The Marriage Contract (18 page)

“Very well,” Major Lambert said at last. “While away the hours, my lord. Enjoy yourself.” He slammed the door shut.

“Touchy fellow, isn’t he?” Aidan said thoughtfully.

Anne sat up, holding the sheet in place over her breasts. She pushed her hair. “Is that what this was about? You wanted to make him angry?”

He turned, surprised. “I enjoy tweaking the fool’s nose, but this—” He placed an arm around her and drew her back down onto the mattress with him. “This has nothing to do with Lambert…” He kissed her neck. “Or anyone…” He kissed beneath her chin. “Or anything outside this room.” He kissed her lips.

She fell under his spell. It was as if she were a torch and he the spark. He rose up over her. “Can you do it again, Anne? Is it too soon? I don’t want to hurt you.”

Her answer was to open herself to him, offering what was only hers to give. As he settled himself on
top of her, she pushed back his hair from his face and asked, “You do love me? Even a little?”

His eyes darkened. “I love you very much. Am I pleased with Alpina for her high-handedness? No. And yet, you have come into my life and changed it in ways I hadn’t thought possible. I was waiting for you, Anne. I didn’t know it—”

“And it took you a while to recognize the fact.”

He laughed, the sound vibrating through her. “Aye, Anne. But how can one ignore a tempest?” he asked. “But I know how to tame it.” He kissed her so thoroughly, so completely, she was his willing slave.

This time their pace was slower, more leisurely. They explored each other and Anne learned Aidan was a generous, considerate, sensual lover.

Now she understood the mysteries of love lauded by the poets. She discovered why a woman would forsake all for love.

There was nothing she wouldn’t do for Aidan. Nothing.

As afternoon faded into night, in a bedroom surrounded by English soldiers and facing an uncertain future, Anne became a prisoner of her own heart. When they weren’t making love, they talked about everything, and about nothing, making up for wasted time.

Occasionally, he would cross to the window or pace in front of it. His actions worried her, but she wasn’t going to ask any questions, fearing the answers.

At one point, he noticed the soldiers delivering a tray of food. He came back to the bed satisfied. “Lambert is listening to me. He’s working to keep Robbie alive.”

“He may be too late,” Anne said soberly.

Aidan shook his head. “The Gunn brothers are a tough and hardy lot. Robbie has had a beating, but he won’t die yet.” His lips twisted into a grim smile. “He’ll just look like he has.” With that, he let down the curtain, and with one wild leap, jumped into the bed beside her.

Major Lambert left them alone. There was a great deal of traffic outside their door, since the room was at the top of the stairs, but Anne ignored it. She didn’t even care that dinner had not been sent up to them. She closed her mind to everything but her husband.

Aidan seemed perfectly capable of both devoting himself to her and keeping an ear attuned to the activity around them. He was the one who noticed that Colonel Witherspoon, Lambert’s commanding officer, had arrived. He watched their movements around the cellar from his window vantage point.

“What do you think?” Anne asked.

“I don’t know.” He lifted a lock of her hair spread out on the pillow and curled it around his finger as he worked some problem in his mind.

“Aidan?”

Her voice brought him back to the present. He smiled and pulled her to him.

Later, as they lay tangled with each other and the sheets, she thought Aidan had fallen asleep. Lying with her back against his, she ran her hand over her flat stomach. An intuition as old as time told her his seed had taken root deep within her. She would have his child.

The mattress shifted. Aidan rose, moving in the dark to dress.

Anne came up on one arm, her hair hanging over her shoulder. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

He placed a finger to his lips, warning her to silence while he checked out the window. Satisfied, he crossed to the bed and started molding the bedcovers and feather pillows into a wall beside her.

She sat up. “Aidan—” His lips closed over her mouth.

“No questions, Anne,” he said, when at last he broke the kiss.

“Where will you be?”

“I’m going to save Robbie.”

“Aidan, you can’t.” She reached for him. “Please, stay here.”

He sat on the bed and put his arms around her. “I must try. Lambert will take me to London no matter what unless I can outwit him.”

Anne started to climb out of the bed. “I will go with you. I can help.”

“You are helping right here. You are the decoy. If someone should come in, pretend to be asleep. They will assume I am on your other side.” He came to his feet.

“Aidan—?”

He pressed his fingers to her lips. “Take care, Anne. Be brave.” With those words, he crossed to the window, opened it, and slipped out before she could protest.

