She crawled out from under the desk, astonishment widening her eyes as she spotted the chieftain sitting by himself on the floor by the window. A miniature country setting was spread before him: little wooden bridges, felt hills, trees, rivers of glazed silk, and tiny lead figures on horseback. She came up quietly behind him on all fours.
“I never knew you liked to play with dolls, my lord,” she said over his shoulder. “What fun. May I play too?”
He glanced around, embarrassed to have been caught in his private game. “I had no idea you were here, Marsali.”
She leaned up against him, studying the formation of soldiers on the floor. “Well, I didn’t know you were here either, at least not until I heard you talking to your dolls.”
“They are not dolls,” he said in annoyance, brushing the feathers of her headdress from his nose. “They’re toy soldiers, and I am reenacting a famous battle between the Scots Greys and the French cavalry.”
She grinned in delight. “May I play with you?”
Duncan’s scowl gave way to a slow cunning smile. “I am not ‘playing.’ Winning a battle is a serious business, and, clever as you are, I doubt you have a head for military tactics.”
“Afraid you’ll lose to a girl, eh?” she taunted, sinking down onto her knees beside him.
Duncan stared down at her, taken off guard by the tempting curve of her bottom as she stretched out full-length beside him. He could think of half a dozen other games he’d rather play with her on the floor. His gaze roved down her derriere to her silk-clad calves and ankles, crossed and kicked up in the air with complete disregard for the enticing view she offered of her creamy skin and lace-trimmed petticoats.
He swallowed with difficulty and clamped his hand around her ankles, forcing her feet back to the floor. Four days. For God’s sake, he had the self-control to resist temptation for that long, didn’t he?
“Did I kick you in the head, my lord?” she murmured, oblivious to the dark fantasies that held Duncan spellbound. “Sorry. It must be this damned gown. It makes me want to scratch in the most awkward places.”
“Well, whatever you do, try not to swear and scratch when I present you to your future husband.”
“Why not?” She glanced back over her shoulder. “He won’t expect me never to scratch or swear once I’m his wife, will he?”
“Quite frankly, what you do after you’re married is not my concern. Here.” He nudged her away from him, the apparent rebuff covering the almost painful urge to press her down beneath him. “You’ll be the French cavalry.” Marsali promptly sat up and began arranging her men in an intricate pattern on the carpet.
“What on earth are you doing?” he asked after a moment.
“I’m pulling the big ones in front to take care of the little ones.”
Duncan hid a nasty smile, moving several tiny metal objects out from behind a miniature hill. “I can see that this is going to be the shortest battle in history. Your men are under heavy cannon fire.”
“Now just a minute, my lord. You never told me you had a cannon hidden behind those hills.”
Duncan slapped his hand to his cheek in exaggerated dismay. “Oh, dearie me. My aide-de-camp must have forgotten to mention that in the gilt-embossed invitations to tea he sent over this morning. I shall spank him senseless with my hankie.”
Marsali rolled over onto her elbow, studying his sardonic face with a nod of understanding. “So it’s to be that way between us, is it? Very well.”
Duncan gave her an evil look and brought out a brigade of British infantry from behind the bridge; he was going to teach her a thing or two about the complexities of warfare.
While he was arranging a brilliantly unbeatable formation, Marsali reached across the carpet and palmed two of his strategically positioned cannons.
“You can’t do that, Marsali,” he said, scowling at her across the silk river that separated them. “You aren’t allowed to steal cannons.”
“Why not? There aren’t any polite rules in a real battle.”
Duncan eyed her with renewed interest, unwilling to admit she was right as he reached behind his back to produce another squadron of Scots Greys horsemen. “We’re firing at you from the right. Your men are hopelessly outnumbered.”
She threw him a challenging look, then stretched back across the carpet, analyzing the situation in absorbed silence before moving her men. “That isn’t fair.”
“No, no, no,” Duncan whispered tauntingly in her ear, leaning over her. “Rush in and suffer heavy losses.”
