Although the Highlands were fraught with disorder, Scotland remained basically at peace, thanks to Queen Marie and Bishop Kennedy. Even the borders were quiet but for a small raid now and again.
At Dunglais, Malcolm Scott continued to pursue Alix. And Alix was finding it more difficult to resist him. Her experience with the Wattesons had left her wary of men. She had felt nothing for her husband, for she had not really known him. She had liked her father-in-law’s company as a friend until he had attempted to debauch her, and then she had felt revulsion.
She was not naive enough to believe all marriages were like her parents’. Alix knew better from her childhood at court. But did that elusive something called love really exist? Could she find it? Or was what she was suddenly feeling for Malcolm Scott the more common and forbidden emotion that was known as lust? Why did her first sight of him at the beginning of a day make her heart race? Why did the touch of his lips on hers, or his hand in hers, render her weak with longing? Longing for what?
Since the early spring the laird had found himself courting Alix. He fully intended to seduce her into his bed, but for some reason he could not explain, he did not want to rush her. When the moment came, he wanted her to desire it as deeply as he did. They rode out daily, with little Fiona accompanying them on her pony. In high summer they took bread and cheese with them, picnicking on the heathered hillsides. One afternoon as the child lay sleeping on a blanket, her companions found themselves lying together nearby.
Alix was only slightly startled when Malcolm Scott loomed over her. She smiled up at him. “The sky is so blue today,” she said. “I do not think I have ever seen so blue a sky even in England.”
“I want you,” he said softly, and he bent to brush her lips with his.
“I know,” she responded as softly. “I have no experience with a lover, but I would be a total fool not to realize, to sense, how you feel, my lord.”
“Then why . . .” he began.
“I am afraid,” Alix answered him simply.
“Of what?” he asked, surprised.
“I did not like coupling with my husband. What if I do not like it with you? Worse, what if you find me displeasing? Do we—can we—go back to the way things were, my lord?” Alix wanted to know. “I think not. And then I must leave Dunglais and my sweet Fiona. I do not know if I am brave enough to take this chance you are asking me to take, my lord.” She reached up and touched his face with delicate fingers. “And yet . . .”
“I cannot imagine you would not please me, and I swear I will please you,” the laird said. Then he bent, kissing her deeply, the tip of his tongue stroking her lips, encouraging them to part, and when they did his tongue plunged into her mouth, found hers and caressed it ardently.
In the few weeks during which they had been exchanging chaste kisses he had never invaded her person as he was now doing. Yet it was exciting, and Alix arched against him, her own tongue stroking his and heat suffusing her body. She reached up to wind her fingers into his thick black hair, kneading his scalp with a need that surprised her greatly. She protested softly as he raised his head from her, but he put a single finger over her lips to silence her.
“Hush, lambkin,” he told her. “Let me have my way now, and I promise you that you will not regret it.”
“Fiona,” Alix said.
“I will do nothing that will awaken my daughter,” he promised. Smiling into her hazel-green eyes, he slowly undid the little horn buttons on the doeskin jerkin he and Fiona had given Alix on her birthday in April. Then he unlaced her shirt while she watched him nervously. Pushing the fabric aside, he gazed down for the first time upon her naked breasts. “God’s foot,” he murmured. “You are perfect, lambkin. Absolutely perfect!”
Alix blushed, suddenly shy, for no man had ever before looked upon her breasts, and his compliment surprised her.
The laird continued to stare for a long moment at the two sweetly rounded breasts that reminded him of two ripe peaches. Her nipples were small, the color of dusky rosebuds. They puckered beneath his ardent look. He brushed the fingers of one hand around the curve of the firm globe, tracing its delicate shape. She trembled beneath his touch. “Don’t be afraid, lambkin,” he said softly. “I am not like
him
. I will never hurt you. I want to make love to you the way a woman should be loved. Tenderly, and with unrestrained passion. You must never fear me, or fear my passion.” He bent his dark head again and kissed her nipple. Then he began to lick it, slowly encircling it with the tip of his warm tongue.
