He shrugged without apology. “It was unintentional. You were taking too long.”
“Is that supposed to be an excuse?”
“If you wish it to be.”
Janet fumed at him.
“You’ve nothing to worry about,” he said. “You don’t have anything I haven’t seen hundreds of times.”
If he was trying to make her feel better, he’d failed. Her eyes widened with outrage. “Hundreds of times?”
He shrugged, and for some reason the careless indifference infuriated her all the more. She shouldn’t care how many women he’d been with or whether he thought her unremarkable in comparison, but hearing him so blandly state it rankled.
“How nice to know that you have such a breadth of comparison to call upon.”
“You didn’t answer my question. How did you get the scars? And before you think about telling me what you told the soldiers today, I know they aren’t from a whip and hair shirt.”
“Have you ‘hundreds’ of scar comparisons as well?”
He grinned; obviously her irritation amused him. “More.”
“You’ve been fighting the war for some years, then?”
“Aye. Now tell me about the scars.”
Janet pursed her mouth. He was just like Duncan. She’d never been able to distract him either. He’d been positively intractable when it had come to questioning her about some perceived issue or problem. If only Ewen Lamont reminded her of her brother in other ways. But the feelings Ewen aroused in her were definitely un-brotherly.
As it seemed he would not be turned from his course without an answer, she decided to tell him the truth. Well, part of it, anyway. “I was on a bridge when it was struck by lightning. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but there was a fire, and some of the wood splintered and ended up in my back. The sisters did their best to remove them, but some were buried deeply.”
He held her gaze as if he knew there was more that she wasn’t saying. But that was all she intended to tell him. How she ended up on the bridge was none of his business.
“So that’s why you didn’t wish to cross. When did this happen?”
It was her turn to shrug. “Some time ago.” Hoping to put an end to the subject, she added, “I do not like to talk about it.”
“The scars are no cause for shame. They are a mark of your strength. You survived.”
She bristled. “I know that. It is not the scars that cause me pain, but the memories they bring.”
This time, he took the hint and changed the subject—though unfortunately, this one was no better than the last. “You have an unusual accent. Where are you from?”
She hoped he hadn’t seen the slight stiffening of her shoulders, but she’d already learned that little escaped him. “My father was a merchant,” she said, staying with the same story she told the innkeeper. “We moved around quite a bit.”
“And that is why you speak so many languages?”
“Yes.” But it hadn’t been easy. She’d always been horrible with languages. Deciding that they’d talked about her long enough, she asked, “And what about you? I have not met many Highlanders who speak such fluent French who aren’t noblemen—” She stopped, blushing.
“And you have figured out that I do not qualify?”
“I did not mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t. I was fostered with a local nobleman and had some tutoring. Languages come easily for me.” She made a face, and he laughed. “I take it that it is not the same for you?”
She shook her head. “Latin was the worst.”
The words were out before she could take them back. She hoped he wouldn’t notice, but, of course, he did.
“I would have thought with Italian being so closely related, it would have been easy.”
“For most people it is,” she said. She feigned a yawn. “If you don’t mind, I think I should like to go to bed. I’m very tired.”
And talking to him was dangerous. It was easy to forget herself, in more ways than one. For a few moments, she’d forgotten that she was a nun—or planned to be soon—that they should remain strangers, and that they were alone in this room. For a few minutes, she’d felt as comfortable with him as if they were truly man and wife. For a few minutes, the intimacy had seemed … natural.
But suddenly being alone with him felt awkward again. She was deeply conscious of him as a man. And as much as she wanted to pretend that she was a nun, her body seemed to know differently. Being alone with a too-tall, too-handsome, too-virile warrior made her feel very feminine and very aware of that femininity in a way that she never had been before.
She pulled the plaid around her shoulders more tightly, even though the room suddenly felt too warm. It was the room, wasn’t it? But that didn’t explain the heat in places she had never felt warm before. Warning beacons seemed to flare all around her. She needed to get away from him.
