Amanda Scott (34 page)

“We’ll have that off now, too, I think,” he said.

“I’ll freeze!”

“No, you won’t. You can get into bed while I take off my clothes.”

Since she had feared he might command her to perform the same service for him that he had performed for her, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Duncan chuckled again. “If I weren’t in a hurry, lass, I’d make you do it.”

She gasped. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

“It’s a gift,” he said, teasing her. He shrugged off his coat and waistcoat, shaking out the lawn ruffles on his shirtsleeves.

Hastily pulling the covers over herself, up to her chin, she stuck out her tongue at him.

“Don’t do that unless you mean it as an invitation,” he said, leaning against the bed to pull off his shoes.

“What do you mean?”

“Grant me one minute more, and I’ll show you.” He pulled off his neckcloth and unbuttoned his shirt, then unbuttoned his breeches and tugged them off.

When Mary realized that he had taken his drawers off with the breeches, she averted her eyes, albeit not so quickly that she failed to notice that he was aroused.

She heard him chuckle again. He said, “There is nothing wrong with looking, lass. I don’t mind.”

She did not move.

A whisper of cloth told her he had removed his shirt. He was naked now, she knew. She still wore her chemise. Carefully keeping the covers over herself, she wriggled to the far side of the bed.

She felt it shift with his weight, and then his bare leg touched hers beneath the coverlet. She jumped again.

“Don’t be afraid of me, lassie,” he said, his mouth near her ear. “You have less need to be frightened at this moment than you ever have in the past.”

“I’m not,” she said, knowing the words were true. Indeed, if she were to speak the whole truth, she would admit that she was trembling with anticipation of what he was going to do, of what they were going to do. She turned her head a little, looking at him, thinking it odd to find his face so near to hers, as if for once they were the same height.

Duncan kissed the tip of her nose, and his hands found her beneath the covers. “You’ve still got your chemise on,” he said.

“Aye.” Her breathing had increased. Her hands seemed to be in his way, and she did not know what to do with them.

One of his hands touched her bare knee and moved up under her chemise. Her breathing stopped altogether for a long moment. The hand paused.

Duncan kissed her. Then, leaning on an elbow and looking down at her, he said, “Stick your tongue out at me again.”

Still breathless, she shook her head.

He kissed her, lightly, on the lips. Then he kissed her cheeks and her eyelids, then a cheek again, and an earlobe. The hand on her thigh twitched, then moved, but to her surprise it left her bare skin and moved atop her chemise, higher up, gliding over the fork of her legs to her stomach, caressing her lightly and moving upward to cup her left breast. She started breathing more normally again.

Everywhere he touched her he awakened nerves to life, and every awakened nerve sent waves of pleasure through her body.

A finger touched the tip of one breast, and at the same time, he kissed her again, and his tongue touched her lips, as if he tasted them.

Her hands remained still.

“Touch me,” he murmured.

“Where?”

“Wherever you like. I want to feel your hands on me.”

Obeying, she moved her free hand to touch his bare shoulder, stroking his skin. Reflection from the firelight turned it golden. Her hand moved toward his neck. He had left his hair tied, and she found the ribbon. With a new sense of power, she untied it, freeing his hair to fall loosely around his shoulders and face. It was thick and wavy, and it tickled her fingers, then her cheeks.

She could feel his breath against her lips, then his tongue again, stroking her lips, caressing them. His fingers teased her breast. She moaned deep in her throat, and melting warmth surged through her body.

Her lips responded hungrily to his, and his tongue dove into her mouth. At the same time, his right hand moved to her stomach, pressing more firmly, inching downward. Her whole body leapt in response.

He shifted his weight, and she felt both of his hands at the hem of her chemise. Tugging it upward, he raised her and stopped kissing her long enough to pull it off and toss it to the foot of the bed.

The covers had slipped, and she reached to pull them up, but he stayed her hand. “I want to look at you,” he said, “to taste you with my eyes.”

He had straightened up to raise her, and although he had put her down again, he stayed where he was, looking at her. A log shifted in the fire, and the resulting burst of flames heightened the golden glow coloring the room.

“Does it bother you, my looking?”

“No, Duncan.” She liked feeling as if his eyes were touching her. “Do you think me wanton, sir, to like such things?”

