TemptationinTartan (7 page)

She rested her forehead on her hands, folded on the tub’s
rim, and wondered if she really had a choice. But did that matter? When had
Kieran failed to take her to heaven and back?

She sucked in a tremulous breath and nodded.

He plunged into her hard and fast, sawing his finger in and
out of her arse in time with his cock. Ecstasy enveloped her and she screamed
again with fear and joy as he took her to a place she’d never imagined could
exist.

His tool swelled inside her. Hauling her upright, he pulled
his finger out of her rear so he could again seize her breasts, again nibble on
her neck. This time she accepted his mark without resistance and he sucked the
tender flesh into his mouth as she trembled in his arms, her bottom sizzling
inside and out.

The fire crackled as Kieran tore his lips and teeth away
from her. He came with mighty spurts that washed hot and thick over her womb.

Long moments passed as they knelt, bodies locked together in
the tub.

His hand snaked around to caress her pearl. “So big, so
swollen and tender.” His voice held amazement.

“You make it so, husband,” she whispered. The aftermath of
their loving rolled through her in hot waves.

“Let’s to bed.” He lifted her out of the tub, helping her
when her trembling limbs faltered, and dried her with the old, soft linens.
When she was dry and nestled beneath the sheets and quilts, he fetched a tray
set outside their door. After sharing soup, they lay together, wrapped in a
contentment that was beyond any dream Lydia had ever cherished.

* * * * *

A waft of cold air awoke Lydia. Where was Kieran? Though it
was still dark, he wasn’t in bed. The bed hangings were parted slightly,
allowing in a thin, chill breeze. She guessed that he was down the hall using
the necessary in the old-fashioned garderobe, and rolled over to go back to
sleep.

Lydia woke again to a sound she hadn’t heard since
childhood, that of a razor stropping against a leather strap. She opened the
bed hangings to see that their tub had been removed and the screen folded back.
Clad in trews, Kieran stood before a mirrored dresser, sharpening his razor. He
put down the strop, tested the edge of the razor and, evidently finding it
sharp enough, poured steamy water into the basin from a ewer.

Picking up a cake of shaving soap and a brush, he lathered
his face and shaved off his beard with deft hands, wiping himself clean with
another strip of soft linen. He then washed his torso. She smiled, remembering
the times she’d covertly watched her father engaged in the same ritual. She’d
never shared such intimacy with William, who, as a soldier, had been frequently
absent and when he was present, had never shared a room with her—had never
awoken with her. She now realized that he’d never been a true husband to her
and certainly not a friend.

Kieran was all that and more.

He turned and, seeing her, came to their bed still holding
the strip of linen. He passed it around her neck and used it to draw her close.
“Good morrow, wife.”

“Good morning, sir.” She strove for a demure tone. “And how
did you sleep?”

“Well enough.” He tugged her closer and kissed her forehead,
then her cheek, then her lips.

“Umm.” She kissed back, then rubbed her face against his
newly shaven cheek. She’d enjoyed his beard but liked him smooth as well. She
pulled away to regard him and stretched her arms over her head, pleased to see
Kier’s dark, intent gaze fixed on her breasts as they lifted.

“Ah, ye’re bonnie.” He dropped the linen and cupped them
just as Elsbeth entered the room. With a squeak, she darted back into the
dressing area.

Lydia giggled as Kier shouted with laughter. “Lassie,
lassie.” He hastened to the dressing room. “If ye flee every time my wife and I
touch, ye’ll be hidin’ all day long.” Lydia covered her breasts as he came back
leading the maid.

Elsbeth looked at the floor, seeming to scrutinize the
planks. “Yes, milaird.”

“Ye’ve no reason to be afeared,” he told her, picking up a
shirt. “Now help milady dress for breakfast.”

“The green robe
a la Française
, Elsbeth,” Lydia said.
A more comfortable style than the panniered gowns she’d worn in England and
Edinburgh, it featured loose back pleats that fell from the neckline but lacked
a stomacher. “And a scarf for my neck.”

When she’d been dressed, Kieran handed her a round silver
brooch. “Here’s something for ye, wife.”

