Twenty-Five
Edward belted his tunic and looked around for his scabbard. It was nowhere to be found. He grinned and tucked a small dirk inside his sash. The lass was too intelligent to allow a stranger free use of his sword. Mairi of Shiels was an unusual woman. An astute mind lay beneath her lovely face. He opened the door and walked down the hall to the stairs. No one was about. The air was cold, and he drew a deep cleansing breath into his lungs. He’d never quite grown accustomed to the foul-smelling herbs that were inevitably strewn across all sickroom floors.
He walked down the stairs to the great hall. The door to the entry was open. God’s blood! Where was everyone? Didn’t the woman have servants? He opened his mouth to call for Thomas, then remembered he’d sent him back to London bearing the message that the king still lived. Hunger and the tempting smell of spice propelled him out the door and across the yard to a small dwelling he was sure would be the kitchen.
Edward pushed open the door and stepped inside. A rush of pleasure caught him by surprise. She was here, overseeing the preparation of apple tarts. Her black hair, held away from her face by a strip of velvet, hung down her back. Her cheeks were red from the heat and a smudge of flour marked her nose. His mouth watered. He wasn’t sure whether it was the smell of food or the incredibly appealing sight of Mairi of Shiels dressed in the simple clothes of country maid.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” she chastised him.
He grinned. “I had nothing to occupy my time. You haven’t been to visit me in two days.”
“There is more to running an estate than dalliance,” she said.
His grin broadened. “’Tis glad I am to hear it. I was afraid you’d been avoiding me.”
She lifted her chin and looked directly at him. “Don’t be absurd. Why would I do that?”
Edward promised himself he would leave the lass pure, but his time was growing short. A bit of flirtation wouldn’t harm her. “Perhaps because I was ungracious enough to refuse your proposal,” he said.
The cooks’ ladies stopped in midair as they turned to look at their mistress in astonishment.
“Of course not,” Mairi said hastily. “You must know I wasn’t serious.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” replied Edward. “If you don’t wish to marry me, perhaps you’ll agree to feed me instead.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Sweet Mary, ’tis past time for the noon meal. I forgot.” She turned to the cooks. “Why did no one remind me?”
“Pardon me, mistress,” a plump, apple-cheeked girl spoke up. “But often times you have no appetite in the middle of the day.”
“I’m afraid ’tis so,” Mairi confessed.
Edward folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the door jamb. He was so tall his head brushed against the ceiling. “I know how to bring back your appetite,” he said. “We shall have a picnic.”
She frowned. “A picnic?”
“A meal out of doors,” he explained. “Surely you’ve done it before.”
Mairi shook her head. “I don’t think—”
His smile was brilliant. “You needn’t think, lass. Just pack up some bread, a bit of cheese, and a flask of wine, and we’ll be on our way.”
Who could argue with such enthusiasm? Certainly not Mairi. She knew, with a sinking feeling in her chest, that he was not a man to accept refusal easily.
He watched her efficient movements with fascinated interest as she gathered the food, stuffing it into a flour sack and knotting it firmly at the top. This was a lady of the manor that he had no experience with. Her capable hands had the slender fine-boned lines of an aristocrat, but her nails were clipped short and he’d felt the calluses on her palm when she’d touched his chest. Mairi of Shiels was not afraid of hard work. For some reason, the knowledge pleased him. Manual labor was something Edward was unfamiliar with. The idea that this border lady with the light-touched eyes was proficient in areas he was not challenged him.
Mairi untied the linen cloth from around her waist. “Shall we go?” she asked, embarrassed at the obvious interest of her servants.
“Aye.” Edward pushed away from the door and held out his hand for the sack.
She gave it to him and waited until he stepped outside before she followed. They walked for several minutes in silence. He spoke first, “You didn’t want to come with me, did you?”
