Chapter 21
Lying across Ruark’s shoulder, her fists pounding on his back, Rose stopped shouting only when he slowed to instruct Colum to see that the boys and Julia got back to Stonehaven safely.
Deaf to Rose’s fury, Ruark swung her up on Loki, then mounted behind her.
He settled her across his lap. He placed his palm across her stomach to hold her firmly against his chest as he bent to secure the reins.
Then he galloped away from the celebration she had helped organize.
He rode for a mile in his estimation before he felt her shuddering inhalation, as if the effort would calm the race of her heartbeat that thumped so heavily against his palm.
His mind was too awash with whatever she was feeling to define his own emotions.
Her full mouth, inviting his gaze, remained neither flat nor pursed, hinting only of the intensity of her control.
“Are you planning to remain silent all the way home?” Ruark asked.
Apparently, she was. He could kidnap her. Twice. Wed her against her will. But he could not make her talk.
He waited until he had ridden a suitable distance from the lodge, until he could no longer see the glow of orange in the sky from the bonfire. Then he reined in Loki. “Dammit, Rose.”
His hand swept along the taut curve of her waist, and he turned her in his arms. A gust of wind snatched the hem of her dress. She did not resist him, not because his physical strength made escape impossible, but because her power against him lay in submission.
He rubbed his thumb across her cheekbone. The moonlight revealed her eyes, wet with hurt. In the charged silence, all he wanted to do was kiss her.
The magnitude of his desire had reached proportions startling even to him. Desire he was only beginning to understand.
He had wanted her since the first time he had seen her at the abbey.
A passion that had slowly grown and fed upon itself, that had awakened him at night these past weeks, that had stopped him in the middle of a meal or a conversation as he remembered her touch, the scent and texture of her hair, the taste of her on his lips, and why he had wanted to get home to her.
He caught her chin with two fingers. “Rose . . .”
“Let go of me. Please.”
“Tell me you did not miss me,” he cajoled.
He could read the answer in her eyes. She would be lying if she told him nay. His hands came over her breasts to undo the laces on her bodice. “You would force me, Ruark?” The question was a wounded whisper.
He stared at her upturned face. She was his wife. She must know there could be no question of force.
He paused. His eyes closed briefly, then opened.
“Tonight ’twas a bit of good sport for all, Rose. We are just wed. I have been absent nearly a month. No one thinks less of you.”
She looked surprised that he understood her feelings.
’Twas not only his actions that injured her.
It had been the ribbing and laughter from everyone else.
Claimed by her Scottish laird. She felt betrayed by their ribaldry as their laird carted her off like a sack of grain.
The conquering hero comes home to his bride, and everyone has a wonderful time at her expense.
His statement galvanized her. “How dare you arrive home after being gone three weeks and show such disrespect. I worked weeks cultivating trust and what I believed to be friendships. I met the tenants, visited the village elders. I had so wanted to show you my school when you returned. I do not want to care, yet I cannot pluck the hurt from my heart as if ’tis a splinter easily removed. ”
Indeed, she had seen something different in his actions from what everyone else recognized. She knew his actions for exactly what they had been as she’d first seen him in the cemetery when he had forcibly taken her from Hope Abbey. And she was correct in her assessment.
From her point of view, his behavior only reinforced a long list of grievances and hurts. Her entire life had been bartered away by another, her worth calculated by her value in gold and lands and political power, not by what she could give from her heart.
Her tears started sliding down her cheeks and he knew she blamed him for that as well. The startling honesty of her hurt finally settled against him. He didn’t reply to her. Not for a long time.
Then he kicked his heels against Loki and they rode the rest of the way to Stonehaven in silence.
She didn’t wait for him to rein in completely before sliding off the horse.
Catching up her skirts, she walked up the stairs to Stonehaven’s front door, as regal as royalty, as if she’d been born into the role of countess, not stopping as the butler appeared.
She swept into the entry hall past an openmouthed Mary and Mrs. Simpson, who had remained behind to enjoy tea with an old friend.
The two of them sat in the parlor and came to their feet as Rose walked past them and up the stairway.
