The Marriage Contract (4 page)

“When I marry,” he announced proudly, “I will not keep ‘distractions,’ as you so tactfully put it.”

“Because you will marry for love?” Her brows rose in surprise.

“Yes,” he declared—although he’d not really considered the matter before. The devil with it. She might have charmed him momentarily, but she could just as easily prove annoying. “Now, are you ready to leave,
your highness,
or do you wish to
spend the night here? Of course, I can’t guarantee there won’t be another wildcat in the area.”

Her nose went up in the air. “Has anyone informed you sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?”

“My sister, but I never listen to her either. Good night,
Miss
Anne.” He turned and started up the hill.

“No, wait!”

Aidan stopped. “Yes?”

She balanced on top of the coach, holding her precious documents to her chest. The braid in her hair had fallen completely out and she appeared very young and very defenseless. She compounded the impression by admitting, “I need help getting down.”

He allowed himself one smirk and then returned to the coach. Placing his hands around her waist, he lowered her to the ground. She weighed less than goose down, although underneath her high-waisted dress were some intriguing curves.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Come along.” He started walking again, but stopped when he realized she didn’t follow. “What now?”

“I need to gather my things,” she explained.

“What things?”

“My clothes.” Her gesture took in the surrounding area. “My dresses and things that fell out of my trunk when it crashed.”

Aidan really hadn’t paid much attention to the bits of material littering the hillside. He didn’t waste
time thinking about trivial matters. “I’ll send someone for them tomorrow.”

“By tomorrow the wind may have blown everything away.”

Women. They were stubborn, although he had a suspicion Anne might be more stubborn than most. Another excellent reason to ship her back to Alpina.

“Well, do it, but be quick,” he said with little grace. He reached for an article of clothing caught in the gorse and discovered he was holding a silky undergarment. For a second, he could only stare at it. After countless days of cotton and homespun, he’d forgotten the cool smoothness of silk.

“We have the horses loaded, Tiebauld,” Deacon called. “Are we ready to go?”

Aidan shifted his gaze to the top of the hill, where the two men waited with stamping horses. They’d already removed the paint from their faces. He’d forgotten about it on his, and the idea struck him she probably thought he appeared ridiculous. Well, to the devil with her!

“My lady,”
Aidan used the title flippantly, “needs to gather her belongings.”

Deacon rolled his eyes with ill-disguised impatience, but Hugh said, “I’ll help.” He dismounted and started combing the hillside, finding a thing or two here and there.

Aidan approached the horses. His animal Beaumains nickered a greeting. The huge gray gelding was his pride and joy.

“What are you holding in your hands?” Deacon asked.

It embarrassed Aidan to be caught rubbing a slip of silk between his fingers. They’d seen him; he had no doubt of it. The three of them never missed an opportunity to goad each other. “It’s Anne’s.”

But there was no humor in Deacon’s voice as he repeated, “Ah, Anne’s.”

“Yes, Anne’s,” Aidan snapped. “And she is leaving on the morrow.”

“So was I right?”

Aidan frowned. “There are times, Deacon Gunn, you are a pushy bastard.” He was tempted to wipe the blue paint from his face with the silk, but he couldn’t do it. Instead, with studied casualness, he tossed the garment over his saddle and removed his rolled shirt and a scrap of homespun he’d brought for the purpose.

“And?” Deacon prompted, indicating with curve of his finger there was more Aidan needed to say.

“And you were right.” Aidan pulled his shirt on before adding, “But not in the way you think. She has stirred old memories. Things I’d thought I’d long put behind me.”

“We never escape our past, Laird Tiebauld,
you
should know
that.”

Hugh and Anne approached, their arms full of personal belongings. “You can use my hunting sack for your clothes,” Hugh offered.

“Thank you,” Anne said. “I didn’t find as much as I’d hoped—” Her voice broke off. She stared at Aidan.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

“Your face,” she said. “You look—”

She hesitated and Aidan caught himself waiting for her answer. Most woman found him handsome in a rugged sort of way. Her dumbfounded reaction was not completely uncommon. After all, he was the laird.

