The Return of Black Douglas (24 page)

If she had told him she was frolicking naked in the ocean, she did not think he could have looked more astonished or angry. When he spoke, his words were cold and perfectly measured. “I thought I forbid you to leave the castle. I explicitly told ye yester eve that ye were confined to yer room until I decided what to do with ye. Ye deliberately disobeyed me.”

Her hands flew to her mouth. Oh, dear Lord, she thought. She had forgotten all about that. “I forgot, Alysandir. Truly, I—”

He slammed his hand down on a stack of papers which, thankfully, muffled the sound, just before they slid off the desk and onto the floor.

She made a move to gather them, but he shouted, “Leave them be!”

She took a step back. “I forbid ye to go wandering out alone, and if ye ever disobey me again, a trip to the dungeon might be in order. Ye would do well to remember that.”

“For your information, I was not alone. Bradan and Colin accompanied me, and it was all terribly exciting. You won’t believe what we found. I want to go back tomorrow.”

“Didn’t ye hear what I just said? Are ye not aware of the danger of wandering into caves, especially along the seashore? If the tide had come in, ye would have had no way to escape.”

“I know, but Bradan is very knowledgeable about the timing of the tide.”

“Bradan! I grow weary of hearing that name, and I rue the day I allowed you to befriend him. I warned you…”

“Yes, I know you did, and I am ready to take my punishment. Have you decided what it will be?”

That seemed to catch him off guard, and his tone was somewhat tempered when he said in softer tones, “I will think upon it, but if you go wandering off again, you may find yourself captured and in the hands of the Macleans.”

“Perhaps that would be the best solution for both of us. I wouldn’t be a burden to you any longer, and I would be with my sister.”

“If ye disobey me again, it will be an end to yer freedom. If I have to lock ye in yer room, I will. Do not test my patience, for I am fast running out where ye are concerned.”

“And it will be the end of the friendship that we have found. Shall I remind you that force is not a remedy? Even if it were, I do not respond well to it. I can be persuaded to go along with reasonable requests, yet demands from overbearing tyrants don’t do anything but bring out my rebellious side.”

He raised his brows in obvious surprise at her outburst, but his words were hard, harsh, and final. “If you find yourself captured, mistress, Bradan goes back to the tower, and his schoolwork will be terminated. That should control yer rebellious side.”

“You wouldn’t dare use a child as a pawn,” she said.

“Aye, I would, and ye are welcome to try me and find oot. I will brook no more disobedience from you.”

“Disobedience can be a virtuous undertaking. It has paved the way for many discoveries and motivated scientists and explorers. Would you like me to tell you about them?”

“What I would like is for ye to stop turning my life upside doon. Ye seem to have a rather curious way of distracting me and creating difficulties wherever ye go.”

“I am sorry if you think I create difficulties for the pure pleasure of it. That is not the case. You seem to find fault with everything I want to do. I cannot sit twiddling my thumbs and staring out the window all day. I am horrible at knitting. I cannot thread a needle. I sing like a lovesick goose. I cannot read your poetry so that anyone can understand what I am saying. I am an educated woman. I like to be active, to learn, to expand my knowledge, and stimulate my mind.”

“Yer mind is over-stimulated as it is.”

“Perhaps, but it would be nice to have a kind and considerate jailer.”

“God, would that someone could send me a quiet, understanding prisoner!”

She sighed and decided to remain quiet, or they would continue this “tit for tat” for the rest of the evening.

He stood, and the chair scraped the floor as he leaned forward and placed both hands on his desk. “Ye are a great deal of trouble, Isobella. Would that I could stuff a sock in yer mouth and clap a padlock on yer mind and have done with it.”

“I could sooner reason with a block of wood than get anything through your thick head. It seems impossible for us to discuss anything. We can’t agree. Perhaps we should try again and start over at another time when we have both had time to think about it.”

“The quickest way to end a battle is to lose it, but I can see that ye never give up, even though surrender is oft more palatable than resistance.”

