Niall returned his sword to the baldric on his back and held out his hand to Liam. “I accept.”
He hauled Liam to his feet, grinning when the lad was surprised at his strength. The crowd let out a raucous cheer, and the two men embraced, pounding each other on the back.
When he turned around, Bella was beaming at them both.
“Thank ye,” he murmured to Liam. If he was really going to marry the lass, then it was best they not start out with any animosity between them.
“Dinna thank me. Make her happy, else I will call ye out.”
“Ye have my word.” And he hoped he could keep it.
When Niall reached Bella, he knelt before her, taking the hand she offered and pressed his lips lightly to her knuckles. They were cold, and so he breathed on them to make them warm and was rewarded with the slight tremble of her fingers. “My lady.”
“Well met,” she whispered.
When Niall glanced up into her eyes, something inside him shifted. She smiled down at him, blue eyes twinkling, and he realized in that moment, that to him, she was like a guardian angel. His savior. Before meeting her, he’d been perfectly happy to return to Dupplin Castle and spend the rest of his days in a darkened room drinking away his unhappiness. But she’d given him something to live for. His heart warmed, and a sensation flowed through him that he’d never felt before. ’Twas quite unsettling.
Niall stood, not able to take his eyes off of her as he did so.
“Walk with me?” she asked.
Niall nodded. “’Twould be an honor.” He still held her hand and she slid her palm up his arm to grip his elbow.
The heat of Bella’s touch, the possessive grip of her hand on his elbow, nearly had him undone.
Once upon a time, he’d taken his position as a bachelor to the extreme. Training hard and cavorting even harder with his comrades and any willing female. Then nearly a year ago to the day the battle that took his arm occurred, leaving him broken and wishing he’d died. There hadn’t been a day that went by when he didn’t feel the pain of losing his limb, or the unsettling feeling that he couldn’t go on. Until he’d met her, he realized with a start. Not once today had he had those dark thoughts. Doubt that he could succeed perhaps, but not that he didn’t want to at least try.
As they walked away from the list field, snowflakes fell from the sky, melting on his cheeks, and forming pretty white diamonds on Bella’s lashes.
“Ye look beautiful,” he found himself saying. There was something profound about complimenting a woman and truly meaning it.
“Thank ye.” She blushed rose-red against her creamy cheeks, lips twitching into a soft smile. “Ye were most impressive on the field. I thought ye strong before, but seeing the way ye took down Eòran, I must say, it rivals the strength of my brother and father.”
Niall grinned, pleased she’d noticed. His chest puffed a little with pride. “Ye flatter me, love.”
“I suspect that is why my brother did not wish to fight ye.”
“I have ye to thank, Bella.”
“Me?” She stopped walking and glanced up at him with surprise. “I did not train ye.”
“But ye encouraged me to go out on the field. Before today it is not something I would have done.”
“Dinna discount yourself so much. Ye kept training for a reason.”
A reason he wasn’t sure of. Fighting with his trainer, with his brother, that had been a way to release his anger. To beat the melancholy that surrounded him. He was a warrior. A leader of men, and to have lost half of what he used to protect himself and his people, he might as well have been a warrior going into battle without a weapon. And he’d only picked up his sword after—
“I…” He trailed off, and then cleared his throat. “There was a time, a verra dark time, that I’d not have come out here today. There might still be dark times to come.”
“What do ye mean?”
Niall stopped walking, his legs heavy, and the confession on the tip of his tongue making everything, even the falling snowflakes appear to slow. “I wanted to die.”
“In battle?” Bella searched his face without judgment.
“Aye, and after.”
She nodded, understanding and not pity in her blue gaze. Her grip on his elbow tightened. “Ye thought ye had nothing to live for—after the loss of…”
“Aye.”
“And now?” There was hope brimming in her eyes, which sparked the odd sensations running through his chest.
“The future looks brighter.”
