The Secret Clan: The Complete Series

by Amanda Scott

  He had feared to admit his growing love for her, knowing that she saw only the man he pretended to be since his return from the Continent and fearing that she could never truly love such a man. He had not thought himself a coward before, but even more than he feared that she did not love him now did he fear that his deceit might render him ineligible to claim her love for all time to come.

  When the chance to marry her had arisen, he had leaped like a salmon at spawn to snatch at it. She was his now, or she would be when they consummated the union, no matter what happened in the future. And that she was his must always be accounted as an asset. But much as confession would relieve his soul, just the thought of it loomed as a monstrous obstacle between them. How would she react?

  Ruthlessly suppressing these thoughts, he bent to kiss her breasts, taking one erect nipple into his mouth to suckle it, savoring her soft mews of pleasure. He would not play the fool tonight. He would give of himself, the real Alex, with all his passion and his love. And if, as a result, she recognized him for who and what he really was, they would deal with that then. But although he could not bring himself simply to blurt out the truth to her now and hope for the best, he would not deceive her in any other way, not any longer.

  She clutched his hair now in one fist, her breath coming in little gasps as he moved a hand down her belly to the juncture of her legs and stroked the soft curls there. The nerves in his fingertips seemed supersensitive, as if he could feel her throbbing pulse beneath every inch of skin he touched.

  His own body was ready, eager to claim her, but he wanted her ready first.

  His fingers probed the opening between her legs and found that her body’s natural defenses had already responded. She was ready for him. Still, he stroked her more, stimulating her and increasing her passions so that he would not hurt her any more than necessary when he took his first possession of her.

  Each time he touched her, his own desire swelled more within him until he felt he would explode if he did not satisfy it soon.

  Bab eagerly accepted his attentions, delighting in each new sensation and discovery. She had never suspected that her body hid such secrets, so many sensitive places. It amazed her that all Alex had to do was touch her, and her body would leap in response. One moment she felt as if she were melting into the feather mattress, and the next as if she were in a world where all was heady passion.

  Her mouth felt hot and hungry, and she wanted to kiss him everywhere. Her hands moved over him, seeking to learn more about him and to excite him as he excited her. When his hand moved between her legs, she nearly cried out, but curiosity held her silent. As he caressed her and his fingers gently penetrated her, her tension increased until her body hummed from her breasts to her toes, and when he moved at last to claim her, she welcomed him. She was conscious of a brief dull ache and then he was inside her, hot and pulsing.

  Alex was still for a moment, as if he were judging her reaction, and when she kissed his cheek and sought his lips, he began to move, gently at first and then more urgently for a time, until with a gasping moan he collapsed atop her.

  Bab could scarcely breathe. It was not his weight that stifled her but the increasingly aching desire in her body that had not yet been quenched. She wanted to urge him to continue, but she feared that, Alex being Alex, he had already exerted himself beyond all reason.

  Hearing him draw a long breath heightened her concern, but then he shifted his weight to one side and began to caress her lightly, first with just his fingertips, drawing them downward from the side of her neck over her breasts to her waist and lower belly. Then he used the palm of his hand, stroking her, pausing at one breast to cup it gently, teasing her nipple with his thumb. Then his palm moved lower, stopping when it reached the curls at the juncture of her thighs and resting there.

  When she opened her mouth to tell him to keep going he kissed her, thrusting his tongue inside, and at the same time fingering her soft nether lips, making her tense involuntarily. His palm moved to her thighs, stroking them until they relaxed, whereupon his fingers invaded her again, stroking and teasing until she moaned for release. Then he caught her hand and moved it so that it touched him, clasped him, and began to stroke and squeeze his stiffening flesh.

  Fascinated by the way he moved within her grasp, Bab continued to caress him, and when he raised himself over her so that his hips were between her thighs again, she helped him insert himself. He began to move inside her then with tantalizing slowness, and she resisted the urge to beg him to move faster, savoring each new sensation, even the slight, continuing ache that accompanied all of them.

