His voice didn’t sound like his own. He hadn’t known it was possible for him to speak so…tenderly.
Her tiny chin trembled and for a heart-wrenching instant, he thought she might fall apart. If she had, he knew he would have pulled her into his arms. He wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.
But she took a deep breath and held her emotions in check. “I heard a man crying for help, and when we came in to help him, Malcolm got stuck when a beam fell on us.”
It was strange how a heart that was pounding so fast could suddenly come to a dead stop. He waited a beat or two for it to start again. He wouldn’t think of her lying under that beam crushed. He wouldn’t. But he started to get a sick, twisted feeling in his gut anyway. He felt something he’d never felt before: weak-kneed.
“Captain? Is that you?”
Malcolm’s voice brought him back. “Aye, lad. I’ll have you free in a minute.”
She looked behind him. “Did no one else come with you?” Her voice shot up in panic. “We aren’t going to be able to move it in time.”
Obviously, she’d been trying to do just that.
“Move back.” He quickly took stock of the situation and realized he needed to have care. One wrong move and the entire pile of rock and beams would come down on Malcolm, crushing him instantly.
Turning his back to the beam, he grabbed the squared edge and using his legs, started to lift. But damn, the thing was heavy, even for him. “See if you can scoot out from under it,” he said from between clenched teeth, every muscle straining.
“Almost,” Malcolm said. “Another inch or two.”
Robbie clenched harder and lifted. His arms burned against the weight. But Malcolm was able to slither his way out. Very carefully, Robbie lowered the beam back into place.
And not a moment too soon. The flames were only a few feet away now. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But what about the man?” Rosalin said. “We can’t just leave him.”
Robbie clenched his fists, fighting the anger and fear that made him want to lash out. “Where?” he said tightly.
“Behind that wall.” She pointed to a space that had obviously been built into the wall as a hiding place. Suspecting for what, and exactly why the man was there, Robbie was tempted to leave him for being so reckless. But a few moments later, he’d moved the debris out of the way enough to drag him out. Not wanting to tell her that it was too late, he lifted the dead man over his shoulder with one arm, and with the other wrapped around her waist tucking her up tightly against him—trying not to notice how good she felt—he led them out of the burning trap.
As soon as they hit the fresh air, Malcolm collapsed on the ground coughing. Rosalin stayed on her feet but bent over to do the same, while Robbie let his arm slide from her waist and dropped the body of the villager, then grabbed on to the nearest tree so he didn’t topple over. His lungs and arms were on fire.
Seton, Fraser, Callum, and two more of his men were almost on them. The lad had obviously managed to alert them to the danger. Seton immediately rushed forward to assist Lady Rosalin, as did Callum with Malcolm. “What happened?” his partner asked.
For once, Robbie wasn’t annoyed by his solicitousness. The lass needed tending, and he could barely stand.
It took a few stops and starts for the story to come out. But between Malcolm, Roger, and Rosalin, the details began to emerge. It was hard enough to believe she’d raced in to try to help someone she didn’t know, but when Lady Rosalin reached the point where Malcolm became stuck behind the debris, the men looked at each other in astonishment.
Robbie voiced what all of them were thinking. “You could have left him there and escaped.”
She met his gaze. “He would have died,” she said, as if the explanation were obvious.
For her, he realized it was. She wouldn’t leave a man behind to die, not even an enemy. He should know that better than anyone. Something inside his chest shifted. It was as if a big rock had been pushed out of the way, revealing a small opening.
Callum looked at him as if the world had just been declared round. “But she’s English,” he said in Gaelic.
“I know.” Robbie was at just as much of a loss for an explanation. It didn’t make any sense to him either. This one small lass seemed have more honor in her than the entire English army put together.