Anne jumped from the bed, wrapped a sheet around her, and hurried to the window. The wind blew the curtains. She knelt to avoid being seen by any guards on the ground. But the only one she saw was a soldier guarding the cellar.

Meanwhile, in spite of his size, her husband moved quietly as a cat along the slippery shingled roof. Again clouds covered the full moon. He stayed close to the shadows and she didn’t think she would have noticed him if she had not known he was there.

Even as she worried, the guard appeared to look in the direction of her window. Anne pulled back quickly, ducking to avoid being seen.

Her heart pounded in her ears as she waited for the soldier to call an alarm; but no such warning came. When at last she dared to look out the window again, Aidan was gone. It was as if he’d disappeared into the night.

She closed the window.

The room seemed empty without his presence. Numbly she walked to the bed and lay down, pulling his pillow to her. It smelled of him.

She rested her hand on her belly and flattened her palm. She imagined a tiny pulse already beating there. A piece of the man she loved.

So she did the only thing she could do—she prayed.

Aidan didn’t dare
tell Anne the details of his plan. He wanted her completely innocent of what he was doing in case he was captured…and also, because it was almost too fantastic to work.

His practical wife would recognize immediately his foolishness and not believe it could succeed. He wasn’t certain, either.

Swinging down to a portico on the first floor, he allowed his body to hang over the edge a moment before releasing his hold. His feet hit the damp, spongy spring earth. His left ankle buckled, reminding him he was growing too old for such tricks.

He wished he could have stayed beside his warm, willing wife. Who could have imagined Anne was such a passionate creature? His reason to succeed this night was driven by his desire to return to her bed—forever.

Stepping back into the shadows, he glanced up at the window where he’d left her. She’d shut it. Good.

He ran along the line of the house, moving with the stealth of a hunter. One soldier guarded Robbie’s cellar, but Aidan knew Lambert had posted others.

Light came from the first floor dining room. People were seated at the table eating and drinking. Aidan knelt below the window casement and listened to Lambert entertain his superior officer, Colonel Witherspoon. From the sound of it, they’d had a good deal to drink, and Lambert was doing everything in his power to promote his suspicion of an impending Scottish rebellion. He mentioned Aidan’s name, pounding the table so hard the china and silver rattled. Aidan couldn’t catch Witherspoon’s low-voiced reply.

Fortunately, it appeared Lambert’s men did not share his vigilance. The two guards who were supposed to be walking the perimeters stood in the shadow of a tree, gossiping. As Aidan moved around the house and across the yard, he caught another asleep against the rustic stone barn.

Aidan skirted him and the outbuildings. Lambert’s dislike of dogs served Aidan’s purpose. There wasn’t one on the property to bark an alarm. He slipped unnoticed along the line of a thicket fence toward a copse of trees and walked off the manor estate without a cry being raised. His long legs ate the mile or so distance to Lybster. He had hunted in this area. He knew the backways and paths followed only by the locals. Lambert’s men did patrol
a distance from the manor house, but they were watching for an armed force of men, not a lone walker taking the back ways.

Aidan prayed he could play upon Lambert’s faults. Within half an hour, he found himself on the grounds of the church at the crossroads where they’d stopped earlier in the day for the funeral procession.

It was the dead of the night. The good people of Lybster were sleeping soundly in their beds. Sheltered by dark, shadowy hemlocks, the cemetery lay on the opposite side of the church, away from the village, so the superstitious need not see the ghosties in spite of it being holy ground.

The hemlocks protected him from discovery while the same moon that had helped him smuggle in the gunpowder now let him find the freshly dug grave. He located a shovel and pick in an unlocked shed attached to the church. It took him approximately another hour to dig up the body.

He’d have to move faster.

Packy Gilbride, the man in the grave, had been a good-humored character known for his love of a prank. He also hated the English.

Aidan used the pick to lift the lid off the coffin. For a second, what he was about to do threatened to overwhelm him. He looked down at Packy Gilbride’s moon-shadowed outline. The man was peaceful in his repose without the lively skepticism that had marked his spirit when he was alive. “I’m
sorry to disturb your peace, Gilbride, but I need you. Do you understand?”

A cloud passed the moon. In the changing shadows, Packy seemed to smile.

It was benediction enough. Aidan hoisted Gilbride’s body out of the grave and lifted him up on his shoulders. The body’s deadweight would not be hard to carry, not for a man as strong and desperate as Aidan.

A sheet wrapped around her toga style, Anne anxiously paced the length of the room taking care to avoid the window. It had been impossible for her to climb back into bed and pretend all was well.

