“Ye think that if I’d heard a whisper from ye—anythin’ that might’ve made me think that ye meant what ye said in the letters ye writ me afore I went away—that I would’ve agreed to the betrothal wi’ Elspeth? Do ye?”
Delilah’s mouth twisted. “So, she has a name… Elspeth what?”
“Elspeth Ewan.”
“And how long did it take you to convince her that you loved her, hm? Was she as naïve as I was?”
Marcus shook his head and looked over Delilah’s head for a second or two. His jaw worked whilst he tried to find the words to retort to this derogatory insinuation.
“Elspeth Ewan is a fine woman,” he said, looking back down into Delilah’s face.
“How nice for you,” Delilah whispered. A single teardrop hung from the end of one eyelash.
“She’s the daughter of the Laird who owns the country to the west o’ my faither’s. Our betrothal is a way to help unify our two clans.”
“You poor boy,” Delilah mocked. “Forced to marry a Scottish lady against your will.”
The tear fell onto her cheek, tracked its way down to the corner of her mouth.
“Miss Ewan is a fine woman,” Marcus said again, “but I have nae told her I love her, because I daenae love her. Nae as I loved ye. Nae as I still love ye, Delilah.”
The words were out of his mouth, beyond recall, before he had a chance to vet them for pertinence.
The two of them stood looking at each other, brown eyes locked with blue, breath coming hard and fast, as if they had both just run a race.
“I—you…” Delilah said.
And, suddenly, without conscious thought, they were in each other’s arms.
Marcus’s surroundings seemed to fade away as their lips met. The candlelit study was diminishing, as something that did not matter, as he lost himself in the embrace. He felt as if his entire world had narrowed down to the space that he and Delilah occupied on that rug in his study. Everything beyond them dwindled away into inconsequential smears of light and shadow and color.
They kissed hungrily, passionately, heatedly. Marcus had cupped one of Delilah’s smooth, porcelain cheeks in his big hand, whilst the young woman had her fingers twined through his dark hair, her hand pulling at the nape of his neck, pulling him towards her.
Never in his life had Marcus felt so supremely immersed in a single moment.
Then, as abruptly as it had happened, he and Delilah broke apart. For Marcus, they might have been locked together for three heartbeats or twenty years—he would not have been surprised to be told either. It felt as if he had woken from the most pleasant dream he had ever dreamt.
Delilah was looking at him and shaking her head. There were more tears on her face now, the tracks of which shone like quicksilver in the light of the guttering beeswax taper.
“I can’t,” she said in a quiet, broken voice. “We can’t. It’s not right. You’re betrothed to another!”
She glared at him through her tears, her hands balled into fists, knuckles white, whilst Marcus searched his mind for a single thing to say. He was so frustrated with this girl and their situation that it took all his self-control not to storm from the room.
“I—I despise you, Marcus Malloch,” she said, her voice shaking. There was still anger in her face, but it was tempered now with grief and longing. Her words lacked their previous conviction.
Marcus opened his mouth to respond. To say—
What? That ye’re still as hopeless in love wi’ her as ye were the day ye parted from each other?
He closed it again, his eyes searching hers pleadingly.
Delilah closed her eyes, spun on her heel, and before he could so much as utter a word, she was gone.
Chapter 6
The following morning, Delilah awoke early, before the sun. It might have been more accurate to say that she was up before the sun though, as she had not slept a wink all night. She had lain awake all through the chill night, her thoughts going over and over what Marcus had said to her. Her mind replaying the kiss they had shared.
She closed her eyes and sighed. She was exhausted, but peaceful sleep eluded her. She rose from her bed and sat on the chill window seat, wrapped in her blanket, staring out into the broadening dawn.
He loved me. Says that he loves me still… But, if that is so, why then does he deny that he’s seen a single one of the letters I sent here? Why does he persist in the lie that he wrote to me on his return? It makes no sense, and runs contrary to his nature.
