Seeing her face down his enemies today had left him more shaken than he could have ever guessed. Part of it was because he would be left with a child to raise when he had hardly gotten to know Leah. But there was more to it than that. He’d felt a strong urge to hack down any man who neared Cristiana of Domhnaill, and it was an impulse that went deeper than possessiveness.
He needed to be careful of her affect on him.
“I am.” She nodded, but did not make any move to lie down.
“You will sleep here tonight,” he warned, unwilling to indulge her on this.
She nodded. “I was just thinking how grateful I am that you were not lying about the treasure at least. It has been difficult to put my faith in you after what took place between our families. So I am pleased to learn you did not invent the story of the treasure hunt merely as an entertainment for my court.”
Ah, the arrow of her gratitude stung his conscience. Tomorrow, he would call his priest and secure the marriage. Tomorrow, he would untwine the lies that remained between them.
But for tonight, he could do naught but guide her sleep form down to the soft pallet and provide his arm for her pillow.
“Come. You are too weary for me to touch you as I would like. Rest now.”
She was asleep almost instantly, leaving him with a confusion of thoughts as he watched the measured rise and fall of her breasts. He loosened her surcoat, but only to make her more comfortable while she slept.
He had ignored his desires for her sake. And while he’d like to think that was a bit of noble restraint on his part, he feared the larger part of his reason for holding back was the growing tenderness he felt for her. And no matter how much he admired her, he would now allow himself to care about a woman who could turn off her feelings for him at a moment’s notice. She had done so five years ago after they’d shared kisses and she’d made sweet promises to him.
She could do it again.
This time, Duncan would not feel the sting of betrayal. Because this time, he had no intention of losing his heart to the enemy.
She played a dangerous game.
Edwina hastened her pace to keep up with Henry as his boots thundered through the courtyard of a rugged coastal fortress far south of Domhnaill. Three days had passed since she’d convinced him to bring
her north under the pretense of a marriage she had no intention of making. But now that she was out of Evesburh and could claim no protection, save this young knight’s, she had renewed appreciation for how utterly dependent upon him she would be until they reached Domhnaill.
“Henry, wait.” Her hands were raw from guiding the reins on a horse too spirited for a woman who hadn’t ridden in years. Her clothes were mud-spattered, the cloak torn in two places from tree branches they’d encountered during the ride. She’d insisted on riding her own mount so they could make better time, but since winning that battle, Henry had not been easily managed for days.
Now, he either ignored her or did not hear her as he was so far ahead. Dropping all pretense of dignity as she neared the rich, stone fortress alive with light and activity, Edwina pulled up her skirts and ran to catch up.
“Henry, please.” Out of breath, she inserted herself between him and the door to the keep.
They’d been admitted to the courtyard by a surly guard at a watchtower, the bridge to the main keep open even though they’d been warned it would be closed for the night in another hour.
“Edwina, we must hurry unless we want to spend the night, and I do not welcome the prospect of so many hours in a Scots’ stronghold while I bear William’s standard.”
“Scots?” She peered around the courtyard at the scurrying grooms and maids, the swaybacked farm horses plodding past well-dressed destriers on their way to and from the stables. “We have crossed the border?”
She had seen no change in landscape, no boundary marking. Somehow, she’d always imagined she would sense a change in the air when she returned to her homeland. In her memory, the air had been far sweeter in the land of the Scots.
“Aye.” He gripped her shoulders and eased her aside, taking advantage of his surprise. “I wish to obtain a safe passage from the king before we travel any farther.”
Edwina was not sure why Malcolm would be in residence here, far from his family seat, but then she had not kept abreast of foreign politics while at William’s court.
Following Henry into the entry, she was treated to an immediate view of the hall, where the king’s shield rested against the dais.
By the saints.
The man with more power than any to punish Donegal the Foul was present this night. Her thoughts racing for how to approach him—how to make an appeal for punishment—she stood frozen. Now that she’d spent time among William’s court, she knew anyone could at least ask the king for his justice. She was no innocent country maid content to abide her
father’s rulings anymore. She could obtain justice here. Now.
