Chapter Seventeen
LUCY AWOKE FEELING different, her body ripe and fulfilled and yet hungry in some way. She rolled over and reached for Robert, but the bed beside her was empty. Blinking, she saw the room was full of daylight.
She rolled onto her back and watched through half-closed lids the play of the sun and shadows across the ceiling.
Such pleasure. She could scarcely believe it.
Such intimacies. She was shocked, if truth be told.
She was shocked by the desires of her body, desires she had never remotely guessed at.
She could see now that she had kept those needs locked down, she had intellectualized them so that they were cold and passionless and were no danger to her.
And now Robert had cut through all that, awakening the desire that was in her.
Yet he had not taken advantage to push matters beyond what she had been comfortable with. And she had given him nothing in return for the most blissful night she had ever experienced, which seemed rather unfair, on reflection.
She remembered that in the throes of her passion she had promised to trust Robert, to allow him to do anything to help her overcome her fears of intimacy.
She had not understood then that this meant surrendering everything to him.
She shivered again. Already she wondered where that promise would take her; already her perfidious body was wanting so much more.
But now that she was awake she could feel the darkness nibbling at the edge of her mind again, reminding her that eventually he would want her to be his wife in more than name, that he needed an heir from her body.
She gave a little shiver, pushing the dark thoughts from her mind.
The breeze from the open window was cold on her naked body.
She was about to pull up the covers, but then she stopped, looking curiously at her nakedness.
She had never scrutinized her body before.
She had turned away from physicality because she had seen Alice die, seen her racked with pain.
Now, for the first time, she thought about her body as a means of pleasure.
She ran a thoughtful hand down over her breasts.
They were so round and ripe, the nipples stung pink from Robert’s attentions the previous night.
They felt sensitive, but pleasurably so, and her skin felt curiously alive.
Her hand dropped to her belly. A hot ache was flowering there at those secret memories of pleasure.
Her belly was rounded too; she was not thin like Mairi or Lachlan, but curvy.
Really she was rounded all over, for her buttocks were plump, albeit tight and high from the riding, and her thighs were quite sturdy.
She was no lithe and slender creature and yet she felt very desirable this morning.
Again the shard of doubt and fear snagged at her heart.
This, then, was how Alice must have felt.
Seduced by passion, helplessly in love, she had given everything of herself and as a consequence had lost everything.
Passion was so deceptive, so dangerous. It could make someone forget all sense.
It could make someone forget everything.
For the first time, though, she stopped the thought in its tracks before the cold fear could take hold of her. Alice had loved and Alice had died and that had been a tragedy, but that did not mean that the same thing would happen to her. The sliver of light in her heart strengthened a little.
There was a knock at the door and Isobel bustled in with a tray.
Lucy hastily pulled the covers up to hide herself, but the landlady’s smile was knowing.
Lucy could see her discarded nightgown lying on the floor by the bed, see too the rumpled bedclothes that told their own story.
She remembered how she had cried out when Robert had driven her to orgasm and wondered suddenly whether anyone had heard her.
She had had no thought of it at the time, had not cared, and no doubt no one would think of it as anything other than proof of their laird’s prowess. But still she blushed.
“Lord Methven thought you might need to rest.” Isobel sounded brisk.
She placed the tray on the bottom of the bed and helped Lucy into the lacy peignoir that lay over the high back of the chair.
“He says to remind you that you sail for Golden Isle on the afternoon’s tide, so you have a little time. ”
Some of Lucy’s pleasure ebbed at the thought that Robert was not here to tell her his plans in person.
It was like the day before, when he had vanished for the entire day, leaving her to her own devices.
She remembered the wedding feast and the change that had come over him when Golden Isle was mentioned.
“Isobel—” She was raising the cup of scented hot chocolate to her lips but paused. “I know that Golden Isle is part of Lord Methven’s estates, but why does he...” She stopped, chose her words with care. “Why does he dislike the mention of it?”
