‘But you do not know me, what I am, what I have been.’
Bryce shook his head. ‘What matter any of that if I love you, Maren?’
Love? How could he love someone like her?
Bryce’s mouth came down on hers, and he pushed her back to the bed, and they fell onto it in a flurry of kisses and caresses. Bryce thrust up her skirts, pulled her legs around his back, and entered her quickly. And Maren succumbed to his passion and love, forgetting her purpose, her danger, and that Bryce Cullan was her ruin. There was only his skin sliding like warm velvet over hers, moist lips cleaving hungrily, her centre crying out for the release only he could give her. When it came, it was bittersweet – the utmost ecstasy touched by horrible sadness, for she knew this wonderful oblivion could not last.
Afterwards, they lay sated in each other’s arms. Neither could speak, for that would reopen the gulf between them, the one they were trying desperately to avoid. Maren must have fallen into a dazed sleep, for she woke in the dead of a moonlit night. Bryce was beside her, snuggled, his arm draped over her as though he would cling fast, even when oblivious.
Everything crashed in at once, and Maren had to blink away tears. She could not see Bryce in the darkness save for his bright hair, but in her mind’s eye, she saw his manly beauty, the peaks and troughs of his muscular shoulders, his manhood – so thick and straight and pleasing to the eye. She felt his safety and his strength. Other thoughts crashed in, and their import was heavy on her heart.
If Sawney was visiting Lawson, and it could be no other with such a distinctive scar, then the captain was somehow connected to Drayton. She had thought Lawson loyal to the Camerons, but perhaps he was playing both sides. Had he colluded in their downfall? Was it Lawson all along who sent the redcoats to pierce them with their swords and fire their home? No, it could not be. She had trusted Lawson completely, and he’d given no sign of treachery. Yet he had not freed her from Balloch jail, saying her message did not get to him. Had he lied?
There was a reason Maren had never succumbed to Lawson’s advances, an instinct for danger perhaps, deep within her. She was her father’s daughter. She was wily, like him. Something had repelled her. Could her rejection have made him turn on her?
Maren peeled Bryce’s flesh off hers and slipped out of the chamber. She hurried back to her own, flitting through the quiet castle like a wraith. Once there, she was overcome with dread. She could trust in nothing, and no one save herself. Try to hold onto love, and it was but a phantom, disappearing when you reached out for it, just a wisp of smoke hanging in the air.
She was caught between two worlds and two men. Bryce’s was light and laughter and plenty. Drayton’s was darkness, doom and dereliction. One would consume the other. What could she do against such a choice?
Maren’s head swam as if she had been running forever, spending all the breath in her lungs. Could she do this? Thoughts of Bryce stopped her – his long fingers between her legs, his tongue plundering her mouth, giving, not taking, his sea-foam eyes, the golden down of hair on his strong arms. Resentment was like bile in her throat. He had lied and imprisoned her at his whim and for his pleasure because it suited him. Yet he said he loved her, and when they lay together, it was not taking but making love. He did not curl her legs up and do what he would, like Drayton. No, Bryce ensured her pleasure before he took his own.
She paced as memories of Lawson and Sawney rushed through her mind, tainting everything. Lawson, with his dancing eyes and teasing seduction, never quite convincing her of his devotion. Sawney at her father’s house when they were but callow youths, roasting rabbits over the fire at dusk as the midges nipped, his hair as orange as the flames, eyes always on her, like a dog begging for scraps. When did he turn on her father? Had her indifference to Sawney’s regard driven him to prey on her for Drayton? Had he resented her marriage to that fiend almost as much as she had?
‘A mistress cannot serve two masters,’ she said aloud, staring out over brooding mountains to the moon’s sheen bouncing off a loch in the distance. Before her lay a fork in the road, each path as perilous as the other. She could not linger like a fool. It was time to fight fire with fire, but did she have the courage for the plan that was beginning to form?
Maren dressed in her warmest clothes and took a small amount of coin she had saved up. It would have to suffice, for she could not risk Bryce waking. She crept down to the stables. Dawn was beginning to spread bright fingers over the fields. Damn her for sleeping so long. If she was not careful, she would miss the tide.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bryce rose to a cheery morning and a cold bed. Maren was not there. She must have risen early to avoid any more of his attentions. Despite the passion of the night before, he had to make amends for making Maren his indentured servant. Her pride had railed at that, he was sure. Yet Bryce held the niggling thought that Maren might have succumbed to him in bed to distract him from asking questions, and it nibbled at his post-coital bliss. No, her surrender was absolute. It was there in every sigh, scrape of her nails down his back and slow thrust of her hips to join with his.
‘Damn your eyes, woman,’ he said, leaping from a tangle of blankets and hastily donning his breeches and a leather jerkin. He hurried to Maren’s chamber to find it empty. Downstairs, before the hearth, he found his father finishing his breakfast and looking very smart indeed.
‘Where is Maren?’ he said.
Jasper shrugged. ‘How should I know? Maren goes her own way. I heard raised voices last evening. Did you quarrel again?’
‘Aye, well, she found out I have a hold over her, and she was not pleased.’
‘What hold, beyond your surfeit of charm and ill-deserved good looks?’
‘If you must resort to sarcasm, Father, I will not tell you.’
‘Forgive me,’ said Jasper smiling and leaning back. ‘Come, indulge an old man, and amuse me with your latest transgression, Bryce.’
‘Maren is under a bill of indenture, signed out to me for one year.’
Jasper leant forward. ‘How did this come to pass?’
‘There was a misunderstanding with a redcoat. He was a bit free with his hands, and she stabbed him, in self-defence, of course. The lass ended up in jail, and I freed her on the condition that she is bound to me and is my responsibility for a year.’
‘And you wed her even after knowing she had stabbed a man?’ cried Jasper.
‘Ah, well, there’s the rub. We are not wed,’ said Bryce defiantly.
Jasper opened his mouth to spew forth outrage, but Bryce interrupted.
‘We will be wed.’ Once the words were out, he realised that his mind was made up. ‘I will wed Maren, for I have grown used to her, and I cannot do without her. She is part of me, and I am part of her.’
