Highland Obsession (11 page)

Her vision swam. It was obvious he and Cam had once been close, because he described exactly what they’d done. “What do you want me to say?” she cried.

His hand dropped away from her chin. “I want you to say he never touched you. I want you to tell me this is all a nightmare and that I’ll wake in the morning with my beautiful, unsullied wife lying beside me.”

“I can’t,” she groaned.

He rose again and strode to the window. Facing away from her, he said, “Then tell me about your first time. Your real first time. With the earl.”

“Please . . . no.”

“Why not? If I couldn’t have been there for my wife’s loss of innocence, I think it’s within my rights to hear about it, at least.”

“He took me in a closet,” she murmured, her cheeks flaming.

“And?”

“We were both fully clothed,” she said in a monotone. “He’d flipped my skirts up. I couldn’t see anything because they were covering my face.” She remembered the scratchy feel of wool covering her nose. Cam had pinned her arms overhead, and unable to breathe, she’d turned her head to the side so the fabric wouldn’t asphyxiate her.

“What happened?”

“He was . . . in a hurry. Rushed, because the door was unlocked and servants were passing by outside. I don’t think he knew I was”—she licked her lips—“untouched.”

“Did you make a noise, Sorcha? Did you scream, even with the threat of discovery?”

She pushed the words out. “I did.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Aye, it did.”

“But then you did it again after that, didn’t you? Why?”

Humiliation swept through her, threatening to drown her, but she clawed herself up, grasping at the crumbling walls of her pride. “Because I wanted to.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper.

“Because Cam made it feel good, didn’t he? Even through the pain?”

She closed her eyes, remembering that day. The smell of cedar wood and lavender surrounding them. Her backbone pressing into the hard planks of the floor. The feel of a man’s body on top of hers for the first time. And then the pain, so sharp, but then dulling to be replaced by something exciting and wonderful.

“Aye,” she breathed.

“Did Cam realize it was your first time after he penetrated your body?”

“Aye, he did.” And he’d begged for her forgiveness for being rough.

“What did he say?”

“He said sorry. He said he’d make it better next time.”

“And did he?”

“He did.” The second time they’d been in Cam’s bed, and he’d gone slow, taking his time to arouse every part of her body before he’d taken her. It was the first time she’d come for him.

“I should hate you for this,” Alan said in a low voice.

She rose from the chair and hobbled over to him. Her swollen feet were tender all over. She stood beside him at the window, gazing out over the glistening green of the lawn separating the cottage from the loch.

“Do you hate me?” she asked, too afraid to look at his face. Tension radiated from every pore of his body, creating a force that made her fear moving closer.

“I don’t know.”

“But do you believe it when I say nothing happened between me and Cam last night?”

“I don’t know that, either. I don’t know if I believe a word you say.”

She understood. She looked up at him, seeing for the first time a terrible lump on the side of his head. Emboldened by empathy, she reached up to touch it, but he cringed away.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“I was in a fight.”

“With whom?”

“Cam’s guards.”

So he had come after her, fought for her. A feeling she’d never experienced surged up from her chest. “Thank you.”

“You’re my wife. I will protect you, even if . . .” He didn’t finish, so she did it for him.

“Even if I betrayed you.”

He didn’t answer.

She wished he’d let her touch him, because the sudden desire to lay her head on his shoulder was almost more than she could bear.

He glanced down at her. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

“I don’t care.”

His lips firmed. “Get some rest, lass. You probably didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“Neither did you,” she murmured. “Will you come to bed with me?” Perhaps there she could be brave enough to embrace him, to show him how thankful she was for his acceptance, however tentative, of her. How grateful she was he’d tried to save her from Cam.

“No. I’ll make up a pallet by the fire. You take the bed.”

Her heart sank. “Alan, I—”

He raised a brow at her.

“I wish you would sleep with me. I am your wife.”

“For now, Sorcha.” His face was hard as carved marble.

“What do you mean?”

He eyed her, and she’d never seen anyone peruse her body so dispassionately. As if she were a broodmare and he assessed her for her ability to bear foals.

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you,” he said finally, his voice cold. “Maybe I should send you back to the Earl of Camdonn. You are perhaps better suited to be his mistress than my wife.”

CHAPTER FIVE

C
am awoke flopped over the desk in his study with a half-empty glass of whisky beside his hand and a headache from hell. “Christ,” he muttered. He rose unsteadily on shaky legs and squinted at the morning light sifting in between the cracks in the curtains. How much had he had to drink last night? Apparently far too much.

Sorcha
.

“Christ!” he exclaimed, louder this time.

He remembered everything.
Almost
everything. The important bits, at least. The fact that he’d left Sorcha alone in his bedchamber, weeping in misery. The fact that he’d planned to release her this morning.

Maybe that wasn’t a good idea, he mused, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Alan was a proud man—would he take her back after what had happened? Cam couldn’t be sure. He’d seen Alan with women often enough. But he’d never been bound to anyone in the way he was bound to Sorcha. And Cam had never before interfered in Alan’s relations with a female.

Perhaps Cam should simply lay down the facts and let her decide. He’d made a mistake by abducting her, but it was too late to undo it. Through no fault of her own, her marriage to Alan was in jeopardy, but Cam would offer her a good life. He’d keep her here at Camdonn Castle. He’d support her and protect her and offer her an income large enough to make any Highlander swoon. He’d even have his lawyer draw up some favorable terms, if she desired.

If, after all that, she still wished to return to Alan—well, Cam would no longer hold her against her will.

