by Karen Ranney
If ghosts were ever abroad at Ballindair, tonight should have been the night. But all was quiet, silent enough that Jean heard approaching footsteps.
The moment had come to confront her husband. Not quite a husband, though, was he? What, then, did she call him? Paramour? Lover? Not that, either.
Two places were special to her at Ballindair: the library, and here, in the Long Gallery. He’d claimed the library, rightfully so, and since he’d found her with such ease, she needed to cultivate another place, a more secretive location to hide.
“What are you doing here?” Morgan asked, stepping out of the shadows.
“Tell me about your wife,” she said.
“You’re my wife.”
She clenched her hands tightly.
“Tell me about your other wife.”
“That’s hardly a suitable topic for my wedding night, is it? To discuss one wife with another?”
“Why did you divorce her?”
He didn’t speak for several moments, but she could hear him walking toward her. She straightened her shoulders, clasped her hands tightly in front of her, and steadied herself.
“I don’t look like any of those women,” she said, waving one hand to the line of portraits. She didn’t have blond hair or beautiful blue eyes. She was tall, and rather large in the chest, but her hair was a plain brown, as were her eyes.
“Must you?”
He took a few steps forward, and she moved sideways.
“Are you afraid of me?”
Startled, she turned her head to address his black shape. “Of course not.”
“Then why do you tense whenever I come near you?” he asked.
“Perhaps I’m wondering if you’re going to kiss me again,” she heard herself saying. What on earth made her say that?
“I only kissed you once.”
“Yes,” she said.
“We could be kissing instead of talking,” he said, moving still closer.
“Perhaps they’re not mutually exclusive,” she said. “Could one not kiss, then talk? Or talk, then kiss?”
“Talking of Lillian does not put me in the mood for kissing.”
She turned and faced him fully. “Why not? She was your wife. Were you forced into the marriage?”
“I was not.”
“Then you must have felt something for her at the beginning of your marriage, didn’t you?”
“I felt a great many things for Lillian. Do you want the whole horrible story? Do you want me to divulge everything so you can investigate it, examine it, then approve or disapprove?”
“It isn’t my place to approve or disapprove,” she said.
She turned and walked deeper into the shadows.
“I was naive when I met her. Not necessarily young,” he said. “But I was naive about women, I suppose.”
“Is that a detriment for men? Being naive about women?”
“It was a detriment for me,” he said. “Especially with a woman like Lillian.”
“Why did you divorce her?”
“Did you know it was relatively easy for a man to divorce a woman? It’s much harder for her to do the same.”
She didn’t want a lecture on the law.
“Why did you divorce her?” she asked again.
“She was unfaithful to me. Not once, but many times. Enough times there were wagers as to the exact number of her lovers.”
Silence stretched thin between them. She could hear the sigh of the wind against Ballindair, as if nature decried the confession of its laird.
“Why?” she asked, giving in to her curiosity.
“Why did I divorce her? I’ve just given you the answer.”
She shook her head. “No, why was she unfaithful?”
“Why is anyone unfaithful? Because they wish to find from others what they can’t find in their own bedrooms, perhaps. Or she loathed me for some reason and wanted to punish me for it.”
“Are you so loathsome?”
His laughter, disembodied and cloaked in shadows, was an eerie response.
“I never thought so. But perhaps I am. If you contact Lillian, I’m certain she could give you a list of all my flaws and faults. She no doubt has informed the rest of society about them.”
“Doesn’t she suffer the same way you do?”
“I don’t suffer,” he said.
“Oh, but you do. If you didn’t suffer for your own actions, we wouldn’t be standing here now. We wouldn’t be married. Honor would not have propelled you to do something so blatantly idiotic as to marry me.”
“Now you sound like Andrew,” he said.
That comment stung. “Evidently, Andrew was not able to dissuade you from making an unwise marriage.”
“First of all, you want to know about Lillian, and now you’re declaring this marriage unwise. Hardly the wedding night I expected.”
She didn’t have a rejoinder for that.
“Were you ghost hunting again?”
“I wasn’t ghost hunting,” she said. “I was trying to escape you.”
“Why?”
“I’m frightened,” she said.
“Of me?”
“Partly,” she admitted. Wholly, in reality, but she wasn’t going to expose the extent of her fear. “I’m not as beautiful as your wife was.”
“You don’t know what Lillian looked like.”
“Wasn’t she beautiful?”
“Perhaps, but you’re my wife now,” he said, his tone brusque. “I would prefer if you would cease referring to Lillian as my wife. She hasn’t been my wife for two years. And even before that she didn’t exactly behave in a wifely manner.”
“Did you share a bed?”
“Another question I didn’t expect,” he said. “Why should I go to her bed when it had been well populated by a dozen or more men? Men, I might add, I knew well.”
“That must have hurt,” she said, “to know your friends were betraying you.”
Again he moved toward her.
“I asked myself many times,” he said, “if they were truly friends.”
