Free book JdM6x1406931-20978754 by Emily Tilton Page A

because his brow furrowed of a sudden. Oh, if only she could tell him that she loved to be abased by his words and by his body! That her displeasure was not at him but at herself for the way her cunny tightened when she heard it called by its shameful new name!
    She put the smile back on her face. “It, too, is more than alright, husband. Did I please you?”
    Angus lay down beside her and lifted the plaid that covered her and regarded her naked body for a moment before he wrapped himself up with her in the wooly cloth.
    Outside, the sounds of parting company came to Elisabeth’s ears, and the pipers were playing the traditional farewell tune. It made her sad to think the day was over, but the die she had wished to cast had been cast, and she knew that she had made the right choice, for her true pride and her true honor, to wed her Highlander.
    “My dearling, my Elisabeth, you pleased me more greatly than I could ever have dreamt.” He reached out under the plaid with his powerful arms and gathered her into himself, then ran his right hand up and down her, as if trying to reassure himself of her truly being there with him in his bed.
    “I love you, Elisabeth MacGregor,” he said.
    Barely thinking, she replied, “I love you, Angus MacGregor.” The response had seemed to well up in her, born out of the way he had mastered her and the way he had cherished her. She hardly knew what she meant, but her heart had responded of its own accord. Surely it was right that a woman should love her husband, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.
     
    * * *
     
    When she awoke, to the crowing of roosters, he was not in bed with her, and she felt so forlorn she could hardly credit it. How could he, the man she had put in the pillory only two days before, have become so important to her happiness? Along with the loneliness, though, there was relief, because he would not see how much she needed his presence. She lay, thinking again about her strange wedding day, about mutton and whiskey and Highland dances.
    Did she miss her father? No—she had never known him really. Did she miss the noble life she would, it seemed, never have again? She missed rooms that did not smell of peat and blankets that did not smell of men’s hard labor, she supposed, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the plaid under which she lay even as she nestled herself deeper into it. But for that price she had gained Loch Glanaidh and the Highland sky and freedom.
    The door opened and Angus came in. His first look was towards her, she saw with a rush of joy that she tried to contain in her heart as she let the smile it caused show upon her face. He met it with his own smile.
    “Calum and Alan did my chores for me,” he said as he banked the fire on the hearth, “the rascals.”
    “And mine?” she asked, though she did not even know what her chores might be.
    He laughed. “Yours, too.”
    “You’ll teach me them? As you taught me about the fire?” Another dangerous feeling of warmth, just at the thought of Angus teaching her, showing her, holding her little hands in his big ones.
    “Yes, lass,” he said. “But this morning we have time to enjoy one another, it seems.”
    She felt her face grow hot and her brow furrow. Surely her resolve was not to be tried again, so soon? How could she bear it?
    Angus lay down again beside her, and she tried desperately to look happy that he had done so, wondering whether she were losing her wits. To be so madly happy that your husband has come back to your bride-bed that you feel your honor is in mortal peril, and therefore to be terribly anxious that he has come back to your bride-bed, and thus to need to pretend to be happy that he has come to lie beside you—surely those were not the feelings of a sane woman.
    But for once he did not seem to notice her misgivings, and he smiled into her eyes kindly and warmly. He put his right hand gently around the back of her neck and kissed her, and she tried to respond the way she