“So you have advised me, over and over again. And I say to you, Dougal, love is more than the side effect of a stiff crotch. ’Tis a kind of magic, that strikes where it may. You canno’ choose it, or refuse it.”
“You truly are a fool.”
“So you have also advised me, repeatedly.”
“Tell me then, Lachlan. If you languish in the pleasurable pool of love, why do you also mope here, showing the aspect of a man who has been kicked in the teeth?”
“You know why. Meg leads me a merry chase. She spends most her time warning me off and then, just occasionally, tosses me a scrap of hope, barely enough to keep me panting after her.”
“So, be a man. Command her, or leave her.”
“As you do your wife?” Lachlan slanted a curious look at Dougal. “I suppose you command all of your emotions, where she is concerned?”
“Of course,” Dougal lied.
“I have to admit,” said Lachlan, who seemed to have a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth this day, “I never expected to see you wed—after Aisla, I mean. And Isobel is naught like Aisla, is she? ’Tis like comparing chalk and cheese.”
“And why should she be like—” Dougal found that even after all this time he could not speak her name.
“Full of spirit,” Lachy went on, oblivious to Dougal’s state of mind. “And I cannot imagine her weeping in that soft way, as Aisla used to.”
“Shut up, Lachlan.”
“Eh?”
“Stop talking now, or I swear I will silence you!”
Lachlan shot him an injured look.
Silence fell on the high walk, save the soughing of the endless wind that seemed to bring the chill of the distant hills.
“All I am saying,” began Lachlan, who never knew when to keep still, then, “is I hope your new wife proves worth it. You do know you have war on your hands? Her father may or may not bring you trouble. With MacNab, ’tis assured.”
“I welcome war with MacNab, Lachy. I have long desired it.”
“You want revenge, and to pay him back.”
“We have established that.”
“And if it costs your lands? Your bonny new wife?”
Dougal shrugged. “The cost be damned. Just so I bring him down—with me or without.”
“Aye, so!” Lachlan tossed his head. “I suppose that proves you have no real love for Isobel.”
“I have told you over and over again, Lachlan, I am incapable of love.”
****
Lachlan’s words returned to Dougal later that evening when he and Isobel sat by the fire in her chamber, prior to retiring. He felt restless and irritable, and Isobel’s presence acted on him like strong drink, turning his mind. He wanted her, aye, but he would be damned if he would jump through hoops for the privilege of enjoying her body. Why did he put himself through this particular hell? He would be better off taking a turn among the guard he had posted on the battlements, or sitting up alone in the great hall.
Or, if he chose, he could just take her—as her husband, it was his right. But self-prohibition that went beyond conscience kept him from that. And, curse her, she had not reached for him.
She spoke suddenly into the stillness of the room. “Do you think MacNab truly will bring trouble over our union? I have been thinking about it for days, ever since his visit, and contemplating my rash action in taking my sister’s place. Perhaps I should write to my father and explain, take all the blame onto myself. He cares little enough about me anyway. Perhaps he could diffuse the situation with MacNab, since they are such close friends.”
Dougal turned his head and looked at her in surprise. She stared into the fire, so he saw her in profile. She looked like a girl turned into a woman by sorrow, and he experienced a twinge of nameless emotion. It had been days since he had considered her state of mind or, in truth, anything save his hatred for MacNab and the ache in his crotch. Now the parallels between her situation and what Aisla had endured long ago leaped at him. Isobel had fire and courage, and little of Aisla’s gentle spirit, yet she must feel afraid and very much alone, her only companions himself—Satan help her—and his witch of a sister.
He drew a breath and thought, actually contemplating his words before he spoke them. “I appreciate your concern, but I cannot imagine any letter of appeal to your father that might change things now. We are wed, and naught can undo that.”
“No?” She looked at him, her eyes wide and filled with reflected firelight.
By the devil’s horns, she was beautiful, from the hair that tumbled down her back to her bare feet.
“Yet,” she spoke on, “Meg says you could lose everything if this, this war goes badly—this place that means everything to you, your ancestral lands, your life.”
He smiled. “Nothing means everything to me, save revenge. You might as well know that of me now. You had best believe it.”
She lifted her chin. “You could renounce me. Send me home to my father.”
“The marriage has been consummated.”
“So it has. Yet I would be no more shamed than I already was, in my father’s eyes. Make some excuse, say the priest was drunk when he joined us, or—”
“O’Rourke was, indeed, drunk. But that does not render the joining invalid.” He frowned at her. “Do you want to escape me so badly that you would rather choose shame beneath your father’s roof?”
She shrugged. “ ‘The devil you know,’ as the saying goes. At least, if I return home to a life of obscurity, it will not cost you all you value.”
“Allow me to worry about my costs, Wife. I am no bairn, unable to make my own choices.”
“Nor am I.”
Just as well, with the way he felt right now: enflamed, ready to push her to the hearth rug and take her there. Could she see the desire in his eyes? He had done his best to hide it these past days and nights, but it grew more difficult. Sleeping beside her proved tortuous, yet he could not keep away. And even when he did remove himself, pacing the battlements or riding the fields, she obsessed his mind.
