Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

As soon as Morgan was out of sight of the hall, he thundered into a run. He took the crumbling steps two at a time, then stopped dead outside the door of Sabrina’s chamber. Over the gently plucked notes of the clarsach and the thud of his heart in his ears, he could hear a man’s deep baritone and a woman’s sweet soprano blended in a melody so poignant it would have made the most ruthless of warriors weep.

The man sang:

I might have had a king’s daughter, Far, far beyond the sea.

Sabrina countered with:

I might have been a king’s daughter, Had it not been for love o’ thee.

Another man was singing with his wife. Morgan didn’t realize it was the first time he had thought of her not as Sabrina, or brat, or a bloody Cameron nuisance, but as his wife . Rage and helplessness buffeted him. The sheer intimacy of their melded voices was somehow more damning than fornication itself.

He threw open the door. Two startled pairs of eyes surveyed him. He suddenly realized what a fool he must appear—half naked, hair dripping, jaw dropped in astonishment.

He could not help but gape to discover the angel’s baritone belonged to a man with a soul more charred than Satan’s.

Fergus MacDonnell hefted his squat bulk from the pillow at Sabrina’s feet and offered her a rusty bow. “Thank ye for the tea, me lady. I’m much obliged.”

She laid the clarsach aside. Fergus’s crude paw swallowed her dainty hand. “Thank you , Mr. MacDonnell, for sharing those charming Highland ballads. My husband will appreciate them during the long winter nights to come. Won’t you, dear?”

It took Morgan a full minute to realize she was addressing him. “Huh?”

Fergus paused in the doorway to give him a chiding frown. “Don’t grunt at yer wife, lad. Ye’re not a bloody swine.” He tossed the dangling tail of the plaid over Morgan’s shoulder. “Ye shouldna go about half dressed in the presence of a lady. Did yer da teach ye no manners a-tall?”

Fergus slapped him fondly on the back before swaggering off down the corridor. Sabrina bustled around the chamber, humming under her breath and blithely gathering teacups as if there weren’t a hall full of MacDonnells below waiting for the thundering report of his pistol.

“Charming man, isn’t he?” She blew a speck of dust off the cream pitcher. “Beneath all that bluster lies the soul of a gentleman.”

Morgan snapped his jaw shut. He’d once seen Fergus suck a mutton bone clean while cleaving off an enemy’s head with his other hand. “Aye, a regular poet, he is.”

At Morgan’s even tone, Pugsley wiggled under the bed until nothing but his curly little tail was showing.

Morgan gently shut the door behind him. “Would you care to explain his exalted presence in your chamber, lass?”

She polished a teacup on her sleeve, rubbing away Fergus’s grubby fingerprints. “What is there to explain? I invited him to partake of tea with me. He was kind enough to teach me some of your lovely Highland ballads. I knew you would tire of Mama’s English songs rapidly enough.” Her nose wrinkled. “Too many references to routing the shiftless Scots, I fear.”

“Is it an English custom to take tea with a strange man? Alone in your bedchamber?”

“Well, no. But I hardly found the hall suitable for…” She trailed off at the full implication of his words. The teapot slid from her hand and struck the table edge, chipping off the porcelain rose that adorned its surface. Incredulous pain darkened her eyes. “Are you accusing me of …?”

“I’m accusin’ you of nothin’, lass. It’s just that when Alwyn told me—”

“Oh. Alwyn.” Her voice turned dull and lifeless, belying the fierce sparkle of her eyes. “You would believe Alwyn, wouldn’t you? After all, she’s a MacDonnell, isn’t she? Not a sly, deceitful Cameron. And where were you and your darling Alwyn when these accusations were made?”

A flicker of guilt danced across Morgan’s face as he remembered the greedy feel of Alwyn’s fingers around him. The wounded gleam in Sabrina’s eyes deepened.

He swore beneath his breath. “I didn’t lay a hand on her, lass, I swear it.”

Sabrina didn’t even seem to hear him. A shaky laugh escaped her. “I should have expected as much, shouldn’t I? Why should you trust me? After all, there is no depth to which we Camerons will not sink—murdering our dinner guests, poisoning our bridegrooms. Why should it be such a stretch of the imagination for you to believe I’d whore for your men?”

She turned her back on him, her slender shoulders rigid with fury. Morgan shook his head in grudging admiration. Sabrina had managed to turn both his anger and his jealousy against him. None of his clansmen would dare lift their voices to him in genuine anger, but once again this slip of a girl had proved them all cowards and himself a bloody fool.

He picked up the rose that had chipped from the teapot. If only he had stopped to ponder the absurdity of the accusation. He was always charging in without counting the cost, destroying something precious and fragile in his rash clumsiness—his mother’s life, the Belmont Rose, Sabrina’s pride.