“Well, I daresay we are well suited in that regard, although I am your prisoner and you have the advantage of me.”

“Nay, not yet, but I will, and soon.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” she replied and left.

She had class with Bradan the next morning, and that afternoon she taught him and several other children how to make kites. Since she was forbidden to go to the beach, she convinced Gavin and Grim to take Bradan to the beach so he could fly his kite. She gave them basic lessons in the courtyard, and by the time they went to the beach, they were followed by half the castle. Isobella stood on the parapets and observed, occasionally cupping her hands around her mouth and yelling orders to add more to the tail or to let out more string.

For the rest of the day, she did not see nor hear anything of Alysandir—or the Black Douglas, for that matter.

Chapter 27

Ah, colonel, all’s fair in

Love and war, you know.

—Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877)
U.S. cavalryman and general in the Confederate Army

He came to her room that night while she slept. He lay quietly beside her, as he had done the night she slept beside him in the glen, gently pulling her close. When she awoke, she was surrounded by the warm, male scent of him. Warm. He is so warm everywhere. His lips found hers, and his mouth was hot and tasted sweetly, faintly of ale.

The kiss was long and hungry as his mouth moved over hers coaxing, teaching her of his need, and urging her to express hers. His words were delicately erotic and whispered warmly against her skin. His kisses were gently offered, but his body, heaven help her, was hot and hard and so right. Him and no other, she thought, for she knew she would never feel about another man as she felt about Alysandir.

I love him
.

She did not want to think about the fact that he did not love her, that he would never again allow himself to love another woman. She was the right woman for him, but they were out of sync, for she had come at the wrong time. Little did it matter that she had traveled back through centuries to meet her soul mate. She had arrived too late. Nothing could change that.

She relaxed against him, wanting him, needing him, and willing to have him without love, if that was the only way. When he kissed her again, she responded more than she had before, showing him with her mouth what she felt in her heart. He groaned deep in his throat and crushed her against himself, burying his face in her hair. She was certain he felt something more than lust.

He started to pull away, and her hand came out to touch his arm. “What is wrong?” she asked, and he jerked as if her touch had seared him like a white-hot iron. She waited as he threw back his head and closed his eyes, beads of sweat gleaming on his skin, visible in the moonlight, and she could see the strong cords of his neck standing out. His breathing came fast and erratic. But the anguished expression on his face told her he was fighting his devils now.

Sadness crept over her and wrapped her in its smothering cloak of despair.

He wanted her, but he did not want her. He wanted to make love to her, but he did not love her. He wanted her with him as his woman, but he did not want her as his wife.

It wasn’t fair. He wanted everything from her, yet he offered her nothing in return. Would she ever come to understand him completely?

She knew that tenderness lay buried somewhere deep inside him. He had loved another woman who hurt him deeply. How could she peel away the layers of pain, betrayal, disappointment, and aching sadness to find the wonderful man burdened beneath the weight of his past? And was she certain she wanted to go that deep to release the devils from their shackles? What if something fiercer, more horrible, more dangerous was imprisoned there? Well she knew that once they were out, the devils would never go back inside again.

And what about you, Isobella Catriona? she asked herself. Yes, he enjoys you now, but you are nothing more than a shiny new bauble that will soon tarnish. Then he will be drawn away by the bright shine of a newer, shinier bauble, while you will continue in a downward spiral, passed from clansman to clansman until you are too old to care anymore.

She closed her eyes, overcome with an aching sadness that gripped her from within. His hand slid down her throat, lingering a moment at the soft beginning swell of her breast. “I never grow tired of touching ye.”

You will… one day you will…
She could almost hear her heart cracking, but he began nuzzling her, telling her how fragrant her hair was, how soft the feel of her skin was beneath his, how her soft, panting breaths aroused him and made him want to be inside her.

