The Recruit

by Monica McCarty

  She stared at the man who’d invaded her chamber—who’d invaded her sanity. Sir Kenneth Sutherland stood—lazed, actually—with his back against the door and his arms crossed against his chest, watching her. The relaxed pose didn’t fool her. She could feel the danger emanating from him.

  Dread sank to the bottom of her stomach like a stone.

  “What are you doing here? Get out!” She hoped she didn’t sound as scared as she felt.

  He smiled, glancing toward the trunks. “Running away from me again, Mary?” His gaze slid down her ready-for-bed-clad form, and she hastily clenched the edges of her robe tighter even though she knew he could not see anything. He let his arms fall to his sides and made a tisking sound. “For someone who purports not to care or have a thought about what happened, you seem to be very anxious to get away from me.”

  He took a few steps closer to her. Why had she never noticed how small the room was? And who had lit the fire so high? The temperature seemed to have gone up twenty degrees. But the blast of heat wasn’t coming from the brazier. The pounding in her heart told her exactly who was the source of the heat.

  “I have to ask myself why,” he said idly. He took another step, and she almost yelped like a frightened pup. He smiled as if he’d sensed it. A big, lazy, knowing smile that set alarm bells ringing up and down her spine. “You know what I think? I think you’re scared about how I make you feel. I think you’re scared not because it meant nothing to you but because it meant a lot. I think that if you didn’t care as much as you say you don’t care, you would be sitting down for the evening meal right now, not hiding up in your room.” He held her gaze. “I think you want me.”

  Mary gasped with outrage. He was arrogant, overbearing, and so cocksure of himself. It didn’t make it any better that he was also right. Not that she would ever let him know that. “I’m not hiding, I’m packing. Not that it’s any business of yours, but I am not leaving to avoid you. There is a pressing estate matter to which I must attend.”

  He laughed. “Very pressing, I’m sure.” She looked up, terrified to realize how close he was standing to her. No more than a foot separated them. “Is that why your pulse is fluttering, your cheeks are flushed, and your heart is beating so hard I can hear it?”

  Her eyes widened in alarm. That wasn’t possible, was it? But he only smiled, her reaction giving her away.

  She started to retreat, backing away from the chair she’d been gripping like a lifeline. Only then did she remember the baby cap. She sucked in her breath. It lay in the middle of the chair with her glasses like a beacon. All he had to do was look down. If he hadn’t heard her heart pounding before, he surely heard it now. She prayed …

  Too late. “What are you doing?”

  He reached for it, but she snatched it and the glasses from him before he could pick it up. “Careful! You’ll break the glasses.” Praying her cheeks weren’t as hot as they felt, she added, “It’s a piece of embroidery I’m working on.” She tucked it in the basket she used before he could look at it closer.

  His eyes narrowed at her odd behavior, and for a minute she feared he might reach in after it. “For whom?”

  She said the first thing that popped into her head. “I sell them at the market in Newcastle.”

  He arched a brow, and she felt her defenses prick. “It is a perfectly acceptable way of earning money. How else should I have provided for myself when my husband was executed and my dower lands confiscated?”

  He gave her a long appraising look. “I wasn’t judging you. I’m merely surprised, that’s all.”

  Having avoided disaster, she just wanted him to leave.

  “Why are you here? Why are you doing this? Why does it matter to you what I do, when you have so many other women to choose from? Was your tumble in the stables this afternoon not enough for you?”

  He showed no shame at what she’d seen. Nor did he deny it. Had she really hoped he would?

  Instead, he merely arched a dark brow wickedly—good God, even his brow was sensual! Was there any part of him that was not? “Jealous, little one?”

  “No!”

  But her protest was too strong and too quick. He closed the gap between them in one stride. She tried to step back, but all she could feel was the hard press of stone. He’d backed her against the wall, and there was nowhere for her to go.

  “You don’t care?” he challenged, his eyes locking on hers.

  Everything inside her was racing. Her heart, her pulse, her blood. “I don’t.”

  He leaned down, his face inches from hers. Their bodies weren’t touching, but she could feel the heat, feel the weight of him pressing down on her.

  Mary couldn’t breathe, conscious of the soft swell of her stomach between them. Despite the fact that the bump was still barely noticeable—fortunately, the weight she’d gained had been distributed fairly evenly so far—she was so certain that he would somehow sense it. That he would know the moment he touched her. Every inch of his body was so engrained on her memory, she assumed he would notice the changes.

  But he didn’t. His hand slid around her waist, and he pulled her up against him. Even though he had the use of only one arm, she would have been hard pressed to escape if she’d tried.

  “Then prove it. Kiss me.” His lips hovered just above hers. “Kiss me, Mary,” he groaned, right before his mouth fell on hers.

  Her heart slammed into her chest at the contact. She dissolved into the heat. Melting against the hard granite of his body and the warm, velvety softness of his lips.

  She descended—nay, plummeted—into a vortex of pleasure. Hot, mindless pleasure that pulled her into a molten whirlpool of madness. The fierceness of the passion that exploded between them claimed them both. She kissed him back. Clutching. Her fingers digging into the hard muscles of his arms as she fought to get even closer.

