The Mammoth Book of Scottish Romance

by Trisha Telep

  “I’m showing the lady the stables, Davie. I won’t need your help so you can go to the kitchen and have Maura fetch you a cold glass of buttermilk.” He glanced up. “And one for yer friend, too. If she’s a mind to come … No. Not word from you now. Yer secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thank—”

  “I said, not a word,” Rob repeated. “I meant it.”

  The wide-eyed lad bobbed his head and, with a backward glance at Jeanne, made a tching sound at which a pretty young face, round-cheeked and dusky-skinned, appeared above them. Without a second’s hesitation the girl swung her legs over the edge and dropped lightly to the ground. Then with a giggle and blush, she grabbed hold of Davie’s hand, hastily pulling him through the stable door, leaving him and Jeanne alone. At last.

  “You know the stable lad’s name.”

  “Aye.”

  “Does the laird?”

  “Aye. Of course.”

  “No. Not ‘of course’. I’ve been in many a castle where the lord wouldn’t know the name of his cook, let alone the stable boy.”

  “Well,” said Rob comfortably, “this isn’t such a grand castle as those.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she murmured, releasing his arm and walking down the aisle separating the stalls. The ground underneath was even and freshly spread with sweet hay. The scent of warm horse, grain and dust filled the air. His gaze followed her, the gentle sway of her hips, the straight spine and shiny red-gold hair.

  She stopped outside his stallion’s stall and looked back over her shoulder at him. “An Arabian steed?” she asked.

  “Half,” he answered. “The other half is Highland mare. In other words, no particular lineage.”

  “Hm,” she said, reaching in and rubbing her hand down the great steed’s velvety face. Rob was unconcerned. He didn’t tolerate vicious animals in his stables.

  “Why did you ask to see the stables first?” he asked curiously.

  She gave a little shrug. “A lord would make sure his chapel’s cross was shined and his larder well-stocked to impress a woman he hoped to marry. The solars would be fitted anew with linens and draperies, the halls swept, tapestries borrowed, beaten and hung. It’s an easy enough thing to make a place look wealthy and welltended. It’s not so easy to make a hungry horse look fat. And a mucked-out stall tells more about a lord’s husbandry than a clean dining hall.”

  Young and girlish and innocent she might be, but Jeanne Forbes was also smart and canny. They’d make an imposing team. He nodded.

  “And do the stables tell you anything else about the laird of Barras?”

  “Aye,” she said. “The temperament of his horse tells me he would rather persuade than conquer. Am I right?”

  He hesitated, uncertain if her words were meant as a compliment or a criticism. Many men – and women – considered intimidation the only way to see things done. “Force doesn’t make a thing love you, only fear you, and it’s the nature of things to try to destroy those they fear. You can only hold a thing to you through trust.”

  She regarded him silently. Her expression was impossible to read. “Are those your sentiments, Rob? Or the laird’s?”

  “We share like views,” he said.

  “Hm.” The pup she carried had begun mewling, causing Paula to dance lightly before her mistress. With a chuckle, Jeanne pushed opened the door to an empty stall and carefully laid the pup on a bed of straw in the corner. At once, Paula flopped down and the pup began nursing.

  Jeanne rose, dusting the hay from her skirts, and came back to him. The light filtering in from the open doors glazed her hair with a fiery sheen and the air in stables dusted her skin with a fine golden talc. He wanted very much to take her in his arms and lick the fine powder from her brow, her cheeks, and her lips … She tipped her head back, eyeing him seriously and he realized she didn’t have the slightest notion of the effect she had on him, or where his errant thoughts were taking him. Them.

  “What sort of man is the laird, Rob?”

  He started, unprepared for the question. He’d expected her to ask him about Barras’s power, land, loyalties, even his faults but not something so all encompassing, so intimate.

  “I am uncertain as to your meaning, lady,” he said slowly.

  “Is he a good man?”

  “Well, now, paining me though it does to say, he’s not much for church-going.”

