Carried Away

by Jill Barnett

  Amy looked up at Calum. “What are they doing?”

  He glanced around uneasily. “I don’t know. Just keep dancing.” He twirled to the steps of a reel and the loud clapping and cheering all around them.

  Amy leaned back during one step and asked, “Do they know we’re going to be married?”

  “No, lass. I had to ask you first.”

  “Then why are people winking at us?”

  “I don’t know.” He spun her around and finally the music stopped with both of them completely out of breath and standing alone in the middle of the hall.

  Angus MacDonald brought out a jug of whisky and filled some glasses. More jugs appeared through the crowd and all the men raised their glasses.

  “Saoghal fada, sona dhuit!”

  Amy looked up at Calum. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a bridal toast. May you have a long, happy life.”

  “Then that means they do know,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “Calum, I think you told them before you asked me.”

  “I didn’t, lass, I swear.”

  “Lang may yer lum reek!” Angus MacDonald shouted and the men downed another glass.

  “Calum?”

  “Och! What’s the matter, lass?” Robbie MacDonald swaggered up. “Why are you frowning so. You should be the happy bride-to-be.” He gave her a wink and slid his arm around her, which earned him a scowl from Calum.

  “I’m frowning, Robbie MacDonald, because I don’t know how you know that Calum asked me to marry him. Or that I said yes.”

  “Well, we don’t know for sure, lassie, but we Scots can put two and two together better than most.”

  “Just because we were outside together, alone in the moonlight doesn’t mean a wedding.”

  “No, lassie, but I’ll wager those grass stains on your back mean there’s bound to be either a wedding or a birthing.”

  Then the whole room cheered and laughed while Amy blushed bright red.

  Chapter 45

  You can marry more money in a minute than you can earn in a lifetime.

  —Anonymous

  Bright and early the next morning, a procession of women all chattering in a mixture of English and Gaelic swarmed over the dockside and onto the coaster like ants on a sugarloaf. Since they had first arrived, Calum had been bunking in the temporary quarters with the men, so Amy had slept on the coaster.

  She awoke this morning to almost thirty woman standing in the cabin, grinning at her, and more women lined up on the dock, all there to make certain her wedding day had no ill winds cast over it.

  To insure her luck that day, she had to get out of bed backwards—which someone had to explain to her because she wasn’t certain which way was backwards. She had to turn counterclockwise three times before she put on her shoes, which someone had slipped pennies in the toes of to ward off poverty.

  That one had made her laugh. If they only knew poverty was not her problem. She was made to wash her face with morning dew gathered from the huckleberry bushes by some of the young girls. She was assured that this would keep her beauty well into her golden years.

  Her wedding dress was a special dress. The women had stayed up in the wee hours, sewing a wedding dress of fine linen whitened in the Highland sun and threaded with velvet ribbons fitting for the bride of the MacLachlan.

  She had her feet bathed in a bowl of water filled with the wedding rings of the older women to make certain the marriage would last. Blue ribbons were laced into her hair for luck. She wore old satin wedding slippers that had belonged to Mrs. MacKinnon’s great-grandmother and she was to borrow Widow Drummond’s fancy lace collar.

  When all was ready she had to stand at the companionway and wait. At two o’clock sharp there was a gunshot at the dock. She was to not move. A second gunshot came five minutes later and then a third shot. She walked up the companionway and down to the dock where Calum was waiting, dressed in tartan and a kilt and looking as proud as he could for a man with eyes so bloodshot it was like having two crabapples staring down at you from behind his spectacles.

  He took her hand and placed it on his arm and led her down the dock to the grassy field where Reverend Munro was waiting beneath the shade of a willow tree.

  She looked up at him. “Hard night?”

  He looked down at her from a squint and grunted one word. “Whisky.”

  Considering a wedding was something a girl waited for and dreamt of all her young life, the ceremony was all over almost too quickly. But the dancing was wild and lively and she and Calum tossed coins to the children as they danced the first reel.

  The food was plentiful and the cider and whisky flowed long into the dark night, when the moon was high and the young girls rushed to their makeshift beds with pieces of bridal cake to put under their mats so they could dream of their future husbands. And one lucky lass, Mairi MacConnell, the one who’d caught Amy’s silk stocking with the gold piece hidden inside, would go to sleep that night and dream of the future she hadn’t had back in Scotland.

  Calum carried Amy to the coaster along with a procession of singing Scotsmen who had drunk too much whisky and couldn’t carry a tune in their sporrans. He did his duty and to ward off the witches he carried her over the threshold—that being the entrance to the cabin stairs in this instance—then he went back on deck to send the wedding carolers all away.

  Amy sat on the edge of the bunk and waited, her hands knotted in her lap. She didn’t know whether she was more excited or more worried about what would happen next.

  He came down into the cabin and then leaned against the handrail for a moment. “I never knew marriage was going to make me this tired.”

  She raised her chin. “It isn’t marriage that has tired you out. It’s all that carousing last night and tonight.”

