“I cannot do that.”
“Why not?”
“I offered the chamber to Fergus.”
“What?” Duncan let go of Marmaduke’s arm in his surprise. “You and Fergus are ever at each other’s throats.”
Marmaduke shrugged. “For all his bluster, the old goat is getting on in years. He shouldn’t sleep on a bench in the hall each night.” Rubbing his arm where Duncan had gripped it, and avoiding Duncan’s eyes as if suddenly self-conscious, Marmaduke went on, “I thought mayhap giving him the chamber would smooth the waters between us.”
“’Tis noble of you, then, but I still canna let you have this chamber, for it is mine. Nor will I share it with you.” Duncan crossed his arms. “And even if I wanted to, I do not see how you can desire to sleep here, with her gazing down at you.”
Marmaduke’s one-eyed gaze latched onto the image of a beautiful raven-haired woman smiling serenely at them from above the hearth. Beautiful beyond words, blessed with an ethereal loveliness even the angels would envy, Duncan’s first wife Cassandra’s elegant grace was captured forever on the smooth panels of painted wood.
’Twas an exquisite piece of art, its rendering wrought by a famed Irish illuminator who had come years before to paint saints upon the chapel walls. But rather than holy figures, he’d immortalized a she-devil.
Bile rose in Duncan’s throat at the memory of the way she’d thrown herself upon the artist. None within miles of Eilean Creag had doubted the methods she’d used to persuade the man to paint her likeness.
“Your brain is addled,” Duncan said, convinced he spoke the truth. “The sight of her will rob your sleep.”
“Nay, my friend, you err,” Marmaduke’s tone was colder than the deep waters of Loch Duich, black and silent beyond the chamber’s arch-topped windows. “’Tis because of her, I welcomed your generosity in granting me these quarters.”
“How so?” Duncan asked, fearing he’d just lost the battle whether he recalled giving away his bedchamber or not.
“Similar to your own reasons for keeping the likeness, her presence shall keep me steadfast in my quest for vengeance.” Marmaduke ran the tip of his middle finger down the puckered scar marring his once-handsome face. “But unlike you, I have not sworn to forsake all women because of the wickedness of one.”
Marmaduke drew back his mighty shoulders, then walked over to the hearth and stared up at the painted beauty. “With your new marriage, ’tis forgetfulness you must master. You must put the pains of the past behind you and look forward. But I have yet to avenge Arabella’s death. If the face of her murderer is the last thing I see at night and the first I see upon awakening, I shall never slacken in my attempts to see justice done… to send Kenneth to join his lewd ladyship in the pits of hell.”
Duncan stared at Marmaduke’s broad back, saw the well-developed muscles bunch with tension. When his friend’s shoulders sagged, Duncan knew he’d lost the battle.
And his bed.
“’Tis a master of words you are, Strongbow. How can I deny you the chamber after such a silver-tongued speech?”
“I but spoke my heart,” Marmaduke said, turning around. “’Twould be wise if you would do the same.”
“I dinna have one, or hasn’t the news reached your English ears?” Duncan couldn’t stop the bitter retort. “’Tis the devil himself they call me.”
“And you’ve a very fine angel sleeping in a cold bed on the other side of this castle. I vow she’d gladly banish your demons if you’d but let her,” Marmaduke said. “Or would you be called a fool as well as the devil?”
His aim perfect as always, Marmaduke’s sagely spoken words slipped through the chinks in Duncan’s armor to skewer the heart he wasn’t supposed to have.
“Tongue-waggers’ prattle matters naught to me,” Duncan groused, knowing his friend knew better.
“Then cultivate her favor simply for yourself. I vow were such a treasure mine, she would not sleep alone.”
At the Sassunach’s admonishment, a parade of his lady’s enticements marched through Duncan’s mind. Her lips, warm and pliant beneath his when he’d kissed her during the marriage stone ceremony. Candleglow casting a gleam upon the smooth gloss of her hair, and not just the glorious tresses springing from her fair head! Nay, the luxuriant wealth of fiery curls at the tops of her thighs caught the light well, too.