“Come, Edwina.” Henry urged her forward, sliding an arm about her waist. “We will obtain safe passage at the same time we receive his blessing for our marriage. We can be on our way to Domhnaill this very night.”
“No.” She halted again, the potential disaster of the situation finally revealing itself. “Nay, Henry, we cannot.”
This time she caught
him
off guard, yanking him into the shadows of the corridor outside the open hall.
His frown did not dissuade her. If ever there had been a time for honesty, this was it. She did not have enough time to think through an elaborate scheme. Besides, Henry deserved better than more pretty lies.
“We cannot wed. I have been more wronged than you can imagine by someone who was once close to me and my heart is too filled with bitterness to love.”
His frown deepened. “I brought you all this way. You promised—”
“I made no promise, Henry.” The depth of her wretchedness pained her as she watched his face twist in confusion. “You are too good of a man to hurt this way, yet I could not have trusted any other to deliver me safely home.”
“We are not at Domhnaill yet. You are tired. You are not thinking clearly.”
“No. I have deceived you most unkindly because life has made me an exile and an outcast. My heart has hardened—” She gasped, her hand moving to cover the vital organ she had just dismissed as toughened beyond penetration.
“What is it?” Henry peered over his shoulder to see what had caught her attention.
How could he possibly understand? Even she did not believe what she spied with her own eyes.
Cullen of Blackstone had just risen from a seat somewhere in the great hall to pass into her view. He approached the king’s table, tall and lean with the uncanny grace of a forest creature that would make him appear young long after his hair turned gray.
“I—” Her voice cracked before she could form an answer. Heaven help her, she had never expected to see Cullen again. “There are so many ghosts of my past here.” She needed to retreat. She could not face the king with Cullen there, reminding her of long-forgotten dreams and piercing her heart with all that could never be. Overcome with emotion, she gripped Henry’s arms. “You have been too kind and, I swear, if you will attend me on my journey north, I will find you the most dazzling bride you’ve ever seen. A young, innocent lass—”
“It is
you
that I want, Edwina.” In the half-light of the corridor, with the torches flickering shadows
across his face, Henry did not appear so youthful. The dark growth of a beard from days on the road hid the pockmarks of his cheek. Oh, he was a handsome one after all and would be more so with age.
“I love another,” she confessed, unwilling to lead him astray even one more moment. She had not even admitted it to herself, but right now, she forced the truth from her lips in penance for what she’d done to a noble, upstanding man. “I can never be with him for he is a nobleman and I’m a ruined woman. There was a time when I was above him in station but loved him anyway. My father would not allow me to wed him, giving me instead to a brute that defiled me before the vows.” She blinked hard, hating that she sounded so young and foolish. Of course, she
had
been young and foolish. She had tried to make the best of her betrothal to Donegal, hoping that stolen kisses with him could compare to the secret trysts she’d once shared with Cullen.
Never had she been more wrong about anything.
A helpless cry of regret edged from her throat, echoing through the foyer. Henry shushed her, his expression half sympathetic and half horrified.
Her eyes lingering on her long-ago love, Edwina allowed the old hurt to wash over her a moment longer before she willed it away. She had worked too hard to get here to fall apart now. The king sat so near.
“I must speak my peace.” Breaking away from Henry, she strode into the great hall.
Her torn cloak and mud-stained skirts dragged heavily through the rushes where she tread. Head held high, she let her hood fall, revealing the red-gold locks that remained her best feature. Keeping her gaze trained on the king, she ignored the murmurs at her arrival and the sound of Henry’s hurried step behind her.
“Edwina?” Cullen’s voice found her ears when she was deaf to all else.
She could not read the nuance of the sound—if he was simply surprised or disparaging. Unwilling to think about that now, she curtsied deeply before the dais.
