Читать книгу Highlander Claimed - Juliette Miller - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

I WAS NOT ONLY ALLOWED but also expected to remain at Wilkie’s side, as he was taken to his chambers and treated by the healer.

His chambers were large and, as expected, luxurious. Heavy furs hung at the windows to protect against the night breeze, which was becoming more biting with each passing day. A fire had been laid in a grand stone fireplace and crackled pleasantly, casting orange light. Wilkie’s bed was supported by four vertical carved wooden beams that reached to the ceiling and were hung with thick embroidered curtains, pulled back now, so the healer could attend to his injury.

I took my place in a chair by the fire as Wilkie’s attendants inspected and cleaned his wound. I was so exhausted, I could have slept in the hard wooden seat. My eyelids felt heavy, and I struggled to keep myself from drifting.

Kade and the laird hung back, watching the healer attend to their brother. In a flurry of commotion, two younger women rushed through the door, frantic with the news of Wilkie’s return. His sisters, it was easy to see, with their dark hair and blue eyes.

“Wilkie,” one of them gasped, pressing her hand to his brow. “He’s fevered,” she said.

“He’s alive, and home,” said the other sister, “and strong as an ox. He’ll be fine.” She adjusted his furs with extreme care, fussing over him.

I envied him, his family close around him, wrenching concern etched onto their faces.

The slightly taller sister, whose hair was as black as Wilkie’s, addressed the healer. “Effie, how severe are his injuries?”

“Quite severe,” replied Effie. “Who stitched this?” she asked the laird.

“’Twas the lass here,” the laird said. “Roses.” All eyes moved to me, but I was too tired to take much notice of their scrutiny, which soon shifted back to Wilkie.

Effie gave a noise that suggested she was mildly impressed. “It can remain in place. The wound itself has begun to heal. In fact, the quick stitching probably saved his life. ’Tis a nasty wound indeed.” She cleaned and bound Wilkie’s torso, then she prescribed a drink of cooled willowbark tea, which she scooped from a pot with a wooden goblet.

But when the women tried to hold his head to make him drink, he swiped the goblet away, sending it flying across the room where it struck the stone wall.

“You must take the drink, Wilkie,” Effie instructed him in a loud voice, as though he was deaf rather than fevered. But when they tried again, his reaction was even more violent, and his body began to thrash in agitation as he groaned with the pain of his own unrest.

“Roses,” the laird said, signaling for me to go to Wilkie. “You try.”

Uneasy under the room’s collective gaze, I walked to Wilkie’s bed. He lay in the middle of the expanse, so I had to climb up to sit next to him. I put my face close to his. “Warrior, you must drink. Let me hold the cup for you. It will cool your throat.”

He turned his face toward me but didn’t open his eyes. “Ach,” he barely whispered, a slow smile touching his mouth. “My angel has come to me.”

Effie handed me the goblet. I held Wilkie’s head, lifting him until his lips touched the rim. “Here it is. Take your drink, warrior,” I crooned. “That’s it, and a little more.”

He drank until the cup was empty.

“Stay with me,” he said drowsily. “Right here, where I can feel you.”

“Aye, warrior.”

I laid his head back on his pillow, more peaceful now. I made a move to slide off the bed, but Wilkie looped a large, muscular arm around my waist, pulling me against him. I tried to pry his fingers gently loose, attempting to unwrap his arm from around my hips where I lay practically on top of him. But Wilkie immediately began to protest, pulling me back to him and securing his hold around me, even more tightly. Through the haze of his fever, he murmured my name and other words of endearment that brought heat to my face, and elsewhere. The laird and Kade noticed my blush, which only worsened its effect.

I leaned up to Wilkie, whispering assurances close to his ear that I was still here, that I wouldn’t leave him. He quieted and loosened his hold, allowing me to sit. But I was still locked decisively in his ironclad grip.

“He requires rest,” announced Effie. She contemplated my placement next to Wilkie and the entwined clasp of our fingers. “The lassie looks dead on her feet. Would you like me to find a bed for her, Laird Mackenzie?”

Wilkie’s words were slurred but quite emphatic for a man infirmed. “She’ll sleep here. With me.”

At this, Kade chuckled quietly.

But the laird did not appear to be quite as amused. “She can sleep in the women’s chambers, and be brought to you on the morrow.”