She’d started to dress and then had changed her mind. If by some chance Major Lambert barged in, she could not be fully dressed—not after the man had caught her naked in bed with her husband.

Of course, if the major discovered her “husband” was nothing more than a mound of bedclothes, Anne didn’t know what she was going to say. She’d worry about it later.

The soldier guarding her door barely made a sound. She discovered why when she overheard soft snoring, which came to an abrupt halt as heavy boots clumped out into the downstairs hall.

Major Lambert had been right: sound did travel in the house. The conversation he and his guest were having flowed all the way up the stairs, waking her sentry and alerting her.

Quickly she hopped into bed, giving the door her back.

Lambert’s voice bounced off the walls. He slurred his words a bit, as if he’d been drinking. Her heart almost stopped when she heard him mention Tiebauld. Then the men walked outside.

Anne scurried over to the window, anticipating their direction to be the cellar. She was right.

Major Lambert’s guest was a trim officer probably no taller than herself. The two men disappeared inside the cellar. About five minutes later, they came out, but she couldn’t make out their expressions, except that the guest was talking earnestly to Major Lambert. She didn’t know what any of it signified.

Anne rushed back to the bed, expecting Lambert to check on her at any moment. The memory of the door to her childhood home being rammed opened with a splintering crash the night the soldiers had come for her father echoed in her ears.

She willed the memories away. This was no time for panic.

Checking the shape of the bedclothes to make sure it would appear Aidan was there, she lay down, her back to the door. She closed her eyes.

The front door into the house opened. Booted steps started up the stairs.

Anne tried to breathe evenly. It was impossible.

Major Lambert and his guest paused right outside her door. “Tiebauld is in here, Colonel,” Lambert said. His voice lowered, but she could still hear
him say clearly, “He and his wife have been going at each other like bloody rabbits.”

“Rabbits?” the colonel questioned.

“You know, sir,” Major Lambert averred. “The poke and tickle?”

There was a beat of stunned silence and then the colonel started laughing. “Here? With your men all around him?”

“It surprised me, too,” Lambert said. “I knew Tiebauld in school. He was the laugh of Eton. He couldn’t walk across a room without tripping over his own feet. But after his performance today, I would describe him as a horse.”

Anne’s cheeks grew hot at such coarse talk. But a niggling insecurity in the back of her mind wondered at what Major Lambert had said. She wanted to believe Aidan had turned to her out of love. But could he also have been orchestrating a ruse to trick Major Lambert?

“And you could hear it all?” the colonel was asking.

“You couldn’t avoid it,” Major Lambert said. “Isn’t that right, Williams?”

“Aye, sir,” the sentry dutifully answered.

“Well, he’s quiet now,” the colonel said.

There was a thoughtful pause. “Almost too quiet,” Major Lambert said. Anne could picture him putting his ear to the door, so she wasn’t surprised when the door opened without a knock or preamble.

She held her breath.

“Well, he is still there,” Major Lambert said as if he’d always suspected that was the case. He shut the door. “The man had to wear out sooner or later.” He started to laugh, but when the colonel didn’t join him, his voice trailed off. “Is something the matter, sir?” he asked stiffly.

The colonel moved away from the door. Anne rolled over, listening intently.

“Major, Lord Tiebauld is well respected amongst the gentry and by the people. If Gunn doesn’t confess his name, you can’t charge him with treason. Otherwise, you will create a situation I will be forced to divorce myself from. Am I clear?”

“Gunn will talk.”

“So you say—and yet he isn’t going to say anything tonight. The man in the cellar appears half-dead.”

“I was a bit overzealous today,” Major Lambert conceded. “Sergeant Fullerton can be heavy-handed. Gunn will recover.”

“You’d best hope so. Or you will find yourself apologizing to Lord Tiebauld, who can make my position in this country very difficult. If that happens, I will sacrifice you.”

“I would expect you to do no less, sir,” Major Lambert said, but some of the cocksureness had left his voice. “At the same time, sir, I will also look forward to your full support when my suspicions are found to be correct.”

“If that is the case, Lambert, then your career will
take a new and very fortunate turn. I believe you know of what I speak.”

“Yes, sir.”

They parted company then, presumably to go off to bed…but Anne didn’t sleep.

Every fiber of her being centered on Aidan. He had to succeed. The alternative was unthinkable.

Aidan had never killed a man.

He stood over the body of the sentry who had been guarding the cellar door gripped by a coldness he had never felt before.

