A Promise of Love Page 13

  Of course, this was the laird's room, and until his father and Ian had died, Alisdair was only the younger son. She wished she had not asked.

  "I winter in Ian's room, Judith. Or at least I did before I acquired a soft, warm wife who could ease the chill."

  He walked to her, slowly turned her to face him and began unlacing her dress. She didn’t move, simply closed her eyes. He smiled, softly, an infinitely tender smile she didn’t see.

  It would have been a blessing to tear this ugly dress from her body, but that would leave her only the black which sagged along the neckline and was too tight in the bodice. Alisdair wished he had extra coin to spend on fripperies for her, a bonnet to accentuate the color of her eyes, to enhance the unusual shade of her hair, a pretty dress that was not so snug across her beautiful breasts. It would be a joy to spoil her, pamper her in a way he suspected she’d never before been treated. .

  "Come," he said, when the unlacing was completed, and her bodice hung gaping and open. His gaze memorized the soft swell of alabaster skin, the hint of generous pink nipples. If this moment had been other than what it was, he would have slid his palm into the opening there, feeling the warmth of her skin, the back of his hand abrading one sweet nipple.

  Alisdair extended a hand to her and led her to a chair seated in front of the window, its back to the room. He smiled tenderly at her look of discomfiture.

  While she sat, hands clenched upon her lap, he stripped off his shirt in one clean movement. His chest was as densely blanketed with black hair as she remembered, sworls of it encircling bronze discs of masculine nipples. She watched him warily for a moment, until she caught herself, then directed her gaze outward, towards the sea. Alisdair smiled at her studied unconcern, keeping his movements slow and unhurried.

  Her mouth went dry. She did not want this to happen. Why were men so insistent upon spilling their seed? They were no more selective than a dog marking its territory. In this eternal battle between men and women, why couldn’t women simply wave a flag of surrender, rather than being physically dominated, invaded, mounted like a beast of the field?

  Alisdair sat on the edge of the bed, removed his shoes, then his stockings and finally stood to unbutton his trousers. He watched her without speaking. Judith had not moved an inch in the last few minutes, unless one counted the frantic darting of her eyes or their quick shuttering. He knew she wanted to disappear inside herself, but curiosity kept her moored here, watching him the way a beaten puppy would note the movements of a cruel master.

  Her eyes were so wide they could swallow him whole.

  He removed his trousers, wishing he wore a kilt still. It was less cumbersome and certainly less threatening to let yards of plaid drop to the floor. Not like the stance one was expected to maintain while pulling off a trouser leg. He smiled at his less than graceful actions, but Judith didn’t notice.

  Naked, he moved towards her and she looked frantically for an escape route, but there was no place to hide. She uttered only one small gasp of protest as he extended one hand around her arm and gently pulled her up from the chair.

  Judith lifted her eyes to his and kept them studiously on his face. One small glimpse of his nakedness had been enough. He was bronzed all over, except for a small area of white buttocks and upper thighs glimpsed when he had bent down to pick up his trousers. She’d closed her eyes tight before he’d turned around. Never had she seen a naked man like this, in the bright light of day, with the sun burning white through the window, with motes of dust dancing in the beams which licked his skin.

  Her hands trembled, her knees felt soggy like overripe turnips. The memory of pain and degradation turned the brightness of the room to midnight, the aching breath in her chest became stifled screams.

  Could she bear the pain?

  Alisdair slowly pushed the bodice of her dress to her waist, and then over her hips. Other than the pulse frantically beating at the side of her neck, she gave no sign of her fear. Nor did she protest his undressing of her, only closed her eyes and allowed him to remove the remainder of her garments.

  For a moment, he allowed himself to look, seeing what he had not seen before in this room, with her naked and stripped bare to the soul. Her skin was the purest white, like virgin milk, her breasts were heavy, pendulous but proud, large pink nipples jutting out from their pink areoles like tiny fingers begging to be kissed, to be sucked. Her waist curved to perfect hips and then to long, luscious legs. The vee at the notch of her legs was shielded with auburn hair, curly and curiously beckoning.

