Chapter Twelve
LADY, I MUST HAVE words with you . . . at the soonest.
The hushed female voice tried to find her ear, but when Amicia looked round, she saw only ale-flushed faces and swathes of disheveled plaid. The boisterous troop of clansmen who saw it as their duty to hustle her and Magnus ever higher up the curving stairs to her bedchamber.
Nevertheless, she kept searching.
Scarce louder than a sigh, the hurriedly whispered words had come from close behind her and were spoken in greatest urgency, the voice sounding much like Janet’s.
If indeed she’d heard anything.
With the smoking flames of the wall torches tossing in the night draughts and constant sprays of fine damp mist gusting through the arrow slits, like as not she’d simply heard the cry of the wind and imagined spoken words.
The saints knew on such a wild night, and with her emotions in a whirl, no one could fault her for hearing voices where none had been lifted.
Or so she thought until the jostling throng neared her bedchamber door and she caught a quick glimpse of Janet’s fair head in the crush.
“. . . would e’er be a burden on my heart if I did not . . .”
And this time Amicia did hear the words—if only a snippet of them before Janet fell back, her odd message and her hurrying feet no match for drink-taken clansmen set on reaching their laird-to-be’s bedchamber and the finest entertainment of the evening.
The seldom-offered opportunity to tease and heckle their future chief without having to suffer for it. And the undeniable boon of catching a wee look at their new lady’s full exposed plentitude.
A ritual nuisance Amicia determined to endure with dignity.
Much worse could befall her.
Aye, were she honest, Janet’s queer behavior unnerved her more than the thought of a few scant moments spent standing unclothed before a clutch of ale-addled but good-hearted Islesmen who’d like as not have no true recollection of all they’d seen, come the morning.
Islesmen who were grinning foolishly as they kicked open the door and surged into her room. They tossed Magnus onto the great four-poster bed, some of the most ale-headed amongst them falling onto the mattress with him.
“Remember my words, lassie.” Dagda appeared at her elbow, Amicia’s fur-lined cloak draped over her arm. She leaned close, her dark eyes glittery with excitement. “You must make him want you.”
Amicia jerked, all thought of Janet’s strange whisperings evaporating as a flood of intimate images sailed through her mind.
She slid a glance at Magnus, her heart thundering even though he was still fully clothed. He sat on the edge of the canopied four-poster, an expression of tolerant good humor on his handsome face as two red-bearded kinsmen struggled to yank off his boots.
Someone had pulled back the bed hangings and the glow from the hearth fire threw dancing patterns of shadow and light into the bed’s curtained interior. The pristine white of the bridal sheet gleamed bright and beckoning, its significance sending a cascade of heat streaming through her.
By sundown on the morrow, that same sheet would have been paraded throughout the castle and held under the noses of every MacKinnon old enough to appreciate the reddish smears that, by then, would mar its snowy weave.
“Make certain he catches your scent,” Dagda persisted, dropping her voice. She tap-tapped a finger on Amicia’s arm to make her point. “Mind you well if you wish to besot him.”
“You are kind to share your . . . wisdom,” Amicia said, tearing her gaze from Magnus and praying no one else had heard the woman.
Feeling naked already, she indicated her cloak. “Thank you for bringing my mantle abovestairs,” she blurted to deflect the seneschal’s interest from carnal activities. “I should not have left it behind in the hall.”
Dagda stroked the mantle’s ermine lining. “Och, to be sure, such a fine cloak ought not to be left about. Not at Coldstone. . . .” Letting the sentence go unfinished, she turned aside, all bustle and business, to hang the cloak on its peg by the door.
“Off with you, you great clumsy-fingered oafs!” Magnus half-roared, half-laughed from the bed. “I can undress myself, and in half the time!”
The words were hardly spoken when, one by one, his boots hit the floor with two loud thuds.
“See you,” he said, pushing to his feet, “a man ought to ne’er allow another to do what he can best do hisself!”
Amicia straightened her back, wet her lips. She, too, would soon be disrobing. The act was upon her, for Dagda had ceased fussing with the mantle and was striding forward, her purpose writ plain upon her face.
She’d coiled her silver-shot hair at the nape of her neck, braiding it with shiny black ribbon in honor of the occasion. At first glance, this gave the impression of glossy-bright dark hair unmarred by the coarse gray threads that marked her advancing years.
The many candles someone had troubled to set ablaze flattered Dagda as well, their soft golden light smoothing the lines and furrows in her most-times tight-drawn face.
