Free Plaid to the Bone by Mia Marlowe Page B

generously sized and he knew it. Then his conscience needled him.
    “I’ll no’ hurt ye, Cait. We’ll go slow, aye? In fact, ’tis best that way.” He stretched out on the bed beside her, propping himself on one elbow. “But a wedding calls for a bedding and that’s just what we’ll have.”
    She seemed to shrink down under the covers a bit.
    “Does it no’ seem odd to ye that we’re almost strangers and yet we’re to do this thing?” she asked in an odd voice.
    Adam didn’t have it in him to tell her most men didn’t even need to know a willing lass’s name before shagging her silly.
    “We’re no’ strangers.” He traced along the edge of the pearl necklace with one finger. Gooseflesh rippled over her skin. “We’re husband and wife.”
    “In name only.”
    “Time will settle that. By morning, we will be joined in truth.”
    “But . . .” She looked away from him. “I dinna love ye.”
    “Nor I ye.” That jerked her gaze back to him. “But I promised that I will love ye and I am a man of my word.”
    “And ye think that’s all there is to it?” She sat up straighter and folded her arms over her chest. “Ye just decide ye’re going to love someone and that’s it?”
    “Of course. Love isna about flutters in the belly, no matter what the poets say. It’s about honoring and preferring another over your own self. ’Tis no’ about feeling. Feelings can change. Love is about doing.” He was surprised she didn’t know this already, but he was learning quickly that women had strange ideas sometimes. “How else do ye think so many made marriages have flourished over the years? Ye purpose in your mind to love someone and ye do it.”
    “But what about your heart?”
    “The heart is a tricky thing, Cait. Desperately wicked, the Good Book says. Who can know it?” He reached up and cupped the back of her head. “Trust me, lass, ye’re safer with my will than my heart. I will myself to love you till I’m dust. That which I’ve promised, I’ll deliver.”
    Gently lest he spook her, he pulled her close and kissed her. Given the way she’d kissed him last night, he was surprised at her tremble now. Perhaps she really was afraid of the act itself.
    He reached around her slender neck and unhooked the necklace.
    “The box for it is in my chamber,” she said.
    “Then I’ll put it in my sporran for the night.” He rolled off the bed and stashed the heirloom in the capacious badger-skin pouch. Then he walked back toward the bed. “Have ye ever seen a man, Cait?”
    “Of course, I have. I’m no’ a helpless ninny. After my mother died, I served as my father’s chatelaine. I’ve nursed some of his fighting men when they were injured or sick, but . . .”
    “But a sick man’s parts are no’ like a healthy one’s,” he finished for her. “Ye’ve never seen one angry before, aye?”
    Her eyes flared and she flicked her gaze back at his groin. “Are ye angry?”
    “No, I just mean . . . I’m no’ always in this state ye ken.”
    “I should hope no’. Ye’d look as if ye had a tent pole under your kilt.”
    Adam laughed. “I’ll no’ say that’s the finest thing a lass has ever said to me, but ’tis no’ the worst either.”
    He lifted the covers and slid in next to her. She sidled away only a little. The heat of her body had warmed the space she vacated, but her feet were icy when they brushed against his shins.
    “Brr, woman. Your feet are cold.”
    She shifted them away from him. “I canna help it.”
    “Weel now, there’s where ye’re in luck, because I can.”
    Adam ducked under the blankets and found her delicately arched feet. He rubbed them between his hands and blew his warm breath on them. By the time he planted a kiss on each of her insteps, her icy toes had thawed. For a moment, he considered kissing his way up her legs to the soft folds between them but decided that brand of love play might be too decadent for a lass who, by her own admission, didn’t