Rory had learned in his years of warfare that timing wasn’t merely important—it was absolutely crucial. The day chosen for the commencement of a siege, the signal to retreat from a lost battle, the knowledge of when to leave port to avoid the icy storms of winter, or the decision to begin boarding a pirate vessel, were all too chancy to be left to blind fate.
As he mounted the stairs that evening to find his bed, he reviewed the day’s events with a newly married man’s smile of anticipation.
Just as he’d hoped, Joanna hadn’t been able to hang on to her anger for long. She didn’t meet life’s problems by remaining alone in her room to nurse her vexation and sense of ill treatment. No doubt she’d seen her cousin Idoine’s limited repertoire of sulking and pouting and had taken a healthy dislike to such childish affectations.
His wife was too decent by nature to take her ire out on the sweet-tempered widow or the blameless young lassie; and Alex was shown the good manners reserved for one’s host, be he enemy or friend. A truce had been established between Isabel and Joanna that proved easy to keep when the eccentric lady retired to her private apartments to fuss over her herbal concoctions and magical incantations. Joanna reserved for Rory alone the impersonal disdain one would give something green and slimy crawling on the underside of a leaf.
She’d joined the family for the midday meal, her demeanor chilly, though polite. The afternoon was spent in the music room, and little by little, her icy reserve toward the Camerons had thawed.
With Raine on the virginal and Nina playing the harp, Joanna picked up a lute, tuned the strings, and joined them. To Rory’s amazement and the Camerons’ delight, she played and sang by rote the ballad Fergus MacQuisten had warbled at their wedding banquet. She might not have rendered it perfectly—Rory wouldn’t know—but when Nina exclaimed over the beauty of the piece, Joanna told them her husband had composed the music and lyrics in honor of his bride.
Rory had scowled, uncomfortable beneath Nina and Raine’s effusive praise. He met Alex’s canny eyes and knew the other laird, familiar with both Rory and Lachlan, had immediately guessed the truth. The reminder of how he’d made such a damn idiot of himself trying to please his imaginative young wife stung Rory’s pride. To hell with her starry-eyed fantasies. He intended to be exactly who he was: a hardened, cynical chief of a formerly landless clan.
If Joanna thought her frosty treatment of her husband would dampen his ardor, however, she’d been mistaken. Seated beside her on the settle, Rory had enjoyed the sweet proximity of his wife to the fullest. While she plucked the strings of the lute, he’d toyed with her long burnished curls. His arm resting across the bench’s high back, he caressed the base of her throat, running his fingertips lightly across the satiny skin above her collarbone. The Camerons, bless them, pretended not to notice anything amiss between the newly wedded pair.
After supper, Joanna had excused herself to retire early for the night. Engaged in backgammon with Alex, Rory looked up and politely wished her pleasant dreams. He’d finished the game shortly after that and leisurely followed her upstairs.
Rory paused for a moment outside the bedchamber, then swung the door open and went inside. He could hear the splash of water and his wife’s soft hum of pleasure coming from behind the screen that had been placed in front of the fireplace by one of the servants. His calculations had been perfect. He’d caught Joanna just stepping into her bath.
Closing the door quietly, he walked around the movable partition to find his wife up to her waist in hot, soapy water, the creamy globes of her breasts with their velvety tips tilting impudently upward. In the midst of lathering a bathing cloth, she watched in frozen surprise as he unfastened his sword belt and dropped the weapon on the rug at his feet.
Someone had added acorns to the crackling blaze on the hearth and lit scented candles on the mantel. The room smelled of summer roses, winter holly, and pine trees drenched by the rain. Steam wafted around her, scented by the bubbles in the tub.
Joanna stared at him as he lifted the bowl of fragrant soaps and the white toweling from the three-legged stool, placed them on the Persian carpet, and sat down.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
He smiled complacently while he feasted on the sight of her. The glorious abundance of auburn hair had been piled on top of her head and fastened with four ivory combs. Save for a wispy fringe of tendrils too stubborn to be tamed, her slender nape and the dusting of freckles across her shoulders lay exposed to her husband’s gaze. Steam warmed her cheeks to a rosy glow, making her violet-blue eyes almost purple in her vivid face.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he questioned with a sardonic lift of his brow. “I’m waiting for my turn to bathe.”
