Ach, he was the one in danger here, not her.
He made himself get out of the bed and leave her.
CHAPTER 15
David lay awake staring at the ceiling and wondering what kind of fool he was. He was lying on the hard floor of the former laird’s bed-less chamber, while the lass who drove him senseless with lust lay in their bed in the chamber above him. If that did not make him a fool, then believing she had never found pleasure with a man before probably did.
Had she lied to him about that? Women knew how to play on a man’s pride. He found it difficult to believe her when he remembered how she had kissed him back and how slick and hot she had been under his hand.Ach, he was hard as a rock again. He would never sleep.
Without even asking, she had somehow managed to persuade him not to take her on their damned wedding night. Was it all a farce to avoid the risk of conceiving a child before her Douglas clan could rescue her? Her brothers’ disgraceful letter should have convinced her to give up hope of that, but he understood that disloyalty was a bitter potion to swallow.
He recalled the last line of the letter:Do not underestimate the power of a pretty and clever lass to bend a man’s will.Was that what she haddone?
He was still awake when the gray light of pre-dawn filtered through the narrow window and someone knocked on the chamber door. Out of habit, he sprang to his feet with his dirk in his hand, then he lit the lamp and donned his breeks.
When he opened the door and saw Robbie and Alison, he swallowed a curse. What in the hell was Alison doing wandering around the castle in her nightclothes with his brother? She had a wrapped a plaid around her shoulders but her feet were bare. The lass could catch her death of cold. He stepped back to allow them to come in.
“I came looking for ye upstairs,” Robbie said, “but Lady Alison said ye weren’t with her.”
He looked at his wife again. By the saints, she was lovely with her hair loose and tangled from sleep. He could smell the faint scent of lavender on her skin from where he stood.
“Why are ye sleeping here?” Robbie asked, his gaze dropping to David’s plaid on the floor.
Alison’s face went scarlet, and she would not meet his eyes.Damn.
“What do ye want?” he asked Robbie.
“Brian returned with news, but he didn’t want to be the one to wake ye,” Robbie said, and glanced again at the plaid on the floor, “it being your wedding night and all…”
David rubbed his forehead. At least it was his brother who found him here. If it was anyone else, he’d be a laughingstock among his men for not lasting the night with his bride.
“Brian says that the Bl—”
“Wait,” David told his brother, then turned to Alison. “Upstairs with ye, lass.”
He saw the flash of hurt in her eyes before she spun around and hurried out of the room. Ach, could he not tell his wife to leave a room without bruising her feelings?
“Why did ye do that?” Robbie asked.
“Because she can’t be privy to what you’re about to tell me.”
“But she’s your wife now, isn’t she?” Robbie asked.
“That doesn’t mean we can trust her,” David said. “She’s been a Hume less than a day, but she’ll be a Douglas all her life.”
Perhaps he could trust her after she bore him an heir. Her loyalty might shift then, not to him but to their child, which would have much the same result.
“Now tell me what news Brian brought.”
“He was in Edinburgh watching for the Blackadder kin, as ye told him to,” Robbie said. “Tulliallan and his sons came to the Holyrood Palace to whine, claiming one of them is the rightful heir to Blackadder Castle. They’re asking for the Crown’s help to toss us out.”
He had expected as much.
“They are begging for their deaths,” David said.
Blackadder’s distant male kin should not inherit over the daughters, but in Scotland disputes over inheritance rights were sometimes determined by the political winds. If they persisted in their challenge, David would take no chances. Dead men could not be heirs.
He did not yet know how deep the Tulliallan Blackadders had been involved in the conspiracy against his father and uncle, but they likely deserved to die for that too.