Page 21 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

M ary watched as Hamish fell asleep, lying beside him and feeling strangely exhilarated. She’d never felt this way before, as if he’d filled her with his seed and his energy at the same time.

What had she done? Something wicked, wanton, and altogether wonderful. Who was to forbid her, after all? Not her long dead parents or her recently deceased husband. Her friends were far from here. She was in a strange place with a stranger who had just brought her delight and joy.

She pulled away from him a little, and moved to the edge of the bed. The light from the brazier cast flickering shadows around the room, but they suddenly didn’t look so fearful. She left the bed and blew out the candles, returning to Hamish’s side a moment later.

He was so large that he took up most of the bed. He looked like some sort of creature of the darkness, someone from the shadowy world of nightmares. A man turned into a beast by the cruelties of other men.

Her hand hovered over his chest as she traced a path in the air of the monster they’d created on his skin. Not a monster, but a god. Shiva. Creator and destroyer. In a way, Hamish had been that, both creating and destroying something within her. Destroying the loneliness and creating a need.

It’s not love I want from you.

Still, she’d stood there, waiting, afraid that he might withdraw his offer, scandalous as it was, leaving her with only regret. She hadn’t given him time to reconsider. She’d never been loved so sweetly, but it wasn’t love, was it? Something sensual, passionate, forbidden, perhaps.

She would wait a few minutes and then return to her room. She was under no illusions that Brendan would remain ignorant of what had happened there. She shouldn’t have agreed to meet Hamish in his room, but then, she’d been hoping for something like this.

There, the truth finally.

She would have to meet Brendan’s eyes in the morning, but not, thankfully, Hester’s or Micah’s, since they’d chosen to sleep in the Great Hall.

As for Brendan, she owed nothing to him, not even an explanation.

However, having to account for her actions was a hard habit to break.

Mary found herself conjuring up a dozen different excuses to explain why she would have lingered in Hamish’s room so long. In the end, it probably didn’t matter.

Would anyone be able to see her secret delight? If so, would they think the worst of her? Or simply understand that the need for touch was a hunger as sharp and painful as that for food?

“Stay with me,” Hamish murmured, and she answered by whispering an assent.

Straightening out his left arm, she noted that the muscle felt tight. She thought that was a good sign but couldn’t be sure. There might be so much damage that he would never regain the use of that limb.

Closing her eyes, she felt her face warm at the realization that she, Mary Gilly, was lying here naked beside Hamish. Her body was still reverberating with tiny little shocks in memory of their loving. Her lips curved in a smile.

Sitting up, she drew the blanket from the bottom of the bed to cover them, and lay beside Hamish. Just a few moments, she told herself.

When Mary awoke, the sun was streaming in through the window, and the air promised a temperate day.

Hamish was standing, fully dressed, in front of her, a smile on his face as he surveyed her.

Sitting up on one elbow, she pushed the hair out of her face and smiled ruefully at him. “I meant to be gone before dawn came.” A glance at the sky told her that she was hours too late.

“There’s no harm done, Mary,” he said. “There’s no one here who’d think the less of you for being with me.”

“Do you lay claim to the thoughts of others so easily, Hamish? Or do you simply command the inhabitants of Castle Gloom to think as you do?”

His smile deepened. “Castle Gloom? Is that what you call it? I’ve named it Aonaranach.”

“The Gaelic for lonely? It is that.” She sat up on the edge of the bed, gathering the sheet around her.

“Do you speak it?” he asked, looking surprised.

“My parents did when they wanted to keep things from me. They never realized that their secrecy was a great in ducement to learning the language.” She stood, wrapping the sheet around her and tucking the ends beneath her arm.

His smile disappeared, and he looked at her intently. If he kissed her, she might tell him all the secrets in her life. If he whispered in her ear, she would probably acquiesce to any suggestion he might make. If he tossed her back on the bed, she doubted she’d protest all that much.

“I should dress,” she said, when the silence between them had stretched to an uncomfortable length. “I need to get our breakfast.”

“Brendan’s already been here,” he said, gesturing to a tray on the table. “He brought a breakfast tray.”