  “No, no,” she said impatiently, shaking her head. “Let me ask this … what does he value?”

  That was easier. “Honesty. Hard work. Peace.”

  His answer didn’t appear to satisfy her. “But what of the man?” she insisted. Then an inspiration seemed to come to her. “What will he do with the pup?”

  “He’ll value him as a gift from his lady.”

  “He’ll not have him fight? Or will he?” She was standing very close now, her expression worried. He could see the ruby sheen in the shadows of her red-gold hair, a sprinkling of gingery freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  “No. That I can promise. He’s no love of violence for its own sake.” She smelled like sun and soap and she was regarding him so earnestly, so seriously and he wanted … He wanted …

  He reached across the space separating them and tipped her chin up. Her lips parted in surprise and before she could react he’d bent down and brushed a kiss over her mouth. He heard her breath catch and he shifted closer, this time letting his lips cling. Her own were soft and plush and warm and sweet. So sweet. She swayed and he caught her wrists together, bracing her hands against his chest as his kiss deepened, his tongue sliding between her lips to taste—

  She shoved against him, hard, and he stumbled back, amused and aroused and pleased, because he wanted her and she wanted him. He had never imagined, never had the hubris to hope, that their union could be more than an expedience for both of them. But now … he nearly laughed with the joy of it, the wonder and fortune of it. She would be his mistress as well as wife, and he would be her lover in addition to husband. Although she didn’t know this yet. Indeed, at the moment she looked decidedly put out.

  “Why did you do that?” she shouted.

  “Well, Joan,” he said in his most reasonable tone, “yer a lass and I’m a man and the stables are as private a place as a solar, and you looked willing and lord knows I am, so … why not?”

  Half of him hoped she would choose now to dispense with her masquerade so they might go forth in honesty. But the other half of him, that half that was still a boy, reacted to the girlishness of her blushes and stutters. That half liked not being cautious, politic, and wise beyond his years, and liked that for these moments she wasn’t Jeanne Forbes, who held the future of his portion of the Highlands in her hands, but “Joan”, a pretty, hot-headed, passionate girl.

  Apparently, “Joan” didn’t appreciate his answer. She gasped. “How dare you? I am not some tart to be tumbled in a stall!”

  He gave her a lop-sided grin. “How about in a loft?”

  Her eyes grew round and he decided to take her momentary silence as consent. Besides, he was in a lather to taste her again, to feel her hands on him. He scooped her up while she was still floundering for a reply. She was light and finely made but well curved and womanly.

  He’d one foot on the ladder leading up before she managed to sputter, “Put me down, you great ox! I’m not some doxy! I’m … I’m …”

  He didn’t put her down, but neither did he start up the ladder, instead he waited, interested to see what she’d say, how far she’d take her masquerade.

  “I’m … I’m betrothed!” she blurted out.

  “Aye?” he said, feigning surprise. He bounced her higher up in his arms and in response she flung her arms around his neck, clinging. He liked the feel of her arms around him and he bent his head down, nuzzling her neck. Her skin was velvety and smooth, like sun-warmed chamois. The pulse at the base of her throat trip-hammered beneath his lips.

  Delicately, he nipped the tender skin and heard her draw in a startl
ed breath. Her arms tightened. “Didn’t you hear me?” she asked in a high and unnatural voice. “I’m to be wed!”

  “No matter, lass. So am I.”

  And as quickly as he said the words, he found himself with a hellcat in his arms. With a strangled sound of fury, she pummelled at his chest, kicking her feet and flaying about so violently that he almost dropped her. Startled, at the last second she clutched hold of his leine, trying to keep herself from falling, but tearing his shirt open at the chest in the process. Taking advantage of her momentary stillness, he repositioned her in his arms, grinning wickedly down into her upturned face.

  “Have a care, lass,” he said. “I’m eager, too, but not so wealthy that I can afford to have one of my best shirts ripped.”