He had not meant to kill him. His intention had been simply to render him unconscious.

However, just as Aidan had been about to attack, some inner sense had warned the soldier he was not alone. He’d turned and would have cried out except for Aidan’s quick action. He’d snapped the man’s neck.

For a moment, Aidan imagined the guard’s soul passing through him. Something, something he couldn’t name, pricked the hair on the back of his neck and tore at his conscience.

Anne was right. War meant hundreds—thousands, even—of men dying. He could not live with the responsibility of their deaths on his shoulders. He understood her fears now. Just as he slowly, painfully accepted the fact he’d had no choice but to take the sentry’s life.

At the same time, an idea of how to use the man’s
death to his advantage also came to him. He’d left Gilbride’s body on the other side of the cellar in the shadows. He could let it be for now.

The cellar door did not have a lock. Aidan pushed it open and pulled the soldier’s body through it. Inside, the torch still burned, giving the room its only light. He kicked shut the door and lay the body on the floor.

Robbie Gunn could have passed for dead himself. He slumped in the chair, his chin on his chest. He appeared not to be breathing—but Aidan sensed the spirit of the man was alive.

“Robbie? ’Tis I, Tiebauld.”

A choking sound was his only answer. It was enough. Aidan knelt at his side. “God, man, can you stand? Because if you can’t, we’ll both be swinging from a tree.”

Robbie moved, lifting his head with difficulty. His swollen lips formed a crooked grin. His eyes were battered shut, his face discolored from bruises. “Have you come to save me, Tiebauld?” He sounded as weak as a wee lamb. Even his body seemed to have been shrunk by pain.

“Only if you are much tougher than you look like right now.”

Pride shone in Robbie’s eyes. “Death alone will make me heel.”

“Good, lad. Now listen, here is what I have planned. I want you to play the soldier.”

“And guard myself?” Robbie asked with a hoarse laugh.

“Exactly,” Aidan answered seriously. He began working to loosen the knots binding Robbie to the chair. “I want you to put on the guard’s uniform. Wear his hat low on your head.”

“Are you telling me you don’t have armed men outside waiting to help?”

“Aye, I brought all the kitchen women. Bonnie Mowat is going to conk heads with her washboard.”

His quip earned a rusty laugh from Robbie. The knots finally untied, Aidan placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s us and us alone, lad. If you can’t do it, we’re damned.”

“For my freedom? I can do it,” Robbie said proudly. He attempted to sit straight and winced. “It may take me a moment.”

“Aye, you’ll manage,” Aidan said, more to reassure himself than Robbie. If Robbie failed, they were all doomed. There was no turning back. He continued explaining his plan.

“The watch will change at four. The night grows cloudy. I’m wagering whoever comes on for you will be sleepy. Keep quiet, walk straight, and you could pass.”

Robbie rubbed his legs, attempting to get the circulation going, a painful process. “Pass for the guard?”

“Aye.”

“And then what?”

“Then you walk off the estate.”

Robbie stared slack-jawed. “Have you been drinking?”

“No. I just did it myself. Lambert thinks you important, but his men prefer the show of soldiering to hard work. They lounge in the house and enjoy heavy meals. If they are on guard for anything, it is an armed force coming from the road.”

Robbie considered his words a second and then he smiled as he realized freedom was within his grasp. Aidan was glad to see this surge of renewed spirit.

“So, you’re joining me, are you?” Robbie said softly.

Aidan frowned. “What do you mean?” he asked in a low voice.

“You are leaving Kelwin for the rebel’s life. It is glad I am to have you beside me.”

Aidan rocked back on his heels. “I can’t leave Kelwin.” He couldn’t. It was where he belonged. Yes, it was his birthright, but it was also the haven he’d created for himself.

“You can’t stay, not after killing Lambert’s guard. They’ll hunt you down.”

“If my plan works, Lambert will never know you are gone.”

Robbie snorted his disbelief. “He’ll know. Granted, you believe Lambert’s men thick, but
don’t you think the bastards will recognize their own mate sitting in my place?”

“It won’t be the same man.”

“Who will it be? You?”

“Packy Gilbride.”

Robbie’s eyes widened. “Gilbride? I know he has a rebel’s heart, but I didn’t think him a fool.”

“He’s not. He’s dead.” Aidan knew his words were blunt, but he didn’t have time to sweeten them. However, he didn’t anticipate Robbie’s reaction.

“They’ve not killed him, have they?” Robbie rose with a surprising amount of strength, ready to do battle.