He’d thought his conscience long destroyed, but the woman had made him feel like a brute. And his intentions to simply claim the wedding night quickly had been dissolved by that wide-eyed, delicate look. He had walked into the room and she had been standing there, like a woman lost to herself, and sensation he had not known he possessed the power to feel had turned inside him.
She was an instrument in his revenge and nothing more. But she seemed much more a woman, a person, separated from her father and all he represented, and he took no joy in her fear.
Grown men had trembled in his presence and he’d taken lives on the battlefield. He was not so small a man he needed to find strength in the fear of a woman.
He felt much more inclined towards giving her pleasure.
And why not? he’d asked himself. She was his wife. He had been long without a woman, between his last voyage, and his determination to take himself straight to Penny’s father once he had decided his course. Why not take his pleasure with her as he chose and not simply dispense her of her virginity as quickly as possible?
He might be accustomed to treating sex as a transaction between a man and a woman, but in that sense he had always felt the transaction should be equal. Women were capable of feeling desire and satisfaction in the same way he was. He had always found it unsatisfying to leave them without it. It was true some whores were jaded and didn’t wish to release themselves in that way, but then he felt that was a choice.
Still, he’d found many were happy to make it an indulgence and he was always more satisfied for it.
So why should he not afford the same courtesy to his wife? Why should she not feel pleasure? It was clear to him that the idea of physical pleasure between a man and a woman was foreign to her. That it was something she had not considered to be possible.
It was the shifting in his chest that had occurred after they’d come together that had sent him to the stables. Pacing around in the cold might do him some good.
One of his men, William, was sleeping on the floor, a blanket tugged up under his arms, his head lolled to the side. Lachlan nudged him with the toe of his boot.
‘Captain?’ the man asked, waking quickly.
They had been soldiers together. Neither of them slept very deeply. Wakefulness was instantaneous for those who had spent years on frozen battlefields littered with enemies and bodies.
‘I need you to go back to the lass’s house. You must collect some things for me. Meet us at the next inn.’
William stood, nodding grimly, and if he were exhausted or resentful of the order, he did not show it.
Lachlan had earned the loyalty of his men in battle, and, to those who had no home or family, he had offered them work after. Some remained on the ships, some were returning to Scotland with him.
They would be welcomed into the clan. He would make sure of it. It was an oath he’d sworn to those who had left the Highlands, as he had. Some of those men no longer had clans to return to, poverty and skirmishes destroying all that was left behind.
He would not leave them in England. They had become his men on the battlefield, united in fighting for a country they had no allegiance to. He would bring them back to where they belonged.
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘When we are back home,’ he said to the other man, ‘I will be Laird to you. Not captain.’
‘Yes, Laird,’ the other man said, inclining his head.
Lachlan gave his instructions, then spent more time than was strictly necessary evaluating his horse, the one who would carry him from here to Scotland. The carriage team they would change out at every coaching inn, but not his horse.
Perhaps his disquiet came from the fact he had never been with a woman who was innocent.
He preferred jaded women. Their souls matched.
Women who had experienced little good in the world, who had been given nothing in the way of comfort. And for a time, together, they could find a bit of warmth. A bit of pleasure.
Penny needed something more from him and he did not know quite what it was. Even more, he wasn’t certain why he felt compelled to give it.
She was not a weeping, delicate female. She surprised him. Through all of this, she had never once dissolved.
But there had been something in the way she had responded to his touch. Her shock, her shame. She hadn’t known her body could feel such things, that much had been apparent by the way she had responded.
It had done something to him. Had made something inside him feel as though it might be new, too. He didn’t want that.
He hadn’t asked for any of it.
He hadn’t asked to pity his little wife.
Or care at all about her bird.
Or her box.
He busied himself with plans and strategies he did not require until he was ready to collapse from lack of sleep. Only then did he return to the room upstairs. Only then did he allow himself to lie on the bed beside her, staying atop the blankets rather than joining her beneath them.
She looked small and vulnerable. And one thing he determined then.
He would protect her. With his sword, if need be. He would protect her from any enemy that she might face. What he did not know was if he possessed the power to protect her from himself.
* * *
Penny awoke the next morning, feeling more exhausted than when she’d fallen asleep. Her body ached in strange places and, when the maid brought a bowl with warm water and a pitcher into the room, her face burned with shame. As if the other woman knew why she might feel the need to cleanse. Naturally, she likely would.
The burning in her face persisted as she washed herself—intimately—before she dressed.
There was a bit of blood on the cloth she used. Which led her to go and look at the sheets. A bit of blood there as well.
