A Year and a Day (7 page)

How could having what she wanted make her so bitterly unhappy?
A plump tear rolled down Cait’s cheek as she finally allowed the thought to form. Ewan hadn’t been cruel. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. In truth, she didn’t mind the physical pain. Discomfort had passed quickly enough. It was the hollowness that he had left in her heart that burned. She had been so terribly wrong to accept his offer. She wanted his body- but that wasn’t enough.

Cait began to cry in earnest when she thought about the ramifi
cat
ions of what she’d done. She’d managed to pass the afternoon in obscurity, but what would tomorrow bring? Surely word would begin to spread. She could already imagine the jealous, disgusted and pitying glances she would receive. Added to that unpleasant expectation was the fact that she didn’t know how much her life was about to change. She gathered that Ewan only wanted sex- a “business arrangement” as he liked to say: but how often, and when? Was she meant to be at his beck and call? Did their “bargain” require anything more?

What if she really did get pregnant
? She didn’t know if the thought of the baby made her happy or sad. She would be proud to bring Ewan’s son or daughter into the world- but what if the child was taken away? After all, she was only wanted for a single year and day.

Curled in her bed, sobbing and miserable, she almost didn’t hear the knocking on her chamber door. Sniffing loudly, she stopped and craned her ears just as it repeated, more loudly this time.

She stiffened. An electric surge of equal parts fear and hope sizzled along her spine. The feeling was so strong that it paralyzed her for a moment while she stared, doe-eyed, at the door.

It had to be Ewa
n.
Cait’s body began to warm, against her will, at the anticipation of seeing him again. She had wondered if she was meant to go to his room
or if he would join her upstairs. Was he angry? She felt another spike of anxiety. Large and powerful though he was, she had never seen Ewan lose his temper.  She found the prospect both frightening and intriguing.

A third time, a fist hammered on the door. Now it was almost a pounding, and she scurried off the bed. She knew that it didn’t matter, but she wished that she had the time to change her skirt, or to tuck up the loose ends of her hair. “Coming!” she called in a soft thin voice, relieved when the hammering stopped. She took a breath to compose herself, and then threw open the
door,
and found herself staring into the pale grey eyes of…

“Matthew?” Cait said, wrinkling her nose at the gangly squire who helped in the stables. She couldn’t begin to guess why he had come.  She wished he hadn’t. They weren’t friends. She still held herself slightly higher than the other servants- especially those who smelt of dung. Even if they had been well acquainted, she still resented the intrusion on her grief. “I was sleeping,” she snapped, indi
cat
ing that he should say his piece and leave.

The boy bobbed his head. She was gratified to see that she had succeeded in leaving him unnerved. He finally found his voice, however, and the announcement stunned her, “Master Cameron bid me come and get you.”

Cait blinked, “
Master Cameron
?” If he’d meant the
Laird
, he would have said so.

“Ewan Cameron, Miss. He bade me fetch you to his room.”

“
Fetch me
?” Cait echoed, aghast. She hadn’t thought it was possible, but she felt lower than before. Her flesh crawled with the humiliation- Ewan had sent a servant to retrieve her, just like
he was
summoning breakfast, or water for his bath!

“Yes, er…” the gangly boy shifted uncomfortably from side to side. “He said there’s something he…er…needs you to do fer him.”

She’d just
bet
there was!
Cait
shivered at the memory, and then shuddered in revulsion at her own reaction. At least she had the answer she was searching for about the bounds of their relationship. Ewan wanted her as his whore.

“Please tell Mr. Cameron that I’m already asleep,” she replied in a snit, “
I’ll be happy to attend to his “something”
in the morning.”

Matthew’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, “I can’t do that miss!” he gaped, and then whimpered, “We’ll both be lashed!”

Cait
hoped
that this was hyperbole. She didn’t think that the Camerons would whip a servant for such a minor act of rebellion- or that Ewan would want his wife, however temporarily and loosely that term applied- to be put on public display, but she could read the fear in Matthew’s eyes. It drove home the truth of her situation. It didn’t matter how she felt. She belonged to Ewan. She had no choice but to go.

With a heavy sigh, she slipped on her shoes and cloak, and followed the boy into the hall. He was holding a sputtering candle, and led their way through the drafty, winding corridor of the castle toward the family rooms.

It was eerily silent. No one was moving about. Cait didn’t know if it was just her imagination, but the darkness felt heavy and stifling, like a dark blanket weighing down her limbs and muffling the sound of their steps.

They arrived at Ewan’s chamber all too quickly to prepare. She knocked on the door. When she looked over her shoulder, Matthew was already gone.

There was no light spilling out from under the doorway. When there was no immediate answer to her hail she thought, with a big of relief that Matthew might have been wrong, or else Ewan had tired of waiting. She could pick her way back through the darkness to her room. Just as she was turning to go, however, Ewan’s soft brogue called out, “Enter.”

Cait hesitated just a moment more, and then she pushed the door open a crack and slipped inside.

The room was swathed in shadows. No candles were burning by the bed. Instead, the light in the room came from a cheerful fire in the hearth. Silhouetted against the bright flames she saw a bathtub- and Ewan sitting inside it!

“Ah, Cait,” he said, his voice softer than it had been that afternoon. He gestured for her to step forward, but she was reluctant to obey.

