned on his back. Merry then promptly stepped back as she found his erection pointing accusingly at her.

She scowled at the limb, amazed that while he appeared dead to the world, it was still hard and ready to go. Forcing her eyes away from the angry-looking thing, she glanced to his chest, a little sigh slipping from her lips when she saw that it was still rising and falling. He was alive, he’d just knocked himself senseless.

Despite having seen it happen and knowing the clothes lying about the floor were at fault and that even she might have tripped over them had their positions been reversed, Merry couldn’t help but think he might have managed to save himself had he not been quite so inebriated.

Grimacing, Merry shifted her gaze to his face. When awake, Alexander d’Aumesbery was attractive, with long, blond hair and strong but pleasant features often fixed in a stern expression. But asleep, that sternness was absent, and she could see that he was much more than just attractive. He was actually handsome, and if he spent less time frowning, scowling, and looking pained…

Merry shrugged the thought aside. It mattered little if he was handsome. She would be more pleased to have an ugly but kind and
sober
husband. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what she had. Feeling depression and gloom slip over her, she left him as he was, walked around the bed to her side, and crawled back in. Merry then simply sat and stared at him. It seemed all her worry about the wedding night had been for naught. And she
had
worried and fretted over it today as she’d waited to be married and then picked at the food during her wedding feast. She’d tried not to think about it, but it had been constantly at the back of her mind. It had been wasted fretting, and now she could fret about it all over again on the morrow. In the meantime, there was little to do but go to sleep.

Shaking her head with exasperation, Merry shifted to lie down in the bed and pulled the linen over herself. She then turned on her side to face her husband, staring at his unconscious form as she tried to relax enough to drift into slumber. However, it didn’t take her long to realize that she wasn’t likely to sleep anytime soon. Now she was worrying about the morning and the embarrassment of explaining that they had not consummated their marriage.

Clucking with exasperation, she sat up and glared at her husband with resentment. She was wide awake and fretting while he lay there naked and—

Merry scowled, thinking she should probably cover the man, but didn’t do so right away. She would have been ashamed to admit it, but the idea did cross her mind that it wouldn’t be a tragedy did he catch a chill and possibly die from it, leaving her
a widow. Of course, Merry wasn’t at all sure she would be a widow since they had not yet consummated the wedding, as the lack of blood on the linen would prove.

That thought made her mouth turn down unhappily. It would be just her luck did the man never wake up from this blow to the head, but die in his sleep on their wedding night without finishing the job and making her his wife. No doubt she’d then find herself married off to another drunk either in Scotland or somewhere else, and possibly an old man with no teeth and bad breath who would make her skin crawl. Clucking with disgust, she peered at her husband again, this time her attention moving to his erection. The thing was still hard and full, looking as if it was ready to burst open at any moment like an overripe plum when squeezed. She sat there glaring at the overblown chicken neck until she was assaulted by the mad thought that there was no reason she could not consummate the wedding herself.

The idea had barely flittered through her mind before Merry was shaking her head. Nay. She couldn’t possibly. Why, that was just—

Why not?
another part of her mind asked. She was used to taking matters in hand herself, and this was no different. She would simply…Well, Merry supposed, she could sit on it, break her maiden’s veil herself with his chicken neck, and ’twould be done. There would be no more fretting about what was to come, no more worry about handing over the linen in the morning…

The more Merry thought about it, the smarter the idea seemed to her. She had overseen the men when
Alex had not been up to doing it himself, why not tend to this as well?

It seemed perfectly reasonable to her.

Never one to stall when something needed doing, Merry promptly crawled back off the bed and moved around to her husband’s side. It seemed obvious to her that for her to mount his chicken neck, she needed to get his feet on the bed. At least it looked to her as if it would be easier to do so were he flat on the bed rather than hanging off it. Pausing before his feet, she bent and caught him by the ankles and began the long, hard struggle to get him turned so that she could get his legs on the bed along with the rest of him. It was no easy task. The man weighed a ton, and it was something of a delicate operation since every time she dragged his legs toward the bed, his upper body seemed to want to move closer to the edge, threatening to tumble off. But by repeatedly moving his legs to the side a bit, and then setting them down to move to his chest to push his upper body farther onto the bed, she managed the task.

Once she had him safely on the bed, Merry paused to contemplate him and the logistics of what she intended to do. It didn’t take much thought to realize he was too close to the edge of the bed to allow her to straddle him, so Merry shoved him away from the edge and farther toward the center of the bed. By the time she’d accomplished that, however, she was a bit weary and dropped to sit on the side of the bed by his hip while she recovered. Her eyes immediately focused on his erection. Merry stared at it, marveling that it still hadn’t deflated or what
ever it should do. It seemed odd to her that a man could be completely unconscious but remain erect. She would have expected it to go back to its resting, chicken neck–like state. But then she was new to all this. Perhaps it was supposed to stay hard until it was used. If so, she could only think that was a good thing since she intended to use it.

She reached out tentatively to poke it, watching curiously as it swayed away and then back. When it stopped, she bit her lip and hesitated. It had seemed hard when she’d poked it, and she was curious to know what it felt like. There seemed little harm in giving it a feel. He was her husband, after all, and she intended to do much more than touch it.

Still, Merry hesitated, her gaze sliding to his face to be sure he was still unconscious before she reached out and brushed her fingers tentatively down the shaft. It was solid, but the skin felt velvety soft under her fingertips. Fascinated, Merry ran her fingers over it again and then took it curiously in hand and closed her fingers around it, measuring its girth and length and moving it about to see just how far it would bend to one side and then the other.

