Thunderstruck, Rory gazed down at Joanna.
She thought of him as an older brother.
Shock and frustration warred within him.
Christ, he’d never known any female to affect him the way she did. His blood pounded in his ears, his sexual craving growing huge at the sight of her on her knees in front of him, looking up with sweet submission. He was hard and swollen and insistent with a need that couldn’t be denied. He wanted to pull her onto his lap and pleasure her in a hundred different ways with his lips and teeth and tongue. To explore the feminine curves and hollows of the supple form hidden beneath those ludicrous clothes with his skilled and knowing fingers.
And she’d asked if she reminded him of a younger brother.
What in the whole breadth and depth of Scotland could have given her such a preposterous idea?
“Do I, milord?” Joanna persisted with a winsome smile.
“My brothers are nothing like you, Joey,” he answered brusquely. “Lachlan and Keir are fighting men like me.”
She blinked in amazement. “Are they as big as you, too?”
“Nearly.” He clenched his jaw, fighting a sense of acute and bitter disappointment.
Damn! That’s what came from being so understanding and patient. From allowing her to keep up her audacious pretense instead of exposing her immediately and punishing her for her willfulness—an unparalleled and headstrong willfulness that kept her here in his bedchamber, alone with him and perfectly willing to see him up close and bare-arsed in order to continue her outrageous deception.
Hellfire and damnation!
He’d never experienced anything so erotic as the thought of her dainty fingers removing every stitch of clothing from his big, aroused body. By the time she’d undressed him, she’d no longer see him in quite the same brotherly light.
“The bath is waiting, laird,” Joanna reminded him as she bounced to her stocking feet.
Rory rose to stand in front of her, and the top of her shabby knit cap barely reached the middle of his chest. “Unfasten my plaid, Joey,” he ordered quietly.
Her eyes grew enormous in her small, heart-shaped face. She glanced at the closed door, wondering, no doubt, if she should make a hasty retreat as she had on the evening she’d brought the firewood.
If she tried to run, he’d stop her.
Joanna wasn’t going to leave this time.
Not if their lives depended on it.
But the diminutive lass surprised him. Violet-blue eyes darting sparks of rebellion, she clamped her lips shut as though squelching a defiant reply. With graceful hands, she reached up and unfastened the pin that held the green and black tartan folds draped across his shoulder. She stood so close he could feel her lithe body brush against his clothing as she placed the bodkin on the small table by the bed. Every fiber in Rory’s being ached to move closer still.
Joanna’s face glowed with curious expectation as he pushed the corner of his plaid over his shoulder and let it fall down his back. Only the wide leather belt about his waist held the rest of his plaid in place around his hips and thighs.
“Now my shirt, lad.”
Her smooth brow furrowed in a dubious frown. “I don’t remember seeing Arthur do that,” she complained.
Rory lifted one eyebrow sardonically, and his low words were edged with sarcasm. “How many times did you watch my gillie attend me when I was bathing?”
“Only once,” Joanna admitted. She lowered her head, and her long russet lashes fluttered against her smooth cheeks as she ran the pink tip of her tongue over her lips in agitation.
Her delicate femininity rocked him. His lungs constricted, and his breath grew short. She’d made a frail, unmanly boy-child, but as a seventeen-year-old lassie, her slim figure and graceful movements were enchanting.
“Remove the shirt before the water gets cold, Joey,” he said, his voice amazingly calm despite the way his eager body was reacting to her nearness.
Her dainty fingers trembled as she fumbled with the laces that tied the ruffled collar of his billowing shirt. Then she pulled the long saffron tails out from under the black belt, her lashes still lowered to conceal her thoughts.
Rory drew the linen garment up over his head and dropped it on the comforter behind him. He could hear Joanna’s quick in-drawn breath at the sight of his bare chest so close in front of her. Clad only in the belted plaid that reached nearly to his knees, he looked down on the top of her frayed blue and white cap and willed himself not to move.
He’d been certain that Joanna would never go through with the task of disrobing him, but she remained where she stood, not budging an inch. When she slowly lifted her gaze to meet his, her eyes sparkled with a mixture of wariness and determination. Beneath the layer of dirt, the color had drained from her cheeks. He could count every freckle on that delightful soot-covered face.