She glanced at it, chagrined to discover that there were two cups and plates arranged there.

A surge of warmth flooded her cheeks, but the embarrassment was not as deep as it should have been.

Overlaying it was the memory of the night before, recollections that were powerful enough to banish any thought of propriety.

“The exact reason I should have left last night,” she said. “I suppose Micah and Hester know where I slept last night as well?”

“I’m not entirely certain that Brendan will tell them.”

“But you’re not entirely certain he’ll remain mute, either,” she said.

“My brother is not the most reticent of men,” he admitted.

“Are you certain you’re brothers?” she asked.

There was a faint resemblance between them, but Brendan had a slighter build and wasn’t as tall as Hamish.

The younger man’s eyes were a hazel hue, while Hamish’s were deeply brown.

But it was in their natures that they were so dissimilar.

Life seemed to have marked Hamish, while Brendan seemed so much younger in comparison.

“I remember asking my mother that question when I was small,” he said, smiling. “She was very put out, as I recall.”

She matched his smile, and once again silence stretched between them.

“I should dress,” she said again. He nodded, but didn’t move. She gathered up the clothing he’d folded into neat stacks and placed on the chair. The idea of him handling her intimate garments brought another rush of warmth to her face.

“Are you going to watch me?”

“May I?” His smile was teasing. “It seems a good way to start my morning.”

“No,” she said, smiling back at him.

He turned and faced in the direction of the open window, and she realized it was as much privacy as she was going to get.

She dropped the sheet and donned her shift. Her body felt sensitized, and the sheer linen slid over her skin like a lover’s breath.

“Stay with me, Mary.”

She stared at him, but he didn’t turn.

“Stay with me,” he said again. “Not for forever, but for a little while.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she rolled one stocking up her leg and fastened her garter around it before repeating the action on the other leg. Standing, she fastened her stays, taking more time with the laces than the task required.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. She bent and retrieved her skirt, clutching the fabric in front of her.

“I cannot,” she finally said when words returned to her once more. “There are those in Inverness who need my assistance.”

He turned and faced toward the sea again, and she donned her skirt and then her bodice. Finally, she bent to find her shoes. On discovering them neatly arranged against the wall, she sat on the edge of the bed and began to put them on.

“I need you as well.”

Her thumbs stilled, caught between her stockings and the heels of her shoe as she stared at his back. She’d never heard a man say those words before, not even her husband.

Hamish’s pose was rigid, his back straight. She could imagine him standing on the deck of his ship staring at the horizon. He was a man with great strength of purpose, even now.

“Stay with me a few weeks, Mary.”

For an instant, she allowed herself to pretend that it might be possible. She’d come to know him, to learn about the man who fascinated her. She knew his body; would his mind prove to be as captivating?

A foolish thought, and an even more foolish woman to be thinking it.

“I cannot even do that,” she said with a reluctance that was all too genuine. “Charles would worry about me, and I have friends who would miss me.”

“Send word to them. Tell them that you’ll return in a matter of weeks. Stay with me.”

Stay with me. It shouldn’t have been such a temptation, that simple sentence.

Three words, that was all, and she yearned to tell him yes.

No one would know that she’d taken an interlude in her life, that she’d simply disappeared from all her responsibilities and roles and become someone new and different for a short time.

Her absence could, after all, be easily explained.

She was treating a patient out of town, someone important enough to justify her travel and time.

No one would think any worse of her. Even in Inverness, she’d often spent the night at a patient’s bedside if his condition warranted it.

There was plenty of money in the household strongbox to take care of expenses for a while.

Charles was no stranger to managing the accounts.

He’d done the task before she and Gordon were wed.

There were only two people who might suspect the truth. Charles because he was too intrusive in her affairs, and Elspeth because she was a romantic at heart.

“I can’t,” she repeated, but this time the refusal was not as forceful as before. Almost as if she begged him silently to convince her otherwise.

He turned and went to his trunk, withdrew a small writing chest, and handed it to her. She took it with both hands and laid it on the bed beside her. Inside was a stack of thick vellum and a place for quills, a pot of ink, and stick of sealing wax.