The Border Lord

by Sophia James

  Belridden mirrored the sudden coldness she felt inside, showing no glimmer of any redeeming feature in the draughty and ill-kempt hall. The wind whistled in through wooden shutters and the rough sleeping mattresses littering the floor had not been cleared away. Half-eaten food scraps and mangy dogs lay beneath a high table that had neither linen on it nor tapestries behind it. Impoverished and meagre, Belridden stood like a sentinel on the very last edge of civilisation. The rolling green pastures of Grantley, the manor house with its garderobes and its luxury and an ease of both language and weather seemed so far away in this unfamiliar and uneasy landscape.

  She shook her head, seeing in that moment how appealing her dowry must have been to a laird struggling with day-to-day expenses. Nothing here looked as if it had been attended to for decades. Even the occupants inside the keep looked ragged, their simple tunics and shifts dotted with repairs. She saw in their covert glances just exactly what they thought of her. Nobody smiled. Nobody welcomed her. Nobody hid the knowledge of her place here or sheltered her from the fondling of the Laird and his mistress, the woman’s arms now full along the rise of Lachlan Kerr’s buttocks.

  She had been fooling herself on the journey north that this alliance could be anything more than a simple union of need—his need of legitimate heirs and her need of a husband. Any sort of husband given her advanced years. Even the brother of a man she had loathed.

  Taking in a breath, she swallowed back panic. Lachlan Kerr’s ring on her finger denoted ownership in a circle of promise and submission and any ill-timed rebellion now could ruin things completely. In children she might find great happiness, and surely in the sharing and shaping of young lives some common ground could be formed.

  His hand at her elbow surprised her.

  ‘If you follow me, I’ll show ye where you’re to sleep.’ The woman he had fondled watched from the other side of the room, warning in her eyes as their glances met. With dignity Grace smiled, hoping to give the impression of an airy unconcern even as she hid her shaking fingers in the generous train of her woollen dress.

  Lachlan Kerr signalled his men to pick up her possessions and turned towards a door she had not noticed before. Lifting her skirts to avoid the hem being stained further, Grace was surprised by the breadth of a tower and by the warmth of a cosy solar off a hallway. A fire burned in a large grate, a coiled rush mat on the ground before it. To one end was a raised cubby with a mattress spread on wooden slats and covered in an intricate green-and-red cloth. A footstool, a table and a sturdy oaken chair completed the furniture.

  When the men placed her things on the floor and departed, Lachlan Kerr closed the door behind them.

  Alone. A silence widening with possibility. When he reached out and laid his hand across the swell of her bosom, the clench of her teeth worried the soft flesh on the inside of her mouth.

  Blood. She tasted it and swallowed, keeping still as his fingers wandered down to the curve of her hips and the line of her bottom. Through the fine cloth of her gown her skin burned and her heartbeat, already quickened, doubled its pace yet again.

  When he laughed and moved back, she felt the blaze of embarrassment more forcibly than she ever had before.

  ‘I will take ye tonight after supper. A woman will be sent to see to your needs.’

  His voice was deep and she saw in his eyes the unmistakable flare of sex, and the sharp rush of prescience almost made her faint.

  Beat, beat, beat.

  Blood in her throat and in her stomach and in a place between her legs where there had only ever been stillness.

  I will take you tonight. A duty. An insignificant thing. After supper.

  ‘I th-th-th-think th-th-that w-w-we sh-should w-w-wait.’

  ‘Wait for what?’ he returned with impatience even as he opened up the portal to leave.

  For love. For softness. For the blossoming of feeling and hope and promise. She shook her head as the words rushed around in her mind and watched the easy way he left her, his thoughts on other obligations that waited outside.

  Standing perfectly still she reached one hand across her breast just as he had, the quick thrill of ardour returning, bold with thoughts of something she did not comprehend. Imagining. Skin against skin. Her eyes flew open and all the pleasurable feeling exited in one single rush. Her hand went to her damaged leg, the knots of red-welted scars overlaid with pearl. She was a flawed wife.