A sudden groan from Alex made her still, her fingers unintentionally tightening on the erection. In the next moment, the chicken neck jerked in her hand, and she glanced to it with surprise as it suddenly began to spit some sort of liquid out of the top. Merry released it at once and stood up. The first thought to flash through her mind was that she’d broken it, but she wasn’t sure if she’d broken it or if that was supposed to happen. However, she was pretty sure she’d just ruined any possibility of con
summating the wedding since it was finally beginning to deflate before her eyes.

Cursing, Merry turned away and paced to the foot of the bed and then back, her mind working. Edda had said that he would probably kiss her, squeeze her breasts, and then,
when excited
, thrust his chicken neck into her. She supposed that hard state had been his being excited. Perhaps she could excite him again.

That thought gave her hope and she moved back to the bed to peer at his now sadly shriveled chicken neck, but Merry really had no idea how to go about “exciting” a man. She’d seen maids on their knees in dark corners at Stewart Castle, doing things to the men there that seemed to make them groan and moan as Alex had done before exploding, but wasn’t sure exactly what it was they did. She supposed it was something that felt good and tried to think of things that felt good to her. Her maid brushing her hair before the fire was nice, though that was more a relaxing sensation than an exciting one. Rubbing her feet when they were sore was also nice, but again relaxing.

Obviously she was approaching the problem from the wrong direction, Merry decided, and asked herself what excited her father and brothers. The only thing that came to mind was whiskey, but she hardly thought pouring a mug of whiskey over the man’s parts was going to get them working.

Merry poked at his chicken neck again and then glared at it with irritation. Truly, she hadn’t a clue what to do here, yet she needed to somehow get
it excited and stiff and then mount it to break her maiden’s veil to produce the blood.

Or, Merry thought suddenly, she could just cut herself to get the blood, spread it on the bed linen, and pretend he’d done the deed. That thought lifted her spirits at once. It would ensure she didn’t have to marry again did the man have the good grace to drop dead on her tonight, and might save her having to worry about his wishing to trouble her in their bed for a while. She had no idea how frequently men liked to bed their wives, but her father never seemed to bother the maids and village women back home much. Of course, he was older, but even Brodie and Gawain did not seem to trouble the women much. Mayhap once a month was her guess, but then she did tend to send the servants away when the three men were drinking, and they did do that often.

That didn’t really matter to her anyway, Merry decided. She was more concerned with securing her place as lady here so she couldn’t be married off to some other drunken lout should the man die tonight, or stumble down the stairs and break his neck in the morning. Did she cut herself, rub a bit of blood on the bed linen, and give it to them to hang above the stairs on the morrow, then her place as Lady d’Aumesbery would be secure whether the man survived the night or not.

Satisfied with the idea, Merry slid back out of bed and moved to her chest to retrieve her
sgian-dubh
from where Una had put it away earlier. She carried it back to the bed with her, tugged the linens to the bottom of the bed so that they were out of the
way, and climbed in next to her husband. She then settled cross-legged and hesitated as she considered where she should cut herself. Her first choice was her hand, but that would be easily seen, and someone might notice and wonder about it.

She peered over her body considering likely spots. Somewhere that was covered by her gown was her best bet. Her eyes settled on her legs, and she peered at them solemnly for a moment and then pressed the knife to her left inner thigh and hesitated again. Merry wasn’t a coward, but truly, deliberately hurting herself wasn’t an attractive idea. It had to be done, however.

Sucking in a deep breath, she held it and then quickly drew her knife across her skin, gasping in pain as the knife sliced a shallow wound in the tender skin. Blood immediately beaded to the surface of the cut, and Merry caught it up on her fingers and brushed it over the bottom linen of the bed. She did it a few more times before the shallow wound clotted and the blood stopped coming.

Merry peered at the bed linen then, considering the small dark smudges on the clean cloth. It didn’t look like much, and she grimaced at the timidity that had made her hold back and cut herself so shallowly. Still, it might be enough. The problem was, she wasn’t sure. How much blood did breaching the maiden veil cause? Edda hadn’t described that, and Merry hadn’t thought to ask. She shifted impatiently on the bed, worried that too little blood might give her away.

Her gaze then slid to his chicken neck, and she bit her lip at its clean state. Surely if he’d breached
the maiden’s veil and made her bleed there would be blood on him as well. There was blood on a knife when it was used to stab someone.

Merry clucked with irritation at this reasoning. There seemed little else for it but that she would have to cut herself again. It seemed to her that it would be better to have too much blood than too little, and she definitely thought she should put some on him. Tightening her hand around her
sgian-dubh
again, she pressed it to her right inner thigh this time, closed her eyes, and quickly, sharply sliced herself again. This time, she didn’t merely gasp at the pain, but had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out, and the blood didn’t trickle forth to bead on the wound but began to gush out. She’d definitely cut deeper this time, more deeply than she’d intended.

Ah well, at least she’d probably have enough now, Merry told herself, and shifted so that she was in the center of the bed. Her hip rubbed up against Alex, and it reminded her to rub some on his shaft, but once that was done, she ignored him and concentrated on using her fingers to spread the blood about as it ran down her inner thigh and onto the bottom linen. She continued to do so until the blood finally stopped running. Truly, the wound bled an awfully long time, and Merry was growing concerned by the time it stopped. She even considered wrapping the wound, but feared moving about to find something to bind it with might start it bleeding again so merely lay back in bed, pulled the upper linen over herself, and tried to go to sleep.

Unfortunately, while she wanted to sleep, she didn’t seem to be able to relax enough to do so.
Merry tried everything she could think of to relax herself enough to manage it, but nothing seemed to work, and eventually she gave it up and simply lay their thinking about her life, past and present, and the bleak future that appeared to lie before her.

It was near dawn before she finally felt sleep overtaking her, and Merry greeted it with a small relieved breath and the hope that the morrow would be a better day.