Her eyes were red and gritty from lack of sleep and weeping. Now that she was sitting on the window seat, she doubted she had the energy to move herself back to the bed, even though she had the deepest urge to curl up and sleep forever.
She contemplated getting dressed and going for a walk in the dark gardens, but the thought of putting on her gown and shoes and tying up her hair seemed tasks that were far beyond her today. She felt hot and cold at the same time. A surge of weariness swept through her, from the soles of her feet to the tips of her hair.
He loves me… Yet he is to marry another.
Despair loomed over her like a wave.
She staggered to the bed, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.
He is to marry another…
He loves me…
Marry another…
The thoughts ran like poison through her weary brain, like ice water through her veins.
And she fell into blackness.
She awoke some time later. How much later she could not say. Perspiration dotted her forehead in perfect beads and her feather bed seemed to clutch her with soft, downy fingers.
“Delilah, darling,” she heard a voice say, the door to her chambers banging open. “You can’t still be abed at this hour, surely? Delilah?”
Delilah’s eyelids fluttered open. Closed again. She felt so hot, yet she was shivering under the heavy bedclothes. She felt her mother’s weight settle on her bed.
“Delilah?”
There was a note of concern in Lady Glimouth’s voice.
Delilah wanted to tell her mother that she was fine, that she was just sad and sleepy and broken, but the effort required to form words seemed far too much. Better just to drift off.
A hand shook her to her senses. Her father this time. Where had her mother gone?
“Delilah? Girl, can you hear me?” her father’s voice sounded panicked. “Can you hear me, Delilah?”
To her annoyance, Delilah’s eyelids were prized open. Sunlight stabbed at her eyes like needles.
“I’m awake,” she mumbled. “Some water… please.”
Someone pressed a cup of water to her lips.
“Send for the physician,” she heard her father say. “Tell them to get up here now. My daughter’s in the grip of some sort of fever. Now, dammit!”
Marcus, on his way down to the front doors, was almost bowled over by the castle physician, Boyd.
“Steady on, Boyd, ye daft scunner!” Marcus said, grasping the little bald man by the shoulders to stop him falling. “Ye cannae be racin’ ‘round the place like a startled nag. Ye’ll come a cropper, man.” His smile disappeared as he noticed the look of concern in the medical practitioner’s eyes. “What is it, man?” he asked.
“One o’ the guests,” Boyd said. “A fever.”
Marcus’s heart seemed to skip a beat. “Who?” he said.
“The Lady Delilah,” Boyd told him, pulling himself out of Marcus’s suddenly slack grip.
Marcus blinked, remembering how distraught Delilah had looked when they had parted the previous evening. Getting a grip on himself, he charged up the stairs after the physician, taking the steps two at a time.
When he stepped into Delilah’s chamber a few moments later, slightly winded and with wild eyes, Boyd was already at Delilah’s bedside. The little bald man had a basin of cool water in front of him and was sponging gently at the young woman’s forehead with a damp cloth.
Marcus stood in the doorway.
God
, daenae let this be because of me. Daenae let this be because o’ the words we swapped last night.
Delilah lay on her sweat-drenched pillows. Her usually radiant face was pinched and gray-looking. Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths and she mumbled in her sleep. As Marcus watched, Boyd pulled some herbs and ointments out of the basket that he had brought with him and started to mix some sort of compress in a wooden bowl. A refreshing smell pervaded the room as he worked; crushed blackcurrant leaves, garlic, thyme, and dandelion all mixed with warm honey and oats.
“Marcus?”
A touch on his arm made Marcus jump, but it was only Delilah’s father, Lord Glimouth.
“Yer Lordship,” Marcus stuttered, “I’m sorry fer bargin’ in like this. I met Boyd—our physician, ye ken—on the stairs and he told me about Delilah.”
The Earl of Glimouth regarded Marcus with a shrewd and sympathetic eye.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “You and my daughter are friends, of course…”
He turned back at the sound of Boyd opening up the shutters of the window and letting the keen Highland breeze into the stuffy chamber.
