DARE THE WILD WIND (37 page)

They spoke civilly to one another, but their companionable rides over the estate all but ended.  Drake made the excuse of going over accounts with his steward and being called again to
London in service to the Crown.  Brenna couldn't know if he had been aware of Caroline's plan to establish herself so close to them in Surrey, or if during his increasingly frequent absences, he traveled any farther than Dorcombe Manor. 

If rumor raced through the county about Drake and Caroline, Brenna knew she would never hear it.  None of the female guests so eager to judge her at the harvest ball called on her at Welling
broke, and anything Theodora told her would be calculated to sow more discord between them. 

She sought only one favor from Drake.  When she married, she had promised she would send for Morag.  She had been Brenna's nurse and confidante, very near her mother after Fiona Dalmoral died.

But when a response came to Brenna's letter to Lochmarnoch, Morag declined to come.  The note was brief. 

My dearest lady,

          Thank the Almighty you're safely wed, even to an Englishman.  And mayhap the Earl is a better man than the sorry lot left in the
Highlands. 

     
Hereabouts I only know of one worth his daily ration, old and contrary as he is.  The laird dismissed me from service at the castle, and none but Duncan would take me in.  The rector in the next village churched us, and 'tis my duty now to stay by my husband's side.

          May God bless you with children and a long life.

        
Y'r Loving and Obedient Servant

         
Morag

Morag could neither read nor write, but despite her aching disappointment, Brenna had no doubt the words were Morag's.  And the last exchange she had heard between Morag and Duncan hinted they had more reason to wed than to silence village talk. 

After
Culloden Moor, Brenna had done all she could to make it appear Morag was ignorant of her plan to escape.  She knew Malcolm would strike out at anyone he blamed, but Morag had been Malcolm's childhood nurse as well as Brenna's.  Beating or killing the woman who suckled and swaddled him would risk mutiny in the clan.

Instead he had driven Morag from the castle, aware his tenants would fear to give her shelter.  But old
Duncan had defied him to take Morag in, and the honorable scars he had won in battle and his standing in the clan protected him from Malcolm's wrath.  Brenna blessed Duncan's courage again.  He had saved Morag from exile, wandering the countryside in search of charity from other clans.  She hoped they would live out their lives together in peace.

Still, the letter left Brenna desolate.  She was far from her native
Highlands, estranged from a husband she might never really know, her only friends in England a day's ride away in London.  And as winter's first snows drifted an unbroken mantle of white across Wellingbroke's grounds and gardens, her loneliness increased.

Some of their awkwardness thawed at Christmastide, when Drake opened the great hall to all his neighbors and tenants, and feasted squire and commoner alike.  Privately Brenna rejoiced at the news that Lady Scoville had returned to
London, and ceased to jump when Drake placed a casual and outwardly affectionate hand on her arm at the banquet table or drew her close to his side as they bade their guests farewell.

Then, in January, Drake was called away in haste to
Hannover, where George the Second held court.  He told her flatly that a winter crossing of the Channel was far too rough and hazardous for her to undertake to be presented for the first time to the King. 

"Time enough for that during the
London season," he said as he wrote at his desk.  "I'd prefer to see you in the bloom of health than bruised from a bad crossing or ill with lung fever."

"I'm far from a poor sailor, and hardier than you think."

Drake glanced up from affixing his crest on the warm dollop of wax that sealed his reply to the King.  "You'd have no one but ship's officers for company, and I can't delay for trunks and baggage."  He rose and gave the letter to the royal messenger
warming his hands by the fire. 

"When I can, I promise you a voyage to the Continent, but for now I go alone."

Brenna saw him off in the ice
rimed courtyard.  He bent from the saddle for a hard farewell kiss before he kicked his mount forward at the head of a small party of men who would travel with him to London.

This separation proved longer than any to attend the House of Lords.  Weeks stretched to a month and then two.  Perversely, Brenna found herself missing the sound of his voice, even his tread on the stairs.  And tossing restless and sleepless in their enormous Italian bed, her traitorous body aching for his.

Drake didn't return until late in March.  He strode into her sitting room spattered with mud from hours in the saddle, and swept her quickly up into his arms and into their private chamber, stripping off his travel
stained clothes as soon as he deposited her on the bed.  Laughing deep in his throat at his haste, he came to her naked and already aroused. 

Magnificent and male, he was an ancient sculpture come to life.  His broad powerful shoulders and deep wide chest tapered to lean hips and the long muscled columns of his legs, and a soft curling halo of hair sprang in a golden furze from his chest to narrow in a tantalizing path down his flat corded stomach to his swelling manhood.

Swiftly, even as he claimed her mouth, his blunt callused fingers tugged at the laces of her bodice and loosened her gown.  In a few impatient movements, he freed her of her petticoats and chemise, and she lay naked beneath him.

Beyond shame or decorum, Brenna yielded to the scalding heat of his mouth and body, glo
rying in the feel of his broad muscled chest above her in their bed, of the male weight of him pressing down on her.  The salty taste of his skin against her brushing lips was nectar, the leathery smell of his sweat unaccountable perfume.  His mouth traced a hot exquisite path down her throat to her swelling breasts, wetly teasing each stiffening, straining bud until she felt each in turn would explode.       

Shock after shock of pleasure shot through her, and she whimpered and arched against him, fingernails digging convulsive
ly into the muscles of his back.  He made a low bearish sound in his throat, and his head dipped lower.  Grazing her ribs and the sensitive hollow of her waist, his lips seared a feathery erotic path down the silken curve of her flesh to the gentle ripe mound that guarded the secret innermost center of her being. 

