The Laird's Forbidden Lady (23 page)

The words shouldn’t hurt, because they were honest, but they did.

He let go a sigh. It didn’t matter what she wanted. She was stuck with him now.

She looked so beautiful with strands of her dark hair whipping around her face. And so vulnerable. He wanted to kiss away the shadows in her eyes. Allay her fears. If she would let him. He offered her a smile of encouragement. ‘It will be all right. You will see.’

Her expression softened for just a moment, her lips parting. He leaned closer, inhaling her scent, feeling her breath on his jaw. This was their common ground. This was where he would win the battle.

She frowned. ‘Why didn’t you tell the men at the inn about the keep being part of the settlement?’

This was a trap. No doubt about it. He’d need
to tread warily. ‘I wasna’ sure your father would give me the same terms as Dunstan.’

Her mouth turned down in a bitter grimace.

Wrong answer, he realised. He opened his mouth to say more, but she tossed her head back and looked at him full on, her gaze hard and cold.

‘It seems you got everything you wanted.’ She swept an arm around to encompass the surrounding hills. ‘Let me go. To Alice. As we planned.’

The words landed on his chest like one of the stones from the castle wall, hard, cold and heavy. ‘You are my wife.’ My wife. It sounded like ownership. It sounded medieval. He was feeling pretty medieval right at that moment as a primitive urge to claim her blasted though his veins.

‘In name only.’ She spoke so calmly, she might have been discussing the weather. She smiled then, a brittle little curve to her lips. ‘You don’t need me. You have what you Gilvrys have always wanted. Dunross Keep.’

‘Your place is here.’ Och, now he
sounded
medieval. He reached for her hands and almost cursed when she tucked them behind her.

‘Give it three months,’ he said. ‘If you are still of the same mind then, I’ll let you go.’ If he could not win his wife in three months with
the kind of passion they shared, he did not deserve to keep her.

She didn’t look happy. Because she knew he would win, he thought with a surge of triumph.

‘A week,’ she said.

Oh, yes, she knew he would win. He shook his head. ‘A month. No less, or we will forget all about this nonsense.’

She glared at him. ‘It isn’t nonsense to want to leave a place where everyone hates you.’

‘They need time to become accustomed to the idea.’ And in the meantime, he would do his best to make sure she never wanted to leave.

Anger followed by determination chased across her face. ‘Very well. A month.’

Now why did he suddenly have the feeling the trap had closed? He reached out a hand. ‘Then we have a bargain.’

She took it. Instead of shaking her hand, he brought her small cold fingers to his lips, turned them palm up and kissed the inside her wrist. He felt her shiver, slight though it was, and saw the flush of heat in her face. He smiled. He was worrying for nothing. A month would be plenty of time. He released her. ‘Let us go down.’

She made to push past him.

He barred her way. ‘Let me go ahead, lass. The stairs are steep and twisty.’

‘You might be wiser to give me a good hard push from behind. Perhaps I’d obligingly break
my neck, then you can marry someone of whom your clan will approve.’

Red veiled his vision. He caught her arm, held her immobile while staring into her flashing dark eyes, noting the petulant set of her full lower lip. She tipped her chin in defiance. Taunting him. Daring him to prove his baseness. Winning her might not be as easy as he thought.

He took a deep breath and smiled with what he hoped was calmness and not quite the grimace he felt on his face. ‘As long as I have breath in my body, you will suffer no harm from me.’

‘No more harm, you mean,’ she said with an overly sweet smile of her own.

He wasn’t going to pursue that, not now. ‘Come, let us go down, supper will soon be ready.’

And then would come the night and the battle would commence in earnest. His body hardened. This war between them definitely had its compensations.

He headed down the stairs, holding her hand fast in his all the way.

Chapter Seventeen

S
upper was done and cleared away, the candles and the fire were lit, and they were alone in the old solar, the room off the bedroom Chrissie had used. Across the blackened wooden planks of the ancient trestle table, Ian sprawled in a carved wood chair, sipping his whisky like some medieval knight and watching her from heavy-lidded eyes.