Marsali stiffened. The imposing weight of his body as it settled against hers was so distracting she completely lost her train of thought. Then the unprincipled devil put his arm around her shoulders. Her throat closed. Was he doing that on purpose so he could win the battle? If so, it was a very covert and potent weapon. How could she concentrate on their game when his physical presence dominated her mind?
“That is a marsh you are leading your men into,” he continued in a softly wicked voice. “Your horses are sinking in the mud, sweetheart.”
She blinked, her concentration jarred again as his hand drifted to the small of her back. “We’re pulling ourselves out of the mud, my lord,” she said in a stout if unsteady voice.
Duncan drew a deep breath, his fingertips flirting with the swell of her bottom. A shard of frustration shattered his focus. He still wanted her. A month of denying it had only intensified the dangerous attraction. Her unawakened sensuality stirred him even as he hated the selfishness that bred his desire for her.
“Marsali.”
She didn’t answer, still intent on the game. Innocence tempting sin. Fragility threatening power.
He closed his eyes. He was a heartbeat from pinning her small body down and suffering the consequences. His physical being ached with the need to touch her everywhere, to nuzzle the nape of her neck, to kiss her breasts, her belly. He imagined exploring the supple curves hidden under the layers of clothing, conquering her on a different battlefield altogether. He swallowed a groan at the thought.
“I’m across, my lord,” she said in a tremulous whisper of triumph as she dragged the last of her men to safety.
When he didn’t respond, she turned on her elbow to look up at him. He stared down into her baffled face with an unsmiling intensity that made her shiver as if a shadow had fallen over her.
“Get up,” he said in a low uneven voice. He gripped her shoulders and raised her off the floor, an emotion Marsali did not understand tightening the planes of his face. “The game is over.”
She didn’t move, her translucent eyes riveted to his. He looked dark and dangerous, and she felt herself responding to the barely leashed charge of sexual energy that emanated from him in the pulsing silence. A delicious tension immobilized her muscles. For a month she had indulged in endless daydreams of another moment like this, the forbidden contact, the hardness, the warmth of his body against her.
“Get up,” he said, a note of urgency deepening his voice. He loosened his hold on her, leaving his hands on her shoulders. “Get out of here.”
“I want to play out this game, my lord.”
His breathing deepened. He turned his face from hers as if he were going to ignore what she had said. Then without warning he lowered his head, his hands tightened around her shoulders again, and a guttural denial sounded deep in his throat as his mouth closed over hers.
“It isn’t a game,” he whispered, almost angrily, against her soft irresistible mouth.
She arched her body against his, whether in search of closer contact or to escape him, he neither knew nor cared. A dark curtain fell in his mind between self-discipline and desire. He tangled his battle-scarred hands in her hair, breathing in her fragrance, knocking over soldiers and cannons as he shifted his body to cover hers.
“I warned you,” he said, his voice so harsh she almost did not recognize it.
Marsali wrapped her arms around his neck, offering herself to his rough hunger, reveling in
it. He kissed her throat. His lips burned her skin. He kissed the swell of her breasts above her gown until she groaned with the sweet excitement that sang in her blood. She ran her hands over his shoulders, his back, feeling muscle and sinew hardening at her questing touch.
He lifted his head, his eyes searching hers with merciless desperation. For a moment she was frightened. What was he thinking, this man who had swept into her life like a thunderstorm? Who was she to challenge his power, to seek his love?
He slid his hands down her sides and lifted her against him, holding her so tightly that she could not tell the uneven rhythm of his breath from hers. “This is wrong.” His voice was barely audible, its low notes lost in the tumult of her hair. “I’m going to hurt you, and then I would really never forgive myself. The women I take are never innocent. Not before or after.”
She swallowed a cry of protest as his grip on her slackened. She wanted to comfort him but could not find the words as she grappled with her own confusion. “Why is it wrong, my lord? I’m not that innocent.”
