by Amanda Scott
When he stopped, she said quickly, “Go on, that feels wondrous good. Does it feel so to you when a woman does it?”
“If you’d like to find out, try it,” he said.
“Sakes, have you never had a woman do it to you before?” she asked as she turned toward him and pushed him gently onto his back.
“That would be telling. Ouch!” She had nipped him with her teeth.
“You are too old not to know such things about yourself,” she said as she stroked his chest and played with his nipples.
The more she did, the more he lost himself in his reactions, until he knew he could stand it no more and surged up again, pushing her back and taking control. He caressed her until she moaned and squirmed beneath him. Then his hand moved to the fork of her legs, and she moaned louder but squirmed less as he caressed her there. A lingering crack of thunder made her jump, and his fingers slid inside.
“I thought the storm had passed,” he muttered, his fingers still busy below.
“Don’t talk,” she said.
A voice in his head said, “Easy, laddie, stop!”
Another murmured, “But I don’t want to stop.”
“Neither do I,” she cried on a near wail as her body arched against his teasing fingers. “So, don’t!”
Evidently the latter of the two voices in his head had been his own, not an imaginary one. But he wanted her then more than he had ever wanted anything.
Although his better nature argued against it, his baser one strongly suggested that he could deal with any problem that taking her might create in the future. He had, after all, come to care for her much more than he had ever thought he would.
When she moaned again, he knew she was as ready as any inexperienced woman could be, and his own body screamed its hunger for her. Without allowing his better self another word, he moved over her, murmuring soft nothings without hearing them through the roaring in his ears as his body responded with every fiber of its eagerness to join with hers.
She cried out once, giving him pause. But her breathing came rapidly, and she seemed as immersed in their passion as he was. When he reached his peak, his better self screamed warning, inspiring him to pull out at the last minute and spill his seed onto the sheet between her legs.
As he lay spent atop her, she squirmed. Realizing he was probably crushing her, he shifted to lie against the pillows and draw her in close to kiss her. Holding her as he did, with her head on his shoulder, he felt deep content.
“I just thought…” she murmured. Then, after a pause, she added, “Will you have got me with child, do you think?”
“’Tis unlikely,” he said. “I pulled out to avoid it. But in troth, lass, I’m told that doing so is no perfect assurance that one has not begun a child.”
“I see.”
“I’d apologize,” he said. “But once again, I’m not really sorry. I could blame the whisky I drank earlier with Fin. But the plain truth is that I wanted you.”
“Aye,” she said. “Me, too.”
Chapter 14
After brief reflection on the delights their coupling had provided, and on all he had just said, Mairi murmured, “Still, I expect we should not have done it.”
“Mayhap we should not,” Rob agreed. “But I could not seem to stop myself. Nor do I wish it undone. We must marry, of course. I’ll see to arranging it at once.”
“Nay, then, we cannot,” Mairi said firmly, determined not to let him see that the idea did appeal to her. The fact that it strongly appealed astonished her. But she could imagine how others would feel about it—especially her father… and Phaeline.
“Lass, we must not fratch over this. ’Tis too important. What we’ve done—”
“What we have done, we did together,” she said. “There can be no dispute over that. But we cannot marry, sir. I am still underage, and my father would never permit it. Nor could I disappoint him by marrying without his consent into a clan that he deems an enemy. He would view it as the basest of betrayals, I promise you. In troth, I believe it would kill him for any daughter of his to betray him so.”
“But your own reputation,” he protested. “You must consider that, Mairi lass. People will believe the worst of you if they learn what has happened here.”
“People believe what they believe,” she said. “Sakes, but my having been with you here for as long as I have ensures that those inclined to believe the worst will believe it now in any event. I would not have them say instead that you forced me to marry you. And they would! You must know that they would.”
“We would deny it. By my troth, I would not force you even if I thought I could. Which,” he added dryly, “I do not.”
“Well, you could, of course, simply by overpowering me, for you are gey strong,” she said. “But otherwise, you could not. Sithee, I have learned much about marriage law from my cousin Jenny, enough to know that no one can legally force a Scotswoman to marry if she does not want to. I know my rights regarding marriage settlements, my father’s barony, and other such things, too.”
“I’ll remember that and take care not to cheat you.”
“You would never cheat me,” she said. “I do know that much about you. But it does not matter. There can be no marriage between us—now or ever.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said. “I will not have people saying wicked things about you. So that is all there is to—”
“My family has grown accustomed to my lack of suitors,” she interjected. “They already fear that I’ll never wed, so I have only to let them go on thinking that. They will tell others so, and so sincerely that those others will believe it, too.”
“Aye, they will believe it,” he said grimly. “Because, whatever anyone may have thought was the reason before I abducted you, they will now believe that you remain unwed because I took advantage and then refused to marry you. We must marry, lass, if only so others can know of our feelings for each other and—”
“Enough, sir. You begin to make me believe you would marry me only out of pity or a hope that you might then avoid being called a rapist. Why should anyone believe aught but that you married me because you had taken advantage—mayhap in hope that you could thereby gain control of the Dunwythie estates?”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I don’t. But many others would.”
