Jasper rocked against her belly, and Rowenna kept her eyes on a beam in the ceiling, willing herself not to think or feel anything – but she did. When the pain receded a little, there was something lurking in her belly, creeping out of its hiding place, a treacherous, evil need. Was she this weak? Could a man she had every reason to loathe just touch her and bring on this raw feeling between pleasure and pain?
‘You belong to me now,’ Jasper whispered into her ear.
A tear swelled from her eye, leaving a cold trail down her face. It trickled into the cleft where his cheek was pressed to hers.
Jasper stopped moving and raised himself onto his elbows. He stared down into her face as another tear fell. Then he rolled off her body with a curse and lay on his back with his forearm over his eyes. His hand was a tight fist. ‘Damn you to hell, Rowenna MacCreadie, and damn me for ever having noticed you,’ he hissed.
For the longest time, there was no sound in the chamber save their breathing. Though she could not look at Jasper, Rowenna sensed waves of anger and frustration coming from him. Would he send her back to her father now that she had disappointed him, as she always knew she would? Did she even want to go back?
Jasper sat up, showing his broad, smooth back to her, muscles bulging from his sides, heaving with anger. ‘I’ll not take a crying woman. Not now, not ever,’ he said. ‘It seems you have sniffed out my only scrap of honour.’
Rowenna sat up and scuttled away from him, pulling up her shift to hide her nakedness.
‘I thought you were ready, Rowenna. Do you know what it is for a man to stop once his blood is up? Do you know what you have cost me in pride this night?’
‘No.’ Her voice was a squeak, and then she remembered Morag’s words about not being bullied. ‘I don’t know much, Jasper, but I know this. I am in a stranger’s home, in a stranger’s bed, and nothing in my life has prepared me for that thing you just did. I am sorry if I am a disappointment and if I don’t cry your name and beg you to dishonour me. I am sorry if I am not good enough, if I am less than Brenna Bannerman, and I am sorry if you….
He turned and grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her to him. ‘That is the trouble, Don’t you see?’ He shook her. ‘You are not less than her. I want you. It is a burn in my soul, and I hate it. My desire is a curse, and it has brought me so low that I would beg for you to want me back.’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Rowenna, if a man has no pride, he has nothing.’
‘And what of my pride? I am just a poor substitute for a woman who would not love you and a wife who died. I can never be anything but a shadow in your heart compared to them.’
‘No,’ he said softly. “I wish that were true.’ He stroked his hand gently down her cheek.
‘I do not believe you, Jasper.’
He let go of her, his face stricken. ‘And why should you, lass? But here is the truth of it. Brenna Bannerman never wanted me, and I humiliated myself chasing her heart. Does it please you to hear that?’
She shook her head.
‘I have long since learned from that folly and put it behind me. If anyone else in Kransmuir mentioned her name, I would have knocked them flat, but I will give you this one more time to do so, seeing as it is our wedding night, and you deserve the truth. As for Isobel, she was as cold as the winter wind scouring the moors the first time I took her to bed and the last, so there is no ghost to compete with, Rowenna. And it’s not as if you seek to win my heart. All I want is your obedience and for an heir to come, and all you want is to clear a debt and save your worthless brother.’
It was such a burst of feeling from Jasper that Rowenna was afraid of him and stayed silent, hoping the storm would pass over her. She was utterly at this man’s mercy. He could strangle her in his bed with no consequences. Such was his power.
Jasper rose, donned his shirt, and went over to the fire. ‘Go to sleep. I’ll not lay a hand on you this night or any other. I will lie down on the furs. You are safe from my unholy appetites, for your tears have struck them down.’
With these bitter words, Jasper lay down. In the half-light of the fire, covered in furs, he seemed like a dead beast, and Rowenna waited a good while, every nerve on edge, before she scurried under the covers and rolled her knees up to her chest. She should not have quarrelled with him. Any sensible woman would have endured his attentions and stayed on his good side. But that was the problem. She had not endured. She had enjoyed it. Her body had betrayed her, and for that, she hated herself.
