She wasn’t the only one calling out the Divine’s name, after all.
Their chambers wereeerily quiet as they clung to each other. The low fire gave off more scent than heat, and the dry air didn’t move. The air in the room was still, as silent as Reade and Blair as they laid in the sheets, their minds trying to make sense of their bodies’ reactions to one another.
Blair swallowed the surprising lump that formed in her throat. It seemed that their marriage should be more solid now, their union official and complete, but something dreadful coursed through Blair, an inkling that perchance their union was not as solid as she might believe.
Those dismal thoughts made no sense — she and Reade had started to mend the breach between them. And while they had made inroads, and their joining tonight had been a meeting of body and soul, the damage of the past lingered, a malignant shadow they couldn’t escape.
Blair shivered as her body cooled, and Reade reached down to the brocade coverlet that had been shoved to the foot of the bed and drew it over them both, up to their waists. There he stopped, and with a light fingertip, he touched the silvery scar that marred her skin above her hip.
‘Twasn’t large and was puckered with age, so she thought little about it. Reade, however, wasn’t as dismissive, and his finger passed over it a few more times.
“Ye had a bruise,” he said, breaking the silent chambers.
Blair twisted her head to look up at him. “A bruise? Many, I suppose. If I caught my leg on the corner of a table —”
“Nay.” Reade’s voice was as soft as his touch. “No’ on your leg. Here, right below your ribs.” His fingers traced the ridges of her ribcage along her backside. “No table in the keep is as high as that. Ye came to Glenachulish with it, and ‘twas old, yellowing and black. I’ve seen bruises like those before, from fighting with my brothers. Who kicked ye, lass?”
Her lower lip quivered uncontrollably, and she worked her mouth to stave off tears as she dropped her gaze. Reade’s tender voice and gentle touch after a lifetime of harsh treatment brought her to the brink of tears. She had hidden Mungo’s treatment of her out of fear that if anyone knew, Mungo’s retribution might be worse than the initial offense. The night before he was killed, he had delivered that blow.
“His parritch had grown cold,” Blair answered in a wavering voice. “He had busied himself in his study, and I was no’ allowed inside, or even to bother him. If I had disrupted him, he would have struck me more. The single kick to my backside was the lesser evil.”
Reade grumbled low in his throat to express his disdain, but said nothing. Blair wiped her hair from her face and tucked her hands under her cheek, making sure her face was turned away from him. She couldn’t bear to look at him with this knowledge of her previous circumstance hanging between them — it filled her with the deepest shame.
But it oddly filled her with hope as well. Perchance if Reade saw the effects of her marriage to Mungo, he might understand that Mungo never shared any information with her, never included her in his depraved deeds. To Mungo, she had been little more than another piece of furniture in his home. She was no more a spy than Reade was.
Instead of inquiring further as to her marriage with Mungo, which she didn’t want to think on with her body still tingling from Reade claiming her body, he leaned over and kissed the scar. Then he laid down behind her, tugged the blanket over them, and kissed her bare shoulder.
“Ye are safe now, lass. I may be rash and thick-headed, if ye ask my parents, but the MacDonalds dinna beat their women. We cherish and respect them. That is a promise I can make for ye.”
Her quivering lips upturned slightly into a suggestion of a pleased smile, and a lone tear escaped the corner of her eye. She wiped it away with her fingertip and nuzzled deeper into the curve of Reade’s hard body. He rested his arm over her body, as if protecting her from the rest of the world, and they fell asleep in each other’s embrace.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Blair hadn’t knownthat intimacy with a man could be so complete, so fulfilling. Somehow, they had managed to put their pasts behind them, or at least to the side, when she and Reade were together. In the past, when her husband had taken her to bed, it had been quick, sometimes painful, and he never made her feel as if he cared for her at all. And never did she feel, well,anything. Yet, to feel the sensations that Reade drew from her body as a piper drew notes from a bagpipe? That such an explosion of pure ecstasy happened to her body? And he knew exactly how to make that happen for her? Oh, that such feelings existed!
Whenever her mind touched on the memory of bedding Reade, Blair grew dizzy, and a thrilling quiver rose from between her legs up through her breasts. Her nipples hardened at any mere reminder, as her body was always ready to welcome him inside her.