He must have picked up on the charge in the atmosphere as well, because he suddenly seemed very eager to leave. “If you give me your clothes, I will take them down to the innkeeper to hang by the fire. You don’t need to leave the candle burning for me; I will be able to find the floor when I return.”
She bit her lip, wanting to ask how long he’d be but not wanting to make him suspicious. Because she had no intention of being here when he woke up.
With his father’s penchant for drink, Ewen wasn’t much for whisky, but at times he could appreciate the dulling effects of the fiery brew. The last time he’d drunk too much was after one of his friends and fellow Highland Guardsmen, William Gordon, was killed in an explosion in Galloway. Before that, it had been when he and MacLean had finally made it to safety after surviving the slaughter that had befallen Bruce’s men at Loch Ryan at the hands of the MacDowells. Eighteen galleys, and only two had survived.
But tonight, it wasn’t the pain of losing friends that had driven him to drink, but another kind of pain—the lustful kind. Knowing that he’d lie awake all night hard as a rock if he didn’t do something, he spent a good hour draining a flagon of very peaty whisky, trying to cool his heated blood. He was tempted when an alternative method of dulling his lust presented itself in the form of a comely barmaid, but the whisky must have already been having an effect, as her flirtatious grazes and bold glances didn’t get the barest rise out of him.
By the time he returned to the room, he was good and relaxed, and the source of his trouble was fast asleep and bundled up safely out of eyesight under the blankets. He threw his plaid on the floor, barely noticing how hard it was before passing out in a whisky-induced haze.
But the drink didn’t penetrate his sleep. He dreamed of her. Hot, restless dreams of high, round breasts and a curvy bottom. He imagined touching her, cupping her, running his hands over every naked inch of baby-soft flesh. His body was hot, his blood rushing, his nose filled with her soft scent. The sensations were so strong, they tore him from his sleep. Or at least he thought they had. But when he opened his eyes, his hand was wrapped around her wrist and she was looming over him, her eyes wide with shock.
Then he knew he had to be dreaming because he could feel the soft stroke of her hands on his hair and hear the soft, soothing tones of her voice as she filled his dreams with the lulling sounds of song. He felt his body relax. Felt the tension that had been teeming through his limbs release under the gentle, calming strokes. It was nice. He’d never had a mother to put him to bed when he was young, but he suspected it would have been something like this. The last thing he remembered before she left was the soft brush of her lips on his cheek.
He woke to a cold room and the first rays of dawn streaming through the cracks in the shutters. Though weak, the sunlight sent shards of pain piercing through his drink-thickened head like daggers. He closed his eyes, listening instead to the peaceful sounds of … silence. Absolute silence.
His eyes snapped open again. Ignoring the pain, his gaze went to the woman sleeping on the bed. Or the woman who should be sleeping on the bed
. But even before he jumped to his feet and tore back the bunched-up plaid, he knew.
It hadn’t been a dream. His damned “wife” was gone.
Six
Janet didn’t think her heart started beating again until she was halfway to Roxburgh.
After she’d managed to get him back to sleep, she’d retrieved her belongings from the hearth downstairs and slipped past the sleeping occupants of the inn to escape into the cool morning darkness with little trouble. But her heart had jumped straight through her throat earlier, when she’d tried to step over him to get to the door and he’d opened his eyes and grabbed her by the wrist.
Whether he’d been awake or half-asleep, she didn’t know, but for one long heartbeat she’d thought he meant to pull her down on top of him. The knowledge of how badly she wanted him to made her panic. She needed to do something.
Without thinking, she reached out and touched him, trying to calm him back to sleep as she had her sister Mary after a nightmare when they were young. But touching him was nothing like touching her sister.
