Sue-Ellen Welfonder Read online

  She searched his face. “Be content with knowing I do not fear you,” she said, the sincerity in her voice unmanning him. “Ne’er you… not while life is in me. I have seen the goodness in you, sir… and your valor.”

  “And keeping that life in you is my sole purpose, dear lady,” Iain said, amazed his voice hadn’t cracked on the words. Her faith in him, justified or nay, touched him deeply.

  It’d been so long since anyone had admired aught about him, that he felt a mite embarrassed, too. But he tamped down those feelings and embraced the good ones… the fine golden warmth stretching its sweet light into the deepest corners of the cold dark inside him.

  For a wee moment, some of the weight on his shoulders lessened, but then suddenly, he was afeared himself. Allowing himself to revel overmuch in any such pleasure might have the fates snatching it right back from his grasp.

  So he cleared his throat and broached a safer, but equally important matter. “I would hear who those men were and what they want of you?”

  She looked down, brushed a sheaf of gleaming, fire-bright curls over her shoulder. “I do not ken what they want or who they are,” she said, setting trembling fingers to work on the second brooch.

  “I think you do,” he pressed, hating to push her but sensing she wouldn’t speak of them lest he did. “You recognized them.”

  She stiffened visibly. “Recognizing them or their vile intent needn’t mean I ken their names.”

  Still struggling with the brooch, she looked up long enough to shoot a challenging glance at him. Her eyes sparked green fire, dared him to state otherwise.

  “Those men are strangers to me.”

  “But you know of them,” he argued. “Enough to ken their purpose.”

  “Nay, I do not,” she insisted. “You err.”

  In a flare of surprising temper, she quit fumbling with the pin clasp and yanked hard on the brooch. It came free at once, a good-sized piece of jagged-edged cloth with it. The torn bodice, and the gossamer-fine shift beneath it, fell completely open, the heavy white globes of her full breasts wholly exposed and wearing naught but the chill night air and two deliciously tight nipples.

  Iain groaned deep in his throat.

  She gasped and clapped her hands o’er her nipples. “Oh, dear saints,” she cried, and angrily tossed her hair back from her face. “Like you, Drummond women are known for their tempers, Iain MacLean,” she owned, an agitated quiver in her voice.

  Looking utterly miserable, she stared at him, her fingers splayed across the bountiful flesh of her well-fashioned breasts. “Now the gown is ruined beyond repair. I’ve naught else to—”

  Iain reached for her, to take her by the shoulders and comfort her thus, but he caught himself and let his hands drop to his sides. “Gavin will have clothes for you when we join him and your friend on the road north on the morrow,” he said, glad he could ease some of her distress. “MacNab, at whose keep they are this night, has more sisters than you can count, and Gavin has instructions to secure fresh garb for you.”

  “So you are kindhearted as well as valiant,” she said, considering him in the candle glow. “I am not surprised.”

  Again, his heart lurched, an unexpected wash of pleasure sweeping him, the golden warmth he was beginning to recognize and crave, filling even the remotest cracks and crannies in his soul.

  His heart.

  The slightest of smiles tugged at the corners of his mouth, but the pleasurable sensations proved so strange, so unaccustomed, they skittered away the instant he focused on them.

  And the more fool he if he allowed himself any such indulgence. So he schooled his features into a noncommittal mask of blandness.

  “Until I leave you in the care of the good brothers at Dunkeld, anyone we meet will think you my wife, and with a few obvious exceptions, I shall treat you as such,” he said, the cold seeping back through him with each spoken word. “Think you I could sleep a night—even an hour—betwixt now and Dunkeld if I allowed you to walk about in rags?”

  To his amazement, she took her hands from her breasts to grip and squeeze one of his hands. “I knew your heart was deep,” she said, tightening her grasp once more before clapping her hands back over her nipples.

  “You knew?”

  “I felt it,” she said, her voice thick.

  Iain eyed her sharply, something about her tone and the bright shimmer of almost-tears in her eyes sending little nips of wariness down his spine.

