As if to break the tension, Kathryn tossed a comment into the silence, and everything returned to normal. “You must be feeling the chill. No matter how hot the sun shines on the outside walls of the hall, it can get very cold inside. Let me place a few logs on the fire and warm up the chamber for your comfort.”
As if he could feel the cold when she stood afore him in all her gold and pink majesty, yet in a sense he was anything but comfortable. Dreams of her had kept him warm as he tossed on his pallet with only a canvas tent ’twixt him and the cool nights near the river Seine. Acting on an impulse, Gavyn reached for her wrist and pulled her hand closer until her fingers rested on his chest. “Feel for your self. I’m far from chilled.”
Then, slowly, he pressed her palm till it spread flat atop his pectoral muscles, a caress that cozened Gavyn’s normally flat male nipples into reacting, rising through the hair covering them to surge closer to the softness of her palm.
She snatched her hand away as if he had burned her—the way her touch made him burn, made him ache. “You’ll be glad of the extra warmth when you’re soaking wet and dripping on my good bearskin rug. It’ll take but a moment to put another two logs on the fire, and I’ll appreciate the flames. Not everyone throws out heat the way your body does.”
A smile leapt to his lips without help. “That’s not your father’s?” he quipped.
“What are ye scared to stand naked on his cloak?” she replied, the semblance of a smile peeking out from her lips.
Kathryn, he decided, wasn’t as immune to him as she pretended. Rinsing his beard with the water in the basin, Gavyn lifted the dirk to his cheek and drew it up his jawline, slicing easily through his short beard. The last time he had trimmed it, he’d been in the room of a tavern that he and his lieutenants had commandeered on the outskirts of Rouen. His men had been camped on a slope above the Seine that looked out o’er villages surrounded by bare land. Land that had once been green and fertile fields afore the French and Normans clashed, grinding the crops into the mud. Easy now to let his thoughts wander on the view, but it had been a death trap at night to those unwary men who shared a few too many wineskins.
It was a memory that made him wonder if on this e’en, he was walking too close to the edge.
He finished shaving and, instead of returning the dirk to its place down the side of his boot, he laid it on the stool beside the basin then, raising both arms above his head, took the chance to stretch the knots out of muscles aching from the weight of his ring mail. Kathryn had more than likely expected him to smell of unwashed sweat, and though sometimes that had been true, he wasn’t such a lout as to return to his young wife in that state. It wasn’t many days syne his skin felt the brush of air cross it. He’d been aboard the cog that carried them across the rough waters of the North Sea. Standing on the small deck, he had stripped his body of every stitch and tipped pail after pail of seawater o’er his head—refreshing until the salt water dried on his skin like a fine crust. Still it had been done as a concession to his wife and a reluctance to greet her in all his dirt—French dirt at that. Sluicing away the odours of battle had not washed away the worst of his problems, though.
He unbuckled his belt, well aware that the past two years would be a contention betwixt them, and that the bedding and consummation were events that wouldn’t happen easily—at least, not until the conflict between them was settled. Aye he could take her under him as was his right, but he didn’t see rape as the solution.
That left only seduction.
Unasked-for heat stained Kathryn’s cheeks—not from the fire, though. No, it was from the sight of the man she had married stripping down to his skin. She turned away, fearful he might ask for her help to pull off the tight leather trews that fitted his thighs like a second skin.
It was nae use pretending. She had been aware this day would come.
Wishful thinking was no answer to fate, and her father had placed hers in the hands of Malcolm Canmore on the day he departed this world, this life. It was time to push her hopes and dreams behind her and move on. Aye she would.
She could.
But how did you make a man love you?
That said, neither Canmore nor God could force her to make it easy for this so-called Chieftain of the Comlyn clan. She didn’t want him to become suspicious of her motives; she would bide her time and change gradually. Gavyn would find that the rest of her kinsfolk wouldn’t change their allegiance as easily. A throng lot, it didn’t matter to them whether Gavyn Farquhar loved them. They had less to lose than she did and didn’t care what fine words the king wrote on a piece of paper.