Too well.
Enough to make him burn to drop to his knees before her and press a thousand kisses against their lush softness and the fragrant sweetmeat hidden beneath!
Hellfire and damnation! Duncan roared the silent curse, letting it swell and expand in his mind until every last vestige of beckoning bronze nether curls was vanquished.
‘Listen to his heart’ Marmaduke had advised. Ha! Only one malediction plagued him at present and it had naught to do with his heart. Hoping Marmaduke’s all-seeing eye for once didn’t see everything, Duncan adjusted a fold of his great plaid to hang a bit more conveniently.
His lustful cravings thus disguised, another image flashed across Duncan’s mind, and this one was even more alarming because it had the power to stir more than his physical arousal.
’Twas the fleeting look of adoration and desire he’d glimpsed in her gold-flecked eyes earlier on, when her expression had gone all soft and she’d looked as if she ached for him to kiss her.
By Saint Peter’s holy tomb, if he heeded Marmaduke’s sentimental advice, he wouldn’t care if an entire garrison of men-at-arms took possession of his bedchamber. They could have it, and all his holdings, if only he could inspire his lady wife to gaze upon him thusly—and genuinely mean it.
But, alas, ’twas well he knew it had merely been a woman’s weakness for a battle-weary warrior that had made her momentarily forget her dislike of him and naught more.
He also knew his own masculine pride had made him believe, for a brief moment, that she would shower him with such attention, would welcome his devotion and love in turn.
Thankfully, he’d caught himself in time, remembered loving a woman was a dangerous endeavor fraught with more peril than a lusty dip betwixt their thighs was worth.
Nay, he’d let Sir Marmaduke woo the women if he was wont to do so. He wouldn’t be persuaded—or seduced—into forgetting himself again.
Scowling once more, Duncan snatched one of the bedcovers and tossed it over his arm. “Dinna attempt to advise me on matters of the heart, English. ’Tis a wise man who doesna wear his feelings on his sleeve. I’m a-thinking you’ve buried your nose in too many French romances and spent too many nights listening to lovesick bards croon their insipid ballads to all who’ll toss them a coin.”
Duncan jerked his head toward his squire who, amazingly, slept soundly on his pallet before the fire. “Save your romanticism for young lads like Lachlan, but spare me such nonsense. ’Tis a grown man I am, and I know from experience what comes on the heels of losing one’s heart.”
“You know naught, my friend,” Marmaduke said, sadly shaking his head. “A man gives his heart, and gladly. Never does he lose it, for in the giving, he gains a wealth of love in return. But, you are right, ’tis a grown man you are, and one too weary, and accustomed to his comfort, to stalk into the night with naught but a thin length of wool to warm your bones. If you will not seek the Lady Linnet’s bed, take your own. I can join Lachlan on the floor.”
Duncan hesitated, tempted to accept Marmaduke’s capitulation, but the memory of his friend’s shoulders sagging as he’d gazed at the painted image above the hearth soured Duncan’s small victory.
He shot a glance at the perfection of his dead wife’s face, and his gut twisted with revulsion. Mayhap the likeness had served its purpose as far as he was concerned and would now better serve Marmaduke. He didn’t need to stare at the infernal painting to be reminded of Cassandra’s perfidy.
Indeed, had Marmaduke not expressed a desire to keep the whoring beauty’s accursed likeness, he’d wrest it from the wall this moment and cast it out the window
, letting it sink into the cold, dark waters of the loch.
Naught would please him more than to know Cassandra’s likeness rested in the muck at the bottom of Loch Duich. Preferably facedown so her loveliness would be forever ground into the mud.
’Twould be a fitting revenge for the way she’d stomped his heart and soul into the dirt.
Duncan didn’t acknowledge Marmaduke’s offer until he reached the door. Turning, he gave his friend a tired smile. “Nay, you keep the bed and the chamber—though I still deny granting them to you.”
An expression very much like guilt washed over Marmaduke’s face, but it was hard to tell given the sad extent of his disformity. He opened his mouth to speak, but Duncan stayed him by raising his hand.