“—Almost normal,” she finished.

So. The kitten had claws. Worse, Aidan—who usually had a good sense of humor—didn’t like her answer. He was tempted to fire a salvo back, but she’d begun stuffing her clothes in the hunting sack, her attention turned completely away from him.

Unfortunately, Hugh didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. “Is it a good or bad thing, my lady?”

Anne appeared a bit befuddled, as if she’d forgotten what they were discussing. Then she swung an assessing glance toward Aidan. “I haven’t made up my mind. Although he needs a haircut. Desperately. Long hair is not in fashion.”

Aidan almost snarled at her off-hand comment. An unusual reaction from him. He wasn’t a vain man. Or at least, he tried not to be. But then, he hated debutantes. He gave a proud toss of his hair. He didn’t have time for frivolities like haircuts.

Deacon came to his defense. “You realize,” he
said to Anne, “Hugh uses his bag for dead birds while he’s hunting. They are usually covered with dirt and lice and all sorts of vermin.”

She paused in her packing, then continued, pointedly ignoring him.

Aidan’s gaze met Deacon’s.
She leaves tomorrow,
he silently promised his friend.

Deacon grunted skepticism and put his heels to his horse. The cat’s carcass was tied to the back of his saddle. He took off ahead of the others. Aidan said to Anne, “You’ll ride with me.” He started toward Beaumains, expecting Anne to follow. However, Hugh’s animal sidled forward, and before she’d taken a step, she was confronted with the grim face of the dead coachman draped over the horse’s rump. Rigor mortis had not yet set in.

Anne paled. Aidan waited, anticipating a bout of hysterics and a plea to return to London…but it was not meant to be.

She released a shaky breath, and then, to his surprise, raised her hand and lightly touched the coachman’s grizzled jaw. “He was such a kind man. A good man.”

“We’ll bury him at Kelwin,” he said. “Did he have family? They should be notified.”

Anne gave a small, sad laugh. “He had a multitude of wives. He claimed one in every county. I’m certain your sister will know who to contact.”

“You can talk to her about it when you reach London,” Aidan answered decisively.

Her gray eyes—yes, the fine ones—darkened. He read mutiny in their expressive depths. Apparently, so did Hugh, because he decided he’d best follow Deacon and urged his horse on.

Aidan waited until they were alone. “You are leaving tomorrow,” he assured her.

“And what of our marriage?”

“We have no marriage.” Was she daft? “It hasn’t been consummated—and it
won’t
be. You will return to my sister and she can see to an annulment plus give you a fat settlement, since this is all her doing. It is the best I can offer.”

Anne bowed her head. Suspicious, Aidan waited for her next sally, but when it didn’t come, he realized how tired she was. He tempered his tone. “Come along. You’ll feel differently after a good night’s rest.” Dear Lord, he sounded like a nursemaid! He mounted Beaumains. The horse stamped, impatient to follow the others.

Her gaze followed the line of the horse from the tip of one mammoth hoof, past his broad chest, up to his alert ears. “How am I going to climb up on that great beast?” she demanded.

He waved the hand he held out impatiently in front of her face. “The same way I lifted you out of the coach.”

“But where will I sit?”

Aidan felt his temper sizzle dangerously. “Miss Anne, you can walk, if you’d rather.”

She placed her hand in his. Her fingers were long
and feminine and her skin felt like the silk of her garments. He heaved her up to sit in front of him.

He had no doubt he was making the right decision to send her back. She was obviously unaccustomed to hard riding. Her hands didn’t have calluses. Her clothing was too thin for Highland weather. She would never survive country life.

She was also sitting right in his lap, her rounded bottom pressed against his hardening staff.

Well, at least she hadn’t neutered him.

She shifted. Aidan bit back a retort for her to hold still and the sound came out as a half groan. Her cheeks turned bright pink. “I’d forgotten about your injury,” she hurried to apologize. “I could sit behind you.”