“No,” she whispered, afraid now. Afraid that he was asking too much and on the verge of receiving it—and she did not want to give him everything. She wanted to keep a little of herself for her own. Yet his words and the way he stroked and touched her made something primitive and urgent leap within her, something too strong, too overpowering, and too desirable to stop.

“Dinna hold back.”

“It’s is too much. You ask too much,” she said, wondering if the husky tones of desire she heard were actually coming from her lips. The heat of his touch unlocked all her well-guarded feelings and secrets, releasing, like the evils flying out of Pandora’s box, the love and passion she felt for him. When his mouth came searching, he found hers waiting and she melted against him, returning his kiss with a fervor she had never experienced before.

He was touching her in a way that wiped out all rational thought. She wanted to live, to feel, to pretend, just this one time, that they were man and woman with one driving need to be together, drawing them deeper into the swirling whirlpool that gradually began to pull them under.

She moaned when his mouth covered hers, and he began kissing her with a burning intensity that left a trail of fire everywhere he touched. She wasn’t so foolish as to think anything was different, but she had this moment, this night, and it would have to be enough.

“I never grow weary of touching ye this way, and when ye open to me, ye canna imagine how it feels.”

For a fleeting moment, she could not help wondering to how many others he had said those same words, kissed this same way. His experienced hands moved over her as if he had been touching her like this forever. He knew how make her body jerk in response, when to gently coax, and where to put his hand to make her cry out.

“Touch me,” he said, taking her hand and drawing it down between them. She closed her hand around him, and he said something softly in Gaelic. He rolled over her and pushed her legs apart, fitting himself between them. She felt light-headed and could not stop the groans that came from deep in her throat when he moved against her.

Her mind did not seem capable of clear thought. She only knew she wanted him with such fierceness she was close to screaming. She knew she would go insane if he didn’t make love to her soon and put an end to the writhing torment. She ached for him, and her legs opened further until he found the place where he belonged.

***

He had never made love with such intensity. What he had with Isobella was stronger than anything he had ever experienced, and the memory of it would be forever etched upon the inner chambers of his mind.
If only I could give her what she wanted.

He looked down at her, wearing nothing but the ghostly light of moonbeams blessing her skin. Her hair entwined him like coppery links of chain, binding her to him. He could love her for her glorious hair alone… if he was a man who could love. The blood in his veins ran hot and thick, but soon duty would call and this moment would become a memory and his blood would, once again, run thin and cold.

In his thoughts… she was always in his thoughts, night and day, sometimes a welcome diversion, sometimes an unwanted visitor he tried to push away. But now, in this moment, she was oh so welcome and he felt at peace with her. He wished he could paint this moment in his mind like a portrait so he could enjoy it time and again.

Did she know how he ached for her? Did she know that he had memorized the way the firelight kissed her skin and turned her hair to fire? That he grew painfully hard watching her dress in the darkness? How badly he wanted to pull her back into bed with him and touch her until she cried out from the pleasure of it?

He did not know if he would be able to hold her forever or if he truly had a right to try. She did not even belong in his world. He knew what she wanted, but it was all the things he could not give her. He had obligations. He fought battles. He knew, or at least expected, that he would end up dead in one of them, just like his father and brother.

A woman could break a man in a way that wars or physical labor could not. A woman always fell in love and ruined it all. They wanted to attach all kinds of weights to pull down a man until he could not walk for tripping over them.

Women could not be trusted.

And it was that last thought that ruined it all.

***

The next day, Isobella was on her way down the stairs as Alysandir came in from the stables. When he saw her, he paused to watch her make her descent. As she stepped off the last step, she said, “I was looking for you.”

“And so you have found me,” he said, his tone cold and emotionless.

She noticed he still wore his gloves, and she assumed he had been out riding. “May I have a few words with you?”

He looked like he was going to tell her he did not have time for such feminine foolishness, but he seemed to check the thought. With a sigh of resignation, he said, “We are close to the library. We can talk in there.”

