Torn Between Two Highlanders (12 page)

“Arabella!” someone cried.

She turned in the sunlit hall to see a very familiar face. “Conall?”

He grasped at her hands, his face creased with concern. “I heard you found your way into the castle last night. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see you alive and well.”

“Thank you,” Arabella said, stiffly, to the man she was to marry. “I’m glad to see the same of you. I did worry that you might be waylaid.”

But she had not worried very much. She’d been too angry. Too hurt. And those emotions hadn’t faded, so she tried to slip her hands from his. But he held them fast. “You must forgive me for the way we parted, Arabella. You disobeyed me and for that you deserve discipline, not abandonment. And when I am your husband—”

“You broke our betrothal!” Arabella cried, startled at the very idea he should think he still had any claim over her. Repulsed by the idea of him as a husband now.

“But I was wrong to do it,” Conall said. “You were frightened. And you’re good-hearted. You wanted to help the injured man. I canna blame you for it. I know you’re a virtuous girl.”

“I’m
not
,” Arabella said. At least not in the way that he meant it.

Conall swallowed audibly. “Whatever those men did to you, we will forget. We will never speak of it…”

He thought he meant well, she realized. He thought he was being generous and kind to her. And in the way of men, she supposed he was. He was saying that he would have her, no matter how she had been dishonored by the Donald men. But it was too late for that now. “Those men did not take my maidenhead, Conall. I told you the truth and still you don’t believe me. Which is a sorry start to a marriage, I wager. But I am no sort of wife for you now. And I am no virtuous virgin girl…”

There. She had said it. And upon saying it, she breathed easier. Meanwhile, Conall’s face reddened as he tried to understand. “If you weren’t violated by your abductors then…are you saying…do you mean to say that you were never—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Arabella said, unwilling to name Davy or Malcolm as her seducer since, in truth, she believed she seduced
them
.

“It matters!” Conall said, giving her a shake. “You were going to make a fool of me. A cuckold.”

“No—”

His hands dug into her arms, painfully, and his face glowed with anger. “You’re a harlot, like your sister. But who did you play the whore for? Tell me.”

“You’re hurting me, Conall. Let go.”

“I’ll let you go when—”

“Do as the lady says or I will take your head off your shoulders in one stroke.” It was Malcolm. Arabella didn’t know when he had come into the passageway and how much he’d overheard, but she knew it was him. She would know that grim voice anywhere. And his promise of death was not a jest.

When she looked up, he had murder in his eyes.

Conall must have known it, too, because he released her at once, stumbling back. “She is my betrothed. This is none of your concern, sir.”

Malcolm’s eyes shone with a sudden flash of pain. “Is that true, lass. Do you plan to marry this lad?”

With all the spite she had in her body, Arabella said, “
Never
.”

“Good.” With satisfaction, the scarred warrior limped closer, his physical presence enough to intimidate Conall. “You heard her. So if I see you so much as look her way again, I will cut your eyes from your face.”

Conall’s expression twisted in defiance, but in the end, he turned and fled. Then Arabella was alone with Malcolm, her chest heaving while his breaths were deadly even. “Are you harmed, lass?”

“No,” Arabella said, her heart swelling a bit at his gallantry, even as she worried over the savagery of his threat. “You won’t really cut his eyes out if he looks at me, will you?”

“I don’t make threats I don’t mean.”

She believed him. “But we’re in the same castle together. And there may come a time when I want him to look at me.”

“Then he had better never do it where I can see.”

“
Malcolm
,” Arabella said, softly putting a hand to his sword arm. “Thank you for driving him off, but I don’t want you to cut his eyes out.”

“I wouldn’t be doing it for you.”

Her head tilted as she appraised him. “Why then?”

“Because it makes me bitter with jealousy to think that he once had a claim on you and threw it away, whereas I have none at all.” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d grown a horn from his head. And while she gawped he added, “You have ruined
me
, lass.”

“What?” she asked, both confused and horrified.

His hand actually trembled, and he tried to hide it by making a fist. “In all the years since my wife’s death, I have been content to sleep alone. Three nights sleeping beside you and now I cannot be content. I cannot sleep. And I
need
to if I’m to be of any use on the night watch.”

