“Yes,” she whispered hoarsely, taken by the torment in his eyes. It didn’t matter what he said. “Oh, Laird… yes!”
“Comhlanaigh dom, mo ghrá.”
With one last blinding thrust, he pushed her over the edge once more. Scarlett cried out as it ripped her apart body and soul. Laird joined her rapture with a harsh groan, stiffening before he slumped over her. Continuing to pump languidly within her as she pulsed around him. Drawing out her climax until tears were rolling down her cheeks.
He cleared them away with the back of his knuckles, brushing tender kisses down her cheek and along her jaw.
She had never imagined there might exist such a lover as he. The sensations he had evoked in her were really almost too much to bear.
No, she really hadn’t thought this through, had she? The road he had taken her down was becoming treacherous indeed.
29
“More rabbit?” Rhys asked, holding out a piece of juicy meat as he rejoined her at the table.
“Thank you.”
“More wine?” he asked, sprawling back in his chair. He had shed his doublet, his shirt open at the collar and hanging over his kilt.
“Yes, please.” Scarlett was almost as informally dressed, having shed her parlett and untied the sleeves of her finely woven flax gown, which were normally laced tightly from elbow to wrist, and pushing them up her arms. Her jaunty Italian bonnet – favored by Laird over the ear-covering French hood – was hanging on the back of her chair.
“Another bottle, Willem.” Rhys nodded to his squire, a young man of about twenty who brought a bottle of wine to the table and poured for them both.
“Did we finish one already?” Scarlett asked, staring down into her cup in surprise.
“Two, my lady,” Willem said with a smile.
“Oh, that’s a lot.” She tipped up her goblet again.
“Yer no’ verra talkative this night, dear Scarlett,” Rhys said softly. “Hae ye no’ forgiven me my hasty words? I beg ye, dinnae bear me a grudge. I apologize truly.”
Scarlett sighed. Whatever Rhys’ misconceptions, he was only trying to be a friend. “I’m not angry with you.”
“Then what vexes ye so?”
Not what. Who.
Hence the alcohol.
“There is something troubling ye.” It wasn’t a question this time. “What is it?”
Scarlett looked around warily. The night was dark, moonless. There was little to see beyond the glow of their small fire except similar spots of flickering light in the darkness.
“Laird won’t be back for hours,” Rhys told her, reclaiming her attention. “Fear no’, he has returned from Wark unharmed. The castle taken smoothly and now under Scottish garrison. ‘Tis the King who demands his attendance again this night.”
Or perhaps it was their father who demanded it, determined to keep Laird from her side. Either way, it didn’t matter. His absence wasn’t the problem. In fact, for the first time, Scarlett was glad Laird was nowhere in sight, however Rhys didn’t need to know that.
“Yes, he told me. Why aren’t you there?” she asked evasively.
“I, thankfully, am not my father’s favorite son,” he said with a smirk, tipping up his goblet. “Therefore I get to spend the night as I please. With you. Now, come. Talk to me. I assume the problem is wi’ Laird?”
“Yes,” she admitted. Damn, Rhys and his insight! “And that is why I cannot talk to you. Besides, I’ve drunk too much. If I open up now, I might not be able to get the flood gates shut again.”
“That might be most amusing.”
“Or humiliating,” she countered. “Depending on which side of the conversation you’re on.”
“True. True,” Rhys nodded, swirling his wine around his goblet before lifting it and downing the contents in one swallow. He held his cup up once again for his squire to refill.
Thankfully, Rhys seemed content to let the matter lie. Something Scarlett was grateful for. She couldn’t talk about what was troubling her.
She thought she’d known what she was getting herself into by giving into her desire for Laird. She thought that once they’d slept together, the edge would come off the intensity that had so shaken her that first time. That she could just lust after him like a normal person.
She had been a fool to think she would feel so deeply just the one time, not every time. The road Laird had taken her down was too intense to be taken casually. It rocked her to the core and terrified her more than a little.
