He tossed the fur back to her, dropped his sodden cloak, then swung over to sit beside her. Ninian offered him more room on the seat to share her lap robe. Her heart pounded frantically. Would he force the driver to turn around? He would kill the child if he did. He would kill her. How could she make him believe?
Without so much as a by-your-leave, he lifted her onto his lap and wrapped both of them up to their noses in furs. “Why?” he demanded. “Why must you go to the back of beyond instead of staying with family?”
“Because Malcolm women cannot have their children safely elsewhere. Because my mother lost all her babes in London. Because I want this child, Drogo,” she ended on a pleading note.
He leaned back against the side of the coach, propped his long legs on the seat, and arranged her on top of him so she shared his heat from head to foot. “I could hire the best physicians,” he insisted.
“I’m the best physician. You have to believe me in this, Drogo. I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but in just this one thing, for the sake of our child, believe in me.”
He sat silent, holding her close until they both stopped shivering. Then reluctantly, he conceded. “You have driven me as mad as you, Wife. You ask the impossible, and for you, I’m almost ready to agree to it. Even should we arrive safely in Wystan, which I strongly doubt, we will be trapped there until spring. I must leave my family to their own devices, let my business fare without me, forfeit the rest of the session in Parliament, because of your strange whims.”
Ninian buried her head against his shoulder. “I know. That is why I left without you. I’m sorry it has to be this way, Drogo, but I almost lost myself in London. I almost forgot who I was and what my grandmother taught me. It would have cost us this child. I must go back. You need not accompany me.”
Divested of its wet glove, his hand wound deep in her hair and held her head against his shoulder as he stared somewhere into the space beyond them. Ninian could feel the power of his heart thumping next to hers, and she wanted it to be like this forever. She never wanted to be parted from him again, but for the child’s sake, she had to be strong.
“I would not lose you,” he finally sighed.
She could hear the air leave his lungs and the tension escape his hold as he admitted this to himself as much as to her. She was the one holding her breath. Could he mean…?
“If making babies is as easy as you say, then the child does not concern me as much as you do. If Wystan is the only way to make you well, then we will go to Wystan. If it’s this important that you risk all to return there, I must believe you in this.”
Breathing deeply of relief, Ninian curled into him as his strong arms held her tighter. She didn’t entirely know what to make of his admission, but it moved her deeply, and she would cling to it in the dark hours that would inevitably follow. All that was important was that he had come after her, and he had not mocked her assertions. “Thank you, my lord. You will not regret this, I promise.”
“I’m already regretting it,” he said grimly. “And if I did not fear for the child’s health, I would make you pay by riding you all the way from here to Wystan. I think it’s damned well time to call this a marriage and move on with it.”
Amused despite herself at his gruff surrender, Ninian peeked up at the square set of her husband’s unshaven jaw and wriggled experimentally in his lap, confirming her understanding of the kind of “ride” he had in mind.
“Is that possible?” she inquired cautiously.
He squinted down at her. “You’re the witch. You tell me.”
Twenty-seven
The violent lurching of the carriage into another water-logged rut convinced Drogo that witch, physician, or lunatic, his wife would be safer at an inn. Even as she considered his insane proposition, he set Ninian away from him. His entire body screamed in complaint as cold swamped the places she’d snuggled, and he almost said to hell with it and snatched her back, but he’d spent over half his life protecting others. He couldn’t kill the habit now.
“There’s an inn not too far from here,” he said gently as she looked at him in surprise. Had he ever really noticed her eyes before? He’d thought them a clear blue, but they reflected the mysterious silver light of the moon now. Something in his insides heaved unsteadily and resettled in a different place as he imagined hope behind that light. “I’ll send the driver ahead on my horse to secure a room for us. The poor man’s half frozen. I can drive us the last few miles.”
“I would not see you made ill in my place,” she said gravely. “I will concentrate on clearing the weather for you.”
So, she was insane. It was a harmless insanity. Drogo kissed her nose and warmed his hands on her cheeks. “Concentrate on healing thyself, physician. I need a wife to warm my bed.”
He pounded on the speaking door, halted the driver, and swept into the cold again.
He was definitely as mad as she. He suddenly felt freer than the hawk swooping overhead, and his heart did excited acrobatics at thought of the night to come. The damned ice would melt right off him, the way he felt now.
***
Ninian smiled at the frosted feather patterns glowing silver against the dark in the window of the inn’s bed chamber. Tonight would be the wedding night she’d never had.
She glanced wryly at her unwieldy belly beneath the warm flannel of her bed gown. Unlike her more slender cousins, she wore her child low and full. There was no mistaking her condition, though she had three months to go. Not a fine sight for a new husband.
She glanced up as Drogo returned from the taproom with two steaming hot toddies. All the protective concern he usually extended to his brothers, he now lavished on her. Never having been the recipient of such cosseting, she was somewhat overwhelmed.
“You wish me drunk before we retire?” she asked in amusement.
“Warm and willing,” he agreed with a leering lift of one curled eyebrow as he set the mugs down.
