This was what she had expected. And everything that had come before had been a cruel trick. This was why a woman needed to lie back and think of housekeeping. Because nothing could have prepared her for the pain she felt at his invasion.
Her eyes stung with tears.
Tears.
She fought to hold them back because she would not give this man her tears. But he had invaded her.
Why did any woman ever fall?
Was it because of the promises made with masculine hands that were not kept with masculine members? She wiggled against him, fighting it. Fighting against him. Because it was better than crying. She would not cry.
He made a low sound, comforting, as if he were trying to steady the horse. And she bucked against him in anger because she was not a horse and refused to be soothed.
‘It will get better,’ he said.
It wouldn’t. He was lying. But he didn’t move, his body resting heavily atop her, his hands pinning her wrists down to the mattress. She began to settle, the tears that had been threatening to spill from her eyes receding. And along with it, the pain.
She slowly began to grow accustomed to the size of him inside her.
And then, inexplicably, as she grew accustomed to him, she felt something more.
Not pleasure, not like before, but a strange sensation of being bonded.
She could not remember the last time she’d been held by another person. Not until he had lifted her in those strong arms and brought her to the bed. And now he was surrounding her. Now he was in her.
She had been lonely. So lonely for so long. And the only end to that loneliness that she had seen was through her marriage to the Duke. She had ached so much to belong to that household filled with wonderful women she could talk to. Whom she could confide in. Women who might understand her, who would not make her keep all that she was locked away in a box inside her heart.
But how could she be lonely like this?
There was no way to be closer to another human. Nothing separated them. Nothing. Even their breath mingled together as he stared down at her.
And he would give her children.
The thought made her heart lift.
The thought of having the Duke’s children had made her happy. Of having a family. But he’d come with family and so part of that need had been fulfilled with them. Lachlan…
She’d been certain she’d been facing a future of unimaginable loneliness, but she had not thought of children.
She could still have that. That connection. She could be a mother.
The idea made her ache.
She’d lost her mother when she’d been a girl and she could never have a mother’s arms hold her again.
But she could hold a child.
Could offer comfort. Care. Love.
Could give all those soft, painful emotions that had spent years building inside her, locked away.
For the first time she thought perhaps this was not the prison sentence she had first imagined it to be.
Then he cupped her face and kissed her.
It was sweet. It was sweet and deep and tender, and she relaxed into it. Into him. It was wonderful. Those kisses.
Only moments before she hadn’t understood. But she did now. This restless, deep need to be as close as possible.
And when he began to move inside her, she found it didn’t hurt.
Rather it built a slow, aching rhythm somewhere deeper than the one that had come before.
He gripped her face, kissing her deeply, before pressing his forehead hard against hers, his movements becoming unrestrained. Gone was the tenderness of only a moment before. And somehow… Somehow it seemed right.
Because this wasn’t sweet or tender. It was primal and it was quite the most intimate thing two people could share. She found herself arching to meet his every thrust, found herself moving against him, shamelessly.
Shameless.
Had she ever been shameless in all her life?
No.
She had always fought against her nature. Against all that she was.
She had spent so much of her youth wanting to disappear. And everything in her was wrong for the life she’d been forced to lead. The daughter of a man who wished her invisible…who wished her gone instead of his wife, that much was certain.
Everything she was. Everything within her was shame.
But not now. Not with him.
And when the cry of pleasure rose up in her chest, she did not push it down. She did nothing to silence it. She let herself shudder gloriously and held nothing back.
He pulled away from her and she clung to his shoulders. He shuddered against her, his breath hot against her neck, as he seemed to find a release similar to her own, culminating in a feeling of warmth on her skin. And then he pulled her against his body for a brief moment, dropping a kiss to her forehead, the moment unexpectedly tender, but all too brief. Before she could revel in the simple touch, he released her.
‘Sleep,’ he said, getting out of bed.
His departure felt abrupt and a personal insult, somehow.
‘What?’ She felt shattered and dishevelled and had no earthly idea what had just happened.
‘I need to be sure everything is prepared for tomorrow. We leave early. Sleep.’
‘You won’t stay?’
‘You don’t need me.’
He began to collect his clothes and she could only lie there on the bed, watching as he did.
Now the shame was back. She felt small and wrong somehow, because certainly had she done right he would want to stay with her.
Then she felt angry that she would care at all. Why did she want him to stay? She didn’t know him or care about him in any way. And what had happened between them wasn’t…
It wasn’t knowing someone.
And it was certainly nothing large enough to take away a lifetime of shame and loneliness. She had been foolish to think otherwise. Even for a moment.
