Teresa Medeiros (28 page)

Morgan smoothed the rich vellum beneath his fingers. It wasn’t too late to pretend he’d never seen the letter. Angus wouldn’t have hesitated to do just that. It was well within his power to make the Cameron boy vanish with Sabrina none the wiser. The Highland roads were narrow and treacherous, accidents common. A gunshot. A horse’s fatal misstep. A plunge into an icy ravine. It might be spring before a rider’s body was found.

Morgan strode to the hearth and cast the offending missive into the glowing embers. A tongue of flame licked at it, curling and browning its creamy edges.

Just before the greedy flames could engulf it, Morgan snatched it back, burning his fingers. Self-contempt flooded him. He was shaken to realize how low he would sink to keep his bride. ’Twas a plot worthy of Horrid Halbert himself.

Remembering the joyous hunger in Sabrina’s eyes as she had reached for the letter and the bitter disappointment that had dawned in its wake, Morgan admitted it wasn’t Dougal’s summons he feared or even Sabrina’s longing to return to the opulent manor house where she belonged. It was his own cowardice. He was afraid he wouldn’t be man enough to let her go.

His lips set in a grim line, he tucked the letter back into his plaid, realizing in the eerie hush that
something had changed. The mocking voice of the bagpipes had stilled.

Sabrina sat across from Morgan and picked at her supper in oppressive silence, determined not to comment on his absence of the previous night. Her melancholy had deepened during the long day, matched by the oppressive snow-laden clouds brooding over the mountain peaks. Both Enid and Alwyn had come knocking at her door, but she had sent them away, pleading a genuine headache. Pugsley had spent the day curled into a ball in the corner, his brown eyes unusually soulful. He slept now, twitching and whining at intervals as if troubled by dreams.

Twirling her spoon in her soup, Sabrina studied her husband from beneath her lashes. Tiny lines of exhaustion fanned out from his shadowed eyes. He ate as always, picking up his soup bowl to drain it, eating his meat with his fingers, then licking them clean, stabbing his bread with his dirk and bringing it to his lips.

But not once had he kissed her, called her brat, or given her the contentious smirk he knew maddened her to distraction.

Nor had he mentioned her father’s letter. She suspected he had commanded one of his more educated clansman to read it to him. But she refused to beg for even a pathetic scrap of news from home. Her father’s messenger had been sent back to Cameron that morning, his pouch stuffed with the letters Sabrina had written her mother in the past few weeks. Letters that made no mention of her papa.

When she could no longer bear the impassive scowl hewn on her husband’s features, she shoved back her untouched soup. “Shall I read to you tonight?
Chanson de Roland
, perhaps, or some more
Beowulf?
”

His hand slipped into his plaid, then back out again. Sabrina wondered at the curious gesture. “My head is already achin’, lass. I’ve no desire to fill it with a lot of fancy words.”

She rose, helpless to keep from pacing like a nervous
cat. “Shall we play a game of chess, then? Or I could teach you a new game. Loo perhaps? There are no queens to lose in loo.”

His pained flinch was so brief, she might have imagined it. He slammed the dirk down on the table. “I’m not in the mood for silly games.”

His cross words brought the childlike knot of disappointment she’d been swallowing all day welling up in her throat.

Shielding her face with the fall of her hair, she picked up the clarsach Fergus had propped outside her door earlier in the day. But her hands were clumsy, laden with the same heaviness that weighted her spirit. One of her fingernails caught on the strings, tearing down to the quick.

A passionate oath escaped her. She tucked the throbbing finger into her mouth.

Then Morgan was there, bringing it to his own lips to suck away the welling drop of blood. “ ’Tis a good thing your mother didn’t hear you swear. I’ve seen Brian get his mouth scrubbed with a ball of pomade for far less.”

Sabrina snatched her finger back, unable to bear the erotic play of his beautiful lips around her flesh. She knew she was being petulant, but didn’t care. “I’m sure these walls have seen worse atrocities than my feeble stab at profanity.” She fled to the window, desperate to escape his puzzled scrutiny. “We mustn’t forget the siege of 1465, when the Camerons starved your ancestors until they were forced to begin dining off each other.”

Morgan frowned. “Aye, perhaps that’s when we developed our taste for human flesh.”

