Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (29 page)

“Aye. So I have.” She slipped the last of the pins from her hair. Her thick, shining braids tumbled to just below her waist. “So what did you wish to imply?” she asked, her fingers undoing the plaits, tugging at the glossy blue ribbons she’d used to cross-garter them. “I truly want to know.”

Magnus blew out a frustrated breath. “God kens, I am not blessed with Hugh’s silvered tongue, lass.” He sought to excuse himself. “By
different purposes,
I but meant that while I am betting neither of us will deny a certain physical need, it is my wish to give you pleasure this night. It is the night of our wedding feast and I would know it special for you.”

He paused, made a conscious effort to stop the wretched flow of words but couldn’t. “And you, precious lass, will be wanting such closeness
all
nights,” he said, near choking on the words. “I can see it in your eyes.”

And it terrifies me more than the thought of the earth opening up beneath my feet.

“I see.” She tightened the plaid around her, gathering it higher until the voluminous folds reached to clear beneath her chin.

“Nay, you do not see at all,” Magnus argued, feeling as if he were sinking ever deeper into a bog patch.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, damning his fool stubborn pride. He cursed his honor for not allowing him to ply her with sweet golden untruths to smooth the furrowing of her brow.

“Will it make what must happen between us more . . . er . . . palatable if I swear to you that”—he flicked a hand in the direction of his loins—“
my desire
for you is genuine?”

To his dismay, the words he’d hoped would soothe her only seemed to upset her all the more. The sparking challenge that had been simmering in her eyes now flared to snapping anger, and the sweet flush on her cheeks deepened to the bright shining red of a woman riled.

“Ach, sir, I know well enough that your physical lust is not contrived.” She trailed a slow finger along the table edge—almost as if the white half-moons of her well-kept nails were a dagger’s edge drawn across a rival’s throat.

Magnus swallowed uncomfortably.

Something was sorely amiss.

She reached up to tuck a silky curl of inky-black hair behind her ear. “I am dark enough, am I not?” The soft-spoken words were barely audible above the wind and rain lashing at the window shutters.

A cold dread spread through his gut as Magnus stared at her. “Why do I think we are speaking past each other?”

She shrugged a mite too casually. “I think not.” Looking down, she flicked at something invisible on her bare arm. “How can we be . . . when I only meant that all and sundry are aware of your wenching tastes.”

“My wenching tastes?”

Her gaze snapped back to his. “Your voracious appetite for well-fleshed light skirts with skeins of raven-black hair.” She set her jaw, her flashing eyes daring him to deny it.

And he couldn’t.

It was more than true—he’d just never told anyone why.

And he’d be damned if he’d tell
her.
Doing so would be selling his soul to the Devil.

Giving away the last shreds of his dignity.

So he simply stared at her, hoped the truth wasn’t writ all over his astonished face. “Who told you that?”

She looked down again, this time to trace the table’s wood grain swirls with her fingertips. “Everyone,” she said, her gaze fixed on the table. “Janet, your brother Dugan . . . and others,” she added, making larger swirls with her fingers for each spoken name.

Magnus blew out a breath, rubbed the back of his neck. Saints, the weight of an unseen iron yoke seemed to settle heavier onto his shoulders with each indrawn breath.

“Can you deny it?”

He shook his head, felt the yoke’s weight increase a thousandfold. “I will not lie to you,” he said, running rough fingers through his hair. “I have indeed favored well-formed maids with dark, flowing tresses.”

“So it is said,” she acknowledged, still not looking at him. “And that, sir, is exactly what I meant—the reason I ken you are not adverse to . . . taking me.”

She glanced up then, smoothed one hand provocatively across the fullness of her plaid-draped breasts. “I must surely resemble the tourney whores you are rumored to have been so fond of?”

Nay, lass, they resembled you! That was the way of it!
Magnus’s heart roared the truth at her.

Years of it.

He stood dumbfounded, his tongue weighted by the strictures of his own fool pride.

“That is by with, I swear you,” he jerked, keeping a careful check on his words lest the whole of it pour out like an eddy of free-flowing water. “Sakes, lass, do you not know that the true way of things often runs far deeper than that which lies on the surface?”

