The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [13]
She didn’t knock on the closed door, just slipped inside. Another bright streak of lightning and she saw her father’s outline in the middle of the massive bed. She eased next to him and wrapped her blanket around her. She was safe now. She could feel his warmth even through all the covers. She snuggled even closer to his back. Nothing could hurt her now. Meggie sighed and went immediately to sleep.
Early the next morning, Tysen awoke slowly, instantly aware that he was in Scotland, sleeping in the huge laird’s bed, and felt his child pressed against his back. He smiled. When the children had occasionally began to come into his bed, he’d learned soon enough to wear a nightshirt. He remembered that Melinda Beatrice had been relieved when he’d donned the nightshirts she’d made quickly for him, a good half dozen. She’d never said anything about his sleeping unclothed, since that was how he’d been raised, but Tysen had known that she was embarrassed when she sometimes saw him naked. He supposed that he too was relieved once he started wearing the nightshirts. He’d matched his wife, both of them covered from tip to toe with white batiste. He also knew that she hadn’t liked performing her marital obligations, for he’d once overheard her saying so to her mother. It had never occurred to him that she wouldn’t want him once they were married, since he’d been desperate to touch her, to kiss her, to come inside her. He’d always believed her reticence, her shyness, were fitting and proper but that she would change once it was deemed by God and the Church to be the thing to do. But no, she’d suffered him. That was the way he thought of it each time he needed a man’s relief. She’d suffered him. She was a lady. He supposed that was simply the way it was. But then he would think of his brothers and their wives and how they were always touching and laughing and kissing behind the door. No, he turned off those thoughts. They were worthless. They were probably ungodly as well, but he didn’t want to examine them closely enough to determine that. Life was life, and he was a very lucky man.
He saw the bright sunlight pouring through the series of eight narrow windows that gave onto the sea. The water was blue and calm. He heard seagulls shrieking as they dove for their breakfast. After the violent storm of the night before, even the air in his huge bedchamber seemed fresher, brighter, drawing in the sunlight. The beauty of it touched him. It was God’s gift after the violence of the night.
He gently moved himself away from Meggie, saw her curl up into a little ball, her sleep unbroken. He eased her under the covers and lightly kissed her forehead. The storm must have frightened her, and the strangeness. The lightning tearing into that turret room must have been a sight. He lightly touched his fingertips to her cheek. So soft she was, and she was his. Even when she disobeyed him he loved her, loved her and her brothers so much that it humbled him, the completeness of it, the infinite richness of it.
He straightened. Kildrummy Castle. It was now his. He was now the laird. He said the words aloud, feeling them roll on his tongue, sing their magic into his mind. “ Kildrummy Castle.” It was his responsibility, no one else’s. It hadn’t really sunk in until this very moment, as he stood there looking out over the North Sea. This would be his home until he died, and then it would pass to Max. He wondered if the harsh beauty of the place would move Max to his soul, or if his scholarly son would just return to Euripides without a second thought and perhaps quote some offhand Latin.
Tysen bathed and dressed behind a screen in case Meggie woke up, then took himself downstairs. The wide front doors were flung open to the enclosed inner courtyard. The morning sun burst through into the castle, filling the vast entryway. Tysen could see dancing motes of dust in that brilliant sunlight.
Pouder, so