Claimed by the Highlander (24 page)

Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he lifted her onto the desk. Quickly, he wrenched her skirts up and thrust himself up against her, while taking careful note of her mounting desires: her breasts heaving lusciously, her wet lips parting. She let out a tiny moan of need that aroused him beyond comprehension.

Angus hooked the back of her knee with the crook of his arm, while he quickly swept his kilt out of the way.

“I want no woman but you,” he told her.

She grabbed hold of his tartan. “Then prove it.”

Feet still on the floor, he entered her in one swift rush of fire, and felt as if he were charging forward with his sword in the air, riding headlong down a steep hillside toward an enemy on the battlefield. The damp heat between her legs provoked his lust, and he pushed hard, needing to claim her without boundaries or conditions.

He worked smoothly inside her on top of the desk, and their bodies moved in a perfect rhythmic harmony. She clutched at his shoulders and cried out with pleasure, and simultaneously, he felt the throbbing compressions of her orgasm squeeze and pulse around the impetus of his desires.

His own orgasm grew in force and spread through him in a steamy blast of vitality, until he couldn’t hold back another minute. He bucked wildly as he ejaculated into her and knocked a vase of flowers off the desktop. It landed with a smashing clatter.

Afterward, the whole world seemed to go quiet, while he held his wife tightly in his arms. It took some time for his breathing, and hers, to return to normal. Then slowly he withdrew from inside her. He let his kilt fall, and touched his forehead to hers.

So much for being in control.

Gwendolen took hold of his face and kissed him hard. “If you go to that woman now,” she said, “I swear on my mother’s life that I will run you through with your own sword. You’ll be a bloody mess on this floor, and of no use to Raonaid or anyone else for that matter.”

God help him, no woman had ever aroused him more.

“I don’t want her,” he said. “I give you my vow as a Scotsman that as long as I live, I will never want any woman but you. But if you betray me, lass…”

He didn’t finish the threat, because he couldn’t imagine what he would do.

“I will not betray you,” she assured him. “How can I make you believe it?”

“I don’t know.”

She pulled him in for another deep, searing kiss, then pushed him away. “Your precious oracle said I would stand by my brother if he returned, and that I would choose him over you. But I am carrying your child now, Angus. That makes me yours. You must have faith in my loyalty and tell her so. Then, for God’s sake, send her away. If you don’t, she’ll do nothing but wreak havoc here.”

“But she sees the future,” Angus said. “I must know her prophecies.”

Gwendolen hopped off the desk and moved to the center of the room. “You cannot trust what she sees, for she has painted me with a false brush. She could be wrong about other things, too, and lead you down the wrong path.”

“What other things?” he asked.

“Your death, for one.” She approached him again. “I’ve had my own dreams, Angus. I have envisioned our future, and what I see is very different from what she has seen in the stones.”

He felt an unexpected curiosity. Did every woman in the world wish to control him with mysticism? “What do you mean, you’ve had your own dreams?”

“Dreams,” she repeated, with a noncommittal shrug. “Sometimes I dream about certain events, and later there is truth in them.”

“What events?”

She shook her head as if she didn’t want to speak of it, but continued nonetheless. “I dreamed of your assault on Kinloch the night before you stormed the gates. I saw our passion together. And before our wedding day, I dreamed of the swallow that was nesting in the Great Hall. I saw her fly away and leave us.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Why have you not told me this before?”

“Because it’s probably just a lot of superstitious nonsense, and besides, when I have the dreams, I don’t know if they will come true or not. I don’t recognize the prophecy until it occurs, and then I look back and remember that I dreamed it. So you see, I am no oracle.”

“But your dreams do come true.”

“Sometimes.”

He walked to the window and looked out at the surrounding meadows and forests, and wondered what he was supposed to do with this information. He had married a woman who was not only beautiful and spirited, not to mention sexually eager and gloriously fertile, but had prophetic dreams as well.

“What else have you seen in your sleep?” he asked. “Have you ever seen my death?”

She spoke with conviction. “Nay, but I have seen our life together, many years from now.”

He faced her. “What did you see? Tell me every detail.”

“I saw you pass your sword to our eldest son on his wedding day, and all was well.”

All was well?

Angus found that difficult to believe, for there was always violence or death in some corner of his life, waiting to rear its ugly head. Even now, the dread of it was haunting him like a demon. Which left him only one choice.

“I am laird here,” he said, looking out the window again, “and it is up to me, and only me, to decide who stays and who goes.”

“And Raonaid stays, I suppose?”

“For the time being.”

For a year, he had lived with Raonaid and listened to her prophecies. She had saved him in more ways than one. Helped build him up when he was broken. She made him strong when he was weak. He simply could not banish her now. He owed her his life, and he needed to know all there was to know about the future. Because of Gwendolen.

She regarded him with disappointment, and he was suddenly aware of the fact that his army was being assembled in the bailey, yet he was here in this room, talking to his wife about dreams and prophecies, when he should be out there, preparing his men to fight and defend.

“Do you still love her?” Gwendolen asked.

He scoffed bitterly. “Are you mad, lass? I never loved her. I’ve never loved anyone.”

Color rushed to her cheeks, and she turned quickly for the door. “I beg your pardon, I forgot. I suppose I have nothing to worry about then.” She walked out and slammed the door behind her.

Angus stood in the empty chamber and knew very well that she was upset with him—because he had just told her in no uncertain terms that he did not love her.

But how could he have said anything different?

He didn’t even know what love was.