“Thank you.” Smiling, she examined it closely. A stag’s head
surrounded by elaborate filigree, similar to the carvings she’d seen on the
Celtic crosses. “’Tis quite handsome. Is this our clan’s badge?”

“Aye, it is.” He used it to fasten the scarf that Elsbeth
had brought, then tucked her arm into his.

Lydia had been too tired the night before to observe the
fortress’s layout. Now she noted that the Laird’s Tower, in which they resided
with some of their servants, was separate from the Garrison Tower that held the
kitchen and the eating hall on its lower floor, with the armory and select
warriors housed above. “A neat plan,” she told Kieran.

“Aye, it lessens the danger of fire destroying our home and
hurting the bairns, when we have them.” His smile was laden with promise.

A tingling expectation shot through her limbs. “Who else
lives in our tower?”

“Your maid and just a few other family. Euan and Dugald live
above and there are storerooms also.”

She didn’t say so, but was happy that neither Moira nor
Grizel lived in their home.

On their way to the Garrison Tower for breakfast, she saw
that each of the three towers, including the Dark Tower, were connected by
colonnades abutting the courtyard and linked above by battlement-trimmed
walkways that functioned as lookouts. Sea-mist shrouded the fortress, softening
the castle’s stony edges, and she wondered if she’d ever see the sun again.

Passing by the guards, she entered the Garrison Tower with
Kieran holding her elbow. The aromas of baking bread and frying meat
overwhelmed her and her belly gave an unladylike rumble. She felt her cheeks
redden, but he laughed and took her directly into the tower’s Great Hall,
which, with the kitchen, occupied the ground floor.

“’Tis a newish addition, the kitchen,” he said. “P’raps
fifty years old or so. More or less.”

“Ah,” she said. “Newish.”

“And the hall has been altered a time or two.”

Long tables lined with stools stretched the hall’s length. A
massive open fireplace dominated the center of the longest wall. A steaming
cauldron sat on the hearth, with a servant ladling out bowls of oat porridge
and handing them to the guards.

One table was placed on a dais a step or two above the rest.
The laird’s high table? Her breath stuck in her throat.

Good heavens. It was like being a queen. The weight of her
new role struck her and she swayed in Kier’s grasp.

“Steady, now,” he murmured in her ear. “The clansmen are
watching ye. They’re always watching to see signs of weakness in us. Our
confidence is their strength.”

She straightened her spine and lifted her head. She was a
Swann, member of a family whose blood was nobler than that of the Hanoverian
royals. She could do this. She paced by Kieran’s side, wondering if a gracious
smile was enough or if she ought to attempt a wave. Instead, she imitated what
her husband did.

The hall was warm and she unpinned the scarf she’d arranged
to hide the marks Kier had left on her throat the night before. He’d been
deliciously fierce…

She wasn’t prepared for the gasps and outright
finger-pointing.

“Good heavens,” she said to Kieran. “What’s wrong? Is there
a smut on my nose, or is my hair sticking up?”

He grinned. “They’re looking at your neck.”

She promptly replaced the scarf. “Have we no privacy?”

“Very little. That’s what being the laird’s consort is
about. You belong to the clan, now.” He seated her at the high table, where
carved chairs awaited them. “Cannae ye manage it? For ye must, ye know.”

“Of course,” she said, putting on her best regal mien.

He laughed. “Elsbeth, take yourself some provender and sit.”
He nodded at a stool near Lydia’s chair.

A servant approached bearing plates. Baked bannocks and
fried sausage, hot and aromatic. Lydia ignored the clan’s whispers and dug in
with an appetite.

Every meal was a revelation. She’d been given the impression
that the Highlands were poor and was surprised at the amount and variety of
food available. All manner of fish and whelks from the sea, plus game from the
surrounding mountains. Occasional mutton from an elderly sheep. Herbs, fruit
and vegetables both cultivated and wild. In midsummer the clan ate well and
focused on stockpiling food for the winter. Meat and fish were smoked,
vegetables, fruit and herbs dried. In the lee of the castle, silted fishponds
were dug out and replenished. Oats and barley were coaxed from the stony earth
wherever possible. The additional foodstuffs Kieran had purchased were properly
stored.