“You…you can’t stay here!” she sputtered. “This isn’t your bedchamber.” She jabbed her finger in the direction of the closed door. “Your room is down the passageway to your left. Didn’t Lady Nina explain to you?”
“Oh, she explained all right,” he replied, casually removing his stockings and brogues. “And then I explained to Nina that I sleep where my wife sleeps.” He looked up from his task to shake his head in mock reprimand. “If you didn’t like the chamber we were in, Joanna, you should have told me. Did the fireplace smoke or was there a draft I hadn’t noticed, while we were getting better acquainted this morning?”
She brought the sopping cloth to the valley between her breasts and glared at him. “Godsakes, do you intend to wait here until I get out?”
He unfastened the bodkin that pinned his plaid to his shirt, tossed the corner of the black and green tartan wool over his shoulder, and pulled his long shirttails out from beneath his belt. “I’m not sure we’d both fit in that tub, lass, though I’m willing to try. On second thought, you’re such a wee bit of a thing, it might work at that.”
Her gaze swept over him in outrage as she shrank back against the side of the oak vat. “Ask the servants to fetch your own bath in your own bedchamber.”
“This is my bedchamber.” He dragged the shirt over his head and tossed it on the floor. “And why waste a perfectly fine tub of hot water? We’d only make more work for Nina’s staff.”
Tipping her chin upward in tight-lipped indignation, Joanna rubbed the lathered cloth over her shoulder and arm, then moved to her chest and stopped abruptly. “I can’t wash myself while you’re watching,” she exclaimed. “’Tisn’t decent.”
Rory unfastened his buckle. “I’ll be happy to do it for you,” he offered as he slid off his belt and dirk.
Joanna heaved an exasperated sigh. “Very well, MacLean, you win. I’ll get out.” She reached over the edge of the wooden vat and snatched up the linen towel. Snapping it open, she held it modestly in front of her as she emerged from the water.
Rory regained his feet at the same moment, allowing his plaid to fall away from his naked form. He offered his arm in a gallant gesture, ready to help her step out of the bathtub. Her eyes promising fire and brimstone, Joanna reached down, scooped the soapy cloth out of the water, and flung it at him.
The sopping linen hit Rory smack in the face. Her startled gurgle of laughter as she stepped across the opposite side of the tub told him she hadn’t sighted her target, but was definitely pleased with the results of her reckless aim.
“Why, Joanna,” he said softly as he peeled the soggy material off his nose. “You should have told me you wanted to play.”
Her eyes widened in alarm at his grin, and she clutched the toweling to her bosom, which rose and fell delightfully in her agitation. She stood in front of the blazing fire, the oaken vat of water steaming between them. A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth and her eyes twinkled with naughtiness. She took a tiny step back.
“Pray, pardon me, milord husband,” she said, poised as gracefully as a hind about to take flight from the hunter. “I was merely trying to assist you with your bath.”
He replied with all the silky assurance of a very large man. “First, I’ll help you with yours.”
He reached for her, and Joanna sprinted away. She dashed around the screen, leaving Rory holding the damp towel in his grasp.
At the success of her ploy, her laughter rang out. “That’s a thoroughly indecent suggestion, MacLean. Your mother should have taught you better morals.”
Rory didn’t follow her around the lightweight partition as she’d expected. Instead he purposely knocked it over, and the stool along with it, as he moved between his wife and the door, cutting off her route of escape.
She whirled at the thud of the falling barrier and stopped in her tracks, caught near the bed, trying to reach her nightshift. Too late, she realized he’d trapped her.
“I don’t want to get my hair wet,” she admonished, merriment sparkling in her eyes. “’Twill take too long to dry.”
“You should have thought of that before.”
Dripping all over the thick carpet, Joanna edged slowly back toward the outside wall. She was splendidly naked, the water and soap bubbles glistening on her ivory skin. When she realized his gaze had locked on the single drop trickling off one rosy nipple, she sucked in her breath. “Stay back,” she warned.
He moved leisurely toward her. “You’re not afraid of a little wetting, are you, milady wife?”
She bumped her bare rear into a bed table and, glancing back, discovered a bowl of apples. He read her intention before she’d fully realized it herself.