  Peg-leg. Ugly. Red-head. She scratched at the creases of skin at her elbows as she contemplated options. The children at Grantley had been told to be kind as she was growing up, though many a boy had not heeded the special advice given about how to handle the withdrawn and newly orphaned thirteen-year-old Grace. Their taunts still pierced her equanimity sometimes, a reminder of reality when her mind took her on other journeys of wishful thinking.

  Would she be able to stay in her clothes for this ‘taking’? Could the expanse of skin between her ankle and her knee be enough for a man like Lachlan Kerr to dwell on before he laid his seed on her stomach? Grace frowned and wondered where this seed would go next. Without a mother, and as the oldest of the female cousins, she had had no one to ask about the proprieties of marriage and its expectations. Of course she knew children were a product of this thing that a married couple did after marriage, but the mechanics of a swollen belly as a result of ‘the act’ eluded her. She had tried to ask Stephen of it once, but he had not answered, avoiding her company until he left again for London. So she had desisted from further questions, reasoning that, as an ageing and plain woman, she might never need to know the answer anyway.

  Until today. Until the hours that led to supper, suspense vied with dread in a very even measure.

  Lachlan cut into his rondel dagger with the flat side of a water stone, angling the blade so that the full bite of it was in contact, and rubbing till a burr began to form. Testing the sharpness to see if the edge grabbed, he cursed as the honed blade slid into the soft base of his right thumb.

  He swore roundly, before placing down both stone and blade and wiping blood against the linen of his long shirt. He felt keyed up, nervous almost, the fear he had seen in his wife’s eyes somehow…important.

  Could this be her first time? At twenty-six! Lord, the whole idea unnerved him. He had been less than half her age when the fifteen-year-old daughter of a French knight had asked him into the deserted tack room of her father’s stables and showed him exactly what it was he had been missing. When their illicit affair had been discovered, he’d been hauled off to the battlefield of Vironfosse in Vervins with Philip the Sixth, his back tanned with the sharp end of a whip and the sure-fire knowledge that he would never bed an unmarried girl again. And he hadn’t.

  He frowned. He would bed Grace Stanton and hope that issue would be forthcoming quickly.

  The ghosts of the past quietened under his plans and, digging into his sporran, he found his brother’s ring and turned the rubies into the light. Remembering.

  Ruth. His first wife! He had taken this very ring from her finger as she had been buried in the consecrated ground beside the chapel because he had not uttered a word.

  Not one.

  And the secrets that simmered beneath the liturgy of honour and esteem and integrity spoken at her burial had remained untold because of the baby, her skin marked close with blue veins. The bastard progeny of his brother and stillborn, as if God in all his omnipotence had smote her breathless.

  Hannah. He had called her that after his mother, because she had needed at least a name. Grinding his teeth together, he stood. Time should have leached some of the pain but it had not, and when Malcolm had been killed his violently uttered oaths had brought him Grace Stanton.

  God, what irony was there in that, he asked himself and went to stand at the window, pulling back a sheath of leather and staring out. The sun was low, falling behind the Cheviots on its journey west. Night time. Almost. The thought of his new wife readying herself for him was surprisingly arousing. Erotic, even. He had in
structed his housekeeper to make certain that she bathed, a custom he had adopted daily since his first sojourn into Acquitaine. He hoped that she would not be adorned with too heavy a nightdress. He hoped that her hair would be down. But most of all he hoped that she would not share the trait of Ruth, her sullen inertness at the whole process of lovemaking a decided inhibitor to any enjoyment.

  The sun fell now into the darkening dusk, turning the surrounding countryside into hidden shadow. Taking breath, he released it carefully. He felt suddenly like a young boy, the pull of lust strong in his blood.

  How would he take Grace? Quick and hard or slow and soft? Up to him. Completely. The flesh between his legs swelled as an unwanted power, all the old betrayals surfacing. He did not want a wife to worry about. He did not want a spouse to watch over to determine if her conscience was clear or not. He did not want the fetter of trust laced again around him, its tethers pulling tighter and tighter with the passing of time.

