As Harris nudged open the door of their room at the inn, a billow of hot air surged out into the hall, redolent with the fumes of lye, camphor and ammonia. With his leg still a bit lame, there was no question of him hoisting Jenny up and carrying her over the threshold. Instead, he stood back to let her enter first. Their bridal chamber was nowhere near the size of the bedrooms at Roderick Douglas’s house, reflected Jenny. In fact, it was not much of an improvement over a cabin on the St. Bride—unless you counted the advantage of privacy.
A high tester bed occupied most of the limited space, with a three-foot-wide easement at the side and the foot. Wedged tightly into the opposite corner, a three-legged washstand was the only other piece of furniture in the room. A heavy china basin sat on top of it, a ewer of water on the shelf below, while a matching chamber pot rested on the floor beneath.
By the foot of the bed, a single narrow window looked out onto the roof of the house next door. Three wooden pegs on the wall beside the door, and a candle sconce by the head of the bed, completed the spartan amenities. Perhaps to compensate for its other deficiencies, the cramped little room looked and smelled painfully clean.
Jenny stared at the bed. “It’s hot as Hades in here!”
Tossing her shawl and bonnet onto the quilt, she flew to the window. With an energetic tug, she managed to wrench it open a little way. The still, heavy air outside brought little relief, but it did give the smell someplace else to go.
The door swung closed on squealing hinges. Jenny glanced back to find Harris gingerly settling himself on the edge of the bed. They held their positions for some time without exchanging a word. The confines of the stifling little room imposed an awkward intimacy. At the moment, they were as far apart as they could get—less than ten feet.
Faint noises drifted in through the half-open window, muffled by the torpid air: the clop of horses’ hooves, the rhythmic pounding of a hammer, the forlorn sound of a dog howling. Jenny could barely hear them over the loud, rapid thumping of her heart.
Abruptly Harris stood up. Keeping his back to Jenny, he took off his coat and hung it on one of the pegs by the door. Seeing the dark patches of sweat below his shirt collar and under his sleeves, she suddenly felt conscious of the beads of moisture trickling down between her own shoulder blades.
Harris cleared his throat. “Ye might as well know, straight off…” He did not turn to look at her. “I’ve only a vague idea of what’s supposed to go on between us now.”
His voice sounded so lost and anxious, it eased Jenny’s own apprehension. She sidled along the perimeter of the bed until she was standing beside him—close, but not quite touching.
“Ye mean, ye’ve never…?” she asked in disbelief.
He shook his head, eyes firmly fixed on the floor.
“Not even…?” Jenny tried to phrase her inquiry as delicately as possible.
Harris seemed to catch the drift of her half-asked question. Head still hung, he glanced over at her. An embarrassed grin rippled across his lips.
“Do ye think a fellow who’s too backward to court a proper lass would have the nerve to pay a call on a Glasgow whorehouse?”
Her bridegroom’s blunt admission prompted a hiccup of nervous laughter from Jenny.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
It made no sense to feel shy of each other now, Jenny thought, not after all they’d been through together. Harris had made no secret of his desire for her. She’d assumed he knew exactly what it was he desired. Heaven knows, she had! One of them would have to make the first move, Jenny decided, or this would be a very awkward marriage. At the altar of St. Mary’s, she’d sworn in her heart never to give Harris the slightest cause to regret making her his bride.
Summoning all her nerve, she reached out and took his hand. “What is it ye’re sorry for?” she whispered. “Sorry ye had to go to all the trouble of wedding a daft, heedless, stubborn wench, just to save her from the likes of Roderick Douglas?”
Harris looked her in the face then, pulling his spare frame to its full dignified height. “I’ll never be sorry for that, if ye’re not. I’ve wanted ye long, Jenny. I haven’t much to offer a wife. Not compared to a man like Rod Douglas.”
A bright blush spread up from his collar. He looked down at his hand clasped in hers. “It seemed the least I could do—knowing enough to make it easy for ye…the first time.”
She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Ye needn’t talk so daft, Harris Chisholm. Ye’re a fine catch for any lass. Ye’re the cleverest man I know, and not just book-learning, either. Ye’re honorable, and brave, and kindhearted. Whenever I see yer face I want to smile. Whenever ye’re near, I want ye nearer still. And when ye’re not around, it’s like the sun’s gone behind a cloud and the birds have stopped singing.”
She hesitated. “As for the other…I ken we’re clever enough to puzzle it out between us. I’m willing to try, if ye are?”
