by Lucy Monroe
"I am your laird."
"I am not a member of this clan. I am your captive and I owe you no allegiance."
"You owe me respect."
"I owe you nothing."
Instead of getting angrier, he shook his head with a strange smile, making him look even more appealing than normal. "My fiercest warriors would not talk to me so and yet you, a mere slip of a woman, defy me without pause."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"No, you are not." He sounded bemused by that fact. "I do not expect to see Cait or Drustan for a day or more," he offered without further prompting.
"You are not serious?"
"I am."
"But that is…" She stopped, unsure what to call it. She supposed that a newly wedded couple might want time to themselves. She could hardly fault mat, but Cait and Drustan had married under anything but usual circumstances.
"It is normal," Lachlan said in a hard voice.
"Is it?" she asked, finding it difficult to keep track of their conversation with him standing so close.
"Yes."
"I have no experience in these matters." Not yet anyway. "But I am worried about her. I hardly slept last night for thinking about what might be happening to her."
Lachlan stared at her and she blushed, realizing how her words sounded.
"I wasn't thinking about that."
"What?" he asked, a devilish glint in his dark eyes.
"That... you know. The bedding."
"What else did you think might happen to her on her wedding night?"
"She might have refused him."
"She didn't. You saw how she responded to his kiss on the boat. The lass wanted him."
Emily's hand flew up to cover his mouth. "Don't say such things. It isn't seemly."
He kissed her palm and she jerked her hand away as if burned. Worse, she felt marked… as if his kiss had seared her palm with the imprint of his lips.
He smiled. "You watched them. You know I speak the truth."
"I didn't watch," she lied.
"You did and it excited you."
"It didn't!"
"It did and that made me hot."
"Hot?" She shook her head, unable to believe they were having this conversation.
He nodded. "Oh, yes. Your lips parted as if you were ready to be kissed yourself."
"I did no such thing."
"You did. And I liked it."
"You shouldn't have noticed. It was rude."
"You think I'm a barbarian."
"A barbarian who speaks Latin," she said wryly.
"I am interested in many things."
"Well, I am interested in my friend's welfare. Will you allow me to visit her?"
"There is no need. You will trust me when I tell you she is content to be with my warrior and you will stop worrying. Drustan gave his word he would not hurt her."
"As you gave your word you would not hurt me?"
"Yes."
Then she had plenty to worry about.
Her opinion must have shown on her face because he said, "You will cease believing my choice of reparation for insult is some horrible fate that has befallen your friend. Cait is unharmed."
Emily laughed. She couldn't help it. The man was daft. "It is a horrible fate."
"No more so than any other woman given in marriage."
"She had no choice!"
"Most women have little choice in who they wed."
"This is different, you must see that."
"How?"
"You chose for her."
"And was she allowed to select her first husband?" he asked in a tone that implied such a thing highly unlikely. "Were you allowed a choice in whether or not you were sent to marry Talorc?"
There had been no choice… not if she wanted to spare her sister. "No." Sighing, Emily also remembered what Cait had told her about her first marriage. "Cait's brother decided on her first husband."
"Ah," Lachlan said with satisfaction. "Her first marriage was arranged by her brother who was also her laird and now her new laird has chosen her second husband. It is no different."
"It's different all right." How could he be too stubborn to see that? "She didn't choose to be a member of this clan."
"Did she choose to be a Sinclair?"
"She was born a Sinclair."
"And now she has been made a Balmoral."
Implying neither had been her friend's choice. Looked at in that light, she could see his reasoning, but it was flawed. Only she did not know how to explain that fact. "You are trying to confuse me."
"No. I'm only trying to make you see the truth."
"What truth?"
"That I have done nothing reprehensible in commanding this marriage take place."
"You said my opinion did not matter."
"I have changed my mind. I want you to stop thinking I am some kind of monster."
"Why?"
He glared at her. "You did not eat your dinner last night, and this morning you have not touched your porridge."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"You will eat. I command it."
"And if I don't… what threat will you use against me to make me obey? Will you take me like a whore to your bed?" She couldn't believe she had asked that, but he certainly didn't hesitate to discuss issues best left unmentioned.
"To warm my bed would not make you a whore," he growled.
"Wouldn't it? What do Highlanders call women who share their bodies with men who are not their husbands?"
"Accommodating."
Emily gasped, unable to believe her ears. "You did not just say that."
"I did. I am no Englishman to say one thing and mean another."
"How dare you?"
"I dare anything I like. I am laird here." And according to him, that made him tantamount to being a king.
Well, he wasn't her king and that was that. With a huff, she spun away.
"If you want to see Cait, you must eat."
"So that is to be the threat?" Not that he needed to threaten her to eat. She'd only been waiting for him to leave before she ate her porridge, but he was right. It was going to be stone cold if she didn't eat it soon.
