A Promise of Love (9 page)

Still, there was something about him to inspire caution. A fluttering in her belly when he smiled, a trembling of her limbs when he grew too near. No, Malcolm was wrong. There was ample reason to fear the MacLeod.

She had only a short time left until she could experience true freedom. In two months and a week, her heart would no longer lurch at the thud of boots echoing on a wooden floor; she needn’t cringe at the slam of a door. A man’s booming voice would not induce anxiety or his anger a paralyzing fear. Her life would be of her making, not lived because of the sudden and changeable whims of a husband. But to tell Malcolm these things would be to expose too many other, darker, secrets. It was better, in the end, to simply remain silent.

They passed at least forty of the small crofter’s huts. Their roofs of thatch and heather merged with the rolling hills so well they blended into the landscape. Only their rock walls declared their man-made construction. Judith was surprised at the number and the tidiness of the community, but noticed that several of the cottages were empty.

"Emigrated," Malcolm said shortly when she asked about their inhabitants, "or didn't survive the last few years. “'Twas the bairns, mostly, who didn't make it. Only two bairns born since the '45, but one is my own wee Douglas."

"Your son?"

"Bless you, lass," he said, smiling, "my grandson. I'm surprised ye haven't seen him yet, Fiona fair dotes on the lad, she does. Would ye like ta see him now?"

Judith nodded, following Malcolm down the track to where it veered left towards the cultivated fields. She wanted to stop him, to say she changed her mind, but it was too late. The MacLeod had already seen them.

"Does he work all the time?" she asked, not realizing how much her question betrayed her growing curiosity about him.

"Aye," Malcolm said, "but then he's always been a demon for work, the MacLeod. There's work aplenty for all here in the Highlands, lass."

The MacLeod was standing at the end of one field, removing his shirt. His bronzed back was wide and glistening with sweat. A feminine hand smoothed down the droplets on his spine, curved around and grasped him firmly by the waist. They made a handsome pair. The woman's head barely reached his chin, making him appear larger and more formidable. She had not relinquished her grip around his waist, and as he bent and whispered something to her, her smile broadened. Her eyes had not left Judith since she spotted her following Malcolm.

Fiona reached up and pulled his head down for an unsolicited kiss. It was damned bad timing, Alisdair thought, pushing his clanswoman gently away. The flush on Judith's face disappeared, to be replaced by a stark whiteness.

At Malcolm’s request, Fiona fetched her son, returning with a wide hipped walk that appeared deliberately saucy, Judith thought.

And the MacLeod did not have the grace to look ashamed.

Fiona's son had the dark amber eyes of the MacLeod, lit by golden flecks. It was plain that Fiona was not the only one who doted on the child. Malcolm oohed and aahed over the baby, who was proudly displayed by his mother. Proudly and with a challenging smile.

It was the MacLeod Douglas reached for, however, and he took him easily from Fiona's arms, cradling him against his bare chest. Judith was not the least bit interested in his paternal leanings. Nor was she concerned that his face softened or the light in his eyes was a glow of love. He was so gentle with the child, as if an errant movement would hurt him, holding the baby easily in the crook of one arm, a stance that denoted much practice.

It was, after all, none of her concern.

Fiona took the baby back to his basket, not resisting a backward glance at the still, stiff figure of the English woman as she did so. Judith did not miss her mocking smile, schooled her own features into a perfect mask, giving nothing of her thoughts away. She did not realize that her eyes turned flat, betraying little, appearing like the calm waters of the deepest loch.

It was grating on his nerves.

Alisdair told himself that he had been as polite as possible, but she continued to be perverse. She fled from a room if he entered it, refused to speak to him when he was being civil, stared at him when she thought he was unaware. If he had to spend the rest of the term of his grandmother's idiotic scheme coupled with such an antagonist, he would cheerfully strangle her. Let the English hang him for that.

If Malcolm had to bind him to an Englishwoman, he should have at least noted whether she grew pale around a man, if her breathing accelerated and was faint at the same time, if she looked as though she would rather die than be caressed. It was the least the old matchmaker could do. But, no, Malcolm had forgotten those little details, and Alisdair was tied to a cold spinster, no matter how many times she’d been wed.

Thank God this unholy bond would last only a little while. It was a thought he should have remembered. Instead, that flat expression on Judith’s face goaded him to thoughts best left unvoiced. Or, was it the fact that her hair seemed to shine even in the gloom of an approaching storm. Her lips seemed too full for fretfulness, and her soft, pillowy breasts gave the lie to her coldness, coaxed his palms to curl.

"Do you not think the lad bonny, Judith?"

His voice was too smooth, too honeyed, as soft as velvet, as dark as a moonlit moor. The wind tossed his hair from his face, the darkening sky was a perfect backdrop for the tanned expanse of his bare torso. He was an avenging god of storm and dark anger.

Judith took one step back, so slight that he should not have noticed. Yet, he did, and the sway of her skirts as she did so. He noted, too, that the pulse beat at her neck accelerated, as if he had touched her with more than his mind.

She was silent still, yet the air swirled with heaviness, as if her thoughts added weight to it.

"I thought all women grew soft and maternal at the sight of a babe. Are the English so different then? Is it that Douglas is only a Scot? Do you English consider him only half-human?"

When she did not speak, he grabbed her arm and pulled her closer. Perhaps she should have pulled away then. If she had distanced herself from him, she would not have felt the warmth of the hand which lay upon her arm. Skin against skin. Too intimate.

He forced her chin up so that he could see her eyes, staring into her face with studied intent before he abruptly released her. There was no expression at all in those azure eyes and the total absence of emotion disturbed him. It was as if part of his English wife had disappeared somehow, as if she'd retreated from his words, from his very presence, from his punishing grip upon her forearm.

