The Blood of Roses (56 page)

“Struan!” Shock turned the amber of her eyes into gold flames. Her lips moved again, but there was no sound. Her jaw went slack and her hands went limp where they clutched at his arms. She slumped forward and Struan caught her, balancing her across his arm until he could lower her gently onto the ground.

“Why?” he asked in an agonized whisper. “Why, damn ye?”

Tears burned at the back of his throat as he straightened. Blood from his damaged fingers dripped steadily, forming a shallow red pool on the frozen ground.

“I could have made ye happy, lass. I could have given ye the love O’ ten men, if ye’d only given me half the chance.”

Cradling his hand against his chest, he turned and walked back down the mountain.

20

C
atherine’s recovery was slow but steady, aided considerably by Alexander’s constant attention. At the end of four weeks, there was little more to show for her escapade than a puckered red weal on her upper arm.

By contrast, the prince’s situation was deteriorating almost hourly. His health was restored, but his money was gone and he could no longer buy food or munitions for his army. In desperation, he was pressed to requisition corn and meal from the local farmers, stores and supplies from the well-stocked castles and estates surrounding Inverness. This endeared him to few of the local lairds, most of whom no longer believed the prince’s promises of payment could or would be forthcoming.

Following the peaceful occupation of Inverness, Charles Stuart’s army suffered bad luck in cornering and running its adversaries to ground. In the north, Lord Loudoun was proving to be an irksome fox to hunt. After prudently withdrawing his troops from the city, the English earl had taken himself and his army across the Forth to Dornoch, confiscating all the available boats for his use. He found it childishly easy to evade the prince’s attempts to corner him: Each time Charles dispatched men to march around the coastline in the hopes of winning a confrontation, the earl would simply load his men into boats and row them to a safe inlet on the opposite shore.

Fort William, placed under siege by Lochiel and Keppoch, was holding out with the ridiculous ease both chiefs had predicted. The fort was well manned and well provisioned, and any summons to surrender was met with effective cannonades and strafing gunfire.

Lord George Murray, in the meantime, had marched south with seven hundred of his men into his own Atholl country where the Duke of Cumberland’s troops were taking unopposed training exercises. In a single, coordinated assault, Lord George managed to surprise and recapture thirty Hanover positions, but before he could do much more than send the English troops running back toward Perth, the prince commanded him to return at once to Inverness. Cumberland, it seemed, was on the move. He had hoped to keep Lord George occupied in Athol while he swung the main body of his army north through Aberdeen. The ruse worked, insofar as the government army advanced almost eighty miles along the coast without encountering any serious resistance—no real surprise, since Lord James Drummond had but a few hundred men to protect the prince’s flank. He did his best to hold his position at bridges, crossroads, and villages until the last possible moment, but in many cases the rear guard of the Jacobite column was retreating from one end of the town while Cumberland’s forces were entering the other.

“Tomorrow morning?” Catherine said softly. “But that’s—”

“That’s giving us ten more hours together than if I strapped you onto the back of a horse and sent you on your way right now. And the only reason I’m
not
sending you right now is because it’s raining so hard out there, you’d drown before you’d gone a mile.”

The anger in Alex’s voice caused her to flinch and he cursed inwardly, going instantly to her side and taking her small, cold hands into his.

“Catherine … we both knew this would happen. It was your choice, remember, and your promise to leave without question, without argument, the instant I ordered it. Those were the terms you yourself proposed.”

“Yes, but I didn’t think the time would ever come,” she admitted morosely, her violet eyes dark and threatening tears.

“Catherine—” He took her face between his hands and kissed her. “Please don’t make this any harder than it is already. There is so much I want to say to you and so little time to say it.”

Again his voice was rough with anger. Only two hours ago the council had been informed—shocked to hear, more likely—that Cumberland’s army was not encamped forty miles away at the River Spey, as O’Sullivan’s inept scouts had previously reported. They were, in fact, already marching to occupy Nairn, a village less than ten miles from Inverness. The council’s immediate priorities included attempting to recall as many of their scattered forces as possible: The Frasers had returned to Lovat to try to raise more men; the Earl of Cromarty and his fifteen hundred clansmen were still playing cat and mouse with Lord Loudoun across the firth. Many of the clans had sent their men home to plant their spring crops, knowing they had to do so now or face the prospect of their families starving come the fall.

Alexander’s first priority, however, was strictly personal: to make the necessary arrangements for getting his wife safely to Achnacarry. With the situation in Inverness growing more critical by the hour, neither he nor Aluinn MacKail could be spared to escort their women themselves but had instead cajoled, ordered, and finally threatened both Struan MacSorley and Damien Ashbrooke to undertake the urgent mission. One look into Alex’s face had told Catherine how reluctant he was to have to entrust her safety into other hands, however capable and fearsomely adequate those calloused hands might be. And even though she was quaking with fears of her own, she knew she could not let Alex see them. Not now. Not when they both needed to know the other was strong enough to go on alone.

“How can love be frightening?”
she had once asked Lady Maura Cameron.

“When it consumes you. When it blinds you to all other considerations … then it can destroy as easily as it can save.”

Catherine understood Maura’s wisdom now. As strong and indomitable, as brash and fearless as Alexander was in all other respects, he possessed one glaring weakness: his love for her. It could very well blind him to his responsibilities, and it could very well destroy him if he was too preoccupied with her safety to worry about his own.

She
had
to be strong. Now, more than ever, she had to prove herself worthy of the Cameron name, deserving the love of the man who stood before her.

She looked up and their eyes met. A soft, thoughtful smile sent her arms up and around his broad shoulders.