  His kisses became more probing, and her tongue responded to his. Her hands clutched him, pulling him closer until her body leaped to meet his. Where first it had ached, now it had caught fire, but she felt no pain, only urgency. They found a natural rhythm together, climbing higher and higher until she thought she could bear no more. And then, all of a sudden, warm waves of pleasure flooded through her, great pulsing, muscle-contracting waves such as she had never known before.

  When the sensations eased, she sighed and smiled at Alex. “What an amazing thing! Can we do it again?”

  He chuckled deep in his throat and kissed her ear, his warm breath tickling it as he murmured. “Soon, sweetheart, but not instantly.”

  She snuggled against him, relaxing deeply with her head in the soft hollow of his shoulder. As they lay together, sated with pleasure, holding each other, and delighting in their newfound intimacy, someone rapped on the door.

  Chapter 20

  Pulling the quilt up so that it covered Bab to her chin, Alex said, “Enter.”

  Hugo put his head in, said apologetically, “Begging your pardon, Master Alex, but his lordship requests your presence below in the great hall.”

  “The devil fly away with his lordship,” Alex said heartily. “Go and tell him that if he will contain his soul in patience, I shall be with him in half an hour. You may tell him that I am with my lady wife and have no wish to leave her any sooner. Couch that in whatever diplomatic phrases you like, Hugo, but tell him.”

  To Bab’s surprise, Hugo remained stolidly where he was. “Wi’ respect, sir, his lordship said ye was to come at once.”

  “A pox on his lordship, then,” Alex said, but this time with less heat in the words, and Bab looked narrowly at him.

  He smiled at her, and she noted that something in his manner was different. She considered it in the few seconds before he swung his legs out of the bed and gestured for Hugo to bring him his dressing gown. Then the answer came to her. He had set aside his affectations.

  The drawl was gone, as was the sleepy look in his eyes. It was as if their coupling had stripped away his outer shell and left the inner man. She liked the result. What she did not like was the way he exchanged looks with Hugo, as if they were communicating silently, keeping secrets from her.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “What is going on, sir?”

  Alex smiled again. “Naught to worry yourself about, sweetheart. I promised, remember? I won’t let him take you back to Inverness.”

  His voice was different without the drawl, deeper and pleasant to her ear, but she felt her temper stir. “It is Francis then. Take care, sir. I won’t be coddled.”

  “I’ll have Hugo send Giorsal in so you can dress,” he said as he left.

  She carefully cleaned away the evidence of her coupling with a cloth and cold water from the ewer on the washstand, splashed more water on her face, and scrambled into her shift, petticoat, and bodice, leaving the lacings loose. Then she flung clothes from her chests until she found a skirt she could wear. By the time Giorsal arrived, there was little left to do but to tighten and tie Bab’s laces.

  Handing her mistress a silver-linked belt, Giorsal watched her fasten it, adjusted her skirt to her own satisfaction, and then stepped back to view the result.

  “That will do, I expect,” she said. “I’ll just brush your hair now, mistress.”

  “Ne
ver mind my hair,” Bab said. “Hand me that cap.”

  Knowing better than to argue with that tone, Giorsal did as she was bid.

  Hastily, Bab slipped her feet into a pair of embroidered slippers, wrapped her tousled plaits into a knot atop her head, and crammed the lacy cap on over the whole. Then with a glance at Giorsal to assure herself that she had left no unseemly bare parts showing, she hurried down to the hall.

  Having dressed so quickly and being certain that Alex would take his usual time, she fully expected to find his lordship pacing the floor, commanding all and sundry to tell him what the devil was keeping his son, but to her surprise Alex caught her on the stairway just before she reached the great-hall entrance.

  “You are not to go in there, lass,” he said, his tone uncompromising.

  She met his gaze steadily. “I want to know what is happening.”

  “I do not know that myself yet,” he admitted, “but Francis Dalcross is here, and Hugo said this time he has brought a whole troop of his men with him.”

