The Highlander's Harlot (Sword and Thistle Book 1) (4 page)

Something inside me tugged at his answer. It was a pull of both fascination, and arousal. What would it feel like to be seized and claimed by a man like the laird, and give myself up to him? And what did it mean to be more naked than naked?
 

It seemed I was destined never to know.
 

“Have you thought to take a wife?” I asked.

Now he snorted. “I can’t do such things to a wife! Besides, my rivals would likely object to any woman I took to wed, so it’s easier to do without a wife.”

“But then how will you have bairns?” I asked, daring to opine, “A laird needs heirs, doesn’t he?”

At that, John Macrae fell silent. Then, he dragged his eyes away from me, and as if to signal that conversation was done, he reached for the leather-bound book his cousin had slammed shut. Readjusting himself on the pillow, he began to read, turning the pages slowly.

Did he expect me to simply watch him while we waited for the hours to pass? Certainly, he was something to look at. I confess, his thick forearms and strong hands were captivating. But when he caught me staring, he seemed to think I was looking at the book.
 

“You can read?” he asked.
 

“My mother taught me my letters,” I said. “But Papa didn’t approve much of it, so I don’t read. Though I’d like to learn.”

Hmph!
That was the sound he made. I didn’t know what it meant. But he closed the book again. “What about games. Do you know how to move chessmen on a board?”

I shook my head, a bit miserably.

“What is it you do when you’re at your leisure?”

“At my leisure?” I asked, trying to remember a time my hours weren’t consumed with duties and care-taking. Probably before my mother died…and that seemed a life time ago.

The laird scratched at the back of his neck, and sudden, unbidden tears pricked at my eyes. I didn’t know how to read, or to write, or to play games, or to do seemingly anything that might be of value to him. “I can sew, and keep house, and keep five little bairns well-fed on nothing but scraps. I can measure out whiskey to keep a man from getting too drunk, and can draw a bath of lavender that soothes all cares away. I can bind a wound, and can milk goats and sheep, and make cheese. And I bake the best pie of any woman in the clan.”

One of his brows kicked up at the deranged litany and the emotional tone of my voice. “You’re a good, giving girl,” he said, gently. “Which, I suppose is the answer to the question I was going to ask you when we spoke at the same time. I wanted to know why you’d sacrificed yourself for your father.”

“Because any good daughter would,” I replied.

“As I thought you’d say…but your father forbade it.”

“And he might’ve forbade it all the way to his grave, and then my siblings and I could all starve and live with the horror of it ever after with our only comfort being the knowledge we’d been obedient.”

“I’d hoped you’d disobey him,” the laird admitted.

And I blinked. “Why would you, if you don’t want me?”

He growled low in his throat, and set the book aside. “I
do
want you. I’ve said it already. If I turned only slightly you’d see how hard I am for you just sitting beside you on a bed. But that’s not why I hoped you’d disobey your father and submit to me. I hoped you’d do it so that I wouldn’t have to hang him. Killing is a thing that sometimes needs to be done. And when it needs to be done, I shed blood with more ruthlessness than any other Scotsman alive. But if I can avoid killing an old man in front of his bairns, I do, ye ken.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” I said, softly. Both because I felt more charitably toward him that he hadn’t wanted to hang my father. And because my heart kicked up its pace at hearing that he wanted me, still. “And you should know that it
was
pleasurable. Some of it, anyway.”

Now it was his turn to blink. “What was?”

“You said that being with you was painful, but pleasurable for the right lass. For me—what taste of it I had—was both.”

He inched closer, his eyes narrowing. “And which part was pleasurable?”

“The kiss,” I said, though that wasn’t precisely true. I’d liked his hands on my body, too, even though he’d grabbed me roughly. But the kiss—that had been all pleasure.
 

Hmph
, he said again, as if I were the greatest curiosity in the world. He took my cheek in his big hand, his thumb slipping over my lips as if they beckoned to him. “Well, I daresay kissing is one way to pass the time…but a torture, too.”

“I could endure it,” I said, very stoically.