Ah, yes, and wrap her long legs around him lest she fall off, her breasts pressed against his back.
“Stay where you are.” He was damned either way. “We’ve a ways to go and it is growing late. I don’t want to worry about you falling off the horse.”

And it was a good thing she was leaving tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow,
tomorrow.

Anne couldn’t relax.
Her husband’s body surrounded hers. The horse he rode was no tame hack, but big and powerful, much like its master.

She wasn’t certain what to do. She’d never met anyone like Aidan. He wasn’t gallant or scholarly or weak, but overwhelmingly masculine. He was nothing like the figure in the miniature. The nose that had appeared straight and noble now had a slight bump. Evidently it had been broken at one time or another. Character and maturity lined his face as did the shadow of a heavy beard. Remaining bits of blue paint clung to the stubble.

Try as she might, she couldn’t picture him in London. This man would never crimp his hair to make it curl or wear a starched collar. He played by rules she’d not been taught. Bold, brash, and wildly eccentric: those were the words she’d use to describe him.

And that nonsense about marrying for love—
“what rubbish!” Did he really believe she was that green?

“Did you say something?” his deep voice asked.

“What?”

He scowled down at her. “You said something. Were you speaking to me?”

“No,” Anne averred, embarrassed to be caught talking to herself. She sank down.

He appeared ready to say something else, then changed his mind.

They rode on in silence. The rhythm of the horse’s hooves threatened to lull her to sleep. Now she understood why he’d wanted her to sit in front of him—and she was becoming accustomed to being this close to him. Actually, his body warmth was quite nice.

The days were long this far north, but the hour grew late and at last a silvery half moon dominated the sky. They caught up with Deacon and Hugh on the coast road, the same one Anne and Todd had been taking when the horses had smelled the wildcat. All seemed so peaceful now.

Anne kept awake by considering her options.

Leaving him might be a very good decision. Todd’s death made her wonder if her marriage hadn’t been doomed from the beginning. She speculated on what Aidan meant by a “handsome settlement.” She didn’t need much—just enough to buy a home of her own.

When she was a child, and too restless to sleep,
her mother would settle her for the night by playing a game where they would pretend to design their very own castle. Her mother had a fanciful imagination. She’d encourage Anne to fill it with grand things like stone walls, colorful pennants, a well-filled moat, and enough bedrooms for her mother, father, and herself. Oh, yes, and plenty of food on the table for everyone.

The two of them would lie side-by-side on Anne’s narrow cot, dreaming and wishing until Anne grew drowsy and finally fell fast asleep. Those nights were some of the happiest memories of her childhood.

Later, after her parents’ deaths, she had continued the game out of loneliness.

But it was never the same. She could build the castle in her mind, it would help her sleep, but the game could no longer bring her close to her mother and father. They would never be there to live in the rooms she created for them. She wished that just once she could feel her parents’ presence, sense that they were with her.

Anne stared at the moon, and added to her wishes that her husband had been someone different. If he couldn’t be a kind, sensitive scholar, she regretted he wasn’t someone more exciting and romantic. More like a Moorish prince than a half-savage Pict—albeit a tall one. As a Moor, she could imagine him in flowing robes with a huge palace and a fortune in gold so she could do whatever she pleased. Every
one would admire her, including married cousins, because people valued money over human emotions. Yes, they would respect her—

“Wake up,” her Moorish prince said in a blunt, rumbling voice. “We’re almost to Kelwin.”

Anne blinked a moment, and then came to her senses. She had fallen asleep. Her head rested against his chest, the material of his shirt rough against her cheek. She could even hear the beating of his heart.

She sat up, alarmed to have confused her husband with a quixotic Moor. He would think her silly if he could read her mind…and use her silliness as another reason to ship her back.

“What’s Kelwin?” she asked.

“Home.”

