Mia Marlowe (19 page)

“Lu—” Alexander couldn’t seem to find the end of her name. It got caught in his throat while she tormented him with all the skill of an accomplished courtesan, teasing and stroking. She’d taken to love play like a spaniel to the water. He’d never have believed her a virgin if he hadn’t claimed her purity himself.

Of course, the fact that she wanted to touch and taste every bit of him with boundless enthusiasm may have colored his perceptions a bit. Once she got him to agree to grasp the spindles in her headboard and not let go until she gave him permission, she began a thorough exploration of his whole body.

“How strange that ye should be so soft near to where ye’re so hard,” Lucinda murmured as she fondled his ballocks with one hand while stroking his cock with the other. As if to make a liar of her, his balls tensed into a tight mound. “Hmm. It appears I’m mistook. Do ye change so at will? Or is it like a sneeze and ye canna stop it from happening?”

Then she bent and licked him from base to tip. It was a good thing she didn’t really seem to expect an answer to her question. He was incapable of speech.

Alex was also incapable of keeping hold of the headboard for another moment. He grasped her hips and pulled her up so he could slip into her. She was wet as waterweed, slick and welcoming and he slid into her tight channel with the rightness of a homecoming.

“Ye promised ye wouldna let go of the headboard,” she chided, but she rocked her hips slowly, luxuriating in having him fully seated inside her.

He grasped the spindles again. “I’m sorry.”

“Ye’ve been saying that a lot this night.”

He grinned at her. “Only this time I don’t mean it. I just couldn’t wait any longer, Lu. I had to be inside you again. But now, I’m completely at your mercy. Do with me as you will,” he said. “Only don’t stop doing with me or I’ll die.”

“We canna have that, can we?” She cocked a brow and smiled down at him, beneficent as a Botticelli angel, wicked as his most lascivious dream.

Lucinda set the pace. She bent to allow him to rub his face in the sweet hollow between her breasts. He caught a nipple as she started to raise back up and held her there as he sucked. He thrust upward as she bore down on him.

He could go deeper. He had to. He longed to release his white-knuckled grip on the headboard so he could press her hips down further. He’d rut her completely. He’d split her in two. He’d—

“Hold me, Alex,” she pleaded and he let go of the spindles.

He grasped her hips and held her down, driving himself in completely. She arched her back, thrusting her breasts forward, her head falling back so her hair cascaded down her spine and tickled his ballocks.

She moved on him, building the friction and heat. He began his mental spelling bee again to keep from emptying himself into her before she came. She had to come again first. He longed to feel her fisted around him, pounding around him—

Even spelling backward wasn’t working. He was losing the battle with the pressure rising in his shaft. He decided to switch to French.

There was no stopping it this time. His body demanded release. Just as he began to go off like a Roman candle inside her, she came with him. They rode the bursts of pleasure together till they were utterly spent.

She’d been waiting for him, the little minx.

He’d been waiting for her . . . all his life. As she collapsed on his chest, he held her close. It made no sense if he thought about it logically. He hadn’t known her much more than a week and yet, there was something inside him that recognized her. There were myriad things for him to learn about her, but at some deep level, he already knew Lucinda down to the soles of her little arched feet. Strangely enough, she seemed to know him as well.

And she hadn’t turned away.

That was a Christmas miracle in its own right.

But on top of that, she made him feel something he’d never felt before. He wasn’t sure yet what this emotion or sensation or whatever-it-was ought to be named, but this hot lump in his chest was too uncomfortably real not to mean something. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her sweet scent.

“Thank you,” he whispered.
Thank you for not turning away when you saw who I really was,
he finished silently.

“Ye make it sound as if I rendered ye a service. ’Twas no’ like that. I rather think what we do together is a gift we give each other.”

“It is. But thank you all the same, love.”

Lethargy stole over him, that drowsy don’t-give-a-tinker’s-damn-about-anything sensation that followed a good hard swive, but he knew he dared not let himself drift off again. Not until she did, at least.

