Chapter Thirteen
Mairi closed thedoor on Connall, then pressed her ear to the door. She wanted to know he walked away. Instead, she heard his sigh. It was a sound filled with frustration and disappointment. She’d heard it from him more and more as they’d grown up, and she knew it was her own contradictory actions that caused it.
Connall had the best laugh in the world, but she caused him to sigh, and that thought cut her deeply. He had been her best friend growing up. Now he was infected with the frustration she caused all her friends. That would be bad enough to spoil her night, but the worst was how angry she was with herself. Why couldn’t she let herself go to Connall? She’d be a duchess. Her life would be secure and there’d be no worry about her losing her dowry. He had plenty of money.
But she couldn’t do it. The fear was too strong in her to say something she knew terrified her. Everyone thought her fearless. She certainly gave that impression. But that was because she avoided the thing that truly terrified her: extreme feelings.
What had destroyed Scotland? The Jacobites’ extreme worship of Bonnie Prince Charlie. What difference would one king or another make over their lives? Very little, and yet her own clan ended at Culloden, as did so many others. Those men were needed at home tending the crops and repairing their homes, but they’d left their families to die beneath a tide of bellowing anger and swords that did nothing against cannonballs.
Idiots.
But they were not alone in folly. She’d seen boys tempt fate and lose too many times. As a teenager, Connall was one of them, always testing his mettle against every other boy. Who could run faster, who could punch harder, who could throw, jump, or swim best? He’d beat them all eventually, but she’d learned her nursing skills tending his wounds and others. One boy had died from a fever contracted while swimming in a frigid stream. Another had broken his jaw in a fall and could not eat meat. It set wrong, and he grew sickly. In the end, winter ended what had begun that spring.
Just because Connall was the best of them didn’t make him any less a fool. Adulthood had tempered his risky behavior. He no longer did a thing just because someone challenged him. But the temptation was still there, that devil-may-care attitude always ended with someone crying. She’d not be the one left with babes to feed while he was six feet under because of his own stupidity.
And then there was her own father. She’d been reared on tales of the great love between him and her mother. Passion had gripped them so much that they didn’t wait to consummate their love until after the wedding. Mairi was born seven months into their marriage, not a respectable nine. Then that same hot passion had made her mother pregnant again too soon. According to the midwife who had been there, her mother was too weak to carry another child so soon after Mairi’s birth. When she and the babe died, that selfsame passion broke her father. Many a night she’d caught him crying into his whisky over his lost love. And he had tears in his eyes whenever he remarked how much she looked like her mother.
The Scots were prone to wild emotions, brutal swings of temper, and fierce passion in love and hate. Which is why she would marry a Sassenach. She would find a quiet man—a boring one—and she would live her life away from the tears that flooded Scotland.
The maid had waited up to help her undress. She accepted her help, then sent the girl to bed. She doused the light and climbed into bed, but tired as she was, sleep eluded her. Her mind was filled with thoughts of Connall. She remembered that afternoon so long ago, the time he thought he’d ended their friendship.
They were both teenagers. He’d filled out in the last few years until he was a sight to behold. She found herself looking at his body in a new way. At the hair that sprouted on his chest and the sparkle in his eyes whenever she caught him looking at her curves. She’d gotten breasts that winter, and they weren’t small ones. Connall liked to watch her play jumping games because of how they moved on her body. And she liked the way he looked at her, joy mixed with hunger.
She’d felt the passion stir then, but plenty of women had told her to beware. She didn’t need the reminder. She’d helped the midwife through the winter and still heard the screams of women in labor. Most survived, of course, but the pain and the blood still frightened her. Her mother had died like that, in wrenching agony, and she had no wish to do the same herself.
And yet Connall watched her, and she always found a way to jump or dance or sashay whenever he was around. She was as much to blame for that day as he was.
She’d been sent to gather berries for the festival the next day, and he had come early with his father’s men. Festivals were always busy with something happening everywhere and no one looking where two teenagers had gone, she to find berries, he to find her.
He surprised her when he popped up in the woods, but not too much. After all, he knew the land around her home nearly as well as she did. And he knew she would be picking berries because she made it a point to dawdle over the task when her friends were near. But this time Liam was away at school and the other girls were given different tasks. Connall had no doubt told his friends to go a different way because when he caught her about the waist, he whispered in her ear.
“We’re alone,” he said, “on a fine afternoon. Whatever shall we do?”
“I am picking blackberries,” she said, holding up her basket and her stained fingers. “I don’t care what you do.”
He caught her hand and made a show of licking at the sweet stains. She remembered how his tongue had wrapped around and between her fingers. How her breasts had grown heavy and her belly moist. She knew when the wetness flowed between her thighs, and all because Connall Aberbeag sucked on her finger.
Her mouth had gone dry as she brushed her finger along the inside of his lower lip. She knew about a man’s lust—at least in theory—and noticed too when his kilt lifted because of her.
It was the power of it all, she thought now, as she nibbled at her own fingertip. Connall was the most powerful boy in Scotland. The strongest, the boldest, the richest, and the most handsome. And yet there he was, lusting after her. She told him to carry her basket, and he did it. She told him to stand absolutely still, and he did so. Then she fed him a blackberry and let him lick not only her fingers, but the palm of her hand as well.
Her hands weren’t idle either. She gripped his upper arm, loving the size and strength of him. His body was warm and alive, and he grinned when she squeezed.
“I think I’ll pluck a berry for you,” he said, and he did something she’d never forget. He pinched her left nipple through her blouse. It was summer and she’d ignored her stays, especially since she knew she’d be climbing and crawling through the brambles. So his hand was quick and the pinch sent a shock of feeling through her whole body.
She gasped when he did it then, and her breath caught now as she did the same in her bed. At the time, she’d stood frozen, surprise and delight keeping her in place. And then the cocky bastard had grinned and took that as permission to flatten his large hand over her breasts. He’d kneaded her tender chest, first with one hand and then both.
What sensations! She’d been hard put to stay standing as he moved his hands clumsily over her.
She was more careful now, knowing exactly what to do when her hands touched her breasts. Back then, he’d caught her up in his arms and carried her to a soft pile of grass. He lay her down, and she’d let him open her blouse such that her breasts were touched by the sun and the breeze. Nothing felt as good as his mouth on her nipples.
She used her fingers now to mimic what he’d done. She pulled at her nipples just as he’d sucked them. She pinched as he’d nipped. And her belly rippled while her breath caught. He hadn’t been patient then. Big and clumsy as he pressed her down, but she hadn’t cared. He didn’t force himself on her. It was just his mouth on her breast and her undulating on the grass in time with what he did.
Then he raised his head with such a grin.
“Lass,” he whispered, and she’d frowned at him. She wasn’t any “lass.” She was herself and had no desire to become one of those girls talked about by the boys working glass furnace. She knew what the men said, and the idea that he thought her like one of them soured her.
But she hadn’t time to express it. Instead, he’d kissed her roughly. His mouth had come hard down on hers and he’d stuck his tongue in when she cried out. That had been the turning point in their encounter. Her emotions had cooled enough with his awkward kiss that she shoved him back. And when he rocked back on his heels, she scrambled backwards.