A smile played across her lips. If he could be direct, so could she. “On the contrary. I wanted to very much.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The wind tugged at her hair, tangling the fine strands into tiny knots. She brushed it back away from her face so that the pure line of her jaw was exposed to his gaze. “Believe what you wish. We both know the truth.”
Intrigued and yet slightly annoyed, Edward reached for her hand. She stopped and faced him, her back very straight. She was tall for a woman, but nothing compared to his great height. Her head came up to his shoulder. “What is the truth, lass?” he asked gruffly.
Edward knew she would not dissemble. He was not disappointed. She looked him straight in the eye and spared nothing. “I know you want me, Edward of Durbridge,” she said softly, “and I know that you do not intend marriage. You are also a knight, and English knights do not seduce virgins.”
He had asked for plain speaking, but he was not prepared for the effect of her words. Like a boy with his first maid, he stared down at her, tongue-tied and red faced, unable to defend himself. No one had ever read his character as clearly as this leggy, half-grown girl he had known less than one week. The air caught in his throat. Holy God, she was lovely beyond belief. But it was more than her beauty that drew him. It was the uncompromising honesty in her gaze, the regal set of her head, the straight dignity of her back, the graceful play of her hands, and the glorious, heart-shattering purity of her smile.
Edward had never considered marrying for love. His marriage to Eleanor had been a political match, debated for hours in the chilly halls of Westminster and the Tower. It had never occurred to him to wonder how his wife’s mind worked. God’s wounds! He could barely remember what she looked like. What he wouldn’t give to be free at this moment, to offer everything he had to this woman who intrigued him more than any other had before her.
The blood burned like fire through his veins. A tic twitched at the corner of his mouth, a sign of the effort it took to control his emotions. Dropping her hand, Edward walked on. He could offer her nothing, not even the truth, and it shamed him.
She caught up with him near the black oak overlooking the burn. “A surly companion is not what I’d expected when you suggested a picnic, m’lord,” she teased him.
Her smile was sweet and beguiling, like wild honey. Happiness flooded through him, warming the chill around his heart. He took her hand and drew her down beside him. “’Tis as good a place as any for a picnic.”
“Aye.” Mairi looked around her at the green-gold beauty of the hills. The sky was a deep, piercing blue, and the clouds hung so low she felt as if she could pluck one with her fingers. At her feet, the burn rushed clear and cold. The water flowed gold colored from the sun and the brown peat stones it crossed on its way to the sea. She sighed. The day was perfect. She was grateful she’d allowed him to persuade her out of doors.
“I had no idea your country could be as lovely as this,” he said.
She looked at him, surprised. “Surely you’ve been to Scotland before this?”
He nodded. “Aye, but only to take part in battle. My mind was not on the landscape.”
There was much she wanted to say but decided against it. Their time together was too short for recriminations. She did not want this Englishman’s last memory of her to be that of a woman with a shrewish temper. “Is your home very different?” she asked instead.
He leaned back on his hands, his eyes closed, his face turned toward the sun. The carven beauty of his mouth made her throat go dry.
“Aye,” he said carefully. “I live in London most of the year, but even in the south of England, the land is dryer with fewer trees.” He opened his eyes, and his voice dropped. It was lower, more intimate, caressing. “I would show it to you if I could.”
“Why can’t you?” Deliberately, she kept her question light.
A sound, almost a groan but more muffled, came from within his chest. “Lass, have you learned nothing of maidenly decorum?”
“I am Mairi of Shiels,” she said with quiet dignity. “I have no need for decorum.”
Her hand on his cheek undid him. He turned toward her touch to find her gaze upon him. Searching her face for the smallest sign of regret, he found none. “God help you, my heart,” he murmured. “May He forgive me for the sin I would willingly commit.”
“I’ll warrant it will not be your first,” she teased him.
He did not smile. “Lass,” he whispered hoarsely, “you cannot do this.”
Her expression grew serious and the cool, light-struck eyes widened until they seemed to fill her entire face. “I know not what brought you here, m’lord, but from the first I knew how it would be between us.”