Yet the more he watched her, the more he believed it wasn’t an act. She was just as sweet and kind as she looked. He’d noticed how she’d distracted her nephew earlier to keep his spirits up and her natural friendliness toward his men—even in the face of their brusqueness (in most cases, outright rudeness). When she’d demanded to come see what could be done in the village, he thought it was a trick. But it wasn’t. It had obviously been motivated by honest concern. For Scots. She’d run into that burning building to help someone who was her enemy.
It defied belief.
But it was more than that. Beneath the sweetness he detected a fierce sense of right and wrong that reminded him of someone, although he couldn’t put his finger on who.
When she reached the part where he arrived, he tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t let him. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “I don’t know how you lifted that by yourself.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d heard admiration and awe in a lass’s voice, but it was the first time he felt his face growing hot. Bloody hell, he was blushing!
“You should see him at the Highland Games, my lady,” Malcolm offered. “The captain can throw a stone three times as heavy as anyone else. No one has ever come close to beating him. Why, he can defeat ten Englishmen using just his hands—”
“That’s enough, Malcolm,” he said sharply. “The lady doesn’t want to hear about all that.”
She looked like she was about to disagree, when she glanced to the man lying on the ground at his feet. Her eyes filled with tears. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
He nodded.
She looked up at him. “Why would he have done something so dangerous?”
Robbie reached down and pulled a purse from the man’s clenched fingers. “For this. He had it hidden in a space in the wall, along with some grain and other goods. He’d probably put it there when the English came and then tried to get to it once he thought it was safe.”
“All this for a few coins and some grain?” she asked incredulously.
Robbie’s jaw hardened. “Aye, it was foolish, but it was probably all he had to feed his family. These people will have nothing left.”
The realization affected her. There was no denying the real compassion and sadness in those too expressive eyes of hers.
“But you saved some of them,” she said. “The fires are almost out.”
The way she was looking at him…
For a minute, he felt like he’d donned some of Seton’s shining armor.
Bloody hell.
Robbie glanced over to where the rest of his men and the villagers were throwing the final buckets of water. But she was right. They had.
Something had changed. Rosalin didn’t know what, but over the next hour, while Robbie and his men helped the villagers put out the last of the fires and see what could be salvaged from the rest, she detected a difference in the men’s attitude toward her.
Once they’d stopped staring at her as if she had suddenly grown a second head, they actually spoke to her. And not just in grunts and unintelligible words in Gaelic. Men who she didn’t think knew a word of English were suddenly addressing her as “my lady.”
Even Callum. Well, perhaps especially Callum. Just as personally as he’d taken her tricking of Malcolm, it seemed he’d seen her refusal to leave his son in the burning building as the establishment of some kind of bond between them. She couldn’t tell whether he was pleased about it or not, but he’d taken his son’s place in guarding her and seemed to have nominated himself as her protector.
When some village children cautiously approached
and started touching her soiled but very fine gown, he’d shooed them away and told them not to get the lady’s gown dirty with their grubby hands. Considering how inelegantly she’d been handled the past twenty-four hours and how filthy she was already, such admonishments were quite laughable. But cognizant of how serious he seemed to be, and his Scot pride, she smothered her smile and told him she didn’t mind just this once.
The children had been entranced with her and had asked some of the most humorous questions, at which she’d struggled hard not to laugh. They must have asked her ten times if she was truly English. That she didn’t have the face of a gorgon, or devil’s horns and tail, was apparently incomprehensible.
It was when talking to the children—a few of whom had lost everything—that she’d had an idea.
Callum hesitated, giving her that strange look again. “You want to give them our food?”
“Aye, do you think some could be found that might be spared?”
He stared at her for a long time, his ruddy, weathered features inscrutable. “I’ll ask the captain.”
From their post by the river, Rosalin watched the older man walk over to where Boyd stood with some of the villagers. Boyd’s head turned in her direction, and even from the distance the intensity of his gaze made her shiver. A few moments later, he nodded, and Callum strode toward the trees where the horses had been tied and started to go through the bags.