Most nights Lydia slept like the dead, given that her days
were so full. After a breakfast of oat porridge or bannocks with fried sausage,
she’d meet with Fenella to learn Gaelic and discuss matters relating to running
castle and clan. She rarely saw Kieran during the day because he hunted and,
with his men, patrolled the clan borders. During the afternoon she visited
crofters’ huts to cement her relationship with the clanspeople and, with
Fenella’s help, ensured that they had everything they needed.

She met old Mhairi, mother to several clanswomen and
grandmother to Moira and Grizel, who were cousins. Mhairi was the clan’s
herbalist, midwife and general healer. Lydia gathered that Mhairi did a good
job, for few babies or mothers died in childbed.

“’Tis because our lairds protect us.” Fenella poured an
infusion for the three of them.

Mhairi rocked and nodded in her chair. “Aye,” the elderly
woman said. “And we eat well, from the land and the sea. The mothers and
bairns, all are healthy.”

“Do many become ill in the winter?” Lydia sniffed the steam
rising from her mug, and detected rose, lavender, honey and a few other flower
scents she couldn’t name.

“Aye, well, we have our share of sniffles and sneezes. But
we are careful, except for the fishers.” Mhairi frowned.

“The fishers?” She cautiously tasted the brew. Hot but
delicious.

“Niall and his cousins, our little fishing fleet,” Fenella
explained. “They insist on going out in all weather.”

“I’ll see about that,” Lydia said. “What are the fishponds
for if not to feed us when the sea is too rough?”

“The ocean sprites call them, milady,” Mhairi said. “They
cannae be stopped.”

Ocean sprites indeed! Lydia stopped her contemptuous snort
and instead looked about. The cozy cottage was clean, lacking the animal odors
that she’d been led to expect by her cousin, who had described the crofters’
dwellings as “middens”. Quilts, patchwork and knitted both, adorned simple
wooden chairs. Garlands of herbs and garlic were draped over the whitewashed
door frame.

She learned quickly to question everything she’d been
previously told about the Scots and Highlanders. The English said that the
Highlanders were filthy savages. But here, homes were clean, as were their
inhabitants. The Highlands were said to be poor. Though she’d seen impoverished
villages on her journey north, Kilborn Castle was comfortable and the clan ate
well. Highlanders were supposedly ignorant, but her husband had attended
university.

Her days were full of new discoveries. So she generally
slept well, but on more nights than she liked she was awakened by a cold blast
of air flowing through a slit in the bed hangings, and invariably she’d find
that her husband was gone.

When she awoke for the fourth time in a week, it was soon
enough to reach out and grab his hand. “What troubles you, husband?” she asked.

“Nothing. I’ll be right back.” His tone was evasive, even
dismissive. He’d never spoken to her in that manner before.

“You get up night after night. Something’s wrong.”

He sat down heavily and the bed creaked. “I am sometimes wakeful
and go to talk with the guards or walk the wall.” He kissed her forehead, cheek
and chin—a bit hastily, she thought—before he left.

She lay back in the cooling bed linen. P’raps he referred to
the upper castle walk but she wasn’t sure she believed him. That was new, also.
New and unsettling. She hadn’t had any reason ever to doubt Kieran’s word. She
didn’t now, not really. She couldn’t accuse him of lying to her.

But she knew something was amiss.

Chapter Nine

The next night she awoke alone, Lydia got up and looked for
Kieran, wondering what errand would take him from their bed—an errand that he
concealed from her. If she saw him in the courtyard or walking the wall, well
and good, she’d go back to bed and rest with an easy mind. If not…

Clad only in a nightgown with a plaid thrown over her
shoulders for warmth, she slid her feet into a pair of mules and went down to
the lower hall. No Kieran. Outside. no Kieran in the courtyard, which was lit
softly by torches nearing the end of their fuel. Guards huddled in a cluster
across at the Garrison Tower, playing some sort of dice game while they kept
watch, but her husband was not among them.