For the first time since arriving in this time, Scarlett truly felt the urge to run.
To do something before she became too attached to him.
“Did the King command him to go?” she asked but rushed to add, “Not that I care about whether he was forced to go, I’m just wondering if they are close. King James is Laird’s uncle, right?”
Rhys shook his head but took the bait. “To my knowledge, the King has never acknowledged the connection. I dinnae think he means to shun Laird in so much as he knows verra well that he wisnae his father’s favorite child any more than I am my father’s. It has never bothered me much but the King wisnae so forgiving.”
“That seems odd. I would think any monarch’s heir would automatically be his favorite child – if he were to have one, of course. Who was his favorite then?” she asked simply to perpetuate the conversation. “Laird’s mother?”
“His favorite daughter perhaps but nay, ‘tis well known that the auld King favored his second son above all his children. Perhaps that is why Laird served as his squire, at the King’s bidding,” Rhys shrugged and swallowed more wine, tipping up his cup to get the last drop before holding it out to be refilled once more.
“Thank ye, Willem.”
The young man beamed, his eyes filled with adoration for his master.
“Top me off, too, Willem.” Scarlett pressed her fingers to her lips as a hiccup escaped her. “I heard about him. The Duke of something?”
“Ross.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Perhaps it was the duke who taught Laird to be the way he is. He inspires such love from his people yet he cares naught for any of us.”
Scarlett thought Rhys was wrong about that. Laird did care, thought he hid it well. Perhaps he even cared about her as well.
Ha, she must be tipsier than she thought.
“He might have made a fine King,” he went on. “He is the only child of the auld King’s oldest child. In another world, in another time, he might have been King.”
“Naw,” she scoffed, waving off the notion with a flick of her fingers. Laird might have been legitimate but his mother was not. Scarlett bit her tongue from blurting out Laird’s secret and said instead, “That would never happen. The laws of primogeniture will never change that much. A daughter, sure, but not an illegitimate child.”
“And how can ye ken such a thing, my dear?” he asked, slurring his words a little. “Are ye a mystic seer?”
“Nope,” Scarlett brought her goblet down on the table with a punctuated thunk. “I’m from the future.”
Rhys blinked at her in a moment of silence and then burst out laughing, slapping his knee and almost spilling his wine. “The future! Ha! Ha!”
“No, it’s true,” she insisted, ignoring the little voice in the back of her mind that was telling her to shut her mouth. “I can prove it. Go ahead. Ask me anything.”
He laughed some more but interest flared in his eyes as he leveled her a serious look. Or as serious a look as he was capable of producing in his inebriated state. “Verra well. Tell me, Scarlett my dear lass, who will be the next King of Scotland?”
Scarlett rolled her eyes. “That depends, which number on you on now? I never thought to ask.”
“James is the fourth of his name.”
“Oh, well, then that’s easy. The next one will be James the Fifth.”
They shared a look and then they both fell into a bout of laughter. Even Willem was grinning from ear to ear.
“
Well played, Scarlett. Well played!” Rhys leaned across the table and lifted his cup. Scarlett tapped hers against it before they both drank deeply again.
“No, really,” she said, twitching her fingers in invitation. “Give me another one.”
“I dinnae know. If I ask ye who will follow King Henry, ye will probably only say Henry the Ninth.” Rhys waved a finger at her.
“Henry the Eighth?” she said, her jaw sagging in amazement. Tucking one leg beneath her, she hooked her other heel on the seat of the chair and rested her chin on her knee as she stared at him with fascination. “The King of England right now is Henry the Eighth? Holy shit. Imagine that. Meeting Henry the Eighth.”
“He is in France right now,” he pointed out. “Ye cannae meet him.”
“That’s too bad,” Scarlett said with honest disappointment. “Which wife is he on right now?”
“Which wife?” He raised a brow in bewilderment. “You mean Catherine?”
“Catherine? Which one?”
“What do ye mean?”
“Aragon, Howard or Parr?”