“Don’t do it, Joanna,” he goaded.
As she reached for the first projectile, he jerked a round silver tray from the press cupboard behind him and warded off the fruit she lobbed at his head. High, low, in between, Rory met the flight of each missile with the flat of his makeshift shield.
“Come out from behind there, you coward,” she taunted as he moved steadily forward beneath the barrage.
He’d nearly reached her when the apples ran out. With an ecstatic crow of discovery, she seized a basket filled with walnuts and hurled the entire contents at him. Showered with three dozen brown pellets, he held his defensive weapon above his head. The nuts peppered him like stone shot, bouncing against the engraved silver platter and rolling across the floor.
Bringing the targe down, he found she’d already picked up her shoes and, with a screech of exhilaration, scrambled across the wide bed, where she hurled them at him one by one. Four bolster pillows followed the shoes. Once again, he blocked them with his trusty shield.
Joanna waited with the ponderous canopied bedstead between them, panting and laughing at the same time. A comb had fallen from her hair, and several long locks dangled around her bare arm.
“I’m going to catch a chill,” she complained. Her bottom lip jutted out adorably. “If I die of consumption, ’twill be all your fault.” Indigo eyes shimmering in the candlelight, she jerked at the quilted comforter spread across the mattress.
He grabbed the other edge and whipped it out of her grasp. “I’ll keep you warm,” he promised. “Right after I scrub you down.” He flung the green bedcover to the floor.
A second comb fell from her hair as she glanced over her shoulder. Until that moment, she hadn’t noticed the compote of oranges on the massive court cupboard, which took up the entire wall behind her.
“Now, Joanna…” he cautioned, purposely egging her on.
Her eyes bright with mischief, she started hurling the precious fruit. Impervious to the cost of the imported luxuries, she tossed the bright orbs at him with abandon. She followed up with balls of brightly colored yarn from a wicker basket on the floor next to the bed.
Her aim was improving. She was, however, attacking a man trained in the arts of war. Dodging swords and dirks had given Rory ample practice in thrusting, feinting, and rushing his adversary. He could have captured her after the first apple launched, but her sparkling eyes and musical laughter made the game much too enjoyable to end it so soon.
He worked his way to the foot of the bed, boxing her into a corner. When all the oranges and balls of yarn had been lobbed, he tossed the silver tray down.
“You’re going to have some explaining to do, come morning,” he said mildly. “Nina will think you went berserk.”
A third comb floated to the floor, and the lustrous hair tumbled about her shoulders and drifted to her waist. “She’ll blame you,” Joanna retorted on a ripple of laughter. “Everyone knows all MacLeans are slavering beasts.”
He paused to admire her nude body, every delicate hill and valley glistening with moisture. His gaze roved lingeringly over the head of glorious coppery locks; cinnamon brows, lashes, and freckles; indigo eyes; rosy cheeks; cherry lips and pink nipples; and the auburn puff of curls at the juncture of her creamy thighs. Hell, she’d turn any man into a slavering beast.
“And what does that make you, Lady MacLean?” he inquired with a confident grin. He propped his hands on his hipbones, and her eyes followed the movement. Her mouth dropped open at the sight of his jutting male member.
“I told you not to call me that,” Joanna admonished, color flooding her cheeks. “Now you’ll be sorry.” She waited for him to get three steps closer, then lifted the fat blue pitcher at her elbow and splashed the water into his face.
Like everything else she’d flung, he’d been expecting it. He anticipated her next move as well. As Joanna scrambled across the mattress once more, shrieking with feminine laughter, he met her on the other side, a vase of spring flowers from the cupboard in his hand.
Leaving the bed abruptly, she skidded on the walnuts concealed beneath the jade quilt. Rory caught her by the waist, held her upright, and calmly upended the urn over her head. Ox-eye daisies, yellow cowslips, lavender bluebells, and cold water cascaded over her gorgeous hair, taking with them the last ivory comb.
“You wretch!” she gasped, then shivered. Her brilliant eyes flashed with excitement. “Now look what you’ve done!”
Rory chuckled softly as his hands slid up to her breasts. “I’ll help you mend the damage to your hair later.”
“You’ve caused enough damage. You’ll do no such thing.”