  But she recovered with remarkable speed, standing tall before him and meeting his penetrating gaze with clear, deep-seeing eyes.

  Wise, intelligent eyes he found every bit as intriguing as the delectable plenitude of her naked breasts.

  More intriguing, in fact.

  A simple truth that unsettled him, for it gnawed voraciously at every barrier he sought to keep between them.

  “Drummond women are also known for their fortitude,” she was saying. She raised the hem of her skirts, let him see the dirk-hilt protruding from her boot. “I am not afeared to face my challenges alone”—she shrugged— “I ken my limitations and thank you again for procuring raiment for me.”

  Iain scarce heard her, his mind full occupied with the dirk. A one-armed stripling could pluck it from her fine-boned hand with ease, use it against her. “You think to protect yourself with that? A wee bairn’s blade?”

  Silence answered him… as did the pink stain popping onto her cheeks.

  She pursed her lips and something in the tight-lipped, voiceless way she regarded him made the fine hairs on his nape lift and crackle.

  Surely she didn’t mean to use the dirk without provocation?

  Iain blinked, dragged a weary hand down his face.

  The uisge beatha—or more likely, the proximity of her bared breasts—had surely turned his brain to mush.

  Addled his wits.

  The strain of keeping his gaze above her shoulders was giving him a raging headache.

  A worse headache than if he’d tossed down the entire flagon!

  He was not the paragon of chivalrous virtue she took him for, and his ability to uphold such a sham was fast dwindling. Leaving her standing beside the wooden tub, he stalked to the bed, tossed his leather satchel onto its feather mattress.

  “Pray have your bath, lass, afore the water chills,” he urged her, rummaging through the satchel until he found the sphagnum moss. “I shall stand before the window, my back turned, until you are through.”

  And if, perchance, the devil got the better of him and he risked a peek, the linen-lined tub looked deep enough to hide her nakedness to her shoulders… which was exactly why he wished her in it!

  A fool notion if e’er there was one, he decided, the instant his ear caught the first soft rustlings of her hastily stripping off her clothes. But it was her sigh of pleasure as she lowered herself into the scented water that undid him.

  That, and the splashy sound of water lapping against her naked skin.

  “Jesu Christ,” he swore, his supposed gallantry forgotten.

  Frowning darkly, he dropped the clump of moss into an earthenware bowl on the table and filled it with water— thanks be, the bowl had a matching pitcher, and someone had thoughtfully assured it held fresh water.

  He was not going anywhere near the wooden tub.

  Not with her in it.

  In particular now that she’d helped herself to the little jar of lavender-scented soap. Its sharp-sweet scent blended with her own lighter, heathery one to rise from the heated water and waft about the small room.

  Waft directly beneath his twitching nose, beguiling him and increasing his difficulty in playing chivalrous.

  Truth to tell, decidedly un-chivalrous thoughts laid siege to him from all sides.

  Taking great care not to look her way, he carried the sphagnum infusion across the room and plunked the bowl onto the top of the brazier.

  Then he went to stand before the shuttered window, his back to the room, just as he’d promised—and took some g
rim satisfaction in having found her at last.

  Even if he could only enjoy the completeness she brought him for the short space of days needed to reach Dunkeld.

  Resting a shoulder against the window splay, he folded his arms and peered down through the angled shutter slatting at the inn yard, awash in drifting mist and slanting sheets of lashing rain.

  Muffled bursts of laughter and song drifted up from the common room, testament of the continued drinking and carousing, and not far beneath the window, the ale-stake bobbed and weaved in the gusty wind, an odd and garish protrusion against somber storm-dark night.

  And not unlike Iain himself, somehow out of place in the world around him.

  The ale-stake’s supports creaked and groaned, angry rusty cries against the indignities of being tossed about on the turbulent night wind. But its screeches and moans availed naught… much as his own protests brought no relief from a life gone wrong.

