“Of course it is,” he replied with a slow smile, understanding my meaning immediately. “Who else would it have been?”
“Buthow?” My mind was muddled by the shocking realization. “Why didn’t I realize it before now? Why didn’t Iseeit?”
“Because you didn’t want to. You were blinded by your fear. My own fault, possibly.”
“’Tis you,” I repeated, utterly aghast.
He seemed amused by my amazement. And therewas an edge to his voice that was entirely new to me, infused with tenderness, and, if I wasn’t imagining it, vulnerability. “Is it really that difficult to believe?” He paused, stroking the wing of my eyebrow with the gentle touch of his thumb. “The first time I saw you, that very first time...I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I was imagining you.”
I remembered the night. That first glance. The fascination, the fear.
“I didn’t think such beauty existed,” he said. “Yet you looked as though you were being hunted from all sides. You made it clear enough that you wanted nothing to do with me. So I kept my distance as best I could.”
I wondered if my husband was somewhat overcome by the events of recent days, as I was, and even more so: tomorrow he would leave his home to disengage from peaceful familiarity and embark on a new life that involved navigating the intricate politics of a new clan and fighting for position within it. He sounded more emotional than I had ever seen him, or had even imagined he could be. His husky voice was shadowed and raw. “And then when I saw you wander out of doors, I followed you. I found you in the dark and all alone. I couldn’t stop myself. I had to touch you. I had to taste you. And the way you responded to me...I thought I might go mad with desire for you, lass. It took everything I had to walk away from you.”
“I wanted to disappear with you into the night and never return,” I whispered to him.
“If you had said one word to me, I would have donejust that. I would have done anything you asked of me,” he said. After a long pause, he continued. “I went immediately to my brother, and I spoke to your father that very night. Your father was against it at first. Against me. It was Wilkie he wanted as his successor. But when Wilkie refused, he had no better alternative. He thought me the lesser choice. I’m too unpredictable, less proven, according to the venerable Laird Morrison. It seems I’ll have to prove him wrong.”
I looked up at him, understanding only now the complexity of the challenges he faced, as my new husband.We’d be wise to make the best of our situation, no matter how difficult it may be for either one of us.
He stroked my cheek with the light sweep of his thumb as he spoke. “And the utter terror written across your face on our wedding day...it seems I’ll have to prove you wrong, too.”
“Prove me wrong now, husband,” I said.
His half smile was enough to bring to life his complicated beauty, which seemed to be getting closer to the surface every time I looked at him. But his smile faded almost before it began. “I thought your fear was directed solely at me, but I think I understand it better now. And I’ll assure you again that I will fight any man who touches you. ’Tis even more important now for me to give you time to learn to trust me. The very last thing I want is for you to feel obliged or pressured into intimacy with a man you hardly know, and one that you were beaten into marrying. We’ll wait until the month has passed, wife. Only then. I’m promising this to you,and I’ll not break my vow. And if it takes longer than that before you are ready to give your consent, then so be it. I would not consider myself an honorable man if I felt you were unsure.”
Strangely, I had a fleeting urge to trample through his honorableness and find the scoundrel in him, the brute who had shredded my clothing with his hunting knife, or the reckless pursuer who had kissed me feverishly in a secluded garden because he hadn’t been able to stop himself. I wanted to find those facets of my husband, to entice them and draw them out now. Shamelessly, my mind began to rove in wicked directions, imagining how I might do just that. I thought of reaching under his shirt, to feel the heated skin of his chest, imagining what he might feel like.
But before I could, he disengaged. “Go to bed now, lass. We’ve a long day of travel tomorrow and the next day. You’ll be riding with your sisters in their carriage. I’ll be taking my own horse to ride alongside the guards. Tonight I need to write a letter to my brother.”
“Tonight?” I asked, feeling disappointed not only by his abrupt shift from tender and communicative to once again fierce and war-minded. But his manner had changed, as though he was wary of frightening me. Now that he knew of my less-than-idyllic upbringing, he had reason to tread more carefully. And I appreciated this sensitivity greatly, even if I had newfound reasons to challenge it.
“Aye. I have a bad feeling about this run-in with Campbell. That he has it in his mind to seek outcommissions so deep into the territories of clans that are clearly against his cause is not only irritating, ’tis dangerous. He wouldn’t do such a thing if he didn’t have a lead of some kind, or an invitation. I can’t help wondering if your Morrison clan might be harboring a rebel.”
The thought was disturbing to me, aye, but I had very little exposure to the ways and means of my father’s army. If there were traitors within my father’s ranks, I would likely be one of the last to know about it. My husband seemed thoroughly aware of this, and didn’t ask me for information either way. “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “But there’s discontent in the clan, in general. My father’s illness has taken its toll.”
“More likely it’s his methods that have taken their toll,” Kade said. “He’s overly harsh in his approach, I’ve heard it said. Loyalty is not inspired by tyranny. No one wants to be dictated to without some degree of fairness.”
“Nay,” I agreed. It was true I’d attempted to flee my own clan myself—or more specifically, the dictates of my own father—and for that exact reason. And I was momentarily shaken by my husband’s words. I knew that the Mackenzies were known for their honor, the fairness with which their clan was ruled, their military prowess. Before, I had thought these traits, in a husband, would only serve to make my enslavement to such a man even more extreme. Honor might mean my wifely duties—whatever they might be—would be extensive and strictly enforced. Fairness in the training yards had never, I knew, translated to fairness in the bedchambers. And as for military prowess:thatcharacteristic had been the most worrisome of all; a man who was skilled in war would likely be one who was so fueled by battle that he would bring all his rough, dirty, violent demands into his marriage bed.
But now, in the wake of his earlier confessions, I could consider my husband’s traits in a new light. To him, honor meant patience.I would not consider myself an honorable man if I felt you were unsure.His skills with his weapons, too, were now much less threatening to me than they had been only days ago. In fact, the very thought of his knife slashing through the thin veil of my shift, the feel of his fingers on my private skin, the dizzying contours of his war-hardened body as he kissed me as passionately as he had in our forbidden garden...I wanted to experience more of his military prowess right here and now.
But he was already sitting at his desk. He was preparing his quill and his parchment, and his attention was far away from me, focused on travel, tyranny and traitors. I wasn’t sure what to do, or how I might show him...whatever it was that Iwantedto show him.
I ventured closer to him, standing next to the fire. He was absorbed in his writing, his head bent over his work. He wrote quickly, dipping his quill frequently and scribbling prolifically as though struggling to get all his ideas onto the page. I stood by the hearth, holding my hands closer to the flames to warm them, twirling a strand of my hair absentmindedly. My thoughts reverted to the kiss, the soft, demanding exploration of his tongue, the rigid planes of his body beneath his clothes.
“Go to bed, lass.”
I looked at him, and noticed that he’d put his quill down and had his arms folded across his chest, watching me.
“Are you...coming to bed?” I asked.
He contemplated me in a lazy inspection. “After I finish this letter.”
“All right,” I said quietly.
His gaze continued to follow me as I walked to the bed. I paused before untying the laces of my gown, the white one that my husband had insisted I wear once he’d known my preference. Now that he sat back in his chair, with his arms folded and his knees apart, he seemed to have returned to the churlish, staunch warrior I had first taken him for. His hand caressed his knife handle even now. This was a habit of his, I’d noticed. He held his weapons when he was deep in thought, maybe planning attacks in his mind or pondering mysterious man-thoughts of one kind or another, so utterly foreign to me.
