Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Sabrina was the first Cameron to conquer Castle MacDonnell without firing a single cannon.

Embued with the confidence inspired by her husband’s touching devotion to duty, and championed by the fierce Fergus, she watched with secret delight as Morgan’s clansmen fairly flung themselves at her slippered feet in surrender. Those who still dared to mock or insult her were more like than not to find themselves scrambling across the hall in a vain search for their scattered teeth.

Only Eve remained immune to Sabrina’s charms, but her mood was so despondent that neither Fergus nor Morgan had the heart to correct her.

Even Fergus required an occasional reminder that civilization had come to MacDonnell. Sabrina entered the hall one morning to discover his beefy fist raised to backhand a cowering boy who had spilled goat milk on Fergus’s tartan. Morgan was reaching to box both their ears, but the wry arch of Sabrina’s eyebrow was all it took to correct Fergus’s lapse of manners.

“Aye, there’s a bonny lad!” Fergus roared, fondly ruffling the boy’s hair as if it had been his intention to do so all along. “Hell, he might even be me own son. He’s got me bonny fair hair, don’t ye think?”

“A touch of your dimples too,” Sabrina agreed, pinching Fergus’s grizzled cheek and making him beam.

Morgan hid his own smile behind a hunk of the steaming gingerbread Sabrina had baked for him, declining to point out that half the children in the clan had hair of that same sunny sheen. And half of them were probably Fergus’s.

Morgan approached Sabrina’s chamber one chill evening, anticipating a rousing game of chess and an even more rousing tumble with his wife. Girlish giggles drifted into the corridor.

He eased open the door, expecting to find Enid and Sabrina engaged in one of the charming female rituals he could never hope to understand. Instead, he found Sabrina holding up a hand mirror so Alwyn could admire her reflection. Alwyn caught his flabbergasted expression in the mirror and spun around, her eyes wide with guilt.

Although Alwyn’s leggy, big-bosomed fairness no longer appealed to him, Morgan had to admit there was much to admire. She wore a clean gown of cool blue satin, marked as a castoff of Sabrina’s by its brimming bodice and ankle-length hem. Her face was fresh scrubbed and a tidy braid hung over one shoulder.

Sabrina linked an arm in Alwyn’s. Morgan felt his stomach sink as would any man faced with two women whose favors he had only too recently shared. Especially when one of them was his wife.

“Good evening, dear. I was just helping Alwyn with her hair. Doesn’t she look lovely?”

Alwyn could have been Helen of Troy and Morgan would still have been blinded by the impish twinkle in his wife’s eye. He scrambled wildly for an appropriate answer, clearing his throat, coughing, and finally settling for a grunt of approval. To his shock, Alwyn blushed. He wouldn’t have thought her capable of it.

She bobbed a clumsy curtsy. “I’d best be gettin’ along, me lady. I promised Mr. Fergus I’d dine with him tonight.” Her toothy grin erased years from her age. “Thank ye for the bonny ribbon. Thank ye indeed.” She scampered past Morgan, hugging the door frame to keep from brushing against him.

He stepped warily into the chamber, shutting the door behind him. “’Twas kind of you to befriend the lass. She can learn much from you.”

“On the contrary. Your Alwyn has much to teach me.”

He scowled. “She’s not my Alwyn. Never was. And I’m not sure I want you learnin’ what she knows.”

Sabrina’s innocent blink made his blood heat. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be so hasty.”

With those teasing words, she hooked her hand beneath his belt and drew him past the waiting chess board to the bed, the mocking slant of her smile softened by the tenderness in her eyes.

If Sabrina ruled MacDonnell by day, then Morgan was master of the night. Never had a Cameron been so tenderly enslaved. He held her in bonds of pleasure forged stronger each time she shattered beneath the artful dominion of his body.

He proved every sly whisper she’d heard about the MacDonnells to be true. He was relentless in pushing her to the brink of ecstasy and beyond, unyielding in his demand of her satisfaction, merciless in extracting cries of surrender until she was begging for what he was only too willing to give her.

Only in the wee hours of dawn, when she lay with her head pillowed on his naked chest, her body still limp from its most recent sating, did she dare to wonder about the morrow. Although Morgan seemed to take perverse delight in wringing her own tender confessions from her lips, he had never once so much as whispered the three words she had hungered so long to hear. Never completely lost that rigid control imposed upon him by a lifetime of care and responsibility. He gave of his body with lavish generosity but kept his heart armored and intact, just beyond her reach.

Time, she promised herself. In time she would lay siege to his heart until he trusted her enough to lay it at her feet. For now, the thundering song of its rhythm beneath her ear would have to be pledge enough.

Morgan emerged from the forest late one afternoon, his muscles aching with the pleasant exhaustion of a job well done. He and his men had done the work of a full clan in the past fortnight. The last of the cattle had been branded that day and left to forage among the rich bracken of the forest floor.

A blast of northern wind struck him as he climbed the hill toward the castle, sending the shards of snow beneath his feet into a whirling dance. Let the winter come! he thought with savage satisfaction.

In the past he’d always hated to see the bleached bones of her fingers come creeping over the mountains. The taunting whisper of her snow-choked voice had brought the MacDonnells nothing but hunger and desolation. But this year promised to be different. He had fresh meat to feed his clan. He would fill out their pinched cheeks and wipe the dull film of despair from their eyes.

The chickens had been cooped, the sheep penned, and the Cameron claymore hung over the hearth in Sabrina’s chamber. There remained only one task left unfinished in his dealings with the Camerons, and Morgan suspected the velvety darkness of the long winter nights would be ideal for its completion. Perhaps by spring Sabrina would bear his brand as well, marked clearly as his by the gentle swelling of the babe in her belly.

Morgan secretly wished for a girl child, not caring to contemplate being forced to honor his hasty and foolish promise to send Sabrina home if she gave him a son. If he had his way, God would bless him with a dozen daughters. He grinned to envision the miniature dark-haired, blue-eyed beauties hanging all over his plaid.

He topped a rise in the hill to discover why most of his men had deserted him earlier. Sabrina was wrapped in her pelisse and perched on a musty hay bale in the open courtyard, strumming the clarsach and surrounded by his clansmen. Fergus stomped out a jolly fling while Ranald kept time on a wheezy set of pipes. As he blew out a sour note, his audience hooted and jeered. Enid, her cheeks blistered pink from the cold, blew him a consoling kiss.

Morgan leaned against the scarred trunk of a Caledonian pine to enjoy Sabrina’s triumph over his clan. He could have ordered their sullen respect from her first day at MacDonnell, but he knew that would have been a hollow victory at best. Harsh experience had taught him that a victory earned was a victory savored.

Her sweet soprano launched them into melody:

Sweet William came whistling in from the plough, Says, “Oh, my dear wife, is my dinner ready now?” She called him a dirty paltry whelp: “If you want any dinner, go get it your—”

“Rider! Rider comin’ from Cameron way!” The hoarse cry shattered their merriment as a boy raced into the courtyard, stumbling and gasping for breath. “Cameron comin’!”