Without waiting for her, he turned and strode down the hall. By the time she arrived, he had removed his gloves and tossed them on the desk he was now sitting behind, framed in a square of sunlight.

She took a seat in the chair near the window and enjoyed the warmth of the sun against her back.

“Ye wished to speak to me about…?”

“Bradan,” she said.

“That is not a subject for discussion. Have ye another to talk about?”

“No. Bradan deserves the same kind of life the other children have.”

He shuffled papers on his desk, a sign that he was ignoring her or that she was not ranked very high in order of importance. When he did not say anything, she made a move to get up. He stopped shuffling papers and sat back, giving her a blank look.

“What is it that ye want?”

“I want you to leave Bradan out of our quarrel. I want your word that you will let him continue living in the castle and not use moving him back to the tower as leverage to keep me in line. Bradan and I are two separate issues. It is unfair of you to combine them.”

Instead of answering her right away, he sat there with his hands holding a small silver dagger that he twirled slowly. She wondered if he was thinking of using it on her. At last he said, “Verra well. I will agree to allow him to live in the room where he now resides, and ye may continue to instruct him, but keep the little bastard out of my sight.”

Elated, she rose from her seat. “I know you won’t regret it.”

“I regret it already.”

For the next two weeks, she put all of her efforts into training Bradan. “When will I study Latin?” he asked.

Happy he yearned to learn more, she said, “As soon as you are further along with your English.” He was smart and he learned fast, but he kept one eye on the door. He acted nervously, always looking over his shoulder. If he happened to see his father, he would run and hide. Sometimes it took hours to find him.

During the third week of it, she was sewing—yes, she was starting to get the hang of sewing—in the solar with Alysandir’s three sisters. They were discussing Bradan.

“I have finally accepted defeat, and I must accept the truth that Bradan will never be free to become the man he is capable of being if Alysandir does not accept him.”

“I agree,” Sybilla said. “But what can we do aboot it?”

Isobella smiled.
What can we do aboot it, instead of what can you do aboot it.

She did not get to think further upon it for Barbara said, “The way I see it, Isobella has only one choice. She must take Bradan and leave Màrrach.”

Her sisters gasped in horror. Isobella was dumbstruck.

“But where can she go?” Marion asked.

“To the Macleans to be with her sister,” Barbara said.

“Alysandir will be furious,” Marion said, “and if he finds oot we had anything to do with it, I shudder to think how angry he would be.”

“Weel, he willna kill us,” Barbara said. “I am certain of that. Anything else, we can handle.”

“I dinna have yer confidence,” Marion said.

“I don’t want to involve you in my dilemma, but I do think Barbara is right. Bradan needs a normal life, and the only way he will have it is if he is away from his father,” Isobella said.

“Ye canna take Bradan and go to Duart alone,” Sybilla said. “Ye will need help.”

“She will have it,” Barbara said. “Our brothers will help. They all care about Bradan and want the best for him.”

“They better all go together, for it will be more difficult for Alysandir to kill all of them than only one or two,” Marion said, and they all laughed.

“I have only one question,” Sybilla said, “and that is, have ye considered that life at Duart could be worse for both of ye than it is here?”

Isobella nodded. “Yes, I have considered that. I have had no word from Elisabeth, so I don’t really know how she is being treated. I only have what Alysandir said when I asked how she would fare. He said, ‘She will be treated the same as ye. She is a pawn, nothing more. They willna harm her.’”

She looked down at her hands clenched together and forced herself to relax. “I have to believe that Alysandir knew what he was talking about and go on faith. And we will not tell the Macleans who Bradan is. We don’t want them to think they have the possible heir of Clan Mackinnon under their roof.”

Isobella was saddened to think she would not see Alysandir again, but she knew that sooner or later Alysandir would tire of her. Because she loved him, she would never be able to stay here day after day, watching him with another woman. And what if she were to have a child? She feared it would be treated the same as Bradan. She had been terribly foolish to risk getting pregnant for a few moments of passion.