Bride (23 page)

Justine stared straight ahead. He looked around but could see nothing that might hold her attention.

“Now,” he said, forcing cheer into his voice. “I am here, and whatever has happened is over.”

“She's gone.”

Struan searched the room a second time. “Who's gone?”

Justine turned to him. She seemed to see him, really see him for the first time since he'd arrived.

“Someone was here with you?” he pressed gently.

Very gradually, color seeped back into her white cheeks. “I… No. The doors swung shut. The draft blew out my candle.”

“I see.”

“Honesty,” she muttered.

Struan approached her carefully. “I should not care to be alone here in the dark,” he said.

She gave a short laugh. “Why must you always be so kind?” Her thick, dark-brownhair curled about her shoulders. Fashioned of some cobweb-fine white stuff, the robe she wore accentuated her slender but enticing body. Struan could not help but glance at the thrust of her breasts, at the obvious evidence of crested nipples.

Words all but deserted him. He cleared his throat. “I am not particularly kind, Justine. Just plainspoken.”

“I do not believe you would be so frightened by darkness that you would screech like a lunatic and stand in one spot, terrified lest you fall over something.” She averted her face.

Struan raised a hand and held it, hovering, inches from her shoulder. “Was someone here?”

“No. I don't know why I said that.”

“You've had a fright, that's why. Let me help you back to your room.”

“I don't need help.”

“No.” He settled his hand on her shoulder. “But perhaps I should like to help you. Would that make a difference?”

As she turned her head her hair slipped over the soft white fabric of her robe—and over his hand. “When I said I had not been honest with you, that was true. I've lied from the moment I arrived at Kirkcaldy.”

He watched her lips move, glanced into her serious eyes, edged her toward him a little—spread his fingers on her neck beneath her hair. “Justine, I cannot imagine you capable of lying. You are the most candid woman I've ever met.” And he was a liar, a liar with another of the damnable, incense-laced letters burning him through the kerseymere of his coat. His enemy had finally made contact again—managed to come and go from the castle without being seen—yet again. Struan had taken the missive discreetly and had yet to open the envelope.

When Justine came closer of her own volition he inclined his head and met her steady stare.

“I knew Arran and Grace had gone to Yorkshire. Grace wrote to Philipa and told her. She told her she might be increasing again and that she did not expect to be able to return to Scotland soon.”

He frowned—and played his fingertips over the soft skin at her nape. “You came although you knew Grace and Arran would not be here?”

Her chin came up. Softly, she settled a hand on his cheek. “I came because I knew they wouldn't be here. I planned to find you alone here—with Ella and Max, of course.”

Struan shook his head. “You said …” What exactly had she said?

“I said I wished to care for Ella and Max and that I wanted your help with my book.”

“Yes. That's exactly what you said.” Her featherlike caresses over his cheek and jaw should not cause his gut to clench, or his manhood to quicken. “Exactly. And we did come to some sort of agreement, I believe.” He wanted—no,
needed
—to spread his hands over her breasts and to kiss her until she willingly stretched beneath him. Naked. Her slender woman's body naked, as naked as his own—joined with his own, writhing with his own—eventually resting in mutual satisfaction with his own.

Justine's eyes went to his mouth. She put her arms around his neck, combed her fingers through his hair… And she rose to her toes to rest her mouth on his.

Breath rushed from Struan's lungs. His eyes closed and heat flashed along his veins. A second and he was weak. Another second and he was strong, so strong he could ward off any foe, even the nameless, faceless foe who threatened him and sealed the threat in blood.

Her kiss was chaste and he let it be so. A chaste kiss from Justine, delivered because she decided to deliver it, was more erotic than any he might have devised.

Slowly, their lips parted. He opened his eyes and found hers closed. Gradually, she sank from her toes but kept her hands in his hair.

“You are lovely, Justine,” he told her. “I could never have hoped to hold one so lovely so close to my heart.”

“I lied to you.” Still she did not open her eyes. “When I came I intended to be alone with you. I planned it because I have thought of little else but you since the moment you first came to meet me at Franchot.”

He was afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to break the spell.