But above and toward the sea, she heard the faint creak of
hinges. She looked up to see Kieran step out of a door in the side of the
crumbling old keep. Shoulders slumped, he slouched along the upper walkway in
her direction and was joined by the castellan, Euan.

Kier’s gait was utterly different from his usual confident
stride. Her curiosity building, she reentered their tower and climbed several
flights of stairs, went through a storeroom and emerged on the same walkway,
staying in the shadow of a battlement.

She was familiar with the way because she also frequently
walked the wall for the view or to watch the birds in the moat. No graceful
swans as swam the ponds in Surrey, though. These were raucous seabirds of
several breeds she couldn’t identify, fighting over whatever edible bits found
their way into the moat.

And she could look for hours at the sea below, crashing with
mighty waves against the cliff and the castle’s walls, watch the clan’s
fishermen pulling their light craft up onto their cove’s small, rocky beach
before unloading their catch, smile at their children paddling in the shallows,
collecting whelks and shellfish, listen to the cries of gannets and gulls as
they floated above.

But she usually walked during the day, most often in the
warm afternoons, when the sun occasionally peeked out to light a glittering
blue-gray ocean. Now stars gleamed overhead and a waning moon cast shadows made
angular and awkward by the crenellated parapet. The night was still but for a
slight breeze off the water, which brought snatches of conversation to her
ears.

“Did ye find anything tonight?” Euan asked. Or so she
thought. The men were a distance away and spoke in a patois of English and
Gaelic.

“Nay, just dust and rats.” Lydia heard frustration in her
husband’s voice. “I dinnae know if I want to find him or not, ye ken?”

“Aye, I ken.”

“I worry that one day I will end up the same way, alone but
for the rats and mice.”

Her heart ached to hear the pain and uncertainty in her
husband’s voice, though she didn’t understand the reason. The same way as what?

“Ye are your own man and in control of your fate.” Euan
sounded calm and certain. “But have ye told Lady Lydia? About him, about us?”

Him? Who was “he”? Who was “us”? The clan, the family, or
just Euan and Kier?

“Are ye mad?” her husband answered Euan. “She was affrighted
enough on the way here.”

“Aye, I heard about it. Ye dinnae think she’s suspicious of
a man who ripped off the head of his enemy and drank his blood?”

Kieran laughed bitterly. “At least she doesnae suspect the
truth. I doubt she’s ever heard the word ‘vampire’.”

Lydia strained her ears. She thought her husband said something
like “vespers”, but didn’t understand what evening prayers had to do with a
secret her husband was keeping from her. Was it a Gaelic word she didn’t yet
understand?

A secret that others knew—possibly many others. Lydia
remembered how crofters from neighboring villages had crossed themselves as
they’d passed. Kieran had told her to pay them no mind, that up in the
Highlands Sassenachs were few and of unsavory, even unholy, reputation.

But how could the Highlanders know she was English? What if
he’d deliberately misled her? What if the peasants were afraid of Laird Kilborn
and not of his Sassenach wife?

“Have you taken from her?” Euan asked.

Taken what? Lydia wondered.

“Aye. Like the finest whisky, she is. Sweet, but…oh, how she
burns. She fires my soul. Intoxicating.”

Her cheeks flamed.

“Have a care,” Euan said.

“I will, I will. Though ’tis hard. She slakes my thirst like
no other.” Kieran groaned. “Och, it’s afraid I am. If I lose control, take too
much from her, turn her or worse, kill her—”

“Ye willnae,” Euan said while Lydia’s heart stuttered.

Turn her into what? Kill her? Her husband planned to kill
her? But he sounded frustrated, even despondent, not desirous of her death.

His thirst? His thirst for her? For sex? For what?

“We’re born, not made,” Euan continued.

“And what was I born?”

“We willnae ken for a long time. Dinnae worry about it now.”

“I am afraid of what I am and what I may become.” Kier
sounded miserable.

Lydia was astounded. She’d thought he was happy and hadn’t
had any inkling of some hidden sorrow.

“Dinnae fear the change.” Euan touched Kier’s shoulder. “In
this way, we protect the clan.”

