Samantha James (14 page)

Meredith hesitated but a fraction of a second. She had no desire to sleep where she stood, or to make her bed on the cold hard floor.

Their eyes met, his inquiring, hers mutely pleading. “Turn around,” she said breathlessly.

Cameron very nearly reminded her he’d already seen what she would hide so diligently. But something inside warned him he’d risked as much as he should dare this night. He turned on his side so that he faced the wall.

Meredith shed her gown and tugged the bed gown over her head. She clambered over him, careful not to touch him, just as careful not to lift the sheet too high, lest she see more than she wished to! Hurriedly she slid within.

Cameron faced her, his head propped on an elbow. His smile was gone, his expression unreadable. He
stared at her as if he would pluck her very thoughts from her mind.

“It occurs to me that you have been sheltered,” he said slowly, “that mayhap you know naught of men…and life.” He seemed to hesitate. “What happens between a man and a woman is not something to be feared, Meredith. It’s where children come from—”

“I know how children are made!” Meredith’s face burned with shame.

“Then why are you so afraid?” he asked quietly.

It was in her mind to pretend she misunderstood—but it would have been a lie. Clutching the sheet to her chin, she gave a tiny shake of her head. “Please,” she said, her voice very low. “I cannot tell you.”

Reaching out, he picked up a strand of hair that lay on her breast. Meredith froze. Her heart surely stopped in that instant. Now it comes, she thought despairingly. He claimed he would give her time to accept him, to accept what would happen, but it was naught but a lie! Her heart twisted. Ah, but she should have known!

“Your hair is beautiful—like living flame.”

His murmur washed over her, soft as finely spun silk. She searched his features, stunned when she detected no hint of either mockery or derision.

She stared at the wispy strands that lay across his palm, the way he tested the texture between thumb and forefinger.

“Nay.” Her voice emerged unevenly. “’Tis too red. Too much like Papa’s.” Too late she realized what she had said. She braced herself for the icy mask of disdain she knew would surely appear.

It did not. Instead he stared at her, solemnly intent.

“They would have cut it, you know,” he said suddenly.

Meredith frowned in soft confusion. “What?”

“They would have shorn your hair…the nuns. If you had taken your vows, they would have cut your hair.” He smiled slightly. “Ah, now, that would have been a sin.” As he spoke, he wound the lock of hair around and around his hand.

Meredith froze. But he stopped before the pressure tugged hurtfully on her scalp…and trespassed no further. Instead he turned to his back.

His eyes closed.

He and she touched nowhere. Indeed, the width of two hands separated them; those silken strands of her hair were the only link between them. Meredith dared not move. She listened and waited, her heart pounding in her breast…

Slumber overtook him. He slept, her lock of hair still clutched tight in his fist.

Only then did she move. Her hand lifted. She touched her lips, there at the very spot he’d possessed so thoroughly. Her pulse quickened as the memory of his kiss flamed all through her. She’d thought it was disdain. Distaste…

But she was wrong. In the depths of her being, Meredith was well aware it was something far different.

Her breath came fast, then slow. Something was happening. Something far beyond her experience…

Egan was worried. He’d watched his chieftain this past sennight…watched while Cameron persisted in giving his attention to the Munro wench! He’d known Cameron since they were both young lads—why, they’d tumbled their first wench together! Egan’s chest swelled just thinking about it. The woman had later confided that the pair were not her first, and if the truth be told, she’d much preferred Egan over his towering, bony friend…

Aye, they’d been through much together. He was the one Cameron had first told of the Red Angus’s butchery—how his father and brothers had died. He’d held him close while Cameron’s shoulders shook with the force of his grief.