“Ten hours, you say? In that case, my lord, may we declare that, for the sake of expediency, all the usual warnings have been duly delivered and understood, freeing us to put our time and energies to better use?”

Alex narrowed his eyes warily. “Have you anything special in mind?”

“Special?” She reached up and pressed her lips to his. “As in
special
… or simply something to keep our thoughts warm until we are together again at Achnacarry?”

Some—not all—of the guarded look in his eyes faded and was replaced by a gleam of admiration. “If it is your intent to make this night more memorable than any other we have spent together, I confess I am at a genuine loss, madam, to know how to go about it.”

“Has your imagination finally run dry?”

“Has yours?”

Her lips returned to his for a moment, although her eyes remained wide open and obviously intrigued by the challenge.

“My choice,” she warned softly, “would mean playing by my rules.” “Name them.”

She broke her mouth away and smiled the kind of promissory smile that stood the hairs across his neck on end.

“Only one rule, I think. And that is that you are not to move until I tell you you may. Not one muscle, not one finger, not one eyelash.”

“Interesting.” He bent his dark head to the crook of her throat and, locating the pulse beneath her ear, began ravishing it with a predator’s instinct for knowing his prey’s weakest points. “And what do I win for my trouble?”

Her eyes shivered open with an effort. One small caress and her body was swamped with cravings, her senses giddy with anticipation. “Win?”

“Every game should provide some incentive for winning, don’t you agree?”

“Oh. Well, yes, but—”

“If I win,” he said, straightening and folding his arms across his chest, “I want a prize.”

“A prize? Very well …” She ran her tongue across her lips to moisten them. “If you win, I shall climb up onto the roof of our tower at Achnacarry at precisely nine O’clock every evening and stand there quite naked, thinking lewd and lascivious thoughts about you.”

“Creative. And if
you
win?”

“If I win … I shall still climb up onto the roof every night, but I shall think only the stern, celibate thoughts of a matron, and I shall do so swathed in wools and flannels and thick tartan underpinnings.”

His grin widened slowly. “I like the first option better.”

“Then I shouldn’t move, if I were you.” She moved closer, reached up, and started unlacing the front of his shirt. With far more care than was necessary, she peeled the linen back off his broad shoulders and chased it down his arms, positioning his hands firmly and deliberately by his sides as she did so. When he stood bare-chested in front of her, she ran her hands over each curve and muscle, stroking and exploring as if she were a sculptor checking for flaws in the texture and molding of the final masterpiece. There were none. The scars he bore were his badges, and she pressed her lips over each one, exploring the finest lines and creases without haste, lingering on those she knew he had earned since she had become his wife … and some he had earned
because
she had become his wife.

Alex did not move. Not when her nimble fingers unsnapped the buckle at his waist and sent his kilt sliding down around his ankles. Not even when those same feathery fingers skimmed down the flat plane of his belly and danced over the coarse nest of curling black hair at his groin.

Compelled to further boldness, she cradled the heaviness of his flesh in her hands, caressing the shapes and contours, feeling that most formidable part of him grow lighter and lighter until it stood conspicuously on its own.

“I presume you took into account the one exception to your rule,” he murmured blithely.

“A minor infraction. It is allowed.”

His feigned indifference prompted her to increasingly brazen ministrations, but although there was now a distinct, throbbing tautness in every muscle and sinew, he remained mute and did not react. He stared at the fire, his rough-cut hair framing his face in waves of black silk, his square, chiseled features reflecting the golden light from the flames. His skin seemed to absorb the warmth and in turn, reflected it outward, intoxicating her with the heady, masculine scent of woodsmoke and heather. Such familiar territory these rugged planes and ridges, these bands of muscle and coverings of sleek black hair. Yet each time she saw him unclothed or watched him walk from one side of the room to the other, gloriously unmindful of his own nudity or the effect it had upon her, she blushed as fiery hot as an innocent bride. She could feel the slow burn rising in her cheeks now, blooming with a quick brightness when she realized his eyes had closed and his flesh had bucked once in her hands.

“My apologies,” he murmured. “It has been a long day, full of unexpected tensions.”

She looked down at the pearly evidence of just how tense he had been and she felt her blush darken.

“I should think you would know by now the effect you have on me, madam, and that this will in no way affect the outcome of your little game. I warrant, it may even improve it.”

“You sound very sure of yourself, my lord.”

“On the contrary. I feel at a distinct disadvantage.”

She followed his gaze to the row of tiny seed pearl buttons that fastened the front of her robe, then arched her brow as she looked back up at him. “Would you like me to take it off?”

“That would be … more equitable.”

Smiling, she raised her hands and teased each button from its satin loop. When the bodice gaped open to the waist, she released the wide sash and shrugged the garment to the floor. Beneath it, she wore a luminous cloud of fine muslin, full in the sleeves and daintily pleated from the top of the demure neckline to the high, gathered waist. A chaste gown by normal standards, it was rendered all but transparent in the glare of the fire.

A tic in Alexander’s cheek shivered to life. “If I promise not to touch anything I am not supposed to touch …?”

His voice prompted a moist shudder deep within, her, but she smiled the offer away. “I have no doubt you are a man of your word, Sir Rogue. But I am quite capable of managing on my own.”

She pulled the topmost ribbon at her throat and left the ends trailing down, leading her fingers to the next in line … and the next. His eyes followed every move, still the predator’s eyes, but watchful now, wary of traps. Any tension his body may have released was replenished twofold, his flesh rising bold and rigid against his belly again, pulsing gently as more and more soft white flesh came into view.