by Tessa Dare
She swallowed hard. "Oh."
"Even so, it's likely to pinch a bit when I--"
"Right."
"But it will be quick from there, much as it pains my pride to say it. That's the usual way when a man's gone without company for a time."
Without the candles, the firelight cast him in murky silhouette.
She would have felt better if she could see him plain. No doubt he'd intended the darkness to be comforting, but Maddie was used to looking at natural creatures in an unfiltered, direct way. Observing where their pieces joined, learning how they moved and worked. Perhaps if she'd been given the same chance to survey his body--even a furtive glimpse or two as he'd undressed--her racing pulse would have calmed.
But it was too late now. The candles were out. And even if they could be relit, she didn't know to ask for such a thing.
To her, he was merely shadow. Shadow with hands and heat and a deep, entrancing baritone.
"Don't be afraid." His hand drifted down her body, blazing a path of unprecedented sensation. "I know you've wondered about this. How a man fits with a woman. How it feels to be joined. I can show you everything. I'll make it good. Verra good."
"I don't know if I can do this," she said.
"You can. There's nothing easier. If this were difficult, humanity would have died out long ago."
"I think you underestimate my capacity for taking normal human interaction and making it awkward."
She inched away, putting space between them.
"Try to understand," she said. "You've been reading my letters for years. You know so much about me, and I don't have even the slightest understanding of you. Where you come from, how you've lived your life . . . to me, you're little more than a stranger."
"I'm your husband now."
"Yes, but we've no history together. No shared memories."
"We have seven years of actual history. And we do have memories."
"Such as . . . ?"
He shrugged. "Remember when we first met and you fell on your arse? Remember when we strolled beside the water and spoke of marriage? Remember the time I kissed you so hard, you felt it in your toes?"
"No," she replied defensively. "I only felt it so far as my ankles."
He gripped her waist. "Well, then. I'll have to try harder this time."
He leaned in.
She put her hand on his chest, holding him back. "Can't we get to know each other first?"
"I dinna see any purpose to further chatter," he said. "We agreed this is an arrangement, not a romance."
"That's just it, you see. I don't want a romance. I don't want to pretend. But when I close my eyes, it's not you touching me. It's some fictional Captain MacKenzie of my own creation. I'm liable to make too much of this. I don't think you want a silly, clinging wife making demands on your affections."
"You're right on that score. I canna say I do."
"It's like you told me. Love is a lie people tell themselves," she went on. "If that's the case, actual knowledge should be the best antidote. Once I get to know you better, I should have no difficulty finding reasons to despise you."
"Is shameless blackmail not enough?"
"I would have thought it would be. But then you told me about your men's dire circumstances. I saw how loyal you are to them. It all became too sympathetic. I need a new reason to dislike you." She crossed her legs. "Let's begin with the basics. Where were you born?"
"Over toward Lochcarron on the western coast."
A sudden thought occurred to her. "Do you have any family?"
"None."
"Oh. That's good. I mean, it's not good. It's terrible for you, and entirely too sympathetic. But it's convenient for our purposes. It matches the lies I told." She bit her lip, cringing. "I can be a bit absorbed in my own problems at times. It's one of my worst failings. But you knew that already."
He nodded. "Oh, aye. I knew that already."
"See? You know all about my flaws. It's easy for you to remain detached. But I don't know any of yours."
"Here's the first." He reached to encircle her ankle with his hand. His thumb stroked up and down. "I'm entirely too good in bed. Have a way of ruining a woman for all others."
She pulled her leg away. "Boastfulness would be the first flaw, then. That will do for a start. What's the worst thing you've ever done?"
He pushed his hands through his hair. "I'm beginning to think it was marrying you."
"No, no. Don't show a sense of humor. That ticks a box in the wrong column."
He reached for her and drew her close, then rolled her onto her back. The hard, heated weight of him pressed her body into the mattress. "I can tick all the boxes, lass."