He had to strain to hear her soft, bitter words. “Then what a fine delicacy my heart must be.” She stared off toward Cameron, her gaze tracing the glittering ribbon of road that snaked along the cliff’s edge.

Morgan steeled himself behind an armor of apathy before asking softly, “Would you like to go home, Sabrina?”

Sabrina’s breath caught on a broken exhalation.
She wondered for a dizzying moment if her heart would beat again. When it did, she felt no relief. Had Morgan tired of her so easily? Had her unskilled attempts to please him only slaked his appetite for her, or, worse yet, bored him? Perhaps this had been his intention all along—to wreak his sensual revenge on her pliable body, then send her home to her papa, marked with the shame of being a MacDonnell’s willing whore. She hugged back a chill of pure misery, trying to work up the courage and the pride to coolly accept his offer.

Morgan slipped up behind her, his bare feet rendering him noiseless, but before he could touch her, she whirled on him, her eyes glittering like polished sapphires. “Don’t touch me! There’s no further need of it. I’m afraid I’ve failed both you and my father in your misguided attempts to provide an heir to cement your precious peace.
There is no child.
”

Morgan’s initial stab of disappointment was blunted by a rush of possessive joy. Sabrina wasn’t homesick for Cameron. She was grieving because she hadn’t conceived a child. His child.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

She inclined her head. “Since this morning.”

He was still too much of a MacDonnell to resist using his strength to his advantage. Before she could protest, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. He sat down beside her, his hip pressed to her own.

“Are you ill, lass? Do you hurt?”

Sabrina dashed a tear from her cheek. She knew she should feel embarrassed. She had never discussed such things with anyone but her mother. But Morgan’s tender concern was irresistible. Unable to choke a word past the lump in her throat, she nodded and reached up to tap her brow.

His fingers stroked and probed her temples with infinite care, massaging until the tension began to ease from her neck and shoulders.

“Where else?”

She shyly patted her stomach. Stretching out full
length beside her, he rubbed her stomach with the flat of his palm, soothing away the dull ache.

Finally, propping his weight on one elbow, he surveyed her solemnly. “Anywhere else?”

Her hand closed into a fist. She pressed it to her heart, knowing it was the one pain he would be helpless to soothe. She was wrong.

His lips descended on hers, coaxing and nibbling until they parted for the tender, possessive stroke of his tongue. Even as his mouth wandered down the column of her throat, he was patiently opening the tiny buttons of her bodice, freeing the lush bounty of her breasts for the pleasure of his hands. Her fists caught in the fair silk of his hair as he inclined his head, sucking fiercely until her womb contracted with delight.

“Morgan!” she gasped. “Don’t you understand? There’s no need for you to do this. It’s impossible for you to get me with child right now.”

His hands pushed up her gown, slid her cumbersome petticoats down over her hips. The dark passion in his eyes robbed her of breath. “Humor me.”

Sabrina was dazed by the impact of his words. Morgan MacDonnell had finally betrayed his own pride. Fierce joy spilled through her, tempered with triumph. This magnificent, arrogant man wanted her more than he wanted a son.

“Are you sure?” she whispered, arching boldly against him as his lips claimed hers again.

He lifted his head to give her a shameless wink. “You’ve been lax, lass, not to have studied the MacDonnell motto. ’Tis written in Gaelic, but it translates as, ‘Any battle worth winnin’ is worth sheddin’ a wee bit o’ blood over.’ ” The naughty twinkle in his eyes deepened. “ ‘Especially if it’s not your own’.”

Sabrina awoke to an empty bed. She lifted her tousled head to find Morgan at the table, his plaid knotted at his waist. A single taper burned, holding the shadows at bay and casting a golden sheen over his inclined head.

She threw back the bedclothes and padded over
to him, wearing the woolen nightdress he had tucked her into when the warmth of their bodies hadn’t completely stilled her shivers.

A children’s alphabet book lay open on the table in front of him. It had been Sabrina’s favorite as a little girl and she planned to use it to teach some of the younger MacDonnells to read. Each of the letters was illustrated by a handsome woodcutting of an exotic animal. Morgan’s lips moved with painstaking care as he compared its pages to a crumpled sheaf of paper.

Sabrina laid a hand on his shoulder. He started guiltily and slammed the book shut.

She clutched her pounding heart. “Mama always warned me never to sneak up on a MacDonnell.”