“Oh, aye.” A tender, hopeful smile spread up from Harris’s mouth, igniting an amber glow in his hazel eyes. It transformed his battered face into the handsomest Jenny had ever seen. She raised her free hand, brushing her fingers against his auburn whiskers in a gesture of affection and trust.
Far less to fear from the gentle, clumsy ardor of Harris Chisholm than from the practiced seduction and lurking violence of Roderick Douglas. So Jenny thought, as her new husband bent forward to deliver a kiss. She tilted her head to meet it. Tentatively their lips brushed. Then, perhaps recalling that he had kissed her before—kissed her well enough to make her want more—he let his tongue dart between her slightly parted lips. Jenny gave a little gurgle of surprise deep in her throat, which subsided into a purr of enjoyment.
When Harris finally drew back to catch his breath, she reached up, twining her arms tightly around his neck. “Ye’ve made a fine start, Mr. Chisholm,” she whispered, her own breath coming fast. “Don’t stop now.”
Harris pulled the pins from her hair, catching his fingers in her unbound curls. He dropped a kiss on her earlobe. “Ah, Mrs. Chisholm…” His voice lingering with proprietary warmth on the word Mrs. “I couldn’t stop now if I wanted to.”
They kissed again, their lips quivering with anticipation. Harris’s left hand remained in Jenny’s hair, massaging the back of her head, maintaining the gentle pressure of her face toward his. Slowly his right hand fell to her shoulder in a fluttering caress. It trailed down her arm halfway to the elbow before making a daring detour inward to the soft swell of her bosom. There it came to rest, with a feather-light touch that demanded nothing, asked everything. Jenny strained forward, offering herself to his hand while she reached back, tugging impatiently at the buttons of her bodice.
Pulling away from her, Harris dropped back to his seat on the bed. He appeared to be making a determined, though not entirely successful, effort to master his eagerness. “Hold a minute there, lassie.”
Jenny fought back a hoot of laughter. Harris sounded as though he was trying to rein in a runaway mare.
“Until we get to yer trunk on the St. Bride, ye’ve only got the gown ye’re wearing,” he explained in a husky, breathless tone. “Ye ought to have a care of it.”
“Aye, ye’re right,” she agreed, promptly twirling about and presenting her back to him. “Will ye do the honors?”
She could feel his fingers, usually so deft, fumble over the close row of tiny buttons.
“Just try to stop me,” she heard him murmur as the dress fell open.
When the last button had broken free, Jenny took a step back toward the bed. She could feel Harris’s knees part to accommodate her full skirts. He drew the sleeves of her wedding dress off her shoulders and down her arms, his hands acquainting themselves with her bare skin. In spite of the heat, Jenny felt her flesh ripple into goose bumps. Her nipples stiffened, pushing out against the lace of her chemise. If Harris’s hands found their way to the front of her shift, Jenny suspected his concern for her dress might be in vain. Skipping just out of his reach, she let the heather-colored silk fall in rustling folds around her ankles.
She gathered the garment up and hung it carefully beside Harris’s coat. Bending forward, she pulled off her shoes and began to roll down her stockings. The sound of a sharp inhalation made her glance up. She saw Harris pulling distractedly at his neck linen, his gaze firmly fixed on the scoop neckline of her shift and the cleft between her breasts that showed above it. He finally managed to pull his stock loose, disengaging the top several buttons of his shirt in the process. The open collar and flying fillets of his stock gave him an endearingly raffish air.
“Have I ever told ye what a bonny lass ye are, Jenny?”
“Ye’re not so bad yerself,” she replied, looking up at him through her lashes in a deliberately flirtatious manner. “But I feel as though there’s a party and I’m the only one going. Do ye plan to take off any more of yer clothes, or are ye waiting for me to help ye?”
Harris’s smile grew broader, if possible. “That sound’s a right inviting prospect, m’dear.”
Straightening up, Jenny reached back to untie her petticoats. “Well, in the meantime ye can make yerself useful by hanging up my shawl and bonnet and turning down the bed.”
The layers of starched cotton and lace slid over Jenny’s hips, followed by Harris’s wondering stare. “If ye can stop yer gawking long enough, that is,” she added with an exasperated chuckle.
Harris managed to wrest his gaze away from Jenny long enough to see her shawl and bonnet safely hung up, and the bedding pulled down. Before he had a chance to turn back from the latter task, Jenny kicked her crinolines aside and stepped up behind him. Pressing lightly against Harris, she reached for the buttons of his trousers.