Rory traced a fingertip down the narrow bridge of her nose. “You’re the one who needs a bath, Joey,” he murmured. “Why don’t you use the tub when I’m through bathing? The water will still be warm and soapy. You can scrub some of that grime off while I’m getting dressed.”
A vision of lathering her slender white body and rinsing the satiny skin with his bare hands sent a lance of desire spearing through him. Vivid thoughts of their wedding night and what he planned to do to his naughty bride nearly stole his breath away.
At his offhand suggestion, sheer terror glittered in her eyes. “I don’t like baths, milord,” she announced in a tone of unqualified rebellion. “’Tis much too dangerous. You can catch a chill and die.”
“Not on a warm spring evening like this,” he said with a low chuckle.
“Any evening’s too dangerous,” Joanna replied. “My da took a bath one fine summer night, went to bed, and never woke up.”
“I thought your father died on the battlefield.”
She didn’t even blink. “That was my real father. My stepfather died of a chill after bathing, just like I said.”
“Come on, lad.” Rory goaded, “where’s your gumption? You were the one who asked if you could learn to fight with a dirk.”
“Fighting’s one thing,” she declared. “Bathing’s another.”
He drew a line down the middle of her smudged cheek, then rubbed the dirt between his thumb and forefinger. “A little soap and water never hurt anyone.”
“Holy hosanna,” she grumbled. “By the time you get in the bath, the water will have already turned cold. I’m not washing in a tub of ice.”
Rory braced his hands on his hips to keep from seizing Joanna and lifting her up to eye level. He wanted to cover her mouth with his, to whip off that absurd cap and bury his fingers in her coppery hair. He wanted to bury himself in her soft warmth.
At the thought of tasting her sweetness, of caressing her bare skin, of pinning her slender form beneath him and gazing into her expressive eyes while she felt him swollen and turgid inside her, the blood raged in his veins.
“Then unbuckle my belt,” he said softly, “and slip it off.”
This time Joanna would surely try to break for the door. If she made a move to leave, he’d stop her. He’d sweep her up in his arms and lay her on the bed behind him, where he’d worship her delicate femininity with his hard male body. He’d teach her the pleasures of the marriage bed and listen with satisfaction to her breathless cries of surrender.
There’d be no wrong in seducing her that evening; they were betrothed. Many couples shared a bed before their wedding day with no shame involved.
Joanna reached toward the large gold buckle. He tensed as her fingers fumbled with the clasp, fighting the primitive urges that gripped him.
Over the top of Joanna’s head, Rory’s gaze lit on the fanciful tapestry. He hadn’t noticed before, but the resplendent knight seemed to be smirking. That arrogant pup appeared certain the lady would tumble off the balcony and land at his feet, overwhelmed by his courtly manner, his handful of blossoms, and his mawkish love song.
With a low groan of frustration, Rory grasped Joanna’s slender wrists and brought her hands upward, where he held them imprisoned against his naked chest. She looked up in surprise, innocence glowing in her marvelous eyes. He realized with demoralizing certainty that if he attempted to seduce her tonight, he’d become the villain in her preposterous make-believe tale.
He needed to win her affection. Though he didn’t believe in romantic love, a bride should display some tender esteem for her groom. Hell, his mother had been so entranced with his father, she’d run away with him regardless of the consequences.
Rory suspected that all young lassies harbored maudlin fantasies—the kind of fatuous, sentimental myths that bards sang about. He didn’t want to shatter Joanna’s childhood dreams and leave her disillusioned and regretful.
On the contrary, Rory wanted Joanna to think of him as her protector. He wanted to see that look of enchantment on her radiant face when she gazed at him—the same damn dreamy-eyed look he’d seen when she gazed at that untried whelp hanging on the wall.
How ironic that a man who’d always scoffed at the idea of romantic love desperately wanted a lass to romanticize about him. To see him as some mythic warrior who’d come to rescue her from a fire-breathing dragon. Devil take it, what was happening to his pragmatism? His forthright common sense?
But he refused to play the role of the monster.