“Aye, perhaps, but what if I have given you a child?” he demanded.
“Then mayhap we’ll talk again,” she replied, refusing to let something that might or might not be the case sway her from seeing the certainties. “There may come a time when I will marry,” she said. “But if I inherit the estates, my husband may not care about what happened here. Meantime, sir, I must think about my father and my own duty. To marry you and live at Trailinghail would be a further betrayal of him as long as I remain heiress to his estates and responsibilities.”
Rob was silent.
He understood familial duty only too well. How the devil could he insist that she ignore such duty when he had abducted her in its service?
The annoying voice that too frequently piped up from the back of his mind suggested then that duty was not all that had spurred him to that injudicious feat.
He hushed the voice. He was sure he would never have thought of abducting Mairi Dunwythie had his grandmother and Alex not both insisted in their own ways that he owed absolute duty to his clan and to his family, and had each not done so, so soon after he had laid eyes on her.
Although he could not deny that he had wanted her then, or that her beauty and her casual dismissal of him had stirred a primal urge to conquer her, duty had certainly spurred him to consider planning her abduction.
When she’d presented herself to him, so near the galley, during his exploratory visit to Annan House, his nemesis, impulse, had seized hold and forced his hand.
“You are smiling again,” she said, visibly irked. “This is serious.”
“Aye, lass, I ken fine that it is,” he said. “I was just thinking b
ack. Sithee, when I saw you in those woods, I acted without considering any consequences.”
“But you must have considered them! You were only there to abduct me.”
He realized that although he had thought much about that day and they had often mentioned the abduction, he had never told her exactly how it had happened.
“I just wanted to see if my plan was feasible,” he explained. “I’d heard you had all returned to Annan House, but I was sure that your father must have the place well guarded, so I went to have a look.”
“And ran right into me, because I had escaped the house and walked down to the barley field,” she said. “Sithee, I heard your boat, the oars thumping. And when I realized you had beached it on the riverbank, I moved closer to see.”
“So here we are,” he murmured, shifting up onto an elbow to kiss her again. “I must go now, truly,” he added. “The men downstairs will be stirring soon, and I need at least an hour or two more sleep. But we will talk more of this, believe me.”
Getting up, he pulled on his breeks and fastened them, then checked her shutters again. The wind had eased its ferocity, and the only thunder he had heard for some time came from well to the east, so he picked up the lantern, used the candle to light it, and blew out the candle. Then, bidding her sleep well, he opened the door.
Tiggie, stretched full length across the doorway, gave him a slant-eyed look, arched up to his feet, stretched again, and rolled to his back.
Rubbing his belly with a bare foot, Rob said, “Get you inside, laddie, if you mean to. I’m shutting this door.”
When the little cat had obeyed, Rob left and went to his own bed.
In the darkness of the bedchamber, Mairi watched the door shut behind Rob and listened for a moment to the diminishing wind. Feeling Tiggie’s slight weight on the bed just before he bumped his nose into her face, she greeted him and waited until he had settled on his favorite pillow before letting her thoughts return to Rob.
Her imagination replayed details of their coupling from the moment he had entered the room until he had gone. She did not think much about their talk, because as far as she was concerned, the subject required no further discussion.
Even if her father were a man who would allow his heiress daughter to marry where she chose, she was not at all sure she wanted to marry Rob. He was and would always be a Maxwell, after all, and that fact alone would cause trouble with her family and perhaps with their Annandale neighbors as well.
Also, although Rob was a landowner and Trailinghail a beautiful place, unlike Sir Hugh Douglas, he was not a baron or even a knight. Moreover, his proposal, if one could call it so, had come so impulsively on the heels of their coupling, he could not have considered fully the fact that he would be marrying a woman who might become a baroness in her own right.
She was sure that the consequences of that would be worse for him, or indeed for any man who expected to control his family and all of its affairs.
Jenny had explained to her how it would be, and Dunwythie had confirmed it. Mairi’s husband, unless he had a title of his own as Hugh did, would have naught but a styling. That meant that although people would properly address him as “my lord,” the words would be no more than acknowledgment of his marriage to a baroness. She would remain Dunwythie of Dunwythie unless she agreed to relinquish the barony to him, something she would not do.
“Maxwell of Dunwythie” flew right in the face of all that her family believed in. Her son, if she had one, would become Dunwythie of Dunwythie, just as his ancestors had been, as her father was now, and as she would be if she succeeded him. She could not and would not consider any other course.
As she tried to imagine what Rob would say if she were to explain that to him, her imagination boggled. But if she did not tell him, then…
She did not wake until Annie came in with her breakfast and the news that the laird would be busy most of the day but would try to join them for supper.
“There be trees down and roofs gone all over, m’lady,” Annie said. “So they’ll be lucky if any man amongst them gets his dinner today. They be a-scurrying hither and yon. Gibby says even Fin Walters’s cottage lost much of its thatch. But at least the rain has stopped, and the sun be a-playing ‘all hide’ wi’ the clouds.”
