Chapter 23
Vaporous sunlight teased Agnes out of her deep slumber, her eyes blurred as they fluttered open. Half-dazed, she stirred slowly, feeling each limb awaken. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so relaxed or slept so well.
It was at that moment that she became aware of where her hand was… and what she could feel beneath her palm. Something that radiated heat, hard as a rock.
She blinked down and saw through her hazy vision what she was touching—that mysterious part of him that so intrigued and frightened her.
His kilt had shifted in the night, riding higher up his powerful thighs. If she were to tease the hem up just a little more, she might actually get to see what it was that she was touching, might be able to unravel the mystery once and for all.
What could be the harm in taking a peek?
After last night, seeing him somewhat naked would only be fair.
She was about to reach for the edge of the kilt when she heard a growl above her, rumbling in the chest where she rested her head.
“For Christ’s sake,” Gordon murmured. “There ye go again, provokin’ me.”
A soft yelp slipped past her lips as he snaked his arm around her waist and rolled her over. The weight and power of him pressed against her as he pinned her to the bed, his grey eyes blazing with the same hunger she had savored last night.
A smile graced her lips as she ran her hands down his muscular arms, enjoying how they flexed as he held himself up. Maybe she should have been scared to be pinned beneath such a man, but after what they had shared, she felt nothing but growing desire.
What might I learn this morning, I wonder?
A sudden frown creased Gordon’s brow, as if he were in pain. His voice took on a harsher tone as he said, “Do ye see what ye’re doin’ to me?” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “That’s a problem, lass.”
“It is?” She tried to be coy, certain that this was all part of some enticement, a game to play before he pleasured her again.
His gaze hardened, his hunger turning into something more like anger. “Aye, it is, ‘cause I willnae claim ye. I willnae be somethin’ to ye. Our agreement was a fake betrothal until ye’re safe.” He paused. “This isnae real. Ye understand?”
She stared at him, her desire turning cold in her veins. She didn’t need to be scolded by him as if she had done something wrong. As far as she was concerned, what had happened last night had happened because they both wanted it. She was not solely responsible for it.
More than that, how could he call her pleasure fake? How could he call their closeness fake? How could he hold himself right there on top of her and call their desire fake? Was he trying to convince himself, or was he merely revealing the cruelty that she had overlooked and disbelieved before?
And here I was, thinking something had changed last night.
His words stung, deeper than she cared to admit. A wound that would not be quickly forgotten.
She shoved him in the chest. “If it is all so fake and such a problem for you, then kindly get off me,” she seethed. “Lizzy probably needs me, and I have my day to get on with.”
To her shame, it was the first time she had thought about her niece.
Gordon pulled back and sat there on his haunches, staring at her with the most curious, confusing look on his face.
She wriggled out from beneath him, grateful that he had helped her back into her nightdress the previous night. She couldn’t imagine how much more awkward and uncomfortable this would be if she were naked, how much more humiliated she would feel.
Getting off the bed and padding to the nursery, Agnes assumed that was the end of their conversation.
But just as she was about to cross the threshold, he called out in a gravelly voice, “We shouldnae get confused like that again.”
“Oh no,” she agreed, not bothering to glance back, “that will certainly not happen again.”
With that, she stepped into the nursery and closed the door behind her.
By the time she returned to her room to get changed for the day, she hoped that Gordon would not be there anymore.
Indeed, she hoped that she would not have to cross paths with him again for a very long time…
which was a shame when she had just started to feel like she might belong.
What else could I have said, eh? I needed to stop it before it became…
He glared at the ledger before him, uncertain of how to finish the thought. Before it became what? Something more? A real problem? A greater mistake than he had already made by losing control? A miserable future for Agnes and her niece?
Any hope he’d had of his work distracting him evaporated as he sat back in his chair and turned his glowering gaze toward the far wall.
He could still feel the pressure where she had shoved him in the chest, could still hear the venom with which she had told him to get off her, the threat in her voice when she had said that what happened last night would not happen again.
All of it interspersed with the majesty, the bliss, the temptation of what had happened last night.