If he was going to stay awake, he needed to be upright. Alexander rolled her off of him and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

“Ye’re leaving me?”

“No, just stretching my legs.” The odd passage between his chamber and hers rose in his mind. “Want to go on a bit of an explore with me?”

She wrapped one of the blankets around her shoulders and climbed out of the bed to join him. “Where to?”

Heedless of his nakedness, he wandered to the wall where the doorway had opened, trying to find it again. The secret passage was so cunningly disguised; there were no visible seams in the richly paneled walls. Then he looked at Lucinda’s fireplace. Another figurine depicting the first Scottish king stood sentinel on the mantel.

He tilted the statue and Kenneth
MacAlpin
opened the doorway again. The candles in the tin sconces were still flickering in the long stone passageway. Lucinda gasped in surprise.

“I do believe your
MacAlpin
is my favorite historical monarch,” Alex said with a grin.

“Mine too, if he led ye to my chambers this night.”

“That was actually Mr. Farquhar’s doing.” The disturbing vision of the old steward stepping from the looking glass still rang as true in his head, but it couldn’t be. Farquhar had probably slipped in through the door in the conventional manner just as Alexander was surfacing from a dream of him popping from the mirror.

He gave himself a shake. It was hard to tell real from imaginary on a night like this. When Lucinda slipped her hand in his it seemed real enough. He’d have hated to wake if this was all just a dream.

“Much as I like seeing ye in naught but the skin God gave ye, d’ye think ye ought to put on yer trousers if we’re to go wandering behind the walls?” she suggested.

“You’re right. And you’d better put on something warmer too.” Her ripped night rail was scant protection from the elements. “It’s chilly in there.”

While Alex tugged on his smalls and trousers, Lucinda donned a fresh night rail and wrapper. Alex draped the blanket around her shoulders for good measure. They joined hands at the yawning opening in her wall.

“We’ll have to go single file.” He kissed her knuckles and then held her hand behind his back as he led her through the opening. He wasn’t surprised when the doorway grated closed behind them, but Lucinda gave a little squeak.

“Might we no’ get lost back here?” she asked in a small voice.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said. “We can probably go anywhere we want once we learn the system, but we’ll just follow the lighted candles back to my room for now.”

He pinched off the burning candles as they passed, throwing the corridor behind them into darkness. Alex fancied he heard something as they came even with the stairs leading to the dungeon. He hurried Lucinda past the dark opening and then stopped.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

It was faint, barely on the edge of sound. He might have imagined it completely. Nothing was more likely on this most fanciful of nights.

“What?” Lucinda cocked an ear.

He strained to listen, but the sound didn’t come again.

“I dinna hear anything but me own heart pounding in me ears,” Lucinda whispered.

“Alexander
Mallory,
Laird of Bonniebroch.”
There it was again, a whisper like a courtyard full of dead leaves. Lucinda showed no sign of having heard it, but the voice sent a ripple of dread down his spine. Alex moved her in front of him, so he could keep his body between her and the stairs leading downward.

When they came to the staircase leading upward, Alex stopped. “Let’s go this way. I’m in need of some fresh air.”

The stone steps turned in a tight spiral but it didn’t take long for them to come to a heavy plank door with a beam in a bracket across it. Alexander lifted the beam and pushed the door open. He and Lucinda stepped out onto the battlements under a sky blazing with stars.

There was no moon, no clouds, only a hazy path of dense fire trailing across the sky. Far to the north, lights danced along the edge of the earth in eerie shades of green.

“That’s something you don’t see in London.” Alex wrapped his arms around Lucinda from behind so he could shelter her from the cold.

“Oh, aye? We see them often in the winter.”

“I’ve heard of the aurora borealis, of course . . .” The green lights changed shape and wavered in long streams. “I never expected they’d be so full of movement.”