Yet never had he seen Cameron so obsessed with a woman. Always before, the pair had been much the same. Women were a leisurely enjoyment, a pleasure to be pursued but not to distraction. It wasn’t that they scoffed at love; it was simply that neither had found the woman whose tender embrace might bind him forever. Of a certainty, while he’d never been one to turn a blind eye to a tasty morsel of feminine flesh, neither had his loins controlled him. It was the same with Cameron, though at times he’d been a bit annoyed
that his friend could turn a maid’s head without even trying! It was the scar, Egan knew. He’d never be as handsome as Cameron…

Yet this was different.
She
was different, the Munro wench—and so was Cameron.

Egan could not say he approved.

He surveyed his friend one night as Cameron kept her leeched to his side—as if he could not bear to be parted! Egan was thoroughly disgusted. It would have been different had it been a matter of control, but Egan was convinced it was she who controlled him—but the wee one did not even know it! Fools they were, both of them! Later he saw the way Cameron bent his mouth to her ear, his words for her alone. Egan’s gaze narrowed. He saw the way she immediately shook her head, the way her eyes refused to meet his…the way Cameron’s mouth turned down. So, he thought. The wench was reluctant…or was she? Mayhap it was but a trick. Quietly she withdrew, her head down as she made her way across the hall to the stairway. Even when she was gone from sight, his friend’s unblinking regard remained fixed in the place where she had last been.

Egan rolled his eyes. Smitten, he was. Smitten!

Before he knew it, Egan was seated opposite his friend and leader.

“Egan! How goes it this night?” Cameron dragged his eyes from his tender prey.

Egan took a long draught of ale. He’d always spoken plainly with Cameron, and so he would now. He nodded toward the place where Meredith had disappeared and lowered his tankard. “Be wary of her, lad,” he warned. “Men, we fight with sword and targe, but women—well, they touch and cajole. They
have ways of twisting a man ’round their finger, and not once does he suspect!”

Cameron’s jaw thrust out. “What! What have you seen?” His tone turned sharp. “Is she planning to escape?”

Egan said nothing for the longest time. “Nay,” he said finally. “She speaks but seldom.”

“To whom does she speak?”

Egan shook his head. “To no one but me. No one speaks to her.” He paused. “She hides nothing,” he admitted. “In truth, I’ve seen no sign that she plans to escape. Nor has Finn.”

“Then why do you alert me?”

“She is a Munro, Egan. I think you forget that.”

Cameron’s eyes flashed. “Nay, Egan.” His lips barely moved as he spoke. “Think what you will, but that is something I
never
forget.”

“You see her as a woman,” Egan argued, “a desirable woman.”

Cameron smiled tightly. “Perhaps because she is. Be fair, laddie, and acknowledge what your own eyes must surely tell you. She is as fair and comely a maid as any.”

“Aye,” Egan said gruffly. “She is as fair a maid as any I’ve seen. But I am not the one who lusts after her, Cameron.” Baldly he stated his judgment. “You want her, don’t you?”

A muscle jumped in Cameron’s jaw. He glowered at his friend.

“I’ve seen the way you look at her, Cameron. Have you taken her to your bed?”

“That, my friend, is not your affair.” A warning glint appeared in his eyes. “And do not dare to call her a slut.”

Egan returned his glare with equal measure. “I said
no such thing, Cameron, and well you know it!” He decided to temper his tone. Cameron’s temper was not easily riled, yet in a dangerous mood he was a force to be reckoned with. “Yet you do not have the look of a man well pleasured. And so, as your friend, I must ask again…have you taken her to your bed?”

For a moment it appeared Cameron would refuse to answer. “Nay,” he said at last. “She scorns me, as if I am the ugliest of creatures.”

“Well, I won’t disagree with that!” Egan raised his tankard as if in salute, then abruptly lowered it. “But you must think me addlepated if you expect me to believe you’ve not yet bedded her. She sleeps in your chamber, in your very bed!”

Cameron tipped his chair back. “What better way to watch her?” he countered calmly.

“Post a guard outside her chamber!” Egan could not help it. He felt betrayed.

“We need the guards elsewhere.” Cameron’s tone was curt. “She stays where she is.”

Egan was not to be deterred. “She’s no doubt a maiden, man, chaste and untouched!”

