Taming His Rebel Lady

by Jane Godman

  The guilt he felt at his own reaction to the discovery that Iona was missing would not subside. I should have known her better. I should have trusted her.

  Williams had returned to the house, tired, disheveled, repentant and clearly expecting to be dismissed. Edwin had been kinder to the groom than to himself. His mind insisted on asking “what if”. What if Fraser had not come? What if Lady Hendry had not shared her information? What if they had not found her in time?

  And, of course, his feelings were frayed to tatters by the way he had found her. Telling himself that she was safe only helped to an extent. Each time he did, he was reminded of the flames, the phantom screams in his head and the searing heat that reminded him of failure and loss.

  Angrily, he told himself, he must regain control over his emotions and take care of Iona. He was surprised, on his return to the house to find Iona precariously descending the stairs. By clinging to the banister, she was managing to keep her weight off her injured foot.

  “What on earth are you doing?” He ran to her and lifted her into his arms, carrying her down the last few stairs.

  “I needed to talk to you. Take me into the library where we can be private, if you please.”

  Once inside the library, Edwin kicked the door shut behind him before setting her down on a sofa near the fire. “Could you not have talked to me in the bedroom?”

  She shook her head, a little smile hovering about her mouth. “You know as well as I that there is only one thing we do in the bedroom, Edwin…and it doesn’t involve much talking.”

  “If I remember rightly, we don’t always restrict ourselves to the bedroom.”

  Iona blushed, a slight, reminiscent smile touching her lips. “Aye, that much is true. But perhaps we can restrain ourselves for long enough to have a conversation?” She patted the seat next to her, and he joined her.

  “What is it you wish to say to me?”

  Her eyes appeared a darker gold than usual as she looked up at him. She took her time before speaking, and he realised she was trying to find the right words. This was a new side to Iona, one he had not seen before.

  “Ours was a strange start, was it not? I’d not imagine many marriages start with a sword fight. But that encounter set the tone for us. From then on ’twas as if we were still involved in that fight, each of us striving to be the victor. The only time that isn’t so is when we make love.” The soft blush that tinged her cheeks deepened. “Then, when we are both applying our considerable determination toward achieving the same goal, we are unstoppable.” She lifted her chin. “I would like it to be so in everything we do, Edwin.”

  He took the hand that lay nearest to him on the sofa and placed it on his knee, covering her fingers with his. “So would I.”

  Iona shook her head. “No, ye din’nae understand what I am saying. It can’nae be that way unless you stop hiding things from me. While you still have secrets, Edwin, while you shut me out of whatever it is that pains you so much, I will always feel that I am just another warm body who takes away your cares in the moment. I will never feel like I am truly your wife.”

  Dread swept over him. He pushed it away with an attempt at flippancy. “First you told me you couldn’t feel like my wife if we didn’t engage in what you called ‘the sex act’, now you tell me you can’t feel like my wife because we do?”

  The hurt in her eyes burned its way deep into his heart. “You know that isn’t what I wanted to say to you. What I feel when we make love, it’s so much more than anything physical. When you are inside me, Edwin, there are no walls between us. You enter my soul as well as in my body. I want that connection between us all the time. I think it can be ours if we can overcome this one, final barrier.”

  Frightened by the intensity of the response her words provoked within him, Edwin reached out for her. Iona attempted to push him away, but he had already lowered his mouth to hers. She continued to struggle for a second before her body yielded to his. Her soft moan was all it took to completely undo him. He placed his hands around her waist and drew her closer against him, not breaking the kiss for a moment. Surrendering completely, Iona pulled his shirt from his breeches and slid her fingers inside it, tracing the muscles of his back.

  Edwin groaned, unable to suppress the quiver that ran through him. God, it felt so good to have her back in his arms. The few days away from her had felt like an eternity, the fear of losing her had been the very worst kind of torture Sir Garwen could have inflicted on him.

  Breaking the connection between them, he unfastened the laces of her bodice and closed his mouth around one of her nipples, loving the choking, gasping sound she made. Her fingers jerked into his hair, holding his head tightly to her breast. He suckled on her gently and moved one hand under her skirts.

  “I want you, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I will be sure to tell you if you do,” Iona groaned and dug her fingers into his shoulders.

  Placing a thumb on each side of her lips, he parted her, pushed a finger into her tight channel and then retreated, stroking her clitoris in the same movement.

  “Edwin.” Iona’s legs fell further apart.

  “I need to taste your sweetness again,” Edwin muttered, dropping to his knees beside the sofa and parting her thighs. He toyed with her clitoris, watching it swell beneath his touch. “To prove to myself that you really are alive.”