Emotion pushed against her throat. She felt very alone. And Lachlan wasn’t there. She knew that he’d come back. She had felt him lie upon the bed and had waited for him to put his hands on her again, but he had not.
She had drifted in and out of sleep. When she had finally awoken when the sun pierced through the small window of the room, he wasn’t there.
She went through the trunk he had brought up and found a blue dress, new stays and a new chemise as well.
With no small amount of contortion she managed to get herself buttoned into the garment. There was also a bonnet, with a navy ribbon that matched the dress, and a rich wool overcoat of the same shade.
She arranged her hair simply, reusing the pins he had removed last night, and she examined herself, trying to see if she looked as different as she felt. She could see no mark of what had passed between them last night, but her soul felt branded.
Scalded.
As if he had been attuned to her movements, the door opened then.
He appeared, large and intimidating as ever, and ready for the day.
If he was affected by last night’s intimacy, he did not show it. She had no idea how she was meant to ride in a carriage with him having been close to his body the way she’d been. It was as if she could feel him now. Pressed against her. Even with all the space between them.
She felt the building pressure between her thighs and had never been angrier at her own body than she was now, for the way it responded to him. She reminded herself, grimly, of that pain and loneliness that had accompanied the act.
Her body could remember only the pleasure.
She was forced again to grudgingly admit that this was why women allowed themselves to be ruined.
She had been told of the innocence of women. That they bore children, that they were the fairer sex in all ways. That they possessed an innate purity that men never would. It was women’s job to steady their urges.
What tripe. How could she steady his urges when she couldn’t master her own?
‘We should be on our way,’ he said, the first words spoken to her since he had left her last night. She didn’t know what she expected from him. She had no right to expect anything. She didn’t know why she felt gravely disappointed, why she felt restless and lonely and empty. She had never been told to expect more from marriage and her dreams regarding her union with the Duke of Kendal had centred around the female companionship she might find in his house. It was such a strange thing, because she had thought the Duke so beautiful. Because her heart had ached, but not after him, she realised now. After all that had come with him.
After what he had represented.
A softness and comfort she had never known. A warm house that was filled with people who cared for each other, rather than an old manor house that was always cold, containing two family members who did not know how to speak to each other.
Her sense of what her future might hold had been heavily influenced by those surrounding fantasies, but she had not known to dream of what her marriage itself might contain. A life living in that household, but not a life knowing a man as deeply as she realised one did know a husband.
Except, she didn’t know him. She knew little about him, yet he had seen her in a state that no one else ever had. She knew next to nothing about him, yet she had touched his body in a fashion she couldn’t fathom touching another. In a fashion she wouldn’t have been able to fathom touching him had it not occurred.
It was disorientating to say the least.
* * *
When all her things were packed away she found herself being bundled into the carriage. He did not join her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, sticking her head out the window.
‘I’m riding,’ he said. ‘Have no patience for sitting in a carriage that many hours.’
‘I’m going to be alone for the duration?’
‘You may occupy yourself with whatever you like.’
‘I haven’t got anything to occupy myself, if you will recall. I did not bring any of my things. I haven’t a book.’
‘I believe the woman who helped assemble your trunk included needlepoint.’
She quite liked needlepoint, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. ‘I would prefer nature writings on the flora and fauna of Scotland.’
‘You won’t be needing a book. I can instruct you.’
‘But you won’t be in the carriage with me.’
‘And we’ll not be in Scotland today.’
With that, the conversation ended.
* * *
They pushed themselves further that day than they had the first and, by the time they arrived at the inn, she was exhausted and her nerves were frayed. He did not help her get ready for bed, rather he sent a maid up to assist her, though Penny knew she could have done without.
She lowered all the lamps, save one by the door, and got into bed.
She couldn’t sleep. She wondered if he would come to bed. She was angry, because she was so tired, but she found herself on edge, waiting for the man.
How could she sleep knowing that she might have an experience like she had the night before? Not being certain?
It had been altering and much as though someone had taken small scissors to the places where she was stitched together, snipped them all out and she was waiting to be made anew.
She didn’t know if a reprieve was the answer, or if his touch might be.
She was resentful that he had suddenly become the largest thought in her head.
She hadn’t chosen this. She hadn’t chosen him.
And he consumed her all the same. Had burst through her defences in a way that she hadn’t foreseen and she hated it. She needed to find a way to remake herself.
And silence had only ever been her enemy.
The door opened then and there he was. She shivered. She couldn’t help but react.