She’d never seen this side of her husband. He seemed almost lighthearted, despite the weather, despite leaving all his responsibilities behind.
She pressed her gown taut against the bulge of her belly. “Warm and willing perhaps, but a trifle ungainly. Even my aunts were not so large at this stage.”
“That’s because it’s a boy,” he whispered wickedly in her ear as he took her in his arms and stroked her roundness. “I tell you, Ives only produce males.”
“Just what your family needs, my lord,” she taunted, wrapping her arms around his where they rested at her waist, “more virile men to foist upon an unsuspecting world.”
“More like what your family needs, my lady.” He caught her by the knees and lifted her into the bed. “A rowdy male to disrupt all the family traditions.”
“Oh my, I don’t even want to think it.” A male Malcolm. The idea spun her head in circles.
She sipped gratefully at the mug he handed her once she settled against the pillows and watched with interest as Drogo tugged off his clothes and folded them on a chair. They had but the one candle, and she could wish for more as his shirt joined his coat and waistcoat and she could admire the full expanse of his muscled back and shoulders. “Oh my,” she repeated, for an entirely different reason.
He swung around and lifted a questioning eyebrow in her direction, giving her full view of the arrow of dark curls sculpting his breast bone and taut abdomen. She gulped and couldn’t look away. She’d never really seen him.
Finally gauging the direction of her thoughts, Drogo reached for the buttons of his breeches. “If we’ve had our wedding night and the courtship is over, what do we call this, madam?” he asked tauntingly, slowly releasing the first button.
Shadows from the candlelight played against the hard ridge pushing his breeches flap outward. Ninian licked her suddenly dry lips. “Large,” she answered mindlessly. She remembered another time and place she had thought t
hat. Her husband was definitely not a small man.
Or a shy one. He grinned as he took her meaning, and the beauty of his chiseled features almost distracted Ninian from his breeches. Almost. As he shoved the fabric over his lean hips, she forgot about the white flash of his teeth against the sensuous fullness of his lips, or about anything at all beyond the evidence of Ives masculinity. Her aunt was definitely right about that. Ives men were very… virile.
He removed the mug from her limp fingers before she could spill the contents. “It’s good to know there are still a few things I can teach my all-knowing wife.” He snuffed the candle.
“I only know about herbs,” she murmured as his heat and weight slipped beneath the covers beside her.
“Then let me teach you about men, my dear.”
A very male hand covered her breast, and a hot, whiskey-flavored mouth parted her lips.
She thought surely she’d died and gone to heaven. Even the fairies couldn’t offer such joy.
She was well and truly married then. To an Ives. So far, the only destruction was to her self-control.
She sighed in satisfaction as he guided her hand downward and taught her to touch him. She only needed her woman’s power for this, and he held the key to that.
***
“You needn’t look so smug, Wife,” Drogo complained jokingly the next day as they emerged from the inn into crystal clear sunshine. “We generated enough heat last night to burn off clouds for the rest of the winter.”
Ninian demurely hid her smile in her muff as he handed her into the carriage.
Just her smile had the power to jolt his heart into a mindless clatter. That frightened Drogo as much as her smile filled him with pride. He knew better than to trust in women, marriage, or jolting hearts. He knew the best he could hope for was a warm bed and an uneasy truce until their next difference of opinion. But even in the bright light of day, he could remember with clarity the joy and hope she had wrung from him last night. She was definitely a witch of some sort.
He would do well to remember that she had twisted him to her will with this mad journey into nowhere. He’d dropped everything he held near and dear to see her safe. He couldn’t remember anyone ever diverting him from the path he’d chosen—not since he was fourteen and his father died, leaving him with a mountain of debt. Even the estate solicitors had bowed to his authority.
Not Ninian.
Fortunately for him, she didn’t even know what she had wrought. She simply smiled and snuggled close as he joined her, as if they were merely on a holiday excursion. He’d never taken a holiday excursion, and this wasn’t one now. They were going back to a blighted land, a frozen nowhere, without friends or family to greet them, and she beamed as if he’d promised her paradise.
He glanced down at her warily. Pink had returned to her wan cheeks, and now that he thought about it, she had scarcely coughed at all since his arrival.
What if she really couldn’t live outside of Wystan?
Panic coursed through him until he quelled it with logic. The rest of her family did quite well elsewhere. It was just a new bride’s homesickness.
He could survive a winter in Wystan in return for the child she would give him.
“Have you heard from your steward? Has the burn recovered?”
On second thought… Drogo sighed and tucked her firmly under his arm. “The burn will be frozen. Concentrate on hatching that youngling and not what cannot be changed.”
He didn’t like the way she narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms in that stubborn manner he was beginning to recognize.
“Who says it cannot be changed?” she demanded.
She said no more, and Drogo let himself believe that was the end of it. Expectant mothers did not traipse about the frozen countryside exploring dead streams.