  Careful of her injured ankle, he pulled her forward to the edge of the sofa and inhaled her musky scent. The sight of her was so enticing his cock instantly became rock hard, forcing itself painfully against the cloth of his breeches. Leaning forward, he licked up and into her cleft. Iona jerked against him, but he held her still, dipping his tongue again and again into her channel. He dragged it slowly back before finally sucking her swollen little bud into his mouth. Edwin heard her groan and answered by pushing two fingers inside her, penetrating her while he brought her to a climax in his mouth. While her thighs still shook from her orgasm, he kissed her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, burying his head in the soft curve of her neck. “I want all the things you do. I want to tell you. It’s just…”

  “Ye din’nae know how.” She wound her arms around his neck. “We’ve wasted too much time on words for now. Take me to bed, Edwin. We’ve all the time in the world for talking after I’ve felt you inside me once more.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Now, please,” Iona murmured.

  “Patience, my lady. I am enjoying myself too much.” Edwin flicked his thumb back and forth over her clitoris.

  Iona squirmed. “Dear God, what are you trying to do to me?”

  Showing her no mercy, he lowered his head to her breast, tracing her nipple with his tongue. Closing his lips over her nipple, he drew it deep into his mouth, sucking on it in a fierce rhythm. The feelings building inside her were all too maddeningly good.

  “I need you inside me, Edwin.”

  “Are you sure? Your injuries…”

  “I’m sure.”

  It seemed he needed no more encouragement, moving so that he could position himself against her tight entrance.

  “Then, my love, you shall have exactly what you want.”

  Without hesitation, he thrust himself deep inside her. Iona’s guttural groan matched his. Inch by inch he sank into her. God she’d missed this, missed him, in those few long days they’d been apart. Edwin began to thrust faster, and she lifted her hips, bringing him deeper. They moved to their own rhythm, one they’d already established in their time together. Iona arched against him, whimpering.

  “Edwin.” She gasped, her thighs clenched around his hips. “You feel so good. More.”

  He thrust into her harder, their bodies quivering together at the sensation.

  “I won’t last much longer,” he groaned. “I’ve missed you too much, missed being inside you.”

  He reached between them to rub her clitoris until her body tightened around him. Iona shuddered, moaning out her release in one long, u
neven breath. Edwin gave one last thrust, pulling her tight against him. He groaned aloud as he orgasmed, as though he was pouring his heart and soul into her. As always, Edwin was mindful of her injuries when he withdrew from Iona and held her close against his side.

  As she lay sleepy and replete in his arms, Iona decided to wait for Edwin to speak. She had told him how she felt. If, as she believed, he wanted her at his side as his wife, his equal, his love, he was going to have to trust her. However hard that might be. He lay in silence with his eyes closed, so still he might have been asleep. Except for his hand stroking her hair.

  Finally, he spoke. “Until I met you, Iona, I swore I would never open my heart to another.”

  “Aye, and you’ve been very successful in that vow. I have seen firsthand how hard you have worked to shut others out of your heart, including me. I know the reason for that is because of something bad that happened when you were younger. Can we get past it together? Will ye no tell me of it, Edwin?”

  He looked into her eyes, and she wondered for a moment if he was about to break away from her and flee. Abruptly, the words were dragged from him. “I was responsible for the death of the girl I loved. And for the deaths of many other innocent victims.”

  She drew his head down to her breast. “Tell me.”

  He was silent again for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to speak at all. When he did, his voice was low and husky with emotion. “We were a small garrison, close to the border, placed there to protect the locals from reivers. I had only recently joined the army, and I was a few months short of my eighteenth birthday. Hendry took a shine to me at once, and I was dazzled by him. Like his brother, he was a big, bold personality, and I suppose I was flattered that our commander singled me out for his friendship. Some of the other soldiers—older, more experienced men—tried to warn me about him. With the arrogance of youth, I didn’t listen.”

  Iona threaded her fingers through his hair. She tried to picture the boy he had once been and thought she could. Heartbreakingly handsome, keen and laughing.

  “The convent—” he swallowed again and she knew it was because he struggled to say the words, “—of Saint Helena-le-Clay was nearby. There was a girl. Her name was Lilith. She wasn’t a nun. Her parents had recently died and she had no other family, so the nuns had taken her in. We became friends.” Iona felt his sigh reverberate through her own body. “More than friends. It was a boy-girl thing at first. Looks and sighs and one or two kisses. It progressed slowly to become something more. I didn’t know then that Hendry had noticed.”

  “He cannot surely have planned to massacre an entire order of nuns just because you fell in love with a girl from their convent?” Iona could not contain her incredulity.

  “You don’t know how evil he was. I wasn’t there when he gave the order. I had sneaked away to meet Lilith, and I think that was what sparked his rage. He had been looking for me, and when he could not find me, he was incensed. Perhaps he thought we were within the convent walls, but we weren’t. We were lying together in an apple orchard some distance away. While Lilith and I were losing our virginity to each other, Hendry and the other men had stormed Saint Helena-le-Clay and were raping and killing the nuns.”

  “Were all of the other soldiers involved? Did no-one refuse to carry out such a heinous command?”

  “One or two. Those who refused were killed on Hendry’s orders. The story was that the men who died were trying to put out the fire that followed.”

  “What happened to Lilith? If she was with you, does that mean she escaped the horror?” Iona’s voice was gentle.