He did not know what she saw in his eyes, but she reached out, her fingers barely brushing his sleeve, withdrawing and then grabbing hold, hard.
“You carry old wounds, deep ones,” she whispered. “I would not have you acquire more because of me.”
Astonishment touched him. “You are a merciful woman, I think,” he told her. “Just how much pity, Isobel, do you have in your heart? Naught can heal those old wounds of which you speak. Yet there is a fairly constant ache you might ease.”
He had never come closer to asking, but his blood fair burned inside him, and he found himself awaiting her reply with held breath.
Her eyes fell and then came up to meet his again, spilling over with wicked light. She tumbled forward into his arms and lifted her lips. “I feared, Husband, you would never ask.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Husband, are you awake?” The words came from Isobel in a whisper as she turned to the man beside her in the bed. Early dawn light crept over the windowsill and past the curtain she had hung to block the cold, barely lifting the gloom that filled the chamber. But she could see Dougal, and the sight caused a pain in her heart.
He slept on his side, turned toward her, his black hair tangled on the pillow with her own. In repose, his face looked almost beautiful, like something carved of ivory, all the wary cruelty gone. His eyelashes, sinfully long, made twin fans against his skin, and only the deep scar beneath his left eye marred his perfection.
Isobel’s fingers tingled with the desire to touch him, smooth his hair, which she knew felt like silk, caress the supple muscles beneath every inch of skin even as she had most the night long. No wonder he still slept, after their excesses—she doubted either of them had more than an hour or two’s rest, and she could still feel his touch everywhere.
Only a madwoman, such as she surely must be, would awaken early following such a night just to look at her husband. Yet that temptation, following all the other
s of the night, would not leave Isobel alone.
She had made a number of mistakes in her life, some of them disastrous: falling victim to the charms of a wastrel, trading places with Catherine and, quite possibly, marrying this man. Yet no mistake would be so disastrous as falling in love with him.
She lay gazing at him and prodding the tender regions of her heart as one might a fresh wound, testing its depth and risk. She had never been in love and did not understand the emotion. And what she felt toward Dougal did not resemble in any way what she had imagined love to be. This felt raw and wild, desperate and unbidden, yet it differed from the desire she also felt when in his hands. She had thought love a soft, comforting thing.
Yes, surely this was but some form of mad desire, never before experienced. After all, she had encountered many forms of desire at his hands—wicked, immensely pleasurable, and heretofore unimagined. She had never dreamed a man and woman could use their lips, their mouths on one another’s bodies the way she and her husband did, nor that the responses could be so shattering and miraculous. Just thinking on it now set her body throbbing again.
Surely, in light of all that, what she felt for him must be mere attraction. Yet the thought of her father journeying north with a household guard or, worse, help from his friend MacNab to reclaim her, caused deep pain. For whatever reason, she did not want to leave this man.
Could it happen? Could her father declare her marriage contract invalid, take her by force or persuasion and give her to Bertram, for his wife? The very idea made it hard to breathe. She would not survive a week, a day, an hour.
Was this love, or need? Need to see Dougal MacRae walk through a door in that arrogant, confident way he had, need to watch the intelligence flicker in his eyes when he spoke, to catch the rare, wry smile he tossed at her when the two of them found something humorous. Need to feel the warmth of his big body in her bed, and even when he slept drink in the feeling of safety brought by his presence, as if no harm could find her when she remained with him.
A lie, that. They were surrounded by harm, risk, and danger. The trouble was, she cared for none of that while he was within her reach.
And what would this day bring? She dreaded to think. She dreaded the possibility of anything coming between them.
The thought made her reach out and touch his hand, which lay upon her pillow. It, like much of the rest of him, was scarred, and once again she wondered about the origin of those wounds.
His fingers clasped hers strongly in his sleep. But no—he slept not; his eyes came open and stared deeply into her own.
“Wife,” he said groggily, and drew her closer. Though, she acknowledged, she could hardly get much closer. As he pulled her against him, her traitorous heart began to pound out a dangerous rhythm.
She wondered what would happen if she confessed to him all of what she felt—the confusion, the wonder—if she employed honesty and risked her sanity and made herself completely vulnerable. Perhaps he knew how to identify love.
But if he did, if he knew, it was because he loved Aisla still. Aisla, never Isobel.
She should get up out of the bed, walk away from him, try to save herself. She should welcome the possibility of rescue by her father. Instead, she found herself pressing her naked body against his and feeling the liquid fire begin to pour through her veins again.
At least they had this.
And she knew he desired her, believed that without doubt. She saw the flames in his eyes, felt his body quicken, and wondered what form the delight would take this time.
His long-fingered, clever hand, with the rough palm, skimmed over her body and slid downward until it reached the juncture of her thighs and parted them.
“Ah, Wife, will you have me again?”
“I will,” Isobel breathed raggedly.
“I am surprised you did not have enough of me last night.”
“I seem to be insatiable,” Isobel admitted, supposing it fruitless to try to hide the obvious. At this moment, could she hide anything?
