The Scotsman (25 page)

Mairi had done that immediately upon her return, and the ensuing scene had put him right in the middle of a female squabble, an unenviable position for any man.

“The whey-faced bitch may be sleeping in your bed, but she is not the mistress here!” Mairi had railed at him
in Gaelic. “I will not have her playing wife when she is only a leman….”

Any attempt to placate Mairi was met with stubborn refusal, and in the end, Alex was forced to remind her that he was master of the keep and made the rules. “Do not berate me for my decision, because I will not allow it, Mairi. Now come, let her take some of the burden from your shoulders. It keeps her busy and lightens your load.”

“Set her above your own, and you will rue the day, Alex Fraser, mark my words.” Mairi had glared at him, then at Catherine. “’Tis an evil day that saw her come here.”

“Evil or not, she is here and will be here for a while yet to come. She is still hostage. ’Tis true she is not locked in a chamber, but she is not free to leave either.”

Drawing herself up, Mairi said stiffly, “Yea, but I am free to leave. I will not come back until the Sassenach whore is gone.”

As he’d watched her storm from the hall, she had looked more frail and older than he’d noticed before. It weighed on him that she so hated Catherine, but he would not relent. Now he must find another guard for Catherine when he went with Douglas, one that was suitable yet not caught up in her charm.

Lifting his head, he looked up to see Robbie watching him. Yea, Robbie MacLeod was loyal and fierce, and while he might jest with Alex about the maid, he would not be susceptible to her beauty or wiles should she choose to use them. Perhaps he was being too cynical, but if he was to err where Catherine was concerned, he intended it to be on the side of caution.

He beckoned to Robbie, and he came, moving across the hall with swift, certain strides. “You are to ride with the Black Douglas?” he asked his lord.

“Aye. We leave at cock crow tomorrow. Logan will be in charge of the men-at-arms, but ’tis you only that I trust with the care of the lady. See to her safety first, then her comfort.”

Robbie looked surprised. “You do not need me to go with you, Alex?”

“Douglas is taking only a few men. I need you here more than I do with me this time. If I should not return, you know what to do.”

“Och, do not fash yourself about the lady, nor summon ill fortune with thoughts of defeat. You will return, and the lady will be held safe here until you do.”

Alex put a hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “I can always depend upon you. Join us at the table. Perhaps Douglas has brought news from the Bruce.”

Steaming venison pies and haunches of beef were served, and across the hall a piper played a lively skirl as they sat at table to eat. Laughter rose in occasional bursts, and castle hounds yapped for scraps and attention. Douglas sat on his right, with Catherine on his left and Robbie just beyond them.

As they ate, James Douglas told them what he had learned of Edward’s movements. “On the side of good, Edward seems to be more humane to Bruce’s queen than was his father. He has just granted her spacious lodgings at Rochester Castle, though she is still a prisoner there, and ordered that she is to have twenty shillings a week for expenses. ’Tis meet that female hostages be treated kindly, do you not agree, Lady Catherine?”

His sly glance at Alex earned him a scowl, and Douglas only laughed before he continued. “At the end of November, Edward wrote a letter to the Earl of Dunbar telling him he intends to bring an army north before midsummer. And just before Christmas, he sent out writs
to eight earls and eighty-seven barons summoning them all to appear with their knights, arms, and soldiers at Berwick on June tenth. On the way here, I learned that he has confirmed to his Scottish supporters—curse the Comyns for fools!—that he fully intends to lead an army against Bruce. Rumor has it that he will make Pembroke the Viceroy of Scotland again.”

“None of this is surprising,” Alex pointed out with a shrug. “We have long been aware of Edward’s intent to meet us in battle on midsummer’s day. What of the Earls of Lancaster, Warwick, and Surrey? Have they yet answered his summons?”

Douglas shook his head, stripping off a juicy portion of beef and chewing it before he replied. “Nay. They are not like to reply until they see which way the wind blows. They will meet their feudal obligation, but still harbor too much resentment against him to ride to his standard.”

Alex nodded thoughtfully. Then he asked, “And War-field? Has he yet answered the summons?”