She shoved against his chest, and he obligingly toppled over, taking her with him to land on the padded comforter at their feet. Bare legs tangling, he rolled beneath her to cushion the fall.
Startled, Joanna looked down at Rory, who was grinning like a naughty lad who’d successfully evaded a switching. He plucked a bluebell out of her tangled hair and tossed it aside. “There, ’tis bonnier than ever.”
“And who’s going to repair the damage to this room?” she inquired with a cool lift of her brows.
“If you’re a good lass and apologize, I just might help you.” He set her on the floor, rose to his feet, scooped her up in his brawny arms, and moved to the tub. “But first we’re going to have that bath.”
“Rory!” she cried softly. “That really is indecent.”
“Would you believe, darling,” he said, “some cultures do it all the time. Men and women bathing together sounds like a sterling idea to me, especially if you’re the woman and I’m the man.”
Scandalized, Joanna gazed up at her husband. His strong jaw was stubbled with a day’s growth of beard. His eyes watched her with a predatory light glowing in their brilliant green depths.
The barbaric emerald twinkling in his ear and the primitive sea dragon etched on his arm should have alerted her, despite the holy medal hanging on his chest. He was a half-pagan warlord, experienced in the vices of the heathen world. Bronzed and sea-weathered, he exuded an aura of savage ferocity.
She’d have been blind not to notice that all the time she’d been pelting him with everything that came to hand, he’d been sexually aroused. The tension vibrating inside her own body had changed during their ridiculous, one-sided duel, though she’d scarcely been aware of it.
“Rory,” she murmured huskily. She unfastened the leather thong at the back of his neck, slid her fingers in the wealth of sun-bleached hair, and pressed her mouth against his.
He kissed her, his tongue thrusting and withdrawing boldly in a clear imitation of what would soon happen between them.
When he broke the kiss, he stepped over the tub’s edge, sank down into the warm water, and settled her in front of him. He lifted her slightly and wedged her rump between his corded thighs, so she lay back against his solid chest, her head resting on his shoulder, her soaked locks floating in the water around them. His rigid manhood pressed insistently against her bottom, and there was no mistaking his intent.
His arms around her, he cupped his hands and rinsed out her hair; then he lathered the cloth with perfumed soap.
“I should have ordered a bath,” he said with a chuckle, “and scrubbed Joey Macdonald down the first day I spotted the cheeky lad standing beside Father Thomas, all covered with soot and grime. ’Twould have saved me a great deal of time and aggravation.”
He ran the soapy washcloth over her breasts, rubbing gently back and forth across her nipples, and the strength of her own arousal came as a shock to Joanna. She’d felt so cross with Rory when he’d first come into the room that she hadn’t realized until now he’d been playing with her in a sexual way, teasing her and then using her sense of humor to overcome her resistance.
The cloth in his hand began an unhurried descent down her belly as the water lapped about them. He bent his head and kissed her ear, his tongue following the curves and dipping into the hollows.
“Joanna,” he said softly, “I didn’t compose the ballad that Fergus MacQuisten sang at our wedding feast. Nor did I write the words.”
“I know,” she replied with a contented sigh.
“You do?”
She nodded, enjoying the hedonistic pleasure of sharing a bath with her husband. His soapy fingers glided over her wet skin, beguiling and seductive as he bathed her most intimate places. Shameful and indecent it might be, but ’twas marvelously agreeable, too.
“Who told you?” he asked gruffly.
“Hm?” she murmured. “Oh, no one. I just knew that you didn’t write it.”
He paused, and she could tell he wasn’t flattered by her assumption—even though it had obviously been correct. His deep baritone rumbled in his chest as he continued his tantalizing endeavors. “How did you know, lass?”
She smiled at the annoyance in his voice. “I just knew the man who compared courting a lassie to feeding carrots and apples to his horse couldn’t have written that romantic verse or the hauntingly beautiful music that went with it.”
He halted as he considered her reply.
“Don’t stop,” she begged. A delicious languor curled through Joanna, and she released a long, appreciative sigh. “Who did compose the ballad?”
“I’ll tell you after our third child is born,” he said, kissing her temple. Joanna could tell he was smiling.
He touched her beneath the water, playing with her gently. The warm ripples swirled around his gifted fingers, creating tiny rills of pleasure.