“That’s because they’re dancing,” Lucinda said. “We call them the Nimble Men. Look! That one just bowed to his partner.”

The sky did seem to be hosting a great ball for the dancing lights with stars winking against the blackness beyond.

“Sometimes, there are red spots here and there in the northern sky as well,” Lucinda explained. “When that happens, folk tell tales of great battles between the Nimble Men and their enemies. The sky is strewn with wound-stones and pools of faery blood.”

“I’ll wager it’s even prettier when there are red lights.”

“Aye, it may be fine to look upon, but I dinna like it when I think what it represents. Violence isna pretty. Why is it men must fight and kill?”

Her words took him back to the French battlefield where he’d hacked his way through a melee after his horse was shot out from under him. His senses were so acute, his memories of that time so vivid, he could still smell the metallic tang of blood and acrid smoke, still feel the burn in his sword arm from every thrust as his strength dimmed and the English trumpets sounded retreat, still remember the faint wisp of a mustache on the last young Frenchman he cut down before he made it back to the relative safety of the English lines.

“Sometimes,” Alex said wearily, “disputes among men can’t be settled by civilized means.”

“But wars mean fatherless bairns and brokenhearted women who must carry on without them. Why are men so bloody-minded? Why not just walk away from discord?”

He shrugged. “I love peace as much as the next man, but there are some fights one can’t walk away from, not without surrendering something even more important than peace.”

She sighed.

“I don’t see any red tonight,” he pointed out.

“Nae, the Nimble Men seem happy the now.”

He could hear the smile in her voice and bent to drop a kiss on her neck. “Why wouldn’t they be if they have Nimble Women up there too?”

She leaned back into him. Wind whipped past, setting the pennants flapping.

“Share the blanket with me,” Lucinda said, lifting it to drape around his shoulders. Then she positioned herself before him and he wrapped his arms around her again. “A warm man
and
a warm blanket. Handsomer than that a girl couldna wish, unless . . .”

“Unless what?” At the moment, with her soft bum snugged up against his groin, he was disposed to give her anything she wanted.

“Unless ye’d be willing to share a bit more.” She gave a beguiling wiggle of that soft bum. “Ye’ve hinted that ye’re here in Scotland for something important. Oh, I know ye’re one of King George’s envoys, but ye dinna seem the type to be overconcerned about protocol and precedence and all the silly things that are so important to a royal court. When ye say your work is important, I dinna think ye mean schooling the local gentry on how to bow properly when they meet your king next summer. What might that work of yours be exactly?”

Alexander’s lips tightened in a hard line. His work for Lord Liverpool had flown clear out of his mind, lost in the wonder of this slightly fantastical night and the thoroughly fantastical woman in his arms.

He’d never told anyone about his covert activities before. It would mean breaking several rules and his own personal code to tell her.

But this was Lucinda, the woman who forgave him for being such an impossible ass. Who loved him, maybe.

She was his wife. His other, better half. Surely one hand needed to know what the other was doing. And she might actually be a help. Not that he’d ever let her do anything that might put her in danger, but she might know something that would put his investigation on the right track.

And he suspected Lucinda was the sort who’d put a leaky roof to shame if he didn’t tell her. So between one heartbeat and the next, he put his whole future in her hands.

“I’m here to root out any remaining Radicals and bring them to justice before King George puts so much as a royal toe on the dock at Leith.”

She trembled. And something told him it wasn’t because of the cold.

Christmas Day passed in unbridled merriment. The unpleasantness of the previous night’s supper was forgotten as word spread throughout the castle that Lady Bonniebroch’s effects were being moved into the master’s suite of rooms. The change in Lucinda’s marital relations lifted not only her spirits, but the spirits of everyone in Bonniebroch. After the morning service in the little chapel, the entire populace bent to work with a will to clean the already spotless keep for the more riotous celebrations to come.

When the company broke off their labor for the midday meal, the boy with the pipes screwed up his courage enough to torment his instrument again. A trio of little girls did a sprightly pointed-toe dance for their entertainment while the household ate.