He laughed at that, long and hard. He guffawed, in fact. “There’s something about you, lass…” He laughed again. “I meant torture for
me
. I’m not in the custom of denying myself. Kissing you, when I know I won’t take from you what that kiss invites, would be…”

But all at once, he seemed to change his mind. He tilted his head and brought his mouth over mine. The sweetness of it melted under the heat of his kiss, and was just as heady as the wine his tongue tasted of. His breath puffed warmly upon my cheeks, and my hands went to his cheeks, fingertips delighting in the slightly scratch of his stubble.
 

We kissed, and we kissed, until it seemed to fill me with a longing that I didn’t understand. A sweet, painful longing for…more. And more painful still, when, breathless, he pulled away. The thump of his heartbeat and the heat of his body let me know that he felt desire, but somehow he tore himself from me, and growled. After a moment, thoughtfully, he ran his hand down my side. “I meant to let you go in the morning. Tell everyone I’d had my fill, and leave you to give yourself to my men for money or take what man might still have you as a wife, in spite of your shame. But you’ve amused me tonight, and I’m not a man much for amusement. So in repayment, I think I must ruin you more completely.”

“Oh?” I asked, still a little breathless in anticipation. Whatever it meant to be ruined, I suddenly felt as if I must experience.

“Aye,” he said, gravely. “Taking you to bed just one night, makes you a fallen woman, though not a strumpet of sufficient fascination to anyone. But should I keep you for a time as my mistress, well, that sets the tongues of the castle wagging. The more infamous you are when I’m done with you, the more men will want you for the honor of having my leavings. Or to spite me by taking a woman who was once mine.”

I gasped a bit, offended and fascinated at the turn of his mind. “But you haven’t taken me—”

“They don’t know it, though. And we have your future to think of. So go on down now to your room and I’ll call again for you tomorrow night.”

This seemed at once a reprieve and torture. “You want me—you want me to go?”

