he had been. It made her deception so much harder to bear.
“There was a time when you begged for my touch.” His voice, low, intimate, and amused was pitched for her ears alone.
“That was a long time ago.”
He moved closer. “Was it, Mairi? Have you forgotten everything we had?”
She stared at the sun-darkened line of his jaw, refusing to answer such a question.
Edward frowned. Holy God, the woman was stubborn! He gazed at her face, surprised at the awakening hunger he felt at the mere sight of her. He thought it was finished, that the years had cured him of his impossible obsession. But now, standing within arms’ reach of her again, he realized the passage of time meant nothing. He would never be finished with Mairi of Shiels.
Eight years had passed since he’d fallen to the ground at her feet. She stood before him now, as she was then, the woman he would move heaven and earth to possess, the woman he was cursed to love and never call his own.
Mairi was done with silence. She lifted her eyes to meet his. “Take it,” she said, pointing toward the table where the large boulder rested. “’Tis our stone.”
“Aye.” Edward looked thoughtfully at the stone.
Mairi dared not breathe. Was there something beyond curiosity in his gaze? Edward was no fool. He would wonder why she had surrendered so easily.
He walked to the table and placed his hand on the granite. This was Jacob’s Pillar, the Royal Stone of the Belgic Kings brought from Dunstaffnage in A.D. 838. Scotland’s Stone of Destiny for five hundred years would now rest in Westminster Abbey. Edward’s voice was rough with emotion. “I, Edward, king of England and overlord of Scotland, claim this Coronation Stone as my right.”
Mairi turned and walked toward the stairs.
Edward’s steely voice stopped her. “You have not asked permission of your king to leave.”
She stared straight ahead, her back to him, and spoke through clenched teeth. “You will never be my king.”
He cursed under his breath and started forward. Instinctively, Mairi lifted her skirts and ran. Before she reached the stairs, his hands circled her waist, and she was flung over his shoulder. He climbed the stairs, two at a time, caring nothing for the extra weight. Mairi was not so foolish as to struggle. One slip meant instant death for the both of them. With bitter resignation she realized that Edward knew Traquair House as well as any castle of his own. She knew exactly where he was taking her.
He kicked open the door of her bedchamber and set Mairi on her feet. “Leave us,” he growled at the cowering servant. With one terrified backward glance at her mistress, the woman hurried to do his bidding.
Mairi braced herself on the back of a chair and pushed the hair away from her face. From deep within the core of her being, she summoned the courage to challenge him. “What do you want of me, Edward?”
He raked her slim, high-breasted figure with a burning glance. “Need you ask?”
“I am married,” she announced.
“Did you really believe I wouldn’t know that?” He walked to a small table near the hearth and poured a goblet of wine, grimacing as he swallowed it. “’Tis sour stuff. I prefer ale.”
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace.” Her voice was thick with sarcasm. “If I had known you intended to invade my bedchamber, I would have prepared more carefully.”
He drank off the last of the wine and removed his breastplate and pavis. “You should have expected it,” he replied calmly. Sitting on the bed, he pulled off his boots and leggings, peeled off the garters, and rolled down his hose. At last he stood before her, barefoot, in a saffron tunic and woolen breeches.
Her eyes were wide with fear and something else that made Edward’s heart beat faster. He hadn’t intended this, but perhaps it was inevitable. She inflamed him beyond rational thought. No longer counting the cost, he would carry the memory of this coupling through all the years without her. Tonight, her hair and eyes, the thin discriminating nose, the curve of her cheek, the shadow above her lip, the graceful, elegant way she moved, would be his alone. He would make her forget there had ever been another in her bed.
She made one last futile attempt to stop him. “I am wife to the earl of Murray. Would you take me in the very room I share with my husband?”
“Aye.” He leaned toward her, brushing her