He raised himself away from her as if she were made of glass. Blood pounded in his temples as he regained control. “It’s wrong because I am offering you as a prize to another man in only a few days, and a prize that is not worth protecting will not be valued by another. I have no right to touch you.”
“I don’t want to be a prize,” she said in a mutinous whisper.
The appeal in her sea-mist eyes touched a chord deep in Duncan’s heart. “But you are. You have inherited all your father’s courage and compassion, and the man who wins you will be worthy. It isn’t right that I defile what will belong to another.”
“But I belong to myself.” She frowned. “I always have. Shouldn’t it be up to me to decide whether you defile me or not?”
“I’ll be gone in two months, Marsali. Back to the business of fighting real wars and setting up my Border estate. Save your virtue for the man who will stay with you.”
She sat up, her frown deepening. “And you won’t miss the clan at all? You’ve not come to care for us even a little?”
“Nobody wanted me to come back. Nobody will care if I leave.”
“I'll care, my lord,” she said passionately. “And the others care too, but they’re too busy hating you to realize it.”
“I don’t think that makes sense, Marsali,” he said after a long silence. “All I know is that I cannot stay here. This castle is a prison of dark memories I have no desire to resurrect.”
He glanced up at the approaching echo of footsteps from the hall. “Get off the floor, lass. This looks improper.”
She refused to move, looking hurt and angry and frustrated at her inability to make him care. When he held out his hand to help her rise, she pretended not to notice. The footsteps stopped outside the door.
“Damn it, Marsali,” he said under his breath. Then he shrugged at her stubborn inertia, smoothed back his hair, and returned to his position beside her on the carpet. When the door opened, his dark face was dispassionate, revealing none of his own emotional turmoil as he righted the lead figures he had knocked over in his deep hunger for the silent, sulking girl who sat opposite him.
Edwina entered the room. If she was nonplussed by the sight of the merciless Marquess of Minorca engaged in mock warfare with the strange Highland girl on the carpet, if she sensed the tension that smoldered like the smoke of a hastily extinguished bonfire, she was too well bred and sensitive to comment on it.
“I thought you wanted to work alone, Duncan,” she said in a tart voice. “The seamstresses are waiting for you, Marsali.”
“We’re busy reenacting the Battle of Brusage,” Duncan murmured, lining up his toy horsemen to launch a charge against the main body of Marsali’s troops. “Close ranks. Move forward. Sabers drawn.”
Marsali looked up, indignant. “Just a minute. You’re knocking over all my dolls.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Duncan chuckled dryly. “Your men are either dead or captured. What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m bringing the dolls in the trench back to life.”
“You can’t do that,” Duncan exclaimed, swinging his long legs over the carpet. “She can’t do that, can she, Edwina?”
Edwina leaned back against the desk, her mouth thin with disapproval. “Not in a gold tulle gown. Marsali, get off that floor this instant and leave his lordship to his battle.”
Marsali turned her gaze imploringly on Edwina. “But he’s cheating. Help me, Edwina. He’s cheating horribly.”
Duncan was maneuvering his troops with demoniacal glee, sweeping forward to outflank Marsali’s dwindling reserve of men, snapping them up like sweetmeats. “I’m not cheating. I don’t need to. War is war, Marsali.” He leveled a meaningful look on her. “Take a lesson, lass. You should have known not to let down your guard with the enemy breathing down your neck.”
“I never realized you were the enemy,” she said softly, unable to add more with Edwina listening closely to every word of the private exchange. “I suppose I’ll be more careful in future.”
“Well, it’s too late for this battle,” Duncan retorted. “It’s turning into a rout. You’ve had it. I told you I was going to win.”
Edwina pushed away from the desk, her sense of fairness provoked by Duncan’s unaccountable display of aggression. “Bring out those men from behind the hill, Marsali,” she instructed her, her expression intent; Edwina was the unmarried daughter of an army general herself and had played more than one mock battle with her father.