She chewed her lip. “When ye said there still might be dark times to come, that is what ye meant, living or dying.”
Niall drew in a deep breath, contemplating just how to explain it to her. “Aye, sweetling. Today I feel… hopeful. But what’s to say tomorrow, I will not wish for the…darkness. I understand if ye dinna want to keep yourself tied to me. I will go. All ye need do is ask.”
Bella’s expression had turned serious. “Nay. I still want to marry ye, and not because I’m afraid that my rejection will push ye into despair.” There she went worrying that lower lip again. “I, too, feel a bleak melancholy sometimes. But, with ye, I feel something, here, Niall.” She tapped his chest. “And it touches me here.” She tapped her own chest. “’Tis odd. I’ve never felt it before.” She shook her head and let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “But ye bring me hope. Hope that I’ll not have to traverse this life alone. The two of us, we can battle the abyss together.”
The place he kept locked up, buried deep, suddenly burst open, demanding he accept his fate. The sensation took his breath away, and when he spoke, his voice was tight, “I’d like that.”
“Promise me ye’ll talk to me if ye feel the darkness coming.”
“Ye have my word. And ye, too.”
“I vow it.” They resumed walking in silence, Bella still clutching his arm, perhaps a little tighter than she had before. Leaning on him for strength.
For the first time since the slash that changed his life, Niall felt a connection to someone that truly understood him.
He might have lost his arm, but Bella, she had thought to be alone the rest of her life. Told she’d be alone before she could truly understand what that meant. He was happy that he was able to provide her with that little bit of hope, and he wanted to be there for her. Just like she’d been there to push him onto the field of battle again.
When her hand slid down his arm to clutch his fingers, he entwined them in his and brought them to his lips. So soft and slender, compared too his calloused and oversized hand.
“I’m a lucky man, Bella Sutherland.”
She giggled and rested her head on his shoulder. “Nay, Sir Niall, ’tis I who am the lucky one.”
Bella shivered at the touch of his lips on her fingers. The warmth of his skin, his breath, spread through her. She sighed, her heart doing a little flip as sensations she’d never known coursed their way through her—starting at the place where his lips had touched.
A tenderness.
And the other… feelings, the ones rushing around making her belly tighten, and her blood spark, they seemed like what she sang and wrote about. The stories that the troubadours touted—desire. Yearning. Tenderness.
Most puzzling was, how could she desire him? It wasn’t supposed to work that way if one was barren. Was it? And did he desire her? Was that even possible in his condition?
Bella chewed her lip feeling more confused than ever. Why hadn’t she paid attention? Or asked the questions that needed asking? Every time her mother had tried to talk to her about what happened between a man and a woman Bella had shooed her away, not wanting to know about something she would never need to experience. Being barren had been her whole existence. And barren women didn’t lie with men. And men who couldn’t… didn’t.
And until now, she’d never actually believed she’d end up wed.
But here she was, walking beside a towering giant who made her heart skip a beat and had not only agreed to marr
y her, but had stepped away from his own darkness, faced his fears, in order to prove he was worthy of her.
“Niall.” She stopped abruptly, turning to face him once more. “Thank ye.”
“I appreciate your gratitude, lass, but for what?”
“For agreeing to marry me, when the last thing ye wanted, or needed, was a wife.”
Niall cupped the side of her cheek, his thumb brushing gently back and forth. Unbidden, she found herself leaning into him.
“Och, lass, but do ye not see? A wife may have been the last thing I needed, or wanted, but ye, ye’re everything I could have ever dreamed of. Ye’re beautiful, strong-willed, and a hell of a storyteller. Ye had the uncanny ability to pull me from my melancholy when no one else could. Do ye know when the princess was denying me, I was not offended, but relieved, because I knew if I was married to her, I’d never be able to live up to her standards. I was planning to take my—” He clamped his mouth closed, silencing whatever confession had been about to cross his tongue. When he spoke again, his voice was taut, gravelly with emotion. “’Tis I who should be thanking ye, sweetheart. Ye saved me.”