Alix gasped softly with surprise. The only time Hayle Watteson had touched her breasts was to squeeze them hard and mock their delicate size. Maida had big breasts where a man could pillow his head, he always told her. Hayle had never touched her gently as Malcolm Scott was doing. She gasped again. And he had certainly never fondled her breast and sucked hungrily upon it as the laird was now doing. A little cry escaped her. “Oh! Oh!”
He looked up and into her face now. “Do I please you, or distress you, lambkin?” he asked her quietly.
“I never knew . . .” she began, and then, “Yes, my lord. You please me muchly.”
He lowered his head and began to pay court to her other breast while she sighed with her obvious pleasure at his renewed devotion. Her scent—or was it the heather about them?—filled his nostrils, making him almost giddy with his rising desire. He felt his cock growing harder and harder in his breeks. But he knew this was not the time. Not with his daughter sleeping so innocently but a few yards away from where he lay with Alix. Finally he forced himself to raise his head from her breasts. He laced her shirt back up.
“We can go no further here with Fiona nearby us. But make no mistake about it, Alix Givet. I want you in my bed. I have never taken a mistress, but I think you would have me, lambkin, as I would have you.”
“But what if I should disappoint you in the coupling, my lord?” she asked him once again. “The man to whom I was wed put me on my back that first night and thrust himself into me so cruelly that he hurt me. I could not see his face in the pitch black of the room. And after that whenever he came he would make me kneel upon my bed, for he said I was no better than a bitch hound and should be fucked as a bitch is fucked. I quickly came to dislike the act, my lord. What pleasure is to be had in it?”
Malcolm Scott felt himself filled with anger as he listened to her. How could a man brutalize a woman so cruelly? “I will show you the pleasure in the coupling, Alix. And you will give me pleasure with your fair body as I will give you pleasure when we are joined as one. You will never displease me, lambkin. I can only hope I will not disappoint you.” He brushed her mouth with his.
She nodded. “I will trust you, my lord, but remember I want no husband who will have dominion over me. I will be your mistress, but I do so of my own free will, not because you force me to it.” She sat up and began to rebutton her jerkin.
“And I want no wife, although I ask one thing of you, lambkin. Never deceive me with another man. If the time comes that you want someone else you have but to tell me and I will let you go, but do not betray me, Alix Givet.”
“I will not ever mislead you, my lord,” she responded. “I swear it!” He was thinking of his wife, Alix thought. “But you must make me the same vow. If you decide you wish to have another for your mistress, or a wife, you will tell me in order that I not be shamed.”
“If that day should ever come I will indeed inform you, and I will provide for you as well, lambkin. I know my responsibilities.”
“I ask nothing of you but courtesy,” Alix quickly said. “My father left me provided for, and I have the wherewithal to make my own way if I must, my lord. I am no whore to be cast off and paid for services rendered you other than my compensation for educating your daughter.” There was a proud tilt to her little chin.
“It is not a matter we are faced with, so why should we argue over it?” he replied. Her stubborn pride pleased him well. Robena had wanted everything of him.
“I will awaken Fiona, my lord.” Alix stood up and brushed her skirts off. Then she went to gently shake the little girl awake.
They rode back to Dunglais in the late-afternoon sunshine, listening to the now-rested Fiona chatter about how she wished to ride all the way to Edinburgh one day to see the king. “Do you think he would marry a girl like me?” she wondered aloud.
“Kings usually marry great ladies,” her father told her.
“Are you not a great lord, Da?” Fiona wanted to know.
Malcolm Scott laughed aloud. “Nay, lassie, I’m just an insignificant border lord with a herd of cattle, a flock of sheep, and an old stone keep.”
“But you were the old king’s friend. Can’t you be the new king’s friend too, and ask him to make you a great lord?” Fiona wanted to know.
“Our new king is a little boy, Fiona. He’s just two years older than you are. And his days are spent very much like yours are, learning his lessons and learning how to be a good king of Scotland like his father and his grandfather were. And he is already betrothed to little Princess Margaret of Denmark. His wise father did that for him before he was killed, God assoil his soul,” the laird told his daughter.
“Am I betrothed?” Fiona wanted to know.