She could still picture the seal the king had marked with the design on his great ring after he’d signed everything that rightfully belonged to her away to a stranger.
Now her life was in Gavyn’s hands, and her body would probably be there as well, quite literally, afore the night was o’er.
Sooner than she might have wished, Gavyn stood afore her naked. It wasn’t that she had never seen the treasured weapon that grew between a man’s thighs, but Alexander had been but a boy when they’d swum naked in the lochan beneath the falls. And she believed that the water was always cold enough to make even a grown man weep. Her husband, however, was a man full grown, his boyhood far behind him. Her eyes widened as she stared, discovering for the first time the size and shape of a full-grown adult’s cock protruding from its nest of black hair.
A thought jumped into her mind.
A notion that wondered if the curly nest was the reason they called their manhood after a male bird. A smile formed in her thoughts, shaped her lips, but was soon wiped away as, before her eyes his male parts changed, grew.
Shocked, she stepped back, glanced at his now smooth face and saw that the smile had leapt from her mouth to his. Flustered, she stuttered, ‘Bes … best be getting into that tub afore the water grows cool. Do you need a stool to help you to climb in?’
As if he would need any help. Her mind had gone a-wandering, confused by what she had observed. It wasn’t as if she had never seen a horse flagrant in its desire to mate, but did Gavyn really desire her, or was she merely the nearest female and who she was didn’t matter?
A while ago, before she married, Brodwyn had spoken to her about such matters—a duty she said she had taken on in place of Kathryn’s mother. Kathryn had taken the confidences as another way for her cousin to frighten her.
Brodwyn had always delighted in telling the scariest stories. Tales about ghouls and boggles whispered on the darkest winter’s nights when the wind howled around the hall as soon as the sun sank behind the mountain—usually before the midday meal had been cleared away—and snow lay thick on the mountain peaks.
No more than days after Brodwyn scared her with the so-called truth of what happened between men and women, while bathing her body she had slid her hand down there to the place where a woman flowered each month and had discovered Brodwyn for a liar.
There was no way on God’s earth a man could fit his prick inside her.
So why did she feel so nervous?
Gavyn was speaking, but she hadn’t been listening, too caught up in her own concerns and fears. “I beg pardon, what did you say?” Had he noticed she refused to call him laird, or even by name.
“I said, it would be best if you strip off your kirtle.”
God’s blood, did he mean to have at her already? Her lips tightened, determined to show nae fear. “And why would I want to?”
“To keep it dry, though no doubt you have a kist full of others just like it. The colour’s pretty on ye, but it will be certain to get wet when you wash my back.”
“Wash your back? I’m not yer squire nor yer servant.” She bit the words out and spat them at him. All her life she’d been waited upon. Until today she had never been called to wait on anyone but her father.
“That’s true, you’re no servant. It’s a wife’s duty so see to her husband’s needs no matter what they might be.”
So
that was the way of it. He’d seen fit to give her, Kathryn Comlyn, a warning. “I’ll not remove my shift, not for husband, king or God. It’s not fitting, and you can’t make me,” she countered with a lie. She knew he could easily make her strip the way he had, but she refused to admit it. She was a Comlyn and knew her worth. She was used to respect and would have it from her husband, no matter what the king said,
Gavyn was a chieftain only because she existed, lived.
It wasn’t her fault she’d been born a lass.
Narrowing his gaze as though to examine her more closely, he said, “That seems eminently sensible. I would no more want you to catch cold than you would.” Gavyn stopped, sighed, allowed her a moment’s pause to think. To retreat afore she ruined her plan. No man would love a shrew.
“Let me assure you, wife of mine, no matter what, this marriage of ours will be consummated today.” And so saying, Gavyn turned his back on her and leapt the side of the tub. Water slopped over the rim, adjusting to the bulk of the body taking up a deal of space. And what a body. Kathryn’s breath tangled in her throat at the view—his long back, sheathed in muscle like boiled leather armour she had seen some warriors wear in the hope of folk imagining it matched the shape of their chest.