Instinctively, she drew nearer to him, and tipped her head back, reaching up on her tiptoes to brush her lips over his.
The day before, she’d wanted to marry him out of convenience, and today—
Today, she simply, wanted to marry him, to spend the rest of her life looking up into the eyes of a man who saw her for more than a vessel for bearing children.
“I want to make ye happy, Niall. I dinna want to disappoint ye.”
“Do ye not see? Ye already have made me happy.” And then he deepened the kiss, threading his fingers in her hair.
Bella clung to him, her fingers curling in the leather of his armor. All hardness pressed to her soft curves. She gasped when his tongue slid over her lower lip. When he nibbled there, pressing that velvet heat forward into her open mouth.
“Oh,” she gasped, at the frissons of heat that swelled and surged at his kiss.
How could a kiss make a woman feel this way? Was it wicked? It had to be… didn’t it?
“Ye make me feel alive,” Niall murmured sliding his hand down her spine to press against her lower back. “Ye make me want to live.”
Nay, it wasn’t wicked. Couldn’t be. If her kiss gave him the will to live, and made her feel like she was flying, then it had to be heaven sent.
All of the sudden, a surge of affection, of tenderness, swept through her. She couldn’t have fallen so fast for this man, and yet, she was almost certain that she had.
“Oh, Niall,” she murmured against his mouth. “I am yours.”
Chapter Six
The following morning, after breaking their fast, Niall and Bella were wed in front of their king and countrymen. A feast followed, with dancing and games. And when the sun began to set, Bella was ushered upstairs by her mother and sisters.
They helped her into her nightrail and a thin robe, brushed her hair and while her sisters were giggling, their mother pushed them out the door.
“Bella,” she started.
Heat rushed to her face and she suddenly felt exceedingly embarrassed at her naivety. “Mother, ye needna say… anything about…”
“Oh?”
Bella shook her head. “Niall canna… He is…”
“Oh…” Her mother blushed, speaking softly in her English accent. “How do you know?”
“I heard Princess Elizabeth say so. ’Tis why she refused him.”
“I see. And does your father know?”
Bella shrugged. “I didna tell him, but if the princess knew, I’m assuming that most everyone must.”
“I did not know, and he did not mention it. I would think…never mind.” Her mother waved away whatever she was about to say. “And this is why you chose him, because you fear the marriage bed?”
Bella sighed, and gripped her mother’s hands. “Nay, ’tis because I am…” Oh, confessing to her mother about her lie was painful. “I am barren, mother.”
“Nay, my darling, you merely came into womanhood late.”
Bella shook her head. “I was pretending. I have never had my woman’s courses.”
Lady Arbella blanched. “Oh, my dearest child.” Her mother tugged her into her warm embrace and Bella breathed in her familiar comforting scent. Like baked honeybuns and roses. She closed her eyes, feeling tears gather, but pushed them away.
“Dinna pity me, mother, I couldna live with that.”
“I just want you to be happy, and…well, being able to lie with your husband…”
“We will be happy, mother, even without that. I know it in my heart.”
“All right.” Her mother swiped at the moisture in her eyes, and before she could say anything more, there came a knock at the door and the sound of men singing. “Your husband has come.”
“Make them go, mother. I dinna want them to… stay.”
Though it was customary for the guests to put the groom and bride to bed, since there would be no consummation, and Bella did not want anyone to know that, her mother agreed.
Niall came into the room towering over everyone, and grinned at Bella with pride. “My beautiful wife.”
“My handsome husband.”
Lady Sutherland shooed all the men from the room when they tried to squeeze in.
They closed the door, their singing passing down the hall. Bella was relieved. Neither one of them needed the crowd to witness the embarrassment of a husband and wife who could not consummate their marriage.
“There is no need for ye to sleep on the floor,” she murmured.