This information appeared disagreeable enough to rouse Wilkie momentarily from his fugue. His eyes barely opened, and his voice was husked with illness, but he spoke clearly enough to be understood. “I need her. She keeps the darkness at bay.”

“Wilkie,” said the laird, and his voice was firm, as though he was confident he could talk some sense into his delusional brother. “Be reasonable. The lass is neither a figment of your imagination nor is she a captive. In fact we know next to nothing about who, indeed, the lass is—a mystery I aim to get to the bottom of as soon as she is rested. She’ll sleep in the extra bed in Christie’s chambers and we can all meet and discuss what’s to be done in the morning. Now—”

“Nay!” Wilkie’s voice sounded almost panicked, and his grasp grew stronger as he attempted to rise into a sitting position. “You’ll not take her. She’s mine.” But the pain in his side speared him, and he flinched, clenching my fingers all the while in a vise-grip, and fell back onto his pillows. Shocked by the agonized sound he made, I used my hands to gently hold him in place.

“Please, warrior,” I urged him, wiping away a tear from my cheek. “Sleep now. Don’t damage yourself further. The moment I’m allowed to return to you, I will.”

The lingering agony was taking its toll; Wilkie’s eyes were directed at me even as he spoke to his brother, and they were heavy-lidded as he slurred from the effects of the strong brew he’d been given. “I’ll die. The sight of her. Her touch... She heals me like no medicine could. Let her... Roses. Angel.” His voice faded as he struggled to retain consciousness. His grip on my body loosened as he succumbed to sleep.

“The man’s taken total leave of his senses, to be sure,” Kade said lightly, but he was watching Wilkie with worry.

One of the sisters spoke then. “Let me get some furs and make up the bed in Wilkie’s adjoining chambers. Please, Knox. Roses can sleep in there, in case he awakens and calls to her.” We hadn’t been formally introduced, but she’d clearly surmised my name during the proceedings. She sounded as if she’d already accepted Wilkie’s pleas and would do all she could to accommodate them.

“Aye,” said the other sister, eager excitement written into her features at the prospect of scandal. “I’ll sleep with her if you like, so she’ll be chaperoned. You must agree, Knox. There’s no need to agitate Wilkie further by removing Roses completely from his chambers when it’s clearly against his wishes. He’s obviously taken an attachment to her. And we must do everything we can to speed his recovery.”

Laird Mackenzie looked thoroughly irritated by the situation, but perhaps he was concerned enough about his brother’s obvious distress to make allowances. He glanced once at Kade, who shrugged and said, “’Tis a reasonable suggestion. We don’t want unnecessary agitation to worsen his condition. We can check in on them from time to time.”

The laird’s glance rested on me for a moment, as though attempting to read my motives. “I suppose we could.” With a heavy sigh, he said, “All right, then. Ailie, you make up the beds. Christie, you’ll sleep with Roses. Effie, you’ll see to the lass—the shoulder of her tunic is stained with fresh blood. She appears to be injured. You’ll tend to the lass’s wound. Kade, you’ll check in at regular intervals during the night.”

Once, it might have occurred to me to question or protest this blatantly inappropriate scenario of sleeping in the adjoining chambers of a man, and one I barely knew. In fact, I felt wildly relieved. I wouldn’t be cast out. And I could be near him, this warrior whose blood had mingled with my own and whose eyes and mouth and fingers had already provoked a longing in me that I could neither explain nor deny.

Effie began to gather her equipment.

One of Wilkie’s sisters went ahead, through the door of the adjoining chambers, and the other helped me extricate myself from Wilkie’s grip. She took my arm. “Come, Roses. We’ll show you to your bed.”

“First,” said Kade, “we’ll divest you of your weapons.”

The abundant weaponry slung across his body, along with his size and slightly wild-eyed look, was wholly daunting as he approached me. I did as he asked. I removed my belt, holding it out, along with my small sword and knife. Kade grabbed the lot.

I remembered Laird Ogilvie’s officers’ passing descriptions, then, of the Mackenzies. Lethal. Armed to the teeth.

Aye, Kade Mackenzie was armed to the teeth. But his blue eyes appeared more curious than cutting; he seemed mildly intrigued by this unusual turn of events and at Wilkie’s sudden desire to have me close. “Your weapons,” he said, “will remain in our care.”

