CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
T HAT NIGHT, Riona had barely closed the door to Nicholas’s chamber before he swept her into his arms. Her toes brushed the stone floor as she clung to him passionately, returning his fervent kiss.
He let her down slowly, her breasts brushing against his chest, his face visible in the small flame from the oil lamp on the table. “I’ve missed you,” he said in a low whisper that made her heart beat with delicious anticipation.
He took off the scarf she still wore to fool Percival, and tossed it onto the chest nearby. She noticed a familiar-looking bundle sitting there, but she forgot it as he trailed his finger from her lips to her chin and then slowly down her neck to the valley between her breasts. She had on the scarlet gown again. She wore it as often as she could because it was his favorite.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted, her body warming as it always did when he touched her. “What’s that on your chest?”
He looked down at his tunic. “Where?”
She laughed softly, and for a moment, her mood lightened. “Not there.” She pointed at the bundle on the wooden chest. “There.”
“Oh, that,” he replied.
He went and got it, and as he did, his serious expression filled her with trepidation and dismay. “Your uncle gave me this, but of course I can’t keep it. Will you take it back to him?”
“What is it?” she asked, although deep in her heart, she suspected she knew.
“A feileadh and shirt—my wedding present for when I married you.”
She briefly closed her eyes. It was a dagger to the heart, although she knew her uncle had meant well. “He didn’t tell me he’d done that.”
“He didn’t give me a chance to refuse.”
Riona took the bundle and set it down on the bed. “He still can’t conceive that you won’t be marrying me.”
Nicholas took her shoulders in his powerful warrior’s hands and regarded her steadily, his gaze full of a yearning that devastated her, because she knew that there could be no future for them. “I would choose you, Riona, if I could. If I were rich and influential, I would send all those others packing tomorrow and carry you to the chapel in my arms to make you mine.”
“But you can’t,” she said, her heart aching, her voice steady. “And you must beware Lord Chesleigh when you choose Eleanor. He’s ambitious and dishonest, and he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants.”
She couldn’t tell Nicholas directly about Lord Chesleigh’s threat to her uncle’s life, but she would do what she could.
“Percival’s influence should counter anything Lord Chesleigh can do,” he replied.
“I’m not so sure. You must be prepared to fight Chesleigh, whether in court or in battle, after you marry.”
Nicholas nodded, and she knew he would heed her words.
“Enough of such grim talk,” she said with false cheer. “I don’t want to ruin our last few nights with worries about villainous Normans. I’d rather talk about you.”
Nicholas seemed anxious to shake off the weight of heavier matters, too, as he smiled. “Oh? Perhaps I’d rather talk about you, and what I’m going to do with you when I carry you to my bed.”
She backed away from him. They had so little time left, she would enhance her store of memories while she could. “Not yet. First, my lord of Dunkeathe, I have a boon to beg.”
He frowned, and she regretted worrying him. “I’d like to see you in a feileadh before I leave Dunkeathe, that’s all. Would you put it on for me now?”
His smile held relief at her simple request. “You’d like to make a Scot of me?”
Trying to maintain this lighter mood between them, she returned his smile. “A feileadh’s very comfortable, or so Uncle Fergus says.”
“A bit breezy, though, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never worn one. Will you put it on for me, Nicholas? Just for a little while?”
“Your wish is my command, my lady, except that I don’t know how to wrap the plaid properly,” he replied. “Adair tried to explain it to me once, but I confess I didn’t really listen.”
“I’ll help you.” She ran her gaze over him. “The shirt first?”
“Very well, my lady. The shirt first.”
He undid his belt and tossed it onto the table. After pulling off his tunic, he set that beside the belt, so that he was wearing only his breeches and boots.
Her mind strayed to thoughts of making love until they were both satisfied and exhausted, and she had to leave to return to her own chamber.
He drew on the white shirt, which smelled faintly of lavender, then discovered that he couldn’t get his arms into the sleeves. “It doesn’t fit,” he said, his words muffled by fabric as he struggled to get it on.
“Your shoulders are too broad,” she replied, hurrying to help him.
She didn’t resist the urge to blatantly caress him while she did.
“Are you trying to make this more difficult?” he asked as he continued to struggle with the garment.
“Not particularly,” she replied, caressing him again.
When he succeeded in getting the shirt off and tossed it onto the chest, she tilted her head to admire him. “Let’s not bother with a shirt.”