“Surely not in your condition,” Arabella said.

“The laird hasn’t the luxury to be choosy.”

I cannot sleep
, he’d said. He meant it. She saw it in the shadows beneath his eyes. Last night, upon their admittance to the castle and his return to his own warm bed, Malcolm ought to have fallen into a deep slumber. But he hadn’t, and she wondered if that could really be because of her.

Then a tenderness stole over her such that it wouldn’t be denied.

“Come then with me, to bed, Malcolm,” Arabella said, reaching for his hand. “And get some rest.”

He knew what she meant; what she was offering. And a longing played across his features. He reached for her, but warned, “The scandal, lass…”

“I don’t care.” Her reputation was lost the moment the Donalds abducted her. Positively tainted when she spent three nights alone with men who were not her husband. And even if she wanted to pretend at virtue, she couldn’t now. She’d already confessed to Conall, who, in his anger, would tell anyone who would listen. She was good and ruined now, several times over. Taking a man to her bed in the middle of the day would be perfectly in keeping with her reputation now.

And so she let him lean upon her as they made their way slowly down the stairs to her chambers. Then she latched the door behind them, and helped him onto the bed, kneeling before him to help him remove his clothes.

When he was naked, she rose up, and Malcolm clasped her about the waist. Kissing her belly and her breasts. Drawing her down onto the mattress with him where they kissed as they had never kissed before. Arabella found herself tracing his scar with her fingertip. Felt herself open to him—surrender to him. And Malcolm
was
tired; she knew, because his fingers were unusually clumsy.

What followed was not the kind of heated, erotic abandon they’d shared before. As he drew her to kneel over him, and sink down upon his shaft, she realized that something had changed between them. As she moved carefully, gently, tenderly to bring him pleasure…it seemed like lovemaking.

At least for Arabella, whose emotions swelled in her chest until it ached.

His eyes never left her face as she moved over him, moaning softly at the caress of his hands on her breasts. And when his pleasure began to peak, and the tell-tale redness spread down his neck and chest in a way that told her he was close to his orgasm, he tried to stop her from riding him through it.

“I must spend outside of you,” he grunted, straining to hold back.

She knew he was right. She mustn’t get with child. It was one thing to damn herself to a life of harlotry, but a child was an innocent. And yet…and yet…she was so overcome with inexplicable love for this man that she wanted all of him.

Every drop.

“Stay in me. Stay with me. Come with me,” she murmured.

It was too much for him to resist. He rose up off the pillow with the strain, shouting out his release as it flowed warmly into her. As her own body convulsed with pleasure around him.

Afterwards, they lay together, spooned warmly beneath the fur. He sighed with contentment, nestling against her as he settled in for the long sleep denied him. And while he slept, he held her tightly, not like a whore, but like a lover.

She felt that, too. Her feelings she had for him hadn’t subsided. Love, it must be, though she dared not name it. And maybe not so inexplicable after all.

Though Malcolm was a quiet man, he was a man of deep emotions. A man who was fiercely protective, and stoically strong. A man who needed her, perhaps as no one had ever needed her. A man who might love her in return.

When they awakened together, later in the day, Malcolm whispered soft endearments in Gaelic. And when she whispered them back, he said, “I canna marry you lass.”

“I know,” she replied. “I wouldn’t make a good wife to any man…”

“You’re wrong. You would make a perfect wife for me, because I love you.”

Her heart stopped. “You do?”

Kissing her hair, her ear, the side of her neck, he whispered, “Aye. After Lorna, I didn’t think I could feel this way again about any woman. But there is no denying I do love you. Truly.”

She sighed. Not with sorrow, but with happiness. It seemed the most wonderful thing anyone had ever said to her. And of course, it was.

“I
would
marry you, Arabella. And make a family together. It is only the vow I made never to marry again. I canna break it.”

She would be his mistress. His harlot. His whore. Gladly. “Then does it matter if we marry? Malcolm, I—”

“Don’t say it,” Malcolm whispered. “If you would declare your love for me, I cannot hear it, because it will break me.”