***
Expectant mothers helped other expectant mothers deliver their babes, Drogo discovered some days later, much to his dismay as they finally arrived in Wystan.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” Lydie exclaimed as she rushed into the great hall before the driver could carry in their luggage. “Cook’s daughter has been in labor since yesterday, and I can do nothing!”
He’d almost forgotten Lady Lydie. He’d rather assumed Sarah had disposed of her somewhere, somehow. His mind instantly sought the legal ramifications of her presence here. Surely her father couldn’t sue him…
“Where is she?” Ninian flung her fur muff to the table without a second look to the husband following her in.
“We brought her here last week since the roads are so bad. Hurry. She’s growing weaker.” Lydie rushed toward the corridor leading to the servants’ wing.
“Ninian!” Drogo halted her before she could follow. When she turned to look at him questioningly, he could see her mind had already followed Lydie down the hall. “You’ve had a long journey,” he said gruffly. “You need to rest.”
She beamed that bewildering smile he couldn’t fathom. “I love you, Drogo,” she murmured, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “But I can take care of myself.”
She was gone before he could even digest that “I love you” or rearrange his thinking to absorb it.
It was undoubtedly some wifely platitude meant to allay his fears, he decided, as he directed the servants to carry Ninian’s things to his room.
But he was still in charge here. This was his home, and she would learn to live by his rules. After the lovemaking they had shared these last nights, she certainly couldn’t object to sharing his bed on a regular basis. He’d be damned if he’d move into the haunted master suite.
As if in answer to his thoughts, a door slammed directly overhead and laughter rippled around him.
Ghosts didn’t laugh, he told himself as he took the stairs two at a time. And he didn’t hear ghosts. That was Ninian’s bailiwick. Let her listen to them.
***
“You didn’t bring that dreadful book with you, did you?” Drogo exclaimed as he came to his bed that night to discover his wife sitting up against the pillows, reading.
She flipped a brittle page and tilted the book to better catch the lamp light. “I keep hoping they will settle their differences and everything will turn out right. The castle was hers,” she said indignantly, not looking up.
“Was hers,” he corrected. “Her father gave it to her husband as dowry.”
“He had no right. The castle belonged to her mother. It just isn’t fair. And to not believe the child is his just because it’s a girl…”
Drogo sighed and disposed of his coat and waistcoat. He obviously didn’t have his wife’s full attention tonight. “She married an Ives, my dear. We are not known for our trust in women or good fortune in marriage. I suppose he’s sired a bastard or two by now?”
“Two,” she said crossly, glaring at the pages. “Stupid man. Both boys, thus proving his masculinity, I suppose, while his wife pines with loneliness and lets her love wither.” She finally looked up at him. “I’ve not noticed stupidity as an Ives trait. Why would he do that?”
Drogo lowered himself to the mattress and removed the book from her hand. “It was a logical assumption,” he explained patiently. “It’s a known fact that we only sire boys. He’d been away on business and came home to find his wife with child. That would have stirred the suspicion of almost any man. The girl was all the proof he needed.”
She punched her pillow into shape and slipped down between the covers. “It only takes one night,” she muttered. “You know perfectly well that he would have taken her to bed the night before he left on an extended journey.”
Drogo pried off his boots and flung them toward the wall. “If she was anything like you, love, he was mad not to have taken her with him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded as he blew out the light.
He slid between the covers an
d trapped her securely beneath his weight before answering. “It means the only time a man can be certain of a woman is when she’s under him.”
He caught her cry of outrage with his tongue and did his best to teach her that being under an Ives was no bad thing.
And perhaps, having a Malcolm woman under him wasn’t half bad either.
Twenty-eight
“How does your daughter fare this morning, Mrs. White?” Ninian asked of the portly woman removing oatcakes from the oven.
The cook carefully shuffled the hot pan onto a cooling rack, then turned with a wide smile. “She and the bairn are well, thank you, my lady. It’s grateful that we be to you and the good Lord above that you arrived in time.”
“They say He works in mysterious ways.” Ninian poked at the steaming cakes and decided to wait before burning her mouth on one. “Where is everyone? I thought Lady Lydie said she’d sent for the servants. I want to start cleaning out the master suite.”
Cook blanched. “You no want to be doing that, my lady. It’s a gloomy old place, it is. The chimney howls something fierce, and the panes rattle, and damp has set in. I’ll air one of the newer chambers, shall I?”
Ninian dipped her finger in a bowl of cake batter and sucked her finger clean. This was Drogo’s house. Sarah had been the lady here and in London. She’d never dealt with servants or been much use at ordering people about. But she sensed this simple woman’s fear and sought to ease it, whatever the source.
“Feeding Lord Ives is a full-time chore,” Ninian assured her. “You needn’t air anything. Does this mean the others won’t be returning?”
Mrs. White clasped her doughy hands in her apron. “They’re afraid of their shadows, if you don’t mind my saying so, my lady. They’ll come when they’re hungry, but not before.”
Ninian sighed. She hadn’t expected better. After all, even she’d believed the superstitions of Ives’s devils and feared the legends when the village flooded. Living with Drogo had certainly widened her mind to look for new explanations.
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