“And you shouldn’t, my lady.”
“Then what precautions would you suggest?”
“Your priest will proclaim the third banns for our nuptials in a few days and he tells me we can be wed in a sennight.” Pausing, he peered hard at her. “Until the day, and as of this night, I shall bed down in your ante-room.”
“But-”
“We have both been married before. No one will raise a brow if they believe we wish to become better acquainted before you wear my ring.”
Caterine’s gaze dropped to his ruby signet ring. Just looking at it, and knowing its significance, sent a slow-pulsing warmth curling through the lowest part of her belly.
“I do not wish to wear your ring,” she said anyway. “The marriage is to be in name only. A pretense.”
“A pretense only works if it is believed.”
“You cannot sleep in my ante-room.”
He folded his arms. “Only until we speak our vows.”
Relief, and a wee tinge of regret, sluiced through Caterine.
But not for long.
Her eyes flew wide. “What do you meanonly until?”
“Exactly that,” he allowed, feigning a look of mock innocence some secret part of her found endearing.
“Once we are wed, I shall sleep where all good husbands are wont to sleep,” he informed her. “In my lady wife’s bed.”
* * *
In a different tower chamber,one located at the very end of yet another of Dunlaidir’s winding passageways, James Keith sprawled in a chair before his hearth fire, nursing his aching leg and his fouler mood.
Across the room, his great four-poster bed loomed empty and cold, a silent sentinel to his dark musings and his inability to fill the room’s splendor with aught but his own fool self and his more foolish dreams.
Annoyed, he pushed to his feet and limped to the windows. The most magnificent in all of Dunlaidir, the bank of tall, traceried windows followed the curve of the chamber wall, so offering sweeping views not only of the endless expanse of the sea, but also of the rugged cliffs on which the stronghold stood.
Night-blackened now, their shutters flung wide to embrace the wet chill and racing wind, the opened windows looked out on an impenetrable curtain of darkness.
A perfect reflection of James’ own self.
And his prospects as master of this pile of stone perched on the edge of the sea.
The Laird’s Stone hadn’t yet wept for him, Rhona had told him earlier, as she’d reminded him every night since his father’s passing.
But it would, she’d hasten to assure him.
As if her words would make it so.
Too bad he knew otherwise.
Furious that it was so, he inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the cold salt air. If only he could fill his heart with the valor that should have been bred in the bones of one such as he, then perhaps the stone would acknowledge him.
But daring and skill couldn’t be absorbed as easily as chill briny air, nor could hard, iron-fisted fathers be pleased by less than the ablest of sons.
And the Laird’s Stone wouldn’t cry for a failure.
Bracing one hand against the stone edge of the nearest window, James tried to ignore the throbbing in his leg. But he could no sooner vanquish the knifing pain than he could block out the roar of the sea crashing against the rocks below.
