Claimed By a Scottish Lord

by Melody Thomas

  ―Until you, I had never looked at a man and felt anything beyond a need to exercise patience. Even you have tried mine immensely.

  ―Until you, I had never gone to sleep dreaming of some handsome face I might have glimpsed in the village or awakened feeling lost and confused, wondering if my heart would stop in my chest, it beat so soundly and painfully in panic. Until you, I had never known what ‘tis like to know I would lay down my body to protect yours. I would do so for many, Jack, Mrs. Simpson, Friar Tucker—these people are my family. But I do not awaken in the morning with this feeling that if anything should happen to one of them I would rather die than live another day alone.‖

  She scraped the heel of her palm across her cheek. ―If this is love, then I love you so much it frightens me into wanting to run away as far as I can. Every time I look outside my bedroom window, I want to run back to the abbey where I once felt safe. To allow something so powerful into my heart and my soul scares me as nothing ever has. Does this manner of cowardice make me a self-contained, ignorant girl? Aye, probably. I am quite proficient in thinking only of myself.‖

  His hands flexed. He had no defenses against the surge of emotions that trapped his words in his throat.

  ―I have missed you,‖ she whispered.

  His heart was pounding so loudly it sounded like an ocean‘s roar in his ears. Before she could say another word, draw another breath, his mouth covered hers. His hands glided from her hips to her neck and cupped her face. A low moan escaped him. In answer, her slender arms rose around his neck and she pressed her body against him, drinking in his kiss, and he never realized just how sensitive his tongue was, how it could distinguish so vividly the textures of her mouth. Above them, wind gusted through the branches.

  Closing a fist in her hair, he drew her back. The intensity of her eyes was a caress. ―I have missed you as well, love.‖

  He looked up at the sky to measure the clouds and need to get the horses inside. ―Come.‖

  He grabbed her hand as the first plop of heavy rain fell. ―We may not want shelter from the storm. But the horses do.‖

  The stable had stone floors and stone walls much like the one at Stonehaven. Straw littered the floor. A door and window balanced each end with stalls in between. The slatted window near the pitch of the thatch roof let in the early-evening air mixed with sounds of the storm.

  Up in the hayloft, Ruark and Rose lay on her cloak in a cozy nest made warm by the rasp of their bodies and the measured tempo of their breathing. Her dress was somewhere behind them in a crumpled heap, near his shirt and boots that lay like crumbs leading to where they had finally fallen in the straw.

  ―Have you ever made love up here?‖ Rose lay with her legs wrapped around Ruark‘s thighs, his weight resting on his elbows as he pulled back to look into her face.

  He chuckled against her lips. ―Pray tell, why that question now?‖

  ―You seem to be familiar with the stable and this loft in particular. And I find I am jealous of any woman from your past.‖

  Her petticoats cradled her head, pale against the spread of her hair. He brushed his lips against hers. ―Nay, love. You are the first.‖

  With a subtle deepening of her sirenlike smile, she came back for a second taste of his lips and lingered. ―I like being the first,‖ she said as he settled his hips more firmly against hers, knowing the tension inside him was because of her.

  The inevitable effect of her words spread through him like liquid heat, and he was no longer content just to feel her. He drew back and thrust.

  She gasped slightly when he moved. Their kiss deepened into a luxurious and mutual exchange that crowded all other thoughts from his mind, until only their breathing filled the small space in the loft. Until it was she and him and the rumble of thunder above their heads. He rolled onto his back, taking her with him, her body sheathing him, even as her hands braced her weight against his chest.

  A low moan escaped her as he cupped her breasts, swirling his tongue around the sensitive ruched flesh of her nipples. Instinctively, she arched her back so that her breasts rose to meet his caress. He slid his hands into the silken tangle of her hair and brought her mouth down to his, parting her lips under the growing pressure of his, nibbling, seeking the response from her that was burning in him. He found it. Her fingers wound in his hair. He slid both palms down her shoulders over her waist and hips.

  Her body yielded easily to his touch. He clasped her bottom, holding her against him, watching her rock in restless abandon. This was not the first time she had willingly come to him, but this was the first time more than willingness lay between them, more than desire.

  Then she was climaxing around him. Her eyes, heavy lidded, watched him until he drove into her, shuddering in release.

  They both smiled at the same time, concurrently—their emotions easily surrendered. Strangely enough, she was his, but suddenly he began to wonder how he could hold on to her. He didn‘t understand why the thought struck him as it did, as if it was a premonition.

  Her hand touched his face. ―What is it?‖

  His kissed her. A gust of wind slapped rain against the slats as he gathered her in his arms.

  ―The storm looks like ‘twill be a long one. I am thinking neither of us has had supper.‖

  She smiled. ―Do you think the watchman minds that you stole his wine and bread?‖

  Ruark chuckled. ―He should feel grateful I allowed him to remain on his cot bed in your schoolhouse.‖

  Rose snuggled her head against Ruark‘s shoulder. The remains of a meal lay beside them on the cloak. He sat propped against the wall, his knee drawn to his chest, one hand dangling a wooden cup over his knee and his other arm casually draping her as she leaned her back against him. He had found a flint box, and a small lamp now burned in the corner. The dim light fell in a circle around them. She wore his shirt. The rain drumming against the thatch roof provided a cozy backdrop for the intimacies of their quiet conversation in the twilight of a fading day. Rose closed her eyes as thoughts of a darker nature began to intrude upon her peace.