  If she hated him, all this would be so much easier. He would have her as a wife in name only, to ripen with his children and hold her own counsel. Already he could see how those in his castle had turned against her and he had made no move to make it different. Nay, Grace Stanton with her fire-red hair and her stutter would bear his children and ensure his lineage. That was all.

  ‘Sheas,’ he muttered into the silence. At thirty-three he was too damn old for all this nonsense. Too old to try to mend what was broken, and lust was such a fleeting companion.

  Chapter Five

  Grace sat on the chair beside her bed and waited. She had dismissed the woman sent to help her dress a good half an hour earlier. The offered bath had been a wonderful surprise and she felt cleaner than she had in days, despite redressing in her sturdy day gown.

  When would Lachlan Kerr come demanding her wifely obligations? She guessed it to be some time after the hour of ten and wished that she had the bravery to blow out the row of candles on the table and bar the door, the slats on this side well hewn and heavy. But if she did that it would only be delaying everything until the morrow and she suddenly wanted what it was that would happen now done, so that she could wake in the morning with at least some knowledge of what she faced…for the rest of her life.

  Footfalls outside had her tensing, and, tilting her head, she listened to the sound of voices.

  Lachlan Kerr and a woman, her voice honey sweet and pleading. His mistress, perhaps? Grace’s ire rose at a trill of something that sounded like laughter. And then silence.

  The handle turned slowly once and halted, as if he too might be delaying.

  Then he was there, shirt bereft of plaid, and for the first time she saw him without a weapon. His hair was plaited at the side of his face into two long strands and the rest of it was down, the line of it reaching past his shoulders, dark black with a thread of silver at his right temple.

  Puzzlement showed briefly on his brow.

  ‘Did the housekeeper nae send a maid, then? To help ye dress, ye ken.’ His Scottish accent was thicker tonight and she could smell strong brew, even at this distance.

  ‘I-indeed she d-did. B-but I ch-ch-chose to stay in my d-day gown.’

  He frowned. ‘Are you knowledgeable about the ways of men?’ Such a formal question. ‘Did your mother tell you about the happenings in the marriage bed?’

  She shook her head and a slither of ire threaded across his brow. ‘Clothes are no’ needed at all.’

  Grace felt the blood run from her face. ‘I c-c-could not p-possibly…’ She stopped. One look at her scars and he would want no more to do with her.

  The soft concern she saw in his eyes surprised her as he left the room, returning less than a minute later with pewter mugs and a jug of ale. Pouring out two generous drinks, he handed her one and bade her sit again on the oaken chair. He took his own seat on the side of her bed, facing her.

  ‘I will nae hurt ye beyond what…will be necessary, you understand.’

  She nodded, not certain as to what she was understanding or agreeing to. Hurt or acquiescence?

  ‘But my seed must mix wi’ yours to form a bairn.’

  ‘A-a-a b-bairn.’ Two words and each one hard to say.

  Bringing a mug up to her lips, he waited as she took a large sip. Then waited again, his shirt pulling up carelessly across the untanned insides of his thighs, his legs well muscled with dark whorls of hair.

  ‘Did ye nae sleep wi’ my brother?’ A different question. Unexpected.

  When fear ripped through her she hoped that he would take her shaking as a sign of grief.

  ‘I see. But ye loved him, then?’

  Looking up, she watched as he took a drink, the froth of the ale smeared across his top lip until he licked it off. A pure shot of anger appeared in his pale blue eyes when she did not dare to form an answer.

  ‘Then I am sorry both for your loss and for what must happen next.’

  The dull throbbing in her stomach became stronger as he reached out and took her hand in his own, holding on when she tried in vain to pull back, his thumb tracing across her palm.

  Only that, and a small hint of interest grew. The lines that circled his wrist were unfamiliar and foreign and she felt the hardness of toil and war imbued into the very texture of his skin. Danger had its own exhilaration, Grace decided, as the ale began to warm other more forbidden feelings.

  The Laird of Kerr neither looked up nor spoke, but his breath against her hand came faster, as if in such a tiny thing a man as large and obdurate as him could be affected, as if within her was a power that left him vulnerable. Exposed!

