“This isn’t the end of it, MacElgin,” Jamie shouted from the doorway, his retainers brushing him off. “Ye’re no the last court of law in the land! I’ll appeal to a higher authority.”
“What does he mean?” Edwina asked in an undertone of amusement. “Surely the big lout doesn’t hope to take his case to the king?”
Duncan slowly shook his head.
“I’ll go to the chief of yer clan,” Jamie threatened as he backed away from the table. “Aye, I’ll go above yer bloody head to the MacElgin Mor. We’ll see who holds the power then.” His retainers were dragging him away, wisely realizing they were outnumbered and in no position for a fight. But Jamie was livid, his pride insulted.
“Jamie wants ye, Marsali Hay!” he could be heard yelling down the hallway. “Aye, and he’s havin’ her too, MacElgin, ye bloody bastard!”
Chapter
20
In the subsequent furor over Jamie’s dramatic leave-taking, the shouting, the clansmen jostling for a look, the candles extinguishing as the heavy doors were slammed, Duncan lost sight of Marsali.
Panic flared in his eyes at the thought that she might have gone running after Jamie. On instinct he shoved around his chair, stumbling over an indignant piglet. He brushed past a startled Edwina without even noticing her. Then from the corner of his eye he caught a beguiling flash of white lace vanishing through the side passage like a wisp of smoke. Fleeing the scene of her humiliation, but so far, thank God, she hadn’t followed that fool MacFay.
He pushed back his chair and ran after her. By the time he reached the passage to the turret stairs, she was gone.
“Marsali!” he called in anxiety, taking the stairs three at a time to catch her.
There was soft scuffling of bare feet against stone. Then suddenly a shadow launched itself at him from the wall. He hurtled down half a dozen steps, regained his balance, and drew his sword. Just as his mind registered the fact that his assailant was a girl, a raven-haired creature with a poignantly familiar grin, she pitched a bucket of cold salty water into his face. “Take that,” she said, her eyes flashing, and then she threw a handful of wet petals at his head.
“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled, throwing up his hands in self-defense.
She jumped back in alarm. “I’m protecting my puir wee cousin Marsali. Aye, I ken my magic’s not as powerful as my papa’s, but this ought to take care of you, my lord chieftain. Here!”
And then she waved a gnarled stick at his—God, there was water still streaming out of his eyes, but he could swear she was waving her wand at his—no, it couldn’t be.
“And may it stay wilted until the next full moon,” she whispered, squeezing around him to escape.
For a moment Duncan could not move, staring after the wild young witchling as she fled with her bucket clattering against the stairs. Recovering, he ran back up the rest of the stairs and burst out onto the turret walkway.
He had followed the wrong girl. Marsali was already riding her horse across the drawbridge. From the distance she looked like a white dove plunging into the grainy shadows of the northern gloaming. A wounded dove escaping the pain Duncan had caused her when he had only meant to protect.
He couldn’t let her go, of course. Not with that bruised look in her eyes haunting him. Not with Jamie prowling the coast with his drunken retainers. Now he really did feel like Cinderella’s wicked stepmother for the way he’d treated her. Why had he let Edwina talk him into the ludicrous ball in the first place? If he had interviewed her suitors privately to begin with…
He still wouldn’t have found a single one worthy of her.
He ran back down the stairs and across the yard to the stables, ignoring Edwina’s cries to wait.
He rode like a demon from the castle and found Marsali’s horse abandoned on the cliffs above the wizard’s shipwrecked home. As he hurried down the wobbly gangplank, he caught a glimpse of Marsali’s white lace gown fluttering like a flag of surrender from the yardarm. Or was it a trophy of triumph, flaunting her independence and anger in his face? Had Jamie left it to enjoy the last laugh?
Chills flashed all over his body. Had she run off with MacFay after all? Was he going to have to start some ridiculous clan feud to get her back? It was enough to make a grown man weep, the very thought of training his inept clansmen for warfare.