“Your man Boyd seems like a tolerably competent man.”
“Aye, he is. Treated me ever since I was a bairn. He’s a man that kens his trade, right enough.”
“Good. Well, if you believe he has everything under control, perhaps you would care to leave us to—”
“With yer permission, sir,” Marcus blurted, “would ye mind awfully if I stay?”
The Earl of Glimouth gave Marcus an appraising look, and Marcus could feel the man weighing him, as surely as if he sat atop a giant set of scales.
“Yes,” he said eventually. “Yes, you can stay.”
Delilah tossed and turned in her bed for three days, carried like a raft on a sea of delusions. She was momentarily aware of people around her, her mother, father, Mallory—the lady’s maid that she had been assigned by Lady Griselda—and Marcus.
Dreaming blended with waking in a strange and feverish tapestry. At times, she was aware of her surroundings with an almost painful clarity, though she could not open her eyes or communicate. She knew—she hoped—that Marcus was by her side often. Barely leaving her night or day, except at the instigation of her parents.
Often, she thought she heard him murmuring by her side, prayers mostly. Sometimes she thought she heard him trying to make bargains with God, telling the Lord that he loved her and that he’d do anything in his power to keep her safe.
These words that she thought she heard muttered would then twist and turn inside her head, scribbling themselves on the inside of her skull. She would hear the scratching of quills, and would remember all the letters that she had written to him. She would watch as the words picked themselves off the paper and flapped awkwardly into the air and out of her bedchamber window.
Then there were times when she would hear another voice. A soft, fervent, unfamiliar voice that insinuated itself into her delusional nightmares.
“Stay away from Marcus, ye hear. Stay away. Or woe betide ye, ye’ll suffer more than this. Leave him be, lass. Leave him be, unless ye fancy strife doggin’ yer footsteps for the rest of yer days.”
Delilah did not recognize the voice.
Perhaps it’s God. Her eyelids flickered as she sought for answers on the variegated pathways of her dreams. Perhaps this is a sign. Perhaps it’s my head reasoning with my heart.
“Leave him be, or trouble will find ye both.”
He loves me.
The thought shone like a seam of gold in a dark cave.
He is betrothed. Promised to another. Tied by duty.
It was truth. It was very hard to lie to oneself in one’s dreams. There was no getting past the fact that Marcus was obligated to see his proposed marriage through.
Firelight seemed to lance her retinas when, on the third day, late in the evening, she finally opened her eyes and her fever broke.
It was very quiet. Delilah realized that, for however long she had been at the mercy of the illness, voices had never ceased playing in her head. She tried to remember all those she had heard—or thought she had heard—but it was like trying to keep water in her cupped hand.
A soft sigh came from her left. Her eyes flicked downwards and her heart twitched inside her weary breast.
It was Marcus.
He was sitting in a chair by her bedside, his head pillowed on his arms where he had been leaning on the side of her bed. His large hand—nicked and crossed with a series of little white scars from toiling and hunting and fighting—was only half an inch from Delilah’s own.
Has he been holding my hand?
Slowly, Delilah inched her fingers towards those of the sleeping Highlander, until they brushed up against the man’s callused digits.
Marcus stirred and sat up, looking rather bleary. Seeing her looking at him seemed to have the same effect on his senses as a bucket of cold water. His eyes opened wide and a sudden smile lit his broad, handsome face.
“Ye’re awake!” he whispered ecstatically.
“I hope so,” Delilah said, “I—”
Marcus placed a gentle hand over her mouth and nodded his head behind him.
Startled, Delilah looked over his shoulder and saw that there was a handmaiden sitting behind him in a corner. The woman was young, with a curvy figure and brown hair, and was slumped against the wall.
“I wasnae allowed tae sit with ye, unless I had meself a chaperone,” Marcus said under his breath, his hand still over her mouth. He took the hand away and looked across at her. His eyes drank her in.
