Border Lord (20 page)

She stared at their horses grazing nearby. "'Twas only the one night."

"A memorable one, aye?"

Her tongue slipped out to moisten her lips. "Aye."

He took her in his arms, his mind spinning with thoughts of the bloodbath she'd witnessed as a child and how he could make her forget it. " 'Twas heaven lying with you," he whispered against her temple. "Feeling you beneath me, your hands clutching me, your soft sigh when I made you mine."

"I belong to no one."

True, he thought. A clan of favor-seeking Highlanders had seen to that. "Because you wilna allow yourself to need anyone."

"I cannot fail. There
must
be peace here."

True. Because for her the consequences were too dire. "Peace is relative, you ken? A forest once covered this land. The Romans created a desert here and called it peace."

She jerked away and threw her hands in the air. "You're just like the earl."

Duncan's heart skipped a beat. Had she guessed? Calling her bluff, he said, "I doona ken why you'd make so ridiculous a comparison."

"You're like the baron, too. You see things in black and white, right and wrong. You're all stubborn and deceitful. You think you can trick me because I'm a woman."

Duncan burst out laughing. "Doona compare me to a stick of an Englishman who thinks the world owes him a living or a niddering poltroon who prefers brook trout to women."

"At least the earl doesn't bedevil poor folks into draping their mantels with leeks and pouring chicken blood in the corners of their homes as you do."

He'd made the mistake of letting her goad him earlier, now he was wise to her methods. "I canna be responsible for people and their superstitions."

"The baron tells a different tale. He says you frighten them apurpose. He says you're a spirit from the pits of hell. His people swear you're a devil who vanishes at will."

"What do you think?"

"The answer to that will cost you."

Good Lord, would he never stop underestimating her? She had changed the destiny of England. Duncan longed to change hers. "I doona want to bargain or argue with you. I want to love you."

She eyed him cautiously. "You're an opportunist, and I
doona
believe you."

"Then believe this." He slid his hands down her arms and threaded his fingers through hers. The warm softness of her skin, the frailty of her bones made him think of how much he needed her and how desperate he was to keep her. "My life changed the day you came to Scotland."

She looked down at their joined hands. "Yes, it did. You're in grave danger now. I can have you arrested for thievery."

"By the magistrate?" He laughed. "The coward'll nae come after me. He couldna catch me."

"You're speaking of Avery Chilton-Wall?"

When she used that silky tone, he wanted to hide behind a shield. He wanted to hold her close and learn the secrets of her past. And he would. But not now. "Aye, Avery Chilton-Wall bribes easier than a Glenlyon Campbell. God rot their wretched souls."

Her eyes grew wide, then narrowed with scorn. "Then I'll replace him."

Would she never broach the subject of her past? And the clan of Campbells that had ripped her childhood to shreds. He wanted to comfort her, but all she could talk about was warring men. "You haven't the power to replace the magistrate."

Silence.

Christ, she did have the power. Now more than ever, he had to secure her loyalty. Malcolm's future and the safety of Kildalton depended on it. Logic had failed. Pray God seduction succeeded.

He grasped her waist and lifted her. "The greatest danger I face is losing my heart to you."

She clutched his shoulders for balance. Now that they were on a level, he could see the wariness in her eyes. Softly, she said, "Heartaches are a part of life."

For certain heartaches had been the lion's share of her life. He'd change that, too, if he could. "Happiness should be a bigger part, Miriam."

The night wind rustled her hair, sending silky tendrils across her face. "You know nothing about making a woman happy. Honesty is what
I
want."

He couldn't give her honesty but he could show her she was wrong. "I know that you like it when I kiss you here." Tipping his head to the side, he touched his lips to the curve of her cheek. "And here," he whispered into her ear, then sent his tongue exploring the delicate whorls.

Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, reminding him that she'd nipped him there at the instant he'd breached her maidenhead. A moment later, she had breathed a soft sigh against his skin and said his name. Later still, she had gasped, straining for breath until she cried out her pleasure, then lay against him, sated and so femininely soft, he'd taken her a second time, and a third.