He could picture it now. Firing hard-boiled eggs from catapults. Cook leading her scullions on an assault against the MacFay fortress. Effie’s piglets bringing up the rear to rescue one tiny girl who’d caused him more trouble than all the French forces combined. No, General MacElgin would not go to his glorious defeat on foreign soil. He would probably be killed by one of his own men while wrestling Marsali from MacFay’s arms.
Suddenly he saw her angry elfin face watching him from the porthole, and he almost slipped off the gangplank with relief. If he was a master of military science, he was a mere apprentice in matters of the heart. She hadn’t left with Jamie—but what was Duncan supposed to do with her now?
He burst into the cabin, and before he could blink an eye, Eun attacked him. The wizard wasn’t there. Neither was the raven-haired girl who had waved her wand at him and kicked him in the shin.
“Help me! Damn it!” he said as Eun’s wings beat against his face and needle-sharp talons nicked his neck. It was as gloomy as a cave in the cabin, only a single candle burning. The hawk had the advantage of good eyesight, and Duncan the disadvantage of losing his damn balance by stepping into a bucket, probably the same one whose watery contents that strange girl had hurled at him on the stairs.
“I’m having this bird stuffed and mounted in the hall if you don’t call him off me, Marsali!”
From the bunk where she lay hidden under a pile of quilts, Marsali watched the chieftain with her eyes half closed like a cat’s. Finally—and then only because she was afraid Eun would hurt himself attacking Duncan—she rose and gently caught the hawk in her hands.
He quieted instantly, then hopped onto her head to observe Duncan, his lids narrowed into slits. As Duncan swore behind her, she soothed the bird and loosely secured him to his driftwood perch, not bothering with his little velvet hood.
“You’ve been forbidden to leave the castle, Marsali.” Duncan glowered at her as she flopped back down on the bunk, totally ignoring him. “My God, look at you, in your underwear and not at all ashamed of it. If you rode along the beach like that I wouldn’t blame MacFay for thinking he had a right to abduct you.”
She glared straight ahead. “Look at you, my lord. Criticizing me with a bucket on your foot. I hate those sort of fussy, scratchy dresses. I don’t think I told you that. I hate you too. I didn’t tell you that either.”
He hobbled over to the bunk, trying to discreetly shake the bucket off his foot, and not to gawk like an adolescent at her practically naked body. “Pull the quilt up over yourself, Marsali.”
She threw it at him.
“That’s very clever, very childish,” he said, swatting it away. “You look like a wanton in those silk underdrawers.”
She turned her head stiffly to give him a tight smile. “And who bought me the drawers? I ask you.”
“I only paid for the things,” he retorted, lowering himself to sit beside her. “It wasn’t my idea that you wear them. And if I had wanted you to wear them, it was under something else, which I was probably paying for too.”
“Fine, then. I’ll take them off.”
“You will not.” His face dark with terror that she would carry out the threat, he clasped her hips as she tried to wriggle out of her underwear. She arched her back in anger. She pushed against his strong hands to break his grasp.
“Stop it,” she said through her teeth. “I wish you’d never come back here, my lord.”
“So do I. Now hold still, Marsali. I’m stronger than you are, and you’ll only hurt yourself. I need to talk to you, and it’s difficult enough to hold a conversation with a woman in her underwear. Talking to you naked would be
impossible. I understand that you’re upset about tonight. It was very unpleasant, and it didn’t turn out as I planned, but you and the clan have to share the responsibility. Along with your uncle, your cousin, and that bird over there.”
“They’re trying to protect me,” she reminded him.
“Yes, and you make it a damned difficult job. Where is your uncle anyway?”
“He’s off working a spell with Fiona somewhere.”
She was still now, crossing her hands over her chest like a martyred saint. Duncan glanced down unwillingly from her face, her graceful curves an enticement beneath her thin ivory silk chemise. To complicate the situation, he had been imagining making love to her all night. In a variety of positions and settings. It was an amazing, if perplexing, phenomenon, the way his body routinely detached itself from his brain. Tonight the battle had reached fever pitch. The imminent threat of losing her to MacFay had roused possessive impulses in him that bordered on barbaric.