  “ ’Tis as I thought then and he’s come to take me back.” The thought made her shudder, but Alex had said he would not let Francis take her away again, and she did not think he would have said it had he not believed he could stop him.

  He said now, “If be that is why he has come, I do not want him to see you. That was our error last time, but no one will have told him you are here unless my father did, and I am not sure he even knows.”

  “He does,” Bab said. “The captain of the guard told me last night that he would wake his manservant and tell him I was safe.”

  “All the more reason to keep out of sight then,” he said. “Don’t defy me in this, Bab. I want your word that you will not show yourself until I give you leave.”

  “Very well,” she said, glad that he had not ordered her back to her room. She was not certain she would have obeyed such an order, for much as she disliked defying him, she intended to see what happened.

  She noted as Alex entered the hall that he walked in the languid, mincing manner she disliked so much, but that did not matter now. Hurrying back upstairs to the gallery, she went directly to the laird’s peek, determined to see and hear for herself exactly what Francis wanted and what he meant to do.

  As she reached the peek, she heard his voice easily. “So there you are at last, Sir Alex,” he said. “Where is your lovely wife?”

  “Faith, Dalcross, you amaze me,” Alex drawled. “Have you misplaced the lass already?”

  “I have not. I know exactly where she is, as do you.”

  Chisholm said sternly, “Speak your piece, man. You said you had a message for my son, and I have produced him for you. If you have misplaced her ladyship, you cannot expect us to help you find her again.”

  “Oh, I have not misplaced her, my lord. She has served the exact purpose I meant her to serve, for she has led me to Sionnach Dubh, just as I intended. Sir Alexander Chisholm, in the name of his grace, the King, I place you under arrest and charge you with the murder of my father. You will answer to that charge and to all the others laid over the years against your alter ego, Sionnach Dubh.”

  Bab gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth so she would not cry out.

  “Have you lost your senses, sir?” Chisholm snapped. “My son is hardly the man you seek. Do you not recall that your outlaw Fox is an expert with sword and pistol? To accuse Alex would be absurd were it not such an insult.”

  “I do you the courtesy to believe that he has deceived you just as he has deceived everyone else,” Dalcross said. “But only a man who had himself lived at Sheriff’s House would know its deepest secrets, unless you yourself revealed to the Fox the location of its hidden tunnel—a secret, I might add, that you did not see fit to impart to my late, esteemed parent or to myself.”

  “I have told no one,” Chisholm snapped. “But clearly you know of it.”

  “I discovered it only tonight, however. My people were watching the bridge, knowing he would most likely cross the river there since it is still in spate and difficult to cross elsewhere. It was by sheer accident that we then found the tunnel. Someone had carelessly left the entry ajar, and one of my men felt the draft.”

  Bab frowned at hearing this. She was certain the Fox had fastened the door.

  Claud, watching from his perch on the dais in one of the privacy-screen carvings, also frowned. Recalling his mother’s warning about mischief afoot, he had watched Mistress Bab’s escape with particular concern, relaxing his vigil only after the riders had crossed the bridge. Despite the darkness, he had seen her rescuer shut the hidden door carefully. He had, moreover, bolted it on the tunnel side.

  Setting himself furiously to think, Claud hoped that for once he would find his mental faculties adequate to the task.

  Francis said bluntly, “That the Fox was able to enter and leave with her ladyship in the dead of night without so much as showing a light speaks for itself and is clearly sufficient cause for his arrest.”

  Peeping around the archway into the hall, Bab saw him sign to two of his men to shackle Alex. She nearly demanded from the gallery that they unhand him, but remembering his command, she decided that she would do better to bide in peace until she had thought everything through more carefully.

  Alex laughed in Dalcross’s face as his captors clapped manacles on his wrists. “No one will believe this,” he said. “Faith, Dalcross, but mayhap I should thank you. Such an accusation is bound to enhance my reputation to a vast degree.”

  Francis ignored him, gesturing for his men to take him away.