“If you knew,” he continued in a serious tone, “why didn’t you say something that day? As MacQuisten sang the ballad, you looked at me as though you believed I’d composed it.”
“Because I assumed you’d asked Fergus to create a tender love song especially for me. And the fact that you wanted me to believe you’d written it touched me deeply.”
“I may not be able to write songs,” he murmured in her ear, “but I can play your sweet, lovely body, Joanna, till you’re sighing for me like a wee magic harp fashioned by the faeries to drive a mortal man insane.”
The warm bathwater swirled around Rory’s dexterous fingers, enhancing each touch, each light brush of his callused fingertips over her delicate folds.
When she was sighing like a faery harp beneath his caresses, Rory lifted her up in his strong arms. Leaving the tub, he laid her, dripping wet, on the bed, with her knees bent, her legs dangling over the edge of the mattress. To Joanna’s surprise, he didn’t join her on the bed, but knelt on the floor in front of her. His hands sliding over her sleek thighs, he lifted her legs over his broad shoulders.
“What are you doing?” she asked with an embarrassed little laugh. She couldn’t imagine what he intended next. She tried to sit up, and with one quick tug, he tipped her flat on her back again.
“This comes under the bridegroom’s responsibility,” he said, his sea-dragon eyes sparkling with devilment.
“What’s that?”
“Teaching you something new every night.”
“And all I need to do is enjoy it?”
His wide grin was positively wicked. “I’ll think of something for you to do later.”
Rory smoothed his open mouth across the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and nipped her gently. She could feel his warm breath drift over her and the prickly graze of his whiskers. Her heart thumped wildly against her ribs as he parted the tight curls that covered her mound.
Holy heavens.
Dragon’s tail or no, he was half-savage. Like some great primitive beast, he nuzzled her with his lips and tongue.
“Rory!” she gasped.
This had to be something he’d learned from the sea nymphs. Who else would do such a scandalous thing?
Joanna jerked in convulsive reaction as he touched her with the tip of his tongue, his hands reaching up to fondle the tightened buds of her breasts at the same moment. The feeling that knifed through her body bordered on ecstasy.
“Oh, my,” she breathed. “Oh, my.”
She now had no doubt about the truth. The chiefs of Clan MacLean cavorted with mermaids. That’s why he’d wanted to bathe in the tub with her. ’Twas the blatantly sensual lure of the water lapping around his manly parts. And that’s why he wanted her hair loose and dripping wet—so she’d remind him of a redheaded sea nymph.
He laved her delicate folds, moist and warm and scented from the bath, moister and warmer now from his skilled mouth and tongue. The world around Joanna shrank to just the two of them as he taught her the incredible pleasures he could give.
He held her hips imprisoned in his large hands, and she writhed beneath his erotic stimulation till she cried out his name in breathless female surrender. Floating in a languorous haze, Joanna realized that Rory rose and bent over her.
“I know you must be tender, darling,” he whispered. “I’ll be very gentle.”
As the exquisite pleasure throbbed and pulsed through her slick, engorged tissues, Rory spread her legs and entered her carefully. The feeling of pressure and incredible fullness seemed so right, she sobbed in relief and longing, wanting to have more of him and still more. She wrapped her legs tightly around his lean flanks, refusing to let him be gentle.
“I need you, Rory,” she said, her words hoarse with emotion. “I need you inside me like this, hard and strong. I feel like I’ll never get enough of you.” She arched upward, moving her hips against his straining loins.
“Then come with me, darling,” he said, seeming to understand her frantic state. “Come ride with me through the stars.”
He bent over her, plunging in swift, strong strokes, building a faster and faster tempo. Where that morning he’d been steady and rhythmic, tonight he pumped wildly into her body, taking Joanna on a breathless ride. They climaxed together, their bodies shuddering in their release.
Her husband slipped his hand beneath Joanna’s rump and, rolling over, brought her up on top of him. Her body clenched him reflexively, and he groaned. “Ah, Joanna, ’tis an old man you’ll make of me before my time, but I’ll enjoy every minute of getting older.”
She lay on top of him, panting. As her heartbeat slowed and her breathing returned to normal, she pushed up, bracing her hands on his shoulders. The strands of her long, wet hair dangled about them.