He glowered at her. “Sound advice. You’re lucky I didn’t jump you.”

A helpless giggle escaped her. “I thought you already did.”

His sizzling glance told her he hadn’t forgotten. She stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder. He cupped his hand around the paper, then relented. “Ah, hell, I can’t read the bloody nonsense.”

He exposed a shabby scrap of vellum that looked as if a rat had been chewing on it. As Sabrina smoothed it beneath her palm, bits of wax that had once belonged to the Cameron seal crumbled in her hand. Her heart quickened with excitement.

Morgan wearily rubbed his eyes. “As best as I can figure, your da, a bison, and an alligator are ridin’ to MacDonnell to fetch their elephant.”

Sabrina swallowed her grin with difficulty and hungrily scanned the letter. “No. My father,
Brian
, and
Alex
are coming for a visit. They wish to retrieve
Enid
and see how we are faring as husband and wife.”

Morgan stroked his chin. “Checkin’ up on me, eh? I’m surprised the crafty son of a”—he caught her reproving look and cleared his throat—“Cameron waited this long. When are they comin’?”

“Before Christmas.” Her fingertip traced the bold line of script etched at the bottom of the page. A note
of wonder dawned in her voice. “He didn’t forget me after all.”

Morgan quenched a childish flare of jealousy, wishing he’d been the one to make his wife’s face glow with such serene joy. “What’s it say, lass?”

“ ’Tis from one of my mother’s favorite poems by Robert Herrick.” Thinking how odd it was that her father’s enigmatic message mirrored the MacDonnell creed so aptly, Sabrina met her husband’s wary eyes and softly whispered, “ ‘Ne’er the rose without the thorn.’ ”

With the ruthlessness of a warring chieftain, Sabrina prepared the MacDonnells for her family’s visit. She blithely ignored their grumbling and muttered oaths, seeing through their hostility to the fear beneath. Fear they would be found lacking by the wealthy Cameron laird. Fear they would be laughed at, mocked for their poverty, their ignorance, they crudity.

Grudgingly blessing her mother’s foresight, Sabrina delved deep into the trunks Elizabeth had packed, finding for each of them some talisman that might give them the illusion of courage.

For Fergus it was a handsome magnifying glass carved from African ivory, and for Alwyn a brass thimble. Alwyn put it to good use without delay, thumping Fergus on the head whenever his roving, magnified eye strayed to another girl.

Fearing the magical trunks weren’t as bottomless as they seemed, Sabrina and Enid plundered their own wardrobes, sewing steadily to make gowns out of petticoats,
lacy caps from drawers, and cloth slippers from the voluminous underskirts of one of Enid’s ball gowns.

Even the gnarled crone who had claimed dominion over the kitchen proudly sported a girlish pink bow fashioned from one of Sabrina’s garters. Eve remained resistant to Sabrina’s overtures. Sabrina found her gift of a gold comb abandoned in a dirty mound of snow. She just shook her head, revising her opinion that Morgan was the most stubborn MacDonnell she had ever met.

The castle floors were swept clean, cobwebs peeled from the tarnished torch sconces, and the holes in the walls disguised by threadbare tapestries.

Morgan returned to the chamber late one night after spending the day clearing chunks of rubble from the narrow corridors. He picked his way over mounds of fabric only to discover his young wife asleep before the fire, her fingers still curled around her needle. Violet shadows tinted the delicate skin beneath her eyes.

She was doing none of this for her own benefit, he reminded himself. She had nothing to prove to her father. She was working herself to exhaustion so her husband could stand before Dougal Cameron and look him in the eye without the barriers of envy and shame erected between them.

Tenderness flooded him, tempering his lust with chagrin. His demands on her since learning of Dougal’s impending visit had been both frequent and intense. He had made love to her with fierce abandon, a primitive possessiveness driving him to remind her that she was his woman now, a Cameron no longer. Her broken cries in that moment when she came apart beneath him were like song to him, an affirmation of the wild, sweet power that bound them. He yearned to sow his seed in her yielding body, to see their future shining in the eyes of their daughter.

A thread of guilt wove through his longing. He had made love to her with tender violence, yet still had not brought himself to say the words that would lay his heart bare and reveal his pride for the folly it was. His own cowardice shamed him.