Douglas grinned. “Aye, ’tis said that he did not need a summons to send his vow of support for Edward. But we knew that he would do so, especially now.”

Catherine’s head had come up, but she bowed it again quickly, staring down at her trencher with a small frown. It was often in his thoughts that she had lingering loyalty to her father though she swore she did not, but he knew for certain how she felt about her brother. Despite their angry words, she loved him, and grieved that he had not sent word to her since she had last seen him on the eve of Saint Nicholas’s feast day.

Later, when he found her alone in the chamber he now shared with her, he asked her the question foremost in his mind: “Where lies your loyalty, catkin? With your father and brother, or with your new home?”

She looked up at him, shadows darkening her eyes to deep purple. “Is this my new home? Are you then reconciled to losing your brother?”

“Nay, you know I am not. But he is yet alive, and if I am able, I will free him.”

“How?”

The simple question took him aback, and he gazed at her with a frown. “God willing, I will manage it, but in truth, I do not know how. The earl is not willing to barter, and I have nothing else to offer that will sway him. If your brother fails …”

As the sentence trailed into silence, she laughed softly and turned away to stare out the window at the dark night beyond. “Yea, now you see how worthless I am as a hostage. You would have done better to take Nicholas, for my father values him.”

He heard the bitterness, and went to her, turning her around to face him. Hooking a finger beneath her chin, he tilted up her face so that he could look into her eyes. “Do not allow your father’s stubborn foolishness to convince you of a falsehood, catkin. You are not worthless.”

Sighing, she rested her cheek against his chest, undoing him with the simple, trusting gesture. He put up a hand rather awkwardly to stroke her bright hair, letting the silken fibers flow over his fingers in a soft tangle. How did she do this to him? Turn him into a mass of confusion? It was not something he would ever admit to anyone, least of all her, but there were moments when he felt an overwhelming softness for her, an unfamiliar emotion that stirred and troubled him. It was unexpected. Lust he knew well, but not this surge of yearning for her that had nothing to do with her sweet, soft body and everything to do with the fierce desire to keep her safe at all costs.

When she drew back, tear tracks marred her pale
cheeks and he brushed them dry with his thumb, managing a smile. “Dinna greet, lass,” he murmured in the familiar dialect that seemed natural with her now. It came easily to him, tripping off his tongue with tender sympathy. A woman’s tears always undid him, but especially this woman, who wept so seldom when other females seemed to spill constant tears like Scotch mist.

Curling her fingers around his hand, she held it against her cheek and smiled. “I do not mean to weep, but it seems so hopeless at times. Are you going away?”

Her abrupt change of direction made him smile. “Aye. It will not be for long, unless Douglas finds that his perfect plan has gone awry. But that is unusual. He is unrivaled in concocting wild, implausible strategies that actually work.”

A frown drew the delicate line of her brows over her eyes. “He is a man who takes too many risks. I would prefer that you stay, but I know from experience how useless it is to ask a man to be safe rather than retreat from certain danger and possible death.”

A little surprised by her comments, he studied her for a moment. The change in their relationship had been dramatic since Saint Nicholas Eve. It was not a situation that was strange to him, for he had noticed in his relationships with women that once intimacy had been achieved, they tended to cling and worry. Perhaps that was why he had always kept his intimacies casual, as with the two village women who had borne his children. That was the only tie he had to them now, for both had married well due to the stipend he gave them as mothers of his offspring. There had never been vows of love between them, and if the women had felt other than physical pleasure or satisfaction that they would be granted regular purses, they did not reveal it to him by word or deed.

It was the way he preferred it. Until now.

By all accounts, he should keep Catherine of Warfield at arm’s length. She meant trouble to him if he allowed her to matter. He knew that well. As badly as he wanted Jamie safely back, he loathed the necessity of returning Catherine to her father should they reach agreement. When had she become so important?

“Alex….” She turned his hand and pressed a light kiss on his palm. “P’raps it seems odd to you that I fret for your safety, when in truth, you are my captor and little else, but ’tis not a thing I fully understand myself. I do know that I cannot help the way I feel, and if you should come to harm, I wouldst be distraught.”