Desire and need filled him, swelling his loins and bringing an ache to his belly. His legs began to tremble, and when his lips found hers willing and eager, he forgot that she might deny him and remembered that happiness had been a stranger in her life. Tonight he would make it her boon companion.

Clutching her tightly to his chest, he reveled in the feel of her tongue dancing with his, her hands moving to his neck and his jaw. Too many clothes separated them, but like the other obstacles in their path, Duncan intended to strip them away, one by one.

Duncan. She wouldn't call out that name in passion. At the unwelcome consequence of his disguise, sadness enveloped him. He must find a way to make her want the man he truly was. But with desire ripping at his gut and the promise of soul-deep satisfaction so close at hand, he banished plans and schemes and set about seducing Miriam MacDonald.

He kissed her deeply, drawing her tongue into his mouth and suckling gently in imitation of the way her body received him. Her breathing grew ragged, her hands busy in their exploration of him. When she inadvertently sent his hat flying on the wind, Duncan had to act before she stripped him of the scarf and spied his fair hair.

He swung her into his arms and made haste for Hadrian's Wall.

"Where are you taking me?"

Looking down at her, the moonlight wreathing her in a silvery glow, her lips damp from his kisses, Duncan thought himself the luckiest man in Scotland. "A familiar place. To paradise, my love."

His words and the promise they contained sent a thrill through Miriam. Yet the irony in what he'd said made her smile.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

Feeling carefree and happy, she said, "Paradise in the Borders. Imagine that."

He flashed her a grin that brightened the night. "'Tis no fair making me laugh just now. I could drop you in the dirt."

She had made a jest. Glory be! Inspired, she said, "I told you I could make you laugh."

A quizzical expression arched his dark eyebrows. His shoulders shook with laughter. "For a woman with no sense of humor, you're doing a damned fine job of entertaining me."

Languishing in his arms, the starry sky overhead, the beloved soil of Scotland beneath, warring men forgotten, Miriam felt at peace. At home. For the first time in her life.

Joy filled her, and over the crunching of his boots and the soft whistle of the wind, she heard her own heart hammer with anticipation of the pleasure to come. Reaching up, she laid her hand on his cheek. He turned and placed a kiss on her palm.

Shivers of desire tickled her scalp and vibrated in the soles of her dangling feet.

Then the shadow of the crumbling wall fell over them, trapping them in a net of darkness. He turned and leaned his shoulder into the barrier. Stone grated against stone. In a state of stupefied splendor, she felt the wall give way.

Cool air, perfumed with hay, wool, and a long dead fire rushed to meet them. Possibilities flitted through her mind: perhaps he
was
a ghost who appeared from nowhere and disappeared into nothing. He could be the ghost of some Kerr ancestor, for he often reminded her of the portrait of the dark and oddly handsome Kenneth Kerr.

Before she could explore his identity or her dark surroundings, the Border Lord put her on her feet and began stripping off her clothes. His seductive Scottish words, whispered against her lips, obliterated rationale and inspired her to divest him of scarf, cape, and shirt. But as she slipped off the scarf, she again found herself wondering who he really was. She opened her mouth to ask him, but his lips smothered the words.

She fumbled with the buttons on his breeches, her mind fixed on what lay beneath. Her petticoats whooshed to the floor at the same moment his manhood sprang free. Temptation lured her from her task of undressing him. She flattened her palms on his waist, then slid her fingers beneath the warm leather, moving down until her hands were filled with him.

In frustration, she said, "I wish I could see you."

"You know me well enough, lassie." He groaned and rocked his hips against her, showing her vividly how her touch affected him. "Ah, Miriam, you've magic in your hands."

His soft, manly pouches had become rock hard, and his jutting maleness had grown bold in its size and insistence. Pride and confidence infused her. "Enough magic," she said, "to cast a spell—even on a ghost?"

He chuckled and lifted her chemise so he could caress her bare bottom. "Aye, or bring out a worse goblin in me."

Her womb became a tight coil of desire and her breasts ached for his touch. He hunched his shoulders and ran his hands over her back and buttocks. When he glided lower, spreading her and teasing her sensitized skin, she felt a familiar sheen of wetness.

