Claimed by a Scottish Lord (36 page)

Angus approached and, seeing Ruark, reined in his horse. ―A bit restless are ye, lad,‖ he quipped as his eyes narrowed on the sky. ―Out on an evening like this.‖

Ruark looked beyond the wild glen, then across the fells. ―Aye, that I am. Are you not supposed to be escorting McBain and my wife to the village today?‖

He scratched his heavy beard. ―They returned some hours ago. Ye have no‘ been back yet?‖

Ruark told Angus to return to Stonehaven and thumped Loki into a gallop. He would be late returning home that night. Aside from the quick trip to look over the new foals yesterday morning, Ruark had spent little time at Stonehaven.

For the last three days, Ruark had settled into a routine of normalcy as much as was possible with Rose in the adjoining chambers and him playing the celibate monk.

His wife had gone about her business as mistress of Stonehaven, overseeing Mary‘s duties during her absence. He barely saw her unless it was late at night and he stood in the doorway between her chambers and his, trying to remember all the reasons why he should turn away.

And so he kept himself occupied learning what it meant to be Stonehaven‘s laird. Yesterday he had gone with Angus to look over the new foals and discuss next year‘s acquisitions. Before that, it had been the barley fields that occupied him, and learning that some of the fields had not seen crops planted last spring. Tomorrow he would go south to the mill on the river and meet the foreman.

After a while Ruark quit thinking. The air was cool and crisp, as heady as rum punch as he rode Loki across the field. He rode up on the lodge, his gloved hands keeping a firm grip on the reins as he dismounted in front of Rose‘s school. The scent of larkspur and juniper mixed with the smell of earth and rain and familiar memories as Ruark looked up at the high roof. All but the watchman had left for the evening, leaving Ruark to walk the empty rooms in the fading light of the day, freshly painted with whitewash and windows newly glazed and the smell of plaster in his nostrils. He was impressed with his young wife‘s accomplishment. The building would make a fine school, and he felt pride knowing Rose was responsible.

Ruark walked around the grounds. The wind caught his hair. Dusk had left the countryside bathed in the deep magenta that mixed with the swirl of dark clouds as if the tempest came from within him. His head came around at the sound of a horse. He looked to where he had left Loki hobbled and grazing on a patch of grass.

It wasn‘t until he was nearly upon the stallion that he saw the second horse hobbled nearby. Rose stood beneath the branches of a large oak looking at him, her hand gripping her copper hair to keep it from whipping the air around her. She wore a cloak over a gown, the color of the surrounding tempest.

And he walked to where she stood, the sudden sharp stab of desire worse than when he had seen her dancing at the bonfire.

Worse even than last night, when he had returned home late to find her asleep on the settee in his library, the lamp burning low on the table beside her, a book upon her chest as if she had been trying to stay awake and wait for him. He had carried her to bed and she had not even awakened when he set her beneath the covers.

He stopped just beneath the branches.

―Angus said he saw you coming this way,‖ she said.

―You were following me.‖

She made the smallest nod. Neither took a step toward the other though he could feel the pull between them.

―I have always considered myself judicious and balanced in my outlook,‖ she said.

―Quite above it all. I do not know about the kind of love hailed by poets. No one in my life has ever born witness to such.‖

Her voice wavered. ―I only know that ever since I found the puzzle box in the abbey‘s crypt with the ring inside, my life has not been the same, almost as if a hole opened in my heart. Mrs. Simpson warned me that I was tampering with something beyond my ken. Yet, I opened the box without fully understanding the power. My heart is like that box.

―Until you, I had never looked at a man and felt anything beyond a need to exercise patience. Even you have tried mine immensely.

―Until you, I had never gone to sleep dreaming of some handsome face I might have glimpsed in the village or awakened feeling lost and confused, wondering if my heart would stop in my chest, it beat so soundly and painfully in panic. Until you, I had never known what ‘tis like to know I would lay down my body to protect yours. I would do so for many, Jack, Mrs. Simpson, Friar Tucker—these people are my family. But I do not awaken in the morning with this feeling that if anything should happen to one of them I would rather die than live another day alone.‖

She scraped the heel of her palm across her cheek. ―If this is love, then I love you so much it frightens me into wanting to run away as far as I can. Every time I look outside my bedroom window, I want to run back to the abbey where I once felt safe. To allow something so powerful into my heart and my soul scares me as nothing ever has. Does this manner of cowardice make me a self-contained, ignorant girl? Aye, probably. I am quite proficient in thinking only of myself.‖

His hands flexed. He had no defenses against the surge of emotions that trapped his words in his throat.