Even as Janet hurried along the road through the forest that connected Trows to Roxburgh, she could still feel the silky thickness of his hair running through her fingers. Surely a man—particularly a soldier who looked like he was born on the battlefield—shouldn’t have such soft hair? But the dark, glossy waves slid through her fingers like the finest silk. She could still feel the solid thickness of his back and arm muscles as she’d tried to soothe the tension from his limbs and ease him back to sleep. But most of all, she could still feel the scratch of his whiskers against her mouth as she’d brushed her lips over his stubble-roughened jaw.
What in heaven’s gates could have possessed her to kiss him? She still couldn’t believe it. But she’d been singing in his ear, and his cheek had been so close and irresistible.
He’d smelled like whisky and pine, and his skin had tasted so … good. Dark and sweet, with a faint trace of spice. A rush of strange sensations washed over her. Her pulse raced, her skin felt flush and prickly, her limbs felt heavy and her breasts full. Her nipples tightened, and she suddenly felt the restless urge to rub her body against his.
For one treacherous moment, there in the darkness, she’d wanted to crawl in beside him. She’d wanted him to take her into his arms and show her what a man did to a woman. She wasn’t ignorant about the act, but until that moment she hadn’t though herself capable of wanting to experience it.
No man had ever made her feel like this. Confused, half-crazed, and scared all at the same time.
Her feet quickened as she sped up her pace, racing as much away from him as she was toward Roxburgh and the future she had all planned out. A future that didn’t include lustful thoughts or being distracted by a man. She was going to be a nun, for goodness’ sake!
It was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She felt a small squeeze in her chest before she brushed it away. Of course, it was. Taking the veil made sense. How else could she continue what she was doing? As a nun, she had freedom. A purpose. She liked working for Lamberton and was proud of all she’d done to help Robert.
What other options did she have? For a noblewoman there were two: marriage or the veil, and she knew marriage wasn’t for her. She’d been engaged twice before, and both times the engagement had ended in the death of her fiancé. War had killed many of Scotland’s young noblemen, but to Janet their deaths had seemed like an omen that marriage was not meant for her.
Besides, she was happy, and in her experience happiness and marriage did not go together. Her father had ordered her mother around like a serf, her sister Mary’s girlish love for the Earl of Atholl had turned to misery, and Duncan and Christina had spent most of their time arguing.
Why was she even thinking about this? Even were she to decide she wanted to marry, it would never be to an ordinary soldier, even if he didn’t seem ordinary. She frowned. She was a daughter of Mar, the former sister-in-law of a king and aunt to his only heir. Her choice of husband wouldn’t be hers at all. It would be a political match brokered by Robert.
For more reasons than one, the gruff Highlander with the silky hair and irresistibly kissable jaw wasn’t for her.
She was practically running now, breathing hard, and despite the chill of the morning mist, a sheen of perspiration appeared on her brow. She couldn’t seem to get away fast enough. She figured she had at least an hour’s lead on him, which even if he tried to follow her would give her plenty of time to reach Roxburgh on foot—it was only a mile or so away. But just to make sure, she veered off the road as she drew near the town and took a roundabout route to the castle through the forest.
She’d thought about absconding with the horse but hadn’t wanted to risk waking the stable lads. In hindsight, perhaps it was a risk she should have taken. Too late, she heard the sound of hoofbeats. She gazed around like a startled hare, frantically looking for a place to hide. But he was on her before she could dart into a hole—or in this case, the brush.
Her heart was beating like a drum, but she hoped she managed to appear cool and serene when she turned to face him. “How did you find me?”
He didn’t bother to answer her question. His face, half-hidden by the helm again, was a mask of icy rage. He leapt off the horse and grabbed her roughly by the arm. “You little fool, are you trying to get yourself killed?”
She might have felt the urge to cower—having six-foot-plus of solid muscle and angry male bellowing at her wasn’t exactly unintimidating—if he hadn’t riled her own anger. “If anyone is acting foolish, it is you for chasing after me! I’ve told you before, I don’t need or want an escort. I didn’t ask for you to accompany me, and I don’t need your permission to leave without you.”
