Page 155 of Laird of Smoke
Adam seemed to sense her disquiet.
“What’s wrong?”he murmured.
“Everyone knows I was raised in a convent,” she whispered back.
“Aye?”
She glanced involuntarily toward the steps leading to the bedchamber Isabel had shown her.The bedchamber that had been prepared with fresh linens decked with flower petals for the newly married couple.
“Mmm,” he said.“Are you worried about the wedding night rites?”
She winced in apology.“I don’t want to ruin anythin’.Your clan has been so kind to me.And I know how important tradition is to them.But the linens won’t be bloody, Adam.They’ll know I didn’t come to this marriage a virgin.”
Adam gave her a wise and sober nod.
But inside he was grinning.
He doubted many Rivenloch brides had come to their marriages as virgins.His clan wouldn’t dare demand anyone go through such archaic rites.As Laird Deirdre had long ago decreed, such traditions were an abomination, an insult to women, and the ruin of perfectly good linens.
His clanwould,however, mercilessly harass the newlyweds.And he didn’t want to give them the pleasure.Not on his wedding night.Not when his bride sat beside him, looking up at him with dewy apprehension in her eyes.
He wanted her all to himself.
“Damn tradition,” he told her.“I have an idea.”
Adam figured it would be the clan’s own fault if they let the bride and groom out of their sight and they happened to disappear.
Perhaps if his cousin Brand hadn’t been helping himself to so many portions of beef, if Logan hadn’t been bellowing out his heroic tales, if Hew hadn’t been fondling his new wife under the table, and if Aunt Helena hadn’t been quarreling with Uncle Colin, they might have noticed when Adam stole upstairs and Eve slipped out of the great hall.
Stuffing the goose-down pallet through the high bedchamber window was not an easy feat, especially with Eve watching from below.But Adam managed to get it past the shutters and heave it onto the sill.Then he pushed it over until it toppled onto the sod.
Eve waved up at him, letting him know it was undamaged.
Then he grabbed a pair of plaids and came downstairs.Creeping back through the crowd, he exited into the courtyard.
Together, he and Eve wrested the pallet across the courtyard to the stables.He’d seen the stable lad at the feast, so the outbuildings would be deserted and relatively warm.
At one end of the stables was a pile of clean straw.He dragged the pallet on top of it.There were horses at the other end.But they were calm, likely used to visitors having midnight trysts.
Once he closed the door, it was as black as a cave.
They wasted no time, divesting of their wedding attire in the dark and stripping down to their leines.
“I can’t see anythin’,” Eve complained.
“Well then, my love, I suppose we’ll have to go by touch,” he replied, reaching out to sweep his hand across her jaw and into her hair.
“Will we?”she murmured.
With one hand, she patted at his chest, feeling her way up to his shoulder and then inward to his neck.
But while he was distracted by that hand, she clapped her other hand boldly over his braies.
He sucked in a breath of pleased surprise.
“What’s this?”she teased.“I can see naught in this darkness.”
He didn’t have the wit to reply at the moment.Instead, he closed his eyes with a groan and caught the back of her neck, pulling her close for a kiss.
