The Bride

  Alec suddenly grabbed hold of her hand and flattened it against his chest. She guessed he was ticklish.

  He guessed she was trying to drive him out of his mind. “Stop that,” he ordered, his voice as gritty as sand.

  Jamie didn’t remember falling asleep, but she remembered waking up, all right. She was having the most delicious dream. She was sleeping on a bed of wildflowers, completely unclothed. She was letting the sun warm her skin into a fever. The erotic heat made her forget to breathe. That familiar pressure was beginning to build up inside her, and that excruciating ache between her thighs was demanding to be appeased.

  Her moan of desire woke her up. It hadn’t been a dream at all. Her mind had been playing tricks on her. Alec was the sun, fueling the fever in her blood. She wasn’t surrounded by wildflowers, either; she was stretched out on Alec’s soft plaid. She had lost her chemise, though. She wondered how that could have happened, then put the negligent worry aside. Alec kept insisting on her attention. He was nuzzling the side of her neck. He rested between her parted thighs.

  He was making love to her. Her sleepy confusion suddenly vanished. She was wide awake now. She couldn’t see him, the darkness was too heavy, but his ragged breathing, added to the sweet music of the insistent wind, pushed most of her resistance away. She didn’t want it to hurt again, thought to tell him just that, but his mouth moved to her breast just as his hand slid into the soft curls between her thighs. She didn’t care then if it hurt or not.

  His fingers were magical. He knew just where to touch her to make her wild, wet. She tensed against him when his fingers pushed aside the soft, slick folds and moved up inside her. The blissful agony made her cry out for release.

  She pulled on his hair to get him to stop. Her mind was quickly changed when his thumb began to stroke the sensitive nub and his fingers thrust back inside her.

  Her nails sank into his shoulders again. He grunted in reaction. Jamie was desperate to touch him, to give him the kind of pleasure he was giving her. She tried to move away, but Alec wouldn’t let her.

  They kissed, a hot, open-mouthed, ravenous kiss. He gave her his tongue. She sucked on it.

  “You’re so wet,” he told her.

  “I can’t help it,” she whispered on a half-groan.

  His hands spread her thighs wide, and he slowly began to penetrate her. “I don’t want you to help it.”

  “You don’t?” she asked, trying to pull him inside her. He was making her daft, easing so slowly inside. She knew she was going to die, but she wanted him filling her, burning her, first.

  “It means you’re hot for me,” he murmured. “Don’t move like that. Let me . . .”

  “This isn’t the time for jests, Alec!”

  He would have laughed if he’d had the strength. “I’m trying to be gentle,” he told her. “But you’re so tight, I . . .”

  She arched against him. Alec forgot all about being gentle then. He pulled her legs high about his waist, twisted her hair around his hands to keep her from moving away from him, and drove inside her with one powerful surge.

  He was so out of control he didn’t know if he was hurting her or not. He couldn’t stop. His mouth trapped any protests she might have tried to make, and when he knew he couldn’t hold back any longer, when he felt his seed about to pour into her, he reached down between their bodies and stroked her into joining him.

  Her legs were surprisingly strong. She squeezed him between her thighs, inside, forcing his immediate release.

  He collapsed on top of her. It took him long minutes before he could regain enough strength to look at her. His first thought, when he could catch hold of one, was that he’d misused her. “Jamie? Did I hurt you? Was I too rough with you?” he whispered.

  She didn’t answer. Alec leaned up on his elbows to look down on her, his worry obvious in his gaze.

  She was sound asleep. Alec didn’t know what to make of that. He realized his fingers were tangled in her hair, and slowly, with patience he found surprising, he separated the curls. He took his time smoothing her hair away from her cheeks.

  He knew he’d satisfied her. Lady Kincaid was in deep slumber, aye, but she’d fallen asleep with a smile on her face.

  The next day proved to be the most difficult for Jamie. It was such beautiful, untamed land they journeyed over, with lochs the wind nudged ripples into, and open moorland expanses covered with grass the color of bright emeralds. There were stark ridges, too. Some of the hilly terrain was thick with green foliage called wild leek, which gave off a most peculiar stench when trodden upon. The grandeur of the Highlands made Jamie think she was slowly climbing up to heaven.

  By noon the scenery had lost its appeal. There was a noticeable bite in the air that gained in intensity with each passing hour. Jamie hugged her winter cloak. She was so sleepy she almost fell off her mount. Alec was suddenly by her side. He lifted her onto his stallion. Jamie didn’t resist, even when he jerked her cloak away and tossed it to the ground. He wrapped his heavy plaid around her and held her against him.

  She let out a loud yawn, then asked, “Why did you throw my cape away, Alec?”

  “You’ll wear my colors to keep warm, Jamie.”

  He couldn’t resist brushing his mouth against the top of her head. He was beginning to think his wife was the most amazing creature. She could fall asleep within the blink of an eye.

  He liked the feel of her against him, her womanly scent as well, and in the back of his mind was the realization that she trusted him completely. He liked that most of all.

  He hadn’t mentioned last night’s passionate lovemaking to her. Her blush in the morning light had told him she didn’t want him to bring that topic up.