“The hell you don’t.”
She had to admit, she felt a little shiver of fear when he growled and pulled her even harder against him. But then she wondered whether it was something else when her heart took a sharp dive and heat coursed through her. A reaction that she was becoming used to where he was concerned.
Good Lord, she loved the way he smelled—the mix of the wind in his hair, the pine of the forest on his skin, and the leather of his cotun.
His face lowered to hers, and she sucked in her breath, wishing that helm covered the steely blue-gray eyes that were flashing at her with as much danger as the sword he had strapped to his back once again. “Did you stop to think that my ‘wife’s’ sudden disappearance from our bed before dawn might be a little suspicious?”
Janet bit her lip, fighting back the flush. She hadn’t. All she’d been thinking of was getting out of there. “I’m sure you thought of something to appease her.”
“Not everyone is as clever at lying as you.”
There was no stopping the flush this time. He didn’t know the half of it. She lifted her chin stubbornly. “Even if the innkeeper is curious, I’m sure it will come to nothing.”
“Is that so? I’m not sure the party of English soldiers I saw approaching the inn as I was leaving will agree with you. But let’s hope the excuse I made will suffice.”
English soldiers? The first prickles of guilt started to form. “What did you say to her?”
“That you’d gone to the local church to pray for your mother’s recovery before we started out on our journey.”
Air eased out of her lungs, and she nodded. “It’s a good excuse.” She was surprised he’d come up with it.
His eyes narrowed as if he could read her mind. “The innkeeper might have believed me, but the English sure as hell won’t if they decide to follow up on us at the church.”
“If they are indeed looking for us, and if they make the connection, perhaps. But there is no reason to suspect either. It was probably just an English scouting party from the castle.” She wrenched her arm out of his hold and took a step back. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t insisted on accompanying her, she wouldn’t be feeling so … confused, and she wouldn’t have felt the need to run away. “I’m sorry for leaving you with
an explanation to make to the innkeeper, but there is something I have to do in Roxburgh, and you aren’t going to stop me.”
Janet saw the flash in his eyes and knew she’d made a mistake. Whether it was the challenge of her words or something else, she didn’t know. But before she could take another breath, he’d jerked off his helm, pulled her into arms, and fitted her tightly to his body, giving her no doubt of his intent.
This time the thrill that shuddered through her was unmistakable. It was as if a wave of molten heat had been poured over every limb. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t push him away.
She didn’t want to push him away.
“The hell I’m not,” he said, right before his mouth covered hers.
So this was what it felt like to lose control. Ewen didn’t know what possessed him to take her in his arms, but the moment his lips touched hers he no longer gave a damn.
Her lips were so silky soft and sweet, he groaned at the first taste of her. The blood and anger roaring through him urged him to go fast and hard, to take and plunder, to lose himself in the sweet, enveloping heat. But something stronger quieted the primitive urge and made him slow down.
Innocent. She was so damned innocent, and suddenly that was all that mattered. As much as he wanted to ravish her senseless, he didn’t want to scare her. So he loosened the hold he had around her, lightened the pressure of his lips, and kissed her gently. Tenderly. Reverently.
He couldn’t recall ever wooing a lass with his mouth, but he did so now. With each deft caress he beckoned her to him, showing her—teaching her—what he wanted from her.
Slowly, he could feel the shock slip away and her body begin to relax. He wanted to roar with masculine satisfaction, but he settled for a soft growl.
But then she nestled in closer against him with a sound that went straight to his cock and nearly wiped away all his good intentions.
Take it slow, he told himself. You can do this. It’s nothing you haven’t done hundreds of times before.
He nearly chuckled at the exaggeration, recalling her reaction—oddly, it had seemed more like jealousy than religious condemnation—but he didn’t feel much like laughing when he realized that this was not like anything he’d done before. Kissing her was an entirely different experience, and he didn’t like it.
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