She swallowed hard. "Who's A.D.?"
"What?"
"The brooch you gave me. It has the initials L.M. and A.D. Who is A.D.?"
His eyes hardened to chips of ice. "No one important to me."
"But--"
He bent his head and kissed her neck. A whisper of heat against her skin. Despite herself, she sighed with pleasure.
He heard that sigh. And was encouraged by it.
His hands ranged over her curves. Not grabbing or taking. Simply learning her shape.
And as he did, Madeline was learning things, too. She was used to examining creatures, cataloging all their parts. The key to creating a good illustration was understanding how the creature functioned. The reason for an antenna. The purpose of a spinneret.
As Logan touched her, she realized something crushing. Over the recent years, she'd reduced herself to a rough sketch of a person. She had hands to draw, eyes to see, and a mouth to occasionally speak. But there was so much more to this body she inhabited--so much more to her--and when she lay beneath him, all of it made sense.
It made her wonder which parts of himself he'd been neglecting. How long he'd gone without a woman to remind him of this small, secret hollow of his throat, the perfect shelter his body made when it curved around hers. The way his hand was made to cup her breast just as capably as it gripped a dagger.
It was all too much.
Maddie squirmed out from under him. "I'm sorry. So sorry. I know this is supposed to be physical. Impersonal. It's only that I keep thinking of lobsters."
He flipped onto his back and lay there, blinking up at the ceiling. "Until just now, I would have said there was nothing remaining that could surprise me in bed. I was wrong."
She sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. "I am the girl who made up a Scottish lover, wrote him scores of letters, and kept up an elaborate ruse for years. Does it really surprise you that I'm odd?"
"Maybe not."
"Lobsters court for months before mating. Before the male can mate with her, the female has to feel secure enough to molt out of her shell. If a spiny sea creature is worth months of effort, can't I have just a bit more time? I don't understand the urgency."
With a gruff sigh, he drew a fold of her quilt over his lap. "We had a handfasting, lass. The vows we spoke would be considered a mere betrothal on their own. The consummation is what makes it a marriage."
He had her full attention now. "You mean this could still be undone?"
That was interesting.
Very interesting.
"Dinna get any ideas," he said, looking stern. "Let me remind you that I have dozens of reasons why you don't want that. Incendiary reasons."
Yes, Maddie thought to herself. He had dozens of reasons stashed away somewhere.
An idea took hold of her.
If she could hold him off from consummating the marriage, she might be able to find those reasons--and burn them once and for all. Watch them go up in smoke. Then he wouldn't have so much power over her.
"You wanted shared memories, did you not?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Remember how on our wedding night I made wild, naked love to you until you were screaming for more?"
"Actually, I remember us staying up all night talking." Just to vex him, she added, "An
d cuddling."
He scowled. "I dinna do cuddling."
"That's for the best, I suppose," she said. "You offered to wait until tomorrow to consummate the vows if I wished. Well, I do wish to wait. I'm not ready tonight."
And if she could find another way out of this situation, perhaps she would never need to be.
She laid a row of cushions down the center of the bed, carefully dividing it into two sides: His, and hers.
"Is that truly supposed to stop me?" He fell back on the bed, on his side--peering over the pillow wall at her with amusement. "I fully intended to have my wicked way with you. But now there's this cushion, so . . ."
She burrowed under the coverlet, drawing it up to her neck.
"Now that you mention it," he went on, "I dinna know how this strategy escaped Napoleon's notice. If only he'd erected a barricade of feathers and fabric, we Highlanders wouldna have known how to get over it."
"I don't expect the pillows to keep you out," she said. "They're merely a guard against anything accidental happening."
"Ah." He drew out the syllable. "We canna have any accidental happenings."
"Exactly. I might roll over in the night, and I know how you feel about cuddling. I should hate to take advantage of you."
"Minx." He sat up in bed and plucked the cushion from between them. "I'm here now. I'm flesh and blood, and I'm your husband. I'll be damned if I'll give up my place to a pillow."