They tidied the chamber and stitched pieces of the quilt together for an hour before their midday meal, then worked on it afterward until Annie produced a dice cup and they threw dice together, competing for exorbitant if imaginary sums.
Annie had just suggested that she ought to go down and see how much longer it would be before supper when they heard footsteps on the stairs.
They stopped on the landing below.
“That will be the laird, m’lady. I ha’ nae doots he has come up to change his clothes before supper. We’d best get ye tidied up gey quick.”
Mairi decided to change her gown, so Annie shut the door, and they bustled about. Mairi was sitting on the stool while Annie finished plaiting her hair when Rob rapped at the door and asked if she was ready for her supper.
Barely waiting for her answer, he entered, leaving the door open behind him.
Annie got up quickly and bobbed a curtsy.
He gave her such a long look that Mairi expected him to send the maidservant away. Instead, he said, “Gib and one of the other lads will be bringing our supper up shortly. I just came ahead to see that all was—”
Breaking off, he turned toward the open door.
Mairi heard a female voice in the distance, a commanding one that echoed up the stairs. She also heard a male voice that sounded like Fin Walters, placating.
“Sakes, I must go!” Rob exclaimed. “Shut the door behind—”
“It is of no use to stand in my way, Fin Walters,” the unfamiliar female voice declared loudly enough to be heard quite clearly. “I know where his chamber is. If he is not dressed yet, with supper awaiting him in the hall, he ought to be. But I have a few things to say to him before he eats that supper, so stand aside, my man!”
Rob stepped hastily out to the landing and pulled the door to with a snap.
Mairi turned to Annie. But Annie looked as mystified as Mairi felt.
Rob straightened his cap and tried to muffle his footsteps on the stairs. But it did him no good, because Gibby came bounding up the stairs ahead of her. Before Rob could hush him, he exclaimed, “Laird, she’s here! Herself be here!”
“Hush!” Rob hissed just as his grandmother came around the bend in the stairs behind the lad.
“It is of no use to hush the lad, or scold him, either; I am coming up,” Lady Kelso declared. “You will scarcely turn me from your door, after all.”
“Madam, I would not, but it would have been good to have warning.”
“I do not doubt that,” she said, eyeing him shrewdly. “Where is she?”
He opened his mouth, words of denial leaping to his tongue. But he could not utter them, not to her. Instead, he said, “Why have you come?”
“Gib, go below and tell them I do not like my mutton overcooked. I shall expect my supper just as soon as my people have brought my things in. I expect you can spare a basin, a ewer, and a drop of water for me, Robbie lad.”
“Aye, Gran, but you’d best come into my chamber to use them, I expect.”
She nodded but said, “She is here then. Faith, lad, what were you thinking?”
Rob looked sternly at the fascinated Gibby. “Get hence,” he said.
“I thought I should wait until ye take Herself into your chamber, lest—”
“Get!”
Gib slid hastily past Lady Kelso and fled down the stairs.
“So you, too, prefer this chamber,” she said when he opened the door for her. “You can leave me to my own devices, if you like,” she added, giving him a wry smile. “I warrant you would like to warn her that I am here. She should take her supper with us, I think. My Eliza will be up directly, though, so prithee, leave that door open so she can find me. It has been years since last
we were here.”
“Aye, but tell me first why you have come,” he said, meeting her gaze.
With a slight grimace of distaste, she said, “I thought I ought to warn you that Dunwythie came to Dumfries and confronted Alex, demanding to know what the devil Alex had done with his daughter. Alex tried to order me out of the room, of course. But I am not so yielding as his Cassia is.”
Too concerned to smile at her understatement, Rob said, “What happened?”
“His lordship, justifiably furious, said his daughter had vanished and your offer of aid had made it plain to him that the Maxwells had taken her. He demanded that Alex return her at once. He ripped up at Alex, too, told him that his despicable tactics would never persuade his lordship to let Alex extort gelt from Annandale.”
“I see.”
“I warrant you do,” she said tartly. “What I should like to know, however, is just when you took leave of your senses!”
Ruefully, he said, “I think it must have happened the moment I laid eyes on her, Gran. If not then, it must certainly have been when I went to look over Annan House and ran bang into her at the riverbank.”
Shaking her head, she said, “Mayhap, henceforward you will learn to control your impulses, though little good that would do you now. The plain fact is, my lad, that Alex is furious. He told Dunwythie that no Maxwell had done any such thing, but the confrontation ended badly. His lordship having had at least sense enough not to bring an army with him to Dumfries, nevertheless departed with threats to do that very thing, whereupon Alex informed me that he would soon teach you a lesson.”
“So he leaped to the conclusion—”
“Don’t cry out about that to me,” she snapped. “You deserve to hear whatever he has to say to you, for you need a good down-setting. And, as I believe he is close upon my heels, it will come to you soon enough.”