Isobel’s expression was guarded. She started to fidget, picking up Lucy’s nightgown, smoothing it between her fingers, and laying it down again. “Lord Methven has not told you?” she said.
Something in her tone caught Lucy’s attention. “Not a word.”
We do not know each other well....
For all the intimacies of the previous night, Lucy was suddenly all too sharply aware that there was so much she neither knew nor understood about Robert. Another shard of loneliness pierced her.
Isobel laid the nightgown over the end of the bed. Then she looked up and met Lucy’s eyes.
“It was where Gregor Methven died,” she said. “They say Lord Methven hates the place. He quarreled so badly with his grandfather in the aftermath of his brother’s death that he took the first boat from the harbor and never set foot there again.”
* * *
LUCY’S FIRST VIEW of Golden Isle was through a fog of rain and hail.
It looked gray, not golden, and for the first time she had some sympathy with Robert not wishing to go there.
Huge cliffs rose straight out of a boiling sea.
Seabirds whirled and called like banshees.
The cliffs were gray, the sea was gray and the sky was gray. It felt like the end of the world.
They had been sailing for six hours and Lucy was cold, wet, sick and miserable.
All day she had been waiting for Robert to speak to her, to tell her his plans, to confide in her about Golden Isle and his feelings on returning there.
But Robert was busy, preoccupied with the preparations for the voyage.
When she went down to the quay to find him, he greeted her absentmindedly before going back to supervising the loading of provisions.
Lucy felt excluded, with no role and nothing to do.
She had said goodbye to Mairi there on the quay at Findon, and it was only through exerting the greatest self-control that she had not broken down and begged her sister to come with them.
She could imagine Mairi’s reaction to her begging for company on her wedding trip; her sister would be concerned that the wedding night had been a complete disaster and would no doubt ask her all about it, loudly, tactlessly and at considerable length.
So she hugged Mairi tightly instead and sent her on her way back to Edinburgh with a letter for their father and a promise that she would invite them all to Methven as soon as she returned.
She watched Mairi ride off with Jack Rutherford. Naturally they were quarreling already.
At first the voyage had been smooth. A pale sun shone through milky-white clouds as the little yacht slipped out of Findon Harbor.
Lucy sat in the cabin and watched Robert as he worked with the crew.
He was dressed the same as they, barefoot, in rough linen breeches, open-necked shirt and leather jerkin.
It was clear he had done this many times before, since he was a child perhaps.
He was surefooted on the spray-dampened deck and completely at ease with the men.
Once again Lucy felt lonely, very much the aristocratic lady, sitting alone in the cabin with nothing to do.
Gradually as the coastline faded from view, the wind freshened and pewter clouds started to mass on the horizon.
The yacht began to buck and roll, and soon Lucy started to feel very ill indeed.
She had never been to sea before and had only once set foot on a boat when they had visited Wilfred Cardross at Greenock and he had proudly shown them over his yacht.
It was considerably larger than this little vessel, and the saloon had been furnished in red velvet with gold braid with the arms of Cardross prominently displayed.
Lucy had thought it garish and vulgar. Now, though, she would have given much for a comfortable berth in which to lie down as the boat lurched through the waves and her stomach lurched with it.
The door of the cabin opened abruptly and Robert came in.
He had been carrying a tray on which there appeared to be two bowls of broth.
Just the smell of it made Lucy want to retch.
He took one look at her face, placed the tray down with a bang and, grabbing her arm, dragged her out into the corridor, bundling her up the steps and out onto the deck so swiftly she almost tripped over her skirts.
“What on earth are you doing to me?” Lucy hissed. “I feel vile. Leave me alone!”
The fresh air was like a slap in the face after the staleness of the cabin below.
Almost immediately her head stopped spinning and her stomach settled as she gratefully breathed in the cold, salty air.
The spray was cool against her skin. She clung to the deck rail and let it settle on her like rain.
“If you watch the horizon you will not feel as sick.”