Home.
The warmth he infused in the single word sent a surge of anticipation through her. He said it exactly how she would have said it if she’d had a place to call home.

“Do you ever miss London?” she asked suddenly.

“No.”

Anne nodded. She wouldn’t grieve either if she never saw the sooty city again.

Anxious for her first glimpse of Kelwin, she leaned forward, his strong arm keeping her safely in place. They rode over the crest of a hill and the scene before them stole her breath.

The moon’s light sparkled off the North Sea’s
white-capped waves like a pathway to the stars. The coast was dark in comparison and there, by the edge of the sea, was the silhouette of a
castle.

“It can’t be,” she whispered. It was perfect, complete with turrets, towers, and blazing torches. She grabbed his arm. “Stop. Please!”

He reined in the horse. Hugh and Deacon did likewise. “What is the matter?” her husband demanded.

“That castle. Is it Kelwin?”

“Aye.”

“Your home?”

A touch of impatience entered his voice. “Of course.”

“It’s like a fairy palace,” she said with awe.

He and the others laughed. Hugh said, “But no fairies live there.”

Anne shook her head. They didn’t understand her meaning, but it didn’t matter. Her mother would have loved Kelwin. This was the dream castle they’d plotted and planned.

He’d not send her away now.

She’d never let him.

“I can’t wait to see it,” she urged. “Hurry.”

If the contrariness of her actions confused him, he didn’t say. Instead, he did as ordered.

Kelwin Castle. She even liked the sound of its name. Kelwin Castle of Caithness. How noble!

Wide-eyed and alert, she watched as they rode closer and closer. She never wanted to forget this
moment, every sight, every smell. Even the night air had taken on a different, more velvet texture as they’d approached the gates.

When the horses’ hooves thudded hollowly over the wooden bridge above a dry moat, Anne could have laughed with joy. She craned her neck to see everything about the stone entrance, even in the dark.

The courtyard was well lit with burning torches and alive with activity. People milled about. Men, women, children. And dogs. Anne didn’t think she’d ever seen so many different canine shapes and sizes all in one place.

As her husband charged into the courtyard on his mighty steed, the people started cheering. Exactly as anyone should if they lived in a castle.

“Did you kill the wildcat?” a short, grizzled-hair man demanded.

“Aye, Fang, did you think I would not?” her husband answered.

Fang laughed. “I knew you would never live it down if you came back empty-handed.”

Deacon held up the wildcat’s body and the crowd roared. It was a hero’s welcome. Anne glanced at her husband, seeing him with new eyes. These people adored him. They must be his clansmen—
her
clansmen, now.

“He did it with his bare hands,” Deacon told them. “And saved this lass’s life as well.” He ges
tured toward Anne and everyone turned to gape at her.

His actions surprised Anne. She been too caught up in the moment to prepare for introductions. Self-consciously, she raised her hand to her hair, expecting to be introduced as Lord Tiebauld’s countess.

Instead, Deacon was done. Her marriage was not announced and her husband didn’t seem to feel a need to correct the oversight.

In fact, the clanspeople appeared more interested in Todd’s body and the story of the coach wreck. They didn’t even want her to tell it. Deacon, Hugh, and her husband told the tale—and they hadn’t even been there!

“Oh, the poor girl,” several whispered to the others, casting Anne in the role of tragic heroine—and promptly lost even that little interest once the ale keg was rolled out.

Aidan swung off his horse. Anne straightened, expecting him to help her down, but he didn’t. Instead, he strode off for the keg, throwing orders over his shoulder for several of the lads to see to Todd’s body, without so much as a backward glance at Anne. Fang handed him a foaming tankard of ale. He drained it in one gulp and called for another.

Even the thoughtful Hugh had deserted her, losing himself to the charms of three young women who threw their arms around him and showered his face with kisses.

Anne looked away, embarrassed by such blatant behavior…although she did sneak another peek. She could almost hear her Aunt Maeve hissing that decent women shouldn’t act that way—yet Hugh appeared happy.

