CHAPTER 18
Sybil snuggled closer to Rory. All she wanted was to stay right here in his arms and pretend this would not end.
“How are ye this morning?” Rory asked, and kissed her hair.
“Good.” She leaned back and grinned at him. “Verra good.”
She could not remember ever feeling this happy and at peace—and she refused to spoil this moment by thinking of how brief their time as lovers might be.
“No regrets?” he asked.
“None.” Their lovemaking had been a revelation, from the fiery passion to the moments of unbearable tenderness. She’d never dreamed that making love could be like it was with Rory. Somehow he made her feel precious and yet utterly free at the same time.
“If you’d kept me waiting any longer,” Rory said, “it might have killed me.”
They both laughed, but then he went quiet.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I can’t say I’m sorry we didn’t wait.” He brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek. “But I do wish it could have been like ye wanted.”
“Like I wanted? Don’t let this go to your head, but I can’t imagine it being any better.” She felt her cheeks go warm.
“Ach, lass, we’ll never get up today if ye say things like that to me.”
A smile curved his lips as he leaned down to kiss her. By the saints, how could she resist him? And why would she ever want to?
Sometime later, they lay side by side staring up at the midmorning sky, their bodies glistening with sweat beneath the blanket despite the nip in the air. Rory clasped her hand where it rested over his heart.
“When I said I wished last night could have been like ye wanted,” he said, “I meant I wish it had been in the best bedchamber in a MacKenzie castle after we said vows before my clansmen and celebrated our marriage with a grand feast, music, and dancing.”
“What?” Sybil sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest.
“Though we’re already husband and wife,” Rory said with an earnest expression, “I promise we’ll have a marriage celebration with a fine gown for ye to wear and all the rest of it.”
“But I’m not your wife.” She was so startled that she blurted out the words.
“After what we’ve done, ye most assuredly are.” A warrior’s glare replaced the warmth that had been in Rory’s eyes the moment before.
“But I never agreed to marry ye.” She clutched the blanket to her chest and shook her head. “We said no vows.”
“A marriage contract plus consummation,” Rory said between clenched teeth, “makes a binding marriage.”
She’d forgotten about that damned contract. What had she gotten herself into? The only way she could persuade Rory they were not married was to tell him that they had no contract in the first place.
“As for agreeing to it,” Rory said as he threw the blanket off, “I believe I heard ye say aye more than once on our wedding night.”
Sybil knew she ought to tell him the truth now, that delaying might even make it worse. Yet she simply could not bring herself to do it. Rory’s stormy expression was not what held her back, though that did not help. After all they had been through and all he’d done for her, how could she tell him the contract was nothing but a jest her brothers had played on him? How could she hurt his pride by saying he had traveled hundreds of miles and risked his life to rescue a woman to whom he owed no obligation whatsoever?
Nay, she could not. Especially now, when he was grieving for his brother and carried the future of his clan on his shoulders. She must find another way out of this.
“Now that you’re to be chieftain, we both know ye need a wife who’ll bring the support of a strong Highland clan with her,” she said. “I assumed ye would want us to destroy the contract now.”
“’Tis too late for that now,” he growled.
“Nay, ’tis not.” Sybil rested her hand lightly on his arm. “No one else knows about the contract.”
He should be relieved that she was offering him an escape from a poor marriage. Instead, he looked as if she had slapped him.
“Say ye don’t think so little of me.” Rory searched her face. “I’d never deceive and take advantage of ye like that.”
Tears welled in her eyes because he was so damned honorable. He really did need to be more pragmatic if he was to survive as head of his clan.
“Ye offered to destroy the contract if that’s what I wished,” she said. “Why should I not do the same for you?”
“I offered to destroy it before we consummated the marriage,” he said. “Like it or not, we’re wed now.”
“We gave in to lust.” Sybil fixed her gaze on the storm clouds on the horizon because she could not bear to look at him while she spoke of what happened between them as so much less than it was. “Your clan should not suffer for our weakness.”
“You and I know the truth. We are husband and wife, and I’ll not deny it,” Rory said. “What kind of chieftain will I make if I’m not a man of my word? I’d be no better than Hector.”
Rory meant what he said now, but Sybil knew how these things went. His advisors would pressure him to make a useful alliance, and his ambitions for his clan and for himself would eventually lead him to change his mind. If he did not deny the marriage outright, then he would employ the Highland custom of setting her aside to make a more advantageous match.
This was precisely what he ought to do. And what she wanted him to do. For heaven’s sake, the last thing she wished for herself was to be trapped in marriage and under a man’s thumb forever.
So why did the thought of Rory taking another woman for his wife make her feel miserable and murderous?
***
We gave in to lust. Is that all Sybil thought it was?
Their lovemaking had changed everything. The moment their bodies were joined, they became legally bound as man and wife. But it was more than that. When he was inside her, Rory felt as if their very hearts and souls were bound together.
Each time he thought he understood Sybil, she confused him again.
It pained him that she had not trusted him enough to tell him she was raped. How could she believe he would blame her for that? She was accustomed to men who lied to get what they wanted and then deserted her when it served their interests, but she should know him better by now. Had he not claimed her after she lost everything?
She had been quick to forgive him for his foolish anger after their first time, and then she gave herself to him with such abandon that he believed he had finally gained her trust. Their lovemaking was nothing short of magical, a melding of two into one. Or so it had felt to him. And yet she believed he would deny what they’d done, deny that he’d made her his wife.
She had been raised in the midst of ruthless royal politics, and she was right that a different wife could bring him an alliance he desperately needed. All the same, it troubled him that she had expected him to behave so poorly—and that she had been willing to bed him regardless.
“We’d best be going.” He got up and started pulling on his clothes. “I’ll see to Curan.”
Before he could walk away, she stood, holding the blanket about her shoulders, and brought him to a halt with the touch of her fingertips against his chest. He sucked in his breath. Though her fingers barely grazed him, they burned into his skin like hot irons.
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said, looking at him with her fathomless violet eyes, “or to suggest last night did not mean as much to me as it did. I’ll hold the memory of it in my heart until the day I die.”
A moment ago she had dismissed what happened between them as mere lust. Was she now just telling him what she thought he wanted to hear? Ach, he didn’t know what to think.
“If the last weeks and months have taught me anything, it’s that we cannot know our future.” She took his face between her hands. “No matter what happens, I want ye to know, Rory Ian MacKenzie, that I treasure what is between us.”
The blanket slipped off her shoulder, revealing her creamy skin, a compelling reminder that she was naked beneath the blanket, which in turn sparked vivid memories from the night before. If Rory had any resistance left, it went up in smoke when Sybil wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him with a fierceness that sent a fiery burst of need coursing through his veins.
She gave herself to him with such warmth and enthusiasm, both then and in the days that followed, that he was sorely tempted to trust her. He wanted to believe she was as happy as she seemed to be wed to him.
And yet he could not forget her startled denial when he first called her his wife.