Mindful of Cullen’s eyes upon her, Edwina humbled herself before Malcolm.
“If it pleases you, my lord, I have traveled far to seek the king’s justice.”
“Y
ou cannot keep me here forever.”
Cristiana paced the laird’s chamber three nights after arriving at Culcanon, frustrated and restless from the days of inactivity. She missed her father and her people. She wondered about various batches of mead that needed ingredients added. Most of all, she worried that if Edwina returned home she would wonder where Cristiana had gone.
After her initial letter to Edwina, Cristiana realized her error in assuming Edwina could simply return home. She’d sent a second missive with enough coin to secure safe passage, but with no word from her sister after so many days, she feared her letters had not arrived.
“You are hardly my prisoner.” Duncan traced the
engraving on his medallion to provide her with a copy to study.
She still could not imagine a treasure hidden on Domhnaill lands, but she had not studied the cryptic map for long, either. Duncan wore it about his neck at all times, and the sorry state of his keep ensured he was busy every moment of each day.
Even the nights had not brought them close. He returned to his chamber long after she slept and was up before she rose in the morning.
Until this night. He’d intercepted her in the hall after she’d spent the evening with some of the other women, applying her woeful embroidery skills to a new tapestry for Duncan’s chamber.
“It feels like a prison,” she remarked, circling the chamber while he worked, her gaze taking in the remnants of kitchen leftovers he’d carried up with him. The mead of Culcanon was truly dreadful. “Leah does not mind it, but I do not wish to be here and have no way to return home unless you accompany us.”
He set aside the tracing to give her his full attention. When his green eyes settled on her, she realized this was what she’d wanted. His attention. His eyes upon her like a caress.
She shivered and tried to hide it. How much might it hurt to care about him again? To feel the sting of betrayal again? Ah, it was unwise to have sought his interest tonight.
“You know we need to find Donegal before he
hurts anyone else. He is paying an army of miscreants with misbegotten gains from my keep.” He gestured to the bare walls.
She said nothing, unsure how to proceed. Speak her peace? Or continue accepting whatever pretense of a betrothal he offered? No doubt, her marriage would not thrive on secrets and lies.
“We did not plan for such obstacles when we discussed what marriage would be like that first time.” Folding her arms across her chest, she neared the fire to warm herself and so she did not have to see his expression. Would he think her remembrances foolish? Did he disdain her soft-hearted memories of the past?
He said nothing. She wondered what he was thinking. Did he recall the same sweetness between them that she did? Or had his wooing of her merely been his way of sweetening a betrothal that neither of them had any great say in?
“Do you remember?” Her voice hit an odd note. “It was so long ago that we spoke of our future together. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”
Perhaps that discussion hadn’t been nearly as memorable for him as it had been for her. Surely, it was weakness to raise the issue at all and prove to him she thought back to such things. But if there was to be any animosity between them, she would prefer to understand his position rather than guess at the boundaries of his resentments.
He pounded his fist on the table so hard his medallion jumped. So did she. She turned to see his hand still clenched on the rough-hewn plank.
“You think I would forget that?” he demanded, his voice low and angry.
Nay, offended.
Rising from his chair, his presence seemed to fill the chamber.
“I do not know what is important to you and what isn’t.” Shrugging, she held her hands out helplessly. “It’s hard for me to tell what you think is significant enough to remember.”
“I remember every moment and every word ex changed that day.” The shadows under his eyes were from lack of sleep, but they gave his visage a lean, dangerous look. “My first day back at Domhnaill, I went in search of the place we kissed and—”
Her cheeks burned as he left the sentence unfinished. She had allowed him too many liberties that day as a hopeful, lovesick maid. But then she had wondered about passion ever since her older sister had admitted to trysts with Cullen of Blackstone before their father had refused his suit. Edwina had spoken so fervently about the feel of a man’s arms, that Cristiana had been eager to experience such things for herself.
Duncan’s hands and mouth had proved her undoing the day they’d stolen away from the keep.