“Sweet Jesu.” He damned the emotions within him that demanded honesty at such a price. “I am not who you think.”
“Hush.” She laid her finger across his lips, down his chin and throat into the crisply curling hair escaping from the top of his shirt. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Mairi,” he groaned, throwing out his final and most damning argument. “I have never known another woman like you. I would wed you if I could, but I am not free.”
Her exploring fingers had unlaced his shirt and were making shockingly intimate forays down his chest. Her question was a whisper against his ear. “You are betrothed?”
“Nay, lass,” he confessed, cursing the hunger surging through him. “I am married.”
Her hand was on his rib cage, her touch more sensuous than any courtesan he had ever known. She could not have heard him for she did not draw away.
“Mairi,” he began and stopped. Her face was close to his own. Her hair smelled like roses and her skin, bathed in afternoon sunlight, was flawless. Her lips parted ever so slightly, and he heard his own harsh intake of breath. Of their own volition, his hands reached out to caress her throat, her cheeks, and finally to thread the silken strands of her hair between his fingers while he gently cradled her head. She closed her eyes. Her lashes rested like dark half-moons against her cheeks. Her mouth quivered in silent invitation.
“I am a man, not a saint,” he murmured. “By all that is holy, I swear you shall not regret this.” With that he lowered his head and touched his mouth to hers.
Whatever Mairi had expected, it wasn’t this piercing sweetness, this exquisite, aching fire that started in the pit of her stomach and traveled through every nerve until she hummed like a branch struck by lightning. Who would have guessed that a man as tall and hard as a mountain had lips softer than angel’s wings, whose sheltering arms held magic in their touch, whose words of love muffled against her throat could heat her blood to fevered heights? Her hands slid up his back, reveling in the hard strength and hot male flesh stretched so tightly across the bunched muscles. She raked him lightly with her nails.
“My God, Mairi,” he groaned, lifting his head to look down at her passion-flushed face. “Tell me you want this. Let me hear your words before ’tis too late to stop.”
Something deep and elemental blazed to life in her eyes. When she spoke, her voice sounded nothing like herself. “I shan’t stop you, Edward. I want it too, more than anything.”
His hands trembled as he molded them over the sweet rise of her breasts and stroked their tips with his thumbs. When he felt her response, he untied her kirtle and pushed aside the bodice of her tightly fitting tunic. Her arms were bare and the thin linen of her shift revealed the outline of her nipples and the darkness between her thighs. Edward’s breathing altered. He was no longer in control. Even if she wanted him to stop, he couldn’t. She was too lovely and he’d thought of nothing but burying himself inside her warmth for a seemingly endless length of days and nights.
He tore his gaze from the enticing roundness of her breasts to look at her face. She was staring at him, unembarrassed and unafraid. There was hunger in her eyes and something else, something that reached out and touched him with a longing that left him shaken and wanting. When his mouth took hers in a searing kiss, her lips opened, and her tongue eagerly sought his. White heat flamed through him. He moved over her, pressing himself into the triangle of her thighs. He had never been so hard. He feared he would hurt her, but there was no help for it. Mairi of Shiels lay beneath him, open and welcoming. Only God Himself had the power to stop this coupling.
Mairi did not feel the coolness of the air or the pebbles rubbing against her skin as her shift was lifted over her head and thrown aside. She did not hear the squirrels chattering and scolding one another in the trunk of the great black oak that sheltered them. She did not see the single whaup circling overhead or hear the shrillness of its lonely cry. She felt only a firm mouth on her lips and a man’s hands on her skin. She heard only the wild singing of her blood that promised her this first long-dreamed-of taste of passion.
Again and again Edward moved against her with all the skill of a man familiar with the secrets of a woman’s body. He stirred the dormant embers of her need into leaping flames of desire. Her skin ached and her nerves throbbed against the insistent coaxing of his hands and mouth. When he parted her thighs with his leg, she was more than ready.
