Chapter 3 #2
Either side of her in the great hall sat the Campbell men, drinking and talking and making themselves at home.
Some of her servants had joined them, and the girls were flirting, a couple even daring to sit on the laps of the men.
She couldn’t really blame them. Her father had not been a good master, and if they could better themselves with the vanquishers then why not?
Although she had always tried to show kindness and speak up for her oppressed people, there was only so much she could do.
Only the older servants remembered what it had been like before her father’s greed had caused him to fall out with every other landowner who did not bend to his wishes.
“Can we leave with you?” her ladies had asked her earlier, worry in their eyes. “What if Ewen Campbell marries us off to his men? Or worse!”
“I will ask him,” she had promised. “And if he says no, then I will demand assurances for your safety.”
Right now she wondered if she was wasting her time asking him for anything.
There he was, standing to one side of the laird’s chair, awaiting her arrival with such a hard, imperious stare.
She wanted to look down at her feet but that would be cowardly, and Elspit refused to be thought afraid of this man she had once loved.
He was taller than she remembered, and his shoulders were broader.
His blond hair that once fell in waves to his shoulders had darkened and been cut short in the manner of a soldier, and his handsome face was so sombre.
His blue eyes slid over her, slowly perusing her breasts before dropping to the dip of her waist, and then the curve of her hips, and finally to the slippers she wore on her feet.
Was he counting off the reasons she was no longer the girl he had loved long ago? The little lines about her eyes, her hair no longer quite so lustrous, the fuller curves to her breasts and hips ... did they all add up to convince Ewen he was better off with the Stewart bride?
She almost stumbled when his gaze returned to her face. There was heat in those blue eyes, or so she thought, before he quenched it. Perhaps he remembered after all. Or perhaps his squire was right, and he merely required a woman for the night to satisfy his lust.
Elspit forced herself to keep walking, elegant, graceful, one foot after the other, until finally she stopped before him. Her head tipped back and then, keeping her eyes on his, she dropped into a low curtsey.
“My lord.”
The blue eyes blazed but again before she could pinpoint the emotion behind them, he shut it down.
Was he enjoying her being brought low? If he knew how much she had missed him, how every day she had longed for him, he would be even more triumphant.
She couldn’t tell him, she daren’t, because it seemed more than likely that Ewen had turned into the sort of man who would use her weakness against her.
“I wish to ask you—” she began through stiff lips.
He held out his hand and for a moment she stared at it, wondering what he wanted. With an impatient grunt he stepped down from the dais and reached to take her hand in his.
“You will sit by me tonight,” he said, his voice low and gruff, and yet there were traces of Ewen in it. Ebbs and flows she recognised.
I loved you once, she thought.
“You are very generous,” she said mechanically, “but I wish only to ask for safe passage from Castle Tighe to the Cameron stronghold in the north. This place is yours now and I do not belong in it. If you will arrange this I will be on my way.”
He went very still. After one glance at his tight clenched jaw and searing eyes, Elspit did not look again. Had she had angered him?
The servers were approaching to pour their wine, and Ewen tightened his grip on her hand, making her wince, and led her to the main table. She sat uncomfortably, feeling the icy tension in the air. Once she was seated he took the chair beside her and nodded brusquely at the servants.
Wine was poured, and she sipped, trying not to make her trembling hand obvious.
“So you cannot stay, my lady?” His voice brought her head around and she found him watching her through narrowed eyes. “Not even for another day?”
Did he see the emotion in her face, the disappointment in her smile? She hoped not. She worked hard to make her expression a total blank.
“There is still tonight,” he reminded her. “And you and I have business to finish. Do we not, Elspit?”
Her chin dropped. Did he mean what she thought he did? “My lord—”
“My name is Ewen, as you know only too well.”
“That was long ago.”
“Ten years is not so long.”
It was for me!
She said nothing, what could she say? Those blue eyes bored into hers and she remembered them smiling at her, or heated with desire and warm with love. Now she could see nothing in them, his feelings were closed off to her behind a wall.
“Your father?” she asked him breathlessly, seeking to find safer ground. “And your brothers? Are they well? Are they here too?”
“Not yet. They will arrive tomorrow.”
So it was true. He was going to marry the Stewart woman.
She said nothing, looking down into her wine.
If he thought her a steely bitch then that was what she would be, because if he knew the heartache she had endured these past ten years .
.. if he knew how she felt now, how much her heart ached, then she wasn’t sure she would be able to survive the humiliation.
“Tell me again where you would go if I gave you permission to leave?” he spoke abruptly, his voice deeper and rougher than it used to be. He was definitely a man now.
Elspit clasped her hands in her lap, staring out at the great hall and the people in it.
They were talking in low voices, interspersed with laughter, but mostly they were staring up at the dais where Ewen and his captive sat.
Because she was his captive, she knew it now.
And it seemed that they were this evening’s entertainment too.
“I have a friend to the north who will offer me sanctuary.” Honora Cameron was a distant relative of her mother, and over the years they had written to each other and on one memorable occasion, Honora had visited Tighe.
Elspit knew she would be safe with her friend and the Cameron family.