  He waited for her to start struggling again but instead she simply stared at him, her exotic eyes widening and then, before he understood what was happening, her arms wrapped tight around his neck and she was drawing herself fully against him, the soft roundness of her breasts crushed to his naked chest.

  “Take me, then. Take me now!” she whispered huskily a second before her mouth found his.

  “What?”

  If she wasn’t so furious at him, she would have laughed at the dumbstruck expression on Rob’s face. Rob Macalduie’s face. But she was furious, whether at him for leading her on or at herself for being so roused by his kisses that, for a moment there, before she’d tumbled to his true identity, she had actually decided to let him have a few more kisses. Because she’d never been kissed like that before, never had the tingling in her lips stretch in a taut wire of need to the very pit of her belly. And deeper.

  Not that she would have ever sanctioned anything more and she would never have let him kiss her in the first place had she known what he’d been about, but once he had, oh, aye! It was amazing, stirring, and as potent as the brandy from the king’s own cellar.

  Even as she’d been anticipating another kiss, she’d been promising herself that she would not betray her husband once the marriage vows were spoken. She had also been telling herself that there was no betrayal in sharing a simple kiss with a would-be suitor before she’d even properly met her intended groom. It was a mere kiss. A simple thing to remember when she closed her eyes three nights hence on her wedding night and accept the laird’s attentions. She wondered briefly who he was, the man she’d mistaken for her future husband.

  “I said,’’ she repeated patiently, “take me now.”

  “But …”

  Clearly, this wasn’t going the way Rob had anticipated. Somehow, she managed to keep from laughing and feigned a confused expression.

  “Don’t you want me? Have you changed your mind?” she asked sweetly, arching her back, just a little, so that her bosom swelled against his hot flesh.

  “God, no!” he whispered hoarsely.

  She almost took pity on him. After all, she’d begun this game and she supposed she deserved his goading. How far would he go, she wondered? He assumed she didn’t know who he was yet. Was he using this encounter as a test of her virtue? She thought not, mostly because he’d no more control of the desire raking his body than she.

  His great chest rose and fell in a heavy rhythm, his breathing harsh and ragged. A strand of hair curled against his damp throat and his eyes were dark with hunger.

  “Then …” Her fingertips played in the crisp dark hair covering his chest and he shuddered, “are you going to take me up to the hayloft?”

  Her gaze flashed to the ladder and his arms tightened about her. “Lady, perhaps you are right,” he said, sounding desperate, “perhaps we should consider the ramifications of our acts.”

  She pouted, plucking the glass token hanging on his chest and giving it a rough tug. It was the token that had given him away, a small glass vial containing a glint of red-gold, a strand of her own hair that she’d sent to him last year. He’d obviously forgotten he wore it.

  Of course, she now realized he knew who she was, too, and had been playing with her, punishing her for her deception by pretending to seduce her. Only now it had become real. She knew this because she knew he would never try to seduce one of Jeanne Forbe’s own companions on the virtual eve of his marriage. Not because she mistook him for a saint. No, the reason she knew he must realize her identity was because he had politicked and manoeuvred and argued for their marriage and he wouldn’t risk that for a tumble in the hay even had she been the Medici witch, Helen of Troy and Cleopatra all rolled into one. If she knew nothing else about Rob Macalduie it was this: he wasn’t stupid.

  “If you’ve suddenly lost your … will, so be it,” she said. “But in that case there’s no need for us to stand about hoping it returns. I should like next to see the chap—”

  “I have not lost my will!” he thundered. “I have will aplenty, lady, and am half a mind to—”

  “What I want takes no mind at all,” she cut in, reaching up and pushing the dark hair from his handsome face. “Simply … will.”

  He threw back his head, groaning. She smiled. He was too honourable to take her under these circumstances. The question was, was she?