  As they did, Alex said over his shoulder to his father, “Doubtless this matter will be resolved quickly, sir, but I’d be grateful if you would tell my lady wife that I love and adore her. I left her a token by which to remember me in the wee carved box that resides in the compartment in my bed-steps. Hugo knows the place.”

  “By heaven’s might, I’ll not stomach this,” Chisholm said. “I will not lose another son to the whims of fate.”

  “ ’Tis no whim, my lord,” Dalcross said as he took his leave. “You will lose him by virtue of his own acts to the King’s justice and the Inverness gallows.”

  Determined to avoid Chisholm lest he impose restrictions on her that she could not obey, Bab hurried upstairs without revealing to him that she had witnessed the entire scene. Going straight to Alex’s chamber, she thrust the door open, catching the two people inside by surprise.

  “Gibby,” she exclaimed, “how relieved I am to see you! You cannot know what a fright you gave me by disappearing as you did.”

  “I didna disappear,” the lad protested.

  “We never meant to frighten ye, my lady,” Hugo said. “Master Alex found him in the chapel and gave him to me to look after.”

  “Yes, he told me he had done that. Thank you for keeping him safe.”

  “I didna mind,” Hugo said, favoring her with a searching look.

  Thinking she knew the reason for it, she said soberly, “They have arrested Sir Alex. That idiotish Francis Dalcross believes him to be the Fox, which I know cannot be true, because I was with Sir Alex myself one day when we saw the Fox on the ridge above us.”

  Gibby and Hugo, their expressions wooden, said nothing.

  “That reminds me, Hugo,” she went on. “As Sir Alex was leaving, he said you would know of a certain compartment in his bed-step table where I might find a small carved box. He said it contains a gift for me.”

  “A gift, my lady?”

  “Aye, a token by which to remember his love,” she said softly.

  “I ken the place,” Hugo admitted. “I’ll show ye.”

  Bab followed him to the head of the bed, where he squatted by the bed-step table and turned a small knob that formed part of the decorative carving. When an opening appeared, Bab reached in and slid out a wooden box.

  Lifting its lid, she gasped, for the box was two-thirds full of silver coins. Some revealed the side with the fox’s mask, others that with the sprig of heath
er.

  She stared at them for a long moment without speaking as shock warred with fury in her unspoken thoughts, and then she looked at Hugo and said, “There can be but one meaning to these being here.”

  “Aye, mistress,” he replied, watching her warily.

  “Your master is very lucky that he is not standing here right now, but oh, how I wish he were, for I should like to teach him what I think of his deceits.”

  Wisely, this time Hugo remained silent.

  She was amazed at the calm that seemed to have banked her fury but was certain that it must be false. Much as she wanted to rail at Alex, she could not do so until he was free again, and since Francis was determined to hang him… Suppressing that unwelcome thought, she said, “You knew the truth, of course.”

  “Aye, mistress. ’Twas m’self ye saw riding Dancer on the ridge that day.”

  She glanced at the boy and back, asking her next question silently.

  “Aye, he kens the truth. But only since master found him in the chapel,” Hugo added hastily. “The lad saw Dancer in the cave, ye see, and that horse be as well known as the Fox. He’s true though, Wee Gibby is. He were with us last night and he’ll no break faith wi’ the master.”

  Bab gazed down at the coins in the box, saying with a sigh, “They found one of these on Friday beside the sheriff’s body, Hugo.”

  “Aye.”

  “He could not have left it there on Friday, because he was here.”

  “Nay, my lady, he did not.”

  “Most people he has given them to tend to keep them, do they not?”

  “Aye, they do and all.”

  Bab nodded. “I know of at least one man who possesses one of these coins who also had easy access to the sheriff’s body after they discovered it.”

  “Aye, my lady, only he has more than one o’ them coins, and ’tis me own belief that he put one where they found it to make it look as if the Fox had committed the murder. But there be no way to prove aught o’ Francis Dalcross and much danger in trying, both to ourselves and to Master Alex.”