A Promise of Love (25 page)

Alisdair wondered if she knew that her eyes always gave her away. He could measure her feelings by their expression. In their depths was uncertainty, wrapped in a cloak fashioned from bravado. He smiled, lifted her chin with the tip of one finger and bent to kiss her swiftly, hard, a kiss to brand.

“Go upstairs, Judith. Wait for me.”

She’d been given that command too many times in her married life. It had never induced sparks of anticipation before, only fear. A finger pressed to her lips halted her words, the message in his eyes as old as time and as solemn as church vows.

"I will be obeyed, my stubborn wife." His eyes glittered as he gently kissed her.

She tried to stifle a smile, but it burst forth anyway, a small slip of one, as if she were a child and at some solemn gathering and forbidden to grin.

“This time, MacLeod.”

Her grandson had a unique laugh, Sophie thought, as she lay her head back in her chair, thinking that this evening was too eventful for an old woman like her. Still, the sound of Alisdair’s laughter was a pleasant thing. Almost as lovely as Gerald’s.

CHAPTER 24

Alisdair hauled the old tub from the pantry, emptied it of the potatoes usually stored there, and began to scrub it mercilessly. The tub had been one of his mother’s extravagances. Why she had required a hipbath whose surface was etched in bronze, he had never known. Louise's peculiar and frivolous purchases had only one thing in common. They were exclusively for her enjoyment and comfort. The tapers especially scented with sandalwood, made to her order in Edinburgh, were to illuminate her suite of rooms. The wine sent in crates from France was for her troubled digestion and not shared with other members of the family. The soap milled in Germany from the finest ingredients was for her delicate skin, roughened and chapped by the Scottish seasons.

She had not, although she had certainly tried, exceeded Tynan's coffers. That had been accomplished by the '45. Louise had simply removed what coin had remained, prior to her self-imposed exile to France. It was a good thing, Alisdair thought, that his mother had not chosen to remain. She could never have borne their hardships.

Alisdair hefted the tub up the stairs, not an easy chore. Nor was lifting the buckets of heated water. The result, however, was worth any discomfort.

Despite Judith’s protests, he lifted the soiled dress over her head, followed by her undergarments. She fussed the entire time. He ignored her.

"Is it your aim to cook me, Alisdair?" she sputtered, as Alisdair helped her into the bath.

She lifted one foot, then another and stepped from the water, all the while scowling at him.

"Come, Judith, it's not that hot," he said mildly.

"Is this penance of some sort, MacLeod?" He seemed preoccupied with every exposed inch of skin, so she reluctantly sat in the tub again, raising her knees to shield herself from his eyes. The heat of the water did feel good, but it did not mean that she chose to bathe in front of him. Just because he gloried in his nakedness was no reason for him to think she would likewise be as shameless.

She began to wash her face with the scrap of linen he handed her and thus did not see him kneel behind her and take another cloth in his hand.

His first touch upon her back was startling. His strokes were sure and firm, unlike the gentle touch of his lips the other night. No, these were strong kneading motions using the palms of his hands. She relaxed, reluctantly, under his ministrations.

"Does your back hurt in damp weather?" he asked, noting that many of her muscles seemed knotted and twisted. She turned and looked directly into amber eyes only inches from her own.

"Sometimes."

"Did you have no treatment for it?"

She stared at him as though he had lost his reason. The man who would have summoned aid would not have perpetrated this persecution in the first place.

"No," she said, her voice clipped. She acted very English sometimes, he thought, as if she were drawing on a protective cloak of reserve. "I was expected to act as though nothing had occurred. Anything that would have indicated my discomfort would only have brought more down upon me."

His eyes flickered with an expression she could not read. "Is it the norm in England, this treatment of wives?"

"I do not know, MacLeod. I did not boast of it, you can be assured of that."

"Your family? Were they not prepared to assist you?"

"Again, I do not know. I never spoke of it."

"So you have grown stoic," he said, soaping the linen square and then her back. He swept the length of her hair aside and continued his bathing of her neck and shoulders.

She thought it a strange duty he had taken on, bathing his wife.

Yet, there was nothing ordinary about the MacLeod.

It was not the first time in her life a man had ever spoken softly to her and offered her consolation. Alisdair had comforted her when he had first seen her scars. It was not the first time a man had ever stroked her skin gently, tenderly, with no thought of exchange. Alisdair had done so, causing riotous feelings in her body. It was not the first time a man had ever wished to know of her life. Alisdair had evinced an endless curiosity from the first moment she’d seen him.

It had always, and only, been Alisdair.

Judith did not realize she had spoken about her scars without tears in her eyes, in a voice that, although it indicated past anguish, held none of the terror or active pain of a few weeks ago. He did, however. Nor did she realize that by turning the conversation to her past, he had adroitly banished her of embarrassment or shame about her nakedness.

"Hardly stoic, MacLeod," she answered him finally, thinking of those days filled with passionate hatred for Anthony and his brother.

"What would you call it, then, Judith?" he asked, "to not seek assistance, or protection?"

"Where would I go? To my father? He would have sent me back. My mother? She was as much a pawn as myself. To my sisters? They would not wish me in their households."

"So you said nothing, and became a martyr."

"I haven't the temperament for martyrdom" she said, and he smiled, thinking her right.

"Did you find it easy to kill, Alisdair?" she asked suddenly, her abrupt question stilling his hands upon the rounded curves of her shoulders. "You with the training to heal?" She turned her head to look at him. Her lovely blue eyes were troubled, but he had the strangest feeling that the emotion in their depths was something he did not wish to plumb.

"No, Judith, I found it very difficult. It is harder, I think, to live with the memory of it.”