―I have missed you,‖ she whispered.

His heart was pounding so loudly it sounded like an ocean‘s roar in his ears. Before she could say another word, draw another breath, his mouth covered hers. His hands glided from her hips to her neck and cupped her face. A low moan escaped him. In answer, her slender arms rose around his neck and she pressed her body against him, drinking in his kiss, and he never realized just how sensitive his tongue was, how it could distinguish so vividly the textures of her mouth. Above them, wind gusted through the branches.

Closing a fist in her hair, he drew her back. The intensity of her eyes was a caress. ―I have missed you as well, love.‖

He looked up at the sky to measure the clouds and need to get the horses inside. ―Come.‖

He grabbed her hand as the first plop of heavy rain fell. ―We may not want shelter from the storm. But the horses do.‖

T
he stable had stone floors and stone walls much like the one at Stonehaven. Straw littered the floor. A door and window balanced each end with stalls in between. The slatted window near the pitch of the thatch roof let in the early-evening air mixed with sounds of the storm.

Up in the hayloft, Ruark and Rose lay on her cloak in a cozy nest made warm by the rasp of their bodies and the measured tempo of their breathing. Her dress was somewhere behind them in a crumpled heap, near his shirt and boots that lay like crumbs leading to where they had finally fallen in the straw.

―Have you ever made love up here?‖ Rose lay with her legs wrapped around Ruark‘s thighs, his weight resting on his elbows as he pulled back to look into her face.

He chuckled against her lips. ―Pray tell, why that question now?‖

―You seem to be familiar with the stable and this loft in particular. And I find I am jealous of any woman from your past.‖

Her petticoats cradled her head, pale against the spread of her hair. He brushed his lips against hers. ―Nay, love. You are the first.‖

With a subtle deepening of her sirenlike smile, she came back for a second taste of his lips and lingered. ―I like being the first,‖ she said as he settled his hips more firmly against hers, knowing the tension inside him was because of her.

The inevitable effect of her words spread through him like liquid heat, and he was no longer content just to feel her. He drew back and thrust.

She gasped slightly when he moved. Their kiss deepened into a luxurious and mutual exchange that crowded all other thoughts from his mind, until only their breathing filled the small space in the loft. Until it was she and him and the rumble of thunder above their heads. He rolled onto his back, taking her with him, her body sheathing him, even as her hands braced her weight against his chest.

A low moan escaped her as he cupped her breasts, swirling his tongue around the sensitive ruched flesh of her nipples. Instinctively, she arched her back so that her breasts rose to meet his caress. He slid his hands into the silken tangle of her hair and brought her mouth down to his, parting her lips under the growing pressure of his, nibbling, seeking the response from her that was burning in him. He found it. Her fingers wound in his hair. He slid both palms down her shoulders over her waist and hips.

Her body yielded easily to his touch. He clasped her bottom, holding her against him, watching her rock in restless abandon. This was not the first time she had willingly come to him, but this was the first time more than willingness lay between them, more than desire.

Then she was climaxing around him. Her eyes, heavy lidded, watched him until he drove into her, shuddering in release.

They both smiled at the same time, concurrently—their emotions easily surrendered. Strangely enough, she was his, but suddenly he began to wonder how he could hold on to her. He didn‘t understand why the thought struck him as it did, as if it was a premonition.

Her hand touched his face. ―What is it?‖

His kissed her. A gust of wind slapped rain against the slats as he gathered her in his arms.