“There’s one thing ye needn’t be shy about,” she teased. “I’ve seven brothers, ye ken? Ye’ve nothing I haven’t seen a time or two before.”
That wasn’t quite accurate, she decided a few minutes later, after she’d helped Harris shed the last of his clothes. None of the boys had been quite so generously endowed as her husband. Certainly none of them had boasted such tantalizing thatches of golden-brown body hair, glowing softly in the dim light of an overcast afternoon. Fascinated, Jenny couldn’t resist running her hand over the silky mat on his chest, letting it stray to the firm, smooth plane of his belly.
Harris sank back onto the pillows. “Oh,” he groaned. “Go easy on me, lass. It’s been a rough week.”
Jenny chuckled. Humor had helped to ease the strain of this first awkward encounter. It would go a long way toward compensating for their mutual lack of experience.
“Do ye not want me to touch ye again, then?” she asked with feigned innocence as her index finger delicately traced a line from Harris’s knee up his inner thigh. Not quite touching the skin, it skimmed over the fine hairs on his leg.
“I didn’t say that.” Emboldened by her shameless interest in his body, he loosed the top button of her shift. “I’m just trying to tell ye, a man can only exercise so much restraint when a beautiful woman sets to rouse him like that.”
“Do ye think I’m beautiful?” Jenny asked, searching the warm depths of his eyes for the truth. She wasn’t teasing now. He’d called her a bonny lass and she knew he meant it. As she’d always heard it used, bonny meant little more than rosy and healthy. The English word beautiful carried connotations of delicacy and distinction.
With a look that took in every nuance of her face, Harris replied solemnly, “Indeed ye are, lass. Beautiful as an angel in a painting.”
As he tugged open several more buttons on Jenny’s shift, her breasts suddenly tumbled free of the restraining undergarment. Full and firm, moist with a fine dew of perspiration, one fell blatantly into the palm of his hand. His smile quirked into a roguish grin.
“Or maybe a goddess,” he amended.
Jenny’s reply stuck in her throat. The sensation of his hand cupping her bare breast made her feel faint with pleasure.
In a gesture of reverent homage to his goddess, Harris bent forward, brushing the tawny pink nipple with his lips.
Jenny gasped. “Is that how it feels when I touch ye? As though all yer bones had melted like a crock of butter in the sun, and yer body’s gone all warm and limp and yielding?”
“Nay,” mumbled Harris as he took the outthrust nub of her breast into his mouth. He ran his tongue over it, in a series of delicate swipes that made Jenny respond with convulsive gasps of delight. Then, nuzzling his way up her breast, throat and chin, he assailed her mouth with a kiss that left her dizzily imploring for another.
“When ye touch me, lass…” He kissed her cheeks and her brow. “I feel like I’ve pitch in my veins instead of blood, and ye’ve just set it on fire.” He kissed her hair and the exquisitely sensitive spot on her neck, just below her ear. “I feel like I’m swelling up with pleasure, aching from the effort to contain it.”
Jenny understood what Harris meant about the ache of pleasure. Her breasts ached with it, and the hot, secret place between her thighs. With every beat of her pulse it throbbed a plea, growing more urgent by the second. Touch me. Kiss me. Take me. Fill me.
She arched her hips high off the bed as Harris eased her pantelettes down. As much as she was capable of thought at that moment, Jenny wondered that a cloud of steam was not rising off her sultry lower limbs. Responding to her body’s urgent demands, she twisted her hips to nudge against his hand.
“Do ye think ye’re ready, lass?” he whispered.
“How should I know?” Jenny asked impatiently. “Never done this before, have I?” She pressed herself against Harris and kissed him hard. “I just know I want ye now, whether I’m ready or not.”
Harris rolled onto his back. “I ken it hurts a lass some the first time. Why don’t ye lie on top of me. That way ye can take it as slow as ye like.”
Accepting that generous invitation, Jenny straddled his belly, using her hand to guide his entry into the warm, wet crevice between her legs. She felt a pang of resistance within her, but the powerful urges that ruled her body would not be denied. With a hard, purposeful thrust of her hips, she impaled her virginity on the shaft of his desire. Biting back an exclamation of pain, she heard Harris gasp a Gaelic oath.
She brought her head down to rest on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her shoulders and back with one hand, running the other over the round, firm flesh of her rump.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Jenny mused softly. Not so good, either, she confessed to herself with a twinge of disappointment. Whetted by the feel and the taste of Harris, her ravenous appetite hungered for so much more.
