The Adventurer (26 page)

Lying beneath him, Isabella closed her eyes and willed her thunderous heartbeat to calm. She could feel Calum’s eyes drinking in her naked breasts and fought against the instinct of embarrassment at being thus bared before a man for the first time. She bit her lip, and prayed that he would touch her, prayed that he would run his hands against the very flesh that was aching, aching for his warmth.

He obliged her, smoothing his fingers against the curve of generous flesh, and Isabella sucked in her breath, arching her back and lifting her breasts upward so that he filled his hands with her.

She thought she had never felt something so wonderful, so torturously sweet as when he glanced his thumbs softly over her nipples, giving her vibrant, tingling shocks of sensation. Until Calum lowered his head, his breath hot against her skin, and covered her there with his mouth.

Isabella gasped, arched her back again, and dragged her fingernails through the threads of the rug. “Calum ...”

He suckled her, drawing on her nipples with his tongue and his teeth and his lips, filling her with such jolts of pleasure that she wondered if she could stand him to continue.

Then she wondered if she could stand it if he stopped.

She knew a need to feel him, to feel his bare hot skin rubbing against hers, and so when he finally lifted his head, releasing her from his tender torment, she reached for him, grasping his shirt in her hands and pulling on it until she had slipped it over his head. He knelt before her, his skin aglow in the light of the fire, and Isabella devoured him with her eyes, the hard, muscled planes of his solid chest, the steely strength of his sinewy arms. She ran her hands over him, feeling the heat of him, the tightening of his flattened stomach. She had never seen a creature more beautiful, more perfectly formed and molded, more utterly and completely male.

Isabella rose up, standing on her knees, tilted her head to look up at him, saying nothing. Needing to say nothing to convey the depth of love she was feeling.

Calum cupped her chin with his hand, kissed her, and drew her against him until her breasts were pressed against his bare chest and their heartbeats pulsed in perfect rhythm.

She felt his hand slide down along the line of her back, cupping her bottom and pulling her tightly against him. She felt the hardness of him, the delightful pressure and friction of him. Her body responded with a heat that surged through her every limb, surged and met and pulsed deep within her womb, all while he continued to kiss her with long and deep strokes of his tongue.

His hand glanced her thigh, slipping beneath the hem of her nightdress that pooled at her knees. He slid up and underneath, scorching the soft and untouched flesh of her leg until he splayed his fingers at the angle of her hip and caressed her there softly, gently. When he released her mouth, and dragged his tongue down along the side of her jaw, suckling her neck, Isabella dug her fingers into the hard flexing muscle of his arm and clung to him as she dropped her head back on a soft outrush of breath, and a moan of complete and utter pleasure.

That moan turned quickly to a gasp when she felt his fingers delve downward, parting her, stroking the heated wetness that beckoned for his touch. She rocked backward and he held her with his arm, supporting her fully as her legs threatened to give beneath the unrelenting caress of his fingers. He explored and he stroked and she raked her nails across his shoulder, dropping her head forward and burying her face in his neck, breathing in the essence of him and fearing she would melt into a pool of liquid heat while unwilling to stop the movement of his hand against her even for a moment. She clung to him as if she were drowning, drowning on a turbulent sea of need. She felt his finger slide inside of her, felt the muscles of her body contract around him as a surge of wetness slickened her, swelling her around him. He used his fingers and his thumb, working her in exacting, intensifying strokes, tormenting her, fulfilling her, taking her higher and then higher still to the heavens until she felt the unexpected shock of her climax and cried out, muffling her cry in the hollow of his neck as sensations she had never imagined rocked her entirely, body and soul.

Wave after exquisite wave of pure sexual pleasure fused itself within her. She wanted him to stop. She wanted him to go on. She spasmed against him and then at the moment she nearly begged him to stop, he stilled and merely held her, held her tightly to him.

She hadn’t even noticed that as the heat of her passion drifted slowly back to earth, so had she as Calum gently laid her back onto the rug beneath them, covering her mouth and kissing her with a hunger that matched her own.

She blinked up at him when he lifted his head to gaze down at her in the hearth light.