  Potency surged and her thumb joined his, a modest caress, the whisper of a promise barely made. And here in this unlikely keep, miles from home and with the wind outside, Grace felt…altered. There was no other word for it. A transformation had been effected by his embrace of her, of who she was, plainness forgotten under the promise of what lay between them. Secret and private. Nobody else’s business at all.

  She was twenty-six and a woman who had not expected the promise of marriage and children, so, even if their tryst should last just this one night, she would be a fool not to relax and enjoy what a man like Lachlan Kerr could show her, teach her. Imagination, after all, lay a poor second to…this, and there had been many a night when she had lain in her bed and fantasised.

  Her breath fluttered strangely in her throat, as if the very air was thinner, and his pale eyes watched her, knowing, one finger on the pulse at her wrist.

  ‘If ye do like this, there is verra much more that I would show you, aye.’

  ‘More?’ She hardly recognised the sound of her own voice.

  ‘Much more,’ he whispered back, his lips now on the soft skin at the base of her throat and trailing downwards, his fingers pulling at the laces of her bodice, deftly untying them and spreading the material around her shoulders. Opened. The slight cold of the air was welcome, cool against warm, another layer of promise and of risk. His hand slipped between linen and flesh, cupping one breast, the flare of his nostrils evident as he determined fullness.

  She should have cried out stop, should have blushed at the sheer temerity of what he did, this stranger, this husband only by the will of kings, but she was held mute by the beauty of his touch and breath and challenge.

  This was no paltry man of little consequence, no bowlegged gaunt lover with a face to match his figure. Nay, she, Grace Stanton, was being courted by a man who could have easily come straight from her dreams, from the stories she was so used to weaving, from the myths and legends echoing down from the very first gatherings of time.

  The sharper flick of his finger on her nipple made her take in breath, and she tried to quell the rush of hope the action engendered as she hardened proud against his thumb, the small nub of her body’s desire tight and close, puckered into want.

  When he bent down she gasped and tried to pull away, but he suckled hard and her head fell back of its own accord.

  Lord, for this minute, just for this min
ute, she thought, her hand threading through his hair and bringing him closer, as a mother might a child, or a mistress might a lover.

  A lover. Candlelight surrounded them, the scent of woman and man, her hand against his breast, nipple hard against her nail, pinching, the ache of lust and passion and the ancient rhythm of love. Faster.

  I…will…love…you…for ever.

  ‘Grace.’ Her name. She came back with a start, his hand over hers, holding her to the task, puzzlement in his eyes. ‘For a novice you are well versed in the arts of pleasing a man.’

  ‘I copied you.’

  No stutter now. It surprised her, this lack of difficulty in speaking and she began again. ‘I th-th-thought if I liked it, then you should too.’ Not quite as fluid as the last sentence, but still a lot better than her usual difficulty in his company. Lachlan Kerr’s eyes ran across her generous curves. She did nothing to cover the nakedness of her full breasts, her bodice now around her waist, her skin translucent against the light of candles.

  She felt wanton, careless, the ties of propriety that had always bound her had fallen away under the pledge of union and when he reached out and gathered her to him she went gladly.

  Not soft either, but tough and full of promise, his tongue scorched a trail along her lips before plundering her mouth, searching inside, denying her breath, taking her as his wife, his woman, allowing her no resistance or refusal, open and wider, one hand in her hair as he hauled her close, the other fastening over her breast.

  Tight bound. No allowance of rejection. The urgency in her body grew, building into thick hot pushes from a place deep within, the voice of it torn from her lips in a punctuated groan as he held her against his shoulder, her whole body jolting in involuntary surges, the quivers of desire surprising them both.

  ‘God.’ His voice, as the liquid heat in her uncoiled and flowed, all around her the light of joy and pleasure. More. Lust no longer hidden, her fingers traced the shape of his cheeks and of his jaw and of the line of his throat. Down. Need burned in the fire of his eyes and the harshness of his breath and the fine true shape of his body as he stripped off his shirt, nothing beneath it but man. The wound from the battle with the Elliots was still bound, white cloth against brownness. She hoped it didn’t hurt him, but feared it might as he adjusted her arm so that she did not lean against it.