“We’re not done yet,” he murmured, planting a kiss on the top of her head.
“Not done?” She looked up at him in surprise. “What do ye mean? We’ve coupled, haven’t we?”
“We’ve made a brave start. But I’ve still to sow my seed in ye. It’s how babies are bred, ye ken.”
“How do ye go about that?” Jenny’s hips gave a slight reflexive twitch, sending the most delicious sensations skittering through her.
Harris writhed beneath her and she could feel his taut, lean muscles contract. “Keep that up, lass, and it won’t take very long.” He seemed to hiss the words on a breath drawn in through his clenched teeth.
“I…see.” Concentrating, she lifted her hips and eased them down again. Oh, yes. This was what her body craved so desperately.
“That’s the way, lass.” Harris brought his hands down to cup her buttocks, helping to lift her nearly free of him before letting her slide back on.
Eight strokes. Nine. The sweet sense of yearning mounted to an almost unbearable pitch. With a convulsive shudder, her body became a nexus of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. Jenny pressed her face into Harris’s chest, greedily inhaling the briny musk of his sweat, trying to muffle her cries. She heard him utter a deep, wild growl as his hips plowed up hard, burying himself deep within her. Then he subsided, limp and spent.
For a time they lay still, their throbbing hearts and panting breath gradually slowing. At last Harris raised a hand to Jenny’s hair. With infinite gentleness, he fondled her moist, tousled curls.
“Is my heart beating still?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
Jenny looked up at him, propping her chin on his breast-bone. “Aye. Did ye think it wouldn’t be?”
Raising his eyebrows, Harris pursed his lips in a droll grimace. “For a while there, I didn’t ken whether my heart would burst in my chest, or just stop dead altogether.”
“Did I hurt ye that much?” Jenny asked with a pang of remorse.
“Nay. What makes ye think ye hurt me, lass?”
“Well, the noises ye were making, for a start.” She cast an embarrassed glance back at the barely open window. “If anyone heard ye, they likely thought I was hacking yer bowels out with a dull knife!”
Harris laughed until his body shook with it, bouncing Jenny crazily atop him. The sound and the movement proved an infectious combination. Soon Jenny was laughing, too—laughing with relief and gratitude and happiness. It took them a while to master this mirth. But in time they laughed themselves out, surrendering to a contented exhaustion.
Jenny rested her head in the hollow of Harris’s shoulder, vaguely wondering if he might be squashed by the dead weight of her body on his for so long. For her part, she felt as light as thistledown. Why, a warm breeze might blow in at any moment and waft her up to the ceiling. Seared in the crucible of passion, she no longer even noticed the heat of the room.
“Harris?” she murmured, not looking up. “Did ye ken it would be like that?”
He raised a hand, sliding the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “Nay, lass. Not in my wildest dreams. Did ye?”
Jenny shook her head. “Do ye suppose it’s like that for everyone?”
“I don’t reckon so,” Harris mused. “If it was, folks’d never get anything else done.”
Jenny smiled to herself. “Do ye ken it’ll always be like that for us?”
Harris chuckled quietly. “Ye are full of questions tonight, aren’t ye? I’ll tell ye one thing, lass. If it’s never that good between us again, I’ll be plenty grateful to have felt like that just once in my life.”
Nuzzling his chest, Jenny planted a light kiss over his heart. It pleased her to know she had given Harris the same brush with ecstacy he’d given her. A sense of ease and deep satisfaction stole over her. Hovering on the brink of sleep, she roused herself slightly.
“Harris?” she whispered.
“Aye,” he murmured drowsily. “What now?”
“I love ye, Harris.” With all her heart she prayed it would be enough. That she could find the strength within herself to keep on loving him through good times and bad, as she’d vowed.
He slipped one arm around her waist. With his other hand Harris cradled her head against him, as though he wanted his body to open and take her into himself, as she had taken him.
“And I love ye, lass. It’ll be all right—ye’ll see. We belong to each other, you and I. That’s all that matters.”
As Jenny surrendered to the sweet peace of sleep, she prayed that Harris was right.
Outside on the streets of Chatham, the air was unbearably close and hot. No breeze blew from the river or the sea to bring a breath of relief. From the surrounding forest there rumbled a faint sound like far-off thunder or the report of distant artillery. Thick dark clouds shrouded the sky, their undersides glowing an eerie, lurid yellow.