“Aye. I don’t sleep easily with anyone else in my bed. And with you, I know I’d be up all night. You’ve already proved yourself to be more of a temptation than I expected, and I’m not in the habit of needlessly putting my self-control to the test.”

~~~

The next night he taught me to play with his chessmen upon a checkered board. The night after that, I actually won a game. He claimed it was because I’d bewitched him with my pretty eyes and pale bosom, and I found myself leaning forward so that he could see them better. “You’re learning to be a coquette,” he accused, stealing my queen from the board.

“Isn’t that what I should learn, if I’m to be a harlot?”

He rubbed the back of his neck as if I presented a manner of difficulty for him that he wasn’t certain how to solve. “I suppose that’s the advantage to being a whore; you may learn whatever pleases you and no one can object to it, ye ken.”

He wasn’t about to convince me that the station of life to which he intended to condemn me was in any way advantageous, but I was intrigued by the possibility he raised. “I can learn anything? Even to read?”

He smirked a bit. “Even in Latin, if you wish it. There are, after all, a few good Latin words you might want to know for between the sheets…”

I felt myself blush, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. And the next morning, I was awakened to a harsh pounding upon my chamber door. I knew Brenna would never make such a racket, and my breath hitched in alarm as I went to open the door.

Then it hitched again, when I saw the scowling man in the entryway. Not my mercurial laird, but rather, his brawny cousin, Ian Macrae.
 

And given the hostile look in his eyes, I counted myself lucky that he was carrying not a sword, but a book. “Sir?” I asked, drawing my shawl around me.

Ian snarled, “The laird has sent me to give his new whore an education.” Coming from another man, I’d have taken it as sexual innuendo and feared that I was about to be ravished. Why else would a man come to my private quarters unchaperoned?
 

But the expression on the apparently scholarly warrior’s face was anything but lustful. “I’m to teach you your letters,” Ian added, with all the enthusiasm of a man who has been commanded to empty a chamber pot.

Nevertheless, I was unexpectedly delighted! I determined to be the best possible student, reverently running my fingers over the leather when Ian set the book down, and marveling at the ink upon the page, when he pulled a chair close and opened the volume.

Ian seemed too big for the chair he sat upon, and heaved impatient breaths as I recited all the letters for him. “That’s an R, and that’s a S, and that—”

“Good! Then you know it already. Now the laird can have you spell out any filthy word he’d like to teach you, or he can swan you about, bragging that he’s bedding a woman of letters.”

Ian started to rise, but I caught his sleeve. “Wait! I know the letters, but I don’t know how to string them all together to make sense of them, yet.”

Scowling, he snapped, “And what you’ll need that for, flat on your back, I can’t begin to guess.”

He was a big man; he might have snapped me in two. But somehow, I sensed that I had the protection of the laird. At least for now, and that emboldened me to say, “I didn’t ask for this, ye ken.”

“Aye, you did,” he rejoined, crossing his meaty arms over himself. “I was there when you asked for it.”

“When I consented to it,” I reminded him, heat flaming at my cheeks. “And if I didn’t, then what would have become of my father? He’d have died!”

“He’d have died with his honor,” Ian said.
 

“What honor?” Why I was so determined to argue with him, I couldn’t say. But I added, “My father didn’t give up the share he owed to our clan chief. He swore his fealty and didn’t—”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score, you daft woman. But your father still had his pride as a man; he’d have rather died than give you up to be the laird’s plaything, but you took that from him, as did the laird.”

I heard in his voice a very real note of censure for John Macrae. “The laird says that you disapprove of him…”

Ian’s mouth thinned to a gash. “I know what he does to women and I don’t approve, no. You must be a natural born whore to have weathered a night with him, where other girls would curl up upon their beds and weep half the day.”

I gulped, suddenly frightened again of the man who had seemed so civilized playing upon his chessboard. And I wanted to ask just what the laird did to his women, but to ask would be to admit that I didn’t know. And if there was anything that was likely to break our bargain, it was that. “Perhaps those other women simply weren’t suited to him.”

Ian snorted. “
Och, aye
. I suppose
most
women aren’t suited to climb willingly in bed with the devil.”

“The devil?” I asked. “And yet you’ve sworn yourself to him.”

Ian grinded his teeth. “I’m a Macrae. He was the choice of the clan. He’s the chief and I’m his chieftain. I’ll fight for him, and I’ll die for him. But the day he looks sideways at a sister of mine, is the day my oath isn’t worth spit and it’ll come to war.”

I swallowed again. Just what sort of man was the Macrae that his own men feared he’d debauch their sisters? I inhaled sharply, then squeezed my hands into fists until I could be brave. “Then isn’t it better his eyes are on me than on your sisters?”

Ian tilted his head, an lock of hair falling over his eyes as he appraised me. He grunted. “He’s right about you. You’re a saucy wench.”

“But you’ll teach me to read?”

“Aye,” Ian Macrae said, finding his chair again. “I will.”

~~~

“Your breakfast,” Brenna said, slamming down the tray.

“Only porridge today?” I asked, for I’d come to expect the biscuits and heather-infused honey.

“Must have forgotten it,” she said, irritation in her voice.
 

And I didn’t think she
forgot
at all. Because she was, by my count, the only friend I had in the castle, and because she reminded me, too, of my own younger sister Arabella, I asked, “Is there something wrong?”

She tugged a bit on her cap. “Does the laird know that you entertain his men in your chambers when he’s away?”

My eyes widened. Oh,
that
. “Do you mean Ian Macrae?”

“Is there someone else that visits you every afternoon and stays half the day?” I’d thought Brenna was a mousy thing. Timid. And I still held to that opinion. But clearly her sense of propriety brought out her inner Scotswoman. “I suppose a woman of your ilk has to take whatever man that has coin for her, but you might do well to wait until the laird’s eyes have turned from you, if you don’t want to be the cause of bloodshed.”

“Brenna, the laird sent Ian to my chambers.”

I’d meant to say more—to explain that he’d come to teach me to read—but the way Brenna’s cheeks turned scarlet made me think she assumed something quite different. “
Oh
,” she said, unable to meet my eyes, looking entirely miserable. “Well, then. I suppose you must obey.”

“It’s entirely innocent,” I hastened to add. “Truly. You’ll notice Ian always comes with a book. Here, look,” I said, pointing at my bedside table. “He brought me a primer last week. He’s teaching me my letters.”

Her eyes widened. Then she blew out a breath of relief so strong that she nearly swayed on her feet. And then I knew. She was in love with Ian Macrae. “That’s…that’s…”