She waited, looking up at him in bemusement. “Milord?”
Her soft whisper seemed to compress Rory’s heart into a tight, leaden lump.
If he felt Joanna’s inexperienced and openly curious gaze move over his buck-naked body, he’d never be able to keep himself under control. The thought of her seeing him like that, reading in her eloquent eyes the startled realization of how massively aroused he’d become, struck him with incredible force.
His mouth suddenly bone-dry, Rory concentrated on breathing in a slow, rhythmic pace. He clenched his jaw and ignored the heated blood steaming in his veins. As he struggled to conquer the primal beast inside, raw, unequivocal lust wrapped itself around his entrails and squeezed painfully. It was fortunate his plaid had been fashioned from over seven yards of wool. At the moment, his manhood stood erect, huge and heavy with need for the engaging, high-spirited lassie before him.
“Leave,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll finish disrobing by myself.”
Joanna’s heart stumbled as MacLean released her hands and pushed her gently away.
She’d told herself that only dispassionate curiosity had kept her there for so long.
She knew better now—now that he’d ordered her to go.
So close she could breathe in the masculine scent of him, Joanna gazed, enthralled, at MacLean’s broad shoulders and deep chest. The three-headed dragon’s long, slinky body wrapped itself around the bulging muscles of his upper arm in a permanent, barbaric display. The jagged scar of his old wound lay white beneath the crisp golden-brown hairs. The golden holy medal hanging between his flat nipples honored St. Columba, one of Scotland’s most revered religious heroes.
She longed to see the bronzed warlord’s magnificent figure completely unclothed. And it wasn’t simply because she hoped to discover if he had a dragon’s tail. Joanna yearned to rake her fingertips through the thick mat of hair on his chest. To press her lips against his sun-gilded flesh and inhale the tangy scent of the forest.
The sight of Tam and Mary in the stable flashed before her. She wondered what it would be like to be held in MacLean’s powerful arms, to have his mouth exploring the sensitive tips of her breasts, to have his huge body pressing against hers as she sank down, down into the soft feather mattress of her canopied bed—just as Tam had pressed Mary down into the loose straw.
Would she whimper and plead for the rugged, virile man to continue as the dairymaid had done?
A thrill of excitation twanged through Joanna.
Godsakes, she couldn’t leave.
Not now.
Joanna slowly raised her eyes to meet his, but MacLean stood perfectly still, looking over the top of her head at the wall behind. Her lips trembled as she offered an ingratiating smile. “I don’t mind helping with your garments, milord. Not if that’s what Arthur usually does. I won’t be fully trained as a gillie unless I do.”
“Go!” he commanded, and a shudder went through his large frame.
“Are you ill?” she asked in genuine concern.
MacLean braced one palm on the post of the canopy bed, his head lowered, his gaze fixed on the rug at his bare feet. “Joey,” he said, his deep baritone terse and threatening, “if you don’t get the hell out of here, I’m going to dump you in that tub of quickly chilling bathwater. Do you understand?”
She didn’t wait for him to repeat the threat. She hurried to the door and swung it open, startling Beatrix, who had one ear pressed to the heavy oak panel. Maude and Abby stood behind her in the corridor.
Joanna quickly shut the door and held her finger to her lips to signal for silence.
“How could you?” Lady Beatrix hissed. Her features contorted in outrage, she planted her hands on her hips and leaned closer to Joanna. “How could you stay in there alone with that fiend? You’re daft taking such foolish chances. What if he’d found you out? What then?”
“Are you all right, child?” Maude questioned in a whisper.
Joanna tried to hide her vexation at being ordered from the room. “I’m fine,” she said with a defensive tilt of her chin.
Abby wrung the corner of her apron in her plump hands, her pretty brown eyes filled with tears. “What did he do to ye, milady?”
“Nothing, dammit,” Joanna replied. “And I wasn’t taking any chances. MacLean thinks of me as his little brother.”
The serving lass clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified at her mistress’s bad language and incredulous at her reply. “His little brother?”
“Thank heavens,” Beatrix muttered crossly.