He moved over her, breathing heavily. The turgid length of his sex probed at her. Mairi looked up through her lashes. His eyes were open, their blue-green color more brilliant than the sky that framed his head. He stared down at her with a look of such yearning hunger that she could not bear it. Reaching up, she touched his face.
With a harsh cry, he surged into her, forgetting his resolve to go slowly, to exercise control, to bring her the greatest pleasure she had ever known. The cords on the side of his neck swelled. He buried his face against her throat. Taking in deep gulping breaths, he willed his raging heart to slow its beat.
Mairi concentrated on the sensations she was feeling. It was not an unpleasant feeling exactly, just different. She felt stretched and full. Edward was a large man, and she was slender. The sharp end of a pebble stabbed into her hip. Experimentally, she shifted her hips. He stiffened.
“Don’t move lass,” he muttered hoarsely, “or it will be over before ’tis even begun.”
“Edward, I—” She gasped as his mouth closed over the sensitive peak of her breast.
The tiny sound was his undoing. His entire body tensed, and then, with an inarticulate moan, he thrust deeply over and over until she caught his rhythm and the tension she felt when his seeking fingers first touched her rose again. Before she could reach her own crescendo, an incredible warmth spread through her belly and she felt him slump, full weight, on top of her.
Mairi frowned. He was heavy, and she was cold. The exquisite sensations she’d felt in the beginning had disappeared, leaving a burning ache between her legs. She twisted her hips and felt him slip out of her.
“I’m sorry lass,” he murmured, “but I couldn’t wait.” He lifted his head and grinned sheepishly. “Say you’ll forgive me.”
She said the first thing that came into her mind. “Is more supposed to happen?”
His expression didn’t change, but his eyes darkened, the pupils blotting out the color. “If you’ll give me another chance, I’ll show you,” he said at last.
Holding his gaze with her own, Mairi nodded. When his mouth slowly descended to find the pulse point in her neck, she closed her eyes, and when his hands moved down her body, she held her breath, but when he finally entered her and the slow, sensuous mating dance began once again, her blood warmed and her hands clenched, and when at last the dizzying whirl of passion reached its peak, she exploded in a vision of light and heat and fire. Mairi dug her nails into his back and buried her face against his chest, inhaling his smell, tasting his skin, crying out his name in one endless, heart-stopping cry of need.
Later, much later, she lay still, her eyes closed, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Never in her life had she felt so vulnerable, so exposed. Never would she have believed her body could respond in such a way. At that moment, she would have given all she had on earth and much of what heaven held in store to know what the man who held her so tightly against his chest was thinking. As if in answer to her silent prayer, he spoke.
“I love you, Mairi Maxwell of Shiels. Believe what you will, but I’ve never said that to another woman.”
“Not even your wife?” Before the words were out, she wished she could call them back.
He took a deep breath. Eleanor was his wife, and he would not speak ill of her, but neither could he lie to this woman with whom he had found something he hadn’t known existed. “No,” he said simply.
Mairi slid out from beneath him and rested her head on her elbow. “How long do we have?”
He thought of the message sent with Thomas and the days already past. Again he refused to lie. “Only tonight.”
There were no recriminations in Mairi’s eyes, only a quiet acceptance. She nodded. “Shall we make the most of it then?”
***
Edward I of England rode out of the gates of Traquair House the following morning a humbled man. For the first time in his life, he understood the meaning of courage. He had known many men and seen many battles during his reign, but courage, he now knew, was not to be found in the midst of war. Courage was not the death-defying charges of men in full mail, their horses foaming at the mouth, their swords dripping with the blood of their enemies. Courage was the dry eyes and straight back of a gray-eyed girl who had given a stranger all that was hers to give only to watch him ride away forever. He would never seek out Mairi of Shiels again. The cost was too great for the both of them.