Eager to expand her own exploration, she made a ring of her hands and slipped it over the crown of his manhood. She encountered a drop of moisture and realized that, although as different as night and day, their bodies reacted in much the same fashion.

"No more teasing, love," he said, laying her down on a straw-filled mattress that crackled under her weight.

She heard him peel away his leather breeches, yank off his boots and toss them aside. The inky darkness robbed her of sight, but her other senses grew keenly aware of him, looming above her, radiating heat, and offering a passion she could not deny despite her misgivings about succumbing to a man who remained a mystery to her, a man who would soon flit off into the night and vanish, perhaps forever, leaving only wistful memories.

Reaching out, she pulled him down, and when she opened her legs and bade him enter, he rasped, "Nay, lassie, I've a craving to love you in other ways first."

Then he set about showing her the marvelously diverse ways a man could use his lips and tongue, fingers and teeth. He left a trail of wet kisses from her breasts to her navel, from her ankles to her inner thighs. But when he'd lifted her legs over his shoulders, parted the folds of her womanhood, Miriam gasped in surprise. As his lips closed over her aching flesh she wilted in surrender. The hungry laving of his tongue and the gentle nibbling of his teeth revived her. Suddenly paradise seemed a run-down shanty compared to the heaven that lay ahead.

He groaned, and the low vibration of his voice against her sensitized skin triggered the first in a succession of climaxes that rocked her to her soul. Just when she thought the pleasure had ended, he opened her wider and murmured, "More, Miriam. Give me more." Then he stabbed fiercely with his tongue and suckled her until she gave him what he sought.

His quest fulfilled, he rose above her, driving deep, grinding deeper. Her languor vanished and she felt compelled to hear him gasp and groan and cry out his pleasure, too. Once, twice, she brought him to rapture, then forced him to stop. Then he reversed their positions and commanded her to ride him to glory. Sitting astride him, his manhood robust and buried to the hilt, she quaked again. He grasped her waist, lunged, and sought his own release.

Once their breathing had slowed, he lifted her and brought her to his side. Nestling against her, he said, "Sleep awhile with me, love. Hold me close and dream only of me."

Hours later, limbs and senses still mired in euphoria, they donned their wrinkled clothes and emerged from Hadrian's Wall.

Verbatim sat sphinxlike, a black plumed hat and pair of gloves resting on her paws. The waning moon cast long shadows on the earth. The Border Lord lifted Miriam into her saddle and rode alongside her to Kildalton. As the towers of the castle came into view, the horizon grew ripe with the promise of sunrise. With it, reality returned.

In a few hours she would face Duncan Kerr and give him the shock of his life.

Miriam dawdled at her toilet, her thoughts ambling from the meeting ahead to the rendezvous past to nothing at all. Depending on the topic, she felt listless, invigorated, and challenged. Sometimes she shivered and felt her knees go weak; other times she ground her teeth and prayed for patience. Once she cried. Never did she regret.

After her arrival hours before, she had thrown open the drapes and stood at the window, watching the sun creep into the sky. Then she'd paced the floor until the maid had come to build up the fire and draw her bath.

Now, she dragged the brush through her still-damp hair and wondered how she'd get through the day, or how harshly she should deal with the earl, or how her body could speak so eloquently to a dark stranger who wouldn't reveal his true identity. Or how he could know her so well.

You shiver in your sleep and dream dreams that make you weep and whimper like a lost child.

Someone scratched on the door. Miriam sighed, smiled, and said, "Come."

A plump maid bustled into the room, a covered tray in her hands, a bundle of dried heather under her arm. "Morning, milady." She dipped a neat curtsy and deposited the tray on the bedside table.

The smell of food triggered a raging hunger in Miriam. Her mouth watering, she put down the brush and went to investigate the food. Beneath the ironed napkin lay a feast of kippers, tatties, scones, and oat pudding. A frosty pewter goblet brimmed with icy cold milk.