Lucinda was told by one of the footmen that the dining arrangements were not unique to the holiday. Unlike the staid English custom of the family dining alone and the help eating below stairs, everyone in Bonniebroch took their meals together, with their laird and his lady presiding from the dais. She was inordinately pleased by this. It was as if she and Alex had a ready-made large family amassed around them.

When Alex reached under the table and took her hand, Lucinda allowed herself to hope, to believe that something of a Christmas miracle had taken place between them. If she could only put his true reason for being in Scotland in the first place out of her mind . . .

Mrs. Fletcher and her staff outdid themselves with a goose, roasted, stuffed, and drizzled with applesauce relish. There was a rich fish soup called cullen skink, followed by meat pies, and oatcakes. For sweets, there were trifles and shortbread and tattie scones galore. Everyone had a healthy portion of the Christmas pudding that Mrs. Fletcher had been working on since the first Sunday in Advent. It was declared her best ever by one and all.

“When will the holiday games begin?” Alex asked as he scraped his spoon along the bottom of his bowl.

“Not until after the Feast of Stephen, the day ye English call Boxing Day,” Lucinda explained. “That’s when we begin to celebrate Hogmanay leading up to Twelfth Night. What sort of games were ye expecting?”

“Oh, you know, Hot Cockles, Snap Dragon, and such like.”

“I dinna ken how to play those English games.”

“Easy,” Alex explained. “For Hot Cockles, one person is blindfolded. While he lays his head in someone’s lap, someone else has to give his bum a whack. Then the blindfolded bloke has to guess who struck him.”

“And ye think this fun?”

He cast her a wicked grin. “Having my head in your lap sounds like fun to me.”

“That we can arrange without someone giving ye a paddling at the selfsame time,” she said with a laugh. “I’m afeard to ask about Snap Dragon.”

“It involves chanting a long rhyme while snatching raisins from burning brandy.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “How did your ridiculous kind ever conquer mine?”

“I’m not sure we have yet,” he said, offering her a bite of his trifle. She took it from his spoon. A little of the sweetness trickled from the corner of her mouth, so he leaned over and licked it off. “But I’m looking forward to trying again tonight.”

Then he gave her a lingering kiss that warmed her to her curled toes. Lucinda would have been perfectly happy if only her brother Dougal wasn’t one of the Radicals her husband planned to “bring to justice.”

Matters were made worse when her Radical brother arrived on the Bonniebroch dock, courtesy of Beans MacFee’s ferry, in the middle of that afternoon.

Lucinda donned her wool pelisse and accompanied Alex through the woods to the dock. Somehow, she had to figure out a way to separate these two men before they realized they were at enmity with each other.

Dougal had brought Badgemagus as Alexander had ordered. He’d bound the gelding’s eyes with a cloth to keep him calm during the ride on the ferry-barge, but the horse hadn’t thought much of the process. When Dougal unwrapped Badgemagus’s head, the horse stamped and reared and might have run off into the wood if Alex hadn’t arrived in time to loop a second rope around his silly neck.

Once they subdued the gelding, Alex thanked Dougal for bringing him from Dalkeith on Christmas Day.

“’Tis no matter. One day is like another for a man who must work for his bread,” Dougal said gruffly. “But I dinna think ye’ll thank me for bringing ye this beastie in the end. I never saw a more stubborn horse in all me life.”

“You tried to ride him, I’m guessing,” Alex said as he paid Mr. MacFee’s fare. The ferryman shoved off with all speed, but Lucinda didn’t imagine the odiferous Beans had a family to hurry back to even if it was Christmas. Lucinda had invited him to stay, but he didn’t want to spend any longer near Bonniebroch than he could help.

Alex took the horse’s lead rope as they started back through the woods to the castle. Lucinda followed, trying to step in the tracks Alex and Badgemagus left in the snow so as not to ruin her slippers. Unfortunately, her stride was much shorter than either man or beast.