“I can feel that,” he said, those long fingers doing things that made Isobel’s mouth go dry. He kissed her lips softly and ran the tip of his tongue across them. “How will it be? How will you have me, bonny Isobel?”
She wanted it all: the heat and strength of him bearing down upon her, the wild abandon when she rode him like some half-broken stallion, the raw taste of him on her tongue. She whispered helplessly, “I cannot choose. Dougal, I—”
Fortunately, he kissed her again, stopping the traitorous words that might have slipped out, her confession of love. For he did not want to hear it, did he? And she, who had already exposed every part of herself to him, need not expose, also, the innermost regions of her soul.
Because he loves Aisla still, she reminded herself yet again, even as he came to her. Never, never me.
Tears blurred her vision then, despite the tenderness with which Dougal treated her. They burned and stung and trickled from the corners of her eyes even as she held him to her. She did not expect him, in the throes of passion, to notice, but she should have known this man noticed everything.
His hand came up. He used his thumb to wipe the outer corner of her eye. “Isobel? Did I hurt you, lass?”
“No.”
“Then, why do you weep?”
Isobel, unwilling to answer, was spared when a thunderous pounding erupted at the chamber door. Dougal swore and, moving like a panther, leaped from the bed almost before she could draw a breath.
He stalked, naked, to the door and hauled it open. She heard muffled conversation and sat up in the bed, clutching the blanket to cover herself.
“What is it?” she asked when Dougal turned back from the door, his face gone hard as stone.
“Soldiers at the gate.”
“Soldiers?”
He dressed hurriedly and without looking at her, throwing himself into his clothing and, lastly, strapping on his sword. “’Tis a party of the King’s men accompanied by MacNab and a band of his warriors.”
“The King!” Horror touched Isobel and she slid from the bed, dragging the blanket with her. “Have they come to take me? Can they take me from you?”
He shot her a look across the chamber, hard and level, that had the impact of a touch. “They may well try.”
“Dougal! I will come with you, tell the King’s men I am here voluntarily. That—that I wish to remain your wife!”
“You will stay here.”
“Dougal, no! I—”
“You will stay here with a guard at the door.” He shouted it at her and went out.
“Damned if I will,” Isobel muttered, and began dressing as hastily as he. She must act quickly before he had time to post a guard who would keep her in. Because, if her fate rested on what happened downstairs, she meant to take part in it.
Her fingers tripped over themselves as she struggled to fasten herself into last night’s gown. She gulped air as she tried to bundle her hair into some kind of order—she did not want to go below looking the wanton but a respectable matron content with her lot.
When she opened the door mere moments later, she could hear voices from below, hear shouting and MacNab the Junior’s unmistakable, raging whine countered by Dougal’s biting lilt. Her heart began to pound double time, and she headed for the stairs, only to find her arm caught in a fierce grip.
“Do not go down!” It was Meg, herself fully clad but with her black hair down. In the dim light at the top of the stairs, she looked every inch the witch, eyes narrowed and filled with cunning.
“I must. They mean to decide my fate. Let go of me!”
“They cannot take you. Surely this is just harassment on MacNab’s part. Let Dougal handle it.”
“But I must show I am willing to remain here.”
Meg examined Isobel slowly. “Are you, then? Has the Devil Black woven a spell that has ensnared you?”
“I love him,” Isobel said, speaking the words she had sworn she would not. She tore herself from Meg’
s grip and flew down the stairs.
The scene in the great hall screamed of danger. Men stood everywhere, all of them armed. Most were Dougal’s warriors, his household guards, one among them no doubt the fellow assigned to guard her door, unable to tear himself from this tableau.
Among this rough crew, the King’s guard stood out like silver from dross, in bright red jackets and with glittering swords. With dread, Isobel counted them: only five, one obviously an officer, yet Randal and Bertram MacNab stood at their back, with at least six of their own warriors in tow.
Madly, Isobel wondered who had let them all in. What had been the meaning of keeping a watch and staking men at the gates if the enemy were permitted to walk right in?
She paused in the doorway and her eyes sought her husband. There—in his shirtsleeves and with his sword strapped on, the black hair streaming across his shoulders. He faced Randal MacNab and did not yet see Isobel, but others of the men did, including MacNab himself.
“You see her!” he declared, his voice throbbing with indignation. “That is the woman in question. Abducted against her will, her attendants murdered! Imprisoned here, forced into marriage by this man. He deserves, I tell you, to be tried, sentenced, and hanged!”
Chapter Twenty
“That is a lie!” The words burst from Isobel, sounding clear and certain despite the fact that her legs had no strength beneath her and for one terrible moment she feared she would fall down. Every face in the hall turned toward her, expressions ranging from curiosity to outrage. Isobel could not identify what she saw in her husband’s eyes, but his head came up when he saw her, like a horse with the whip laid on.
The captain of the King’s guard, identifiable by the amount of silver on his jacket, stepped forward. “You say, Lord MacNab, this is the woman in question?”
“It is! Daughter of a dear friend of mine who sent her north from Yorkshire, in all good faith and trust. I have already notified him of his daughter’s abduction, and he repairs here with all haste.”
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