As if today were Fat Tuesday, she devoured the crunchy fish and feather-light pastry. The maid stoked the fire and tossed in the heather. The burning plants filled the room with the sweet smell of summer.

The maid began fluffing the pillows. Miriam dove into the tatties and oat pudding.

"Would ye be carin' for more kippers, milady? There's fish aplenty, thanks to his lordship."

An odd thought seeped into Miriam's euphoria. She looked at the maid, who was frowning as she stripped the case from a pillow. "What's your name?"

Flipping the pillowcase over her shoulder, the maid said, "My given name's Faith, but they all calls me Saucy."

Food momentarily forgotten, Miriam rose. "Well, I'd call you a mind reader, Saucy. I was famished."

The maid reached for another pillow. "His lordship said 'twould be the case."

Miriam grew exceedingly curious, for the earl couldn't have an inkling as to her mood. She hadn't seen him in weeks. Had the Border Lord crept into the castle and told the earl? Probably so.

"Oh?" challenged Miriam. "Is his lordship a mind reader, then?"

Saucy's jaw grew slack and her gaze darted from the pillow to the rumpled counterpane, to the empty tankard. "Ah, would ye be carin' for more milk, milady?"

Hiding a smile, Miriam said, "No. But I wonder… How did the earl know I'd take breakfast so early—and in my room?"

The maid opened her mouth, closed it, then leaned over the bed. "Will you look at these stains?" With a loud pop, she jerked the pillowcase from her shoulder and began rubbing vigorously at the sheet. "Looks like soot, it does."

She stood and headed for the door. "I'd best tell the laundry maid 'afore the stains set."

What was the girl hiding? Obviously something about the earl. "Did you say the earl had been fishing?"

Her back to Miriam, her hand on the door, the maid stopped. "Oh aye, milady. Fishes all the time, he does. He just come back yesterday from Barley Burn. 'Afore that 'twas Loch Horseshoe. He's a real fisherman, the laird is. Feasted himself on kippers just this morning, he did."

The overdone explanation, delivered hastily and without sentiment, sounded like a lecture. Obviously the earl had told Saucy what to say. If he thought to elude a reckoning with Miriam by going fishing, he was in for a surprise.

"Where is his lordship today, Saucy?"

A square of paper appeared beneath the door. Saucy snatched it up and eased toward Miriam. "Practicing at swords in the old tilt yard with Angus. Here."

So, the earl had carried through on his promise to learn a soldier's skills. He'd become a better leader and for that she was glad. But one truth did not an honest man make, especially when the man had lied to Miriam outright and by omission. He'd be sorry as sin that he'd underestimated Miriam MacDonald. "What name has Malcolm chosen?" she asked.

Saucy unfolded the paper. Frowning, she said, "Another Englishman. Thomas a Becket."

So, even servants in Kildalton could read. The earl hadn't lied about the school. But he still had much to answer for.

Miriam took the paper. "Thank you, Saucy. You may take the tray with my compliments to the cook, and send young Salvador to me. But don't disturb Lady Alexis."

"Nay, milady." She picked up the tray and hurried to the door. "Mrs. Elliott'll have my hide, should I wake her ladyship 'afore ten o'clock."

Miriam fetched the brush from the vanity, then sat on a tapestry stool near the fireplace to dry her hair. Her thighs, sore from the hours of lovemaking, protested; so she stretched out her legs and curled up her toes. She became aware of differences in other, distinctly feminine, parts of her body: her breasts felt heavy, the nipples still tingling from the touch of his lips, his ardent suckling, and the drag of stubble on his cheeks. He'd kissed her in more intimate places, too. At the remembrance, she felt hollow in the place where he'd loved her with his mouth, then filled her, time and again, with his manhood. Her womb contracted and she drew her legs together.

The Border Lord. Her lover.

You never sleep the night through, for sunrise finds you pacing the floor. I think you spend your nights running from your days.

Maybe, she thought, but once she'd solved the problems here her own troubles would be over. The queen would keep her word and Miriam's quest for justice would come to an end. The Glenlyon Campbells would pay for their treachery of twenty years before.