“What was it like?” she asked with a curious smile. “Doing it under water?”
He looked at her blankly. “Doing what under water, lass?”
“This.”
“This?”
She frowned, surprised and a little annoyed. He was usually far more astute. “What we just did,” she explained. “What was it like, doing it under water?”
Rory slid his hands up her back and lifted the damp locks away from her shoulders. “Joanna,” he said with a bemused expression, “why would you think I’ve coupled with a woman under water?”
“Oh, not with a woman!” she exclaimed. “With a sea nymph.”
A crooked smile creased his sharp features, his green eyes danced with suppressed merriment. “What makes you believe I’ve coupled with a mermaid?”
“All Macdonald children are told how the chiefs of Clan MacLean cavort with the water sprites. And that the MacLean chiefs have dragon tails, which are snipped short at birth so they can hide them beneath their plaids. That’s why, this morning, I wanted to get better acquainted. I wanted to find out if it was true—if you really did have a dragon’s tail.” She giggled happily. “But you don’t.”
“You mean…when you were fondling my bare buttocks…you were trying…to discover…” A look of sudden comprehension lit his face. Then he roared with laughter. He bellowed so hard, she bounced up and down on his chest. “Oh, God, Joanna!” he cried between hoots and guffaws. “Oh, God, I don’t believe it!”
“Shush!” she told him. “You’ll wake everyone in the house.”
He wouldn’t stop laughing—or couldn’t. She wasn’t sure which. Finally she grabbed a pillow and smashed it over his face. That finally shut him up.
He lay there so still, Joanna grew afraid she’d smothered him. “Rory?” she whispered, lifting the pillow.
He immediately brought her face down to his, kissing her passionately. All of a sudden, he started laughing again. He laughed till tears ran from the corners of his eyes.
“I’m going to start getting angry if you don’t stop laughing at me,” she threatened.
He kissed her again. “Darling of my heart,” he whispered against her temple, “how did I ever get so lucky?”
At the loving Gaelic endearment, Joanna became absolutely still. Grandpapa had been the only person who’d ever called her that. Anguish welled up inside her, flooding her already overwrought emotions to the brink. She pushed back and looked into her husband’s mirthful gaze, her heart breaking.
Unable to help herself, Joanna burst into tears. She slumped down on his chest and buried her face in the curve of his neck. “Oh, Rory,” she sobbed, “why did it have to be you?”
Stunned, Rory cradled his wife in his arms and listened to her heartbroken sobs. He stared at the green silk canopy above them, fighting back the galling disappointment. He’d hoped that tonight Joanna would tell him she loved him. Instead, she was crying her heart out because he, Laird Rory MacLean, was her husband.
Rory and Alex stood in the kitchen the next morning, eating oat porridge and hot buttered scones. The weather had cleared, and they intended to make a tour of the Archnacarry fields. As laird of Kinlochleven, Rory would need to become familiar with the yearly routine of plowing, planting and harvesting crops, as well as the raising of the sturdy, long-haired Highland cattle. Before setting out, he planned to return upstairs to get his weapons and to check on his wife, whom he’d left peacefully slumbering in the midst of the shambles they’d created the night before.
Suddenly the door leading from the great hall banged opened with a crash. The two lairds turned in surprise to find Godfrey Macdonald holding his sword on Archnacarry’s steward, Malcolm. Immediately behind them came a hefty Macdonald man-at-arms with Raine held fast in his grasp and the blade of a dirk laid across her throat. Though pale with fright, the lassie remained calm.
“I-I’m sorry, milord,” Malcolm said. “They told me they were Lady Joanna’s family, come to pay their respects to the bride and groom. They’d hidden their weapons beneath their clothing.”
Fists clenched, Alex glared at the beefy Macdonald soldier. Like Rory, he hadn’t yet buckled on his broadsword and dirk. “Get your hands off my niece, you damn filthy slug,” he ordered.
Godfrey snickered, his beady eyes glittering in his bloated face. “No one will be harmed,” he said, “as long as you remain calm. Lady Cameron and the lassie will act as surety for your good behavior. But if either of you try to resist, the girl and her mother will be the first ones killed.” He jerked the point of his dark, scraggly beard toward the door. “Now, gentlemen, shall we join the ladies?”