  He sighed and took off his spectacles and put them in a cabinet in the wall. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Aye, lass, you’re probably right. Too much whisky. Not enough sleep, and now I’m too tired to be a husband tonight.”

  With that pronouncement he yawned and stretched his big arms high, so high his hands could touch the rafters.

  Too tired? Amy sat there stunned and hurt and feeling as if he had slapped her. She couldn’t even look at him. She tried to reason this scenario in her mind, telling herself that he hadn’t done it on purpose, that they had a whole lifetime to have a wedding night.

  But it did her no good. This was her wedding night. And there could only be one. Ever.

  She stood and began to try to unbutton her dress, pulling at the buttons and bending this way and that, trying to reach every last one. She certainly wasn’t going to stop and ask him for help. She had one arm flung over her back at an odd angle and the other was reaching around her back, trying to grasp the last few buttons.

  “Having trouble?”

  She inhaled a deep breath. “Yes, but I don’t need your help.” She bent this way and that, struggling to reach the buttons and failing miserably.

  She heard his laughter and glanced up, scowling. Her scowl fell away.

  Calum stood across the cabin from her, in all his naked glory, with his arms crossed over his hairy chest and a teasing grin on his face.

  “Oh, you!” She grabbed a pillow and threw it at him, then tried to run. She only got as far as the bunk, flat on her back with Calum on top of her.

  He brought his nose so close to hers they almost touched. “You’re a gullible lass, you know that?”

  She looked at him, and rubbed her fingertips over his lips. “I was afraid I wasn’t going to get any more kisses.”

  “Ah, Amy-my-lass, you’ll never be kiss poor.”

  Poor. The word rang through her conscience. She looked up at her husband and wondered if she should tell him about her fortune now.

  But there was no time for second thoughts or telling truths and secrets, because he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her long and lingered there as if he had to, as if kissing her was necessary to his bein
g. When he was through, money was the last thing Amy thought about.

  He pulled her clothes away piece by piece. His lips and hands explored her face, neck, breast, and legs. He kissed her in ways she never knew existed: her ears, neck and breasts and body. It was a new world of experience, one she savored with each new touch and kiss, each new thrill that ran through her blood making her hot and crazy.

  In an act of pure instinct, she ran her fingers through the thick black hair on his chest. He inhaled sharply when her fingertips touched his nipples. He went a little wild then, and took most of her breast into his mouth, laved the tip of it with his tongue and sucked so hard that she felt the rush of a tingling sensation in her most private place.

  He pulled her to her feet and knelt before her, taking off the satin slippers she wore as if they were glass. His hands roved up her legs, stroking her, memorizing her skin, the feel of it. He told her how soft she was and he kissed the backs of her knees and drove her wild with his tongue.

  In a slow and methodical way, he rolled down her one silk stocking and kissed a path up her legs, taking forever. Soon he touched her there, at that intimate spot with his mouth.

  When he kissed her she almost lost her balance. She grabbed the first thing she could. His head, and clutched it to her. She needed the feeling he was creating, the thrill and the rise that made her blood speed through her body in a storm of emotion.

  A moment later she cried out and fell back on the bunk, her body pulsing with something she couldn’t believe could happen to her while her breaths came in broken gasps.

  Calum was standing over her then, his look satisfied and spectacularly proud, as if he had just saved the world.

  He pulled off the rest of her clothes, folded them, and then knelt on the bunk, one thigh wedging its way between her legs. He started again, kissing her ankles and her calves, up her thighs and pausing to breathe on the center of her. He did this over and over until she craved another touch there.

  She whispered his name and a wealth of love was in that one word: Calum. He drew one finger over her and she arched toward him. His mouth was on her waist, her belly, and her hips, everywhere, making her body nothing but sensation while his finger stroked her, then slipped inside and filled her, rubbing in and out and making her body cry.

  Then he was looming over her, his mouth and tongue tracing her ear and her neck, her breast, while his hand and fingers made her wet and wild and wanting him.

  He shifted his body and slid against her. His face was above her and he was watching her closely. He shifted slightly so he was stretching her open, beginning to slip inside. “Are you okay, lass?”

  She nodded and he slipped inside farther. She inhaled sharply at his fullness.

  He stopped, not even halfway inside her. “Amy?”

  She opened her eyes.

  He touched her with his fingers again until she was feeling that sensation again, the building of something wonderful deep within her. He slid in farther, his touch making her accept him more easily than before.

  Then he kissed her long and hard and filled her mouth with his full tongue. He gripped her hips in his hands and pushed hard.

  Her eyes flew open and she cried out into his mouth. She tried to push him off her, but he wouldn’t move.

  “Amy . . . hold still.”

  “It hurts, Calum. You’re hurting me.”

  He groaned and rested his head on her shoulder. “Lass, please. Give me a moment.”

  So they lay there, her center burning with the fullness of him. She was tense and stiff and almost afraid to relax. She was afraid it would hurt again.