In Gavyn’s case, a fool would be hard pressed to call the lie.
All well and good, she thought, observing his scars, battle wounds that were part of his trade as a mercenary. In the depths of her imagination, she had been certain Gavyn would be one of yon captains who sent their men into the affray, shouting directions from way back in the battlefield. Now she realised she’d been mistaken in wanting him to be less than he appeared. Her eyes followed the lines of his scars, some darker than the others. It made her aware that mayhap she hadn’t been so far wrong in thinking he might not return.
The moment gave her pause to wonder what sins she had committed to earn this man as her fate. She drew a sharp breath to clear her head, time to obey her husband’s command whether done with a willing heart or not.
Keeping her eyes averted, she attempted to avoid perusing the broad shoulders that broached the water’s surface, wreathed in steam. Picking up the piece of soap he had forgotten, she tossed it into the tub beside him. Enjoying a moment’s spite when the water splashed up into his face, though it hadn’t been intended.
She didn’t want to touch him again.
Didn’t want to feel her hand tingle, her heart race.
“You can get started on your front while I remove my kirtle. And aye, the one I’m wearing is braw, my favourite, because I feel the colour suits me.”
“It matches your eyes,” he mentioned casually, as if it wasn’t intended as a compliment, just a simple statement of fact and no more important than gathering the foam from the soap to wash around his ears.
Walking away from him to where the candlelight couldn’t reach, she stood at the far side of the large bed, trying not to think of sharing it with Gavyn that night. Instead, to keep her mind busy, she began braiding her long hair, slowly. From the wooden bowl where Lhilidh kept the ivory pins she used on her hair, Kathryn gathered up a few in her hand and began winding the braid around her head, and pinning it close to her scalp. Which hurt, unlike when Lhilidh did it. The pain took her mind away from the thought of laying hands on Gavyn’s firm body.
Task done, she unlaced her kirtle until it sagged on her shoulders. Shivering, she stood there on the dark side of the room and held the kirtle in place with arms crossed o’er her breasts. She’d always been large there, well formed, but it had been more nuisance than advantage or a shape to be desired. Ever since her flowering had begun, she had done her best to disguise her breasts.
Letting the kirtle slide down her arms to flow in a blue river atop the herbs and rushes strewn across the flagstones, she then bent to pick it up, shaking it out, brushing the fine worsted with one hand to remove any particles clinging to its folds.
“I’m waiting. What’s taking you so long? I could have had you undressed as fast as that arrow ye shot at me,” he yelled to her.
Clenching her palms into tight fists until her fingernails painfully marked her skin, she began the longest walk of her life, around the huge bed, but as she neared Gavyn, she made certain to unfold her fingers. No need to let on to Gavyn about the tension tying her muscles in knots. However, his next question surprised her by the amount of interest he showed.
“When did you learn to use a bow, and why?” His eyebrows rose as he posed the question, emphasising the diagonal scar as his brow creased. It was a reminder that what she had tried to accomplish was worth naught compared to trials he had faced.
That didn’t deter her. “One of us had to show willing to defend Dun Bhuird, and you weren’t here. I learned archery at the same time as Alexander. My father approved, as he considered it more ladylike than learning to fight with a sword.”
Gavyn had the nerve to laugh at her, but she refused to be cowed by his impertinence, and continued, “I wanted Magnus to teach me that, but he wouldn’t … said the sword would break my wrist.”
He frowned. “Was that afore or after the constable broke his leg?”
“Afore, years afore ye even arrived at Dun Bhuird with yer king’s writ and official seals to inform me I would become your wife. And afterwards you sailed for France and left two auld men in charge of what I believed should have been mine by right.”
“Women have nae rights.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She moved around behind him. His hair was wet as he had ducked his head under water. She liked the shape of his head and the neck supporting it. There was a strength there she wished belonged to someone else, anyone else—a man she could love, a man she could build a life with.
