At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle 3)

“A girl, is it?” the laird asked with a start, his eyes widening with something akin to delight. But then the rest of my words reached him and his shoulders slumped again. “I would never discard you, mo chride. Never.”

“Never again, you mean.”

I was provoking his temper, but he managed to keep it in check. “In facing death, lass, I did for you the best thing I knew how to do as a laird. But perhaps what you need is a man who is not the laird. You need a man who can make a wife of you—”

“Don’t,” I said, with a violent shake of my head, sure that he was about to do it all over again. To send me away from him to some man of his choosing, without my having a say in it. “I don’t want some other man.”

The laird’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t speaking of another man. I was offering myself to you, lass. The whole of me. If you will have me, I will give up my position as laird.”

I blinked at him, furrowing my brow, not letting myself understand. “Give up your position as laird? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“Because it’s never been done,” he said, his brow furrowed too. “At least, not that I know of. But that wouldn’t stop me. I will face too much opposition in marrying you—it will cause people to scheme against us both. So I will resign my lands in favor of Ian in exchange for his blessing to wed you.”

Oh, the awkward pain of asking Ian for his blessing! And yet…and yet…this man, this proud man, was offering me marriage. Marriage! As if I were a respectable girl. “You cannot mean that.”

The laird nodded, gravely. “I do. I thought once that you were sent by the devil to tempt me. But now I think it was something of divine providence that brought you to me. I am no good without you, Heather. Not good as a laird and not good as a man. I had the chance to see that, while contemplating my death, and I thought it would be a short time of suffering without you until the end. But now I face a whole life ahead, and I will do anything to have you with me. Anything but force you to have me.”

In spite of how I told myself to resist him, to be wary of being taken in again by his charms, his words touched me so deeply that I would have to be a heartless woman to deny him. My laird had told me that he liked to leave marks on his women—well he had left marks on me. Deeper than skin. Deeper than pain. Deeper than anything.

I was, for him, always more naked than naked.

“You’ve never had to force me to do anything, my laird. And if you give me your word you will never discard me for any reason, it will be enough for me. You need not give up your clan. You’re the laird. It’s who you are. I would never be the one to take it from you.”

He gave a rueful chuckle. “You see, I always suspected you preferred the laird over only John Alexander Ramsay Macrae…”

“And I told you that you weren’t only anything,” I smiled, cupping his cheek. “My laird, the clan needs you. None of them, not even Ian, is as strong as you are. What you did, it pained me, as a lover. The lover in you did wrong. But the laird did not. You were willing to sacrifice everything for your clan’s safety and honor. Everything.”

“Yes,” he said.

“That is the sort of man the clan needs, and I will proudly love that man and be his harlot all my days…”

The laird winced. “Not my harlot. Never again. Not my mistress, either. But my lady. And my wife, some day, if I can make it so without causing a bloody feud. This I vow to you, Heather. As true as a husband to you. I swear it.”

Tears of happiness coursed down my cheeks as I kissed him, savoring the taste so long denied me. I wanted him so badly, in spite of the wounds and everything else. “Never your harlot?” I let the faintest trace of disappointment tinge my words. “Not even when I’m in your bed, pleading with you to take me in every way it is possible to take a woman?”

The consternation on his face as he struggled with his love and his lust might have been comical were it not for the fact I earnestly feared his answer. “I’m trying to speak to you of my heart, woman!”

Laying my hand upon his chest, where his heart beat, I felt the heat pass between his skin and mine. “So am I.”

He was cracking, I could tell. And as he stared down at my fingers as if hoping desperately for them to trail a path lower, he rumbled, “Well, maybe in bedroom play you can be my harlot. If it would please you…”

“T’would please me,” I said, boldly, imitating his thicker brogue. “I’m a woman for rough wooing, ye ken. You said once that being with you was painful, but pleasurable for the right lass. Well, I’m the right lass, John Alexander Ramsay Macrae.”

A slow and sheepish smile crossed his face. “Aye, you are. The right lass for me. The only lass for me. I will never be sated of you. Not my whole life long. With or without a churching.”

Chapter Twelve

JOHN

The wedding was celebrated in fine fashion in the Great Hall, with music and feasting. Heather wasn’t quite recovered of her wound enough for dancing, which was a shame, because the laird loved to watch her long coltish legs. Best that she take it easy, though, given that her belly was round with child.

His child, he was sure.

He would never admit to any other

possibility. And it mattered not at all, because Heather had told him the way of it between her and Ian. Which meant that the child was conceived in the laird’s bed one way or another. Which was nothing short of a miracle. A blessing he scarcely deserved. It felt like divine forgiveness, which made him, in turn, feel more forgiving against those who had wronged him.

Not the Donalds and MacDonalds. Never them. But Heather’s father he forgave, inviting the man to return from the countryside with his bairns in tow for the wedding. Alas, Heather and Arabella’s father was a stubborn old goat. Seeing his younger daughter honorably wed to Davy of Clan Macrae wasn’t enough to lure him back to his laird’s hall.