At the first tantalizing brush of his mouth, Brenna gasped and cried out at the wild sensation that arrowed through her.  With deliberate sensual calculation, his lips grazed and teased and explored before the first invasion of his tongue sent a shower of sparks spiraling along her every nerve. 

Darting, probing, flicking, his tongue ravished and tormented her with supremely salacious skill.  Whimpering and quaking with intolerable pleasure, Brenna writhed in a mindless struggling frenzy, and ruthlessly he pinned her wrists, beginning again.  Slowly, relentlessly, he drove her to madness, the wet hot laving and fluttering of his tongue increasing in tempo until she arched and screamed against him, flying apart into empty space, falling for a brief spinning eternity into the void.

Then she felt Drake's mout
h take possession of hers once more, and he thrust hard and deep inside her, moving, plunging, pounding to his own urgent release.  Brenna's need crested again with his, once then a second time, as his manhood swelled again within her. 

Afterward they lay together, Drake's body curled around hers, drowsing briefly into spent and drifting sleep.  And woke to make love again, as if neither of them could sate their desire.

The strange magnet that drew her to Drake had no link to sanity, no tether to reason or sense, but in the first days after Drake's return, it mattered not at all.  For a brief time, even Brenna's doubts about Caroline were forgotten, willfully pushed i
nto a back corner of her mind.

It seemed almost possible that the rift between them  might heal.  His return from
Hannover had the air of a welcome homecoming.  Drake seemed genuinely pleased to be back with her at Wellingbroke, and to once again pass the great part of his time in her company.  And finally Brenna could admit to herself that she wanted to mend their quarrel.  Despite their beginnings, she didn't want to spend the rest of her life at war with Drake.  During the Rising, she had seen him rightly as her enemy and Cam's.  But it made no sense to go on despising Drake because he was an Englishman, and she had been born a Scot. 

The rebellion was at an end, and her girlhood dreams had been swept away.  It was time to try to embrace the future with Drake, whatever it held, and, if necessary, to combat the hold Caroline Scoville might still have on Drake. 

It gave Brenna hope that once Caroline had absented herself from their neighborhood in Surrey, Drake's stiff manner with her had softened a degree, and he had started to warm to her again.  Caroline was a startling beauty, so exquisite Brenna felt commonplace and flawed beside her.  But beguiling as Caroline might be, if her charms continued to lure Drake, her power over him diminished with distance.  It was a straw to grasp at, and a rivalry Brenna meant to face when they returned to
London.

But when Drake announced they would depart from Wellingbroke, it wasn't to
London, but to his estate in Cornwall. 

"It isn't the fashionable season for a holiday, but I've neglected affairs at Penherion too long.  Production at Carn Sennen has fallen, and my steward at Penherion and the manager at the mine are at dangerous odds."

Brenna knew little beyond the fact that the mine on Drake's estate produced tin, as
Cornwall had done before the Romans conquered Britain.  Barely a fortnight since Drake's arrival at Wellingbroke, an urgent dispatch had come from Cornwall.  And, much as Brenna longed to see Eleanore and Geoffrey Wittworth again, she secretly felt a twinge of relief at her reprieve from London. 

"We've been married less than a year, and we've spent months away from each other."  His arm reached out to circle her waist as she stood beside his chair in his study.  "I never intended that, and I mean to remedy it now."

Brenna felt a cautious surge of optimism.  Until now, when his business or the Crown's had called Drake away, he had gone alone.  He could easily have left her behind at Wellingbroke again.  But this time he wanted her with him.  It was a good omen, and she threw herself into hasty preparations for the trip.       

With two wagons o
f their baggage in train, they made the journey by coach.  Rain and  mired roads slowed their progress across Hampshire and Dorset and Devon, but at last they arrived on the north coast of Cornwall.

Penherion sat at the very tip of a headland jutting high above the crashing sea.  A gray pile of stone defying wind and storm and man, it was a fortress, its sheer granite ramparts thrown up to repel seafaring raiders and bloody internecine war.  It had come to the Setons as a reward for service to George the First.

It was very like
Lochmarnoch Castle, and Brenna felt oddly at home there.  Much of the estate was too barren for crops, and Penherion's real source of wealth was the tin mine at Carn Sennen.  Tin and fish and copper were the coin of this rugged and windswept country, as different from Surrey as her own beloved Highlands.  Its stark wildness quickened something in her blood, and far from banishment, Brenna found Cornwall a refuge from Theodora.

The gales and wet kept her from riding Dancer out often.  The splintered shingle of the steep paths leading from Penherion was more slippery and trea
cherous footing for horse than man.  While Drake wrangled with his steward or traveled to Carn Sennen, Brenna took solitary bracing walks along the high jagged cliffs, watching the sea rage and foam against the rocks below.

A small fishing village sat below Penherion at the base of the cliffs, its weathered stone cottages huddling at the edge of a narrow deep harbor that afforded its inhab
itants their livelihood.   

"At times I suspect the villagers have trafficked in more than an honest day's catch," Drake had said a touch grimly when he accompanied her on her first walk along the headland.

"In
Truro you hear tales of wrecking on this coast, and smugglers who drop anchor by night."  He held out his hand to help her over a fallen rock blocking the track.  "My steward is a Cornishman.  Having one of them manage the estate is much the better choice than a stranger, but he's less than useful at taking note of occasional mischief in the village."

"Are you saying he isn't honest?" Brenna asked.

"Honest enough where my accounts are concerned," Drake answered wryly.  "I see to that.  But he scruples at reporting a little larceny when he knows the penalty the villagers could pay.  Penherion suffers from the lack of a landowner who can be in residence the year round."

That was impossible, and Brenna knew Drake regretted his neglect of Penherion keenly.  First he had been called away on campaign in
Scotland and later on political errands for the King, and Drake disliked to see any of his estates in disarray.