*   *   *

That night, Gwendolen waited hours for Angus to come to her bed, but he chose to stay away.

A part of her wondered if he had gone to Raonaid’s bed instead, but she could not let herself imagine such a thing. She had to believe that he would not be unfaithful, not after what occurred in the steward’s chamber that afternoon. He’d vowed that he wanted no woman but her, and he seemed to take her threat of running him through with his own sword seriously enough.

It was not love, he had said—but his sexual desire for her was something at least.

Alas, when she finally drifted into a deep but uneasy slumber, she tossed and turned in her bed, moaning softly into her pillow, as disturbing images of a distant land troubled her mind …

She woke with a start. Dawn was creeping across the sky, and the fire had gone out.

Sitting up, she gasped for air. She choked on a scream that would not escape her tight, burning throat.

She had dreamed of her brother, Murdoch, floating down a long, winding river that drained into the stormy waters of the English Channel. His body rested on a funeral pyre, and there was a noose around his neck. When he plunged beneath the surface, he called out her name.

But there was nothing she could do. She reached out, but could not save him, for he was gone—sinking alone into the cold, dark depths below.

At that moment she knew. She had lost her brother forever.

Chapter Twenty-one

Angus stood on the tower rooftop, watching the rising sun splash bright patterns of color across the horizon. The eyes of the world would soon flutter open, and he would begin another day with no idea how to navigate through the muddy terrain of his life and emotions. He was someone’s husband now—he was Gwendolen’s husband—and imagining the loss of her was like imagining the loss of his own soul.

Angus had never put much stock in the fate of his soul before, nor had he feared death. He had witnessed his own mother’s tragic passing as a child, and not even that had made him anxious about his own. All his life he had charged fearlessly into battle without the slightest hesitation. If he died, so be it. It was enough to know that he would die with honor, for outside of that, he’d never had much to live for.

Everything was different now. Raonaid’s prophecy forced him to look at his life and all that he had yet to experience and achieve. He and Gwendolen had created a child together, and for that reason he needed to live. He needed to protect his family and care for them, and prove that he could be something other than the ruthless brute that everyone believed him to be.

Perhaps he knew what love was after all. Or at the very least, he was discovering it, one day at a time.

The sound of footsteps up the tower stairs caused him to turn, and he found himself staring, speechless, at his wife. She wore a white shift and lace-trimmed dressing gown and looked like an angel in the breezy pink radiance of the morning.

His gaze fell to her bare toes peeking out from under the hem. “You ought to be wearing shoes, lass. The stones are cold.”

“Why are you always concerned with my feet,” she asked, “when you should be wondering what I’m doing here in the first place? Is it not worth noting that I am on a tower rooftop at dawn searching for you, when the last time we spoke, I stormed out of the room and slammed a door in your face?”

He approached her. “Aye, it’s definitely worth noting, and I’m pleased to see you.” He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to your bed last night.”

There. See? He could be gentle when he tried. He could offer his wife an apology.

She pulled the wrapper more tightly closed to ward off the morning chill. “I wasn’t surprised when you didn’t come,” she said. “We were angry with each other yesterday.”

“Nay, lass—you were angry with
me,
and for good reason. I was wrong not to believe you about the child.”

“And what about the other thing?” she asked, shivering slightly. “The fact that Raonaid said I would betray you? Do you still believe her about that?”

For a long moment, he considered it. “I don’t know.”

Her shoulders rose and fell with a resigned sigh. “Well, I can’t force you to believe it, can I? All I can do is ask that you follow your heart, and hope that over time you’ll learn to trust me.”

He inclined his head at her. “There was a time you didn’t believe I had a heart.”

“There was also a time when I was a virgin and knew nothing about what went on between a man and a woman in the marriage bed. I am not the same person I once was, Angus. Everything is different now. I hope it is different for you, too.”

He laid a hand on the small of her back and led her toward the tower battlements, where they could look out over the distant fields and forests of Kinloch.

“Why are you here, lass?” he asked, admiring her profile and her shiny black hair, blowing lightly in the breeze. “Why are you not sleeping, warm in your bed?”

She faced him. “Because I had a dream this morning, and I needed to tell you about it, in case it turns out to be a premonition. Though I sincerely hope it does not.”

“If you tell me you saw my head in a noose…”

Gwendolen quickly shook her head. “Nay, it was not that. It was something else, though it was just as morbid. I couldn’t breathe when I woke.”

Angus laid a hand on her shoulder. “What did you see?”

“My brother,” she answered. “I saw Murdoch floating on a funeral pyre out to sea. I fear he will never return to us now, and my mother will be forced to mourn the loss of her only son.”

A funeral pyre?

Angus recalled his instructions to Lachlan on the day of the invasion. Lachlan was to send MacDonald warriors on a hunt for Murdoch, and do whatever it took to prevent another attack.
Whatever it took
.

Tears filled Gwendolen’s eyes, and she stepped into Angus’s arms.

“Perhaps it was just a dream,” he said, “and he will return any day.”

Or perhaps not.

He held her close and struggled with his bucking conscience, while he wondered who, at this moment, was the real traitor in this marriage.

The answer was simple, he supposed—for he had put his instincts as a warrior and chieftain before any thoughts of compassion for his wife. Her feelings had not even entered into his decision to crush his enemy, and he was quite certain that given the same circumstances, he would do the same thing again.

Perhaps he had not come so far after all. Perhaps he would always be the same ruthless warrior he had always been.