Maude said nothing, merely giving Joanna a penetrating look from narrowed eyes. Beneath the silent scrutiny, Joanna could feel the heat of a blush creep up her cheeks. The realization of just how close she’d come to seeing the mighty chief of Clan MacLean in all his bare-arsed splendor struck her with a near-paralyzing impact.
Godsakes! What in the names of all Scotland’s saints had she been thinking? She could have given herself away and ruined everything.
Joanna had to keep her identity a secret until Ewen came to rescue her. She wouldn’t fail her clansmen and prove herself unworthy to be their chieftain.
“Let’s go,” she said with a weak smile, “before the Sea Dragon changes his mind and wants me to scrub his scaly back.”
Rory unbuckled his belt and let his plaid drop to the floor. Then he picked up his tankard of ale and padded to the tub. Stepping into the warm water, he sank down with an agonized groan. Jesu, he felt like a rutting stallion, locked out of a pen holding twenty mares. His balls hadn’t ached this way since he was a fifteen-year-old cub dallying with a milkmaid who liked to play tease and tickle in the hay.
He lifted the pewter cup in a salute to the damn puling knight in the tapestry. “You won that joust, you mealy-mouthed sonofabitch,” he taunted with a mocking grin. “The fine, fair lassie standing on that balcony may be captivated by your bonny face, but Lady Joanna won’t be for long.”
Rory had never been any good at pretty speeches. He’d never engaged in devious intrigues or devised clever strategies to capture a reluctant lady’s attention. He’d certainly never misled any woman to make a sexual conquest. There’d never been the need.
The chief of Clan MacLean had always prided himself on his honest, straightforward behavior, and the females he’d bedded had been just as forthright in their sexual desires.
In a few more days his family would arrive at Kinlochleven, and Lachlan could teach him everything there was to know about courting a fine lady. The man was a goddamn genius at wooing. He could play the rebec, harpsichord, and lute; compose ballads and poetry; dance with consummate grace; and twist any lass around his finger with disgusting ease.
Of course, Lachlan was much comelier than his older brother. Slimmer, more graceful, with a face almost as braw as the knight’s on the wall there. When it came to the lassies, Lachlan made Rory feel like a great, lumbering brute.
The thought that Joanna might see a resemblance between Lachlan and her fantasy hero brought a scowl. Rory sipped his ale and stared in rueful cogitation at the tapestry. Outwardly, his brother was the image of the illusory knight, but Lachlan was intrepid in battle and had the scars to prove it beneath his clothing. Inwardly, Rory’s brother hadn’t escaped life’s emotional scars either, though his charming ways with the lassies kept them well-hidden.
Since the Maid of Glencoe was already betrothed to Rory, his brother would never purposely set out to court her; there was nothing to worry about there. But he didn’t want Joanna to pay more attention to Lachlan’s refined, gentlemanly talents than she did to her eager bridegroom.
This evening she’d almost discovered for herself how eager he was. He smiled at the memory of her ingenuous eyes when she’d asked him that cockamamie question.
She’d find out on her wedding night if he thought of her as a younger brother.
Rory tipped his head back and gave a sharp bark of laughter.
“Ah, Joanna,” he said, lifting his tankard to the gentlewoman on the balcony, “you’re about to discover how romantic and chivalrous the chief of Clan MacLean can be when he puts his mind to it.”
Two mornings later, the expected guests arrived with the skirling of bagpipes and beating of drums. Joanna watched the cavalcade ride beneath the raised portcullis from her perch on the keep’s castellated parapet.
King James rode a magnificent caparisoned steed beside a beautiful woman she assumed was Lady Emma MacNeil, MacLean’s widowed mother. On the sovereign’s right rode the arrogant and ambitious Archibald Campbell, second earl of Argyll, whom Joanna had seen from a distance in Edinburgh. Directly behind them came a middle-aged gentleman with two younger enormous warriors, who could only be MacLean’s uncle and brothers.
They were followed by what appeared to be the entire Scottish court. James’s household included over a hundred personal retainers, many of them of gentle birth. In addition to the richly clothed lords and ladies, there were grooms, clerks, a barber, a tailor, and a falconer—for the king was inordinately fond of falconry. Musicians, singers, dancers, acrobats, mummers, and minstrels swarmed into Joanna’s lower bailey. Even a dozen Observantine friars from the nearby monastery and a small group of Poor Clares, apparently on a pilgrimage, had attached themselves to the royal retinue for safety while traveling.