  Closing his ears to its pitiful wails, and to the softer, sweeter sounds of Madeline’s ablutions, Iain let the cold draught blowing through the shutters carry off any residual doubts lurking at the edge of his mind, unable to deny the irrefutable truth of the clan legend he’d ne’er believed.

  E’er a man of dark reserve and little jollity, ne’er had he breathed so freely, known such warmth curl round his heart—or felt more alive—than in the few scant hours she’d been at his side.

  She’d even brought a smile to his lips a time a two… or, at least the fervent wish to form one.

  And he held in greatest trust that, given time, she’d fill his life with so much color and richness, he’d not pass a single hour without smiling.

  Not a whim or fancy, she was indeed the other half of his heart, and he would ne’er unsay or scoff at legends or magic again.

  Leaning harder against the window’s edge, Iain drew a rough breath and faced still one more truth.

  Mayhap the most vital one of all.

  There could be no stepping back.

  He could not—would not—walk away from Dunkeld Cathedral without her.

  Regardless of what it cost him—and the saints knew he had scarce little to offer her—she would leave Dunkeld at his side… and as his bride.

  Chapter Twelve

  MADELINE SIGHED, AND RESTED her head against a folded towel she’d placed over the edge of the linen-draped tub. Sinking lower into the blissfully heated water, she concentrated on every shade and ripple of her shadow man’s emotions e’er to spool round her heart or drift through her dreams.

  Her eyes half-closed, she curled her fingers o’er her bent and raised knees, and recalled them all…

  An ache that could ne’er be assuaged.

  A black void too deep to e’er be filled with joy and light.

  A profound love so all-encompassing it burned with a brilliance to rival the light of a thousand suns.

  …but she failed miserably in her every attempt to forge a new path into his heart.

  Or invite him into hers.

  Time and again she tried, remembering his every anguish, his guilt. And, aye, the bottomless love he bore a single woman.

  But her efforts proved futile.

  She could no longer reach the deepest part of him.

  Could feel naught but the numbing cold and emptiness inside her own heart.

  The hunger and the doubt.

  And the two words that seemed to hover in the air between them, elusive as the wispy curls of scented steam rising from her bath and just as difficult to catch.

  She thought the words were entwined destinies.

  And if they were, she knew exactly what they implied… a forever bond between her shadow man and the woman who held his heart.

  A bond beyond breaking.

  Her eyes stinging from tears she refused to shed, Madeline sat up and plunged her fingers deep into the little pot of soft, lavender-scented soap. The languor brought on by the soothing caress of the warm water on her naked flesh marred by the direction her thoughts were taking, she scrubbed first her arms, then her legs, scouring her flesh with a vengeance until it tingled and shone with a fine rosy glow.

  And still she couldn’t rid herself of the stain of the two words.

  They flitted about in the half dark, taunting her from the shadows and reminding her that she had her own path to follow and that another woman accompanied Iain MacLean along his.

  But unbreakable bonds or nay, he had looked on her with favor, and well more than once!

  And he’d certainly enjoyed kissing her.

  Of that there could be no doubt.

  But how could he feel such desire for her—for the evidence of his arousal had been unmistakable—if his heart belonged so fully to someone else?

  Madeline’s brows drew together, each unanswered question another reason for her confusion… and why she’d sought so hard to catch hold of some revealing filament for a telltale glimpse into his heart.

  Fervently wishing that for once she’d been able to make use of her gift at will, she drew a deep breath and held it, then slipped beneath the water to wet her hair.

  Long in need of a thorough washing, she soaped her hair and scrubbed her scalp with special care, the fine and fragrant lather making the task an indescribable bliss. A divine treat every bit as enjoyable as the swirl of warm water rippling across the top swells of her naked breasts.

  Uncertainty lapped at her, too. If she couldn’t probe the depths of his heart to find her answers, she had little choice but to voice them directly.

  Aye, she’d simply ask him.

  Her decision made, she reached for a pail of clean water to rinse the soap from her hair. The cold water sluiced over her head and down her back, chilling the already cooling bathwater and making her shiver, but also carrying away any last residue of hesitation.