“I thought we were to wed.” Otherwise, she would
have never allowed her surcoat to fall away from her breasts the way it had that day. “We were but days away from speaking the vows.”
“Do you know what happened when I searched for that place where I touched you and you promised to warm my heart and my bed for all time?”
Her whole body flamed to have her words spoken back to her so bitingly. She’d given herself too freely, never guessing he could turn on her so easily.
“We built the mead house upon that spot.” She knew exactly what had become of the place where she’d come so unwound in this man’s arms. “I did not want to see our glade and remember how foolish I’d been.”
Some of the tension in his shoulders seemed to relax as his expression cleared.
“Yet you stand on that very spot every day, do you not? Perhaps you did not bury the glade so much as you commemorated it.”
She shook her head. “Nay. I did not want to remember.”
“But you do. We both do.” He stepped closer, his hold on her in the present as powerful as the grip he’d always had in her memory, even though he did not touch her.
“We have lost so much.” She could not begin to compare the loss of her starry-eyed youth to all her sister had lost. But they’d both had an innocence taken
from them by the Culcanons. “I thought you would stand by me.”
“I thought you would honor your promises. But if we brood about all we’ve lost, we will never find any contentment in marriage. Can we not celebrate what is left to us?”
Trembling with too much emotion, she stood before him, searching his eyes for some hint of his meaning. Even with the hearth fire at her back and the fiery heat of his body in front of her, she still felt a chill deep inside.
“What is left when trust and hope have fled?”
“You can rebuild trust with time.” He took her hand and folded it inside his. Then he lifted her palm to his chest and placed it there, above his heart.
Frustration edged out some of the hope she’d felt.
“I do now know how.”
“You have already witnessed my commitment to keep my vow to protect Leah. With my life, I have kept her safe.”
She nodded, remembering how scared she’d been and how fearlessly Duncan had placed himself between Leah and danger. There were some things she could not do for Leah, some things only Duncan could provide in this harsh land they called home.
“Now it’s your turn,” he continued. “You can make good on a vow to me.”
Stepping closer, he sealed her body to his, molding her curves to fit against him.
Still, she remained silent. Mute in the face of the passion she’d never been able to rein in with him. Breathless from the feel of him, she curled her fingers about his shoulders.
He slid one palm inside the slashed sleeve of her surcoat and used the leverage to tug the overdress down one shoulder, baring a patch of skin at her neck to his avid gaze.
“You promised once to warm my bed forever. You can start this night.”
He knew without question she would come to him.
He preferred that she do so because she wanted to. Because she regretted the way she had gone back on her word five years ago.
He’d stayed away from her for days, giving her time to make peace with the marriage he’d offered her no say in. By tonight, he’d known she would never come to him freely without something to drive her into his arms. When he had plotted to win Domhnaill, he had not counted on how much he would want to win her.
“I am in no position to deny you.” She licked her lips, taking no responsibility for her own desire even though her fingers sank into his skin and her heart pounded so hard he could feel it through his tunic.
The skin in the hollow of her neck pebbled where he’d kissed it.
“But I’ve made no demand.” It took considerable will to hold back for as long as he had. A vein in his temple throbbed with the effort.
Letting her go now could be his undoing, but he was prepared to do so. He needed her to admit this heat between them was not one-sided.
Still she said nothing. A silent battle of will and want.
So, against every instinct he possessed, he forced himself to relinquish his hold. Regret burned his throat. His breath whooshed in and out of his lungs like a warhorse after battle.
The confusion in her lovely gray eyes would have given him more satisfaction if he had not been burning from the inside out. Her lips parted. In protest?
“You are wicked to the very core,” she accused softly, taking the smallest of steps toward him. “Do not leave me.”
Untwining the clasp on her girdle, she let the jeweled belt fall to the floor. His eyes followed the movement, hardly daring to believe she would offer herself to him. And that’s what she did—by deed if not word.