Lightly, he said, “Then I will remain unharmed so as not to cause you distress, milady.”

“You jest, when I am most serious.”

“Yea, but there is naught either of us can do but take each day as it comes, catkin. If I were to bog down in worry, then I would lose whatever edge I might have over my enemy.”

“But—”

Bending his head, he kissed her to stifle any more protests or words of worry. After a moment, her lips grew soft under his, and parted to allow him entrance. Quickly, their discussion was gone from his mind as he concentrated on the sweet softness of her, the heady taste of her mouth, and the feel of her silky skin beneath his roaming hands.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her across the chamber to his bed, laying her on the mattress and following her with his weight atop her yielding form. Her breath wafted over his cheek when he drew back to gaze down at her with a smile, and her eyes were half-closed.

“You end every discussion you do not like this way,” she murmured, twining her fingers in his hair.

“Complaints again, milady?”

“Nay, no complaints … just an observation. Kiss me.”

He complied most willingly, brushing his lips over her mouth, the smooth curve of her cheek, then her eyelids before moving lower to press his mouth against the rapidly throbbing pulse in the hollow of her throat. She moaned softly, music to his ears, as stirring as the pipes playing a rousing battle tune. His blood beat faster in his veins and he lost himself in her fragrant flesh and yielding sweetness, forgot everything but the driving need to ease his growing sense of urgency.

His head moved lower to kiss the valley between her breasts through the soft velvet stretched over them. She responded with a little moan and restless arch of her body toward him. He smiled against the fabric, and nipped gently at the tight buds pressing against her bodice. Then he sat back on his folded legs and dragged his hands down her legs to her knees, bunching the velvet in his fists as he watched her. As the hem slid upward, his curled fingers brushed lightly over her calves, her knees, her pale thighs. She shivered beneath his touch.

Bending, he pushed the gown slowly up, kissing the skin of her inner thighs as he worked the fabric higher. A husky moan shimmered in the air between them, and he looked up at her. Her face was flushed with passion as she chewed at her bottom lip. Dragging his mouth over the soft flesh above her knee, he muttered, “You smell like lavender.”

“Yes … yes … the soap….”

He made a mental note to bring her a different scent, though it should not bother him that James Douglas had given her the soap. Another trivial reason for staying away from her, for he had never in his life felt the faintest twinge of jealousy about any woman. They were
there or they were not, and one was as good as another when it came to sexual matters. Until now … Lord have mercy, until now and this one woman, who of all in Christendom, he should avoid as if she were a leper. Yet he craved her, craved the sight and smell and feel of her, craved her laughter and even her tears, and it tore him apart that to save his brother, he would have to relinquish her.…

He slid his hands beneath her and lifted her, brushing his face against the fragrant contours of her body and breathing deeply of lavender and female. When he raked his tongue over her she gasped and arched into him, a lovely female sound of excitement that was arousing.

“Oh, Alex … what are you … doing?”

In answer, he cupped her buttocks in his palms and pulled her closer, his tongue delving into her feminine recess with steady rhythm that summoned gasps and muffled cries from her as she pressed the backs of her knuckles against her mouth. Through his lowered lashes, he watched her face as he brought her to the brink of ecstasy, stroking and kissing her until she curled her fingers in his hair and held him against her writhing form.

When her entire body trembled, he eased her down to the mattress and stretched over her. With swift efficiency, he unlaced her gown and freed her breasts from their prison of velvet. Shaping the small, firm mounds with his hands, he kissed and fondled and suckled her until she was panting and pleading for him, and only then did he lift the edge of his tunic to press his arousal between her damp thighs.

A flash of fire exploded deep in his belly, and he paused, throbbing at the moist heat between her thighs, his teeth clenched for control. Lord have mercy.…

Shuddering, she arched her hips, rotating them into the hard pressure. Her hand crept between their bodies,
fingers finding and circling him, exploring the stiff swell with excruciating motions that drew a wordless groan from him. Unable to wait, he moved her hand aside and entered her, plunging deeply and moving with hot ferocity against her, unable to hold back, unable to think of anything but the heated urgency that drove him.