“The ball was not ‘very unpleasant,’ my lord,” she said into the silence that had fallen. “It was a debacle. A disaster. My entire life is in ruins.” A tiny frown furrowed her brow. “Who would want me now?” she said crossly.
“Any man with blood in his veins.”
She sniffed. “I’m going to Virginia anyway.”
“On Jamie’s horse?”
She bit the bottom of her lip. “That isn’t funny. You made him look like a fool.”
“He is a fool.” He touched her cold ashen cheek. Desire and duty tied his gut into a knot of aching frustration. “He wasn’t the one to take care of you.”
A tremor shot through her as he traced his thumb along her delicately carved cheekbone. “And who asked anyone to take care of me?”
“Look at me, lass.”
“No.”
“Do you really hate me?”
“Aye, I do. Besides, whenever I look into your eyes, my brain turns to porridge, and I always say things I regret afterward.”
“I want to see you settled before I leave,” he said quietly.
She rose up on her elbows and batted his hand away, upset because he’d mentioned leaving again, and she realized he really meant it. “You’ve played me like a puppet on a string,” she whispered, emotion rising in her voice. “You’ve dangled me like a bone to a pack of dogs.”
“They were dogs.” He shook his head at the recollection. “Every last one of them, down to that fool MacFay.”
“Marry this man, Marsali. No, I’ve changed my mind. Marry that one instead. Wear this on your head. Wear fancy underwear. Push out your chest, lass. Well, I don’t need you, my lord.” Her voice choked on the words. “I don’t need anyone. Needing people makes you dependent on them, and the next thing you know, after you need them, they’re gone, along with a huge chunk of your heart that never heals.”
Her voice trailed off into a dry sob of self-contempt for revealing so much, and, too ashamed to await his reaction, she drew her knees into her chest and hid her face. Feelings that she had suppressed, of grief, of loss, of abandonment, surged and refused to be subdued.
Duncan stared at her. He ached to stroke her downbent head but didn’t dare touch her again. He was distressed at the depth of pain that had spawned her outburst, at how immeasurably she had been wounded by the loss of those she loved. How much more unhappiness did she hide under the sunny warmth she presented to the world? And what had he done but hurt and humiliate her from the start?
Remorse deepened his voice. “I meant to find a man to protect you—no, not just to protect, but to cherish you and give you joy. I care for you too much to let you keep living your reckless life.”
Slowly she lifted her head. Her sea-mist eyes looked dull in her piquant face. “I don’t want to live anymore,” she whispered without inflection.
“Don’t say that.” Her admission filled him with horror. He’d suspected as much from the start from her selfdestructive behavior, but hearing the words made him want to shake and comfort her at the same time.
“You were my last hope,” she said in a soft weary voice. His face hardened. “I’m no one’s hope, not unless you want an army trained or a citadel captured. The clan doesn’t give a damn about me, and why should they?” “You don’t understand.” She swallowed, the words barely audible. “I want you for myself.”
For one insane moment, as their eyes met, he could think of no reason to discourage her. His past, his future, did not exist. He wanted her with an urgency that defied logic. It took every ounce of his self-control to fight it. “I don’t think you’re quite yourself,” he said when he recovered. “It was a foreign prince your father wanted, not an outcast.”
She frowned at the resignation in his voice, forgetting her own misery. “Are you saying that the chieftain is not worthy of the tacksman’s daughter?”
“Not this chieftain.”
She sat up straighter. It was obviously a night for removing masks and revealing confidences. She had never seen Duncan like this, and his vulnerability disarmed her. “But why, my lord?”
Duncan stared past her, listening to the lulling wash of waves against the ship’s hull. How did he untangle the shadowy twists of his thoughts to someone who was as light and uncomplicated as sunshine? “I’m just not for you,” he said after a moment, rubbing tiredly at his temple. “Perhaps I’m not for anybody.”
The anger in her heart began to melt; it wasn’t in her nature to hold a grudge anyway, and she understood now that he was hurting inside even more than she’d guessed. “Are you still sad because Edwina’s niece eloped with that man?” she said, touching his arm in sympathy.