It was his turn to remain silent. Not because he waged that battle of will anymore. Rather, the sight of her unfastening the laces of her garb and lifting the
heavy fabric up and off had robbed him of the ability to speak.
“You have shown me delights I never imagined.” The soft fabric of the kirtle clung to her curves, revealing more than it concealed. “They have worked a magic on my soul that won’t free me even when you release me.”
He reached out to her then, drawing close the soft, fragrant warmth of her. Lowering his mouth to hers, he nipped her bottom lip, then kissed the same place.
“You seem to have spoken my thoughts for me.” He wrapped his arms about her, splaying his hand along her back and shoulders in order to touch as much of her as he could. “I feel those things, too.”
Arching up on her toes, she fitted herself against him. Her eagerness stoked the fire within and he rent the sheer fabric of her kirtle in his haste to feel her skin.
Her hands were no more patient than his, her fingers working the ties of his tunic, then falling to the lacing of his braies. She went back and forth, tugging knots into them that hadn’t been there before, her thighs moving restlessly between his as she hummed frustrated noises against his neck where she laid kisses.
“Let me.” He took over the job, freeing himself of his garb in moments, knots and all.
She watched him in the firelight, her gaze bold
and appreciative, devoid of self-consciousness. But then, this was what had fascinated him about her ever since his father had written about her. Cristiana of Domhnaill had no use for feminine pretense or false modesty. She thirsted for adventure, knowledge and passion. Maybe now that she did not have so many secrets to keep, she would find her way back to her passions.
“No woman’s gaze has ever flattered me so well.” He ached for the want of her.
A smile curved her lips as she reached for his hip. Her hand stroked him there, just beside the hard, heavy weight that craved her the most.
“No man has ever allowed me such liberties,” she whispered, finally switching her attention from his hip to the throbbing length of him.
Her teasing words stirred a possessive storm within him even as her finger traced the thick, corded vein down the front of his shaft.
“And now, no other man will ever dare to try.” He charged her, backing her to his bed and tumbling her down to the pallet. Though he protected her back with his hand, he was careful not to put his full weight on her as they landed.
That fall seemed to crumble the last of his restraints. He explored every curve and hollow with his hands, kissing and tasting his way down her body, pausing at the places that made her squirm and gasp with pleasure. He would not disappoint her now that
she had confessed her desire for him. He would make this night the most fulfilling to show her they were meant to be together. That they never should have been apart.
“Duncan!” She cried out a breathy plea as his kisses strayed below her navel.
Her fragrance surrounded him, intensified by the heat of her skin, and mingled with the scent of her hunger. Her fingers scratched softly at his shoulders, her hips rolling with each flick of his tongue along her taut belly.
When he parted her thighs and placed that first kiss against the slickness he discovered there, she would have bolted upright if not for his steadying hand on her hip. Her protest was all innocent distress without any teeth, for she settled into the pallet easily enough after a few more strokes of his tongue against the tight bud of her sex. The sound of throaty approval she made urged him on in spite of her restless wriggling.
He lost himself in the taste and feel of her. As much as he wanted to sink into her and remember that sweet tightness all around him, he wanted this for her more. He couldn’t wait to feel her pleasure this way, to know he’d taken her somewhere she’d never been before.
He was so wrapped up in providing that high that he must have missed the warning signs. Her body went as taught as a bowstring, her muscles straining
with unnatural stillness for a long moment until she flew apart beneath him.
Her sex throbbed as she let the waves of bliss roll over her. He did not release her until she’d been still for a long time, making sure he’d teased every last lush contraction from her passionate body.
He stretched out over her, settling himself between her thighs, playing in the slick sweetness he found there.
“I need you,” he admitted, unable to hold back his own desires. “Now.”
With a wordless nod, she shifted, helping him be right where he wanted. Sweetly, she lifted her hips, giving him access to everything he needed.
He entered her in one smooth stroke, seating himself fully inside her. Little spasms leftover from her release squeezed him, teasing him with what was to come.