It was a long time before he found the strength to pull away from her. The heat of her surrounding him and the way she idly caressed his body with her small, soft hands, as if she truly liked the feel of him, had him eager to remain joined with her. That need had never been there with any other woman and Brian knew he should seriously consider what that meant. Later, he thought, as he gave her a quick kiss and moved to get out of bed.
In truth, it did not really matter if he ever sorted out all he was feeling for Lady Arianna Murray Lucette. She was not for him. She was better born and far richer than he was, used to the finer life he and his kinsmen were only beginning to see glimmers of. The widow of a French comte, a woman born of a clan connected in some way to half the clans in Scotland, both notorious and influential, was too high a reach for one of the youngest of the eleven legitimate sons of Fingal MacFingal. It was true that his brother Gregor had married a Murray, but Alanna had been a maid and they had traveled together. The need to honor her with marriage after that overcame any other considerations as to whether Gregor was worthy of the lass or not. Arianna was a widow and those demands would not be directed at him when he finally got her settled with her family. There was no maidenhead to be lost here.
He grimaced as he slipped behind the privacy screen to wash up and relieve himself. His clan was a jest in many ways, made up of his father and all the sons he had bred in and out of the marriage bed. It was the result of a man being angry with his true family and clan and, like some spoiled child, deciding to make his own. The only claim to fame they might have was that his father was a prodigious breeder of sons. The acknowledgment of their ability as fighters was growing, but slowly, and it did not even begin to equal the place of honor so many Murrays held. Considering how many of his brethren acted, they were more notorious than honored.
No, Lady Arianna was not for him. Brian just wished that he did not want her so badly. He had the brief thought that he could probably tie her to his side with the passion they shared, or even a child, but quickly shook it aside. Her clan had already climbed free of the mire of their rough beginnings. He could not drag her down into that again and it would be a long time before his clan got much beyond the struggle to just survive. He was going to have to keep their affair no more than a sharing of pleasure, and keep his heart from yearning for more. The problem was, he feared he was already far past that.
The moment Brian stepped out from behind the privacy screen, Arianna dashed behind it. She had donned the shirt he had given her for it was easier to find than the shift he had tossed aside in the night, but it was not very modest since it barely reached her knees. Then she realized it was more than simple modesty that made her rush to hide behind the screen, that she feared he would retreat from her once he clearly saw how little her thin body offered a man. A man liked rounded curves, flesh on a woman’s bones to cushion his body, and found the reddish hair covering her privates to be common and gaudy.
She softly cursed. It was Claud whispering his denigrations in her head again. She had never been vain but she had always believed herself to be moderately appealing to a man’s eyes. Until Claud. Until he had found fault with everything from her face to her feet, some of the criticisms poorly disguised as kindly suggestions on how she might improve herself. By the time she had caught her first sight of the buxom Marie Anne, Arianna had been quick to see just how much she lacked compared to her husband’s mistress. It had also given his family and his people all the excuse they needed to show her their scorn. Brian had now seen her naked and she had seen no hint of the disdain Claud had always shown her, but the fear of it lingered.
What had she allowed him to do to her? Arianna began to think that the scars his cruel words had left ran far, far deeper than she had believed. It was embarrassing to realize how much she had let him say to her without retribution, and how much of it she had taken to heart. She should have been stronger than that, should have believed more strongly in her own worth. What frightened her was that, if she did not hold a strong belief in her own worth, how would she find the strength to rid herself of Claud’s poison?
Even worse, if she did not believe in her own worth, how could she hold fast to a man like Sir Brian MacFingal? And she admitted to herself that she did want to hold on to him, tightly. For a moment she feared she was letting her first taste of passion trick her into thinking there was more to what she felt for him than lust, and then she shook that doubt aside. What she felt for the man had been born from the moment she had opened her eyes on that beach and looked into his. Everything that had happened since then had only strengthened it.
“So much for keeping my distance and allowing this to be no more than a simple affair,” she whispered angrily as she finished relieving herself and then began to wash up.
“Are ye all right?” asked Brian.