“She doesn’t seem to be suffering,” he said as he came closer. “To use your word. The divorce hasn’t changed her behavior.”
Then she could feel him standing behind her. She shivered. “Are you going to divorce me?”
“If you’re unfaithful, probably. I divorced one wife, I can divorce another. Granted, Scotland and England would probably reel in horror. Have you plans on being unfaithful?”
“Shouldn’t I bed someone first, before I entertain thoughts of adultery?”
“You realize, of course, that I’ll know if you’re telling the truth about being a virgin?”
“You can tell?” she asked. “How?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Very well, you’re not as beautiful as Lillian. But does outward beauty matter as much as a woman’s character?”
She laughed, unwillingly amused.
“You’ll pardon me, Your Lordship, if I don’t give any credence to that remark. If you had to choose between a beautiful woman and a plain one—”
“I chose the plain one.”
Another sting of words.
“I’ve never bedded anyone. I don’t know anything about it. You will find me massively inept. I haven’t, in your parlance, traveled excessively.”
“Thank God.”
He turned her to face him.
“Do you think I want you experienced? Do you think I want anyone to have kissed you but me? Do you think I want a harlot in my bed?”
“How do you know no one else has ever kissed me?” she asked. “Perhaps I’ve been kissed by dozens of men.”
“Have you?”
“Of course not.”
“You say that with great conviction. It’s a habit of yours.”
“I didn’t know you’d been in my vicinity long enough to notice my habits,” she said.
“I’ve been around you more than anyone at Ballindair,” he said, a comment that startled
her. “You might even say you’ve been a companion of sorts.”
“Have I?”
“And when I wasn’t around you, I found myself thinking of you a great deal. You’re a very interesting woman, Your Ladyship.”
“You mustn’t call me that,” she said, taking a step back.
“Countess,” he said, taunting her. He followed her, matching her retreat. “Your Ladyship.”
“Has anyone told you what a prig you can be, Your Lordship?”
“Not in the last hour or so,” he said. “I find it odd it’s my bride who insists on doing so.”
“Your bride has just had certain facts made clear to her,” she said. “I am to be eminently grateful you’ve married me, plain as I am. I don’t have the beauty of my sister, or Lillian, but I haven’t sent anyone fleeing in fright, either.”
“That’s not what I said at all.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Are you deliberately instigating an argument, Jean? Do you think if you make me angry enough, I’ll avoid you on our wedding night?”
She turned to face him.
“As a ploy, madam, it has worked. I dislike the idea of bedding a quarrelsome woman.” A moment later he said, “Do you want me to leave?”
“Yes,” she said, fervently and simply.
Suddenly, he was gone, only the muffled sound of his footsteps in the darkness reassuring her that he hadn’t been a ghost.
Chapter 20
RULES FOR STAFF: Be prompt at all meals, except when required to be at your duties.
This marriage had started out all wrong.
She’d questioned him about Lillian and his honor. Then, when he insulted her, entirely by accident, she acted offended. Worse, she’d been hurt.
Why hadn’t she been in her room? Why wasn’t she waiting for him there? Why had he gone in search of her? For that matter, why was it necessary for him to search for her?
Did she think to escape him?
Did she think he was a brute who would force himself on her? She’d said she was afraid. Dear God, did she think that?
He’d been a very inept seducer, however, hadn’t he?
She’d banished him, but he’d as much as summoned his own banishment.
Morgan stopped in the middle of the corridor leading to the Laird’s Tower. Perhaps she had been frightened.
This would never do.
He couldn’t leave her alone tonight, of all nights. Had he ever seduced an innocent before? Never, which left only one: Jean, ghost huntress, debater, former maid, and a woman who said the most surprising things.
Why shouldn’t he bed her? She was legally his wife. He was legally her husband. Granted, they didn’t know each other well yet, but that would come, wouldn’t it? Though not if they remained separate, each aloof from the other.
He turned, intent for the Long Gallery once again, seduction in mind.
Jean stood in the Long Gallery, listening. Would the French Nun refuse to appear before her now, simply because she was married? Did she only counsel those single women who’d lost their hearts to the Murderous MacCraigs?
Surely she wasn’t so idiotic as to expect advice from a ghost?
Then from whom?
Catriona would laugh merrily to know she’d been left alone on her wedding night. Or that she’d sent her husband away. And she dared not go to her aunt. Aunt Mary would only say, “For heaven sakes, Jean, be a little more practical.”
Hadn’t she proven to be practical? Especially during that last year in Inverness? She was the one who kept everything together, especially on those days when Catriona indulged in fits of weeping. What good were tears?
Then why was she brushing away her own now?
What exactly was she supposed to do?
She shouldn’t have asked those questions about his wife—about Lillian. She shouldn’t have told him she was afraid.
She shouldn’t have sent him away.
