A Promise of Love (17 page)

"You speak as one who hates war, MacLeod."

"I see no shame in admitting it. No, our industry is better used by preparing for the future, than for mourning the past."

"Do you truly think your future lies with England? It seems a strange view for a Scot to take."

"A practical approach, however. Did I not state that I was a practical person, also? Trade with England is our only hope." He would have preferred another country’s coin, but was prevented not only by geography but by English ships which lay in wait off the coast of Scotland for just such enterprising commerce.

Alisdair did not tell her there were times he could not quite forget Culloden and the loss of friends and family, memories which galled at the thought of trade with England. Memories, however, had become an impediment to the future. Just as Judith’s recollections kept her awake at night, nearly screaming.

"No wonder you sought to buy sheep from my father. He is a great believer in free enterprise,” she said wryly. “Everything is a commodity to him. Even his daughters are only goods to be sold on the matrimonial market."

"He is not the first father to want to profit from marriage, Judith," he reminded her gently. "How would you have it, if it were not so?"

"I would be free, MacLeod. Free to do what I would, when I would, as I would." She did not mean for her words to sound bitter, but he thought he understood the reason for such a tone.

"Freedom. Do any of us have it?" He looked around the path they were taking, to the broad moors that slipped down to the sea. "I am not free," he said in explanation. "I have duties and obligations that will not cease even when I lie in my bed at night.”

"Because you are a man, you could never understand.” The look she gave him was new and fascinating. He wondered if she knew her eyes flashed as if lighting lit their depths.

"I am a man with a brain.” His grin was challenging. “Explain it to me. Any idea which makes you crinkle your nose with such disdain can surely be spoken.”

She thought for a moment, trying to find the words. "Men are capable of living their lives like islands, MacLeod. They are not dependent upon anyone in order to survive. A man is either a noble, a soldier, or he has a trade. He can decide whether he wishes to live in Yorkshire or Kent, whether he marries or does not. He can make the choice to have a child, ten children, or none. But none of these things are possible for women. Our occupation is wife, harlot, or spinster, all dependent upon a man’s convenience. We've no option to refuse our husband's mating, no way to prevent the seventh child or the seventeenth. Men are islands. Women are captive birds. Freedom? Some of us have it more than others, MacLeod."

He had never heard her speak so many words at one time. It was with delicacy that he disagreed, hoping that by doing so, he didn’t push her back into the shell she’d worn so comfortably since coming to Tynan. This new and voluble Judith was a singular pleasure.

"Yet, you said it yourself. A man is dependent upon no one. If he succeeds, it is because of his own work. If he fails, then that, too, is laid at his door. A woman has no such burdens. She is taken care of and cared for. It seems a fair trade."

"I wonder how many women would trade their husbands for their freedom, MacLeod and being taken care of for the ability to care for themselves," she said, and it was suddenly not a simple question she asked, nor so much a rhetorical one.

"Aye, that's true enough, I suppose," he said, thinking of her tortured back and the deep darkness of her troubled eyes. "Yet, you did not trade this husband for freedom, Judith. One word would have made you a guest of Colonel Harrison’s, safely under the protection of the regiment. Why did you not speak that word?" His look was amber directness, allowing for no lies nor reservations.

How could she tell him that he offered less danger than Bennett?

“Perhaps I had no ability to care for myself.” It was not a complete answer, yet he did not question it. The key to Judith was perseverance, Alisdair thought. She divulged snippets of information about herself a bit at a time and only then when they were pulled from her.

“And your brother-in-law? Would he not have cared for you?” It was a question posed in a reasonable voice, one which made her wonder if he’d been privy to her unspoken thoughts.

"I dislike him.”

The best course was understatement. Those who embellish are quickly branded as liars. She would not tell him about Bennett, or that other part of her life. Those secrets would be better left unsaid, and unthought. To do otherwise would be to condemn herself to purgatory on earth. It was enough that she was destined for hell itself.

Such prevarication would have worked, had he not been watching her when he'd asked the question. A blankness appeared in her eyes as if she'd simply walked into a room and shut the door behind her. It was the same response she'd had when she’d waited for him to punish her. There was a mystery here, and he would pursue it. Thanks to the English, he had the rest of his life to solve this puzzle.

Alisdair stood aside for her to precede him up the stairs, through the bronze door. They walked quietly into the kitchen, where he placed the basket containing the eggs on the large, scarred oak table. Smiling at his grandmother, Alisdair reached for his wife.

Judith brushed his hands aside, but he would not be denied. He effortlessly lifted her into his arms, one arm beneath her legs, the other encircling her shoulders. It was not unlike, she thought, the way he might carry a lamb, gently, but with stubborn intent.

"It is daylight, MacLeod." It was neither a command nor a request. Instead, it was said with a sense of fatality. Hadn’t she been waiting for this moment ever since he’d rescued her from Bennett? It was the price she had to pay for solidifying their marriage.

"So it is," he said, as if just noticing the sun rising high in the stairwell window.

"I have chores to do."

"So you have. Obeying your husband." His lips quirked.

"What instructions would you have me heed?" Her voice was low and serious. He gently pried her fingers from his shirt front, and his chest hairs, well aware of the fear that filled her face and made her eyes wide and as deep as the sea.

"At this moment? To cease struggling.”

She turned her cheek away from the warmth of his chest, choosing, instead, to stare at the moving ceiling.

The sunlight streamed in through the windows of the lord's room, and it was the first place she went when he finally released her. She breathed in the salt air that blew in from the sea.