There had been talk of her marrying Honora’s brother but that was nothing but her father’s wishful thinking—Lord Cameron was in love with another.
Ewen said nothing for a moment and then, “Eat,” he growled. “I would not want you to faint. You need to keep up your strength for tonight.”
She glanced at him quickly, before she could stop herself, her eyes wide. “What do you mean?” she whispered.
He smiled, the corners of his lips tipping up.
He was still a handsome man, but his experience and maturity had given him an extra rugged quality that drew all the female eyes in the hall.
Suddenly she found herself wondering about his future wife.
Was she beautiful? She must be. The thought of his impending marriage stung her deep and she clenched her jaw to stop from crying out.
“I mean that I am the ruler of Castle Tighe, lady,” he explained, and leaned in closer as if he was sharing secrets with her.
“Remember how your father chained me in the dungeon? Well I have not forgotten. I wanted to save you then, I would have given my life for you, but you would not let me. Now here we are, and there is unfinished business between us.”
She stared back at him. “Unfinished business?” she breathed.
The way he spoke the words made her think he was threatening her, and yet the quickening of her heart was not because she was afraid.
It was the way he was looking at her. As if he craved her.
The heat in his gaze singed her skin. She was feeling that almost forgotten ache in her breasts and between her thighs, so that she shifted on her chair, unable to help herself.
She wasn’t remembering the Ewen of ten years ago.
She was thinking of this Ewen, the man, the warrior, with his mouth and hands on her, turning her mindless with desire.
So many nights she had reached between her thighs to pleasure herself, pretending he was with her still, and now at last he was here.
“Ah I see you have remembered.” Suddenly he was so close, his breath warm against her ear as he leaned in so that only she could hear what he had to say. She wondered what the watchers in the great hall must think, seeing them so intimate.
“You confuse me, my lord,” she said in a hard little voice.
“Do I? Then let me be plain. You are something that I have always thought of as mine, Elspit, and tonight I am going to take you.”
Goosebumps rose on her arms and she swallowed. If she thought her breasts were aching before, now they were heavy and desperate for his hands, the nipples hard points beneath her gown.
“I am no longer yours to take,” again she found her voice.
He smiled and suddenly she saw Ewen, her Ewen, in his stranger’s face. Wicked and teasing, lust in the curl of his mouth, his bottom lip still plump, making her long to suck on it.
“I think you’ll find you were always mine to take,” he said, closing in again.
She felt his tongue, warm and wet, against the skin near her ear, and jumped. “Please,” she breathed.
“I fully intend to please you,” he growled.
Elspit found her mouth go dry. If she had thought the Ewen of the past was gone then she knew now she was wrong. He was here, and he wanted her. He might be marrying another woman tomorrow but she could not deny the heat in his eyes, or the clenching need in her belly.
This was wrong, so wrong, but it felt so right.
She had waited for him and now he was offering to make her wait worthwhile.
All those nights she had pleasured herself with her fingers, dreaming of him, and he was here.
She couldn’t believe she was asking herself these questions, but …
what if she said yes? If she agreed to this?
It occurred to her then that her agreement might make him think she loved him still, and she knew she couldn’t bear that.
She was holding on to her pride by her fingernails, it was all she had left.
She must make him believe that she would agree to spend the night in his bed only if he would agree to let her go.
“Will you give me a leave pass for tomorrow?” she asked him, her voice not sounding like her own. “If I say yes?”
He stared at her for a long moment while she waited, frozen, hardly daring to breath. When had her sweet Ewen learned to make his expression so unreadable. “Tomorrow I will sign the papers,” he said, and taking her hand kissed her fingertips.
Her breath stuttered and her fingers trembled. Her eyelids flickered and threatened to close but she held herself firm. Not yet, not yet ...
“Then I will say yes.”
His blue eyes flared with triumphant desire, and she thought he would rise immediately and carry her away, but just then one of his men approached the table and was bowing before him. “My lord.”
Elspit didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
With Ewen’s attention elsewhere, she was able to relax a little.
The tips of her breasts felt uncomfortable against the wool of her gown, and she tried to be calm, telling herself that she must not let him see how he made her feel.
That she was still attracted to him, that she still loved him.
Being held captive in her own castle by a man who was about to wed another was bad enough, but for him to know how she felt would make things far worse.
One night with him. One night in her bed with his body lavishing hers unselfishly in the way he used to.
That had been love, despite the restriction he had placed upon them, or perhaps because of it.
But this time, if she could believe what he said, then he would complete the act. He would finally make her his.
Ewen’s chair grated back on the floor as he stood up.
“I have a matter to attend to,” he said, looking down at her from what seemed a great height.
The fire in his eyes had necessarily been contained but she was not fooled.
It still smouldered, and his nostrils flared as if he could smell her arousal.
Suddenly he was close again, leaning down so that his breath stirred the curls of her dark hair.
“Go to your bedchamber and wait for me there,” he murmured.
She wanted to agree more than anything, but her pride demanded she pretend reluctance. “And if I do not?” she asked him softly.
“Then I will lock you in the dungeon,” he said.
Shocked, her mouth fell open, but he was already striding away down the great hall.