When you came down to it, she had no idea at all if her husband did. In truth, how could he, when he didn’t know her any better than she knew him. She didn’t know his birthday, his favorite foods, what kind of music made him feel like dancing. Or if he danced at all. Was he kind to animals and small children? Would he care if she told him she had no idea what she was supposed to do with her life now that she was queen of the castle? Once the baby came, her role would be more clearly defined, but right now she felt downright rudderless.
She poured herself another cup of tea and drew her chair closer to the fire. Back home in Houston she’d be wearing shorts and a tank top, wondering if it was time to turn on the central air-conditioning. Home, she thought. Houston wasn’t home anymore, was it? Glenraven was her home now, as it was her husband’s home, and would be their child’s home, as well. She waited for the word to resonate inside her heart, but that sense of rightness never came.
Maybe it never would. It wasn’t as if she’d ever felt a deep spiritual connection to the place where she was born. Oh, sure, she had the same loyalty all Texans had for their home state, but that overwhelming sense of pride and belonging had somehow eluded her, as if she had been waiting all this time to find out where she was meant to be. Was this wild and beautiful place what she’d been searching for?
She glanced around the library and found nothing of herself anywhere she looked. The books were strange to her, beautiful old leather volumes of poetry and history and art that smelled like salt air and heather. The photographs on the desk were of people she’d never met The needlepoint cushions featured a coat of arms that had nothing at all to do with her.
A rush of anger brought her up short. Why wasn’t Duncan there with her, helping her settle in? This was worse than being stood up for the high school prom by Cal Hutchens. At least then she’d been able to run upstairs to her own room and slam the door closed on the world. Here, she was expected to sleep with him.
She glanced at her watch, which had been reset to local time. Nearly nine o’clock. That wasn’t too early for a pregnant woman to go to bed. If she hurried, maybe she could bathe, brush her teeth and be sound asleep before he joined her.
It was the coward’s way out but it was the best she could do tonight.
Chapter 9
Duncan stood by the window of his studio and stared at the castle. An open bottle of Glenraven’s best rested on the sill. He’d watched the lights go off one by one until the only light remaining was the one in his room. He wondered what she was doing, what mysterious female nighttime ritual she was performing.
This stranger, his wife.
He imagined her rising from her bath, a cloud of perfumed steam billowing about her knees and thighs. He could see droplets of water sliding down the curve of her belly, down the sleek line of her thighs. He could see himself dropping to his knees in front of her and capturing those drops of water with the tip of his tongue. She would taste warm and sweet and female and he—
Whiskey was a poor substitute for a woman’s body, he thought, as he lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank. That sweet, soft welcome for which men fought wars. He hadn’t been with a woman since Samantha. Not since that afternoon in the spring rain when he’d come closer to heaven than any man had the right to. She’d branded him, and he’d not been the same since.
And she would probably never know.
That was the one thing they hadn’t provided for in the endless reams of paper detailing the specifics of their marriage.
She had his heart. She’d had it from the first moment when she came to his arms beside the loch.
He saw the faintest shadow of movement behind the curtains in his room. A willowy figure paused for a moment, silhouetted by the bedroom lamp, then disappeared from view. But not from his memory. He remembered too well how she’d felt in his arms, the way her slender body had accommodated itself to him, how perfectly they’d fit together. And more than that, he remembered the way she’d made him feel.
He turned from the window and polished off the last of the single malt, but nothing dulled the sharp stab of hunger deep in the pit of his belly.
A man had the right to sleep in his own bed, but that fact somehow didn’t wash with the look he’d seen in his wife’s eyes. She feared him—or was it herself she feared? He didn’t know why that thought came to him. It must be the whiskey speaking. Whiskey made a man wonder about things that were no concern of his. The lives they’d led before no longer mattered. Wasn’t that what they’d said in those endless pages of legal documents that passed for commitment these days? The child was what mattered, making certain he or she was cradled in the secure arms of a mother and father who would always be there.
But it wasn’t the child he thought about now. It was the woman.
DUNCAN HAD certainly spared no expense when it came to remodeling the master bath, Sam thought as she climbed from the enormous sunken tub and reached for a towel. She sighed with pleasure as she wrapped the warm bath sheet around her damp body. A heated towel rack—now