  His fingers itched to touch her just once, to see if she was as soft there as she looked. His mind urged him to explore, to discover if those pink nipples would draw up and nearly disappear at the touch of his mouth, or pout proudly. His palms urged him to forget his plans and stroke down one hip to see if she trembled beneath his touch.

  Instead, he sat down in the large overstuffed chair and pulled his reluctant wife onto his lap. Her eyes opened and she stared at him in surprise.

  Alisdair placed one hand on the back of her neck, gently urging her head down until her cheek rested upon his chest. The look in her eyes was suddenly too much to witness - hurt, pain, and fear, silent emotions all the more powerful for being unspoken.

  Judith curled into herself, placing her arms across her breasts, drawing up her knees and wrapping her arms about them, as if to hide herself from his interested gaze. It did not mean, however, that her skin lacked sensation, that she could not feel the mat of his hair against her right arm and cheek, or the smooth warmth of his golden flesh.

  Her body was soft where his was hard, curving inward where his barely tapered.

  Alisdair placed both hands on the arms of the chair and looked out the window, wishing he could view the sea. It would be a paltry diversion to feeling her flesh against his. Yet, Judith was so armored by her own fear it was as if there were a suit of chain mail between their bodies.

  The hammer beat of his heart boomed loudly against her ear. Would he not hurry then, or was this some sort of slow torture?

  Judith didn’t not move, not because he restrained her, but because she felt exposed in the sunlight, more so than the time when she had stood before him naked.

  "Did you know I studied at Edinburgh?" he asked.

  It was not the question she was expecting. She nodded, remembering their conversations.

  He reached out suddenly and grabbed her foot before she could jerk it from his grasp. A tiny frown marred her brow as she sat, contorted, her foot in his hand, his fingers gently tickling her toes. Alisdair wondered if she realized her frowns had been growing more frequent of late. The perfect mask she’d worn was cracking, and beneath its surface lay a woman he wished to know. One who felt anger and joy and a hundred other emotions once buried under an exquisite facade of blankness.

  "There are more bones in the foot, Judith," he said absently, as if not noticing her nudity, "then in any other part of the body. Did you know that?"

  "No."

  He stoked her foot from her ankle to her toes. "You have long toes," he said with a smile. "It is a very aristocratic looking foot." She peered over her clenched knees as if never having seen it before.

  "I, however, have wolf feet," he said, extending one of his own so that she could see it. Even his toes were hairy, and the black hair extended up his ankle and over the corded muscles of his calf. "One of the women of our clan used to say it looked as though the kelpies had stretched my feet at birth." It did look that way, she thought. The space between his toes and heel was long and flat, with barely an arch.

  He gently released her foot, again pushing her head down upon his chest before returning his hand to the arm of the chair. They sat for a long time in silence, the beating of his heart the only sound she heard. That, and the faint breath which emerged from his chest. Occasionally, his chest hair would tickle her cheek, and she would rub it absently, then return to her original position.

  She did not like waiting for the pain. Perhap
s he would not hurt her as much as Anthony had, or degrade her as much as the other, but it was still a duty she wished fervently to avoid. The feeling of his skin against hers, especially that warmth that lay just beneath her buttocks was disconcerting. She was not so scarred there that she could not feel.

  "Will you not just do it, MacLeod?" she asked finally in the silence.

  "My name is Alisdair," he corrected her absently.

  "Very well, Alisdair," she said shortly, "will you not just do it?"

  "Do what?" he asked, smiling.

  "Mount me. Spill your seed. Seek your pleasure."

  "Good God, Judith," he said, that infernal smile still playing around his lips, "you have a variety of descriptions for the act, don't you? It is sad that none of them is correct."

  "What would you call it, then?" She squinted up at him, and he chuckled.

  "Making love, coupling, sharing passion. They all seem more apt than your rather coarse terms."