Her delicate fingers brushed across his forearm, and a feeling of apprehension gripped him as if a butterfly had landed on a beast and did not sense its danger. Marsali, he realized, had never seen him as the others did. Perhaps she’d been too young to be swept along with the wave of public opinion. Or her father, bless his wise soul, had taught her to find her own truths. Whatever the reason, she viewed Duncan as proud and powerful, as strong and self-confident. The chieftain. The marquess. The military genius. She saw him the way he wished he could be.
It was the image he’d projected to the rest of the world. It was the image he had developed to protect himself from the painful memories that shadowed him of the dirty beaten boy who had survived abuse and a violent adolescence. But it was an image based on illusion, built on sand, crumbling grain by grain under his feet. One day, when it eroded, he would sink into a dungeon of self-despair.
“What am I to do with you now, lass?” he thought aloud, turning to look at her.
“Love me,” she said, breaking into an appealing grin.
“Don’t say that. Your father will rise from the grave.”
“Love me.” She twined her slender arms around his neck. Her small body sought the warm strength of his. “Love me,” she whispered in his ear.
Her sweet breath stirred dangerous sensations along his nerve endings. A groan of denial caught in his throat. Her simple plea broke down the self-defensive composure of a lifetime. Duncan told himself he was going to push her away and walk out of this cabin.
A moment later he was pressing her down onto the bunk and kissing her into breathless silence. She tasted sweet like heather honey. She trusted him, and the eager yearning in her eyes filled him with ambivalence, with guilt and with a sexual hunger that shuddered down his neck into the base of his spine.
“Beg me to stop.” His voice was a tortured groan against her mouth. “Lass, do you not understand what I want to do to you?”
His lips drifted down her delicate jawline to her throat, his teeth grazing her skin with a tender sensuality that sent a violent jolt of pleasure down to her toes. She could hear his voice, but the dark tones only dropped like stones and sank unheeded into the deep well of her dazed awareness. When his mouth sought the peak of her breast and laved it through her silk chemise, she gasped in shock that swiftly intensified to enjoyment.
“Tell me
what you want to do. my lord,” she whispered, shivering with pleasure.
He closed his eyes, pressing his face between the cleft of her breasts. “There are dark enough thoughts running through my mind without your encouraging them.”
“Aye, but I like what you’ve done to me so far,” she admitted with another reflexive shiver.
He ran his large hand down her hip and rubbed his palm against the mound of her womanhood, his voice rough with restraint. Feverish heat washed over his body. Just touching her there made him shake. “Well, there’s this for a start. And then I would undress you, and kiss you everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” she said with an underlying catch of laughter in her throat.
He had to smile; her sexual curiosity was more arousing than the wiles of all the courtesans he’d known combined. He empathized with MacFay’s rage at being denied her. She was the sort of woman who, without even trying, fueled obsessions and started wars.
“Yes, everywhere. I’d kiss and touch you everywhere,” he said hoarsely as his fingers brushed downward and sank into the slit of her drawers. Soft dewy flesh hidden beneath a tangled fleece of curls. Now it was his turn to shiver, temptation spinning its web tighter and tighter around his willpower. He was a pulsebeat from taking her and damning the consequences.
“Oh.” Marsali arched instinctively into his hand, her eyes widening in surprise. She felt both curious and overwhelmed by her body’s powerful response, not certain where it would lead. The raw passion in Duncan’s unwavering stare disconcerted her. Confused, she buried her face in the sturdy musculature of his chest, breathing in his rich male scent, which mingled with the sweet pungence of the herbs hanging above and made her feel lightheaded. She liked the inescapable weight of his body against hers, the dominant strength that pinned her to the bunk, the gentle play of his fingers that sent pleasure streaking inside her.
Duncan clenched his jaw, consumed by a powerful commingling of affection and a lust that turned his mind molten. When she climaxed under his hand, her soft cries of pleasure absorbed by his shoulder, he thought his heart would burst with his own excitement. He imagined burying himself inside her, thrusting until his own need was relieved. His entire body ached with animal instinct, to mate, mark her, overpower.
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