Jasper could have been rough, but he wasn’t. He could have forced her to do her duty by him, but he had not. She had no idea why, and she was beginning to realise that she did not understand Jasper Glendenning at all. Folk said he was a ruthless monster - violent, impulsive, cruel. But he had been gentle and patient so far. How long that patience would last, she did not know. And there was more mortification than that. If she had no feelings for Jasper, then why was her belly curdling with bitter jealousy over an old love and a dead one?
Damn. It was so much easier to hate Jasper than to see that glimmer of vulnerability in his soul. It made her want to reach out in the darkness, find his hand and hold it.
Chapter Fifteen
Jasper woke at dawn from a fitful slumber to find the fire burned down to its embers, the room frigid, with a sharp wind rattling the shutters. He had spent all night battling the urge to climb back into bed with Rowenna and say to hell with his good intentions. He’d never had any before, so why succumb to them now?
He rose and walked quietly over to the bed. The sight of Rowenna made his breath catch. She lay on her back, hair fanned out on the pillow, one arm slung out. The blankets were around her waist. Evidence of a fitful night for her, too? In the half-light, he could just make out one rosy bud of a nipple through the thin fabric of her shift, giving rise to lust so strong, it was almost violent.
She had the most exquisite breasts – creamy, uptilted, full, and they had been so sweet under his tongue. They aroused him beyond measure, and now they belonged to him. He would pay a king’s ransom to touch them and never stop touching them, to lay his head between them after he’d made long, lazy love to Rowenna, to fall asleep cradled in their warmth.
Stifling a curse, Jasper lifted the blanket over Rowenna, gathered his fine wedding kilt off the floor and crept out. He hurried to his own chamber, donned braies and a jacket, and slung his fur about his shoulders.
Kransmuir Fell was only just stirring as he made his way to the stables and saddled his horse, which snorted out clouds of white through its nostrils, eager to be off. Jasper’s fingers turnednumb in the frosty air, but it did little to cool his ardour. He rode out of the castle and pounded across fields of white-tipped grass until he reached the high ground at the Fell. From its peak, he could survey his birthright, and he usually took great pride in it. But this day, all Jasper could think about was his folly. Owning things did not bring happiness, be it land, cattle or riches, and marriage to Isobel had brought all those things.
Whilst he had fulfilled his husbandly duty with vigour, he had never anticipated Isobel’s bed with any real yearning. It was a duty done, a release of lust – and on her part, not much of that. She had come to him a widow, not some blushing virgin who did not know her way around a man. Isobel knew what to expect from the marriage bed, and yet he had tried to be kind and gentle, to see to her pleasure in the hope that there might develop between them a mutual affection. But from their first night together, Isobel had lain stiffly beneath him, opened her thighs and offered up her body as if she were a human sacrifice to pagan gods. And to Isobel, he was a pagan, godless thing. When they coupled, she did not move, and she made no sound as he entered her, nor any indication of release on her part. Jasper had wondered if she had to swallow down her revulsion. Once that thought had occurred to him, their coupling had always been abrupt, silent, and wholly mortifying.
He did not want Rowenna to lie like a corpse. He wanted her hands all over him, fingernails digging into his back, pulling him deeper inside. He did not want silence. He wanted soft gasps and moans, for her to crave his touch, his kiss, his body. He wanted Rowenna to find him as beautiful as he found her. But it would never happen.
He had tried to be kind, to follow his conscience. His kiss was meant to distract her from the moment he took her virginity, and she had been innocent. Her body’s resistance was clear, andhe’d seen the blood on the linens. Why had she cried? He had been as gentle as possible but clearly not gentle enough. His pride winced at how she must have hated his clumsy attempts at tenderness. He was too brutish, angry and hurried to make a woman truly want him.