“Never.” He bent and kissed the tip of one breast, taking the nipple gently in his lips.

Mary gasped, arching her back and burying her hands in his hair. At least one aspect of marriage to Duncan Campbell was, she decided, exceedingly pleasant.

A sudden knocking at the door jolted them both. With a sound perilously near a growl, Duncan raised his head and shouted, “Go to blazes!”

“We know where to find MacCrichton, Master Duncan.” It was Bannatyne’s voice. “They say Allan Breck is with him, sir.”

“I’m coming,” Duncan shouted. “Tell them to saddle horses.”

“Already done,” Bannatyne called back. His footsteps sounded loud as he hurried away. Marry wondered why they had failed to hear his approach.

Duncan left the bed and began hastily to put on his clothes, saying with a grimace, “Sleep here tonight, lassie. I want to find you in this bed when I return. We’ll finish then what we’ve begun.”

“Is it so important to catch Allan just now, sir?”

“Aye, it is. I want the pair of them now, but I’ll be back soon.”

Pulling the covers back over herself, Mary said, “I may just stay here then. I don’t really want to go down to dinner alone.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, adding with a grin, “but if you don’t go down, they’ll most likely think I’ve beaten you and sent you to bed without your dinner.”

That thought, and the thought that Hardwick would come to tidy the room if he learned that Duncan had gone, spurred Mary to grit her teeth and decide to face the family. Only then did she remember Lady Balcardane and the celandine still in the kitchen. Guilt-ridden, she jumped out of bed the moment Duncan left, dressed herself hastily, then hurried to her room to ring for Ailis.

D
UNCAN DREW HIS GREATCOAT
more tightly around him, cursing MacCrichton and Breck under his breath and hoping the horse beneath him would not lose its footing on the slushy track. Bannatyne’s torch up ahead, and others borne behind them, did little to light the many hazards they met. More important to Duncan, however, was the plain fact that as much as he wanted to lay hands on the scurvy villains, he had not wanted to leave Mary. That reluctance, he told himself (more than once), had been a matter of wanting to assuage awakened lust and nothing more. Still, he had been loath to leave her.

For some time his men, judging his mood accurately, stayed behind him, but Neil had chosen to accompany them, and after a while he rode up alongside. He said, just loudly enough to carry above hoofbeats and harness jingling, “Do you think they’ll still be there?”

“They’ll have left a trail if they are not.”

Silence hovered between them for some moments before Neil said, “Dare I say that I hope you didn’t murder the lass.”

“Did you think I would?” His memory of the way he had left Mary made him smile a little.

Neil, eyeing him, said, “I wasn’t certain. In truth, I haven’t trusted my thoughts since she wrote to say she had agreed to marry you. I won’t conceal that we all feared then that the lass had completely lost her mind.”

“Perhaps she did.”

“I don’t know that. She seems content enough, and you seem quite different somehow. Rory said she would be good for you if—” He broke off, and even by torchlight Duncan could see the deep color wash over his face.

Faintly amused, he said, “Don’t stop now. Your comments were just becoming interesting.”

“You won’t like it,” Neil muttered.

“I daresay I won’t. Tell me anyway,” he said, adding with a mocking look, “unless you are afraid.”

Glaring, Neil said bluntly, “He said marrying her might be the making of you if she could teach you to think of someone other than yourself for a change.”

Feeling his temper waken, Duncan suppressed it, saying, “I can’t think where Rory got the notion that I think only of myself. Mary knows better, I promise you.”

“So you didn’t murder her. I hope you didn’t …” Shooting another look at Duncan, he appeared to think better of finishing the sentence.

Thought of Mary having relaxed him again, as such thoughts increasingly were wont to do, Duncan’s sense of humor asserted itself. “I did not beat her either, Neil. Not that it’s any business of yours if I did,” he added.

“No, of course not, though perhaps it should be. She is my cousin, after all.”

“She is my wife, however.”

“Just so,” Neil admitted. Yielding the point, he said, “How far is this place we’re heading for? I don’t know all of these side glens well.”