“Leave her alone,” Duncan snapped.
“What men?” Marsali asked in puzzlement.
“The men under your skirts,” Edwina said. “No, don’t move them that way. Enemy encampment.”
“Go away, Edwina,” Duncan said with a scowl. “You weren’t invited to play.”
“I’m inviting her,” Marsali said, motioning Edwina to her side. “She’ll be my—what did you call it?—yes, my aide-de-camp.”
“Look, Marsali,” Edwina said, studying the floor, “you’ve got him outnumbered now. I think it’s time to take out your guns. Advance your rear.”
Duncan frowned across the carpet in fierce concentration. There was far more at stake than winning a game with Marsali than he cared to acknowledge, and being forced to play elbow to knee with her put him at an extreme disadvantage. Every time she stretched across the carpet he forgot the battle and remembered the exquisite pleasure of her soft body beneath his. Every time she worried her bottom lip with her teeth, he tortured himself with unspeakable fantasies about her soft red mouth. The poor bastard who married her had better be warned that his future wife was far more than the delicate creature she appeared to be.
For her part Marsali fought the remainder of the battle with a deadly resolve that took both Edwina and Duncan by surprise. The rudiments of warfare seemed relatively simple compared to the chieftain’s behavior. She pressed her belly to the floor, suppressing a shiver. The need in his eyes, the naked sexuality had aroused the wildest feelings within her. For a few wonderful moments she would have done anything he asked.
All in all, it was a very unsettling situation, which Marsali could control less and less. Clearly the chieftain desired her, and he resented her for the fact. She concealed a grin as she observed him from the edge of her eye. He was really going to lose his temper when she refused to marry the man he chose for her after all the fuss with suitors and seamstresses.
They battled fiercely for another hour. Edwina stood on the sidelines, offering snippets of advice, but Marsali waged her own brilliant war campaign. In the end, Duncan swallowed his pride and quietly requested a cease-fire.
Marsali nodded in dignified agreement and rose stiffly to her feet, her bedraggled headdress leaning precariously over her left ear. “Well, my lord,” she said with a pleased sigh, “I enjoyed myself. We’ll have to play that game again some time. I’ve a feeling I might improve with practice.”
Duncan couldn’t bring himself to even
pretend he was a gracious loser. He had underestimated both her intelligence and the depth of his affection for her. He got up and strode to his desk, plucking away the fishing bucket she had propped against the chair.
“I would like both of you to leave me alone now,” he said in a restrained voice.
Marsali edged around his desk, watching him in concern. “It was only a game, my lord. Better luck next time.”
Edwina waited for her at the door. “I don’t think he’s ever been beaten at soldiers before,” she said in an undertone as she ushered Marsali outside.
He hadn’t.
Duncan stared down at the disorder of his defeated troops on the carpet, shaking his head in bemusement. The girl had changed history. And she had won the only battle that haunted Duncan—the only battle he had come close to losing.
Cold terror washed over him. His instincts had proved true. Marsali had found the chink in his armor that so many of his enemies had sought. Her winsome charm was the most unbeatable strategy he had ever encountered.
The irony of his conflict was tearing him in half. He wanted to be the only man ever to touch her. At the same time he wanted to protect her from himself.
Because she was Andrew’s daughter, he could not have her. And yet it was the qualities that she’d inherited from her father that had attracted Duncan from the start. He craved not only her sweet little body, but her warmth, her honesty, her wild passion for embracing life.
Friday could not come soon enough.
Friday had come too soon, and there was no reprieve from the chieftain’s heartless plan in sight. Marsali walked swiftly through the soft white sand toward the familiar figure gathering shells along the shoreline. The ball was four short hours away, and she had escaped the castle in a panic.
Duncan had been shouting at her from the battlements.
Edwina had chased her across the drawbridge with a pair of curling tongs. Johnnie had met her on the moor with a vague promise about the clan coming to her rescue.
Fairy Tale Page 16