“I trust your accommodation will be suitable,” said the laird, nodding once in a brief bid good-night. The gesture was polite, oddly, and somewhat foreign to me; it was the gesture of a nobleman, and one that might be delivered to a woman of his own class. Something I was most definitely not. It occurred to me then that he wasn’t aware of my lowly status. Tomorrow the truth would be told, but tonight, I would enjoy the plush chambers of the privileged few.

* * *

THE ANTECHAMBER WAS a long, narrow room with a stone-bound window seat at one end, generously adorned with fur cushions. At the opposite end of the room was a fireplace, laid with a recently lit fire. Two single beds were being draped with thick, luxurious coverings. Merely the sight of a warm fur-piled bed amplified my fatigue.

Now, in the close quarters, I could get a better look at Wilkie’s sisters. I had noticed immediately the strong family resemblance between the Mackenzie siblings. His sisters were indeed quite beautiful. Both regarded me with blatant curiosity.

“I’m Ailie, Roses. And this is Christie.”

“Roses,” said Christie, the younger sister, whose manner was open and vivacious. She took my hand. “’Tis a pleasure to meet you. However do you find yourself in Wilkie’s bed? You’ll be the envy of legions.” She was exquisitely petite, and her hair was a minky shade of dark brown, which she wore loose so it waved gently around her shoulders. Her eyes were an unusual shade of light blue and sparkled with a hint of mischief. Eager questions bubbled out of her, as though she couldn’t contain them. “You must tell us the story. What has happened? And where did you come from?”

“Stop interrogating her, Christie,” scolded Ailie. She was the taller of the two, slim and elegant in the way she held herself. Her more reserved manner suggested she was the elder sister. Her black hair was swept up in a fashionably braided twist. And her eyes were such a deep shade of blue, they might have been described as violet. “We’ll talk of all that tomorrow. Roses needs to have her injury treated, and she needs sleep. Here, Roses, lie here on this bed so Effie can look at your wound.”

I lay on the bed, so very grateful for its warmth and its softness.

Effie came to me, setting down her tray filled with teas and medicines, bandages and ointments. As she leaned over me, I looked more closely at her face for the first time. She was perhaps twice my age, short and rounded, with a busy bunch of red curls framing her kind, pink face. “Can you sit up, dear? I’ll need to remove your tunic. And the oversize trews you wear, whatever for I wouldn’t guess at. I daresay you look like you’ve been through the wars.”

I could hear Kade and the laird in Wilkie’s adjoining chambers, in quiet discussion. Then the door closed.

Effie helped me remove my outer clothing. I made sure to keep my back hidden, aware of my tattoo, as always, and careful not to reveal it. My hair still hung loose, covering me, and I lay back as Effie attended to me. She treated and bound my wound, chattering gently of its successful healing thus far, despite the blood. She described her methods as she worked, to make me feel at ease, perhaps, as Ailie and Christie watched intermittently, and attended to tidying up the room. And I was grateful for their chipper yet restful presence. Effie gave me some tea and a dose of medicine. She felt my forehead and expressed concern at the warmth, but she hoped that the medicine was administered in time, that it would override the beginnings of any danger. Then she tucked the furs to my neck and patted them.

“’Tis brief, your underclothing,” she whispered, putting her face close to mine. “But ’twill hardly be an issue, lassie.” She was smiling kindly, with only a hint of chiding curiosity. She seemed to be most entertained by the near-scandal of my presence in Wilkie’s antechamber and pleased to be privy to the drama of it. “Ailie and Christie will find clothing for you on the morrow. Something more...suitable.”

I wanted to thank her for the offer and assure all of them than it wouldn’t be necessary; I would be on my way on the morrow, if I could just get some bread. Some pears, maybe. But I was asleep before I could even get the words out.

* * *

“ROSES.”

The darkness was too thick, the sleep too deep.

“Roses.”

I sat straight up, utterly bewildered. For the briefest, panicked moment, I thought I might be in Ogilvie’s dungeon, cast forever into the fetid gloom for my brazen desertion. My mind flashed then to the cave. Was I alone? But I could see now: the pattern of the stone-laid floor near the dying embers of the fire. The shadowy outlines of the bed and the room.