  She moaned as his tongue licked into her mouth, as he bent her to him and plundered the deepest reaches of her soul, leaving no part of her unclaimed. Untasted.

  Her heart beat wildly in her chest. Blood pounded in her ears. She was hot and weak and needy, her body clenching and quivering in anticipation.

  He groaned, a deep guttural sound that made her heart flip, and dug his fingers through her hair to grip the back of her head, shifting the angle to kiss her even deeper.

  She could feel the hardness of his manhood pressing against her insistently. He started to circle his hips to hers, and she made a sound of pure pleasure at the sweet friction. Heat clenched between her legs. She could feel her body softening, weakening, opening for him.

  The memories of passion were visceral and immediate. She wanted him inside her, right here, right now. She wanted him to lift her skirt, press her up against the wall, and surge deep inside. She wanted to feel him moving, thrusting, slamming harder and harder. She wanted to feel the sweet crest of passion, feel her body spasming around him. And she wanted to hear him cry out. To see him stiffen. To see his face tense with the force of his passion.

  And he wanted it, too. His hand was on her hips, her bottom, sliding up over her stomach to cup her breasts, her—

  Stomach. Her mind caught up a fraction of a second too late to stop him.

  He stilled.

  For one long heartbeat nothing happened. She waited. In a moment of desperate self-delusion, she wondered if perhaps he hadn’t noticed.

  But the calm was only a harbinger of the strength of the storm to come. When he lifted his gaze and his eyes fell on hers, the wrath was upon her.

  Fifteen

  At first when Kenneth’s hand slid over the slight roundness, it didn’t penetrate. He was so half out of his mind with lust that he couldn’t completely process what he was feeling.

  She was so soft and sweet. She felt so good in his arms. The urgent little sounds she was making were driving him wild. All he could think about was getting inside her. He wanted to possess her. Claim her. Force her to acknowledge the strange connection between them.

  He�
�d never felt anything like this before, and damn it, he needed to know she felt it, too.

  But slowly the vague prickle at the back of his consciousness grew. Eventually understanding slid through the fiery haze of his passion like a blade, splitting it apart from end to end, leaving nothing but cold rage.

  He didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe it. But the truth swelled under his hand.

  Suddenly the changes he’d noticed in her took on a very different meaning—as did her anxiousness to leave.

  He jerked his hand away and stepped back from her as if scalded. Hell, he had been. Burned and betrayed.

  “You are with child.” His voice was every bit as harsh and cold as he felt.

  This time the fear in her eyes was warranted. Emotion crackled and fired dangerously inside him as he struggled for control. But the battle had already been lost. His hands clenched at his sides, every muscle in his body tensed and flared.

  She didn’t say anything, his anger seeming to have rendered her mute. She just stared up at him with big blue eyes, looking so damned vulnerable, so ridiculously innocent. But she was neither.

  “How long?” His voice cracked like the whip flailing inside him. He grabbed her by the arm and jerked her up against him. “How long?” he repeated, not caring that he was scaring her. “And don’t think about lying to me.”

  “I, I—” Her eyes skittered away, for once unchallenging. But he was too furious to enjoy it.

  “It’s mine,” he said flatly. He’d known it from the first moment his hand swept over the soft swell. He didn’t need her to confirm it, but damn it, she would. “Tell me, damn it.”

  Maybe if she’d begged for understanding. Maybe if she’d continued her moment of feminine meekness and contriteness, he might have reacted differently. But the defiance and cool challenge that had pricked him from the first returned.

  He was angrier than he could ever recall, and she didn’t care. He’d seen fierce warriors quake in their boots when he lost his temper, but she stood toe-to-toe with him, utterly oblivious to the danger. Apparently, she knew just as well as he did that there wasn’t any. No matter how angry, how furious, he would never hurt her. He wasn’t used to fighting without the advantage of physical strength, and it was bloody disconcerting.

  “It’s mine!” she shouted, twisting her arm out of his hold. “Yours may have been the seed that took root, but the child is mine. I want nothing from you, as I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear.”

  Kenneth flinched as if she’d slapped him. She couldn’t have made her opinion of him—her disdain—more clear. She’d wanted only one thing from him.

  Suddenly, another thought struck him cold. It was bad enough to not be taken seriously, to be thought of as nothing more than a ready cock, but what if passion wasn’t all she’d wanted from him? His jaw was clenched so tight he could barely spit out the words. “Nothing but my seed. Is that it, Mary? By God, did you plan this?”

  She drew back in shock. “Of course not!”

  He stared at her, searching for any sign of deception or guilt. There was none, but he knew better than to be deceived by her air of innocence.

  She must have sensed his hesitancy. “It was not I who pursued you, if you’ll recall. This was as much a surprise to me as it is to you. It was an accident. I was married for over ten years with one son. I never dreamed this would happen.”

  Unconsciously, her hands had gone to her stomach and a soft expression swept over her features. She looked so lovely and happy, so different from the drab, half-starved nun he remembered. His heart did an odd little start.

  He ached to touch her again, to finish what they’d started, but she’d deceived him. “Yet you are pleased that it did.”