Cameron’s laugh was tight. “No one would be more surprised than I were that not the case. She went to the priory straight from Castle Munro. To all accounts she had no suitors. Aye, she’s a maid, or I am not Cameron of the Clan MacKay.”

“Do you forget she planned to take her vows?”

“I do not forget.”

“And you would take such a woman to your bed? One who knows naught of the ways of men?”

“She lived among men most of her life, Egan. Indeed, it’s only the last few years that she resided in the nunnery.”

“Nonetheless, ’tis not right.” Egan was adamant.
“Your loins rule you now and not your heart!”

It was Cameron’s turn to raise a brow. “What! Do you now defend her? ’Twas you who helped me abduct her. Why, but a few nights past, you vowed you’d have killed her long since.”

“That was before I knew what you intended.”

Cameron gave a self-derisive half-smile. “Even I did not know what I intended.”

Egan stroked the white scar on his cheek. “Moire will not be pleased,” he observed suddenly.

Moire be damned! Cameron thought viciously. “’Twas never my idea to marry her. Nor did I say I would. As for Meredith, you need not worry, Egan. ’Tis a matter of vengeance, that is all. Aye, I want her—and aye, I will have her. But never would I forsake either you or my clan.”

His vow seemed to reassure Egan, and the talk turned to other matters. Yet images of Meredith lingered in the back of his mind.

The bruised, wounded look in her eyes the other night filled him with guilt…and made him want to shake her senseless! But he was set on his course and naught would sway him. Oh, she spurned him with words, but her mouth had not lied. Her lips had flowered beneath his like a fragrant bloom beneath a noonday sun.

Only this morning she had been plaiting her hair, its fiery length drawn over one shoulder. Her nape lay bare and fragile and vulnerable. His rod swelled thick and rigid as a lance, hidden only by the folds of his kilt. The urge to plant his mouth on her nape, to taste her creamy flesh and drag her into his arms was overwhelming.

He had not.

He had watched her these past days—watched her
and considered, his mind ever churning. She stirred him in ways he’d not thought possible. She stirred him unbearably, as no other woman ever had. Oh, she spurned him with her adder’s tongue, but Cameron could not forget her wild panic the night he’d told her she would bear his son…

He recalled the way she shrank back whenever he touched her. Still, something in her must have recognized that he would not hurt her, for of late she’d begun to unwittingly ease closer whenever one of his men approached…

At last it struck him.

She was uncomfortable in the presence of men.

He’d pondered long and hard. At first he’d thought it was because of the feud between the clans. What woman would not be frightened by her enemies? Then he’d begun to wonder if her sheltered existence was not to blame. Yet it was just as he’d told Egan—it was only the last few years she’d spent at the nunnery. Indeed, she was a woman full grown when she’d departed Castle Munro for Connyridge.

Some little-known sense inside him whispered there was more. Ah, if only he knew! Yet he knew intuitively she would not tell him. She would no more confide in him than she would in any other MacKay.

Yet she sought refuge beside him, pressed herself close though he suspected she knew it not! It pleased him—pleased him mightily. There and then he decided it was but a matter of strategy. It was the way of the Highlanders to strike when the enemy least expected it, where it was least expected. He must breach her defenses. Invade little by little. Aye, he would woo her. School her. Charm and gentle her to his hand.

He was most certainly determined. Now, if only he possessed the patience!

The situation was a trifle different for Meredith. Where Cameron was concerned, she was duly wary. At times he was coolly remote, saying little to her. Yet it was disconcerting beyond measure to turn and discover his gaze full upon her—and not once did he avert his gaze whenever their eyes chanced to meet.

Alas, she was hardly indifferent to him, much as she wished otherwise! He was a man of raw masculinity, and everything within her was aware of it. She experienced a shattering rush of awareness whenever he was near. She was achingly conscious of everything about him—the way he towered above all others, the potent strength of his hands, the heat exuded by his body.

