Lords of the Kingdom

by Le Veque, Kathryn

  In a flash, the perfected physique she had just been gazing at was pressed against her, his lips burning into hers. She gasped in surprise at the sudden contact, and he took the opportunity to invade her mouth with his tongue. He stroked and caressed her, but there was an edge of urgency and insistence in his kiss, which she felt rising inside herself as well. She wouldn’t have been able to articulate it before, but this was what she wanted—to feel him against her, to let their mouths meld together, to feed the hunger she had for him.

  One of his hands was wrapped around her waist, holding her close to his body. The other drifted lower to settle on her hip, pulling her against him even tighter. Her arms had risen of their own volition and were now wrapped around his neck. Her fingers entwined in his dark hair, which was still dripping from his dunk in the creek. His clean, masculine scent invaded her senses. He smelled of warm skin, leather, and the outdoors.

  He started moving forward, which forced her to step back, but he held them together so that they moved as one, never breaking their kiss. A moment later, she felt the bark of a large pine tree pressing into her back. She was pinned between the tree’s unyielding trunk and Garrick’s rock-hard body—and one hard part in particular was pressing into her. Heat shot through her at the sensation, firing her limbs. It gathered especially in her mouth, her breasts, and between her legs.

  The hand on her waist began to move upward, and though she had never been touched there before, she suddenly longed for him to let his hands settle on her breasts, which were achy and needy for something, like an itch but…deeper. And more pleasurable.

  She arched her back slightly in anticipation of his touch, and he made a noise in the back of his throat that was somewhere between appreciation and pain. He kept his movement slow, though, his hand inching up to brush against the outside curve of her breast. Then he let his thumb move over so that it skimmed against the swell of her breast.

  Even through the material of her dress and chemise, the touch sent a jolt of sensation through her, and she gasped again. The urgent achiness hitched higher, both in her breasts and between her legs, where she felt warm and damp. She pressed her hips into his even harder, longing for both relief from the sensation and more of it.

  The hand on her hip suddenly clutched the material of her skirts and pulled it up by about a foot. Then abruptly, the cool morning air slammed into her, replacing his warmth. Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw him before her, panting, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “Christ,” he breathed.

  She brought a shaky hand up to her lips, trying to feel herself to make sure she was still real and that this wasn’t some heady dream.

  He dragged a hand through his hair, which was disheveled from her fingers. “We can’t do this.”

  As if she weren’t reeling enough from the intensity of their kiss and the longing coursing through her, his words spun through her head and she struggled to make sense of them.

  “Why?” That was the best she could manage. She had a dozen more articulate and important questions about what had just happened, but she couldn’t seem to sort them out.

  “Because…” He took a breath and rolled his shoulders, trying to relieve the tense knots of muscles that were visibly clenched. “Because you are Raef Warren’s sister, and I am a Sinclair. Because you are English and I am Scottish. Because you are a healer and I am a killer. Because it’s wrong.”

  It hadn’t felt wrong. In fact, it had felt more right than anything she had ever experienced. She had been completely entwined with him, communicating without words, sharing in a free and untamed passion she didn’t know she was capable of. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

  “What does my brother have to do with this, or my country of birth, or my healing skills?” She couldn’t quite manage to say the part about being drawn to him like no other, embarrassed at the thought of sounding girlish or naïve. But she wouldn’t just accept his reasoning—not when she longed so badly to be back in his embrace again.

  “I don’t think you fully understand the gravity of this situation, lass, or the mess I am already in just by having you here.”

  His tone was like a splash of cold water, waking her from the dizzy dream of desire in which she had been floating. “Then why don’t you explain it to me, since you were the one who brought me here.”

  Garrick struggled for a moment, longing to soothe the clear frustration and injury he was inflicting on Jossalyn by pushing her away, and yet also wanting to solidify the distance he had just wedged between them.

  “I can’t tell you any more. We are all already endangered by how much you know,” he said through clenched teeth.

  He had told her that he was a Highlander and part of the rebellion, and that he had been spying on her brother and Dunbraes. That was enough to have them all hanged, but at least she wasn’t completely in the dark anymore. He would be crazy to explain further—about how he was Robert the Bruce’s go-to marksman, that they were heading toward his secret camp near Inverness, that the Bruce was developing a new strategy to attack the English using stealth rather than meeting them on the battlefield, and that Garrick was central to this plan. She would just have to accept staying in the dark while he figured out what to do with her.

  “We should discuss where you’ll be headed once Burke is well again,” he said carefully, wanting to change the subject, but finding just as many thorns in this new line of conversation.

  She drew her brows together and crossed her arms over her chest, understanding his meaning. He was trying to offload her once her usefulness to his mission was over. He suppressed a wince at the harshness of it, but it was true. He shouldn’t try to soften it or ease the rejection for her. She couldn’t stay with him, no matter how much he wished things were different. And he did.

  “I’m sure I can take care of myself,” she said flatly. “Just drop me off in a village, and I’ll be fine.”

  “You still plan to stay in Scotland?” For some reason, this surprised him, though it shouldn’t, now that he thought about it. She had already tried to escape to Scotland once, and he doubted there was anything for her to return to in England—least of all her brother’s keep.