“Calum.”

His eyes softened and he kissed her on her forehead. “Aye, lass?”

“I never knew ... never could have imagined ...”

He smiled. “I know, lass.”

“But you did not—”

“Shh ...” He leaned on his elbows above her, framing her face with his hands and smoothing the tiny tendrils of hair that curled about her ear. “It would be the furthermost desire in my heart to make love to you right now, right here, Isabella. I don’t think I have ever wanted anything else more in my life. But I cannot.”

She blinked. “Why?”

He looked at her, looked at her deeply, and said, “Because there is no honor in taking that which has been pledged to another.”

Isabella felt her body go awash with an icy chill, banishing the delicious warmth that had settled over her but moments before. “What do you mean, Calum?”

“You are betrothed to someone else, Isabella.”

She felt her throat tighten, constricting her next words. “How do you know that?”

He closed his eyes a long moment. When he looked at her again, his expression had gone from the tenderness of their loving to a guarded, shadowed mask. “I am ashamed to say that I read of it in your journal.”

He had read her journal?

Isabella instinctively stiffened, felt the beginnings of tears in her eyes, and squeezed them shut in refusal. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “How? Why?”

“The night of the feast, after I won your kiss from Fergus. I slipped away from the hall ...”

“I wondered where you had gone.”

“I came here, to the study. I was going to start looking through Lord Belcourt’s ledgers. Fergus and the others had brought the trunks they had taken off your ship here. They were waiting when I arrived.”

“My trunks,” she stated.

He nodded slowly. “Though it can never justify my invading your privacy as I did, I only sought to find out who you really were. I dinna know if you were Lord Belcourt’s daughter. I dinna believe you were a mermaid. So when I found your journal, I decided to read it. To see if it would reveal who you really were.”

Isabella closed her eyes, unable to look at him, unable to endure the knowing that her personal thoughts, her innermost private dreams, had been exposed without her knowing it.

“I canna tell you how very sorry I am, lass.”

She swallowed, trying desperately not to cry. She knew if she did it would break him. She looked at him. She could see how very much this had troubled him. She could understand his reasons, and it was that which she focused on in an effort to dispel her own embarrassment.

And then she remembered what he had said to her, why he had not taken her, made her his. Why he had not made love to her.

You are betrothed to someone else, Isabella.

“You ...” She didn’t want to ask the question even as she knew that she must. “You read the letter? The letter from my parents? The one I had tucked inside the journal?”

He stared down at her blankly. Finally he nodded.

She bit her lip. “So you know? You know who I am to marry?”

“Yes, lass.”

She swallowed hard, locked her gaze to his, and asked on a whisper that was filled with impending dread, “Who?”

“His name is St. Clive.”

Isabella’s vision blurred. “Kentigern St. Clive?”

Surely she had heard him wrongly.

But when he solemnly nodded his head, she knew she had not.

“It cannot be.” She shook her head. “You must be mistaken.”

But how could he have been mistaken in
that
name?

Calum lifted himself off of her, moved to sit on the rug beside her. “Nae, lass, he is the one. He is the one who your parents have made arrangements for you to marry. I’m certain of it.”

Isabella stared up at the ceiling for several moments, silent, still, as she tried to understand what she’d just been told. Then she turned, looked at the door, and got to her feet, rushing from the room, heedless of the fact that her nightdress was loose and open and free.

She hastened up the stairs to her chamber, crossed the room to the bed where the candle she had left burning earlier yet glowed. She took up her journal from where she had set it earlier that evening on the side table, opened it to the page where the letter yet lay, tucked away. She took up the letter, broke the seal with trembling hands, and read the words her mother had written.

When she got to the final line, she lowered to sit on the edge of the bed, and stared for several moments at the uncompromising stone wall before her.

Calum had been right.

It wasn’t until she read the letter a second time that she realized exactly why he had stopped making love to her completely, why he had not made her his.

Knowing the fondness you held in your heart as a young girl for him, I know you will be thrilled to learn that we have made arrangements for your marriage to Kentigern St. Clive.