  He began to move. “I have to move, lass. I have to. Does it still hurt? Tell me what you feel.” His expression held a hint of an apology.

  She looked up at him from teary eyes and she shook her head. “Not like before.”

  “Ah, lass, I didn’t want to hurt you. If I could take the pain for you, I would.”

  “Just hold me. Please hold me.”

  “Aye, I have you now and I’ll hold you forever.”

  He reached between them and began to touch her. Before long, she was captured by the fullness of him and his motions were starting to make her want to move with him, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

  This was like nothing she’d ever experienced, nothing that ever came before it.

  He pulled up one of her thighs and pulled it against his hip and moved harder, then stroked longer and more rapidly. She was breathing hard now, and so was he, like they were both running, chasing after something. If they hurried they could really fly, fly all the way up to those stars they had watched.

  He moved faster and she moved with him, until they were moving against each other. His fingers gripped her bottom, pulled her tight and more open against him, and he used his body at a different angle so it rubbed against that vulnerable, aching spot.

  She cried out his name, because she had to, because she needed to say it aloud.

  He thrust with five hard and rapid thrusts and she exploded, felt as if she were one of those shooting stars. She gripped his damp back with her fingers as she whispered his name again and again.

  He kept moving, the same hard rhythm, for long minutes and then he thrust once, groaned, and she could feel him pulse inside of her.

  In the sudden silence they lay there, sweaty and wet and their breath coming in hard shocks, neither one of them able to speak for the longest time.

  Calum lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “You are so sweet. You taste like everything good in the world.”

  She looked into his eyes and saw her husband, a man who knew her in a way she hadn’t known someone could.

  She gave him a dreamy smile that he traced with his fingertip.

  “I love you, Amy-my-lass. God, how I love you.”

  And then he kissed her again. Almost too tenderly after what they had just experienced. Holding him, having him kiss her was everything wonderful and magical.

  She knew she was going to like this thing called love and marriage, because she had Calum.

  He was still hard inside of her and he began to move. She met his motions this time, met him movement for movement while he built the tension inside of her all over again, watching her come in an explosion of ecstasy until finally he went with her, came hard and furiously inside of her.

  As they lay there, he shifted and raised up on one elbow and looked down at her. He looked at her as if he wasn’t going to stop looking for a long, long time.

  She cupped his cheek with her hand and he grabbed it, and turned his mouth to it so he could kiss her palm. He lifted her hand and placed it on his shoulder. “Am I too heavy?”

  She laughed. “Isn’t it a little late to ask that?”

  He smiled, then his smile faded. “Am I hurting you now?”

  She shook her head. “No. Stay there. I like the feel of you on me.”

  “I like the feel of you under me.”

  She flushed and he laughed.

  “Tell me, lass. How we can do what we just did, twice, and you can still blush?”

  “A woman can’t control when she blushes.”

  “Ah, but perhaps a man can. I’ll have to test this.” He traced her breast with a finger.

  “Again,” she asked.

  “After we rest for a few minutes.” He shifted off of her and then groaned. He started to get up, but she stopped him. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I’m not leaving you. I promise I won’t.”

  He shifted off of her but kept her pinned against him. Her head rested in the crook of his arm and her leg was flung on his warm thigh. She played with the thick curly hair on his chest, until he laughed and stilled her hand with his.

  There was a noise outside and he paused for a moment, an awkward moment because his hand was just moving downward over her bottom.

  A crash cut through the still night air, followed by some Gaelic curses. A man on the dock began to sing.

  “Damn those MacDona
lds,” Calum groaned and leaned his forehead on the pillow.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Serenading us. Like a shivaree, lass.”

  They listened quietly to the off-key singing:

  “There’s a marriage game called ‘Ten toes,’

  It’s played all over town.

  The girls play with ten toes up,

  The boys with ten toes down.”

  They sang the bawdy verse for a few minutes, stomping up and down the dock, singing the refrain over and over and laughing.

  Finally it grew quiet outside. When the singing was surely gone, and the man had stomped off elsewhere, Amy looked at Calum and began to giggle. “Ten toes up?”

  “Aye, one can never say the Scots don’t have a sense of humor.”

  Then he grabbed her, rolled her over on top of him, and shifted so her legs fell in between his.

  “What are you doing?”

  He smiled up at her. “I’m going to teach you how to play the marriage game.”

  “I already know how. You just taught me.”

  “Aye, lass.” He laughed and kissed her nose. “But not with ten toes down.”

  Chapter 46

  It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate at all times and situations. They presented him with the words, “And this too shall pass away.”

  —Abraham Lincoln

  Georgina flopped back into a chair in the main room in Eachann’s half of the house. It appeared to her as if this was once a reception or drawing room. She looked around. No artist could draw this mess. It was beyond the imagination.

  She raised a limp hand to her pounding forehead. “My life is over.”

  Eachann’s children had been home for a week. It had been the longest week of her life. She had tried to be friendly with them. She had tried very hard to be friendly. They wouldn’t let her.