Arabella turned to face him. Her eyes searching out answers in his dark, inscrutable gaze. “Why should it break you?”

“Because Davy loves you too. And unlike me, he can make an honest woman of you.”

“You have the wrong herb,” Arabella said to the overtaxed physicker as he tended the wounded men in the makeshift infirmary.

“
What
?” the harried man said, with nary a glance at her.

“You wanted mistletoe,” Arabella replied. “But you grabbed the jar with the whortleberry.”

He looked down, his eyes widening with surprise. “So I did…”

Arabella, who had spent the afternoon making bandages and tending to wounded men, pressed her lips together. She needed this distraction. Needed it very much, given the way her heart ached for Malcolm. Given what he’d said about Davy making an honest woman of her. And she would be vexed if the physicker sent her away.

“How did you know I wanted mistletoe?” the physicker asked.

“Because the man you’re treating has gone into seizures,” she whispered, waiting for the inevitable accusation of witchcraft.

Instead, the physicker nodded and went about his business, letting Arabella help him where she could, until her stomach was growling so loudly, he said, “Go to the kitchens and get yourself something to eat.”

But the kitchen girls turned her away, saying that she’d been asked for in the main hall.

Arabella had never been to dine in the castle proper. Never thought to be included at the tables with the notables and retainers. But as her sister was seated with the laird at his table, as if she were his lady, Arabella had a place in the hall, too. It was Davy who saved a place for her, offering her the choices bits of food.

He was always so careful with her, so accommodating. And whenever she was frightened, his bright smile had eased her fears. Even now, he sought to cheer her. “We’re rationing,” he explained, as if to excuse their meal. “But it’s a wee bit better than porridge!”

In truth, it was finer food than Arabella had ever tasted in her life, excepting, of course, her sister’s meat pies. A thing she hungered for, even as she nibbled at fresh fragrant bread and a dish of cabbage with smoked ham. It was autumn, the blood season, when the animals who could not be fed were sacrificed for meat. But all that would have to be smoked and preserved to see them over the winter.

That was, of course, about as much as Arabella knew about domestic matters—reminding her once again what a poor daughter she had been and what a poor wife she would make. She couldn’t believe what Malcolm had intimated; that Davy—
Davy
of all people—might intend to propose marriage to her.

If he had ever said such a thing, it was surely said in jest. For Davy’s sense of humor was always a bit off. And yet, sitting at a table with him for a meal, she realized it was more than his sense of humor that was off. Not a bawdy tale escaped his lips, and instead of drinking and swearing and laughing as he might normally do, he griped, “I hate sieges.”

“Not dangerous enough for you, Davy?” asked a brawny warrior, taking a big mouthful of bread. “There was a skirmish yesterday morning. Some men badly hurt.”

“It’s the waiting,” Davy replied. “Waiting to know when and where they’ll strike. All the waiting is dull enough to make mush of a man’s brains.”

“I think they’ll come the way you did,” the other warrior said, resting a muscular arm on the table. “From the loch. Up the walls. At night, when there’s no moon. They’ll dress like villagers, so it won’t be easy to tell them apart. For all we know they’re already inside, waiting for a moment to betray us.”

Instead of grinning at the prospect of battle—as he normally did—Davy actually grimaced. “What an optimist you are, Ian Macrae.”

And Arabella stiffened in her chair.

Ian Macrae.
The laird’s kinsman. A man many in the clan thought
ought
to have been the laird. And she narrowed her eyes, suddenly suspicious of a man who could lay out so precisely a plan for treachery.

If there really was a traitor inside the castle, was it more likely to be a man dressed like a villager? Would rival clans count on that? Or was it more likely to be the laird’s own kinsman—a man who stood to gain from the laird’s death?

“Aren’t you hungry, lass?” Davy asked, when she pushed back from the table.

“I’ve lost my appetite,” she replied, trying very hard not to meet the eyes of Ian Macrae. “And I think I should retire.”

Davy caught her sleeve, eyes hopeful. “But there’s to be music. Maybe dancing. It’s important for people to keep their spirits up in a castle under siege.”