“Wanton wench—and if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the bed right now.”
“Then I won’t look at you,” she pertly replied. “Or you can keep your breeches on until I’ve got the fabric around you.”
He started to undo the tie of his breeches. “If I’m to wear that plaid, I think I should wear it as the Scots do, and that means naked underneath—or so Adair’s informed me. Don’t you think I should?”
Her cheeks warmed with a blush, and the memory of his naked body. “If you wish.”
He shook his head as he got one boot off. “If you wish.”
“I won’t stop you.”
“When you look at me like that, it makes me want to kiss you.” He got the other boot off and kicked it into the corner. “Of course, there seems to be very little these days that doesn’t make me want to kiss you.”
She put the fabric on the floor and started to unroll it. “What are you doing” he asked.
“I’ve got to spread this out.”
“What, on the floor?”
“It’s too long for the bed.”
“Ah, the bed.”
His deep, husky voice alone could make her moist and ready for him. But although she would gladly make love with him now, she did want to see him in a feileadh —another recollection to take with her when she went home.
By the time he had his breeches off, she had laid the fabric out so that it was flat on the floor, stretching from the window nearly to the door.
“Is this going to take a long time?” he asked as he stood wearing nothing but a smile, and shamelessly displaying the extent of his eagerness to make love with her.
She raised a brow. “Can you not control that, my lord?”
“I’m naked and I’m with you, so no, I can’t.”
“Peacocks have their tail feathers and you have that. I suppose both are impressive displays of manhood.”
“Suppose?”
“I’ve never seen a naked man aroused, except for you,” she confessed as she crouched and made a series of folds in the center of the fabric.
After she finished, she pushed the center together, so that it was narrower there, and slipped his belt underneath the narrow portion.
“Now, if you’ll just lie down here where the belt is, I’ll wrap the fabric around you,” she ordered, pointing to the center.
He didn’t immediately do as she said. “That floor’s going to be damn cold.” He raised a brow. “Or is this a clever scheme to cool my ardor?”
Considering how long he could love her before he climaxed, she doubted that would happen. “I’m sure that takes more than a cold floor.”
“You may be right,” he said as he lay down on the fabric. When he was flat on his back, she stood at his feet. “If somebody were to come in now, you’d present an interesting spectacle,” she noted.
“Are you going to stand there and make fun of me now that you have me completely at your mercy and looking ridiculous, or are you going to show me how to wear this?”
“Much as I’d love to stand here and admire you all night, I don’t want you to catch a chill. Please raise your arms.”
He did, and she knelt and pulled the right side of the fabric across his torso. She also lightly—and quite deliberately—brushed his penis with the back of her hand as she did.
“Brazen hussy.”
“If your little soldier is going to stand at attention and get in my way, that’s not my fault.”
“Little soldier?”
“Big soldier,” she amended as she drew the left side over the right, surreptitiously caressing him again. “Now you may fasten your belt and stand up.”
“My big belt,” he muttered as he obeyed. “On my big feet.”
“I don’t think your feet are particularly enormous. As for the other parts of you, I’ll just have to take your word that they’re impressive.”
“In that case, I assure you, my lady, I’m very impressive. Bards are going to sing songs about me someday,” he said as he rose.
The feileadh looked like two overlapping skirts, held in place by the belt. He frowned as he looked down. “Are you sure this is right?”
“You have to adjust the part hanging over your belt, that’s all.”
“How do I do that?”
“I’ll show you.” She took hold of one side of the overhanging fabric, and arranged it so that the extra fabric wound from his waist across his back, to drape over his left shoulder. “There.”
She stepped back to admire her handiwork. And him.
He looked even more magnificent and handsome in the feileadh than she’d imagined.
“Do I meet with your approval?” he asked as she stood staring at him. “Do I look like a Scot?”
She didn’t answer with words. She launched herself at him and took his mouth with a heated kiss, grinding her hips against him in blatant, brazen invitation.
He instantly responded with equal fervor, clasping her to him.
“I want you to make love with me, Nicholas. Now!” she ordered, panting as if she’d run for miles to be in his arms.
“Gladly,” he growled.
He kissed her passionately and thrust his tongue between her lips. His hands stroked and caressed her body, gliding over the fabric until, with a low growl of pure animal hunger, he picked her up and took her to his bed. Watching her, his eyes full of heated need, he hurried to take off his belt.
“No!” she gasped, half sitting. “Like that.”