As if she was some choice morsel he had yet to taste.

He’d got his precious keep. Why did he have to want her, too? Thank God she hadn’t blurted out foolish professions of love the previous night. That would have made him impossible. She just had to survive a month of him and then she could go her own way.

It was even a better arrangement than she
would have had with Dunstan. They would have lived together. With Ian, she would have freedom and respectability. She should be feeling pleased, not miserable.

There was no reason to feel miserable. Not once had he indicated he cared for her no more than he might care for any other woman. Attraction, yes. Lust, yes. But nothing more. And look how quickly he’d agreed to let her go in a month if they did not suit. No doubt he wanted to make sure the marriage could not be disputed. But for that, he would have let her leave with her father.

Not that Father would have taken her. She didn’t quite understand why he’d been so angry. She could have understood disappointment, but it was as if there was something of importance riding on her marriage to Dunstan.

Ian rose.

Her heart beat faster. Her mouth dried. She felt flustered. Unsure.

In London, this would be the moment when she would retire to the drawing room for tea and he’d take his port in some male dominion. His study, if he was alone, the dining room if he had company. But this room was the domain of the lady of the keep. She had nowhere to go except to her bedroom.

He held out his hand. ‘Come. We will sit by the fire.’

Two deep chairs flanked the merrily blazing hearth.

So he intended to prolong the evening. Continue the pretence of married bliss. No doubt for the sake of appearances, with half his clansmen now employed in the keep. With a sigh she rose to her feet and strode for one of the chairs.

Before she could sit, he swept her up in his arms and sat down with her on his lap.

‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.

‘Enjoying a pleasant evening with my wife.’

The way his deep voice caressed the word ‘wife’ sent a shiver down her spine. She stiffened against the traitorous trickles of heat that sparked in her veins.

She gazed at the fire, trying to pretend she felt nothing, that the strong arms holding her against his chest were not warm or protective. That the feel of his heartbeat against her shoulder didn’t send little thrills of anticipation through her body.

But she was his wife. And she could not deny him her body, a little voice whispered with a bit too much glee and excitement.

‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I would like to retire.’

‘Bed sounds like a good idea.’ Amusement coloured his voice, along with desire.

Heat rushed through her. Anger. Defiance. ‘It has been a long wearing day. Surely you will not force yourself on me tonight?’

She winced at the brittleness in her tone. Clinging to her anger was not easy when cradled so softly in his arms. But his utter stillness said her barb had reached its mark.

His chest rose and fell with a long breath. A man trying to hold on to his patience. Perhaps if she made him angry enough, he’d let her go sooner than later.

Fingers calloused by work grasped her chin with gentle force and brought her face around. Blue eyes dancing with the light of the fire gazed into her face. He didn’t look particularly angry. Indeed, he looked as he always did, handsome, alluring, manly.

Then a seductively dark smile curved his lips. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Your face is lovely by firelight. I have not yet looked my fill.’

He wasn’t the first man to praise her beauty, but his softly spoken words warmed her more than any before. Somehow the power she’d always drawn from her beauty leached away in his presence. He made her feel weak. Needy.

Needing anyone was a mistake.

She returned his smile with one of her own. ‘La, husband, you flatter me.’

His gaze darkened a fraction. ‘It is not flattery to speak the truth.’ His lips descended on hers, gentle, wooing, teasing.

She tried to resist, to pretend his kisses did not make her dizzy, did not rob her of reason.
Indeed, she even went so far as to place the flat of her hand on his shoulder to push him away, but instead her fingers closed on the lapel of his coat, clutching as if she would hold on to him. Her lips parted and his tongue stroked with a soft silken slide. And she was lost.

Lost in passion. Her body clenching at the thought of the pleasure to come.

A soft groan rumbled up from his chest as her tongue tangled with his in a shocking dance of intimacy she’d learned only one night before, yet now seemed to know the steps by heart. The give and take of pleasure.

Her hands cradling his head, the silk of his hair brushing her skin, she pressed into his hard wall of chest, while his hands wandered across her back, her buttocks, her thigh. Beneath her, the evidence of his desire pressed against her.