  Her shyness amused him.

  His wife wasn’t very strong, though. She didn’t know her own body’s limitations, either. Alec had recognized her exhaustion immediately. For that reason, he’d set a much slower pace.

  She was sleeping soundly; he had to nudge her awake several times before getting any kind of response. “Jamie, wake up. We’re home,” he repeated for the third time.

  “We’re home?” she asked, sounding confused.

  Alec patiently dodged her elbows while she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Do you always have such trouble waking after a nap?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jamie answered. “I’ve never taken a nap before.”

  She missed his frown when she turned to look around. “The only thing I’m seeing are trees, Alec. Did you wake me just to jest with me?”

  In answer, Alec tilted her chin and pointed. “There, wife. Above the next ridge. You can see the smoke from my hearth.”

  She did see the stream of smoke curling up into the clouds, and a glimpse of his tower when he nudged his mount farther up the steep slope.

  The wall surrounding his castle finally came into view. Lord, it was gigantic. A section looked as though it had been built into the side of the mountain. It was made of brown stone, an innovative break from English tradition, for most of the barons’ holdings were built of wood. His wall was much taller, too. Why the top looked as if it reached the clouds. The structure was new, incomplete, too, as there was a wide breach adjacent to the drawbridge.

  The trees had all been clipped away to make a wide margin around the wall. There wasn’t a blade of grass along the rocky slope to soften the starkness.

  The moat, with water as black as parchment ink, curved around the structure. The wooden drawbridge was down, but they headed through the opening in the wall instead.

  His castle was much more grand than her papa’s humble home. Alec was a rich man, she decided. The main dwelling boasted not one but two turrets, and everyone knew how costly just one was to build.

  Jamie certainly hadn’t expected anything this magnificent. She thought all Scots lived in stone cottages with thatched roofs and earthen floors, like the serfs in England. She realized now she’d made a prejudicial assumption. There were cottages, however—at least fifty o
f them, she guessed, peeking through the branches of the trees as high up the hillside as the eye could see. Jamie assumed the huts belonged to the Kincaid clansmen and their families.

  “Alec, your home is grand,” she told him. “When your wall is finished, your lower bailey will enclose half of Scotland, don’t you suppose?”

  He smiled over the astonishment in her voice. “Do you live alone, then? There isn’t a single soldier in evidence.”

  “My men will be waiting for me atop the hill,” Alec answered. “In the courtyard.”

  “The women as well?”

  “A few,” he answered. “Most of the women and children have gone to Gillebrid’s holding for the spring festival. Half my number of soldiers are with them.”

  “And that’s the reason it’s so quiet?” She turned, smiled up at Alec, and then asked, “How many serve under your command?”

  Jamie forgot her question as soon as she’d asked it. His smile had captured her full attention. “You’re happy to be home again, aren’t you?” she said.

  Her eagerness pleased him. “There are five, perhaps six hundred men now, when they’re all called together, and yes, English, I’m happy to be home.”

  Jamie let him see her exasperation. “Five or six hundred? Oh, Alec, you do like to jest with me.”

  “’Tis the truth, Jamie. There are many Kincaid clansmen.”

  She could tell he believed what he was telling her. “By a Scotsman’s method of counting. I believe you think you have that many men.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m merely suggesting you need help counting, Alec. After all, you did tell me it would take us three days to get to your home, and it took us several added days.”

  “I slowed the pace because of your condition,” Alec explained.

  “What condition?”

  “You were tender, or have you forgotten that fact?”

  She immediately blushed, telling him she hadn’t forgotten at all.

  “And you’re clearly exhausted.”

  “I’m not,” Jamie replied. “It isn’t important,” she rushed on when he started frowning. She was about to meet his relatives and wanted to keep him in a cheerful mood. “If you tell me there are seven hundred men under your direction, then I’ll believe you.”

  His smile told her she’d placated him. Yet she couldn’t resist pricking his arrogance just a little. “Isn’t it strange, though, Alec, that I don’t see any men? Could all six hundred be waiting in your courtyard?”

  He laughed over the exasperation she tried to hide from him. And then he let out a shrill whistle.

  His call was immediately answered. They came from the top of the wall, the cottages, the stables, from the trees and forest surrounding them, these fierce-looking fighting men, until they covered the ground.

  He hadn’t exaggerated. If anything, she thought he’d understated their number. While she stared at the soldiers, Alec nodded his approval, then raised his hand into the air. When he made a fist, a resounding cheer split the air.

  Jamie was so jarred by the noise that she grabbed hold of Alec’s other hand where it rested possessively around her waist. She couldn’t stop staring at the men, even though she knew it was rude. She’d come to the land of giants, she decided, as most of the soldiers seemed to be as tall as the pine trees she’d heard they liked to throw.

  Their size was most impressive, their watchful gazes unnerving, aye, but it was their state of dress that stunned her speechless.

  Cholie hadn’t been sotted. She’d known what she was talking about. The Scots did wear women’s gowns. Half naked women’s gowns, she qualified. Jamie shook her head. No, they weren’t gowns; they were blankets, the Gaelic word for their plaid.