"Do you never get cold in the winter, MacLeod?" she asked, anxious to enliven the heavy silence. She wanted to postpone what would happen between them. She had begun to feel a softness for him, a respect she’d not had for any man. The feeling was so precious that she wanted to hoard it a little longer, keep it safe before it was shattered, forever destroyed.

"I have never spent a winter in this room," he said, calmly.

She turned to look at him, a small frown upon her face. He would give half his sheep to see her smile, to keep her standing there, with the sunlight touching her hair the way it was right now.

Of course, this was the laird's room, and until his father and Ian had died, Alisdair was only the younger son. She wished she had not asked.

"I winter in Ian's room, Judith. Or at least I did before I acquired a soft, warm wife who could ease the chill."

He walked to her, slowly turned her to face him and began unlacing her dress. She didn’t move, simply closed her eyes. He smiled, softly, an infinitely tender smile she didn’t see.

It would have been a blessing to tear this ugly dress from her body, but that would leave her only the black which sagged along the neckline and was too tight in the bodice. Alisdair wished he had extra coin to spend on fripperies for her, a bonnet to accentuate the color of her eyes, to enhance the unusual shade of her hair, a pretty dress that was not so snug across her beautiful breasts. It would be a joy to spoil her, pamper her in a way he suspected she’d never before been treated. .

"Come," he said, when the unlacing was completed, and her bodice hung gaping and open. His gaze memorized the soft swell of alabaster skin, the hint of generous pink nipples. If this moment had been other than what it was, he would have slid his palm into the opening there, feeling the warmth of her skin, the back of his hand abrading one sweet nipple.

Alisdair extended a hand to her and led her to a chair seated in front of the window, its back to the room. He smiled tenderly at her look of discomfiture.

While she sat, hands clenched upon her lap, he stripped off his shirt in one clean movement. His chest was as densely blanketed with black hair as she remembered, sworls of it encircling bronze discs of masculine nipples. She watched him warily for a moment, until she caught herself, then directed her gaze outward, towards the sea. Alisdair smiled at her studied unconcern, keeping his movements slow and unhurried.

Her mouth went dry. She did not want this to happen. Why were men so insistent upon spilling their seed? They were no more selective than a dog marking its territory. In this eternal battle between men and women, why couldn’t women simply wave a flag of surrender, rather than being physically dominated, invaded, mounted like a beast of the field?

Alisdair sat on the edge of the bed, removed his shoes, then his stockings and finally stood to unbutton his trousers. He watched her without speaking. Judith had not moved an inch in the last few minutes, unless one counted the frantic darting of her eyes or their quick shuttering. He knew she wanted to disappear inside herself, but curiosity kept her moored here, watching him the way a beaten puppy would note the movements of a cruel master.

Her eyes were so wide they could swallow him whole.

He removed his trousers, wishing he wore a kilt still. It was less cumbersome and certainly less threatening to let yards of plaid drop to the floor. Not like the stance one was expected to maintain while pulling off a trouser leg. He smiled at his less than graceful actions, but Judith didn’t notice.

Naked, he moved towards her and she looked frantically for an escape route, but there was no place to hide. She uttered only one small gasp of protest as he extended one hand around her arm and gently pulled her up from the chair.

Judith lifted her eyes to his and kept them studiously on his face. One small glimpse of his nakedness had been enough. He was bronzed all over, except for a small area of white buttocks and upper thighs glimpsed when he had bent down to pick up his trousers. She’d closed her eyes tight before he’d turned around. Never had she seen a naked man like this, in the bright light of day, with the sun burning white through the window, with motes of dust dancing in the beams which licked his skin.

Her hands trembled, her knees felt soggy like overripe turnips. The memory of pain and degradation turned the brightness of the room to midnight, the aching breath in her chest became stifled screams.

Could she bear the pain?

Alisdair slowly pushed the bodice of her dress to her waist, and then over her hips. Other than the pulse frantically beating at the side of her neck, she gave no sign of her fear. Nor did she protest his undressing of her, only closed her eyes and allowed him to remove the remainder of her garments.

For a moment, he allowed himself to look, seeing what he had not seen before in this room, with her naked and stripped bare to the soul. Her skin was the purest white, like virgin milk, her breasts were heavy, pendulous but proud, large pink nipples jutting out from their pink areoles like tiny fingers begging to be kissed, to be sucked. Her waist curved to perfect hips and then to long, luscious legs. The vee at the notch of her legs was shielded with auburn hair, curly and curiously beckoning.

His fingers itched to touch her just once, to see if she was as soft there as she looked. His mind urged him to explore, to discover if those pink nipples would draw up and nearly disappear at the touch of his mouth, or pout proudly. His palms urged him to forget his plans and stroke down one hip to see if she trembled beneath his touch.

Instead, he sat down in the large overstuffed chair and pulled his reluctant wife onto his lap. Her eyes opened and she stared at him in surprise.

Alisdair placed one hand on the back of her neck, gently urging her head down until her cheek rested upon his chest. The look in her eyes was suddenly too much to witness - hurt, pain, and fear, silent emotions all the more powerful for being unspoken.

Judith curled into herself, placing her arms across her breasts, drawing up her knees and wrapping her arms about them, as if to hide herself from his interested gaze. It did not mean, however, that her skin lacked sensation, that she could not feel the mat of his hair against her right arm and cheek, or the smooth warmth of his golden flesh.

Her body was soft where his was hard, curving inward where his barely tapered.

Alisdair placed both hands on the arms of the chair and looked out the window, wishing he could view the sea. It would be a paltry diversion to feeling her flesh against his. Yet, Judith was so armored by her own fear it was as if there were a suit of chain mail between their bodies.

The hammer beat of his heart boomed loudly against her ear. Would he not hurry then, or was this some sort of slow torture?