When they entered the manor hall, they found Nina encircled by five Macdonalds at the far end of the chamber. Rory paused to scan the large, high-ceilinged room with its gallery leading to the second-floor quarters.
Andrew, accompanied by a corpulent Observantine friar, waited in front of the great hearth. His brown eyes troubled, the comely lad seemed to have lost his zeal for marrying his cousin. The night spent with the brigands and the subsequent rescue had left its mark.
Along with Cameron’s clansmen who’d been disarmed, the household servants had been gathered together and seated on the benches at the trestle tables under the surveillance of a dozen soldiers. One woman wept quietly, the only sound in the large room, except for their footsteps on the scented rushes. Isabel stood apart, guarded by two men. Joanna was nowhere in the hall.
“Get in there,” Godfrey snarled as he shoved Rory from behind.
Rory reined in the urge to turn on the filthy cretin and wrest the sword from his grasp. Until he knew that Joanna was safe, he dared not take the offensive.
The remaining Macdonalds surrounded Rory, their weapons drawn, and quickly separated him from the Camerons. They led him to the center of the hall, and Rory allowed them to force him to his knees, five sword points held scant inches from his head.
A noise came from the gallery above, and all eyes turned upward. Gripping Joanna’s arm, Ewen dragged the outraged lass remorselessly along behind him. She was still in her nightshift, her hair tumbling about her. Too far away to be heard from the lower level, the two were arguing bitterly.
On the second-floor arcade, Joanna tried to wrest free from her cousin’s grasp. “Let me go,” she insisted. “How dare you invade these people’s home!”
Ewen’s baneful gaze flickered over her rumpled shift and disheveled hair as he scrutinized her with open disdain. “We won’t be here long, lass,” he replied. “Only as long as it takes for you to sign the papers for your annulment.”
“You’re mad!” she told him scornfully. “There are no grounds for an annulment.”
“There are always grounds, if a lassie is clever enough.”
Her jaw dropped, and she gazed at him in bewilderment. “What justification could there possibly be?”
“Impotency.”
“That’s a lie,” she hissed.
But he already knew that. He’d found her asleep in bed, surrounded by the evidence of Rory’s presence and their impassioned mating. The room was littered with apples, oranges, walnuts, flowers, perfumed soaps, and articles of clothing. The tub of bathwater, cold now, still sat in front of the hearth, the toppled screen on the floor beside it. Her husband’s sword and dirk rested next to the overturned stool. Nearby lay a coverlet of sable, where they’d moved during the night to be close to the crackling fire while he brushed her hair dry.
“’Tis a lie!” she repeated. “And well you know it.”
Ewen pivoted so only his back could be seen from the manor hall, neatly hiding Joanna from view. He pitched his words low, making certain the people watching from the ground floor couldn’t hear.
“You’re going to swear before God and man that MacLean is impotent, Joanna,” he said with a sour smile. “I’ve brought the priest and the papers. Your Macdonald clansmen shall be the witnesses to your oath.”
She recoiled in disgust. “I’ll never swear to such a lie. Never. ’Twould be blasphemy!”
Ewen drew her closer, his fingers biting into her arm. “Then you’ll be relieved to know that you’ll soon be a widow,” he said. “Because either you swear that the marriage has never been consummated, or by God, we’ll kill the baseborn miscreant here and now.”
Joanna clutched the red and blue tartan wool pinned to Ewen’s shirt. “Don’t kill him,” she begged. “I pray you, don’t kill him.”
His smile flashed cold and humorless in his silver-streaked beard. She could hear the faint rasp of desperation in his voice. “The decision is yours, lass. I’d rather not risk the King’s retribution for killing his favorite Highland laird. But James Stewart and his bloody avenger be damned, MacLean lives or dies according to the next words out of your mouth.”
He thrust her toward the gallery railing. Below, the Camerons and her kinsmen waited in mesmerized silence, their faces uplifted, their gazes locked on the two cousins arguing above them.
“Say it,” Ewen snarled. “Tell them now.”
Joanna flinched in horror as she looked down at the scene below. On the rush-covered stone floor, five able-bodied Macdonald soldiers held Rory at sword point. He was on his knees, Godfrey behind him. The sight of the magnificent golden warrior humbled by his enemies tore at her heart.