  All wore the same plaid. Alec’s colors they were. The men had them wrapped around their waists and belted in place; and the plaids barely reached their knees.

  Some of the men wore saffron-yellow shirts; others went without. Most were barefoot.

  “Would you like to count their number?” Alec asked. He nudged his mount forward, then said, “I would guess around two hundred are here now, wife. But if you’d like to—”

  “I’d say five hundred,” Jamie whispered.

  “Now you exaggerate.”

  Jamie glanced up at Alec and tried to find her voice. A wall of soldiers lined the path they climbed, and she therefore kept her voice low when she said, “You have your own legion, Alec, if this be only half your number.”

  “Nay. A legion is three thousand, sometimes as many as six thousand men. My number is not so high, Jamie, unless I call up my allies, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “You needn’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid. Why would you think I was afraid?”

  “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m not,” she denied. “They’re all staring at us.”

  “They’re curious.”

  “We didn’t catch them unprepared, did we, Alec?” Her voice sounded terribly forlorn.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She was staring at his chin. He nudged her chin up, saw her wild blush, and became all the more bewildered. “My warriors are always prepared.”

  “They don’t look prepared.”

  He suddenly understood why she sounded so embarrassed. “We don’t call them gowns.”

  Her eyes widened in astonishment. “Did Beak tell you—”

  “I was there.”

  “Where?”

  “In the stable.”

  “You weren’t!”

  “I was.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Jamie frantically tried to remember the conversation she’d had with the stable master. “What else did you overhear?” she asked.

  “That Scots have minds of sheep, that we throw pine trees at one another, that we—”

  “I was just jesting with my sister when I told her . . . and I thought Cholie was sotted when she told me . . . Alec, do they always dress so indecently? With their knees showing?”

  It was sinful for him to laugh right in her face. “You’ll get used to our habits once you settle in,” he promised.

  “You don’t dress like your soldiers, do you?”

  She sounded appalled. “I do.”

  “No, you don’t.” Jamie sighed when she realized she’d just contradicted him again. He did seem to take offense whenever she corrected him. “I mean to say, you’re wearing proper breeches now and for that reason I did assume—”

  “I’ve been in England, Jamie. ’Tis the reason I wear such cumbersome garb.”

  Jamie glanced around her again, then returned her attention to her husband.

  “How do they keep their britches rolled up above the hem of their plaids?” she asked.

  “They don’t.”

  “Then what . . .” From the devilish look in his eyes, Jamie decided she didn’t want to know. “Never mind,” she blurted out. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know what they wear underneath.”

  “Oh, but I want to tell you.”

  He was smiling just like a rascal. Jamie had to sigh over his ungentlemanly remarks and her own unladylike reaction. Lord, he was becoming more handsome by the minute. Her heart started fluttering like a butterfly’s wings.

  “You may tell me later, then,” she whispered. “Late at night, Alec, when it’s dark and you can’t see my embarrassment. Do they wear chain mail when they go into battle?” She added that question to get him to forget about the soldiers’ lack of undergarments.

  “We never wear armor,” Alec explained. “Most of us just wear the plaid. The seasoned warriors prefer the old ways, though.”

  “What is the old way?” she asked.

  “They don’t wear anything.”

  She was certain now he was jesting with her. The picture of naked warriors riding their mounts into war made her laugh with delight. “So they just throw off their blankets and—”

  “Aye, they do.”
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  “Alec, you must think me naive indeed to believe that fool’s story. Do quit your jesting, please. You’re being rude by half ignoring your men for so long.”

  After making that pronouncement, she turned her back on him, leaned against his chest, and forced a serene expression for the soldiers they passed on their way up the hill.

  It took a mighty effort, what with the shameful thoughts Alec had just put into her head.

  “You must learn not to give orders, wife.”

  He dropped his chin to rest on the top of her head as he whispered that order. It was a gentle rebuke. A shiver of pleasure rippled through her stomach. “I would like to do the right thing, husband, and so should you. Rudeness is never acceptable by anyone’s measure, even a Scotsman’s.”

  A shout echoed through the trees when they reached the second clearing. Alec jerked on Wildfire’s reins as soon as she started fussing, then dismounted. He left Jamie on his stallion and led both horses toward the throng of waiting soldiers.

  My, but she was nervous. She folded her hands together so his men wouldn’t see how much they shook.

  A blond man about Alec’s size separated himself from the others and walked over to give greeting to his laird. The man’s good looks made her think he was related to Alec. She assumed, too, that he was Alec’s second-in-command and a friend as well, for he actually embraced his leader and slapped him mightily on the back.

  The loud whack would have felled her to the ground, but Alec didn’t even shrug. The burr in the soldier’s voice was so thick Jamie couldn’t catch every word. She heard enough, though, to blush in reaction. The two giants were taking turns insulting each other. It was yet another odd habit, she supposed.

  The talk turned serious then. She could tell it wasn’t good news the man was giving her husband. Alec’s voice had taken on a hard edge, and a scowl had settled on his face. He looked furious. The soldier looked worried.