She reached up and grabbed his belt to pull him down on top of her. Her eager hands attacked him, stroking his back, his chest, his nipples. With soft moans and anxious whimpers, she bent her legs, so that her skirt fell about her hips, exposing her nakedness to him. As he raised himself on his hands, she grabbed his buttocks and pushed him closer. The feileadh bunched between them, but not enough to keep him from thrusting eagerly inside her warm, moist, ready body.
She came nearly at once, arching and bucking and breathing hard through clenched teeth, her hands gripping his arms until her knuckles were white. She called out his name as wave after wave of pleasure ripped though her while he continued to thrust until, with a cry of ecstasy, he climaxed.
Sated and spent, he fell against her. “By the saints…” he murmured, gasping for air.
Her breathing was ragged, too. “I thought the feileadh would suit you, but I had no idea…”
He raised himself and looked down at her flushed face. “Was it just the feileadh?”
She smiled like one drugged, or drunk, blissfully replete with the euphoria of making love. “Not just the feileadh. Your body. Your legs. Your knees.” She lazily caressed his cheek. “You’ve got very handsome knees, Nicholas of Dunkeathe. I’d suggest you wear a feileadh all the time, but your maidservants would surely be too distracted.”
“And you?” he said, lightly kissing her nose. “Wouldn’t you be distracted?”
Her happiness diminished. “If I were still here, yes, I’d be distracted.”
“I’m sorry, Riona,” he said, and there was sorrow and remorse in his dark eyes.
“I’m not sorry,” she said sincerely as she brushed a lock of hair from his face. “And I don’t—I won’t— regret the time I’ve spent with you.”
He tenderly stroked her cheek. “You truly are an amazing and generous woman, Riona Mac Gordon. How I wish I could marry for love.”
She had longed to hear him say that he loved her, yet hearing it now gave her nothing but pain, and the certain knowledge that her heart would break when she left Dunkeathe, and him. “Whatever we’ve shared, it’s enough,” she lied.
He drew her closer. “Stay the night with me, Riona.”
“You know I can’t.”
“A while longer then,” he implored. “Just be with me for a bit longer.”
She couldn’t bring herself to refuse his request. “Very well—but you’d better take off that feileadh, or I’m going to want to make love with you again.”
“Are you trying to tempt me?”
“I think you’re the one tempting me, my lord.”
He didn’t take off the feileadh until later.
Much later.
N ICHOLAS AWOKE when a beam of early-morning light fell across his eyes. As he opened them, squinting, he thought of Riona, as he had every morning since the first time they’d made love, and even before then.
Last night she’d been trying so hard to keep things happy and carefree between them, as if she could make him forget the inevitable. More poignant than tears would have been, her efforts had brought pain along with happiness, sorrow with the pleasure.
He’d tried to respond in kind, to sound merry and happy in spite of what must be. She deserved no less, and so he hadn’t refused her request to don the feileadh, even though he was sure he’d look ridiculous.
Clearly, to her, he hadn’t.
He smiled to himself as he recalled her passionate attack. What a lover. What a woman! And how he would miss her when she was gone.
Dreading the day she must go home, he’d asked her to stay with him longer. No, he’d begged her, and while he would rather die than beg of any man, he didn’t regret beseeching her to remain with him.
They’d talked and laughed and whispered like children as she told him stories of Glencleith and he told her some of the pleasant things that had happened in his life, until passion had kindled again. He began to caress her, and she him. Then they’d kissed, soft and gentle, warm and tender. They made love again, as if time meant nothing.
Once again he’d been tempted to ask her to be his wife. To live with him and run his household and bear his children. To make him happy and joyful in a way he’d never imagined, and to let him try to make her happy, too.
Yet as always, the memory of the worst days of his youth, when he was beaten and starving, cold and wet, completely at the mercy of men bigger and stronger than he, arose.
And silenced him.
He couldn’t lose Dunkeathe and all it represented.
Yet what if Marianne was right, and he came to regret losing Riona even more?
Dunkeathe was a fortress, a pile of stone. Riona was light and joy, happiness and bliss. She was loving and generous, shrewd and resolute. Dunkeathe would be empty once she was gone.
He would be empty, and more lonely than he’d ever been before, in his great fortress of cold, hard stone. What if he discovered that he’d given up the greater prize for a castle and the capricious favor of kings?
He rolled onto his back—and instantly realized he wasn’t alone.
Then he saw the long blond hair.