  “Yes. So you see, just as you are using me to heal Burke, I am using you to gain my freedom and start a new life in Scotland,” she said, lifting her chin slightly.

  He wanted to argue with her, to tell her it wasn’t safe and that he couldn’t just leave her in some random village. But then he realized she was only making the best of the situation he had put her in.

  He cursed himself yet again for acting so rashly. He should never have let it go this far. He should have kept his nose out of it and left her to deal with Warren. But his whole being rejected the thought immediately. He could never have sat idly by and watched Warren harm her, or leave her to fend for herself in the middle of a battle that his actions had instigated. Christ, this was a mess.

  “Very well, lass, we will use each other. But we should not…touch each other that way again. It will only make things more complicated.”

  He didn’t try to explain how or why things would get complicated if they continued to let their attraction rule them, because for every reason he came up with against it—she was a maiden, she was English, she was Warren’s sister—his body came up with a counter—her soft pink lips, those firm, full breasts, her innocent yet heated response to his touch. He had nearly taken her right there and then against the tree. If he hadn’t reined himself in instead of hitching her skirts up higher, he might have done something irreversible.

  She didn’t respond, and instead, searched him with her gaze, trying to read him. He dropped a veil of flatness over his demeanor, suddenly afraid that if she looked too closely, she might see that his reasons for keeping his distance were paper-thin and could be torn away with the slightest brushing touch from her.

  “I’ll go check on Burke,” he said brusquely. “You should see to your dr
ess. There is still blood on it.”

  She looked down and registered the blood—his blood—that had stained the front of her dress the night before. The sight chilled him, reinforcing what he needed to do. If he didn’t follow through with his mission and keep her at a distance, one or both of them would be hurt. He was used to closing himself off, to doing what needed to be done, even if no one else was willing to do it. This was just another mission, he repeated to himself over and over, forcing his feet to turn away from her and walk back toward the shelter.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jossalyn didn’t bother to take off her dress. Instead, she knelt next to the creek, cupped water in her hands, and splashed it down her front. She ended up damper than she would have liked, but the thought of peeling off the dress and standing in the open air in nothing but her chemise—with Garrick only a short distance away—was too much. So her entire front was soaked, but at least most of the blood had washed away.

  She made her way back to their makeshift camp slowly, trying to give herself time to chew on everything that had passed between her and Garrick. It hadn’t come as a complete shock that he was a Highland rebel—she had gathered nearly as much with the combination of witnessing him fight, hearing his thick accent, and seeing him in a kilt.

  But she had had no idea her brother was such a well-known and hated figure in these battles for Scotland’s independence. He very rarely told her anything about his trips to the north or the movements of the English soldiers who frequently passed through Dunbraes, but she had known he was some sort of player in all this—just not quite so central a player.

  The real shock had been her kiss with Garrick—their second kiss, which had somehow managed to be even more intense than the first. But her mind swirled at his harsh words of warning and the way he was distancing himself from her. His body and his words were telling two different stories, and she wasn’t sure which one to believe.

  She was uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was inexperienced, and he…well, he wasn’t. But she trusted her sense that his attraction to her was real. Could a man simply fake the kind of bodily reaction he had had with her?

  The memory of his hard manhood pressed against her stomach flooded back to her, and despite the fact that she was alone with her thoughts, she blushed. She didn’t think he could fake that.

  And she didn’t believe he was faking his protectiveness of her either. From what she had seen, he had a strong sense of honor, of right and wrong.

  So then why did he keep warning her about how dangerous he was? Why did he make it clear that he didn’t trust her, and that she shouldn’t trust him? There was more he wasn’t telling her, she was sure of it. He wouldn’t tell her why, but he was convinced that he was some sort of dangerous villain, which simply didn’t fit with what she had seen of him, even after he had transformed from country blacksmith to Highland warrior.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a groan up ahead of her. She quickened her pace toward the shelter, worry itching at her. As the shelter came into view, she broke into a run.

  “Stop! Put him down!” she shouted at Garrick in shock. He had pulled Burke out from inside the lean-to shelter and was supporting his weight under his arm. Burke was leaning precariously against Garrick, his face white and glistening with sweat, despite the cool morning air.

  “He can’t be moved yet! He needs more time to rest!” she panted in frustration as she came to a halt in front of the two men.

  “There isn’t time to rest anymore. We have to move,” Garrick responded coolly. He had donned his shirt and leather vest again and looked prepared to ride already. His tone was authoritative, brokering no argument, but Jossalyn paid it no heed.

  “You said you wanted me to help Burke, but I can’t very well do so if you are dragging him all over the forest, can I?” she said acerbically.

  He raised an eyebrow at her tone, but didn’t bother answering. Instead, he guided Burke around her toward their horses. Burke had all his weight on his good leg, but even just moving was bringing grunts of pain from him. When they reached his horse, Garrick paused for a moment, letting Burke catch his breath and steel himself.

  Through clenched teeth, Burke said over his shoulder, “Garrick is right, we have to keep moving. I’ll be fine, lass.”