A strange comment from a man who lived every day as though he squeezed each hour dry, who looked at the sky and noted the clouds, the expanse of horizon and nodded as if satisfied with God's handiwork. She’d seen him stopping to study the bloom of an isolated flower, bravely growing beside a pebble strewn path. She'd seen him do all these things and more, and it was not the behavior of someone who wished to forget the actions of his life.

What had life been like for him during the past two years? She found, and not for the first time, that she very much wanted to know.

The MacLeod had other ideas.

He dropped the square of cloth, letting it float gently to the bottom of the tub as he took the soap between his large hands. He smoothed his slippery fingers over her shoulders, and down toward her breasts, only smiling at her futile gestures, at the hands that pulled against his wrists but were powerless to prevent his actions.

"I think that being stoic is a fine emotion for some situations," he said, paying close attention to her nipples, tracing circles around their pink length with his soapy fingers, then cupping her breasts in his hands, feeling their fullness, their plump heaviness. "But I think, it loses its appeal in some circumstances."

"What circumstances would those be?" she asked, in a tremulous voice, thinking that it was a strange man, indeed, who would insist on touching her in such an intimate way, but continued to converse as if they were taking tea in the drawing room.

"Have you not noticed?" He bent close to her and she turned, noting the tender smile on his lips and the gleam in his eyes accentuated by some mischief there. His fingers were splayed across her skin, tracing the symmetry of waist to hip, from hip to thigh.

Once more, she tried to dislodge his hands, but they were firmly planted and would not budge.

"I am clean, MacLeod," she said between clenched teeth, trying to dismiss the sudden feeling of warmth where his fingers explored, then lingered.

"Oh? So you wish me to move onto another spot?"

He almost laughed at her quick nod. She glared at him when he did.

Did the man have a thing for water, she wondered, trying to concentrate on something other than the placement of his hands. It was not easy, this detachment. Her face grew flushed, but it was simply the heat of her bath water, it was not his closeness and the intimate, stroking position of his hands. His mouth licked the outline of her ear, and then swooped to caress the heated scent of her neck.

She closed her eyes.

She certainly did not mean to lean back against him, allowing him to place small, sucking kisses against the side of her neck. Nor did she intend to lift suddenly weak hands to stoke his arms and feel the texture of his sun darkened skin against her palms.

"You no longer need to be stoic, Judith," he said, a light rasp to his voice. "I'll never let you be hurt again."

"Then cease, MacLeod," she said faintly, her voice not as strong as she would have wished, her tone not as forceful.

"Do you truly wish me to?" he murmured, his lips sliding over her shoulder.

She did not answer him, which was response enough.

His fingers combed through the silken curls nestled between her thighs, his thumbs parted the folds of her submerged skin and delved even further. She was startled by his touch, would have raised up in the water, but he held her imprisoned by his mouth, by the gentle nip of his teeth at her neck.

"It's all right, sweet," he whispered. His arms rested on either side of her breasts, lifting them up so that her nipples peeked through the soapy water. She sank back against him, not protesting when he touched her ear with the tip of his tongue and breathed words that would have embarrassed her at another time.

This was not another time, this was now and she was without thought or reason or logic as his fingers spread her wide and entered her. She could do no more than feel as he stroked her with hands that were suddenly too knowing, too experienced.

Her head twisted away from him, her eyes were tightly shut, but she was more aware of him than she'd ever been before. The feel of his lips on her neck, his tongue dancing lightly against the line of her jaw, the sinewy muscles of his arms as they rested against her breasts, the long fingers that were sending darts of feeling spiraling through her body as an indefinable ache began somewhere deep and dark. He removed one hand from her slippery wetness and cupped her breast, gently pulling on an engorged nipple. He began to whisper to her, provocative words that echoed the feelings inside of her that were straining for something, something.

"Please," she said finally, when she could bear it no longer.

"Not yet.” He nuzzled her neck and stroked her breasts with gentle, teasing motions.

He returned his fingers to that that one spot that was so swollen and distended. He moved his body slightly, turning her chin so that he could reach her open lips. He kissed her then, tasting her passion as the feeling overwhelmed her, slowly licking her lips, their corners when she arched and shuddered. He slid his hands to her breasts, widening his fingers so that her nipples slid between them. He drew them out, slowly, his lips still fastened on hers, her hands clenching his wrists as if he were a lifeline.

Her head dropped weakly to the back of the tub and he smiled. She opened her eyes, and he saw the widened pupils, the lambent look, and his smile broadened.

"Is this the way the Scots bathe?" she asked, her smile lighting the midnight blue of her eyes.

He grinned as he lifted her from the tub. Nor did she desist when he gently dried her, then tucked her into one side of the bed and lowered himself to the other. She did not even mind the faint chuckle that she heard, as he hauled her close to him.

"You Scots have odd customs, MacLeod."

"You don't care for the practice?" One eyebrow winged heavenward and a knowing glint in his eyes made her turn her face into the pillow.

He laughed, that great barking laugh that filled the room. Extending one arm, he pulled her close.

"Would you like to hear the story of the Picts and heather ale?" he said, absently stroking her hair back from her face.

"Tell your story, MacLeod," she said, feeling as if every muscle in her body had gone limp. It could have been the hot bath, but she suspected it was due more to the MacLeod's ministrations.

She allowed him to cuddle her closer.

"Well," he began, "I've already told you that the Romans came to the Highlands, but they couldn't subdue the Picts. However, another tribe of people, probably another branch of the first Scots, decided to have a try. They had heard the story of the mystic heather ale, which had a rare and wonderful bouquet, a sweet and tangy taste, was far superior to the brew we know today. The secret was passed from the king of the Picts down to his first born son, which is how the secret was kept for so many years. The king of the Scots captured the king of the Picts and demanded to know the secret. The king said that he would tell him, but only if he killed his son first. For he meant that the secret would never be known, you see. There is a verse about it, too.