“Angel, where are you?” came the muffled, husky murmur. “Come back to me.”

My awareness settled into place. I could see that Christie was asleep in her own bed; she didn’t stir. I eased myself from the warm cocoon of my furs and went to the door of Wilkie’s private chambers. It was unlocked. No one was with him, and his chambers were quiet. I entered and closed the door behind me. Wilkie lay in his bed, his eyes closed, but he was writhing slightly, murmuring. His hair was in disarray and damp from his own sweat.

I went to him and held my hand to his forehead. Still feverish.

At the touch of my hand to his skin, his eyelids fluttered but did not open. He groaned softly in a spoken word. “Roses.”

“Here I am, warrior,” I whispered to him, leaning close. Wilkie’s room was dark save the flickering light of a fire that had been loaded with wood, to keep the room warm for him. But it was too warm, I thought. He was overheated. I pulled the furs down from his chest, draping them back over his bandaged side, to his waist.

I went to Effie’s tray, which had been left on a table next to his bed, and I poured a goblet of cooled medicinal tea. When I climbed up next to him to try to revive him enough to drink some of the liquid, I was surprised to see that his eyes were open, blazing in their sudden blueness, still bright and slightly bloodshot from his fever. He drank willingly when I offered him the cup. It was only then that I realized I was clad only in my brief underclothing.

I made a move to leave him, to go and cover myself.

His hand clasped my wrist with surprising strength. “Stay,” he said, his voice deep and rasped from lack of use. Not a command, a request. The grasp of his hand loosened almost immediately, his fingers feathering the light downy hairs on my arm.

“Let me go, warrior. I’ll dress. Then I’ll return to you.”

“Stay,” he said again. “I’ll not look at you.” But his eyes were already on me, burning into me.

My thin shift did little to hide my body, but then again this warrior had already seen me, and much more than that. He had, in fact, tasted me, pulling sensuously with his hot mouth, biting with his teeth. The thought sent a hot flush to my cheeks and to my breasts as I remembered the feel of him. I hoped he couldn’t detect my heat in the dim light. Or my secret, rising desire for more of his tantalizing touches.

“I might look at you just a little,” he amended, watching as my body responded to him, as my nipples grew tighter. A hint of a smile played at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were light against the dark rims of his eyelashes. He’s breathtaking, I thought.

“I’m dreaming,” he said, as though speaking to himself. “She can’t be real.”

“I’m real, warrior,” I said, drawing my finger across the back of his hand to convince him, so he could feel my touch.

“Are you?” he whispered.

“Aye.”

He paused, allowing the reality to settle. “And you’re here, in my chambers with me.” He laughed softly. “My brothers are truly good to me when I’m ill.”

“You fairly insisted on it,” I said gently.

His slow smile offered a brief dazzling flash. “Aye. I remember. I want you as close as you can be. Let me feel you, lass.”

His fingertips drew soft lines up my arm, and he reached to stroke the long strands of my hair, smoothing it carefully against my arms and my breasts, as though disbelieving the solidity of me. His touch was possessive and sure, leaving trails of warmth wherever his fingers had lingered.

“My dreams were so vivid,” he mused. “You appeared to me, a golden angel. I have never seen a beauty equal to yours. You were the sun, burning me with your golden light. Burning me as I’ve never burned. When you left me, all was dark. I followed you for days so I could feel again your voice, your warmth and your fair hair, touching me like a feathery wing.”

I knew Wilkie’s delirium remained; it was clear that he perceived me as a vision, perhaps, or an apparition. I suspected he was associating me with some kind of life force that had led him from the darkness of death and into a healing light. In his weakened state, he was seeing me as his savior.

I didn’t know if his desire to keep me close was real, or just a side effect of Wilkie’s instinct to survive. What I did know, though, was that I wanted to save him. I wanted his attachment to me to last. I knew that this desire was too intense and too quick. That I should feel such wild affection for him, when we had spent so little time together and knew so little about each other, was, perhaps, inappropriate. Yet it didn’t feel inappropriate. It felt important. It felt as if I finally had something to lose.

I leaned closer to him. “I’ll tend to you again, warrior,” I whispered. “Whatever you need.”