At least, he’d try his damndest not to hold her against her will. He swallowed down the cotton in his throat and glanced longingly at the pitcher of whisky, but it was too early to get drunk.

The thought of chaining her in the castle dungeon was far preferable to the thought of returning her to Alan MacDonald’s bed. But seeing her crying last night . . . He couldn’t do that to her. As much as he wanted her, it killed him to see he’d caused her pain.

He dragged his unwilling body to his bedroom. He took a deep breath at the door, remembering the heartrending scene of her sobbing in his bed. What would her mood be this morning? Would she be angry? Still in tears? Accepting of her fate?

He opened the door to silence. His bed, though rumpled, was empty. He stepped inside to scan the room. “Sorcha?”

She was nowhere to be found. In desperation, he checked the window—it was locked, and in any case, she’d be a fool to try to squeeze through it—and searched the wardrobe and under the bed. Nothing.

It hit him like a brick in the gut. Clutching his stomach, he turned slowly toward the threshold. He’d walked right in. He’d been so bloody sotted last night, he hadn’t locked the door.

She’d escaped.

 

Alan stood at the window as Sorcha rested. He wasn’t tired, though he hadn’t slept at all last night.

He could join his men in their duties. It was a busy time—not only was it the middle of harvest, but they were still herding the straggling cattle down from the shieling where they’d been taken to graze for the summer.

He could read one of the books he’d brought with him from England. He could go out and work, though Moira had forbidden manual labor. He could fix the damaged door, which was allowing a frigid draft to waft in from the outside.

He could take off his clothes, lie beside his wife, and make love to her. She was his, after all, to do with as he pleased.

No. His pride wouldn’t allow him to touch her. He’d opened his heart to her far too easily, and now he paid the price. He wouldn’t let her know how her deception cut him to the quick. Couldn’t let her know he cared.

He shouldn’t be feeling so strongly about this. But he was shaken to the core, flooded with disappointment and the bitter taste of betrayal. Out of all the men in the world, why had it been the goddamned Earl of Camdonn?

He walked to the partition separating the two rooms and gazed at the bed. She lay curled on her side, covered by a plaid with her pale arm wrapped over it. She was relaxed, her wine-red lips parted in slumber, her long eyelashes arcing at the bottoms of her eyelids. Her hair swept around her head like a midnight-colored fan.

If only he could bury himself deep into her sweet warmth again. Start over, from the beginning.

But as he’d told her earlier, she wasn’t what he wanted, wasn’t what he’d looked for in a wife. God knew for once he wanted a woman completely separate from Cam’s influence. He’d thought she’d be that woman.

Yet . . . as cold as he felt toward her, something about her behavior nourished a seed of hope somewhere inside him. Maybe it was her pained honesty when he’d so brutally questioned her about her relations with Cam. In that, he knew intuitively, she hadn’t lied.

But why? After deceiving him so smoothly last night, why wouldn’t she try to continue the charade? He didn’t think it was sheer fear of him discovering her secret. She’d been afraid to tell him everything, but resolute. Determined.

She was an enigma, this pale Scottish woman. One he didn’t know how the hell to approach. She brought out a vulnerability in him he didn’t like at all. Never before had a woman had the ability to hurt him. He’d been married to this one for less than a day, and the wound she’d inflicted on him pained him far more than the slice down his back.

Alan blew out a breath. Hell. All of his hopes, his dreams for a happy life in Scotland with his new wife, had gone up in smoke. Nothing was as it should be.

Memories washed through him, of the times he and Cam stood side by side, friends through good times and bad. In England they’d been inseparable through school and university. Together they were invincible, or so they’d thought as young men.

When Cam returned to Scotland, their communications had dwindled. Alan had been busy with his grandfather’s estate, Cam had been busy assuming his duties as earl, and neither of them were faithful letter writers. And when he’d finally returned to Scotland eight months after Cam, Alan had been overwhelmed by clan business and his upcoming nuptials. He’d seen Cam on only a few brief occasions, the visit to Camdonn Castle last week the longest . . . and in retrospect, the strangest. He realized now Cam hadn’t been quite himself. He hadn’t looked Alan in the eye, and he’d drunk whisky steadily throughout Alan’s visit.

Alan had missed his friend, thought about him often, mulled over how odd it was he saw him less in Scotland than he had in London, even though they lived closer to each other now. Alan planned to visit again once the political crisis had calmed. He’d admonished his Jacobites to live peaceably beside Cam’s loyalist men. He’d considered asking Cam to join with him on an investment he planned to make in cattle.

Their duties had forced them apart, but in Alan’s mind, their friendship was as solid as ever. If he ever truly needed anything, he knew Cam was just a few miles away.

But Cam had severed the tight bonds of their friendship last night when he abducted Sorcha. The sense of loss left Alan feeling winded. He felt as if two people close to him had died.

Sorcha shifted, made a low sound in her throat, then stretched and rolled to her back. Her eyes opened and slowly came to focus on him.

“Alan,” she murmured. Her voice was like honey, smooth and sweet and sliding under his skin like a warm balm. “What time is it?”

“After noon.”

“Have you slept at all?”

“I’m not tired.”

She rose to her elbows. “I’ll make you something to eat.”

He stood silently, watching her as she left the bed, her shift falling to her shins. His cock swelled at the way the linen draped over her body, clinging to the pert breasts, the flare of her hips. She hobbled to the table in front of the silver-edged mirror he’d given to her as a wedding gift and ran a brush through the silky cascade of her hair. With deft fingers, she made a single braid down her back and then, with a shy glance at him, pulled a plaid over her shoulders and limped past him, slipping on her shoes set beside the front door.