Laying the rose on the table, he padded over to stand in front of her, so close he could feel her breath against his bare chest. Its sweet whisper stirred him as Alwyn’s touch never could. She kept her head bowed, stubbornly refusing to meet his eyes.

“I don’t suppose you’d read me that story you promised? The one about the bonny lass Delilah?”

“I don’t suppose so,” she whispered.

“A game of chess? I swear I won’t toss the board. Not even if you win.”

She shook her head. The silence stretched between them.

Morgan ran a hand through his damp hair, feeling the dead weight of regret settle into his bones. He sank heavily into a chair.

Sabrina had decided her husband was impossible to please, so she decided to please herself. Ignoring Morgan, she sat upon the stool and began to pluck a melody from the clarsach. Inclining her head, she toyed with the bittersweet words of the ballad Fergus had taught her.

Her attempt to pretend Morgan didn’t exist soon failed her. Even motionless and silent, his raw masculine presence commanded the room. Six feet three inches of brawny Highlander was impossible to ignore, even to someone oblivious of his charms, which, Sabrina regretted keenly, she was not.

She stole a look at him. Her voice faltered, stumbling over a puir lassie’s pledge of undying love to her faithless suitor. Longing closed her throat. Morgan’s eyes were closed, his gilt lashes resting flush on his cheeks. His muscled legs were stretched out before him and his plaid had ridden up to reveal bronze thighs dusted with sandy hair. Sabrina drank him in like a tall, cool swallow of water on a hot summer day.

She stroked the strings of the delicate instrument, weaving an old English melody, one her mother used to sing to them on cold winter nights when icy bits of snow tapped against the windows of the solar. She loved watching Morgan relax his fierce guard. She could almost see the tension seeping out of his muscles, the wary lines of his brow melting in contentment. She longed to fan her fingers along his rugged jaw, to touch him as she was touching the clarsach, with tenderness and reverence and joyous hunger.

He stirred in the chair, sighing drowsily, and murmured, “’Tis a lovely melody, Beth.”

Sabrina’s fingers froze. Morgan’s eyes drifted open, but she could read nothing but bewilderment in their depths. She held her breath. Perhaps she had only imagined his lapse.

He rubbed his brow. “I must have dozed off. I’d best get to bed before you have to call Fergus to carry me off.”

He lumbered to the door, then stopped. Sabrina felt his continued presence like a vise squeezing her heart. She was desperate for him to leave, desperate to be alone so she could give herself over to the doubts lodged like a stone in her throat.

Finally, when she could bear it no more, she swung around to face him. “For God’s sake, man, what are you waiting for?”

He stood like a Greek statue, his arms folded over the pagan span of his chest. “My good-night kiss, of course.”

Sabrina was flabbergasted by his nerve. She rested her hands on her hips. “It seems I’ve neglected to educate you fully on civilized custom. If a husband has behaved badly and wounded his wife’s tender feelings, they do not share a good-night kiss.”

He took another moment to digest that bit of lore. Then he strode over and lifted her by the shoulders until her feet dangled a full foot off the floor. His mouth claimed hers in a slow, gentle mating of tongues until all the nether pulses of her body began to beat to his dark, erotic rhythm. The resilient satin of his lips almost made her forget Eve’s warning, almost drove everything from her mind but the lazy promise of passion in his eyes. Almost.

“Stupid custom,” he pronounced, lowering her to her feet. “Good night, brat.” He shut the door behind him with a gentleness that mocked the thundering of her heart.

“Good night, Morgan,” she whispered to the silence. “No wonder he always calls me brat. He probably can’t remember my name.”

Pugsley emerged from beneath the bed at her words.

Sabrina threw the edge of the tablecloth over the chipped teapot, sickened somehow by the sight of it. Had Eve been right? Was Morgan no different from his father? Had he truly nursed a vain infatuation for her mother all these years? She searched her memories, finding Morgan’s face, its lean planes drawn with boyish longing as he listened to Elizabeth sing.

Sabrina pressed a hand to her stomach as if she could stop the dull ache spreading through it. The irony did not escape her. While she had propped her own little chin on her pudgy fist to gaze adoringly at Morgan, he had been watching her mother in that same worshipful stance.

She had thought nothing of it at the time. They had all looked to Elizabeth. Hers was the gentle pulse that beat at the heart of Cameron Manor. Sabrina had struggled her entire life to emulate her.

When Sabrina would have had every excuse to be the spoiled, vain brat Morgan believed her to be, she had striven instead to be graceful, generous, and well-mannered.

She had dutifully squelched the raw passions trembling in her heart. She had sat in the window, her embroidery in her lap, and watched wistfully as Morgan and her brothers went cantering over the heather-strewn hills on their shaggy ponies. To please her mother, she had even been willing to travel to London and marry some staid Englishman, secretly knowing that her heart would always belong to the Highlands and to the wild, stubborn boy who had stolen it.