With Callum occupied and Roger conscripted to help the other men with the cleanup, Rosalin kept herself busy answering the children’s questions while trying not to let her eyes stray to the man who seemed the center of attention in the village.
She frowned. For one small village, there certainly were a disproportionately large number of young women. And every one of them seemed to be traipsing after Robbie Boyd like he was some kind of hero.
To them, he was, she realized with a start. This man reviled as a devil on one side of the border was lauded as a hero on the other. It was strange what a difference perspective made.
The women were practically tripping over each other trying to get him to notice them. Good gracious, had they never seen a handsome man before? She could see the stars shining in their eyes from here.
Why did she care, anyway? She’d outgrown barbarians, hadn’t she? Besides, he’d made his feelings toward her perfectly clear: they were enemies. She would not forget it.
Escape was what she should be thinking about. Not tall, broad-shouldered brutes with excessively muscled bodies.
Tearing her gaze away from the man commanding so much feminine admiration, she focused her attention on the children. When they moved off, she asked Callum if she might wash up before they left. After a quick glance to where Roger stood with Malcolm and another young warrior (he knew she wouldn’t try to escape without her nephew), he nodded and told her to be quick about it.
She hurried down toward the river, heading to the left, where it bent and a copse of trees would protect her from view and give her the privacy she needed.
She hadn’t lied. She did want to wash and soak her hands in the cold water, but she also needed to replenish her supply of ribbon for the trail she was leaving for Cliff. The last few strands of pink were in her purse, but her chemise was decorated on the neck and sleeves with small, light-blue bows of satin ribbon. The costly garment imported from France had raised even her indulgent brother’s eyebrow, but she didn’t think he’d mind its destruction under the circumstances.
Indeed, most of her once luxurious clothing was in shambles. Removing the plaid and cloak, she shook them out as best she could, set them down on a log, and then brushed the dirt and soot off her dark blue wool cotehardie edged at the hem, neckline, and cut sides with gold embroidered ribbon. But she feared not even a good brushing and hanging would save the pretty garment after such abuse.
She grimaced, lifting her skirt up to examine the rest. The lighter blue wool kirtle underneath was in much better shape, except for the muddy hems where it hung below the cotehardie. But she didn’t think to remove her over-gown; she needed every layer for warmth.
The fashion for both gowns was tight in the sleeve and bodice, and it wasn’t without some difficulty that she was able to loosen the laces of the cotehardie on the front and the kirtle on the side to reach the chemise underneath.
After pulling off as many of the ribbons as she could reach, she tucked them into the purse still at her waist. Then, kneeling beside the river, she dipped her hands into the icy water and cupped it to her face. It was cold but invigorating. She washed and scrubbed until the water came back clear and not gray with soot.
It felt so good to be clean that she considered dunking her head in and washing her hair, but she didn’t want to risk the chill of wet hair while they were riding. She did, however, take the opportunity to wash her upper body as best she could with the loosened garments. She was so engrossed in her task, she didn’t hear him approach.
“It’s time to go. The men are…”
His voice dropped off. It took her a moment to realize why. She’d jumped up when he startled her and turned without thinking. His gaze had fallen on her chest and appeared to have become stuck, along with his tongue.
A quick glance down told her why. Her chemise was soaking wet from her washing. Her very thin, very transparent, very revealing chemise, which was now molded to her breasts, revealing every curve, every contour, every point in perfect detail. She might as well have been naked.
She sucked in her breath, which was a mistake, as it only made her breasts rise to even more prominence.
He made a sound low in his throat that was almost pained, but it made every inch of her skin blaze with heat.
She made a move to cover herself, but he grabbed her wrist. “Don’t. God, please don’t.”
Heat blasted her again. It poured off him in a hot, molten wave, making her nipples tighten.
He groaned, a deep, intensely masculine groan that sent a rush of something hot and damp between her legs. It pooled there, growing warm and achy.