Without pretence.
But he was Gavyn Farquhar, the husband who had deserted her to pursue a mountain of silver, so for now she simply informed him, “A chieftain should be cognisant of the laws pertaining to the citizens under his protection. According to the Laws of the Innocents, women may not be killed by a man in any way, neither by slaughter nor any other death, not by poison, nor in water, nor fire, not by any beast, nor in a pit, nor by dogs, but shall die in their own beds. Anyone that does so goes against the laws of the church and the land.” She finished quoting and reached her arm over his shoulder, saying, “Soap.”
As requested, Gavyn placed it in her hand, squeezing her fingers firmly around the sweet-smelling yet slippery block. “I see you have that law off by heart. It makes nae odds to anyone intent on killing you,” he growled so fiercely under his breath she thought she felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “Be it known that any man trying to kill you by any means whatsoever will have me to contend with. A Farquhar protects what is his and you, Kathryn, are mine.”
The hand that curled around the soap prickled where he’d touched her. If she didn’t take care, he would have her fooled the same way he’d obviously taken in Magnus and Abelard. She didn’t think she could bear to become a fool of his making. So she asked, “If that is so, why are you here at Dun Bhuird? Why are you not at Wolfsdale, claiming what is rightfully your own, instead of here with your fingers wrapped around what is mine?”
His hand went to his forehead, traced the scar that traversed his forehead frae hairline across the corner of his eye until it stopped by his ear and he rubbed at it as if it pained him. “Scotland has been good to me,” he began. “When I lost my memory and all knowledge of self, one of the king’s captains took me in, and his lady cared for me until I was strong again. Strong enough to fight for the King. Malcolm Canmore is a man that appreciates those who serve him with honour. He gave me the opportunity to become a mercenary, to become rich. However, had I been aware he would eventually grant me lands and a hall of my own that needed so much work to make it safe, I would have saved more of the earlier proceeds. I thought someone might have told you that until he sent me to Cragenlaw to fight for the McArthur, I had no memories of Wolfsdale, no notion it should be mine. I
know only what Morag and Rob have told me. As for getting it back, that’s for the future. Meanwhile, the king expects me to keep the Norsemen of Caithness and Orkney at bay, so my plans for Wolfsdale must wait.”
At least his auld hame wasn’t a person, with all the emotions and feelings that trammelled her mind. Wolfsdale couldn’t be hurt by his desertion as she had been. Aye she had been hurt. She had never admitted that before, not even to herself.
Kathryn dipped her soapy hands under the edge of the tub and touched his back, ran her finger down to the base of his spine. A wash of hot water surged o’er the rim, as he appeared to recoil from the contact by heaving himself up frae the tub. “I’m not finished,” she whispered, her gaze eating up the sight of firm buttocks and strong hairy thighs, a part of the body she had never found particularly attractive afore that instant.
She still hadn’t looked her fill afore he sank again beneath the water’s surface, hidden.
“A cramp,” Gavyn said by way of explanation for his sudden emergence from the tub. He hadn’t expected her touch to burn. Aye, he’d been looking forward to the seduction, had planned it in the long nights on his travels betwixt battles when the only thing that touched his arse was a saddle.
As if there could be any comparison.
Next time she laid hands on his back, he was ready for the sensation of her touch. They eventually settled below his neck with her thumbs digging into the muscle sitting above the join of his arm and shoulder. “There is a lot of tightness here. You need some ginger oil or horse liniment. The heat would help you.”
He imagined it would at that, but would be no hotter than the sensation of her skin rubbing over his. “Have you been studying with a wise woman while I’ve been away as well as learning how to do your husband damage by either arrow or sword? I gather there’s no law protecting husbands, only wives.”
A small puff of air brushed his shoulder. He’d a notion she had stifled a laugh, and it felt like progress. “I’ve told you I felt bound to protect my clan and that I can’t use a sword.”
Chieftain By Command Page 7