“Aragon.” Rhys drank deeply once more, eyeing her over the rim of his cup.
“Ha! There you are, then. I can prove it to y’all.” Scarlett waved her goblet at him triumphantly, the wine sloshing over the sides. “Henry the Eighth will have six wives. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Ann of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr.”
“Six?” He jeered dismissively. “Nae man is widowed six times.”
“No, he was never widowed at all.” Scarlett counted them off on her fingers. “It goes divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.”
Rhys spat out his wine and howled with uncontrollable laughter, rocking back in his chair until he almost tipped over before Willem caught him. Still he didn’t stop, laughing so uproariously that he couldn’t catch his breath and was holding his sides as Laird walked into their circle of light.
“What’s all this?”
Scarlett offered up a lopsided grin. “I think I broke him.”
30
“Yer blootered again, are ye?” James looked between them, at the empty bottles on the table and at Willem, who hastily shoved the third bottle behind his back. Rhys hollered hysterically once more.
“Hey, don’t judge me.” Scarlett waved a finger at him.
James snorted. “To bed wi’ ye, lass.”
Rhys looked set to argue but Scarlett only shook her head, leaning across the table to kiss his cheek and wish him good night before James led her off.
“Willem, be sure Rhys reaches his tent. We’ve an early day before us.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Willem took Rhys away, wrapping an arm around his waist as he stumbled away.
“Spoil sport,” Scarlett mumbled as James propelled her into the tent.
“Ye’ve become a veritable maltworm, lass,” he said, clarifying when she frowned, “A drunkard.”
“Yeah? Well, I didn’t grow up drinking with every meal like you did. You’re going to make a drunk out me before I make it home. Then I’ll have to go into rehab. The press would get a cheap thrill out of that.”
Ignoring Scarlett’s drunken rambling, James ignored her and looked around the tent. “Where is Maris? I hired the bluidy wench to see to yer needs no’ her own.”
“She’s been gone since we got here. Again.” Scarlett sniffed dismissively but turned to face him. “Hey, this is my tent. Mine. Remember? Propriety and all?”
“I kent whose tent it is verra well, lass,” he ground out.
“You’re not supposed to be in here. You should go.”
“Would ye rather Rhys shared this tent wi’ ye?” he asked bitterly, feeling the jealousy rising up to bite him once again. Scarlett had ignored him in favor of his brother’s company again this day. After their powerful lovemaking the previous night, James was hard put to find an explanation for her suddenly aloof demeanor. Nor had she offered one.
“Rhys schmees,” she mumbled. “He wouldn’t share this tent with me for a million bucks. Whoa, I think I need to sit down.”
Dropping on to the end of the mattress, Scarlett cradled her spinning head in her hands as the striped tent swirled like a carousel around her. “I swear I’m never drinking again.”
“Yet ye will nae doubt hae another cup in yer hand on the morrow.”
“Only if it’s water. Is it really bad as I’ve heard to drink it?” she asked as James undressed her like a child.
“Where would ye hear that?” he asked.
“I think that’s what they teach, isn’t it? Somehow it’s an embedded certainty that they didn’t drink water in the past.”
Such nonsense was falling from her lips, James didn’t know how to address it. “There’s nothing wrong wi’ water from a spring, lass, though some claim any water can chill the stomach and hinder digestion. ‘Tis only standing water that ye should avoid.” But she should know that. Any person would know it. It brought to mind once again all the mysteries about Scarlett and reminded him of the answers he still didn’t have.
With the nonsense she was talking, there was no chance he would have them now.
“To bed wi’ ye, lass,” he said, pulling down the coverlet and lifting her between the sheets.
“Are you going to leave?”
“Aye, we depart in the morn to take Norham,” he told her.
“No, are you going to leave me now?”
“Do ye want me to?”
“No, you should stay.”
Relief swept through him. “Then I shall stay.”
“Awake wi’ ye, lass.”