Something made him want to banish that calm, nothing-look on her face. Any emotion was preferable to that flat look in her eyes.

"Or is it that you have no maternal leanings yourself, Judith? Twice married and no bairn. Yet you, Judith," he continued, his thin edged smile infinitely cruel, "have the hips of a born breeder. You could spit babes into the world without a gasp."

She didn't bother to respond. His words did not surprise her; she was immune to ridicule. Her father had not ceased commenting upon her appearance since she was a child. Peter's mother had read her a litany of her faults from daybreak to dusk, and Anthony had not abstained in his scathing remarks about her looks, her abilities, her many liabilities. The MacLeod's words paled in comparison to those she’d received in the past.

The thunder rolled, a drum beat of punctuation to her silence.

"Yet, it's true ice is not a fertile ground," he said brutally. "Were you never warm and willing, then? Only cold like now? If so, I can see why no man's seed found purchase in your pristine English womb."

Her pallor was replaced by blotches of red, the flat look in her eyes gone, supplanted by a look so fierce he almost recoiled from it. Yet she did not speak, and as he stared, she changed again, cloaking her rage in something he could not describe. There was no hushed comfort in her silence, nothing restful. It bubbled like an underground stream. There was concealment in her speechlessness, a hint of something clandestine, as if she were afraid to reveal the substance of herself.

She did the one thing designed to infuriate him.

Judith turned and walked away

He had had enough.

She felt the jolt at her knees and would have fallen if he hadn't scooped her up and thrown her over his shoulder. She screamed, which only fueled the laughter of those who’d followed her through the village despite the oncoming storm. Judith beat on his bare back, but all he did was hook his free arm around her legs and drop her by the ankles, until the long mass of her hair uncoiled and touched the ground.

The eternal Highland rain began to fall, full, fat drops accompanying the symphony of thunder. It was, Alisdair thought, a curious diorama they enacted, complete with nature’s cooperation.

Her nose was at the level of his knees.Judith was beyond humiliation. Her skirt was sliding down and, in a moment, her legs would be bared to the shuffling mass of people who relentlessly followed them despite the MacLeod's quick and determined strides. She ceased pounding on his back, replacing that futile gesture with one far more practical.

She bit him.

He dropped her with a shout.

She landed on her back, momentarily winded. She stared up at the furious face of the MacLeod and realized that modesty was going to demand a price. She crept up on her hands and knees, brushed her hair back from her face with one wet hand, never shifting her gaze from him. She watched him warily as he rubbed that portion of his anatomy which had been the softest and most accessible to her teeth. When he came after her, she was prepared. She leapt to her feet, looked to the left, but darted to the right.

They raced towards the castle and Judith knew that she was going to pay for her impulsive gesture but not, she vowed, in view of a hundred people. She gathered the skirts of her new dress in her fists and, without a thought to the modesty she had protected only moments earlier, lifted the folds of material above her pistoning knees and sprinted for her life.

The storm was full upon them now, but Judith didn’t notice the pelting rain, her only thought was to escape the retribution she would receive at the MacLeod’s hands. The path she’d taken only moments earlier became as slippery as a stream bed, but still she ran.

If he caught her, he was going to kill her, Alisdair decided. One less English woman was not going to be a loss to the world. Especially, this one. But, damn, the woman could run. The rain was icy upon his bare chest, but he was immune to such petty discomfort.

Alisdair caught her just inside the bronze doors. He swept her up in his arms despite her struggles. The crowd cheered as he disappeared from sight with his sodden English wife momentarily tamed. Well, if nothing else, Alisdair thought, she had been an entertaining diversion.

He swayed against the stone steps that led to the living quarters. She had not stopped fighting him, but he lacked the energy to throw her over his shoulder again. He’d been working in the fields since dawn while she, no doubt, had been saving her strength for their encounter. He scowled at her, a gesture that would have given a sane person a reason to cease their shouts and blows. No, his English wife was as stubborn as she was athletic.

"Shut up, woman!" he finally shouted, and the sound bounced off the stone walls and seemed to echo down the long corridors.

"Let me go!" she yelled in response. She had nothing to lose; she knew what punishment awaited her in the room atop the stairs. If she could only delay it, she would forestall the pain, also.

Alisdair wondered exactly who Judith was, that she could hate as deeply as a Scot, and tremble with fear at the same moment. For all she wished to hide herself, he’d read those emotions well enough.

Rain had plastered her hair down, sheened her face. Her lashes were long, spiky, her lips were full and wet. Alisdair wanted to tell her that a mouth could be used to better pursuits, a voice to softer demands. Instead, he only stopped and stared at her, wondering why the rhythm of her heart would be so audible to him, why his own breath, raspy and winded, would echo hers so exactly.

The staircase had no railing, no banister. Those were frivolous notions for manor houses and estates. This staircase had been built with defense in mind, steep downward sloping steps that were difficult to mount if one were tired, or sick, or like Sophie, aged and frail.

At this moment, Alisdair felt all four.

Despite the trembling in his arms, he held his temporary English wife out over the sheer drop.

"Now?" he hissed.

She felt the tremors in his arms, and held onto his bare chest. He grimaced at the discomfort of her nails digging into his skin.

"Now?" he repeated.

"No," she said softly, defeated.

"Are you sure? It would be no trouble at all." He could feel his own heart pounding so loudly that surely she could hear it. He was tempted to throw her over, anyway.

She shook her head, frantically, and he stepped back and wearily leaned against the wall. He lowered her legs and allowed her to stand, but kept a firm hold on her upper arm. He pulled her inside Ian’s room, and swung her around as if she weighed no more than a feather. Her skirts slapped around her, wet, muddy. The beautiful blue sprigged dress - the prettiest dress she’d ever worn - was ruined.