“Dinna say it. The saints alone know what you and the others conspire to achieve with your intrusions into my affairs, but I do not believe your motives are corrupt.” He paused to open the door. “I think your intentions are well-meant and good, albeit misguided.”
“Hold a moment, wait,” Marmaduke protested, coming forward. “For the love—”
For the love. The three words propelled Duncan through the door and made him shut it tight behind him. He didn’t want to hear whatever Marmaduke had wanted to say. And he especially didn’t want to discuss love.
Not love of the saints or angels, not love of any kind, and definitely not love of a man for his wife.
Nor of a man for his son.
A muscle in his jaw twitched at that thought, and he increased his pace down the shadowy passageway. He wanted naught to do with love of any kind and felt a pressing need to put a great distance between himself and his too-wise Sassunach friend.
The one-eyed Englishman had the uncanny knack of making him feel as if he could see into his very soul at times. Faith, he should have married Marmaduke to discover Robbie’s true parentage! His new wife’s failure to satisfy him in that regard deepened the scowl he already wore.
At the end of the corridor, just before the stairwell that led down to the hall, Duncan stopped to lean against the cold and damp stone wall. His jaw twitched and jerked almost uncontrollably, and frustration made him grind his teeth together so brutally, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he chipped one of them.
He shivered, too, for before he’d found Marmaduke in his bed, he’d doused himself with chilled water in an attempt to wash the blood and grime from his aching body.
And he smelled, for the unsettling discovery had put a premature halt to his much-needed ablutions.
Above all, he was absolutely miserable. Even more than he’d been when he’d left the battlements and headed for his chamber, desiring naught but to rest his weary bones.
Uttering a dark oath, he pushed himself away from the wall. With heavy steps, and a heavier heart, he began the winding descent to the hall. He’d spend the remainder of the night sleeping on a bench or make do with the rushes as did most of his men. But halfway down the stairs, he halted.
The perverse irony of his situation would have made him laugh in younger years… back when he’d still possessed a hearty sense of humor.
He had sought the hand of Linnet MacDonnell. He had brought her to Kintail in the hopes she’d rid him of his doubts and prove herself a useful, if not cherished, wife.
Instead, she’d turned his world upside down, and utter chaos had ruled his household from the moment she first passed through the castle gates. He was laird, yet he alone crept through the night-darkened keep, chilled to the bone and reeking to the heavens, without a bed to claim his own.
She slept in one of the castle’s finest chambers, the one that had belonged to his parents, and their parents before them. She was likely lost in a dream world of valiant knights, gracious ladies, and cherubic babes, while he skulked about like an outcast in his own home.
The injustice of it made his hands clench, while his lips formed a thin, tight line.
From below, the faint sounds of his men’s snores carried up the circular stairwell, along with the scurrying sounds of his hounds foraging for scraps of food amongst the rushes. Fainter still, the crackling of the fires in the hall’s three great hearths and the ever-present sound of Loch Duich’s waves, gentled by the late hour, lapping against the castle walls.
An ordinary night for all who called Eilean Creag home.
All save its liege laird and master.
Duncan flexed his fingers a few times, then balled them into tight fists once more. He needed the slight pain of his nails digging into his palms, welcomed it, lest he pound his hands to pulp against the wall.
Everyone but himself had peace this night. Marmaduke rested well in Duncan’s… former… chamber, his men slumbered as always below, and old Fergus no doubt enjoyed the luxury of finally having a bed to call his own in Marmaduke’s relinquished quarters.
He didn’t know where his wife’s protective lady servant slept, but she, too, had assuredly found more calm than he.
Feeling much the fool, and angrier still, Duncan took two steps downward, then stopped. He’d be a bigger dolt if he spent the night in the hall. Come the morn, his men would make jests, speculate amongst themselves his reasons for abandoning the warmth of his bride’s bed.
Duncan winced at the ramifications. Giving his men fodder for gossip would only increase his misery. Without taking time to consider the consequences, Duncan turned and headed back up the stairs.