  ―You have been silent for a full minute.‖ Ruark pressed his lips to her hair. ―What is it?‖

  She raised her head from his shoulder and twisted around to look up at him. ―I have been plagued by a question I feel I need to ask that concerns us both. I will still stand by you no matter what your reply, but I need to know. I hope you will be honest.‖

  Lanthorn light defined his nearly black eyes under thick lashes. ―I will try, Rose.‖

  Yet the tenor of his reply told her he was not certain of his honesty, and she realized, despite everything, there were still many aspects of his life that he was not ready to share.

  Drinking from the loosely held cup in his hand, he awaited the question.

  ―Are you Jamie‘s father?‖

  He nearly spewed his wine. He snatched up an edge of her cloak and pressed the cloth to his lips. ―Madam,‖ he gasped. ―Please warn me before you accuse me of fathering a child on another woman. I am in danger of strangling.‖

  ―I read the entry of his birth in the Bible. He was born eight months after Julia‘s wedding to your father. I know she was with you shortly before that and that you had taken her to a kirk to marry but that she balked.‖

  His eyes amused, he said, ―Then there is nothing else I can tell you. It seems you have mined all there is to know about my life.‖

  ―Can you deny you were in love with her?‖

  ―I will not deny that when I was seventeen, I was willing to elope with her. But please, you cannot hold me responsible for the actions of a rash youth.‖

  ―Then you and she . you must have . ‖

  Ruark raised a brow. ―We must have what?‖

  He was going to make her say the words. ―You must have been intimate with her.‖

  ―I will admit I have not been a virgin since I was fifteen . but she was different. She and I had known each other since we were both in swaddling. Our mothers were
close friends. I loved her, I thought.‖

  ―And did she love you?‖

  ―I thought she did.‖ He studied the wooden cup in his hand. ―But looking back, I know now she was not in love with me.

  ―I had always believed we would one day be wed if only because of our families. I had little respect for most everything else in my life, but I did have respect for her. She was fragile. She reminded me of a delicately painted glass doll and I wanted to protect her from breaking. If I had pressed her into an intimacy, I knew she would have been the one hurt.‖

  ―You must have felt betrayed by both her and your father.‖

  ―Strangely, never by her. My father. Always.‖ Ruark leaned his head back against the wall. ―I can think of no time in my life where he ever reached out to me or my mother. When she died, he was with his mistress. He was not so much physically cruel as he was indifferent and self-involved, except when it came to Stonehaven.

  ―I rebelled against everything for which he stood. I cared little for the lives of those who lived there. By fifteen, I was a dissolute heir already intent on drinking and gambling away my heritage and forcing him to claim note after note against my markers. I believed in nothing.

  ―One could say Duncan took exception to the direction of my life when he decided to send me on a new path and rescue me from destroying myself.‖

  ―After you fought your father.‖

  ―I have since lived almost as much time out of this country as I have in it.‖ Ruark was silent a moment, then his eyes met hers. ―I brought a lot of misfortune upon myself and others caused by anger and pride. I have been no better than a smuggler and much-cursed pirate with little difference between Hereford and myself, or my father, ‘twould seem. Cunning and ruthlessness kept me alive.‖ He finished off his cup and set it at his thigh, and as he peered at her some of the cold left his eyes. ― ‘Tis only recently I have learned the value of compassion.‖

  ―Yet, you still feel guilty in your failure to save Julia.‖

  Ruark met her gaze steadily. ―How is that, love?‖

  ―You have not spent any time with her son, your father‘s son, the brother you worked so hard to save. As if you think that you also failed in saving him. He is home and safe because of you. And he loves you.‖

  ―Perhaps,‖ he said thoughtfully. ―Or it is not knowing quite what to say to a brother I have only known through letters.‖ After a moment, he asked. ―What of you, love? Have you any regrets you wish to rectify?‖

  The question begged an honest answer even to herself. ―I regret not remembering my mother,‖ she said. ―Nor did I treat Friar Tucker as well as I should have. I have never told him I love him.‖

  She sighed softly. ―I think, a part of me blamed him for the choices he made for my life. I do not know why I felt the way I did—he has been nothing but patient and loving. I was never outwardly angry but I must have been angry . for I have always been searching . for something. I do not know for what, but it is there on the horizon.‖ She lowered her head, and her hair fell over her shoulders. ―I have learned resentment no matter how small and seemingly insignificant is like a smoldering ember. It burns at the edges of a person‘s soul and eventually blackens all that it touches.‖

  She had not meant to be so honest or allude to her restlessness as if that took away her newfound feelings for him. His arm tightened around her and he pulled her close to his heart.