“Is it worth the cost?”

What under heaven was going on?

She sensed someone by her side and turned. Moira’s catlike
green eyes gleamed in the faint light of the tiny candle-stub she carried.

“Ye must wonder,” Moira said without preamble.

Lydia paused. How much should she say? “Yes, I do.”

“The answers ye seek are in that auld keep.” Moira gestured
with the candle, which sat in a small but ornate pewter holder. Her red curls
floated on the chilly sea breeze.

Lydia shivered. “Milaird forbade me to enter the Dark
Tower.”

“Dinnae ye wonder why?”

The woman was so close to Lydia that she could smell the
lavender Moira used to keep her plaidie fresh.

After a brief hesitation, Lydia said, “Of course. I’m but
human.”

Something strange edged Moira’s chuckle. “I dinnae doubt
it.”

An odd statement. “Why should I trust you? You want my
husband. I feel your jealousy.”

“’Tis true.” Moira shrugged. “The brothers, Kieran and
Ranald both, didnae hesitate to take us when they, and we, pleased. Along with
the old laird.”

“Do not use his name.”
Lydia’s unaccustomed temper
burned white-hot.

Moira ignored the command, instead continuing, “We all know
what the Kilborns are.”

“What they are? What do you mean?”

“He hasnae told ye, has he? Ask him what happened to his
mam.”

“I know what happened to his mother. She died in
childbirth.”

“Did she now?” Moira’s mirthless laugh was high and
frenzied. Fortunately, the wind blew from the sea to land and didn’t carry the
uncanny sound to Kieran and Euan.

“He bites your neck and drinks from ye. Dinnae ye worry that
one day he willnae stop?”

Lydia’s brain froze. No, the thought had never occurred to
her. Unwillingly, her memory brought forth the sickening sight of her husband
slaking his thirst with the MacReiver’s blood.

“He’s quit yer bed night after night…dinnae ye wonder where
he goes?”

“Not to you,” Lydia snapped.

“Aye, ’tis true, that is. He takes from ye so often, ’tis a
miracle ye’re still able to stand upright. Besotted with ye, he is.”

Moira’s open hostility unnerved Lydia. Were the Kilborn
women as wild as the Kilborn men?

And what did she mean by, “takes from ye so often”? “What do
you—”

“He goes to the auld keep.” Moira nodded at the two men, who
still stood near the ancient door, conversing in low tones. As she left, she
flung a final taunt. “Dinnae ye wonder why?”

* * * * *

The next morn, Kier’s footfalls dragged as though he
struggled through a marsh rather than the gentle mist that shrouded the way to
the Great Hall. He glanced at Lydia and saw that a slender line, probably
invisible to anyone but him, had appeared between his wife’s fine, dark brows.
A worry line it was, and he continued to study it throughout their mostly silent
repast. Something was on the lassie’s mind, and he hesitated to ask her what it
might be. What if she asked again about his nocturnal ramblings? What if she
saw him slip inside the keep?

What if she followed?

He couldn’t continue to evade her questions without lying
outright and his feelings for her, as well as his honor, wouldn’t allow that.

He was aware of the gossip. Had she also heard the muttering
and the murmurs? News traveled around the clan in Gaelic so mayhap the blather
hadn’t reached her ears.

What he’d done to the MacReiver had spread among the
crofters like spilled blood and this morning, like every morning at breakfast
in the Great Hall, guards and servants peered at Lydia’s delicate throat,
noting every mark and nibble. He couldn’t stop, not with her tender neck
offered so sweetly and she so eager… The pointing and whispers wouldn’t stop
either. Might as well try to prevent the tide from coming in or the fog
settling on the meadow.

But he could distract his wife. She had shown a love for the
sea. P’raps an outing would shift her attention.

He gestured and a servant hurried to his side. “Owain,
please fetch Niall when he returns from the sea this day.”

“Niall the fisherman?” Lydia asked as Owain left.

“You know of Niall?”

“Yes, he and his family often eat here and I have been to
their croft.”

“Have ye, lassie?”