Calum believed she would want to marry Kentigern.

Dear God, he couldn’t be more mistaken.

Taking up the letter, Isabella dashed from the room, racing down the stairs once again. She was nearly breathless when she reached the study door.

“Calum, it does not matter. I would never—”

But the room was empty.

He was suddenly gone.

Calum was in the stables later that morning, brushing down the Trakehner after having ridden him hard across the moors.

He looked up when Fergus came walking in. Their eyes locked.

“I want to talk to you,” Fergus said.

“I already ken what you want to say.” Calum turned, hanging up the tack to dry. “And I can tell you it’s no’ what you’re thinking.”

“Isn’t it now? I saw you. With her. Last night.” He lowered his voice. “In your study.”

Calum whirled around. “You’ve taken to peepin’ in on a man’s private moments now, have you, Fergus? Like some sort of pathetic keeker?” He closed his eyes, took a breath, and reined in his emotions. Fergus was his brother and he was coming dangerously close to saying something he would later come to regret.

He looked at him. “I love her, Fergus.”

“Love her? But you dinna e’en know who she is!”

“I know everything I need to. She’s compassionate. She’s intelligent. She’s—”

“A Sassenach.”

Calum scowled at him. “Aye, so she is. What of it?”

“ ’Tis a foolish man, Calum Mackay, who beds down with his enemies.”

“Is it tha’ which really bothers you, Fergus? That she’s a Sassenach? Or is it tha’ she chose me instead of you that first night in the hall, eh?”

“Is tha’ what you ... ?” Fergus shook his head, obviously fighting to control his own troubled emotions. “What I think, Calum, is that she could be a spy.”

“A spy?” Calum scoffed.
“Dia!
Where the de’il did you come up with that one? ’Ave you and Mungo been at the
uisge-beatha
early this morn?”

Calum turned, started out for the courtyard. He was finished with the conversation.

“Listen t’ me!”

Fergus went after him, grabbed his arm. “She makes drawings, Calum ... of people. Of us. She has drawings of you, M’Cuick, some of the other lads. She’s drawn the castle, some of the places around here.”

“Aye. She’s an artist. Tha’s what artists do.”

“Aye, she’s an artist who only need hand those pictures over to the government and we’ll all end up gibbet bait.”

Calum shook his head. “Isabella would never do that.”

“Isabella?” Fergus stared at him. “So is tha’ her name then? At least the name she told you?”

“Aye. And she told me aught else as well. You’ve no need to worry where her loyalties lie. I do and I trust her, Fergus.”

“And you know this after wha’? Less than a fortnight of acquaintance with the lass?” Fergus frowned. “For your sake and the sake of every man who’s with us, I certainly hope you’re right.”

He turned with a disgusted sweep of his arm.

“Wait.”

Fergus stopped, looked at Calum.

Calum came to meet him, his voice growing quiet. “Hae you no thought for what you’ll do once this is all over, once we’ve finished with this life on the seas?”

“Aye, I have. I’m for America.”

“America?”

It was the first time Calum had ever heard Fergus speak of it.

“Aye. There is nae Scotland anymore, Calum. Not the Scotland we fought for. We lost on that bloody moor and we canna get it back.”

“We lost a battle, Fergus. Not the rebellion.”

“Look around you, Calum Mackay! There is no rebellion. The prince has nae made any attempt to return in o’er a year now. He’s left us at the mercy of the government and now ’tis said the French are talking of peace with the Hanoverian. Already the clan estates of our brethren have been given over to the Sassenach nobles. It is only a matter of time afore they come to remove the rest of us, too.”

“So you’ll make that task all the easier by abandoning your homeland and going to the very place we have worked to keep your father and the others from? ’Tis a good thing Wallace and Bruce dinna surrender so easily as you, Fergus Bain, else we’d all be wearing breeks and eating kippers for breakfast.”

Fergus frowned at him. “Aye, but I’ll go on my own terms, Calum. Not as a prisoner, not as a servant indentured to another, but as a man free to choose.”

Calum shook his head. “I’ll ne’er turn my back on my heritage.”