"If that is what it takes to make you act reasonably, then yes."
"I did not realize that prisoners were expected to be reasonable." Because she wanted to anyway, she sat on her bed and began to eat.
He moved to stand near her, propping one foot on the bed frame. "You are not a prisoner."
She tried not to look at the muscular leg so close to her, but could not keep her gaze from straying to it. Englishmen covered their legs, but she did not think it would matter if he wore hose and a long tunic. Lachlan was so very masculine that he called to everything feminine in her even when she was angry enough to throw her porridge right at his head.
"So the door is not barred on the other side when the servants leave?" she asked with faint mockery. "I must have imagined hearing it slide into place then."
"I warned you that you would be locked in a tower if you ran from me again yesterday. You ran."
"And you followed through on your threat, but you didn't tell me you were going to torture me with boredom."
Chapter 9
Lachlan watched Emily eat, lascivious thoughts that would send her running if she could read them going through his mind. He wanted that mouth on him, not the spoon. When he had threatened to keep her in his bed the night before, he had known it would convince Cait to speak her vows. That did not mean he had not wished for the opposite outcome.
He did not pine for women, but he'd spent a good part of last night sleepless and aching. And it was all this Englishwoman's fault.
"I am not torturing you."
She was the one torturing him with his need to touch and taste when he knew he should do neither.
She finished her breakfast before saying, "I saw you shake your head at Marta. You wanted her to tell me she could not give me any chores to do when we both know
there must be dozens in a keep this size."
He could not believe she was acting offended because of that. "You are not a servant in my household."
"I would rather be a servant than sit around all day doing nothing."
"Is that why your hands are chapped from work? Because you did not like doing nothing in your father's household?" He had noticed that yesterday and wondered at it.
She winced, tucking her hands into the folds of her skirt. "My hands are not unsightly."
"I did not say they were."
"You did."
He sighed. "Will you argue over everything I say?"
"I don't mean to."
"Then stop."
"You make me angry."
"I had noticed."
She cast him a disgruntled look. "Then why don't you stop?"
"I am laird."
"Is that your answer for everything?" She sounded so incensed, he had to bite back a smile.
"It is my answer when it is the right answer."
"Which seems to be all the time, in your opinion," she grumbled.
He stepped away from the bed. He had accomplished his purpose. She had eaten. Now, he had other more important duties to attend to.
She jumped up and grabbed his arm. "Please… do not leave me here again with nothing to occupy my time."
"What would you have me do?" he asked out of curiosity.
"At the Sinclair holding, I helped Cait oversee the running of the keep. I did the same with my stepmother in my father's home as well as seeing to many chores myself. I am used to being busy."
"I have a housekeeper and women to help her."
Emily's face fell and her small hand dropped from his arm. "Very well. I will not keep you from your duties any longer with my unimportant problems."
"They are not unimportant," he denied, even though he had told himself that very thing only a second before. "I simply do not know what you would have me do to fix them. I will not have you treated as a servant and you must wait to see your friend until she and Drustan emerge from his quarters."
Which did not mean Lachlan could not think of anything to occupy Emily's time. He could, all too easily, but it had nothing to do with work and everything to do with getting her naked. He did not think she would appreciate his solution.
"At least let me stay in a room that is not a prison."
"You said you preferred to be kept from my people." She'd been adamant on that point.
"I was overwrought yesterday. I wasn't thinking clearly when I ran from you."
"Why?"
She looked at him as if she could not believe he had needed to ask. "I was kidnapped, then I discovered the only friend I have in the Highlands was to be forced into marriage to exact revenge on her brother, then you made me sit in that tiny boat to cross water so deep there is probably no bottom while your brother glared at me as if I were his worst enemy. When we landed on dry land, my emotions got the better of me."
"The water frightened you?" he asked, wondering if she would tell him the truth.
Knowing an opponent's fears made them vulnerable to you and she did not realize he knew hers already. He'd been shocked when he heard her and Cait talking about it. He had not smelled Emily's fear on the boat and he should have. Humans were not trained to mask their scent.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't want to die by drowning."
"A sound plan, but that does not explain your concern when you were in a seaworthy boat."
"The boat could have tipped. A wave could have crashed over the bow and knocked me into the water."
"I would have pulled you out."
She stared at him, an odd expression on her face. Then she sighed. "I don't expect you to understand, but I don't like the water and the sea terrifies me."
"Why?"
She looked away, her face schooled into an impassive mask that impressed him all the more for the fact that her features were usually so expressive. "It does not matter."
"I will be the judge of that. Tell me."
"You are even more demanding than my father."
"Did your father instill the fear of water in you because he was afraid you would drown?" It was not such an uncommon practice, but it was a foolish one. Better to teach a child to swim than to teach them fear.
She did not answer and she did not move. There was a quality to her stillness that bothered him. It was too absolute. She was barely breathing.