His lingering smile speared me with intense awareness. His hand stole back to my hair, which he wrapped around his hands, then let fall in fanning designs, as though spellbound by its texture and the play of the light. It was true I didn’t know Wilkie Mackenzie beyond a heart-pounding chase, a quick but savage fight and two astonishingly beautiful kisses. His presence, his face and the brush of his hair against my skin now felt familiar to me after brief and close-strung embraces against his bare chest. But his subdued, almost-wakeful energy was new to me and unfathomably intriguing. We were strangers whose mouths had touched intimately, yet the thoughts behind his eyes were wild and unknowable.

“You healed me,” he said.

“I sewed up a wound that was inflicted by my own hand,” I reminded him softly.

“And what of your wound, inflicted by my own hand?” He helped himself to an inspection of my bandage.

“’Tis nearly healed already,” I said.

His hand continued its lazy exploration of my body as his eyes held mine.

“Come closer, Roses,” he said. “Breathe on me. Breathe on my mouth. I want to feel your breath on me.”

I wanted to comfort him, to do as he asked of me. And I wanted to grant him his wishes. His wishes felt as if they were my own wishes, as if they were one and the same. I leaned over him. My breasts pressed against his bare chest through the thin fabric of my night clothing. I blew softly onto his lips as he parted them to inhale the air of my lungs. He breathed deeply.

“Ahhh,” he exhaled. “You heal me well, lass. I intend to take of you all your remedies.”

“Which remedies?” I began to sit up. “I can fetch—”

He pulled me back to him, quite forcibly, so I was pressed up against him once more. His body was remarkably hard against my softness. “This remedy,” he said, and he fit his hand around the base of my skull, to pull my face to his as he lifted his head. “A kiss, Roses. Kiss me like you kissed me in my dreams.”

* * *

“AYE, WARRIOR. I’LL KISS YOU. Now be still. You’ll overtax yourself.”

He obeyed, and his body relaxed. I touched my hands to his shoulders, to relax him further. I ran my fingers along his jaw. I touched his hair and smoothed its thick silk layers. I traced one finger across his lips. His breath was hot against my fingers. I leaned farther over him, breathing his breath, and when my hair brushed against his chest, he made a sound, like a soft sigh. I touched my lips to his mouth. That flavor of him, as I’d tasted twice before, was wickedly alluring. Wanting more of it, I licked his top lip, pushing tiny licks into his mouth, as he’d taught me, sucking gently on his lips and the tip of his tongue as I kissed him, savoring the all-tempting essence of him.

“Warrior?” I whispered.

“Aye.”

“Is this kiss remedying you?”

“Nay, lass.”

I stopped. “Nay?”

“My fever is far more acute than it ever was.”

I touched my hand to his forehead again. He smiled at my confusion.

“My innocent Roses. Stay close to me. My fever burns for you and can only be calmed by your body. And I can soothe you, too, sweet Roses. You must let me.”

I wanted to let him. But there was a small reticence in me. “What should I do?” My inexperience was fairly embarrassing at my age. I’d been too preoccupied with work duties to wonder beyond them. Until now. And I was beginning to understand the new fever he spoke of. This warmth, this feeling of heat. Of tingling need. His dark blue eyes were lust-drowsed and hungry for more of my kisses, I could sense this.

“You’re getting better, lass.”

“Better at what?”

“Better at heeding my commands.”

I smiled. “Aye. I get into trouble when I don’t heed your commands.”

“You and I both. Now you’ll do as I tell you.”

I was nervous at what he might command me to do, yet in my heart and my very bones, everything about this close company of Wilkie Mackenzie felt right. To look at him, to touch him, to be touched by him: these were the things that felt most important to me at that moment.

“Roses, my sun, my golden light. I must be careful with you. I’ll not hurt you, nor take you. Not yet.” His words had a strange, thawing effect on me; my skin felt dewy and hypersensitive. “You’ll do as I say.”

The beauty of his face, artfully shadowed and lit from the fading firelight, it fairly stunned me.

“Aye, warrior,” I whispered.

He wrapped his hand around the nape of my neck, pulling my face closer to his. “Kiss me again.”

I did, kissing him gently, exploring his lips with my tongue, pushing just inside his mouth. He returned the kiss, fitting his mouth to mine, tasting, delving into me more insistently, feeding me with his taste and his fire, which seemed to ignite my body with a pleasurable flush.