He began to strip off his clothes, the dim light from the single lantern playing tricks with light and shadow over that warrior’s body.
She had been so overwhelmed by him last night that, while she had looked, she felt as if she hadn’t been able to fully get a grasp of how he truly appeared. It had been like staring into the sun.
He had scars. Ridges of flesh that spoke of wounds sustained in battle. His chest was broad, his waist narrow, his thighs well muscled. And then there was… Well, the rest of him. Now that she didn’t feel quite so intimidated she could see that he was, in totality, beautiful.
She had seen paintings of naked men, but their members were small and wilted. Not his. It was… In full bloom, by contrast to wilted, she supposed.
She wanted to ask him the words. For everything. That was what she really wanted. She needed a book, an encyclopaedia of his body, one that might come with labels and terms for each illustrated figure.
It was how she learned.
How she had learned everything that she knew so far. It seemed reasonable enough to wish that she might have a book for him. For this. For them.
He said nothing to her, came over to the bed and settled on top of it. Then she waited.
He didn’t move. He didn’t get beneath the blankets. She stole a glance at him and could see that he was lying on his back with his arm thrown up over his face.
He lay there brazen, uncovered, clearly not at all ashamed of his exposed form. She began to feel restless, for she could not sleep with such a great awareness of his presence. With him right there, not knowing what he intended to do. With that strange pressure building between her legs and creating a restlessness in the pit of her stomach.
‘Lachlan,’ she said.
‘Don’t,’ was his response, clipped and short and angry.
‘Don’t what?’
‘I’m not in the mood to be gentle tonight, lass. Just sleep.’
‘I don’t know what that means,’ she said, feeling frustrated.
He growled and, suddenly, he was over her, his green eyes blazing into hers.
‘You do that quite a lot,’ she whispered. ‘Growling like a beast.’
‘You tempt me to it.’
‘I don’t know what that means either.’
‘All the more reason you should have let me sleep.’
‘I can’t sleep,’ she confessed.
He kissed her then and she wanted to weep. Because finally, finally she felt something. A surge of strength and power. She had felt so hollow and miserable and lonely all day, ever since he had left her bed last night. But now he was kissing her and every possibility he had raised the night before was there again. It was a magical thing, the way that his kiss burned away the anger she had felt. Her fear. Her trepidation.
He pushed the bedding down with no small amount of violence in his movement and pushed her nightdress up, settling himself between her legs, pressing his hardness to the cleft between her thighs and shifting his hips slowly. She was wet there again and the glide of his heat was smooth, stoking that desire inside her that she had felt the last time they were together.
He entered her much more quickly this time, but it didn’t hurt. She felt slightly tender for a moment, but it receded quickly. His strokes were hard and fast, his grip bruising on her hips, and when his teeth closed down on her lower lip, the shock sent an arrow of even deeper pleasure through her body.
She was like spun glass and knew that he would shatter her soon. But this was so different than how she’d felt all day in the silence. There was a power in this because, as fragile as she was, he was right there with her. She tried to hold back, because she knew how undone it made her feel and it frightened her more than a little. But soon, she couldn’t. His breath, his body, his kiss. The way his heart raged in his chest, the deep, masculine sounds of pleasure that were foreign and mystical to her ears, all combined to stoke the flame of her desire.
‘Penny,’ he said and, the moment his name fell from her lips, a plea she didn’t quite understand, she broke.
She gasped her pleasure, clinging to his shoulders, and that was when he withdrew, spending his own pleasure on to the sheets.
She wanted to ask him why, but her thoughts and words were tangled, and he didn’t leave tonight. Instead he settled himself on the blankets, keeping distance between them, and slept.
How…how could he? How could he sleep with all of this between them?
It forced her to conclude that he felt nothing. That somehow this had changed nothing in him.
That she was alone in feeling altered. That created a terrible loneliness indeed.
* * *
In the morning, he was gone again, just as he been the night before. Once again, he bundled her into the carriage and rode on his horse. And again, any closeness that she had felt evaporated.
Of all the concerns she had about marriage, she realised now that they were foolish. She hadn’t even known what concerns to have.
Right now, the deepest was all the feelings she had no names for. And a husband who made her feel both more whole than she’d ever felt in her life and lonelier, too.
This was not the life she had dreamed of.
‘You’re a fool for thinking you could have dreams in the first place.’ And since she was alone in the carriage, she could say it out loud.
But then she rebelled against herself. No, she was not a fool. She was only a fool if she allowed it to stand.
If she wanted change, she would have to make it.