“All I have wanted since that day is to find a way to be with you. I plotted to do so. And then I came to Scotland, praying I might be able to stay where I could at least see you from time to time.”

No woman had ever made herself vulnerable to him as this woman did now. “Yet you will not have me as your husband?”

“Please will you answer me honestly?”

“Yes. Oh, yes, Justine.”

“Is it possible … That is”—she slowly raised her lashes and yearning shone in her eyes—“could you care for me? Enough to find me an acceptable helpmate?”

“Acceptable?”

“To share your life? All aspects of your life? Is it possible that you did not ask me to mary you entirely because it seemed the right thing to do?”

He took her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “I am going to show you the answer to that question, lovely lady. Containing myself until the appropriate moment will take great control on my part, but I shall manage.”

“Is that your way of saying you do have some feelings for me?”

Struan gritted his teeth. He pulled her face against his chest and kissed the top of her head. Her hair streamed over his fingers and he tugged it lightly. “I have a great many feelings for you. All of them want me to do certain things right now.”

“Then do them.”

He laughed aloud, and as quickly sobered. With a knuckle, he raised her face until he could rain small, hard kisses over her brow, her nose, her cheekbones and jaw—the corners of her mouth. “I do believe I shall do some of them,” he said when he paused for air. “But this ballroom is not at all comfortable. Do you think I could persuade you to come to my apartments for … for a little companionship before I return you to your own quarters?”

“Shall we … Struan, will I learn more of what happens between a man and a woman? In private? A man and a woman who wish for
It?”

Sometimes she had the most peculiar turn of phrase. “I do believe you will. And I shall enjoy being your teacher.” He must be very careful with her, not an easy task when he could not deny his own burgeoning lust.

Her brow pleated. “Well, in light of these developments, I think that would be a perfectly appropriate idea.”

Struan pushed his chin forward and produced a jaunty grin. “Would you care to explain that statement to me?”

“I love you, Struan.”

He stopped smiling.

“I will always love you,” she whispered.

The slow revolution within him might be his stomach or his heart—or both.

“You said you thought we should marry. The rest of them agreed.”

“I did,” he managed to say. “And they did. And I still do.”

Justine stepped away and put her hand in his. “I do, too.”

Chapter Fourteen

“W
ake up!”

Mr. Smith's voice came to Glory through a heavy mist of sleep. She groaned and coughed. Her mouth felt as dry as the earthen floor in the cave.

He shook her by the shoulder and stripped away the tartan he'd covered her with before he left. “It's almost time. We've got to make sure you know exactly what you're to do.”

“Don't want to,” she mumbled into a rancid-smelling sheepskin. “Sleep.”

“You've slept enough. You've slept away many days, my girl. I need to check you.”

She tried to turn over. “No!”

Mr. Smith pushed her back onto her face and shoved the thin gown she wore up to her waist.

Consciousness rushed back and she made fists beside her head. “Don't hurt me again.”

“I'm not going to hurt you again,
my dove.”

Glory lay quite still. He'd called her that several times since she'd arrived in this terrible place. Each time, instead of the things she'd expected, he'd forced an opiate down her throat and beaten her. She still didn't know how badly or how often he'd beaten her. Steady doses of the opiate had assured that.

“A beautiful arse, m'dear.” Something cold ran over her exposed bottom and between her legs. “This will make certain those nasty welts heal with as little marking as possible.”

“You hit me, Mr. Smith. You've scarred me.”

“No.” He laughed. “Just created the knife to turn in Hun-singore's gut. I can imagine how that woman's heart of his will cringe at the sight of what he caused.” The laugh rose higher.

“What am I supposed to do?” Glory asked. “Go to his doorstep and pull up my skirts?” “You know what you're to do.”

She sniffed into the nasty sheepskin. “I don't know why I should.”

His slap on her slick, bruised skin slammed her teeth together and she choked on a scream.

The laughter became even higher. “That's right,
my dove.
You know what I like, don't you?”

At last he was going to let her have what she wanted. Glory's excitement rose. The pain where he'd slapped her only increased the thrill.