For one eerie moment, Amicia’s breath caught. Even the old woman’s step seemed more brisk and sure than usual. Something about her gave the unsettling sensation of glimpsing the seneschal as she must’ve been as a much younger woman.
A strikingly handsome one who’d suffered great tragedy and loss as the severe planes in her face and the silvery gleam of age-grayed hair at her temples once more attested.
Shivering, and not because of the room’s cold, damp air, Amicia blinked a few times until the clansmen’s high spirits and ribaldry reclaimed her attention and all vestiges of long-lost youth slipped from the old woman’s countenance.
“Be you prepared?” Dagda was asking, her voice carrying in the crowded chamber—the suddenly quiet chamber.
Crackling anticipation stood on every staring face as the seneschal placed two sturdy hands on Amicia’s shoulders, holding her so that her back was turned to Magnus.
“You need not flush so. He is not yet fully unclothed,” Dagda said, her gaze sharp.
“He stands beside your bed clad in his braies, thin though they be,” she revealed, the twinkle in her eye turning mischievous.
“Tradition deems that you must watch his men remove his braies and he, then, must look on as I disrobe you.”
“The way I mind it, tradition demands we must all look on,” a drink-slurred voice burst out from near the door.
“And decency deems we keep those looks to a minimum—and fleeting,” Hugh spoke up. “I’d mind you not forget it.”
The man gave him an owl-eyed stare. “Faugh, Hugh! Do you ken how long it’s been since I—” he started to protest but then lifted his hands in mute surrender as he sagged against the doorjamb.
Ignoring him, for the man was clearly too ale-headed to cause a disturbance even if he wished to try, Dagda aimed a censorious stare at Janet and Colin.
They’d seized the slight furor to begin moving around the chamber dousing candles until naught remained to light the room save the reddish glow of the peat fire and the thick waxen night candle burning on its pricket beside the bed.
Amicia silently blessed them, her heart warming ever more toward her husband’s bastard cousin.
Dagda cleared her throat. “I ask you again,” she began anew, “are you prepared to have your husband look on your nakedness and judge you worthy . . . or nay?”
I ache for him to look on my nakedness!
I burn to see his.
Amicia almost cried out the words.
But she kept her secret wishes to herself and simply nodded, her stomach fluttering and her mouth going dry despite her mounting excitement.
“A nod will not suffice. You must speak the words we rehearsed earlier.”
Amicia drew a long breath. “Aye, I am prepared to inspect my husband’s nakedness and have him do likewise of mine,” she said, her cheeks flaming hotter with each spoken word.
“Then turn and behold him.” Dagda deftly maneuvered her to face him.
Embarrassed or nay, a thrill of pure, hot-streaming desire shot straight to the deepest reaches of her female heat.
Faith, but he took her breath away.
Tall, broad-shouldered, and golden, his magnificence wrapped itself around her, igniting her senses and sending the most delicious sensations winding all through her.
Even just glancing at his well-muscled calves, so powerful and pleasingly-formed, their shape well-defined and pressing against the light linen covering of his braies, made her mouth run dry and her heart skitter out of control.
An insistent pulsing began low by her thighs and an exquisite heaviness started spreading through the lowest part of her belly as every inch of her tingled with awareness.
Saints of mercy, she scarce had need to see her husband’s bare-bottomed virility—sheer and vibrant masculine power pulsed and throbbed along the whole glorious length of him.
Towering over his kinsmen any hour of the day, standing amongst them near naked and with the fire glow casting a luminous sheen across his wide-set shoulders and handsome brow, his sheer presence dwarfed every man in the room . . . even the brawniest, toughest-looking souls.
A gasp of awe slipped from her lips . . . a soft, little ooooh, which brought hoots and guffaws from the clansmen.
“Noble and puissant, eh, lass?” a great bear of a black-bearded Islesman teased, wiggling his ears at her.
Amicia flushed, well-versed enough in fleshly matters to ken exactly what part of her husband’s body the well-girthed giant meant.
Magnus only arched a russet brow, his clear blue gaze decidedly pleased.
Or amused.
He stood looking at her with his arms folded across his chest and his legs braced slightly apart. A slight upward turn at the corners of his mouth allowed a faint hint of his dimples to wink at her, enchanting her in ways just as heart-catching as the gleam of well-toned muscles and manly brawn.
His eyes seemed to darken as he watched her with a heavy-lidded, hot-smoldering gaze that sent little flames of thrilling desire licking across her every nerve ending.