  It wasn’t a question, though she took it as one. She met his gaze full on. “Aye. My son was taken from me before he was six months old. Can you imagine what that was like? I was only fourteen. I never had a chance to be a mother to him, but this baby—” She stopped, her voice tightening with emotion. “This baby will be different.”

  He was aware of the general circumstances of her past, but didn’t realize that her son had been taken from her when he was so young. He remembered his own mother. How she’d doted on him and his brother and sister. How tenderhearted and loving she’d been, so different from most noblewomen. Mary was the same, he realized.

  But he didn’t want to feel sorry for her. He didn’t want to think about how she had suffered. Intentionally or not, she’d taken something from him and then tried to hide it.

  She gazed at him with her hand over her stomach protectively—as if he would somehow harm them. The gesture infuriated him. She’d cast him in the role of enemy, and he wanted to know why.

  “You should have told me.”

  She glared at him, not heeding the warning in his voice.

  “What difference would it have made? You were in Scotland and I was here. We were on different sides of the war.”

  “And now that we are not?”

  A faint blush pinkened her cheeks, and her gaze dropped. “I didn’t think you’d care. As prolific as you are in your … uh, relationships, I assumed this was not an infrequent occurrence. I thought you’d thank me for not telling you.”

  Kenneth felt his temper spike hot again. She knew nothing about him. “Oh, I care, and your assumptions are dead wrong. I may have had my share of bed partners—which is nothing that I need to apologize for—but I’ve never had an ‘accident,’ as you put it.”

  He’d also never allowed himself to take his release inside a woman before, but for some reason he didn’t want to tell her that.

  She bit her lip contritely and also, he noticed to his extreme irritation, adorably. She blinked up at him. “You haven’t?”

  He ignored the urge to take that lip between his. Anger and desire were a potent mix that was proving hard to resist. “Nay, not a bastard to be found, I’m afraid, and I have no intention of allowing my firstborn son to be the first.”

  “Son? Why would you assume the child is a boy?”

  He gritted his teeth. “Because if I’m going to be forced to marry you to give this child a name, you will bloody well give me an heir.”

  She paled. “Married? You misunderstand. I have no intention of marrying you. It isn’t necessary. I’ve already made arrangements—”

  “I don’t give a shite what kind of arrangements you’ve made.” She startled at the crudeness of his language, her face growing a little paler. “It is you who misunderstand. You don’t have a choice. You will marry me.”

  Mary’s heart dropped. “No,” she choked out in a strangled gasp. She shook her head. “No.”

  His smile was merciless. “I’m not asking. You’ll marry me if you want to know this child.”

  Mary looked up at him in horror, at the hard, ruthless warrior who radiated icy rage and left her no doubt that he meant what he said. Worse, he had the power to carry out the threat. He had all the power. She might be the one carrying the child, but in the eyes of the law, she had no rights. She was a woman in a man’s world. Whatever independence she’d carved out for herself was illusory. She hated him for making her see it.

  She’d underestimated him. Misjudged him. Thought that he was as feckless and uncaring as her husband.

  But she’d made a mistake. A horrible one. Too late, she saw what her first impression of a handsome hero with an adoring throng had missed: the core of steel and the iron will forged by years of fighting. The man who hated to lose, and the perseverance that had made him a champion. He wouldn’t give up until he achieved what he wanted. The baby. Her. It didn’t matter.

  Her stomach rolled. This couldn’t be happening. Her darkest fears had come to life. To save another child from being taken from her, she would have to submit to the will of another man who didn’t care about her. She would lose the power to make her own decisions, lose the ability to control her life, and give it to him to do with as he wished.

  Moreover, it wasn’t onl
y her hard-won independence at stake, but her heart as well. Even standing here in this room with him furious with her, a part of her wondered if it could be different. He made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. She’d tried to protect herself against it by running away, but how could she do that if they were married?

  Was she doomed to another loveless marriage? To watch another husband adored and fawned over by a bevy of willing admirers?

  Her stomach knifed. She couldn’t bear it. After what she’d been through, she would not—could not—slip back into the role of the adoring, trusting, and subservient wife. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt when he left her bed for another’s. And it would hurt. If what she’d felt today was any indication, it would hurt quite a lot.

  But what choice did she have? Her heart squeezed. Her baby …

  He didn’t bother waiting for her to respond. For the second time, he hadn’t bothered to ask her to marry him. A silent sob buried itself in her chest. He’d left her no choice, and they both knew it. “I will speak to Sir Adam and leave for London at dawn.”

  “London?”

  “Edward will be furious if we wed without his permission. Fortunately, the new king is more of a romantic than his sire, and I think I can convince him to agree to the necessity for a quick and quiet ceremony. We’ll have to hurry, with Lent approaching.”

  Despair weighed down on her. She was being dragged along already, no matter her wishes.

  “Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “Why are you forcing me to marry you, when you know I have no wish to do so?”

  “I told you, my son will have a name.”

  “And after that? What happens after you have your heir, what then? Will that be enough?”

  He stilled. “What do you mean?”

  She lifted her chin and met his gaze unflinchingly. “I should like to know what more will be required of me.”