  Edwin’s breath was ragged, and she felt the rise and fall of his chest as he struggled to control his emotions. “I walked her back to the convent gates and kissed her goodbye. She went inside, and as I reached the end of the lane that would lead me back to the village where our troop was garrisoned, I heard her call my name.” He sat up abruptly, rubbing his hands over his face. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I thought I could speak of it to you…but I can’t.”

  Iona sat up next to him, drawing him into her arms and pressing her lips to his temple. His whole body shuddered as though wracked by some terrible fever. She held him until the trembling finally subsided.

  “You are nearly done,” she said and he nodded.

  “I said Lilith called my name, but those words do not convey the awful sound she made. She screamed my name. It was a plea for me to help her. I have never heard a sound like it, before or since. It was a cry of pure anguish. As I turned and ran back toward the convent, I could see her at one of the upper floor windows. Hendry was with her. He grinned down at me before he pulled her inside. I heard other screams from within the convent, and I knew something was very wrong. I tried to find a way inside, but the door was barred. I ran down the lane to get help from the village. When I returned with a few men, the first flames were already taking hold.”

  Iona reached for the decanter of wine on the locker at the side of the bed and poured a goblet of the crimson liquid. Edwin took it from her, draining half the contents in one swift mouthful.

  “Come back here.” He patted the place she had just shifted from. “I’m strong enough to go on, but only with you next to me.”

  Iona moved back to him. “I will always be next to you.” She lifted his hand and kissed his palm.

  “Between us we—the men from the village and I—broke down the convent door, but it was too late. The fire had been set in too many places, and it had taken a strong hold by then. I was sure I could still hear Lilith calling to me so I wouldn’t give up. I kept trying to fight my way through the smoke and flames to find her. Even when they pulled me back, I fought them and went in again. The last time they dragged me out, I was half-unconscious. It was no good, I didn’t save anyone. There were no survivors.”

  “Where was Hendry while this was happening?”

  His lips twisted into a half smile. “He and his men got away before the fire got a grip. They were found drinking in a nearby alehouse, supposedly oblivious to the drama. I seemed to be the only person who noticed that one or two of them smelled of smoke and had blackened faces.”

  Iona searched for a grain of comfort in the horrible story she had just heard. “I know he murdered her in the fire, but mayhap Hendry did not have time to do any other harm to Lilith before that.”

  “Oh, he did.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because he took great delight in describing every detail of what he did to her before he killed her. He told me of it every day I served under him. Over and over. He told me how she sobbed my name as she died.”

  Iona brushed away the tears from her cheeks. “Bastard.”

  He shook his head. “That is an accident of birth, my love. Hendry was evil to the core, the blame for that cannot be placed upon his parentage.”

  “I still don’t understand the extremity of his reaction to you and Lilith. Was it jealousy? Did he want her too?”

  “Yes, he was jealous. But it was not Lilith he wanted. It was all about me, Iona. I have had to live with the truth since that godawful night. Whether it was my friendship or my love Hendry craved, I will never know, but in his twisted mind, he acted as he did because he could not bear to lose me.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “I do indeed. Again, I know it because he told me. It was the means by which he kept me close. The threat with which he bought my silence and my false friendship. ‘You’ll not make the same mistake again, will you, Eddie-boy?’ Those were his words every time I looked at a woman or one looked my way. Four long years I endured that bastard’s emotional torment.”

  “Edwin, you did’nae kill Lilith or those other women.”

  “I can tell myself that sometimes. Sometimes my inner self even listens. The fact remains, Iona, that they would all have lived had it not been for me. And during those four years Hendry managed to convince me that, if I ever let another woman—another person—get close to me, the sam
e thing would happen. It is a powerful message.”

  “How did you break free of Hendry?” She knew, of course, that the truth was he had not broken free of him. Only that he had managed to put some physical distance between them.

  “There were rumours about him in the army. He was unstable, untrustworthy. Horrible as it sounds, his evil nature was just what the English command wanted here in Scotland to subdue the clans. When he was posted north to the garrison at Fort William, I received orders of my own which sent me to Flanders. He tried to have them countermanded so that I could remain with him, but I have some powerful connections. I rarely use them, but I called in a favour on that occasion and my orders remained in force. On my return from Flanders, I was stationed close to London. I had vowed to see Hendry again—just once—but your brother curtailed my plans.” She frowned her confusion and he smiled at her. “I swore as I stood in the ashes of Saint Helena-le-Clay, that I would kill Augustus Hendry. While I served under him, I was not brave enough to do it. My courage broke down every time. What if I should fail? What would his retribution look like? I knew what he was capable of. Oh, I was not afraid for myself, but I knew what he could do to others. Nevertheless, I swore I would face him one day and drive my sword through that black heart. Fraser beat me to it.”

  “And that is why you wanted Fraser pardoned for Hendry’s murder,” Iona said and he nodded. Edwin’s motives were finally clear.

  “Pardoned? When I heard about it, I wanted him rewarded. I had to make sure he didn’t hang for ridding the earth of the foulest man that ever walked it. After Culloden, there was even more I could do for him. I made sure he avoided the attainder.”