  She turned in his arms, letting imagination lead where experience failed her. She pressed her lips against the heavy plane of his chest and then, quite deliberately, touched the tip of her tongue to the salty skin and trailed a long, searing line to the base of his throat. He drew in a long, shaking breath in response and she laced her fingers around the back of his wide neck, pulling his face down to hers. Their mouth met in a heated kiss, open and hungering, locked into a fever of yearning, their tongues dancing together. The fervour of their actions caused her gown to pucker and pull, her breast escaping above the décolletage and rubbing erotically against him. Its touch galvanized him.

  With a low sound of anger, he dipped down, setting her on her feet. She swayed, suddenly being ripped from his embrace, dizzy, suffused with unfulfilled longing. She put a hand up to steady herself and he backed away from her. His chest was working like a bellows; his gaze was predatory and keen, frantic and raw.

  “Mother of Mercy, how to tell you who I am?” he breathed in a low voice not meant for her ears. “How do I right this?”

  But she did hear and was pleased beyond measure by his words, his honour, his self-restraint. Rob Macalduie was a man she could love. May already be in love with, truth be told, and had been falling in love with at the arrival of each new letter, circumspect, reasoned, but flavoured with hints of wry humour and self-deprecation.

  “I know who you are,” she said breathlessly. “You are Rob.”

  “Aye, but—”

  “Rob Macalduie, Laird of Barras, betrothed to Jeanne Forbes who you well know is … me.”

  For a moment he simply stared at him and for an instance, Jeanne feared she might have read into his character things that were not there, and hoped she was not wrong, but then his handsome face lit with a huge grin. “You knew!”

  “Aye, but for a far shorter time than you did.”

  “Faith, lass, we’ll make a fearsome pair, I warrant,” he said, still smiling, handsome great devil of a Highlander that he was.

  “I warrant,” she agreed, suddenly shy beneath the hungry, roving, possessive glint in his eyes.

  “So, now that we’ve been revealed to one another, what next?” he asked, still looking greatly amused, oddly proud and decidedly boyish.

  She thought of all the things her uncle and the king had told her to explore, all the questions a prudent woman would ask a prospective groom, all the things she ought to insist she see, the people she must ask to interview. But then her gaze caught on a piece of hay drifting lazily down from above.

  “I’ve always wanted a proper tour of a hayloft,” she said.

  And soon enough, she had one.

  Author Biographies

  Marta Acosta

  Author of the award-winning Casa Dracula series, she is a Romantic Times award nominee. Her first young-adult gothic novel, The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove,
will be published in 2012. She also writes romantic comedies as Grace Coopersmith (Nancy’s Theory of Style).

  www.martaacosta.com

  Jackie Barbosa

  Jackie knew she wanted to be a writer by the time she was seven years old. After detours into academia – she holds a Master’s degree in Classics from the University of Chicago – and the software industry, she is at last achieving her lifelong dream of writing romantic fiction, and is published by Kensington Books and Harlequin.

  www.jackiebarbosa.com

  Annette Blair

  Award-winning author who owes her paranormal roots to Salem, Massachusetts, where she stumbled into the serendipitous role of Accidental Witch Writer, her bewitching romantic comedies became her first national bestsellers (magick or destiny?). Her thirty-plus titles include her popular Works Like Magick novels and Vintage Magic Mysteries.

  www.annetteblair.com

  Sandy Blair

  Winner of a National Readers Choice Award and RITA nominee, she continues to make the Barnes and Noble and Amazon national bestseller lists with her light-hearted Highlander novels.

  www.sandyblair.net

  Terri Brisbin

  When not being an award-winning author of compelling, emotional and sexy historical romances set in medieval Scotland and England, Terri Brisbin is a married mom of three and dental hygienist to hundreds in southern New Jersey.

  www.terribrisbin.com

  Connie Brockway

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author and two-time winner of the RITA, with starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, when not writing historical romance and irreverent women’s fiction, Brockway makes her home in the Minnesota tundra where she plans to stay until they plant her. If they can dig through the perma frost.

  www.conniebrockway.com

  Leah Marie Brown