It was the closest he could come to spilling his heart to her.

Wishing he
could,
he turned half away from her, fixed his gaze on the windows. Hard rain hammered against the closed shutters, rattling them, and each new clap of thunder released another blinding flash of bright silvery-white light that sharpened the outlines of everything in the chamber in a quick wash of startling black and white.

And in the few moments without pealing thunder and rapid bursts of light, an eerie greenish glow shone through the cracks in the rain-swollen shutter slats—the unholy color, a sure sign of a Highland storm the likes of which seldom had been seen.

At least not in his day.

Not that he was all too sure he’d own to having glimpsed such an otherworldly light even if he had.

Shivering, he gritted his teeth and wished he could have done with this mummery. He came close to going down on bent knee and telling her the truth . . . that he’d wanted her with the whole of his heart since he’d first glimpsed her at the ripe age of two-and-ten.

A tender age, to be sure, but enough years for even the most ambitious of lads to realize the folly of hoping to win the hand of a daughter of such a high and mighty house as MacLean.

In especial, a
feuding
clan.

Nevertheless, it was a plan he’d embarked on with all the gusto and faith of his bold, young heart—a goal he’d clung to every day upon awakening and every night before he’d succumbed to sleep.

He had contrived meetings at each gathering of the island clans. One day, he’d followed her onto the moors, hoping to please her with a bouquet of bell heather. Then she’d hurt her ankle, and after carrying her back to her kinsmen, they’d shunned and reviled him. The experience made it clear how futile his love was for her.

Thereafter, he’d avoided looking at her, the pain of doing so too deep for his young lad’s heart. And the few times he’d slipped and glanced her way, some flaunting evidence of her wealth and status had reminded him of his lacking.

Even so, all through the years, he’d hoped in secret. The thought of her sustaining him until, at Dupplin, utter failure had ripped and shredded even his hardiest hopes and dreams. And then fate had given her to him at last—upon the shards of all his inadequacies.

“Be not so certain you have the fullest rights of it,” she said then, bringing him back to the present, a challenge heating her voice again. “Oft-times there is much truth to be seen on the surface. The tragedy is when we fail to recognize it—or worse, when we do and then deny it.”

Their eyes met and held. “Mayhap, sir, we would both be well-served to acknowledge the ripples on the surface
and
look deeper to find the pebble that caused them?”

Magnus bit back a groan of frustration.

The pebbles lining his path were the size of boulders. Mammoth chunks of granite that would break a giant’s back, much less a mortal man’s.

Narrowing her eyes, his long-desired bride turned a penetrating gaze on him. “I can begin by telling you I shall do my best not to mind that you desire me for my hair color and not becau . . . because I am me.”

He stared at her, slack-jawed.

Could she not
see
his mind? His heart? Even if he did not speak the words?

Ne’er had he known a lovelier maid, or one more desirable.

Especially now, full naked save the enveloping folds of his plaid. Lucifer’s knees, just looking at her, with the fire glow gleaming off her bared shoulders and glinting in the ebony silk of her hair, inflamed him and set his blood to heating with furious, unabated need.

The only problem was the oversized chunk of granite looming up between them—an immovable barrier that had the words
love, joy,
and
intimacy
chiseled all over its hard-glittering surface.

The only truths he couldn’t share with her.

Not if he didn’t want that boulder shattering what wee bit of his pride yet remained intact.

So he would give her what he could—his body, his physical passion, and the knowledge that he indeed cared deeply.

He just wouldn’t mention his true feelings.

For his sake as much as hers.

Not until he’d repaid her brothers every last
siller
and could support her from his own coffers.

“Sweet lass.” He caught her hand, holding her gaze as he brought her fingers to his lips. “You are lovely as no other,” he vowed, trying hard to imagine what Hugh would say in this moment, how his golden-voiced brother would weasel his way out of such a foul-reeking corner.

“To me, you are incomparable,” he tried, the honeyed words sounding silly on his unused-to-tenderness tongue. “Any lass I knew before you, raven-haired or otherwise, is but a distant shadow, that I swear to you.”