  Feeling more in control of her fate than she had in weeks, she lifted her chin and reached behind her to twist her wet hair into a thick rope. But she’d hardly begun to wring out the moisture—or savor her newfound resolve—when a resounding crash shook the walls.

  “Of a mercy!” Madeline shot to her feet, her heart slamming against her ribs.

  “God and all his saints!” Iain cried, his hand flying to his sword hilt… only to lower again as swiftly.

  A quick glance through the still-vibrating shutter slatting revealed the cause of the deafening commotion. Gusting winds had ripped the ale-stake from its hinges and sent it plunging to the ground.

  “It was only the ale-stake,” he said, turning to face Madeline. “The wind—”

  He froze, his mouth going instantly dry.

  Saints above, in his shock from the sudden crash, he’d forgotten she was bathing.

  Madeline Drummond stood in the wooden tub, the glory of her nakedness rendering him speechless. White-hot heat surged through him, shooting straight to his groin, his need so hard and tight he could scarce breathe.

  She stared at him from eyes wide with shock, her nude body, wet, glistening, and rosy from her bath. Damp hair, a tangled mass of dark red ringlets, hung over one shoulder, the curling tendrils clinging provocatively to her naked flesh, molding sweetly to each lush curve.

  Iain tried to look away, but making his heart stop beating would have proved easier. His blood running hot, he stared back at her, his gaze fastened on the rivulets of water trickling down her breasts. Some snagged on the very tips of her nipples, forming tiny droplets on the hard-budded peaks, clinging there for long, tantalizing moments before dripping off one by one.

  Then a droplet fell onto the nest of red-gold curls topping her thighs, and his entire world contracted to the fierce pounding need thundering through his loins.

  He stared at the water droplet, watched it disappear into the lush tangle of wet curls, and the instant it slipped from sight, his sanity returned.

  Or mayhap his honor, for he lifted his gaze to her face and saw his own need reflected there, caught the desire burning in her own eyes just before her lashes swept down to hide i
t from him.

  He recognized it, too, in the deeper red of the flush slowly spreading across the upper swells of her naked breasts. A flush that had naught to do with the warmth of her bath and the brazier’s luxuriant heat.

  ’Twas the rosy glow of a woman roused… a flush Iain hadn’t seen in years and ne’er such a beautiful one.

  Turning back to the window before his sore-battered honor slipped back into the shadowy depths whence it had made its timeous appearance, Iain glowered down at the felled ale-stake and crossed his arms.

  He, too, had been felled.

  At least the throbbing part of him that shared distinct similarities with the long, hard length of the ale-stake.

  Aye, she wanted him, there could be no doubt.

  A woman’s eyes, in particular, never lie. Not if a man looked deep enough, and Iain had, even in that one fleeting glimpse before she’d lowered her lashes.

  And much as a certain part of him would wish otherwise, his heart and, aye, his honor, wouldn’t allow him to touch her so long as shadows of doubt clouded her eyes.

  Pain had been there, too.

  And rampant frustration.

  All harbingers of just the sort of shaky foundation he did not want to build a new life upon. The kind of ghosts he did not want looming between them.

  He’d started one marriage with a lass whose gentle eyes had held shyness and, aye, fear, too, and though time banished those shadows, even replacing them with love, it’d ne’er been the urgent, all-consuming passionate love he knew he could have with Madeline Drummond… if he didn’t let the raw lust gnawing at his innards drive him to rushing her.

  Nay, that, he would not do.

  Even if she danced naked before him and begged him to take her.

  He wouldn’t lay a finger on her—in that way—until naught but purest love, shining and clear and untroubled, shone in her magnificent green-gold eyes.

  And until the last of his own ghosts were laid as well.

  But he burned for her nonetheless. Knowing her naked, wet, and willing, if he encouraged her, so near behind him and yet so far, almost killed him.

  Raking a hand through his hair, his breath still harsh and ragged, he stared down at the inn yard, watching as someone flung open the door and a stream of shouting men poured out to gather ’round the downed ale-stake.