  "Fine, call it whatever you will. Will you not just get it over with?"

  "That is not my purpose, Judith," he said softly, countering her sudden panic. It showed in her eyes and in the stiffness of her body, curled though it was over his.

  The sun touched her skin and made her warmer. She squirmed, and Alisdair fervently wished that she would not move. It was damnable practice, this, and he could not focus on other thoughts if she was forever moving about. He was very grateful her husband had only been a sadist, that he had also been a lousy lover. That was plain by the contempt with which Judith viewed love making. If Anthony had compounded his sins by teaching Judith pleasure, then she would have learned to equate it with pain. As it was, she knew a great deal about torture and nothing about passion. Even now she sat, fearing to move much lest it stir some great dormant desire of his.

  If she knew anything, she would have realized that his desire hadn't been dormant for quite awhile.

  For almost an hour, they sat in the sunlight. With the warmth of the room, and the warmth of his skin, Judith began to feel drowsy. She sighed, heavily, and allowed herself to relax a little. He smiled again, nudging the top of her head with his chin. The soft movement did not disturb her, nor did the placement of his hand upon her knee.

  He traced a path with that broad palm of his, over her knee, down the length of her leg to her ankle. She moved, fitfully against the tickling sensation. He slowed his touch and removed all but one finger from her skin. He traced an imaginary circle around her knee slowly, so delicately that it felt as though a fly brushed across her skin.

  He chuckled when her knee jerked, as if to dislodge his finger. He moved slowly, extending his right hand over her body, and clasping it with his left so that she sat within the circle of his arms. She opened her eyes and looked at him accusingly, but he did not remove his arm, nor did he go any further.

  He broke their look, staring out the window at the clouds massing above the promontory. From here he could see the very tops of the pines, but no more.

  "Anne was very young when we married," he said, as if she had asked the question. "Barely grown. All of my skill, what there was of it, could not save her. My child died with her, struggling to find life."

  She kept his eyes upon his profile, that jutting chin that spoke so eloquently of his stubbornness, that nose which looked to have been broken once, she wondered how. His hair curled around the shells of his ears, and the shadow of his beard was showing through the tanned expanse of his cheeks. It was his eyes that drew her attention the most, though, and the soft, pained look within them. It seemed to alter their color to molten copper.

  "You could not prevent a death in childbirth, MacLeod. It happens all the time. It happened to Janet," she reminded him.

  "Too often, Judith. Surely a bountiful God would not make it so. In Anne's case, it was a forced escape from a place she'd learned to call home, the terror of fleeing in the dead of night, her youth, perhaps, and a body not built for birthing that caused her death. Not to mention the futile and puny skill of her husband. It was too much to ask of her."

  She wanted to ask why he left Scotland, but then realized the timing of his exodus, shortly after Culloden. Then, she wanted to ask why he had returned, to this isolated spot, when he would have been welcomed anywhere with his skill and his education, then realized that what she knew about the man answered that question. Alisdair MacLeod had a deep and abiding sense of obligation and responsibility. He would not turn his back on the people who, for generations, had looked to their laird for sustenance and protection. Nor could Judith picture him enjoying a carefree life while those who had once depended on him tried to survive. No, he would either lead them to victory, or die with them.

  "Did you love her very much?" The answer was somehow important.

  He sighed. "Perhaps part of the guilt I sheltered and protected for so long was because I did not love Anne as much as she deserved. Is that truth enough for you?"

  She nodded.

  "And Anthony? Did you love him?"

  Her horrified glance was answer enough.

  “I tell you of Anne for one reason, Judith. I berate myself for what happened to her, even though in my mind I know I did all that I knew to do. It is human nature to try and apportion blame, to capture some of it for ourselves. I think you must do the same, without knowing. But what was visited upon you was not of your doing.”

  He spoke of the scars on her back; she knew of the scars on her soul. Too many times, Judith had awakened with the sickening awareness of her own actions. Scrubbing her body had not altered the shame. How did anyone ever wash that sin away?