Malcolm Scott chuckled. “I am not certain yet that I ever want to let you go,” he said with a smile at his little daughter.
“Oh, Da!” Fiona replied, but they could tell she was pleased.
As they sat afterwards at the high board when Fiona had gone to her bed, Alix asked the laird, “How did you know the king, and were you really his friend?”
“Jamie Stewart and I were educated together,” Malcolm Scott said. When King James the First was murdered and his eldest son became king, his mother, Queen Joan, sought for a few lads his age who were not involved with either the Douglases, Lord Crichton’s family, or the Livingstones to be companions to the boy king. Jamie had been the survivor of twins and he bore a rather harsh birthmark. Half of his face was the color of an amethyst. In the streets he was known as James of the Fiery Face.”
“Oh, how sad!” Alix noted.
“Because of it he didn’t like great public shows or spectacles where he had to show himself. He was intelligent, inquisitive, and preferred companions like himself. He had nothing but scorn for old Douglas, and as for Crichton and the Livingstones he but bided his time until he could take control of his kingdom, for there was a ruthless streak in him. It was shortly after he married Marie of Gueldres, the Duke of Burgundy’s niece, that he exerted his influence. Many thought she was behind it, and while I am certain she encouraged her husband, Jamie was his own man. We learned to like bad women, good whiskey, and guns together. Of course, I went back to the borders right after he married. He didn’t need me then. My father had just died, and a border holding not strongly held by its owner is apt to be taken by another.”
“Were you with him at Roxburgh?” Alix asked.
“Aye,” the laird replied grimly. “I said that damned cannon was ill loaded, but he was so anxious to show off for his queen. He loved her, you know, and got four sons and two daughters on her. She has not just the little king to worry about, but the other five as well. Hers is not an easy task, but she was a good wife to Jamie, a good queen, and she is proving stronger than anyone anticipated as the queen mother.”
“So in a way you were brought up at a court too,” Alix remarked.
“Not really,” the laird replied. “We moved from place to place. We were always on the go. There was no real court as you would know it. The idea was to keep the king safe and alive. To get him educated to take up his duties. Most of the other boys fell away in the furor between all the factions trying to control the king’s person. But he would never go anywhere without me, and I even slept in his bedchamber most of the time. We were bedded by the same whore for the first time when we were fifteen,” Malcolm Scott chuckled as he remembered. “Livingstone was a prig, but Crichton arranged it for the king, and if the king did it then I had to do it. Jamie Stewart would have it no other way.”
“And after that you never looked back,” she teased him.
“Nay, I never looked back. And now I am looking forward to a new adventure, lambkin.” He took her hand and kissed it, laughing softly when she blushed.
“You are so bold,” she said softly. “You frighten me, and yet I trust you. ’Tis odd.”
“I don’t want you frightened of me,” he told her earnestly. “But I believe once we have become lovers in every sense you will not be afraid of me, Alix. At least I hope not.” He still held her hand in his, and now, turning the palm up, he placed a kiss upon it.
He excited her. She had never before felt excitement for a man, but Malcolm Scott excited her. His touch set her pulses racing. “My lord,” she whispered, looking into his handsome face. And he was indeed handsome to her eye.
He smiled a slow smile. “May I come to you later?” he asked her softly.
Alix’s heart thundered in her chest. For a moment she wasn’t even certain she could breathe. She was actually considering what it would be like to be naked in his arms. But what if his gentle words were just that—words? What if Hayle’s treatment of her was the way all men behaved with women? But it couldn’t be! Her mother could not have loved her father had he been such a brute as Hayle Watteson. Nor could Queen Margaret have loved her husband if he had been so cruel. But both her mother and the queen were devoted to their men. And she would never know the truth of men and women if she did not take this one chance. And if it was awful? Well, then she would flee Dunglais.
“Alix?” His deep voice penetrated her thoughts.
“Aye,” she whispered. “You may come to me, my lord.”
“Colm,” he said. “If we are lovers, Alix, then you must call me Colm.”
She stood abruptly, pulling her hand from his. “I must go to my chamber now, my lord,” she told him and fled the hall.