Sabrina had been Mama’s dainty rose.

Papa’s perfect little princess.

And now she was Morgan’s charming pet, hopping to attention each time he jerked her leash.

But she’d never been a woman. And never a wife.

While Enid had found the courage to break the chains of the past, Sabrina had fallen into the same old trap, seeking to charm Morgan’s clansmen, hoping that if she won their hearts, she might win their chieftain’s as well.

Flattening her palms on the table, Sabrina surveyed the chamber with smoldering eyes washed clean of childish illusion. There was nothing of Sabrina Cameron here, no hint of her character, no clue to her personality. Her mother’s elegant hand was everywhere. On the porcelain tea set shipped from London at her expense, on the graceful tapers dipped per her orders, on the virginal bedclothes hemmed by her precise stitches.

Everything in Sabrina’s chamber, including her dog, had belonged to Elizabeth first. And now she had reason to believe her husband’s heart had as well.

Sabrina loved her mother. Admired her. Respected her. But she could not be her. Not even for Morgan.

All those years ago, Morgan had taken such perverse delight in knocking her crown askew. Now the time had come for her to relinquish it willingly.

Pugsley growled his approval as she drew the pins from her hair, sending it tumbling around her shoulders in a dark, smoky mass.

It was nights like this that made Morgan wish he were a drinking man. Not even the iciest of spring waters could quench the fire roaring through his loins. His exhaustion had fled before the sweet acquiescence of Sabrina’s lips beneath his. The prospect of sleep was now as removed as earning a spasm of precious release for his lust-battered body.

In a moment of savage weakness, he wished he could be the man Sabrina believed him to be. He envied the moral poverty of his notorious ancestor, Horrid Halbert, who would have simply chained the beautiful Cameron girl in his dungeon to rape at his leisure.

Groaning, Morgan tossed back another draft of water. He had sought the hall, hoping to find both solace and anonymity among his boisterous clansmen. As their numbers had dwindled over the past few years and the sporadic raids of the Grants and Chisholms had grown bolder and more bloody, most of the MacDonnells had abandoned their decaying cottages and sought the refuge of the castle. They took their meals together in the hall and huddled on the benches wrapped in their plaids to sleep each night just as their ancestors had done five centuries before.

The skipping notes of the flutes and the rhythmic throb of the tambours kept time with Morgan’s restless heart.

“Heave ho, there he goes!” came the warning cry as one of his clansmen took a good-natured punch and went sailing down the table.

Morgan caught the lad by the scruff of his plaid and heaved him aside without blinking an eye. Fergus sat next to him on the bench, nuzzling a lass’s neck with far more tenderness than he might have shown a few hours earlier. Another afternoon tea with Sabrina and Morgan feared the grizzled rascal would start spouting Shakespeare. Eve perched at the end of the table, surrounded by four MacDonnells too distant from Morgan in kinship to even have earned the dubious honor of being called cousins. Their whispers and sly glances nagged at him, and he found himself once again obsessing over the frustrating mystery of Angus’s death. It galled him to know that he might never learn who murdered his father.

He yearned for that taste of sweet oblivion when Sabrina had eased him into slumber with her song, slipping him back in time to the peace of the Cameron solar, where Elizabeth’s rich soprano had finally drowned out the shouting, cursing, and violence that had punctuated his young life. But when he had awakened, Beth’s daughter had been watching him, a quizzical pain darkening her eyes. His elusive peace had shattered beneath a flood of blinding need.

It was snowing harder now. Glittering flakes drifted through the arrow slits and into the hall like a sprinkling of banished stars, melting as they reached the heated air.

Morgan stiffened as a sinuous pair of arms circled him from behind. “I hate to see ye lookin’ so grim,” Alwyn purred in his ear. “Gi’ me a moment o’ yer time and I’ll put a smile back on those bonny lips o’ yers.”

As tight as his loins were wound, Morgan suspected a moment was all it would take. His hand clenched around his mug. For one bleak instant he was tempted. Sabrina would never have to know. But as he met Eve’s wise, amused gaze down the length of the table, something in him resisted, knowing instinctively that he would feel worse after the soulless coupling. Dirtier and even more unworthy of the girl he had married, a girl as fragile and pure as the fresh flakes of snow pouring into the hall.

He was forming his rebuff when the music died. The flutes shrieked into silence. The tambour player thudded to a halt. Fergus choked on his whisky, spewing it across the table in the face of a lad too dumbfounded to bother wiping it away.

Morgan followed their stunned gazes to the archway. When he saw what had captivated them, he reached over, blindly pried the mug out of Fergus’s hand, and killed its contents in a single convulsive swallow.