Delilah could see that the Highlander had dark rings around his eyes and his jaw was covered in a rough stubble. She was also extremely aware that she wore nothing but a long nightgown under the bed clothes.
Marcus leaned in close to her. “Tae be honest with ye, I daenae think I was meant tae stay so late, but I nodded off.” He smiled at her again, and Delilah shivered with pleasure as he reached out a tentative hand and touched her cheek. “I best be off before Mallory wakens,” he said, “but, by God, it does me heart glad tae see yer awake, lass.”
He grinned again, and Delilah’s heart fluttered to see the look on his face. A look of equal parts relief, joy, and genuine care. Having him this close, she was very aware of the scent of him, woodsmoke and horse, heather and soap. She breathed in a long, slow breath and closed her eyes.
He cares, yes, but any kind host would be glad to see their guest awake.
Marcus’s scent grew stronger, closer. The exquisite feather mattress sank under her.
Then his lips were pressed against hers. A touch as light as rain at first, as if the Highlander was scared of hurting her. They stayed like that, in that perfect moment, for a glorious few seconds. Then Marcus pulled away.
Delilah closed her eyes again, as Marcus’s rough jaw moved against her own as he kissed along her cheek. She gasped slightly as his lips touched her earlobe, sending delicious shivers through her. Then he whispered, “Lass, this marriage that’s been fixed. I agreed tae it out o’ loyalty to clan MacConnair, but if I’d have kenned that ye still felt the same as ye did before the war, I’d never have agreed tae the match.”
Delilah quivered again as Marcus planted a kiss on her neck.
“Delilah, I care fer ye in ways me clumsy words cannae express, but I’m betrothed… Tae break such a thing might be beyond me. Beyond the both of us. Might be that it’d be better if we stopped this now.”
He stood swiftly then, and was at the door in two long strides.
Delilah felt as if she should say something—tell him that they would find a way to make it work—but the words stuck in her throat.
“Ye’ve spent enough time abed, ye lazy wee lass,” Marcus whispered teasingly from the threshold. “Up wi’ ye tomorrow, and I’ll find us a place where we caen talk away from pryin’ eyes and ears.”
Then he was gone, the door closing softly behind him.
Delilah slumped back into her p
illows. Her face was aching from the smile that was spread across it, her heart full to bursting with the joy of what had just happened. She touched a finger to her cheek, her neck, her lips.
However, these feelings were tinged with a slight despair. Marcus was right—if they were honest, then they would have to reconcile themselves to the fact that nothing would probably ever come of this.
The thought of a secret rendezvous with the Highlander the next day made it nigh on impossible for her to get back to sleep.
The next week passed in a blur of happiness for Marcus and Delilah, albeit a happiness that had to be veiled whilst the two of them were in public. They rendezvoused in all sorts of unlikely places just so that they could talk, hold hands, or gaze at each other for as long as they liked. Sometimes, if they dared, they would steal kisses from each other.
Marcus would slip scraps of paper into Delilah’s hand as he walked past her in the corridors, telling her the place and time to meet him. They lay hidden in the haylofts of numerous barns around the castle, sat squashed under bramble hedges eating apples and talking of everything and of nothing, and embraced for fleeting moments in dark nooks within the MacConnair castle itself.
Neither of them broached the matter of this dalliance of theirs being doomed. It was an unspoken agreement that they would ignore the looming heartache, and instead enjoy the time that they had been gifted.
All the while, though, Marcus racked his brains to think of a way in which he might break his betrothal to Elspeth Ewan without incurring the wrath of her father. It was of paramount importance that the engagement be broken off in an amicable way—not just for the sake of his and Elspeth’s reputations, but for the sake of the relationship between the two clans.
As the week passed with alarming speed, and the date for the Earl of Glimouth’s departure drew nearer, Marcus became reckless in meeting Delilah. He felt utterly incapable of puzzling out a way in which he and the English noblewoman could be together. To him, the future seemed set in stone.
Captured by his Highland Kiss Page 5