She couldn’t
see
anything because of the light, and Lord knew that Ewan didn’t appear embarrassed by his nakedness at all, but Cait was positively mortified. She averted her eyes and, only then, did she inch forward.

She didn’t see it, but she assumed that Ewan smiled. He made a satisfied little sound, and then sank deeper into the tub, causing water to splash over the edges.

“Bring me a rag, Cait?” he asked, his voice was still low and unthreatening, but firm enough to convey an order.

“Yes, sir,” she said instantly and instinctively. A moment later, when she realized what she’d done, she was disheartened that Ewan hadn’t tried to correct her.

Cait had always tidied Ewan’s room, and she knew precisely where the cloth would be. She took it out of the top of his dresser, spread it open, and then carried it to the bath, still careful to look away. “Here you are, sir,” she said as she presented it.

Ewan’s fingers brushed her wrist as he accepted the flannel square. A few warm drops slid from his skin onto hers, wetting the cuff of her sleeve.

“You should push them up,” he remarked. Surprised, Cait looked up and found him watching her face. “You’ll get soaked,” he told her, seeming not to notice her confusion. His eyes flicked away for a moment while he soaped and rinsed his chest.

Cait wasn’t needed, but she hadn’t been dismissed, and so she hovered by the bathtub, still unsure of her role. She stared fixedly into the fire, ignoring him until she heard a splash and felt a nudge against her skirts. Flicking her eyes down, she saw that he was offering her the rag and soap.

“Could you help me with my back?” he asked with a deceptively innocent smile on his face.

Cait’s fingers were trembling when she accepted the dripping cloth, but she couldn’t very well deny the request- nor could she continue to avoid looking at him if she was to help him wash. Shyly, she flicked her eyes up to drink in his skin- the same glorious expanse that she had seen earlier, only now it was dripping wet.

Cait couldn’t help the flush that came to her cheeks when she followed the progress of one drop of water from his hair, onto his shoulder, and then down the front of his chest. It glistened as it slid over the swell of his pectorals, and then caught in the light furring of his chest. In the firelight, all of his body was
gleaming,
the moisture that clung to his skin reflecting back the flickering flames.

Ewan coughed, reminding her that he was waiting, and she dunked the rag into the tub near his ankles. She wrung it out, and then laid it against his spine. She tried to concentrate on the movement of her hands, and not the flex and ripple of his muscles that she could feel through the dripping flannel. It was
hard
though!- hard not to remember the way that her finger nails had dug into the same muscles when Ewan had claimed her body only a few short hours before; hard not to wonder if it would be the same an hour later, stretched out on Ewan’s bed, the damp hair on his chest brushing against her breasts as he took her again
.

“Lower.”

Cait looked up at the sound of Ewan’s voice. Lost in thought, she had begun massaging his shoulders, moving the washrag in tight, heavy circles over his skin. He was apparently enjoying the attention. His shoulders were scrunched in delight. “Just a little bit lower,” he instructed again, leaning forward in the bath to give her more room.

Cait did as she was told, rubbing slowly down his spine. She didn’t know where he wanted her to stop, and finally settled at the small of his back, just above the cleft of his bum.

It was so exquisitely intimate. The cloth clutched in her fingers was as good as worthless. It did nothing but enhance the sensation of touch, adding a nubby friction to the strokes.

Ewan stretched his arms up over his head. Then, without warning, he leaned back, submerging up to his shoulders in water so that was his chest now offered for Cait’s attentions. “More,” he purred. His eyes were tightly shut. The expression on his lips made him seem exquisitely pleased with himself- or with Cait.

Cait didn’t hesitate this time. She was feeling bold and a little bit reckless. Ewan had insulted her, but empowered her as well. The pretense of the washcloth gave her virtual free reign over her body- and, despite how he had made her feel, there was still so much that she wanted to explore. As long as he kept his eyes closed, as long as she kept him contented enough not to move, there was nothing to stop her explorations.

Cait licked her lips and gave her husband a frank appraisal.

Beginning at the top, she drank in the squared-off curve of his shoulder and hollows of his clavicle and the base of his neck.  She started there, sweeping the cloth down the column of his throat. Ewan’s lips curled up on the edges, and a low, pleasured sound rumbled from his lips as she continued lover, down his chest to the flat ridges of his belly.A narrow ridge of wet black hair nearly bisected his chest. She followed it to the place where it disappeared into inky blackness, and then she paused, wondering how far she dared to go.

She couldn’t see beneath the water. It was glassy and still, although it reflected the dancing flames. They seemed to swirl and burn across the surface. Even though she was separated from their glow by the tub, Cait felt herself growing uncomfortably warm.

“Cait?” Ewan murmured sleepily, but without opening his eyes. The subtle reminded
Cait
that she had stopped moving.

She wetted the cloth again. Dragging her eyes from the water, she attended his arms, carefully scrubbing his bulging biceps, the crook of his elbows and the long, smooth expanse of forearms and wrists before turning to his legs.

His knees were sticking out of the tub, and she started there, taking an exaggerated amount of time to cover them with soap and water before daring to skim down his legs and thighs, once again stopping at the water’s edge.  She lingered there, fidgeting with the washcloth and wondering what to do next when she Ewan’s touch made her jump and
Cait
ch her breath.