“Of course.” Her expression became regal and he couldn’t
suppress his grin. Despite that new wrinkle between her brows, Lydia was
adjusting to her new role with grace. “What do you think I do with my days
while you are out hunting, milaird?”

He leaned back in his chair. “Och, I dinnae ken.
Embroidering bonnie pictures in the solar, p’raps?”

Her frown could have soured fresh milk, but not his hopes.

“Dinnae be angry at a bit of teasin’, lass, for we’ll have a
fine day.” Kier winked at her and was pleased when the curve of her lashes
swept her blushing cheek. “Niall possesses the means to a great adventure,
milady wife.”

He enjoyed the way her expressions shifted from annoyed to
confused to delighted. “His boat? His boat! We’re going on his boat!” She
bounced in her chair like an excited wee bairn.

Distracted, she was. So far his plan was working.

* * * * *

Instead of waiting for Owain, Lydia insisted upon going down
to the beach to watch Niall bring in his morning catch. So he wouldn’t miss his
midday meal, servants brought baskets of food for the excursion—ale and whisky,
plus hot bannocks and sausage, venison pie and a fruit tart.

She’d donned her old brown woolen sacque with a plaidie
thrown over for extra warmth. Kieran was in his customary black and the
fishermen’s children, waiting on the beach to help their fathers, wore a motley
assortment of rags and tatters. Had Lydia not been to their crofts and huts,
she would have been disturbed by the sight of so many barefoot ragamuffins. As
it was, she knew they wore their shabbiest garb to bring in the catch.

Like the others, Niall’s boat was small, the better to drag
it up onto the beach, for the clan lacked a pier. She guessed that any mooring
would be smashed in the brutal tides of winter.

The narrow cove was strewn with more pebbles than sand, and
the cliff bounding it was pocked with caves. Above them, gannets and other
seabirds wheeled and cried. Mist still hung in the air, unusual for such a late
hour. Most often it burned off by eleven or noon, but the sun would not peek
out this day. The air was still. How could they sail?

But Niall and the other fishermen apparently knew how to
maneuver their craft, for the clan’s tiny fleet—all seven boats—came into sight
just as Lydia began to wonder if her feet would ever feel warm again. Wiggling
her toes in the stout boots she’d bought in Edinburgh, she watched the
red-sailed boats tack this way and that, catching every stray wisp of breeze
while avoiding the sea stacks that rose from the ocean just off the promontory.

The first boat to gain the shore was Niall’s. She recognized
his shaggy reddish brows and bright blue eyes peering at her above a scrap of
tartan wrapped around the lower half of his face. He leaped out of his craft
and dashed to where she was standing while Kieran helped to drag the boat
ashore.

He dragged off his scarf so he could speak while bowing
swiftly. “Milady! Is there aught amiss?” A tiny gold ring in his left ear
glinted in the dim sunlight.

She realized that her presence at his landing was unusual
and to Niall could mean ill news of his family. “Oh, no, not at all. All’s
well. We just… I believe my husband has a favor to ask of you. Involving me.”
She wasn’t certain of her right to ask Niall to take them aboard his boat.

Kieran advanced, rubbing wet hands on his leather breeks.
“Ho, there, Niall.” He tugged a flask from his pocket. “A wee dram to warm your
bones?”

“Thank ’ee, milaird.” Niall took the flask and drank deeply.

“In the mood for a pleasure sail? Milady wishes to see the
ocean close, as it were.”

Niall finished drinking and wiped his mouth with the back of
his toil-roughened hand.

“We brought food,” Lydia said. “Lots.”

A grin split the fisherman’s face. “So milady knows the way
to a man’s heart?”

She grinned back. “How about fresh, warm venison pie?”

They ate watching his mate—his eldest son, Ian, a lad of p’raps
thirteen years—and the other children unload the catch, mostly herring and
whitefish. Lydia put down her bannock and went to see, with Kier following.
Among the silvery fish, a wet brownish mass lay quivering.

“What is that?” she asked, prodding it with the toe of her
boot.

Kier bent down and seized it, whipping it around. Tentacles
swung, some just an inch from her face. She gasped and jumped back while he and
the children laughed.