All he had to do was close his eyes, and he was kissing her again, feeling the outline of her shapely curves, running his hands over soft, smooth skin, exploring her, tasting her, listening to the catch of her breath before she cried out his name in delirious abandon.
His traitorous loins didn’t know the difference between memory and reality, stirring as he thought of her… and thought of what he would never have again.
Ye’re a soldier, ye bampot. Ye should have done more to discipline yerself.
It was all his fault, after all. He was the one who had demanded that she remove her nightdress. He was the one who had been so certain that he would just look and not touch, and now he was in this situation, cursing himself and his idiocy.
Of course, he would not have been able to resist her. He had practically set his own trap and walked right into it.
A knock at the door jolted him out of his clashing thoughts.
“Me Laird?” Iona said when she was already halfway inside the study.
He narrowed his eyes at her. Everyone seemed to have forgotten their manners.
“What?” he asked sternly.
She slightly raised the tray in her hands. “I thought ye might want some breakfast, me Laird. There’s some excellent jam today. Blackberry. Sweetest I’ve had in years.”
“Nay, thank ye,” he muttered, and pretended to look over something in the ledger.
But the housekeeper didn’t leave. Instead, she set the breakfast tray on the desk and lingered there like a maiden with a secret. He didn’t look at her, but he could feel her eyes on him, assessing him, waiting for a moment to say whatever was clearly on her mind.
With a sigh, Gordon lifted his head. “Was there somethin’ else? A fine batch of gooseberry preserves, maybe?”
Iona chuckled, but it echoed hollow. “Nay, nay, there was nothin’ else.”
“Then why are ye still standin’ there?”
She hesitated. “Well, now that ye mention it, I suppose I was… um… curious to ken what actually happened in Braemar yesterday. I thought the two of ye—three of ye—would return in high spirits. I thought it would be good for the lass to get away from the castle and meet some more of our people.” Her throat bobbed.
“So, ye can imagine me distress when ye returned as ye did. And Miss Agnes wasnae keen to speak to me about it either when I popped in just now to bring her somethin’ to eat. ”
“What do ye mean?” Gordon asked before he could stop himself.
“I enquired, just being concerned like, but she said she was too tired to talk about it. Wee Lizzy was gripin’, and the fox had torn up that wrap she carries the babbie in, so I suppose it wasnae a good time,” Iona explained.
Gordon growled in annoyance. “I warned ye about that fox.”
“It meant no harm. I’ve put him in the kitchens for now, in a pen,” Iona protested mildly, with some regret in her voice. “But I am worried about the lass, me Laird. She looked ashen. Weary to her bones.”
Well, she shouldnae be. She slept the night away, quite content, in me arms.
He shook off the thought and replied with the short version of what had occurred in the marketplace: his swift dispatching of the three Englishmen who had tried to kidnap Lizzy, spilling blood and snapping a neck right before Agnes’s very eyes.
It rather begged the question of why she had allowed him to be so close to her at all last night. Shouldn’t she have been terrified of him after seeing his cruelty, his violence, in action?
Yet she had sought comfort from him. She had played cards with him.
She had kissed him as if he meant something great to her.
She had called out his name as if it were a blessed thing and not a curse.
She had lain there in his embrace, sound asleep, looking so peaceful that he wished he could have captured her serene expression, to make certain his mind had not been playing tricks on him.
“I see,” Iona said, nodding. “I imagine they daenae deal with things quite so… decisively south of the border. I heard they daenae even permit men to duel to end a disagreement.”
“She was fine,” he insisted. “After she’d bathed and rested, she was fine. It must’ve caught up to her.”
He did not admit that he knew why Agnes might not be herself this morning, for that was not something that a nosey housekeeper needed to know. Especially not if Agnes had neglected to tell her already.
Iona sighed. “Aye, ye’re probably right.
Poor thing. Must’ve been a terrible shock.
Nae just the killin’, but the snatchin’.
She must’ve felt so scared for that wee niece of hers.
The fear is bad enough when ye turn yer back for a moment, and when ye look around again, yer bairn has wandered off.
But to have the lassie stolen from her… Och, it’s no wonder she looks so troubled. ”
She looks troubled because I crossed a boundary and I cannae step back across it.