His face was harder than she’d ever seen it—sharper—more dangerous somehow. It was as if all the civility had been stripped away, leaving nothing but the fierce, primitive male underneath.
He stared at her breasts as if he had never seen anything more desirable. As if he could barely hold himself back from touching them. From ravishing them.
Their eyes met, and she felt the shock of it radiate like a bolt of lightning up her spine. No one had ever looked at her with such raw lust, possession, and heat.
The air was charged with something she didn’t understand. The fierceness of the emotions crackling between them was too overwhelming.
Men had wanted her before, but never like this. This was different. This was wild, dangerous, and uncontrollable. This was desire unlike anything she’d ever experienced before and, for a moment, it scared her.
He scared her. She might have thought she knew him, but Robbie Boyd, hardened warrior, was not the noble rebel she’d watched as a girl. She was alone with one of the most feared men in Scotland. A man who by all accounts was a scourge, brigand, and barbarian. She was completely at his mercy, and the precariousness of the situation—and her vulnerability—slid down her spine in a terrified chill.
Eight
It took Robbie a minute to realize he was scaring her.
Before that he was lost. From the moment she’d turned, with every inch of that damp linen molded to her chest, he hadn’t had one rational thought in his head. With all the lustful thoughts swirling around, there hadn’t been room for anything else.
Hell, there hadn’t been room for much else since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. Even his dreams had been filled with her. Images that had made him wake up hard and restless this morning. Images that had come back to him during the day, too many times to count. Images that it turned out were nowhere near as spectacular as reality.
This image was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. Every pair of brea
sts he saw from now on would suffer from the comparison.
The funny part was that she didn’t even fit what he’d thought of as his ideal. To be blunt, he liked them big and lush, with sweet, juicy nipples. He liked to bury his head between the soft mounds of flesh, to watch them bounce, jiggle, and sway as he drove in and out. He liked them to pour over his hands as he gripped from behind (aye, he especially liked that), to suck the hard peak of a substantial nipple into his mouth and draw it between his teeth and tongue.
Not that he opposed variety. But if he’d had an ideal, that would have been it.
Until now. The two perfectly rounded mounds of flesh before him were not generously proportioned by any means. They would fit in his hands with nary an ounce of flesh spilling over. But the shape was exquisite—masterful in its detail—putting any Grecian sculptor to shame.
They were high, round, and firm, and perfectly proportioned to her slim ribcage and waist. Her nipples were small and a dusky shade of pink. When they hardened under the heat of his gaze, they weren’t much bigger than two pearls. Not much to pluck between his teeth, but he could still practically taste the tiny points on his tongue, and it took everything he had not to reach out and rub one under his thumb. To circle the wrinkly edge and pinch the delicate tip gently between his fingers and see if it felt as perfect as it looked.
It would be. God, he knew it would be.
He felt like a child who’d just opened a door and found a room full of sugary confections waiting for him to gorge on. And God, she was sweet. Sweet and so damned ripe, it took his breath away.
Her skin was like freshly poured cream, smooth and velvety white. In God’s way of devising the perfect torture for a man, he’d matched the naughty little freckle on her lip with one above her left breast. He didn’t know which he wanted to put his mouth on first. But it was all he could think of.
Blood pounded through his veins. He throbbed hard with need. Seeing her like this had stripped away all pretense of control. His attraction to the lass went beyond rationality. His body didn’t care if she was English, if she was Clifford’s sister, if touching her would be the biggest mistake he ever made in his life. All his body wanted was to smooth his hands over every inch of her soft skin until it was just as hot as his, until her cheeks flushed and lips parted with pleasured breaths, until her hips pressed against his in silent entreaty, until he opened her with his fingers—and maybe even his mouth—and made her slick and wet for his entry. And until he came into her with a hard thrust and made her his. He wouldn’t stop thrusting until she came, until she screamed his name and every last shudder of her release had ebbed from her spent body.