Drawing a trembling breath, she pulled her hand from his grasp and looked down. But not before Magnus caught the glitter of unshed tears clinging to her spiky black lashes.

The shimmering gleam of her tears were a swift kick in the teeth to his fool attempts to imitate his sweet-tongued brother.

She waved a stilling hand when he opened his mouth to recite another sonnet-like bit of sentimental nonsense. “Do you know I ought to be relieved?” she said in a small voice that made his heart tilt.

Taking the first step, he hooked two fingers beneath her chin, turned her face to him. “How so?” he asked, rubbing his thumb gently along the smooth line of her jaw. “Relieved in what way?”

“Ach”—she blinked furiously and dashed at her cheeks with the back of her hand—“see you, when I first came here, I feared you might prefer wee slips of maids like Janet, all fair and fragile.” She plucked at the plaid she’d wrapped so securely about her.

In particular, at the folds covering her abdomen.

Moistening her lips, she turned a shimmering gaze on him. “Had I known you relished well-rounded, more womanly-shaped lasses, I would ne’er have spent hours marching—”

Boom, boom, boom!

She clapped a mortified hand over her lips almost as if she, too, had heard the long-faded echo of many pairs of trampling feet trudging down the turnpike stairs.

Magnus heard it without question.

But he also heard a single pair of marching feet—a most fetching feminine pair with the sweetest ankles he’d ever seen. And in his mind’s eye, he saw those delightful feet not just traipsing down endless spirals of winding stone steps, but also making the journey back up the stairs.

Over and over again.

Just as Janet had reported that early morning in the rain-misted bailey.

Comprehension sluicing through him, he stared at her, his heart slamming hard against his ribs. Hoping she wouldn’t notice that his hands trembled, he reached to touch her loosened braids.

“Can it be you were about to admit marching up and down the tower stairs?” he asked, unraveling her plaits until the thick glossy strands spilled free. “And that you did so repeatedly?”

He stretched his fingers through the cool silk of her hair, savored its sweet slide across the back of his hand. Didn’t dare to trust the wild hope beginning to well inside him.

“Did Janet and Dagda perchance catch you in this . . .
unusual
activity?”

She said nothing, but the way she compressed her lips and a slight tensing of her eyelids proved ample answer.

An awkward silence she couldn’t keep for long.

“Botheration!” The expletive burst from her lips and she swiped another hand across her cheeks. “A grand and merry pox on whiche’er of the two told you.”

Magnus folded his arms, waited until a particularly strong buffet of wind ceased rattling the shutters before he spoke. “And will you tell me why you engaged in such foolery?”

Biting her lower lip, his bonnie bride said nothing.

Not that she had need of words—the delicate flush inching up her neck and making her face glow as bright as red-burning peats screamed her ill ease with a loudness more deafening than the sharp cracks of thunder shaking the chamber’s thick stone walls.

He cocked a brow, let the slightest of smiles take any harsh edges off his words—and hammer away a few more chips of stone from the mammoth clump of granite.

His smile broadening, he went on, the words flowing now. “A lass traversing a turnpike stair is none so rare a sight in any keep, I’ll wager, but a fair lady occupying herself with such a task for hours on end is . . . in- triguing.”

And encouraging beyond measure if he was correctly guessing the reason she’d indulged in such nonsense.

He hadn’t developed his physical stamina and muscular build without long hours of hardest training.

She swung away from him, tossed a sheaf of gleaming black hair over her shoulder. “There is naught
intriguing
about it,” she declared, her voice ringing. “For a braw champion of the lists, you are precious dull at kenning a woman’s heart if I must color my reasons for you!”

“Ahh . . . but you color so beautifully,” he said, feeling almost two-and-twelve again, bursting with hope. “Saints, but you are bonnie when you glow like that,” he blurted, grinning at her lovely profile. Noting well the bright red of the cheek turned his way, he wondered if a similar flush kissed the lush fullness of her breasts.

“So-o-o, you would you see me color, would you?” She whirled to face him, a blaze of MacLean fury sparking in her dark eyes. “If I say you what I was doing on those stairs, I shall flush a brighter red than a hundred Highland sunsets!”