She held her breath. What would he do?
"I'll sleep on the floor," he said.
He took that pillow and the spare quilt from the end of the bed and began to arrange a pallet near the hearth.
Maddie told herself to be happy--it was safer that way.
Instead, she couldn't keep from stupidly worrying about his comfort. The floor would be cold and hard, and he'd been traveling. Physical nearness was one kind of danger, but caring about him would be even worse.
"We're adults with an understanding," she said. "You're welcome to share the bed. No barricade required. I'll stay on my side and you'll stay on yours."
"I'll sleep on the floor. I prefer it."
"You prefer the floor to a bed?"
"At the moment, mo chridhe, I prefer the floor to you."
Horrid man.
"You said you want to wait," he went on. "I'd like to think my honor makes a stronger barrier than pillows. But tonight, it wouldna be prudent to put that theory to the test."
After a moment, she said, "I see."
He folded the quilt in half, spreading it on the floor. "It's no matter. I slept on the ground for my first ten years of life. Never once in a bed."
"Ten years of the floor?"
"Ten years of the cowshed or the sheep pasture, most accurately. Before the vicar took me in, I was an orphan raised on the charity of the parish. I stayed with whichever family would keep me--and that meant whoever needed a hand with the sheep or cattle that season. I tended the animals, day and night. In exchange, I had my morning parritch and a crust or two at night."
Oh, no. This entire exchange was one step forward, two steps back. A mild insult--excellent. He abandoned her bed for the floor--better. But now, this tragic tale of orphan woe? It ruined everything.
How was she supposed to remember to dislike him when she was picturing a hungry, lanky boy with reddish-brown hair, shivering on the frosted ground all alone?
Maddie wanted to clap her hands over her ears and tra-la-la to drown out the pounding beat of her heart.
Instead, she punched her pillow a few times to soften it. "Sleep well, Captain MacSurly."
What had she done? Just when it seemed she couldn't pay enough ways for telling one silly lie in her youth . . . this happened. She'd agreed to marry a perfect stranger. One who cared nothing for her, and one she was in danger of caring far too much about.
But she wasn't fully married to him yet.
With a bit of luck, perhaps she never would be.
Chapter Six
Logan hadn't expected to get much sleep on his wedding night.
He hadn't thought he'd be spending it on the floor.
But his rest was disturbed for an entirely different reason. It was distressingly quiet.
Everything he'd told Madeline was true. In boyhood, he'd slept in pastures or byres, surrounded by shaggy Highland cattle or bleating sheep. Since joining up with the Royal Highlanders, he'd been bedding down on a pallet surrounded by his fellow soldiers. It hadn't felt much different from sleeping amid beasts, to be honest. There had been a certain comfort to it, with the nightly symphony of crude snorings and scratchings.
But while he'd passed many hours of pleasure with female company, he was not accustomed to sleeping near a woman. Cuddling? Never happened.
Maddie's presence in the same room made him strangely uneasy. She was too mysterious, too quiet, too tempting. The sweet scent of lavender kept prodding him awake every time he started drifting off to sleep.
As soon as the first light of dawn seeped through the window, he rose from his makeshift bed, buckled his kilt about his waist, and made his way out of the castle to stand by the loch, watching the new day creep across the blue surface and burn off the mist.
"So, Captain. How are ye feeling this fine morn?"
Logan turned away from his view of the loch. "What?"
Callum and Rabbie stood behind him, peering at him with an unusual degree of interest.
Rabbie propped his forearm on Callum's shoulder. "What do you think, lad?"
Callum cocked his head. "I dinna rightly know. I think it's a yes."
Rabbie laughed. "I think not."
Logan frowned. "What the devil are you on about?"
Rabbie clucked his tongue. "Irritability. That's not a good sign."
"But he doesna look well rested," Callum replied. "That should be a point in my favor."
Logan stopped trying to make sense of them. He was in no humor for their joking this morning.