Lassitude swept over her. She stared into the fire. Atop the smoldering peat sat the remains of the heather, the stems glowing bright red, the ashes floating upward on a stream of toasty air and disappearing into the blackened chimney.

Black. Her mind darted to the sooty stains on the bed. Twice she'd so soiled the sheets and her dresses. Each time she'd been with the Border Lord. He was clean, but the places he took her were dark and dusty. What could she expect? She was in a country castle, not some spit-and-polished palace. She giggled, for she didn't know exactly where she'd been last night and doubted she could find his lair again. Or had he turned into a spirit and carried her through the wall?

A knock sounded at the door. Expecting Salvador, she was surprised to see Saladin, wearing a turban and tunic, stroll into the room.

Hands clasped, he bowed, touching his steepled fingers to the widow's peak in his forehead. "May Allah's blessings be upon you, my lady."

The familiar greeting, delivered in sibilant tones, made Miriam smile. Saladin's outer tranquility served as a perfect foil for his fiercely competitive nature. He'd been an enigma since the day she'd plucked him and his brother from an auction block in Constantinople. At seven years old, they had been as surly and as filthy as camel drivers. At twelve, they were confident youths, highly skilled in their abilities, thanks to Miriam, and secure in their futures, thanks to Alexis Southward.

Miriam returned the greeting and patted the rug beside her. "Come. Sit here and tell me where Salvador is."

He sauntered toward her, knee-high red boots and saffron tunic contrasting vividly with the homey decor. He sat cross-legged facing her, an incredulous expression making him appear younger than his twelve years. "His ribs are hurting. Is it true that he let a girl—a mere child—tie him up and beat him with a stick?"

Miriam had forgotten the unfortunate episode with Baron Sinclair's odious niece. "I'm afraid Alpin hurt him dreadfully. But I hardly think he 'let' her get the best of him. A meaner, more wicked child I've never seen."

"Alpin. That's an odd name for an English girl."

Miriam had thought so, too. "Kenneth mac Alpin was king of Scotland in the ninth century. To show his good will to the earl of Kildalton, the baron changed the girl's name."

With a shrug, indicating that old Scottish kings were unimportant, Saladin said, "One time she blacked Malcolm's eye, he says." Scoffing, he added, "Her father should beat her. Muslims control their women."

With concealing black robes and pretty prisons they call harems, Miriam thought, remembering her struggle to open diplomatic channels between King Ahmed and Queen Anne. "Well, she hasn't a father or a mother, Saladin. Only an uncle and a brood of cousins. I suppose a six-year-old girl gets lost in the shuffle."

"Salvador says the baron has more children than a sultan."

Thinking of the noise, the hustle and bustle, and the crush of people at Sinclair's, Miriam felt relieved to be back at Kildalton. "They're not all his children, per se. Many of them are poor relations with nowhere else to go."

"Then he's a kind man?"

"Not exactly kind," she said, thinking of the baron's misguided generosity. "Just accepting of life in general."

Still sitting, Saladin took the fire iron and poked idly at the clumps of smoldering peat. "The earl's been practicing swordplay with Angus MacDodd since you've been gone."

"And fishing, I'm told."

Stirring the fire and sending a whoosh of sparks up the chimney, Saladin grunted. "He cavils on like a camel driver." In a poor imitation of the earl, the boy said, "My flippity-flop did the trick today. The salmon fair clamored after the hook."

Knowing the boy would never speak so disrespectfully in public, she let the insult pass. "But has he learned to wield a sword?"

A wry grin exposed the space between Saladin's teeth. "I pinned him to the wall on Tuesday."

"I'm not surprised, but do you think 'twas proper?"

"He laughed, my lady," said Saladin, as if it were the most ridiculous of reactions. "Then he minced off to quaff a pint with the soldiers."

Curious, Miriam said, "Tell me what else happened while I was away."

His report held few surprises for Miriam until he said, "The earl told Malcolm and me to stay with Angus MacDodd the night the duchess of Perth came. At first I thought we were both being punished for one of Malcolm's silly pranks, but Angus showed us a chest full of dirks That's a Scottish dagger."