In one swift motion, he pushed the gown up to her shoulders. “Let's have a look up here. Pretty colors. Very effective. And how will you act, my dove?”

“Pitiful,” she said, her breathing short. “And like I don't want to intrude.”

“Very good.” More of the cold liquid drizzled along her spine. Mr. Smith spread the herbal-smelling unguent from her neck to her knees. “And what will you keep on saying?”

His fingers touched the sides of her breasts and she wriggled.

“What?”

Glory wriggled some more. “Can't remember.”

He smacked her rear again and Glory cried out again.

“What will you say?”

“Give me a little bit,” she wheedled. “Go on, just a bit.”

Rather than doing as she asked, Mr. Smith slid his hands beneath her breasts and squeezed, hard. “Say it.”

She shook her head.

He twisted, then flipped her to her back.

Glory threw her hands over her head and licked her lips. “Come on, then.” She deliberately taunted him. He liked her to taunt him.

From a pocket he produced one of his precious cundums.

“Ooh, been down the Strand again, have you?” she asked. He insisted on wearing the piece of dried sheep gut over his rod no matter what they did. “How many times do I have to tell you I'm clean?” Fastidious, was Mr. Smith.

With narrowed eyes, he stripped off his coat and threw it to the floor. He undid his breeches, pushed them down, and straddled her.

She sighed. “There can't be another one like you, luv. Oh, come to your darling, Glory.” Desperate to urge him along, she undulated her body, thrust up her breasts, then her belly, almost bucking him forward.

An instant and he used a knee to pin each of her arms. With his cock so close she could almost reach it with her straining tongue, he slid on the thin bag and tied it in place.

“Let Glory have it, then,” she said, smiling coyly. “All of it.”

“Beg.”

“I've been begging.”

“Beg some more.” Winding a lock of her hair around his fingers, he turned and turned until she yelped. “Tell me what you want?” he said.

“You know what I want.”

Another turn of her hair tore at her scalp and she hissed out her pain. “Say it” The tone of his voice didn't change.

“I … want it… behind,” she managed to tell him. “And in front.”

“But what do you want first, my dove?”

Amazingly, the grip on her hair grew even tighter and she wailed. Between gasps she said, “I want to feel all of you, Mr. Smith. And I want you to do what makes you happiest.”

“That's better.” He lowered himself until his ballocks rested between her breasts, and took his fingers from her hair.

Glory gave a little shriek and wrestled to release her arms. To no avail.

“What are you going to say to Hunsingore, Glory?”

Tears seeped along her temples. “I'm sorry. I'm going to say I'm sorry.”

“Very good.” A slight shift of weight and the end of his rod pried her lips open. “And what will you say to the woman he's asked to marry him?”

She blinked. Mr. Smith pushed himself deep into her mouth, into her throat. Glory panted and sucked.
Woman?
He hadn't mentioned any woman.

Mr. Smith's hips moved rhythmically.

It always went this way. First what he liked best. Then what she wanted—after he got himself together again and emptied out his bloody cundum.

Glory concentrated, sealed her lips tightly around his shaft, and used her sharp little teeth to milk him to release.

And he never said a word—never did say a word when he came.

As usual, he drew in a long, shuddering breath and leaped from her as if she might get something he didn't want to give away.

With his shirt all but covering fine, strong hips and his breeches around his ankles, he braced himself against the wall and waited until his breathing grew slower and quieter.

“What woman?” she said.

“The one he's going to marry. The one you're going to use if Hunsingore gives us any trouble. Only not at first. I've got other plans at first. Tell me what you're going to do to Hunsingore.”

“I'm going to make him sorry for me.”

“Then what?”

“Then I'll get him to comfort me.”

“What sort of comfort will that be?”

She smiled to herself. “I'm going to get him to take me into his bed—or somewhere else if that's what presents itself.”

“And?”

Glory stroked her breasts and belly and pushed her fingers into the dark, slick hair between her thighs. “I'll make him want to give me what I need.”

“What you always need,” Mr. Smith said neutrally. “I do believe we understand each other well. Show me what he will do to satisfy you.”