“It’s near Glen Ure, where your late Crown factor lived,” Duncan said. “I’m told that rather than return to Shian to replenish their stores MacCrichton and Breck have begun raiding their clan members’ farms, and others, as well. One of their victims, a Campbell man, rode to Balcardane to demand aid. Evidently the villains have got a half dozen men with them, and they take all they can lay their hands on.”

“Well, I just hope we can catch them without losing a horse or two, or even a man,” Neil said. “Though we’ve got moonlight, those clouds keep hiding it, and our torches don’t help all that much.”

“Fall back and ride with the torchbearers if you are going to fret about it,” Duncan recommended.

“No, if your nag and Bannatyne’s can manage, so can mine. I just hope we find those worthless rogues. Serena told me MacCrichton struck Mary. Is that true?”

“Aye,” Duncan said, making no effort to resist a new surge of temper, “and from what she told me, when he cornered her at Maclean House, he wanted to beat her witless. I mean to discuss that with him at length before he’s much older.”

“I’m surprised that you didn’t do so at once.”

“I had Mary to look after. That was more important.”

Neil glanced at him, but evidently thought better of speaking. They rode in silence for a while before Duncan asked him a question about his visit to Perthshire that initiated a conversation having nothing to do with MacCrichton or Mary.

Although Duncan and most of his men believed they would find their quarry that night one way or another, they soon discovered that Breck and MacCrichton had outwitted them again. Duncan’s men were able to follow the trail easily from one cottage to another, but just as they thought they were closing in, they found tracks leading off in eight directions, like spokes from the hub of a wheel.

“They’ve separated,” Neil said. “Which one do we follow?”

Duncan sighed. “We could follow any one of them and perhaps find them all when they regroup, but that may not happen for days.” Raising his voice, he said, “That’s it for tonight, lads. We’ll turn back. Bannatyne, see that the folks in this cottage have food and fuel to see them through the next storm.”

“Aye, Master Duncan,” Bannatyne shouted back.

“We could ride to Shian,” Neil said, clearly unwilling to give up so tamely.

“We could, but I’ll warrant we won’t find them. MacCrichton is too smart to go back to his lair when he knows I’m on his heels.” Cheered at knowing that they would be at Balcardane in less than two hours, Duncan signaled his men to ride.

Although Mary hurried, and Ailis did all she could to help her tidy herself quickly, by the time she had visited the kitchen to add celandine root to Martha’s soup and seen it on its way to her ladyship, much time had passed. Balcardane and Serena were already at dinner when she joined them, and it soon became clear that Mary would have to exert herself to get through the meal with her dignity intact.

From the first, Serena made no effort to conceal a near-gleeful air of satisfaction, and she could think of no way to diminish it without declaring outright that Duncan had not remained angry, let alone done anything to punish her.

As she sat down, the earl said, “What kept you, lass? Duncan left long ago.”

“Taking Neil with him,” Serena said crossly. “He need not have done that, and it will doubtless all go for naught, but I daresay,” she added in a more earnest tone, “that he was still frightfully angry, so it’s just as well, is it not?”

“I daresay Neil wanted to go,” Mary said, ignoring the rider. Then, to the earl, she said, “I went to the kitchen to see about some soup for her ladyship.”

“That was kind,” he said. “I’d have gone with them, but Duncan said I need not, and in this unpredictable weather, I don’t mind leaving such chores to him. He’ll deal with those villains. I just hope he don’t beggar me in the process.”

“Poor Duncan,” Serena said, casting a look at Mary. “He seems to have had much to deal with today.”

Fidgeting, the earl said, “We’ll say no more about aught else, if you please. Duncan told me those villains have raided some farms. Like as not, he will draw from our supplies to restore what they’ve lost, so I’ll have to keep an eye on him.”

Ignoring his attempt to change the subject, Serena said sweetly, “You waited till he left before you came to dinner, Mary. Did he say you could do so, I wonder?”

Balcardane said in surprise, “Bless my soul, lass, why would he stop her? Are you referring to that fool wager? Because if you are—”

“What wager?” Serena looked from one to the other, her air of bewilderment reminding Mary that she had not witnessed the events in the courtyard.

Balcardane grimaced ruefully, then said, “I expect you’ll hear it all before long anyway.” He explained, and then, while Serena gaped in amazement at Mary, he added, “I admit, Duncan was put out, and that temper of his can be dangerous.”