“Aye, I did manage to mount the blighter a few times, but he wouldna let me keep me seat,” Dougal said, rubbing his backside surreptitiously. “I’d heard ye’d had some trouble wi’ him and thought as I’d gentle him a bit for ye. I was sure the evil things folk said about Badgemagus couldna possibly be true, but it seems they are. Never met a horse I couldna ride before.”

“Me either,” Alex said.

At least these two men Lucinda cared for had found common ground. Pity it was in a horse that was destined to be turned into glue.

“And so long as I don’t give up, I still haven’t met the horse who bested me,” Alex said with dogged determination. “I mean to ride this beast, one way or the other.”

“Meanin’ no disrespect, milord, but me money’s on ‘the other.’ Ye’ll be pickin’ rocks out o’ yer backside if ye mount him again.”

“We’ll see,” Alex said as they passed over the drawbridge, Badgemagus’s hooves clopping loudly on the ancient wood. “I’ve been thinking about this stubborn old cuss and there’s something I haven’t tried yet.”

As soon as they were inside the bailey, Lucinda put a hand on her brother’s arm and pulled him aside.

“Dougal, ye must leave here,” she whispered as Alex walked on. “Now.”

Her brother’s face screwed into a frown. “The ferryman’s gone. I havena even had a chance to warm me frozen bum or take a nip o’ Christmas cheer. Ye’d send yer own kin packing on this day of all days?”

“Trust me, ’tis for your own good. The Englishmen are looking for Radicals.”

“I figured the ones at Dalkeith were sniffin’ about. One of the reasons I left as soon as I could.” Dougal glanced at Alexander’s back. “Yer Englishman as well?”

Lucinda nodded miserably.

“Dinna fret. I’ve given up that cause and there’s little to connect Dougal MacOwen with Dougal Dun.” That was the name her brother had assumed when he began his idealistic crusade. Living rough since he went into hiding had etched itself on Dougal’s face. There was a hardness in her brother that hadn’t been there before. “The few who know Dun and MacOwen are one and the same know well enough to hold their tongues if they wish to keep them.”

Something inside Lucinda shivered. Her brother wasn’t exaggerating. He was a cold enough man to deliver on the threat. “And yet ye still remain hidden, only in plain sight the now.”

“A man canna be too careful. I’ve but one neck, ye ken.”

“Though I’m glad to hear ye no longer work for rebellion, I dinna understand how ye can set aside yer principles so easily,” she said. “Ye were so overwrought about the English and how they’d oppressed the Weavers Guild.”

At their height, the Radicals had sought to echo the cries for freedom heard across the Atlantic in America and in France’s revolution as well. However, when James Wilson, one of the leaders of the movement, was hanged before a crowd of some twenty thousand onlookers, the Radicals lost steam and went underground.

“Can ye give up something ye gave years of yer life to?” Lucinda asked in a frantic whisper. She wanted to believe it, but the Dougal she knew was as stubborn as Badgemagus once he set his feet.

“Aye, but ’tis hard. There’s no denyin’ we were in the right and had legitimate grievances. Dinna think me heart doesna still beat for Scottish independence, but we must use our heads lest we lose them,” Dougal said with surprising practicality. “Times have changed. What with this royal progression, Scottish weavers have work and to spare. Now that George IV has decreed that all his subjects must greet him in the plaids of their clans, no one who owns a loom goes hungry.”

“But what about the dirk dance and all? You weren’t planning to—”

“Lucy, d’ye take me for a fool that would try to murder a king? I’ve no wish for martyrdom.” A faraway look softened his eyes and eased the fine lines around the corners of them. “I’ve a less lofty goal than that now but ’tis one I’d come closer to risking me neck for. Has Enya MacKenzie taken a husband yet?”

