A Promise of Love (29 page)

She wanted to hold Alisdair within her arms, kiss his broad back and trace words of possession upon his warm, bare skin. The depth of her emotions scared her, as Anthony had never been able to frighten her. As Bennett, despite his attempts, had never accomplished.

But was that what Granmere called love? Judith didn't know. How could you recognize it, if you’ve never experienced it before?

Judith suspected that to love Alisdair MacLeod was to surrender herself. To trust, wholly and completely. To believe in goodness and right, nobility and honor.

So easy, and so difficult for someone tinged by guilt and touched by evil.

She sighed, heavily and he caught the sound, spun her in his embrace as if she were no lighter than a feather. His brandy eyes sparkled, a finger tipped her chin up so that he could inspect her face, his lips tilted in a restrained smile.

So might a wolf have looked before stalking the sheep.

"Did everyone adore Anne?"

The question so surprised Alisdair that his mind froze in mid-thought. He glanced down at his wife.

"Anne?"

"Yes, your wife."

"I'm aware of her identity, Judith," he said, irritation swamping his senses. She never did what he expected, did she? She was always full of surprises. He smiled, then, at the thought that the next twenty years would not be boring with her.

Judith felt something inside her twist at the tender reminiscent look. She looked down at her clenched hands and wondered why she dared to ask. Except for that one day, when he'd held her so gently upon his lap, Anne's name had not been broached between them. A picture of her had grown in Judith's mind. A gentle sweet face, filled with patience and kindness, a Madonna glow of purity around her. She would have been the beloved wife of the laird, a fitting mate.

"Anne suffered as well during the winters," he said. "Is that what you wished to know?" His forehead wrinkled in confusion.

"I never said I wanted to know anything, MacLeod."

"I'll not argue the point, Judith. I'm not yet as addled as Geddes. I heard the question. I just can't comprehend why the answer is so important to you."

"It was but a passing comment, MacLeod, as insubstantial as inquiring about the weather."

"I think not," he said, not allowing her to escape from his embrace despite her wriggling. "As far as affection, I never heard any ill words spoken of her."

"Not even from Fiona?" Judith mumbled, her forehead pressed against the great expanse of Alisdair's chest. Not for the world would she have looked up into those too knowing eyes.

"Not even Fiona," he said. The words held no mocking humor, only a depth of understanding she recognized and which made her jealousy feel childish.

"I think you would have liked Anne," Alisdair said, his wish to ease Judith's discomfort giving voice to words which should have been better left unsaid. "She was sweet and kind, with never a thought for herself. She was too gentle for life at Tynan, though, I see that now. Sometimes, I think she was too good for life at all."

It had been difficult living with a saintly wife, Alisdair remembered. Anne never spoke above a whisper, her smiles were tremulous and timid, she never reached out to touch him, or to initiate their love play. She lay docile, sacrifice not so much her aim as to retain a ladylike and demure pose while engaged in the least polite of human occupations. Yes, everyone at Tynan had loved her, but it was the gentle natured affection of those who care for one in their midst not as strong. Judith, for all her travails, had the soul of a survivor, not an angel.

It was a real woman who stared back at him, eyes darkened to nearly black, an unrecognizable expression molding Judith's features into a mask of perfect, polite, unrevealing restraint.

Too good for life. Not like a slightly used English wife with a soul destroying secret. Not sweet, nor kind. Certainly not selfless. Anne would not have been racked by guilt, by a culpability which sickened her.

Who wouldn't have loved such a paragon of virtue? Who wouldn't have adored such an angelic personage? It was a wonder the MacLeod didn't have a statue erected in her honor or a shrine built with her name inscribed on it.

Saint Anne.

"Excuse me," Judith said, feeling all too human at this particular moment. Her words were clipped and very English, her tone cold as she slipped from his arms and would have escaped. Except of course, that one left the MacLeod's presence only when the MacLeod allowed it. She tugged, he pulled. She jerked, he only drew her closer. She tensed, he tumbled her onto the bed.

She lay where he placed her, not moving when he lay beside her. When his arm reached out to pull her close, she did not demur but lay stiffly against him, her head cradled reluctantly on one of his arms. His fingers idly traced a path against her temple. She sighed, a grumbling sound of surrender. He reached out one hand and twisted a tendril of her hair around his wrist.

"What is it, my little English wife?"

"Do not call me that," she said fiercely, "do not ever call me that, again." Her eyes were level on his, the look direct, so filled with remorse and pain that he brought her hard against him.

"It is not your fault." His words were fierce, his tone muted, as if the room had somehow become a hallowed place where he must whisper. "For all the sins of the English, you are blameless."

Would that I were blameless, Judith thought, but the words were not spoken aloud. She was too much the coward for that. Instead, she allowed him to envelop her in his embrace, as if his warm flesh could block out the world. She snuggled closer to him, wishing that she was as pure as Anne, as gentle, as unused by life as Alisdair’s first wife.

Life had used her too well.

Almost of their own will, her hands curled against his skin, seeking the tactile reassurance of him. He kissed her on the nose, a non-threatening gesture of affection. Judith lifted her lips for a fuller kiss, leaned into him.

If Alisdair had not studied her so avidly for the past months, if he had not come to know just when those loch shadowed eyes of hers hid what she felt, and when they revealed her emotions, Alisdair would have said that Judith was feeling the same singular lust he was now experiencing, that what she wanted was mind-numbing pleasure, a respite from the world around them. But there was something more urgent in Judith’s eyes than simple passion, something desperate that demanded satiation, some wild emotion which caused his heart to skitter in his chest and made him hold her even closer, an embrace comprised of fear and loss and something even more precious.