  She looked up at him with a wobbly smile. ―Perhaps we are both still looking for a place that feels like home.‖

  Just then, there was a gust of wind against the slats. Ruark lowered his head took her lips in a kiss, slowly turning her in his arms until she was across his lap. Her fingers slid through the wisp of hair on his chest as he pressed her down into the cloak. He pulled away to look down at her, the expression on Ruark‘s face unreadable. But he needed no words, as he loved her.

  They remained in the loft until dawn, when the rain finally stopped and she was forced to rouse from her languor. Forced to admit as she smiled up at her husband that if this was what it meant to be in love, this need to be near him, this all-consuming passion, then she wondered how one survived it.

  She dressed while Ruark saddled the horses, then climbed down from the loft for a bit of privacy outside. The sun emerged from behind the clouds as Rose pushed open the stable doors. She looked out across the field, empty save for a few brown shaggy cattle, and approached the nearest tree when she spied a horse hobbled nearby. She walked around the stable.

  Duncan sat on a rock, both feet on the ground. He was bent over his knees whittling at a stick with a sharp knife. He looked up at her, squinting against the sun at her back.

  She and Duncan had reached an understanding these past weeks. She still disliked much of his bullishness, but she had seen something behind his gruff exterior that made her more tolerant of the man himself. Only a week ago, she had watched him literally give the shirt off his back to one of the drovers injured after a horse threw him. McBain had had to rip it up for bandages.

  A breeze fluttered the red ash trees and dappled the ground briefly with light. ―Why are you sitting here?‖

  Duncan braced both elbows on his knees and regarded her levelly for a moment. ―I do no‘ think you would rather I have interrupted you last night.‖

  ―You have been here all night?‖

  ―He‘s been lookin‘ for me. I suspect he‘s thinkin‘ many unflattering things about my character after seeing Hereford in Mawbray. Business with the Black Dragon, ye ken. He did no‘

  trust me to go along with him.‖

  She had not known what business had taken Ruark from Stonehaven this past month. Then Ruark no longer owned his ship.

  ―Good men could have died because of you, Duncan,‖ Ruark said from a place behind her, cold deadliness in his voice. ―Come here, Rose.‖ He held out a gloved hand to her. She walked over to him and took it.

  Rose looked from Ruark to Duncan, and didn‘t understand the danger she sensed. More than long-standing animosity that stretched farther back than merely the incidents of the past year vibrated the air between the two.

  ―Aye, she will stand at your side, lad,‖ Duncan said in amusement. ―She is no white-knuckler pissin‘ herself over a wee thing like fear. I‘d wed the lass myself if she was no‘

  already mistress of Stonehaven.‖

  ―Stay away from my wife and from Jamie. Stay away from Stonehaven.‖

  ―Ruark,‖ Rose gasped.

  Duncan held up a hand to stay her. ―Leave off, lass.‖ His eyes remained on Ruark. ―No matter what Hereford might have claimed or hinted, I did no‘ kill your da, lad, though he deserved killin‘ for the man he was.‖

  ―And Kathleen‘s husband? Did he deserve killing as well?‖

  Duncan rose to his feet and slid the knife into a sheath at his belt. He was a big man with large shoulders and hands. Dirt and dead leaves clung to his shoulder-length hair and worn plaid.

  ―I would have done the deed had his horse no‘ fallen and done the killin‘ for me. Him leavin‘ her and his youngest bairn bein‘ just four. Procurator fiscal, principal public prosecutor, a regular limmer he was.‖ Duncan spat. ―Your da sent me after him for stealing from him. He was no‘

  dead when I found him trapped beneath his horse, and gold in his saddlebags. He begged me to save him and told me what he‘d been doin‘ all these years for your da and for Hereford. Had a mistress in Carlisle he was swiven‘. It took him a day to die in the cold with his injuries and trapped as he was beneath the horse. If he had no‘ killed himself with his stupidity, I would have, for what he did to Kathleen.‖

  ―Christ, Duncan . ‖

  ―You told everyone he was innocent,‖ Rose said.

  ―Aye,‖ he tossed out in defiance. ―Kathleen loved the bloke. Why destroy that with the truth. I‘ve no‘ much honor left in me, and I‘m no‘ denying I‘m guilty of plenty of sin in this life, but those bairn of his would have carried the stigma of their father�
��s crime to death.‖

  ―And yet you kept the gold,‖ Ruark said.

  ―It stuck in your da‘s crawl like a burr when I said I did no‘ find any gold. That gold was supposed to have gone to Hereford to pay a debt caused when you took that cargo ship outside Rotterdam. They were to meet in Chesters in late spring. Aye, I learned then he and Hereford were partners.‖

  ―A devout Scotsman who had devoted his life to protecting and dealing out justice for Stonehaven‘s chieftain might also take exception to finding the earl of Roxburghe an English sympathizer and in league with Hereford. If one thought Hereford to blame for the laird‘s betrayal of the precious Kerr honor, one would want revenge against Hereford. What better way to rally the family than Jamie‘s capture in a bout of cattle lifting.‖