Scarlett rocked from side to side as she was shaken roughly. With a groan, she rolled on to her stomach and buried her head under the pillow. She was never go to drink again. How did these people do it every day? “Go away.”
“How do ye manage to live a life where ye can sleep the day away?”
Pulling her head out from under the pillow, she glared at Laird who was kneeling next to her bed. Nothing more than a silhouette in the gloom but he still managed to look appealing. And appallingly awake. “Sleep the day away?” she grumbled. “It’s still dark. Go back to bed.”
“Mayhap if ye were there to share it wi’ me,” he teased then clapped a hard hand down on her bottom, the sting searing through her thin chemise. “Make haste, lass, we maun away.”
Stretching, Scarlett sat, not noticing how his gaze fell to her breasts as they pushed against the taut linen. “You are too freakin’ happy. I hate morning people.”
“Lass.” His light caress tickled down her arm.
Running her hands over her face and through her hair, she kicked off her coverlet and rolled off the mattress. “‘Kay. I’m up. I’m up.”
Standing, she tugged down her chemise and jumped when his hot palms ran up her thighs, pushing it up once more. Cupping her bottom in his hands, he pulled her closer and pressed an open-mouth kiss to her belly. His beard rasped teasingly as his lips drifted southward. Scarlett clenched her thighs together as heat pooled between her legs.
This was the problem. This incessant need for him was getting out of hand. Even when she tried to dominate him, he was in charge. He left her feeling helpless and overwhelmed.
Cherished, her conscience reminded gently.
Perhaps, but he reached deeper, demanded more from her than she had ever freely given. She’d spent too long having her will overridden. She didn’t like the way her body quivered at the slightest touch, her heart ached at the merest glance.
Liar, her inner devil retorted. His protective nature tugs at your very soul and well you know it.
Scarlett shook her head. No, she wasn’t used to the concern for her well-being any more than she was used to this tempestuous desire.
True, she was in way over her head. What was she going to do about him?
Somehow she needed to put some distance between them. Find some objectivity as best she could. This wasn’t her future. He wasn�
�t her future.
But what if he was?
Scarlett stiffened at the thought and pushed him away before his tormenting lips might find themselves in a place that would dissolve her determination.
“I thought you said you were in a hurry?” she asked when he looked up at her quizzically.
“What troubles ye, lass?”
No more willing to talk about with him than she had been with Rhys, Scarlett only provided the same answer. “Nothing. Let’s do this.”
Dressed in a bronze linen dress and wrapped in Laird’s plaid against the morning chill, Scarlett crossed her arms protectively around her waist as she watched Aiden load Laird’s possessions into his cart. Laird was clad in a thin metal armor that covered his chest beneath his kilt and sleeves of chainmail covered his massive arms. He wore no helmet, nothing at all on his legs. For a man considering doing battle, he looked alarmingly unprotected.
Surely he meant to wear something else? Scarlett couldn’t help but put the question to him.
“We go to lay siege,” he told her. “Norham willnae fall as easily as Wark. ‘Twill take time and many cannons to defeat them. What I wear now will be unneeded.”
“Really?” she asked doubtfully. “You’ll be careful?”
“I always am.”
“Now you’re sounding as arrogant as Rhys,” she mumbled not noticing the frown that furrowed his brow and darkened his eyes.
“Yer up early, Scarlett.”
Scarlett turned to find Rhys strolling toward her, not from his adjacent tent but from the opposite direction. He wore the same clothes he had the previous evening and his dark auburn locks were untethered, skewed every which way. Obviously, he had just awoken.
“I wanted to say goodbye. You’re going, aren’t you?”
“Aye, I’m ready to be off. See?”
She turned to see Willem leading a pair of heavily laden horses over to the tent.
“If we’re to Norham this day, we need to make haste, if ye dinnae mind, Rhys.”
Rhys glanced curiously at Laird, taken aback by his snappish tone and hurried to Scarlett’s side. Looping his arm around her waist, he turned her away and whispered, “Is something amiss?”
Taken Page 23