I felt his hand on the back of my thigh, over the light cloth of my underclothing. He pulled me harder against him, so I was slightly straddling his leg, still clad in the rough leather of his trews. He held me with surprising gentleness, introducing a lazy rhythm as he rubbed me against him, still playing my tongue with the luring pulls of his mouth. Shockingly, the rolling clench of his hand on the barely shielded skin of my backside fed a spiky warmth to the sensitive place between my legs. He took his time, ever so slightly increasing the pressure and the pace. His strength gave him total control, and he continued to work my body with his hands, squeezing and caressing in undulating grasps. I didn’t know what he was doing. Or how he could be doing it. But the building sensation was so needy, so sweet, with its promising, blinding forward momentum, I felt myself rocking ever so slightly against him, melting under his touch. The fever of my body grew in its power until it overwhelmed me, coursing with a compounding swell to surge through my very core, spasming in delightful, nearly unendurable bursts. I coiled and moaned with an almost painful pleasure, unable to quiet myself as the sweet fire pulsed through me.

The waves calmed, and I slumped against him, weakly kissing his lips. My body felt heavy and honey-soaked.

“Warrior.”

“Hush now.”

He drew the furs over us, and I barely registered the warning footsteps, the click and creak of the door opening. I knew I should have hidden myself or fled. To be caught like this, scantily clad in Wilkie’s bed and locked in an inappropriately intimate embrace: the entire scenario should have been mortifying. My reputation—if I even possessed one now—would be even more tattered than it already was. But I was too entranced by him, by what he’d just done to my body. I couldn’t quite summon the shame or even the energy to remove myself from him, not from within this hazed stupor that radiated from my deepest depths. I was floating as though in a wondrous dream where reputations mattered little and the only consideration was the nearness of my warrior.

“Availing yourself to healing remedies, I see, brother.” I recognized Kade Mackenzie’s low voice but had no compunction to open my eyes; they felt as heavy and sated as the rest of me. “Just checking to see that you’re still alive.”

“Aye,” Wilkie said, and the sound of his voice, so deep and comforting, as I lay against his chest, as close as I could be. “Still alive.”

The footsteps retreated as Kade took his leave. He was clearly not as incensed by the possibility of scandal as Laird Mackenzie had been. He paused at the door and asked, “What’s wrong with the lass?” Amusement rang in his words.

“Nothing’s wrong with the lass,” I heard Wilkie’s voice say lazily, his hand still warm and intimately placed. “She’s fine.”

I thought I heard a note of Kade’s soft laughter as the door closed behind him.

I lay with Wilkie for a long time, flitting in and out of a replete half sleep, until I was awakened by his moans and his uneven breaths, from warring dreams or from the pain of his injury I couldn’t be sure. I stroked his hair to ease his unquieted sleep. I ran my fingers along the stubble of his days-old beard, savoring the scratchy feel of it, mesmerized by the rugged beauty of his features. His arm wrapped more tightly around my waist, and the strength of him seemed to buffer me from the uncertainty of my predicament, softening my own unease.

I was becoming accustomed to the insistent embraces of Wilkie Mackenzie. Despite the newness of our familiarity, every aspect of his touch consoled me. It may have been foolish to find such a degree of contentment in a connection that might soon be broken. I knew Wilkie Mackenzie was likely to be a brief, temporary fixture in my life. But he was such a magnificent presence, so unexpected and so very, very beautiful. I wanted only to savor the pleasure of him while I could. I knew that when he finally let me go, I would miss the warmth of him. And the anticipation of his lips touching mine just once more.

When Wilkie’s breathing evened, and the black of night gave way to a purple-hued dawn, I kissed him once more with the lightest touch of my lips to his. Then I slipped from his bed and returned to the antechamber, where Christie lay undisturbed. I crawled back into my bed.

And in the wake of Wilkie’s enlightening caresses, I could not bring myself to fret about the uncertainties that the day would surely introduce. I still felt an echo of a pulse in the core of my body. It was an exquisite feeling, of fruitfulness and warm promise, as though my body had become a quivering vessel. Despite injury, fatigue, soreness, I felt more alive than I had ever been. I slept, thinking only of him.