At this moment, with the silence of night falling about them, with the activity of Tynan fading below stairs to a simple muttered goodnight greeting, a scrape of boot against a stair, the screech of the bronze doors as they were closed, Alisdair MacLeod recognized that there was a new emotion in the lexicon of his feelings. He knew its name and all its myriad facets. He appreciated its strength and its demands, but knew its rewards were worth any sacrifice. He loved Judith Cuthbertson Willoughby Henderson MacLeod, and the barbarism of it, the sheer melodramatic protectiveness of it rolled his stomach and curled his toes.

They were held together by the savagery of a kiss too quickly ended, by the tenuous bond of her hands clasping his shoulders.

And by words spoken by a man who had always been gentle, but whose tenderness brought the spiking of tears to her eyes.

"You have the softest lips, Judith," he said, and his tone made her shiver. It made her want to move her lips against that finger, capture it in her mouth, taunt him as well with words spoken as if they were the greatest truths in a voice meant to seduce.

One long callused finger touched her cheek, following the path of her skin to the edge of her nose and then to the top of her upper lip. He watched his own finger as if it had a will of its own, not empowered by his mind's wishes.

"My beautiful Judith."

She said nothing, her eyes fixed upon his mouth, upon the way he framed his words. How could a man's mouth be so alluring? How could he speak and she want to touch her tongue to the full contours of it, to taste his speech?

He rolled off the bed and removed his clothes, oblivious to the cold, to his own nakedness illuminated by candle light.

“With that wicked smile, MacLeod, you look more like Pan, than a Scots laird.” She lay on her side, watching him.

“The Greek god of woods, fields, and flocks? Except that Pan had a goat’s legs, horns and ears. I prefer my own, thank you.” He lay down again and pulled her fully clothed astride him. She looked down at him, at ease beneath her, hands now propped beneath his head. Without thought, she brushed back a tousled curl of black hair which fell against his forehead. Her fleeting smile made his breath catch.

She leaned down against his chest, her chin in her folded hands. Both his large hands were involved in slipping free her garments, one lace at a time, one stocking at a time, her nakedness sweetly and unabashedly accomplished inch by inch.

"I know better than to claim duties or chores," she said, to hide the fact that his fingers were tracing a pattern upon her skin that made her shiver. He could rouse a dead woman with his touch, she thought.

"Then you have learned something during your tenure in the Highlands, my love. There is nothing more important than this."

She didn't know if it was him calling her 'my love' or the feel of exploring fingers which caused her flush. It prompted his gentle laughter, a teasing sound from such a large man. She squirmed, and moved from him, but he only followed, his ease at changing her mind not at all surprising. She had long suspected her husband had once been a rake.

When he rooted between their bodies to grasp her hand, she did not flinch. He touched her fingers with gentle reverence, a large man who knew his own strength and yet never abused his power.

He levered her hand up to his mouth, blew gently on her palm as a stallion might nuzzle a trainer's hand. He had it backwards, did the MacLeod. It was submission from her he wanted. Trust. He wanted her to believe in him, and that she did already. What he did not understand was that she could not believe in herself.

"I can lift timbers to a rooftop, Judith," he said, refusing to look anywhere but at the palm of her hand. A hand which carried it own scars, softened over as they were by the lanolin from the sheep’s fleece. "I can lift a broadsword over my head, walk for miles without tiring." He looked up, finally, at her face, and his eyes seemed licked by flames like a snifter of brandy backlit by a glowing fire. "Yet, here, in this room, in this bed, I am equal in strength to you."

"Me?"

"Did you not know that there was one place where men and women are equals?"

Nights of brutality flashed into her mind. If the words had been said by anyone but the MacLeod, she would have struck out at him, either verbally, or with her fists, so angered was she by the trite falsity of his words.

“What happened to Meggie was not lust, Judith. It had no place in passion’s games.” He smiled, a gentle, teasing smile as if to tame her from her anger. His voice was so low that she leaned towards him to hear it. His breath brushed against her cheek, the warmth of it infused the air between them.

"In love, Judith, men and women are equals."

The silence was measured by the beat of her heart, a living metronome. How many seconds, minutes, eons, stretched between them before she could bear to look into those flame tinted eyes again? How many seconds did it take to lift her gaze past that aquiline nose to those impossibly long lashed eyes? Her heart beat steadily, faithful heart, but rapidly, as if straining to make up for the space in eternity in which all time stood still, rocked on its axis by Alisdair MacLeod and tenderness.

"This is to be shared, Judith," he said, his teasing gone, his look so direct and without artifice that it was difficult to stare full face into it, like gazing at the sun.

The air was cold against Judith’s back, but she was warm everywhere else, a curiosity no doubt brought on due to Alisdair’s encompassing look. He seemed fascinated with her nakedness, although there had been many times in which he’d seen her without her clothes. And his hands. Curiously tender for such large hands, his fingers explored and dipped and warmed themselves in places she’d not thought heated.

“My dreams are hot things, Judith.” He traced an errant tendril of hair behind her ear, wondered if he should keep silent or speak of a man’s secrets. He smiled, a self-mocking smile that he should wish to keep his pride so desperately at the same time he wished to peer into her soul. “These past weeks, my wife, I’ve no control over them, these hot and wild dreams. You tempt me even when you sleep downstairs with Meggie. I’ve wakened with my sheets soaked and my manhood limp and the memory of spilling inside of you only a delicious dream.”

The flush which suffused her face seemed to start at her toes, he thought.

“I but await your summons, Alisdair.” Judith buried her cheek on the pillow beside his face. What was he about, that he should say such things to her?

“I do not wish a dutiful wife in my bed, Judith,” he whispered, leaning over to plant a gentle kiss on the shell of her ear. “I want a woman who wishes to be here, not one who ascribes it as only her wifely occupation.”