―The storm looks like ‘twill be a long one. I am thinking neither of us has had supper.‖

She smiled. ―Do you think the watchman minds that you stole his wine and bread?‖

Ruark chuckled. ―He should feel grateful I allowed him to remain on his cot bed in your schoolhouse.‖

R
ose snuggled her head against Ruark‘s shoulder. The remains of a meal lay beside them on the cloak. He sat propped against the wall, his knee drawn to his chest, one hand dangling a wooden cup over his knee and his other arm casually draping her as she leaned her back against him. He had found a flint box, and a small lamp now burned in the corner. The dim light fell in a circle around them. She wore his shirt. The rain drumming against the thatch roof provided a cozy backdrop for the intimacies of their quiet conversation in the twilight of a fading day. Rose closed her eyes as thoughts of a darker nature began to intrude upon her peace.

―You have been silent for a full minute.‖ Ruark pressed his lips to her hair. ―What is it?‖

She raised her head from his shoulder and twisted around to look up at him. ―I have been plagued by a question I feel I need to ask that concerns us both. I will still stand by you no matter what your reply, but I need to know. I hope you will be honest.‖

Lanthorn light defined his nearly black eyes under thick lashes. ―I will try, Rose.‖

Yet the tenor of his reply told her he was not certain of his honesty, and she realized, despite everything, there were still many aspects of his life that he was not ready to share.

Drinking from the loosely held cup in his hand, he awaited the question.

―Are you Jamie‘s father?‖

He nearly spewed his wine. He snatched up an edge of her cloak and pressed the cloth to his lips. ―Madam,‖ he gasped. ―Please warn me before you accuse me of fathering a child on another woman. I am in danger of strangling.‖

―I read the entry of his birth in the Bible. He was born eight months after Julia‘s wedding to your father. I know she was with you shortly before that and that you had taken her to a kirk to marry but that she balked.‖

His eyes amused, he said, ―Then there is nothing else I can tell you. It seems you have mined all there is to know about my life.‖

―Can you deny you were in love with her?‖

―I will not deny that when I was seventeen, I was willing to elope with her. But please, you cannot hold me responsible for the actions of a rash youth.‖

―Then you and she . you must have . ‖

Ruark raised a brow. ―We must have what?‖

He was going to make her say the words. ―You must have been intimate with her.‖

―I will admit I have not been a virgin since I was fifteen . but she was different. She and I had known each other since we were both in swaddling. Our mothers were close friends. I loved her, I thought.‖

―And did she love you?‖

―I thought she did.‖ He studied the wooden cup in his hand. ―But looking back, I know now she was not
in love
with me.

―I had always believed we would one day be wed if only because of our families. I had little respect for most everything else in my life, but I did have respect for her. She was fragile. She reminded me of a delicately painted glass doll and I wanted to protect her from breaking. If I had pressed her into an intimacy, I knew she would have been the one hurt.‖

―You must have felt betrayed by both her and your father.‖

―Strangely, never by her. My father. Always.‖ Ruark leaned his head back against the wall. ―I can think of no time in my life where he ever reached out to me or my mother. When she died, he was with his mistress. He was not so much physically cruel as he was indifferent and self-involved, except when it came to Stonehaven.

―I rebelled against everything for which he stood. I cared little for the lives of those who lived there. By fifteen, I was a dissolute heir already intent on drinking and gambling away my heritage and forcing him to claim note after note against my markers. I believed in nothing.

―One could say Duncan took exception to the direction of my life when he decided to send me on a new path and rescue me from destroying myself.‖

―After you fought your father.‖

―I have since lived almost as much time out of this country as I have in it.‖ Ruark was silent a moment, then his eyes met hers. ―I brought a lot of misfortune upon myself and others caused by anger and pride. I have been no better than a smuggler and much-cursed pirate with little difference between Hereford and myself, or my father, ‘twould seem. Cunning and ruthlessness kept me alive.‖ He finished off his cup and set it at his thigh, and as he peered at her some of the cold left his eyes. ― ‘Tis only recently I have learned the value of compassion.‖

―Yet, you still feel guilty in your failure to save Julia.‖

Ruark met her gaze steadily. ―How is that, love?‖

―You have not spent any time with her son, your father‘s son, the brother you worked so hard to save. As if you think that you also failed in saving him. He is home and safe because of you. And he loves you.‖