He left her there and she curled in on herself, doing her very best to try to press her shattered pieces back together.
She hadn’t known.
She hadn’t known that the physical act between a husband and wife could take you up to the stars and then—back down to the rocks just as quickly.
That a moment of deep connectedness could leave you feeling lonelier than you ever had before.
It made her despise him. More than she had before.
Because he had shown her pleasure.
And then he had taken this new, fragile thing he had built inside her and broken off pieces of it. He had stolen her protection. Stripped her bare and made her vulnerable. Nearly brought her to tears.
She was strong and knew how to protect herself against all manner of things.
But he was a storm. And against him she had no defence.
She would have rather he’d been cruel.
She would have rather he’d made it harsh and painful, and nothing more.
He had made her feel.
Sensations that were too big to be contained. That could not be shoved down inside her.
And it was then she realised that he had withdrawn from her in such a way that pregnancy would be prevented.
The darkness and a sense of isolation crushed down on her.
He had taken something from her. And he had given the possibility of nothing back.
She lay there with her eyes dry and her heart thudding a full, defeated rhythm.
And her last thought before going to sleep was that he had compromised her ability to lock her emotions down inside herself. And if that were true, she had no idea how she would survive her marriage to Lachlan.
No idea at all.
CHAPTER FIVE
He’d thought his conscience long destroyed, but the woman had made him feel
like a brute. And his intentions to simply claim the wedding night quickly had been dissolved by that wide-eyed, delicate look. He had walked into the room and she had been standing there, like a woman lost to herself, and sensation he had not known he possessed the power to feel had turned inside him.
She was an instrument in his revenge and nothing more. But she seemed much more a woman, a person, separated from her father and all he represented, and he took no joy in her fear.
Grown men had trembled in his presence and he’d taken lives on the battlefield. He was not so small a man he needed to find strength in the fear of a woman.
He felt much more inclined towards giving her pleasure.
And why not? he’d asked himself. She was his wife. He had been long without a woman, between his last voyage, and his determination to take himself straight to Penny’s father once he had decided his course. Why not take his pleasure with her as he chose and not simply dispense her of her virginity as quickly as possible?
He might be accustomed to treating sex as a transaction between a man and a woman, but in that sense he had always felt the transaction should be equal. Women were capable of feeling desire and satisfaction in the same way he was. He had always found it unsatisfying to leave them without it. It was true some whores were jaded and didn’t wish to release themselves in that way, but then he felt that was a choice.
Still, he’d found many were happy to make it an indulgence and he was always more satisfied for it.
So why should he not afford the same courtesy to his wife? Why should she not feel pleasure? It was clear to him that the idea of physical pleasure between a man and a woman was foreign to her. That it was something she had not considered to be possible.
It was the shifting in his chest that had occurred after they’d come together that had sent him to the stables. Pacing around in the cold might do him some good.
One of his men, William, was sleeping on the floor, a blanket tugged up under his arms, his head lolled to the side. Lachlan nudged him with the toe of his boot.
‘Captain?’ the man asked, waking quickly.
They had been soldiers together. Neither of them slept very deeply. Wakefulness was instantaneous for those who had spent years on frozen battlefields littered with enemies and bodies.
‘I need you to go back to the lass’s house. You must collect some things for me. Meet us at the next inn.’
William stood, nodding grimly, and if he were exhausted or resentful of the order, he did not show it.
Lachlan had earned the loyalty of his men in battle, and, to those who had no home or family, he had offered them work after. Some remained on the ships, some were returning to Scotland with him.
They would be welcomed into the clan. He would make sure of it. It was an oath he’d sworn to those who had left the Highlands, as he had. Some of those men no longer had clans to return to, poverty and skirmishes destroying all that was left behind.
He would not leave them in England. They had become his men on the battlefield, united in fighting for a country they had no allegiance to. He would bring them back to where they belonged.
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘When we are back home,’ he said to the other man, ‘I will be Laird to you. Not captain.’
‘Yes, Laird,’ the other man said, inclining his head.
Lachlan gave his instructions, then spent more time than was strictly necessary evaluating his horse, the one who would carry him from here to Scotland. The carriage team they would change out at every coaching inn, but not his horse.
Perhaps his disquiet came from the fact he had never been with a woman who was innocent.
He preferred jaded women. Their souls matched.
Women who had experienced little good in the world, who had been given nothing in the way of comfort. And for a time, together, they could find a bit of warmth. A bit of pleasure.
Penny needed something more from him and he did not know quite what it was. Even more, he wasn’t certain why he felt compelled to give it.