’Twas true, his lady wife’s chamber was on the opposite side of the keep, attainable only by crossing the hall and climbing yet another set of spiral stairs, but he was laird of this island stronghold and as such he knew its every stone… and secret.
Such as the narrow passage cut within the castle walls.
An escape route connecting a few of the castle’s rooms before winding downward to a hidden cave on the island’s rocky shore.
A slight tugging pulled at the corners of his mouth in what could’ve been the beginnings of a smile—if he were wont to smile, which he wasn’t. But it pleased him greatly to have decided to take matters into his own hands.
He was, after all, laird.
It was beneath his dignity to scramble about in the middle of the night, seeking a place to lay his head.
Nay, he’d exercise his rights as the present MacKenzie of Kintail and reclaim the chamber his father and all the clan chiefs before him had used as their own.
Including the bed.
“My faith, but you startled me!” Sitting bolt upright in her bed, his bride clutched the covers to her breasts and stared at him, round-eyed and aghast as if he’d risen up from the floor like a wraith or other such unwelcome creature of the night. “I must not have heard your return.”
Nay, you wouldn’t have for I did not arrive through the chamber door!
The unspoken quip and the exhilaration of sneaking into her chamber through the secret wall passage, something he hadn’t done in years, brought a wolfish smile to Duncan’s lips.
’Twas the first genuine smile he’d allowed himself in the devil knew how many years, and the feel of it was unexpectedly good.
His wife tilted her head to the side as if she meant to take full measure of such an odd phenomenon as the great MacKenzie of Kintail grinning. “Then why did you?” she asked finally. “Return, I mean.”
“Of a certainty, not to joust words with you, my lady.”
“Am I needed below?” She peered sharply at him. “Has something befallen Robbie? Or one of the Murchison survivors?”
Aye, you are needed, lass. By me.
The heart he didn’t possess and Marmaduke would have him listen to, spoke.
Duncan ignored it.
“The boy is well and the Murchison party sleeps soundly, or so I’ve been informed,” he answered as laird, and continued to work the shoulder clasp that held his plaid in place. He also continued to enjoy the view.
The thin woolen coverlet his wife grasped so tightly did more to pleasingly frame the fullness of her breasts, emphasize their lushness, than to h
ide them, as was surely her intent.
“What are you doing?” Apprehension stained her cheeks with a flattering wash of color.
“Be it not obvious?” The devilish smile almost returned, but this time he resisted.
“You appear to be readying yourself for bed, milord.”
“Duncan.”
“You appear to be readying yourself for bed, Duncan, sir,” she corrected, her voice soft yet piercing the wall around his heart as expertly as if her words were carried on the sharpest and most swift of arrows.
“And so I am,” he confirmed, more serious now, the rare moment of unanticipated frivolity past, replaced by a sharpening of his senses caused by the fetching way moonlight gilded the silken skein of her unbound hair. “I dinna usually sleep fully clothed.”
“But I thought… you said—”
“I know what I said,” Duncan finished for her. “But I’ve been compelled to change my mind about where I lay my head. You needn’t look so alarmed. ’Tis sleep alone I want.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks promptly turned a brighter shade of red. “’Tis not alarmed I am, sir, only confused. I thought you preferred your own quar—”
“My chamber, milady, has been sequestrated by a certain one-eyed demon of rascality.”
Surprise, nervousness, or mayhap because the saints inspired her to help rob him of his sanity, she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and in doing so, let slip the edge of the coverlet. In the instant it took her to realize what she’d done and yank the coverlet back in place, Duncan caught a most tantalizing view of one deliciously peaked nipple.
His loins fired immediately, his shaft filling at the sight. Dusky rose in hue and tightly rouched, the exposed nipple, even glimpsed so briefly, sent desire crashing through Duncan. Driven by pure male hunger, he strode forward, ready to abandon his ridiculous monkish vows and take possession both of his wife’s nipples and everything else she had to offer.
And this time he intended to remember every minute detail of the pleasuring of her!
Devil in a Kilt Page 14