"If you're awake, we might as well get to work," he said.
After breakfast, they all rode out to scout the glen.
Not far from the loch, they found the remnants of a ruined cattle enclosure. Time, weather, or battles had crumbled the low walls ages ago. There was no use in rebuilding it, but the loosened stone could be put to use in building cottages.
He put his hand on a waist-high bit of wall, and a chunk of stone immediately shook loose. It landed on his boot, crushing his great toe. Logan kicked it aside and ground out a curse.
He turned in time to see Rabbie extending an open palm in Callum's direction. "I'll take my payment now."
Callum resentfully dug a coin from his sporran and placed it in Rabbie's hand.
Logan had had enough of their mysterious chatter. "Explain yourselves."
"I'm just settling a wager with Callum," Rabbie said.
"What kind of bet?" he demanded.
"As to whether you bedded your wee little English bride on the wedding night." Rabbie grinned. "I said no. I won."
Damn. Was his frustration that obvious?
Logan thought of the way he'd just cursed at a rock.
Yes, it probably was.
They'd lived too close with each other for far too long. Logan could tell at a glance when Callum's stump was paining him, and he could sense when Fyfe had a difficult night ahead.
He knew his men, and they knew him, too. It would be plain to them all that he hadn't purged his own lust last night.
Though Rabbie's wagers were crass and stupid, he understood why the men would take more than an idle interest in his amorous activities. In order to ensure Castle Lannair would be their permanent home, he needed to consummate the marriage. There was a lot riding on Logan's . . . riding.
As of this morning, he was letting them down.
He hated that feeling. In battle, he'd been their infallible, loyal officer, leading them into battle without so much as a blink. Not anymore.
Callum, always the peacemaker, tried to apologize. "We're just h
aving a bit o' sport with you, Captain. She must have been weary last night, and you only just came home to her. Was quite a shock, I expect. There's no shame in giving her time to adjust to the idea. I'm certain your lass thinks it sweet."
Sweet?
Curse it all. First cuddling. Now he was sweet?
"That'll be enough," he said. "If I hear of any more wagers like this one, heads will be cracked. You should spend your time on something more worthwhile. Like shoveling out the castle stables this afternoon."
"But Captain . . ." Callum lifted his amputated arm.
"No pity from this quarter."
Until he could put any doubt to rest, he would do what he'd done for the past several years: keep the men working and focused on the future.
They placed stones to mark out sites for building and planting. Then he led the group up the slope to survey the grazing lands from a higher vantage.
"There's no time to be wasted," he said. "If we want to have a harvest this autumn, we need to put crops in the ground by Beltane."
"Let's hope the land's yours by Beltane," Rabbie said.
"It's mine already. I've married her."
"Aye, in word. But the English have a way of breaking their word, up here in the Highlands."
"I'll remind you, that's my wife you're discussing."
Rabbie gave him a doubting look. "Is it?"
"Yes."
Maddie would be his wife. Fully, legally, permanently, and soon. He'd acceded to her requests for a delay last night because of everything Callum said: She'd had a shock and a long, wearying day.
He knew she was curious, and he'd tasted her kiss. There was potential for matters to be good between them--perhaps even incendiary. It would be a crime to squander their agreed-upon night by pressing her too far, too fast.
When Logan bedded his wife, she would not only be willing. She would want it. She would be pleading for him.
And he'd leave her so limp and exhausted with pleasure that she could have no thought of any cuddling afterward.
"Say, Captain." Callum motioned back toward the castle. "Looks as though you have a visitor."
Logan peered into the distance. An elegant coach-and-four had drawn up in front of the castle's entrance. A man alighted from the coach. No sooner had the man's boots met the ground than a small figure in gray emerged from the castle to greet him, as though she'd been expecting him to call.
Maddie.
"On second thought," Rabbie said, "looks as though your lady has a visitor."
An uncomfortable silence fell over the group.