What was worse, Anne didn’t know how to gracefully slide off this mountain of a horse.

So she sat there, feeling awkward and alone. Several of the women sent puzzled, surreptitious glances in her direction, but no one approached. She could imagine them whispering amongst themselves, talking about her.

Anne acted as if she did not notice. This first reception at Kelwin was very much like the balls and routs of the
ton
—she was the wallflower. Again.

The trick was to behave as if she belonged there. She affected an air of disinterest, pretending her husband’s desertion was understandable and she had some
true
purpose for sitting on this beast of an animal. She shifted her focus away from the people with their prying eyes and focused instead on the castle surroundings.

Torchlight danced along the crumbling line of the ancient stone walls, and for the first time she realized a good portion of her castle was in ruins. At one time, this had been a formidable keep, but that had to have been ages ago. Someone had already worked hard to rebuild a portion of the walls, but there was still much to be done.

“Those Whiskey Girls are the disgrace of Caithness,” a woman’s voice whispered to another.

Anne tilted her ear in the direction of the speaker. Two older women huddled together in conference. They were quickly joined by others, many younger than themselves.

“Men need to have that kind of woman around,” one of them whispered. “A bachelor like the laird has needs.”

Anne wondered if by “needs” the woman meant the same as “distractions.” She listened harder.

“A bachelor like the laird needs to find a wife,” the first speaker declared crisply—winning a place in Anne’s heart! “Then we’d have a wee bit of organization and common sense around Kelwin.”

“Men don’t think of such things,” another observed.

“It’s still disgraceful.” And they all agreed. “Someone should run those Whiskey Girls off.”

“You can’t run off the distiller’s daughters,” another told her with a laugh.

There was a sharp reply, but Anne didn’t hear it, for at that moment a red-headed boy took her horse’s bridle and said, “Do ye need help, Miss? I’m goin’ to be takin’ Beaumains to his stall. He’s ready for a nice rubdown.”

The horse beneath her shifted his weight as if letting her know he had been patient long enough. He swished his sweeping tail in her direction.

Anne confessed, “I can’t get down.”

“Oh.” The lad looked around and hurried off into the crowd to return in a second with a thick log, three feet high, which served as a mounting block. Anne was relieved for the opportunity to dismount with some dignity. Still, Beaumains was a tall horse, and she glanced around to see if anyone had noticed her less than graceful scramble down.

People were more involved with themselves than the antics of a stranger. The crowd was beginning to disperse. The hunters had returned victorious and there was no longer a reason to linger, save for one last tankard of ale. The people shifted and moved around her, making their goodnights to one another or plans for the morrow.

With the expediency of the young, the stable lad had walked off with the horse leaving Anne still standing on the mounting block. She felt very alone and out of place. Again she looked to Aidan and what she saw made her eyes pop open.

He was no longer drinking with Fang. Instead, he was now surrounded by the same women who had welcomed Hugh. The Whiskey Girls. They’d abandoned Hugh without a backward glance.

One of the Whiskey Girls laughingly messed Aidan’s hair with a bold familiarity that made Anne’s blood sizzle. They were definitely sisters with the same coal black hair and ample, jiggling bosoms which they thrust up at her husband in a decidedly provocative manner.

Then, the hussy who’d pulled Aidan’s hair took his hand holding the tankard and rubbed it, tankard and all, back and forth across her overflowing breasts, the nipples already tight and hard against the tight material of her skimpy bodice.

And Aidan let her.

Reason fled; shyness evaporated, as did her promises made earlier during her pretty speech about allowing him his “distractions.”

Anne would be damned to be so publicly humiliated. And she didn’t care about his “needs.” Something possessive rose inside her. In a voice as sharp as a governess’s, she said, “Take your hands off my husband.”

Her words cut through the air. Everyone froze in surprise, including the erring Whiskey Girl and Aidan.

“Husband?” the Whiskey Girl repeated dumbly.

“Husband?” the good women of the clan echoed.