  “Your union with Anne was not like my marriage.” He waited, but she said nothing else. Perhaps that acrid statement was enough, after all. A small vent hole of rage. Alisdair could imagine what she buried beneath the crust of it.

  He held her still, within his arms. It came to her then, with a shock, that she was not as frightened as she had been earlier.

  "It is still possible for me to leave," she said slowly. "It would spare you a marriage to me."

  Alisdair glanced down at her, liking the way her chin jutted out when she was being defensive. He wanted to applaud every instance in which she expressed emotion. He suspected that she had, for too long, simply shut herself off from feeling in order to survive. Yet, in order to heal, Judith needed to recognize the emotions she had kept suppressed, dampened.

  "I'm afraid if you left now, Judith," he said, with a hint of amusement in his voice, "the good Colonel would hold me accountable for your disappearance. Although life at Tynan is not as pleasant as I would wish at present, it is still life. I find the thought of my hanging somewhat daunting."

  She looked up at him, her eyes a deeper blue than before.

  “You could do so much better than to take me to wife, MacLeod.”

  “Alisdair,” he said automatically. “And what is so wrong about you Judith, that I would have cause to put you aside?”

  It was the perfect opportunity, if perhaps an odd one, sitting naked upon the MacLeod's lap, to tell him of other secrets. Secrets that would endanger him and the clan. The moment passed, however, and she wondered at the sense of relief she felt when the truth remained unspoken.

  "I am barren, Alisdair," she said, instead.

  "We live in uncertain times, Judith. It may not be safe enough to bring a child into this world," he said calmly.

  "You are the last of your line, MacLeod. It is fitting that you have an heir."

  "It is more fitting, perhaps, that I simply survive," he said calmly. "Let others found their dynasties. I do not crave a mirror image of myself."

  Why should you want what you already have? Douglas looks just like you.

  “I am too tall for a woman, I am not delicate like a woman is supposed to be. My eyes are an odd color, and my hair will not be pressed into curls no matter how hot the iron.” She focused her gaze on her clenched hands. It was the only way she could be as honest as she was. She did not want to see the ackno
wledgment of her own defects in his eyes.

  Alisdair wondered why she chose to believe the worst of herself. He, too, had been mocked for his differences, mainly by his brother and those who would follow him. Yet, that condemnation had been laid over a foundation of stone. Since he was a child, he had been praised for his very being. He was, after all, a MacLeod. His first steps were feted, if not by his mother, then by the father he'd grown to worship and the family relationship of his clan. Even when he'd made mistakes, they had been brushed off as the growing spirit of a MacLeod. He was set apart and excused, but most of all, he had been encouraged. His early life had been spent around the crofter's huts, where members of his clan were his surrogate parents, correcting, scolding, but above all, loving. He had always appreciated his heritage, but never more so than now, when he realized with a jolt how much his clan had brought to him.

  Total acceptance.

  Had she never felt it? Had she never been loved?

  “Is there a reason for this litany of concerns, Judith?”

  “It was you who wished for the telling of my faults.”

  After another long silence, he spoke again. "Do you remember the little lamb we saw on the hill the other day?"

  "Yes," she answered cautiously.

  "It was black, was it not, although the other lambs were white?"

  She nodded.

  "Was it still a lamb?"

  "You know it was."

  "Then know this, too, Judith," he said, nuzzling the top of her head again. “Your differences do not set you apart, they simply define you. One day, you will see yourself differently, I promise that. You will accept yourself and all that has happened to you as only a part of who you are, as I am comprised of my past, my present, and my hopes for the future.”

  "I think I'd rather be a lamb, MacLeod," she said, an unwilling smile upon her lips.

  "You have the stubbornness for it, I think," he said, chuckling.

  He leaned down and kissed her, quickly, but she did not draw back. It was a light, unthreatening kiss, a benediction of friendship more than lovers. When it was over, she held two fingers to her lips. He smiled at the gesture, the bemusement it unwillingly divulged.