Her lips trembled. “I…I…” she began, then covered her mouth with shaky fingers.
“Say it, Joanna,” Ewen commanded.
She gripped the carved walnut railing and stared down at the crowded hall. Within a cluster of burly men-at-arms, Lady Nina, white-faced and terrified, met Joanna’s gaze, beseeching her wordlessly to save her family. Ebony eyes unwavering, Raine stood with the malevolent blade of a dirk resting against her throat, waiting with an air of contemptuous detachment. Laird Alex and Isabel had been separated from the others by a small knot of soldiers.
Rory watched Joanna with cool self-possession, his features composed. He seemed to be trying to give her some of his own strength of will, his concern for her welfare surpassing any fear for his own safety.
Joanna tore her gaze from his, unable to meet the piercing green eyes when she denied him. Instead, she looked at the priest in the hooded black habit of the Observantines, who stood beside Andrew at the fireplace. “I-I wish to…to apply for an annulment, Father,” she said, her voice scratchy and thick in her bone-dry throat.
“Don’t, Joanna,” Rory called, an icy warning in his words.
“On what grounds, milady,” the friar inquired smoothly. The portly man had been bribed and knew exactly what was occurring.
“On the grounds of…of…” Tears blurred her eyes, and she could no longer focus on the people below. She placed her fingers on her eyelids, pressing away the telltale drops.
“Don’t do this, Joanna!” Rory shouted. The fury in his words struck her with the force of a riding crop across the face.
Her gaze fastened on the clergyman, she clung to the wooden rail, her knees nearly buckling beneath her. “The marriage between Laird MacLean and…and myself has never been…been consummated.”
“Goddammit!” Rory cursed, turning his wrath on the friar. “She’s being forced to say this, you cold-hearted sonofabitch.”
The priest ignored him. “Can you prove your statement, milady?” he inquired pleasantly.
“We…we have always slept a-apart,” Joanna said, choking back a sob. “I tried to kill him on our wedding night and ran away the next evening, as my cousin Andrew can avouch. Since arriving at Archnacarry, Laird MacLean and I have…have slept in separate bedchambers.”
The friar’s tonsured head shone smooth as a sea-worn pebble as he nodded gravely. “And this you solemnly swear to, Lady Joanna?”
Joanna wiped the tears from her cheeks, then twisted her hands together in front of her. “I swear by all the saints in heaven that, despite the holy sacrament of matrimony, I remain a virgin still.”
“She lies!” her husband roared. His booming voice echoed through the hall in his wild frenzy. “We are well and truly married.”
Rage tightening every muscle, Rory started to regain his feet, and the five men encircling him struggled to hold him down. With an oath, Godfrey grabbed a handful of Rory’s hair, shoved a knee between his shoulder blades, and jerked his head back. He held his dirk across the stretched tendons of Rory’s throat, the steel less than an inch away.
“Don’t make another mistake like that,” Godfrey warned, a sneer creasing his pocked, bleary-eyed face.
“You’re a dead man,” Rory told him calmly. The points of five broadswords moved closer at the soft-spoken words.
“Let me slit the whoreson’s throat,” Godfrey called to his brother. “’Twill be faster than filing those damn papers in Rome.” He moved to draw the razor edge of the blade across the exposed juggler.
“Wait!” Nina cried. Her rose-gold hair drifting about her shoulders, she held out one graceful hand in a pleading gesture. “Don’t kill him. ’Tis true, what Lady Joanna says. I gave them separate rooms at their mutual request. Laird MacLean never slept with his wife.” She paused, knowing every head was turned in her direction, every pair of eyes fastened on her. “I know it for a fact,” she continued, her angelic face drained of color, her melodious soprano quavering pitifully. “I know because he slept with me, instead.”
A hush swept through the chamber.
“And you’ll be willing to sign an oath to that effect, Lady Cameron?” the black-robed friar inquired with an unctuous smile.
“I will swear to it on the holy crucifix,” she replied, her lovely azure eyes fastened on Rory. “Joanna Macdonald remains a virgin.”
With a bellow of rage, Rory shoved a punishing elbow into Godfrey’s soft paunch and sprang to his feet. The merciless crack of a sword hilt on the back of his head brought instant blackness.