Ruark remained on the horse, one wrist crossed over the other on the pommel for a few minutes, watching the whole thing through the tall window. Then he dismounted and gave the reins over to the startled stable lad who stood with his mouth agape.
He followed Rose’s path up the stairs to the door. Rose’s icy silence back to Stonehaven was not the only source of his surly mood. He stepped into the entry hall as the distant slamming of a door reverberated through the house.
The butler made no comment as Ruark handed him his riding gloves. “I will need a bath and supper brought up to my wife.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Ruark stopped in front of the small parlor where guests usually awaited the master of the manse’s leisure.
It was a brightly colored room unlike the darker-paneled entry hall.
It was simply fitted without heavy tapestry and finished off with blue upholstered furniture.
He rarely used the front entrance of the house and had not been to this room in years.
It had been his mother’s entertaining room.
He found Mary standing. “I left Colum to see that Julia and the two boys are returned home safely. Where is Duncan sleeping these days?”
“He stays at the gatehouse.”
His gaze briefly touched the pert gray-haired woman next to Mary, and he accepted an introduction.
Sophia Simpson wore fine gray linen that despite its severity made her look regal.
She looked to be in her sixties and better-dressed than one would have expected of someone he had imagined living in a simple thatched cottage outside Castleton.
“Mrs. Simpson is the expert on Arthurian legend of which I spoke,” Mary said.
The woman did not curtsey but seemed to be studying him, her opinion of him not visible in the blue eyes that held his.
“ ’Twas my husband who was the real expert,” she demurred after a moment.
“Rose herself had an interest in a particular relic. Though she informed me ’twas no longer in her possession.
I wonder if the person wearing it now has found his life greatly changed. ”
This woman had brought Jack to Stonehaven, someone clearly special to Rose, and she knew about the ring.
Who was to say his life would not have changed in the same manner without the ring?
But something had indeed changed inside him, touching on emotions and hopes and dreams he’d buried so deeply he thought them forever gone.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said.
Strangely, he was pleased. He saw a lot of Rose in Mrs. Simpson’s demeanor. She politely inclined her head. “Likewise, my lord. Welcome home. Rose has missed you despite what you might think.”
With a detached sort of amusement, he considered that after she had witnessed Rose’s entry a moment ago, she also surmised Ruark would be receiving no proper homecoming tonight. “Perhaps I will see you at breakfast,” he said, a corner of his mouth turning up.
Mary cleared her throat. “Her ladyship has given me leave to accompany Mrs. Simpson tomorrow to visit old friends of her husband’s in Hawick. In the Roxburghe coach. We will be gone a week.”
Ruark raised his brow, unsure if he was more surprised by the obvious respect she paid Rose as mistress of Stonehaven, or that Mary was actually taking a holiday. “Then I wish you both a safe journey. Ladies . . .”
“My lord . . .” Mrs. Simpson’s voice brought him back around.
“A captured butterfly might be beautiful, but is still captured. If you want what you seek most in the world, then open the cage and let the butterfly find you.” She smiled.
“I have known Rose since she was a child, my lord. She is special to my heart. To many hearts.”
Irritation pricked him but left as soon as he felt the sting. Mrs. Simpson had not said anything more or less than what he already knew himself. “What is it you think I want, Mrs. Simpson?”
“I could not say, my lord.”
But she was sure he knew what he wanted.
Aye, he could charge upstairs and force himself on his wife.
But tonight was suddenly not nearly as important to him as tomorrow and all the other tomorrows to follow.
Rose had very little that was hers, and what she did have she fiercely guarded. Her heart was hers alone to give away. He would never own it completely if he did not first win her trust.
Chance not. Win not.
He remembered the inscription on his great-grandfather’s empty tomb, the other pirate in the family, the one who had found his life and his peace with his English bride.
Audace fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the bold.
If he did not risk his own heart, he would never find hers.
Rose awakened to morning light spilling into her room and over the soft white eiderdown comforter that wrapped her in warmth.
While Ruark had been away, she had moved her belongings into the blue damask bedchamber, with its flamboyant rococo-style furnishings, but she had continued to sleep in her husband’s bed.
Last night she had barred the doors and slept in the blue bedchamber.