The twenty Macdonald men-at-arms, who’d been coerced into swearing their fealty to the king, were also now returning to Kinlochleven. Joanna’s heart lurched painfully when she spotted her clan’s war commander, Ewen Macdonald, and his brother, Godfrey, with Ewen’s sixteen-year-old son Andrew riding between them.
Andrew’s handsome face looked up to the battlement where she sat, but he didn’t recognize her in disguise. His dark brown eyes swept the upper bailey, then moved back to his father for guidance, as they always did.
Joanna pressed her hand against her waist and told herself it was the very size of the entourage that caused the sharp pain in her belly. What had MacLean been thinking to invite so many people?
The past Sunday, Father Thomas had read the banns at Mass exactly as MacLean ordered. Poor Idoine had squirmed in the pew, her face white and drawn with fear. Joanna had assured her cousin again that she’d never allow the Sea Dragon to force her into marriage with him. Upon her father’s arrival, Ewen would identify Idoine as his daughter, and The MacLean would have to accept the fact that he’d been outfoxed from the start.
After greeting the king, MacLean lifted his mother down from her horse. She threw her arms around him in an openly affectionate greeting and said something in his ear that made him laugh. Then he shook the older gentleman’s hand with a welcoming smile. His brothers whacked him on the back with blows that would have sent any other man flying. She suspected by their animated conversation that they were congratulating him on his upcoming nuptials.
MacLean grinned as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He’d soon have to explain to all these people that the bridegroom was ready and willing, but the elusive bride-to-be—whom he’d mistakenly believed to be Idoine—was nowhere in sight. The thought made her cringe. In a strange, bittersweet way, she actually felt sorry for him.
When the King of Scotland entered the donjon with a fanfare of trumpets, Joanna knew she could dally no longer. She’d need to go down and see that Ethel and Peg had everything running smoothly in the kitchen and buttery. She prayed her mercurial cook hadn’t become so flustered by the influx of the king’s cup-bearers, turnspits, kitchen varlets, and head chef that she’d started nipping from a bottle of spirits again. And that Davie had assigned the guest bedchambers on the fourth floor in the correct order of status. If James Stewart ended up in a smaller room than one of his vassals, heads would roll. And her chamberlain’s would be the first.
Joanna scowled with annoyance at all the trouble that stiff-necked MacLean was causing, and climbed down from the edge of the parapet.
Arms folded across his massive chest, Fearchar stood directly behind her, engrossed in the pageantry below. She hadn’t heard him join her on the battlement, but she wasn’t surprised by his quiet presence. The giant often appeared nearby, as though he’d nothing better to do than keep his cousin’s apprentice gillie company.
“What was MacLean thinking to have invited the entire court to his wedding?” she asked crossly as she tripped down the stairs beside him.
The huge warrior’s wide smile split his bearded face. “Forbye, laddie, he’d be thinking how proud he is of his lovely bride.”
“Humph,” she sniffed. “Lady Joanna will be lucky if that mass of malingering humanity doesn’t eat her out of house and home before they finally leave.”
“Och, there’s naught to worry about there, lad. The lassie’s bridegroom is a wealthy man. He could feed the chattering apes for a month and never see a dent in his coffers.”
She stopped on the stone step and stared at him, horrified. “A month! You don’t think they’d stay that long, do you?”
Fearchar puckered his lips and scratched the bristly flaxen whiskers beneath his chin. “Well now,” he said, “I doubt they’ll stay more than a few days. But I’ve fought alongside The MacLean for the last ten years, and I’ve never known him to count the cost when it came to getting something he wanted.”
“Godsakes, what has that got to do with it?” she snapped in exasperation.
He grinned complacently, his one eye twinkling merrily. “Not one of the fortresses he vowed to conquer lasted a month beneath the assault of his cannons.”
Joanna groaned and resumed her descent to the ground floor. “Fortresses and cannons,” she muttered under her breath. “That’s all warriors think about.”