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Our words cut off in a tangle together and he chuckled. “Go on,” he said, wryly.
Nervously, I cleared my throat. “I was just going to say—just going to ask—why are you a man for rough wooing? You must have some appreciation for tenderness, because you said, all those years ago, when I tended your wound so gently—
“I said that when you tended me gently it made me want your hands on me everywhere. I didn’t let myself think about what my own hands might do. But I know they wouldn’t be gentle. You already felt that when I tore your gown and mashed your bosom. It gives me more pleasure to make a woman whimper, to claim her thoroughly, to exhaust myself, and her, and leave my marks on her.”
“What kind of marks?” I asked.
“It’s not proper to speak of.”
I snorted indelicately. “I’m undressed in the bed of my laird, who wishes to ruin me utterly, and we’re to worry of impropriety?”
He eyed me, rolling onto one side to stare. “Ye make a fair point, lass. But we don’t know or trust one another, you and I. So I’d rather not say.”
That was even more curious. What could he be afraid of in telling me what gave him pleasure? “My real question wasn’t what pleases you but why, my laird.”
“Aye, true enough. But I don’t know the answer. Why am I so rough with the lasses? I can only guess it’s because I’ve had to fight for everything that belongs to me my whole life. Had to take it before it’s taken from me. I suppose I can’t enjoy anything as my own—not even a woman—unless I’ve seized her, claimed her, and made her give herself up to me completely. To make herself, for me, more naked than naked.”
Something inside me tugged at his answer. It was a pull of both fascination, and arousal. What would it feel like to be seized and claimed by a man like the laird, and give myself up to him? And what did it mean to be more naked than naked?
It seemed I was destined never to know.
“Have you thought to take a wife?” I asked.
Now he snorted. “I can’t do such things to a wife! Besides, my rivals would likely object to any woman I took to wed, so it’s easier to do without a wife.”
“But then how will you have bairns?” I asked, daring to opine, “A laird needs heirs, doesn’t he?”
At that, John Macrae fell silent. Then, he dragged his eyes away from me, and as if to signal that conversation was done, he reached for the leather-bound book his cousin had slammed shut. Readjusting himself on the pillow, he began to read, turning the pages slowly.
Did he expect me to simply watch him while we waited for the hours to pass? Certainly, he was something to look at. I confess, his thick forearms and strong hands were captivating. But when he caught me staring, he seemed to think I was looking at the book.
“You can read?” he asked.
“My mother taught me my letters,” I said. “But Papa didn’t approve much of it, so I don’t read. Though I’d like to learn.”
Hmph! That was the sound he made. I didn’t know what it meant. But he closed the book again. “What about games. Do you know how to move chessmen on a board?”
I shook my head, a bit miserably.
“What is it you do when you’re at your leisure?”
“At my leisure?” I asked, trying to remember a time my hours weren’t consumed with duties and care-taking. Probably before my mother died…and that seemed a life time ago.
The laird scratched at the back of his neck, and sudden, unbidden tears pricked at my eyes. I didn’t know how to read, or to write, or to play games, or to do seemingly anything that might be of value to him. “I can sew, and keep house, and keep five little bairns well-fed on nothing but scraps. I can measure out whiskey to keep a man from getting too drunk, and can draw a bath of lavender that soothes all cares away. I can bind a wound, and can milk goats and sheep, and make cheese. And I bake the best pie of any woman in the clan.”
One of his brows kicked up at the deranged litany and the emotional tone of my voice. “You’re a good, giving girl,” he said, gently. “Which, I suppose is the answer to the question I was going to ask you when we spoke at the same time. I wanted to know why you’d sacrificed yourself for your father.”
“Because any good daughter would,” I replied.
“A
s I thought you’d say…but your father forbade it.”
“And he might’ve forbade it all the way to his grave, and then my siblings and I could all starve and live with the horror of it ever after with our only comfort being the knowledge we’d been obedient.”
“I’d hoped you’d disobey him,” the laird admitted.
And I blinked. “Why would you, if you don’t want me?”