"Emily?"
She looked at him then and her violet eyes were filled with an agony he could not stand.
Without considering his next actions, he sat beside her on the bed and then pulled her into his lap. It was a measure of her inner turmoil that she did not fight his hold, but burrowed against him as if hiding from her own thoughts.
It shamed him that while she was so obviously upset, his body reacted to her nearness with primitive intensity. He wanted her and his sex was soon rigid with the need to take her.
Forcing his thoughts to other paths, he repeated, "Tell me."
She shook her head.
"Why not?"
"It is long past."
"But haunts you like a specter of the night."
She shuddered. "Yes."
"Tell me and I will vanquish your ghost."
Emily marveled at his confidence. Did he really think it was that simple? "You are a man, not a magician."
"I am a laird."
"There you go again, thinking that's the answer to everything," she said teasingly, but her voice was not as light as she wanted it to be.
"It is." No doubts. No questions. Just absolute certainty in his own power.
Was he right? Could telling him cauterize the wound that had bled inside her for so long? She had never told anyone, not even Abigail, why she was so wretchedly afraid of the water.
"My mother died giving birth to a boy child who also died." Memories crowded her mind and she curled instinctively further into Lachlan's strength and heat. "Until then, my father loved me and called me his precious daughter. He was kind to me and smiled often. He loved my mother very much. His grief at her death was terrible. And his affection for me turned to hatred. He blamed me for being born a girl and for Mama's death in the attempt to give him a son and heir. He drank wine by the pitcherful the first months after her passing."
She could still remember the stench of it on his breath, his clothes. She'd been a small child, hurting and frightened by her mother's death and her father's withdrawal.
"One night, I went to him… I wanted to comfort him. I wanted him to hold me and call me precious as he had before she died. But he did not want my comfort and he abhorred my touch. He started shouting at me, telling me how useless I was. He said that when animals give birth to useless offspring, the babies are drowned. That I should have been drowned at birth, I was so useless."
Her throat convulsed and she had to take several breaths before going on.
"He stumbled to his feet and grabbed me. He carried me like a sack of wheat, his big arm pushing into my stomach. It hurt. I was crying and begging him to let me go, but he acted like he didn't hear me. He kept muttering about drowning a useless pup. He carried me outside. It was dark and there was no one around. He took me to the small pond behind the keep. The water was dark and black. Terrifying. I started screaming, but no one came. He gave an anguished roar and threw me in."
Talking about it brought back the feeling of the cold water closing over her head, the terror as she realized she could not breathe. She'd flailed in the water, but could not swim and her head broke the surface only once. She'd been sure she was going to die, but then her father's hand had been there, grabbing her, pulling her into the cold night air.
She'd coughed and sputtered, throwing up water, sobbing so hard she could not breathe. He'd held her then, rubbing her back, telling her over and over again how sorry he was. He'd carried her back to the keep as if she were a baby, cuddling her close to his chest, trying to comfort her. But al
l she had wanted was to get away from him.
When they reached the keep, the housekeeper was there. With terror-based strength, Emily had torn herself from her father's arms and thrown herself at the housekeeper. She'd wrapped her arms around the woman's legs and sobbed and sobbed.
"Father told her to give me a hot bath and drink. Then he left. The next day, he found me in my room and I screamed when I saw him. He went away after that. When he came home, he had my stepmother Sybil with him and my two stepsisters."
Emily had needed her father's love, but had not been able to bear being close enough for him to touch her for years after that. Sybil had finished the separation his drunken rage had started, and by the time Emily was old enough to begin to understand her father's pain and drunken cruelty, she was too estranged from him for it to make a difference.
"He has never had a drop of wine since then that I know of, even when Sybil insisted he toast the birth of their first son. He drank water."
She looked up at Lachlan, wondering what he thought of her awful tale. His eyes were filled with banked rage and a compassion that touched her in places she could not afford to be touched. She scrambled off his lap and stood. He made no move to grab her back, but she felt the need for more space between them nevertheless and moved to the other side of the room.
She crossed her arms protectively over her heart. "Now you know."
"He was crazed with grief."
"Yes."
"But there is no excuse for what he did. I would kill a soldier who acted likewise."
She shivered, knowing he meant it. "I didn't want him killed. He was my father."
"He never touched you again?"
"No."
"But you are marked by his brutality."
"You could put it that way. My fear of the water is not usually a problem. I can hide it mostly. Other than kidnappings, I've never been forced into a boat."
He did not smile at her small jest. "You still cannot swim?"
Revulsion at the thought swept over her and she made no attempt to mask it. "No."
"I can."
"Oh." She did not know what else to say.
"To live on an island and not be able to swim would be foolish."
"I suppose so."
"I will teach you to swim as well."
Horrified, she shook her head vehemently and then said, "No," for good measure.