  Garrick boosted Burke into the saddle, but the motion of swinging his wounded leg over his horse brought a string of muffled curses from Burke. Garrick was grim-faced but didn’t say anything. He turned to his own horse, preparing to mount, but Jossalyn strode to Burke’s side and took the reins firmly into her hands.

  “I cannot condone this. You are endangering Burke by forcing him to ride.”

  Garrick brought his horse on the other side of Burke’s, so that he was towering over her and pinning her between the two horses. “And we are all in danger if we stay here. No doubt your brother and his English army are barreling down on us as we speak. Our only hope is to take advantage of the fact that we are fewer in number and know the landscape better. We have to outride them.”

  Jossalyn felt a surge of helplessness and frustration wash over her. It went against every instinct as a healer to put one of her patients in danger by ignoring his wound and risking infection.

  On the other hand, she had no desire for her brother to catch up with them. She felt her stomach twist at the idea of another confrontation between her brother’s army and Garrick and Burke. The images of the blood, death, and maiming she had witnessed at Dunbraes flooded over her, and she had to swallow to force her stomach back down her throat. But this time, Burke wouldn’t be able to fight, so Garrick would be on his own against who knew how many soldiers. The thought of him dying beneath her brother’s blade brought a stab of fear and nausea to her.

  She locked eyes with Garrick, trying to communicate her struggle to him. His steely gaze cut into her, determined, but she thought she saw a flicker of his own fear for a moment as well.

  Just then, Burke groaned again, but this time he began slumping forward over his horse’s neck limply. Garrick flung himself from his horse and darted to her side just as Burke began to topple sideways out of the saddle. He caught Burke just before he would have fallen unconscious, either onto the ground several feet below his horse’s back, or right onto her, which would have likely crushed her.

  “Take him back to the shelter,” Jossalyn said as she locked her eyes on Burke’s leg. It was bleeding again, and the fresh bandages she had put on no more than an hour or two ago were already soaked through.

  Garrick half-dragged Burke’s large frame back toward the lean-to. When Burke was settled inside the shelter on his back, Jossalyn crawled in and placed a hand against his damp forehead. He was burning with fever. She muttered in frustration, something between a curse and a prayer, then unwrapped the bandage on his leg. He had reopened the wound, likely trying to stand and mount his horse. But more concerning was the fact that the flesh around the cut was now red and puffy.

  “What is it?” Garrick said softly from the opening of the lean-to. He was watching her closely, his eyes hard and grim.

  “Infection,” she said as her mind raced for a solution. “We’ll need a fire after all.”

  He grimaced and opened his mouth to argue, but she held up a hand to silence him.

  “Garrick, listen to me. Burke will die if this goes untreated. And even if I had every herb, tincture, and tool a healer needs at my disposal, I’m not sure whether or not I can save him. I have to try everything I can, even if it means risking discovery.” She held his gaze and watched a war rage across his face.

  Finally, he cursed and raked a hand through his hair. “What can I do?”

  She turned her attention back to Burke, relieved that she had won the battle. “We need a fire and boiling water. The best we can do out here is to soak the bandages in yarrow water and force some tea down Burke’s throat.”

  It was a long shot, but the yarrow would absorb into the wound better if it were boiled and soaked
into the bandages. Yarrow was their best bet to get the bleeding stopped and hopefully stave off the infection. She would have to re-stitch the wound, too.

  Garrick set about building a fire a few feet away from the shelter. Jossalyn dug in her bag again, hoping to find anything that might help, but she had taken very little with her when she left Dunbraes to stow away with Garrick and Burke. The memory of packing for her grand escape seemed to have been formed ages ago, although only a few days had elapsed. She had had no idea when she was packing what kind of tangled calamity she would find herself in just days later. A man’s life was in her hands—and all of their lives hung in the balance.

  A fire now crackled cheerily in front of the shelter, a stark contrast to her mood. Garrick had pulled a small tin pot from his saddlebag and had filled it with water from his waterskin, then placed the pot over the fire to get a boil started. Jossalyn crawled out of the lean-to and toward the fire, a clump of yarrow plants in her hand. She pulled off the soil-covered roots but pushed the rest of the plants—feathery leaves, white flowers, and all—into the pot.

  Reminding herself that a watched pot never boils, she crawled back into the shelter alongside Burke and went about preparing to re-stitch his wound. This time, since he was unconscious, she wouldn’t need Garrick to hold him down. As she threaded her needle, she glanced out at the fire in front of the shelter, but Garrick was gone.

  She tugged her attention back to the task at hand, pushing away her thoughts about him. She could gaze at his strikingly handsome face and body or chew on his enigmatic words and behavior some other time, she told herself firmly.

  After she had re-stitched the wound in Burke’s leg, she went to the fire to check on the yarrow water. The plants had turned pulpy and withered, and the water was nearly boiling already. She looked around and noticed that the horses were gone, but their saddlebags sat on the ground a few feet away. Garrick had likely seen to them. She felt a wave of gratitude at his small action. It meant she was no longer going to have to fight him on whether or not they could move Burke and resume their travels. It was a small act, but she was glad to have one less thing to worry about.