She let the passion carry away her fears and her anger, let physical sensation fill all the corners of her mind. Her body trembled at the sensual onslaught of his mouth, his hands, his body.

Heat rolled off him in waves. His scent filled her nostrils, the clean smell of the Highlands, the tang of soap, but more powerful yet, his essence.

And then he stood up, rising from the chair with her in his arms as if she weighed nothing.

Released from the magic of his kiss, she scrambled to pull herself back together. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Taking my wife to bed.’ He gave her a wicked grin that curled her toes in her slippers. ‘That was what you wanted, was it not?’

‘Not quite,’ she managed, though it was hard enough to breathe, let alone speak with any sense.

He cocked an arrogant brow. ‘Tell me I did wrong after it is done, lass.’ He strode for the bedchamber, kicked open the door and deposited her gently on her feet.

Now was the moment to tell him to leave, before she succumbed to him utterly. Before he stole her sense of self.

The resolve in his face, the determination in his eyes said he would not be gainsaid his rights as a husband. Nor did she want to gainsay him. Damn it. In the matter of attraction, of physical desire, it seemed they were of one mind. Yet she still resented the way he’d played her for a fool.

Well, she was a fool no longer. And she had her own arsenal of weapons. As long as she shielded her heart, as long as she kept him at a distance, she would be safe.

He had proposed the bargain, and in all honour he had no choice but to keep to it, just as she’d had no choice but to agree to this marriage. She would enjoy her month of married life and at the end of it she would walk away.

Without regret. Or very little.

She stood on her tiptoes, twined her arms
around his neck and drew his head down. His eyes widened with surprise and flared with banked heat.

Then she tasted him in a slow measured kiss, teasing his lips with her tongue, nipping with her teeth. His hands skimmed her body as if they knew just how to touch and where so her bones would melt and her mind turn to mush.

One large warm hand came to her breast, gently circling and teasing, while the other explored the shape of her hips and her buttocks.

With each stroke of his tongue, each caress of his hand, he stoked the fires within until her body took on a will of its own, melding into him, demanding more.

Flames of desire leapt within her, heat flushed through her and the tension within her tightened. When he broke the kiss to pull at the laces of her bodice, she fumbled with the buttons of his coats.

When he knelt to remove her stockings, she fought with the knot of his cravat. When he untied the strings of her petticoats, she undid the buttons of his shirts. Urgency made each article of clothing a barrier to be conquered.

Finally she stood before him in nothing but her chemise. And he was naked. Beautiful. An aroused pagan warrior.

He stood still and proud and let her look. The
sight stole her breath. Too bad she had to let him go. A pang twisted her heart.

He stepped towards her. ‘Selina,’ he murmured and there was comfort in his voice, along with the husky rasp of lust.

Now was not the time for comfort. That was not what she needed from him. It came too close to emotions she would never admit to. Not ever.

She undid the ties of her chemise and let it slip down her shoulders and slither its way to the floor. She could not hold back her smile as his hot dark gaze followed its progress, stopping only for a second to linger at her breasts and belly and finally the heart of her femininity.

On a groan he pulled her close, his mouth coming down hard on hers, ravishing and plundering and pleasuring.

She gave herself up to the pleasure of his hard strong body pressed against hers and rejoiced when he eased her back onto the bed, never breaking the kiss for a moment.

This was all she needed. All she would ever accept. She wasn’t a child any longer and he would not break her heart again.

She stroked her hands over his shoulders, across the plane of his strong wide back. He felt lovely beneath her palms, skin like silk, muscle like bands of iron rippling beneath her hands. His soft indrawn breath let her know he enjoyed her touch as much as she enjoyed his.
Perhaps she wouldn’t be the only one to suffer loss when she left.

The thought pleased her. Gave her a surge of confidence, returned a little of the feminine power she had always relied on.

When he finally broke the kiss, he raised himself up to look into her face, as if he had noticed something different and was puzzled. She smiled at him.