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“Ah,” I said, though it seemed a risky proposition. Especially since Ian seemed to wish him dead…
I opened the book over my knees and started to sound out some of the words. He was duly impressed as I strung them together like beads on a string, the whole bunch of them a shining jeweled necklace. “It’s a love poem,” I said, marveling. “Is that what I’m reading?”
“Aye,” the laird said, beginning to laugh, then frowning when he saw tears glisten in my eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s beauti
ful.”
“Aye,” he said, more softly. “Pretty words.”
“More than that,” I replied, trying to stifle a sob. “It’s all this emotion. This feeling. He loves her and she loves him in return, and they are so filled with it, so connected to one another, that they can’t keep silent about it, so they speak this poem…and it’s something I’ll never know. A feeling I’ll never—”
“You might,” the laird broke in. “Even if no man will ever marry you, there’s plenty who would love you for your kind and devoted heart.”
“I’ve never loved a man,” I said, not believing him. “And now I probably never will. Have you ever loved a woman, my laird? Is it like this poem?”
“No, I’ve never loved a woman,” the laird replied, lacing his fingers together. “Wouldn’t dare to. I’d only end up having to try to be a different kind of man than I am, feeling hollow and alone.”
“Then I’m sad for us both,” I said, dabbing at my eyes with the kerchief he extended to me for my tears.
“Heather, I’m trying to do right by you,” he said, weakly. “At least, as right as I can do under the circumstances. I know it isn’t much and I’m bungling it at every turn, but if there’s something I can do—”
“You can kiss me, again,” I said, suddenly sure it was the only thing that would make me forget the pain in my heart for the circumstances I’d come to. I’d been thinking about his kiss, remembering it, dreaming about it for days now. Wanting it to happen again. Telling myself that I couldn’t possibly want such a thing. But I did. “Lie down with me on the bed and kiss me like you did before, until I can’t think of or feel anything but my laird.”
His eyes softened. “Oh, lass. Would that I could. But you have little idea what you’re tempting me to.”
“I don’t care anymore,” I said, petulantly. “Everyone already believes I’m your harlot. If I’m going to be ruined either way, shouldn’t I at least have the honor of it being true?”
The laird sucked in a breath, reaching out to touch my cheek. “You wouldn’t think it an honor. You deserve for the first time a man takes you to do it gently, and—”
“What if I would rather it be you?” I dared to interrupt. He was, after all, the most powerful man I knew. He was also a man who had shown some care for me. If I was to surrender my virtue to a man who wasn’t my husband, I couldn’t think of anyone it should be instead of my laird.
He stared at me, heat banked in his eyes. Desire radiated off the heat of his fingers as he continued to stroke my cheek. I thought he might grab me in his strong hands and crush me against his chest in a smothering kiss, but instead he said, “Sometimes, lass, I think you were sent to me by the devil himself.”
So he was going to refuse me. He was going to cuddle me on his lap and feed me bits of food from his fingers, and build in my body this outrageous fire of desire, and then deny me. It seemed even more unjust than everything else he’d already done to me!
He spoke of me as the devil? Hurt at his rejection of my offer of my body and more, I blurted, “Ian says that what you do to women in bed should cause them to curl up upon their beds and weep half the day.”
John Macrae blanched. Went white to the tip of his nose. And I had the strangest sensation that I had somehow caused him pain. “I told you before, I’m a man for rough wooing, but there’s no girl who comes to my bed who isn’t there by her own consent. And I don’t mean the kind of consent that you gave at threat of your father dangling from a noose!”
His shout startled me.
And I began to realize that whatever it was that pleased him in bed was something that also shamed him. It shocked me, because he was a big strong man who held the fate of everyone in our clan in his hand. He was the laird. He merely had to say something was so and everyone was bound to obey him. So long as he kept to the code of honor that men held between themselves in battle, and in loyalty to family and our land, who could ever make him feel ashamed? And yet, I sensed that he was. “I wish you’d tell me what it is that you do with the women who willingly come to your bed.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I wish you’d read from the book like I told you.”
I stared down at the letters, but in my confusion about my laird’s troubled emotions, they all seemed to swim before my eyes. “If I’m to pretend that you’ve had me, don’t you think I need to know how to answer when someone asks what it was like?”
He looked up as if startled by this argument, and also, not having an answer for it. “You can tell them that I took a belt to your backside. That I strapped you until you cried of it. That I spoke to you with harshness—that I called you names to make you feel small. Abused you in this way until I could taste your shame. Because shame is how a woman is made more naked than naked.”
My mouth went dry. I wasn’t sure I understood all of what he meant, but I understood enough of it. The idea of him taking a belt to my backside wasn’t as frightening as I think he thought it should be. And it was also strangely arousing. I was a grown girl now, past the need of discipline, but I didn’t think it would break me to feel the sting of a belt again. In his foul moods, my father had strapped me for no reason at all, and I was hardened to it.
I said none of this, of course, to the Macrae.
Instead, I asked, “And this gives you pleasure?”
“More than pleasure,” he said, darkly. “It gives me strength. It makes me feel as if I have the power I need to protect this castle and this clan. It gives me the confidence to fend off rivals and be the laird. It feeds something in me that’s always hungry without it.”