Was there a scale, somewhere? One measuring the levels of fear a human experienced? If a scale did exist, with one being the lowest level of fear—a placid acceptance of all that life brings—and ten being screaming and running away, then what she felt right now was a seven, or perhaps a six. Nothing like those days in Inverness, when she’d endured a nine. Being without prospects, money, charity, friends, or hope had been daunting indeed.
Everything had changed, however, hadn’t it? A thought lasting until she saw Morgan striding down the Long Gallery. She didn’t need light to know there was an intent and determined look on his face.
Her fear level rose to eight.
She looked absurd standing there, the moonlight streaming over her dark cloak. She hadn’t fastened it; in between the folds he could see the hint of her nightgown. She looked ethereal, like a ghost of herself.
Foolish woman.
His pulse raced, no doubt because of their argument. He’d always liked a good debate.
How long had it been since he’d bedded a woman? Long enough. He didn’t have to deny himself any longer, did he?
“Do virgins feel lust?” he asked, stopping in front of her.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, blinking.
He didn’t ask again; he knew full well she’d understood him the first time.
“You seemed interested in me when I was naked. Was it lust I saw on your face?”
Lillian had seduced him; Jean had no concept of the idea. She didn’t realize how lovely she was, standing in the moonlight, the illumination enough that he could discern the frown on her face.
A prickly bride.
“I have no intention of answering that question.”
“Let’s say it was lust. Couldn’t you feel it again?”
She blinked at him.
“You think I insulted you,” he said.
“It’s not an opinion, Your Lordship. You did.”
“Morgan.”
“I’m not your first wife.”
That comment was surprising.
“No, you certainly aren’t.”
“If you’d wanted a beautiful wife, you shouldn’t have insisted on this marriage.”
He was not about to respond to that comment. “Are you really afraid?”
She turned her head, an answer without words.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her toward him. Pressing his lips against her ear, he whispered, “Don’t be afraid of me, Jean.”
“I’m not exactly afraid,” she said. “I’m cautious. Unprepared. Unschooled.”
“Virginal.”
She nodded.
He turned her, grabbed her hand and left the Long Gallery.
It was time that inconvenient virginity was done away with; the sooner the better.
She was not foolish enough to try to escape, but his strides were longer than hers and her slippers kept falling off.
In the corridor she said, “I won’t run away, but I can’t keep up with you. Or am I to leave my shoes as a trail for the maids to follow in the morning? Like your French story?”
He turned and looked at her. She pulled her hand free and bent to put on her slippers again.
Standing, she said, “If I agree to go with you to your suite, will you let me do so without dragging me there?”
A look slid over his face, too quickly for her to decipher it. But he immediately bowed his head in acknowledgment of her words.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be boorish.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You weren’t boorish. Perhaps a little eager,” she added.
His smile took her aback.
“I’ll be damned if I know how to act at this moment,” he said. “I never envisioned a wedding night like this.”
“I never envisioned a wedding night,” she admitted.
“Surely that’s not true. Didn’t you see yourself marrying?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I did see myself attending Catriona’s wedding, being a doting aunt to all her children, but
as for myself, no.”
He looked at her and frowned.
She’d said something wrong, something that had irritated him. Instead of speaking, however, he simply turned and led the way to the Laird’s Tower. Not once did he look back. She felt not unlike a mongrel pup who’d found a hint—the barest hint—of a meal and a place to rest for the night.
“Shall I feel grateful you’ve decided to bed me?”
“If you wish,” he said, his voice reverberating against the stone of the tower.
She halted on the steps, one hand gripping her nightgown and cloak, the other holding onto the banister.
“Were your ancestors called the Murderous MacCraigs because they killed people or because they incited others to violence?”
At the top of the stairs he turned and looked down at her, his smile causing her heart to beat faster.
“Have I incited you to violence, Jean?”
He incited her to something, but she wasn’t exactly sure what it was.
Her hands were trembling, her face felt too hot. She’d never had any training in flirting. Nor did it come naturally to her, as it did to Catriona. Tonight, of all nights, she should feel soft and feminine, intriguing, a little mysterious. Instead, her fear level remained at an eight.
If he kissed her, perhaps she’d feel better.
She eyed him as she climbed the rest of the stairs.
“May I ask you something?”
He turned back and glanced at her. A nod was her only encouragement.
“Does a woman experience pleasure in the marriage bed?” She didn’t look at him when she spoke, but at the floor. “Is that proper?”
“You ask the damnedest questions, Jean.”
Still, she didn’t look at him, moving beyond him to stand at his sitting room door.
“It doesn’t seem quite right if a man is the only one to enjoy the act, does it?”
“Shall we adjourn to the library so you can seek out a book on the subject? Or talk to one of your ghosts?”
“I doubt if there’s a book on the subject,” she said.
“You’ve already looked.”
She wasn’t going to answer that. “And they’re more properly your ghosts,” she said. “And they’ve given me no advice at all. Not even the French Nun, and I half expected her to counsel me to run as far and as fast as I can from you.”