“Hmph! That I dinna ken.” Lucinda had been too caught up with her own family’s doings to keep up with gossip in another village. Her sister Aileen would be the one to ask. “Ye ought no’ expect a lass will wait forever. Somehow, we must see about a pardon for ye before ye think to go courting.”

“Aye, and if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,” he quoted the old saw. “I’ll believe a pardon will happen when I see yer husband riding that damned Badgemagus—”

“Then look, brother.”

Alexander came riding across the bailey at an easy trot. About twenty feet from Lucinda and Dougal, he guided the horse in an easy figure-eight pattern, demonstrating complete mastery over the gelding, and then came straight ahead. For once, Badgemagus halted before them without throwing Alex over his head.

“Alexander Mallory, how did ye ever manage it?” Lucinda said as she reached up to pet the gelding’s velvet nose.

“I remembered something Mr. Gow said about him. He mentioned that Badgemagus was broad enough to pull whatever I cared to put behind him. It occurred to me that he might have been trained to cart rein instead of neck rein.” Alexander dismounted and gave the horse an affectionate pat on his arched neck. “If I pull back on one side as though I’m driving a cart, he responds perfectly. When I was neck reining, he didn’t understand what I was asking of him.”

“No wonder he was difficult,” Dougal said. “All the men who tried to ride him were dunderheids who didna speak his language.”

Alex laughed. “I hope to retrain him, but for now, we understand each other. Come warm yourself, Dougal, and help us celebrate Christmas.”

Lucinda hoped she’d be able to keep the men sufficiently apart until she figured out a way for her husband not to help her brother into a noose.

 

 

Brodie MacIver liked Bonniebroch Castle fine. There were plenty of out-of-the-way places for a ghost to explore and lots of new people to play a few harmless tricks on.

Like the way he mixed up the Christmas pudding helpings. The little serving maid had planned for the second footman to get the one with the message to meet her in the solar at sundown stuffed inside it. Instead, he was served a pudding with naught but the requisite twelve ingredients. At the other end of the table, the stable hand scratched his head over the bit of foolscap tucked into his dessert. From the way the lad scowled at the note, Brodie would bet he couldn’t read a lick.

If Lucinda learned about his tricks, she’d do more than frown at him.

Besides, his little lassie was so taken up with her new husband, she hadn’t a moment to spare to scold a ghost. Still, he didn’t feel the least neglected. Even without fretting over Lucinda’s well-being, there was plenty to keep him occupied. Brodie was as happy as a fellow without skin had a right to be.

Of course, there were some oddities about Bonniebroch, as well. He was certain there was at least one other spirit wandering about the place. Most often he sensed its energy when he approached the tall tower. But that way was warded by a shimmering wall of glamour and he could only advance so far up the winding stone staircase that led to the top turret.

Then there was the sense of something foul hidden away in the deeps of the castle. Brodie hadn’t screwed his courage to roam in that direction. He told himself it was likely warded as well, but in truth, he didn’t want to be any closer to the source of uneasiness that bubbled up inside him.

And finally, there was the soft sobbing. He didn’t hear it all the time. It came and went, but it pierced his heart each time. He didn’t know why it should. He had no notion of who the weeping woman was.

Brodie had never told Lucinda how he’d died, because actually, he couldn’t remember. Much of his life on earth was veiled in mist. A few snippets poked through from time to time, like the fact that Lucinda’s new husband strongly resembled Cormag MacGregor, the man who’d had something to do with Brodie’s demise. But the particulars were like flotsam frozen in the castle moat. He could see bits and pieces of them, but he couldn’t dig them out of the prism of time.

Sometimes, he wondered if it really mattered anymore. He had the sense of being stuck, of not being where he was supposed to be, but at the same time, he was enjoying where he was.

While Lucinda watched her new husband ride his pesky horse again, Brodie floated along at ceiling height from one yawning chamber to the next on the second floor of the Great Hall. When he came to the library, he stopped. Unlike the feckless stable hand with the pudding message, Brodie
could
read.