He had kissed her several more times, long, drugging kisses that made her head spin and her heart pound. As if that were not enough, his kiss blazed through to other, forbidden places. The very summit of her breasts, which seemed to swell and grow strangely erect. Last night, when he’d reached across for a hunk of bread, he’d brushed her nipple. A white-hot jolt shot through her. She wondered what it would feel like against her bare skin, with no barrier between…

He touched her. Often. Deliberately. She knew what he was doing. He wanted her to grow used to him. Meredith was always careful to preserve her modesty, bathing and dressing once he had gone—thank heaven he had yet to invade her privacy! As for him, it was just as he’d so boldly stated that first night in his chamber—he had no such qualms. He walked about the chamber naked. He slept naked! Meredith always averted her head, though one day he’d caught
her staring. Her eyes squeezed shut—yet still she could see the shape of him, tall and sculpted and lean. He’d laughed, the rogue—he’d laughed! And whenever she chanced to meet his gaze, his eyes were ever upon her—within was a simmering heat he made no effort to disguise. For a time she hadn’t known what it was…but now she did.

It was desire. Stark and blazing and utterly irrefutable.

Indeed, she mused one night as they lay in bed, it was almost worse than before. She could not look at him without remembering what he wanted of her…without imagining what he would do…what he would have of her! For he was right…

It was inevitable. She would be his…

The only question was when.

The strain was almost more than she could bear. At times she almost wished he would take her and be done with it—indeed, she wondered wildly why he hadn’t.

While her nights were spent with Cameron slumbering by her side, her days were spent in solitude. Self-pity had never been her way, yet never had she been so forlorn, so forsaken. She walked about the bailey as she pleased, but always Egan or Finn lurked somewhere near…always. Though she did not hate them, she hated what they did…the way it made her feel, as if she’d done something wrong—that she was some abominable outlaw guilty of some horrible misdeed. She bitterly resented Cameron at those times, for she knew it was at his orders that she remained beneath their scrutiny.

There was a small stone bench just outside the chapel where she liked to sit. Here in the far corner of the bailey, she was removed from the bustle all
around; here it was quiet and peaceful. Flowers grew in sweet profusion, lending an air of tranquillity where she could forget, at least for a time, that she was a prisoner here.

It was here, one warm summer morning nearly a fortnight after her arrival at Dunthorpe, that she lingered after her prayers; she had been at Dunthorpe nearly a fortnight. With the tip of her finger she traced the mason’s mark carved into the stone at the base of the corner, her thoughts on her father.

A trill of feminine laughter floated on the air. Meredith raised her head. Her heart lurched. It was Moire—Moire with Cameron. Small fingers nested cozily in the crook of his arm. Moist, wine-red lips smiled directly up into his face. He said something and laughed down at her.

There was a sharp, knifelike twinge in Meredith’s chest—for an instant she thought it was her wound, yet the pain had long since fled.

Why? she screamed inwardly. Why was this happening? Surely she was not jealous. Surely she was not drawn to him…

A slight movement from the corner of her eye snared her attention. She glanced over to see a sweet-looking young girl with huge brown eyes staring at her. Meredith judged her to be perhaps four or so.

Her mouth relaxed into a smile. “Hello, there,” she said softly.

The child said nothing, merely gazed at her, one finger pressed against her lips.

Meredith tried again. “My name is Meredith.” She tipped her head to the side. “What’s yours?”

The finger lowered. Rosy lips pursed, as if in deep thought. Then, a whisper: “Aileen.”

“Aileen,” she repeated, then smiled. “’Tis a beau
tiful name.” She patted the space beside her. “Would you like to come sit beside me, Aileen?”

The child hesitated, then clambered up beside her. Round eyes peered up at her, intently searching her features. All at once the girl reached out and touched a silken tendril of hair where it trailed across Meredith’s wrist. She’d arisen late this morning, and so she’d left it unbound.

“Your hair is bright,” said Aileen.

“Aye, lassie, that it is.”