She was not a weeping, delicate female. She surprised him. Through all of this, she had never once dissolved.
But there had been something in the way she had responded to his touch. Her shock, her shame. She hadn’t known her body could feel such things, that much had been apparent by the way she had responded.
It had done something to him. Had made something inside him feel as though it might be new, too. He didn’t want that.
He hadn’t asked for any of it.
He hadn’t asked to pity his little wife.
Or care at all about her bird.
Or her box.
He busied himself with plans and strategies he did not require until he was ready to collapse from lack of sleep. Only then did he return to the room upstairs. Only then did he allow himself to lie on the bed beside her, staying atop the blankets rather than joining her beneath them.
She looked small and vulnerable. And one thing he determined then.
He would protect her. With his sword, if need be. He would protect her from any enemy that she might face. What he did not know was if he possessed the power to protect her from himself.
* * *
Penny awoke the next morning, feeling more exhausted than when she’d fallen asleep. Her body ached in strange places and, when the maid brought a bowl with warm water and a pitcher into the room, her face burned with shame. As if the other woman knew why she might feel the need to cleanse. Naturally, she likely would.
The burning in her face persisted as she washed herself—intimately—before she dressed.
There was a bit of blood on the cloth she used. Which led her to go and look at the sheets. A bit of blood there as well.
Emotion pushed against her throat. She felt very alone. And Lachlan wasn’t there. She knew that he’d come back. She had felt him lie upon the bed and had waited for him to put his hands on her again, but he had not.
She had drifted in and out of sleep. When she had finally awoken when the sun pierced through the small window of the room, he wasn’t there.
She went through the trunk he had brought up and found a blue dress, new stays and a new chemise as well.
With no small amount of contortion she managed to get herself buttoned into the garment. There was also a bonnet, with a navy ribbon that matched the dress, and a rich wool overcoat of the same shade.
She arranged her hair simply, reusing the pins he had removed last night, and she examined herself, trying to see if she looked as different as she felt. She could see no mark of what had passed between them last night, but her soul felt branded.
Scalded.
As if he had been attuned to her movements, the door opened then.
He appeared, large and intimidating as ever, and ready for the day.
If he was affected by last night’s intimacy, he did not show it. She had no idea how she was meant to ride in a carriage with him having been close to his body the way she’d been. It was as if she could feel him now. Pressed against her. Even with all the space between them.
She felt the building pressure between her thighs and had never been angrier at her own body than she was now, for the way it responded to him. She reminded herself, grimly, of that pain and loneliness that had accompanied the act.
Her body could remember only the pleasure.
She was forced again to grudgingly admit that this was why women allowed themselves to be ruined.
She had been told of the innocence of women. That they bore children, that they were the fairer sex in all ways. That they possessed an innate purity that men never would. It was women’s job to steady their urges.
What tripe. How could she steady his urges when she couldn’t master her own?
‘We should be on our way,’ he said, the first words spoken to her since he had left her last night. She didn�
��t know what she expected from him. She had no right to expect anything. She didn’t know why she felt gravely disappointed, why she felt restless and lonely and empty. She had never been told to expect more from marriage and her dreams regarding her union with the Duke of Kendal had centred around the female companionship she might find in his house. It was such a strange thing, because she had thought the Duke so beautiful. Because her heart had ached, but not after him, she realised now. After all that had come with him.
After what he had represented.
A softness and comfort she had never known. A warm house that was filled with people who cared for each other, rather than an old manor house that was always cold, containing two family members who did not know how to speak to each other.
Her sense of what her future might hold had been heavily influenced by those surrounding fantasies, but she had not known to dream of what her marriage itself might contain. A life living in that household, but not a life knowing a man as deeply as she realised one did know a husband.
Except, she didn’t know him. She knew little about him, yet he had seen her in a state that no one else ever had. She knew next to nothing about him, yet she had touched his body in a fashion she couldn’t fathom touching another. In a fashion she wouldn’t have been able to fathom touching him had it not occurred.
It was disorientating to say the least.
* * *
When all her things were packed away she found herself being bundled into the carriage. He did not join her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, sticking her head out the window.
‘I’m riding,’ he said. ‘Have no patience for sitting in a carriage that many hours.’
‘I’m going to be alone for the duration?’
‘You may occupy yourself with whatever you like.’
‘I haven’t got anything to occupy myself, if you will recall. I did not bring any of my things. I haven’t a book.’
‘I believe the woman who helped assemble your trunk included needlepoint.’
She quite liked needlepoint, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. ‘I would prefer nature writings on the flora and fauna of Scotland.’
Harlequin Historical July 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2 Page 56