Niall raised a brow. “The floor?”
“Aye. I had assumed that was what ye’d do.” She wrinkled her brow in confusion. “But since neither of us can…” She waved her hand toward the bed. “Then what harm can it do for us to share a bed?”
“Neither of us can what?” Niall raised a brow.
“Have children.”
“I’ve no proof, not like ye, love, but what does having children have to do with it?”
She swallowed hard around the lump that had formed in her throat, trying to concentrate as she watched Niall unpin his plaid, and belt. The fabric of his plaid slowly unfurled, leaving him to stand in his leine, the shirt coming to just above his knees.
He sat on a chair and started to unlace a boot.
Bella rushed forward, kneeling before him, as she was certain a wife should, and took over the task of unlacing his boots. He smelled clean, as though he’d bathed right before coming to her. In fact, his hair was still a little damp, droplets sprinkling on her hands. An image of him bathing, muscles rippling as water sluiced over his skin suddenly invaded her thoughts. She bit her lip at the wicked contemplation and the sudden tightness in her chest, as a shiver seemed to make her skin come alive. Where had that come from?
“I heard what Princess Elizabeth said to ye…” Why did her voice have to come out so squeaky?
“About?” he prodded.
Bella tugged off one boot, marveling at the sheer size of his foot, it was at least the size of her forearm, if not longer. She started to work on the other as he untied the garter around his upper calf letting the hose sag down his muscular leg. She’d have to be blind not to appreciate the beauty of his body. Again that racing in her heart, the prickles along her skin. And… what in blazes? There was a tingle between her legs, her breasts, too. Nipples grew taut, and she felt… breathless. And hungry. But not for food. She longed for him to touch her. To climb into his lap and kiss him.
“About ye not being whole,” she finally managed to say through the tightness.
Niall raised a confused brow. “My arm?”
“And your…” Her gaze fell to where his shirt gathered at his middle, where a sudden bulge had begun to appear. The place where a man had his…
“Ah. Ye thought me to be missing my—”
She was quick to cut him off, already feeling faint, and certain him saying that would push her o
ver the edge. “Ye needn’t say the word. But aye, I believed ye to be… barren, too.”
“Did ye now.” Humor danced in his eyes and laced his words.
“Aye. I thought that was why ye didna mind having a barren wife.”
Niall grinned. “I assure, ye, lass, I am still a whole man where it counts.”
“And ye can… have children.”
“As I said, ’tis not been proven.”
“I see.” She chewed her lip, sat back on her heels and stared down at his feet planted on either side of her knees. “Ye’ll want to try then. With other women.”
“What?” he sounded exasperated and she jerked her gaze back up to his.
“Ye’ll want to see, if ye can… with others… so your line…”
He cupped the side of her face and looked at her earnestly. “Lass, if I cared about my line, I’d not have married ye when ye told me ye couldna have children. I wanted to marry ye. And I’ll not stray from our bed.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Our bed… So ye expect me to…”
“To lie with me, aye.”
“But I canna. I am barren.” What was that breathy tone her voice had taken on? It sounded foreign to her own ears.
“That doesna mean ye canna lie with me, Bella.” He stroked the side of her face and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from sighing.
“Just lie with ye. Beside ye.” She swallowed hard when the image of them lying beside each other, and him turning to kiss, her flashed before her eyes.
“Under me. Over me. Beside me… It doesna matter. I’ll have ye anyway.”
“Oh…” She did sigh then. “But, why? If I canna have children…”
“Men and women dinna just lie together to make bairns, love.”
“Why else would they?” Again, she regretted not allowing her mother to give her further instructions.
Niall leaned down, brushed his lips over hers, and the tingles that were already forming on her skin sprang to life once more, making her shiver as he pressed hard, swiping his tongue over the seam of her lips. His fingers trailed over her ribs, tickling her, but she didn’t want to pull away. If anything, she leaned in closer, wanting his touch.
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